High on the

hog in

Tuscany

PIGS are in the news these days. Wild boars in Tuscany have sniffed out and destroyed a stash of cocaine they found in a forest.

They scattered the white powder all over the Valichiani valley, consuming a fair proportion of it as well, according to Sky News.

We're not told how this might have affected the behaviour of the already wild boars, but the escapade has cost the drug dealers who stashed the stuff in the forest the equivalent of more than R90 million.

Not only that. The Italian cops have swooped on the forest stash and arrested four dealers.

Still with Sky News, a large pig brought some of London's busiest rail routes to a halt the other day when a water pipe burst at Surbiton, in the south-west.

When engineers from Thames Water arrived to fix it, they met the large pig, who would let nobody past. This was not a wild boar, it was a pet pig named Pickle. But he stood his ground.

Meanwhile, water from the burst pipe was damaging equipment. Trains were being cancelled or delayed, affecting thousands of commuters.

But then somebody managed to lure Pickle away with a trail of potato crisps. If he'd been a wild boar they would have needed a trail of cocaine.

Living will

OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "Last night my kids and I were sitting in the living room and I said to them: 'I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.' They got up, unplugged the computer and threw my wine in the sink. The little bastards!"

Bare knuckles

ONE  senses bare knuckle stuff as the American presidential election approaches and the impeachment inquiry in the House of Representatives proceeds.

As a former US ambassador to Ukraine was giving evidence, President Trump sent out an astonishing tweet attacking her personally.

Then the New Yorker: "In a blistering tweet on Friday, the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, was accused of leaving a trail of destruction by a man with six bankruptcies and multiple business failures.

"'Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad',  wrote the man, who ran the now defunct United States Football League into the ground and paid twenty-five million dollars to settle fraud charges against a fake university bearing his name.

"'She started off in Somalia, how did that go?' tweeted the man, whose lengthy roster of bankruptcies includes the Trump Taj Mahal (1991), Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino (1992), the Plaza Hotel (1992), Trump Castle Hotel and Casino (1992), Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts (2004) and Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009).

"'Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new   Ukrainian president spoke unfavourably about her,' continued the man, who founded such business fiascos as the Trump Shuttle Airline, Trump Vodka and Trump Steaks."

This is heavy, combative stuff. It's satirist Andy Borowitz nagain, bit a biting, gonad-grabbing brand of satire.. Things are getting ugly.

Tailpiece

A FELLOW is planning to marry a 19-year-old stripper on his 75th birthday. His doctor is perturbed.

"I urge you to reconsider," he says. "For a man your age, prolonged sexual activity with a girl that young could prove fatal."

His patient shrugs. "If she dies, she dies."

Last word

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious and immature. – Tom Robbins