The Idler, Tuesday, February 25, 2020

New Texas

tourist

attraction

 

DALLAS, in Texas, has gone into competition with Italy for tourists attractions. It now has a Leaning Tower very similar to the one in Pisa.

It happened by accident, according to Associated Press. An implosion intended to bring down an 11-storey building failed to do the trick, leaving the central core at an attitude very similar to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

The demolishers will now use a wrecking ball to bring down the rest, but the online jokes and photos are flowing and there's even an online petition to "save this landmark from destruction."

The Leaning Tower of Dallas. It reminds me of another Leaning Tower.

In Maritzburg in days of yore there was a very lanky senior golfer who, in the 19^th Hole, had a peculiar stance at the bar. He would lean slightly back ward as he took his first drink. As he took subsequent drinks he would lean back more and more. The angle became alarming. But he never fell over.

He was known as the Leaning Tower of Phuza.

 

Object lesson

 

A DISCUSSION in a Tennessee courtroom on the question of drug possession turned into an object lesson.

Spencer Boston, 20, was addressing the judge in the town of Lebanon, telling him marijuana ought to be legalised, according to Huffington Post, when he reached into his pocket, pulled out a spliff and lit up.

But he wasn't given much time to enjoy it. The sheriff's men pounced and led him away, with disorderly conduct added to the charges of drug possession he already faced.

He could've at least offered the judge a puff.

 

 

Triangles

The long-lost wreck of the SS Cotopaxi - a steamship referenced in movies, memes and myth - has been discovered off the coast of St Augustine, Florida, almost a century after vanishing near the Bermuda Triangle.

The wreck was identified by diver, author and researcher Michael Barnette, according to Huffington Post.

Cotopaxi set off from Charleston, South Carolina, bound for Havana, Cuba, on November 29, 1925, then vanished. No trace of the ship or its crew of 32 was ever found, making the vessel ripe for folklore and pop culture.

In Steven Spielberg's 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the Cotopaxi reappears in the middle of the Gobi Desert: 

And in recent years, social media memes have suggested the Cotopaxi had suddenly appeared, empty and intact, as a "ghost ship" floating off the coast of Cuba. That one was passed around so often that Snopes published an entire page debunking it. 

The Bermuda Triangle is a loosely defined portion of the Atlantic stretching roughly from Miami to Bermuda to Puerto Rico, and some believe ships and aircraft mysteriously vanish there.

It's a bit like our Durban Triangle. This runs between the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties, high up on the Berea, and the Irish Tavern and The Pub With No Name, down in Florida Road. This forms a narrow Isosceles triangle where knickers, beer glasses and large amounts of money mysteriously disappear.

 

 

Tailpiece

 

TWO cockroaches are munching rubbish in an alley.

Says one: "I was in that new restaurant across the road. It's so clean. The kitchen is spotless, the floors gleaming white. It's so sanitary the whole place shines."

Second cockroach (frowning): "Please. Not while I'm eating!"

 

Last word

 

You must not think me necessarily foolish because I am facetious, nor will I consider you necessarily wise because you are grave. - Sydney Smith