The Idler, Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Confirmation of Kipling THE BANKS OF the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees ... Sky television has a remarkable illustration of Rudyard Kipling's famous Just So story on how the elephant got its trunk after starting out with a nose the size of a boot. A baby elephant in an unidentified part of Africa had been drinking from a waterhole when a crocodile seized it by its trunk. The frightened little elephant's ears flap as it tries to pull its trunk away from the crocodile. As Kipling put it: "Then the Elephant's Child sat back on his little haunches, and pulled, and pulled, and pulled, and his nose began to stretch. And the Crocodile floundered into the water, making it all creamy with great sweeps of his tail, and he pulled, and pulled, and pulled."   The baby elephant shown on Sky looked as though it was fighting a losing battle as it spread its legs for balance and pulled back in fright. But once they realised his distress, the elders of the herd moved swiftly to the waterhole and scared off the croc by trumpeting and stamping the ground. Just So. Did anyone ever doubt Kipling's version?   Zzzzzzz... HERE'S where you're paid to sleep on the job. A zoo keeper in Finland has had to bed down with a juvenile brown bear for the Nordic winter – which starts about now and lasts for rather a long time – because the bear would otherwise not be able to hibernate. In the wild he would have his mother to hibernate with but the mother is no longer around. The keeper beds down in a small hut in the enclosure of Juuso the young bear, who then settles down to his winter snooze, quite happy. Humans don't hibernate – they have to eat and watch football – so the keeper doesn't stay put the whole time. But he has to be around in case Juuso gets restive. We're not told about the keeper's social life; whether he has a wife and what she thinks of the arrangement. But it does remind me of a farmer just outside Maritzburg who had about a dozen large dogs, all of which slept with him every night on a huge bed he had specially made. The several wives he had all walked out on him. Some people just don't have this slumber bond with animals. Game granny A 77-YEAR-OLD Spanish granny named Montse (she doesn't seem to use a second name) is the world's oldest professional parachutist, according to this news snippet. She's had 903 jumps altogether, all over the world. Other activities have included ski-ing, swimming, trampoline jumping, sailing and windsurfing. Good heavens! When does she do her knitting? Riddle   YOU'RE lost and alone in the middle of a vast forest. All you have with you is a soggy matchbox with a couple of broken matches left. You have no food, no shelter and no hope of rescue. Who do you think would be able to help you? .The Pakistan cricket team. They can fix matches.

 

 

 

 

 

On the road

A SELECTION of bumper stickers:

·        If you don't like my driving, don't call anyone. Just take another road. That's why the government made so many of them.

·        If that phone was up your butt, maybe you could drive a little better.

·        Horn broken … watch for finger.

·        You! Out of the gene pool!

·        Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

·        Grow your own dope – plant a man!

 

Tailpiece

A FATHER goes into a toy shop to get something for his daughter's birthday. He asks: "How much for one of those Barbies in the display window?"

 

Sales assistant: "Which one do you mean, sir? We have Work Out Barbie for R79.95; Shopping Barbie for R79.95; Beach Barbie for R79.95; Disco Barbie for R79.95; Ballerina Barbie for R79.95; Astronaut Barbie for R79.95; Skater Barbie for R79.95; and Divorced Barbie for R809.95".

"Why R809.95 for Divorced Barbie and the others are only R79.95?"

The sales assistant rolls her eyes and sighs: "Sir, Divorced Barbie comes with Ken's Car, Ken's House, Ken's Boat, Ken's Furniture, Ken's Computer, one of Ken's Friends and a key chain made from Ken's Genitalia."

 

Last word

Now and then an innocent man is sent to the legislature.

Kin Hubbard

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Monday, November 8, 2010

The arms deal and Lady MacBeth

WE LIVE in a globalised world, and here comes evidence of one of its major benefits. Our own investigators – notably the so-called Hawks – have run into a brick wall in their investigation of alleged mega-scale corruption associated with the R47-billion Arms Deal. The trail has gone cold. So they call off the search. Nothing more can be done.

 

Yet here the hounds give tongue again. The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board in Britain has launched its own investigation into kickbacks said to have been paid to South African figures in connection with the BAE aircraft contract. The sum of R1 billion is mentioned, and the South Africans involved will be named.

 

So the Hawks and the others will presumably be able to take up their investigation again. Hurrah for globalisation! Without it the trail would remain cold, our leaders frustrated and unable to punish the wicked.

As Lady MacBeth said: "Murder will out."

 

Don't bank on it

WE HAVE a banking system that leads the world, I'm told. Apparently it's because we have a vibrant first world sector which is small enough to be easily manageable. For that reason, new banking services are given a trial run here before they are taken to the rest of the world.

It's nice to know. Yet I've had e-mails from two major banks telling me I need to update the security of my internet banking facilities, failing which they will be suspended.

Except I don't have an account with either of those banks, and have never had - let alone internet banking facilities. I suppose I just have to put up with suspension

But it makes you a little uneasy. Why has my bank not contacted me? Is it fast asleep or is it busy contacting the clients of other banks?

It recalls the story of the airline passengers being addressed by a robot voice: "This flight is navigated and piloted by computer. Nothing can go wrong ... can go wrong ... can go wrong ..."

HMS Otus

A BARNACLE-encrusted member of the Durban Undersea Club has approached me with an appeal for information about the scuttling of the British submarine HMS Otus (N92) off the Bluff soon after World War II.

It is believed Otus was scuttled in 1946. It seems she might have been decommissioned and sold into private ownership before this happened, though why a private owner would scuttle his vessel rather than sell it for scrap is not clear.

The DUC think they have located the wreck (if that's the right word for a vessel that was deliberately sunk) and intend exploring it. They would be grateful for any information about Otus and especially for any pictures of the scuttling.

Does anyone out there have more information?

 

Sleaze-rag

THINGS are getting a bit sticky for British prime minister David Cameron's communications director, Andy Coulson. He's now been interviewed by the fuzz over allegations that, while editor of the News of the World, he knew his reporters were illegally hacking into people's telephone conversations. One went to jail for it.

Coulson protests his innocence. He knew nothing about his reporters indulging in such villainy. Of course not. People who regularly resort to entrapment – secretly filming individuals agreeing to dodgy deals in return for cash, then splashing it in the paper – would never dream of such a thing.

The real question is why Cameron should have chosen somebody from a sleazy red-top tabloid. It's like recruiting from Wormwood Scrubs for a post on the police selection board.

Coulson and the News of the World recall the lines of Hilaire Belloc:

You can never hope to bribe or twist

Thank God the British journalist.

But considering what the man will do

Unbribed there's no occasion to.

 

 

Tailpiece

A MAN is walking unsteadily down the street in the early hours.

 

Policeman: "And where would you be going, sir?"

 

Pedestrian: "I'm on my way to listen to a lecture about the physiological effects of alcohol and drug abuse on the human body."

 

Policeman: "Really? And who's going to give such a lecture at this hour?"

 

Pedestrian:"My wife."

 

 

Last word

A lifetime is more than sufficiently long for people to get what there is of it wrong.

Piet Hein

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

Captain Cook Friday, November 5, 2010

THIS was quintessential rugby – King's Park packed to the rafters, two sides laying it on, ball in hand; hard, driving play, great handling and formidable tackling; the crowd totally involved, high emotion. I'd never before noticed the national anthem being sung before a Currie Cup final. Was this a first? Whatever, it was entirely appropriate. This was the culmination of the 2010 season, the best of South African rugby, as important as any international, an emotional event.

Let's hope our rugby administrators got the message. The Currie Cup is not just the best and most entertaining rugby competition in the world, it's the white-hot crucible in which Springbok rugby is forged. It's always been that way and this season proved it again.

But of particular significance is the way our rugby developed during the Currie Cup. The Tri-Nations showed Springbok rugby to have adopted obsolescence as its game plan. New Zealand especially, but the Aussies also, were light years ahead of us in adapting to changes in the laws that favour a free-flowing, running game. The Currie Cup showed how well our provincial teams have adapted. They were playing a totally different game.

It was not just ourselves. Western Province, the Bulls, the Lions and Griquas were also playing the ball-in-hand game. It made for an enthralling, absolutely spectacular Currie Cup competition. Translate that into the national side and we're looking good for the World Cup next year. But unfortunately these things do not translate easily and automatically. There are different coaches, different game plans. And, of course, different opponents.

The point is that if Springbok rugby is to be rescued from the humiliation of the last Tri-Nations, the Currie Cup has shown the way. And a second point arising is that we tamper with the Currie Cup at our peril. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This year's competition proved its worth. It must not be watered down or neglected in any way just because the Super-14 has become the Super-15 or because of the World Cup. Even if the international players are not available the whole time, the Currie Cup is vitally important. Some of its great moments this year were before the Springbok players became available.

Back to that final. What a corker! What a culmination of a dream season for Patrick Lambie. Michaelhouse will be jubilant that they at last have a rugby Springbok. Give it another 50 years or so and they could draw level with Durban Girls' College, who already have two (Wally Clarkson and Pat Lyster, who were in the Girls' College kindergarten in the 1920s).

And what a confirmation of the qualities of Keegan Daniel in his selection for the Boks. What a season he's had. That tackle he made on Brian Habana late in the second half last Saturday had it all – speed, brawn and mathematical precision. Habana looked like he'd been shot by an Exocet missile.

Ireland tomorrow. The Boks are up against it – injuries, lack of training time, arriving just before kick-off. I know it's only the end of season tour, but shouldn't these things be taken a little more seriously, be organised better?

This is a fixture for The Pub With No Name. What a great season it's been. Crème-de-menthe all round! Frappe!

The Idler, Friday, November 5, 2010

The great snoop computer

HERE'S a potentially chilling development. A computer technology has been developed between Swiss and American boffins to monitor and measure disenchantment with government.

The computer programme trawls through telephone conversations, e-mails and social networking sites to identify disenchantment.

Now leaving aside the fact that it's doubtful whether any computer anywhere in the world has the capacity to store and process the disenchantment of ordinary people, so great is the volume, let's have a look at how it works.

The Mind Machine Project – developed between Geneva University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - pinpoints resentment in conversations. It measures decibels and other voice biometrics.

It detects obsessiveness with the individual going back to the same topic over and over, measuring crescendos.

Yeah, right. Walk into any bar and you'll hear the obsessions, the rising crescendos. You don't need any computer programme.

But presumably governments stay out of bars. Presumably they buys and instal the programme so they can keep tabs on potential trouble-makers.

This is too sinister for words. No doubt very expensive too.

And it's unnecessary. There's a simpler and cheaper method. In America it's known as the mid-term elections. In recent days, these have revealed massive disenchantment with government.

Most societies have their own version. In Britain recently, massive disenchantment showed itself in the general election. Next year we have our local government elections. If anyone is feeling disenchanted, he/she has the chance to show it. There's no need for spooky technology.

Let's get back to basics.

The Tea Party

WHAT do we make of the failure by Tea Party candidate Christine O'Donnell to make it into the US Senate? Would this former witch have enlivened matters with a bit of hocus pocus across the floor, a good old shake-up of Washington with its stuffy ways?

On reflection, perhaps it's as well things have turned out as they did. Innovation is all right, but you can't have a senator sailing in on a broomstick.

 

Only too real

IT'S A SAD little story this about actor Kirk Abella who was shot dead by a village security guard in the Philippines while filming a scene for a British movie.

Abella was speeding away on a motorcycle with a masked driver and looked too much like the real thing, prompting the security guard to open fire.

The film-makers should come to South Africa. In certain localities all the film crew need do is stake it out and they will get all the heist, getaway and bang-bang! footage they could wish for, all of it totally authentic – and without putting any of their actors at risk

Dearly beloved ...

THE MALDIVE islands are a popular holiday/honeymoon destination, idyllic palm-fringed beaches of white sand, set in a calm turquoise ocean.

They've also become a popular venue for the sentimental renewal of marriage vows. Couples go to the Maldives to lovingly recommit themselves.

But if you do that, make sure the celebrant – as they call him – renewing the vows speaks in your language, or at least you have a reliable interpreter.

It seems celebrants speaking the local language have been having a bit of fun, insulting the loving couples, calling them "pigs" and "producers of bastards", while the other locals struggle to keep a straight face. It gets videoed then posted on YouTube, to great hilarity.

But the authorities have tumbled to it and are furious. A celebrant and a man accused of collaborating with him have been were arrested and banged up in jail awaiting trial. The Maldives government has issued tourist hotels with a set of strict instructions on marriage vow renewal ceremonies, which have become a significant part of the tourism package.

Yes, the original ceremony was unnerving enough. After 30-odd years, who needs to become a comedy star on YouTube?

Helen's good vibes

IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, sends in more verse on Julius Malema's description of Helen Zille as a "cockroach".

How well the cockroach survives,

Despite man's anti-roach drives;

So the Youth League's invective

Must be seen in perspective,

Against Helen's positive vibes.

 

Tailpiece

Teacher: "You never get anything right. What kind of job will you get when you leave school?"

Pupil: "I'll be the weather girl on TV."

 

Last word

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

P J O'Rourke

 

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Thursday, November 4, 2010

Meerkat hits the big time

JUST when did the meerkat go global? This quirky and appealing little denizen of the Kalahari desert and such places is a natural for film footage, and indeed he has appeared in various local advertising features.

But suddenly he's in the international big time. He's adopted a Russian identity – Alexsandr Orlov – and pedigree, including a great-grandfather in Tsarist uniform who fought in the Meerkat-Mongoose war of 1728 and appears on the internet.

Now Alexandr – created originally as a fun diversion by the VCCP advertising agency in London – has written his autobiography, A Simples Life (No, it doesn't make sense to me either), whose sales are outstripping those of former British prime minister Tony Blair and showbiz celebrity Katie Price.

Not bad for a meerkat. I must get cracking on that memoir of Laurence the Leguaan.

Frenchies!

WHEN French and British engineers first mooted, in the 19^th century, the building of a cross-channel tunnel to link the two countries, lurid cartoons appeared in England showing French soldiers pouring out of it with fixed bayonets.

Sentiments were no doubt similar in France. The Napoleonic wars had built up a stock of mutual suspicion and ill-will that has by no means dissipated.

 

Yet Britain and France are now to merge their military/naval operations in all kinds of areas, a development that has been hastened by the need on both sides to rationalise and drastically cut government spending.

It's a bad day for the Francophobes and Anglophobes. Some of their favourite jokes, their pet prejudices, will have to be ditched.

A cultural bridging is needed. How about a run by the Folies Bergere on the London West End?

 

Ball of fire

MEANWHILE, the notion of the French and the Brits sharing aircraft carriers recalls the one about the carrier-based American aviator in the Pacific theatre during World War II,

This fellow had been a little erratic and had been warned that unless he tightened up his act he would lose his wings. Determined to prove himself, he took off one morning.

He was an absolute ball of fire. He shot down two Japanese Zeroes. He torpedoed a Japanese cruiser. Making a pass over a Japanese destroyer, he dropped a bomb right down the funnel. Boom!

Running short of fuel, he nevertheless performed a victory roll as he came in to land on the carrier flight deck. The capture wires had barely eased when he was out of the cockpit and striding jauntily toward the waiting captain.

He saluted: "Whatchya think of that then, Cap'n, Sir?"

The Captain: "Velly funny, Amelican pig!"

 

Missing limerick?

IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, thinks he might have found the limerick sought by reader Lydia Weight, who can recall only the first two lines:

A limerick's written with ease,

Like a man on a flying trapeze;

With only five lines,

Including scansion and rhymes,

It is verse that will certainly please.

 

Would that be it?

 

Another limerick

MEANWHILE, Ian is so exercised by Julius Malema's calling Helen Zille a "cockroach" that he supplies comment, also in a limerick:

There should have been reproach,

When Zille was called a cockroach;

But the President's silence

Condoned verbal violence,

Thus weakening his non-racial approach.

 

Tailpiece

A COUPLE are going out for the evening. They're in their glad rags and need only to put the dog out when their taxi arrives. However, as the couple go out the dog bolts back inside.

They don't want the dog shut up in the house so the wife goes out to the taxi and the husband goes back indoors to chase the dog out.

The wife doesn't want to advertise that the house will be left empty so she says to the taxi driver: "He's just going upstairs to say goodbye to my mother."

A couple of minutes later, the husband gets into the cab.

"Sorry I took so long. Stupid bitch was hiding under the bed and I had to poke her with a coathanger to get her to come out. Then I had to wrap her in a blanket to stop her scratching and biting me as I hauled her ass downstairs. Then I threw her out the back door. She better not poop in the vegetable garden again!"

The silence in the taxi was deafening.

 

Last word

If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything.

Mark Twain

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Wednesday, November 3, 2010

The colonisation of space

NASA is considering a project to fly astronauts to Mars within the next 20 years, to settle permanently.

In fact those behind the multi-billion dollar project, Hundred Year Starship, don't mince their words. For cost reasons, the atronauts will have one-way tickets. There will be no coming back.

The Starship project is being led by Nasa's Ames Research Centre.

The US government and Nasa have already put in substantial funding but Ames director Pete Worden is hoping to attract the world's billionaires to the project.

He says: "We hope to inveigle some billionaires to form a Hundred Year Starship fund. The human space programme is now really aimed at settling other worlds. Twenty years ago you had to whisper that in dark bars and get fired. Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds."

Nasa research claims a one-way human mission is technologically feasible and would be cheaper than returning astronauts to earth. The costs of safely returning a crew would take up most of such a mission's budget. The one-way human mission to Mars would be the first step in establishing a permanent human presence on the planet.

Experts say the cost of sending 20 Mars settlers with a one-way ticket would be equal to bringing four astronauts back.

There's something very familiar about all this. They used to call it transportation.

But do we really want another Australia in outer space?

Disparaging?

 

PRESIDENT Zuma's cabinet shake-up highlights the fact that we have in this country a "Ministry for Women, Children and Persons With Disabilities".

 

Is this title not somewhat disparaging of women? It's like the maxim of Roman-Dutch common law which denied contractual capacity to "minors, married women and lunatics."

 

It's who you're bracketed with that counts.

 

Numbers game

 

READER Brian Gilham crunches some numbers concerning the Currie Cup final.

 

Date: 30-10; Score: 30-10; Difference: 20; Top scorer: No. 10; Year: 2010; Number of players on field: 30; Time between halves: 10; Duration of half: 30 + 10.

 

Yep. Do the maths!

 

 

Cheers!

 

THE LEBANON has produced the world's biggest wine glass. Measuring 1.5m in height and 1.46 m at its widest point, it holds 100 bottles of wine and has been officially declared the champion by Guinness World Records.

It was produced for a wine festival in Beirut – but it wouldn't have been big enough for the jollifications in Durban last Saturday. Nor to drown the sorrows of Cape Town.

 

Pear-shaped world

 

THIS week's remarks on the way things have mostly gone pear-shaped since we entered the 21^st century remind Sally Stretch of a song she first heard in the 60s.

 

They're rioting in Africa, they're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida, and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls,
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much!

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud,
For mans' been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off, and we'll all be blown away.

They're rioting in Africa, there's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us, will be done by our fellow man."

 

Not much has changed, she says. Indeed, not much.

 

Health food

OBESITY has reached serious proportions in much of the world. Half the problem is youngsters being flush with cash plus the easy availability of chocolates and other junk food.

But in China they're doing something about it. In Nanjing, capital of the  province of Jiangsu, chocolates and potato crisps have been removed from the vending machines that serve rail commuters.

They have been replaced by the Dazha hairy crab, a popular traditional delicacy that is eaten live. The vending machines spit them out in custom-fitted plastic boxes, chilled to 5 degrees centigrade, which leave them sedated but still alive.

Delicious! Non-fattening! Healthy! And if a customer gets a dead crab, he gets three more live ones in compensation. What could be fairer?

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet ...

 

Tailpiece

 

WHAT do you call a short-legged tramp?

 

A low-down bum.

 

Last word

 

Conscience is what makes a boy tell his mother before his sister does.

Evan Esar

GRAHAM LINSCOTT