The Idler, Monday, December 13, 2010

Stand in line!

NEWS from Oz. A crowded Virgin flight from Sydney was cancelled after Virgin's 767s had been withdrawn from service. A single attendant was re-booking a long line of inconvenienced travellers. Suddenly an angry passenger pushed his way to the desk.
  
He slapped his ticket down on the counter and said: "I have to be on this flight and it has to be first class!"

The attendant replied: 'I'm sorry, sir. I'll be happy to try to help you, but I've got to help these people first and I'm sure we'll be able to work something out."

The passenger was unimpressed. He asked loudly: "Do you have any idea who I am?"

The attendant smiled and grabbed her public address microphone:"May I have your attention please …" Her voice was heard clearly throughout the terminal. "We have a passenger here at Desk 14 who does not know who he is. If anyone can help him find his identity, please come to Desk 14."
 
As the other passengers shrieked with laughter, the awkward one glared at the Virgin attendant and uttered a well-known four-letter word.

Coolly, she replied: 'I'm sorry sir, but you'll have to get in line for that too."

You don't tangle with an Aussie sheila.

Snow story

 

A HEARTWARMING e-mail arrives from Glasgow:

 

"Hi all, it's snowing like hell here today. My mate says that since it's been snowing, all his missus does is look through the window.

 

"He reckons if it gets much worse he'll have to let her in."

 

 

Mystery music

 

ROGER Kirk, of Hillcrest, was wakened in the early hours by a cascading of musical notes, a nice little ditty at full volume.

 

At first he thought it was his wife's new cellphone. But the music had too much depth and bass for that.

 

Then he sat up with a start. Somebody was playing his old upright piano. He thought: "Ghost!"

 

He grabbed a torch and went to investigate. Sure enough, the piano was strumming away but nobody was seated at it.

 

Then inside he found a little mouse running up and down, playing its heart out.

 

There seemed a definite pattern to the notes. Roger wonders whether readers would have any ideas as to what tunes the mouse was producing.

 

Something from Mouzart perhaps?

 

 

Gender trawl

INVESTMENT adviser James Greener takes issue in his latest newsletter with the gender equity industry.

"Do we not have more productive things for people to do than trawl through company reports counting how many women work in the place? Presumably it is us taxpayers who employ these folk to howl with outrage at their discovery that 'companies demonstrate a lack of coherent gender transformation … policies, with little evidence of … designated responsibility measured through performance management mechanisms'.

"No one trying to run a business where people are employed on the basis that they add more value than they get paid, has any desire or time to understand let alone implement nonsense like this.

"I wonder what will happen to the small firm they found that did not have any men on board?"

 

 

Higher education

PIET van der Merwe enrols as a mature student at a university. He meets the Dean of Admissions, who suggests he should register for courses in mathematics, history, English and logic.

"Logic?"What's that?"

 

"I'll give you an example. Do you own a weed eater?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Then logically speaking, I think that you would have a garden."

 

"That's true, I do have a garden."

 

"Because you have a garden, I think logically you would have a house."

 

"Yes, I do have a house."

 

"And because you have a house, you must logically have a family."

 

"That's right."

"And because you have a family, logically you must have a wife. And because you have a wife, logic tells me you must be a heterosexual."

 

"I am heterosexual. That's amazing!"

 

Piet meets Koos in the bar and tells him the exciting news about signing up for classes in maths, English, history and logic.

 

"Logic? What's that?"

 

"I'll give you an example. Do you have a weed eater?"

 

"No."

 

"Then you're a moffie!"

 

Tailpiece

I like to walk around the house naked. That's until the neighbours and the police tell me to go back inside.

 

 

Last word

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.

W. Somerset Maugham

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

Captain Cook, Friday, December 10, 2010

THAT was a humdinger of a Test down in Adelaide. I was able to watch a bit of the England innings and it was thought-provoking stuff. Half the Aussie side seemed to be carrying injuries and it was astonishing to see the England batsmen running four off shots that didn't reach the boundary, some Aussie fielder hobbling after the ball with a tendon injury or something of the sort.

I've never seen anything quite like it. It's difficult to summon up sympathy for Van Diemenslanders but this was painful to watch. It seemed to somehow capture the decline in Australian cricket since the Waughs and the others departed.

Now there's a clamour for Shane Warne to come back; to swap his seat in the commentary box for a place on the field, preferably as skipper. The Aussie newspapers are full of it. The bookies are offering cautious odds. Warnie himself plays it close to his chest, saying he is "flattered" (though having observed Kevin Pietersen flay the leather about the place for that double ton, I wonder how keen he really would be).

This is desperate stuff, a rerun of the Barbarossa legend – the Germanic warrior-king who lies sleeping in a cave, waiting for the moment when he will emerge to rescue the nation in its hour of need. I hadn't thought the Aussies were big on this kind of Germanic folklore thing, but there you are.

It will be fascinating to see what happens next week. Australian cricket is suddenly at a low ebb. Morale has gone. Can they recover in these few days? Can they do it without Barbarossa? It's a sobering thought that if England can pull it off again next week they've retained the Ashes with two matches still to play. Who could have believed it?

Following the cricket Down Under has its complications, of course. Coming on-screen at 1.30 am, you either have to set the alarm or stay up all night at some place like the Thunder Bar, chatting to the Ukrainian dancers.

This tends to blur the focus on the game, but on the other hand these Ukrainian ladies are learning fast and showing a real appreciation. The way they snap their suspender belts to applaud a boundary adds a new dimension to cricket. So do the depth charges and jagermeisters.

Why go to these lengths to watch a Test between England and Australia? Well, in a certain sense it's South Africa B versus Australia – Strauss, Pietersen, Trott, Prior. There could be others I've missed. It's almost our own away fixture.

What a come-back for Pietersen - the double ton and a breakthrough wicket. He must have used his recent sojourn in KwaZulu-Natal to visit the nets at Maritzburg College, his old school and get new inspiration.

No, I don't want to talk about last week's Baa-Baas rugby. The season's over. But I see De Snor says there's nothing to worry about, the Boks are still on course. That's exactly what worries me.

It's enough to drive you to the Thunder Bar with your English/Ukrainian phrasebook. Slivovitz all round!

The Idler, Friday, December 10

Horror show collision

A DURBAN ambulance driver wouldn't let a female paramedic out of the vehicle the other day because she was laughing so hard. He said it wasn't professional. 

They were attending a two-car collision at St John's bridge, Westville. One car had been carrying a 25-litre bucket of white touch-up paint on the back seat.

As the ambulance arrived, the four occupants were clambering out, covered in white paint. They looked like something from a horror show.

But it had been a minor collision and nobody from either vehicle was hurt. The paramedic team survived intact, in spite of the strain on the girl's laughter mechanisms.

I'm obliged for all this information to my old friend and sometime contributor, Tom Dennen, who I understand is still in his native America and picked up the story on the Internet.

Dad's pants

THIS week's reports about women wearing pants in Umlazi remind reader Brian Kennedy of when young women first started wearing slacks in Dublin

"They would walk down the street to calls of: 'Go home and let your father out of bed!' from groups of teenage boys."

 

*

Marriage

SOME thoughts on the institution of matrimony:

·        Marriages are made in heaven. But then again, so is thunder and lightning.

·        If you want your wife to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say, talk in your sleep.

·         Marriage is grand -- and divorce is at least a 100 grand!

·        Married life is very frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbours listen.

·        When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing: Either the car is new or the wife is.

·        Marriage is when a man and woman become as one; The trouble starts when they try to decide which one.
 

·        Before marriage, a man will lie awake all night thinking about something you said. After marriage, he will fall asleep before you finish.

·        Every man wants a wife who is beautiful, understanding, economical, and a good cook. But the law allows only one wife.

·        Marriage and love are purely a matter of chemistry. That is why one treats the other like toxic waste.

·         A man is incomplete until he is married. After that, he is finished.

 

Divorce

MEANWHILE, Bill Bryson (Bizarre World – Warner Books) brings us some news from the divorce courts:

A woman in San Diego was granted a divorce on the grounds that her husband was so cheap he made her make her own false teeth. In Cleveland, meanwhile, Mrs Edna Hopton, a deaf mute, won a dissolution of her marriage because her husband nagged her in sign language.

 

Wonder drug

ASPIRIN turns out to be the wonder drug to ward off cancer. Everyone should take it. Side effect: no more excuses from women at night, says reader Diederik van der Werff.

Bumper sticker

AN innuendo is not an Italian suppository

Tailpiece

A DUBLIN doctor wanted to go fishing. He approached his assistant. "Murphy, I'm going fishing tomorrow and I don't want to close the clinic. I want you to keep it open and take care of all me patients." "'Yes, sir."   The doctor returns next day: "So, Murphy, how was your day?" Murphy says he had three patients. "De first one had a headache, so he did, so I gave him Paracetamol.' "Bravo, Murphy lad! And the second one?" "De second one had indigestion and I gave him Gaviscon, so I did sir."   "Bravo, bravo! You're good at this. And what about the third one?"   "Sir, I was sitting here and suddenly de door flies open and a young gorgeous woman bursts in, so she does. Like a bolt outta de blue, she tears off her clothes. She takes off everyting, even her bra and panties and lies down on de table and  shouts: 'Help me for de love of St Patrick! For five years I have not seen any man!''' "'Tunderin' lard, Murphy! What did you do?" "I put drops in her eyes, I did!"

 

Last word

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.

Thomas Sowell

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Thursday, December 9, 2010

Under the mistletoe

'TIS THE SEASON to be lusty … yet there's a danger that supplies of the traditional Christmas mistletoe could be running out.

As we all know, it's under the mistletoe that a girl is required to accept the kisses of a boy (but, as we also all know, it generally happens the other way round).

Mistletoe thrives in established apple orchards but such habitats have seen a big decline in England over the past 60 years, conservationists warn.

The British National Trust is now urging people to buy mistletoe in the run-up to Christmas in a bid to ensure future revellers can go on kissing under it.

And the ministry of agriculture says there's more to it than just boy-girl fun. Kissing under the mistletoe also assists the cider industry.

At least 60 percent of old orchards in the "cider country" of Somerset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire have disappeared since the 1950s. In Devon and Kent, the figure is as high as 90 percent.

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant that thrives on apple trees. It can also be found on lime, poplar and hawthorn trees.

But unless it is plucked, it can envelop and kill its host tree.

Says agriculture minister Jim Paice: "Buying mistletoe helps traditional British cider apple orchards thrive by removing mistletoe from apple trees. By buying mistletoe at Christmas, you're continuing a tradition that helps apple trees to flourish."

So whether in Devon or Durban, 'tis the season to seize a girl under the mistletoe. It's all in the cause of conservation.

As the old English folk song has it:

Apples be ripe,

Nuts be brown,

Pettticoats up,

Trousers down …

 

 

Zoider in Zomerzet

AH YES, THE zoider country. A South African girl and I once went into a pub in the Forest of Dene. The locals looked on and listened with great interest. Then an old chap came across.

"Arrrr! Yew be Polish?"

He was disappointed when we replied not.

"Yew be French then?"

They couldn't believe we were speaking our native English.

As they sing in those parts:

Yew can 'ave 'er,

Oi can't take 'er,

'Er's too fat for Oi ...

The big sting

A GERMAN national has been arrested for smuggling hundreds of tarantulas and other spiders into the US. Sven Koppler, 37, was apprehended when he arrived in Los Angeles to meet an associate, following a nine-month police investigation dubbed Operation Spiderman.

The probe began when customs officers found 300 live tarantulas during a routine search of a package. Fish and wildlife agents intercepted a second package containing 272.

Then agents ordered more spiders from Koppler, who sent a package containing 70. The packages included species whose importation is in breach of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

He was arrested when he eventually arrived in person to meet an associate in Los Angeles. This is what is known as a sting operation.

But Koppler – who is said to have earned $300 000 from his spider trade – might still have had the last laugh. Did they have the savvy to search his underpants when he arrived at the airport?

Life's pressures

A FEW musings to help cope with the pressures of life:

·         I have kleptomania but when it gets bad I take something for it.

·         My short-term memory is not as sharp as it used to be. Also, my short-term memory is not as sharp as it used to be.

·         In just two days from now, tomorrow will be yesterday.

·         A bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory.

·         The statement below is true.

The statement above is false.

·         I may be schizophrenic but at least I have each other.

·         I am a nobody. Nobody is perfect. Therefore I am perfect.

·         Dyslexics have more nuf.

·         Money isn't everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch.

·         Reality is only an illusion that occurs due to lack of alcohol.

·         Don't sweat the petty things, don't pet the sweaty things.

 

Tailpiece

WHY COULDN'T the sesame seed leave the gambling casino?

Because he was on a roll.

Last word

 

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

George Bernard Shaw

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Tale of romantic love

THIS column avoids Mills & Boon style romance, but occasionally a love story comes along that makes the grade.

US comedian Jay Leno had mingled with the audience to discover the most embarrassing first date that a woman ever had. Here is the experience described by the winner.

It was midwinter ... snowing and cold. The date had taken her ski-ing in the mountains outside Salt Lake City, Utah.

It was a day trip. The outing was fun but relatively uneventful until they were headed home late that afternoon.

They were driving back down the mountain when she began to realise she should not have had that extra latte. They were about an hour away from anywhere with a rest room and in the middle of nowhere.

Her companion suggested she try to hold it, which she did for a while. But because of the heavy snow and slow going, there came a point where she told him he had better stop and let her go at the roadside.

They stopped and she crawled out beside the car. In the deep snow she didn't have good footing, so she rested her butt against the rear fender to steady herself.

Her date was a real gentleman. He stood at the side of the car watching for traffic and refrained from peeking.

However, the ordeal of embarrassment was by no means over. The young lady discovered to her dismay that her buttocks were firmly glued against the car's fender, the way tongues get frozen to poles in the North American winter.

Horrified by her plight, she replied to her date's questions as to what was taking so long by saying she was "freezing her butt off" and needed assistance.

He came around the car and they assessed her dilemma. She obviously needed to be unfrozen from the metal. But how?

What had frozen her there in the first place? Her date had to unzip and provide the only warmth available. Soon she was sluiced free.

How did this first date otherwise turn out? He became her husband and was sitting next to her on the Leno show.

They don't tell us anything about the honeymoon.

Weird life

LIFE - but not as we know it - has been discovered by scientists. It is not in some distant galaxy, as so often imagined. "Weird life" microbes have been scooped from the mud at the bottom of Mono Lake, in California. The discovery is said to have huge implications in the search for extra-terrestrial life.

The Mono Lake bugs are able to thrive on arsenic, one of the most deadly substances known to most organisms, and even incorporate it into their DNA, the arsenic displacing phosphorous.

When scientists talk about life they tend to mean "life as we know it" - that is, life based on the biological building blocks found on Earth, of which phosphorous is one.

But some experts have speculated that there may be alternative kinds of life - dubbed "weird life" - elsewhere in the universe.

Dr Felisa Wolfe-Simon, from Arizona State University, who led the US researchers, says: "Our findings are a reminder that life as we know it could be much more flexible than we generally assume or imagine.

"If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet? Now is the time to find out."

This is most interesting. Arizona State University need to extend their "weird life" researches to this country. It would be nice to know what makes Comrade Julius tick.

 

Generation gap

A RABBLE-ROUSING poster comes this way:

TEENAGERS – Tired of being harassed by your stupid parents?

ACT NOW!

Move out ... get a job ... pay your own bills.

Do it while you still know everything!

Liquor habit

MORE from Bill Bryson's Bizarre World (Warner Books)

In Boston a thief who couldn't get too much of a good thing was arrested after robbing the same liquor store three times in one day.

Tailpiece

A YOUNG hotshot pilot approaches the airfield for his first night landing. Instead of making the official request to land, he says over the radio: "Guess who?"

The runway lights go out.

Control tower: "Guess where?"

Last word

 

Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

Idler, Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Romance, valour in Botswana

NEWS from Botswana. The President, Ian Khama, is 57 and not yet married. A bemedalled former military man, he says he does not have the time to look for a wife.

But the people are becoming restive, especially the majority Bamangwato ethnic group of whom he is Paramount Chief. Tradition requires that he take unto himself a wife. Medals on his chest are all very well, they say, but he now needs a ring on his finger.

The affable Khama, who trained at Sandhurst, says fair enough. But he still doesn't have the time to look around. So he's asked the women of Botswana to look for him.

He called a meeting of women and told them: "The best that you should do is to go out and look for the woman that you prefer for me as I hardly have time to hunt for a woman who will become my wife.

 "I want to marry a woman who is slim, tall and beautiful."

Standing beside him as he spoke was a Mrs Botlhogile Tshreletso,assistant Minister of Local Government. President Khama used her to reinforce his preference.

"I don't want one like this one. She may fail to pass through the door, breaking furniture with her heavy weight and even break the vehicle's shock absorbers."

At which the women broke into ululation (though my correspondent does not say if Mrs Tshreletso joined them).

I say Ian Khama deserves another medal.

Later Mrs Angelinah Sengalo, chairwoman of the women's wing of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party, proposed Emma Wareus, a beauty queen who was first runner-up in a Miss World contest.

When Ian Khama gets hitched, remember where you read it first.

 

Glee club fun

 

READER Clive Jones, of Gillitts, is looking for extra verses to a popular glee club type song that he and his friends used to sing at Wits in the mid-50s, and which went:

 

It's a wonderful place is this Joburg

Where the liquorice lights always shine,

And the rickie tickey train runs by Fordsburg

And the mine hooters tell you the time.

 

"It was sung to a simple waltz time and always raised a laugh. This was in or just after the era of Cecil Wightman and Snoektown Calling. If I recall correctly, there were several verses.

 

"Do you or any of your other readers know the full lyrics or have a reference to them? I hope for a lead for nostalgia's sake."

 

As it happens, I can help with a couple of verses:

 

Oh, we have such wonderful railways,

With hundreds and hundreds of lines,

And hundreds and hundreds of platforms,

And trains what is never on time.

 

Oh, we have a wonderful police force,

With Japies and Gawies and such,

They don't speak a word of old English,

They only knows how to speak Dutch.

 

Anyone else out there with a misspent youth, who can add some more?

 

 

 

Kung-fu clincher

READER Eric Hodgson sends in the briskly-written introduction to a paper in an academic journal:

"In this essay, I defend an account of right action that I shall call 'asymmetrical virtue particularism.' An action, on this account, is right just insofar as it is overall virtuous. But the virtuousness of an action in any particular respect, X, is deontically variant; it can fail to be right-making, either because it is deontically irrelevant or because it is wrong-making. Finally, the account is asymmetrical insofar as the viciousness of actions is not deontically variant; if any action is vicious in some respect Y, then Y is always a wrong-making feature of any action whatever that has Y."

This is reproduced for the benefit of male readers, who should cut it out and keep the clipping in their wallet. In any argument in which the spouse/girlfriend challenges the virtuousness of an action (say a few pints with the boys) and starts citing the wrong-making feature of that action, it should be produced and read aloud.

She will have no answer. She will be flummoxed by deontical irrelevance. Asymmetrical virtue particularism is the clincher, the intellectual equivalent of kung-fu.

 

Tailpiece

A HOUSEWIFE opens her refrigerator to find a rabbit sitting on one of the shelves.

"What are you doing in there?"

"This is a Westinghouse, isn't it?"

"Yes." 

"Well I'm westing." 

Last word

 

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

Samuel Goldwyn

GRAHAM LINSCOTT