The Idler, Monday, May 16, 2011

Astonishing ramp-jump

A CHILEAN daredevil has performed the staggering feat of ramp-jumping his motorcycle off a cliff in the Andes mountains, free-falling 3 000 feet then opening his parachute just 200 feet off the ground, to land safely.

Paratrooper Julio Munoz, 37, is matter-of-fact about it, saying simply: "The main motivation was that I found a group of friends who had the energy and the desire and the professionalism in their fields to develop this project. This was the result, a good jump with no problems."

Unlike a predecessor, Evel Knievel, an American stuntrider who used to ramp-jump buses lined up side by side – his record was 14 – and whose ambition was to ramp-jump the Grand Canyon in his Skycycle X-2, a steam-powered rocket.

Permission for this was never granted so he tried it at Snake River Canyon, Idaho, but crashed after his arrester parachute opened early.

Knievel crashed quite a lot. He's in the Guinness Book of World Records for sustaining 433 broken bones. He derived his showbiz name, Evel Knievel, from a night he spent in jail with a man known as Awful Knofel. (Originally it was "Evil Knievel" but then he changed it).

Munoz, by comparison, seems calm and collected. Nobody calls him Madcap Munoz.

Downstairs dive

EVEL Knievel captured the public imagination in his day. Down at Parliament in days of yore we had a much-loved messenger known as Evel Clevelly because at least once every session he would take a spectacular, death-defying dive down the stairs, carrying a tray of tea.

Mr Clevelly – a mild-mannered, perfect gentleman and veteran of World War I - was in his eighties.

Brideshead touches

CONTENTION rocks the university town of Oxford. British satirical magazine Private Eye has a feature titled Funny Old World containing bizarre news items, most of them from out of the way places. But this latest is taken from the Oxford Times and should interest all who follow developments in higher education. There are touches about it of Evelyn Waugh and Brideshead Revisited.

"We are absolutely furious with St Peter's College," Dr Haze of the Circus of Horrors told reporters in Oxford, "because they knew from the start that our shows are not for sissies, or for those of a nervous disposition. They initially said that they wanted a lavish show for their Summer Ball, so we offered them Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf, who can pull a vacuum cleaner with his genitals, but they deemed this act 'unsuitable'. Nor did they want Gary Stretch, who can pull the skin of his own neck up over his mouth.

"If the college didn't want Dan to pull a vacuum, we could have put him in an electric chair instead, pumped him with volts and lit fluorescent tubes off him. But they then told us that any acts that depend on physical conditions to achieve a shock impact were 'not suited to the occasion'. Yet Dan and Gary were born like this, and the college accepted a fork-tongued sword swallower and a female blade walker without complaint. Frankly, I think the students of Oxford University should revolt to get the acts they want at their ball."

After a spokesperson for the college had confirmed that the Circus of Horrors would now not be performing at their May 7 event, Captain Dan (real name Daniel Blackner) denounced the decision. "I have a brilliant resume, having featured as an ewok in Return of the Jedi, and as a flying teddy bear in several Muppet movies. To see me pull a vacuum cleaner with my penis is to witness beauty. This decision is an utter disgrace."

Ah yes, the dreaming spires ...

 

 

Keeping abreast

LAST week we discussed bra sizes in Britain, where they have apparently been getting bigger and bigger over the years.

The nomenclature of the different sizes and fittings is a little baffling but Richard Isemonger, of Hillcrest, comes to our assistance with SBH.

"It is a standard size I have known about, and a fair handful of British men have used it as a measure of appealing physique."

(SBH - Standard British Handful)

Tailpiece

She: "How do you like my new haircut?"

He: "Classic Italian."

She: "Sophia Loren?"

He: "No, spaghetti."

Last word

Howard Hughes was able to afford the luxury of madness, like a man who not only thinks he is Napoleon but hires an army to prove it.

Ted Morgan

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Friday, May 13, 2011

Friggatriskaidekaphobia

TODAY is a day you try to avoid flying because you're likely to end up sitting beside Julius Malema; if not he, one of those fellows who enthuse about the Indian Professional League or - worst of all – one of those who hold forth on 9/11 being a stitch-up by the CIA and the international banking system.

It's a very real fear. These days you can run into any one of those just about anywhere, including the Umbilo bus. But it's a fear that is accentuated on Friday the 13^th.

The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga being the name of the Norse goddess for whom Friday is named and triskaidekaphobia meaning fear of the number thirteen). A simpler version is paraskevidekatriaphobia. a concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía .

The origin of the supersitition is not at all clear. One version has it that Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility, was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labelled a witch when the Nordic and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil — a gathering of 13 — and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath."^[9]

Another links it to when Phillip IV of France pounced on the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13, 1307, inflicting hideous torture and slaughter for their supposed heresy and blasphemy (while what he really wanted was to get his hands on their loot).

However, some experts doubt all this. They say the superstition was barely mentioned until it became popular after publication in 1907 of Thomas W Lawson's novel, Friday, the Thirteenth. In this an unscrupulous broker creates a Wall Street panic on a Friday the 13th.^[]

Well, that doesn't seem far off the mark these days. Watch the stock exchange! But I really don't know. If I run into Julius Malema today, I'll tell you about it.

 

Raquel Welch

PHWOAR-R-R … still a stunner! In the 1960s Raquel Welch provoked a hurricane of testosterone when she emerged from behind a rock wearing a doeskin bikini in the film, One Million Years BC. Now photographs have emerged of her power-walking (whatever that might be) in the Hollywood hills.

The figure is still voluptuous. The lady is glamorous as ever. And – unbelievably – she's now in her 71^st year.

Four-times-married Raquel says she mainly plays the grandmother in movies these days. She'd like to be one for real, but her kids are not co-operating.

That would be some granny.

Odd expression

 

OVERSEAS TV is full of stuff about a blitz by the British police, who are to be given the power to spot fine motorists up to £100 for dangerous driving. It includes those who "undertake" on the motorways.

 

Undertake? Whatever can this odd word mean? Obviously there is a causal connection between dangerous driving and funerals, but that can't be it.

 

Do motorists in mini-minors overtake a heavy duty lorry by driving under the chassis, startling the driver by suddenly popping out from between his front wheels? Do they therefore undertake?

 

No, that can't be the answer. It's a mystery.

 

Military poser

 

I'VE BEEN had before by this one but I can't remember the answer.

 

Bobby Freeman, Regimental Sergeant-Major of the Natal Mounted Rifles, sends in a puzzle. Ken needs to buy jeans. He borrows R50 from Walter and R50 from Joe - total R100. He buys jeans for R97 and gets change of R3.

 

He decides to reduce his debt and pays R1 to Walter and R1 to Joe. That leaves R1 in his own pocket.

He now owes Walter R49 and Joe R49 – total R98. Add the R1 still in his pocket and you get R99.

 

 

What happened to the remaining R1?

 

I really don't care. It's the kind of thing they argue about endlessly in the army. We in the navy forget about it, we go ashore and razzle – blow the whole R3 and be damned!

 

Tailpiece

 

She knows hundreds of photography jokes. You just can't shutter up.

 

Last word

 

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.

Peter Ustinov

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Thursday, May 12

Durban lags behind

TOILETS al fresco ... Cape Town has them, Viljoenskroon has them. You're out in the fresh air, you can read the newspaper, do the crossword, smoke a cigarette, wave to your friends.

Open toilets are gaining in popularity. Soon they will have all the cachet of the patio jacuzzi.

Why does Durban not have them? Why has Mike Sutcliffe not demolished the stonework that makes the public toilets in Farewell Square, and other parts of the city, so archaically reclusive?

This should become an election issue.

Twitmarshery

 

THIS week's piece on Twitmarsh bureaucrats reminds reader Perry Webb of his son's encounter with military twitmarshery.

 

His son completed his army service in 1987 with a fine outstanding of R275 for a misdemeanour which involved being rude to a senior officer, mistaking him for one of his fellow-soldiers.

 

When discharged, the army failed to deduct the fine from his final pay packet. For several years letters arrived requesting payment. They were ignored.

 

"In 1995 after the new dispensation the army sent him a cheque for R275.00. It was gratefully accepted. Case closed."

 

Yes, twitmarshery can have its upside.

 

Stages of man

SUCCESS in life goes through different stages. An in-depth research project has identified and tracked them.

·         Age four - success is not wetting in your pants.

·         Age six - success is finding your way home  From school.

·         Age 12 - success is having friends.

·         Age 18 - success is having a driver's licence.

·         Age 20 - success is having money.

·         Age 35 – success is having money.

·         Age 45 - success is having money.

·         Age 55 - success is having money.

·         Age 60 - success is having money.

·         Age 65 - success is keeping a driver's licence.

 

·         Age 70 - success is having friends.

 

·         Age 75 - success is finding your way home from anywhere.

 

·         Age 80 - success is not wetting your pants.

Love's an equation

THE RELATIONSHIP between the sexes can be expressed algebraically, it seems.

Smart man + smart woman = romance.

Smart man + dumb woman = affair.

Dumb man + smart woman = marriage.

Dumb man + dumb woman = pregnancy.

Yep. And it makes the world go round.

The cups

ANOTHER cruel sports story. The Fire brigade phones Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger in the early hours of Sunday morning."Mr Wenger sir, the Emirates stadium is on fire!"

Wenger: "The cups, man! Save the cups!"

"Don't worry, the fire hasn't spread to the canteen yet, sir."

 

Twitchy Brits

 

THE BRITS are becoming increasingly twitchy about illegal immigrants. An open letter to Prime Minister David Cameron comes this way:

 

"Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that during the mad cow disease epidemic our government could track a single cow, born in Appleby years earlier, right to the stall where she slept in the county of Cambria? 

"And they even tracked her calves to their stalls. But they are unable to locate 125 000 illegal immigrants wandering around our country. Maybe we should give each of them a cow."

Corporate-speak

NEW DIMENSIONS are being added to the language by corporate-speak. Some examples from America:

·         What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter.

·         E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business.

·         This project is so important we can't let things that are more important interfere with it.

·         Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule.

·         No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them.

·         Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say.

·         We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees.

 

Tailpiece

 

PADDY applies for a job with a blacksmith and is asked if he has any experience shoeing horses.

"No, but I once told a donkey to get de hell out of it!"

 

Last word

The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won't get much sleep.

Woody Allen

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Trying to frighten us

ALARMING news from Blighty. British women's breasts are getting bigger than ever, according to this news item. The N-cup bra - the biggest size ever made in Britain – has just been launched.

In the 50s the average woman fitted comfortably into a B-cup, but today underwear retailer Bravissimo estimates at least 60 percent of women in a C-cup should be wearing a D-cup — or larger. The average size is closer to a 34E than the 36C we're led to believe.

These mathematical statistics are baffling to mere men, but the underlying message comes through: Cor – wot a set of Bristols!

The news is alarming not so much in the sense of physical intimidation – we men will not be frightened, we will stand firm and not waver in the face of whatever – but because this undermines everything we have been striving for in Durban over the past few days.

The Tourism Indaba has showcased what Southern and East Africa has to offer: beaches, mountains, game reserves, river rafting, safaris, everything to make a visit memorable.

And now the Brits come along and tell the world how well-stacked their girls are. The British Tourism Authority will stop at nothing.

 

Angola attractions

THE TOURISM Indaba in a way reflects the gradual return to normality of some of the countries in the region. Angola was there, its stand extolling the natural wonders of the place which for three decades or so had been a hellhole of civil war.

Delegate Danilo Cruz spoke with enthusiasm of the way his country is trying to develop tourism to complement its massive oil revenues. The country, he explained, was recovering from many years of civil war.

"I know," I told him to his utter astonishment. "I heard the first shots of that civil war, in Sao Paulo Square, Luanda. It was a long time ago."

He's right about the natural wonders. You could fly over Angola for hours in a light aircraft and look down on virgin forest, undisturbed by even the tiniest village. The Kwanza River is a marvellous estuary running into the Atlantic, teeming with tarpin, a species of gamefish.

Today, on the banks of the Kwanza, the Quicama national park is managed by a Durban man, Roland Goetz, formerly of the Natal Parks Board and the Wilderness Leadership School.

Yes, normality returns. But it takes time.

Bling specs

THE INDABA is over. One of the more eccentric delegates - the Wild Man of Zambia - is about to return to his bush habitat in Kafue national park, strumming his fishing line braces, humming snatches of Dixie and dazzling all with a pair of bling spectacles bought off the rack here in Durban.

These have a conventional horn-rimmed appearance when looked at full-on, but each leg is adorned with a tasteful display of glittery artificial diamonds. A finishing touch would be to introduce to his Abraham Lincoln beard the glitter normally worn by striptease artists.

It's been an eventful Indaba for the Wild Man. I hope he re-adjusts to life in the bush.

 

Irish medicine

 

A READER sends in some extracts from an Irish medical dictionary:

 

·        Artery: The study of paintings.

 

·        Bacteria: Back door to cafeteria.

 

·        Barium: What you do when a patient dies.

 

·        Benign: What you be, after you be eight.

 

·        Caesarean Section: A neighbourhood in Rome.

 

·        Catscan: Searching for Kitty.

 

·        Cauterise: Made eye contact with her.

 

·        Colic: A sheepdog.

 

·        Coma: A punctuation mark.

 

·        Dilate: Live long.

 

·        Enema: Not a friend.

 

·        Fester: Quicker than someone else.

 

·        Fibula: A small lie.

 

·        Impotent: Distinguished, well known.

 

·        Labour Pain: Getting hurt at work.

 

·        Medical staff: A Doctor's cane.

 

·        Morbid: A higher offer.

 

·        Nitrates: Cheaper than day rates.

 

·        Node: I knew it.

 

·        Outpatient: Patient who has fainted.

 

·        Pelvis: Second cousin to Elvis.

 

·        Post operative: A letter carrier.

 

·        Recovery room: Place to do upholstery.

 

·        Rectum: Damn near killed him.

 

·        Secretion: Hiding something.

 

·        Seizure: Roman emperor.

 

·        Tablet: A small table.

 

·        Terminal Illness: Getting sick at the airport.

 

·        Tumour: One plus one more.

 

·        Urine: Opposite of you're out.

 

 

Tailpiece

WHAT'S green and takes an hour to drink?

A student grant cheque.

Last word

If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.

Marlon Brando

GRAHAM LINSCOTT

The Idler, Tuesday, May 10

The roll-back begins

WE LIVE in a world of stress and danger; of international terrorism; of chaos in the international system of finance – and of galloping bureaucracy that threatens to enslave us all.

We need to adjust as best we can to all of it. Every little bit helps. And a book has come this way which offers the ordinary citizen the opportunity to roll back the menace of bureaucracy. It is written by RT Fishal (Can this be a genuine name, or is it artificial?), titled Bureaucrats: How To Annoy Them (Arrow Books).

It contains some splendid tips on gumming up the works in bureaucracy, thereby extending the sum of human freedom and happiness. Set in Britain, its principles nevertheless have a universal validity.

For instance, if you have to fill in a government form why not get some linguistically inclined colleague to do it for you in Greek or Icelandic? That will have the Twitmarshes (Fishal's word for noisome bureaucrats) scratching their heads. There's no law to say it has to be in English.

"In a more extreme case it is permissible to use several languages, thereby filling in Part 1 of the form in Norwegian, Part 2 in Hungarian, Part 3 in Romanian and Part 4 in Dutch ..."

Twitmarshes, he says, will be temporarily baffled by such words as yksityiskohtaista and tahtijoukkomuuttujiski.

Another wonderful tip: "Many forms – both from the Inland Revenue and from other official bodies – include sections which are left blank, with the brusque comment: 'For official use only. Do not write in this space.' A very thin layer of candle grease smeared over this part of the form will make it quite impossible for the Twitmarsh to write on it with either a fountain pen or a ball-point, and after several abortive attempts he may well screw up the entire form in blind fury. If you have no candles to hand, a judicious amount of hair-cream or even oil will serve almost as well."

We need all the help we can get. As I dip further into this excellent book, I will bring you more tips on recovering human liberty.

 

Gas board

HOW DID Fishal arrive at the word "Twitmarsh"? It's from an encounter he had with a gas board bureaucrat named Whitmarsh, which in fact launched him on his guerrilla campaign.

Whitmarsh had sent him a final demand for £10, failing which he would be criminally prosecuted. As Fishal's home was heated by oil, not gas, he thought something was amiss. He paid the £10 to stop the criminal proceedings but sent a letter questioning the whole thing.

He then received from Whitmarsh over the space of a few days: A letter saying he probably didn't owe the £10; a letter saying he certainly didn't owe the £10; a refund of the £10; a second refund of the same £10; and a second final demand for £10.

So Twitmarsh it is. Free men of the world, unite!

 

 

Security?

IN HIS LATEST grumpy newsletter, investment analyst Dr James Greener asks what many have been thinking: How secure is the state when the minister in charge of that kind of thing was unaware that his wife was running an international drug trafficking ring?

He doubts if the minister will feel any obligation to resign and expects a bland and convoluted statement about how his wife's extracurricular activities have had no impact on his own duties.

Similarly with government comment on the "American hunting excursion into Pakistan".

"It must have been prepared by someone whose real job is as an economic analyst in the financial sector, so perfect was the indecisive ambiguity of the words and sentences. It is completely unclear whether this country thinks that the death of a terrorist kingpin is good or bad."

 

ATMs

GREENER also notes that ATMs in the Vatican City offer Latin as a language option. "Presumably there is no number pad ... Amounts like 1 385 will take a little longer to figure out. (MCCCLXXXV)."

 

Tailpiece

THE TEN Commandments are not posted in any courthouse or Parliament. "Thou shalt not steal", "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour" are reckoned, in a building full of lawyers and politicians, to create a hostile work environment.

 

Last word

Love is the difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.

Iris Murdoch

GRAHAM LINSCOTT