Tghe Idler, Monday, June 17, 2013

Durban's No Gear event

 

READERS have welcomed the suggestion that the recent Naked Bike Ride in Mexico City should be replicated in Durban as a follow-up to Top Gear.

 

Mary Ann Grafetsberger, doughty champion of the interests of vervet monkeys, says she has neither the figure nor the bicycle to take part but she would be happy to lead the parade in a sidecar.

 

She also suggests that, to highlight the need for harmony with the animals that share our urban space, participants should take their pets with them on the ride – being cautious, of course, about claws and paws.

 

Ken Gillings suggests that the event should be called No Gear.

 

This surge of civic consciousness and pride is most heartening. I wonder if Mary Ann would be prepared to train a troop of vervets to ride bicycles in the parade.

 

Throwback

 

A BRITISH and Irish Lions tour is always a kind of throwback to an era in rugby that has otherwise passed. A strong national side (in the Lions' case multi-national) touring another rugby nation, playing strong provincial sides who throw everything at them but the kitchen sink; enthusiasm building to a crescendo as a Test series approaches.

 

So it was in Sydney at the weekend as the Waratahs took on the Lions in an absolutely thrilling encounter not entirely reflected in the Lions' eventual margin of victory. The stadium was jam-packed. It seemed perfectly natural that the Aussie commentator should slip into the terminology of yesteryear, describing the Waratahs as "New South Wales".

 

Compare it with our current concoction of "double-header" Tests played in zero atmosphere before half-empty stadiums (Well, in Durban anyway). The punters know the real deal.

 

Bad handling

 

MEANWHILE, reader Dave Cousens detects in the distressing Plumtree affair a parallel with the well-known nursery rhyme.

 

Big John Smit sat in the pit

Consuming his contract pie;

He stuck in his thumb

And pulled out a Plum

And thought what a great guy am I!

 

Has our rugby ever known such handling errors?

Quality complaint

A MAN living in Solihull, in the West Midlands of England, dialled 999 – the police emergency number – and complained that a prostitute he hired was not as attractive as she had claimed.

He said he wanted to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act.

The West Midlands police say the complainant has now been warned in writing not to waste their time again.

'Tis a weird and wonderful world we live in.

Glam ad

AN ADVERTISEMENT on eBay of a second-hand Mercedes has a lady on the bonnet – not quite as glamorous as the models who the manufacturers drape on their fancy cars at motor shows. This lady is rather plain. To be brutally frank, she's also obese.

She is, the advertiser informs us, his "more to love" missus.

Fie! Is this not still more chauvinist, sexist, offensive and outrageous than the classically beautiful models draped over the bonnets at the motor shows?

Yet offers for the ageing and somewhat battered Merc have soared to an astonishing £152 000 (R2.3 million).

'Tis a weird and wonderful world we live in.

Ticket to run

SOME Cockney wit. Former track athlete Sebastian Coe (proper title Lord Coe – he organised the Olympics in Britain) tried to go into Lord's cricket ground, in London, by the members' gate, though his ticket was for another gate.

Coe: "Don't you know who I am?"

Gateman: "No, who are you?"

Coe: "I'm Sebastian Coe."

Gateman: "Are you? Well then, it won't take you long to run round to the Nursery End, they'll let you in there."

 

 

 

Hats off

 

IAN GIBSON, poet laureate of Hillcrest, pens some lines in support of Public Protector Thuli Madonsela, who had a hostile grilling from certain members of a parliamentary committee.

 

Hats off to our Public Protector,

Who stands up to MPs who hector;

Her honest approach,

Is beyond reproach,

Whilst her political detractors reject her.

 

Tailpiece

KOOS van der Merwe wakes up in hospital, wracked with pain and covered in bandages. Cousin Piet is sitting at his bedside.

"What happened?"

"Well, you had a few dops last night. Then you bet you could dive out the window and fly back in again."

"Why didn't you stop me?"

"Stop you? I had 50 bucks on you."

Last word

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.

Samuel Butler

 

Idler Friday, June 14, 2013

The top toe wrestlers

THEY'VE just held the World Toe-Wrestling Championships in a pub in Derbyshire, England. Winner in the men's section was Alan Nash, who has now held the title for 10 years, and in the women's section it was newcomer Rebecca Beech. (Both are from England).

Toe-wrestling is an ancient sport that dates back to the Middle Ages. It was revived in England in 1976. It's a bit like armwrestling, except the contestants sit opposite each other, lock big toes, then twist as hard as they can.

It's best of three – first with the right foot, then with the left, then again with the right if the score is equal.

The competition is held every year at the Bentley Brook Inn, in a place called Fenny Bentley. It attracts a wide field, including overseas entrants, and the proceeds go to charity.

Toe-wrestling needs to be introduced at the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties. The punters would take to it, I'm sure, the gals especially. Already they slip their sandals off and use their strong and sinuously flexible toes to surreptitiously grope at men in a most improper way. Let's channel this into something wholesome.

Thirty-day slap

FORMER American football star Chad Johnson playfully swatted his attorney on the bottom – as footballers routinely do when the other fellow has done something good – but it got him 30 days in jail.

Johnson was expecting to be handed an order for community service plus counselling, under a plea bargain agreement in a domestic violence case in Broward County, Florida. But when Judge Kathleen McHugh asked if he was satisfied with his attorney – and Johnson in reply perfomed the butt-slapping gesture on attorney Adam Swickle – it all unravelled.

The courtroom erupted in laughter and Judge McHugh took umbrage. "Is there something funny about this?"

She rejected the plea bargain and gave Johnson 30 days. He was led away in handcuffs.

Imagine if he'd butt-slapped a female attorney. Do they have the electric chair in Florida?

Termites

AN ELDERLY Chinese woman has had her savings chewed up by termites. She had stowed banknotes worth the equivalent of R630 000 in a wooden drawer in her home, wrapped in a plastic bag.

When she went to draw on her stash, the unnamed lady from the south of China found the termites had got there first and the notes were in tatters.

But this sad little story could have been worse. People at the bank were able, by scanning the fragments, to verify about R525 000 worth, so she lost only about 15% of her savings.

In recent years investors in the West haven't been so lucky. The derivatives sharpsters were worse than any termites.

More termites

THE ABOVE recalls the occasion when Koos van der Merwe had been heavily on the razzle in London and went into yet another pub where he was refused service because he'd already had too much.

"I insist, man! I want a double whisky!"

"I can't serve you, sir. You've had too much already."

At which Koos slowly and deliberately took a matchbox from his pocket and tapped at it. Two white ants fell onto the bar counter.

"Okay, boys – wreck the joint!"

 

Alarm system

POLICE in Bangkok raided the home of a pet shop owner and found hundreds of birds and animals being kept illegally – including 14 albino lions from Africa.

Also at the house were meerkats, tortoises, peacocks, and monkeys – believed to have been illegally imported – and an indigenous hornbill and indigenous leopard, both of which are protected in Thailand.

That's a pretty noisy and screechy crew; also a pretty scary one. Maybe the pet shop man, who faces 41 charges, will argue that it was only his household alarm and deterrence system.

 

 

 

Tailpiece

CRUSTY old man in bank: "I want to open an account, damnit!"

Female teller: "I beg your pardon, sir?"

Crusty old man: "Open your ears, fathead! I said want to open an account. Bloody hell!"

Teller: "I'm calling the manager. I won't be spoken to like this."

Manager: "Now what seems to be the problem here?"

Crusty old man: "I've just won 50 million bucks on the Lotto and all I want - damnit! – is to open a blasted account."

Manager: "Ah, and this silly bitch is giving you a hard time, right?"

Last word

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

Albert Einstein

 

The Idler, Thursday, June 13, 2013

Flying food tray A JAPANESE restaurant in Soho, London, has brought a new meaning to the term "fast food". Meals hurtle through the air toward customers on what is believed to be the world's first flying tray. Dubbed the iTray, the lightweight, carbon fibre gadget can travel at speeds of up to 11 metres per second (40km/h) and has a range of 50 metres. Waiters and waitresses at YO! Sushi guide the platter through the air by wifi, using an iPad app, while kitchen staff check that the food is delivered by watching real-time video feeds from two on-board cameras. "We're all about innovation and delivering a whole concept in an unusual and exciting way," says Robin Rowland, chief executive of YO! Sushi. "The iTray is a way for us to explain how exciting food can be." This is most impressive, though not entirely new in concept. At the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties, the chef specialises in hurling pizzas like a discus thrower while, late at night, items such as bras and knickers are also known to fly mysteriously through the air. However, wifi and iPad apps are not involved. They're a little old-fashioned at the Street Shelter. Deer bagged A SHERIFF'S deputy in the Florida Keys, in the US, was driving through the woods when he spotted what seemed to be a new species – a headless deer. It turned out though that the deer merely had a potato crisps bag over its head. Immobilised in its confusion, it allowed the deputy to approach and remove the bag – at which it was off like a flash. The deer - of the tiny Virginia white-tailed species – hadn't left a single crisp in the bag for the deputy. No tip. Game management can be a thankless task. Snaky stuff ALWAYS something new at St Clement's. At this week's soiree the charming Maren Bodenstein launched her novel, Shooting Snakes (Modjaji Books), and fielded questions on the technicalities and difficulties of writing and developing a plot. The book is set on a remote German mission station in Venda, switching from World War II to the present, and no doubt mirrors Maren's own experience growing up on a Lutheran mission station at Hermansburg, here in KZN. Somebody asked if the title refers to snakes being shot at, or the other way round. A fair question and now I can't wait to read it. Nothing brings tension to a story better than a boomslang with a Colt .45.  Bright side THERE'S too much negativity about. Look on the bright side. A formulation comes this way, telling us South Africa – or Seffrika, as they call it – is still a great place to live. ·        You can eat half-dried meat and not be considered disgusting. ·        Nothing is your fault; you can blame it all on apartheid. ·        You get to buy a new car every three months and the insurance company pays out. ·        You can get pathetic service in all 11 official languages. ·        You get oranges with 45 percent alcohol content at rugby matches. ·        Striking workers are so angry they dance. ·        You're can use a cellphone, change CDs, drink a beer, put on make-up, read the newspaper and smoke, all while driving at 140 km/h in a 60 km/h zone. ·        The accents are lekker, ek se. ·        You decorate your garden walls with barbed wire. ·        Illegal immigrants leave voluntarily because the crime rate is too high. ·        Police stations have panic buttons to call armed response when they are burgled. Ja-nee. This is the life!

Tailpiece

THEY'RE standing drinking at the bar. Somebody shouts: "Thirty-four!" The place erupts with laughter. Then somebody shouts: "Twenty-one!" More laughter.

Newcomer: "Excuse me, I don't get it. What's so funny?"

Barman: "Well, you see, these guys are all regulars. The same jokes have been going round for years. So they've numbered them to save time. Everyone recognises the joke by its number. Why don't you give it a try?"

The newcomer shouts: "Four hundred and twenty!"

The place is convulsed with laughter. People are falling about. The barman is crying into his apron.

"What did I say?"

Barman (wiping his eyes on the apron): "Oh my! That's priceless! None of us had heard that one before!"

Last word

  An incompetent attorney can delay a trial for months or years. A competent attorney can delay one even longer.

Evelle J Younger
 

The Idler, Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Naked bike ride

HUNDREDS of naked cyclists rode through the streets of Mexico City the other day to mark what they call the World Naked Bike Ride. Traffic came to a standstill as onlookers stared and took photographs.

Not all the cyclists were entirely naked – some had top hats and other fancy headgear.

World Naked Bike Ride seeks to raise awareness of the importance of cycling for exercise and as an alternative to burning fossil fuels. It also seeks to highlight the fragility of the human body and the need for drivers to be more careful on busy city streets.

The movement began nine years ago in Canada and has been held every year in various cities around the world.

When will it be Durban's turn? The Naked Bike Ride could be a great follow-up to Top Gear.

 

 

Curiosity Rover

 

ON MONDAY we speculated that the Curiosity Rover, supposedly on Mars, might in fact, due a to a navigational error, be photographing and analysing the arid, rock-strewn surface of the Griquas rugby field at Kimberley.

 

However it seems this is quite wrong. According to George Hutchison, of the Kwambonambi Club, it has been travelling – heavily camouflaged – for some time now at the bottom of a pothole in Kwambonambi High Street.

 

"Well camouflaged as it has not yet disappeared and been sold for scrap."

 

Mad, madder …

 

READER Perry Webb responds to last week's degrees of comparison/trappe van vergelyking.

 

Mal – maller – Malema.

 

Nkandla particles

 

ROB NICOLAI, Howick's resident astrophysicist, quantum mechanic and towering intellect, has been grappling with particle physics as applied to Nkandla.

 

'Tis somewhat esoteric, but here goes: "Physicists have long struggled with how the most basic and ever present atomic force – gravity - is transferred from every particle with mass to attract every other particle with mass at an exponentially decreasing strength over greater distances without emitting a detectable force-carrying particle.

 

"Another greater mystery has developed here in South Africa. If every atom did emit a force particle or graviton constantly, why does the atom not lose any mass as it exerts this attraction energy? This is against a fundamental law of thermodynamics, known as the conservation of energy principle, and it's lucky it's there or every atom would just sommer disintegrate into nothing.

 

"The South African mystery is similar to how every huge scandal can emerge without JZ or any of his senior officials ever being present to account for it? Or how have the gravitons of justice and accountability been deflected from Nkandla? The only tons of anything of interest attracted to Nkandla seems to be the presence of Khulubuse Zuma."

 

Er, yes. Quite.

 

See ya later …

IT'S ASTONISHING what people keep in their basement. Anti-cruelty activists in Greater Dayton, Ohio, in the US, found a man was keeping a two-metre alligator at his suburban home.

The Humane Society of Greater Dayton removed it after a tip-off and the authorities are now investigating animal cruelty charges.

The alligator is to be moved to a refuge in Florida.

That householder sounds a shifty character. I bet he's also got a mad old aunt up in the attic.

Look, teacher

SMALL kids often get asked to bring to school something from home that is unusual and will be interesting to discuss. But when a five-year-old at St Margaret's Church of England School at Bowers Gifford, in Essex, England, produced from her satchel a 20cm artillery shell, the discussion became hectic.

The 250 pupils were evacuated a safe distance. An army bomb disposal unit was called in and the shell was taken to a nearby field for examination.

It turned out to be harmless – but the "show and tell" exercises will in future have a few preconditions.

Sea lion pup

MOTORISTS on a slip road from a busy highway in California were astonished to find themselves sharing it with a sea lion pup.

The California Highway Patrol animal control officers caught the pup and took it to an aquarium in San Diego, where they are trying to figure out what it was doing on the highway.

The slip road was to a place called Mission Bay. Clearly this was a sea lion pup on a mission.

 

 

Tailpiece

HOW DO WE know Moses wore a wig?

Sometimes he was seen with Aaron and sometimes not.

Last word

The future, according to some scientists, will be exactly like the past, only far more expensive.

John Sladek

 

The Idler, Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Hairy Swedish legs

TRAIN drivers in Sweden have become cross-dressers. Banned by operating company Arriva from wearing shorts in the cab this northern summer, they have taken to skirts, saying the heat becomes unbearable wearing long trousers.

This has thrown Arriva's management into a wobble. In politically correct Sweden nobody would dare banning skirts from anything, So, although hairy-legged drivers in shorts are no longer permitted on the Roslagsbanan line, that links 38 stations around Stockholm, hairy-legged drivers in skirts are OK.

The Stockholm drivers should link up with their counterparts in Glasgow and Edinburgh – maybe even seek affiliation to the Black Watch.

Let the wind blow high, let the wind blow low,

Down the street in ma kilt I go;

The lassies they all shout: 'Heigh-ho!

'Donald, whaur's yer troosers?'

Now say that in Swedish.

Back rowers?

IT'S CURIOUS the way so many sportswriters describe rugby loose forwards as "back rowers" or "the back row". What kind of a row is it when there's only one person in it – the eighth man?

It would have made sense in the days when the scrum had a 3-2-3 formation, not today's 3-4-1. But who' ever seen a 3-2-3 scrum? It was dropped in the 1940s or thereabouts. Flank forwards today are in the second row – alongside the lock forwards – even though their role is entirely different.

Pedantry rules – OK!

 

 

Mynahs awol

READERS will be glad to know that Mutt and Jeff - two Indian mynahs who featured in this column recently having moved in with sometime correspondent Granny Joan - are now back with her, having been awol for a week.

Joan asks also if I am able to supply the words of Saxon White Kessinger's poem, The Indispensable Man. She says she needs it because some of the youngsters at the office where she works are getting a bit big for their boots and need to be put in their place.

So, as a caution to all who might be getting too big for their boots, here goes:

 

Sometime when you're feeling important; Sometime when your ego 's in bloom; Sometime when you take it for granted, You're the best qualified in the room: Sometime when you feel that your going, Would leave an unfillable hole, Just follow these simple instructions, And see how they humble your soul.   Take a bucket and fill it with water, Put your hand in it up to the wrist, Pull it out and the hole that's remaining, Is a measure of how much you'll be missed. You can splash all you wish when you enter, You may stir up the water galore, But stop, and you'll find that in no time, It looks quite the same as before.   The moral of this quaint example, Is to do just the best that you can, Be proud of yourself but remember, There's no indispensable man.

Bad slip

OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "I was installing a light bulb in the loft today when I slipped and put my foot right through the bedroom ceiling. It frightened the heck out of my girlfriend – she kicked me out last August."

Impossible omelette

BRITISH TV/music celebrity Simon Cowell was pelted with eggs during the live final of Britain's Got Talent by a viola player who had an issue with him over last year's competition.

Richard and Adam – a Welsh duo - were actually singing their operatic version of The Impossible Dream when viola player Natalie Holt rushed forward and threw several eggs at Cowell. The song continued in spite of it and Richard and Adam were eventually placed third overall.

Hell hath no fury like a viola player scorned.

 

 

 

Tailpiece

A KENTUCKY redneck family are in New York for the first time. They're in a foyer gawping at the workings of a lift.

An old lady rolls up to it in her wheelchair, presses the button and rolls on in when the door opens. They watch the lift's progress, floor to floor, shown in the lights. It goes right to the top. Then it starts coming down again. They watch its progress, floor by floor.

The door opens and a blonde with sensational legs steps out.

Redneck Dad: "Son, push your maw in there - quick!"

Last word

 

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Niels Bohr

 

The Idler, Monday, June 10, 2013

Riotous stuff in Piemburg

FOR PEOPLE in Pietermaritzburg, part of the fun of the early Tom Sharpe satirical novels was identifying the characters in them.

Riotous Assembly (by Sharpe's own account written in three weeks) and Indecent Exposure were set in the city – he called it Piemburg – around the late 1950s. They mercilessly lampooned apartheid and the grimly serious South African Police who were charged with enforcing it.

They also lampooned the very pukka "English colonial" set, who had been politically emasculated but still knew a thing or two about putting inferiors in their place.

Sharpe has died in Spain, aged 85, after a long career of humorous writing, much of it totally bizarre. It all started in Piemburg, Sharpe drew on his time there as a teacher then freelance photographer.

Some of his characters were instantly recognisable. The easygoing, Angophile Kommandant Van Heerden just had to be the police colonel who was a leading light in the local operatic society and a great tenor. The surly, Anglophobic and ideologically obsessed Luitenant Verkramp was, I am sure, a senior detective of the day.

To students who had occasional encounters with the police – they frequented a pub at the Imperial Hotel, just opposite police HQ - the near-cretinous Konstabel Els was also instantly recognisable. But only Sharpe could have portrayed him getting into an altercation with his dog so intense that they bit each other's genitalia and went whirling down the street like a Catherine wheel.

The acidly snobbish Lady Hazelstone was obviously a play on the Shepstone name - the family of colonial administrators – but she seemed more of a type than an actual individual and could have been any one of the Pietermaritzburg society matrons of that era.

A lot of fun, much of it totally over the top and bizarre. Not surprisingly, Sharpe was deported at the time South Africa became a republic in 1961. Humour was not highly developed in the apartheid ideologues. But perhaps they did him a favour. He went on to write a lot hilarious stuff set in England.

 

Navigational error?

NASA is thinking about getting its Curiosity rover on the road again and heading towards Mount Sharp in Mars's Gale Crater.

The robot has spent the past six months in a small depression, drilling its rocks and analysing their composition. It regularly sends back vivid colour photographs of an arid, rock-strewn surface.

The latest excavation/ analysis in the Yellowknife Bay depression reveals mudstone rock laid down billions of years ago in a benign water setting, possibly a lake.

Arid rock-strewn surface, ancient mudstone … are they sure there's not some gross navigational error and they're investigating the Griquas rugby field at Kimberley?

 

A-list odyssey

IT SEEMS Justin Bieber will be literally mingling with the stars. He's signed up for a trip into space, possibly next year.

The kiddie pop star is the latest A-lister to join the Virgin Galactic mission, which will includes Leonardo Di Caprio and Ashton Kutcher.

Richard Branson, who is organising the trip, tweeted him: "Congrats, see you up there!"

The trip will cost Bieber $250 000. (R2.5 million).

A-listers in outer space – the idea is appealing but unfortunately, with today's communications technology, they'll still be on our TV screens every night, having fun floating inanely about the place.

 

Tailpiece

AN ENGINEER is crossing the road when a frog calls out to him: "If you kiss me, I'll turn back into a beautiful princess." He bends down, picks up the frog and puts it in his pocket.

The frog speaks up again: "If you kiss me, I'll turn back into a beautiful princess and stay with you for a week." The engineer takes the frog out of his pocket, smiles at it and puts it back.

The frog cries out: "If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I'll stay with you for a week and you can do anything you want." Again the engineer takes the frog out, smiles and puts it back in his pocket.

Finally the frog asks: "What's the matter? I've told you I'm a beautiful princess and I'll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won't you kiss me?"

"Look, I'm an engineer. I don't have time for a girlfriend but a talking frog—now that's cool."

 

 

Last word

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

Thomas A Edison