The Idler, Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Kindness

on the

highway

ONE good turn deserves another. A story comes this way of a Maritzburg attorney who was driving up from Durban when he took pity on a particularly wan and woebegone hitch-hiker at the roadside. He stopped and gave him a lift.

The hitch-hiker was not strong on the small talk, mainly just stared straight ahead. Then = whoops! – they got flagged down by a cop. They'd gone through a speed trap. The attorney was arguing in irritation with the cop as he wrote out the ticket, knowing it was a lost cause, when suddenly he saw his passenger had got out of the car and come round to the driver's window.

He started shoving the cop around, bumping and hassling him. The attorney was appalled. This was compounding the felony.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

The cop was furious, threatening all kinds of dire punishment.

"I don't know this guy. He's a hitch-hiker."

"He's in your car. You're responsible for him."

The fellow got back into the car and they drove off.

"What on earth was all that about? What did you think you were doing?"

"I must explain. I'm a pickpocket. I've just got out of jail."

He handed the attorney the cop's book of tickets, the attorney's details the latest on the stubs.

What do you do when, as an officer of the court, you're the unwitting beneficiary of a crime? You take the culprit for a slap-up meal at a diner, that's what.

But lest the provincial traffic cops or the law society think of launching any kind of witch-hunt, it's too late. It happened years ago and the attorney – who I knew well – is no longer with us. I heard the story for the first time last weekend from a mutual friend. I repeat it merely to cheer up motorists in general.

 

A VIDEO clip is doing the rounds. A TV set is playing. Standing watching are a Jack Russell, a dalmation, an Irish wolfhound and a collie.

On screen is Donald Trump. It's that acrimonious White House press conference after the mid-term elections when Trump refused to let a CNN reporter ask questions.

"Sit!" he says as the CNN man remonstrates. "Sit down! Sit! Sit! Sit!"

The Jack Russell, the dalmation, the Irish wolfhound and the collie sit, as they've been trained, and pay respectful attention.

Dogs are obedient. CNN isn't.

 

 

READER Dave Pickford asks what you call a bulletproof Irishman?

Rick O'Shea

 

RACCOONS in the American state of West Virginia are getting plastered and terrorising neighbourhoods. They get aggressive when they've had too much, according to Huffington Post.

Where do the raccoons get the booze? They apparently feast on crabapples, which ferment into alcohol in their tummies. And then their behaviour becomes appalling – worse than undergraduate students – and they become aggressive toward humans, whose snobbishness they have always resented.

The police at Milton recently hauled in two hopelessly drunk raccoons, placing them in custody until they sobered up, after which they were released into the woods – but probably just to go on the razzle again. They appeal to people to just not get involved if they find raccoons lurching about.

Happiness is to be a raccoon in crabapple season.

 

 

Tailpiece

THIS lecherous Scotsman lured a girl up to his attic to look at his etchings. Before she knew it, he'd sold her four of them.

 

Last word

How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?

Charles De Gaulle

The Idler, Tuesday, November 20, 2018

WIT' A SHILLELAGH at me arm and a twinkle in me oi,

Oi'll be off to Tipperary in de marnin' …

 

WHAT a day for Irish rugby. But it was coming. As remarked last week, the All Blacks were on borrowed time. We should have beaten them at Loftus a few weeks ago. England came even closer at Twickenham.

But Ireland pulled it off. They held tight in those dying moments when the All Blacks are so deadly.

Give dose fellers a Guinness!

The Boks pipped Scotland but not by much. This is a risorgimento of the northern hemisphere. Next year's World Cup in Japan is now wide open.

For the Boks this Saturday it's Wales, another tough 'un look you, indeed to goodness. The march to Japan continues.

'Erewego, 'erewego, 'erewego!

 

 

LAST week I read the Wikipedia entry on rugby between Ireland and the All Blacks. To my astonishment, Ireland had beaten the All Blacks in every encounter but one, since 1905.

Of course, Wikipedia is open to editing and correction by readers. This must have been an Irish patriot at work.

I checked again yesterday. The entry was unchanged, unembroidered.

Mind you, the Guinness does slow things down.

 

 

OVERHEARD in the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties: "Once you've given up on existentialism and grown out of nihilism, all that's left is to embrace the absurdity."

 

AUSSIE prime minister Scott Morrison is in trouble, according to the BBC,  for making "smutty" remarks about blonde actress Pamela Anderson – former Baywatch star – after she asked him for help in freeing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, also an Aussie, who is holed up under diplomatic immunity in the Ecuadorean embassy in London.

Morrison rejected the request but said he had "plenty of mates who have asked me if they can be my special envoy to sort out the issue with Pamela".

Pamela describes this as unacceptable smut. A government minister defends the comment as being "light-hearted".

Lighthearted? In this day and age? Where have these Aussies been lately? Such jokes are simply verboten.

Assange is wanted in Sweden for alleged sexual transgressions. The Brits have said they'll arrest and extradite him if he steps out of the embassy. I've no idea why Pamela should be campaigning for his release. The issue is the kind of minefield these days, into which it is folly to venture. Far be it from me to make any sort of smutty suggestion. Things have gone far enough as it is.

 

 

 

Tailpiece

AN IRISH scrumhalf dies. He's standing before the Pearly Gates. A voice booms: "Seamus O'Flaherty, is there any sin you have not confessed?"

"Er, yes dere is one sin."

"What sin is that?"

"It wuz at Lansdowne Road. We wuz playin' England. We wuz one point down. It wuz injury toime. We had a scrum on England's loine. Oi put in. De scrum wheeled sloightly. Oi went for de ball. Oi knocked it on ever so sloightly. But de ref was unsoighted. Oi dived over de line and scored. We won de Test. But Oi know we didn't really. Oi never told anybody. Dis has always been on me conscience."

"Seamus O'Flaherty, that was no sin. You may enter."

"Oh, tank you, St Peter, tank you!"

"It's St Peter's day off. Dis is St Patrick."

Last word

Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional Record.

Tom Masson
 

The Idler, Monday, November 19, 2018

Encounters

with some

ugly ladies

THERE was this ugly female breastfeeding in public. Sies! No, it wasn't the Street Shelter for the Over-Forties, it was at Mlilwane Game Sanctuary in Eswatini, which they used to call Swaziland. We were at a campfire and this warthog – to be fair, no less beautiful than others of her species – was huddled up to the campfire and suckling her two little babies.

I could have sat on her, thinking it was a log. That would have been fun.

What was I doing in the land of the Swazis? As mentioned last week, this is where the first stirrings are being felt of a movement to reverse the 41-year Cites ban on international trade in rhino horn. Conservationists, scientists and businessmen are involved, and the expectation is that by the time similar conferences are held in Mozambique and in Pretoria, an array of international experts will have been assembled to make a few waves.

The sentiment is one of indignation that the countries of the northern hemisphere – where there are no rhinos except in zoos – should be riding roughshod over the countries of the south that do have rhino and are having the devil's own job protecting them from poachers who are heavily financed by the illicit trade that has been made possible by the Cites ban, and who threaten to drive the rhino into extinction.

If international trade in rhino horn were permitted, the argument goes, the takings could pay for the anti-poaching campaign without a single rhino being unnecessarily killed. Natural attrition plus a degree of private sector horn harvesting would more than supply demand from the Far East, which is driven by traditional medicine, culture and mysticism and fuelled by rising prosperity in places like China and Vietnam.

Financial fundi Michael Eustace put forward a fascinating blueprint for regulation of a legitimised rhino horn trade, based on the monopoly model used by De Beers to control the international diamond trade. A single horn broker should be appointed to periodically invite traders to a secure room at OR Tambo international airport to view a parcel of horn at a fixed price – take it or leave it.

Eustace is co-founder of African Parks, an organisation not for profit that runs 14 parks in various African countries, where the governments really could not be bothered. African Parks is responsible for the conservation of some 10 million hectares altogether of wilderness habitat.

Ted Reilly, chief executive of Big Game Parks, which conducts conservation in Eswatini on behalf of the government, said Africa was believed to have had 100 000 black rhino in 1960. The Cites ban was introduced in 1977, and now there are only 5 000.

Go figure!

That was the work side of it. Besides that there was a lot of fun – conviviality interspersed with bird calls by a senior ranger from Hluhluwe-Mfolosi named Sabelo Mdlalose and the cry of the blue crane from a fellow named Bugsy van Heerden. A wonderful game drive over impossibly rugged terrain.

 

Then pursuit by a very ugly and angry lady. This huge crocodile took exception to our photographing and filming her on her nest and she lunged out and chased us up a bank. That you are reading this account tells you we outpaced her.

Tailpiece

 

WHY is the ocean so restless?

Well wouldn't you be restless with crabs all over your bottom.

Last word

GRATITUDE is riches. Complaint is poverty. – Doris Day.

The Idler, Friday, November 16, 2018

End this

naïve

nonsense

WHEE! A jaunt to Swaziland (or eSwatini, as it's now called). The reason is a get-together tomorrow of conservationists and business people who are determined to end the naive northern hemisphere nonsense that is driving the rhino to extinction.

Rhino have now passed the tipping point. More are being poached today than are being born. Two sub-species have already gone extinct, the Western Black Rhino (in 2008) and the Northern White Rhino, this year.

It's caused by the illegal rhino horn trade. You couldn't imagine anything more inert and intrinsically valueless than rhino horn. It's the equivalent of toenail clippings. But in the Far East it has a mystical, medicinal, cultural and decorative value.

Forty-one years ago, with the best intentions, Cites (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) banned international trade in rhino horn. But it hasn't worked. Rising prosperity in countries like China and Vietnam has increased demand exponentially. Rhino horn is now more valuable than gold.

The illegal trade now funds an epidemic of poaching. Well over 1 000 game rangers across Africa have been killed trying to protect rhino and elephant from poachers.

It's a tragic and nonsensical situation, a losing battle. But the conservationists of southern Africa – the people who actually care for rhino day in, day out – have got together with the business community to do something about it. They want the Cites ban reversed. Natural attrition among rhino, perhaps augmented by harvested horn (like toenail clippings) from private sector operators, can meet the demand without a single rhino being killed.

Tomorrow's conference is likely to set out the framework for a controlled and transparent legal trade in rhino horn and will be followed by conferences in Pretoria and Maputo (Mozambique). The march has begun.

 

TOMORROW'S gathering will be at Mlilwane, a delightful private game reserve outside Mbabane, owned by Ted Reilly, who is also head honcho of conservation in eSwatini (let's get used to that name) and a colourful character.

In the early days, before they'd learned to use nets in game capture, his method was to launch himself from a speeding jeep to crashtackle a galloping wildebeest or zebra or whatever. I don't think he ever crashtackled a rhino, but he certainly would have made a useful rugby player.

Ted will be one of the main speakers. This idea of legalising the rhino horn trade at first sounds counter-intuitive. You have to get your head round it. But it's the only answer. Not a single conservationist that I know – and that included the late Ian Player – is against it. Nuff said.

Next is to get the business leaders to produce a workable framework. Then persuade the Cites member states.

 

RUMOUR has it that the Scots – riding high in rugby at the moment – are planning to avenge their debacle at the hands of Hennie Muller's Boks at Murrayfield long ago in 1951. They will have been encouraged by our lack-lustre display against France last weekend.

But did they watch our first half against the All Blacks? Our first half against England? Some fine day the Boks are going to play two great halves. Then pas op!

As they say in the pubs around Edinburgh: "Hier kom 'n ding, laddie!"

Hoot mon! 'Erewego, 'erewego, 'erewego!

 

Tailpiece

WHAT'S furry, has whiskers and chases outlaws?

A posse cat.

Last word

At 18 our convictions are hills from which we look; at 45 they are caves in which we hide.

F Scott Fitzgerald

 

The Idler, Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Will Brit

politicos ever

be forgiven?

IT'S at a distance yet we watch with morbid fascination as the Brits lurch toward crisis. This is real drama. Will it be cliff-edge Brexit, non-Brexit or half-baked Brexit? Will Prime Minister Theresa May survive? Is the likely outcome anything like what people voted for or against in the referendum?

May's Secretary for Transport has resigned, no doubt in the knowledge that the country's port and other infrastructure is in no way equipped to cope with a sudden departure from the EU customs union.

Catastrophe could lie ahead, both for the Brits and the EU. The manufacturing exchange built up so successfully over 40 years could be suddenly ruptured.

What has caused all this? Could answers to the snags not have been worked out before even asking the question about Brexit? Had nobody considered the impossible question of the Northern Ireland border? Why was Article 50 – setting in motion the withdrawal process – triggered before answers had been found? Will the politicians ever be forgiven?

History unfolds in Europe in a way it has not since the collapse of communism. The unity and stability of the whole continent could be compromised. And the wonder is that the mess is wholly self-inflicted.

Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. There really is no other satisfactory explanation.

 

A RADIO exchange in the North Atlantic comes this way:

"This is the USS Montana requesting that you immediately divert your course 15 degrees to the north to avoid a collision. Over."

"Please change your course 15 degrees to the south to avoid collision. Over."

"This is Captain Hancock. You will divert your course. Over."

"Negative captain. I'm not moving anything. Change your course. Over."

"Sir this is the USS Montana the second largest vessel in the North Atlantic fleet. You will change course 15 degrees north or I will take measures to ensure the safety of this ship. Over."

"This is a lighthouse … Hello…"

 

THE American mid-term elections are not quite over. A late result shows a Democrat has won an Arizona senate seat which had been held by the Republicans for 24 years. Recounts are automatically under way in Florida where the provisional results were was so close that by law they have to look again.

An outcome is being challenged in Georgia. In Mississipi there will be a run-off election in a month because neither candidate got 50% of the vote.

It's all very complicated and a little boring. President Donald Trump himself is sick and tired of it. According to the New Yorker, he has warned that recounts "could set a dangerous precedent of the person with the most votes winning."

"Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said that those in favour of the recount had a 'sick obsession with finding out which candidate got the most votes. Since when does getting the most votes mean you win?'

"Having just returned from the Armistice commemoration in Paris, Trump said that Florida's recount has made America 'the laughingstock of the world,' adding: 'Putin told me they never do recounts in Russia.'"

Yes, this is satirist Andy Borowitz again. What would we do without him?

 

 

Tailpiece

"DOCTOR, doctor, I keep thinking I'm a racehorse."

"Nonsense. Just take one of these pills every four furlongs."

Last word

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

Oscar Wilde

 

 

 

The Idler, Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Caravans

threaten

the US

STURM und drang in Washington. A caravan of migrants is making its way from the hellholes of South America for the US border, seeking entry. At the same time, according to the New Yorker, a caravan of Democratic women is heading toward Washington with the explicit goal of invading America's capital.

"Speaking at a press conference at the White House, President Trump acknowledged that he had failed in his bid to stop the caravan, which is on schedule to arrive in Washington on January 3, 2019.

"'The Democrats are responsible for sending this caravan and, frankly, it's a disgrace,' he said. 'They are sending some dangerous women."

"Elaborating on the threat posed by the caravan, Trump said: 'Some of these women have fought in wars. They have fired guns. One of them is a mixed-martial-arts specialist. These are women who will kick your ass without hesitating.'

"Trump denied that he was irresponsibly stoking fears about the caravan of females. 'Every Republican in Washington should be scared of these women,' he said. 'I know I am.'"

Yes, this is satirist Andy Borowitz again. The acuity and depth of his political analysis is quite breathtaking.

 

IT HAS been half a century since the dawn of colour television, but more than 7 000 people in Britain are still watching in black and white, according to the TV licensing authority.

Despite an increase in the use of smart televisions, as well as tablets and smartphones to access TV content, 7 161 British households are spurning modern technology and have not switched over to colour transmissions, according to Sky News.

TV Licensing spokesman Jason Hill is quoted:  "Over half of the UK's TVs now connect to the internet so it's interesting that more than 7 000 households still choose to watch their favourite shows on a black and white telly."

This surely is deplorable. In an age where everyone else is using the thumbs on the smartphone, accessing all kinds of wonders of the digital age, there still are Neanderthals watching black and white TV. One conjectures with revulsion as to what kind of programmes they watch. Almost certainly it will not be anything wholesome like the zombies, robots and other dramatic figures that inhabit today's TV screens. Shudder: It's probably such stuff as football or horseracing.

Er, do we still have black and white TV here in South Africa? Surely not – but I don't know for sure. I must reactivate my trusty Nokia – the one with the Arabic characters on the buttons – and get through again to the Nkandla party line. That's where you get the hi-tech know-how.

 

A CAT in Luxembourg was caught on camera chasing after a rat. But the rat turned to fight back.

A fellow named Claude Alff got it all on video, according to Huffington Post, while strolling through the town of Esch-sur-Alzette.

"The footage shows the frightened cat leap into the air when its would-be prey turns the tables. It wasn't long before the kitty high-tailed it - with the rat in hot pursuit:"

This might seem amusing. But is it fair to cats? Why make fun of them? Snigger away – I'll set the Bluff Cat Lady on ya!

 

Tailpiece

SOMETIMES you run into people who change your life for the better. These people are called bartenders.

Last word

I think that I shall never see
a billboard lovely as a tree.
Perhaps, unless the billboards fall,
I'll never see a tree at all.

Ogden Nash

The Idler, Tuesday, November 13, 2018

The war

to end

all wars

THE striking thing about the weekend celebration in London and Paris of the centenary of the armistice that ended World War I – the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month – was a sense of immediacy.

Nobody alive today remembers that conflict. Yet the ceremonies were packed, with young people as well as veterans of wars since. Relatives came forward of soldiers who died generations back, some wearing their medals.

In Paris, a spread of world leaders were invited by President Emmanuel Macron to a peace indaba. He proclaimed narrow nationalism to be "treason". It's as if the centenary jerks humanity into a new focus on the tragedy and futility of war.

It's worth recalling how the war began. It wasn't a calculated move by one side to overwhelm the other. It began almost by accident with a fanatic in the Balkan city of Sarajevo assassinating the Archduke of Austria and his duchess – "the shot that rang about the world".

One thing led to another. A series of treaties and pacts were activivated, mobilisations occurred, setting up a domino effect until the horror of mechanised warfare was unleashed on the world for the first time. Europe had been a disorganised patchwork of rivalries.

World War II was a continuation of that, a failure of diplomacy and international organisation. Could it happen again? Surely not. We have the UN with oversight. The EU unites Europe. Nato keeps the peace.

Yet the Brits are hiving off from the EU. Nationalism simmers again in various parts of the organisation. President Trump appears ambivalent about Nato.

Maybe that's why there was such a turnout in London and Paris. The Last Post concentrates the mind.

 

AS EX-SERVICEMEN and women marched past the London Cenotaph, the bands played jaunty tunes from World War I: Pack Up Your Troubles, It's A Long Way to Tipperary, Mademoiselle from Amontieres and Oh, What A Lovely War.

Er, was the last a little insensitive? I guess not. It was made up and sung by the blokes in the trenches themselves.

 

 

INVESTMENT analyst Dr James Greener takes issue in his latest grumpy newsletter with Science and Technology Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane over the lack of PhD degrees  contributing to the country's lack of innovation.

"Registering for a doctoral degree is normally an indication that the candidate is very comfortable in academia and has scored funding for another three years indulging his interests. He will definitely not be taught innovation.

"Necessity is the mother of invention and sending people out to find or make a career as soon after school as possible will be a far greater spur to innovation than being nestled in the bosom of some leafy campus."

 

A 69-YEAR-OLD pensioner in the Netherlands, who says he has the body of a 45-year-old, is taking action to legally change his age to improve his job prospects and his luck with women.

Emile Ratelband argues that if people are legally allowed to change their sex, he should be allowed to change his age, according to Sky News.

It's a beautifully logical argument. Happy hunting, Emile!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tailpiece

THIS fellow takes his dog to the cinema. Whenever the villain appears on the screen, he growls. When the hero appears, he wags his tail.

A little old lady approaches. "I've been watching your dog. I'm amazed at the way he appreciates the film."

"Me too. He hated the book."

 

Last word

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

Mark Twain