Zimbabwe Ruins: The plight of the forgotten white elderly

Many years ago I collected banknotes. Well, I suppose we all do in a way, but these were just odd bits from around the world. I picked up some of the Weimer Republic’s currency at a flea market. I remember one vividly. It was a small square of cheap flimsy paper. Printed on one side was 1 million mark. The other side was blank. Then it had a black stamp across it which said 1 milliarden, which is German for what we would consider a billion. Crazy stuff. At least Zimbabwe is doing the same sort of thing with a little panache.

Take for example this amazing poster from 1^st August 2006. This was the day when in a stroke of economical genius three zeros were lobbed off the currency. Note the colourful logo in the top right hand corner. Zero to Hero. If you are looking for a decent graphic designer get the bloke who did that.

Now here is the (almost) full range of notes since that date. Missing is the new 500 million. It is very hard to keep up. This new note will in theory, at this moment, buy two loaves of bread. Actually this isn’t money at all! This was proved a couple of years ago in a court case in Zimbabwe when someone was arrested crossing into Zimbabwe with a large amount of the currency. Why he had taken it out in the first place isn’t important. Perhaps he wanted to wipe his arse on the stuff. Anyway he is acquitted after making an ass out of the law. The law stipulated currency. These are bearer cheques with end of use dates, thus are not legal convertible tender in the sense of the word. So, there you have it – Zimbabwe must be the only country in the world with no money!

Against this backdrop, please take time to watch this extremely sad YouTube which has just this last week been posted. It is about the plight of a forgotten minority in Zimbabwe – the white elderly.

Tired, So Tired

I am suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, well it sounds good!

I have something to tell you about soon, but in the mean time, I have given you a few YouTubes that will, hopefully, pump you up as it does me. The first two are contemporary stuff, the last two, yee oldie favourites. Enjoy.

This is pure brilliance:

So is this:

Now, to cool your brow:

And if you think that was queer, check out this:

This is War Jim, but not as we know it.

This is War Jim, but not as we know it.

This is used to describe the present situation in Zimbabwe and is a total misquote by Spock from Star Trek. Star Trek attempted in the original series, and greatly improved on in future spin-offs, to teach lessons in the humanities. One of these was philosophy. Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Trek, thought up the creation of the Vulkan race, the ultimate philosophers, who were trained to avoid emotion and see everything logically. The fictional character of Spock (and other Vulkan characters, although Spock will always remain the most well known), was given the argumentative sophistication of history’s greatest philosophers.

I have just started learning about philosophy as part of my present OU course and find it fascinating and extremely uplifting. I will direct you to an extremely important and well written piece from today’s Zimbabwe Situation, but before that I want to make a rather odd observation.

I often come across in my cyber travels and conversations with people terminology that is considered derogative by me and other like minded causeless right and left wing liberals, of descriptions of certain indigenous people of Africa. One of them is monkeys.

Encephalon is a brainless name for brain, something a monkey would find difficulty getting his head around.

Recently Jeremy Clarkson, on the first class BBC series Top Gear, called the French ‘a bunch of surrender monkeys’, which I thought was hilarious, knowing full well it was a comment of satirical wit, not a racist slur.

Now, calling the upper echelons of Zimbabwe’s political hierarchy or for that matter any well positioned governmental representatives of an African nation - monkeys; is rather stupid. In fact, all it does is emphasize that the person who made the comparison or observation that, for example, Mugabe and let’s say Mbeki are monkeys have

A) very little knowledge about monkeys and

B) uses the comparison as a rather clumsy attempt at a derogative slur of little logical consequence.

(Oddly enough, Mugabe fell into the same trap when he pronounced that his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, was nothing more than a ‘Western organ grinder monkey’.)

When it comes to the primates, monkeys are rather on the bottom end of the cleverness scale. Mugabe and Mbeki therefore cannot be compared to monkeys, as no matter how you look at it up until now they preside and quasi-control populations of millions and land almost the size of Western Europe (give or take a few square kilometers). AND, this position of power was undisputedly taken back from minority white controlled regimes.

How this process came about is not the theme here. I merely wish to point out that Mugabe and Mbeki can’t be compared to stupid monkeys for the simple reason it would be a paradox. Clarkson could imply the same terminology by also calling the whites of Southern Africa ‘surrender monkeys’. (Although unlike the French, it could land him up getting skinned alive.) Never in the history of the animal world have there been examples of monkeys surrendering to each other. (I am not talking about simple territorial monkey business here.)

Why? – because they are too stupid.

(I hope you are getting a laugh out of this, because I am. Remember, this is just a piece of satirical, ludicrous piece of amateur philosophy.)

If you insist on wanting to call the likes of Mugabe and Mbeki some form of primate that can –

A) satisfy your perverse desire to liken homo-sapiens with other animals, and

B) show your intellectual prowess by using a logical comparison -

then you must use SBC.

Vote ZANU (PF) or else !

SBC? What the fuck is SBC, you might say. Well, it is an abbreviation for South Bank Chimp. (Chimp, is of course, an abbreviation of Chimpanzee.) But why SBC?

The South bank Chimp is exactly what it is. It lives on the south bank of the Congo River. There are NBCs as well (North Bank Chimps), but they are a completely different bunch. Laid back, hassle free and spend most of their time shagging. In fact, the various tribes of NBC are usually run by the females and, if the males are all shagged out, the females are quite happy to play with each other. In other words, if you believe in reincarnation and can opt to coming back as an animal – pick a NBC. Not a rabbit - you might land up in my oven.

I am not making this up by the way. NBCs are known as Bonobos, and you can check out all this at –

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee

BUT, it’s the SBC who are the real mother-fuckers of the chimp world. Controlled by a totalitarian Alpha male, backed up by a compliant politburo (till the alpha male shows weakness and is summarily dispatched), a SBC gang will plan attacks on other groups with the utmost horrific, intentional cruelty. Murder, rape, enslave and torture - they do it all! Some for good measure, suffering from superstition and angst from AIDS, are quite happy to eat certain body parts of their victims. Although not proved, some large Alpha males may even have a quick dip in the Congo River after a good rape to wash away the AIDs virus and mull over the idea of becoming the next President of South Africa.

We don't need no bridge over troubled waters.

Why are the Mugabes and Mbekis of this world just the same as the SBCs? What have they got for a problem? Why are they not like the happy shaggers on the other side? (Thank God that neither group ever got around to building any bridges. The shaggers would have been annihilated very quickly, even with UN intervention.)

The answer may be what was proposed by philosopher Roger Scruton in a brilliant essay, "The Totalitarian Temptation", delivered in an address in 2003 to a conference on totalitarianism organised by the University of Krakow in Poland. (To a bunch of plumbers thinking of emigrating to Zimbabwe.)

And that takes me full circle – so please take time to read the short article mentioned at the beginning of this blog posting. You must scroll down a bit till you find

The “Totalitarian Temptation” in Zimbabwe

The Zimbabwe Times

By Paul Trewhela

At -

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/apr30b_2008.html

How long would it take to wash the dishes?

Let’s say that in March of this year you are a male, law abiding, (refuse to have any truck with black market racketeers), foreign tourist who happened to be on holiday in Zambia. You are visiting the Victoria Falls, but as we know, the best view is on the other side of the border in Zimbabwe. Not sure if you can get much beer in Zimbabwe, you get well fuelled up before hand.

So you walk across the bridge and bump into the most beautiful girl in the world. She is very impressed with your Nike sport-shoes and Canon digital camera and thinking that you could maybe ‘pull’ her, you invite the damsel for dinner.

Being a complete poser, you state that as she is as glorious as a Queen, therefore she must be wined and dined as one, and as such you land up at the famed Victoria Falls Hotel where Queen Elizabeth had stayed when she had been doing the Great White Madam trip when the locals respected Great Britain for what it really is – an imperialistic nation of thieving land-grabbers.

With the dinner you order two Castle lager beers (for yourself) and the girl has a mineral water, as by now she has concluded you are a complete plonker. You call for the bill and make an impressive show of presenting the waiter with your American Express Gold card, without even looking at the cost; after all, you have a credit line of £5000. That should easily cover it…hah hah hah!

Sadly, unbeknown to you, the machine converts your bill of Z$ 1,243,255,000.00 at the official bank exchange rate of Z$ 60,568.60 to £1, making the cost of the dinner an impressive £ 20526 million or just 205.2 million or just 20,5 million, but it doesn’t matter as the credit limit is not enough and the card is returned cut into little pieces.

At this point, judging by the heavy feeling in your stomach, you conclude your steak had been made of solid gold and the rice must have been sautéed diamonds, the manager appears wearing dark sunglasses, and a large ‘I love ZANU (PF)' badge on his suit jacket. He is accompanied by two drunk and stoned male teenagers from the liberation war in green jackets carrying blood stained iron bars, who relieve you of your Nikes whilst singing ‘You will never walk alone’ in Shona, and share the pair between them. The girl meanwhile has excused herself to go to the Ladies but never returns, and oddly enough your camera has also absconded at the same time.

It was at this point that perhaps the advice not to carry any cash because the ‘Tsotsis’ might steal it, had been a little ill-advised and a £50 note exchanged on the illegal parallel market would have easily covered the bill along with a second-hand wheel barrow to carry the cash in, would have relived the problem you now face.

However, you freely volunteer to work off the debt, as any honest citizen with a conscience would do, by washing dishes in the kitchen. The manager, a charitable sort of bloke; who had only ever had previous customers who had not paid and tried to leg-it, been given the option of bungee jumping off the Vic Falls bridge with the rope tied to their necks or taking a stroll through one of the many mine fields still left over from the liberation war, happily agreed.

A wage, based on the national average for such menial tasks, was set at Z$1.5 million a month. A bonus of free accommodation on the sewerage covered streets with only an occasional beating (to maintain work moral), was set and you eagerly conclude that presuming that your wage is inflation linked, in a mere 100 odd years (or is it a thousand?) you could return home.

Post note: Unfortunately, due to the huge figures involved it is extremely difficult to work out the exact figures and length of time washing dishes. Thus, the moral of the story is – don’t pick up chicks unless you have a calculator NOT Made in China! And don’t forget the gratuity tip.

Don’t Press 1

This was brought to my attention and it is another clever little prank by South African radio jocks. It is very funny but it is the comments that make fascinating reading with ludicrous ranting from blacks and whites and a couple of Mugabe fans as well.

One gentleman claims to know his country’s history very well unfortunately it is based around myth which Mugabe and his boys are extremely good at propagating.

The on-going violence in Zim is terrible and not a lot is being done about it. I did get a comment from someone in Harare yesterday. It could be just another rumour but it makes some sense –

Zim is an interesting place at the moment. For sure running a business is very stressful with the power cuts, shortage of forex etc but we may well be on the verge of significant change. Clearly the ruling party has lost and all these ridiculous recounts are happening to buy time until a solution is found. From what we hear locally the leader is ready to step down but the military men aren’t and things are happening in the background to help them change. If there is change then I foresee money to be made – for starters the South Africans will be here in a flash like they are in Zambia and people are making serious loot out there. But for now I remain cautious.

Robert "bob" Mugabe's Farm

Your gonna love this…

Google says it all!

Why does Bob still hang around? A quick search on Google gives you one of the answers. Look carefully at what I have found. See, poor old Bob just can’t take it that in the Africa sweepstakes, he is only fifth amongst the ‘big boys’, and worse of all, look who is above him! He has to hang around beating people a little longer if he is to get into second place, but even I can’t see him making number 1 unless he starts to record his opposition’s ‘singing’! He will be well pleased that he easily overtook his present arch-enemy, the colonial tyrant Gordon Brown.

It is nice to see that that complete imbecile Mbeki will soon be overtaken by a fictional character, mainly because at least the fiction is more believable than the crap spouted by him.

Results 1 - 10 of about 21,500,000 for bono

Results 1 - 10 of about 3,400,000 for nelson mandela

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,680,000 for ian smith

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,290,000 for bob geldorf.

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,220,000 for Robert mugabe

Results 1 - 10 of about 1,050,000 for thabo mbeki

Results 1 - 10 of about 837,000 for No 1 ladies detective agency

Results 1 - 10 of about 837,000 for idi amin.

Results 1 - 10 of about 634,000 for morgan tsvangirai

Results 1 - 10 of about 566,000 for haile selassie

Results 1 - 10 of about 195,000 for disposed white farmer

Results 1 - 10 of about 180,000 for mobutu sese seko

Results 1 - 10 of about 41,700 for gordon tiny dot brown

‘Terminal 5 terminated elections’ claims Ambassador NoLies

A baggage handler employed part time by BAA, the company responsible for the present chaos at Heathrow airport, has admitted to loosing over 3 million diasporas’ votes all ticked in President Mugabe’s favour.

Answering questions put to him by the BBC, Ambassador NoLies said

‘The baggage handler, who has since absconded, was repeatedly beaten on the soles of his feet for 16 hours till he finally admitted that he lost the baggage with all the crucial votes. It is because of these missing votes that we cannot declare the results of the election yet.’

Asked what the government of Zimbabwe was going to do about it, Ambassador NoLies replied,

‘We have contacted all the people who voted and they have agreed to allow the electoral commission to redo their votes for them. This of course takes time, but we can assure the people of Zimbabwe that this will be completed before the next freely held general election in the very far distant future.’

Meanwhile---

Trying to get your head around Zimbabwe’s inflation is a task that even the world’s best economists can’t figure out. I mean, how long can you just keep printing money?

Today, what is now considered the world’s highest denomination note, the new Z50 million dollars, is worth just 45 pence on the black-market, yet the official exchange rate is 60,000 to the pound. That means, officially, this note is worth an amazing 833,000 British pounds! How crazy is this shit! Some cleaver entrepreneurs are making some nice pocket money on EBay. Yesterday one of these notes shifted for £21, but already the market is getting flooded, so the prices are plummeting.

Thing is of course, is that you can’t exactly walk into a bank in Zim with your 50 mill and ask for the Forex, not unless your name is Mugabe and co. Ironically enough, the very people who left Zimbabwe are the ones still propping up the regime. Some Forex comes from the dribble of minerals still being mined but the bulk is from money sent from abroad by the Diaspora to their suffering relatives. This all lands up on the black-market where the regime gobbles up as much as they can. As long as they can keep printing money (or getting firms to print for them), they reckon they could go on for…ever!

I liked this version of inflation recently published in The Independent titled –

Africa Unscrambled: How to make money in Zimbabwe - get drunk

Quoting from South Africa's Business Day in the middle of last year, when Zimbabwe's inflation was a mere 5,000 per cent, the newspaper reported the following investment advice:

"If you had purchased Z$1million of Time Bank stock a year ago, it would

be worth Z$49 now. With ENG you would have Z$16.50 of the original Z$1m

left. If you had invested in Kondozi Farm you would be left with Z$5 today.

But if you had bought Z$1m worth of beer a year ago and drunk it, you would

stand to pocket a cool Z$140m by just returning the empties now and cashing

in on the deposit."

Olympic Torch arrives in Zimbabwe

Confusion reigns in Zimbabwe after the police accidentally mixed up an Olympic torch bearer with Pro-Tibet demonstrators. Police Commissioner Corrupt Ncube, at a hastily convened press conference said -

‘Aah, the person beaten looked like he was setting fire to a rolled up election poster depicting our esteemed President. He also had a Chinese made flip-flop on one foot making out that he could catch the security forces on the hop. So as such he got what he deserved. Anyway, we do not tolerate any form of Tibetans and other cretins in Zimbabwe.’

A short footage of the incident was made by an undercover BBC reporter using his mobile phone. He managed to send it before he was accidentally shot whilst trying to interview the only remaining person who admitted voting for the MDC.

Grace Mugabe stars in her very own YouTube.

Bright Matonga – It’s the calendar, stupid.

Bright (or as he is known locally as, ‘Not so Bright’ ), Matonga, the Zimbabwean Deputy Minister of Information, announced today that there never was an election.

‘It is very simple’, he said today to a gathering of accredited journalists consisting of a former NASA trained chimpanzee, an ex-racing camel from Libya and a stuffed Russian bear. ‘This is the Chinese year of the baboon. This means in February there was an extra day. To keep everything in order, we took one day out in March. That being the 29^th. So you see, you can’t be waiting for election results if there never was any on that day because the day never existed!’

Matonga was accompanied by his white British wife, the low class Essex slapper, Anne. She shot to notorious fame in 2002 when her husband was ‘rewarded’ a farm belonging to Vince and Monica Shultz, by President Mugabe. Anne had arrived at the farm and screamed to an astonished Monica ‘We are taking back the land you stole from us!’

Rumours abound that Anne Matonga has already put her name onto the Essex council housing list because, as she said to her mother in a recent telephone conversation, ‘these fucking ZANU monkeys are too stupid to peel even a banana, and I might be needing a bolt hole soon.’

---

Please find the full article of the invasion of the Shultz farm at

http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/aug26_2002.html

A final comment from me. I have on disc some rather long Email exchanges between myself and Vince Shultz as the whole drama unfolded. One day I will put it all together. It is incredibly harrowing.

Will the real Captain Vokker please stand up!

This entry is massive, so get some wine or beers in…

Sorry for the delay, but firstly I would like to congratulate the winner of the recently held competition - namely, no-one. I did receive one entry at the count number 22245 by enthusiastic fan, Bill Flintrop, who added a short begging letter – ‘So I missed by a few visitors. It’s not only in Africa politics smells a bit off.’

This is of course very true, but I don’t accept rhetoric based on post-colonial whinging. Nice try, but rules are the rules. Ask Bob Mugabe. Better luck next time.

Well, I decided that with all the excitement going on in Zimbabwe, I should have another competition. All you have to do is guess the cost of a tin of peeled and diced tinned tomatoes in the Co-Op just down the road from me. If you think this is ludicrous, it is! Entries are limited to one per person. In the event of a tie, the winners will be tossed into a hat, and a rabbit will pop out with the lucky person’s name tattooed on its backside. I am sure you get the idea. If no-one gets the exact amount by Wednesday next week, the prize will be rolled over for another exciting competition. This time the prize has been upgraded. It is the same note but now laminated as to be a superb bookmark! Exactly like the one I am selling on Ebay at the moment.

Click here –

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=160226094644&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

Oh, if your really bored, be a good ‘citizen’ take a minute (snigger) to ‘watch’ the amazing Ebay auction with one of the best descriptions of all ‘time’ by clicking here –

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=160226122860&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT

Okay, back to the competition… Simply use the comment button with your guess (in British Currency, not Zim dollars or Polish Zlotys), along with a name. I will notify the winner via this blog, and ask them to send me a postal address. How do you know I will not tell porkies? I will take a photo of the tin along with the till receipt and put it up here. Why go to all this bother? Good question, let me get another tin of beer and muse over a possible answer.

Moving on now, I would like to point out there are several reasons for the existence of this blog, but unfortunately due to severe damage to the cellular structure of my brain, I have forgotten most of them. Now I just do it for a laugh and hope that some people get a laugh out of it as well. People pay a lot of money to be amused these days. A television licence is a fine example. For an annual fee you are legally allowed to push a button on a plastic box which sends a signal to another plastic box which shows you images of black people living in abject poverty awaiting handouts and white people living in mansions advocating that those with television licences should do the handing out. The only thing in common is that both groups speak similar forms of pidgin English. Being a little philosophical here, doesn’t it make sense to give the black people free television licences? Would that encourage them to get a job and buy a TV? The local economy would boom and the entire community could feed off the good news!

Which brings me to the whole point. It might be a good idea to put up my own PayPal begging box. Beer is getting very expensive these days!

---

Amazing, you know the old adage, fact is stranger than fiction, but it has happened to me recently. I was dreaming away that Hilary Clinton was the President (I would like to add that I am seriously panicking as I have £2 bet at 5 to 1 on her, and it isn’t looking too good), but really 15 years younger than she is now, and she had heard all about me and I was invited to the White House.

She offered me a cigar and that’s when I woke up all confused and just then the phone rang! It was her! My therapist! She said I was a total waste of time and not to bother coming back for more sessions, because quite frankly, I was not right in the head. I readily agreed and said she had small breasts. Undeterred with my observations, she also added that she was sick to death each time she sees me as I do the ‘doggy’ on her leg as a greeting, whilst claiming it was a Rhodesian ritual dating back to the time of the war when we were forced to shag any dog we could corner in the discos on our R and R. (Rampant Rutting.)

Well, I did try and point out that it was her job to make me better, not just fob me off like a spent dog!

Of course, most of the above is a load of bollicks. It was just to prepare you to some more unbelievable happenings in my undiagnosed world of being a Bi-Polar sufferer. That’s the disease where you get confused between the North and South poles and consequently can’t use a GPS navigation system.

After checking out some Open University rules, I feel safe to show you this. This is supposed to be a play. To be honest, it is more of a sketch for T.V. It is very short and due to certain regulations I was limited to four characters and about 6 minutes of action. Please read this, as it is rather funny. I also give permission for it to be used by anyone, as long as I am recognised as the writer.

However, you can imagine my surprise when an article in The Telegraph newspaper the other day, really made me do a turn, when lo and behold, my parody is actually played out in real life! After you have read the sketch you will see a link to the real life of Captain Vokker.

Flight of the Feeniks – A Christmas Turkey

Starring-

CAPTAIN VOKKER

• Early fifties.
• German drunkard.
• Owner/ pilot of Feeniks Airlines.
• Wears a camouflage jump suit riddled with bullet holes.

DEVORA

• Fortyish male Californian.
• ‘Stewardess’ for Feeniks Airlines.
• Dim-witted
• Stereotype camp transvestite bimbo.
• Wears ‘60s PANAM stewardess outfit.

JAMMY JIMMY (JJ)

• Mid twenties.
• Black English con-man.
• Co-pilot of Feeniks Airlines.
• Rastafarian, attired in Bob Marley look.

DODGY BIN-LINER

• Age, ethnicity unknown.
• Male.
• Fanatical suicide-bomber.
• Prominent breasts.
• Dressed in a burka designed from a black plastic bin liner.Speaks with an Asian Sub-Continent accent
  

Scene One.

Christmas Eve 2009. The open frontal view of a shoddy aircraft cockpit. Soft lighting, small, coloured lights flash periodically from instrument panels. The backdrop of the partition wall to the cargo hold has a skeleton, in tattered clothes, attached to it. Preparing for take-off from a fog bound Heathrow airport, CAPTAIN VOKKER slouches in his seat, drinking from a bottle of whisky. JJ sits straight up, fiddling with the controls whilst staring out intently. A loud speaker hangs down above their heads playing Band Aid’s ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’. Off- stage are the muffled sounds of idling aircraft engines.

Captain Vokker (singing with chorus) ‘Do they know it’s Christmas time at all!’ (burps) Santa Vokker is here again, feeding the world! (laughs, takes a swig from bottle, sings along again) ‘At Christmas time it's hard, but when you're having fun…’

Music is interrupted by a crackled announcement from the Heathrow tower. CAPTAIN VOKKER removes a handset from the instrument panel and speaks into it.

Captain Vokker Devora, we now taxi, you belt the passenger, really good! The

bastard only paid two pound on thieving eBay for his ticket. (hangs up handset, turns to JJ) Okay, Jammy Jimmy, lets go! We are cleared for take-off from runway five. Follow behind the CIA’s 747!

Loud speaker continues playing song ‘ There's a world outside your window
And it's a world of dread and fear…’

JJ (with dread and fear) Me, Mon? You want me to fly this shit-bucket? (short pause) By the way, it’s Jay-Jay, Mon. Only the police and lawyers call me Jammy Jimmy.

Captain Vokker That is what I pay you for, Yes? (laughs and takes swig from bottle)

JJ (looking intently forward, whilst fiddling with controls) Okay Mon - erm, what that plane look like? It’s a bit foggy out there! I can’t see jack-shit.

Captain Vokker It has two wings and a tail. (short pause. Laughs, drinks from bottle) I am starting to think you downloaded your own qualifications from the internet… Who cares, if they were good enough to fool the flight authorities, they are good enough for me.

JJ (nervously) That’s great Mon, anyway, I know what a plane looks like, Mon. But what are its colours?

Captain Vokker It is painted white, has no markings and tied to the wings are loads of bearded darkies dressed in orange jumpsuits. (burps, head lolls drunkenly)

JJ starts to pull levers and various handles. Engine sounds off-stage increase in volume. Stage slews back and forth. Skeleton thrashes widely and loses its left arm.

JJ Where we going, Mon?

Captain Vokker (laughs) We going to where all you kind of people come from…

JJ (amazed) We’re flying to Brixton Prison! At least it’s quicker than London Underground and a lot safer, Mon.

Captain Vokker No, you idiot! We fly to Africa, the home of rich tyrants and poor bastards! Tyrants pay me to deliver guns, so they can starve their population into submission. And at Christmas, the charities pay me to deliver food-aid to the poor bastards. Crazy world! (laughs sarcastically, takes swig from bottle)

Pause, loudspeaker plays – ‘The greatest gift they'll get this year is life…’

JJ Hey, my great, grand-daddy got stolen from the Congo, Mon. We kept it in the family - every generation been stealing ever since. (laughs) My sister got life for stealing an Arab prince’s crown jewels in Soho. She cut them off with his own Rhino-horn knife for not paying for the services rendered. (laughs) Not so bad, Mon, lifers are let out after seven years.

Captain Vokker (sighing, swigs from bottle) We have family tradition also. My father fly in the Luftwaffe. He was sent to drop relief parcels on the 6^th Army at Stalingrad. The idiot got lost in thick fog and dropped two million condoms with twenty thousand copies of Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ on Timbuktu. I laughed so hard when he tell me the story. The Muslim peasants are still pissed off and shoot at the German rally-cars on the way from Paris to Dakar.

Pause. JJ is struggling with the controls, stage slews again, off-stage engine noises roaring and spluttering.

JJ Those rich eBay bastards put me in jail for eighteen months, Mon.

Captain Vokker What you do? Sell hashish? (laughs, takes sip from bottle)

JJ I got caught washing windows. (struggles with controls, mops brow, to himself) Oh Mon, I am wishing I never take this crazy job!

Captain Vokker You get jail for washing windows?

JJ No, Mon. (laughs) I tried to wash twenty thousand copies of Window’s Vista software, all stolen. (pause) This flying malarkey isn’t that easy! (stage slews violently as JJ pulls levers frantically) On the pc flight simulator I played with in prison, I flew the Concorde into the Taj Mahal!

Captain Vokker Not bad! (takes swig from bottle) In 1980, I was so drunk, I crashed a plane into Harare Stadium, Zimbabwe, in the middle of Bob Marley’s Independence concert. Lucky for me, the police were still white, so I got away with it. (laughs) Those Rhodesians were a great laugh.

JJ Never heard of the place.

Pause. JJ fumbles between his feet and produces a small teddy bear dressed in boxing shorts and gloves and props it on the instrument panel.

JJ This is Cassius Clay, my lucky mascot.

Captain Vokker Get rid off it! That teddy will be trouble! If they see that in the Sudan, we will be lucky if they just lynch us, (short pause) after cutting our hands and feet off. (laughs wickedly)

JJ hurriedly takes teddy and hides it, then fiddles with controls. Stage slews softly. Off-stage, engine noise increases.

JJ What’s the heading Mon, after we take off?

Captain Vokker Ask Bones, the navigator.

CAPTAIN VOKKER points over his shoulder at the rocking skeleton. JJ turns and looks.

JJ (laughs nervously) Aah, he seems a little dead, Mon!

Captain Vokker Poor old Bones. He was my co-pilot till last Christmas. He caught Jungle Bunny Fever and he rabbit all the time. At every stop, he go hop, hop! He got bad ‘JuJu’, started barking and shit in plastic bags and throw them out the window. I get him to England hospital just in time to save him. Then he get MRS super-bug from the hospital and it eat him inside out! I shoot the poor bastard and promote him to navigator to keep him here as part of the skeleton crew. (laughs uproariously and swigs from bottle) Bones still give me a hand. If right arm points down, that means south-west to Africa. Then we wait for Devora to bring tonight’s menu and we know exactly where in Africa we are going. He digs food from the boxes we are to deliver, for something to eat. After all, charity begins at home, I always say. (laughs)

JJ (facing now forward. Sarcastically, mimicking Vokker) That is so Cool! (to himself) Holy Haille-Sell-Asses, I am doomed, Mon! (makes sign of the cross) Okay, I think this is runway five, I dim the lights for take-off.

As lights dim into darkness, JJ pushes controls forward, stage slews and off-stage engine noises increase.

End of Scene One.

Scene Two

Almost simultaneous time frame. Cross section of cargo hold on same swaying stage floor. Soft lighting. DEVORA stands centre stage by back- drop of cabin partition wall, replacing a handset and facing forward in audience and BIN-LINER’S direction. BIN-LINER sits slumped in a deck chair besides food- aid boxes, stage right at an angle. Off-stage sounds of labouring aircraft engines.

Devora Well, sweetie, Captain Vokker says I have to make sure you’re belted in now.

Bin-Liner Shut-up, you decadent Western whore! I kill you!

Devora Tut-tut, if I was your mother, I would wash that filthy mouth out with soap. (approaches BIN-LINER) You don’t seem to have a belt. (looks about) Well, I can’t seem to see anything to secure you with, so…

DEVORA fumbles in his blouse and pulls out a bright pink bra and after a struggle ties BIN-LINER to the deckchair, pinning his arms. DEVORA returns centre stage.

Devora Well, that’s better! (staggers on his high heels as stage slews) Well - I am Devora, your lovely stewardess. Do you like my hair? (pats at hair) Well, anyway, I am here to make sure your flight is really, really pleasurable. So, a grand welcome to you, Mister Dodgy Bin-Liner, on Feeniks Airlines! (blows kiss) I will now perform the safety regulations. (giggles coyly) Feeniks Airlines has an excellent safety record, not even terrorists dare fly with us. This aircraft is equipped with one escape route, the cargo door at the back. (points) However (pregnant pause), if you feel your cargo needs some escape, I might let you root in my back door. (sniggers)

Bin-Liner (screaming) I kill you all! Filthy slut! Allah, save me from this filth!

Devora (waves a finger at him) Ooh, such a naughty little boy! I couldn’t help but notice those large breast implants you carry. Did you have yours done by Dr. Feelgood in Los Angeles? He does all the stars… He did mine also, filled them with two pints of silicone - each!

Bin-Liner (shouting fanatically) Shut-up you whore! Mine are filled with nitro and glycerine, and made in Pakistan by the Islamic Jihad Unpopular Front for the peaceful revolution against western capitalism and degenerate debauchery.

Devora (pause) That sounds like an interesting club. Do they have swinger parties? Anyway, I heard they stone people like me over there. I’m surprised you took the risk - you are so brave! (short pause) Now, during the flight, should there be a sudden drop in pressure and you are short of breath, (makes obscene mimicry of oral sex) you will be supplied with one of these.

DEVORA produces from behind a carton an oxygen bottle with a mask attached.

Devora Even if you’re smoking hot, you must put it out before you can suck on this. (waves mask and giggles)

Bin-Liner (struggling against his bonds, screaming hysterically) Allah, Allah, give me strength to send these infidels to hell!

Devora (ignoring outburst) We don’t carry any lifebelts, as we fly mainly over desert, but we do carry some blow-up camels. (laughs) That was a joke, so - finally, I will demonstrate the KAG position you will take, should we be about to crash.

DEVORA spreads his legs wide apart and bending over, pushes his head between them making loud kissing noises, then returns to standing position.

Bin-Liner She-devil!

Devora That is the end of the ‘Kiss Ass Goodbye’ demonstration. Now this is the best part - looking for dinner! I will now show you the various choices. (starts to sing ‘At Christmas time it's hard, but when you're having fun…’

DEVORA, swaying his hips, starts dramatically to open boxes whilst still softly singing out of order lines from ‘Do they know it’s Christmas’. After looking and reading out loud the doner/destination details printed on them, he theatrically shows objects from several boxes’ contents to BIN-LINER, whilst commenting on each donation, before returning them. Throughout the demonstration the plane occasionally sways, along with off-stage changes to engine noises. BIN-LINER periodically fights his restraint.

Devora Let’s see what China is sending to Mali. Oooh, how sweeeet! Look! There is a lovely, juicy lamb chop, some chips, peas and carrots. Shame they are all plastic and unsuitable for children under three - they might choke on the generosity. (laughs, pause, new box, sings ‘Where nothing ever grows No rain nor rivers flow...’) With love from Uncle Sam to the people of Somalia. This comes from my people. (pause) How boring, just hundreds of bags of microwavable popcorn. Leftovers from Chilly Clitoris’s Presidential campaign are my guess. I don’t like her, far too bossy, but I do fancy her husband. He did love to suck on a good cigar. (giggles) Did your people like him too? (pause, new box, sings ’Here's to you, raise a glass for everyone...’)

BIN-LINER makes loud gagging sounds.

Devora (continues undisturbed, sings ‘Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears..’) From Save The Planet, for the people of Dafur. No surprises here. There’s a little booklet called ‘How to save your environment and grow your own genetically modified beans’, by Hal Bore. Comes complete with seven lucky seeds to create your own magic beanstalk! We had these last year. Full of helpful tips, you know. It said, for example, if your land suffers constant drought you should urinate on your planted seeds, as this also acts as a fertilizer! Amazing, huh? (pause, new box, sings ‘Feed the world, let them know its Christmas time…’) Not sure where this came from, writing looks Japanese to me. (pause) Dehydrated sweet and sour, researched whale meat, with a built in MP3 player! No batteries though. These Nips are really smart. (pause, new box, sings ‘At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade...’) To Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom. Ooh look – it’s a vacuum packed roast midget Christmas turkey. Oh isn’t that just so cute! I wonder how they got them to grow so small. It says, ‘With love from Olly James’s happy turkey farm, all scanned with radium to kill bird-flu viruses’. Ooh, I have had one of these. Mind you, it took ages to catch (short pause) and it squawked horrendously when I stuffed it. (laughs)

Bin-Liner (screaming) I can not wait to blow you up, you filthy whore!

Devora Oooh, I can’t wait either, you sexy beast! (continues poking around in boxes, sings ‘And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy…’) Yuck! This sounds disgusting. Tins of foetal lamb soup from Afghanistan. So that’s what they do with all the unborn lambs after they skin them to make those funny hats. I don’t care where it is supposed to go. Poor little lambs! I will get Captain Vokker to throw them out over Timbuktu.

pause, starts on new box, sings ‘And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time…’

Lights start to dim. Off-stage engine noises increase.

Devora That means we will be taking-off any moment now. I must get myself into blast-off position. (winks)

Lights dim to total darkness. Off-stage engines reach take off crescendo then reduce in volume. There are sounds of muffled struggling and giggles.

Bin-Liner (screaming angrily) Don’t touch my tits, you decadent whore! They are pure dynamite!

Devora (delightedly) Ooh, promises, promises!

Bin-Liner (shouting hysterically) Once I get my tits out and mix them, you and your gang will get a big bang.

Devora Don’t be coy, let me give them a quick grope. It’s Christmas after all.

Short pause. There is a loud explosion and a bright flash followed by darkness. The curtain comes down to the sounds of Band Aid ‘Do they Know it’s Christmas’, at the line -

And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you
Feed the world

Let them know it's Christmas time again
repeat then fade.

The End.

And now read about the real Captain Vokker…

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/07/warms107.xml

Should I stay or should I go?

Okay – this was done in a hurry, but I thought it rather appropriate. So for your entertainment, may I present Mad Bob in, Should I Stay or Should I go?

There is an interesting comment about all the shenanigans by Peter Godwin in today’s The Independent at -

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/peter-godwin-the-desperate-throes-of-a-master-electionrigger-803497.html

While We Wait

Yes, I know. You are all on tenterhooks waiting for the results of the Zimbabwe election. At the moment the only news to be had is 15,000 pieces of baggage are stacked up in a huge mountain at the new terminal 5 at Heathrow airport. Presumably they belong to fleeing ZANU (PF) hierarchy members. A search of various web sites has produced comments from all three presidential candidates saying the same thing, ‘I won’, ‘I won’, and ‘I won’ and ‘Any one fancy some won-ton soup?’

This is nail-biting stuff. Well, it is for us, as the Zimbabweans ate all their fingernails years ago! In fact, an old Rhodesian expression ‘fancy a good nailing?’ which did mean getting a hiding, has now become a Zimbabwean invite for a cup of nail soup!

Anyway – as it is Sunday and you all have time on your hands, you thought it might be informative to pop into lore’s blog and see if he has some updates. Well I have. I managed to get today’s exchange rate. As you can imagine, due to the circumstances it is a little volatile –

1US$ is equal to Zimbabwe Dollars. (Er, the counter ran out of digits, so please add four zeros)

Also, for a bit of a laugh - I came across this interesting website with the name Uncyclopedia. It is a very clever spoof of Wikipedia.

Check out this entry –

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Robert_Mugabe

and this one

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Rhodesia

and, sadly, last but not least –

http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Air_Zimbabwe

Vote For Me and See What You Get For Free!

Greetings my fellow Zimbabweans.

As you know, today you will go to the polls and vote for me to remain your leader. It is not in your interests to even consider voting for anyone else. Only I can save you and what is left of your family from being colonised again. Imagine, you would have to work for a pittance and take orders from a White ‘Baas’ who would beat you and have sex with your wife at anytime.

Since I have been in charge, more than 80% of you now no longer have to work! Soon we will emulate successful lands such as the very Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they have worked so hard to make sure that 99% of their population no longer have to work. I and my politburo members have to work of course. Such is our burden of responsibility, but we do so with joy in our hearts, as we know our efforts reap joy and happiness among you all.

Because of our brilliant economic plans, there is no need for most of you to get up early in the morning to go to work. Now you can just ‘hang around’ waiting for handouts. Today, because it is such a special day, I have decided to give all of you presents of grandiose abundance. All you have to do is simply click on the gift and save it to use at any time you like.

We all love a good fry-up, so please except this traditional Zimbabwean breakfast dish (the British imperialists stole the recipe, just like they did in India with the curry) -

You need to drive to the polling station? Please, here, have a Rolls Royce. (You can keep the plane as well.) These were made in Zimbabwe before the arrival of the British land thieves who stole the factory and shipped it to their mud island -

You want a new farm? There are plenty to be had now we took them back, click as many times as you like -

Short of a few Bob? (ha ha, excuse the pun), want to go shopping and need some coin?

Click here -

Tired of cooking? Need a Cook-boy? Well we no longer use that derogative racist term. We call them Chink-boy now. Here, click a Chinkie or two, every well run African land should have several millions of them. Very useful, they even come with their own plastic bags! -

Should you be a complete simpleton and still insist on voting for one of the other pretenders, then you better get a tire which my boys will set alight so you will look like one of these sell-outs –

Finally, I recommend a book by Tim Butcher called Blood River. He recently travelled the entire length of the Congo River and reported of the incredible achievement of the government there who have managed to put the clock back to a time before there were any. If you go to his website

www.bloodriver.co.uk

there are some wonderful pictures of the unique system of African reverse progress.

This is it, or is it?

Reading all the blah blah available and watching some of the limited coverage on TV leading up to today’s election, one wonders why Mugabe even bothers.

The old fart rants that should he sort of lose, which is theoretically impossible, he won’t accept the result, nor will his commanders of the army or the police. If he then wins as predicted, all his best mates (leaders of other dodgy regimes), will rush to congratulate him, giving him his tiny mantle of legitimacy, and the status quo remains.

But, and it is a big but, what will happen if the locals actually decide to kick-up if they decide that they have been robbed yet again and face more of the same? That is the big question.

Let us see what happens tomorrow and the next few days.

----

I have been away, thus the lack of postings. Sorry about that but there will be a few coming in the next few days.

$750.000 Dollars To Be WON!

Yes people, I am willing to give back to my readers something that they have given me; mainly, not a lot!

I have decided to run a competition. The first prize is an amazing three quarters of a million dollars! All you have to do to claim your prize is to win the competition. That way I eliminate the losers. To win is very simple but you need to be clever, so it is not clever to enter the competition if you’re a bit simple.

If you look at the right hand column you will see a green counter. Every time some one takes a peep at this brilliant blog, it registers them and the number goes up. Well, soon it will reach the artistic merit of 22222, so whoever is that one, two two two two two… er… two, gets the prize. To prove this (and I tried it out, so it works) highlight the counter, save the image, and send it to me in an email ( lore-data@hotmail.com) with a maximum word count of 100, as to why I should give you the prize. (Winning comment will be put up on my blog along with a picture of the winner with his wad of cash, should he send me one.) Please note that thanks to Google analytics, I can see any daft twats who decide to keep clicking till they reach the number. Should that be the case, I will disqualify anyone doing more than 5 hits a day.

Just in case you may start to get very excited, I would like to point out that your prize is a brand new, hot off the press, Zimbabwean 750,000 dollar note that is, at today’s rate, worth about 3 British Pence. The stamp will cost me more!

The competition is genuine and I will post the prize.

The Gokwe Kid Strikes Again

How someone’s innocent search for a DVD film caused uproar in the art world.

Ooh – I was planning on posting some other stuff, but it can wait, as I have sensational news! Yes, little me, the infamous Gokwe Kid, the greatest bush detective ever, has unearthed a scandal of all scandals!

Regular readers (if I have any), may recall that I was checking out the Tate Modern art gallery a short while ago. Who cares, you might say!

Anyway, in the cellar, they got this giant crack in the floor. Now, it cost serious money to put it in there. Last year, some artistic Brazilian genius was given some serious bucks (tax-payers, by the way), to create this.

(Hey, you lot. Give me a tenner each, you can come have a look at the cracks in my ceiling. Women only!)

So far, so good – what’s the big fucking deal about a crack in the floor, besides it must have cost £1000 a foot? Very simple, I, through my pure genius of detection, think the whole thing is a sham! Okay, I admit that when I went and looked at it, I was seriously tempted to deposit the wrapping from my POLO sugar-free sweets in it, but was put off by the amount of refuse already in there. The point I am desperately trying to make; is that I think, the giant crack was plagiarised.

In other words, the Tate gallery fell into a very expensive void which was about as original as Hot Cross buns with an extra 25% more currents for free. How do I know this? Well, that’s another story. It all started, long, long time ago…

Once upon a time, in Zimbabwe, my step-mother, along with her late husband, supplemented her income by being a movie extra. One day, a movie company decides that riding the anti-apartheid ticket was always good for a few bucks and seeing that Zimbabwe was sort of like South Africa (having lots of black people living in huts and a few whites living in mansions), they went there in 1989 and made a film call A Dry White Season. Based on the 1979 novel by Andre Brink, it starred Donald Sutherland and a cast that includes sexy kitten Susan Sarandon (Tell us about it Janet!) and Marlon Brando. The story is the usual genre – Blackman good, whiteman evil etc and all bundled up in the millenniums favourite word; Racism.

My Mom was head of history at the exclusive, private St Georges college in Harare at the time. That’s the same one where Peter Godwin went. Most of her pupils, right up until she ended teaching last year actually, were black. The sixth form whites were also used as extras, popped in South African Police uniforms and had a merry time running around kicking in the doors of black peoples huts. There is one scene where Donald is at a rugby match. The camera zooms up on him in the spectators stands and for a few seconds there are Mom and her husband standing behind him chatting! Great stuff. As Mom will be arriving any day now, having had to flee Robb’in Bob the Hood’s madness for a while, I thought it would be cool to get a copy of the film. That way we can both weep over the locations that were once called home. Sniff, shed a few tears.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any DVD cheepies up on Ebay at the moment, so it will have to wait. I have a taped copy from long time ago, but it is in German.

BUT, what has this to do with the crack in the floor? Well according to the blah blah on the Tate’s own website (So read on, you are going to learn something.) –

Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth is the first work to intervene directly in the fabric of the Turbine Hall. Rather than fill this iconic space with a conventional sculpture or installation, Salcedo has created a subterranean chasm that stretches the length of the Turbine Hall. The concrete walls of the crevice are ruptured by a steel mesh fence, creating a tension between these elements that resist yet depend on one another. By making the floor the principal focus of her project, Salcedo dramatically shifts our perception of the Turbine Hall’s architecture, subtly subverting its claims to monumentality and grandeur. Shibboleth asks questions about the interaction of sculpture and space, about architecture and the values it enshrines, and about the shaky ideological foundations on which Western notions of modernity are built.

In particular, Salcedo is addressing a long legacy of racism and colonialism that underlies the modern world. A ‘shibboleth’ is a custom, phrase or use of language that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. By definition, it is used to exclude those deemed unsuitable to join this group.

‘The history of racism’, Salcedo writes, ‘runs parallel to the history of modernity, and is its untold dark side’. For hundreds of years, Western ideas of progress and prosperity have been underpinned by colonial exploitation and the withdrawal of basic rights from others. Our own time, Salcedo is keen to remind us, remains defined by the existence of a huge socially excluded underclass, in Western as well as post-colonial societies.

In breaking open the floor of the museum, Salcedo is exposing a fracture in modernity itself. Her work encourages us to confront uncomfortable truths about our history and about ourselves with absolute candidness, and without self-deception.

So, did you get that? It is all about ‘a long legacy of racism and colonialism’. Any bells ringing yet! So let’s presume that Salcedo wakes up one morning and says

‘Blow me down with a feather, why don’t we dig a huge black crack in a white floor and persuade everyone its all about bad white people.’

And the art world yanks at its hair, grovels to the floor and pronounces the entire concept one of pure inspirational genius. The price tag is so horrendous; it just has to be the ultimate in modern art. Think about it, most people pay to get cracks like that filled in!

OR IS IT?

I don’t think Salcedo thought up anything artistic. Someone has done it before! All Salcedo had to do was steal the concept from the original art work and pay some Polish labourers a few pounds to dig a crack and pocket the rest. The actual explanation for the work of art has also been given to her. Yup, you guessed it – A Dry White Season.

I discovered, whilst looking for the film, several copies of the book. But it is the hardcover version printed in September 1979 by publishers WH Allen, that really blew my mind. Without actually buying the book, I don’t know who did the art work for the dust cover, but…take a look at this!

There you go then. Who do I turn too? How can I profit from all this?