Humour from the streets

Being a street cleaner must suck. Which is why I was chuffed to see this the other day. It is one thing to take pride in your work but it is even better if you can take time out to have a bit of a laugh. The unknown cleaner must have gone for a wee wee or a quick bite to eat, but he took the time, using only equipment he had available to him, to make a simple humorous gag.
Thank you unknown street cleaner man, you made me smile. When I came upon this installation I dropped the chip packet i was holding and took a photo. Not only have I shared your work with the world. When you came back you had more rubbish to pick up. So I played my part in helping to keep you employed.

How do you bomb knowledge?

The US Government’s 16 intelligence agencies have come out and said that Iran halted its nuclear ambitions in 2003. A very intelligent move for once. They saw how their colleagues were hung out to dry in the wake of the failure to find WMD in Iraq, so rather than keep quiet now and help Bush with his plan to bomb Iran back to the stone age, they have decided to implement and arse covering maneuver and come out with the truth now.
So what does Bush do? Change the rules.
Suddenly it is not about having the facilities to build nuclear weapons. It is having the ‘knowledge’. Maybe the Iranian nuclear scientists should hand themselves into the men in black. Tommy Lee and Will Smith could wipe their minds with those little flash things and they would be free of the knowledge. Failing that how do you do fight knowledge?
I suspect Bush’s answer is that same as the solution to the Iran problem last week.
You bomb.

Desert Safari Bollocks Part 2

Our convoy rolled up at the same time as 7 or 8 other vehicles and people of all nations came together to empty the sand out of their shoes. For those wanting to ride a camel or to snowboard down a sand dune, this was their chance. Camels are not nice animals. I suspect the reason they live in the desert is that all the other animals on the planet chased them away from the good spots. And there’s nothing dignified about riding a camel. I have the video footage of my wife to prove it. Some people aren’t happy with only having sand in their shoes, hair and mouth. They want the full ‘sand in your undies’ desert experience. This is where the sand boarding comes in. All the sand you can handle and a good laugh for everyone else.
Next it was into the camp for Arabic coffee. I’m not so big on proper Arabic coffee. For me it is a bit like England with their Football/Cricket/Rugby. They bought it to the world, but now they are just not very good. Luckily one of the Russians in the group spotted the bar at the other end of the camp which I suspect wasn’t a fixture in days gone by but we weren’t complaining. We were there faster than a young camel willy wrangler washes his hands after work.
I was surprised to see two cats skulking around as we sat on the cushions laid out around the low dinner tables. You don’t see cats in the desert very often. But why not? For a creature so fussy about where it goes to the toilet, the desert must be a dream come true. It’s just a giant litter box.
Dinner was served under the stars and the cats got the scraps and left (but didn’t go too far I suspect) then they pumped up the music to herald the arrival of the belly dancer.
Watching her, it occurred to me that Arabic women were belly-dancing hundreds of years ago and at the same time on the other side of the world, young Hawaiian, Tahitian and Rarotongan girls were doing the same thing. Isn’t it amazing how anywhere on the planet that is hot, men have found a way to persuade the ladies to get their kit off and wiggle for them.
6 or 7 songs was all the our German friend’s pace maker could take and even the two Indian guys who got up to dance in the audience participation section looked hot and sweaty by the end. But again the timing was perfect, because as the music was turned down the sweet aroma of shisha drifted across the camp. They say one shisha is about the equivalent of 30 cigarettes. I’ve never smoked. It is a filthy, smelly habit, but shisha is a totally different story. How can something with apple or banana or strawberry in it be bad for you? I had coconut one night, but that was a bit like smoking suntan lotion. But even if you don’t smoke you have to try shisha at least once. With our 30 cigarettes worth of fruit tobacco consumed we were guided back to our 4x4’s for the trip home. It could have turned into a spontaneous review of the buffet dinner, but our driver magically found a road in what seemed the middle of nowhere and we soon found ourselves back at our hotel carrying, as my wife and I found out later, enough sand to make a small commemorative paper weight each.

The Dubai 7’s. 7 beers an hour or you’re not doing it right.

I reckon the international rugby unions looked at what their cricket mates did with the one dayer and thought. We only sell 80 minutes worth of beer. They sell 7 or 8 hours. Then they invented the rugby sevens tournament. 2 days (3 if you count the local competition) of beer drinking bliss.
Maybe bliss isn’t quite the right word. Certainly not at 8am on the morning of the second day. But like good cowboys you climb back up on the horse and complete your second 10-hour session. 7’s rugby is all about the number 7. 7 players per side 7 minutes per half. 7 songs. The same 7 played over and over. You would have thought they could have splashed out for more, but the crowd didn’t seem to mind. When your games are that short you need a lot of teams so they let lots of countries play. Even the crap ones. Some come for the experience, others for the food. I imagine the Zimbabwe team was thrilled to be in a country where bread doesn’t cost a million dollars a loaf. They played hard and fast. Fast, I suspect, so they could get off the field and back to the buffet table. The Poms weren’t too good on defense. But that’s what cost them their Empire so no surprises there. The Kenyans weren’t very good either. 7’s is a sprint not a marathon of a game and the Kenyans are better at marathons eh. Tunisia is not exactly world superstars at rugby but they gave the Canadian a run for their money. Rumor is that at halftime the Canadian coach, with the backing of the Canadian Government, offered the Tunisians Bryan Adams if they let the old Maple leaves have the win. Samoa did Ok considering anyone in that country that is really good at rugby has been ‘adopted’ by NZ. Same with Tonga and Fiji. Fiji still manages to do well at the 7’s and they faced the Kiwis and a few of their cousins in the final.
7’s isn’t just about rugby. It’s also about people dressing up in silly costumes that ideally are loosely linked to the country they are supporting, and getting pissed together. Looking around me it kind of felt like the Untied Nations had decided to have a Christmas party at a sports stadium. The Kiwi’s weren’t just the winners on the field. Over the 2 days a highly trained team of Pilipino boys and girls walked through the stands with little bags selling fresh, hot pies and sausage rolls. It was a tough job that just got tougher as the tournament wore on. Like those fearless medics you see in war movies who dodge bullets to get to the people that need their help the most, these little pie warriors dodged beer cans and demands to ‘sit down’ in 5 different languages, to make sure the drinkers kept up the internationally approved limit of one pie or sausage roll for every 10 beers consumed. It was only at the end of the event after a chat with a very happy man behind the pie shop counter that I found out the brains of the operation was a Kiwi. And he was right to be happy with over 20,000 pies sold in 3 days.
Another moneymaking scheme were the little pointy Asian hats being sold. The clean-cut man selling them said the money was going to help Cambodian children. I thought someone had done that by arresting Gary Glitter, but apparently that’s not enough. Or maybe he said the hats were so cheap because Cambodian children had made them. I can’t remember, I had had a lot of pies by then. I think they could have condensed all the international matches into one big day instead of dragging it out over two and adding lots of local games no one wanted to watch, but I guess they wouldn’t have sold as much beer then. Rugby was the winner, followed closely by Heineken but no Fitzy it wasn’t a game of two halves, there many. And each one gave you the chance to buy another beer or a pie or a pointy hat.