Wednesday, August 05, 2015
Incurable Afflecktion
Ben Affleck has got in a tizzy over allegations that he slept with his children’s nanny:
“The story is complete garbage and full of lies!” he bawled. “It’s shameful and desperate!”
Any man who contests a conjecture so hotly is probably hiding something, but that would be straying into matters of irrelevance. I have no interest in what games Affleck and the nanny played inside the wendy house. What bothers me is the vehemence of the denial, which indicates a lack of etiquette. A man should never imply that having sexual relations with a particular woman is an abomination on a par with massaging the devil’s buttocks. The poor nanny must be feeling like Henrietta of Hagsville.
I remember when my old circus buddy Smacker Ramrod was rumoured to have slept with the daughter of a local farmer, thereby obtaining free supplies of fresh milk, whipping cream and other choice delicacies. The ringmaster publicly confronted him on the issue:
“Ramrod, you sly dog!” he exclaimed. “Have you been procuring fresh produce by rogering the farmer’s daughter?”
Smacker smiled wistfully and sighed, looking into the distance.
“I should be so lucky,” he said.
His answer was the last word spoken on the subject, and when the farmer’s daughter got to hear of it she was immensely gratified. So much so, that the favours she allegedly performed for him were extravagantly enhanced and upgraded.
Another fine example of such gallantry occurred in the film Live and Let Die, in which James Bond seduced a virgin priestess played by the nymph-like Jane Seymour. The downside of this auspicious event was that Miss Solitaire (as she was known) lost her power of prophecy, which is the unavoidable fate of any virgin seer who is despoiled by a sharp-shooting servant of the Crown.
This greatly displeased the crime baron who controlled her. After capturing Bond, he summoned Miss Solitaire to the interrogation chamber and immediately guessed what had happened. In the style of the ringmaster, he put the question to his captive directly, not sparing the blushes of the deflowered maiden who unwillingly witnessed the scene. As one would expect of a British secret agent, Bond was unflappable:
“That’s not the sort of question a gentleman answers,” he replied dismissively.
Everyone knew, of course, that Bond had tutored her in the wiles of the boudoir, but a man of honour is discreet in his utterances about the ladies he consorts with.
One has to pity Mr Affleck for lacking the refinement to respond to an accusation of hanky panky with the decorum befitting a squire of the parish. It is too late for him to learn these niceties? One would like to think that he could acquire such habits if he served an apprentice as a dogsbody of Colin Firth or some other thespian of more notable pedigree. On the other hand, one look at his spoiled, whiny face suggests he is too far gone to be improved by an example of superior manners and deportment.
Labels: Ben Affleck, Colin Firth, hanky-panky, James Bond, Miss Solitaire, nanny
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Fortune cuckoo
A tourist at the safari camp advises me to consult Madame Poot if I want to know what fate has in store for me in the coming year. In a fit of curiosity, I visit her webpage and discover that she will answer questions on-line, which is unusually obliging for a fortune teller. I consider typing in a question about the price of coconuts when a thought occurs to me: who exactly is Madame Poot? After clicking around the website, I find the following biographical details:
Madame Poot is a very old fortune teller, and very different from all other fortune tellers. While traveling through some ungodly desert, the engine of her pink 1970's Cadillac convertible died due to lack of oil, so there is where she lives today. She's seen many things in her life, most of which she can't really remember.
This story is superficially convincing, but there are obvious holes in it. Those of us who have visited deserts know that surviving there is no picnic. The Kalahari Bushmen can do it, but they have mastered all kinds of cunning tricks, like hunting for roots and squeezing the moisture from lizards. I, for one, would be parched as a cuttlefish in such a habitat, so how could an old French biddy live there without turning into something resembling a dried prune? The suspicion which cannot be suppressed is that Madame Poot is actually a computer program, created, in all probability, by a geeky teenage boy. I hope his mother tells him he’s not too old for a spanking.
To be honest, I don’t have much time for fortune tellers. Our local witch doctor used read my palm for a bottle of fermented mango juice, but most of what he told me was piffle. He eventually confessed to being a fraud when I held him upside down by his ankles. If I consulted a soothsayer today, it would have to be someone like Miss Solitaire in Live and Let Die, played by the nymph-like Jane Seymour.
Miss Solitaire, if you remember, used to work her magic with the tarot cards, which are far more intriguing than a crystal ball. She was also the last film character I can remember who was proud to be a virgin, not least because her powers depended on maintaining the purity of her flesh. Her career ended, of course, when James Bond deflowered her. It was a dishonourable seduction achieved through subterfuge and deceit, and predictably turned her into a pouting nymphomaniac who couldn’t foretell the ending of a Doris Day movie.
If all else fails, you can always use a Ouija board to hail passing spirits and ask them for their prognostications. This is what the clowns did in my circus days, although the spirits they contacted were usually as ignorant of the future as they were. The most famous one they communicated with was Liberace’s mother, who still hadn’t found out that her son was gay. The lesson for overly inquisitive humans is clear: ignorance is bliss.
Labels: fortune-tellers, James Bond, Liberace, Miss Solitaire
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Reading the stars
A young American woman at the safari camp asks me what my star sign is.
“Gorillas don’t have star signs, Miss,” I explain. “The zodiac is a human invention for the classification of humans.”
My answer seems to puzzle her.
“But you know your date of birth, right?” she inquires.
“Certainly,” I reply. “I was born on the 7th day of Hairygus in the year of the She-Elephant’s Udder. What that is in the human calendar I could not begin to guess.”
“Uh huh,” she says. “My boyfriend’s really into astrology and did my charts based on my exact time of birth.”
“How thoughtful of him,” I remark. “Did you discover anything interesting about yourself?”
“The position of Venus when I was born means I’m, like, passionate and sensual,” she answers. “I’m a woman who needs to give men pleasure to be happy.”
“Is that so?” I muse aloud. “Tell me something, Miss. Would your boyfriend’s star sign happen to be The Bull?”
“Yeah,” she replies in a tone of earnest surprise. “Howja know?”
“Lucky guess, Miss,” I say, shrugging my shoulders.
We part on amicable terms.
I have no idea whether there’s anything in astrology, but it seems to me that its best days are behind it. Back in ancient
The last practitioner who really hit the big time was Nostradamus, although how much astrology he used in his prophesies is debatable. It was rumoured that he saw glimpses of the future when he gazed into a cauldron of water, which might explain the haunted look in his eyes. (My peepers look the same after I’ve stared into the
Incidentally, I’ve often wondered what happens to Bond’s leading lady after the movie ends. A long-term relationship with 007 would be out of the question, given that he’s married to the Secret Service and as frisky as a goat on Viagra. Yet it wouldn’t be his style to drive her to a Tesco Superstore and desert her while she’s shopping for kitchenware. Perhaps he has a rich cousin called Felicity Carruthers, who takes his conquests in hand and grooms them to be hostesses in her raunchy ladies’ clubs. Sizing up beefcake talent for burlesque shows might be the best remedy for a Bond infatuation.
Getting back to the subject at hand, I’m glad to say that my circus never allowed fortune tellers on the venue. That sort of thing creates bad vibes for performers who do dangerous stunts. A trapeze artist can lose his mojo if he gets funny looks from a spooky-looking dude in a turban. We did once have a spat with an old gypsy woman who incapacitated one of our lily-livered clowns by putting a curse on him. When I tried to solve the dispute by diplomacy, the silly old crone actually threatened to put a hex on me! The cheek of the woman! Little did she know that we gorillas are unhexable. I eventually got her to see reason by turning her urine blue. This was not achieved by magic, I should add, but by doping her groceries.
Labels: Astrology, Miss Solitaire, Nostradamus
