Exciting foot and leg wear

Recently, somewhere out in the wide wild world of fashion design, a genius came up with the following prototype:

Let's say that you could wear these shoes, for example, when you're out on a surfboard in the waters off the West Australian coast, waiting for a wave. There's no way in the world that a big hungry fish might try to snap off your snappy shoes, chained safely to your shins.

I imagine an elegant high-end steel-gray version of this footwear: the jailbird model.

Curiously, after their brilliant prototype, the designers of the Adidas model seem to have run out of imagination. They could have easily added extra chains, in colorful hues, extending up to the wearer's wrists and—why not?—his stupid neck.

Suddenly I'm reminded of a trivial but true anecdote, many years ago, in the family flat of our concierge (guardian) in the rue Rambuteau. One of the youths was trying to lower a heavy bed from a first-floor window to the pavement in the courtyard, several meters below the window. To support the weight of the bed, he had coiled the ropes around his shoulders and neck. All of a sudden, he lost his grip on the ropes, and the big bed jolted downwards until it was suspended in the air about two meters above the surface of the courtyard. Meanwhile, the ropes had tightened around the fellow's neck, and he was choking for breath. We terrified onlookers lost precious seconds while we climbed onto chairs and boxes to take the weight of the bed, enabling the silly bugger to unwind the noose that was strangling him and get loose. In fact, he had a few screws loose, as they say. Fascinated by firemen, he always got around in the rue Rambuteau wearing bits and pieces of a fireman's uniform... in spite of the fact that no self-respecting unit of firemen would ever accept such fellow in their ranks.

Antipodean exploits

The first exploit is simply an unbelievable catch in a game of cricket in New Zealand. The ball was about to touch the ground beyond the official boundary of the playing field, in which case the batsman would have made a substantial score. To avoid such a happening, a fieldsman in the other team leaped into the air at the last moment, and grabbed the ball. Then, during the half a second that he was still in the air, this fellow tossed the ball to a fellow fieldsman who was located well inside the playing field, and this second fieldsman had no trouble in catching the ball. So, theoretically, the batsman was caught out. Here's the video:

The second exploit concerns an Australian girl who went bungee jumping in Zimbabwe, on the edge of the Victoria Falls.

When she was down near the surface of the water, the cord snapped, and she got carried away (her ankles still tied together) by the rapidly-flowing Zambezi River. Miraculously, she survived with no more than a few bruises. Here's the video:

Enough to turn an aging gentleman off women forever

I warn you. This is an incredibly nasty video:

Survivors might cry out for help. I would dearly love to direct fellow males to interesting images, for a minimum of erotic appeasement. Alas, I seem to have mislaid my book of web addresses.

At times, it helps if you're blonde

It goes without saying that, for young American women, there's no stigma attached to being blonde. Here's a delightful specimen, whom I believe I've presented already, several years ago:

The color of a woman's hair is of no significance whatsoever. But, in certain cases, it helps...

Windy wedding in Arizona

This short video shows memorable moments of an Arizona wedding:

As you see in the video, it had been been planned that, during the ceremony, the bride and groom would take up two jars of sand and mix their contents together in a third container, thereby symbolizing the eternal fusion of two souls in the holy union of wedlock.

Jeez, that lovely symbolic message sure came through loud and clear. In any case, I would like to imagine that the newlyweds will live together in calm harmony for ever and ever. But I have my doubts...

Holy spirited driver

My mother used to tell us an amusing anecdote about a car excursion from South Grafton to the beach at Yamba. Her oldest brother, Eric Walker, was at the wheel, while their mother (whom my siblings and I always referred to as Grandma) was seated in the rear. Suddenly, on a narrow stretch of the highway running alongside the Clarence River, they were overtaken in a dangerous manner by a speeding vehicle. They noticed immediately that it was the black sedan owned by the Roman Catholic church of South Grafton. The driver, alone in the vehicle, was the local parish priest, Father O'Meara. Eric was so startled that he started to curse the priest, whereupon Grandma came to the defense of the speeding ecclesiastic.

GRANDMA: He has probably received a phone call asking him to rush to the bedside of a dying parishioner.

ERIC: Like bloody hell. He's speeding to get to the pub in Maclean in time for a beer before closing time.

I thought of that anecdote when I read an amazing article in today's Australian media. A few days ago, the local priest from South Grafton, Father Peter Jones, was stopped by police for driving dangerously on the road from South Grafton to Yamba, in the vicinity of Maclean. Alarmed drivers had phoned the police when they saw the priest's white Toyota zigzagging from one side of the road to the other.

[Click the photo of Father Jones to access a newspaper article]

When a police officer attempted to use a hand-held breathalyzer to determine the priest's blood-alcohol state, his intoxication was so high that the machine was incapable of supplying a result. So the offender was taken to the police station in Maclean, where a more sturdy apparatus gave a reading of 0.341. Not only was this result some seven times the legal limit, but the drunken priest supplied one of the highest blood-alcohol readings ever recorded in the history of the New South Wales police. A specialist explained that guzzling down beer alone would not be able to produce such a high reading. So, the priest had surely been imbibing a large quantity of far more potent spirits. Thank God that nobody struck a match near the good man, for they might have all been consumed in a ball of fire.

My grandmother would have said that, in such a state of inebriation, the priest was surely being protected from an accident by the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Good idea for a hat

Here's a picture of the kind of hat I have in mind:

Let me refer to it as an iHat (even though I would imagine that this term is already being used out in the wide world). The top hat style—which is just one suggestion among others—has the advantage of offering a rigid lightweight structure to house both the electronic components and the wearer's skull. The size of the hat and the position of the flat screen would have to be adjusted so that it could be worn by people who don't necessarily have receding Neanderthal foreheads.

The front section of the hatband conceals an elegant pull-down keyboard. Inside the crown of the hat, above the top of the wearer's head, there would be ample room for the power source and a rich assortment of components.

To help pay for the high-tech hat, the wearer might decide—from time to time, when he's not himself working with the iHat—to display publicity in the style of TV ads, aimed at viewers seated opposite him in public transport, waiting rooms, etc. At sporting events, the screen might display the colors of the team that the wearer is supporting.

Interesting and beautiful variants of the iHat could be designed for special occasions, such as weddings or horse races of the Ascot kind.

Naturally, people wearing particularly exotic iHats equipped with high-powered electronic devices emitting intense electromagnetic radiation would be advised to have their brains scanned from time to time, just to be sure there's no damage.

It would be advisable to secure the iHat to the wearer's neck by some kind of metal chain or cable. It would be silly if a valuable iHat were to be blown off by the wind and crushed by an automobile, or grabbed by an evil strike-and-run hat thief.

No problems

It's easy if you try.

Postman needs a vacation

This true story about a French thief is similar—on the surface—to the anecdote described in my recent blog post entitled Lovers lanes for an ex-husband [display].

In the city of Moselle (province of Lorraine), over the last ten years, a middle-aged postman has stolen 13,000 items that he was supposed to deliver. Amazingly, he stored all this stolen mail in his attic, where it was discovered in a more-or-less intact state. The most intriguing aspect of the thief's behavior was his predilection for simple postcards, of the trivial kind that tourists send back home to their loved ones.

Not surprisingly, psychiatrists concluded that the postman was a compulsive kleptomaniac, but he's thought to be totally responsible for his acts. In other words, he's by no means clinically crazy. The postman himself is incapable of explaining objectively why he committed all this theft, but he admits that he has always been fascinated by the kinds of simple family letters and postcards that he stole.

The poor guy is likely to be sent away on a three-year vacation for theft, accompanied by another three years for a fuzzy crime described as "violation of the secrecy of private correspondence". I would have imagined that, in our Internet age—where organizations and individuals are constantly sticking their noses into other people's business—the latter concept would have become somewhat obsolete.

I hope the authorities will give us the guy's address in jail, enabling well-wishers to send him friendly postcards.

This story has a happy ending. The postal authorities are in the process of forwarding all the stolen mail to its rightful receivers. Since we live in the best of all possible worlds, I'm sure that many people will be so thrilled to receive this long-overdue mail that they'll spontaneously dash off a thank-you postcard to the postman.

Jesus walked on the waters of Irene

I can't help loving Americans. [And I promise not to use a single swear-word in this blog post.] They're innocent childlike observers of the calamities of the universe, and they're especially skilled in Biblical stories concerning the Deluge. Jesus Christ is constantly just around the corner. Often, a delightful word seems to describe adequately the attitudes of certain descendants of the Founding Fathers: dumbfounded.

The journalist Jojo deserves deserves some kind of prize for perseverance. He should be sent off immediately to a front-line war zone in Libya. I have a gut feeling that Jojo would rapidly unearth Gaddafi, because Jojo wouldn't be deterred by side-effects and noise. Outstanding US media professionals like Jojo tend to talk well in front of a microphone, but we may not necessarily learn much from what they're saying.

Back to the studio for further last-minute news…

Lovers lanes for an ex-husband

This true story, in yesterday's French press, is sad but strangely beautiful. Late on Monday evening in the city of Albi (south-west France), police came upon a 67-year-old man perched on a stool by the roadside, busily unscrewing a sign bearing the name of a nearby locality. When they got around to inspecting the fellow's house, the police found a room in which a hundred or so local road signs were neatly stacked.

The man told the police that, since his recent divorce, which had been a particularly painful event in his life, he had been vainly attempting to recover the romantic sensations of his married days by collecting all the road signs indicating places associated with that happy epoch of his life. And, whenever he came upon a signpost indicating such a place, he had got into the habit of unscrewing it and taking it back to his house as a souvenir of those happy days. Since his married life had been full of joyful events (at least from the husband's viewpoint), his collection of signs had become quite large.

The police informed the fellow that he would be charged with unlawfully removing public property, then they let him return home. Before the trial, he'll be receiving a summons to spend a few hours with a court-appointed psychiatrist. Indeed, the police suspect that the poor fellow is crazily in love (literally)… with his ex-wife, or with road signs, or maybe with both.

Ah, to be a glorious banker!

I was overcome emotionally by these spontaneous expressions of deep love towards Tan Sri Teh, the 81-year-old founder of a private bank in Malaysia, celebrating the bank's 45th birthday. The cherished old man, who is escorted into the arena in the style of a Roman emperor on a chariot, is described in an anthem as a "living legend" and a champion. This video is rather long (7.5 minutes), but I advise you to persevere to the end, to capture the mounting enthusiasm of the host of well-wishers.

Wicked European journalists described this charming gentleman and the glitzy happening as "megalomaniac" and "kitschissimo".

French cat on the booze

This photo (tidied up slightly with Photoshop), from the archives of the French national library, is a hundred years old.

[Click to enlarge slightly]

Alcoholism has been a problem in France for a long time. In a pathetic case such as this, I would say that the cat's owners (if indeed it is owned by anyone at all) are just as much to blame as the cat, if not more. When you acquire a cat or a dog, the least thing is that you instill sound moral principles in the animal, and keep it away from hard liquor.

Jingle cash bells

Regular readers of my Antipodes blog will have noticed that I often go out of my way to give a friendly helping hand to needy causes that appear to be worthy of my patronage.

So, that's why I've decided to throw in this small plug for a time-honored department store in London. In using the adjective "needy", I must admit that I'm merely judging the present state of this prestigious shop on the basis of a somewhat disturbing news item… although I must add that I haven't had time to drop across to the other side of the English Channel to verify personally this news. Apparently they've decided to install, at the height of summer, their Christmas 2011 displays. My only guess is that they're desperate for cash, and that their dire straits force them to adopt this incongruous marketing solution.

I'm particularly enticed by a delightful article that is indeed presented on their Christmas 2011 web pages [display]. I'm talking of a deluxe version (a little less than 80 quid sterling) of Freddie, the Harrods 2011 Christmas Bear. I'm thinking of ordering a specimen in the next few days—before the store runs out of bears—so that I'll be able to send it out to my Australian family in December. I reckon that a Christmas bear that can be acquired in the Old World at the start of a sultry month of August will be just right for transportation to Australia during the sweltering Antipodean celebrations of the birth of Jesus.

Religious breakthrough in Austria

Here's a photo of what appears to be an ordinary Austrian driver's license, issued to a young guy named Niko Alm:

When inspected closely, Niko's identity photo reveals a puzzling detail. On his head, he seems to be wearing some kind of curious helmet. In fact, it's a round-bottomed metal strainer of the kind used to extract spaghetti from the water in which it was cooked.



At this stage, you might be asking (I hope): How come that Austrian guy named Niko Alm has decided to give the authorities, for his driver's license, an identity portrait in which he's wearing an upside-down pasta strainer as if it were a hat? Now, that's an excellent question, and I'm glad you asked it. So, let me answer it.

Anybody who's ever tried to get a driver's license in Austria knows that the authorities are generally furious whenever they receive an identity photo in which the candidate is wearing any kind of hat. For example, if Princess Beatrice were to imagine that she could use this lovely portrait for her Austrian driver's license, then she would be in for a nasty surprise.



In Austrian law, there's only one possible loophole that allows you to use a photo in which you're wearing a hat. You have to make it clear that the thing you're wearing on your head is a religious headdress… like a Jewish hat, say, or a Sikh turban. And that is the ingenious method that enabled Niko Alm to use a portrait in which his head is adorned by a pasta strainer.

You might recall that, in a recent blog post, I evoked the existence of a spiritual entity known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster [display], who was responsible for the creation of the Cosmos and all the creatures in it, such as you and me.

The vast congregation of decent God-fearing folk who believe in this explanation of Creation are known as Pastafarians… and you can use Google to find out all about their fascinating theology, dogma, etc. Well, the Austrian driver Niko Alm wrote a letter to the authorities stating that his adherence to the Pastafarian religion made it obligatory for him to wear a pasta strainer on his head at all times. The authorities promptly got him examined by psychiatrists, to see if he was totally crazy. This was not the case. So, the authorities had no other choice but to allow Niko to be photographed while wearing his Pastafarian religious headdress.

Planning for emergencies

Thankfully, here in France, we don't have to worry too much about the end of the world, programmed for 2012, because we can simply drive down to the magic mountain alongside the village of Bugarach, which will be saved from the Apocalypse.

[Click the photo for an English version of the fairy tale.]

I still feel it's a little too early to release the news officially, but I have strong reasons to believe that there has been an error in the geographical calculations of the people who started to talk about Bugarach. The true magic mountain that will be saved from Armageddon next year is in fact the nearby Cournouze, just opposite my home at Gamone.

Be that as it may, there's another emergency situation that must be handled urgently. I'm talking of zombie invasions.

I've just heard that the city of Bristol in England—home of my pious ancestor John Harris [1722-1801], who may have dabbled in the notorious slave-trading industry—has announced a plan to deal with zombie contingencies.

[Click the image for an English article on this theme.]

With all these nasty threats looming on the horizon, it's a bloody shame that News of the World will no longer be available to provide our dear English cousins with reliable in-depth information.

Levitating Chinamen

We're all accustomed to incredible demonstrations from Chinese magicians of all kinds. So, we shouldn't be surprised, let alone annoyed, by the following photo:

Chinese officials have developed an extraordinary technique enabling them to inspect a newly-laid road while the macadam is still warm and sludgy. Like Jesus walking over the waters of the Sea of Galilee, these fellows are phloating fotoshopically over a new Oriental Highway of Truth. For God's sake, don't stick a pin in the image. It might burst, and the inspectors would fall onto the steaming macadam.

What's happening here?

I like this kind of photo. It forces you to think, to ask questions. What the hell is actually happening here? Maybe the police have just cornered a dangerous psychopath disguised as a Disneyland employee. Why are the two guys in blue shirts wielding simple wooden clubs, whereas the police officer appears to be equipped with a high-tech military weapon? Is the "creature" still alive? Is it about to be killed by the policeman taking aim? How come the people wandering around in the background don't seem to be particularly alarmed?

I don't think I could have guessed the true facts before they were revealed to me by the accompanying press article. They're employees of a Chinese zoo, and they're simply practicing an emergency drill involving the escape of one of their tigers. The weapon is designed to fire harmless anesthetic tranquilizer darts, capable of sending a tiger into a nice deep sleep. In the following photos, prior to the final standoff, we see the ferocious make-believe beast bounding across a road and hiding in the bushes, ready to pounce on zoo visitors:

And here's my favorite photo, showing a real tiger watching the show from his glass cage as the fake creature gets carted off on a stretcher, like a dazed rugby man being taken off the playing field:

I can imagine the authentic beast murmuring to itself: "OK, you bunch of silly buggers, one of these days we'll see if events in the real world are likely to turn out just as nicely as that!"

Stray horse

This morning, when I woke up and switched on the computer, I found this stray horse racing across my blog:

It isn't branded, so I don't know where it comes from. But I suspect it belongs to Saltbush Bill.

Staircase is still standing

In an article entitled Awards, which I wrote nearly four years ago, I made fun of a dangerous-looking concrete staircase in the village of St-Jean-en-Royans [display]. A few days ago, I took this new photo of the staircase, which is clearly built to last. Maybe it incorporates extraordinary engineering principles that merit study in the great technological universities.

On the other hand, I should point out that, although I've been driving past this place for years, I've never seen anybody actually using this fine staircase… which is no doubt a pity.