Category: that’s a bit mad

Just Hanging Out

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Much hubris from the ANC over Brett Murray’s depiction of President Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma in a Leninist pose, but with his bits hanging out of his trousers. As far as I’m aware, Lenin never did that.

Nope. Vladimir is all tucked in there. And thank goodness, if the rumours of his immense statue are to be believed. Apparently, “Once you go Red, you never go back.” Or maybe it was all propaganda.

I’m not publishing the JZ picture on here, not because I disagree with it being painted, drawn, whatever, but because I really have no compulsion to have a stylised image of Mr Zuma’s parts on my blog. If you want to see “it”, then pop over to this M&G story on the subject.

But come now, it’s just another big fuss over nothing. In protesting, the ANC have now ensured that the Streisand Effect is in full force and the 99.99% of the nation that was wholly unaware that a picture of the President with his fly down even existed are now marvelling at… at… Murray’s work.
It’s fantastic publicity for Murray and for the Goodman Gallery for what, to me, resembles a GCSE art project (but with a willy). If the artist is trying to portray a message with his work – and apparently he is – it’s been thoroughly lost in the rumpus around JZ’s bits being on display. If you want to send a message through art, maybe go back to throwing loo rolls into trees.

Meanwhile, the “freedom of speech” brigade are out in force again, citing Constitutional rights as they always do when this sort of thing happens. And, of course, they are right: Murray is well within his rights to illustrate the genitals of anyone he wants.
But I would love it if despite the fact that Brett Murray had the right to paint JZ’s genitals, he chose not to. Just because you’re allowed to do it, just because it’s your right, it doesn’t mean that you have to. And yes, the ANC has its knickers (not depicted) in a knot over this and it’s all awfully silly, but there really was no need to have done it in the first place. Except to earn the fat fee that some stupid overseas buyer has paid for it, I suppose.
Meh. Brett should head off and find something else to do that actually benefits the country.

As for Jacob – if he didn’t want the picture painted, he should never have agreed to pose for it.

Meanwhile, in Manchester…

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It’s been a good week for Manchester. City won the Premier League and it hasn’t rained every day. But there is a sinister underworld in Manchester which is exploiting the lower than average intelligence of people from… Manchester.

Because:

Greater Manchester Police are investigating a scam in which victims were conned into handing over hundreds of pounds for a bag of potatoes.

The story, which I spotted on BBC News, using the keywords “Manchester”, “Potato” and “Scam”, leaves us tantalisingly short on detail.

Police say at least four people have been approached by two men offering to sell them a laptop or iPhone.

One man paid up to £1,400 and walked away with a rucksack full of potatoes. Other victims received bottles of soft drinks.

Crime, and being a victim of crime, is a terrible thing. It’s in no way a thing to be ridiculed.

Except perhaps, when instead of getting an iPhone for his hard earned £1,400, the victim walks off with a rucksack full of potatoes. Which, it should be noted, would be equally good at displaying Flash content.

How can this have occurred? I can only imagine that there was some sort of hypnotism involved.

You are feeling sleepy…
You are feeling restful and sleepy…
When I click my fingers, you will awaken and believe that this rucksack full of potatoes is an iPhone worth £1,400.

And then, when they get home and the spell wears off, they have to go down to their local police station and report that they thought they were buying an iPhone, but actually, they ended up with a rucksack full of potatoes. And the police have got to keep a straight face. Jeez.

Still, it could be worse, I suppose. They could have ended up with a handful of Blackberry.

Running Doula has ‘horizontal’ catchup with Aussie blogger

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The mother of all Freudian slips ensues as Running Doula “catches up” with old friend and Saffa/Aussie blogger Delboy in Melbourne.

Always good to see someone managing to deal with apparent food-poisoning long enough to have fun with her friends.

Please note Melinda’s (almost) immediate response to her error: “VERTICAL!! I meant vertical!”.

Of course you did, love.

Madonsela ‘concerned’ as DA requests run dry

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Public Protector Thuli Madonsela was said to have been “hugely concerned” by an apparent halt in requests from the Democratic Alliance for her office to investigate anything and everything to do with anything and everything.

A spokesperson for the Office of the Public Protector stated:

Ms Madonsela stated her concern to colleagues that there had been no incoming requests from the DA for her to investigate any government department, government minister, government linked company or parastatal for almost 24 hours.
This is an unusual situation and had worried Ms Madonsela as the DA contributes over 95% of the investigative work for our office. On the DA’s insistence, we have investigated the Health Department, E-tolling (twice), SAPS Building Leases, Sicelo Shiceka, Richard Mdluli, Jacob Zuma (thirteen times), Susan Shabangu, Oilgate, Bheki Cele and the POIB.
And that’s just off the top of my head. Which they have asked for an investigation into as well.
They submitted no request for any investigation into Minister of Labour Nelisiwe Mildred Oliphant, however, they then submitted a request for an investigation as to why there had been no request for an investigation into Ms Oliphant.

There is much speculation that other DA requests to the Office of the Public Protector, and which were rejected, have not been made public. Rumours suggest that these included the decreasing size of Woolies’ prepared fruit salads, the lack of sunshine in Cape Town last August and the suddenly anatomically-confusing animal designs on Iced Zoo biscuits.

The spokesperson added:

They [the DA] also called for an investigation as to why the Public Protector had investigated the DA-controlled Midvaal municipality, as they never asked us to investigate that. That was a bit of an awkward moment.

However, there was much relief in Ms Madonsela’s office as it turned out that the lack of email requests was because of a Telkom ADSL fault in central Pretoria.

The DA immediately called for the Public Protector to investigate Telkom, by fax.