Adspeak blow-off

There was an item on CapeTalk the other day, about how ghastly it would be if travellers on the Mango airline were forced to listen to ads on the aeroplane’s loudspeaker system. The talkshow host pointed out that you can mute your radio, but you can’t shut up the loudspeakers on a plane.
However, he then presented the usual limp-wristed response to listeners’ complaints about the truly idiotic ads carried by his station:
1. You can go listen to another station [what kind of argument is that, if you have a real interest in the stuff on his station?];
or 2. It’s our living, it’s what keeps the station going [which if you think about it is something of a contradiction of 1.].
What this man and his colleagues cannot, apparently, understand is how insulting it is to have to listen to the same crap ever half-hour for five years or more. There’s an ad for Timbercaw [that’s ‘caw’ with a ‘a’, gushes the half-witted lady who has apparently been desperately seeking T-caw all her life]. Can’t you persuade the cheapskates at Timbercaw to commission a new ad, CapeTalk?
But that’s not all. Lately there has been a rush of ads that are either so untrue or scripted in such bad English that they – and the station that carries them – deserve high censure.
First, their own ad. They recently ran one trying to persuade us to rush to False Bay to photograph killer whales [I kid you not – no, I don’t know what the hell for either!]. This ad carries the line “killer whales ... members of the orca family”. CapeTalk, killer whales are orcas. Your line means the same as saying [idiotically], “men ... members of the human family.”
Recently there was an ad for some snake-oil called Bimbosym D, or somesuch. “Our modern lifestyles are killing us,” pronounces a man who with demonstrable lack of candour claims to be a medical doctor. Of course they are, fool – everyone’s lifestyle is killing them. However, our modern lifestyles have ensured that we live one hell of a lot longer than we used to!
Then there is an ad for endangered ghost frogs [I think ... but who cares?]. It contains the winning injunction, “Animate life!” 
   CapeTalk, please. How do you animate the animate? And we thought your English was so good.
There is another that claims that “used printer cartridges are destroying our planet!” Have you ever heard such utter sh*te? If that is not an insult to our collective intelligence, then what is.
There is one for envelopes [envelopes? Why?] that contains the line, “So much for those  ‘Think before you print’ messages.” I challenge anyone in the entire media industry to explain what the hell that line has to do with the advertised product! It’s just pure idiocy!
Talk about dumbing down the population with verbal rubbish. Whatever happened to ‘Lead SA’?

– Grumpy Old Kaartman, June 2013

DaiSyTV

One of the great things about satellite TV is that you can pay a monthly fortune to be able to watch old movies that you last saw many years ago on free “Welfare” TV.
Thus it was that Mrs Kaartman dug out and dusted off “Never Cry Wolf” on M-Net, an almost-cult movie from 1983 starring Charles Martin Smith as a researcher who is dumped into the Arctic wilderness ostensibly to find out whether too many wolves are eating too many caribou. It’s based on the 1963 book by Farley Mowat and is memorable for the toasted mouse sandwich and pretty fine scenery. Back in the day our home-village of Plumfoot could only receive one TV station; the reception was so bad that naturally-snowy films were particularly popular. We were very fond of the movie for other reasons, too.

There’s a great line in the flick that became a regular part of the Kaartman family lexicon. Charles is explaining what he’s up to, to a toothless young Inuit, Mike [played by Samson Jorah]; every explanation Charles offers is met with a finely-accented, “Good idea.”
Mrs K and I settled down in front of the box for the recent re-run, our faithful hounds fast asleep as usual at our feet. Charles wandered off into the snow-covered wastes and, sure enough, before long somewhere a wolf howled. Years ago the small Kaartmannetjies were watching a cartoon, “The Hound of Castle McDuck” I think it was. There was a large luminous dog-thing, with lots of red glowing eyeballs and much passionate howling. While one of the Kaartman kleintjies [he was only eight, hey, a sensitive soul] hid behind the couch the then-Kaartman doglet Lucy [long gone] sat back and howled every time her improbable Disney counterpart did the same.
This led me to expect a similar reaction from Daisy and/or her older companion, Ruby, but neither pooch turned a hair. It was much further on into the movie that a scene of rollicking wolf-cubs, complete with suitable Wolf-baby whimpers and squeaks, flashed onto the screen. Daisy sat up and peered myopically at the images. The scene shifted to a lone, white wolf running from left to right across the screen. Daisy’s eyes followed the wolf; then, as it disappeared into the wings off right, she jumped up and trotted around the wall, into the kitchen, clearly in search of the vanished Canis lupus arctos.
Daisy watched the rest of the movie, our first-ever TV-besotted dog. Whenever the white wolves appeared she pricked up her ears. The brown wolf made her growl. When Charles-the-actor came walking over a distant ridge, she barked at this stranger. She made several trips into the kitchen in search of the disappearing figures. She was entranced.

Good idea ... Loomin’ hoomins ...
Daisy liked this ... disliked this

Whether Daisy dreamed of wolves that night we do not know, but the next morning there were further surprises awaiting us. As usual Mrs K and I took the dogs to Muizenberg for their customary dawn walk on the beach. There is a collection of Familiar Others who do the same, and many of them greet and are greeted. One of them walks a slightly aggro-looking bull terrier and, presumably because his animal is not well socially-adjusted, he and his dog stay up in the low dunes that fringe the beach. 
There we were, a few hundred metres along the sands, when the bull-terrier man appeared in the dunes, as he has often done before but without any reaction from Daisy. This time was different. Daisy had been watching “Never Cry Wolf”, a terrifying film about strange large dogs and unknown men who loomed menacingly over the skyline. Suddenly a man loomed menacingly over the dune skyline – exactly as Charles had done the night before. With a wolf by his side, nogal.
Daisy freaked. She clamped her shaggy tail firmly between her legs and ran – all the way down the beach and into the water. Further along the beach she kept really close to us, with frequent glances over her shoulder and jumpy jumps every time anyone else moved anywhere on the beach.
The lesson from this story is that not all TV programmes are suitable for dogs; some contain disturbing scenes for sensitive viewers. Next time we’ll have to put Daisy to bed before we watch a film.

Daisy asleep in front of the TV,
enjoying one of her favourite smells

Oh – by the way, Daisy has had a reprieve. She still has most of her unmentionable bad habits, but her extraordinary personality has won the day – and now we love her.

Kaartman, Mothers Day 12 May 2013

Doubting Daisy

Minnie, the thin Fat Dog, died not long ago. She’d been a great pup, but her time was up; our short-lived pets tend to teach us how to grieve – unless they’re parrots or giant tortoises or elephants, of course.
Minnie left Ruby behind, together with Dink the last of the Kaartman pets [see previous blog]. Rubes is a sawn-off rescue mutt who at times [when her hair is long] resembles a brillo pad. I acquired Ruby while Mrs Kaartman was overseas. On her return she studied Ruby, then famously asked, “Is that the best you could do?”

Is that the best you could do?

Minnie died and eight year old Ruby was left alone. She seized the day as street doglets will, and within a week had established herself as a sedate lapdog, moving swiftly from 5 to 7kg and hardly deigning to greet the postman any more. But we have always had two dogs, one older to teach the young ’un, one younger to jack up the older. To cut a long story short, it was not long before Daisy arrived.
Daisy is a rescue dog loosely described by the Authorities as a ‘boomer’, ie resembling something out of Dr Seuss. Hair, ears, feet, tongue, tail all over the place. She was lovely. Within a week she was thoroughly bonded, loved a cuddle, sat when ordered, completely house-trained, came when we called, chased a ball and always brought it straight back, got on with Ruby, barked correctly at the postman, sat up and begged for bones on demand.
But suddenly – in the last day or two – I am in doubt. Daisy has steadily dominated Ruby; now she chases her off the food bowl with violent snarls. She has attacked her over a bone, little harmless eight year old Rubes attacked by an eleven-month upstart. Daisy digs holes in the lawn. She swims in the vlei and comes home smelly ... but that’s not all.
She’s coprophagic .
Look it up. I can’t bear it, and I dunno how to stop it.
Suddenly Daisy has lost her sunny sheen. For me, anyway.
I am a dog owner in doubt. Daisy has been returned once before to the doghouse by a less-than-gruntled human. A second return means ... well, that she would probably be headed for the boneyard.
Do I owe her a life after just five weeks of pethood? Aren’t I more fond of deeply-cowed Ruby? Can I learn to live with coprophagia? What’s to be done?
I’ll have to think about it. Meanwhile, Daisy, be careful. Very, very careful.
As careful as a wild, feckless boomer can be.

Be careful, Daisy

Kaartman, Jan 2013

Another Tortoise Tale

Amongst a plethora of dogs, snails, frogs, and hairy rain-spiders Chez Kaartman also hosts a tortoise, a small female rooipensie tortoise named Dink, aged about 28 years.
If Dink had a male tortoise he’d be called Humper. Humper and Dink could have been called Bert and Engel, but that subtlety escaped us when the naming occurred.
Like most tortoises Dink spends most of her day asleep in her bony house, emerging mornings and evenings for a cruise around eating mostly precious garden plants. Dink is something of a gastronome: the rarer and more difficult a plant is to grow, the more likely Dink is to eat it.
Not long ago Dink discovered that the Kaartmans enjoy summer breakfasts on the outside stoep. Summer is spaanspek time [spaanspek: a small, sweet melon. The name means “Spanish bacon”, alluding to the imagined breakfast diet of Iberians]. There is probably nothing as ravishingly delicious as a really good spaanspek, an opinion with which Dink clearly concurs. Roll out the spaanspek and she comes racing across the lawn, scrawny neck outstretched. At the edge of the stoep she fixes her black, beady eyes upon us and waits with chelonian patience for her bit.

Dink comes racing across the lawn

At a recent breakfast we offered Dink a slightly vrot nectarine instead. She attacked it with gusto, ripping the soft sweet flesh to bits with her sharp little beak, swallowing great gobs of it with peristaltic throaty heaves.

A slightly vrot nectarine

But a tortoise has a problem. Living in a bony box might be a good way of surviving falling objects, etc etc but it has certain restrictive effects. Like eating. You can’t gorge if you’re a tortoise. You can’t binge eat or bloat. You would literally pop, a messy way to go. Dink left the last bit of nectarine uneaten, pulled in her undercarriage and sank back in a sort of digestive daze.
It was at this point that we – some might say cruelly – pulled out the spaanspek, and offered a piece of its juicy skin to Dink.
Now, as you might know, rooipensie tortoises tend to live in dry climates where fresh water is hard to come by. Consequently they are able to store water in their bodies in a special bladder, and they have been known to live on this supply for up to a year without drinking. If you pick up a wild skillie it will wee all over you – it releases its water bladder to put you off and persuade you to leave it alone. Don’t pick them up – you may inadvertently kill them if they can’t replenish that water supply before they dehydrate.
Dink squared up to the spaanspek, but she was full. And that’s when a most extraordinary thing happened.
I have never read of this in any herpetological reference – please let me know if I am wrong in suggesting that Dink’s behaviour might be something of a new discovery!
Dink uttered a small, squeaky cry – the first sound from her that we have ever heard. Then she wee’d. Water simply poured out of her until she was sitting in a prodigious, smelly-ish puddle. She finished off with a pretty large defecation, too.
Space inside her box thus created, she consumed the spaanspek skin.
Sounds a bit like one of those Roman orgies, hay. The Romans made defensive “tortoises” out of interlocking shields – they called them “testudo” too [“tortoise”] – but whether a Roman testudo employed the same processes as Dink at orgies I cannot say.
I certainly hope not.

Kaartman Jan 2013