Today was an especially good day on Instagram.
Especially Good Day On Instagram
Principal Difference
The principal difference between a dog and a man?
According to Mark Twain, it’s this.
Headline Says It All
When it comes to current news, sometimes the headline says it all. Other times it’s a little harder to wrap your head around a story. For instance, take this one, here:
Energy CEO poisoned with cyanide-laced coffee plans to ‘lay low’ and ‘watch out for who invites me to coffee’ after losing access to bodyguard.
On the one hand, that pretty much tells the tale, right? But on the other hand…. wait. WHAT? CEO with a bodyguard? Poisoned with cyanide-laced coffee? Maybe we better delve a little deeper to get to the bottom of this one – d’ya think?
“Never have a personalized mug.”
The South African energy executive, who was poisoned with cyanide-laced coffee in December, said he plans to lay low after having been stripped of his company bodyguard and being fired last week. In an interview published by the Financial Times, André De Ruyter, former CEO of South Africa’s biggest energy firm, Eskom, said that his dismissal from the company following an explosive TV interview last week means that he’ll no longer have the bodyguard.
“I may go abroad for a while, but I have no intention of leaving the country,” he said when asked whether he’s going to flee South Africa. “I’ll just watch out for who invites me to coffee.” De Ruyter, who handed in his resignation in December just hours before he was poisoned, was supposed to serve until the end of March 2023. However, after making a series of explosive allegations about corruption in an interview with a journalist, he was pushed out of the company a bit sooner than originally expected.
In the interview, De Ruyter said he raised concerns to his boss — South Africa’s public enterprises minister — about a high-level politician being involved in corruption, but he was ignored. De Ruyter told the Times that, according to his toxicologist, the poisoning incident was “indeed an attempted murder, not just a warning.”
He described the incident in greater detail in an interview, saying his personal assistant had served him instant coffee because the coffee machine at Eskom’s headquarters was being repaired. After drinking the beverage he became confused, nauseous, and struggled to breathe. He was eventually rushed to a hospital by his security detail. “Cyanide is not like I take out a gun and I shoot you in the foot,” he said, adding that if it was not for a doctor injecting him with an antidote, he probably would have died.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa previously addressed the dangers of working at Eskom, saying that one manager “wears a bulletproof vest to work” and keeps two bodyguards at all times. Since De Ruyter was appointed as CEO in 2019, Ramaphosa said that has tried to clamp down on corruption in the energy sector. He told the Times that criminal gangs loot Eskom’s coal plants, forcing the company to impose power cuts. He also pointed to South Africa’s governing party, the ANC, for the power shortages saying “It’s a little bit like a Venn diagram: There might be pure criminals and pure politicians. But then there’s an area in the middle where the interests of the two intersect.”
Ah-ha! NOW I get it. Of course – it’s like a Venn diagram. Well why didn’t you say so in the first place? Maybe next time try putting that in the headline so it says it all right up front. Gotta be worth a shot, right? Now about that personalized mug thing…
It’s easy to forget that in certain parts of the world, Handmaid’s Tale or Hunger Games style melodrama is more than just a box office attraction. In fact, sometimes it’s literally front page news.
Super Niche
OK, today’s post is aimed at a super niche audience: Solvers of the NY Times Crossword who, like me, got down to this as the last remaining clue today and were stumped. Me personally, I have never in my life heard the word “van” used in this way. OK, now that we’re down to the remaining two or three of you, let’s proceed, shall we? From Caitlin Lovinger’s Wordplay column, here…
42A. “Leading position” solves to VAN in this puzzle, and I couldn’t pull up “vanguard” in my mind for the life of me. I had to look up this definition and, sure enough, it’s perfectly acceptable. The first time VAN appeared in a Times Crossword, in 1943, its clue was “Leading unit in battle” — although clues like “Covered wagon” and “Truck” soon followed. As clued in this puzzle, VAN as an attenuated “vanguard” is rooted in the French “avant-garde.” When VAN is short for “caravan,” it draws from the Persian “karwan,” a group of travelers, or possibly the Sanskrit word for camel, “karabhah.”
“Avant-garde,” perhaps. And “caravan?” OK, maybe I can grant you that one. But “vanguard?” Nope, not so much. Waddayasay, solvers? Am I being too harsh? Or is this one a bit of a super-niche stretch? You make the call – all three of you.
C’mon, Kate. Weigh in here. What would etymonline say? Oh, no, wait. I guess it already did. (See link to “short for caravan” above.)
Semper Fidelis
Know what I love about Shakespeare? It’s this: What you might at first think he’s saying isn’t necessarily what he’s really saying at all. For instance, take Hamlet, Act 1, right near the end of Scene 3. Remember that one? No, you say? Here, let me help…
This above all: To thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
At first blush this is straightforward good advice to speak the truth from your heart and be a straight shooter. Sort of a “Semper Fidelis” for the enlisted ranks. But when placed on the lips of Polonius, King’s councilor and notoriously inveterate gas-bag, the meaning is turned on its head. In proper context, it actually makes a case for things not always being as they seem. That no one is implicitly to be trusted in all cases. And that the human heart is at bottom both shifty and unreliable. On the whole, Shakespeare was nobody’s fool, even if Polonius was. So, in the mouth of a more trustworthy speaker, Shakespeare’s advice might go something more like this: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” (Borrowed from a different sort of classic: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War.)
********
So then, in good Shakespearean fashion,
my own bit of Polonian wisdom for today:
Stay classy, lounge lizards. And always remember: Flexibility and blending in with your surroundings? It’s the key to survival of the fittest. “And as night follows day…. ” Well, you know… blah-blah-blah… etc.-etc.-etc.
********
Shakespeare, Sun Tzu, the USMC, and a lounge lizard visual:
Who could ask for anything more?
Semper Fidelis, baby!
Natasha Not So Much
I love quotes from Honest Abe. Natasha? Not so much, despite the striking similarity in facial bone structure. And thanks as always to depthsofwikipedia for thought-provoking Instagram prompts.
Bonus Quotes From Honest Abe For The Pure In Heart
********
A perhaps apocryphal story from an old friend.
Or, why you just gotta love Honest Abe.
“Abraham Lincoln once defended a woman accused of murdering her husband. He requested a private conference with his client, after which she was nowhere to be found. Lincoln told the court that she simply wanted to know where she could find a good drink of water. He told her that he thought the water was pretty good in Tennessee. Our greatest president could be a bit of a rascal.”
Re: “rascal” – It takes one to know one.
Don’t believe me, Natasha?
See, here.
Wine Sales
Happy First Day of March, everybody! Thanks to the passage of Prop. 125 here in Colorado, today marks the first day of legalized wine sales in grocery stores. A new report from CSU, here, suggests it will help large wine sellers like Total Wine even more than it helps local small-batch producers or liquor stores. But I’m just glad we won’t have to travel clear across town anymore to get to the one Trader Joe’s in Denver that carries two-buck-chuck. And you can say you heard it here first.
For those of you contrarians for whom straight news – and legal wine sales in grocery stores – is not enough, here’s a snarky cartoon mocking Aaron Rodgers’ recent “darkness retreat” – which is also current news, but funnier.
Last but not least, for those of you afflicted with Seasonal Affective Disorder (AKA “SAD”), here’s a little poem from the Queen of Dark Humor – and my personal favorite – Dorothy Parker.
Yes folks, we have it all here at dewconsulting.net: Late breaking news, grocery store wine sales, snarky sports humor, and SAD poetry from Dorothy Parker. Now YOU tell ME: Who could ask for anything more?