This Easter holiday I'm headed back "home" to Cape Town for a series of gigs at the Comedy Warehouse. Then I'm going to spend the weekend with my family so that I can share at least some of the pain that Jesus suffered on the cross. Cape Town has a unique link to Easter's big kosher brother, Passover. The residents use it as an annual reminder to think about finishing that bridge that ends in mid-air, halfway over the city. Drinking and driving is dangerous, but the City Bowl road system is ample warning of the hazards of taking acid while town planning. Of course, local Passover celebrations are adapted to suit our mental landscape too. Nobody smears blood on the doorposts anymore, the armed response sign is all the warning you get.
Guns have long been banned in South African comedy clubs. Guns? Oh, yes, in these here parts dying on stage can have a whole new meaning. Anyway, the other night, I noticed a new sign on the door of a venue, the silhouette of a pistol with a red line through it, à la Ghostbusters. So, even if you've been circumcised from the neck up, you still know you have to check your firearm. Just wondering though, should people who never bothered to learn to read be allowed to carry fucking guns? Maybe if we had more signs saying "No Morons", we'd need less signs saying "No Guns". I know I'm going to get mail about your inalienable right to protect yourself and your family. Again, just as a devil's advocate type thought, who said morons should breed?
Only kidding, my 'roid-rage, brethren in paranoia, crime is rife and you gotta be packing. They even robbed my dog of his balls last week and I don't mean the chewy toys in the garden. If he'd carried a gun, I'm sure he'd still be wearing his gonads. My good and faithful hound (corgi x spaniel x Yeoville street fighting brak) had to have his nuts out because at the venerable age of 12, his prostate had swelled to the size of the Burundian national debt. I'm not sure why this has upset me sooo much. I understand that his best days of flaunting those bollocks were over and he's now a lot more comfortable without something bigger than a grapefruit up his arse, BUT I can't help worrying that I've done him a grave disservice. He's trusted me all his life, accompanied me on countless walks and guarded my sleeping form. So how do I repay him? He dozes off at the vet and, when he wakes up, I've let some bastard loot his nutsac. Besides, farting will never be the same again. What's the use of letting rip a good eisbein-epol bomb if it doesn't have a swollen prostate to tickle on its way out? Damn!
I apologise for the balls & farts tone of that last paragraph. If I start complaining about gum disease or haemorrhoids now, it'll feel like you're eavesdropping on a conversation at a Rolling Stones concert, probably backstage. This is my pathetic attempt to salvage some "guy cred", because in recent blog updates I've been anti-war, now I've written something anti-gun and I fear I'm turning into a middle aged, two-children-in-the-Waldorf-school, hyphen abusing, hugs-against-drugs soccer mom. Granted, I don't have the beard or the Birkenstocks yet, but suddenly I'm suspicious that maybe my dog's balls aren't the only ones that have been removed. I'd better rush out and kill something, preferably flightless and defenceless and not even low fat. I'd like to drag it back to the cave and eat it too, but there's a problem. See, I live in a complex and the body corporate doesn't allow...
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