Received any of those alarmist emails recently? I mean the ones warning you of "blacks" plotting to impregnate white women by freeze-drying their own scrota, grinding them up in high-tech parmesan graters and serving the sprinklings on your cappuccino in Sandton coffee shops. This type of dire alert...
...has become a standard feature of my inbox thanks to a group of South Africans now living abroad who seem desperately concerned that I might forget about crime for one second. They urge me to bury myself in a nuclear bunker so secure that I even do my own vacuuming and then tell me how much they miss the sunshine in Joburg. The first news of danger I received, was when AIDS infected needles were supposedly planted in my movie-house seats. Now, I admit there were some scenes in the new Charlie's Angels film where I was writhing around in pain thanks to a little prick, but I have to blame my genetics rather than the cleaning staff.
Then the fuzzy haired fiends came up with a new method of hijacking your car, while you're driving. Apparently, just whacking you with a .38 at the stop light has become passé. Either that or the dumbass South African tactic of rolling up your window and taking cover from a bullet behind 5 mm of glass is actually working. No wonder this is the only place where ostriches survived. According to this email, our Jackie Chan inspired hijackers pounce when you think you're safest, doing one-forty on the highway. (By the way, I'm not bragging about speeding, I'm trying to avoid becoming a bonnet ornament on a passing Toyota Tazz.) The bad guys roar up next to you and spray some sort of fluid onto your windscreen that makes it impossible to see where you're going and can't be shifted by your wipers. When you stop, they hijack your car and race off, presumably guided by a seeing eye Labrador tied to the front bumper.
Where I live there's plenty of murder and mayhem, but just the drearily ordinary, horrible kind. Certainly not interesting enough for our phantom emailers who have to spice up the yarns to include the elements of surprise, inventiveness and outrageousness. Sex is an essential part of the threat too; the kind of sex that only a truly repressed Calvinist mind that still has sweaty fantasies about the gardener can dream up. You can almost see them typing left-handed as they warn of "blacks" using the Brixton tower as a giant, phallic catapult to distribute loaded condoms wrapped in ANC pamphlets to your preschool toddler. Having sown panic and despair, our friends on the web can sit back and watch the rise of that uniquely white, South African game show, "Murder Your Own Family".
There's nothing you can do about this kind of danger... or maybe there is. I figure that anybody paranoid enough to make up shit like this would also be quite susceptible to it. So, I've just heard the following genuine, really true, factual, authentic type rumours and I think it's only fair that you forward them to all the expats on your mailing list as well.
Assault in Public Park in Richmond:
Taking a Sunday walk through your London suburb? Beware! Your eardrums can be seriously damaged by the piercing Pretoria accent of a rogue dentist as he harangues luckless passers-by on the art of making a "real braai". He'll seem harmless enough at first, dressed in what appears to be a G-string and a bib. Don't be fooled! These are his "Polly shorts" and an old Springbok rugby jersey that he also wears to bed so that both he and the wife have something to get them aroused. The reason for the rather snug fit is that he's put on a bit of weight since his athletic glory days. Run! Lock yourself indoors! Before he gets started on the scarcity of biltong. Neither he, nor his fat arsed wife are fit enough to chase you down, but under no circumstances stare directly into the glare of her gold belt or sandals.
Sex Attacks in G8 Capitals Increase:
Club goers and even pedestrians have recently suffered a number of attempted sexual assaults from South African tourists' desperate find a mate and avoid returning to their own country. After a lifetime of imbibing bottled chemical sludge that they call "Castle", their brains have been eroded to the point where they'll fuck anything for a foreign passport. Stay indoors! Buy a litter box for your pets. It's too dangerous to be on the roads with your loved ones at any time, because they've also imported their ideas of getting snot-flying drunk and then driving. If you are remotely attracted to one of these desperadoes, take his tales of being part of the anti-apartheid struggle with a bucket of salt. If there had indeed been as many activists as claimed in a singles bar in Amsterdam recently, apartheid would never have happened and Che Guevara would have been president since 1965.
On second thoughts, there's no point in forwarding any of this stuff. Scaring these assholes might just send them back here. Just do me a favour and delete panic mail. Besides, all these stories are bullshit, except maybe the one about the ball bag filings in the cappuccino machine.
Cheers!
Al
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