Where have all the fun ones gone?

Of course, now that the RPs (reluctant punters) have made their bucks on the Zuma pot, the world is abuzz with predictions. I made a cool R250 on a Zuma win — c’mon, at 10:1 it was a straight gimme!

Anyway, with my new wealth, I went shopping at Northgate. I was looking for Andrew Feinstein’s After the Party, but it was out of stock. So I checked out some new books on birds and trees — seemed like a wise compromise. But they were either waaaay too pricey (it being Xmas and all) or offered little by way of new material (seems I’m at that difficult stage in a twitcher’s life).

But I love browsing, and slowly idling among the aisles at CNA, Exclusive or Fascination gives one a not-to-be-missed chance to get an idea of what is interesting to other people and what they think their friends and loved ones might enjoy wrapped in pretty paper next week.

The Secret is a hot contender — though it isn’t a secret any more; and religious lit in general. That suggests folks are looking to things spiritual, like they did with Y2K, reflecting an inner concern with the afterlife or the alterlife. Could this be something we need to watch? Mmm, better note that in the list of future blogs …

Jodi Picoult is selling well, as is Alexander McCall Smith and anything on diets, cuisine and travel. Quite a contradiction, ‘ey? But generally it seems business as usual, though Sir Dicky’s Screw It, Let’s Do It also filled several baskets.

What did surprise me, though, was the interest in South African history and you could almost hear David Rattray’s dramatic narration against a background soundtrack by Bok van Blerk. I have no idea what that’s all about. Mmm. Highlight for future interviews … then blog.

The thing that strikes me most about our bookstores and their shelves this year is the famine of fun, the lack of laughter, the dreadful drought of drollness. Where are all the giggles, for God’s sake? It’s not as if there isn’t enough to roll on the floor over, but aside from David Bullard’s latest collection of acerbic wit, there’s nothing, zip, niks, mahala, fokkol for the funnybone.

Surely things can’t have gotten that bad?

And the ghost-voice answered: “Yes, they have. And don’t call me Shirley!”

The ghost-voice continued: “We have a very silly person (who could have been frontman for Monty Python’s Flying Circus) at the helm of a dangerous mob of megalomaniacs who own the future. We have clueless clowns switching power on and off like the whole country were a disco. We have drunken police chiefs and gibbering judges, corrupt cops and pointless prisons. All the clever people are crooks and the utterly gormless are in government.

“Less than 10% of people who can operate a keyboard (in other words, the intelligentsia) think what happened in Polokwane was ‘a victory for democracy’. And everybody else is crowding in through the colanders we call borders. You see, friends, it is as Jeremy Taylor sang many, many moons ago: ‘All de black people wanna be white, and de white people wanna be black’ … if not dermatologically, then certainly economically.”

The ghost-voice trailed off: “So what’s not to laugh about?”

“Then where are the funnies?” I screamed in terror.

The Question That Has No Answer scared the crap out of me. So I bolted for the exit and the safety of my car without even glancing in the window at CUM Bookstores. (We’ve gotta be the only country in the world where a chain of Christian book-and-music stores has a name that sounds like a huge, red “Adults only” sign should be flashing outside — there’s a hoot in itself!)

On the way home I stopped at a nursery and bought some plants with my R250; to give me some hope for the future.