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By Peter Wilhelm
I was shocked to read in the ripped scrap of newspaper I plucked from a handy bergie that rumours are circulating that SA has signed a nuclear deal with Russia. The projected cost – R1trn.
Of course we need the energy and the Soviets (sic) know their fission and fusion. The largest manmade explosion in all history was the Tsar Bomba in the 1950s when the Kremlin took on the US in such pissing contests as the size of the device to be dropped on New York, in this case 100 megatons. Almost enough to douse the Earth with radioactivity and making the delivery rocket pilots incapable of escaping the blast range. Just what we need. I mean it.
Yes – for electricity. While it might be extremely useful to detonate an atomic bomb on every statue of Cecil Rhodes, there could be what the Americans usefully call collateral damage. Who would be left to vote you in as president of the Grade School Marxist Tendency?
Yet my tiny hands are frozen (an experiment in cryogenics that didn’t work) and I’m sick of setting fire to my priceless heritage of vinyl record covers (Black Sabbath, Beastie Boys, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden) to keep warm. What’s left of the albums is puce and sticky. But R1 trillion! For rusty, old Chernobyls!
Of course, given inflation, that’s what we would be paying for a cup of thin potato-skin soup in 2030 or so (when the reactors melt down). And by then the glistening passions of Jacob Zuma and Vladimir Putin will have abated once they wrestle their bulky, gladiatorial bodies to a standstill and puff like adders. I’m not insinuating anything: the pictures were taken for the cover of Vogue.
In any case, by the time the reactors fizzle into acrid smoke, our closest allies are unlikely to still be Russia, China, or Iran. Swaziland looks to be the coming nation. However, its massive output of blankets and pointed hats will be no replacement for old-style E=MC² engines, such as one might be housed in our city’s disgraced soccer dogbowl.
But as I have discovered by trolling the Internet, all manner of fabricating A-bombs are spelt out for anarchists, furriers, bullies and the like. You can easily make one in your underground mancave – and if you can survive a violent surge of annihilation, never lack for electricity. Every home will have its own source of placid AC/DC.
Of course the A-bombs will have to be secured in several rolls of clingfilm, such as you use to keep Bunny Chows off your date’s lap. Prick a little hole to allow the electricity to trickle out.
But why steal all that money – which could be used to construct a Burj Khalifai-sized roller-coaster at Nkandla – when the Russians swine will also only steal it? We have a serious unemployment problem.
Think of the wonders of transforming all those wretched PhDs into busy little turners of toasters into humming reactors. For their sake, therefore, I have compiled a summary of how to re-engineer battery-driven toothbrushes into reliable sources of the power that fuels the sun. This is how it’s done:
* Buy 25kg of plutonium at the nearest hardware store.
* Once home, wrap the plutonium in the powdery stuff you can extract from illegal fireworks. The entire rig can then be fitted into a tough Woolies grocery bag. Don’t let it get too hot.
* In an intermission between loadshedding, place the nuclear ball in the oven and set the heat to high. Leave the house.
* The plastic will melt and the fireworks explode, setting off the plutonium. Half the country will – in an instant – be reduced to a raging fireball.
Looking at my last entry – (Medics open new line in saleable body parts – our penises) – I wonder whether my Grade 0 physics classes were sufficient to give me a full understanding of nuclear power? There would also be the problem of paying for enough plutonium – at today’s rates it would be in the region of R1,722,216,000 for 25kg.
Better to import more Swazi blankets and cuddle under them.
To pass the time you might further examine that newspaper I filched from the bergie. There you might encounter headlines such as the following: MOROCCAN PM SEEKS TO BAN J.LO’S ASS.
How absurd! Everyone knows that the Puerto Rican chanteuse has a bottom so vast that she is often mistaken for a supertanker. However, as an astute feminist has observed: “Widely recognised and celebrated for her figure, she has been credited with allowing women with curvaceous figures to be accepted.” That’s news? Since when has, say, Tim Noakes not accepted large ladies into his gym?
In conclusion, I have to say that nothing in this column is true. But then, nor is anything you read, see, hear, touch, taste, or gossip about. Not even trillion dollar nuclear deals.
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