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Serious satire
"Humor is a funny way of being serious"
-Thomas Edison
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Copyright© 2001-2010, Renato Obeid
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"Top blog/Renato Obeid's World/Today's pick: This rambling weblog is worth reading not so much for its satirical posts but more for its insight into the minutiae of life in Lebanon, including the etiquette of road accidents and how to hire a taxi.”
-Jane Perrone, The Guardian
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Monday, May 17, 2004
KEEP THEIR HEADS RINGIN'
-of quizzes and politics
3.30AM MONDAY 17TH MAY 2004
Went to the pub quiz yesterday night.
We lost by three points – fair enough but I think that the quiz is getting a bit "murky".
When I was last there, two weeks ago, it seemed as if everybody was cheating except us – answers flying around all over the place.
And I'm sure that what I saw was just the tip of a chilling iceberg, an even chillier iceberg than normal chilly icebergs which are very chilly!
One of my teammates told me that a team was even disqualified last week.
"What do you have to do to get disqualified from this quiz?" was my astonished question (apparently they were consulting a laptop).
You have to really push it to get disqualified from that quiz!
It's like being kicked out of the Labor Party – they have a really high threshold for corruption.
Or getting reported and facing a disciplinary tribunal in a Rugby League game – how can you split hairs in such a melee, where do you start, do you report the whole team?
A disciplinary tribunal in rugby is as pedantic and redundant as the Geneva Convention in warfare or a condom in a porn film; a world away from the iron rule of Australian Rules Football I grew up with, where the post-match Monday tribunal was the busiest place in town – you're practically reported for not saying "please" and "thank you' in Aussie Too Many Rules!
Speaking of corruption, the taxi driver who delivered me down the mountain (one of my regulars) was telling me that his brother had failed to get elected to the local council.
Not the most surprising thing I've ever heard – any Lebanese political contest is like the Boston Marathon (everybody's a candidate, even the local manouchie man ran and lost) – but what was surprising was that this was the first time I've ever heard someone actually admit to bribing voters outright.
He told me that they'd paid scores of non-resident ring ins (living in Beirut etc) a hundred US dollars to come back to the village and vote for them (he called this a "gesture").
Wanting to keep him talking, I spun this as a travel expense, compensation for taking the day off (although elections are held on a Sunday) etc.
Even more surprising, he was upset that other candidates had come along and done the same thing but had outbid his brother – had paid three or four hundred dollars to the same people who collected both monies and promptly voted for the highest bidder.
I was going to suggest that he report this outrage to the electoral commission but I didn’t think that he would of have heard me over the deafening cacophony of bells tolling for him and pots calling kettles black and vice versa.
Also at the quiz, another of my teammates (an insurance executive) was telling me about the raucous week of annual conferences he'd just had – which, apart from some minimal occasional conferencing, mainly consisted of heavy drinking and partying.
Adhering to quite a different stereotype of insurance people, I was quite surprised at this.
He told me that insurance people are THE champion drinkers because, as he put it, "they're used to taking risks".
You learn something new everyday – I'd always thought that journalists were the at the top of the drinking league table due to the fact that journalists have to be drunk to put up with themselves and each other.
3:30 am
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