CSotD: Start Spreading the Gnus!
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You won't get this Madam & Eve without you have seen this viral video from YouTube of a meeting between a hapless cyclist and a hartebeest:
While the M&E gang apply it to South African events — and, hey, it happened down there, so they're more than entitled to take it local — I don't think you need to know much about their politics or society to get this one.
It's a bit like the Lord High Executioner's patter song from the Mikado, which is traditionally updated with current and local references for performance.
(Here is that song, as performed by Groucho, not the best version, but YouTube has several that are considerably worse, and Groucho was a lovely Lord High Executioner.)
I think the M&E crew should offer a version of this cartoon with spaces to insert your own favorite targets for the antelope.
Regarding today's blog title: I'm aware that, while they are of similar heft and both carry their horns so high on top of their heads that they look like a morphological afterthought (God: "Oh, shit! I forgot to put horns on it! 'Let there be horns!' Hmm. Well, good enough."), there is a difference between a hartebeest and a wildebeest, and that the latter, not the former, is the one which is also called a gnu.
And I'm quite aware that the latter becomes highly offended when mistaken for the former.
But I feel that it would be unjust to offer employment only to the one and not the other. Or to allow a matter of factual accuracy to derail an otherwise applicable pun.
In any case, the hartebeest likely thought he was attacking a predator of some sort. I just heard a report the other day about ecotourism in Namibia and how they have to work with local farmers to persuade them that a share of the tourist dollars is worth losing a few goats to cheetahs here and there. Similar programs take place in South Africa as well.
Obviously, however, nobody bothers to set up these meetings with the antelope.
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