Speaker’s corner
WE IN the brother and sisterhood of journalism are not just nimrods in search of bad news to cheer people up each day with our posters – PETROL PRICES UP, ANC TO ZAP FARMS, AXE KILLER STRIKES AGAIN… We are also very good at predicting things.
In fact, to save us time, we each have a button on our PC keyboards marked AWPO. It automatically types “as we predicted on”. We then simply fill in the date.
Well, as we predicted on January 14 last year in this very column, any attempt to land on Mars would be doomed to failure. I ended that statement by hitting my well-polished MMW key, which automatically types, “mark my words”.
OK, I know all about the Mars landing that the US claims to have achieved. Yes, I saw the images. But (and here I shall twirl my middle finger and steer it towards my ICND key) “I can now disclose” that the shots of that red, rocky martian plain were in fact snaps taken by a soldier outside Baghdad to show the lads back home what a typical Middle Eastern fairway looks like.
Consider the evidence: apart from Britain’s failed “Beagle” probe a few days ago, three Russian and two US Mars probes have also disappeared on reaching Mars.
The Star reported in 2001 that “Conspiracy theorists accuse Nasa of having purposely sabotaged the (last) probe because Nasa had observed martians – too scary a sight for ordinary American citizens”. Do not sneer at this. In 1993, my personal Tracking Centre at Hartbeeshoek (observant people will have spotted our huge dish antenna there) cleared up a missing Mars lander mystery. It concerned a US probe, which mysteriously fell silent on reaching Mars. Its last utterance was a poignant “glip”.
“Glip”, we soon discovered, is the sound a $100 zillion space probe makes as it is swallowed by a martian rubbish compactor.
Busisiwe Magagula was womanning the tracking centre at the time.
While trying to gain contact using our Pentium XV Dingbat Cryton apparatus, Magagula, instead of hearing the bleep signals, heard a peculiar metallic voice – like somebody speaking into an empty baked bean tin. “Hello? What do you want?” it demanded.
“That depends on who, or even whom, you are,” said Magagula.
“I am a martian space litter-monitor and my job is to keep space clean. They don’t call us little green men for nothing. I was just about to pick up this piece of junk with my pooper-scooper when I heard your voice...”
Magagula cut in: “What d’you mean, ‘junk’? That’s an X-Zastron III probe from our planet!”
“We are impounding it,” said the martian. “We cannot abide litter.”
“Litter! It’s just done 757 million kilometres.”
“Fiddle de dee! Me and my mate Gweedle Omble do that daily in our garbage truck. Anyway, where is your planet?”
“Planet Earth, 153.6 million kilometres from the sun.”
“Planet Earth. Gweedle, I have the Blue Planet on the line. So there is intelligent life there. We thought your atmosphere was too polluted for intelligent life.”
“You did, did you? Well, who do you think built such an advanced probe?”
“Advanced. My little zigzog throws up stuff like this.” (Dear reader, we must assume a zigzog is a sort of martian dog).
In answer to a martian question, Magagula explained that Earthlings are soft, two-legged creatures: some black, some pink, some yellow.
“Well, we little green men are not colourconscious, are we Gweedle? But, by Jupiter, we are litter-conscious!”
To cut a long story short their rubbish compactor then swallowed the probe. “Glip!”