Signs that prove that South Africa is different

The ubiquitous sign in bold lettering PENIS ENLARGEMENT is plastered on almost every stop sign, wall and bus shelter especially in the decrepit ramshackle areas. What image does this conjure up in the minds of foreigners about South African males? In less bold lettering beneath the prominent words will be a whole plethora of ailments and desires which this magic potion or muti, in the local Zulu parlance, can remedy.

The list will include items such as finding a job, retrieving a lover from the arms of another man to finding another wife. Of course the whities or mulungus sneer and roll their eyes at such quackery but in certain segments of black society, these concoctions clearly have credence and an allure otherwise these flyers would not be as prolific.

Main picture: Perhaps in the case the muti will be effective because all it is “designed” to do is to enlarge and not to find a girlfriend

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Only in Israel

After doing a number of blogs on Only in South Africa and one on Only in Australia, it must be time for another country. I have a whole bunch of new photographs on South Africa which epitomises the cultural divide in here which I might even use tomorrow night but first let us have something different.
Main picture: Your date brings het M-16 along with her

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Creative Graffiti

Normally I find graffiti offensive. It despoils and defiles all manner of items from walls, electricity boxes to bus shelters. As these pictures illustrate, perhaps I should not be so rigid in my approach and thinking. I will make one admission albeit sotto voce. They are stunning but amongst the quantum of graffiti that I have ever seen, they must represent far less than a fraction of a percent of the images that I have seen.

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Pawel Kuczynski: The Master of Illustration Satire

At first sight these illustrations are akin to a cartoon of the unhumourous variety. Upon reflection they highlight not only social, cultural & political realities in a thought provoking manner but they also subtly convey his viewpoint on these ills through his unflattering illustrations of their consequences.

Born in Szczecin, Poland in 1976, Pawel graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Poznan with specialisation in graphics.

Main picture: One of my favourites as it is probably as evocative as George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” in that it underlines the nature of mindlessly replacing one form of tyranny with another.

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An Array of Stunning Photographs

Perhaps this series of photographs should be called eclectic as there is no overarching theme aside from their evident beauty. Perhaps one can invent a collective noun for stunning photographs. I propose an old English word now is disuse but which I can still recall from studying Latin under the tutelage of Mr Wright at Alexander Road High School in the late 1960’s. How about pulchritude of photographs? No. It doesn’t take your fancy. Too old fashioned?

 

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Aspirant Engineers at Work

Everybody has to be a handyman periodically. In these cases the person who performed the occasional domestic repairs and minor renovations around the home clearly had pretensions of becoming an engineer. It is not that these improvisations do not work – they clearly do – but they lack the finesse of a properly executed engineering job. From the obvious crudity, the term Heath Robinson springs to mind as they all bear this hallmark.

 

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Accidental Ironies

Of the many forms of ironies, the most sophisticated is Socratic Irony which is a means by which the pretended ignorance of a skilful questioner leads the person answering to expose his own ignorance. A more common form relates to the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning. An example in this guise would go as follows: “The irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.” The type employed in this series of photographs is predicated upon their incongruity, the least intellectual incarnation of its use. In this sense it bears more the qualities of paradox than that of mordancy.

All of these photographs bear the hallways of the latter variant.

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Extremely Fascinating Facts

The source of these facts is unknown. Like many emails that one receives, its author is never known. Unlike most which I immediately delete or distribute after reading, this is one which I kept and read again the following day.

Maybe you will also find some of these facts equally as fascinating. For instance, the size of a kangeroo when it is born in its mother’s pouch cannot be larger than a few peas.

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