doek and the devil

[freckles_and_doubt]

The Billboard Poet is getting a bit frisky for the festive season. Yesterday:
THE DOEKS OF HAZARD!
And a few weeks back:
THAT'S THE WAY THE DOEKIE CRUMBLES!

For non-Saffricans, a doek is a woman's headscarf, worn largely by black and Afrikaans ladies of the more matronly persuasion. I am now plagued by the necessity for imagining endlessly-ramifying scenarios in which plump, comfortable, Afrikaans or Xhosa ninja ladies in doeks perform a variety of unlikely and probably criminal acts.

This is also generating helpless flashbacks to an incident in my childhood featuring the reaction of a Shona matron to the sight of one of my dad's peregrines, hooded and sitting on the back of the car seat, as was their wont. She burst out laughing and insisted on calling all her friends to see the "shiri with a doek!" ("Shiri" is the Shona for bird). I should add for the record that a leather falconry hood, while tending to make falcons look slightly silly, looks nothing at all like a doek.

Comments

Doek-clad ninja

[rumint.livejournal.com]

Look no further than M&G's Madam & Eve - the mielie lady is clearly a doek-wearing ninja :)

Re: Doek-clad ninja

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

This is terrifyingly true! All becomes clear. No wonder mere catapults are helpless against her.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

For the uneducated amongst us.... what is billboard poetry?

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Oops, sorry - as stv would shout, CONTEXT! I have an unhealthy fascination for the efforts of the individual who writes the headlines on the advertising billboards for the local tabloid newspaper. S/he has a nice line in wit, wordplay, severe laterality and the ability to construct headlines whose actual story one is at a loss to construct. A bit like Thurber cartoons, now that I come to think about it. Every now and then a particularly juicy headline amuses me enough that I subject it to random analysis. (Not so much with this one, it speaks for itself, but more under the "billboard poetry" tag.)

I saw...

[first-fallen.livejournal.com]

A billboard the other day that read "High School Boozical - Flats' suiping teens". It made me lol.

[mwotn.livejournal.com]

Ah, OK, I gotcha. Thanks.