SCRUTATOR is writing this week’s instalment from a hospital bed somewhere in Maseru and she might not be released until after Christmas.
Doctors say she is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder caused by too much exposure to DStv’s channel 151.
Curious to find out why people say LTV is a scandalous excuse for a television station, Scrutator this week decided to check for herself.
Her hope was that it would not turn out to be as bad as some people claim it to be.
Glory be to the heavens for it was by the Lord’s grace that Scrutator survived to tell this tale.
Yet doctors warn it’s too early to celebrate because her mind will need to be fumigated for months to get rid of the traumatic effects of LTV.
In any case, the doctors caution, it is rare for a human mind to be subjected to such an assault and be expected to be completely normal again.
The harrowing experience began with that news anchor whose face looked so pale like she had dipped it into a bucket of flour before facing the cameras.
It’s either she had applied too much make-up or whoever applied it had a sinister motive to make her look like an apparition on national TV.
Or that the make-up itself is one of those cheap ones you get from those fong-kong shops that have invaded Maseru.
Scrutator would have forgiven the make-up smudge had the newsreader made it a point to smile once in a while but this one insisted on wearing a glum face like she was pining over a lost lover.
She mumbled through the news script like she had water in her mouth.
Some of the news clips were so long that one would have been forgiven for thinking they were watching a home-made documentary.
Politicians were allowed to talk, talk and talk until they could talk no more.
Then after what seemed like an eternity that glum and ashen face would reappear on the screen to introduce the next dose of claptrap.
But still, after taking such a long break during the long clips, the unsmiling news reader would stumble through her lines and mutilate the Queen’s language with gusto.
Once in a while she would beg “your pardon” and retake the sentence but most of the times she just ploughed through the script mumbling what she could not pronounce and shouting that which she found easy.
So words like the “the”, “government”, “minister” and “urged” were the most audible while those such as “emphasise” and “reiterated” were mumbled.
At the end of the long sentences, one could not help but notice that the presenter looked even paler because the script writer forgot to put commas.
Scrutator has no words for the reporters themselves because doctors say they actually worsened her trauma with their stuttering and shallowness.
Then there are talk programmes where you have to visit a sorcerer to find out who is who between the presenter and the guest.
For now, allow me to take my pills before I give you what I had written before finding myself in hospital . . .
| T |
hat thief of copy, ‘Neko Ntsane, has been found out again.
The bootlegger is a certified dunderhead too!
The flaws he has been hiding all along are now in the open, like a goat’s behind, for all and sundry to see.
Scrutator had a good chuckle after perusing the prominent copy-and-paste columnist’s instalment this week.
But then, I almost cried too — because the boy was behaving like someone who has been caught smudging the loo walls with his own poop.
After Scrutator spanked the plagiarist’s tiny bum, Ntsane decided to do a little work of his own this week.
And boy was he at sixes and sevens!
“Thanks to web 2.0 technologies, it has brought complex application in to a piece of cake unlike few years back when web development was not that easy, let us now take a look at one of powerful tools that makes it even easier writing web applications in just few seconds, J Query, what is it?”
Yes, what is it, Mr Ntsane?
Ever heard of punctuation or a tiny thing called full-stop?
Is that the clumsiness you were trying to hide when you were passing off other people’s work as your own?
Not that he has stopped bootlegging.
After huffing and puffing to string that belaboured intro, the copy stealer was back to his pinching ways.
But cleverly this time round.
He put quotation marks on one of the stolen chunks and prefixed the other with “some say”.
What’s shocking is that the story robber still has his picture to go with his very unoriginal work as if bootlegging is something to be proud of.
It seems the copy stealer is finding it hard to stop masquerading as an IT guru.
I have a suggestion: ask former tourism minister Lebohang Nts’inyi for directions to Kereke ea Ntate Moshoeshoe.
There, in Teyateyaneng, the popular prophet will probably give you “holy water” or perfumed oil to chase the bootlegging demon out of you!
Scrutator hears the prophet works wonders.
Nts’inyi says she had only accompanied her sister-in-law to Kereke ea Ntate Moshoeshoe when she was spotted there last week.
But if the big prophet’s reported prowess is anything to go by, my sister, who fired as a cabinet minister in October, would have done herself a priceless favour if she had consulted about her troubled political fortunes.
And what is it about the tattered shoes that we hear the former minister was wearing on her visit to the shrine?
Scrutator can only think Nts’inyi didn’t want to look out of place at a shrine frequented by the poor, desperate and vulnerable.
| T |
hat opposition talk shop, curiously named the Lesotho Opposition Forum, is in quarrelsome disarray.
The forum’s spokesman, Majara Molapo, quit in a huff this week.
And that was before he delivered a telling jab at his boss within his own Basotho National Party, Metsing Lekhanya.
Besides Lekhanya the other two opposition leaders who were the subject of his vile tongue were All Basotho Convention leader Thomas Thabane and Marematlou Freedom Party leader Moeketsi Malebo.
These are all gray-headed veterans of our politics who have matured with age.
With that maturity we expect that they are now repositories of distilled wisdom.
But the dangerous thing is that old age does not always come with wisdom.
Sometimes age comes alone.
In the case of some of these old veterans, age simply came alone.
“Those three old men are such a closed book whose outer cover can be disastrously misleading,” Molapo said.
“With them you’d think you have purchased a Bible, only to find that you have purchased a very obsolete and outdated dictionary,” he said.
Instead of handling this delinquent son of theirs in a calm manner these three old wise men went into over-drive.
“His resignation is good riddance to bad rubbish,” Lekhanya said.
My advice to the three wise men is as short as my mini-skirt: stop your tantrums or Size Two will continue to rule this country until the donkeys grow horns!
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