I also know this is a family newspaper and its readers should be protected from the slings and arrows of profanity and vulgarity.

 Now then, were you aware that a Japanese textile company has developed under-rods for men that allegedly neutralise the smell of flatulence? Apparently Japanese businessmen favour the idea of breaking wind without getting, er, fingered.
 
Similarly, did you know that a Spanish toy-maker has manufactured a doll designed for girls as young as two years old to “breast-feed”? Children wear a little bib which features “flower nipples” and the “baby” makes sucking sounds when the child puts the toy to her (flat) chest.
 
The doll demands to be winded after feeding and if “mommy” doesn’t do so, the doll starts bawling.

 Both of these items – the odourless underwear and the sucking doll – are unnatural, aren’t they?
 
While all this is going on in the world, I, working in The Citizen newsroom, have been exposed to eNews Channel Africa (eNCA).

What has been played at least twice every hour, for the past week or so, has been footage of the killing of a rhino by a hunting party, and features Chumlong Lemtongthai, the poor benighted Thai national who got 40 years’ jail.
 
The voice-over is by Debra Patta, she of the machine-gunner’s stare and insidious voice. She keeps on saying – as you listen to the appalling “scream” of the injured rhino – “you never get over that sound”.

But of course eNCA keeps repeating that sound, over and over.
 
So, although being slow to anger, I stripped my moer, as we say in Brakpan. I got angry because, one, how can a man be slapped in jail for 40 years for being involved in a rhino killing when you don’t even give people in this country 15-year sentences for killing children? Second, why should a sensitive soul (like me) be continually exposed to that footage on national television?
 
Although I know this is a family newspaper I therefore asked myself the following question and had the following thoughts …

Why are people such as Lemtongthai having our rhinos killed?  Because there are obviously millions of folk in the mysterious east – China, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, etc – in need of aphrodisiacs.

 Well, that’s okay: what is more natural and creative than a male erection? What is more glorious than a morning glory?
 
This being the case, why don’t the governments of all these countries start thinking creatively? You’ve heard of thinking outside the box? Well, international leaders and pharmacists need to think outside the condom.

They should contact the manufacturers of pills such as Viagra and Cialis.

 I, of course, don’t know much about these pills but I believe that, other than the occasional headache, they work better than alleged aphrodisiacs such as rhino-horn powder.
 
The governments then need to import millions of the pills and to distribute them at a nominal cost, like condoms, to their citizens. This way our rhinos are protected, thousands or millions of men are put out of their misery, maybe Lemtongthai could get early parole and I wouldn’t have to listen to and watch that  clip again.