Less than a week after the severe flooding in central Europe, just as people are starting to look around for someone to blame (fact: we are all to blame, probably, since this is generally recognised to be one of the consequences of global warming and climate change) but less than a week after the flooding, and as forest fires raged in Oregon and California, and on Cyprus, Jeff Bezos took a rocket flight to the edge of outer space lasting ten minutes (return journey) dumping God only knows what kinds of emissions into the atmosphere. And he wasn’t even the first. Richard Branson did it last week. Nor is he the last. Next week it’s Elon Musk’s turn. That’s right, the one with the electric cars that are better for the environment.
Okay, sorry for getting a bit political there. Back to my thing: language. The only joyous thing to come out of all the disappointment of the week is the word for these high jinks of the world’s richest men: willy-waving! WILLY-WAVING! I love it. It’s evocative, it’s alliterative, it’s got it all.
The Dutch don’t wave their willies as such. Instead, they have a contest to see who can pee farthest.
I considered using ‘space balls’ as a title for this blog but decided against it. 😊