Wine companies move to make wine “more student friendly”

It was a wonderful step towards true progress for all amateur wine-lovers today, after South African winemakers across the country bowed to mounting student pressure, finally making wine an approachable and simpler science.

“After years and years of debate and anger from the student population, we have finally decided to come clean,” said Hermanus-based viticulturist (from now to be called “Grape Farmer dude”) Connor Suer. “All that BS we put on the back about ‘lingering notes’, ‘delicate finishes’ ‘zesty aftertastes’ and ‘fully-bodied aromas’ along with all that made-up malarkey about guava, oak, berries and so on? Yeah. We admit. It’s lies designed to create market demand.”

As such, the South African Winemakers’ Association (SAWA) have committed to make wine – whether it be Merlot, Bordeaux, Blanc de Blanc, Tranquil, Rosé, Shiraz, Syrah, Maritimus, Champagne or Sauvignon Blanc –more “student friendly.”

“Really the only difference is the colour,” said SAWA CEO Charl Donhey. “They all taste the same, after you’ve had more than one bottle, so who are we to say otherwise?” SAWA has also announced their decision to replace the names and cellars of wines with just the price and alcohol percentage.

“Let’s be honest,” said Donhey, “When you’re looking to just get totally fucking tanked before stumbling off to the local club and punching the air to bad music for three hours before passing out in a ditch and waking up minus your dignity, dinner and a considerable portion of your monthly allowance, why would we pretend you buy wine based on its name and celebrity? We all know you just trawl the shelves for the lowest price and the highest percentage.”

The move will also avoid the “glaring, hateful shame of bending over to grab a bottle from the bottom shelf where all the plonk is.”

“No one says anything,” remarked Donhey, “but we all know what they’re thinking when you so obviously stoop to grab the cheapest bloody bottle of booze in the shop. The cashier may say nothing, but we know what she’s thinking. We all know. Look in her eyes. See the contempt, you miserly drunk.”

Reviewers and wine makers have been enthusiastically supportive of this move, with Tasters Weekly and Wine Magazine announcing a student-friendly range available in shops close to your house.

“Already we have dozens of available brands for you to try,” said Head review for TW magazine, Sipin Spitz. “Like the strong, white R25 – 11%, and the even stronger, but red, R28 – 14%. We’re sure that, whatever you’re looking for, it’ll be very easy to find, will do the job and won’t break the bank.”

God personally awards ManU with win over Arsenal

Thousands of Manchester United fans took to the streets in celebration last weekend, after God took time out of his busy schedule of ignoring starvation, racial discrimination, poverty and war to give the Red Devils a clean 4 - 0 win against rivals Arsenal.

According to the best-selling author and divine creator, he was ignoring a three-year-old paraplegic and blind wheelchair-bound boy's cry for help when he decided to get involved in the hotly-contested and "far more important" 90 minute period of a bunch of millionaires kicking a plastic sphere of air around a patch of grass.

"St Peter and Jesus and I were kicking it in my pearly crib, when J-C said that Christianity has been getting a really bad rap these days. We spoke about how best to make an impact, you know, really reconnect with our fanbase. We could have solved hunger or saved a dying baby or something, but no one posts about that shit on Facebook and Twitter every day. It's just not popular," said the divine being of unknowable age.

Then Jesus remembered how football was, like, everywhere: in slow motion replays, dedicated sports channels and packed bars.

"It's basically its own religion," said Our Lord and Saviour. "It quickly became apparent that we could look really good by doing something that takes really no effort at all. I mean, I once fed thousands of people with just a few fish and a loaf of bread. I think I can put a plastic ball into a net. Come on."

The Almighty and Heavenly Father's religion, Christianity, is now the second-most popular in England (home of Premier League Football), with almost 23 followers.

The miraculous four last-minute goals mark one of the Holy Father's most widely praised miracles in almost 2000 years. Religious and political analysts have since been debating the divine appearance in great depth.

Other critics have, however, defended the Holy Father's decision, saying that it was a fresh new take on world problems.

"We see pictures of starving children with distended bellies and sawn-off or blown-off limbs everyday," said media analyst Mizrep Risent. "It's just getting stale. So when we saw pictures in the paper of a young boy in a football stadium with that wonderful smile on his face, shining tears of joy streaking his face after his Football team had scored a point, I immediately felt the old heart strings tug. It's a bold new take on an age-old problem."

However, some have critisised the miracle, saying that the match had been looking pretty much dead even up until the intervention.

"In terms of miraculousness, it was about a 4 out of 10," said Cardinal Archie Bishup, "and so it falls somewhere between a plague of frogs and a turning water to wine. Man-U has had a great season, and so some say that they didn't really need the extra help. Hell, they're already ahead on the log. It would have been impressive if it had been 4 - 0 to Everton."

Arsenal fans and players alike have since expressed their displeasure at God's action, saying that they, too, prayed for victory. Notable examples include ex-defender and current multimillionaire Hover Payd."I would like to blame God for the loss," he said. "Without, him, we might have actually won. Thanks a lot. Now all I have is my incredible pile of money to wallow inconsolably in for the rest of the day. You know how many strippers and cocaine i'm going to have to go through to recover from this?"

God, however, personally defended his actions, saying that there was a "special place reserved in hell" for those "festering rectal sores" who support anyone else.

"Every time I see a player from any other team putting his hands together and looking up, or kissing the silver cross around their neck, or genuflecting after scoring a goal, it gets my tits in a twist," he said, snapping a vuvuzela in two. "Obviously it's not me - why would I rob the Devils by having some fancy-haired idiot from another team scoring against us? It just makes no sense."

Celebrities unite to raise 0.00001% of their net worth for charity

pic: wikimedia commons

Non-government charity organisations like OxFam and AfriCare have a new contender to deal with in the Save Africa campaign, after dozens of celebrities, signers, actors and politicians combined forces in a super-fund-raiser concert series aimed at raising up to one ten thousandth of a percent of their overall combined worth for African Aid Organisations and charities.

“This is big,” said coordinator of the fund-raising initiative, Bono. “We expect to raise in charity donations almost as much as what we spend in a year on cars and clothes. Every year we make tens of billions of dollars, so it’s just nice to be able to host a concert and make our fans give us almost a fraction of a minute shard of our net worth in ticket sales to give to starving Africans.”

Stars like Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Madonna and Lady Gaga will take to stages across America all throughout this week to raise awareness and millions of dollars, with a portion of that awareness and money going not just to their latest albums but also to a variety of charities.

“I’m just so glad I can do my part,” said amateur wrecking ball operator and pioneer of twerking for white people, Miley Cyrus. “Africa and these kinds of charities have been a huge part of my message and so close to my heart, ever since I learnt where Africa was and also that it isn’t a country nearly two years ago.”

Not all stars, however, were so pleased.

"Those mooching fucks in Somalia have never come to one of my concerts," said voice of our generation Kanye West, "why should I come to their help?"

Even some African citizens have stressed their displeasure.

"Two of our biggest industries are getting lots of money from guilty Europeans and Americans, and all the thousands of dollars we earn making teary-eyed poverty-porn commercials involving distended bellies and crying mothers that we produce for foreign aid companies," said Minister of Film in Southern Sudan, May Kafylm. "If these celebrities solve hunger and poverty, we will actively destroying the only source of income for tens of thousands of families across the Drought Belt."

In any case, in light of these announcements, dozens of recording studios and production companies have announced their unequivocal support of the concerts, saying that they were a wonderful opportunity to raise money for sad-looking black people on TV.

“We care a lot about African countries like Mozambia and Zimbalawi,” they said. “Some people might think that these concerts are just another opportunity to try and humanise our stars who barely even live on this planet or know what a normal life is like, or make them seem more loveable, caring and humane than they really in the eyes of crowds of mindless fans who idolise their every fart, but it isn’t. This is about charity. And giving. And a bunch of other nice-sounding words.”

However, many thousands of starving Africans have reported their happiness after some stars announced that they would be airlifting crates of their latest In Concert DVDS and albums into their countries.

“I love stars and rappers and their struggle songs, like with Drake and his ‘started at the bottom now we here’,” said one Ethiopian man. “Some of these stars lived with a dollar a day in their pockets, maybe eating out of bins and sleeping on concrete, having to go to performance venues night after night to perform and earn a name for themselves. Someday, I wish my children will live in such extreme wealth and leisure like that. Imagine that, actually eating – and out of an American bin!”

Thousands barely escape White Genocide

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Thousands of white South Africans just barely escaped with their lives this morning after calls by the country's black majority population to commence the long-planned White Genocide (also known as The Night of The Long Knives") were hastily withdrawn.

According to Perry Noya of the Institute for Murdering Vit Mense, the calls to commence the wholesale ethnic cleansing of South Africa precipitated over recent false rumours of Nelson Mandela's death.

"At roughly 9:55am this morning we got an SMS from staff at the Pretoria hospital saying "Madiba is gone!", and so our various generals across the country started breaking open the crates of machetes and parafin-soaked tyres. However, ten minutes later we got a second SMS saying "found him, he ws in da bathroom." Needless to say, it was a close call."

According to Noya, this isn't the first time white people had just barely escaped.

"The genocide was first penned in to happen just after April 1994, but was seriously waylaid by Mandela's bullshit message of peace and reconciliation," said Noya. "That idiot really put a hurdle in the path of the inevitable.”

However, organising officials have said that in recent years the planned mass murder has been plagued by modern philosophical and practical questions.

"Right now we have whole schools of thought dedicating their lives to finding out where we stand on certain ethnicities," said Head Researcher of the Rhodes University Wilson Yves Theory-school of Ethnicity (RU WYTE) Carl Ord. "Right now we just can't tell where we stand on some coconuts. Like, coloured people? And what about really black white guys? Or what about rich black people who live in Sandton? We don't want to murder all of them by accident.”

Ord went on to say that they were thinking of reinstating old scientific measures for determining true blackness.

 "Like the Pencil Test," he said. "Just to be absolutely positive. That's tried and tested. If that Staedler falls out, it's machete time, mlungu."

However, the false-start killings were not bloodless, with three white people killed, thus sending the media into a frenzy of extensive coverage.

"If we do the media math, we can see three white people dead is a fucking high and scary number," said Editor of Die Burger Steer Eyotypz. "In fact, if we look at the current value system, the equivalent of as many white people died at Marikana, and we can see how much coverage that got." He went on to add that this number was almost as high as half an American person, but only equal to one-sixteenth of an American blue-eyed little blonde girl.

In reaction to today's events, hundreds of white people have since taken to the streets to voice their terror and concern for the proposed killings.

"A bunch of us and Steve Hofmeyr have decided that enough is enough," said 42-year-old farmer and Jo'burg resident Boet Enswaar. "Sure, probably thousands more black people are murdered every day, but there are a lot more of them, so it's not the same."

As such, they have planned some scathing and moving protest action in defiance of the horrific acts. 

"We're gonna throw all these red balloons into the sky just to show everyone how gatvol we really are," he said. "That will really get the message across."

And in related news, scientists are running out of time to discover the potion for everlasting life to keep Nelson Mandela alive. According to scientists from the University of Stellenbosch, medical science is still far from coming up with the immortality potion that will keep Nelson Mandela, and thus the minority white population, alive.

"A lot of people say that black people are actually peace-loving and that the idea that they just want to go on a massive colour-incited spree of mass murder and violence is ridiculous, and that they just want to live in peace," said Head of Medical Research Liv Foorevah, "but we think this is the only way to be  100% sure."

Man with braai tongs delivers State of The Nation address

pic: wikimedia commons

Huge crowds of South Africa citizens gathered at Number 18 Chester Street in Johannesburg yesterday evening, to hear The State of the Nation Address delivered by a man holding braai tongs.

The Address, given by 42-year-old Johannes van Vuuren and starting out as an informal rant to a few friends about "can I tell you what's wrong with this fucking country?", soon developed into one of the most nuanced and insightful critiques of South African zeitgeist and the social, political, financial and cultural implications of modern South Africa.

The speech quickly drew a massive crowd.

"It was incredible," said awed speech attendee Audrey Ence. "Who would have known that a part-time garage mechanic and businessman would have such a deep, considered and profound understanding of South African politics and current affairs?"

The speech, however, was not without its controversial moments, such as when, after six beers and looking over his shoulder to make sure no black people were around and also feeling really comfortable in the privacy of his own home and among friends who didn't have the balls to stand against his bigotted viewpoints, he dropped the K-bomb. Three times.

"Many people were outraged by this," said cunning linguist and head of the London School of Oration and Rhetoric Spee Chiz. "However, it was only to point out the other flaws with this 'fucking baboon country' such as our obsession with political correctness."

"Did you know," Van Vuuren's speech continued, "that I can't even call a gay oke a fag anymore? When I was at school during apartheid it was okay, and now it's all like illegal and stuff. Flip, man. It's, like, supposed to be my Freedoms of Speech, or something. All this fucking LGBTIQ nonsense. We're going to run out of blerrie letters just now."

When asked whether he thought that perhaps his speech was just a hateful drunken rant that he should be ashamed of, he just laughed. 

"It's what everyone is thinking," he said. "It's you blerrie University students, you comment and criticise things too  much, but you don't even see what's right in front of your face." 

When further asked if perhaps many of the problems that South Africa is currently facing, such as rampant government corruption, failure to deliver basic services to a disenfranchised public, and the grand failure of the education system, stem from roots of inequality and social injustice that were carried over post-1994, he scoffed.

"You know, we should just get over the past. I didn't have any trouble getting a job because I studied blerrie hard at the all-white private school my parents paid for and worked blerrie hard at my dad's garage to get where I am today."

Since delivering the epic speech, Van Vuuren has decided to run for office.

"I'll be a hundred times the president Zuma is right now," he promised.

However, this promise has greatly worried political analysts and citizens. 

"When Van Vuuren builds his own Nkandla in Orania or wherever the hell he was brought up, that means he'll spend R20 billion, and not just R200 million," said married couple and Soweto residents Dis and Fran Chised. "That also means that he'll get off 100 times the rape accusations and escape 100 times the Arms Deal probes. We're not sure SA is ready to get that royally fucked up."