Parliament nears resolution on crucial “which superpower is the best” debate

Weeks of arguments and rhetoric are going to pay off today, after MPs and parliamentarians announced that they are on the brink of reaching a resolution on the heated and months-long debate over which superpower would be the best.

The debate – which has seen proponents for “totally sweet” invisibility at loggerheads with advocates for “frikken awesome” flight or like really cool laser-beam eyes – has raged in the halls of our nation’s legislative centre for nearly two months; and both sides have been staunch and unmoving.

“Those idiots don’t even get it,” said the leader of the Freedom Front Plus party, Lay Zerbeems. “I mean, how sweet would it be to be able to fly? Like, no more walking from place to place, just you and the eagles in the sky – how frikken cool would that be?”

She explained at length.

“Some of our critics have put forward super strength as an alternative – but when do you ever lift anything heavier than like a suitcase at the airport?” she said, to loud “exactly”s from the Minister of Argiculture.

“Besides, all your friends would just always ask you around to their house whenever they need to move house and you’d have to move all their furniture – and just think, all this time you could have been chilling with the hawks in the boundless blue skies above,” she finished to resounding murmurs of approval, agreement and “so friggin’ badass” from gathered MPs.

The debate has unleashed a slew of controversy.

“This whole debate is just silly and a massive waste of time, because it stops us from asking important questions,” said chief whip of the opposition party IKP, Ian Visabel. “Questions like, 'How would you even breathe in the thin upper atmosphere?'. It's glaringly obvious that you’d freeze to death without some kind of heated suit, and the baddies would see you easily and use radar to fight you.”

The answer, he explained, was obvious.

“Everyone knows mind control or telekinesis would be just so awesome,” he said, speaking at a deliberation over a moratorium of debate proceedings, “like, you could lift things with your mind.”

“Or, like, block bullets and throw things around without even having to stand up, so freakin' cool,” added the Minister of Rural Development.

But even this brings has only served to add fuel to the flames.

“The Honourable Member is misguided and wasting our valuable time, my Fellow Honourable Ministers,” said the chief whip for the Democratic Alliance. “You can’t just say ‘mind powers’ because you can’t have more than one, that’s cheating and totally not fair.”

And despite contentious and tiring debate, citizens are showing their support for the democratic process.

“I think it’s important,” said Johannesburg accountant Flei Mbreff. “After all, how can we deliberate over trivial issues like Nkandla and the growing issues around unemployment, the education crisis and worsening corruption when we can’t even agree over whether we’d use our ice breath to freeze the baddies or swish our hands to fight with the metal around us like we’re Magneto?”

“Besides, it gives us a great insight into our politicians,” he added. “Like that one minister of finance wanting invisibility? Bloody pervert probably just wants to sneak in the ladies’ volleyball changing room, the creep. Or steal money in a way that doesn’t involve some intricate tenderpreneurship scandal.”

“And that guy who wanted to slow down time? Shows you why he’s the Head of the Department of Home Affairs.”

But despite all of this, the Office of the Presidency has assured all South Africans that the real answer is in their hands.

“We don’t really listen to parliament, and this time is no different,” they said in a statement early this morning. “Besides, if you’re looking for a power that will give you unlimited control over a whole nation, totally freedom from attack and accountability, and as much wealth and luxury as you want, I think it’s pretty clear which power is the best of them all.”

“Being Jacob Zuma.”

Football “still definitely newsworthy” – BBC

It was a resounding victory for journalism today, after football, rugby, cricket, tennis – as well as many other sports codes including but not limited to curling, archery, bowling, darts, pool, rowing and professional tiddlywinks – were reaffirmed as “still definitely newsworthy and important journalism” by a BBC-funded study.

“For years now our screens have been filled with hundreds and thousands of hours of slow-motion replays, critical analysis and up-to-the-minute updates on everything sports-related, like match scores, financial transfers, or even who is fucking whose wife in the national team,” said a spokesperson for the BBC. “Today, we are pleased to announce that these events are still as important as ever, and deserve their hours-long slots just after international affairs and current events.”

The study has irrefutably proven that football – along with all sport – is still on par with disease, war, political scandals and the myriad other important current events that define our generation and necessitate ceaseless coverage and debate.

“Although football was first started as a social experiment in the 1960s to see how much a human being can be paid for doing as little and as inconsequential, meaningless-in-the-grand-scope-of-the-universe work as possible, it quickly blossomed into something as important as Ebola killing white people, or famine killing brown people, or war,” said the study. “Hence the dozens of channels dedicated to every goddamn fart Lionel Messi makes.”

The study has since been welcomed and applauded by leading institutes of journalism and media studies.

“People misunderstand sport,” said professor Rum Rogeny of the Rhodes School of Journalism and Media Studies. “It’s not an opium of the people designed to distract them with irrelevant and endless arguments about who has the better team or the most trophies and titles or who beat who in the umpteenth iteration of a packet-of-air-kicking-contest between two groups of millionaires. Soccer is relevant. It's the only time God ever does anything on Earth. It’s politics but with a ball. It’s war, but with better hair and fake injuries."

In spite of mounting criticism from dissenting critical voices who steadfastly claim (in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, of course) that sport is a form of ‘soft politics’ that allows you to pretend to take part in pseudo-political arguments without any of the reprisals or repercussions of holding a real political view – much like a child walking around in his father’s oversized shoes in imaginary games of ‘play-play’ – many thousands of normal people around the world have welcomed the study.

“Football is super important,” said a man counting an imaginary list with his fingers. “It has kicking. It has passing. It has tackles – some of these tackles are illegal. Some are in a grey area. These are important debates. Debates which the news tries to distract us from with news like which country is invading which country, or new about stupid so-called ‘mass protests’ in Mexico City.”

The study also definitely ruled out the possibility of think topics, debates, art exhibitions or any kind of cultural thing as ‘news’.

“Even things like massive scientific accomplishments – like a ten-year project to land a tiny satellite on a comet one hundred million miles away – are fucking definitely not news. The thing is, how many people really understand science enough to make an opinion on it? There just isn’t any controversy around these events. How are we supposed to get ceaseless heated debates, long, angry blogposts and opinion columns, pages and pages of incensed comments defiantly touting their entrenched viewpoint, and metres of print responding not just to the story, but also responding to responses - and therefore endless pageviews and unfathomable advertising revenue – out of that boring crap? That’s why we make it more about the little things. Like sexist shirts. Now THAT is news.”

Muse and Abuse would like to invite any reader who didn't understand this to form a very angry opinion about it and write their own blog on why we're a bunch of morons.

Kid doesn't develop superpowers after eating radioactive waste

6-year-old comic book fan and Intensive Care Unit patient Timmy Henders came out of a coma on Friday night just long enough to tell reporters how very disappointed he was to not have developed any badass superpowers after chugging back a 3-litre bottle of highly dangerous nuclear reactor waste.

"It's just really disappointing," he said on an intercom behind a 3-metre thick wall of lead shielding. "No spider sense, no super hearing, no x-ray vision. Not even any immunity to advanced radiation poisoning," he said, gesturing to his horridly disfigured and sore-riddled body, arms, legs and face.

The sad incident comes in the wake of many similar disappointments, most recently the case of 11-year-old Jake Smith, who did not become a millionaire genius vigilante with cool black cape and utility belt after both his parents were violently murdered in a mugging gone wrong right front of him in a dark alleyway outside the exit of an opera house.

"I'm terrified of bats, and now this happens," he said in a glum voice. "Technically, I should already be kicking badguy butt every night. I thought i'd at least be taking the first steps to becoming the hero the city deserves, even if it's not the one it needs right now."

However, according to child development psychologist Ed Harding, all is not lost.

"If Jake - and to a lesser extend the probably-going-to-die-in-the-next-few-weeks Timmy - plays his cards right, maybe pick up the guitar and a brooding, misunderstood attitude of apathetic moodiness, he could score the best superpower of all: scoring totally hot babes. The dead parents thing is just a sure ticket."

Harding estimates that, should he work his situation and circumstances just right, he could score "at least a low 8, minimum, bro."

He went on to add that there were also some other benefits to this seemingly sorry situation.

"The whole 'dead parents' thing will get guitar-weilding Jake into at least the 4th round of South African Idols," he said, "even if his voice is lacklustre and utterly unspecial." He added that teaching music to AIDS orphans, having dead grandparents as well, or having an image that is utterly incongruous with his voice and song choice could only add to this.

Meanwhile, development experts are even more adamant and vocal that no one - child or adult - should use comic book methods of getting superpowers, whether it be through radioactive waste, genetically altered arachnids, or chemical toxin exposure.

"The only way to be all powerful in this world and to roam the land with impunity like a god amongst ants is through that one and only tried and tested way," said Superpower expert and part-time graphic novel reader Stanley Marvel, "which is becoming as absurdly rich as humanly possible."