Area man can’t be in London, say social media analysts

An Area man’s alleged move to London has come under intense scrutiny this morning, after social media analyists exposed a dire lack of posts and uploads proving that it actually happened.

The 25-year-old editor of a popular satire website, who would fire us if we exposed his name, has apparently uploaded very little evidence of his move abroad, doing little to back up claims that he has been in the shiny and amazing city of London since September of last year.

“It’s disquieting and crazy, but the man has yet to upload more than one perfunctory selfie of himself in front of the Tower of London, or outside a classic red telephone box, or even a mere picture of his University,” said one social media analyst, Luke Sattweets.

“We all know I had a coffee this morning, because it got thirteen likes on Instagram," he said. "We all know I went to the Coldplay concert last October, because I posted about it every day and took those fifteen blurry videos from seat 798 in row Y. I just can’t say the same for this guy. Come on, ONE status about watching the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Get the fuck out of here.”

Pull the other one, dipshit.

And he’s not the only one.

“There are no pins. No check-ins. No cheesy tourist snaps outside the Tate Modern, no poses with waxen celebrities at Madame Toussauds, no clever angles making it look like he’s holding Big Ben in between his pinched fingertips,” said another analyst, Lycan Pohsts. “How can anyone believe you’ve have an incredibly life-changing experience if there are no photos of it, no track record on social media?”

He continued.

“How can I believe he is gallivanting around London if he hasn’t uploaded a grinning, thumbs-up selfie with a pint of lager and a packet of crisps in a traditional pub? How can we really trust that he has gone over without endless selfies of him struggling to sleep in the Boeing 757, arriving at the airport in a daze and flurry of activity? How can anyone prove he has undertaken this massive challenge without pictures of him at all the tourist hotspots Nelson’s Memorial to the National Gallery and buildings of parliament? He hasn’t even posted a picture of himself posing next to the Royal Guard making fun of their Beefeaters.”

And the public is furious.

“People lie on social media all the time; why wouldn’t he?” asked one man. “It’s highly, highly suspicious: photos like these would get DOZENS of likes and comments. It’s crazy: why would you pass up such an opportunity for digital validation?”

“No, I demand that he uploads proof of this fantastic, life-changing trip,” he stated bluntly. “Until I push air out my nose, click ‘like’, and then keep scrolling down an endless wall of memes and vapid listicles, I refuse to believe that he is actually having the time of his life in London.”

USA celebrates 47-year anniversary of faking Moon Landing

It’s another giant leap for mankind today, after the National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA) and the United States government celebrated its 47th anniversary of the great Moon Landing Hoax of July 1969.

The elaborate hoax (which was filmed in a Hollywood basement and duped millions of viewers on “live” television) involved meticulous planning and required the silencing of hundreds of thousands of key witnesses and involved parties for nearly 50 years. Even today, it has still got all but ‘a few enlightened geniuses in camper trailers across the globe’ totally fooled.

“It’s incredible,” said then project manager for the intricate cinematographic con, Philemon Greenscreen. “Still to this day, millions of people actually believe we went and landed on the moon. You can’t imagine the amount of work it has taken to keep them all in the dark.”

Greenscreen explained the unfathomable complexities of the massive cover-up.

"We had to train thousands of staff and engineers to make plausible rockets and equipment that we tested in front of crowds of thousands of paid actors."

“Since then, we’ve had to keep hundreds of thousands of scientists, tech developers, researchers, politicians, journalists and employees of the state – who were all involved in the moon landing projects – silent on the whole thing,” he explained. “Then there’s the arduous task of keeping all of our trained actors to one script whose details never change even once over several decades. It’s been hard work.”

The difficulty of their work has lead Greenscreen and many other NASA frauds to reflect on their tireless efforts.

“It’s was tough, but we did it,” said camera operator and the genius behind the fake ‘hammer and feather’ scene, Sian Sfukushun. “And we’re lucky, too: you’d think that by now one of the countless state enemies that we’ve had since the Big Fake of ’69 would blown the lid off this whole thing with irrefutable leaked evidence that we threw it all together with Spielberg in a NASA basement.”

“Sometimes I think of the billions of dollars we spent on space travel and the existing technological advancements alongside plausible, tried-and-tested science that was widely available at the time, and it makes me wonder,” she said.

“With Yuri Gagarin and the incremental improvements to space-travel made in the Apollo missions, it probably would have just been cheaper and simpler just to actually go to the Moon.”

They said I was crazy to try and build a spaceship that runs on toothpaste. They were right

Pursuing your dreams isn’t easy. As any dreamer, any person who has ever followed that arduous and rocky road to your goals and desires knows, in life you meet a lot of obstacles.

Doubters.

Nay-sayers.

People who think that you’re crazy: that your idea will never work, that it’s impossible. And many, many times, with hard work and perseverance, these obstacles can be overcome, these nonbelievers shown up.

This was not one of those times.

Growing up, I had a dream to fly to the moon and stars. When I was just a young boy my father would take me out into the field and we would lie in the cool, soft grass and watch the stars twinkle in the unreachable distance. He would trace out constellations with his finger, giving each one a shape, a name, and I would tell him, “I’m going to go there one day, dad. You’ll see. I’ll build a big spaceship, one that runs on toothpaste, and I’ll fly among the stars.” It sounded crazy: but it was so crazy, that is just might work.

My dad would smile, pat me on the back as only a loving father can, and simply say, “lol are you totally nuts that’ll never work.”

The basic concept is no different from
any other rocket engine. 

As I grew up, the dream grew. I knew that my dad was wrong, even if he was factually correct. Every night I would spend countless hours in the basement, working until daybreak drawing up rough sketches of how this magnificent machine would work. I would show them, I told myself. I would show them all.

Looking back, I realise, boy, toothpaste isn’t really a great combustible substance.

I eventually dropped out of school to work on my invention. “You’re wasting your life!” my physics teacher screamed at me as I walked out the school entrance, slamming the doors on all the negativity and scepticism that was my daily experience. “Seriously, in terms of actual real-life physical possibility, you won’t succeed.”

They doubted me. They thought I was crazy. “It’ll never work,” they said. “Toothpaste is not a reliable, energy-efficient or economically viable fuel,” they told me.
They were right.

“You’re wrong!” I shouted back with a laugh, knowing that one day I’d prove her and all the jeering children and staff at my school wrong by zooming off into outer space, leaving nothing but a long, minty-fresh contrail in my wake. Of course it was only years later, as I sat in the basement looking over my blueprints after my 983rd failed launch, that I realised they were right - but does that really matter?

Is my dream really so far-fetched?
Why should the "medical knowledge" of
"clinical psychiatrists" dissuade us?

And so I worked, day and night. There was no sacrifice I considered too great. A series of failed girlfriends and relationships came and went. I missed my father’s funeral. My brother and I fell out of contact. My dog died. I think I forgot to feed him. I wonder if dogs can eat toothpaste.

But through it all, I’ve learnt a valuable lesson: you have to follow your dreams. Well, that, and also that the cost per ounce versus combustion potential of Colgate makes it an impractical choice of fuel.

Life is full of disappointments and setbacks. It’s chock-a-block packed with so-called “friends” and “family” who think your dreams are impossible, are too big, will never work, are contrary to the very principles of rocket science.

And sometimes you’ve got to cut this negativity from your life.

It’s hard, I know. When I first told my sister, “I have dreams, ambitions; the lizard people watch us - they know all. A new utopia of greenery and prosperity await, in hidden Xanadu-esque caverns buried hundreds of kilometres below Mar’s rocky plains,” well, it wasn’t easy to look her in the eye and summon up the courage to defend my dreams and say, “you’re family, why won’t you support my dreams, it’s probably the brain-leeches the Zerngions injected into you as a foetus seriously you should go for a professional defogulation and invest in aluminium cerebro-brainwave protector.”

Work hard. Believe. Ignore the nay-sayers and scientists.

Because nothing should ever stand between you and your dreams. Not even a straitjacket.

Greyhound awarded the least disgusting bus service

It was a fine day for bus services today, after the International Travel Awards Consortium awarded the Greyhound bus services the “Least Disgusting Bus Service” trophy for allowing its customers to retain at least a shred of their dignity whilst traveling on their coaches.

“The choice was clear,” said award committee member Gol Dansilver. “Not really because they provide an excellent service or because they offer competitive prices for reliable, affordable and enjoyable travel across our beautiful country, but simply because there just isn't really any meaningful competition.”

Dansilver went on to elaborate on how, in terms of offensiveness, frustration, the irrevocable hatred a mere bus can instil in your soul, and the utter disregard for Human Rights law, the choice was ultimately simple.

“If we consider how SA Chodelink can be 10 hours late and make you sit in a bus-cum-sauna (ambiguity intended) that is not only utterly repugnant but also has you fighting cockroaches for armchair space, or how Intercrap assumes everyone on board to be Christian and then dictatorially deny you that one sorrow-drowning comfort of alcohol, or even how several other buses – Shitty to Shitty, Transkak and Shittyliner – are so massively physically offensive and make you want to throw up until you pass out or die, whichever comes first to ease your hellish 14-hour suffering, then really there was no one else to confer this medal to.”

Bus travellers across South Africa resoundingly agreed with this sentiment, applauding the committee for its frankly insultingly easy decision.

“When I think back to those other sweltering sweathouses-on-wheels that are always later than the SABC’s airing of a series people enjoy watching - those 'modes of transport' that somehow always bring with them conditions a Syrian War Refugee would consider brutal and disgusting, then I don’t really see how Greyhound couldn’t have won it,” said torture victim and frequent traveller Miles Sandmiles.

Dansilver said that Greyhound should now be considered the leader of bus travel in South Africa – or at least, the least mortally affronting when you consider your alternatives.

“Even when you take into account resurgent smaller companies, like the Blunden Shuttle service, [Greyhound] still wins. Not because, as I have said many times, Greyhound is any good, but because in comparison to the poisonous and offensive business model on which these other small services operate, forcing you to pay for a full coach if you’re the only one but then not applying that same division to a full bus meaning you’ll always fork out several hundred rand no matter what, then Greyhound still takes the cake.”

However, Greyhound now reportedly has its eyes on the last shred of bus traveller, those Masochistic people who enjoy these other services.

“We want to be loved by all equally,” said Greyhound CEO Naim Dafterdogg, “which is why we’ll be introducing a service that deliberately insults, offends and disgusts you as if you’re our torture bitch in our ever-expanding slave dungeon. We’re calling it Fifty Shades of Greyhound".