BREAKING NEWS – TV showing mysterious images

BREAKING NEWS – 8:17am

There is confusion this morning, as journalists and media experts are trying to make sense of a new series of images that have just been release on our televisions.

At this moment we’re not too sure what these images are, but rest assured that we’ll be bringing in a team of specialists to try and make sense of these unfathomable photos. Details are limited right now, but the first image we’re seeing is of some large, shapeless blue mass covered in greenish blobs. Dotted all over the image are tiny cylinder-shaped things that appear to be silver and pointed, with some orange-coloured mess on one end. Again, we aren’t sure what we’re looking at – they could be tiny cigars – but we will keep you updated as this story progresses.

UPDATE – 8:27am

More breaking news on our top story this morning of the strange images covering our TV. We’re not sure if this is linked with all the other video footage of heads of state giving tearful speeches from unknown locations, but NASA has released another image, perhaps even more confounding than the first.

Again, we must stress that the meaning of these images is not clear, but it does appear that the tiny cigars have disappeared only to been replaced by smallish yellow-and-black circular plates, each surrounded by a small circle of concentric red rings. As always, we will keep you updated as this more details on this story come into public knowledge.

UPDATE – 8.33am

Back to our top story this morning, NASA and a team of scientists and researchers have released a new series of images to the public. Again, details at this time are unclear, but it appears that some kind of white face-like figure next to a number keeps flashing intermittently on our television screens. This number has steadily increased to be almost nine digits long in the course of just a few hours. In-house experts and media specialists still have no clue what these figures might mean, but what we can confirm that this is a very, very high number.

“This is perhaps one of the biggest numbers we’ve seen on TV in many, many years,” said numbers expert Matt Matison, one of the few professionals we could contact (there seems to be some kind of a problem with telephone services). “We can only assume this means some kind of big event has happened.”

Again, exact details are sketchy, and finding the meaning to these images is proving difficult as large parts of the internet seem to have gone offline, and so we will keep readers updated as this story continues to unfold.

UPDATE – 8.37am

NASA has done it again. The latest in the series of images shows what we can confirm is definitely a figure of a human being standing next to what seems to be a large grey square with a big crack in it. We’re not sure what caused the crack, or why this person is standing next to this giant square, or even what kind of grey object would be that big, but as always we will keep you updated on this news event as it unfurls.

UPDATE – 8.39am

We still have very few details on this story. At the time of going to press the government and various heads of state had not replied to requests for comment. Let us know in the comments below what you think these strange images could possibly mean. And as always, we will keep you updated.

And if no further details come to light, well, it’s not like what would be the end of the world.

Game of Thrones fans react in anger to announced spoiler publication

Thousands of fans of the HBO blockbuster medieval fantasy epic television drama Game of Thrones have reacted in outrage and mass protest today, after news was released that an elderly American man is reportedly set to publish a nearly 700-page tome exposing to the public in minute detail many hundreds of plot spoilers of the upcoming seasons of the series.

“It’s unacceptable,” said a man who openly weeps on Monday evenings after he has had his fix of Lannister-on-Stark action. “It’s already bad enough that I can’t go on Twitter or have normal conversations with friends who didn’t, you know, illegally download it, and now they want to publish a whole book that will ruin the most juicy secrets? We won’t stand for this!”

He explained that they would probably sit for it.

“In front of our computers, where we will blog and tweet about it. That’s always a sure-fire way to change the things you don’t like about the world.”

The as-yet-unnamed source of the
leaked manuscripts, over whose head
the Internet has issued a fatwa.
pic-wikimedia commons

Apparently, however, the protest and outcry is too late, as some media reports now show that this man has in the past released several plagiarised manifestos with thousands of crucial and key details of the series’ plot leaked to the public, which has led to threats of legal action by the show's producers.

“We’re lucky that we caught these illegal manuscripts early,” said police in their report, “and even luckier still that not really many people have been exposed to them, what with them being put down into books that are several hundred pages long instead of a series of ten million tweets.”

The police added that so far the only people really that had been exposed to these dangerous leaks were “mostly just smug idiots who shrug when we’re weeping at the Red Wedding or shocked at the emotive and heart-wrenching finale and say patronising shit like ‘oh, now you know how I felt three years ago’.”

They added that they were also unfazed by the announced release.

"The spoilers and leaks are only expected to be released in a few years' time," they said. "By then, the series should have reached its conclusion, and these huge manuscripts will be totally meaningless."

In other news, the next season of the much-awaited saga is set to come out to the public in a year, which means that almost thirty percent of the public is hoping to get some work done over the weekends. Many others, however, are not so optimistic.

“The only thing that brought me some cathartic release from the painful, dreary existence I lead on a daily basis, slogging off to the same dead-end job that will end someday with me being laid off and forced to go home to my depressing family and tiny house, was getting my weekly dose of seeing these beloved characters’ mothers and families murdered, tortured, their genetalia cut off, beheaded, and their loved ones scattered to the four corners of the globe or killed, and all their individual hopes and dreams cut off by the bleak reality of an uncaring world. Without this weekly reminder of how relatively unmiserable my life is, how am I supposed to go on?”

In response to these fears, television networks have promised to up the ante on their fear machine.

“We show terrifying images on TV every day, but now, in the light of this public need, we’ll ramp it up to 11,” said the SkyNews and CNN. “With our in-depth coverage of mass killings, racial hatred, armed conflicts, torture and brutal multiple-homicides, it’ll be like you’re watching season three all over again. Just with less tragedy.”

Brace yourself

As Lord Eddard Stark warned us.

"Winter is coming."

After the bone-biting chill of today frostily and unnecessary-adverb-ly swept across Grahamstown, I fear that the sweet warmth of summer has seen its heyday, and is on its swift way out.

The last week has been very enjoyable, and not just primarily because of the weather. Sure, the sun has been shining beautifully, and some days have been unseasonably warm to the point that the air becomes a hot honey against your skin, cloying sweet and sticky, but the people at Rhodes itself have been... well, they look pretty good.

Now, blog posts about the weather aren't exactly what you'd call riveting, nail-biting prose, and so I come to the secondary point of this post: fashion. Now, I'm no Gucci or Gaultier, but I've grown up around two sisters and a my mom (they used to watch a HELL of a lot of Style Network channel, a testament to their lack of cupboard space), and so I pride myself on knowing at least a little bit about fashion and how to look good. This past week, I've thought exactly that about the Rhodents I've seen across campus and in the various local haunts at night. This I can attribute to one sole reason: home.

We were in that most wonderful of times: the first week of term. Freed from the stresses and strains of university, students went home to relax and unwind. Upon their return (I know this is an assumption, but I can only base it on what I've seen) most got new clothes, had their hair cut, coloured, Brazillian deep-conditioned, straightened and god-knows-what-else-ed. Also, being home, they probably decided to wear their nicer clothes (and here by "nicer" I mean "anything that WASN'T flip-flops, teesavs, beaters, hippy pants, hoodies, terribly-motto'ed printed tees, and the innumerable other things that encompass the "student too lazy to even put on shoes let alone drag a comb through their greasy, matted locks" look). And so, lulled into this sense of home (and in some cases, the fashion prerequisites of big-city life), most came back still lost in the heady mists of home-hood. As a friend eloquently noted, "Bro, these chicks are, like, at least one point hotter than I remember". Sexist shallowness aside, I couldn't help but agree.

Alas, let me reiterate: winter is coming. That first blast of freezing cold not only make students shiver and bitch and moan at supper, but it dealt a potentially fatal wound to fashion prospects. I've been here for two years now. Do you want to know what a cold, like, really cold, winter does to dress sense? It alters it utterly.

So, what have we to look forward to on campus? Well, for one, we can applaud winter's kiss in rendering the barefoot look a thing of the summery past. No one is so lazy that they'd freeze their pink little phalanges off. However, that is not enough of a saving grace. Hoodies are coming. Lots of them. Some with terrible res/matric slogans embossing/adorning/ruining them. And not those cute hoodies, either. The puffy, pouffy, "fuck you, winter" marshmellow ones so thick they'd make the girl who invented pouty ducklips look like Einstein. Hoodies of this caliber are utterly devoid of any shade or suggestion of sexiness; if anything, they remind of that last boss battle in Ghostbusters.

You see my point?

It's not just the hoodies, either. similarly puffy and pouffy hippy quasi-pyjama pants will make their usual appearance, accompanied by those ever-godawful Ugg boots. Or, (fucking)Ugg(ly) boots, as I prefer to call them. The only thing worse would be slippers: oh yes, you'll see plenty of those, too.

Kate put on her new hoody and went to lectures.

Or maybe I'm being defeatist: there are some who met the cold with valiant fashionable resilience: black coats, jeans, boots, scarves. I can just hope the wintry wind fills the sails of this revolution.

Or, maybe even worse, I'm being shallow. "There's more than meets the eye," I hear you cry. "Beauty is but skin deep!" Well, maybe. And maybe not. No one loved the Mona Lisa because the canvas and wood underneath its paint was. Let's be serious: you can't judge a personality from across the quad, and so you might have the most wonderful, striking, charmingly charismatic personality in the world, but it won't count for much if you dress like (for want of a better word) a lazy moron. And don't say "oh, but just talk to them".  What, every person I ever see? Yeah. Not likely.

All in all, I love winter. Yup, it's definitely tie-collared-shirt-and-jeans weather, a look which is just painful  under the the burning eye of the summer sun.
Except when I have to row. Then winter is a bitch. A hand-biting, bone-chilling bitch.