Teenage boy unsure whether to use smiley, heart emoticon

pic: wikimedia commons

Following Friday night’s message from 14-year-old Jane Hadley to 15-year-old Eric Carlson containing not one but two winking smileys, a hug emoticon and a colon and capital ‘D’ combined to make a grinning text face, the young boy is reportedly unsure how to respond, saying there isn’t a smiley or textual emoticon that fits neatly into the category of appropriate responses.

“We’ve been texting for a while now, and she sent me two x’s the other day, so it’s safe to say that things are getting pretty serious,” he said, gesturing to his Blackberry. “But I can’t use a single x, because we’re past that stage, and even the double x is getting a little stale. I just don’t know what to do.”

According to Carlson, a whole range of usual responses is now unsuitable.

“I can’t send her three x’s, because that might be too forward – you know, a little raunchy? – and if I send back a heart emoticon with a wink and a smile she might read into it too much,” he said. “Usually I would just type out a laugh, you know, ‘hahahahaha’ and then send a winking smiley or two back, but I really want this single instant message to make an impact, a real lasting impression, on her.”

Media Message experts have agreed that the young boy is in quite a conundrum, as moving forward into three x’s, or even a combination of ‘x’s and ‘o’s, is “a definitely too saucy”, and that “most normal smileys available to him are too benign and friendly to convey his true feelings about her”.

“As text smileys stand right now, he’s in a difficult spot,” said Reed Zintouet. “How can he tell the girl how he really feels, what he honestly thinks about her, if all he has are smileys that convey a very limited set of emotions?”

Sources close to the teenage boy now report that he is considering what could almost be proper spelling and grammar to show how much he cares for Jane.

“We looked at his phone the other day and saw that he is now using ‘yuo’ instead of ‘u’ and stuff like ‘too’ and ‘to’ and whole words instead of a garble of vowel-less bastard words,” they said to reporters.

Analysts now estimate Eric to be only four and a half months away from actually talking to Jane, and a mere eight months before they have a full conversation.

“If he keeps at this break-neck pace, they’ll be holding hands before his 17th birthday.”

However, there still is no reliable guess as to when they might one day have sex, as queries to this effect were met with stifled giggles and outbursts of laughter when we mentioned the word ‘penis’ or ‘vagina’.

“He said it again!” said Eric’s friend, Jake. “Hahahahaha, ’penis’!”

South Africans excited for their one day they can afford at Arts fest

South Africans across the country have expressed their unmitigated excitement this morning, saying they cannot wait to travel halfway across the country to enjoy the one day that can spend at this year’s National Festival of the Arts without declaring bankruptcy.

“I’m very excited,” said one Johannesburg resident. “There are hundreds of shows, dozens of food stalls, and a whole range of different clothing stores and other outlets selling stuff that is quite blatantly overpriced. I’m having difficulty deciding which three things I can afford to do.”

Much fervour and hype has met this year’s Festival, with many leading art critics saying that this one is going to be “the fucking weirdest one yet.”

“We know that in the past we’ve had guys in glass boxes sweating blue paint while music plays in the background, and we’ve had contemporary interpretive dance pieces that make you think ‘okay, what the fuck did I just watch?’," said a critic working at Art Times magazine. "Not to mention we've seen in the past a whole bunch of higher-concept plays and theatrical performances that went right over your head, after which you had to pretend to have understood their underlying postmodern and postcolonial thematic bases and socioeconomic critique to not look like a moron in front of your educated friends - but this year is set to make all of that look like a bunch of Leon Schuster films.”

Grahamstown and her inhabitants are now up in a flurry of preparations to get everything ready for the yearly fun and festivity of the NFA.

“I’ve filled up all my bottles and water tanks at the spring, I’ve bought candles and petrol for my generator for when the power goes out, and I’ve made sure I have enough basic foodstuffs in the fridge and pantry before Pick ‘n Pay invariably ups the price of bread, milk and other necessities by 28% each,” said one Grahamstonian who has also moved out of her own bedroom to rent it out to strangers so that she can afford to eat during the NAF week.

“I think everything is ready for just another typical festival week.”

Angie Motshekga – Matric is “not that easy”

The government has struck back at critics of the Education System and the Department of Education this morning, after a statement released by somehow-still-Minister for Basic Education Angie Motshekga and signed by almost 100 Members of Parliament declared that “Matric exams aren’t easy” and that “we’d know, because we tried to do one.”

“Everyone is criticising it, saying it’s simple, it’s too easy, that the standard of education is falling quickly, but it really isn’t,” said Motsekga at a press conference in Johannesburg today.

Many MPs have agreed, having taken the exam themselves.

“The first question was quite challenging, but I eventually figured it out after maybe fifteen minutes of thought,” said Minister of Agriculture Lander Eforme. “But after I wrote down my name in that first blank, I realised that being asked my name isn’t actually a part of the question paper - and then I couldn’t go past the real Question One, which was something about two numbers and a small cross between them. I put my head in my hands and looked around Parliament at everyone else’s anxious, confused faces and thought, ‘Jesus, what are these hieroglyphics? Have we done this in class?’”

Minister Motshekga has slammed criticism of Matric,
saying, "Me, Malema, Zille and Zuma all agree - that's
seventeen people who prove my point."
pic:Flickr, Governmentza

According to Motshekga, 100% of the MPs who sat the exam failed to get over the minimum 33% pass mark, proving that the exam isn’t as easy as many claim.

“These critics, people like Johnathan Jansen, they are wrong about the exams,” she said, “and by wrong I mean more wrong that you’re allowed to be to be deemed eligible to get a Matric.”

Though some of the submitted papers did garner a few correct marks here and there, exam markers have now determined this to be “merely coincidental.”

“If we look at the papers themselves, statistically speaking they could only have gotten a few lucky ticks,” said script marker Nawt San-Krosis, “because the ANC just filled in all the (A) and (C) boxes on the multiple choice grids, with Helen Zille and her cadre of counterrevolutionaries filling in all the (D) and (A) choices. COPE and Agang didn’t provide any of their own problems to the solution, but probably just tried to peek over their neighbours' shoulders to steal some answers and points and pretend it was their original thoughts.”

The full results of the experiment, however, are not known.

“We don’t know what how the EFF did, because firstly there aren’t any (E) or (F) choices on the grid, and secondly because they staged a mass walk-out when the Woodwork Exam Question Papers were handed out. “

Despite all this, Motshekga says that she and other Organs of State were not worried by these Parliamentary failures.

“You don’t need a Matric to run a country,” she said. “Just ask Jacob.”

However, to combat possible issues they have announced new legislation and changes in law and education, such as protecting doctors in medical malpractice suits who only get one or two things wrong.

“If he cuts you open, fixes your liver, and then sews you up nicely, but accidentally leaves a box of needles in you, that’s okay, because that’s more than 33% correct.”

Motshekga and her coworkers are also excited to announce a new series of Matric Examination Papers, such as Put The Coloured Blocks In The Right-Shaped Holes and new multiple choice style papers in fitting with today’s high standard of education.

“Are we the Bad Guys?” – Apartheid minister diary

Recent declassified top-level Apartheid Minister diaries that they forgot to shred after handing over power in 1994 have surprised all South Africans today, with their deeply personal and heartfelt philosophical self-scrutiny, with several of the personal Agony Aunt booklets going so far as to ask outright if maybe “we’re the baddies”.

The diaries, which were unearthed yesterday and are purported to belong to Daniel Francoise Malan, Hendrik Verwoerd and Peter Willem Botha, contain many startling self-admonishments.

“Dear Diary, today I started to think that maybe the international media and the thousands of sanctions against us might be justified,” said one diary. “The beatings, the political assassinations and repression, the restrictive pass laws, and the racial prejudice – are we like Hitler and those Nazi fellows? I mean, we don’t wear leather or have spikey helmets, but still... I just don’t know any more. I feel conflicted.”

The author went on to berate himself at length before adding, “I really hope we're not the baddies. I mean, I’m not racist. Some of my best garden boys are black! If we are the bad guys, then it could be seriously awkward – haha, can you imagine the racial tension and legacy of social inequality that could create in a future South Africa?”

However, many ministers whose personal diaries were also declassified defended their actions, saying “all we want is peace.”

“All we want to do is live peacefully and without problems in our own little corner of the world,” said Verwoede’s pages, ”and also retain total political, mineral, territorial, military, societal, legislative and societal superiority – is that too much to ask?”

He went on to add that it was “probably too late to stop now anyway.”

“We’re already committed. It’s not like we can just say ‘oh, our bad, bro’ and tell everyone who votes for us to stop being racist dicks.”

Verwoede did stress, however, that he still had yet to make up his mind about the whole thing.

“I’ll give the whole ‘are we the racist dick bad guys’ thing some more thought later,” he said. “Maybe after Phineas has cut the lawn and Sophia has cooked dinner and I’ve given Xolile his daily trashing for no apparent reason, I'll be able to relax and work out if I'm evil or not.”

Catholic Church rebukes Scientific Community

Following last month’s discovery by noted astrophysists of cosmic gravitational waves undulating through the fabric of space-time (a discovery that was predicted by Einstein almost half a century ago and one which has profound implications on theories of the origin of the universe), The Catholic Church has rebuked the scientific community, demanding that it “Please stop answering so many bloody questions.”

“It’s getting ridiculous,” said Pope Francis who has a bunch of letters after his name. “Every week, a discovery, an invention, a break-through. Don’t they know curiosity killed the cat?”

Many scientists have struck back at this criticism, however, reminding the public that “the cat must be though to be both dead and alive until observed”.

“It’s simple Schrodinger, really,” they said.

Despite this, many of the faithful and hundreds of defenders of unproven-in-any-way-by-reliable-peer-reviewed-journals-in-respectable-medical-science-publications alternative medicines have flocked to support the Church.

“Gravity, Evolution, The Big Bang… These are all just theories,” said long-time churchgoer Mia Thologie, who went on to add that she “of course totally understands the scientific definition of a theory and how it differs from a hypothesis or mere conjecture or postulation”.

“Theories aren’t fact. You want fact? 6000 years old, 7 day creation, talking snakes, strangely-no-longer-missing ribs – these are facts.”

Others have stated similar sentiments.

“The Church is absolutely spot on,” said homeopathic doctor, acutonics expert and crystal healing guru who assimilates scientific jargon and science-y words like “quantum” into his baloney to make it sound legitimate, Robin Hughs. “Just because easily-repeatable experiments with sound methodologies that follow strict, unchanging scientific principles and standards objectively obtain results that prove causation, underlying patterns and the general truth of a hypothesis, doesn’t mean that they’re true.”

The Catholic Church did, however, add that they would be equally happy to negotiate with scientists to come to an agreement.

“Just because we believe in talking snakes, virgin births and that homosexuality is an abomination that should be cured through vigorous whispering to yourself in a building filled with men in dresses, doesn’t mean we aren’t reasonable people,” he said. “We would be just as happy if they stopped asking questions. Either way, we don’t mind.”

Man self-immolates in front of High Court

Speculation, shock and rumours have swept Johannesburg this morning, after a man poured petrol all over himself outside the High Court, flicked a match and set himself ablaze in front of a crowd of hundreds of traumatised onlookers.

"Why did he do it?" stammered haunted-for-life magistrate and part-time blogger Justice Laaifen Pryson. "What could be so singularly awful in our country that he would douse himself in fuel, light a match, and end it all? Crime? Poverty? Worsening socioeconomic disparities and widespread political corruption under a nepotistic, loyalist government? What could possibly drive him to such desperate lengths?"

Despite the endless speculation, police investigators from the Pretoria SAPS now think there could be a simpler, far more obvious reason.

"Footage pulled from surveillance cameras around the area clearly shows why he would be driven to such an act," said Chief Investigator Ian Competance. "He was wearing a T-Shirt which, upon close examination, shows adverts for not one or two but THREE Leon Schuster movies: Mad Buddies,Mama Jack, and - God help us all - Mr Bones 2. Eurgh...

According to the Centre for the Management of Hazardous, Dangerous, Toxic and Radioactive Substances (CMHDTRS) , Leon Schuster Films - know by their empirical chemical name LSF - are a highly dangerous waste product of the South African film industry, with over a million DVD cases of the deadly, radioactive substance being dumped in Afrikaans households and struggling small-town Mr Video stores every year.

"LSF is clearly one of the most toxic forms of industrial waste that South Africa produces," said Dr John Doe of the CMHDTRS. "Prolonged exposure can cause insanity, blindness, hysteria, brain damage, full-body cringes so powerful they can shatter bone and burst internal organs, and the dangerous tendency to think a scene centred loosely around a protagonist losing control of his bowels in a public place as hilarous, original comedy."

He went on to add that the substance was even deadly to those who only suffered partial exposure.

"Such as the blind and the deaf," he said, pointing to a sheaf of paper covered in graphs, long latin words and numbers that looked very sciency indeed.

Police reports now confirm the man's cause of death, saying that the utter lack of mirrors in his house meant that he would not have known his exposure to lacklustre fart-joke comedy weakly hinged around racial differences in a modern South Africa until it was too late.

"He was probably in a rush to work and pulled on the first T-shirt his hand grabbed out the cupboard. He was probably in public for hours... Jesus," read the offical police statement.

The public is hereby formally warned to immediately destroy any LSF they should come in to contact with.

"Fire, a hammer, a knife, a shredder that you don't care whether it breaks or not - these are all scientifically tried and tested methods of dealing with LSF," said Dr Doe. "Please, people, don't take any chances."

This is the second such incident in the past four months, after a man stood in a high-speed industrial blender after being forced to watch an Adam Sandler movie marathon with his eight-year-old brother, who reportedly found the films "hilarious".

Bunch of men kick bag of wind into net between poles

pic: The Guardian

Thousands of people screamed in mixed frustration and celebration last weekend - much like they did in the hundreds of weekends before - after a bunch of millionaires used their feet to roll a plastic packet of air into a white nylon net suspended between two metal poles.

The group of millionaires, who all wore the same colour just with different numbers on their backs, cheered in victory for the crowd, after just narrowly stopping another bunch of same-colour-shirt wearing millionaires from doing the same thing to them on a big patch of grass in London surrounded by thousands of screaming non-millionaires.

"I know that we have had lots of exciting examples in the past of a bunch of grown men getting overpaid for what is really just toeing around an imported Chinese piece of plastic pumped up with what we breathe on a daily basis," said a 42-year-old man dressed all in red who also isn't a millionaire, "but this particular 90 minutes was exceptional. There was kicking. There was passing. There was booting. There were balls going into nets and fully grown men kissing their hands and pointing to the sky as if God was favouring them in that particular 90 minutes instead of ending world hunger or war or disease. It was brilliant - certainly nothing like the last 40 or so 90-minute ball-kicking sessions I paid to go and watch every weekend last year."

The 90 minutes - which was more like 97 minutes after the man with the whistle not kicking the ball awarded extra time for the millionaires' impressive acting skills - was not, however, without controversy, with hundreds of thousands of people in smoky bars across the world screaming their opinions at TV screens.

Pictured: fan's impression of whistle-blower

On more than one occasion, the whistle-bearer's quality of eyesight was brought into question, along with his sexuality, mental condition, and whether or not he was being unfair to a particular bunch of millionaires.

Following the success, the bunch of men will go on to play another bunch of men next week, with the hope of winning a big metal cup.

"We're going to win it again, I just know it," said another fan (who has no real connection with the bunch of millionaires and yet becomes indignantly defensive if you question their skills or qualities as a bunch of ball-kickers), before adding in a few homophobic digs at the other teams' millionaires, and making a snide remark about their track records of winning big metal cups. "Those other clubs haven't won a title in years. We're obviously better, because reasons."

Meanwhile, the head multi-millionaire in charge of the other millionaires said that he was excited about the results, and that they could not have done it without their loyal fanbase.

"I drive a very nice, very expensive car that uses a lot of fuel," said the also Men's-Cologne-and-underwear-and-sports-shoes model, who took time out of being in scandals in the tabloids to speak to gathered reporters. "Without their endless support, I wouldn't be where I was today. I'd be in a lower league, probably, making as much as a doctor or teacher makes. Christ, imagine that?"

Analysts have since confirmed that the air-bag-kickery was the most exciting thing to happen in human history since last weekend, when a bunch of yellow-shirted millionaires kicked their sack of air into a net belonging to red-and-blue-shirted millionaires.

"It certainly is a very important piece of human history," said a man who used to kick air packets and is now paid to give his opinion about kicking air packets on TV, "which is why we filmed the air-packed-kicking and will play that particular fifteen seconds of air-bag-booting in slow motion every four minutes, for the whole day. And not just on dedicated packet-kicking TV channels, no. We'll also pretend it's news and tack it on for 30 minutes after the news anchor has sufficiently depressed you with all those far-less-newsworthy stories about a couple of kidnapped girls in some African country."

Readers wanting to know more about this story can just turn to any news channel or walk into any bar.

Survivor South Africa to be set in South Africa

Fans of survival drama and underused hashtags jumped with joy today, after producers at DSTV and MNet announced their executive decision to set the next overhyped and underwatched season of Survivor South Africa “actually in South Africa.”

“We’ve been thinking about South Africa and the direction the show has been taking in the past few years, and we wanted to make Survivor into the most harsh, difficult and drama-filled show around,” said MNet CEO Ree Peatz. “At first we thought to maybe follow Bear Grylls and set the show somewhere bleak and depressing and very difficult to survive: like the endless desertscape of the Sahara, or the bleak and frozen ardour of the Artic Tundra, or even the Rhodes University Accounting 3 lecture venue – very few survive that place. But then we realised that actually we don't have to go halfway across the world to find such a depressing and difficult environment to put our contenders.”

It soon became clear to them that the best place to set a show that depicts surviving against all odds was actually South Africa.

“For many, many years now South Africa has slowly declined into a perfect environment to shoot a harsh and unforgiving reality show based on surviving against all odds,” said Peatz. “This will make the show more locally relevant, more bold and representative, and also save us a fortune on travel expenses and filming costs.”

The much-anticipated upcoming season, says Peatz, will be set in one of South Africa’s townships.

“In the past, our contenders basically took the equivalent of a three-week all-expenses paid vacation to a lovely tropical beach paradise in the Indian Isles. There, they were guaranteed at least two meals a day, a crude shelter that kept out most of the rain and bugs, clean drinking water, and free, world-class on-site medical attention if anything went wrong,” said Peatz, outlining the show’s shortcomings. “But here, closer to home, thousands of normal South Africans have none of those wonderful relaxations and privileges.”

The show will now have a set of more contemporary challenges and aims.

“They will have to contend with things like low pay, criminal working conditions, awful socioeconomic disparity, increasingly more frequent rising costs of living, widespread crime, an inefficient and overtaxed police service, no healthcare, endless strikes, terrible basic and secondary education, disease, malnutrition, unemployment,” said show organiser Ian Munity. “And in this new show, they won’t be set weekly challenges. We’ll just declare whoever is left alive by the end of the season as the winner. The symbolic act of snuffing out their torch will be replaced by the even more symbolic act of Digging A Hole And Lowering A Box Holding Their Lifeless Corpse Into It Before Burying It and Saying Some Prayers.”

Many South Africans have, however, voiced their displeasure at the decision saying they used to love the escapism and sense of wonderful relaxation the show brought.

“I used to escape my problems by watching a bunch of unknown ‘celebrities’ and douchebags argue on a beach over who said what to who while actually eating a proper meal and not facing the daily dreariness of everyday life in SA,” said one of the seven people who watch the show. “It was nice to be able to get away from it all, you know? To lose yourself in a world of clean water and only slightly shoddy houses, with so little tension between the various colour groups with actual meat to go on your rice. Now i'm going to have to watch real people dealing with real problems - what kind of a reality TV show is that?”

Media analysts now confirm that this is the biggest change of scenery for a reality television show, ever since MNet made the decision to cancel Judge Judy and other similar court dramas and put cameras in front of Oscar Pistorius.

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.”

Blatter and Brazil "won't last, just a fling" - relationship experts

Relationship experts have extended their warnings and concerns to buxom young bombshell Brazil this morning, saying they believe current flame Sepp Blatter "does not have her best interests at heart", and that she should as soon as possible get herself out of what is sure to become a traumatic and abusive relationship.

"Brazil is young, carefree and just mad about Football," said concerned friends and family after they read the report, "and so we can see why she'd be attracted to Blatter - but she's not thinking straight. She doesn't know what she's getting into, what huge ramifications that await her down this dark, miserable and dreary path."

Blatter has reportedly moved into his new love interest's home - but is already showing his dark side.

"She's had to force some of her brothers and sisters to move out and make room for all the strangers Blatter knows, and I think he's making her spend all her money on things for him," said Brazil's close friend and neighbour Ura Guay. "He doesn't care about her. He just wants to ravage her, take, take, take, and then one day, after all the partying and celebration is over, she'll wake up hungover and mired in debt and see that he has left her, the bastard, and is now fawning over some young Italy or England, showering the same empty promises and praise over them even as he slips their wallets and jewellery into his coat pocket."

Pictured: Swiss hunk, badboy, Micheal Caine
impersonator, and Brazil's toxic new
boyfriend, Blatter.

Already past lovers and weeping, struggling exes have added their voices to the controversy, saying that "Blatter is sexy, yes, that's undeniable - every young country wants him" but that "entering a relationship with him was a sure sign of desperation and misery to come."

"I can remember how he acted like I was the only country he cared about," said a teary South Africa, who told a sympathetic media of their abusive relationship. "He made me feel young, proud, like I was actually equal to all those other first-world babes he's been with, stringing me along with all these lies about how I was the envy of all the other countries, how I could be the best in the world - despite my current medical condition, Bafana-bafanaeriosis."

Soon, she said, things turned sour.

"He started buying all this stuff we don't need - like an upper-middle-class Capetonian in a Woolworths," said South Africa, hugging her knees. "I told him, again and again, that I had health bills, socioeconomic issues, I needed proper housing and to improve my infrastructure. But he was a toxin, addictive and dangerous. He showed me a big, glitzy world, and we went mad, buying massive stadiums, overhauling city busses and all this other stuff."

She wiped away her tears, struggling to contain sobs, of which we got a wonderful 1080p HD close-up.

"And the worst part is, it now all just lies around, unused and gathering dust, a haunting reminded of the mistakes I made. I should have known! There's a reason he looks like a Sith Lord!"

However, experts now predict that the toxic fling will burn out in about a month - perhaps even less.

"He's been harping on to close friends and mates in the bar about how fiiiiiine Qatar is looking, that he just wants to get in there and rip that ass up, take what he can and dump the bitch," said one analyst. "He's sick."

And in related news, a country is increasingly concerned and anxious that it will soon be eligible to host a World Cup. The country appeared on TV this morning, a sorry mess biting its nails and pacing back and forth, to say that it was probably as worried as Planet XL22194 was when it was diagnosed in 2004 by Astrophysicists as "capable of one day supporting the rampant ecological destruction commonly known as 'human life'."