Son developing nicely into entitled bigot

According to South African parents André and Jannita du Plessis, legal guardians of five-year-old Michael du Plessis, their son is “well on track” to becoming a privileged, entitled little shit with tendencies for casual racism and sexism.

“We’ve been working hard at this for a while now, and so it’s nice to see it all starting to pay off,” they said to gathered press this morning after young Michael said his first bad words about the ANC.

“He called them a bunch of corrupt thieves and liars, and then added that the blerrie country was going to hell,” they said with beaming smiles. “Usually, we have to tell him what to think and what political views to hold, but this he came up with all by himself!”

However, his parents said that they only became aware of the full extent of his progression into a fine young man who thinks the world owes him a favour and that his particular hubristic worldview is unassailable when he pulled out an empty beer can and a pair of braai tongs at breakfast yesterday and asked them, “can I tell you what’s wrong with this blerrie country?”

“Ever since his first words – ‘dada’ and ‘vok die ANC’ – we’ve known he was a natural,” they said, “but this was the cherry on the cake. Or rather, the ’blerrie’ on the hate.”

Since the announcement, his parents say they have ramped up their program to include sexism and homophobia.

“The other day we overheard him telling a friend to stop being such a faggot. When we hear him using such language, we immediately brought him an xBox, the latest Call of Duty game, a chat headset and uncapped high-speed ADSL internet. He now spends almost three hours a day belittling other kids his age and calling their sexuality into question after giving them a thorough teabagging.”

Michael is a natural, apparently, and is now taking his own initiative in his education.

“We were talking to a couple of his friends and they told us that he claims to have had sexual relations with half of their sisters and mothers, which is a nice touch that we didn’t even think about.”

And in related news, the Du Plessis’s daughter Chanté is also making her own rapid progress in becoming a lovely little sex object, with no real opinion, dreams, desires or ambition in life but to be a “nice piece of ass”.

“We make her watch at least eight hours of television a day, with enriching, empowering shows to further her growth, said her parents, “like Real Housewives of Orange Country, Geordie Shore and Mob Wives. Before you know it, we’ll be starring alongside her in our own episode of 16 and Pregnant.

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!”

GuitarHero World Number One still sucks at guitar

Despite spending hundreds of hours on his plinky-plonky plastic GuitarHero guitar and winning dozens of international competitions across the globe, 22-year-old Eric Layla told reporters this morning that he is still terrible at “normal guitar”.

“I get a perfect 300-note streak time and time again,” he said, holding an old Taylor guitar out of which he could not coax even a shabby Wonderwall, that crappy beginner-guitarist’s bread and butter. “I get Ultra Perfect scores, even on Master difficultly, and I can destroy even the third piano solo on The Beatle’s Here Comes the Sun. It makes no sense. I should be at least as good as Angus Young by now.”

He said that while the Ten-Thousand-Hour rule had proven successful for many other video game addicts, it did not seem to be working at all for him.

“Violent video games make you violent, and all the people that play these turn into brutal cold killers with 100% accuracy on the gun range – so why can’t I shred like a boss yet? I mean, I can hit over 893 000 points on Smoke on the Water, and I can’t even do a barre chord yet,” he said. “You know, whatever ‘barre chord’ means.”

Scientists have since looked into this complaint.

“We have done science and chemicals and graphs over this problem, and I think we have found the solution,” said lead researcher Tess Tubes. “You see, where games like DJ Hero allow for the fully real and visceral experience of plugging in a flashstick, pressing play, and then touching buttons and turning dials that do nothing for three hours, GuitarHero is a little different.”

The problem, she said, lies with the instrument.

“What we need,” she said, “is a GuitarHero controller that has not just five buttons with different colours, but instead six rows of buttons with 22 columns. For a fully real experience, he should up the difficultly rating past Master all the way to Real Life.”

Artist's impression of what the all-new Future controller
might look like

Creators of the game have since said that they have taken heed of these complaints, saying they were coming up with a new game that more accurately represented the instrument.

“We just have some legal hurdles to vault,” they said in a statement yesterday, “but already we are working on GuitarHero: Real Life.”

The game, they said, would have a number of different modes.

“Practice Mode is set in the lifelike setting of your room, where you spend hours stumbling and fumbling away on one particular chord progression,” they said. “Once you have mastered this early campaign, you move onto Shitty Gig Mode, where you will cope with terrible equipment, a drunk, uninterested crowd, and a guy who keeps coming up to the mic and asking you to play songs you don’t know.”

However, at this stage the game is all in an early development phase.

“We have a whole lot of ideas – like towards the end of Shitty Gig Mode, we might have ‘Friends Asking You To Play At Their Society's Event For Free Mode’, and maybe a ‘Your First ‘Real’ Gig In A City, Which Only Your Sisters And Mom Come To Mode’. Like we said, it’s all in the early stages, but as you can see, when it comes out, it’ll be like you’re actually playing a real guitar.”

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.