Artistic tendencies turn piece of crap into theatrical genius

It was a close call for local theatre production company UpStage Productions this week, after theatre critics’ and art reviews’ tendencies to obsess over themes and metatextual references made their latest show Glass Grey Sky an “insightful, profound piece that evokes a self-aware critique of postmodernism” instead of just a piece of really crap theatre with no real point or production value.

The show, which was written and directed by Arya Dzjoking and featured out-of-tune violins, out-of-sync choreography and seven instances of actors forgetting their lines, has been hailed by reviewers and physical theatre experts as “just ambiguous enough to be called ‘spectacular’”.

“To the lay man or woman, it might have looked really awful,” said reviewer and long-time Physical Theatre expert Harold Cress. “I mean, if it wasn’t for my ability to look past the flat, dead soundtrack and interpret this as a direct symbol of the paucity of life and lack of vim and vigour in the post-modern subject who inhabits an abyss of futile dreams, or my training which has prepared me to look into those expressionless, bland faces with too much make-up caked on their cheeks and read within them a scathing critique of the deadness of our Self in the modern digitalised era and our obsession with socially mediated appearances no deeper than a thimble that in no way form a meaningful representation of our true selves and beings, then it just might have been the worse, trite piece of shit of I’ve ever watched. But like I said, below the surface, it was genius.”

The show, which has purportedly gone over the heads of over seven thousand people without Dramatic Arts degrees or Arts Journalism training since its opening last weekend, will now tour the country, debuting at R150 a ticket.

“Some people have gone to see our show and been all like ‘oh, I totally didn’t get that, what the hell did I just watch?’,” said show director, producer and choreographer Sim Bolism, “but then again, what would those artless, ignorant pricks know about dance?”

Singing talent will be a factor this year – Idols SA

Singing talent search television hit South African Idols has shocked the world this morning, after they announced that during the upcoming 14th season of their dream-destroying drama show, talent and musical ability would be actually considered as a factor by the judges.

“We know it’s a huge, bold new step that seems to totally go against what we as a show have stood for this past decade or so, but we think that judging our contestants on singing talent will be just the breath of fresh air this show needs,” said Idols show director Noah Melody. “We’re still going to stick to the other tried and tested, much-loved criteria for singers in our show – for example how ugly or irritating you are, and how dead your parents are or how many AIDS orphans you played guitar with at that charity – but we think this could really spice things up a bit.”

The show's researchers and interview desks have already started scouring the country for the 73 people you’ll actually see on TV standing and singing in front of the judges.

“We think it’s going to be a nice addition,” said junior show researcher Lexi Ploytation. “Just think of how great and controversial the show will be when the judges purposefully drop a better, talented singer and advance some talentless, tone-deaf douche so as to rile up the thousands of screen-bound sheep?”

Though Idols has, in the past, been criticised as a shallow, exploitative and nasty belittlement of human beings and their dreams, the show’s producers and judges have defended it.

“We’re here to help people. Well, person, to be exact. We take that guy or girl from an the entire country's population and turn them into a star,” he said, “we even help them to make that obligatory one-hit crash and burn album they make after winning and subsequently stepping into a life of obsolescence as the country moves onto the next fad star. So what if we utterly demolish the hopes of people we trick into auditioning?”

In spite of the controversy, media pundits have claimed that this year’s show is set to be the biggest yet.

“Hell,” said talent contest media analyst Misty Vhoats, “there might even be three winners this year!

Hell “not actually that bad”

Following a long, happy reunion with friends, family, ex-colleagues, old girlfriends and almost 80% of his Facebook acquaintances, Derek Henderson, once 34, told reporters this morning that Hell, the infamous pit of fire and brimstone, that dark torture hole of eternal damnation, is actually “not really all that bad.”

“I’ll admit, when I first got here I was really anxious,” he told reporters gathered around an Ouija board. “I’d heard all sorts of terrible stories of pain and endless suffering, and so I understandably started gnashing my teeth. But when I was waiting in the eight-hundred kilometre queue outside the black gates, I ran into my all old friends and the people I knew back on the physical realm. I was too busy catching up to even notice that my soul was beyond redemption!”

However, Henderson’s list of positive aspects didn’t stop there.

“It’s always so tropical and warm down here, which makes a nice change from living in cold, cold Canada. The décor is excellent – like an authentic Dark Ages-style Gothic feel – and the volcano hell pits put on an excellent fireworks display every few seconds. Sure, I might be steeped in incomparable agony every walking moment and I might be pained by the ceaseless torment of knowing I'll forever be damned to unending and horrific torture, but apart from that I honestly don’t have any complains.”

This revelation comes just days after reports by members of the heavenly host that heaven, the final resting place of joy, elation and wonder, is “sooooo flippen’ boring, bro”.

According to reports by Gerrie Huuysmans, who arrived at the pearly gates just three days ago, there are no guns, no sport, no alcohol and no sex in heaven, making it more boring even than his hometown of Boksburg.

“It’s all this flippen’ moffie choir-boy nonsense of white robes and angel wings and halos,” he told reporters from a burning bush last Friday. “Yes, you’re filled with constant ecstacy, and it's quite a kiff exlusive party 'cos the bouncer only lets in the righteous and truly hot binnets, but even being happy gets kak dull if you can’t chug back a few brewskies whilst checking out the nasty binnets in hell who would do the freaky stuff. I can’t believe I spent my whole life being a good Christian and staying on the right path, and now I can’t even enjoy the guilty-boner-giving things Leviticus openly condemns.”

Satan, however, has said that "they won't enjoy it for long."

"Not because they're basically eternally fucked," he explained, sharpening his dildo-trident, "but because he'll have to share it with that bunch of flat, characterless dicks he calls 'friends'."

Local teens “literally just cannot even”

Following what Tiffany said to Jessica this morning at the Bayside High School cafeteria, 17-year-old Britney Wilson has reportedly told the media that she “can't, [she] just literally cannot even right now”.

Friends and peers at the teen girl's school have echoed her sentiments, saying that, they too, right now, could also literally just not even.

“I mean, I can’t,” said her lab partner Amber. “I can’t. I try, but I just cannot, I literally just can’t right now. I’m done.”

This shocking report comes just days after an in-depth study of High Schools, in which it was discovered that, on a scale from Literally to Right Now, the average seventeen-year-old girl Just Can’t Even.

Experts have however, defended the reaction of these students, saying that such an inability to be able to right now was “perfectly justified” considering what that hoe-bitch said to Jess.

“It makes total sense that they would not be able to right now. What she [Tiff-Tiff] said to her [Jess] was just… wow, right?” said Socioanthropologist John Henderson of the Institute for Social Studies. “As the day goes by, many students who formerly could will find that they can’t, and perhaps a small percentage of these learners will then go on to literally be unable to just now. I heard what she said, and even I, a grown man, literally cannot.”

However, some students at the high school have defended Tiffany’s actions, saying that quote, “that skank Jess totally got what was coming to her”

“The bitch deserved it,” said in a text to us that contained far fewer vowels, grammar and comprehensible English than we’re putting across. “I mean, have you seen the way she wears her hair all up and messy […] god, and her glasses, what’s up with those?”

Some have even gone a step further, saying that although they totally think it was so frikken bitchy what Tiff said, they had to admit that “come on, we were all thinking it, Tiff just said it.”

Xbox user accidentally destroys all of the Middle East

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and all of the Middle East have been reduced to a single charred, radioactive and smoking desert devoid of life this weekend, after an Xbox Live user accidentally logged into the United States Military Defence Network server and went onto inflict what he is calling “the greatest high score of all time” against the group of Arab countries.

According to a Commission headed by the Supreme Court and the Senate, 14-year-old Jake Ericson accidentally logged onto the Pentagon’s wireless servers at about 3:14pm yesterday afternoon after he put new hit First Person Shooter game Call of Duty: Ghosts into his console’s disc tray. Ericson then proceeded to load what he thought was a special downloadable Drone Strike mission, which resulted in the deaths of some 42 million people.

“Usually in these games, if you kill a friendly soldier or a civilian – except in that No Russian airport mission controversy, of course – you die,” said the Commission in its final report. “But outside of the game, there was no such limitation placed on Ericson. His pursuit of topping the leaderboard was unhindered.”

Ericson, who has mastered this game over many years and versions of Call of Duty, was reportedly unstoppable.

“When we saw one of our drones go rogue and start this senseless and horrifying slaughter, we tried to shoot it down with counterdrones, missiles, and countermeasures,” said Military spokesman Hope Infyre, “but he just pressed the Right Trigger button to deploy flares and barrel roll.”

In spite of the controversy, however, Infyre said that they had to look at the “silver lining in all of this”.

“This just shows us how warfare is evolving,” he said. “We shouldn’t punish him, but instead learn from him. If we could boil down war to just one drone, think how much that could save us in yearly budget allocations on Defence.”

The Department of Defence has since considered offering Ericson and other COD fans full-time positions training a future generation of warriors, but they say there are still some legal considerations to be ironed out.

“First of all, we’ll need to amend or even possibly rewrite the Geneva Convention and its laws on the rules of engagement,” said the DOD in a statement, “because right now it doesn’t say anything about the ethics, morals or legality of calling everyone around you a bunch of noob faggots and then teabagging their dead corpses after you shoot them in the back.”

Man opens restaurant after thinking up hilarious food pun

Local IT technician and part-time blogger Eric Muller is reportedly excited today, having unveiled to the media his plan to open a new small café restaurant after he thought of a “really hilarious” pun centred around food yesterday afternoon.

“I was just walking along, minding my own business, eating an egg, polony and cheese sandwich, when a friend commented on how disgusting my sandwich looked,” he said rapidly, stuttering every few seconds he was so fired up.

“I told him that it was the only edible thing I could make with the ingredients remaining in my cupboard, and that was when it hit me. Eggers can’t be Cheesers. God, I’m a genius.”

Muller now joins over 2000 other small businesses, food stalls and quirky art shops across the country with similarly clever names. Such restaurants account for over 53% of all income in small towns across the nation.

“I haven’t really figured out where I’ll open it, what my business plan is or how I’ll secure funding, and I don’t really know anything about cooking or the food industry,” he said, “but I think I’ve got the most important element figured out. The rest should just come along by itself.”

However, his announcement has been met by scepticism from the clever-pun-business community, saying that his plan is “entirely inadequate.”

“He needs a lot more than just a clever name,” said co-owner of extermination company No More Mr Mice Guy, Jeffery Smokes. “He also needs a clever, well-designed logo and really cool overalls. Otherwise, he’s doomed to fail.”

Others, such as Jake Harding (owner of local fruit and veg stall Melon Cauli) and Callen Buffalo (owner of alcohol outlet Liquor Bru) agree.

“You need dedication and commitment to survive in this industry,” they said. “Whether that means having the ability to come up with clever weekly or daily specials on the menu that are also really clever puns, or employing a very self-aware brand of humour for the curios, trinkets and memorabilia you sell in your wife’s store inside the shop, you need to be on your game.”

Readers wanting to know more on this story can check out our new website, www.SickAndSatired.com

Swaziland witches protest govt flight restriction

The Swaziland Association for Witchcraft and Wizardry has this morning announced plans for a series of strikes and protest actions against the Swaziland government following its controversial decision to restrict all witches from flying above 150m.

The flight altitude restrictions, which were put into law last week, would fine any lawbreaking masters of muti, the dark arts or black magic R500 000 for going over the newly imposed limit.

"It's backwards and utterly ridiculous to put in such a law. It makes no sense," said Swaziland citizen Matt Henderson, who asked not to be named. "No one would have ever thought that such a law would even be entertained by citizens and lawmakers - I mean, we all know Swazi witches use their brooms to fling potions at houses and perform incantations, not fly."

The Swaziland government, however, is adamant that such a move is necessary.

"We can't have sorcery in plane engines," said Civil Aviation Authority spokeswoman Seess Wichcroft. "The tokoloshe-bringing hazards they pose on ground-level must not be allowed in the skies." He added, however, that witches were still free to fly below this level. "We don't want the people of other countries to think we're backwards, anti-progressive and witchophobic."

However, the law has been extensively critised by the Sangoma and N'anga Association of Southern Africa.

"Many of our members are not evil witches, but are still grouped under this hurtful law. Some of them make a fair amount of their money protecting would-be air travellers from the dangers of modern aviation," said Chairwizard Aldus Bumblemoore. "We also have a ten-year contract to provide muti application processes to all the 747s and A-380s in the Swazi fleet." This, said Bumblemoore, constitutes an illegal reversal of a contractual agreement, as the airlines argue that they no longer need protection.

He went to outline the dangers of this arguement. "You see, they haven't yet passed legislature restircting the operational limits of tokoloshes and evil spirits. Unless we have formal laws and limitations on where these insidious creatures can practice their trickery, passengers are still in danger."

The government declined to comment on the matter, saying that they were still waiting for their bone-throwers and intestine-readers to get back to them with an official response.

Study finds 96% of men “really good at doing the sex”

Recent inferences in the media and society that not all men are irresistible and fantastic lovers were utterly shattered today, after a survey has found that a staggering 96% of men are “like, really really great at doing the sex” and that 93% of men have “totally massive” dicks.

The survey, which was conducted over the past three years and involved over 160 000 male respondents between the ages of 12 and 42, has irrefutably found out that a vast majority of men are without equal in the sack, are very well hung, are excellent chefs, bone different totally hot binnets each weekend and have definitely banged both your mother and your sisters.

“Recent media misconceptions might paint men as just these overhyping, overexaggerating fools who are of average girth and length, and who have far fewer sexual conquests than they claim to have when surrounded by mates and various quantities of alcohol,” said head of the research team, Muhst Askew, “but these claims – according to our scientific research – are just a bunch of lies.”

The survey comes hot on the heels of last month’s shock scientific discovery in which a survey found that over 92% of all men are “completely dangerous cage fighters, deadly brawlers and MMA masters” who could “totally take like three guys at once in a bar”.

“It’s just like I’ve been saying for years,” said Tap-out t-shirt porting MMA fan, Marshall Harts. “I mean, maybe someone tunes me or checks me skiff in the bar, or looks at my chick. Boom! Elbow to the face! I mean, I wouldn’t want to though. I might, you know, fuckin’ totally kill someone,” he said before adding that “someone would definitely go to hospital [and] I don’t know if I want to do that to another guy.”

However, in light of these revelations, many experts and members of the public are now asking why there are not similar studies of woman – a question that the scientific community has attacked viciously.

“We obviously can’t ask women, like Jennifer or Christine, my ex-girlfriends,” said Askew, “because they’d probably lie about how tiny and laughably inadequate my penis is, the lying skanks.”

Government secret service agent ordered to repay misused funds

Following the discovery of mismanagement and abuse of funds, equipment and their Code of Conduct, world-renowned British Secret Service Agency MI6 has ordered one of their most noted agents to reimburse them and the state.

Head of the MI6, Miss M (no surname), said in a press conference this morning that their leading agent and covert operative Mr Bond James Bond has been ordered to pay almost £12 million back to the agency.

“For a number of years now we have exercised a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy with the majority of our agents’ expenditure and behaviour in the field, and we’ve always thought the outcomes of their missions more important than the sums spent to achieve them,” she said. “But this is becoming ridiculous.”

M said that Mr Bond’s expenses account when out in the field was “exorbitantly high and completely out of proportion”.

“Something must be done to curb this wastefulness,” she said. “Every mission, we have to pick up the tab on endless Whiskeys, Dry Martinis shaken not stirred, and massive gambling debts – and we won’t even mention the condition he returns his Agency-issue equipment in, if he returns it at all!”

Quartermaster for the Agency, Q (also no surname), agreed with The Agency’s decision, saying that Bond’s reputation of carelessness and recklessness was costing British taxpayers millions of pounds a year.

“I work my ass off making these gadgets and disguised weapons so that his mission will be a success,” said Q. “Laser-beam watches, exploding pens, grappling-hook cellphones, gas-grenades disguised as two-pound coins – it doesn’t matter what ingenious contraption I devise. If he bothers to return it, it’s usually irreparably damaged. A little respect would be nice.”

Bond's excessive love of plastic surgery
has hit taxpayers hard.

Also hitting the taxpayers’ wallets was Bond’s overly excessive love for plastic surgery.

“Every few years, it’s like we’re getting a different Bond. He has his face and voice altered every couple of missions, and we have to pay for those expensive treatments as well as the cover stories to match it. I don’t even know who he is anymore: one minute he’s a throaty-baritone Scotsman going under the pseudonym ‘Connery’, and the next he’s a wiry, silver-haired Englishman under the passport name ‘Craig’. I can barely keep up.”

This is not the first bit of controversy to engulf the long-time secret agent, however, after recent calls by the Agency forced him into a rehabilitation and treatment program for drugs, alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases.

“It’s been an issue for year now – he’ll get hammered while on the job, and then invariably bang some Russian secret agent whose name is a weak sexual innuendo,” said the Agency’s statement. “But we’re pleased to report Mr Bond is making steady progress.”

The Agency is still cautious about the controversial operative, and has as a precautionary measure introduced a new set of gadgets so that Mr Bond does not sink back into his old ways.

“Our Quartermaster is now making all sorts of clever devices,” they said. “Including a breathalyser disguised as a ball-point pen, and a watch that dispenses condoms and a six-week course of antibiotics.”

Most wizards “horribly underprepared” for normal society

A new study co-released by the Ministry of Magic’s Departments of Education and Statistics has shocked the wand-wielding world this morning, after it unleashed a scathing indictment of Schooling for Witchcraft and Wizardry, saying that the mostly magic-focussed schooling system leaves almost 90% of young wizards “horribly unprepared” for normal and everyday society.

According to the study, many famous institutions, such as Hogwarts School, focus too much on “arcane and not-that-useful subjects such as Potions, Alchemy and Defense Against the Dark Arts” and entirely leave out vital fields of study such as languages, mathematics, statistics, geography, politics, and sexual education.

“It’s ridiculous,” said Minister of Magic Neville Shortbottom. “Our schools teach skills that you might use once or twice in your life, like Alohamora or Expecto Patronum and yet they teach you nothing about basic addition or subtraction, calculus, grammar or spelling. Many say, ‘oh, but we have magic for that,’ but what if you’re out in the Muggle world or don’t have your wand?”

This isn't the first criticism of the Wizarding world's governance, legislation, social bounds and norms and general normalised societal conventions. In early 2011, the Wizard world was accused of being a "racist, almost Apartheid-like separation of races, magic and non-magic, which revels in secrecy, discrimination, technophobia and incredibly dangerous and unnecessary inventions", such as the ridiculous risky game of Quidditch, and prisons full of dangerous sorcerers guarded by horrific soul-sucking demons (which are then posted to guard schools).

However, this is just the beginning of scandalous findings against the Magic world’s schooling system, after a seven-book report, published by Rowling, J et al exposed the horrific dangers that school-going wizards face on a daily basis.

This report, which focused mostly on Hogwarts School, showed how schools have declined under the headmastership of noted wizards, such as maybe-homosexual-maybe-not Albus Dumbledore.

“Hogwarts in particular was a real shock to all parents,” said Head of The Association for Schooling Safety, Mandy Castmoore. “We found that in many cases, there had been no rigorous HR-approved hiring policy or system of controls, background scrutiny or checks and balances for employing new teachers, often hiring dangerous and entirely unqualified madmen and servants of the Dark Lord himself as educational instructors and professors. The school grounds and classrooms are filled with deadly poisons and vicious animals, and there were no Emergency Medical Services available during any of the Quidditch Matches, which were often played in lightning and rain. Add to this the fact that some idiot thought it would be a good idea to let walking undead Soul-Vacuum-cleaners prowl around the campus on the flimsy basis of ‘security’, and you have yourself a ticking timebomb.”

Wizards who have been through the schooling system are reportedly already feeling the brunt of this ruinous education system.

“This guy walked into my shop the other day and bought a chocolate frog for 32 Knuts, a bag of unicorn hair and serpent’s venom for 53 Sickles, and a new wand for 6 Galleons 82 Sickles. When he asked me how much I owed him, I had no clue,”said shop owner Eric Mandelson. “When I admitted it to him and asked him if he knew, he said no, and we just stood there awkwardly. I don’t even have a calculator spell. I know Muggles have machines and 'apps' to prevent this problem, but even if I had one I wouldn’t know how to use it.”

The Ministry is reportedly now looking at improving wizards' and witches' education by replacing "arcane and outdated subjects", such as Divinity and Levitation, with more modern fields of study such as Maths, Physics and Language studies.

"We're excited," said Minister Shortbottom. "This will be a Patronus of knowledge right up the arse of the Dementor of ignorance."