News organisations publish response tips for ISIS fundamental extremists

Following infamous fundamental Islamic extremist and jihadist group ISIS’s release of a series of guidelines for journalists working in their area of operations, news organisations across the world have banded together to come up with an easy series of guidelines for ISIS’s particular business model.

“You know, we don’t really think we’re in any position to tell anyone how to do their jobs,” said one editor, “but really, when you look at ISIS’s overall public image and how the world reacts to their modus operandi, so to speak, we really think there is a lot they could learn from the news media.”

Thousands of corporate news agencies welcomed the Islamic State's document last week, which they are calling “a remarkable breath of fresh air” and “a stunning wake-up call.”

”People tend to get caught up in all the massive differences between each other and come up with hateful, intolerant assumptions about other groups,” said Sky News CEO Dale Emayle. “But seriously: tighter news controls, undying patriotic allegiance to the state, supervised journalism, restrictions on dissemination and publication, forced accreditation, prerequisite permission to publish opinions, unwavering respect and utter secrecy over state and military actions, threats of job loss, enforced licencing? Hell, we have such similar goals!”

Below, readers can find just a few of the abovementioned tips, hand-delivered by News Intern Eric Hilding, who did draw the short straw after all.

International News tips for ISIS agents

1. Avoid controversy

   Behead equal numbers of races, genders, nationalities. Any resurgent political movement can be easily marred by accusations of racism, xenophobia or sexism. In this regard, you should consider hiring an Human Resources manager, or perhaps even a Media representative who can mitigate damage and spin stories to produce favourable reception by the world community. We all have our own Rebekah Brooks, but it's how you manage the fallout that matters.

2. Know your bullets

   Lots of bullets look the same, but not all bullets were created equal. Sometimes it’s better to maim and disfigure an opposing US military soldier – perhaps blow his limb off or mentally and physically scar him for life – than kill him outright. Journalists know better than anyone else that dead people can’t tell a story. Sure, we can create hype over what are dead issues, like recycling the same garbage again and again, but making the dead speak (outside of sensationalist tabloid hack journalism about ghosts and phantoms and that garbage) for you is just impossible. Be sure to have a liberal sprinkling of landmines too. Nothing tells Momma and Papa Decadent Westerner to withdraw troops and vile hedonistic Imperial doctrine from pure Islamic states better than a trip to the prosthetics department.

3. Fear videos

   Right now, there are just some people who just don’t see your message. Well, fear not: our Western News standards and code of ethics loves nothing more than spreading the bowel-emptying, moan-inducing black stain of fear as far and as wide as possible. When you do behead someone, just send us the video. We’ll immediately publish it! We have huge twitter handles with millions of followers, international blogs and news websites translated into hundreds of different languages, and a keen, keen desire to accumulate as much scare material as possible. Hell, if your beheading is good enough, we’ll even slot it in before the latest BREAKING NEWS about a white person dying of Ebola.

4. Diversity and Equality: key business solutions

   Feminism and calls for sexual equality are commonplace for our generation. Women can behead just as well as men, and require less food and training than a male warrior. Also, a lot can be hidden under traditional dress. Having a diverse workplace will mean that, at the very least, you’ll be able to be considered as a progressive pioneer – an example for all reactionary extremist sects to follow with pride!

5. Don’t feed the trolls

   The internet can be a place where thousands will denounce you at every moment because of your religious beliefs and political leanings. Just goes to show you how strong their “democratic” views are, right? Stay strong, and don’t mind the haters. The journey is long, and Allah will grant you success if you stay the course. Infidels will see their tweets and support of “humanitarian intervention” and “basic rights” punished accordingly when Allah brings forth his glorious Yawm al-Qiyāmah and visits divine retribution and judgement on the world of sinners and nonbelievers.

6. Don’t lose your fun side

   Just because you’re undyingly committed to establishing an all-Islamic caliphate in Iraq and have to enforce rules and holy writ with an iron hand, doesn’t mean you have to go all square and lose your younger self. Keep things fresh. Use happy fonts, like Wingdings and Comic Sans to show everyone that Jihadist extremism doesn’t have to be all march-step and machine guns. Keep things interesting by mixing in realistic looking stones made of sponge with regular stoning rocks. And it’s always fun to mix up your legal proclamations and denouncements on twitter with an inspiring motivational poster or quote. Remember to use lots of smileys!

7. two words: Buzz. Feed.

   Well, one word. But if we in the industry have learnt anything from hyping up expensive journalism degrees at leading schools of Media Studies across the world just in time to support the cash-hungry, shallow switch over to a frivolous and new-standards-teabagging digital portal rolling in the filth and lies of its own quest for permanent virality, it’s how to kill things. Especially standards.
   You don’t need a journalism degree to make people see why you’re right even when you’re wrong. Peurile, simplistic and reductive arguments work great. Combine the most facile aspects of your vision in one small, less-than-300-word listicle with a catchy, eye-grabbing viral headline. Try anything like “Twelve things you didn’t know about ISIS” or “I thought ISIS was a terrorist group – and then I read this article!” or even “Eight reasons why you need to support ISIS – #6 blew me away!” You’ll have billions of shares in no time.

8. Let the West kill itself

   Honestly speaking, you don’t even need this unnecessary campaign of violence to end the sick and detestable Western culture of indulgence and decadence. Have you ever been to a McDonald’s? Have you ever watched any non-cable TV, or shows like America’s Got Talent or Honey Boo-Boo? Really, their shallow batshittery, combined with a culture of intolerance and easy gun access will do far more damage than a truckful of hateful, ideologically warped bigots ever could.

11 ways to double your iPhone battery life! #8 blew my mind!

You may not know this, but there are literally over ten reasons why your battery just doesn’t seem to last as long as it used to. Well, those days could be in the past – if you just follow our eleven easy steps!

1. Data

   Turning off data is a great way to save on precious battery life. You might not know this, but every time your phone sends a little nuggets of data into the internet cloud in the air around you, it uses up battery. Go into your settings and turn off wifi, mobile data, your personal hotspot and your Bluetooth. For good measure, disable your network carrier as well, and maybe even rip out the antenna circuitry. Every time your phone rings, it’s using up valuable electricity pieces from your already taxed battery.

2. Messages

   Believe it or not, but messaging friends, family and loved ones can use up valuable battery life. For every time you tell someone that you love them or miss them, or just fire off a quick text to tell your parents how your day was, these are seconds of battery going literally down the drain. Cut out this wasteful activity to conserve that valuable percentage.

3. Phone calls

   When you make a call, your phone takes small pieces of electricity stacked in tiny microscopic piles in your battery and turns it into sound and shoots it through the air with your antenna. This is almost the same as taking a short length of wire and shorting out the two terminals of your battery. I mean, just imagine how much electricity it must take to shoot a soundwave strong enough and accurate enough that it lands in the right phone halfway across the world? Lots and lots, you can guess. Maybe even as much as a thousand.

4. Photos, videos and sound recordings

   When you use your camera or microphone to convert sound energy into harddrive energy to be saved on your phone for later, it actually uses electricity. Yes! It’s true! And worse still, when you reconvert the harddisk megabyte energy back into sound and lights, science laws say that it uses the same amount of energy again. So next time you’re thinking of taking a picture of you and your girlfriend’s day at the beach, just think of how much battery you’ll save by just using the cheeseburger you had for lunch to convert these things into memory energy to be stored in the brain and heart.

5. Being on

   Thousands of scientific studies have proven time and time again that when your iPhone is switched on, whether it be during the day or late at night, at work or at home, even if its locked or in Flight Mode, it uses up a major portion of your battery. In fact, even with the measures above, this little horrible function of the iPhone means it will ALWAYS run out of batter no matter what. Turn it off, and you’ll be like a housewife leaving her abusive alcoholic husband: you’ll save yourself months of battery.

6. Applications

   Apps use data and battery energy whether you’re using them or you’re not. But it doesn’t have to be like this: just double-tap the home button to see your open apps, and then slide them up to quit them and free up some battery life. Then uninstall the apps to prevent future battery life usage.

7. Day Light Savings

   This one is a no-brainer! Science has proven that turning your clocks forward ahead during the winter months can improve battery life for up to an hour. *note, using this tip may simultaneously decrease battery life for up to an hour

8. Having only one iPhone

   With the well-padded bank account belonging to you or your parents that you normally use to buy Apple products, why not double you battery life by simply purchasing another iPhone? Lucky for you, Apple’s incredible Cloud services allow instant updates and sharing of videos, photos, contacts and all your data between devices, meaning that it will be like you never even swapped phones! Repeat this trick for infinite battery!

9. Numerical literacy

   Reading and writing is a curse. But if you can’t read numbers, 31% might as well by 150%. This tried-and-tested technique has the added bonus that, since you cannot physically mark or comprehend the passage of time in standardised units, it will seem as if hours or even days have gone by between plugging in your device. How cool is that?!

10. Not having a Doctorate in Advanced Quantum mechanics that allows you to manipulate exotic matter states to invent an infinite-capacity battery

    Having an expensive degree and over 37 years of experience with the erratic and unpredictable behaviour of subatomic particles, which allows you to invent a super battery that accumulates and retains an infinite charge, potentially holding all the energy in the universe like a small, plastic rectangular blackhole of electricity, is something you might want to look into getting if you really want to stretch that white bar as far as it will go.

11. iPhones not being Samsungs

    One of the most crucial battery-stealing hassles of the modern iPhone is that they aren’t manufactured by the South Korean multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. But if you just slap an Apple sticker on the back like you did with your car and guitar to make sure everyone knows you're an Apple Customer, no one will even have time to notice the difference because they’ll be too busy wallowing in their crippling jealousy that your phone can run forever without ever needing recharging until the end of time or until the universe stretches too far out, causes a net distribution of energy across the entirety of known existence and kills everyone and everything we’ve ever loved in a colossal, frozen and lifeless void of final entropy.

EA celebrates 20th anniversary of releasing the same game

EA Games – Challenge everything (except the core gameplay mechanics and central ideas)

Following the successful launch of their 2014 edition of their FIFA World Cup football game on as many different videogame consoles as profit-makingly possible, videogames giant Electronic Arts (EA) have today celebrated their massive 20-year anniversary of releasing the same sports game.

“We’re just so happy,” said EA CEO Ian Ishals. “It’s taken years of perseverance, of stifling creative thought and internally repressing the resurgence of innovative concepts or new takes on the tired and over-done format of sports games, but we’ve done it.”

FIFA World Cup 2014 Brazil (which was originally penned to be released under the title FIFA Football Game Number 39) is the latest version of their original 2001 gameplay mechanics and basic coding – but the company is already hard at work updating the player names of this game to be released under the title FIFA World Cup Quatar 2022.

“We used to think that making inventive, breathtaking leaps in gameplay or never-before-seen concepts was necessary to make an impact on gaming culture – kind of like the massive change from ICO into Shadow of the Colossus or like they did with Borderlands, seamlessly combining elements of disparate gaming genres into one amazing product,” said head of the FIFA game design team, Cody Haxx, “but then we remembered we make sports and car games. So we just changed the names, shifted some stats, slapped a new coat of graphics on it, and bam! There you go!”

EA, which has been hard at work mastering how to release the same game with the illusion of novelty enough to dupe consumers, first found success in their global franchise The Sims, which has seen enough editions, versions, expansions, sequels and DLC-addons to last a lifetime and is entering its 2,758th instalment.

“What we’ve accomplished with that game is phenomenal,” they said. “You’d think consumers would notice our offering the same DLC pack each time we release a sequel – like we did with that IKEA furniture content pack – but no. They love it so much, they keep coming back for more.”

Fans are ecstatic.

“Taking the ladder out the pool, building a house with no doors to watch your Sims piss themselves, pass out and eventually die… these things never get old!” said 28-year-old gamer Creed Eitkard.

This anniversary celebration comes just one year after the Electronic Arts made history for winning the International Ecological Responsibility Award, for being so utterly dedicated to recycling trash.

Dear Black Bloggers (A Response to Dear White South Africans)

Emotion can be a dangerous thing. Sure, anger can lend to our words and actions a passionate intensity that enables a vociferous, unbidden expression of what we’re feeling at the time, but it also brings with it a dangerous cloud of obscurity to our thoughts, a choking fog that surmounts clarity and seeps in at the cracks of our rhetoric and renders it illogical, irrational.

Which is why when I read a Facebook-furore piece yesterday entitled “Dear White South Africans” , I was unsurprised to see what can only be described as dangerous, illogical generalisations at play in the form of that ever-emotional issue, race.

The context for this article was the silly Braai Day thing that happens to override Heritage Day once a year. Readers who have been on this site before will know my thoughts on such a matter – I feel that Braai Day, a capitalist, consumerist and shallow hijacking of a public holiday - distracts us from remembering our unique history.

Now then, to the issue at hand: it would be easy to call Mazwai’s blog post a baseless, moronic, stereotyping, hate-mongering mess of oversimplified sweeping generalisations and unfounded accusations, but in lieu of an ad hominem attack, I feel it is better to debunk the article on its own merits and bases.

First of all, postulation on others’ original heritages and countries of origin is meaningless, really, in this scope of argument. If we look back far enough (as the Nando’s advert so wonderfully pointed out) we can see that ‘Afrika’ doesn’t really belong to anyone (or at least, that Africans are just as guilty of colonisation over the Khoi San as the ‘whites’), and if it does, it probably belongs to the common ancestor who preceded Homo Habilus, Homo Erectus and our modern species. History, wars, civil unrest and the general passage of time can have monumental effects on ‘countries’ you supposedly come from. What about in the early 1800’s, when Germany and Poland were not real states, divided and shared between other nations? Indeed, our origins - black, white, whatever - are a subject of far more complexity and depth than a simplistic Ancient Nation Origin. As another blogger put it "Calling me one of the children of Hitler is like calling you a child of Charles Taylor, this is simply wrong". If it is written in On The Origin Of the Species that we all probably came from the Ocean, then does that mean we should all fuck off back into the Atlantic?

The idea of having multiple contrasting heritages is also not made on logical ground. Yes, technically white people may or may not come from countries where they were the “children” (not literally, obviously) of “Elizabeth, Hitler, Bismarck”, but what of those living in the diaspora, those who were born in countries outside their so-called “homes”? I am ineligible for citizenship in my “homelands” Scotland, France and Britain (so much for being the son of Napolean and Louis XI, right?), was born in Zimbabwe but have South African citizenship – how then, does my belonging here be erased because a bunch of unrelated humans came before me? In the same light, there are many aspects of these ‘bad’ legacies that can be celebrated: Nazis pioneered rocket engines, Uganda wants to kill gays***, and the industrial revolution was thanks mostly to the Scottish people. Any Heritage comes with good and bad: if you chose to celebrate Shaka Zulu’s legacy, you would also have to accept his dark, violent, warmongering side instead of just sanitising his historical image as a faultless black Jesus.

The claim that we come from a legacy of “stealing lands and making people slaves” is also a knee-jerk red herring. Slaves have been owned by many cultures and peoples stemming back thousands of years, including Biblical and African cultures. Pots cannot really call kettles black. In the same way, many African as well as Western cultures extended their lands and kingdoms through military campaigns, violence, war and slavery. Again, you cannot blame solely whites for these specific human evils.

What, also, is the basis for saying that white people have issues centred on their “SELF importance”? According to whom, to what data, what empirical research? Without a proper basis of fact to make such an allegation, it becomes mere conjecture, a subjective anecdotal posturing that is as weasel-wording-y as “scientists believe” or “they say”.

Similar easy debunking can be applied to the claims “This confuses me because you did not build your own empires, we built them for you”, “You did not raise you own children, we did that for you” and “You did not stand up when the injustices of Apartheid were happening, we stood up for ourselves”. This, again unfounded, baseless, claim is nothing short of an opinion. Which empires? How do you term ‘build’? Many whites raised their own children, just as many whites stood against apartheid, which did not benefit all whites equally (hence white women being included in BEE legislation). If we look into white struggle contributions, you cannot say that any one people put an end to it. The downfall of Apartheid was a complex and sophisticated convalescence of many wide influences and factors. Saying white people were only the perpetrators of Apartheid and that only Africans ended it carries with it a magnitude of imbecility that defies description. In the same way, did not Afrikaaners fight during the Boer War to ensure that British Rule ended? You cannot just whitewash (blackwash?) history.

“You’ve been too damn arrogant to learn the language” – sadly, this is a whole messy debate in and of itself. I myself learnt French and chiShona in school, but having been kicked out of Zimbabwe and now working in France, I would say that not learning the language has been a benefit. Again, learning a language must be something that is decided on relative merits. There are many reasons why learning another language might not be done: one of these is that many vernacular languages lack the grammatical complexity to be university instructional languages – how, for example, would one learn quantum physics or advanced organic chemistry in isiXhosa? And there are over 250 dialects in DRC alone, with RSA having 11 official languages – if you learn seven of them, are you not still being exclusive? Additionally, saying “with all due respect” means that technically you cannot follow up by being hugely disrespectful. But then, if you understood English, you’d understand paradox, contradiction, or oxymoron.

I would say that I have heard some white folk dumb down their English when speaking to black people, and I would agree that this behaviour is patronising and insulting. However, generalising that all “you white people” do this is, again, empirically unfounded. Anecdotal evidence is not the rule. Following on from this, who says it’s “ignorance”, “arrogance” or “a desire to be asked to go back to your lands” that whites disrespect Heritage Day? And why is it specifically YOUR (I take it the author here means “belonging to Africans”) Heritage Day? The history of its development clearly shows that it was meant to be a celebration of Heritage (and be definition that means all peoples, cultures and traditions in South Africa, not just the ones you acknowledge or deem more important). Braai Day is stupid, yes, and it warped Heritage Day just in the same way Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas and a whole host of other public holidays have been hijacked. Have we not seen Youth Day devolve into just a day off school to nurse hangovers? (This is a generalised statement, I admit). But if the esteemed author had read any of the interviews done in the course of the Heritage Day controversies, she would know that the original creator of the day had only the best intentions, but now kind of regrets the whole thing. Besides, who are you to tell people what aspects of culture are best and how or what we should celebrate on this day? It is exactly a South African celebration, which is why braaiing is perfectly fine.

As a (white) someone who got “chased off the land […] in a ‘Zimbabwe situation’”, I would say that the Zimbabwe Land Reforms were not as simplistic and puerile as white people being arrogant. A whole host of political and racist motives moved the land, starting with the failed move to change the Constitution in the referendum of 2001 and demonstrations by old Chimurenga War Veterans. Again, the author simply has not done any research or reading into the claims she makes, preferring the easy, knee-irrationality that is designed only to sow hatred and garner pageviews and perhaps advertising revenue.

In short conclusion, this article is nothing but a condescending, patronising, baseless bunch of unfounded opinions and childish assumptions that lead up to grotesque mess of hatemongering drivel. The author should, in future, not be so clinically myopic or as viciously race-hate hungry.

Notes: A reader corrected me - the Referendum was in 2000. Also, the title was intended as a sardonic, ironic rebuttal rather than any racial motive aimed at black bloggers.

*** a reader pointed out the structural ambiguity here: though placed in between two arguable progressive things, my addition of Uganda killing gays is sorely mistaken. I wrote it in a way that was meant to show how, terribly evil, mixed message, or good for all, each culture has a complex history and background that must be taken into account when celebrating it. Let me be clear that I fully believe gay rights should be a global given. I find it absurd to imagine the comparative equal: having to tell society "I am heterosexual" before "being allowed" to say that I love a woman because she is a particularly gender. Thank you for pointing this out, and I apologise for any misunderstanding.

“Charring meat on fire” still best way to celebrate diverse heritage, culture

Government spokespeople and social commentators put on a united front today, after unanimously agreeing that even now, many hundreds of years into South African democracy, the best way to celebrate and pay tribute to our country’s unique history, peoples and rich traditional background during tomorrow's National Heritage Day celebrations is through the delicious smell of grilling meat on a nice charcoal fire.

“When you see that 2kg Woolworth's prime rib slowly darkening to a rich, mouth-watering deep shade of brown, or hear that spritely sizzle of steaks on the griddle, what else comes to mind than the words ‘heritage’, ‘culture’, ‘nationalism’ and ‘pride’?” said Heritage Day Coordinator for Johannesburg Mr Bryan Stakes.

“When you hear the word ‘Zulu’, does it not conjure up thoughts of lamb shanks braised in a red wine and rosemary sauce scorching on the braai?” he asked. “I mean, what is more indicative of the deeply sincere traditionalist roots of Afrikaans solidarity and tenacity than a slowly charring coil of lightly peppered Oom Charl’s vors? And come on, what is heartier and more typically English than a quick-seared medium-rare steak? Well, that and the invention of concentration camps.”

Heritage day experts have been quick to publish their advice on having a truly authentic Heritage Day celebration.

”For a truly South African experience, be sure to slowly grill your garlic-and-lemon-basted chicken on signed copies of A Long Walk To Freedom,” said braai expert Karl Nivoar. “As you turn the bird, you’ll see the hopes and dreams of our fore-Presidents slowly curl, burn and seep into that lovely browning skin.”

However, despite some ardent and vociferous critics claiming that “[this] YOLOised and capitalist hijacking of a public holiday essentialises, oversimplifies and debases the truly rich and diverse collection of peoples, cultures, rites and traditional heritage that make up modern-day South Africa”, many people reportedly “don’t really give a stuff, china”.

“People say that this is an insult to our heritage, that it makes us so concerned with a trivial, shallow braai – which happens every weekend anyway – that we forget our own real history and the tales of those who came before us,” said Cape Town resident Weld Hun. “But seriously, what better way to remember Olivier Matambo and Nelly Madonsela and their ceaseless struggle during A Party Hate all those hundreds of years ago?”

Muse and Abuse would like to wish all its readers a happy Inkosi Asimbanano for tomorrow

Football fans don’t blame referee

It was first for the history books today, after thousands of Manchester United and Arsenal fans agreed that last night’s game was “totally fair” and that the referee did a “marvellous, simply excellent job” of ensuring a clean, even match.

“The game was absolutely fair and unbiased,” said one fan, Shirley Reff, who emailed us without once using her CAPSLOCK key or any exclamation marks. “I would just like to congratulate the referee on doing a great job of the overwhelming task of making sure that a soccer match is objectively controlled, fair and utterly impartial.”

Reff explained in more depth.

“Let’s take for example his offsides call at about the 32-minute mark,” she said. “Excellent! What acuity! It was quite clearly offsides, no two ways about it. And that tackle between Santi Cazorla and Ander Herrera? It was fair and clean: his foot clearly hit the ball first. The referee was right to exercise his play-on discretion.”

Pictured: Most referees

Fans now say that even when there were questionable moments replayed in slow-motion where the referee missed a call or didn’t issue a penalty, one had to be understanding.

“We can’t expect him to see everything,’ they said, quietly drinking their beers in a calm and orderly fashion while seated and not taking off their shirts or hurling abuse at the Plasma screen. “It’s a huge stadium, lots of noise, lots going on. He’s just human. We’re bigger than being childish ranting lunatics.”

Experts in the act of guys kicking around a bag of air have agreed with this reaction, saying it “only makes sense”.

“Really, if you think about the utter meaninglessness of the world and the impossibility of our existence, and the overwhelming and terrifying fact that we live in just one tiny shard of space-time, an insignificant blink in history’s eye in which we’re all definitely going to die alone and unloved one day, with all our life’s works and struggles reduced to a forgotten and trivial collection of futile acts in the face of our own inevitable mortality, then getting worked up about one missed call in one inconsequential football match just feels dumb,” said Refereeologist Blou de Vissle. “Unless we’re talking about last weekend when that fucking blind dick ref missed that totally obvious handball by Suarez right outside the goal line. I mean, how could you miss it? The useless myopic fuck.”

MRAs demand more White Male Protagonists

Reacting to “those femi-Nazi bitches” and the equal representation controversy that has recently swept the games industry, Men’s Rights Activists have today called for videogame developers to include more White Male protagonists in their triple-A title titles, saying that this disenfranchised minority group deserves more representation than they currently receive.

“Every day we hear the same thing: women droning on about ‘more females, more women’. What about the men? We’re bombarded with demands to make a women Thor, or a women Spiderman or woman Assassin [in Assassin's Creed Unity] or have a women in a game who doesn't wear totally skimpy bikini armour or have breasts roughly eighteen times larger than her IQ,’ said head of MRA organisation We’re The Real Victims, John Doe, “but we can see how many dozens of games are trapped in a vice-grip oppressive hegemony by woman characters who refuse to shift.”

Their list of demands now includes a male Lara Croft (Tomb Raider), a male Bayonetta, and a male Faith (Mirror’s Edge).

“Yes, we have Drake from Uncharted and Dante from Devil May Cry, but that’s not the point,” said Doe. “Women get a Women’s Day and they have a government department for their gender. Is it too much to ask that we just little bit of equality in the gaming world?”

Online commenters have since obviously agreed, saying “Come on, it’s only fair.”

“We have given women their own characters and a lot of representation in all our games. Just take a look at Call of Duty coughmuliplayercough and Dragon Age coughNPCcough. We just want a little more fairness and understanding, for them to meet us halfway.”

MRAs have, however, agreed that women should have their own videogames for themselves, to celebrate their womanliness.

“It’s only fair. We have games like Call of Duty which are filled with men and celebrate our being totally flippin’ badass,” said Doe. “In the same way, women should get their own games to celebrate their ladyiness. Like Kitchen Simulator 3 and Sandwich Tetris. You know, progressive titles.”

These games will be available for purchase in your local game store in December 1952.

Eskom starts star appreciation week

Stargazers are turning heads skywards this week, after South African national electricity provider Eskom kicked off its new Star Appreciation Week celebrations.

The week, which is aimed at cutting down drastically on light pollution in households across South Africa, will allow residents of South Africa to observe our cosmos unhindered by the pesky lamps, globes, bulbs, heaters and cooking appliances that obscure our view of the heavens.

“We’re so excited,” said head of Eskom Rowling Blakowts. “Now you’ll be able to appreciate the infinite beauty of the stars as they shine down on us without the annoying distractions of cellphone chargers, fridge lights or hot water.”

The move has been met by widespread approval and praise.

“I’m so happy,” said one Jo’burg resident. “Without them [Eskom], you’d never even know these stars were there. For example, did you know that right behind your street lights, if you’re standing on your porch, there is the Magellan nebula? Or that, without the security lights on your garage shining right into your eyes, you could usually see the Goran Cluster?”

“I totally agree,” said another. “Gazing up into the infinite and unknowable expanse of our solar system and the universe beyond, it makes you think of how small and insignificant we really are, and how our troubles, such as days-long power outages or half-month water cuts to our community, are really meaningless in the grand scope of things.”

Since the success of the announcement, Blakowts now says that Eskom has “even bigger, better” plans for similar celebratory weeks.

“When was the last time you bathed in the soft glow of simple candle light? When last did you enjoy the rustic, calming roar of a wood fire, or the peaceful murmur of a paraffin lamp?” he asked. “Well, with our new series of Appreciation Weeks, you’ll be sitting and smiling in nostalgic contentment for months on end.”

The announcements have, however, been met with derision and contempt by Zimbabwean electricity company, ZESA, who said they had been appreciating stars, wood fires and the "deep, inexplicable beauty of utter darkness" long before “it was cool”.

“Typical South Africa, always copying us,” said ZESA superintendent Sir Kitt Braykas. “First the colour of our currency, then our ruinous political agenda and our brutal, gung ho police force, and now this. I guess maybe imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: that we’ve been doing this for so long that we’re the experts. Hell, we’ve even been thinking of making an ‘Electricity Appreciation Ten Seconds’ sometime this year. Maybe after National Police Riot Baton Appreciation Week.”

Readers of Muse and Abuse are recommended to print this and other news articles to appreciate in the romantic low glow of next week.

Pic:ForestWander

Gangsters protest school dropouts

Reacting to what it has called “an unfair, hurtful and biased knee-jerk response”, the notorious 28s gang of Cape Town has today protested against the terrible state of education in South Africa, calling on all 12-to-18-year-olds to stay in school and complete their education.

“We have a terrible rep’ in the media,” said 28s gang leader Slevin Tymsfore. “All these community members are attacking us, saying kids are dropping out to join us and that we’re destroying children, their future and our communities. But ask yourself – who the hell would want a kid with no Matric working for them?”

He explained in more depth, pointing out that the Numbers gangs have always had huge respect for education, and that no person in their right mind would trust any simple task in the high-risk crime world to someone with what is not even a minimalist qualification

“Think about it: we run multimillion rand smuggling, drug and racketeering operations. There is no margin for error, no room for mistakes. If someone can’t finish a Matric Maths exam and can barely scratch by in Maths Lit, how can we trust them to count out our blood money, or work out how much flour and talcum powder to cut into the cocaine and heroin?”

"Besides," he added, "you can see what no Matric does to a country. Those okes are right: it's blerrie going to the blerrie dogs, man."

Experts have since agreed wholeheartedly with the gangs’ statements.

“If we look at gang culture, most people would think they’re a bunch of uneducated psychopaths with massive drug addictions and their shorts five inches too low,” said Head of the Anthropology Department at the University of Cape Town, Di Aspora. “But really, you would actually need tertiary education to succeed in this lifestyle. You need a master’s level understanding of economics to understand the fluctuations of supply and demand and how international drug busts and police action affect product quality, supply and price; you need sociology to know how the groupings work and who not to ‘diss’; you need physics and anatomy to know where to shoot a guy to kill him instead of making another 50 Cent; and you need language and linguistics to be able to understand exactly which words to use to describe how much of a trippin’ skank-ass bitch that nasty trick hoe is.”

In light of this controversy, the Department of Education has announced plans to “modernise and reboot” exams to be more culturally and socially relevant.

“Look at the old exams: ‘if John has R128 and apples cost R8, Oranges cost R12 and bananas cost R4, what is the optimum ratio of fruit he can get to maximise his expenditure?’ I mean, who the hell ever thinks like that in a shop?” said Head of the DOE Noah Bhooks. “This makes far more sense: ‘Those motherfuckin’ balla tricks from the 26s have cut in on your turf. If a dime of coke sells R800, and you and your 7 homies can move 5 keys a week, and an illegal assault rifle costs R3000 with bullets at R4 a pop, how many days of dope pushing will it take to make back your losses AND clean out your tuft of those bitch-ass punks, assuming they are undercutting you at R600 a dime and that it takes a full mag to cut down each of the 42 invading foo’s?’”

Teachers and community leaders everywhere have praised the move.

”Lots of people attack and undermine what studying to be a gangster, saying it’s easy and a waste of time,” said local resident Jerry Hatrick. “Kinda like a BA. However, at least with this, my kid will make lots of money instead of being perpetually broke, have excellent employment opportunities and great upward mobility, and sell drugs instead of taking them at trance parties to ‘experiment and gain a deeper understanding of the human condition.’”

However, the DOE was quick to reassure those without a Matric or formal education who still want to be a part of an organised crime syndicate that they can still apply for a position in the Cabinet of Ministers or their local municipality.

Game reserves now totally safe

South African Nature Reserve tourists can visit our nation’s game parks in guaranteed peace now, after national Wildlife Conservation Authority SAWCA has announced that all these rustic national relaxation centres are “totally free of dangerous and wild animals.”

“Once upon a time, you couldn’t even move around freely in these beautiful and secluded parks,” said program manager Jerry Cull who yesterday confirmed the beheading and incineration of the last potentially dangerous lion in South Africa. “Because of all the vicious and dangerous animals, you couldn’t get out of your car and walk around safely, and if you had food on you, like a pocket of oranges or some delicious fruit, you had to wrap it in clingfilm and hide it in a scent-eliminating Tupperware box at the bottom of a mine shaft.”

Thankfully, says Culls, that is all in the past.

“These fenced areas used to be filled with all manner of dangerous and savage beasts: elephants, hippos, buffalo, lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas and the vicious and deadly African Honey Badger,” he said gesturing to the mountain of bones erected in honour of SAWCA's accomplishments. “Not any more. Now visitors can roam the waterholes and tree-filled savannah unmolested.”

Culls told of how the program had been a decades long-effort.

“We’ve been working for a number of years now to cut down on the number of wild, ferocious and dangerous animals in the world. We erected concentration camps, er, sorry, zoos, and fenced enclosures so that we’d have them all trapped in one place when we started.”

However, they soon realised it wasn’t enough.

“We thought they’d starve to death in these small enclosures, but their numbers started actually improving. We knew something had to be done.”

Culls immediately started bringing in poor locals and struggling immigrants to help in an unofficial program known only as the Program Of Accurate Culling of Herds.

“These POACH members were magnificent and efficient. With a few well-placed lies to the Asians about how animal parts are like biological Viagra, we got rid of the animals like that.”

Though this program has been met with widespread praise and approval, it still fights against completely contrasting programs overseas, such as in the US, where they have started a program to save their last eagle, Bob, and the UK, where they have begun a national initiative called the Save Whatever Is Left campaign.

“Foreigners think that animals are some sort of representation or symbol of the wild savagery and untamed nobility of a Dark and Forgotten land,” said Culls, cleaning the blood and brain matter off his 7.62mm M134 chaingun, “but honestly, have you even seen a Buffalo? It might look peaceful and majestic, standing in the golden light of the dazzling African sun, ruminating slowly and calmly on the undisturbed tranquility of the Sub-Saharan savannah, but we all know that that murderous, psychopathic shitbag would stick his curly, hard horns through us given even half a chance."

However, game parks remain unsettling and unwelcoming places for human beings, and citizens still demand much change before they will flock to bask in nature's breathtaking tranquility and ambiance.

"We're working on the problem day and night - well, mostly just day, really, between 9 and 5, with an hour for lunch and intermittent smoke breaks," said Game Reserve Conversion Manage Deacon Strukshun. "With our planned night clubs, restaurant chains, foodcourts, multi-storey parking, always-on wifi, and massive luxury strip mall to be added to the parks, we hope that by at least 2018 all citizens will be able to totally lose themselves in the endless beauty of our planet's natural wonders."

Pic: Wikimedia Commons