Ban unhealthy smoking in bars, say disgruntled alcoholics

A countrywide ban on smoking in bars is now a distinct possibility, after the binge-drinking community came together a unanimous front aimed at ending “disgusting, dangerous and unhealthy smoking”.

Weekend bar-goers now say that it’s time they put a stop to the health-destroying and irresponsible risks associated with second-hand smoke.

“The risks of lung cancer, emphysema and other respiratory or pulmonary diseases is just unacceptable, especially in children,” said 48-year-old bargoer Courtiney Chand. “How can we possibly sleep at night when there are potentially hundreds of 15- and 16-year-olds in bars across the country being exposed to the affronting and live-threatening drug that is cigarettes?”

Bar patrons across the nation are now calling for a unilateral ban on smoking in any public bar or late-night drinking hole.

“The smokers are putting us all at unnecessary risk, and endangering the health and lives of everyone around them,” said founder of the antismoking organisation Down-Down With Smoking, Sam Buka. “It’s just ridiculous – you’ve only been in the bar for a few minutes, you’ve only had your first of seven tequila shots, and already you stink of smoke. Lord knows how all those fumes are affecting your health.”

Other drinkers agree.

“It’s so awful – last weekend I absolutely stank of smoke after just a dozen beers,” said 26-year-old Kay Nansoda. “It was so disgusting that while I was driving home on the N2 I just had to pull out my phone and message all my friends telling them how reckless and uncaring about the health and safety of others all these smokers are.”

And with bar owners and bartenders standing behind their customers, lawmakers say a municipal bylaw outlawing these deathsticks could be just around the corner.

“We just want to create a safe space for our clients,” said bar owner Cyril Siss. “We want our decades-loyal customers to be able to come to their weekend binges, drink litres of vodka and go home alone with strangers to have unprotected sex, without having to worry about second-hand smoke threatening their health or safety - and that's all we'll settle for: no ifs, ands, or butts.”

Local bouncer douche to get GP licence plate tattoo

Citing fears that people can’t immediately tell he’s an gigantic arsehole, local area bouncer and gym squat rack hogger Blake “Bee-rad” Bradson is reportedly set to get a tattoo of his Gauteng GP car registration plates.

Bradson told reporters that this latest commissioned work, which is identical to the plates on his orange Subaru WRX with chrome 26-inch mags, will be inked onto his lower right bicep, just below the spiky tribal waves design, the armband of flames and barbed wire, the red heart with an arrow through it, and the map of Africa.

Bradson says he hopes the tattoo will allow passers-by a clear glimpse into his deeper personality.

“I might work as a bouncer at a too-expensive club who lets in only blonde rich girls with skirts shorter than my list of tertiary qualifications, but right now I’m just not sure that people can see how of a giant prick I really am,” he said. “I’m hoping that they’ll be able to glance at me across the street, see my new licence plate tat and say ‘god, I'm certain that that guy is an incomparably massive tool’ without my having to actually walk up to them and do something massively arseholeish.”

“Besides,” he added, “this new piece should go lovely with my steroid addiction and deep-seated rage issues stemming from a difficult childhood without a loving or supportive father figure.”

However, medical experts say the addition is not without its risks and side-effects.

“When we consider the kind of empty, soulless human being Blake is, then we realise that this choice of tattoo is totally fitting,” said leading tattoologist and medical expert Dr Richard Haversham. “Getting a tattoo of a Gauteng car registration is much like wearing an Ed Hardy or TapOut T-shirt, or getting spiraling tribal wave designs inked down your calves: having them doesn’t automatically make you an arsehole, but most arseholes do have them.”

Haversham, who has studied behavioural psychology in inked subjects for over a decade, says that such a tattoo could provoke severe psychological side-effects, such as cutting random people off in the line at the supermarket, always being on his phone, or even yelling at people at the streets and calling them all flippen’ stupid blind idiots who must learn how to flippen’ drive.

“Whereas a Bluejay on his ankle would merely make him an artsy prick, or some quotation in Sanskrit or Japanese ciphers down his back would just make him a pretentious hipster douche who places far too much value in his parent-funded two-week ‘soul-searching’ trip to Thailand, this tattoo could have truly heavy ramifications,” said Haversham.

“Honestly, in as little as two weeks we could see things like severe insecurity, festering rage, and him using the flashlight function on his phone to blind people who walk too slowly in front of him.”

Racist shocked at friend’s overt display of liberalism

Friends and family of a Johannesburg man have expressed disgust and shock today, after his embarrassing and brazen display of outright liberalism at a dinner last night.

According to those closest to 26-year-old Jacob Van Rensburg, the liberal-arts student went on a “long and loathsome” rant about equal rights and the so-called ‘unscientific approach to apparently race-based characteristics’.

“We were just sitting there, having a nice dinner, enjoying a lovely couple of beers, talking about how these blerrie baboons are destroying the country, and he suddenly just blurts out this vile and twisted monologue about ‘outmoded stereotypes’ and ‘a backwards and overly facile conflation of genetic and socioeconomic factors’,” said Jacob’s father, Adrien Willem Bennie (AWB) Van Rensburg. “I think it goes without saying that we’re all utterly repulsed by this horrific outburst of tolerance and understanding.”

His mother recalled the traumatising evening, fighting back her tears.

“It was such a nice get-together,” she recalled. “His uncles from Orania and our grandfather, who emigrated to Australia in April of 1994, had come down for the holidays. Anyway, we were talking about the crime problem and Eskom and corruption and thievery, when Jakkie just starts yammering on about how racial characteristics have no innate bearing on intelligence. It was so embarrassing! And he was doing it right in front of our white waiter! I think the worst thing was that we couldn’t even chide him on his awful, naïve, worldly views because he was paying for the meal.”

Jacob has since apologised for his “utterly loathesome rant”, saying that he had assumed it was safe to air such unconventional views.

“You know, I’d had a bit too much to drink, a few too many beers, and I thought that I was in a safe, private space – among family and like-minded friends,” he explained contritely. “I apologise for my deeply shameful words, and promise to never again let such lucidity and common sense come between me and my family again.”

His family have since accepted his apology, saying that Jacob ‘seems to be on the right track again.’

“We’re confident he’s realised the error of his ways,” said his father. “I mean, yesterday he dropped the k-bomb when a waiter short-changed us.”

“Now if we could only do something about his stupid stance against homophobia.”

Man bravely captures other man saving child’s life on film

A local man is being hailed as a true hero this morning, after bravely capturing cellphone video footage of another man saving a child’s life.

According to eyewitnesses on the scene, when the 8-year-old Billy Thomson tumbled off the edge of Platform 18 at Kingscrossing Train station, closely followed by another man dashing down into the tracks of the oncoming train to grab the boy, 34-year-old bystander Eric Jackson immediately flew into action.

“I knew time was of the essence,” explained the brave soul modestly. “Precious seconds were ticking away - I had to act quickly. So I immediately whipped out my Samsung and started recording.”

Jackson’s actions have been praised by the Mayor as “an incredible show of quick-witted initiative”.

“Not only did he start recording from the moment little Billy tripped into the path of the roaring 10:41am Express Line, he also had the wits to film in landscape mode, where many would have unthinkingly done that irritating portrait stuff that leaves those big black bars on either side of the screen. I mean, he even went so far as to enable HD, full-res mode, zooming in with a still, unshaking hand to capture every moment of the near-tragedy in perfect clarity.”

Teary-eyed parents have lavished him with their deep and sincere thanks.

“If it weren’t for him, we would never ever be able to relive those special moments on Youtube where our boy’s life was pulled from the very jaws of death,” they said, expressing their undying gratitude. “Without Eric, it’s almost as if our son might as well have died.”

However, Eric remains humble and unassuming.

“I’m no hero. I’m just a guy who was in the right place at the right time, with the right HD-ready smartphone,” he said. “I just did what any other human being would do in such an awful situation.”

“Really, in moments like this, we should really be thanking guy who was instrumental and hands-on this awful close-call," he said. "That’s right: the nameless engineer-hero who made such an excellent camera. Without him… well, I’d hate to think what would have happened. Something awful probably, like a 4-megapixel camera without integrated shake-compensation.”

The guy in the background, who almost ruined Eric’s shot when he flung Timmy up and out of the train tracks, could not be reached for comment.

Study finds something that can’t be easily turned into clickbait

Confusion abounds today, after a ten-year scientific research program found something that can’t be oversimplified or easily turned into clickbait.

According to researchers at the Centre for Galactic Astrophysics, who have been looking into the nature of blackholes and how they interact with space-time, the results of their study, while incredibly important for the advancement of astrophysics as a science, cannot be easily turned into an image-heavy and arbitrarily-numbered list of things that will totally blow your mind or leave you speechless.

“We’ve been looking at the results, and we must say that we’re conflicted,” said Dr Theo Reece of the CGA. “I mean, the data really does change the way astrophysicists look at the complex equations and science of spatio-temporal interactions between objects of astounding mass, but when it comes to telling Buzzfeed readers that ‘These Scientists Have Been Researching Blackholes – And What They Found Will Completely Blow You Away’ we come up totally empty-handed. I mean, what good is scientific advancement if it can’t be completely reduced to an overly simplified misinterpretation for idiots to share on the ‘I Fucking Love Science’ Facebook page?”

CGA researchers now say that they are back at work searching for four more facts in their massive study that will fill a 10-item, 150-word listicle.

“It’s going to be a difficult task – like finding a needle in a haystack, or original content on Buzzfeed,” said Reece, “but we’re confident that, by early January at the latest, we’ll have found something dull and uninspired enough to get you through the last four points on the list so that you can read item 10 and do your obligatory reshare on Facebook and ‘lol’ comment.”

However, “writers” at the social media viral sites now say that they’ll probably just go ahead with the article anyway.

“We’ll just churn out the listicle anyway,” said Killean Jurnlizm, section editor for the sciences beat at the viral website. “I dunno, maybe there’s something on Reddit we can just steal and paste in… Besides, since when did our readers care about scientific accuracy anyway?”

Woman’s profile pic not fooling anyone

A woman was declared “obviously not attractive” today, after the internet came to a general consensus that her profile picture isn’t fooling anyone.

The black-and-white airbrushed image, which was carefully framed, lit and chosen out of four dozen other photos taken at around the same time, was uploaded yesterday evening to 26-year-old Megan Jenners’s Facebook profile – and all her friends agree that “this shit isn’t fooling anyone”.

“Yes, it’s a pretty photo. Yes, to the untrained eye that hasn’t seen her in real life, you might be fooled into thinking she’s attractive and then swiping right,” said the guy who follows her every update but hasn’t spoken to her in four years, Vuyo Rystic. “But let’s just admit the facts here: it’s a top-down, filter-heavy selfie that has clearly been put through the Instagram-photoshop wringer.”

Friends and followers of Jenners– even those on Twitter – have agreed.

“For me, my suspicions were raised when I saw the angle. I mean, it’s top-down and is filled with her face,” said one friend Jake Henderson shortly before liking it and commenting ‘omg so pretty u stuning babe’. “Why else would you want a full picture of your face as your profile picture unless you had a disgusting, corpulent and revoltingly grosteque mass underneath it that you wanted to hide no matter what?”

Others agree.

“No amount of BW correction and careful balancing of exposure and saturation can hide how much of a soulless, blackhearted skank Megan is,” said another friend, Erin Blakey, before hitting ‘like’. “I’ve read her statuses. She’s vapid and completely irritating and full of herself. Maybe I should post a passive-aggressive status about her?”

She followed this by adding “no, on second thoughts I shouldn’t” and “the two-faced bitch might realise who I was talking about.”

According to online researchers, much of the anger stems from its inherent insincere dishonesty.

“When it comes to Social Media, I think we can all agree that the most important, central tenet is honesty and truth,” said media analyst Eric Henderson. “So when she posted these quasi-blurry, pseudo-artistic selfies of herself and tried to pretend she was someone she wasn’t, she broke the cardinal rule of the internet: never lie to people.”

“In their eyes, this publication of a falsehood is a deep and hurtful mockery of the thought-provoking articles, provocative philosophical debates, and cat pictures they share,” he explained. “To the untrained eye, it might seem like all these people commenting on the picture think she is, quote, ‘gorjuz’ and ‘totes hawt girl’, but we all tacitly know what they’re really saying.”

However, not everyone agrees.

“Oh, I dunno, bro,” said one man. “I mean, I would still definitely bang her.”

Facebook to distribute likes to cancer victims

Social media giant and philanthropic website Facebook have announced that, starting today, they will now be distributing the accumulated likes, shares, and statuses aimed at ending cancer.

According to Head of Facebook's Charity wing, Sharon Lyks, the decision has been a long time coming.

"Ever since that first photo of a small girl smiling sadly at the camera, her bald head shining tragically in the little-girl-hating, cancer-giving sun, we knew we had to do something to stop this awful illness," she said in an interview with Muse and Abuse this morning. "Of course, we all know that the best way to end the combined pain and suffering of the victims of disease is to like and share photos of the internet."

The response, said Lyks, has been amazing.

"Since sharing that photo and putting it on everyone's wall, the picture has garnered over 4 billions likes and 18 billion comments," she said. "We're not sure, but we're pretty sure that's gotta be worth a lot of Internet Money."

Lyks and the Facebook team intend on taking these likes and comments to the Internet Monetary Exchange Bank later today.

The secret to its success, she said, was in Facebook users' tendency to repost the picture again and again, even if they know other people had seen it before.

"That's how much they cared about this campaign," said Lyks with a big smile. "They'll share it on all their friends' walls, even if that friend is a cancer-loving douche who replies 'oh, it's a hoax' and 'you should check these things to see if they're real, or just donate to a recognised charity', the cancer-apologist arsehole."

Facebook first shared that seminal photo in early 2003, but have now extended their charitable goodness to other worthy causes.

"World hunger, poverty, water shortages, homelessness... These are just a few of the things on the list of tragedies we are eliminating, one mouse click at a time."

Facebook's early estimates now state that homelessness and poverty are a mere 43 243 likes away from not existing.

"When it comes to creating a perfect utopian world of wonder, we believe that Facebook is right up there with those other bastions of social change: you know, email chain letters and online petitions on Change.org.

Black people can't be racist, and other UCT scandals

It’s been a while, but Guest Writer Johan Van Eksteen is back – and this time, he’s not pulling any punches. On his hit list today: the UCT political rhetoric around racism after the successful removal of the Rhodes Statue.

My dear friends, it’s been a while. Since my last exposé on the Rhodes Statue, much has happened that has probably left you dazed and confused, like a Woolworth’s shopper trying to choose between two equally expensive packets of low-GI bread. So, without further ado, let me dive right into the muck to find the gems of truth we all desire so very much.

UCT students want black only spaces

A while back I spluttered on my morning coffee and melkbeskuit when I read about UCT students hosting a black-only closed event for law students in Kramer at UCT.

But actually, this is a good thing. We need closed spaces that are safe for us to discuss one immovable, unrefuted idea with people who only agree with us. In university, it is important that we give as much a safe space and respect as possible on campus for university students to share one idea in tight-knit, polarized groups.

But this just isn’t enough. How can we expect black students at UCT to feel truly safe to express themselves if there are still so many places where the hateful colonial history and embedded, oppressive culture of white privilege inflict daily mental violence? We need more safe spaces: Black-only residences; Black-only courses; and Black-only bathrooms.

Of course, this move is clearly not intended to divide the students at UCT, no! This is progress though separate unity. However, we live in an equal, egalitarian society – one in which we cannot discriminate against anyone because of the colour of their skin, sex or gender (we’ll get to our awful, anti-progressive Constitution in a bit). So we’ll need to be fair and make white-only discussion spaces for them to talk about being oppressive hatelords. We’ll need coloured-only spaces for coloured people to talk about the difficulties of being caught at the halfway house in system that only recognises binaries of white and black. Then, as is fair and just, we’ll need to make larger spaces for them to feel truly safe – white only residences, coloured only classrooms, international student only cafeterias, where they can eat without having to feel South Africa’s ingrained and xenophobic mentality of ultranationalism.

UCT students claim blacks can’t be racist; whites can’t experience racism

However, this amazing student organisation went one step further and finally proved what I’ve always wanted to say: that racism is not a two-way street and that anti-white racism doesn’t exist.

“But Johan!” I hear you shout in vituperative, frothing rage. “that’s impossible! Racism is the belief in superiority or inferiority based on different skin colour!” And yes, that’s what it may look like – but you’re wrong. Racism of course has nothing to do with race – it’s about power.

You might feel uncomfortable with someone calling you “a fucking stupid white honkey” and “kill the boer” and even “you bloody white bitch, go back to Zimbabwe” – but this isn’t racism.

The author of this statement is right: racism is about the expression of power. However, I would like to take his logic one step further and say that nobody – especially white people – can be racist. After all, racism is tied to the expression of power, is it not? And power – and the author misses this point – comes in lots of different forms. We have financial power. We have power of capital. We have the power that comes with social position or privilege. And we have power that comes from Eskom.

So, if you are a poor, homeless white person who cannot get a job and will in all likelihood die in the streets, you cannot be racist when you call someone a black baboon because you have no power.

If you are really broke and get kicked out of university because your parents can’t afford it, this means you lack academic, social and capital power. So if you get drunk and vent on Facebook like that oke at Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2012, it can’t be racist.

And when I’m sitting at home and the light go out, well that’s an inequality in the power relations between me and Eskom. So when if I (underpaid guest writer who still hasn’t gotten a wage increase - Ed’s note: nice try, bro) loudly exclaim that Tshediso Matona (millionaire black CEO of the state provider) is a useless braindead chimpanzee, it can’t be racism.

While black people may be offended or be made to feel uncomfortable, in this case, they cannot experience racism. Like the esteemed author said “racism and power cannot be divorced from one another” – and just by playing with one or two words, we can clearly see how this drastically affects this global, human phenomenon.

I wish I could explore this topic more and prove to you why foreigners can’t experience xenophobia and that South Africans can’t be xenophobic, but I have a word limit to consider. Perhaps next time.

The Constitution “violently preserves the status quo”

I’m going on a bit here, so I’ll keep it short: I agree.

That widely reviled and hateful document, which was brought into effect in 1994 with the transition to democracy, is a pestilence on our people and a plague on our civilisation. It claims to uphold and enshrine the most fundamental and basic rights every human deserves, like freedom from discrimination, a right to education, the right to safety, the right to human dignity, the right to vote, but these are just a clever disguise for its evil-sowing, hatemongering lies.

It’s so called rights are the reason we are living in this modern dystopia. The right to vote got us Jacob Zuma. This violently preserves the status quo of a country where we suffer daily corruption and theft.

What about the so-called “right to education” – look at all the idiots I’m surrounded by. Having basic education made them this way. Without it, they would be here, saying dumb things at my hard-earned tax dollars. And the freedom of assembly to picket and protest? This is the reason we have so many violent, street-trashing, poo-flinging protests. If we could tear up this document, we’d never have another violent march again.

Let’s not even talk about the Freedom of speech – people can just say whatever they want and are allowed to disagree with you. It makes me sick that we live in a society where people are allowed to say what they want, or even write these Protest organisation releases that make us so angry in the first place. If we could get rid of the Constitution, I'm sure South Africa would be restored to its rightless former glory or peace and prosperity. You remember those days, don't you?

Johan is a guest columnist at Muse and Abuse. Widely renowned for his non-nonsense approach to controversial topics, Johan shines a blinding light of truth on subjects like the hideous scourge of immigration, why white people should vote ANC, why Blackface isn't the real racist problem in SA, and how Black Privilege is an ugly truth that no one wants to admit. He also thinks gay marriage should have been outlawed years ago.

Facebook introduces new revolutionary new features

Social media users should brace themselves for a whole Facebook experience filled chock-a-block with features set to revolutionise the way you live in the online world.

“We’re changing everything,” said head of the R&D team at Facebook, Cody Compyler, “and not just the colour and logo font.”

“Facebook forces users to go through their entire lives, photos, opinions, thoughts and personality, and choose only a tiny fraction of a percentage of what is true to impress the people around you,” he said, “but most of us got Facebook when we were 16-year-old morons who thought liking a page called ‘Beer and Cigarettes’ made us look like rebellious bad boys. How can you pretend to be cool on Facebook if there’s over three years of evidence to the contrary that you can’t delete for fear of making it look like you joined Facebook this year, like your grandmother?”

This issue, says Compyler, is expounded only by its corollary.

“Then, when your mother or grandmother or someone close to you goes on Facebook, they judge you or start worrying because the only photos of you are taken at parties or trance festivals, making them say they’re worried about your ‘drinking problem’ when actually you’re not even that much of a lady-slaying party animal.”

In light of this, they’re introducing two new features: the ‘Real User feature, and the ‘Make Me Cool’ feature.

“Let’s see these features in action. If we go to my friend Jake’s profile, we can see he has photos of himself in the gym, at the beach with his really hot girlfriend, and driving around in his badass car. All of this makes me feel pretty inadequate. So if I press the ‘Show Me The Real Jake’ button over here, Facebook immediately shows me pictures of his girlfriend in a Onesie without makeup on, and here it gives us some really embarrassing childhood pictures, and here we have a collection of desperate and awkward messages to his grandmother and his ex-girlfriend who he apparently still loves to death. This is great, because now I know that Jake isn’t as cool as he seems, and also that my life isn’t that shit in comparison.”

“Now, if I go to my own profile, we can see that I have over 2943 photos and six years of likes, comments, posts and shares. I can’t possibly go through all of this and sweep all the embarrassing stuff under the carpet – that would take hours. So I just click the ‘Make Me Cool’ button and voilà! Thanks to Facebook’s coolness algorithm, I no longer liked ‘Beer’ and ‘Fast Cars’ and ‘The Hangover’ when I was 16, but instead I liked ‘The works of Noam Chomsky’ and ‘Psychodynamic analysis of postmodern literature’.”

The R&D team now report that they are working on a feature that will half the time it takes to ignore, trivialise or mock people on your newsfeed.

“It used to take as much as an entire hour to entirely debase someone’s existence and being, but we’ve cut down that time to as little as sixty seconds,” they said. “Hell, the only thing it doesn’t do for you is groan, roll your eyes and moan ‘how fucking retarded are some people?’”

Iraq, Afghanistan announced US “Humanitarian intervention”

Citing the extreme violence and riots in Baltimore in the United States of America, leading political figures of Iraq, Iran, and other Eastern nation states have announced a humanitarian military intervention into the United States.

”It’s awful,” said Fuad Masum, President of Iraq. “When we look at the almost civil war and societal unrest happening in this country, how can we remain inactive? America was the country that brought us democracy. Sure they launched an unfounded revenge war and created an atmosphere ripe for radical extremism, but if we just let them suffer in silence, then which of us are the true monsters?”

”Besides,” he added, “we still have all their tanks and military assault rifles and munitions here. It would be nice to put them to use, or just give them back.”

Other Eastern Leaders have agreed.

“Just look at America. It’s slowly devolving into a brutal police state devoid of respect for basic human dignity and rights. They have martial law and state-enforced curfews in trying to quell huge demonstrations against an allegedly brutal police state. ” said President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyann of the United Arab Emirates. “We have much experience in exactly these things. We can apply our expertise and return the country to its former peace.”

The international aid effort has been met by unhesitating applause by well-known Aid Organisations, such as AfriCare and Red Cross Africa.

“Every time we have riots of civil unrest here, they always express concern and want to step in and help,” said Project head of OxFam Kenya. “These poor, suffering Americans need our help, and it’s up to us to save these destitute, suffering people.”

It’s not all bad news, however, as Islamic extremist organisation ISIS has announced they’re relaxing their efforts.

“We can take a much-deserved break here,” said spokesperson for the group, Joe Hadi. “Besides, it looks like the hedonistic, godless West is destroying itself just fine without us even lifting a finger.”