How to deal with self-pity
Wallow in it. Wallow like a big fat warthog in a mud pool. Put on Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads and take the elevator all the way to the basement. Do not stop at the ground floor. All the losers are on the ground floor. You are not a loser. Well, you are, but you are a different kind of loser.
The ones huddled together on the ground floor lack the courage to indulge in pure 100% hi-octane self-pity. For a start, they are missing self-hatred, a vital component of remorse that only the true masters of self-pity are able to excavate from the tortured belly of this restless beast. Go all the way down. Take a deep breath and plummet. Put on Songs of the Damned, light a candle, pop a Seconal and take out all the old photos. After that, the only way out is up.
Surviving erectile dysfunction
This is a condition created by many different factors, chief among them the features editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. She created the condition so she could reassure her readers that it is not their fault. Cosmo readers are damn near perfect and if they are unable to get their men aroused, well, they should simply cancel their subscriptions and start reading Farmer’s Weekly.
It is a little known fact that erectile dysfunction has nothing to do with men. It is not caused by the stress of closing yet another multi-million dollar deal. It is not caused by clogged arteries. It is caused by women.
Bobby, the ex-boyfriend of a former friend’s girlfriend told me that he has never experienced erectile dysfunction while he is on his own. The only times he has ever had trouble with his willy were when women were in the area. Bobby is not bent. I have seen pictures and I can attest to that. Bobby is among countless men who frequently find themselves naked with women whose only appeal turns out to lie in the fact that they will have to leave sooner or later.
Some say beer is to blame. Far be it for me to defend beer, but let me just say that while beer might be a contributing factor in taking the gravel donkey home in the first place, it also serves as a self-defence mechanism in that it prevents you from acting on your misguided impulse. Beer is good in that way.
I have never met a man who has gone home with a Charlize Theron lookalike after a few pints and said the next day that he couldn’t get it up. The fact that I have never met a man who has gone home with a Charlize Theron lookalike is not the point. You know I am right.
So, men, do not feel shattered when you are stricken with erectile dysfunction. Do not be afraid to tell the truth. And you, women, shame on you. Shame on you for blaming the beer, the cigarettes, the stress, the volatile heart condition and the ex-girlfriend.
Erectile dysfunction is caused by women who talk their way into your bed and then, when it is too late, you find they cannot spell. It is caused by women who lie through their teeth and kiss like Gila monsters.
How to get a job
First of all, make sure that you are not white. White is last year’s black and is hopelessly out of vogue among the new elite. If you cannot afford a full-body skin graft, then be very humble when applying for a job. Keep your eyes on the floor and your hands where they can be seen.
How to keep a job
Everyone is always saying how, even though they are desperately unhappy at work, they still count themselves very lucky to have a job in these harsh times of financial belt-tightening and racial quotas. This is just plain stupid. There have been no fundamental changes in the workplace since the industrial revolution. All that has happened is that a bunch of backstreet businessmen and assorted capitalist lackeys have spawned a slew of books with titles like The One Minute Manager and Six Secrets to Success.
In turn, the hard-nosed but generally even-handed bosses of the past began devolving into the two-faced expatriate Eurotrash scumbags who run most companies today. Where they once ruled by respect, they now rule by fear.
Through the underhand corporate philosophies propagated by people like, well, let me rather not mention names, today’s employers have learnt how to make their workers believe that they are lucky to have their jobs. If the propaganda has been installed correctly on the employee’s internal drive, it doesn’t matter how appalling the working conditions may be. The poor bastard could be using blunt nail scissors to cut matchsticks into equal lengths for 18 hours a day, and if the boss has applied the proper techniques, the shattered employee will drag his numb brain and body into bed at night and thank god he has a job in these hard times.
The strategy to get a worker into this state of mind is not particularly sophisticated. In fact, much like poker and marriage, it is based on the art of bluffing. This is how it works:
Employee: “Sir, I’ve worked here for 25 years without a raise. But I’m not complaining. However, I’d like to have this Friday afternoon off.”
Employer: “Well, you can’t. And if you don’t like it, you can leave. There are a thousand people lined up around the block waiting for your job.”
Employee (sobbing): “I’m sorry, sir! I don’t know what came over me!”
If the employee had not allowed himself to have been so effectively brainwashed, he might have answered thus:
Employee (letter-opener against employer’s carotid artery): “You sick, twisted motherfucker. You don’t scare me. Go ahead, do your worst.”
Try it. You will be surprised at the results.
How to lose a job
See above.
How to analyse someone with the sole intention of getting laid
Rule number one. Never take a guess at their star sign. This is strictly for amateurs. When I was young and foolish I did this on several occasions, but only because the women were always wearing something that suggested they were astrologically inclined (dreamcatcher earrings, tie-dye pants, pierced tongue and so on). Without fail, the conversation went like this:
Me: Hi (nod and smile). You’re a Gemini, aren’t you?
Her: Um, no.
Me: Of course. Now I can see it. You’re a cusp. Taurus, right?
Her: No (turns to friend and mouths ‘help’).
If you are going to try such tomfoolery, make damn sure you know your signs and what they mean. I have no idea and yet there are still times when I feel inclined to use the line.
I know for a fact that there are women out there who will sleep with any man capable of guessing their star sign, but while she may be fun for a while, it won’t be long before you start considering how to short-circuit her electric yoga mat.
You will wake up on Sunday mornings to the stench of cheap incense and the sound of the Tarot deck being shuffled. Believe me, there is nothing that ruins a lazy Sunday morning more than getting the Death card three times in a row. She will laugh gaily and tell you, “No! No! It’s a good card!” It is not a good card. It has a picture of a skeleton on it. How good is that?
Where was I? Oh, yes. Psychoanalysis as a tool for achieving despicable ends.
Psychoanalysis is easier to do than it is to spell. Of course, the experts won’t tell you this. If their dirty little secret had to get out, nobody would bother wasting enormous amounts of time and money in stuffy little lecture rooms so that they could get a fancy-looking piece of paper saying Psychoanalyst so that they could spend the rest of their lives in stuffy little offices talking to mad people.
The only real difference between the Trained Psychoanalyst and the Street Psychoanalyst is that the Trained Psychoanalyst nods a lot and gives the mad people useless bits of advice in return for huge sums of money, while the Street Psychoanalyst laughs a lot and gives mad people drugs so that he can have sex with them. Both can be found staking their turf on the moral low ground.
A lot of fun can be had with emotional disorders. Some people seem to think that the disturbed mind is a thing to be treated with respect and caution. Nonsense! Embrace it! Just make sure that it is not carrying a flick knife when it embraces you back.
What makes street psychoanalysis such fun is that you can invite all your friends around to your place and hypnotise them and then delve into their collective subconsciousness.
If your friends are anything like mine, they are unlikely to be harbouring anything particularly interesting. Maybe a bath time fondle from Aunt Julie or a glad-hand from Uncle Pervy, but nothing to write home about. So what you have to do is make up some really wild stuff once they come out of hypnosis. Tell them that they were recounting the most horrendous stories of abuse, committed both by and against them.
They will be so disturbed by this revelation that they will come back to you over and over for advice and suggestions. This is when you start charging them or sleeping with them.
How to behave on the wine route
Most importantly, do not be intimidated. You will encounter people from the horsy set. In fact, some of them may even be horses. They let anything in on some of these estates.
The wine route goes back hundreds of years to a time when labourers would go from farm to farm begging to be allowed to work in return for a bottle of wine. This fine tradition continues today. The only difference is that the labourers are no longer allowed anywhere near the manor house. The wine is delivered to them in the fields.
While on your wine-tasting excursion, make liberal use of words like “woody”, “petulant” and “cheeky”. These terms can be applied equally to the wine and the staff.
I was unaware of it when I embarked upon my first tour of the Western Cape wine farms, but it is not acceptable to continue sampling the most expensive wines without showing some sort of indication that you are prepared to actually buy a bottle.
Staff are trained to compile psychological profiles of everyone who walks in. But they can’t watch us all. Make sure that you follow a tour group inside. While the French are hawking and spitting and generally behaving badly, you can get down twelve, maybe fifteen, glasses of the cheap stuff.
Since the tots are a little on the teeny side, I have found that pouring five or six different wines into one glass often works best. Then you can sip at your leisure while the attendant refills the glasses that she thinks the greedy French have finished. Repeat until you are led out staggering and shouting about the time you were caught deep in Shiraz country with your trousers around your ankles and a donkey on your ass.
How to respond if a person of a different race hits on you
Rule number one. Don’t panic. First, ascertain the colour. With skin lighteners and tanning beds, it is becoming increasingly difficult to tell a person’s race with any degree of certainty. The waters have been muddied and the lines blurred.
You do not want to come across as politically incorrect, so do not, under any circumstances, refuse to go to bed with them should they ask.
However, if it turns out that they only want a few bob to buy a loaf of bread and a small house in Llandudno, then it is important to know which tribe they belong to. Should you fail to obtain this information, you run the risk of responding in a fashion that will brand you as a cultural anachronism, and even though you don’t know what it means you know it can’t be good.
Remember that white is also a colour. Not a very impressive one, admittedly, but it is most definitely a colour and should be treated as such. However, if you are black and a white person hits on you, this does not mean you should stab them in the eye with your swizzle stick and run like hell. They probably mean you no harm. You may, however, find that they are German or Swedish, but this shouldn’t be a problem because black and white South Africans are still struggling to speak the same language so you should feel quite at home.
How to avoid getting old
- Autoerotic asphyxiation.
- Swim naked at Gansbaai while a friend on a boat pours fish guts into the water around you.
- Cut a broomstick into six or seven equal lengths and run towards an Israeli military checkpoint shouting in Arabic.
- Use embalming fluid instead of milk with your morning cereal.
How to drink and dive with panache
Drinking and diving is the new paralympic sport for athletes disabled in drink-driving accidents. They still get to drink but all they need is a Speedo and a towel instead of a high-powered car. The water is softer than the concrete underpass that they rammed and they still get to do somersaults, except this time off a diving board and not through the windscreen.
BEN TROVATO – Durban Poison 