Long haul to Bali

If you have to go to Bali at short notice but lack access to a high-powered boat fitted with supplementary vodka tanks, supersonic stabilisers and three depraved Scandinavian contortionists, you should probably fly Singapore Airlines. My contortionists were in for repairs so I decided to fly.

OR Tambo International Airport is nothing like the man. For a start, it lacks his outward sense of calm and order. Ironic, though, to name an airport after a man whose lexicon included regular use of a word that may not, under pain of imprisonment, be uttered in an airport. For the slow-witted, I’m talking about the word bomb.

I suppose I could’ve flown South African Airways. It would have been the patriotic thing to do. Then again, not allowing an immigrant family from Uttar Pradesh to ransack our state owned enterprises and loot the treasury would also have been the patriotic thing to do. Flying SAA is about as patriotic as giving Jacob Zuma a third term.

Singapore Airlines is everything that SAA isn’t. It runs on time, gives people free drinks and, unlike the rand, hardly ever crashes. The ten hour flight to Singapore was a pleasure. The pilot wasn’t even a little bit drunk. I have experienced more turbulence in hotel rooms. And their meals make SAA look like a soup kitchen for homeless war criminals.

Singapore is one of the many airlines that don’t fly from King Shaka International Airport. Hadedas barely fly from King Shaka. Most of them depart from the tree outside my bedroom window at 5.30am. Hadedas have the worst air traffic control in the world, shouting at each other whenever they take off or land. Or even just sit there.

To get to Singapore Airlines I had to fly from Durban to Joburg. I managed to get myself an emergency exit seat by weeping openly at the check-in counter while standing on my tip-toes, which brought my height to around three metres. I need extra leg room like sharks need to keep moving.

The cabin attendant pretended to give me instructions on what to do in the event of what she coyly described as a forced landing and I pretended to listen. We both knew that in the history of aviation, nobody in my position had ever swung that lever up, kicked the door open and helped his fellow passengers onto the wing.

The attendant then told me, with a straight face, that in the event of a water landing I should swim to the front of the plane where I’d find the life vests. So there was a chance we’d come down in the Umgeni River, then. Or maybe Zoo Lake? It was like a triathlon. Fly, swim, crawl to hospital.

Waiters in an airport bar took me hostage and only released me when they heard my name being called. Weaving off to the gate severely handicapped by a belly distended with beer, I made it just in time.

“Where were you, sir. We’ve been calling you,” said a gatekeeper with the face of a rejected kidney.

“I thought that was the voice of God,” I said.

This conversation might have taken place in my head. Living alone as I do, a fierce amount of conversations take place in my head.

It wasn’t long before I was on nodding terms with the onboard medication. But there comes a time on any long-haul flight when the airline treats its passengers as one would a bunch of parrots. They’ve barely fed and watered you when the blinds come down and the lights go off. It’s the equivalent of putting a blanket over a cage.

“More gin and tonic, air slave!”

“Sir, now is sleepy time, not drinky time.”

“What? This is an outrage! Drinky time has barely begun and you expect …”

“Sir, it is 2am in Singapore. Not drinky time at all.”

“Rubbish. It’s 6pm and it’s still light outside. Look.” I went to raise the plastic shutter thing.

“Mr Parrot, do not touch the fittings or we will have you shot.”

Singapore, you will remember, is the country that destroyed Helen Zille’s career. I shudder to think what their airline is capable of doing. Quite frankly, I’m not convinced that Singapore is a country at all. I think it’s just a giant airport with travelators instead of roads, planes instead of trains and sliding glass doors instead of borders. I’ve visited smaller countries than Changi Airport, which appears to have a GDP considerably higher than most African states. Another reason I don’t think Singapore is a real country is their idea of what constitutes crime.

A teaser emblazoned on the front page of last week’s Singapore Sunday Times screamed, “The ugly side of bike sharing!” I assumed “bike sharing” was a polite euphemism for one or other less than salubrious activity. Human trafficking, perhaps. My brain salivating at the idea of receiving a dose of fresh filth, I flipped the paper open. The page two lead story was headlined, “LTA moves against badly parked bikes.” Ramming home the full horror, four photographs showed bicycles parked willy-nilly, some obstructing doorways, others partially blocking a staircase. A few have already been impounded. It was too terrible. I had to bite down hard on my knuckles so as not to cry out at the inhumanity of it all. But, despite the brutally indiscriminate parking of bicycles, Singapore will rebuild. Je suis Singapore.

To reach my connecting flight to Bali, I had to cross several topographical zones within the Singaporean People’s Republic of Changi. Across the temperate highlands of Duty Free through the megalopolis of pharmacies to the glittering cornucopia of Gucci, I soldiered bravely on. Rebel controlled roadblocks slowed my progress but, after handing over bottles of water, I was allowed to continue on my way.

I spent the flight with my knees around my ears, eating with T-Rex arms and shooting death stares at parents who think it’s somehow acceptable for their children to carry on like malfunctioning air raid sirens.

Black-gloved gunmen were waiting for me at Denpasar Airport. Were they to release me into the wilds of Bali with my bottle of rum and my bottle of gin, I would quite clearly be unable to resist the urge to violently overthrow the Indonesian government. They gave me a choice.

“Rum or gin,” said a beautiful combatant with sloe eyes and a quick draw. It was a vicious and cruel choice to have to make.

“Eat prey, love,” I muttered, handing over the gin before walking out into a thick soup of tropical humidity, Australian accents and seven billion motorbikes.

The intelligent designer is a moron

The stomach-churning, brain-curdling news that Donald Trump is the 45th American president continues to give rise to all manner of existentialist questions like: What the fuck? Is this really happening? Is there a God? And if there is, what the hell is he thinking?

I know feminists prefer referring to God as she, but in the wake of recent events, they might want to change their position. No self-respecting female creator of every creeping thing that creepeth, flying thing that flyeth and fishy thing that swimmeth could possibly have had a hand in the elevation of this ludicrous tangerine-coated semi-literate superpatriot to the most powerful position on earth.

If I’m right – and there’s no reason to think I’m not – then God is not only a man, but he is an arrogant, combative God who won’t listen to reason. What am I talking about. You just have to read the Bible to get an idea of where the Almighty stands on a whole range of issues. He sure ain’t no bleeding heart liberal, that’s for sure. No wonder he had his hippy son whacked by the Jews. Or was it the Romans? Jewish Romans, maybe.

Details are sketchy. Ballpoint pens hadn’t been invented yet and the only reporter on the scene got drunk that night and lost the tablets he’d spent all day carving.

Editor: “Are you sure this is what Pontius Pilate said?”

Reporter: “Yes, of course. Well, close enough. I’m paraphrasing here.”

Pontius: “Fake news! Feed him to the lions.”

Fast-forward a couple of thousand years and not much has changed. The internet is groaning under an avalanche of slander, subterfuge and lies so bald they make Lord Voldemort look like Zack Galifianakis.

Donald Trump’s penchant for prevarication has got journalists fact-checking like never before. The problem is, Trump supporters care little for the facts. And why should they, when their hero makes it up as he goes along? Trump and his inner coven are utterly shameless when it comes to subverting the truth and his supporters couldn’t care less. Or, as the Americans would have it, could care less. Which makes about as much sense as Kellyanne Melted-Horseface before she’s had her meds.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the American Press Institute, questions if we’re already in a post fact-check world. “There’s a difference between facts and knowledge. I can tell you your facts are wrong but not change your belief.”

Which takes us back to religion. Atheists, when they’re not busy drinking the blood of virgin sacrifices, know there’s little point in badgering the offensively religious with science. Their belief will not change. It’s called faith. Which, as we know, has less than perfect vision. Fact carries a baseball bat. Faith, a white stick.

Did Schrodinger even have a cat? We can’t be sure. What we are sure about is that America’s new Secretary for Education is a woman by the name of Betsy DeVos. She’s Cruella De Vil in ugly shoes and it’s only a matter of time before she starts making lampshades from the skins of young public schoolboys.

She’s one of the billionaires with whom her president is repopulating the Washington swamp now that it’s been drained of everything true and good. She said not too long ago that guns should be allowed in schools for protection against “potential grizzlies”. I don’t know if she meant actual bears or if it was a euphemism for rappers, pot-smokers and the homeless.

Speaking at an evangelical event a few years ago, she proclaimed, “Our desire is to confront the culture in which we all live today in ways which will continue to help advance God’s kingdom.”

These are bowel-loosening words for us heathen scum living in the relative safety of Africa, but far more so for the juvenile heretics and pagans trapped in the American public schooling system. Let’s go back to the Middle Ages and do it right this time, goddammit!

One thing you can be sure of is that Cretinella DeVos will not be pushing schools to include evolutionary biology in their syllabuses. Syllabi. Whatever.

Four in ten Americans believe God created humans ten thousand years ago. The hardliners say six thousand. Half of Americans believe humans evolved, but then ruin it by saying God guided the process.

Then there’s the intelligent design movement. They think they’re smarter than the creationists, but the jury’s out on that. Not really. The jury came back a long time ago. I’m just trying really hard not to offend anyone.

I don’t feel like I’m the creation of an intelligent designer at all. I drink too much, never watch rugby and pretend that my dogs aren’t mine when they defecate on the beach. I don’t give to charity and I shout at old people when they drive badly. I have way too many design flaws and should have been recalled long before now.

Maybe that’s what death is. You get recalled because you are defective. After your warranty is withdrawn, you line up outside the intelligent designer’s workshop along with all the other broken people. The queue must be horrendous. Bring a book.

After waiting a few hundred years, the intelligent designer hoists you on to his workbench, clamps you in his divine vice and gives you a tweaking with his celestial spanner and supernatural screwdriver. It’s gets a bit tricky from this point on. The only way he can get you back into the race is by rebirthing you, but now the good ship Faith is drifting dangerously close to the rocky shores of Reincarnation. So scrap that idea.

Perhaps the designer simply strips you of your consciousness and tosses your carcass into an unmarked grave on the desolate outskirts of the Pantene Nebula.

I don’t really feel like God made me, either. God has made some terrible mistakes and there are certainly days I think I might be one of them. But doubts do creep in. I mean, really, make the earth in just six days? It takes me two weeks to put shelves up.

If God has a plan for all of us, as the Christians would have it, then why won’t he give me an indication of what the hell it is? Maybe he already has. Still, going to the beach or sitting in pubs writing rubbish doesn’t seem like much of a plan. Then again, the Christians don’t claim he has a fabulously awesome plan for everyone.

I think maybe God has fallen asleep, because sometimes the sound of him snoring comes out of my bum. Or maybe God is speaking through my bum. Maybe I have fallen asleep and he is telling me to wake up and be a better person. Maybe I should put my bum on eBay.

As I’ve already mentioned, most Americans don’t believe in evolution. This is not necessarily because they are in-bred reactionary rednecks, but rather because scientists are pathetic when it comes to marketing their discoveries.

The remnants of a five-million-year-old Homo are dug up in one or other godforsaken flyblown corner of Africa and a man in a white coat appears on television squinting nervously into the camera, saying, “Um. Sorry to bother everybody, but we seem to have found something that could be, well, rather important.”

What they should be doing is dressing up in yellow seersucker suits and glittering top hats and taking the bones on the road. Turn it into an event. A bacchanalian carnival of discovery. They should ride through towns on the backs of painted elephants, drinking champagne from the bottle and brandishing the skull of the flat-faced man of Kenya while shouting through megaphones fashioned from narwhal tusks, “So where’s your god now?”

In the meantime, I have applied for membership to the fastest growing carbohydrate-based religion in the world. Pastafarians believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster created life on earth 4000 years ago when very drunk. I think they may be on to something.

In the words of church founder, Bobby Henderson, “We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform a carbon-dating process on an artifact. He finds that approximately 75% of the Carbon-14 has decayed by electron emission to Nitrogen-14, and infers that this artifact is approximately 10 000 years old, as the half-life of Carbon-14 appears to be 5 730 years. But what our scientist does not realise is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.”

I am particularly drawn to this church because every Friday is a religious holiday. Also, heaven has a beer volcano and a stripper factory.

An open letter to Pastor Steven L Anderson

Dear Pastor

On behalf of all red-blooded, right-thinking heterosexual South African men, I would like to apologise for the appalling treatment meted out to you by the limp-wristed, cocktail-sucking pillow-biters in our government.

You were meant to arrive today – a day declared holy by God after he spent six days working his all-powerful arse off making the universe. And this is the thanks you get? How very dare they ban you from entering our country? You are a man of the cloth. You should be allowed to enter anything you like. Well, when I say anything, I obviously exclude certain categories. Just so there is no misunderstanding, I’m talking about leather-pantsed, Latex-rubbered men with lisps and whips.

Quite frankly, I was surprised our government even had time to get involved in this matter. As you may know, the entire executive has been tasked with the full-time job of protecting our president from prosecution and bankruptcy. Between you and me, I don’t give a damn how corrupt or dysfunctional he is. The important thing is that when he goes home at the end of the day, it’s not to a man wearing nothing but fishnet stockings and Manolo Blahnik stilettos, swivelling his girly hips to Born This Way, an anthem of blasphemy performed by a fallen Jezebel by the name of Lady Gaga.

When Jacob goes home, he has to put on gumboots to wade through raging torrents of oestrogen being secreted by his multitude of wives. What I’m saying is that you shouldn’t write us off just because of one man with a predilection for gold braid and pilot caps. Trust me when I say you won’t find a more butch president than ours. I thought maybe Vladimir Putin could give him a run for his money, but the Russian has a disturbing penchant for whipping off his shirt and mounting the nearest animal. I think it’s fair to say that our President Zuma loves women more than he loves … I was going to say money, but that would be a lie. More than he loves governing, let’s say.

In 2006, when he was deputy president, Big Z told a crowd attending Heritage Day celebrations in KwaZulu-Natal, “When I was growing up, unqingili (homosexuals) could not stand in front of me.” This was followed by an outbreak of stamping and flouncing and demands for a retraction. Well, not really an outbreak. There were complaints. As you’re undoubtedly aware, “retraction” is a term frequently bandied about in the homosexual community. I don’t know what it means. Nor does our president. It’s probably part of the secret code gays use to fool us normals.

Our so-called Home Affairs Minister, Malusi Gigaba, is obviously a closet homo. Why else would he ban you from visiting South Africa? Just because you believe homosexuality should be punished by death, that women who use contraception are whores, that abortion is a sin, that the Holocaust is a scam, that Islam is evil, that the Jewish Messiah is the Antichrist, that the unsaved will be consigned to eternal torment in hell, that Barack Obama deserves to die, that … I’m running out of space. Just because of this? Please. You’ve never even said that second-born girl children should be slaughtered. Or that people with disabilities should be drowned. You’re almost a liberal where I come from.

You said Gigaba was “damned” for standing with the “sodomites”. To be clear, it’s not so much the standing with them that unleashes the wild beast in these perverts. It’s the shirtless dancing and, later, the trouserless lying down. And sometimes the being roughly taken from behind on the balcony by a man wearing a nun’s habit, a titanium dog collar and a studded cock ring. Or so I’ve heard.

Gigaba said you were an undesirable person for “practising racial hatred”. That’s ridiculous. God-fearing folk like us don’t need to practice racial hatred. It comes naturally. I’m sure your 150-strong congregation at the Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona, have had all kinds of hatred down pat for generations. That’s the beauty of in-breeding.

Our government, by the way, also considers the Dalai Lama to be an undesirable person, but that’s because he wears a dress and preaches peace and love and other hippy filth.

After you were grounded by our government, you called South Africa “a den of iniquity” and a “demonic stronghold”. I have to correct you here. You’re describing Cape Town. The rest of the country is filled with brethren smiting the scoffers and mockers with an abundance of righteous violence. O yea. Huzzah to the highest.

As you pointed out, there has been much wickedness in South Africa during its history. “It’s like the devil has a hold on that place. And don’t try to make it about this race or that race or this nation or that nation.” Nicely put, sir. This places the blame for colonialism, apartheid and overgrazing squarely on the shoulders of the devil himself. Or, dare I say, herself. There’s a reason devil worshipping and wooing women are so very similar in methods and outcomes. And yet women are not devils. We love women and hate the devil. Do I have this right? But what if the devil really is female? This could explain and, I hesitate to say, justify why so many men are becoming homosexuals. I’m very confused. I do hope this doesn’t signal the early onset of gayness.

I need clarity on something so that my hatred may be fully focused. You say that all GTBQLI people are “sodomites”. Are you certain about this? I can’t be sure, but I don’t think lesbians, for instance, are all that crazy about action in the botty area. As for intersex people, I’m not sure they even have botties. Either that or they have several. Can you send me some pictures? You must have a few lying around at home for research purposes.

You issued an angry message on Tuesday informing the free world that you’d been banned from not only South Africa, but the United Kingdom too. What irony. Britain is the original home of the deviant. Cabinet ministers are regularly found late at night in the parks and commons on hands and knees dressed as fairies and elves, snorting magic mushrooms and having their prostates checked by hirsute men with tattoos and bad attitudes. The nation is ruled by a queen, for heaven’s sake. Can you get more bent than that?

The quote you fired at the two aberrant countries was well chosen. “And when they opposed themselves, and blasphemed, he shook his raiment, and said unto them, Your blood be upon your own heads; I am clean; from henceforth I will go unto the Gentiles.”

I know what you mean. I have shaken my raiment many times, and even sometimes had it shaken for me, and have almost always gone unto the Gentiles, usually just for a wee but sometimes a shower, depending on the state of my raiment.

You also complained that the Christians in South Africa did not defend you and that you wouldn’t be surprised if you were unable to win any souls here. That’s our Christians for you. Bunch of backsliders who would rather get drunk and watch rugby than spread the word of King James. I’m not talking about King James the advertising agency. People who work in advertising serve the Dark Lord and should be set alight and thrown into a burning pit full of burning vipers along with the homosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, sodomites, catamites, chilibites, Muslims, abortionists and the French.

Your message ended, “I feel sorry for people who live in South Africa, but thank God we still have a wide open door in Botswana. Stand by for reports of multitudes saved in Botswana, where religious freedom still exists.” I’m not altogether convinced that the multitudes in Botswana want to be saved. But if they do, my advice is to give them a bit of the old dimethyltryptamine before the sermon. You’ll have them eating out of the palm of your hand. Some of them may even try to eat the palm of your hand. Don’t worry. It’s an African thing.

See you at the Rapture.

Application for the position of Director of Rugby at St John’s College, Johannesburg

Dear Arch-Vicar,

Congratulations on having the courage and wisdom to create a position like this.

People think there is something wrong with me when I tell them that the reason education is in crisis is because schools are not focusing enough on rugby. Sure, a lot of them have a team or two that plays on the odd weekend, but that is nowhere near what it should be.

Without a director of rugby, a school is little more than a place in which young people congregate to have their heads filled with rubbish like science and history. Would you believe that they are even being taught mind-rotting filth like evolution theory? No wonder our lunatic asylums and prisons are overflowing.

I am very pleased to see that a Christian school has taken the lead in showing the government where its priorities should lie insofar as teaching the next generation something of real value is concerned.

As Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor male prostitutes, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortioners, nor those who play not rugby shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”

Far too many schools in this country treat rugby as if it were just another homosexual activity like cricket or hockey. Tennis, needless to say, is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord and yet it is still played openly, often in front of children and the elderly. May their rotten souls burn in the hellfires of eternal damnation.

Watching the Sharks or the Blue Bulls, even the casual observer can quickly tell which player is the product of a worthy God-fearing school such as yours, and which is the product of an evil system propped up by the antichrist.

When I have the job at St John’s, I will make it a rule that any player who scores a try, drop goal or conversion and then turns to wave at his mother, or wiggle his hips for the cameras, will be forcibly removed from the field and locked in the Sin Bin, a one-metre-square steel box I have built, where he will remain until he is able to recite the Ten Commandments in their original Aramaic.

Players like Bryan Habana set an outstanding example by giving credit to God whenever they score, make a pass, kick the ball into touch or even tie up their shoelaces correctly. There is nothing that gladdens my heart more than seeing a player fall to one knee and point to the sky. He is letting us know that God is guiding him – that he is simply a tool. A big, hairy tool.

Having said that, I do find the tactic of bowing heads and kneeling in silence to be marginally less intimidating than that disturbing pagan dance the New Zealanders do.

With your permission, I will get the lads to perform something out of the Crusades. I expect the swords will be provided by St John’s. This should work particularly well when we play against the Muslim, Jewish and old Prussian schools.

I will also be changing the outfits. Although you are Anglican – what the infidels call Catholic Lite – and would probably rather stick to tradition, my research has shown that the best way to get people to watch the game is to put the boys in tight shorts and shirts.

Rest assured that under my firm hand the team will return to the ancient practice of allowing forward passes, using a sheep’s bladder for a ball and stoning the unmarried mothers whose first-born play in the losing team.

There will be none of this drinking the blood and eating the body of Christ at half-time. Quite frankly, I think it is an appalling practice and sets a terrible example for the boys. Instead, we will share vials of amyl nitrate, a biblical balm which, as Moses discovered, goes a long way towards boosting team morale.

Unfortunately, this energising ambrosia has over time been misappropriated by sexual deviants for purposes which rarely have anything to do with rugby.

By the way, sources not far removed from a certain archangel by the name of Gabriel have informed me that the Springbok coach is planning on using me as his secret weapon in the match against Scotland this weekend. Please keep this to yourself. It wouldn’t do to have those haggis-snorting brutes get wind of the plan.

I shall let you know when it’s convenient for me to start work.

Yours in Christ and Rugby,

Ben “Tighthead” Trovato

Why Mickey Mouse Would Make A Better President Than Jacob Zuma

Mickey is black but he has a white face. This means he stands a good chance of being accepted across the racial spectrum.

Mickey is keenly aware of the importance of personal hygiene. For a start, you will never see him without a clean pair of white gloves. He takes precautions to protect his health in other areas, too. Cheddex, the Cheddar-Flavoured Condom for Randy Rodents®, is his preferred method of contraception. Mickey does not believe that a post-coital shower eliminates the risk of being infected with a sexually transmitted disease.

Mickey has mastered the art of getting people to laugh with him instead of at him. Blessed with the ability to sing and dance at the same time, Mickey brings joy into people’s lives as opposed to striking terror into their hearts.

Mickey is an independently wealthy mouse. Worth an estimated $15-billion, Mickey never has to rely on his friends to bail him out of financial difficulties. In fact, it is usually Mickey who lends money to cash-strapped losers like Goofy and Pluto.

Mickey can be trusted implicitly. It doesn’t matter whether you are a dog, a duck or a bird, you can run out of petrol in the middle of the night and one phone call will bring Mickey rushing to your aid. But don’t ask him to lie for you, because he won’t. Don’t call him up and say: “Yo Mick, Donald here. Listen, if Daisy calls, tell her I’m sleeping over at your place tonight.”

Mickey is not a homophobe. In fact, given his predilection for skimpy red shorts, there is a very good chance that he is latently gay. He might not come out openly and condone the homosexual lifestyle, what the prominence of his position and all, but he most certainly would not describe same-sex marriages as “a disgrace to the nation and to God”. And especially not if he happened to be the guest speaker at, say, Heritage Day celebrations in KwaDukuza.

Mickey is a one-woman mouse. Apart from a brief ill-advised flirtation with Daisy Duck in 1968, he has never cheated on Minnie and would never, ever consider bringing another wife into the Mouse house.

Mickey never shows his age. Even though he was born in 1928 and stills turns up for work every day, he always looks fit, young and happy. Almost human, in fact. Just the kind of president we need.