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

To: University of the Free State – Faculty of Theology

Dear Reichsmarschall,

Word in the Lord’s vineyard is that you have a vacancy in the Shepherd Centre for the Guidance of Spiritual Leaders. This is fortuitous timing as you have caught me between jobs.

The last time I saw your university’s spiritual leaders, they were in a television documentary performing some kind of religious ceremony. I presumed they were converting the heathens to Christianity, although it struck me as a little odd that they would use beer and urine as their holy sacraments. Is that from the Old Testament?

Rest assured that I am well-equipped to provide the best possible guidance to these charismatic young leaders. I am as well versed in the Bible as I am in the R4 assault rifle, and history has shown that the pagans are more easily converted when both the good book and the gun are used in conjunction with one another. Being a man of God yourself, you will already know this.

I should probably tell you right now that I intend teaching liberation theology, but without all that melodramatic carry-on about bringing justice to the poor and oppressed. Instead of promoting doomed causes, I will instruct my flock in the more practical art of liberating oneself should one find oneself in Pollsmoor Prison or Pretoria Central.

Some of our country’s finest spiritual souls are behind bars after committing a misunderstanding. Not too long ago, four bright young lads from Waterkloof were sent to jail for failing to get a homeless man to accept Jesus into his heart. The ungrateful sun worshipper instead chose to die even as God’s angels were banging on his door and his head and his ribs and his kidneys and spleen.

Through liberation theology, I will teach these eager young evangelists how to bribe warders, fashion crude duplicate keys, hide in the kitchen during lockdown and make good their escape. However, true liberation is never achieved easily and I may well include a module dealing with emigration to Australia.

I understand there are a few students of the darker persuasion studying at your noble institution. This pleases me because there is nothing more futile than preaching to the converted.

With your permission, I will get the girls to make boerewors rolls and hand them out to our black brethren as a way of encouraging them to come along on Tuesdays and Thursdays and teach their Aryan brothers to sing and dance. We all need a little levity in these tough times and, besides, a lynch party that can toyi-toyi would be uniquely South African. It wouldn’t surprise me if your sister universities in Alabama and Mississippi offered to sponsor my position once word got out.

You need not provide the accoutrements of the job since I already have my own uniform and freshly charred cross.

Supremely yours,

Ben Trovato

Imperial Lizard

Church of the South African Knights of the Ku Klutz Klan

An Open Letter to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa

Dear Sir or Madam,

Forgive me for I know not whether you are a sir or a madam. For all I know, you are both. If you are indeed a hermaphrodite or even a transsexual who dreams of one day undergoing gender reassignment surgery, may I take this opportunity to wish you luck. Some of my best friends are trapped inside a woman’s body. In one case, quite literally.

While we are on the sticky subject of genitalia, I would like to congratulate you on your legal victory against those godless purveyors of filth, TopTV. Had you not stepped in and hauled those vile degenerates into court, this country would be on its knees right now. Performing acts of unspeakable depravity on a vulnerable neighbouring country, no doubt.

Three channels of porn? I mean, really. How very dare they!

This is an honest Christian country and even though the Ten Commandments avoid making specific reference to pornography, I think “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass” comes pretty damn close.

These would be 24-hour channels. More and more people would begin calling in sick. Industries would fail and the economy would collapse. Eskom’s blackouts would see gibbering porn addicts embarking on rolling masturbatory action. The lunatic asylums would be jammed with hairy-palmed madmen and the gutters would overflow with semen.

Many of us who own holiday homes on the moral high ground have learnt, through bitter experience, that sex is a deeply unnatural act.

Who among us can forget the terrible deeds the devil made us do when we were younger? All these years later, we remember the studded gloves, the smell of antiseptic, the sting of the lash, the bone-chilling silence that followed those horrifying words, “Is it in yet?”

We do not want our kids to have to walk through the same fires of damnation.

I am proud to say that my boy Clive still believes babies are made in Wonky Willie’s baby factory in Salt River. He stole my car the other night to go and look for it and came back at 3am. He seemed very agitated and wouldn’t stop talking. Eventually I had to dart him with my tranquilizer gun. Brenda thinks he might have wandered into a crack house.

That’s fine with me. Just as long as he never discovers he is the result of a process so shameful that his mother and I have not repeated it since he was conceived.

TopTV gives a hollow assurance that the filth will not be freely available to everyone, but there is not a child on this planet who couldn’t find his way to their offices, present a fake ID proving he was over 18, take out a subscription, shoplift a decoder, hook it up to the TV, break the encryption code, bypass the security system, tune the channels and change the locks on the house.

In no time at all our suburbs would be full of weeping parents banging on their front doors shouting, “Jimmy! We know what you’re doing in there! Let us in! You’re going to hell if you don’t close your eyes right now!”

My fear is that not even the very real possibility of Jesus withdrawing his unconditional love would be enough to stop little Jimmy from gorging himself sick on this carnal buffet.

It wouldn’t stop there, either. Studies have shown that pornography is a gateway drug to harder habits such as cannibalism, journalism and politics.

Well done on securing the support of Pastor Errol Naidoo and all the other right-thinking Christians who threatened to boycott TopTV and their advertisers if Satan’s broadcaster went ahead with its nefarious plan to destroy humankind as we know it.

Some say you cannot call yourselves “independent” while co-opting allies in your righteous crusade against evil, but these heretics will burn for their sins and I, for one, will be there with marshmallows when they do.

One last request. Please do something about those pagan Muppets who live in sin on Sesame Street. Bert and Ernie are clearly homosexual and have no business being on public television.

You also need to shut down the internet. Did you know that if you type “sex” into Google, you get 3.8-billion results? Many of these sites are unrelated to the human reproductive system and some of the longer lesbian videos can take more than an hour to download. This is outrageous. We need high-speed broadband so we can see what we are fighting against.

I have to go now. There is a fantastic movie starting on SABC3. It’s full of violence, bad language, misogyny and racial prejudice. Just what us decent God-fearing folk need on a Sunday evening.

If Anyone Can, The Anglican

Dear Archbishop of Canterbury,

My friend Ted and I spent last weekend praying that the Church of England would not allow women to be ordained as bishops. We already live with women who tell us that if we don’t do what they say, we can go to hell. Must we have it in church, too?

So you can imagine our joy when we heard on Monday that the General Synod had taken the Catholic option and pulled out moments before reaching the point of no return.

When I say Ted and I were praying, I mean drinking beer. When I was very young, a wise man told me prayer can take many forms. I decided there and then that I would praise God in the form of beer. And let me tell you, I have given a tremendous amount of praise over the years. In fact, between you and me, I am almost praised-out. But this is okay because the older I get the less I have to be thankful for.

Besides, it’s not as if God is doing such a fantastic job these days, is it? His earlier work was impressive but he seems to have lost interest.

Anyway. After three or four hours of hard praising, Ted and I came to the conclusion that women wanted to become bishops because of the funky hats and dresses you guys wear.

And who can blame them?

Purple is a passionate colour and women are passionate creatures. Christianity is a passionate religion. And who among us can forget Mel Gibson’s tour de force, The Passion of the Christ? Well, apart from Mel, of course. This crapulous son of Catholicism gave the Judas kiss to his own movie after discovering, too late, that Jesus was Jewish.

You were quoted in the heathen media as saying you hoped that postponing the decision would “lower the temperature” of the debate.

This is beyond a debate, my friend. This is 1534 all over again, except this time you’re not splitting from the Roman Catholic Church, but splitting from yourselves. A bit like ecclesiastical amoebas.

There are those who will shriek and fall about and insist that women should be allowed to become bishops because we are all God’s children. What nonsense. God is not Jacob Zuma. God had only one child – a boy, if I recall.

I blame the insufferable suffragettes, those professional naggers who went on and on and on until the British government went mad and agreed to give women the vote.

Anything to shut them up.

Once they had the vote, they demanded all sorts of things and today there are men sitting at home with no supper because their wives are out flying helicopters in Afghanistan. A shameful state of affairs all round.

As for the outrageous notion of bishops with breasts, your General Synod voted 288 in favour of postponing a decision, 144 voted against and 15 abstained.

I bet the darkies abstained. They still can’t believe their luck at being allowed to become bishops ahead of women and they certainly aren’t going to stick their heads above the parapet just yet.

This is not a time to be fannying about with votes. You don’t see the pope bothering with the niceties of democracy, do you? The faithful need to be ruled with an iron fist.

Drive across England in an armoured archbishopmobile and tell people in no uncertain terms how to behave and what to think. Get a posse of defrocked priests to round up the dissenters and have them shot.

You warned last week the church was “looking into the abyss” over the issue. I think you need to use stronger language. As long as Christianity has eternal damnation at its disposal, the idea of a piffling abyss is not going to frighten anyone. In fact, I have seen some stunning abysses. All you are really doing is threatening people with a view of the Fish River Canyon.

You allowed women to enter the priesthood twenty years ago, then turned the other cheek and hoped they would be happy with that. There’s the problem. You people just don’t understand women.

Give a girl a dog collar and sooner or later she will want a cassock. Any idiot off the street could have told you that.

You’re on a slippery slope, comrade. Look what’s happening with your morally flexible cousins, the Episcopalians. Not only have they decided to bless gay relationships, but while you were playing for time on the babes-for-bishops business, they were voting to give transgender people the right to become ministers. Transgender clergy!

Now you don’t know who you might be taking home after a particularly arousing sermon. It’s worse than Thailand.

The Episcopal Church is a hotbed of tolerance and equity. No good can come of it. Please don’t go down that road. Prejudice is an essential tool in helping us to judge others. Without it, religion would cease to exist.

And what kind of terrible world would that be? 

Thank You For Not Sharing

Much like alcohol and organised religion, Facebook can ruin your health, wreck your marriage and make you appear stupider than you are.

However, it brings great happiness and joy in so many other ways. Take brunch, for example. Too often we take this simple meal for granted. If brunch had feelings (and who is to say it doesn’t?) it would be hurt by our callous disregard for it.

“I am not a late breakfast, nor am I an early lunch!” it would cry, were it allowed a voice at this unholy buffet we call life.

Fortunately, there are kind people out there who, through postings on Facebook, remind us that brunch can be a deeply moving if not life-changing event.

“OMG! Just had most DIVINE brunch eva!!”

“Y u not invite me I thort I woz yr BFF?!!??”

“Sorri babe! Nxt time ROFL!!”

“Won’t be a nxt time coz am cuming round to cut yr hed off.”

The same goes for children. If it weren’t for some parents proudly posting pictures of their progeny, we would labour under the misapprehension that all of us were cursed with ugly, talentless offspring. Who would have thought that some are so bright and beautiful that one would require sunglasses to avoid being blinded by their coruscating countenances?

My very best, though, are the gut-churning parables and three-hankie homilies.

Flipping through Facebook’s news feed is like having a stream of Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing your doorbell while Paulo Coelho sits in your lounge spouting 20-word truisms dressed up as profundity.

The practice of posting platitudinous parables, ass-kissing aphorisms and hackneyed self-help clichés is not only monstrously offensive to the condemned and the cursed – among whom I count myself – but also an alarming indictment of the depths to which these meddling missionaries will stoop in their nugatory quest to help others see what they call “the light” but which I call moral bestiality.

I would wager that many of those who flood Facebook with these disposable sermons suffer from poor self-esteem and a pestilential smorgasbord of personality disorders.

If this is where you find redemption or look for lessons on how to live your life, you’re in a lot more trouble than you think.

Here is a sampling of esoteric excrescence which this week interfered with my search for amusing tales of stupid people in real trouble.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

The picture is of a child, perhaps mentally disturbed, standing in the rain. She doesn’t look happy, probably because she knows she’s in for a thrashing when she gets home. “What’s the hell is wrong with you?” her gin-soaked mother will shout. “Why didn’t you wait for the bloody storm to pass before going outside?”

“Dear God, thanks for this beautiful life and forgive me if I don’t love it enough.”

Forgive you? What kind of spineless God do you take me for? You will love your life – even if you have no legs and live in a cardboard box on the N2 – or you will burn for all eternity in the hellfires of damnation. Forgive you. I have never heard such rubbish. If I did it for you, everyone would get up to all sorts of crazy shit knowing that I was dishing out forgiveness to anyone who asked. In future, you can show how much you love your life by dancing in the rain. Naked. Then I want you to go to work and murder your boss. Don’t bother me again.

“The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.”

The picture is of an angry mob of very big trees posing aggressively for the camera. First, let’s me just say I don’t believe in spirits, unless it’s Klipdrift you’re talking about. In which case, make mine a double. Second, the kind of places that have not been rearranged by the hand of man (even though it is women who do most of the rearranging) are in such remote areas that you would have to be a damn fool to go there without a posse of heavily armed friends, one of whom should be a paramedic and another a lawyer.

Nature that has been spared the firm hand of man is nature that will tear your throat out as soon as look at you. It will crush you, drown you or just plain old snap your spine and leave you to rot. Don’t be an idiot. The human spirit can get whatever it needs off the internet.

“Being strong doesn’t always mean you have to fight the battle. True strength is being adult enough to walk away from the nonsense with your head held high.”

Bollocks. You must fight the battle, unless of course you started it, in which case it’s more fun to sneak off and watch from a safe distance. Still and all, I wouldn’t advise using that craven “adult enough” rationale while backing out of a bar fight in Hillbrow. Your head will be held high, alright. It just won’t be attached to your body.

“Even in the darkest of night there is hope. As the moon lights our path so does hope light our way.”

No, it doesn’t. Hope is the last refuge of the doomed. It smells of lavender and carries a concealed weapon. Hope will not hesitate to bludgeon you from behind, moon or no moon.

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

This is the kind of paranoid, judgmental gibberish shouted by a right-wing redneck moments before he slaps his wife, drags a giant bag of ammonium nitrate into his bakkie and blows himself up outside a government building. Not always a bad idea.

“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy.”

Right, then. That’s my job and marriage out the window. Can I come and live with you?

“I have learned it is not what I have in my life but who I have in my life that counts.”

Really? Can you drive your husband along Chapman’s Peak on a Sunday morning with the roof down and a bottle of champagne between your legs? Has your Blackberry ever cheated on you? When you need to see a naked woman, do you reach for your iPad or your wife?

“God made the horse from the breath of the wind, the beauty of the earth and the soul of the angel.”

Whoever said this has never been stabbed in the face by a horse. He will pretend to be your friend right up until the moment you’re on his back, and then he won’t listen to a word you say. Sooner or later he will try to kill you.

So much for that.

Shops are full of this tawdry tat coyly posing as philosophy. You wouldn’t buy a tea-towel that said: “Believe you can and you’re halfway there”, but see it on Facebook and it’s, “OMG I love that!!!” and “So very TRUE!! Thank you!!!”

Were these people raised by wolves? Or do they genuinely have the intellectual capacity of a garden gnome? For the sake of humanity, I pray it’s the wolves.

Thank you for not sharing.