Tap-dancing gorillas and tenants from hell

Did you know that gorillas make up “food songs” while they eat? A German scientist discovered this “fun new fact” while working with the primates in the Congo. I don’t think it’s a fun fact at all. I can’t think of anything more terrifying than coming across a silverback gyrating its hips and singing Purple Rain with a mouth full of bamboo shoots.

Oh, look. Here’s another fun fact. Come November, Donald Trump could well be the 45th president of the United States of America.

While we’re on the subject of fun facts, did you know that 42% of Americans continue to believe that God created humans less than 10 000 years ago? Understand this and you’ll find it easier to understand why that orange maniac is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.

I read somewhere that the world has experienced five mass extinctions over the last half a billion years and is on the brink of the sixth. Quite frankly, it can’t happen soon enough for me.

I don’t know what the hell this year thinks it’s doing. I went to Cape Town for Christmas and stumbled out three months later. I made an overnight stop in Jeffreys Bay and went to St Francis for lunch. Lunch lasted a month. Then, on my way back to Durban a few days ago, my biological GPS had a nervous breakdown and instead of driving past Rhodes University I found myself outside the University of Fort Hare in that glittering jewel of a town called Alice. Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?

I’m exhausted. If that’s what holidays do to you, then I need a proper job – one that restricts me to 21 days leave a year. It’s for my own good. Even heroin addicts live longer than freelance journalists. They at least have to move around to find money and drugs. We just need a laptop, a comfy chair and a running tab.

Some idiot once said that with great freedom comes great responsibility. This is absolute rubbish. With great freedom comes great freedom. That’s all there is to it.

Freedom is great. I would venture to say that freedom is greater than God because freedom doesn’t threaten to consign your soul to the eternal hellfires of damnation if you covet your neighbour’s ass. But it can be tiring.

So anyway, after eight hours of dodging Transkei road-kill and bent cops, I get home to find my refuge trashed. Not by burglars, but by the people who stayed here last. The thing with Airbnb is that you’re allowing complete strangers to abuse your house in return for nothing more than money. It’s a form of prostitution, really. It’s also a devilishly easy way to make money. This is something that speaks to me. Whoring my home comes naturally to me. I am a property pimp. There are worse things to be. At least I’m not a member of parliament.

Usually there is a domestic worker who gets dropped off by helicopter after a guest leaves, but this time she had been called away on urgent business in the Bahamas and failed to turn up. This meant I had to deal with the situation with no backup whatsoever.

I pulled in to the driveway saturated in road rage, the Land Rover bucking and snorting, and bellied up to the front door with my key in one hand and a Balinese fighting sword in the other. That’s my weapon of choice when I traverse the Transkei. Chopping off an arm here and there sends a clear signal to the local banditry. I learnt this from my Saudi Arabian friends.

The guests, luckily for them, had departed. Less luckily for me, they had left a mound of soiled cutlery and crockery in the sink, three pots of semi-cooked gunk on the stove and bits of half-eaten food in the fridge. I also found a packet of King Size Rizlas and an empty eyedropper of something called Ruthless. I don’t know what it is. The print on the bottle is too small to read. And my bedroom looks like Charlie Sheen was here. This guest from hell was an Afrikaner currently living overseas. He brought his girlfriend, his baby and his mother. It sounds like a sitcom written by the Marquis de Sade.

I suspect this is why Berlin has introduced a law banning homeowners from renting out their properties on Airbnb, although a more plausible reason might be that the city wants to keep random acts of cannibalism under control. Germans like nothing more than getting together on a Saturday night and eating bits of one another over a bottle or two of chianti. The new legislation is called Zweckentfremdungsverbot. Such a mellifluous language.

I returned to not only terrible scenes in my home, but also in parliament. A debate on the Presidency budget vote? That’s not what I saw. I saw a bunch of pot-bellied revolutionaries getting their arses handed to them by a plainclothes posse from the parking lot. Surely the whole point of wearing red is that you don’t care about getting blood on your clothes? I want to see some real fighters in the EFF. I want to see Mikey Schultz and Radovan Krecjir sitting behind Julius Malema and Floyd Shivambu. Then we’ll see who gets thrown out of parliament.

Finally, let us not even speak of Matthew Theunissen, Cape Town’s latest contender for a Darwin award. After posting an ill-conceived anti-government diatribe on Facebook that would have made a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan blush, he said he “didn’t intend to say those words”. Fair enough. I didn’t intend to drink a dozen beers while writing this column either, but it happened nevertheless. Evil forces are clearly at work. Matthew has a Masters from Stellenbosch University, that shining beacon of progressive thought. I wasn’t aware that Maties offered post-graduate degrees in white supremacy. Maybe he thought you needed a Masters to be a fully-fledged member of the master race.

Matthew insisted that he wasn’t a racist; that he had “friends of colour”. By colour, I imagine he means the different shades of red his white friends turned when they realised what an utter fuckwit he is.

Bring on the sixth extinction.

 

 

 

Dear Saudi Arabia

Congratulations on your decision to kill the Shiite boy who goes by the name Ali Mohammed al-Nimr. Teenagers are dreadful at the best of times, what with their sighing and eye-rolling and endless demands for human rights and justice. If I had my way they would all be put to death.

I suppose I shouldn’t call him a boy. He is, after all, 20 years old. However, he was still a teenager when he committed the dastardly crimes for which he must die. Apparently he participated in the Arab Spring protests in 2012. Is that right? My kid once participated in a school play and by the end of it I wanted to slaughter the entire cast and most of the audience, so I know how you feel.

I gather you are breaking with tradition and not beheading the lad. Well done. Beheading is too good for some people. Crucifixion is the only language this generation understands. Well, that and textese and SMSish. Hang on. I’m getting conflicting information here. Some reports say you’re going to behead him and then crucify him. I don’t want to sound like a liberal, but isn’t that overkill? I apologise. You obviously know what you’re doing. I’m a bit worried, though. Crucifixion can lead to new religions forming and nobody, least of all you, wants that happening. Yes, I’m talking about a certain Mr J Christ of Bethlehem. If the Romans had let him off with a light whipping and a warning, Christianity would probably not exist today. And even if it did, their symbol certainly wouldn’t be a cross. I’m just saying be careful, that’s all.

Your own media, which never gets anything wrong under pain of death – in my country that’s just an expression – said you wanted to string up the body after the beheading as a warning to others. I may be out of line here, but would the average Saudi be shocked at the sight of just one body? From what I’ve heard, one can barely move in Riyadh for the corpses of people executed for jaywalking or littering. That’s just the men. Apparently the countryside is littered with the bodies of female radicals who were caught driving, watching television or talking to men who weren’t their brothers.

Wouldn’t it be more effective to round up everyone who participated in the Arab Spring and crucify the lot of them? You could do a thousand a day for three months. If the United Nations starts gnashing its gums, tell them it’s none of their damn business what you do. Tell them it’s population control. If they threaten to pass a resolution, threaten to fire nuclear missiles into New York. You do have nukes, right? You’d better have, or even Israel could whip your arse.

I hear France has also asked you to call off the execution. France! That’s a laugh. After the terrible things they did in the Congo. No, wait. That was the Belgians. Same thing. If they want a united Europe, then all of Europe must take collective responsibility for all the horror.

At least you don’t have to worry about Britain putting the boot in. Their prime minister is too busy doing damage control after it emerged that he stuck his honourable member into a dead pig when he was younger. Also, they really want to land that £6m contract to provide prison expertise to your country. To be honest, I’m surprised you still bother with prisons. Decapitation is so much more cost-effective in the long run. I hope you’re not going soft on us.

By the way, congratulations on being chosen to head up the UN human rights council. This couldn’t have come at a better time for you. It doesn’t matter how much the limp-wristed dolphin-kissers wave their yoga mats and rattle their daisy chains, the fact remains that the US State Department has welcomed it, as do all right-wing, I beg your pardon, all right-thinking members of the global community.

By the way, you might want to get the plasterers in. I hear there are some nasty cracks developing in the House of Saud. The last thing you want to do is let the light in.

Backwards to the future

Dear Comrade President Zuma,

Congratulations on your narrow escape at the reed dance in Nongoma the other day. I was alarmed to read that hundreds of bare-breasted virgins had become possessed by demons and rushed the stage where you and King Zwelithini were sitting. What a frightening thing to happen.

I have been to the reed dance and, quite frankly, the girls scared me even when they weren’t full of demons. One of them took a run at me, leaping into the air with a terrible shriek and gesticulating wildly with her ample buttocks. It wasn’t clear if this was a mating dance or a death threat and I felt uneasy after that.

Virgins are unpredictable at the best of times. Put three in a room and it’s mayhem. From what I’ve read, even the carpenter Joseph had a hard time controlling his wife, Mary. Then again, their kid was a bit of a handful. Getting forty thousand of them to strip virtually naked and dance for you is just asking for trouble.

I know it sounds unlikely, but perhaps Satan wasn’t responsible for this one. The king was late with his speech and the maidens had already gone back to the buses and tents to get out of the rain and cold. When he ordered the girls to return, is it not possible that they were half-mad with hypothermia and were simply looking for shelter? Alternatively, this might well have been the first wave of Zulu suffragettes whose minds have been poisoned by the inflammatory teachings of Oprah Winfrey.

Once feminism takes hold, you can kiss the reed dance goodbye. And it will be the last thing you kiss for a long, long time. Trust me. I know.

Prince Thulani Zulu of the royal household said the devil spirit is common among young girls. I suspect it’s also fairly common among older girls. Well, I’m thinking more of married women, here. One in particular, really. There would be much weeping and falling over and pretty much everything short of ectoplasm would come out of her potty mouth. So I know how you must have felt. We both had a close call.

People who were there said you were quickly escorted to safety, leaving the king to fend for himself. Fair enough. He carries what looks like a ceremonial battle-axe and dresses like a cross between a leopard and a lion. I certainly wouldn’t mess with him, and I’m no virgin.

Other people who were there denied that you were escorted to safety, saying you were simply popping off to the loo. Of course you were. Who wouldn’t want to go to the toilet after facing down a battalion of topless teenagers brimming with hormones and hobgoblins?

Sometimes I think demons are inside me, too, but then I drown them with beer and feel much better afterwards. At the next reed dance, you should give the girls beer. Maybe organise a few bands. Chuck a couple of cows on the fire. It could be wild.

In the meantime, please encourage the king to keep blaming evil spirits and demons for all the bad stuff that happens. It’s the only way we can weed out and burn the witches who send lightning to strike their neighbour’s hut by sneezing twice in a thunderstorm. You should also encourage more ANC MPs to publicly denounce evolution as a racist conspiracy.

This sort of thing helps us retain our less developed country status and keeps those foreign grants and low-interest loans rolling in. The country scores, the king gets another wife and you get to ogle thousands of breasts. Everyone’s a winner. Everyone except the witches. And science.

 

Cheater – The Fastest Mammal on Two Legs

Never mind Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Forget Alan Turing cracking Nazi Germany’s Enigma code. The hacking of dating site Ashley Madison has done the most damage. If you go outside and listen carefully, you can hear the distant sound of erections toppling over like shot giraffe.

Okay, so Ashley Madison isn’t strictly a dating site, although I do think that if two strangers get naked and filthy within five minutes of meeting, it’s still a form of dating. Extreme dating, perhaps.

The tag-line on their website, as everyone knows by now, is, “Life is short. Have an affair.” They may want to change it to, “Life is short. Have a divorce.” Lawyers are already referring to Christmas in September.

The site also says, “Ashley Madison is the world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters.” Discreet is highlighted in red and italicised. Apparently that wasn’t clear enough for the hackers. As for the company’s claim of 39 470 000 anonymous members, well, they might want to make a couple of changes. For a start, replace “anonymous” with “anxious” or “mortified”.

When it emerged that the site’s security had been breached, every married woman in the world wanted to know if her beloved was on the database. Ninety percent of those signed up to the service are men. The phrase Members Only has never rung more true.

Although there probably are some wives on the site, women, married or not, generally don’t need to trawl the internet to get laid. They simply need go outside and smile at any passing man who takes their fancy. Perhaps do that thing they do with their eyebrows to help the slower ones get the message.

So who did the hacking? They call themselves the Impact Team and my gut tells me women are involved. There’s a vicious recklessness in this act of terror. But, speaking as a twice-married man, my gut has been wrong before. It could just as easily be a bunch of disgruntled husbands. Or religious zealots.

Noel Biderman, legendary lounge lizard and founder of the Toronto-based Ashley Madison, has without doubt made it easier for married people to cheat over the last 14 years. Would these people still have cheated had the site not existed? Probably.

Biderman might have broken hearts, but he broke no laws. Stone him. Don’t stone him. I don’t particularly care either way. He’s a money-grubbing douchebag.

I do think, though, that by acting as judge, jury and executioner, the crusading hackers are pretty much cut from the same cloth as the Islamic State. Meting out “moral” justice without allowing for mitigation? Shades of Sharia.

This week a community newspaper in Nelspruit posted two links, presumably as some kind of twisted public service, allowing people to check whether their spouse was on Ashley Madison. All you had to do was type an email address into a box. On a site called Trustify, you’d either be cleared or get a message saying, “You have been compromised.” Later, checking to see if any of my married friends had been compromised, I discovered the service had been “temporarily removed”. I tried the second link. This site warned, “Do not use the Trustify search site. They are recording email address searches and spamming/extorting people.”

Indeed, the potential for extortion has never been better and the hum of computers firing up from Lagos to Ljubljana is almost drowning out the sound of weeping women and laughing lawyers.

Before Trustify went down, so to speak, I typed in my email address and was duly notified that I had been compromised. I was asked if I’d like their help in protecting my information. I got the impression a fee might be involved. The other site also said my email had been found. They offered advice and said don’t trust Trustify.

Both sites were right. My email address was indeed registered with Ashley Madison. Oh, please. Don’t look at me like that. It was research. Seriously. I joined half a dozen dating sites earlier this year because I thought it might make good material for a column – a column, I might add, that appeared on May 3 in this very newspaper and in which I openly admitted to having signed up to Ashley Madison.

It went no further than that, but even if I had shagged someone else’s wife it wouldn’t have counted as adultery because I’m separated. Okay, fine. It’s a 50 shades of grey area.

Given the choice, though, I’d rather not get jiggy with married women. Not for any ethical or moral reasons, but because South African men are quick to resort to violence and I really can’t run that fast any more.

Things are getting nasty, with at least two reported cases of people killing themselves because of the leak. And two Canadian law firms have filed a $578m class-action lawsuit against Ashley Madison for failing to secure their site. In turn, Ashley Madison’s parent company Avid Life Media is offering a R5m reward for information about the hackers. There’s panic in the air and nobody’s getting laid. This is not good.

Fortunately, I have a solution. Well, technically it’s not mine. It belongs to a company called Sprout Pharmaceuticals and it’s a little pink pill designed to boost the female libido. The pill, taken daily, is called Addyi. It’s generic name is flibanserin. How ridiculous. If I had to invent a drug that restored sexual desire in women, I’d call it Yeehaa!

Addyi comes with side effects of fatigue or fainting if combined with alcohol or certain other drugs. Every woman I have ever known has, on at least one occasion, passed out or pleaded fatigue when I have sounded the Last Post and set about the ceremonial lowering of the broeks. In their defence, though, or perhaps in mine, drugs and alcohol were almost always involved.

My point – let’s call it a theory – is that married men might not be so quick to sign up to sites like Ashley Madison if their wives were able to boost their dopamine levels and show a spontaneous interest in bumping uglies.

On the other hand, there might be nothing wrong with your wife’s sex drive. She wants it, alright, just not with you. So while Addyi might very well awaken a ravening beast in your woman, there’s no guarantee you’ll be the beneficiary.

Meanwhile, estate agents everywhere have begun adding dog boxes to their listings.

A letter to Big Jake

Dear Comrade Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma the First, by the Grace of God President of the Republic of South Africa, Head of the Household, Defender of the Faith, Pastor of the Flock, Defeater of the Mbeki, Unifier of the Nation, Msholozi of Msholozis, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, Conqueror of the Apartheid Regime and Owner of Property in Nkandla, I hereby greet you.

First, allow me to congratulate you on your magnificent performance in parliament the other day. You must have studied drama at some point in your life because your range is astounding. It’s not everyone who can so realistically portray a serious statesman one minute and a giggling halfwit the next. You’re clearly a master of the Chekhov technique, making good use of imagination and gestures to get your point across.

I am aware that you never read the reviews, but you might want to know that you do have your detractors. Actually, forget I mentioned it. These people wouldn’t know the difference between Shakespeare and Shakes Mashaba. You are, after all, not performing in the house of the Capulets. This is the house of the ANC. As the star and director, you need to have a word with those playing opposite you. I don’t think Mmusi Maimane even went to acting school. It doesn’t look like he is pretending at all. Perhaps you should have a word with him. Explain that the point of parliament is to simply put on a good show for the millions of extras at home watching on the telly. Well, those who can afford tellies. And who haven’t emigrated.

It’s a damn good thing the extras aren’t given a speaking role in this movie of yours. The chaos would be unimaginable if they were required to do anything more complicated than vote every five years. And they can’t even get that right.

You have obviously watched Mad Max: Fury Road. Where else would you be getting your ideas on how to run a country? I think it works. Tyrannical cult leader Immortan Jacob and Furioso Baleka take on Mad Zille in a desert wasteland where civilisation has collapsed and petrol, electricity and water are scarce. We don’t even have to wait for the future – it’s already happening. The money we save on props can be spent on bolsering security at your home. How about a nice surround sound theatre system? Or a gold-plated Jacuzzi for each of the wives? What about a subterranean bondage club for the livestock? I bet the cows are into leather and whips and stuff.

By the way, well done on ridding the National Prosecuting Authority of that troublesome Mxolisi Nxasana. I’m sure you derived little pleasure from punishing him with a R17-million payout. But it’s his own fault. He asked for it. That reminds me of something Karl Marx once said: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them … well, I have others.”

How about these Catholics? What a nerve, describing the expenditure on your modest home as “morally indefensible”. The Inquisition was morally indefensible. The Crusades were morally indefensible. Priestly paedophilia is morally indefensible. They should smite the log in their own eye before getting stoned in glass houses. Why not buy them out, like you did the Nxasana quisling? Okay, the Church is worth around R200-billion so they might not need your money – our money. Perhaps you could offer the Pope timeshare at Nkandla. The Vatican’s security features aren’t up to scratch, or so I’ve heard, and I’m sure the old chap would fancy a dip in the fire pool before blessing the natives.

All this talk of money is making me aroused. Excuse me while I take a quick shower. Phew. That’s better. Anyway, back to money. I heard you’ve paid out more than R150-million this year alone to people you appointed in recent years who disappointed you with their insufferable honesty and irresponsible attitude towards the truth. So here’s what I’m thinking. You put me in a top position and, in a year or so, I’ll start suggesting that you should be investigated and we’ll split the golden handshake. What do you think? It works for me.

 

Unprotected and exposed

The lights were turned down low. I was nervous. This was my first time. He smiled when I walked in. Gently took my hand in his. I recoiled as he began stroking my arms. “Just relax,” he murmured, running his fingers over my face.

“Take your shirt off,” he said. He turned me around and stroked my back. It felt good. Then he asked me to move to the bed. “Take off your pants,” he said. I hesitated. I had never been touched by another man in this way. Hesitantly, I unbuttoned my camo shorts and let them fall to the floor. He sank to his knees and ran his hands over my thighs, making soft appreciative sounds. Then he asked me to lie down. I knew this was going to cost me. Dearly.

Dermatologists don’t come cheap.

I grew up surfing in Durban at a time when cigarettes were good for you and brandy improved your looks. I remember my mother shouting, “Put some bloody suntan lotion on!” before I went surfing. In those days, boys weren’t interested in applying oil or cream to anything that didn’t involve their genitals. I doubt much has changed.

I had years, if not decades, of unprotected exposure to the sun. You’d think my face would look like a cross between a raisin and a piece of biltong by now, but you’d be wrong. Mmmm. Biltong. Thanks to good genes and beer, my face is silky smooth and completely hairless. No, wait. That’s my bum.

If I were to be honest, and, to be honest, I rarely am, the main reason I was there was because I had begun growing a second willy and wanted some advice. Should I keep it? My gut told me there were untold benefits to having a back-up, but my gut has been wrong in the past. I needed a professional opinion.

The doctor’s fondlings trailed off as he failed to discover any melanomas or carcinomas, malignant, benign, squamous or otherwise. I could see in his eyes that he was wondering whether I simply enjoyed being felt up by older men. I had to bring out the second willy before things turned weird.

Not wanting to drop my shorts again, I instead pulled the pant leg up. And there it was. My second willy. I apologised and turned my head away so the doctor wouldn’t see the shame in my eyes.

“Ah,” he said. “A polyp.” Oh god. It has a name. Polyp shall be thy name. Polyp, meet Doctor … I couldn’t remember his name. Apparently it wasn’t a second willy at all. I was crushed and elated at the same time. I looked like I was having a stroke.

“A lot of women have them.” Confused, I thought he had asked if I have a lot of women. “Not as many as I’d like,” I said. He looked at me for a couple of seconds, then moved away to load up a syringe. This wasn’t what I had in mind.

“If you’re going to be operating, shouldn’t I have a general anaesthetic?” He smiled. There are only three times a doctor smiles. When he’s about to tell you that you have two months to live; when he gets the keys to his new Mercedes; and when his work permit arrives from the Australian embassy.

He plunged the syringe into my thigh. I screamed but quickly stopped when I realised that I had barely felt it at all. Then he picked up a pair of scissors and that was that. No more second willy. But that wasn’t the end of it. He grabbed what looked like a can of spraypaint and began inspecting my body like a delinquent tagger would inspect a naked wall. He was looking for dark patches. I had a few. Not enough to get a tender, but enough to mar my otherwise perfect skin.

I thought he was about to touch me up with Neutrogena Blemish Concealer, so you can imagine my surprise when the can turned out to contain higly pressurised liquid nitrogen colder than a polar bear’s ass.

The doc walked around me spraying this, that and the other thing. Every burst felt like a thousand poison darts. The British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes lost some of his fingers after being caught out in -20C. Please. That’s like a week on the Costa do Sol compared to what I went through. Try -200C, Sir Ranulph. Then you can complain.

I didn’t want to ask if this was a life-saving procedure or a purely cosmetic endeavour. Twenty minutes and R1 200 later, I repaired to the nearest saloon for a cheaper anaesthetic.

What were once slightly discoloured spots barely visible to the naked eye slowly began turning into angry red lesions. By my third beer, the lesions had become blisters. Big, puffy ones. It looked as if some hideous tropical disease was erupting from my body right there in the bar.

I ordered another beer. An attractive woman sitting nearby on her own smiled at me. I gave a shy wave with my festering hand. She looked away, then got up and went to the bathroom. To throw up, I expect.

It’s going to be a long, lonely winter.

 

WARNING: Tanning without protection could change your looks forever

 

 

 

No nudes is good nudes

Dear Reverend Mike Effanga,

I wish to applaud you on behalf of all right-wing, I beg your pardon, right-thinking South Africans for your efforts to stop those backsliding nudist barbarians from getting their wicked way.

As you know all too well, the Hibiscus Coast municipality – quite clearly agents of Satan – voted last year to allow people to take their clothes off on a beach in your area. Unfortunately, they chose a section that is hidden away and hard to reach. This makes it difficult for those who wish to protest. Luckily, there are many of us who are prepared to go out of our way to be offended.

This country has only 2 800kms of coastline. If we give these heathens 500m of it to practise their degenerate sun-worshipping ways, where will it end?

Cape Town allows nudists at Sandy Bay and look at that city today. Gay people walk openly in the streets. We don’t need that kind of wanton licentiousness here.

If God had meant for us to walk around naked, he wouldn’t have given Adam and Eve those fig leaf ensembles to wear. The unattired human body is a disturbing sight and I, for one, can no longer even visit my local swimming pool for fear of turning into a slavering beast incapable of controlling my most basic of urges.

I cannot believe these handmaidens of hell are planning their naked launch for Good Friday. Jesus wouldn’t be happy with that, I can tell you. Isn’t it enough that he has to deal with yet another anniversary of his crucifixion? I may be wrong but I’m sure he’d rather we just stopped mentioning it altogether.

I’m talking about that nasty business in Calgary. Nudist beaches, I bet he’d want to know about. What am I saying? Of course he knows about it. He’s Jesus. And if he didn’t get the memo, you can be damn sure his father knows of the horror about to be unleashed upon Mpenjati beach.

I must confess there are times I walk around my house without any clothes on. It is simply too hot. However, you will be pleased to know that I do punish myself afterwards with a light flagellation followed by several Bloody Marys. Hail Marys.

Nudity, unlike murder, poverty and child abuse, is not something we can tolerate. If we allow people to voluntarily remove their clothes on a beach far away from decent God-fearing folk, what will we allow next? Seances in the Margate Wimpy?

While you are on this crusade, have you given any thought to the farm animal situation? I’m sure I am not the only one to have noticed the growing number of cows along the South Coast. I think you know what I’m saying. Udders. I need go no further.

Once you have won this battle against the idolatrous undressed, I urge you to consider demanding clothes for livestock. It need not be anything fancy. Simple loincloths and four-cupped bras will do.

I understand you run an outfit called Worldwide Gospel Ministries. Your website has an interesting quote from Luke. “Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when he cometh, shall find watching.” That’s exactly what the nudists are afraid of – Peeping Toms.

It goes on. “Verily, I say unto you that he shall gird himself, and make them sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.”

I’m a bit confused here. Luke clearly wasn’t a vegetarian. But the Lord serves the servants? That doesn’t sound right. Imagine if this happened in South Africa. The servants would be ungovernable in no time at all.

In your ministerial profile you state your nationality as “Kingdom of Heaven.” Nothing wrong with that. Presumably you have your citizenship papers. I imagine the home affairs office up there is more efficient than the one down here.

Your website says that apart from healing the sick and broken-hearted, you also bring sight back to the blind. You are truly a man of many talents. What would you do if, say, one of those rotten nudists was sick, broken-hearted and blind? Tricky one.

I see you have 18 friends on Facebook. That’s okay. Jesus only had 12.

Anyway, congratulations on getting the pagans on the council to agree to listen to your objections for a second time. As you said recently, “The voice of the people has to be heard. The decision to have a nudist beach here is illegal, immoral, unethical and undemocratic.”

And therein lies the rub. Oops. I apologise. “Rub” is one of those words which, if used carelessly, can lead to the corruption of weaker souls. It won’t happen again.

What I’m trying to say is that it takes a wise man to point out that a decision taken by a majority of democratically elected councillors is, indeed, undemocratic. Some might say the voice of the people has been heard, but, as we both know, they are the wrong people. Not all people are people.

Well, I’m sure you and your Concerned Citizens Group will succeed in denying the Devil his due. Nobody wants to be cast into the hellfires of eternal damnation, even if they are politicians.

An open letter to the Grade One class of 2015

Hello kiddies. I’m your Uncle Ben and I’m here to help explain what’s happening to you.

First of all, welcome to hell. You think the last five years of living with your parents was rough? That’s nothing compared to what lies ahead. The abuse, ridicule and pressure to achieve standards that are way beyond your means.

You probably don’t believe me, right? I bet you think you’re going to spend the next twelve years drawing turtles, finding Wally and learning how to tell the time. Well, you’re not. By the time you realise you’ve been duped, you’ll be drawing Euclid’s parallel postulate, finding your way to the headmaster’s office and learning how to get Tracy to show you her broeks. And it will be too late to cut and run.

That’s the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is that Comrade Blade Nzimande becomes president in 2024 and, days before your 16th birthday, he changes the medium of instruction to Russian and reduces the number of subjects to two – wine farming and intelligence gathering.

My advice is that you get out now, while you still can. I don’t care that you’re five-and-a-half. In some countries, at your age, you’d be locked inside a cage for twelve hours a day assembling iPads. Or, if you’re really lucky, your king would delay the start of the school year so that you and your friends could finish weeding his fields. Sadly, not everyone is fortunate enough to live in Swaziland.

Come Monday, you need to put your hand up and tell the teacher you want to go pee-pee. Grab other kids’ lunch on your way out. You’re going to need to keep your strength up. It’s a tough world out there, especially when you stand a metre off the ground, talk gibberish and fall down a lot. You won’t be alone. I know plenty of grown-ups who do the same.

Run away and join the circus. The one I went to the other night didn’t have a single small person. When I went to the circus as a kid, you could barely walk ten paces without tripping over a midget. Okay, so you’re a kid, not a midget. Don’t quibble.

If not the circus, then form a union. You might not know it, but you do have rights. Not many, admittedly, but you have some. It’s right there in the Constitution. You don’t know what that is? What the hell kind of educa … oh, right. Well, it’s this big book that is kept locked away and only brought out when people have their feelings hurt.

Section 28 – not that you know what a section is or even how to count to 28 – says you have the right to a name and a nationality. Your parents will have given you a rubbish name. They always do. Change it. Open your word tin and empty the words on the floor. Pick seven letters. That’s your new name. Welcome to reality, Zbejfhy.

You also have the right not to be used directly in armed conflict. This means nobody may fire you from an artillery gun or use you to bludgeon the enemy. You probably find this disappointing but, let me tell you, it’s not as much fun as it sounds. However, this does not stop you from forming your own militia. A million children who think nudity is normal and whose negotiating tactics include screaming and thrashing around on the floor would be a formidable force indeed. I, for one, would give you whatever you want. With the right demands, finger-painted crudely on the side of a dog, you guys could be the new Islamic State.

You are also entitled to parental care. If you don’t like your parents – and let’s be honest, who really does? – go and find new ones. Walk around the neighbourhood knocking on doors. If you’re white, someone will eventually take you in. If you’re black, well, human trafficking is one way of seeing the world for free.

If you decide to ignore my advice and stay in school, don’t blame me for the consequences when the system spits you out in 2027.

You think jobs are scarce now? Of course you don’t. You think Smarties are scarce. That’s all you care about. Instant gratification. Keep it up and you’ll be a journalist one day. Obviously they won’t be called journalists by the time you matriculate. They’ll be known as Noble Messengers Of The Only Truth.

I’m probably wasting my time. You’re a kid. You’re going to do whatever you want to do. Some grown-ups never lose that mindset and they end up divorced, jailed or very wealthy. I’m on two out of three and hoping for a home run.

Good luck, kiddo. One day all of this will be yours.

What’s left of it, anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The filth and the fury

Shell-shocked, I trail through the house kicking aside empty beer bottles and accumulating a thick layer of animal hair on the soles of my feet. By the time I find the bad yellow-eyed woman, I look like a hobbit with a drinking problem.

The house is beyond dirty. Encrusted dishes and semi-sucked marrowbones are strewn everywhere. The windows are impervious to light and the pot plants wilt like shot giraffes. The cat is having a nervous breakdown and the dog is projectile vomiting. The blood from New Year’s Eve stains the lounge walls. The toilets are in an unspeakable state and I fear a cholera outbreak is imminent. Is al-Qaeda behind this?

I trip over a tangle of wet towels and fall down a staircase slippery with grime. I would be dead if a pile of unwashed clothes hadn’t broken my fall. Covering my mouth with a damp cloth, I swivel my eyes at the bad yellow-eyed woman and make the international gesture for “what the hell happened here?”

Like one of those dangerous mimes you see in shopping malls, she goes through a range of expressions that suggest surprise. Why she doesn’t just speak, I don’t know. I start replying in the spirit of the game, but, quicker than a striking cobra, she catches my middle finger and bends it so far backwards that I cry out in pain.

“Kwaai Lappies,” she says, “is still on leave.”

Panic rises in my sunken chest. “Dear God! What are we meant to do now?”

She sinks to her haunches, a look of utter hopelessness on her face. It is a pathetic sight. I try to encourage her to stand up and get stuck in.

“Come on!” I shout, dragging her by the hair. “You can beat this thing! Don’t give up now.” Her eyes glaze over and she slumps sideways. “I can’t,” she says weakly. “Go on without me.”

Does this mean she won’t do the housework or, worse, can’t? Is it possible that she has forgotten how? Aren’t all women genetically hard-wired to clean? Or is this an elaborate ruse to get me to do it? There’s no way to be sure. The woman is as trustworthy as a juvenile puff adder.

I call Kwaai Lappies in the Transkei and beg her to return without delay. No dice. She says she’s going to Lusikisiki with the kids and might be back some time around the 20th. Jesus, Mary and Joseph. The 20th? She’s been gone for what feels like months. When did domestic workers start getting the same amount of leave as hard-working white men? This is what democracy has done to our country.

Faced with the harrowing realisation that we are doomed to wallow in our own filth for another week, I tell the bad yellow-eyed woman that we are going to have to start rotating rooms. Like farmers rotate their fields. I only hope the en suite will be able to recover after lying fallow for so long. The last thing I need is the health department cordoning off the street and declaring the house a biohazard.

Right now, in suburbs across this fine land, madams – big and small – are sobbing helplessly. Unable to operate the Hoover or find the broom. No idea how to use the steam iron or stack the dishwasher. Can’t tell their spin cycle from their menstrual cycle.

Beauty from next door is also still on leave. I know this because I can hear little Chardonnay screaming her hateful lungs out. She is screaming because a strange white woman keeps trying to pick her up.

God help us all.

 

The Agony and the Methylenedioxymethamphetamine

Men in white coats tell us that hangovers are caused by the excessive intake of alcohol. Funny, then, how it was men in white coats saying, “Can I bring you another?” that caused all the trouble in the first place.

They would have us believe that the first step towards avoiding a hangover lies in limiting the amount you drink. This is meaningless gibberish and does little to help the person battling to survive a hangover registering 17 on the open-ended Retchter Scale.

Your size, weight, metabolism and body chemistry all play a minor role in how much you can drink. The main factors that dictate consumption levels are financial and emotional. If you are happy and in a good mood, you may find nine beers, three tequila shooters and a double Irish coffee to be an elegant sufficiency. However, if you are feeling downhearted you could easily put away 15 beers, 10 shots, five double vodkas and fuck the Irish.

Some doctors try to tell you that hangovers are caused by dehydration. This is like saying drought is caused by rain and I, for one, will sign any petition that calls for these charlatans to be struck from the medical roll.

Dehydration is caused when the bartender ignores you because he is too busy catching bottles behind his back and flirting with all the pretty young things.

In rare cases dehydration is also caused when a girly little hormone, that is meant to tell the body to conserve water, can’t hold its liquor and passes out on the job. This results in you having to wee every few minutes. With the floodgates open, the body starts borrowing water from less important organs – like the brain. This causes the grey stuff to shrink, which goes a long way towards explaining why stupid people with small brains suffer worse hangovers than smart people with big brains.

All alcohol contains methanol. I would have thought this is a good thing since it is also the fuel used in motocross bikes, and those babies can go! The problem seems to be linked to yet another design flaw in the human body. Instead of using the methanol to accelerate the mind, the body inexplicably breaks it down into formaldehyde and formic acid. Deformed foetuses and pygmy brains are preserved in formaldehyde. Ants and bees secrete formic acid when they attack. What the hell are our bodies thinking?

Some hangover symptoms are in part due to magnesium depletion. As we all know, magnesium constitutes 2% of the Earth’s crust. So before you go drinking, take the time to step out into the garden and grab a handful of that damn fine crust. You will be glad you did. Just remember to wash your face before you walk into the bar. Not many drinkers can handle the sight of a grown man with a soil-encrusted mouth spraying bits of grass and earthworms as he shouts for another round.

A Japanese study showed that taking five grams of chlorella before drinking can prevent hangovers 96% of the time. From what I can make out, chlorella seems to be some sort of algae capable of multiplying faster than that Russian maths freak who turned down a medal and a million dollar prize after proving the Poincare conjecture which states that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere. How would you like to go up in front of a crowd and explain your thinking on that one? No wonder he still lives with his mother.

If the chlorella does nothing for you, try an antioxidant called dimethylaminoethanol. If that doesn’t work, whip up a Bloody Mary and wash down a handful of methylenedioxymethamphetamine. That should cheer you up in no time at all.