It is nearly the end of the year. And in a time honoured tradition spanning the last three hours, I have compiled my shit list. These are the things and the people I feel need to be flushed down the proverbial john. Those little flecks on the toilet bowl of humanity that have spoiled an otherwise spotless year.
Bankers. Once again these fine men of the city have proven themselves to be the nearest thing we have to walking turds. For the last 10 years, they have drunk gazillions of litres of the world’s finest champagne, they have bought mansions and limos and yachts and holiday homes. They have buggered all the finest hookers in all the finest hotels in all the finest cities in the world. And we let them do that because they were meant to be looking after our money. Well, it turns out they were frauds. They had no idea what they were doing. While they claimed to be experts, they turned out to be morons. Greedy morons who spent more time jerking each other off with massive bonuses and slaps on the back than actually doing the job they were paid to do. I suppose there is a reason why banker rhymes with wanker.
Climate change sceptics. Two of the world’s leading climate sceptics are Sarah Palin and George Bush. The moose-shooting ex-governor of an oil-rich state and the gung-ho Texan oil-bro. That says everything about these people. Their reasons for doubting climate change have nothing to do with science and everything to do with cash. They like the status quo because it makes them money. It keeps them rich. They are the oil-pushers. The high-flying dealers in that black sticky junk that the world is addicted to. And what pusher wants his customer to go to rehab? I just hope one day that I open the paper to discover they have been eaten by a pack of polar bears.
Gareth Cliff. He is not here because of Manto. Yes, he showed scant respect for her family and that makes him a cock. But I can live with that. It is his right to be a cock. What I can’t abide is a mediocre cock. What I can’t stand is a flaccid little pecker pretending to be hard. Cliff is more soccer-mom than shock-jock. His jokes are boring and his insights are average. He resorts to lowbrow insults because his arsenal is empty. For a man who should have a machine-gun mouth he shoots blanks. He uses his words like blunt spoons rather than ninja stars. He is a Model-C student pretending to be a Tsotsi. Just look at this photo. Look at that hair and that smile. He has about as much personality as an Excel spreadsheet. You’d probably have more fun listening to the Tannoy system at the Home Affairs office than listening to his show.
Nokia. Connecting people — isn’t that what the ads say? Well, Nokia have taken their mission statement to a new level this year. Over in Iran they are connecting people like never before. It came out in the press this year that they sold the Iranian government a surveillance system that allowed them to monitor all mobile communications. Allowing the government to connect with their people in a very novel way — with batons around their heads. I suppose it is like Nokia says on its website: they are a “very human” company. Yes, they are. They are greedy and selfish bastids who would sell their own grandmothers to make a buck.
TL readers who only read blogs about race, Malema and the ANC. Well, this may be a bit pointless because the people I’m talking about are probably not reading this post. They are off fistpunching the keyboard replying to some godforsaken article about Juju, laughing about how dumb he is and how smart they are. They are rolling around in some verbal muck about today’s latest race-issue or screaming into their tea with indignation at how the low the ANC has sunk. Oh well, since it is the season of giving, we may as well throw them a crumb.
Jacob Zuma. Why does he get to marry five women? Does he not realize that nature made a 50/50 split on the sexes and that means there are four bros out there who won’t get a wife? I know all is fair in love and war but this is crazy. He’s old, he’s got a country to run, important things to do; he doesn’t have the time to be satisfying the needs of five ladies. Mr Zuma, I like your style but as one bro to another bro, please, you need to focus. Leave the ladies to the Egyptian football team.
People who sell hydroponic cannabis. Dude, WTF? This is South Africa. Land of the blazed and home of the weed. Yes, weed, as in bush, as in it grows by itself. Durban Poison, Swazi Gold, Transkei Reds, Malawi Cob. We have it all. We don’t need no R400 bag of bullshit purple power northern lights. I don’t care if the seeds were imported from San Fran or Amsterdam. Who the hell are you? Howard Marks. Get off your higher-than-thou horse and start rolling with the peeps. When I’m in SA, I’m looking to get zolled, I’m not looking for a clear strong sativa high. Save that shit for Mr Muggins of Higgovale.
The people who force us to use shopping malls. God, I hate shopping malls but what I really hate is the fact that in South Africa we are forced to use them. When did we decide to do this? When did the referendum happen that said from now on you shall shop in a large fishtank with all the other guppies? Who is the secret force behind these massive zits on the face of humanity? Who is building them? Who has engineered it so we so have nowhere else to go? People went to prison, died, took to the streets to free this country, just for us to herded into suburban death-camps kitted out as “malls”. I know all the rubbish about security but that is codswallop. A shopping mall is no safer than street full of shops. Do you think that guy sleeping at the doorway, getting paid R40 a day, is going to bother saving you when the baddies come through blazing through the place? At least if you get caught in the crossfire of a heinous robbery on the street, you’ll die in the sunshine. A far better way to go than in the artificial lights of the Fourways Crossing Shopping Mall like some sort of human battery-hen. Gasping for your last breath, while all you can taste in your mouth is the cheap odour of candy wafting out of Sweets from Heaven. Your ears filled with the electro-synth sounds of Stars by Simply Red. Your last thought as you fade away: Why, oh why, didn’t I just shop online?
China. There has been a bit of meme over the last year to hail China as the new saviour for the world. But I’m not down with that meme. I’m not down with a country that executed a mentally-ill man yesterday. A country that sabotaged the climate-change summit in Copenhagen. A country that has destroyed our textile industry. A country that doesn’t allow people to use Twitter or Facebook. A country that jailed a man for 11 years for writing a book. I’m not down with a country that wouldn’t allow me to write this list.
Swine flu. It appeared on TV with its alien spikes. Looking all menacing and deadly, it promised to be an epidemic of Hollywood propositions. It was going to be the disease that rid the world of all its swines. I was excited. Finally we would see some justice. The asshats of the world would get their just desserts. And what happened? Nothing. It killed a bunch of innocent kids and left all the swines alive. No one on the list above seems to have even got a sniffle from it. How disappointing.
Well, on that low note, I hand it to you. Give us your shit list. Tell us who left a dirty smell up your nose this year. Really give that toilet bowl of life a good spray down with some righteous verbal toilet-duck.
Peace Y’all …
Oh and you missed out our truly deadly drivers who wipe out 1 000 people a month; the parents who don’t use baby seats and seatbelts for their children so they take off through the car windscreen in an accident and are killed; the men who rape women and children; the men who take out their families because they know best; the men who are so gynaephobic that they believe women and girls should be neither seen nor heard; people who break the law and then complain about crime; and there’s probably many others. That’s my list for now!
A Shit List
YOU Readers
The articles are only 50% true 25% of the time but there are a few females who tend toward red nail polish, blue eyeshadow and auburn box hair dye whose sole aim in life is to read every issue of You and tell you about it. They pride themselves in knowing every skewed detail about Joost and Amor, Steve Hofmeyer and random South Africans who have had life changing experiences / encounters with dead people / 25 cats.
Intersection Blockers
These people are not just shit, they are diarrhea. Your Toyota Tazz with Christmas lights will not fit into that 10cm space no matter how low your suspension is. When the robot is orange and there is no space on the other side of the intersection stay where you are. I know you dudes love to camp on your accelerators but really.
Luke Watson
When some silly little white boy gets shoved into the side because his daddy said he must it is a little too much for me to handle.
The Robot and Pothole fixer
My I’d love that job, you sit around and do NOTHING all day long, while the rest of the country has to swerve their way around car – sized holes you sit and sip your coffee. While motorists who cannot get the idea of a four way stop into their heads cause accidents of spectacular proportion, you play solitaire and move papers around.
CORPORATES.That have used anticompetitive tactics,
price fixing,share dealing,overpaid directors,
overcharging customers,misleading marketing,..etc
eg medical aids,retailers,shopping mall owners
Jislaaik, Dave, I swear i could listen to you for the rest of my life, laughing care-free about what you wrote, especially this:
Do you think that guy sleeping at the doorway, getting paid R40 a day, is going to bother saving you when the baddies come through blazing through the place? At least if you get caught in the crossfire of a heinous robbery on the street, you’ll die in the sunshine. A far better way to go than in the artificial lights of the Fourways Crossing Shopping Mall like some sort of human battery-hen. Gasping for your last breath, while all you can taste in your mouth is the cheap odour of candy wafting out of Sweets from Heaven. Your ears filled with the electro-synth sounds of Stars by Simply Red. Your last thought as you fade away: Why, oh why, didn’t I just shop online?
He he he he he ho ho ho ho ho ho ho…shooo
Funny. But get real – all companies are like Nokia, all politicians like Zuma (you like his style? You must mean his clothing style??) and all countries as selfish as China.
Shopping malls are temples to the g-ds.
I am a believer, hallelujah!
Bigotry and Hypocrisy
Corporates
Simply – the entire south african government
Are you feeling better now, David? Let it all out…it’s okay.
this is a funny list.
why aren’t the board of telkom on this list? they’re the reason that you can’t shop online. the internet is so expensive in south africa that most companies’ web presence is pance. the best way to discover the panceness of south african corporate and retail websites is to compare the sites of those companies who have a major web presence both inside and outside of south africa — the south african site is often amateur compared to the british or american site.
oh, and the department of home affairs should also be on that list. while it might be better for south africans, it’s not better for foreigners. an average of 2 years for an appeal hearing if you file for an immigration decision appeal is just not kosher in a country this side.
put another way, in the united states, the appeal process takes 18 months and goes to a different set of people than those who failed to approve the immigration decision the first time around.
Top of my shitlist are the greenie scaredy-cats, prime among whom are the climate panickers, egged on by the cheesy and factually-inaccurate pure Hollywood Al Gore skrikfliek. There’s yet another volcano erupting in the Philippines, and it’s spewing out more “greenhouse gases” in a month than humankind has created with ALL their cars and factories and backyard BBQs ever since our primitive apeman forebears learn to walk upright, 100000 years ago.
And all those treasured, protected world-heritage “wetlands” (i.e. swamps) — HUGE methane factories, burping out more greenhouse gases than a hundredfold of humanity!
Definitely mega-shitlistworthy?
What you say about Gareth Cliff is 100% true. Hear hear Mr Smith. He is such a contrived, lukewarm idiot.
I really get annoyed agreeing with everything a person says so I am really, really annoyed with your post. So I have to add:
China: They could have left our grandchildren some fish stocks in the local waters. Fishing with banned trawler nets in our waters just because our security in that aspect is lacking is just not on.
Soccer Stadiums: Did they really have to cause the price of cement to skyrocket thus making it near impossible for me to secure my property against the influx of soccer fans and retrenched soccer stadium builders?
Litter fiends: (They’re no bugs.) Since when has it become fully cool to fling everything you don’t want anymore over your shoulder without even a glance backwards to see who it hits in the face? Every open piece of ground is not a rubbish dump, just as every window is not a rubbish bin.
HRC: More concerned with the rights of disrespectful misguided children and criminals than the law abiding people who pay their salaries.
Misguided pet owners: It is still against the law to let your pooch trawl the street for dustbins at night, or to let it breed as it wish when it wish where it wish as often as it wish, isn’t it?
Mediocrity & Hypocracy: In all its various bleached, sanitised, unholy, synthetised forms. Gareth Cliff, etc.
I’ve reached the age where this is the point I should stop at before someone adds a grudge against grumpy old farts.
My list has only one entry:
Chuene and the rest of the retards at ASA for monumentally pulling the race card and waving it wildly about at the IAAF. Then putting that poor girl/man/herm through that entire ordeal. Cheune definitely deserves a kick to the jollies.
Sandile Memela self proclaimed intellect for failing to deliver intellectual stimulating blogs.
The entire SA Govt!
hahaha nice one man. Shopping malls spot on – my personal idea of hell would be an endless december in the pavilion amidst the millions of redfaced Xmas shoppers buying crap they dont need for people they dont like.
My shit list:
Bankers
Politicians
Consumerism and the culture of greed and narcissism
Celebrity “culture” and reality TV
The Shaik family
Rock on 2010, lets hope its all we wish it to be.
No mention in the Queen’s new year honours list and no mention in this article. Frankly David je suis disappointed. As the country’s richest and most celebrated “unreconstructed racist” I think a mention would have been courteous. What about politicians buying absurdly expensive cars on the taxpayer? Or columnists writing for free thereby bringing down the going rate for those of us who charge for our services?
Robert Mugabe and his clones everywhere.
Denialists like Mbeki.
The late, unlamented Dr. Beetroot.
Julius, Vavi, Blade,Fikule,and their minions.
People who use ‘culture’ to defend ignorance, mutilation, sadistic rituals.
Child abusers.
Rapists.
Murderers.
Slave traffickers.
Tyrants–of all kinds including parental..
Hi-jackers.
Gangs.
Pirates.
Warlords–all of them.
Drug dealers–all ages.
Religious fundamentalists–all kinds.
Banks, Insurance Companies, Politicians, ‘Spin Doctors’.
Former victims who become victimisers when they gain power.
People who defend the indefensible.
People who play the race card–or any phony victim card.
People who oppose birth control and planned parenthood and then deny abortion to rape and incest victims.
Men who refuse to wear condoms.
People who oppose universal health care.
The culture of surveillance that has spread throughout the world.
Spyware.
Hackers.
Crooked journalists and editors.
illiterate ‘writers’ and ‘bloggers’.
Sociopaths–esp in gov’t. (Irresponsible and pathologically indifferent).
Reckless drivers and tailgaters.
Taxi horns.
“isms” of all kinds.
TV and radio “evangelists”.
Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and all extreme right wingers.
People who abuse or neglect animals. (Not vaccinating and not neutering are forms of abuse.)
Passive-aggressive personalities. (They insinuate, hint, “damn by faint praise”, and pretend innocence when confronted).
People who oppose “doctor assisted suicide” for the terminally ill.
The Master’s Tournament “Hymn”. Sport is the new God.
Smarmy sports ‘commentators’ who dramatise and sentimentalise athletes. (They sound like romance novelists on steroids).
Anyone who doesn’t do the job he/she is being paid to do.
Fini.
David, you rock! Your blog is officially my all time favourite. On my list along with several you already mentioned are :
Eskom, for hiking the cost of their dirty power without a thought for the consequences, for being too shortsighted to invest their borrowed billions in renewable energy rather than in dirty coal which is going to run out anyway, all in the name of profit.
The pet trade and backyard pet breeders, for treating animals like commodities, for profiting from their imprisonment, for condemning so many animals to a life of misery in a cage, neglect, mistreatment or death on the roads.
The traffic department, for being so utterly disorganised, inept and ineffectual. Why is it that traffic police are sometimes to be seen cruising the streets but are never around when idiot drivers are doing u-turns across three lanes of traffic, stopping without warning where they may not stop or driving at 160 in a 60km zone? For doing nothing to alleviate the traffic nightmares created by ongoing 2010 roadworks and leaving drivers to their own devices when traffic lights, some at major intersections are out of order sometimes for days.
All public servants who think they are celebrities and deserve million rand cars and don’t care that thereby they are stealing peoples rights to housing, healthcare and education.
Viva 2010!
Great one! But you forgot Luke Kotskop Watson…
ESKOM ;
Mike Sutcliffe & ANC Durban City Councillors who always pay themselves and their special friends first;
USA who has put the whole world in Shit Street for the next decade at least with their hubristic financial mismanagement;
Al Gore and the UN-ICPP who are as phoney as astro-turf. Sequestrating CO2 will destroy global food security, especially for third world countries. How selfishly misguided is that?
Love your work David. My neurons aren’t firing yet, but I’ll add to your shit list the moment they do.
Great blog, but how about a list of things positive to take into the new decade….
Perhaps we could let Siobhan start off? LOL
“When I’m in SA, I’m looking to get zolled”
I hope for all out sakes, there where you ‘live’ that you can’t just walk into a shop and BUY weed/zol… becuase if that IS the case; then peeps enjoy your ‘shops’ and keep quiet!
It is obvious you haven’t grown ANYTHING…
Even cannabis does not grow by itself, god is in every gardener; and believe me they have to work hard to make the pittance you want to pay to get high.
And because there is no ‘legal retail’ there is imprisonment threat for each step from hard working farmer to man on the side of the street.
Cannabis / Zol/ Dagga / Matekwane, Instangu may have been in Africa for 4000 years but the law against it is still in effect and only 90 years old….
still we the unlucky south africans (all of us) are falling behind the global legalisation as 15 states in America have cannabis legal, Spain Portugal and dare I say the Netherlands…
ag but let me get off my high horse and go look for a cop shop; they’ve got weed at least
Eskom for CRYING WOLF and resulting in all of us buying generators BECAUSE OF POWER CUTS that do not happen anywmore.To ESKOM directors for playing the stock market with our money and taking the profits instead of investing in infrastructure.
For overpaid directors that obviously had better things to do than plan for the future of Electtrcy
consumption.To Eskom that supplies cheaper electricity to certain clients….perverse incentive/kickback.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=&art_id=vn20100104040408198C414435
the cop “Shop”
Lotto visions induced by smoking dried vulture brains. – That made my shitlist
Hydroponic ganja not so much of an issue for me, can’t lie, but agree with you on most of the others. Eerily, in fact:
Gareth Cliff and swine-flu pandemonium:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=iol1260854948772C514
Racial obsessing:
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=iol1260960968685K216
And bankers, JZ, shopping malls and China (and more…):
http://www.twodogs.co.za/complete.htm
i know im like a few months late, but i just HAD to say that this line is f**king classic: “He has about as much personality as an Excel spreadsheet.”
If you are wanting memorable lines, look no further: “The moose-shooting ex-governor of an oil-rich state and the gung-ho Texan oil-bro. That says everything about these people.”
That pretty much does.