 | Memes are a pure snort of internet. These evanescent time-wasters are the perfect accompaniment to the dead hours of the dead end service economy. Folk expressions of the post-industrial setting of work today. The mind life of bored kids stuck in underfunded educational settings and people in cubicles staring at screens. We don’t make stuff anymore. Not physically. That’s all been shipped to China and India where people work cheap. Work is mind-fatiguing in a knowledge economy. Ideas hold sway. ...read more |
Meme of the Week | Would Not Bang
Thursday, January 26th, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds
Gimme Violence, Gimme Change
Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 by Max Barashenkov
 | The young man sits sipping coffee. He is good looking, talented and smokes too much. He has adopted the aesthetics of past social movements – he is part hippie, part French New Wave auteur – yet he’s failed to internalize the ideals that fueled those movements. ...read more |
Liberal Smut
Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 by Paul Hjul
 | When I was small (and Christmas trees were tall), I thought it would be cool to one day, when I was big, to be like Barry Ronge. In my mind the guy had this awesome job of watching movies (and clearly eating endless amounts of popcorn doing so), but more importantly he got to tell people exactly how stupid some of the movies were. Unfortunately as I grew older the fantasy job of a film critic withered away. For one ...read more |
White Slaves
Monday, January 23rd, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds, illustration by Alastair Laird
 | Sometimes you gotta laugh. Right? I mean this country. I tell ya. It is funny. Here’s Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe’s recent toast at the ANC Centenary shindig: “The leaders will now enjoy the champagne, and of course they do so on your behalf through their lips.” Oh of course. Wait. So the lips of our leaders belong to us? Whatever passes them is our business, is beholden to us? We control, by proxy, the intimate threshold of their lips. Cool. ...read more |
The Horseshoe
Monday, January 23rd, 2012 by Sihle Mthembu
 | For how much longer in our post-apartheid jargon are we going to ignore the role of black people in helping to oppress other black people during the bad old days? The racial charges in our society are tired. Too often, they have been exercised in the pursuit of self-benefit. These people were there in Sharpeville in 1976, wielding knobkerries and firing bullets on command. ...read more |
Doggone Snowblindness
Friday, January 20th, 2012 by Brandon Edmonds
 | This is a story about empathy. I saw a headline “Gardener ‘raped’ employer’s dog” and my spider sense tingled. Unusual, gonzo, attention-grabbing. There’s race in there, animal sex, class and the suburbs. Things I can write about. Right up my alley. “A 54-year old Pretoria gardener has been denied bail after he allegedly raped his employer’s Dachshund bitch.” He did the dog in a Wendy House. It writes itself. ...read more |
Jack Parow and The Nature of Inbreeding
Friday, January 20th, 2012 by Max Barashenkov
 | The Patriarch pulled his cock out of his son, slapped the hairy ass and said, “that’s it, Jack, you’re ready for real stardom now.” The younger man hitched up his shorts, wiped the snot from his moustache and vacated the place for the next sibling to receive the blessing. Fame Under The Mountain is hard earned, the family demanding and merciless to those that stray beyond the caravan park, but, as the Patriarch likes to say, inbreeding sells. Success is ...read more |
It’s Hard Not To Shout
Thursday, January 19th, 2012 by Linda Stupart
 | It’s hard not to shout when someone just isn’t listening to you. Unfortunately, though, if you’re a woman, and particularly if you’re a Feminist (GASP), shouting at men is exactly what’s expected of you: Illogical, emotional, cock-hating, weeping and so on (at this point I’d like to reiterate that I rather like men, and I definitely like cock, hey SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE BOYS). ...read more |
Roofies
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 by Themba Kriger
 | Stepping out of the tiny lift in a nondescript building on Loop Street, Amy was surprised to be in, what appeared to be someone’s lounge, complete with couches and coffee table. The room was small with the lift and a door to her right, being the only obvious points of exit. She felt as if she was stuck inside of a surreal, text-based video game from the 80s. ...read more |
My Mouth Works
Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 by Rob Cockcroft, images by Luke Daniel
 | Not many Mzansi rappers can say they’ve achieved what 20 year-old Youngsta has in the two short years of his music career. Since his first appearance on the scene in 2010 he’s dropped 23 mixtapes, a full-length album, occupied charts on Goodhope and 5FM and rocked big shows in Cape Town and Jozi. ...read more |
