Archive for the 'Killer Posts' Category

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »
16
Mar
10

Are Women Getting Hotter With Every Decade?

By SlickTiger 4 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

It has been a theory of mine for some time now that women have gotten better and better looking over time. Just when you think they can’t get any sexier, BAM, another stunning supermodel seems to pop out of the woodwork, even more beautiful and unobtainable than the last.

Then again, maybe it’s just me, maybe I’ve just been brainwashed by the media to think Miss X, Y or Z is so incredible, when actually drop-dead gorgeous women have always existed, the only difference being which one the spotlight shines on, from what angle and after how much photo-shopping.

And so I approached the authority on such issues, Google Images, and started looking for pictures of ‘sexy’ women through the ages.

I started at 1900 and found the following gem:

 

 

Let me break down what we’re dealing with here. I see a woman with a strange-looking, skunk-like mop of hair for a hairstyle, reclining suggestively with a book, inches away from showing us a little nip, but thankfully keeping the PG rating of this pic at a 10.

This is the kind of girl who would make a great librarian, pre-school teacher or postal worker. All in all, I think she should go back to reading her book and pull up her dress for heaven’s sake! No need to scare the children.

Moving right along, here’s what 1920 yielded in the form of the first popular female actress to make it in Hollywood, Florence Lawrence:

 

 

Yeah, are we making any progress here? Yes? No? Sure, there is some kind of charm about her, but let’s be honest, if you passed her in the street would you give her a second look? I mean, besides to stare at her hat, which is making my balls shrivel up inside me.

I think this is what people mean when they describe a woman as ‘handsome’. She’s a handsome woman, ie. good-looking… for a man.

Just wait though, cause with 1950 comes good ol’ Marilyn Monroe, hooo-weeee!

 

Was Marilyn Monroe really the belter everyone makes her out to have been, or was she just the first attractive woman with enough confidence to be able to pose half-naked and make it look sexy?

What I’m seeing in this picture is a woman with smallish breasts, some pretty meaty thighs, a stomach she’s definitely sucking in for all it’s worth and a face that’s attractive the way your sister’s best friend was attractive back when you were 11. Then you realised her mustache was thicker than yours and never spoke to her again.

Let’s move onto 1970 shall we?

 

 

All of a sudden, things are starting to heat up a little. Meet Veruschka von Lehndorff, one of a dozen or so ‘supermodels’ that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Veruschka, with the right kind of make-up, lighting and wardrobe could easily nail an FHM front cover.

Still though, can she compare to modern-day beauties? Maybe not quite, but I’d say she’s damn close.

Then I stumbled on this picture of model Gia Carangi, who was big back in the late 70s and early 80s. They made a movie about her starring Angelina Jolie called Gia which, if you like seeing lots of Angelina’s naked body, is DEFINITELY worth watching.

 

 

Now THAT is a good-looking woman and one that is definitely comparable to any modern-day beauty. She was also one of the original ‘supermodels’ on the scene, but died tragically at 26 from AIDS, which she got from shooting heroin with dirty needles.

Still though, would you say she’s better or worse looking than a modern-day supermodel like say, Joanna Krupa, for example?

 

 

Or the woman who seems to be topping a lot of lists these days, Megan Fox?

 

After trawling the interwebs for literally hours to find pics to base this post on, the conclusion I’ve reached is that yes, women are getting hotter and hotter and it’s all thanks to the invention of the supermodel way back in the 60s and 70s.

Once supermodels came into existence, all of a sudden female perfection had a benchmark to measure itself against, and now women are not only getting hotter and hotter, but the mainstream media is flooded with images of them on an ever-increasing basis, causing untold damage to ordinary men and women alike, who do all manner of fucked up shit to either date women like this or become them.

Which is why sometimes you gotta take a step back from it all and realise that while these women might be incredible to look at, chances are they have really shitty personalities and are plagued with insecurities.

Bottom line is when you look that good you’re so used to getting your way and walking all over people that you think behaving like a sycophant is totally normal and acceptable.

I say let’s go back to a time before supermodels and celebrate what true female beauty is and so, I’d like to invite you in appreciating the following NSFW image with me of a woman from 1920 who has great breasts (if this is your gran, I’m sorry, but she had a great set and you should be proud of that).

 

 

The lesson here is not to let the mainstream media dictate your tastes. Instead, you should get into 1920s porn and not only will you be an INDIVIDUAL but you’ll also have a great conversation starter (and ender) at the next dinner party you attend.

All those girls in magazines, all the ones in the movies and on 50ft billboards, let that shit go. Look for beauty in the real world and when you find it, hold onto it, cherish it and you might just find something close to true happiness instead of shallow pleasure.

-ST

10
Mar
10

SlickTiger Interviews The Minister Of Arts And Culture… Or Does He?

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last week’s post about the time I interviewed Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig got a whole bunch of old cogs turning in my head and memories I’d long since forgotten have been playing all jerky and in sepia tones at the weirdest times.

 

 

The one where I ‘interviewed’ the then minister of arts and culture, Dr. Zwelidingo Pallo Jordan, jumped randomly into my head outta nowhere and I burst out laughing in the middle of a teleconference call with Ireland.

I was 22 years old at the time and facing the biggest hair crisis of my young life. During varsity I cut my hair about four times in as many years. I looked like a roadie for Metallica,  which was great, at varsity.

Back in the real world (ie Joburg) people looked at me like I was something that had dribbled out of a garbage bag they had just lifted from the bin.

So I reluctantly agreed, in the interest of securing gainful employment, to get a haircut. But the next question I faced was what kind of haircut? At that stage in my life I’d only had 3 – a ‘pot cut’ from when I was born up until I was about 13, then a middle parting throughout highschool and then shoulder-length, greasy, grunge-rock hair from when I arrived at varsity till when I left.

Stupidly, I told the hairdresser to keep it pretty long and defaulted to the middle parting I’d worn back in highschool.

It was fucking cringe-worthy. Remember Will Ferrell in ‘One Night At The Roxbury’? No? Let me jog your memory.

 

 

Yeah, it was that bad.

So anyway, the group of journalists I was working with at the time managed to set up an interview with the Minister himself, ol’ Zwelidingo, at the ministry in Pretoria and so we set out early one morning to get there by 9 and conduct an ‘interview’ with him (ie. try to sell him advertising in the bullshit report we were compiling).

In order to make what we were doing look legit, there were a number of essential tools we used, such as:

  • Expensive-looking suits (ties and all)
  • Briefcases
  • A thoroughly researched list of interview questions (no shit, if we didn’t at least get this part right, no one would take us seriously enough to buy advertising)
  • A ridiculously overpriced ratecard and legal documents that were anything but
  • A dictaphone that used tiny old-school tapes, and
  • A digital camera that took fucking crap pictures

About halfway to Pretoria, my colleague, a Hawaiian guy in his thirties called Steve asked me if I’d brought spare batteries for the camera at which point I froze rigid.

‘What?’ he said, ‘Don’t tell me you forgot spare batteries.’

‘I didn’t forget spare batteries,’ I said, still rigid.

‘Then what?’

‘I forgot the camera.’

‘Oh, what the fuck dude?! What the fuck are we supposed to do? We can’t go back now, we’re nearly there, the interview’s in 20 minutes!’

‘Fuck, just relax, that thing takes fucking useless pictures anyway, we’re not going to use one fucking picture we’ve taken so far, they’re all shit.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not the fucking point! The fucking point is to look like we’re journalists and journalists take fucking pictures! God! How could you forget the fucking camera!’

‘Stop being such a prick about it I’m sorry! What else do you want me to say! I’m sorry! Fuck! At least I remembered…’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Don’t say that. Don’t say ‘oh fuck’ like that.’

‘Dude. I forgot the dictaphone.’

‘Oh fuck.’

 

 

We were royally screwed. We had no choice but to keep our eyes peeled for an electronics store on the way to the interview and though we found two, neither of them had dictaphones.

This left us with only one option, call the Minister’s PA, explain that our dictaphone was broken and find out of the ministry didn’t have one we could borrow.

She said she’d see what she could do. I still remember sitting in the ministry foyer, nervous as hell, jiggling my leg, drumming my fingers, praying for a miracle.

While we were sitting there waiting a man with a giant ghetto blaster walked past us and into the PA’s office.

I looked at Steve. Steve looked at me. His leg started jiggling.

‘Are you sure this will work?’ we asked the PA moments later.

‘It should – it has a record button and we found a clean tape you can record on, just make sure you sit close to it.’

And that’s how, on a random Tuesday morning, I ended up walking into the Minister of Arts and Culture’s office dressed in a 3-piece with a fucking terrible haircut and a ghetto blaster.

‘Ehhhh,’ the Minister said, frowning, not entirely sure what the fuck was going on, ‘are you going to play me a song?’

Believe it or not, it gets worse.

The ghetto blaster had the shortest cable known to man and no batteries, so in order for us to all be close enough to it so that we could actually record what was being said, we had to rearrange the fucking furniture in the minister’s office so that we could all sit at the boardroom table, around the gheto blaster.

Thank fuck Steve was with me, he kept the Minister occupied with polite banter while I made sure the tape was rewound, hit record/play and started saying ‘testing, testing’ in a voice loaded with the kind of quiet desperation people usually reserve for prayer.

 

 

I hit stop. The loud sound of the spring-loaded buttons snapping up made the room so silent. I hit rewind. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the gheto blaster. It got to the end of the tape and I hit stop again.

I shut my eyes. With a trembling finger I pressed play. The tape spools started turning and the next thing I new, clear as day we all heard…

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The record/play buttons on the blaster were for recording CDs, or maybe even, if you were feeling daring, the radio, but that was it.

‘Um,’ Steve said as he realised how fucked we were, ‘Minister. I’m so sorry about this, but I think we’re going to have to reschedule…’

‘What magazine did you say you were from again?’ The Minister asked, too baffled at this point to be angry.

‘British Airways. HighLife Magazine,’ I replied, blushing blood-red.

‘Well that settles it then.’

‘Settles what?’ Steve asked nervously.

‘I want free flights. British Airways.’

I looked at Steve. Steve looked at me. I gave up. So did Steve.

‘Free flights,’ I said, ‘you got it.’

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how NOT to interview the minister of arts and culture, and yes, there will be a quiz later 😉

Have a killer day.

-ST

09
Mar
10

The Day I Won The Lottery

By SlickTiger 5 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , ,

I stood in the sea, holding her. We watched the sun set pink-red over the horizon while surfers around us paddled lazily after waves and a man on the beach threw a frisbee for his Jack Russell.

We left when the sun was about a fist from the horizon and drove back to our crazy wooden house, both of us salty from the sea with sandy toes, and we talked about the future.

 

 

Back at home I fried up some burgers while she did a load of washing and when we were both done, I popped a bottle of Champaign and we drank a toast, clinking glasses. Our wild eyes met, my lioness and I, and we kissed. The taste of cold Champaign, the feeling of her body pressed against mine.

That old Sheryl Crow song came on her iPod, ‘My Favourite Mistake’ and I remembered the first time she ever said those words to me.

The things women tell us when they’re falling in love, we never forget them do we? No matter what happens, no matter how badly it ends, we never forget the words women whisper to us in those moments when the universe is holding its breath and it feels like the credits in the movie of your life could roll at any second.

And now she lies sleeping on the couch next to me while I finish the rest of the bottle of Champaign, listening to Jimi Hendrix on this balmy summer evening, at the end of a day that I think has changed my life completely.

There are things happening, things I could never have foreseen and they’re good things because they prove what I always suspected was true, that the good guys win sometimes and that if you find something you’re passionate about and stick to it, great things will come your way.

Me, I’m a writer, always have been, but I can’t tell you how long I wasted that gift, how many years I kept it locked away waiting for an opportunity that never came, making excuses.

Not living, just killing time.

But the day I finally got my shit together and started this blog, something came alive, and this thing, it’s big and it’s getting bigger.

Maybe, like me, people are tired of being fed a load of contrived bullshit. Maybe they just want to kick back for a few minutes a day and feel like they’re connecting with an actual human being instead of a bunch of fucking robots.

 

 

I stand like I always have, naked in front of you, shameless and unafraid, and I tell it exactly the way I see it and I leave the rest entirely up to you.

But I will say this though, pull up a chair if you like what you see here, because the show’s just starting and you bet your ass, it’s gonna be a good one 😉

-ST

08
Mar
10

Top Four Reasons Why Drinking An Entire Bottle Of Whisky Before Work Is A Good Idea

By SlickTiger 4 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts and Tiger Guides
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

It’s Monday morning and I know what you’re thinking.

“Fuck” is probably it, followed shortly by, “this again.”

Well, I have good news. Thanks to a miracle remedy I recently discovered, your work days no longer have to smack of mindless repetition, bullshit meetings and faking that you enjoy the company a bunch of people you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire.

That miracle remedy, ladies and gentlemen, is whisky. Don’t believe me? Well then, read my top four reasons why drinking an entire bottle of whisky before work is a good idea.*

Ready? Atta boy! Let’s get started!

*Note: For best results, an ENTIRE bottle must be consumed. Don’t be a pussy and stop when you’re two thirds down because you’ve gone blind, what are you? Six? MAN UP fer chrissake!

Reason #1: The drive to work will be AMAZING!

The first thing you’ll notice once you’ve chugged down the last few delicious mouthfulls of whisky is that you are more confident and capable than you’ve ever been IN YOUR LIFE!

The second thing you’ll notice is that your pants (and underpants) might need changing before you venture out into the world due to a large, warm, wet stain around your crotchal area.

Don’t let this deter you, the complete loss of bodily functions is a common side effect after drinking an entire bottle of whisky. Just make sure you sit down first before attempting to change your pants as balancing on one leg at this juncture could prove tricky.

 

 

Armed with fresh pants (and underpants) stride confidently out the house and into your car and leave for work. If you’re having trouble starting your car, run through the following checklist of questions to make sure you haven’t forgotten something:

  • Have you left the house?
  • With your car keys?
  • Are you sure it is indeed your car that you are trying to start?
  • Is your car in gear?
  • Do you remember how gears work?
  • Have you taken the handbrake off?
  • Have you reversed down the driveway, across the street and into the neighbour’s living room? If so, explain the situation away by saying you’re recovering from extensive neural surgery, and then pretend to slip into a coma

Once this checklist has been completed, you will notice that the drive to work is AMAZING!

You’ll careen at breakneck speeds along pavements, the wrong way down highways and possibly even along railway tracks. All that traffic that used to cause you unnecessary stress will magically disappear as you tail-end, side-swipe and pile-drive your way through any vehicles unfortunate enough to get in your way.

 

 

Provided you aren’t arrested and your car doesn’t explode in a blazing ball of molten steel and broken glass, you’ll arrive at work in record time, invigorated after your near brush with death and only vaguely concerned about the newspaper vendors smeared all over the front of your car.

 

Reason #2: You can finally get all of your issues with fellow work colleagues off your chest

Any HR person will tell you that the best way to maintain a happy and healthy work environment is to keep lines of communication open at all times.

In practice this becomes difficult to do as people don’t always take kindly to you telling them that they are big fat pathetic losers who are further down the food chain than prawn shit.

This can lead to the suppression of any number of issues that you have with fellow co-workers, which can have negative results on your performance in a team-orientated office environment.

However, after an entire bottle of whisky, voicing your concerns becomes not only easy to do, but also thoroughly enjoyable.

 

 

I’d suggest starting with junior staff members in order to practice your new found skill and then moving up the food chain and finally ending with your boss or even the CEO of the company.

Here’s another check-list of constructive comments and feedback you could give to your colleagues and co-workers in order to facilitate an open and honest forum for future discussions:

  • Your ugly! Anyone ev’r tell ya that? UGLY AND YOU SMELL! Go home! N’body likes YOU!
  • Look-ee look-ee! If it isn’t Miss ‘I jus’ got ANOTHER pr’motion! Everyone knows you’re screwin’ the boss, yeah! That’s right! EVERYONE!
  • Hey there sweetcheeks! Did I ev’r tell you you’r fuckin’ HOT? HUH? DID I? Well, you are. C’mere, gimme a hug, c’mere. I love you. I LOVE you! Hey, c’m back here!
  • Yo Boss-man! Up high! Hahaha! C’mon, loosen up ya big, dumb prick, stop bein’ such a fuckin’ homo all the time!

You’ll find all these and many, many more conversational ice-breakers come naturally after an entire bottle of whisky, so why not lighten up the atmosphere in your company and drink an entire bottle of whisky before going to work today!

 

Reason #3: You’ll get to go home early

After your courageous display of honesty at the work place, you can be sure that your bosses will reward you by letting you take the rest of the day off.

You can spend this time reflecting on the profound difference you have made in the lives of the people you work with, or, even better, getting started on a second bottle of whisky!

 

Which brings me neatly to my final reason why drinking an entire bottle of whisky before going to work is a good idea.

 

Reason #4: I’ll have someone to drink with

Having experienced first hand all of the reasons why drinking an entire bottle of whisky before work is a good idea, I now find myself waking up completely carefree everyday at noon without having to stress about the burden of going to work and with not a worry on my mind except my impending court date.

Which is why I urge you to try this miracle cure for all of life’s woes and when you have, come and find me!

I can be reached during the day at the Salvation Army shelter in the city centre and at the alley behind it at night where I often pull up a plastic crate with my new friends and drink varying kinds of interesting alcoholic concoctions they make from metholated spirits and shoe polish!

 

 

So don’t delay! Drink an entire bottle of whisky before work NOW and kiss your worries (and life) goodbye!

-ST

07
Mar
10

Sunday Grocery Shopping = Hatred

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Things were going well, I had a handle on today, I felt like progress was being made.

I was up by 9.30 finishing the final few things that needed picking up, packing away, pulling out and plugging in. I ate leftover spaghetti bolognaise for breakfast, when you eat meat for breakfast the world bows down to you because it knows that you cannot fuck with this man!

You cannot fuck with a man who eats meat for breakfast – that man proceeds directly to the shower and scrubs himself so clean he gets out red, the colour of beetroot, and races to the sink and brushes his teeth, LIKE A SPARTAN!

 

 

This man was ME!

Right after that, I grabbed the nearest pen and began writing a LIST! Of GROCERIES! Because we were running dangerously low on MEAT!

Once I’d made sure my grocery list had at least four DIFFERENT animals on it, I added other crucial foodstuffs that I knew I’d get in trouble if I didn’t remember such as:

  • MILK!
  • YOGHURT!
  • COFFEE!
  • A MOSQUITO NET! (Technically not a food stuff, but not too bad on a piece of toast with some peanut butter)

I surveyed my grocery list, realising full well that it was lacking in a number of additional foodstuffs to make the consumption of the MEAT more palatable for my WOMAN and other leafy, vegetable-like foodstuffs that my doctor told me I need to have in my diet to KEEP THE SCURVY AWAY, but these were MINOR DETAILS that I knew I could figure out WHEN I GOT THERE!

And so I struck out, engine roaring, music blaring, to HUNT and GATHER from the hot, dry and dusty savannah plains of Pick ‘N Pay, confident that WITHIN THE HOUR I’d be back with a wagon-load of food to nourish my tribe.

 

 

I arrived and contemplated parking in the yellow bays right by the entrance that are reserved specifically FOR THE ELDERLY! But that’s highly inconsiderate and what would my mom say?

I then GRABBED a trolley and stormed into the grocery store, one I had never been to before, only to find that it was FUCKING MASSIVE!

Crap. I thought. How the fuck am I going to find anything in here?

The second thing I noticed was the music, which was quite CALM and PEACEFUL and had the same effect SLEEPING PILLS have on me.

Before long, I started to lose enthusiasm. Before long I was just kinda flopping from one aisle to the next, thinking ‘Hmm, Royco Cuppa Soup… do we need this? Royco? Cuppa Soup? I… don’t fucking know…’

The music rolled like a thick fog into my brain, which, already completely overwhelmed for choice, was systematically starting to shut itself down.

Eventually the workings of my mind resembled a goldfish, dead, floating belly up in it’s tank. Or a donkey, standing in the boiling midday heat, its face completely expressionless, half-heartedly swishing flies away from its ass.

 

 

Fakh, I thought, not for the first time in my life, I hate grocery shopping.

I don’t know what I bought, hell, I don’t even remember the last half-hour of my grocery shop, which explains why I came home with the following items:

  • Coat hangers
  • Mince Mate (but no mince)
  • Ice Cream
  • A gem squash
  • Soap
  • Steak
  • Oven Gloves, and
  • Royco Cuppa Soup

Kill me.

Kill me now 🙁

-ST

05
Mar
10

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be Alan Knott-Craig

By SlickTiger 3 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

A long time ago, I was a journalist working with a team of people from all over the world and I felt pretty fucking special and amazing.

We got paid every week in cash, huge wads of R200 notes carefully counted, stacked and packed into brown paper bags.

See, what we were doing wasn’t exactly legal. It would bore the hell out of me to have to explain it as I’ve probably told this story a hundred times, so instead I want you to think of the scene in Fight Club where they’re in the boutique store selling soap.

 

 

The narrator says something about how all they’re doing is selling rich people their fat asses back to them – we were doing the same thing, only in an editorial sense with neat, official rate cards with prices printed in Euros.

You want a page of advertising in our report? That’ll be eighty-fucking-nine thousand Euros please.

I know what it feels like to be escorted out of someone’s office by security. I also know what it feels like to lie to mayors, ministers and high-powered CEOs right to their smug little faces instead of the other way around.

You’d be surprised how easy it is – 70% of winning people over is looking the part, get that right and with enough important-sounding smarmy banter you can bullshit your way into anything.

That’s how I landed the interview with Alan Knott-Craig, who was the then CEO of Vodacom. A phone call here, an official-looking series of faxes and emails there and then next thing I knew, I was waltzing into his offices with my Hawaiian team-mate Steven, both of us dressed to the nines in expensive business suits and leather shoes polished until they looked like black mirrors.

I wore a fucking tie. I had a fucking briefcase. I was 22 years old.

For the record, old Alan had the hottest PA I’ve ever seen in my life. That woman was hot enough to melt tar, fahk. It’s a smart move because before you’ve even met the man you already have this grudging respect for him whether you’re conscious of it or not.

 

 

Understandably, I was more than a little nervous and had asked Steven, 12 years my senior, which interview question of the ones I’d drafted I should start with.

‘None of them,’ he replied.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Dude, you look like a kid fresh outta college.’

‘I am a kid fresh outta college.’

‘Yeah, so you’ve got to earn the man’s respect or he’s never going to take you seriously. Start with a difficult question, show him you’re not afraid of him.’

‘O… kay…’

‘Ask him why Vodacom’s cell phone rates in South Africa are so much more expensive than other places in the world.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t think that’s going to piss him off?’

‘Trust me, after that he’ll know we aren’t fucking around and after that, he’ll buy some advertising in the report.’

‘Cool. Ok, I’ll do it.’

He’s a tall guy, ol’ Alan. Big hands. Exudes unwavering confidence and is direct to the point of almost coming across as rude.

 

 

None of this helped my nerves. We all sat down and I opened my briefcase with trembling hands as he sat there, calm as a cat with its claw through a mouse’s tail.

‘So Mr Knott-Craig,’ I stammered once I was set up and ready to go.

‘Call me Alan,’ he replied.

‘Alan. Why are Vodacom’s rates so much more expensive than other places in the world?’

And good old Alan, good old Mr Knott-Craig, I’ll never forget his response as long as I live. Me, a skinny kid out of college no idea what the hell I was doing, and him, one of the most influential men in South Africa, the chief executive officer of an empire.

He stared straight at me with a look that could weld steel and said one word.

‘Crap.’

Which is exactly what I did.

And that’s why when I grow up I want to be Alan Knott-Craig, what a fucking badass.

-ST

04
Mar
10

SlickTiger Meets Gary The Cannibal

By SlickTiger 6 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“I’m in a gay relationship,” he said, “I’m not sure if you… might have… heard anything about that…?”

When complete strangers open up like that with me, my first instinct is to go deadpan. I fake nonchalance because I’m totally cool with that. This is 2010 for chrissake, people are entitled to live free and without prejudice when it comes to their lifestyle choices.

 

 

And no, it doesn’t alarm me on some level that I’m sharing a room with this man, didn’t he just say he’s in a relationship?

“No, I hadn’t,” I replied, “but, um, I respect that.”

“We’ve been together 8 years now.”

“That’s a long time,” I said, genuinely impressed, “the longest relationship I’ve managed so far is about and year and a half. Straight relationship. The longest straight relationship. Um. Not that I’ve tried any other kind, haha… yeah, so…”

“Should we head downstairs?”

“Fine with me.”

And that’s pretty much how our first conversation went. They got much better after that, as they do once alcohol is introduced, and by the time we all met up for dinner that night, Gary and I were good friends.

Also, because we were two out of the only three males on the conference with about 26 women, we ended up hanging out a lot purely by default.

Shortly after we all sat down for dinner the MD of the company told me that they weren’t going to make us n00bs dance or sing a song for everyone, but that we would have to stand up, introduce ourselves and make a speech during dinner instead.

I love shit like that and so the second the MD, henceforth known as ‘Hot-Boss’, made the announcement to the table, I volunteered to go first, right then and there, before dinner had even been served.

Always go first. Don’t be a pussy. People will respect your courage and, having no one else to compare you with, will love everything you say.

I kept my speech nice and short. I thanked them for hiring me, I thanked them for inviting me on the conference, told them how excited I was to be starting out at such a friendly and rad company and sat back down.

“Wait a minute,” one of the girls chirped, “tell us why you got arrested!”

Ahh Christ.

 

 

In one of the ‘getting to know you’ games earlier that day it had emerged that I had been arrested when I was 13. Funny how things like that seem to pop up at the least appropriate moments.

Eyebrows were raised. Hot-Boss tried to brush it off by saying, ‘Well, there’s a question we’re definitely going to add to the list the next time we interview someone.” Queue polite / nervous laughter (keep in mind this was before the alcohol started flowing).

Under the surface though I could see she was a little unsettled – the last thing you want to find out about the person you’ve just hired in that they’ve had a run-in with the fuzz.

You can read all about the first time I got arrested here, it’s actually a pretty tame story. Me and some buddies smashed a few windows on a derelict building and got caught and arrested for vandalism.

Still though, it sounded bad when I explained the story over dinner that night, it was awkward and I sat down sheepishly when I was done and made a mental note to just shut the fuck up about that stuff in future.

Shortly thereafter Jager-bombs began to drop like grenades down a VC trench.

The next n00b stood up after dinner was served and got a slightly more severe grilling than me, she clocked in at about 4 minutes. She survived with her dignity intact though, but only just.

More Jager-bombs dropped. Speeches got longer and longer as the people listening grilled the n00bs with one question after the next. Questions like ‘How old were you the first time you got drunk?’, ‘When did you first have sex?’ and ‘Who’s the hottest girl here?’ started popping up. Much hilarity ensued.

Jager, Jager, Jager. Bomb, bomb, bomb.

Eventually everyone got tired of speeches and hit the upstairs lounge to party on down and cut up the dance floor.

Sometime during the festivities someone figured out that Gary hadn’t made his n00b speech at which point we all started chanting ‘Ga-ry! Ga-ry! Ga-ry!” which reminded me of the crowd chanting ‘Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!” from the movie with the same name about a retarded football player.

 

 

Being surprisingly shy in front of a crowd, Gary tried to get us to simmer down in the hope that we’d all forget about it after awhile and carry on partying.

No such luck.

Hot-Boss asked him to tell us about himself and he told us a killer story about how when he served in the army (navy?) he was sent on a ship to guard PW Botha only to end up accompanying ol’ Pik on what can only be described as a ‘ho-run’.

Pik was in the mood for some Eastern European women, of which there happened to be a few on a neighbouring ship, so they rowed off in a life-raft towards this other ship only to get shot down completely by the women / security on the ship and forced to row back empty handed.

“Hahaha!” people chuckled, “nice story Gary!” “Tell us another story Gary!” “Yeah, tell us another one!” everyone shouted in happy, drunk unison.

“Well,” said Gary, “another thing I’ve learned is that human flesh is overrated.”

[Insert record scratching sound effect]

“What?! Overrated how?” one of the braver girls present asked.

“As a food source,” Gary stated, matter-of-factly.

The room exploded. “What the fuck?!” “You’ve eaten human flesh?!” “Tell us you’re joking Gary!” everyone shouted in bewildered, drunk unison.

“It was in North Africa back in the day when a lot of people still did that and it wasn’t really frowned upon. I had no idea what I was eating, I was only told afterwards,” he said defensively, “it tasted quite sweet.”

Cut to the inside of my head where the opening scene from the movie Ravenous started playing, the one where a tent full of starving soldiers all tuck into a bloody meal of suspicious-looking circular steaks.

 

 

It’s shot mostly in close-ups. They tear at the meat with their teeth, blood running down their chins and congealing in their beards, while the wet sound of them all chewing gets louder and louder and the cuts get faster and faster and faster and…

“GARY THE CANNIBAL!” I screamed like a man waking up from a nightmare. Everyone burst out laughing, well, everyone but the intern who was struggling to lift her jaw back off the floor.

Me, on the other hand, I was ecstatic. Gary’s priceless over share nullified my earlier confession completely – who the fuck cares about a few broken windows when you have a human flesh eater in your midst?

Now there’s a question to add to the interview list – True or False: Human flesh tastes sweet?

Hahahahahaha! Ahh, good times I tell ya, good times 😉

-ST

18
Feb
10

The Internet Is making me retarded

By SlickTiger 3 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts and Satire, Irony And Vitriol
Tags: , , , , , ,

When I think of the internet, I don’t think of a serious place. I don’t think of an information super-highway where top professionals can source any kind of information they want, network with colleagues and like-minded individuals and make informed business decisions, no.

When I think of the internet, I think of one big-ass playground full of kids running around with cake all over their faces.

 

 

I’ll tell you what’s happened. Thousands of years of human evolution have pushed us so far up the food chain that nothing, nothing can fuck with us, except us. Provided you live in a country that’s not wracked by war, famine, pestilence or death and you earn a steady income, chances are you’re so comfortable and bored with day to day life, whether you admit it or not, that you’ll do any fucking thing to escape the hum drum, and THAT’S what the internet has become, a giant escape hatch.

Grown men and women the world over are sending one another FAIL mails, lolcats, pyramid scheme spam (send this to 10 friends in the next 20 minutes and your penis will grow by 3 feet!), and lame joke emails that get sent to you by four different people, the last one being your own mother.

 

 

Don’t get me wrong though, I’m just as guilty as the next guy of indulging in the mindless garbage floating around on the interwebs. I enjoy a FAIL mail just as much as the next guy, but the question I often find myself asking is, What the fuck is happening to my mind?

Do you ever find yourself thinking that? All that junk we consume, all the media we are bombarded with on a daily basis, it all sits in our minds somewhere, and like a mustard seed you swallow into your lung by mistake, it’s growing in the damp and the dark and that can’t be good.

I meet these people with increasing frequency that have very clearly made it their life’s mission to completely discard the things that make them think or feel anything beyond a purely superficial level and I get ticked off when I meet people like that. We have no idea what we are capable of, it’s possibly the best part of being human. You think you know yourself and your boundaries, but you’ll find if you have the courage to step outside of your comfort zone and test those boundaries, they move.

Isn’t that the reason we exist? To grow and learn and gain as much experience as possible? Fuck, this life is a gift, you don’t know how fucking lucky you are to be living it, how fucking lucky we all are to be alive is this world of supreme chaos where in the same day, millions of people will meet and fall hopelessly in love while millions more will stand in mourning over the graves of their parents or even more heartbreaking than that, their kids.

I’m paraphrasing badly from one of my favourite movies of all time, Adaptation. You remember the bit where Kaufman goes to the script writing seminar held by Robert McKee? Well McKee ends up attacking Kaufman after Kaufman makes the statement that ‘nothing much happens’ in the world, it’s brilliant.

 

Nothing happens in the world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day. There’s genocide, war, corruption. Every fucking day, somewhere in the world, somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else. Every fucking day, someone, somewhere takes a conscious decision to destroy someone else. People find love, people lose it. For Christ’s sake, a child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church. Someone goes hungry. Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman. If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know crap about life!

 

 

And I think this is exactly the problem this modern world of ours faces. We don’t know crap about life. We shut all that stuff out, we focus only on things that make us feel happy and make us feel good because ‘there’s enough shit in the world already’. Here’s a news flash – that ‘shit’ you refer to, that’s LIFE. Running away from the things that challenge us or scare us or force us to really feel something, isn’t LIVING, it’s just killing time and when it comes to killing time, the internet is KING.

I don’t have any answers, yet. All I got is words, fightin’ words and nothing to back them up with except my primal sincerity. Still though, I can’t shake this feeling that we’re being dumbed down, all of us, by the media we consume in nauseating quantities and worse than that, we’re enjoying it.

-ST

17
Feb
10

The Three Evilest Shots You’ll Ever Drink

By SlickTiger 7 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

If you’re the type of person who enjoys this blog, then I’m just gonna jump right in there, take a shot in the dark and guess that you probably don’t mind a drink from time to time.

You don’t mind a drink from time to time, you don’t mind going out with your friends and maybe doing a sneaky tequila or two, you have nothing against that. You don’t mind opening a fine bottle of wine and drinking the whole thing by yourself, that’s fine by you, and you don’t mind taking a hip flask of whisky to work everyday and taking large gulps under your desk when no one’s looking, you know, just to steady your hands a little.

 

 

We don’t judge here at Them’s Fightin’ Words, well unless you’re MTN, The Parlotones, 30 Seconds To Mars, a fascist pig, or any number of other things that irritate the shit out of me. I like drunks though, so you guys are safe.

In fact, a lot of my good friends are well accomplished drunks, and I’ve followed their drinking careers in some cases right from the first drink I forced them to down. You know where you stand with a drunk because the second they’ve had a few, THE TRUTH starts flowing like a fountain of milk and honey from their wet, booze soaked lips, usually with hilarious consequences.

Also, I love watching the body language of truly wasted people, especially when they’re trying to get some ass. Take this one friend of mine for example, we’ll just call him X, to avoid an awkward conversation later today. When he’s nice and lubed up he’ll approach his target, leaning backward at an angle of 45 degrees from the floor. Then once he’s made his approach, he’ll straighten up to a respectable 90 degree angle, occasionally wavering forward to 100 and backward to 80.

God help his target if she shows any kind of interest because then it’s balls to the wall, 135 degree forward leaning, right up there in her personal space. Now it’s her turn to lean backward at 45 degrees. It’s like some bizarre mating ritual perpetuated by two similarly charged magnets.

 

 

So anyway, I decided for today’s post I’d share a few priceless nuggets of information I gathered whilst living in Grahamstown and studying at Rhodes University, Where Leaders Learn… To Drink.

And no, I don’t know your friend’s sister Kirsty who went there to study a BSC, or your mate Rhino who was part of the surf club so let’s not even go there ok? I went to Rhodes I remember NO ONE! I leave all that remembering bullshit up to other people cause yesterday’s got nothin’ for me, pictures that I’ll always see, time just fades the pages in my book of memories.

Here are the three EVILEST shots ever invented. I sincerely hope you never have to drink any of these. Rhodes students invented these. Yeah, that bad.

 

THE MOTHERFUCKER

 

 

Not a very original name for a shot, I’ll be the first to admit that, but when you’re caught in the hazy deluge of a three-day drinking binge, these things seldom matter.

For this particularly potent assault on sobriety, you’ll need the following:

  • 1 x double shot glass
  • 1 x shot of absinthe
  • 1 x shot of stroh rum
  • 1 x draught glass
  • 1 x lighter
  • 1 x bent straw

Ok? Are you picking up what I’m laying down here? It goes like this: You pour the absinthe and stroh into the shot glass and light it. You hold the draught glass upside down over the flaming mess, catching as many fumes as possible before putting the draught glass down over the shot glass, thus neatly extinguishing said flaming mess. Carefully sneak the shot glass out from the draught glass, being careful not to let the fumes escape and SMASH the shot in your face.

Then, quick as possible, put the short end of the bent straw under the draught glass and suck the fumes in like a bong hit. I watched someone pass out instantly when doing this once, so maybe tie yourself to something first.

 

THE SAMURAI

 

 

Specially designed for the shoe-string budget drinker, this is by far the MOST FUCKED you’ll ever get on one shot. I’ve been there. I have the scars to prove it.

For this suicidally retarded foray into drunken oblivion, you’ll need the following:

  • 1 x shot of stroh rum
  • 1 x shot glass FULL of sugar
  • 1 x round slice of lemon, with rind

Can you see where this is going? I think you can see where this is going. This is going straight to shit, do not pass go, do not collect 200.

First empty the entire shot glass of sugar into your mouth. You’ll be surprised how much sugar a shot glass can hold. Swill it around a little to get it moist and then pop the entire lemon slice, rind and all into your mouth and chew it up but good.

By this stage your mouth will be so full your cheeks will be in real danger of rupturing. Now somehow get that shot of stroh in there and swallow the lot. Sit down for 15 minutes and for god’s sake, no matter how ‘fine’ you feel, DON’T drink anything else. Now stand up, walk around a little and marvel at how completely wasted you’ve just become.

Make an educated decision at this point, ask yourself ‘Can I handle any more booze?’ O’course y’can! Ffffaahk!

This will be the last thing you remember.

 

THE SACRED SHIT OF SATAN

 

 

This shot should not be drunk by ANYONE. It was invented by barmen at Champs Action Bar shortly before the place was closed down. Champs was frequented mainly by truck drivers, correctional services officers, criminals and students who were into metal and didn’t mind spending their evenings watching people fight one another with broken bottles and screwdrivers (true story).

So anyway, there is nothing cute or clever about this shot. To make it you need:

  • 1 x double shot glass
  • Bit of tequila
  • Throw in some stroh rum
  • Fuck it, why not some whisky
  • Vodka’s definitely a winner
  • Some amarula cream so it can curdle instantly
  • And why not finish that bad boy off with a healthy dollop of Tobasco sauce?

Does that sound like fun to you? I had no idea what it was when I bought it because I was already pretty hammered. The sign behind the bar said ‘Don’t be a pussy! Try The Sacred Shit Of Satan.’

‘I’m no goddam pussy!’ I slurred, ‘gimme Satan’s shit!’

Yeah. Boy did I regret that decision.

So there you have it guys, three fun ways to spend a night slurring incoherently, hitting on ugly strangers and starting fights that trust me, you’ll lose.

Hahaha! Good times I tell ya, good times 🙂

-ST

16
Feb
10

Why I Don’t Play Action Cricket

By SlickTiger 5 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Look, I don’t want to start this post on the wrong foot here ok? This is about why I don’t play action cricket, I’m totally down with the fact that you might play action cricket, playing action cricket is a perfectly acceptable pastime that thousands of mentally disabled people engage in worldwide, keeps them from banging the cat, I’m cool with that.

 

 

In fact, one of my best and severely mentally disabled friends, The Glaze, used to play action cricket every Friday with his buddies from work, that’s how open minded I am about the whole thing.

They were part of some league or other, which meant they played against a whole bunch of other tards who’d formed these ‘work buddy’ teams to encourage healthy socialising outside of working hours.

But let’s be honest, these ‘work buddy’ teams only exist because three or four douchebags in the office are FUCKING AMAZING at EVERY CONCEIVABLE SPORT and so they rope in a whole bunch of other guys who really suck at sport so that the douchebags can laugh at and humiliate the others in public.

If some guy at work came up to me and said, “Hey dude, we’re starting an action cricket team, it’s gonna be rad bro! We play every Friday after work, have a couple of beers, it’s chilled, wanna sign up?”

My reply would be, “I’m sorry. Friday nights are when I masturbate furiously to re-runs of ‘Murder She Wrote’. Sounds retarded doesn’t it? Yeah, well so does action cricket.”

 

 

See, The Glaze didn’t have the malevolence in his spirit to perceive the trap he had wandered into by agreeing to play action cricket in a ‘work buddy’ team until it was too late.

And so there he’d be on Friday evenings, NOT enjoying a few sneaky libations with the rest of his real life friends, but rather stuck in some day-glo green astro-turfed nightmare, trying with all the skill he could muster to hit a ball with a plank of wood.

Just wait, it gets better.

At some stage during their league games, the office douchebags decide to implement a new rule. The person with the lowest score has to drink a HUGE mouthful of warm beer, not out of a glass, no, that would be too easy. Not out of a shoe either, also not degrading enough.

Instead, the player with the lowest score was forced to drink a HUGE mouthful of warm beer out of the communal ball-box.

Two things immediately struck me when The Glaze broke this news one evening in shame – a) Why the fuck did they all use the same ball-box? and b) WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THEM?!

At this stage let me just make one thing clear. By ‘ball-box’, I’m not referring to a box that balls come in, I’m referring to the moulded piece of hard plastic that players wear to protect their sweaty junk from injury.

 

 

Surely at the exact point that someone suggests you play for stakes like that is when any sane person makes any excuse imaginable to get the fuck out of there?

What’s really funny though is how badly The Glaze’s team sucked. By the end of it all I think they’d lost every game except for two. They still got medals for effort though, every player in the team, which really cracks me up because The Glaze got the lowest score four or five times, once even managing to score –12, so in my estimation, he must have drank about a pint of ball-box beer.

Unfortunately he took his medal out with him on Friday night and by mistake lost it, which made me laugh so hard I cried because who in God’s name would want to walk around clubs and bars with a medal they got for drinking ball-box beer?

“Hi cutie, nice medal, what’s it for?”

“Drinking ball-box beer.”

“Oh my GOD!”

“What is it Tracy?”

“That guy’s an action cricketer!”

“Ok, stay the fuck away from us freak or I’m calling the Police!”

But what really cracked me up is the fact that the poor dude’s downed a pint of ball-box beer and now he’s got nothing to show for it! Hahahahaha! Double-edged sword muthufukkah!

 

 

The lesson here kids is never let your ‘work buddies’ rope you into any kind of sporting activity that you aren’t a semi-pro at or they’ll finally have that opportunity they’ve been waiting for to make you drink their ball-sweat.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you 😉

-ST

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »