The tale I’m about to tell you is pretty damn incredible, so much so that many people, friends and family alike, have warned me against putting it out there. “Whatever you do, DON’T blog about this!†they warned, but seriously, what the hell do they know?
I tell ya, it’s EXACTLY like they said in Spiderman “With great power comes a tidal wave of shit you probably don’t want to deal with†(or something like that) and, well, I’m done picking the flesh of my loved ones out of my teeth, I just want my old life back, is that too much to ask?!
It all started with Vincent Hofman, that evil bastard. Him and his site www.moralfibre.co.za started ALL of this.
There I was one day, minding my own business on the internet, probably surfing some porn or playing Farmville or something, when he attacks me on G-chat about some competition or other that he’s running.
I don’t remember the conversation exactly, but I think it went something like this:
Vince: hey! you! buddy! hey! stop fucking around, i know you’re playing Farmville, stop trying to look busy
me: Um, hi Vince, how are you to-
Vince: you visited MF today?
me: Huh? No, not yet, but I was just about to I swe-
Vince: why not!
me: Dude, I was just about to, I swear!
Vince: whatever. you finished writing that piece i asked you for?
me: Um, which one was that ag-
Vince: fuck man! The one about how contemporary society has become eroded by the twisted moors of pseudo-intellectual, quasi-omnipotent, western corporate consumer masturbatory ontological fascist antidisestablishmentarianism?
me: Oh yeah, that one… sure, um, should be ready any day now…
Vince: good. i want it 8am tomorrow. also, i’m putting my name in the byline. but don’t worry, i’ll link it to your site, right at the bottom of the piece. in font size 3. in turkish
me: Ok, um, yeah, that sounds fair…
Vince: also, im running a competition on the site
me: Cool! what’s the prize?
Vince: a shirt
me: I love shirts!
Vince: yeah, a dude from that band the gallows designed it himself, sealed the print onto it with virgin’s blood in some kind of elaborate ritual sacrifice to Satan presided over by a Haitian voodoo priest or something
me: Fuck yeah!
Vince: for some reason not many people have entered the competition yet, so get your ass on the site and enter the competition and there’s a better than average chance you’ll win it
me: Fuck yeah!
Vince: um, there’s probably just one thing I should tell you first though
me: Eh? What?
Vince: the last guy to have the shirt tore his entire family limb from limb and was found crouching with nothing but the shirt on in the corner of his room, eating their remains
me: Huh. But the shirt’s free right?
Vince: yup
me: Fuck yeah!
And so it came to pass that three days later the announcement was made over Twitter that the winner of the Gallows Voodoo Demon T-Shirt competition was… me!
Having never won anything in my life except a 10kg bag of Epol dog food (which tasted like total crap, but made my coat really shiny) I was so excited I could hardly sit still!
For the first few days, my excitement levels were tolerable, and my friends and co-workers shared my enthusiasm and were genuinely happy for me as I jumped up and down excitedly and sang songs I made up about my new T-shirt.
However, two and a half months later, when the T-shirt still hadn’t arrived I had to be put on powerful sedatives after my booth-buddy at work screamed something about not being able to take ‘anymore fucking singing anymore’ and stabbed me in the neck with a pair of scissors.
About a month after that, the T-shirt arrived! I rushed home to put it on, and with trembling hands, slowly pulled it over my head and slid my arms through the sleeves.
The instant the shirt was on, this feeling of raw power flooded through my entire body! It was like this one time when my friends spiked my drink with liquid ecstasy at a high school social and I ended up with my underpants on my head gyrating wildly to “What Is Love? (Baby don’t hurt me)†while the other grade 8s ran screaming out of the school hall.
I turned to look at myself in the mirror and this is what I saw:
The Gallows T-shirt had transformed me into a bloodthirsty gargantuan beast! I immediately went on a rampage around the neighbourhood, smashing buildings down with my bare hands, swatting helicopters out of the air like flies and using tank turrets as baseball bats while I bashed army dudes over the horizon and clear into the ocean!
I also ate a few people. They tasted marginally better than Epol.
Of course it wasn’t long before they sent in the big guns and called a nuclear airstrike in on my ass and that’s when I realised that maybe I’d taken things too far.
It’s not right for one man to have so much power, and so I’m offering The Gallows T-Shirt, designed by one of the dudes in the band in some kind of dark, evil, blood soaked voodoo ritual, as an item to be raffled for the Nerdies 2010, because all the proceeds go to Wet Noses charity and puppies are cyoot.
But whoever wins the T-Shirt BEWARE! On wearing it you will become a bloodthirsty gargantuan beast, filled with murderous rage and a savage appetite for destruction and human flesh, but it sure beats spending your free time jacking off and playing Farmville right?
Let the bidding begin…
MUAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
-ST
