It’s a crazy day for your Tiger pal folks because it’s my last day at my current job. It’s been two and a half years, amazing how quickly it goes by.
Blink just once and you’ve missed the entire thing. On the other hand, change is good, you gotta embrace that shit because it’s the only constant in this crazy life and without it we’d all be bored stiff.
Speaking of change, I just watched the latest Nando’s and Cheesekids Souperstar video that did the rounds on Friday and it made me feel better in a small way about life in general, so thank you Nando’s, your Tiger pal salutes you.
Since Nando’s put out the first Cheesekids teaser video (at around the time of Nando’s controversial anti-Xenophobia ad), over 800 people have signed up to volunteer at four pop-up soup kitchens around the country – all in areas that have been affected by Xenophobia.
From Alexandra to Langa, Lindela Repatriation Centre to Limpopo, these Souperstars have made a difference by simply volunteering their time and energy to help feed the homeless.
Check it:
My dad started going to church unexpectedly back when I was in highschool, which was a bit of a curveball at the time because I’d never thought of him as a particularly religious man.
He didn’t make a big thing of it and still doesn’t to this day, but all these churchy pamphlets and handouts started collecting on the counter in the entrance hall where he’d “file†them every Sunday.
I didn’t pay much attention to them, they were pretty stock-standard images of Christ getting nailed (the bad way) and suffering for our sins, coupled with lines cleverly designed to make you feel righteous and vaguely guilty at the same time.
But this one caught my eye on day, this story about two friends walking on the beach after spring tide with all these washed up starfish everywhere, thousands of them.
The one friend, much to the irritation of his buddy, kept interrupting the flow of conversation by picking the starfish up and throwing them back into the sea.
Eventually his buddy cracked, saying, “Would you stop that? There are thousands of starfish on this beach, it’s not like you’re making a difference.â€
To which the friend replied by picking up another starfish, throwing it into the sea and saying, “I made a difference to that one.â€
It’s been over a week since Mark Esterhuysen, a former newsreader for 702’s Eyewitness News, released the Hiroshima equivalent of F-bombs during a live news broadcast at 1am on a random Tuesday and catapulted himself to instant internet fame.
In case you missed it, here’s a transcription of what he said, verbatim, right before they cut to a convenient ad break:
Good morning. I’m Mark Esterhuysen. Fuck racism, fuck the pigs who killed Andries Tatane, fuck the AWB, fuck racism. We are all wild animals here, meant to live free. Fuck capitalism, fuck fascism. Fuck this fucking wage slavery graveyard shit. Fuck domestication, fuck Julius Malema, fuck the state. Fuck perpetual economic growth on a finite planet. This is the only fucking planet we have…â€
Right after that he proceeded to direct anyone who disagreed with him to his Twitter profile, Facebook page and blog http://markesterhuysen.blogspot.com/.
Can you believe the balls on this guy?! Hahahaha! What a legend! Here’s the original:
Naturally the first thing I did was to try and find out if anyone at work had hit the guy’s site so I could get the address (I kept misspelling “Esterhuysenâ€) and was told in no uncertain terms that this guy is COOKED!
FUCK YEAH! I thought. I love crazies!
But reading his site I soon realised that the poor guy isn’t crazy at all. Misguided, maybe, but outright shit-your-pants-mad? I don’t think so.
His site consists of about 10 posts, at least 5 of which are long, sprawling diatribes about his dissatisfaction with modern civilisation and this desperate need he feels deep down to get as far away from it as humanly possible.
I’d be lying outright if I said I’ve never thought that. In fact, for a long time when I was younger I entertained the idea of falling off the grid completely. Finding some remote desert island somewhere and living out the rest of my days spear fishing, climbing coconut trees and living in an A-frame hut on the beach.
Esterhuysen’s need to get the hell away from it all was calcified by an article he read on the Men’s Health website that was posted in October last year which, to be perfectly frank, stated some pretty obvious facts about how being exposed to the great outdoors is one of the best ways to sharpen the mind and senses and how modern society has all but cut us off from nature completely, to our detriment.
In fact, all of Esterhuysen’s posts seem to be pretty obvious at face value. Civilisation is tyrannical, agriculture is the root of all human evil, the abhorrent ecocide we are committing on a daily basis isn’t receiving the level of attention it should be, the sooner we go back to the Stone Age way of life, the better.
They’re all arguments I used to believe fervently. It’s a FACT that we are, by all definitions of the word, insane. All of us. Every living person on this planet, because we are systematically destroying the very thing upon which we rely for our existence as a species.
So the guy took a stand for what he believed in. He used the medium of commercial radio to stick it to the man in a 25th Hour inspired tirade, such was the strength of his convictions.
But here’s the kicker – what did his passionate outburst result in?
One Time Airlines recording an Esterhuysen-inspired ad that rips off his F-bombing and turns his entire outcry into a big fucking joke so that they can sell more flights.
Let’s just pause and reflect on the irony of that.
A guy who is so concerned with the way we’re destroying the planet voices his vehemence on radio only to be made fun of by an airline so that they can sell more flights, burn more jet fuel and stamp their carbon footprint firmly on the face of our planet.
Esterhuysen may be an ideological fool, but I admire what he did, and if that makes me an ideological fool as well, then so be it.
This weekend, J-Rab and I are going to (finally!) sign up with a recycling service in an effort to try and make some positive change. Sure, it won’t stop cars from driving or planes from flying or BP from fouling up our oceans, but it will make a difference, even if it’s a tiny one.
My old man goes to church on Sundays, which I found pretty bizarre when he first started going because he’s never been religious at all, but he never spoke about it or got all weird and preachy so I just let it be.
After returning one Sunday, he left a pamphlet on the entrance hall table that told the following story:
Two friends were walking along a beach one afternoon when they noticed that the spring tide had washed hundreds of starfish up onto the beach that were drying out in the sun and dying.
As they walked, the one friend randomly picked up starfish and threw them back into the sea.
Irritated with the futility of this gesture, the other friend eventually snaps.
“There must be a thousand starfish on this beach! Would you just give it a rest, you’re not making a difference!â€
To which his buddy simply picks up another starfish, throws it into the sea and says, “I made a difference to that one.â€
Mark Esterhuysen might have become the butt of everyone’s jokes, but at least he’s trying to make a difference in some way.
It’s a crazy day for your Tiger pal folks because it’s my last day at my current job. It’s been two and a half years, amazing how quickly it goes by.
