Welcome to 2000-and-Why-Do-We-Give-A-Fuck.

2009 American Inauguration Special.

Welcome back fuckers, and say hello to the 21st of January 2009, the first day that the world woke up to an African-American running the White House. In my previous post, I mentioned Barack Obama’s election victory in the U.S. as, well, one of the positive changes we could look forward to in 2009. This was just over three weeks ago, when 2009 still seemed like such a promising year, full of potential and sweetness yet to be savoured.

But having been back at work for just over two weeks, I realize that my optimism may have been a tad premature.

News That Features Monkeys: Fun facts about mooning

Not many people know this, but the act of mooning originated as a show of respect among bonobo monkeys. At some point in their evolution, younger males started approaching the troop leader, turning their backs to them, and laying their arms on the ground as a sign of submission. Gradually it became custom for the troop leader to acknowledge the gesture by mounting the lesser males and initiating mock intercourse.

Needless to say, this peculiar custom can lead to difficulties wherever humans come into contact with this species. Last year alone, six Canadian tourists tragically lost their virginity to overeager troop leaders (frustrated for years by the lack of females in their enclosures) while mooning caged monkeys in south-east Asia.

So how did the act of mooning turn into the full-cheeked insult it has become today?

“Some of us are just wired that way”

An interview with Paul Blom & Sonja Ruppersberg.

by AtraBilious and DocBenway

* * * * *

Eleven o’clock on a Sunday morning seems an odd time to meet people who share a love of horror movies and heavy music, but that’s when we arranged to meet Paul Blom and Sonja Ruppersberg. Apart from organizing the annual Horrorfest, South Africa’s only dedicated horror movie festival, they also form the core of the industrial band Terminatryx, who will perform a live soundtrack accompanying the Halloween showing of a silent horror classic, with guests.

Sarah Palin: Darling We Don’t Need You [With apologies to John Cale]

Every four years or so, anyone who’s depressed by the state of South African politics – and who isn’t, really? – can take solace in the election antics of the elephants and asses from the Land of the Free™ and Home of the Brave© across the Atlantic. And this time around it’s no different.

En nou vir iets heeltemal fokken anners.

In the last few weeks we’ve done the silly, we’ve done the funny, we’ve even done the obituary. We’ve also updated the site so that the links now show the current headlines. We’ll be trying to keep these more up to date from now on so that visitors can feel free to click away, safe in the knowledge that you won’t be magically transported to a different time and place – the equivalent of waking up and seeing today’s newspaper dated “July 15, 1952″. [This is for the africans site, by the way. Link at the end of the post.]

So in keeping with the atypical, today’s missive will be vaguely more serious ones, since all those cartoons are making our teeth ache already. So let’s hope you all are ready to become informed, because it’s time for our new feature:

Annals of Journalism: Crap-shooting Science