I Quit! Pope Style

You can take this job and… give it to someone else!

So the Pope resigned this week.

And good for him, sometimes you just have had enough of the 9-5 grind and living in a little cubicle having to drink bad coffee and take crap from a shitty boss so you just have to resign before you climb a clock tower with a sniper rifle.

Oh wait? He lived in a palace and didn’t really do anything. I blame social media. First Pope on twitter and next thing you know he’s resigned. There are only so many Bieber fans and bots offering you discount iPads you can take before you have to quit or climb a clock tower with a sniper rifle.

I just want to know how the heck he resigned. Who exactly do you give the resignation letter to?

“Dear God, you can take this job and shove it. Kind Regards – Pope… Benedict” (you can’t expect God to remember all the Popes’ names, he’s a busy guy).

What does someone do after being the Pope? You’d think he’d be a bit overqualified for most roles.

“Well you have a very impressive resume Mr Pope, but what makes you think you’d be suitable to work here at Walmart?”

Do you think he resigned to join a competitor in the market? Like all of a sudden he’s a Rabi or head of Scientology. It’s not like the Church can really counter offer.

“Look Pope, we understand things have been tough, but how about a pay increase and a promotion to Super Pope or Jesus.

In a press conference (that may or may not have actually happened) he was heard to remark.

“Look, I’m sorry Christians, I was offered a great package by the Scientologists, it’s got great medical aid, full dental and an employee share scheme. They even said I could pick my own title, I’m going with Captain Science! The job is on flexi-time so this gives me more time to spend time with my wife and kids… um I mean… spend more time with my World of Warcraft clan, I’ve got a sweet level 70 blood elf.”

“Also I want to concentrate more on my music, especially my solo career as the artist formerly known as Pope. I’ve also got a book I’m working on called “Rock Papal Scissors – how to cope when you’re Pope”

“I guess I was just tired of the same thing every day and trying to convince people of the truth about our religion. That my nose does not taste like chicken!”

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 12,000 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 20 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Disciplining your Children

Why you child rack a disciprine?

I’m getting to the stage where I’m thinking about possibly maybe having the inclination towards perhaps entertaining an idea of considering having kids, but the one thing that freaks me out about having children (besides the no sleep and changing nappies, of course) is the discipline issue.

I’m worried because disciplining children doesn’t seem to be as easy as it used to be. It used to be that if your kid even so much as looked at you funny and he was on his way to the small town of Assbeaton, population 1. It really was a golden age of corporal punishment and we thought it would never end. We thought as kids ourselves that although we might not be able to in act revenge against our parents and teachers that at least we would get even on the backsides of the next generation. I know what you’re thinking “dream parent”, right?

But now there’s no corporal punishment in schools and it’s frowned upon in most homes. I don’t see what’s so bad about it. It very quickly taught me to be scared of those bigger than me and that I could physically dominate anyone weaker than me that didn’t listen to me. The system works!

I used to get hidings all the way till I was about 13 when I made the mistake of laughing while my mother tried to give me a hiding. “Ooh nooo the pain! Oooooh nooooooo the agony!” That’s when we stopped getting hidings and the psychological punishment began removing privileges like a week of no Television or a week without being allowed outside or a week without food or water.

Now you have to negotiate with your kids and try to make them understand why they are being punished and I honestly cannot believe some of the disciplinary methods I hear about these days.

Like freaking hippy / free spirits that say “We don’t like using the word NO so we don’t”. So when little Jimmy is drawing on the walls we know he’s just trying to express himself and we shouldn’t stop him from doing that.”

What about when you need to discipline him?

“We like to let him decide on his own punishment that way he will choose a punishment that fits the crime”

For example?

“Well a few weeks ago we found him ripping up the plants in our marijua…I mean herb garden and so we asked him to punish himself” He had such bad munchies that he decided his punishment was to eat as much chocolate as he could.

Really? And that’s “punishment”?

“He was so sick the entire night. He was puking all over the house and I’m sure as he saw his mom and I on our hands and knees cleaning up all his chocolatey vomit he felt really bad. Which is why last week when he was ripping up the marijua… um Basil leaves again he didn’t eat as much chocolate as last time.”

I also don’t understand people that use the “naughty stool/time out/send you to your room” method

“Whenever little Billy misbehaves we just send him to his room because that sort of simulates what it’s like in the real world when criminals are sent to prison.”

Rrrrrrrright. Because in prison every cell has a Playstation 3, stacks of toys and a Spiderman bed spread.

Sorry but little Billy’s room is nothing like prison. First of all there’s no toilet in the corner of his room, there aren’t bars on the windows and in prison they don’t call you out of your cell after 30mins for pizza to chat about what you did.

If you want him to really feel what it’s like to be in prison, the least you could do would to get him a roommate called “Bubba” or “Stabby”.

Teach him to join a gang, carve a shank out of a toothbrush and smuggle cigarettes in his ass.

Maybe if that TV series “Prison Break” is anything to guy by you should tattoo the blueprints of the prison on his back.

But if you really want your child to know what it’s like in a South African prison and how to survive teach him to fake being sick

Why there are no weatherman on other planets

Is that a warm front or are you just happy to see me?

This may come as a surprise to you, but I watch a lot of space movies, not because I’m a nerd or anything (I mean I AM a nerd, but that’s not the main reason). I watch them purely on a research basis (okay, that’s pretty nerdy). You see there are thousands of movies and television series about space and aliens and at least one of them must be correct in their depictions of aliens and other planets – a sort of “thousand monkeys” theory, if you will. So by knowing all the different rules at play I can increase my chance of survival.

So when we do eventually make contact with another sentient life form I’ll be able to tell which rules to follow. Are we talking the killer xenomorphs from “Aliens” or the cuddly Ewok aliens from “Star Wars” or heaven forbid the super disappointing aliens from “Contact” (worst aliens EVER) because knowing which rules to follow can mean the difference between survival and burning to death in acidic Ewok blood.

Regardless of which alien movie I’ve watched the one thing I’ve noticed to be true is that the weather and terrain on whatever strange planet you arrive on is uniform throughout the planet. You go to Hoth from Star Wars and the entire planet is frozen tundra. You go to Tatooine and its wall to wall perma-desert.  LV 426 from Aliens is an endless stormy wasteland.

Why is this? If aliens came to Earth and landed in the Himalayas they’d think the entire planet is a highly mountainous and snowy region, if they landed in the Amazon they’d think that it’s all just Jungle and monsoons and if they land in Mexico they’d think it’s all just sand and tequila.

This is why you never ever see weathermen in space movies because their jobs are completely redundant.

“Since you’re here on the Rain Forest planet expect lots of rain and jungle with brief periods of slightly less rain and jungle followed by extensive rainy jungle-ness and now sports.”

or

“Welcome ice planet Hoth news and now the weather… It’s going to be cold and now the sports”

or

“Welcome to planet Mexico weather… expect sand and tequila. Ole!”

 

Beware the Pizza Man

I didn’t order any pizza, but you look legit. What smells like chloroform?

So on the weekend I decided to order pizza and chill at home because, well I like pizza and it was freezing outside. Why I am justifying my decisions to you? Where were you? You seem to know an awful lot about this Pizza story for an “innocent” bystander.

*deep breath

Okay, let’s start again. I decided to order pizza from the local pizza delivery place and after the 40 minute waiting period I received a phone call from the pizza place saying the delivery boy was outside the gate because the security guard wouldn’t let him up to my place.

Now first of all what is the point of ordering a pizza delivery to avoid going out in the cold, if you still have to go out in the cold. This was particularly strange to me since I had ordered pizza the week before and the delivery boy dropped it off at my place without any issues. What? I like pizza. I went for a run the next day. Stop judging me. I was too hungry to argue with the woman on the phone so I just ran outside to the security gate to pay for my pizza, but before I walked back I asked the security guard why the pizza boy wasn’t allowed past security.

He told me the superintendent of the complex had issued a new order saying that pizza deliveries had to be collected at the front gate. When I asked why this was he said because the superintendent felt that there was a risk of these pizza boys attacking or raping one of the other tenants.

Yeah…..

Sure thing…

The 45kg, 16 year old, scooter driving pizza boy is going to attack and rape us.

These kids pretty much get fired for being more than a minute late where the hell are they supposed to fit in the time for some attacking and raping?

How are they even supposed to get into anyone’s apartment?

*knock knock*

“Who is it?”

“Pizza delivery”

“We didn’t order any pizza”

“Well can I still come in and attack you… please hurry I have to be at my next delivery in 5 minutes”

Where did the superintendent get the idea that pizza boys are violent sexual deviants unless he watches A LOT of porn?

All of a sudden the superintendent seems way creepier than before. Thanks for ruining pizza for me too, jerk.

Life’s unfair… get over it (or why everyone else is wrong except me)

Shut up, you smart ass raptor. If you’re so smart why are you extinct? #evolutionburn

Sound advice, I suppose. Until something unfair actually happens to you. This was the advice I was given when I witnessed the worse kind of discrimination in the world… the type that is against me.

I had seen an advertisement for a local comedy competition and being that I was a local comedian, thought I should enter. The competition was held in a dodgy little meeting room in a paint-by-numbers hotel.

The competition seemed fairly well run with the rules being read out, the contestants and judges introduced and the criteria for assessment explained in full. The criteria included content, crowd interaction, originality, body language and use of the floor (as in the space provided – not actual use of the floor in which case levitation would be an immediate disqualification)

The contestants then drew numbers (luckily I had been attending art classes so my drawing skills were pretty good), but regrettably I drew “number 1” which meant I was up first. Once my name was called I stepped up to the stage and performed my 7 minute routine which, at least by my own admission, was stellar.

My confidence was further buoyed by the fact that the next 3 contestants were terrible. Unfunny; nervous; reading off sheets of paper; it was terrible, like watching surgery on a train wreck. So I felt that I had the contest in the bag although there was a bit of apprehension when I saw a bit of “procedural irregularities” occurring during the contest which I will mention after the result which I’m sure you’ve already guessed.

So the winners are announced and for some strange reason they said I was in second. I asked the person next to me if I had heard correctly and then started looking around for hidden cameras because this had to be one of those candid camera reality shows. Alas, nothing.

Now I’ve lost many comedy competitions in my life. I’ll chalk it down to being so ahead of my time that my comedy isn’t understood by most (when in all likelihood I’m just not that funny), but to lose when there was such damningly ridiculous bias made me want to spit.

Allow me to elaborate on those procedural irregularities. The individual who won not only was terrible, her “original” material was to quote the several types of personalities on facebook. I say “quote” as to give her the benefit of the doubt that she was going to give credit to the original authors of the material, but she probably just did that silently afterwards. That’s not even the problem because to get into what is original these days is so subjective that we’d be here for another 10000 pages and still have no resolution.

What was objectively unfair was the fact that one of the judges was her husband.

What made matters worse was… HE WAS BLIND!

Now I’m all for comedy being for everyone and that the disabled should be included, but at what point does it become patently ridiculous to be judged on criteria such as “use of the floor” and “body language” by a blind man?

It gets better… because he couldn’t see what scores he was writing, he would simply tell his wife (the contestant that won) what score to write down.

“Give Gareth a 72%” (she writes 52%)

“Give yourself a 75% (she writes 105%)

The cherry on top was that she read her entire routine… NOT THAT HER HUSBAND THE JUDGE WOULD’VE KNOWN!!!!

AAAAAAARGH!!!!!

Life’s not fair… get over it… well I’m tired of “getting over it”

Allergies vs Immunities

Allergies are probably the weirdest thing evolution has thrown our way since the duckbilled platypus, the flying fox and Keeping up with the Kardashians. How is it that a full grown man able to lift 3 times his body weight can be laid low by a single peanut?

Allergic reactions are so intense sometimes that they have to put warnings on everything to avoid getting sued – “WARNING this Car was made in a factory where someone once ate a peanut butter sandwich. I was shocked to find a warning on a bag of mixed nuts that said “WARNING this product may contain traces of nuts”. Part of me was upset that the manufacturers doubted my intelligence enough that they felt they needed to warn me that my bag of mixed nuts may contain traces of nuts, but then I was more upset that I just paid 10 bucks for a bag of nuts that only “may” contain “traces” of nuts – what a rip off!

And people seem to be allergic to anything, peanuts, dairy, hard work, seafood, alcohol, relationships. It appears anything can be a source of an allergic reaction and you can’t tell this about someone just by looking at them.

Yet one lowly peanut can have a muscle bound freak shaking and convulsing like an epileptic in a strobe factory I can eat them by the fistful. It really is like the whole Superman story where an innocuous green crystal that ordinarily would have no purpose other than as a paperweight for hippies would be able to cripple the man of steel.

But to make up for this incredible weakness, Superman has all these incredible powers (that seem to increase every time the writers run out of ideas). Super strength; super speed; the ability to fly; X-ray vision, laser vision, frost breath and all for the slight disadvantage of becoming incredibly frail when exposed to a  rock (that doesn’t exist naturally anywhere on Earth). Seems like a good deal.

Now the point is (and sorry it has taken almost 400 words to get to it), that I think it would be far more fair if for every allergy one had, one received an equally potent immunity. So if you are allergic to peanuts then maybe you’re immune to cashews – okay that’s a bad example.

Say you share my allergy to bullets then maybe you can be immune to explosions… okay now we’re getting somewhere.

Allergic to onions? Then maybe you’re immune to alcohol – great for drinking contests or sobriety tests.

Allergic to hard work? Well then maybe you’re immune to criticism.

Or say that you are allergic to telling the truth, can’t stop yourself from fraudulently misappropriating taxpayer money, sexually harassing young interns and taking bribes from organised crime?

Well then maybe you get diplomatic immunity…