The Only Way To Stop A Bad Guy With A Gun…

I don’t understand America’s obsession with the phrase “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”, and I don’t mean simply because it seems to be a confusing thing to say after every school shooting they have.

Let’s assume that the logic behind the saying is sound for a minute, that arming teachers with their own guns will mean that bad kids with guns will be stopped in their tracks before they can do murder on their fellow students, surely we should still take it a step further? Wouldn’t it make more sense to actually arm the teachers better than the students who have guns? If your wife was facing off against a madman with a knife, surely you would give her a gun rather than a knife of her own – given the choice, and assuming you are the same kind of coward I am who wouldn’t offer to fight him in her stead?

America doesn’t go to war against anyone without being sure they have better weapons and greater numbers than their opposition, so why are they including a fair play clause in the teacher vs student shootouts? Surely this saying should be, “The only good way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with laser guided nuclear warheads” or better yet, “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy in some kind of mechanised gundam suit with arms made out of laser cannons?”.  There is no 14 year old with a tog bag full of guns who could take on an squadron of teachers flying F-16s. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with an army of battle-armoured velociraptors“.

Honestly it’s this kind of narrow world thinking that has America stranded and watching the same school shooting  every week on their news. The only thing the saying “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun” is good for is selling more guns. Instead of empowering the same NRA cadres after every shooting, why not invest in some decent start ups to make the teachers not only the equal of a gun toting teen, but his superior. The stock exchange would boom as companies entered the market making bullet proof robot geography teachers, interstellar “bad guy with a gun” laser targeting systems, and problem student decapitation collars.

The other option is of course the one proposed by snowflake liberal cucks like myself in which America just takes away the guns from the students, or at least make it a lot harder for them to buy them. At the moment a six year old can buy an assault rifle with her tooth fairy money, and gun enthusiasts don’t want that to change. What they don’t understand is that if they are right, and  taking away guns from scholars won’t lower the number of attacks, then it will at least make them more interesting. I am sure we are all bored as hell of the same story happening over and over again.  Rather than watch the news to only see the aftermath of yet another schooting (a portmanteau of school and shooting, that I am leaving behind as my gift to humanity) we could all track the killer student as he stalked through the ventilation system leaping on popular kids with a sharpened stick and a Taser.

Oh what a wonderful world it could be, but doubtless, despite offering two win-win answers to this problem, those NRA haters will say I am wrong.

The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 – Episode 8 – Nicholas Goliath

The Award Winning Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 – Episode 8 – Nicholas Goliath
Loading
/

Nicholas Goliath’s comedy bio says he is a loving father and husband. It doesn’t mention he also has a criminal record. This is a story you need to hear to believe. After this episode You Magazine will become SA’s second top source for SA celeb gossip. Nick also answers all the first date questions, and in the end keeps nothing back.

The Midlife Crisis Beard

When I left school I grew my hair. It was long and luscious and exactly the kind of thing my son will laugh at loudly when he sees the pictures. It was the 90s and everyone I knew left their schools and immediately started trying to look like they were homeless. I however did not. My first year at university was spent clean cut, with the same short style I had during my school years. This was intentional. I didn’t want people thinking I was going with the crowd, when in fact I very much wanted to go with the crowd. Toward the end of first year the excitement became too much and I started letting my hair grow out. The point was that it has always been important to me that I not fall into the trap of becoming a stereotype. Turning 39 and at the same time realising I am undergoing a midlife crisis has therefore been extremely annoying.

I know I am going through a midlife crisis, because I have started to think about growing a beard for the first time in my life. I don’t mean one of those neatly trimmed, and oiled hipster beards, but rather a kind of untamed jungle beard.  I want a shaggy monstrosity that I occasionally take a kitchen knife to and hack back like a wild vine. Or rather I don’t want one, because that is what’s expected of me at 39, shortly after a divorce, and I will be damned if I meet society’s expectations.

Knowing I am probably undergoing some kind of mid-life crisis is very enlightening however. It means I can choose the direction I want to take it in. I don’t necessarily have to grow a beard. Rather than unknowingly plunging myself into an extra-marital affair, taking up drugs or purchasing a stupidly expensive motorbike, I could be looking at this as an opportunity to position my life well for the next 39 years. Last night I made a mental note to buy more Weet-bix for the fibre. I am also considering studying something, and taking up the piano again.

On the other hand, there is always the beard. As far as I see it growing a beard now has many benefits and only one con. If I grow a Hagrid beard strangers will probably assume I am either a murderer or belong to a cult. People I don’t even know would likely fear me, or go out of their way to avoid me. It would be wonderful. Other benefits include not being able to see my face accurately in the mirror, and having an excuse for why no one wants to sleep with me. The con is of course that my toddler son may no longer recognise me, but I am sure he will understand when I tell him the “hedge who is his dad” is saving literally tens of Rands on shaving stuff each month.

By this time next year we will all know which path I took. Will I be on the path to self-fulfilment, riches and happiness, or will I have a beard. Who knows? I live in exciting times.

 

 

 

 

 

The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 – Episode 7 – Angel Campey

The Award Winning Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 – Episode 7 – Angel Campey
Loading
/

Angel Campey is a comedian, writer, and, it turns out, a convicted criminal. In this weeks episode she makes us laugh, while telling us how the criminal justice system finally tracked down and convicted one of the country’s most wanted. She also chats about her career, Cape Town and everything else.

Anything But Selfies

I hate social media, and the reason I hate it, is because hating things on social media seems to be the best thing about it. It’s a confusing paradox. Last night someone pissed me off cause they hated something I also hate. I hated them, because they hated the thing I hate, in a snarky and off-putting manner that wasn’t in keeping with the more dignified, and quirky way in which I hate things. At least I thought so. I hope me saying that doesn’t make you hate me.

Probably the thing that I hate the most about the internet is the “selfie”. Not anyone specific’s selfie, just the concept. When I went to Japan way back in 2001 I took a few “selfies”, because I travelled there alone and needed proof I had been. It was awkward and uncomfortable, and I felt like a bit of a loser for having no friends who could take these pictures for me. A man alone taking pictures of himself, was viewed with the same suspicion as a trenchcoat owner in a play park. That was how it should be. Why was he alone? Was he a murderer? A lunatic? A Backstreet Boys fan? Turns out he was likely none of those things, just a normal, narcissistic arsehole like the rest of us. The only thing that prevented us from taking nothing but selfies back then was apparently the stigma, and once that evaporated so did our dignity. Now every second Instagram account is just pictures of the owner’s face blocking the view.

We should have seen it coming. It’s not like we haven’t always been narcissistic. Ever since the days of nobility spending hundreds of peasant’s worth of salary on oil paintings, we have wanted nothing as much as to look at our own faces. Coke had its first sales increase in more than a decade when it introduced the idea of adding names to their cans and bottles. We as a species are so self-involved, so desperate to be recognised as special, we will actually spend extra money just so we can drink from a can that says we have a common enough name to make printing it economically viable. It’s our biggest, most easily exploitable failing. We are idiots, little more than apes. Want proof? What was the first thing a monkey with a camera ever took a photo of? Itself.

I am more than willing to bet that if that ape had access to a computer it would also be posting that it has an IQ of 172 according to the test it just took on Facebook. Taking an IQ test on Facebook should automatically qualify you to fail it. “Only the smartest will be able to spot the…” If that sentence doesn’t end with the words, “data mining capabilities of this test”, then once again, finding the solution means you don’t qualify for the descriptor.

Facebook’s entire business model is based around selling our predictability. They are only able to promise that an advertiser will get x number of likes per x amount of cash they spend, because they know exactly what we will click on and when. That’s how mundane, and predictable we each are. If you see something on the internet that claims you are special it’s probably just selling your data to sex-traffickers or worse, McDonalds, cause you aren’t. You, like me, are a number.

We aren’t special so we need to stop acting like we’re among the most intelligent and handsome, just cause an app told us we are smart, or that we look a lot like the celeb Selena Gomez. No matter how many filters you use you don’t look like Selena Gomez – you look like the selfie monkey. So stop photographing your face, and turn the camera outward. At least then you’ll likely get a better view, and I will have one fewer thing to hate.

Seeking – Cheap, back-alley liposuction.

I am overweight by about 8kgs. It’s not a lot by some people’s reckoning, but it’s enough to cause me a healthy dose of self-loathing. I therefore want to be thinner. On the surface losing weight is simple – all a person needs to do is eat less, and move more. The equation is simple. The application is not.

A few years ago I went to a dietician to see what I was doing wrong, and get an idea of what I should be eating. What she told me was horrifying. Apparently a fistful of nuts is not just the name of my favourite adult video, but rather what one should eat six times a day. “Whenever you think of pizza, just eat another handful of polystyrene,” I seem to remember her saying, sometime after I decided to ignore her completely. What she was saying made no sense – if God had wanted us to eat fruit he would never have banished Adam & Eve for an apple.

It seems when people say, “be hungry”, what they mean is, “Be hungry all the time. If you aren’t constantly famished, you aren’t living your best life”.  A famous comedian once accurately said, “Losing weight is easy. Stop eating. There were no obese people in the concentration camps.” Sure, but then those people were also notoriously hungry. Not one person left Bergen-Belsen delighted with their figure, and determined to stick to the diet.

In short you need to be ravenous, and if you are ravenous you are grumpy. If your personality has begun to make you a victim of office politics, and your wife is secretly visiting a divorce lawyer to consider options, then congratulations, you are probably dieting correctly.

The second step to losing weight is to simply move faster. Apparently moving faster, and more often is the key to making my body look less like a bag of milk. I have tried it. It’s unpleasant. Water comes out of me and makes my shirt wet, I struggle to breathe and things start to hurt. Doing this once is awful, but people say I must do it every day.

Lifting up heavy things then putting them down again also works. Lifting things up, moving fast, then putting them down is the best way to lose weight. If you pick up something heavy, move it quickly to somewhere else, then put it down, and start to see bright lights flashing behind your eyeballs, then you are both succeeding at exercise and at not eating. Well done. This is what healthy feels like.

It would be much easier just to make excuses. “It’s baby weight.” I want to say to anyone who looks at me sideways. “My son isn’t even two. I have time to drop down to my pre-pregnancy weight.” But things are getting dire.  I recently told a friend it was puppy fat, and he asked me why I ate a puppy.  So next week if you see me, please understand why I look so sad. I am starving, and spending all my energy picking things up and putting them down again, all so the TV news won’t use a photo of me with my head cut off when they talk about the dangers of obesity.

The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 Episode 5 – Ebenhaezer Dibakwane

The Award Winning Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 Episode 5 – Ebenhaezer Dibakwane
Loading
/

Rapidly becoming one of the biggest stars in the SA comedy firmament Ebenhaezer Dibakwane brings his infectious enthusiasm to the stage to talk about his time as a youth pastor, homelessness, being arrested, and which SA politician he would most like to sleep with.

Oh To Storm The Beach At Normandy

People don’t really ever think about the consequences of their actions. Every day all of us do things that may one day, unknown to us, cause untold misery to people of the future. For instance, did the neolithic cave person who first picked up a stick and started beating out the rhythm of a song ever consider that he was one day going to be responsible for Noot Vir Noot? Probably not.

Likewise did the first person who offered to carry something for someone else in exchange for one of his cabbages envisage the modern work environment of cramped desks, medical aid, and a 60 hour working week? If he did then I hope he is in the special hell alongside Judas, Gert Van Rooyen and Speckles from Pumpkin Patch.

In the end it was probably a few dozen of these well intentioned, but ultimately crushing decisions that lead to the world, and the lives, we now live, and it seems none of us want to go back despite being in a state of near constant misery propped up by anti-depression pills, alcohol and that “Britain’s Got Talent” video of the disabled woman getting a standing ovation.

We hate it so much that the way we relax is to connect to virtual realities where we imagine we live in a series of post apocalyptic nightmares. The deeper humanity finds themselves trapped by reality, the more popular entertainment centred on fantasy, and science fiction becomes. “The Walking Dead” isn’t a horror show it’s a vision board. We would rather spend our time pretending to wander a maze full of undead than face another day in our cubicle selling insurance, or connecting with loved ones over a lukewarm Woolworths lasagne.

Life is one long unskippable cut scene and the tedium is only relieved when we get home, switch on our alternate reality machines and pretend we are storming the beach at Normandy. What was once your grandfather’s greatest nightmare has become what we look forward to at the end of a long day. And why not? For the rest of the day we are just waiting for death by endlessly switching between the same three websites anyway. 

The best motivational speakers would end this piece by telling you, your chains are all of your own making, and that at any point you can throw them off and travel the world with nothing but an Instagram account, but then those guys are all in the only category of people capable of doing that – the mega rich, and I am not paid to make anyone think they can be their best selves. What I can do however is point you in the direction of the game Horizon Zero Dawn. As the lead character Aloy you get to be both primitive and live in a post-apocalyptic scenario. It’s basically our collective dream, and you almost never get stuck in traffic.

The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 Episode 4 – Dave Levinsohn

The Award Winning Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast Podcast
The Award Winning Podcast – Season 2 Episode 4 - Dave Levinsohn
Loading
/

In this episode hilarious improv comic Dave Levinsohn talks about what it was like growing up during Apartheid, school, going to the army, and how that has impacted on him as a person, a parent and a comedian. It’s the longest podcast to date cause he just won’t stop being funny.

How To Judge A Parent

There is a new saying, that one should never judge another parent. The idea is that anyone with a small child, no matter how attentive, is likely to experience melt downs and moments of almost monumental shame for no reason while raising their young one. I say this is bullshit. Judge away. If my child is lying on the floor of a store thrashing his legs and arms, you would be only be right to judge me. If I don’t hear hear you whisper about what a bad parent I am, then at the very least I know you and I have nothing in common, cause that’s what I would be doing.

Probably the worst side-effect of being a parent is that one is forced into contact with other people’s children. My toddler and I like to go down to the park – he to run and climb, and me to be told to run and climb by him, like I am on boot camp and the drill sergeant calls me “daddy”.  Having a job done in odd hours, I often get to take him on week days when the park is silent, but when it isn’t I find we are often confronted with the worst specimens of childlike humanity. And on those days judgement comes in handy.

The other day a boy, who I was assured was five, but who looked as if his beard was coming through,  backed my son into a corner on a jungle gym to tell him a story. The tale went as follows, “And then the people died, and do you know what happened next?” he said. My kid, being 20 months old, polite, and having never heard a story of this kind before dutifully answered, “no” thereby encouraging young Shakespeare to continue.

“Blood came pouring out of their heads and they turned into bats, and do you know what happened next?” he asked, the gripping cliffhanger dangling in the air.

“No,” my son said again, not yet having learnt from his previous error. “They were made into stone, before exploding, and guts went everywhere. Do you know what happened next?” the elocutionist enquired, while I stood starring at him like shit smeared on a new rug.

At this stage the child’s mother must have finally noticed what was going on as she bustled over and told her young thought-leader that he probably shouldn’t be terrifying the baby. He drooled on his chin, screamed something nonsensical and dived head first down the slide. My son turned to me, shrugged and demanded I run to the swings.

I judged that mother that day. Her inattentiveness lead to a really awkward situation. What was I supposed to do? Remind her son he was speaking to a baby? Shout at him? Wade in and toe punt the hobbit over a swing set? Socially we are not allowed to do those things anymore, and so I judge. Giving some sense of shame to the parent is our last defence in the face of a badly behaved child, and if this bothers you, if you are worried that one day it could be you on the end of my glowering silence remember, “you will never experience a public tantrum if you just keep them locked in a cupboard at home.”