The Ex Factor

Everybody is somebody's ex. Unless you are a serial statutory rapist who only "dates" 12 year olds, or are a masochist prepared to restrict yourself to the fugly bitches of the scoring world then you can be certain that at some point in time prior to your current sacred and oh so special union, the object of your affection was once the bed buddy of another man. Like it or not some greasy chump has had his busy hands all over that shit - your precious little angelface babycakes, the one who declares her undying love as she gently tongues your balls at night.

This girl has no exes.

This girl probably does.

Juggling the ex / current boyfriend dynamic is a tricky and potentially volatile thing to do and needs to be handled with extreme caution. However you need to face facts that at some point in your shitty little life you're gonna come face to face with your predecessor. When this happens, like a dog marking it's territory, you may be tempted to "lift leg" all over your lady friend. Believe me when I say this is most unadvisable as not only is it messy but the last thing you wanna be doing is flashing your manhood around THAT guy. Just because SHE says it's as big as a baby's forearm does not make it true. Personally I would recommend a more anonymous and cowardly (and deadly) form of attack, like a letter bomb - just don't go putting the return to sender address on the back!!

"This shit be mine yo"

What you also need to realise is that as the usurper the ex is just as, if not more wary of you than you of it. You see current squeeze is the natural enemy of the ex, this is because to ex the current boyfriend represents an upgrade - a walking reminder of all the things they are not. I mean what did you honestly expect shit for brains? she broke up with you so she could go out with someone uglier, fatter, less intelligent, less witty and more of a loser? That you were just far too much man for the likes of her? Get real shitface. But if for some reason he is not, if for some reason he's a pasty faced tub of lard, I'd be willing to put my penis on the chopping block that he's loaded.

Sure he may be loaded, but it's his great sense
of humour and killer body that really drives girls wild

Overinflated bank balances aside the only time someone would ever trade down instead of up in the relationship stakes is if they were recently on the receiving end of a dumping. In which case it's quite natural and perfectly normal for the dumpee to go in search of some "relationship mouthwash" - the first available thing with genitals and a pulse to get the taste of this failed affair out of their mouth. The turnover time for this kind of thing? Roughly 17 hours. Given the state of the self esteem at a time like this, choices made while drunk on rejection are often... how do you say, "questionable". Some people sugarcoat such embarrassingly poor acts of judgement and desperation by calling it a "rebound" but I prefer to call a spade a shovel and say it's nothing more than a validation fuck. You've just been dumped, you feel hideously unattractive, what better way to mend your crippled self-esteem than to prove to yourself (and probably all your friends on Facebook as well via countless status updates) that you are still able to dupe a member of the opposite sex into sexual relations WITHOUT the involvement of monetary exchange. You go girl!!

After Sonny Bono gave her the slip Cher's standards really went to shit

No matter what the state of your mental health if you're saving up souvenirs from a relationship gone by like they're ingredients for a voodoo doll, a lock of his hair or the used condom from the first time you had sex, you need to get a grip. Or rather you need to loosen your grip on the life you once had. It's also generally accepted best practice to avoid a blow by blow account of your entire sexual past. And yes when I say blow by blow I do mean blowjob by blowjob. This includes such intricate details as cock sizes, sexual picadilos, and I think it goes without mention that slides, home videos and hand drawn diagrams are out of the question. They're not buying a car here. They don't need to see the full "service history", if you catch my drift.

"Oh and that's Brian... he was my first anal... I couldn't walk straight for a week!"

At the end of the day dealing with any aspect of an ex relationship when in a new one is much like dealing with alcohol and handguns, it really is in the best interests of everyone to keep them as far apart as possible.

15 Minutes of Shame

Homosexual eccentric and art fag extraordinaire Andy Warhol once predicted that we are all predestined for approximately 15 minutes of fame. But in a culture that celebritises negativity, runs on tragedy and practically demands the self-destruction of it's pop icons the cooling time for this big steaming turd called fame is really more like 15 seconds.

Fame: as fleeting as Jude Law's hairline

One only has to look at what cracks a headline these days to realise that there is nothing more marketable than failure. People just aren't interested in the good fortune of others especially where Celebville is concerned. The public waits with baited breath to watch the latest Hollywood hot shot "fuck out" and take the obligatory fall from grace. I for one was ecstatic at the public demise of pop radio's resident teen queen cum slut-in-sweetheart's clothing Ms Britney Spears, in fact quite frankly I was gunning for a suicide. When it comes to news of the stars stretchmarks, suicide, divorce, drug addiction, debauchery and mental meltdowns are the order of the day because if it was peace, love and understanding we were after we'd watch 7th Heaven reruns for that.

Looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays

These days talent is no longer even required to earn that oh so coveted title of tabloid poster child. Hollywood has been infiltrated by attention seeking amateurs famous for nothing more than being rich, snot nosed, albeit entertaining, little upstarts and Paris "have tits, will party" Hilton is the pristine example of an undeserving A-list brat. Besides playing daddy's girl to a stupidly rich hotel tycoon the extent of her talents range from being blonde to being hot and dumb - throw her brief stint in the world of homemade porn into the mix and you have all the ingredients for the makings of a superstar.

But if it's the undeserving you're after you needn't even look so far as the beautiful people of the E! channel. Thanks to the magic of public forums like MySpace, YouTube and the catrillions of blogging networks that seem to make up 99% of the internet these days a voice has been given to the voiceless and spawned an online sub-culture of sub-talent. Useless turds content with the fame-barrassment they achieve from their desperate acts of self promotion and shameless crimes against the internet. Whoever said 1% talent 99% hard work was the key to success must have forgotten to add the part about not being mildy retarded:

No matter who you are or how undeserving of it you may be one thing's for sure, fame is a fickle bitch from hell. So if you've got it you better put it to good use pulling as much pussy and / or cock as you can while it lasts because in the end that's pretty much all it's good for anyway.

Shut The Doors

Jim Christ

The death of Jim Morrison really was a double-edged sword. On the absolute upside it saw the demise of quite possibly the most famous art fag who ever lived but on the downside it secured the little pissant a life of immortality survived by teengagers discovering gateway drugs for the first time and fueled the diddle-fantasies of "misunderstood" pubescent sluts the world over. However had this man lived to see middle age he would have been exposed for the doped up sham he really was. Much like Axl Rose who is at present a fat, bloated, prat version of his former dangerous rocker self I have no doubt that Mr Morrison too would have settled into a life of mainstream obscurity as the the marijuana soaked haze of the sixties dissipated, the hippies all got jobs and his few short years of hyper-concentrated chemical substance abuse gave way to the joys of early onset senility. Were he alive today he'd be sporting adult nappies and drooling on himself.

Be sure to consider the dangerously vast quantities of Acid and various other hallucinogens this dirty hippie had coursing through his veins at any given hour of the day when considering the piss poor excuse for the so-called poetry that is widely considered to be some of his most profound lyrics.

People are strange when you're a stranger,
Faces look ugly when you're alone.
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted,
Streets are uneven when you're down.

Wooah man! That's like so deeep! Not quite 2 drawers full of acid deep but most definitely "how much wood would a woodchuck chuck" kind of deep at the very least.

In the music industry you're only as good as your last single and in the case of old Jimbob here he's been riding that wave for oh, I dunno, a good 27 years now. His entire legacy nothing more than a snapshot in time. The only reason being that he never had time to fade away, just as warmonger eccentric Afolf Hitler never had the chance to right the wrongs of his picadilos. Given the chance could the man who gave us the Volkswagen and mass Jewish genocide have gone on to win the Nobel Peace Prize? Maybe so, but that is something we will never know. Anyone can remain a legend (or a monster) when they're just way too dead to prove it wrong. So I challenge the rotted corpse of this sixties rocker fossil to get his fat lazy hasbeen ass out of that grave and write us another string of #1 hits, if he can.

10 things I hate about The Dirty Skirts

The Dirty Skirts are hands down unequivocally the worst thing to ever emerge from the SA music scene so far besides possibly Freshly Ground. Just take one look at ol' big nose in the pink pinstripe and funny glasses and tell me you don't wanna slap that face till your hand falls off.

The brainchild of pretentious designer turned pretentious muso Jeremy "the tollie" de Tolly they form the perfect soundtrack to a day in the life of your Vida e-loitering, Kloof Street-lurking, Fiction-frequenting, Mac-loving trendoid fuckface and it just so happens they opitomise everything I despise about Cape Town life.

1) It's wrong to hit a guy with glasses. Unless the glasses are whacky, then it's practically prerequisite.

2) This guy's entire look, right down to the room temperature IQ facial expression, is lifted directly from that un-funny doos Corne. He must be preparing for a future career as Corne's stunt double just in case the band doesn't make the big time. Smart move.

3) Why is this guy covering up his right eye? Was he doing a visual acuity test when the photo was taken?

4) Oh right, he's doing it because he suffers from the same droopy eye syndrome that plagues hooker fucker Hugh Grant. Perhaps a pair of whacky shades are the order of the day?

5) Contrary to this guy's belief sporting a red leather jacket as made famous by washed-up celebrity paedophile Michael Jackson doesn't make you look thrilling, it does however make you look like a washed-up celebrity paedophile.

6) Jeremy wears these beauts because they make him look ironically cool. In a twist of double irony he really just looks like a sad douche trying to look ironically cool.

7) Only one thing could possibly make your cookie-cutter indie rock clone of a band even less original - a tie. Well what do you know, there it is. Way to go idiot.

8) According to an interview in blunt magazine this clever looking fella's band duties include not only drums but fashion as well. It must be in the same FHM magazines that he reads to stay abreast with the world of fashion that he learnt about the manscaping technique of waxing his monobrow.

9) Sucking on fags is all part and parcel of playing in a rock band.

10) I don't know what this is but I'm pretty sure it's the button from his skinny fit jeans that popped off from the strain of being a whole 15 sizes too small.

Wake Up and Smell the Break-up

Published in blunt magazine volume 12 issue 6

Breaking up is hard to do. In fact sometimes it's damn near impossible. I'm talking of course about those persistent pieces of relationship deadweight that just refuse to go away. Hanging around like a fart in an elevator they continue to stink up the ride for everyone else onboard, and that is why when it comes to delivering the death blow to a soon to be insignificant other one needs to be about as subtle as a Jack Hammer to the face. Amputation of an expired romantic interest, much like that of a gangrenous limb, is the best option for everyone involved.

That means no greetings cards to you or members of your immediate family on birthdays and religious holidays, that means no "accidental" run-ins at the nightclub across town that they only know you frequent because they've studied your nightly movements for the past month and that certainly means no checking in with a friendly sms at the ungodly hours. Friends send smses, that's true, but only stalkers, booty callers and sad, lonely rejects looking to put the "ex" into sex send smses at 3 in the morning.

But try as you might to drive that final rusty nail into this relationship coffin like a moth to a blowtorch they will be back for more. Doped up on dangerous amounts of Rescue Remedy just to keep the volatile emotional breakdowns and sporadic weepings at bay they will boast how much better they're doing and may even dupe you into believing them when they say they're finally ready to be friends. However the idea that that once pathetic sniffling mess trying to beg their way back into their shattered relationship could transform into a pillar of maturity looking to engage in a purely platonic friendship with the very person who served them up a nice fat slice of rejection pie is something best reserved for movies starring Jennifer Aniston.

It's really nice to see you've found a medication that works and have made an attempt to rejoin the land of the emotionally stable but you're old news. Yesterday's headlines. The hideously obsese lady has sung. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

Splitting Hairs

Published in blunt magazine volume 12 issue 5



What self-respecting heterosexual male spends longer than a few seconds "doing" their hair in the morning? None, that's what kind. To faff with matters of the mane is a pastime best left to the fairer sex and if you beg to differ then I'm here to tell you that you're gay. I hate guys who style their hair almost as much as I hate premature balders who insist on gelling the shit out of their rapidly thinning mop leaving a wispy mess on their head that resembles a mange ridden dog caught in a rainstorm. Sorry to break it to you Fabio but in case you hadn't noticed when you looked in the mirror, the patchy wet look is not sexy. I could make a better hairstyle just by gelling the hairs on my ass.

Buddhists shave their heads in the belief that hair breeds vanity. One only has to look at the hair harvesting habits of a certain SA rock band to know they're right... damn right in fact. If you keep your finger on the pulse of the Cape Town music scene then you'll know who I'm talking about. They're the androgynous clowns in the spray on jeans looking like they raided their mothers' wardrobes during a powercut. Never before has this country seen such crimes against hair since a young grot named PJ Powers hit the scene. These wannabe bad boys care just enough to make it look like they don't really care at all but one can't help but wonder if maybe they have a little sugar in their gas tanks if you know what I mean.

Fags night out

Gel, mousse, straightener, hairspray, relaxant, style wax, polishing milk - the only "product" that touches this hair of mine is tap water. Even as a hairdresser frequenting youth I dreaded the inevitable question, "how do you wear your hair?". A question to which surely the only logical response could be, "on my head". If you're a male "wearing" your hair in any other fashion than that then you probably need to get a life a little more than you need to get a haircut. Hair: it's on your head, now get over it.

Second Hand Love

Published in blunt magazine volume 12 issue 4

If there is but one thing I can say that I've seen destroy more friendships than anything else it is the scandalous behaviour of hooking up with friends exes - the act of snaking your way into the pants of a friend's new lost love faster than you can say "on the rebound". It is a fundamental and unspoken rule of friendship that exes are banished to the dating blacklist where they shall remain until such time as the "no bang" policy has been lifted. A very noble and fair enough cause indeed, at least until you factor a little thing called "real life" into the equation.

We've all seen it happen - one guy, one girl, one "baby you're my world", one messy break up end and she's dating his best friend. People hook up every day and in this incestuously small town cesspit affectionately known as Cape Town the chances of the next in line to put their greasy mitts all over your ex not being a "friend" are about as slim as Noeleen's waistline. It would be nice to believe in knights of the round table type friendships, ones bound by a strict code of impenetrable adamantium-like honour and the sexual appetite of an impotent eunuch but let's face it, if the want for something is strong enough you're gonna take it, loyalty or no loyalty.

I've been witness to some pretty controversial break-up triangles in my time and while it goes without saying that the friendships involved were destroyed beyond any semblance of reconciliation one can't help but wonder just what a sorry, crippled state these acquaintance-ships were in to begin with.

Moral ramfications aside, one thing's for certain, making a habit of such underhanded dealings is guaranteed to make you more unpopular than a knife juggling HIV+ haemophiliac. No one likes a relationship hyena, forever lurking in the shadows just waiting for an oppurtunity to feast on the still warm carcass of yet another failed relationship, because a friend in need might be a friend indeed but a friend in your ex... well I guess that's not really a friend at all.