Posts Tagged ‘retards

26
Mar
13

Monopoly Is For Assholes

MonopolyManOn Saturday morning I drank six cups of coffee as I sat writing the first chapter of the book that’s gonna make me a famous for something other than writing the SlickTiger Guide To Klapping Gym, Boet.

I got the entire chapter out, not quite the way I’d planned it but close enough, and afterward this weird feeling of satisfied detachment washed over me that I wasn’t expecting.

I was happy with what I’d written but I’d climbed so far into the world of my story that, as dramatic as it sounds, coming back to reality was difficult. It was in this detached state of mind that I decided it would be a good idea to buy a Monopoly board.

It’s probably been a good fifteen years or longer since I played Monopoly last, but it was fun back when we were kids right? Overcast winter days spent hiding under blankets playing marathon games of Monopoly and sipping hot chocolate, good times right?

So I convinced Graumpot and his lady that instead of J-Rab and I coming over to eat pizza and watch movies, we were going to come over and play Monopoly and it was going to be awesome just like when we were kids, KAPOW!

 

 

So we set everything up and started playing and very quickly two things became apparent: 1) This was hardly the thrill-a-minute game I remembered from my childhood and 2) I was basically the only person who remembered how to play.

Oh, another thing also became apparent – whoever designed the new South African version of Monopoly is very clearly retarded.

I mean how Blouberg Strand, Tygervalley and fucking Mitchell’s Plain can be worth more than Sandton, Randburg and Hyde Park is beyond me.

Also (spoiler alert) Boksburg, Soweto and Hillbrow are worth more that Plett, Knysna and Wilderness.

 

 

It took awhile for us to get things going but before I knew it I’d managed to buy up all the pink and yellow properties which I very quickly started building houses on.

Soon afterward the wheels started coming off. I had random properties that other people needed to start building houses. When asked how much I wanted for said properties, the only child in me (read: greedy little asshole) started rearing his greedy little asshole head.

“One thousand,” I firmly replied.

“What the fuck the property’s only worth 250!”

“One thousand,” I repeated unflinchingly. “If I give you this, you’ll start building houses and that will definitely come back to bite me in the ass.”

“Dude, you’re the only one with houses on the board! If you don’t sell some of those other properties, none of us will be able to fucking play the game! I’ve already got the other two, just sell the last one to me for a decent price and stop being such a douche. Three fifty. C’mon.”

“One thousand,” I said, completely unwilling to negotiate with the terrorist forces that were threatening to usurp my game of Monopoly.

 

 

Not long after that, cash started rolling in thick and fast and I somehow managed to acquire the red properties as well which I also started developing hell for leather.

I’m not sure at which point I realised that I was the only person actually having fun but when that realisation dawned on me things got pretty damn awkies.

“Is anyone actually having fun playing this game?” I eventually blurted out, hoping beyond hope that someone else would say yes.

A resounding silence settled over the room, interrupted only by the distant sound of a lonely cricket grinding his legs together in a desperate attempt to get laid.

“Fuck,” I said. “How about I sell you guys some properties, special discount, nine hundred a pop!”

Once again, the lonely cricket.

“Christ, does anyone actually want to carry on playing?” I asked in exasperation.

“No,” Graum replied. “I mean, there’s no point dude. Even if you do sell us those properties, no one has any money to buy any houses on them cause we keep paying it all to YOU.”

“Huh,” I replied. “I guess that’s that then. Best R300 I ever spent…”

 

 

We packed up the board in awkward silence and then sat and stared at one another for a bit.

Luckily wine was at hand (though obviously J-Rab couldn’t indulge) and so things soon loosened up a little and an hour later Monopoly was just a distant, awkward memory.

I was so unsatisfied by the whole ordeal that I seriously considered trying to take the board back the next day and get a refund on the grounds that I had this false childhood memory that Monopoly is awesome when it’s actually a gigantic pile of shit game that is fun for no one.

The problem is there’s no way to fight back after a certain point in the game and that point comes frighteningly quickly.

If you don’t get a good haul in the initial land-grabbing phase, you’re fucked. And if you do get a good haul, you better be willing to make some deals you’ll probably regret later in the game or you risk going the SlickTiger route and crushing your opponents like ants two hours into the game.

The following day, J-Rab and I were bored and decided to play just the two of us and my God did the tables turn!

 

 

It was merciless. Actually no, I lie, it was merciFUL which made it worse because even though she was sharing her Free Parking jackpots with me and letting me off paying rent in some instances, she was still murdering the fuck out of me and there was absolutely nothing I could do to stop it.

Suddenly childhood memories of overturned Monopoly boards, hurling those little metal pieces at my “friends” and screaming my very first swear words all came sharply into focus as I realised the undeniable truth that Monopoly is for assholes.

So the moral here is the next time one of your buddies decides to have a Monopoly evening to relive the nostalgia of youth, rather kick that fucking douchebag right in the shin as hard as you can and ask him, “Was that fun? No? Well neither the fuck is Monopoly.”

The End.

-ST

24
Aug
10

Marketing People

I deal with a lot of marketing people, sometimes as many as 3 in a single day, and the conclusion I have drawn about this kooky bunch is that they are (with one or two exceptions) from another fucking planet.

 

 

What do they do to these poor people that makes them think that whatever it is they are marketing is basically more important than life itself?

In my mind I see horrible torture chambers filled with marketers-to-be all chained up and getting stretched on racks and shit while their directors whip them and pour boiling oil over anyone who thinks the product or service they’re trying to market isn’t the single most amazing thing the world has or will ever see.

I mean christ, I’ll be honest here and straight up say that these people fucking scare me.

They march into meetings armed with an entire arsenal of information about their target audience and are generally flush with all kinds of demographic information, statistics about what people supposedly like and don’t like and all kinds of other stuff I don’t even begin to understand.

 

 

And that right there is the beauty of what they do. No one understands it. And the reason no one understands it is that they invent their own fucking language to explain it. Here are the only examples I remember right now, but I swear there are at least 10 000 000 000 more I’ve heard and instantly blanked from my mind.

  • “Ideation” – to what? Create ideas? Isn’t that called “thinking”?
  • ”Release” – specifically used to describe the way consumers conduct themselves in social situations, ie. “we need to be careful we don’t end up marketing our product to an audience seeking release”. In plain English this sentence reads: “don’t target people who like getting fucking wasted. If we do that it’s back to the torture pits”
  • “Push back” – as in, “you need to manage your pushback” which is a nice way of saying “stop being so fucking lazy and do some work. I was up until 3am working. What were you doing at 3am huh? HUH?!?”
  • And so on and so on…

Funniest thing is that marketing people have this innate ability to make other people buy into their bullshit even though those other people have no idea what any of it means!

 

Case in point. I recently sat in on an eyeball-gougingly productive meeting where someone from another agency was describing this new target audience that the bad, bad people from marketing had invented and given a snazzy name.

In an effort to figure out what this invented target audience is into, I fired off a whole bunch of questions about them which yielded the following answers:

  • They get bored quickly
  • They all want to be celebrities
  • If given an option for a prize, they would choose cash over anything else
  • They won’t engage with anything unless some kind of reward is guaranteed
  • They aren’t on Twitter
  • They aren’t on Facebook
  • They don’t read blogs
  • They only ever consume mainstream media and nothing else
  • They don’t understand what Tetris is (long story)
  • They wouldn’t know what Mayans are (also long story)

So what we’re basically describing here is a bunch of really, really stupid and lazy people who are self-obsessed and disinterested in anything that doesn’t immediately benefit them in a tangible way.

And all the while, I’m sitting there thinking, If these people actually do exist, I really don’t like them and the LAST thing we should be doing as human beings possessing any kind of moral conscience is trying to sell them alcohol!

 

 

It’s a crazy world we live in folks and thanks to people like marketers, advertisers and me, it’s only getting crazier.

Ain’t that wonder 😉

-ST

13
Apr
10

Three Reasons why humans are dumber than animals

My girlfriend J-Rab works at a reputable animal park that shall remain nameless, where she and the other people who work there handle a number of badass animals like cheetahs and pumas, and then one or two other little critters like black-backed jackals and meerkats.

Part of her job is training students that come from as far afield as places like Canada and Germany who become friends with her (some of them) and then, 3 months later, promptly leave.

 

 

Last night was the farewell for one of these students, let’s call her Shroomgirl, which even I was a little sad about because as it turns out this girl is fucking hilarious!

To be honest, as a guy I very seldom find girls funny. Sure, sometimes the way they tell stories and jokes is cute and I laugh along so they don’t think I’m rude, but it’s very seldom that a girl will make me genuinely laugh my ass off, but Shroomgirl nailed it!

Last night she told us her three biggest ‘What the fuck?’ moments working at said animal park, irrefutable proof that humans are indeed dumber than animals.

Reason #1: Syntax, syntax, syntax

When taking a group on a tour of the park one day, Shroomgirl fielded an unintentionally sexually explicit question when one of the members of her group, on admiring a fine and majestic cheetah, asked the following gem: ‘Do the cheetahs ever get a chance to spread their legs?’

 

 

What he meant to say was ‘Do the cheetahs ever get a chance to stretch their legs’, as in, do the cheetahs ever get a chance to run around a bit. Even funnier than that was the fact that, before anyone could answer, one of the managers, Yogi Bear, jumped right in there, completely deadpan and replied, ‘No. The cheetahs here are not used for breeding purposes.’

Fail squared.

Humans:0 Animals:1

Reason #2: Dirty-talking cheetah style

Another time, Shroomgirl was with a group that had some randoms and a dude in his 20s and his girlfriend. Now, because they’re animals (and probably also because they’re just plain bored) sometimes the cheetahs do some pretty weird shit to one another, much like humans.

On this particular day, two young males, Chobe and Felix shared a special moment when Chobe started suckling Felixes tummy while they were lying down together, right where Felixes nipples would be if he was a lady-cheetah.

Even more fucked up than that was the fact that the minute the boyfriend saw this happen, he turned to the ol’ GF and, loud enough for everyone on the tour to hear, said, ‘How about later you be Felix and I’ll be Chobe?’

And immediately everyone on the tour threw up in their mouths a little.

 

 

Humans:0 Animals:2

Reason #3: The leopard-guy

The third what the fuck moment was the best by a long way.

After just finishing an extensive tour of the entire park where Shroomgirl showed the group the entire park, starting with the cheetahs in the front, and then the other assorted animals in the back and introducing the group to every animal and telling each animal’s life story, they came to the end of the tour and when Shroomgirl asked if anyone had any questions, she was bludgeoned by this beauty:

‘Ok, so I know the front part’s for the leopards, but what’s the back for?’

Well done. The front part’s for the leopards, well done. There is not one fucking leopard in the park. And ‘what’s the back for?’ after she just showed the fucking retard every square inch of it?!

You’re a credit to the species.

 

 

Humans:0 Animals:3

I rest my case.

-ST