Cancer, Goldilocks and Superman's Pee of Fire!

Cancer is a motherfucker.

He most often turns up as a tumor. Just walks into your body like he owns the place. Sits in your chair. Sleeps in your bed.

Like Goldilocks if she were a fat smelly parasitic crack whore.

Cancerous tumors are mutations of our own cells. These affected cells start dividing uncontrollably - a cockroach’s bursting egg sack sending its dirty babies out to deliver carnage.

OMG! Goldilocks is a giant cockroach crack whore pumping out cockroach babies!

And cockroaches are fast. They race past your bodies defenses. It’s called asmetastasis. The cockroach spawn find their way into your bloodstream, spread through your whole body.

Cells from malignant tumors can invade many different tissues. They’re not choosy. They can get to your lungs, spleen, bone, everywhere.

Each metastatic cell sets up camp. Goldilocks going global. And forms a new tumor in the new location.

Put simply: If this happens you die.

Your body can’t support the growth of so many tumors. Your organs, working so hard to keep you alive, get a big fat bastard sitting on them. They can’t work anymore. They stop and YOU DIE.

So you think, fuck this shit, and call in Chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy is grizzled angry Superman without the dorky costume who really, really hates Cancer. Seriously, if cancer were on fire he’d pee on it only because grizzled Superman’s pee IS MORE FIRE!!!

Chemotherapy is designed to kill rapidly dividing cells. All those cockroach babies. Grizzled Superman uses his telescopic vision to spot them and then uses his fucking huge fists to pound them into oblivion and then just to be safe he pees his FLAMING PEE all over them.

The problem is some of those rapidly dividing cells aren’t cockroaches. They’re beautiful butterfly babies that only want to kiss and be nice. They’re normal healthy functioning cells. They’re your hair follicles and stomach lining.

That’s why chemo patients lose their hair and feel like puking most of the time.

Grizzled Superman has to kill just enough cells to kill the tumors, but not so many so he kills you.

And then he pees on them. Did I mention that grizzled superman PEES FIRE? He does. I mean, FIERY PEE!!! Awesome!

They need money to make grizzled Superman more awesome and make his FIERY PEE even hotter.

Give generously. Don’t be cheap. Someday Goldilocks might sneak through your window. Sit in your chair. And pump her cockroach crack whore babies through your body.

DONATE HERE:
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/get-involved/donate?gclid=CjwKCAjwndvlBRANEiwABrR32AqIIN7wtHFU3f7U5wRj-xZkRY80QfQphkILqNLWs6x48QuYRQbSlRoC81IQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

MORE INFO HERE:
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/

haha or lol?

If I explained the growth of a gigantic carbuncle on my toe as a process of ‘evolution’ you’d probably head off to the bar for another drink or make some such other excuse to leave my company, right? But then why do people insist on telling me that language is evolving?

More likely, as with the ugly thing sprouting on the edge of my foot, it is becoming hideously deformed.

With every Facebook ‘lol’ I type and ‘innit’ I catch on the tip of my tongue I feel like I’m becoming more slobbering beast than Darwinian king-of-the-food-ladder. And with every badly punctuated ‘Firemans Arms’ pub or cringe-inducing ‘wellness’ I read I imagine our species spiralling back to amoeba status.

I have a special hatred for the word ‘wellness’. When I hear it or see it written in some puffy magazine it never fails to conjure images of rich housewives daintily nibbling scones on the patio and sipping Earl Grey in frilly teacups – “So, Maeve, how’s your health? But more importantly, how’s your wellness?”

It is a pity our language is being destroyed. To hear a Christian say, “God is awesome!”, I’m never sure he means the yippeewowsingasong ‘awesome’ or the real meaning: the inducing of equal parts fear and excitement. One of the most powerful words in the English language is now a guy on the pavement with his trousers around his arse and a baseball cap at a jaunty angle.

Depressing.

And if I read the UK papers correctly, the word ‘immigrant’ now does not mean someone from another country living over here. In the hearts and minds of Brits, ‘immigrant’ means Muslim.

Whenever I see an article bemoaning immigrants I can’t help taking offence. I’m an immigrant and I don’t leech benefits. I’m an immigrant and I’m contributing to the economy and paying taxes. No, no, people tell me, they don’t mean people like you; people with jobs who can speak English; they mean those other people.

What am I then? A pseudo-immigrant? A European returning to the motherland? Sometimes I feel like I’m back in South Africa, only it’s not the Juju Malema’s telling me to bugger off back to where my ancestors possibly came from but the Brits saying I’m not really a Saffer but one of them… shit rugby team and all!

I’m not complaining. I appreciate that I’ve been welcomed with open arms by the country we beat in a World Cup final. In fact, the thought of going back to South Africa fills me with dread; not because I don’t love my country, but because I like it here so much.

I sympathise with the English who see a cleric on a street corner shouting about how evil the British are; especially when said cleric is living in a cosy council house eating food bought with tax money. I also think that if he reckons it’s so shit over here why doesn’t he fuck off back to where he came from.

But don’t shoebox him as an ‘immigrant’. Call him what he is: a stupid prick.

I say this not as a foreigner telling anyone how to run their country, but as a staunch defender of a great language trying to rescue it from obscurity. I love English, and will stand in front of the ‘innit’ wrecking ball as it swings in for destruction.

If only someone would point that wrecking ball at my big toe, maybe I’d get more conversation down the pub.

The Number 22

It makes me wish I was a double agent in a bad Eighties spy movie and some American or Russian bonecrusher would tie me down to a chair in a dilapidated warehouse in a deserted neighbourhood and start pulling my teeth out… because eventually they’d get to the one that’s giving me trouble.

Toothache is one of the only legitimate reasons for a bad mood. When a little old lady at the bus stop smiles because you moved off the seat so she could sit there, you just want to punch her in the face.

Not her face in particular. It could be anyone. Any face.

It gets worse when the bus you’re supposed to catch – the number 22 – drives straight past you without even so much as a sideward glance. You run after it waving your hand, but then remember Don Johnson’s words from the film ‘Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man’: “My old man told me before he left this shitty world: Never chase women or busses; you always get left behind.”

Truer words are not very often spoken.

I don’t know what it is about the number 22 bus. It’s always late with a grumpy driver who tears through the streets like a maniac.

I remember one rainy bus ride out to Mutley Plain when the ‘22’ driver hit a cyclist. The poor pedal-powered patsy bounced off the large window, startling some old dear, without so much as slowing down.

The bus driver’s expression – common to all bulldogs while dining on wasps – didn’t flicker, and he carried on as though nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred. I sighed with a slight wave of homesickness and thought about the roads of Cape Town.

But enough with the flashbacks.

That same day the morose ‘22’ flew past, leaving me more than a bit pissed off, got worse.

The weather knuckled down and with a bit of effort managed to cough an hour’s worth of hail out; and my tooth – not to be outdone – turned my mouth into an Iranian nuclear testing site – with suicide-bomber-practice-run intervals between each mushroom-cloud-main-event – while I waited at the bus stop to embark on my return journey.

Needless to say, my sense of humour had packed his belongings into a hanky and tied it onto the end of a stick and told me he was taking the magic beans and my signed copy of ‘Green Eggs and Ham’ and marrying a washed-up pornstar in a kitsch Las Vegas church to pursue his dream of training Boston Terrier puppies to bark the hits of Chesney Hawks.

This news left me devastated.

After fifteen minutes of trying not to scare the old ladies waiting with me, I saw the much-anticipated ‘22’ careering down the road. Holding my hand out and stepping into the road, I flagged the Frankenfaced steering-wheel-pusher down.

Of course, he stopped five metres away from where I was standing. And as I walked towards him the grannies jumped to their feet in front of me.

So, being a gentleman in spite of the dental demolition derby running across my gums, I slowed down and patiently followed the OAPs; imagining that soon I would be holding on for dear life as the sour-faced Citybus speedster either brought me closer to home or closer to God.

Before I knew it the accordion-doors were closing and the bus was shooting off without me or the old ladies on board. As it turned out the grannies had clocked the number ‘8’ bus a mile up the road and were giving their old bones a head start before it flew past as well.

Next time I’ll just elbow them out the way.

… later that day, when I’d eventually met up with Lucy, she said I’d probably have seen the funny side if it wasn’t for the misery-inducing cavity.

Secret agents might laugh in the face of danger, but it’s hard to laugh with toothache.

A S'Efrican's Culture Surprise

After a while you stop noticing the accents… and then you realise that you’re the one with the funny accent when a punter at the place you work smiles in that awkward way because they didn’t understand a word you just said but are politely humouring you.

Another barfly, after arguing vehemently that England have a better Rugby World Cup track record, change from aggravated to jolly when they realise that you’re actually not from New Zealand but South Africa.

Then they ask if you’re a “kaffir lover”.

You frown and tell them (as though you’re talking to a naughty child) how derogatory that word is, and about how much the Apartheid government fucked up your country, and most of the time they apologise or at least look incredibly sheepish.

I don’t think it’s a racist thing when they say it. Or at least not in any vindictive, aggressive way. It’s more like them trying to find some kind of connection. I can only imagine – because of the terrible attempt at an Afrikaans accent – that they watched Lethal Weapon 2 a few too many times and it’s all they really know about us.

What I’ve learned about people is that no matter how good they’ve got it they’ll find something to moan about. If it’s not the weather or the busses, it’s (believe it or not, fellow Saffers) taxi drivers.

Like the “poverty stricken” rioters in London (who organised their hijinks via Blackberry!!!) people just don’t know how great they’ve got it. It’s all well and good to show starving African orphans on a tellybox Oxfam ad, but unless you’ve seen dishevelled streetkids and landmine-crippled beggars firsthand I don’t think you can appreciate the luck you’ve been saddled with.

For me Plymouth seems like Cape Town in the Winter, but minus not only the crime but also the underlying aggression that seems to sit just beneath the surface of everyone’s consciousness.

Of course, it’s only a bit wet and windy now (much milder than good ‘ol CT) and I’m sure when Winter really gets going I’ll eventually get annoyed with the kids in the park throwing snowballs at me when I’m walking the cat.

But up until then, it’s been less of a culture shock and more of a… well, let’s call it a pleasant ‘culture surprise’.

No More Stormers

I’ve always felt lucky that, by pure accident of birth, I’ve had decent sport’s teams to support. Western Province and Stormers rugby. Cape Cobras cricket.

Even Cape Town Ajax is quite good – not that I really follow football, but anyway.

It’s always seemed bizarre to me when people from South Africa stoically support a team like Chelsea or Manchester United; and even more bizarre when someone from the UK supports a team from another city or county.

I could never support the Sharks, because I wasn’t born in Durban. And now residing in Plymouth I feel if I’m to follow any team it’d have to be a one from my newly adopted city.

Doing a bit of research on the Plymouth Albion rugby website in a stopover at Abu Dhabi, I read that their weekend home game was played to “a crowd of almost 3000 people” – smaller in scale than, say, Newlands rugby ground that often hosts around fifty thousand fans.

And it appears they’re not so hot when it comes to the game either, being third from the bottom of the Championship log the last time I checked. Although this was possibly because two of their players had been away playing for the Canadian squad sent to the World Cup.

If I were so inclined I could imagine myself as the newest member of this team. And I might be convinced to firmly believe that it’s not just tries and penalties that win rugby games, but screaming and shouting and flag waving too.

If not, I could at least believe that the more bums on stadium seats means more money to buy (or rent, really) better players, thereby improving performance.

It was a bit of a culture shock when I posited to Lucy that maybe we could pop down to our local and watch the next Albion game on the tellybox. She smiled warmly at my naïveté and said, “They don’t televise Albion matches.”

In South Africa they put even schoolboy games on Supersport.

So it seems I’ll have to burst my comfort bubble and venture into the wild. Go there, do that, get the t-shirt.

But with a Plymouth Albion jersey at a whopping fifty quid I’ll just have to make do with reports in the Herald.