Weekly Web Boners

Feel it, it is here…

The biggest sports scandal of all time. (*Kanye voice: “Of all time!") has rocked a nation that has plenty of overweight sports scandals to choose from. After all, this is the same country that gave its boy wonder detention for shooting his girlfriend dead on Valentine's Day and had World Cup-winning scrummie Joost van der Westhuizen doing drugs with a prostitute dressed in underpants that have holes in them (never forget). The latest ugliness to tarnish our beloved green and gold is world news. The New York Times opened with a story that reads like a Mario Puzo novel, featuring briefcases full of money, banks in the Cayman Islands, fake consulting contracts, shell companies, bulk cash smuggling, safe-deposit boxes and, ultimately, Swiss authorities arresting top FIFA officials at a Zurich hotel. Believe it or nuts, the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa was rigged by a dude named Jack Warner, who took $10 million from SA for a group that he controlled, fucking over Morocco in the process. Then – and this is where it gets really good – because SA didn’t actually have the money he used FIFA’s money to pay its own bribe. Expect to read a lot more about this story everywhere, and perhaps this would be an opportune time to investigate the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar and, while we’re at it, the International Olympic Committee.

Sunday’s Fun Day

Is the Sunday Times quickly turning into Sunday's Sun? Not that we’ve read the paper since Ben Trovato left, S/O to the Whipping Boy, but come on guys, you can at least try. We’ve seen more convincing adverts for Nigerian traditional healers at the train station. Just last week the paper announced that Trevor Noah’s cousin had died. Headline news at that. Trevor Noah tweeted, “Thanks to some crafty journalism my family and I have spent the whole day trying to figure out which one of us died #awkward.” If we are to play by the Sunday Times' rules, then they were quoted as saying something about never letting the truth stand in the way of a good story.

Ireland’s Referendum

It’s like my gay uncle always says, “I’d rather be gay than grumpy,” so here's a rainbow-hued bit of news:Ireland has become the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage by referendum. And why's that a big deal when gay marriage is legal in a whole lot of other places too? Basically, this was the choice of the population at large, not a small group of high-minded lawmakers. JK Rowling, who must be exhausted from having to provide a clickbait-ready 'Best Response Ever' to every bigot she encounters on the internet, went in harder than quidditch when the Westboro Baptist Church threated to picket an Irish wedding of Harry Potter's and The Lord of the Ring's Gandalf (We're not making this up). However, them of the God Hates Fags picketing and posters did an even better job of trolling themselves – accidentally using the Ivory Coast’s flag in their demonstrations .

South Africa’s Internet Under Threat

You were probably just a sparkle in your parents’ eyes when The Film and Publication Board used to print “Home Taping is Killing Music” on LPs and employed a man to stick stars over all the nipples in the Scope. Who knows what they’ve been doing since then, but they decided to come to work this week when they introduced a Draft Internet Regulation Policy. The censorship board are using the distribution of child porn online as their excuse, but we’re not stupid – Google is free, and it's showed us that the Policy is a thinly veiled attempt to censor what we share online. YouTube, Facebook and Instagram could get a whole lot trickier if we first have to submit our content to the FPB to be classified. What is this, China? You can sign the petition at Internetfreedom.

Nkandla Report

Don’t you dare ever complain about your TV license ever again. The Nkandla Report was television gold. Also known as The Fire Pool Movie, it had Zuma lolling, like, “he he he” as his spin doctors made everyone so dizzy they had to take seasickness tablets. Takeaways were that the amphitheatre was built as a soil-retention mechanism, as well as being a place to assemble for emergencies, and that KFC Braamfontein should take a page out of the president’s book when it comes to caring for their chickens. Mother cluckers. Ultimately, the report was a gormless cover-up exonerating the president. If the ANC could employ this level of creativity in other areas, with solving the country’s actual problems we’d be a lot better off and students at Fort Hare would be putting their Xs in the usual old boxes. On a positive note, the woman who laid the initial complaint and called for the investigation of the Nkandla upgrades graduated Harvard on the same day, so between the Obama of Soweto, (S/O to Mmusi!), and Lindiwe Mazibuko there’s hope.

Johnny Depp Dog Smuggler

Our favourite make-believe pirate and all-round weirdo, Johnny Depp, is in big trouble down under. He faces 10 years in chookie after smuggling his two mutts, Boo and Pistol, into the country. He’s now being accused of international canine trafficking and Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce told ABC. “If he doesn’t take Boo and Pistol back we do have to euthanase them. Just because he’s Johnny Depp doesn’t make him exempt from Australian laws.” And as if we didn’t have enough reasons to hate ‘Straylia, then take their strict biosecurity laws, put them in your pipe, but don’t inhale because they probably have a rule about that, too.

OFWGKTA

And then, as if this week’s edition wasn’t already filled with enough bad news, Tyler, The Creator took to Twitter last week where he got deep, alluding to the end of an era. First he posted a picture of the OFWGKTA crew in 2010 and then tweeted: “Damn going threw the old golf wang photos shit. i miss my friends alot. 5 years later isnt that long but wow soooo much has happened." Followed by: "although its no more, those 7 letters are forever." (No, not really, Wu-Tang is Forever, OFWGKTA was fun while it lasted). And while Tyler, Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean and the 17 weed-carriers in the crew continue to put out work individually, it seems unlikely that we’ll see anything from the crew any time soon. So watch this Oldie, but a goodie, and try not to shed a tear.