Blow it out of your a**

If one had to ask me, for whatever reason, what smells I associate with Cape Town and Johannesburg, a brief moment of pondering would lead to the conclusion: cigarette smoke!
Walking down the Mother city’s streets has become a hazy gauntlet of noxious cigarette smog. This coupled with the cacophonous hacking coughs of these chronic indulgers of cancer gathered outside buildings makes a simple stroll a hazard of sorts. Sure, those of the non-smoking persuasion, such as me, have the shopping malls, hospitals, aeroplanes, morgues, our ‘antiseptic’ fortresses away from the eye-stinging ciggie smoke. Why then do smokers have the environment, the rest of the world to indulge their habits? You’ll note, I didn’t mention restaurants among these newly created ‘Smoke-free zones’ Hahahahahaha, what a joke? Too often a dinner out will be interrupted by that all too ubiquitous smell. And setting up so-called ‘Smoking Areas’, does that really help? Does smoke not know how to creep and contort its way through any crack so it can hone in on your eyes and nostrils and clothes? I often stare at these ‘cages’ they euphemistically label ‘smoking sections’ (more like wannabe cancer wards) and wonder just how pleasant can it be sitting amid an atmosphere of smoke, sipping wine, having a meal? I suppose seasoned smokers are accustomed to it, but surely the penny (or cigarette butt) has to drop at some time, where they realise ‘Yuck, I smell offensive. My teeth are yellow, my fingers pong. Heck, even my underwear stinks (of smoke that is)’. But personal hygiene aside, for me, it’s more the virtually omnipotent intrusiveness of the smell and the arrogance of most smokers. Sitting in my car the other day at a red traffic light a man in a Mercedes behind me, lazily smoked his cigarette. Like a heat seeking missile, the smoke sought me out in my car as if it could detect I was one of those – an anti-smoker. Before I knew it, Mercedes man was inadvertently sharing his habit with me. He’d smoked just half of it before flicking it onto the road (at more than R20 a box, I would have thought he’d at least smoke it to the end. It’s like burning cash). Don’t Mercedes vehicles come equipped with ashtrays? Why couldn’t this guy just stub it out into the apposite instrument – the ASHTRAY? Stompies are now a regular sight on beaches across the country. Like little landmines, they surround you. They’re by no means dangerous, but most certainly offensive. Yet another billboard advertising the arrogance of nicotine lovers. All too often I find I have to negotiate a wall of smoke while walking, smoke which comes from another person’s possibly disease-infested mouth. How would they like stopped, turned my head to them and coughed furiously over them? If they were normal functioning humans they’d scowl and curse, much like what I do when they exhale their fumes and promptly flick their butt wherever they want to.

Post-traumatic World Cup Disorder

As Spanish mid-fielder Andres Iniesta slotted a goal into the back of the net at the Football World Cup final it effectively signalled the end of the tournament, much to the relief of many an alienated wife, girlfriend or rugby fan and to the chagrin of tens of millions of football fans and men desperate to escape mundane conversations with significant others on what colour bathroom tiles they should get for the house. The void grows virtually by the minute as the madness that was the Football World Cup abates towards South America (where it's now Brazil's turn to cough up billions to pay for FIFA Fuhrer Sepp Blatter's new expatriat empire). I stare at the TV expecting a build-up debate among soccer experts, the singing of national anthems, visuals of maddened, over-zealous fans, there faces painted, their flags draped over their pot bellies. But now there's nothing. Only remnants of what was. Empty stadia, mountains of wasted paraphanalia and super hangovers. The void grows as does our boredom and post-World Cup despair. What now? What are we meant to do? Work? Come on, that's just silly! Must we now revert back our reality? I choose to stew in this depression (which has nothing to do with South Africa being knocked of the tournament before, well, before the team could even prove anything of note). I choose to drink more (screw Cosmo's "10 great diets for after the World Cup"). I choose excess and prolonged derangement. I crave the public viewing areas, the throngs of people intoxicated on football jingoism and overpriced Budweiser (can that piss really be called beer?). I need the fervour and even, dare I say it, miss the drone of a trillion vuvuzelas. Yes, you heard right, I miss that satanic, ear-drilling instrument of mass (sanity) destruction. Okay, maybe I won't miss it for too long, but I do sorely long for the vibe, the atmosphere, the chaos, the enraged reactions from anti-vuvuzela-ites, which accompanied that damned trumpet. This was our reality for a month. I'll also miss the random acts of drinking. When else will we be able to use the excuse "It's the World Cup, come on man, I had to have a drink before church". When stumbling back into the office or into a beetroot-faced gilrfriend, from an alcohol binge, the World Cup was the staple excuse. That was the World Cup! Emphasis on the word 'was'. It's a thing of the past and, as my therapirst tells me on a weekly basis at an inflated fee, we just have to move on. But where do we go from here? To the pub, of course, the haven of sports replays, the platform of plebeian sports academia, where we can postulate, pontificate and imbibe until the feeling of despair, loss and boredom passes - much like Budweiser through our suffering livers.