Disordered Thoughts and Curmudgeonly Ramblings
Sic Semper Arrogance
England has retained the Ashes. Good. The Australian cricket team are a bunch of arrogant bogans who need to lose more often so they can learn to deal with it in a mature fashion, rather than whinging, complaining and generally being extremely sore losers.
While we’re on the subject, can we hurry up and axe Shane Warne’s atrocious talk show already? Thanks.
The boys of the NYPD Choir still singing Galway Bay
Perhaps the greatest Christmas song of all time…
Merry Christmas to you all! 😀
A victory for science!
Looks like sanity has finally asserted itself regarding that whole “Power Band” thing. I mean c’mon – a “hologram” encoded with a “frequency” that enhances your body’s “energy field”? Anyone with the slightest bit of scientific knowledge knew that the product was complete crap, but basic scientific knowledge seems to be in short supply these days. Thankfully the ACCC has stepped in and not just slapped them down, but ordered them to refund all the credulous idiots who purchased the damn things. Victory!
(I was actually fairly disappointed the other week when I noticed one of the cute girls down at the sandwich bar wearing a power band. Maybe she’ll wise up now.)
Christmas looks to be stupidly hot. Latest forecast is 38 degrees and there’s talk of unusual levels of humidity. Might as well be in Singapore damnit!
Vale
Two great losses this week with the passing of author Ruth Park and musical-oddity extraordinaire Captain Beefheart.
Playing Beatie Bow was on the year nine syllabus when I was at school, so I read and studied the crap out of it. A lot of books suffer when you’re forced to do that to them, but Beatie Bow stood up. I haven’t read it for the better part of twenty years but I still recall vast swathes of it – it’s one of those books that gets into your head and changes it a bit so you’re never quite the same person after reading it.
More recently I obtained a copy of Ruth Park’s Sydney which provides a brilliantly written (if it wasn’t so pretentious I’d even say “sparkling”) history of the city via a series of walking tours. It’s clear that she had an incomparable love and knowledge of Sydney, and the book is going to be the first thing going into my case when I pack for my (Sydney departing) cruise in early 2012.
Captain Beefheart – well, what can you say about Captain Beefheart? A musical genius and provocateur without compare (unless it’s to his buddy Frank Zappa). I’ll let him speak for himself with the 1982 video clip of Ice Cream for Crow – a film so weird that a terrified MTV refused to play it, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York rushed to add it to their permenent collection.
Vale Ruth Park and Don Van Vliet. We’ll miss you both.
The Carnival Begins
Here we go…
It’s a little bit fancy…
Call me an unpatriotic bloke if you must, but I’ve never even once held a business meeting at McDonalds.
I guess I’m just not fancy enough.
Sports. Bah.
So, Australia didn’t get the 2022 World Cup. Big deal. I mean it’s not like it’s quidditch. I suppose it would have been nice to get more than a single vote though.
At least it solves the problem of us having to come up with an instrument as annoying as the vuvuzella. Personally I was going to nominate the lagerphone.
You know sometimes I’m tempted to think it would just be easier to nuke North Korea into dust and be done with it.
I have no truck with Gregorian calendar!
It’s the tenth of the tenth 2010. Oh wow.
I have to say I find this rather boring. I mean, we’ve had the 1st of the 1st 2001, the 2nd of the 2nd 2002, the 3rd of the 3rd 2003 and so one, and no one made a fuss about them (well, apart from 1/1/1 obviously, and some religious types got upset on 6/6/6). And we’re going to be getting the 11th of the 11th 2011 and the 12th of the 12th 2012 (assuming the Mayans haven’t come back and eaten us or something). I don’t regard any of these as being at all interesting, with the exception of 12/12/12 which is only interesting because it’s the last one.
So get back to me in 2 years, 2 month and 2 days. Then I might be interested.
Is it the closing ceremony yet?
Ah yes, the Commonwealth Games are on. This means I’ve had to totally rearrange my TV viewing since Channel 10 has dumped its regular schedule in favour of broadcasting the competition around the clock (do something else instead of watching TV? Are you mad?:))
I really find it hard to get excited about the Commonwealth Games. They’re really nothing more than a second rate Olympics with all of the serious competition removed. In several areas (the swimming in particular) Australia simply has the best athletes in the Commonwealth, which makes picking up medals akin to shooting fish in a barrel. What’s our tally so far? Nine gold, ten silver, five bronze, for a total of twenty four – putting us at the top of the medal count and thirteen ahead of current second placers India.
This sounds impressive, but with the big boys missing it’s all really kind of pointless. It even approaches embarrassing, particularly when the media try to get everyone all revved up about it. “Gold for Australia! Gold for Australia!” has a kind of hollow ring when there are no Americans, Russians or Chinese in the competition. Without meaning to put down our fellow Commonwealth members, it’s like wining a foot race against a bunch of amputees – crowing about it just comes across as pathetic.
So yeah, the Commonwealth Games. Is it the closing ceremony yet?