Christmas - a time for potency

Let's call this a list. A list of all that's wrong with the world - or to be more precise: my world.

1) Hubert Pabst.

2) My end of workday befouled me.

4a) My left hand is kinked to the left but my right hand is not.

4) I kicked the internet addiction.

5) The world is an perhaps the only amazing place. Perhaps the only place!

5 in 7 days I gotta
say my goodbyes
Brush a coupla cobwebs til they're
outta my eyes

close the door behind me
- cobwebs again
i try not to hate the spiders
cause that's not very zen

Gathering pace and also
gathering heat
kids are waiting for the bus bout halfway down the street

doublecheck the time
cause my memory's shot
turn the corner blind
at the cafe bluetongue spot

check who's on the platty
- buy a special ticket
never have a lollipop
but if i did i'd lick it

see the train pull in
pull the doors apart
pretty much my last chance
if i feel i need to fart

lookin for a spot
that'll fit my walking sticks
i really doubt a long commute
gives anybody kicks

i'm yet to feel love
that i did for stanmore-stratty
will i ever reminisce
about me and parramatty?

A winning dialogue

Journalist: Well, Mac, what did you make of that match?
Benny: I played a match.
Journalist: Yes, but what are your thoughts on it? As you're speaking to me right now, why not give the viewers a chance to experience what you're feeling?
Benny: They can never know how I feel. I suppose they could come close, if they saw the meaning of this statement: a bird cries the truth.
Journalist: Are you trying to make a point about Tiger's marital transgressions?
Benny: Ah, eff off. Coldplay's second album is a good listen.

How to live life

First of all, consider each possible way of living life.

Then pick the best one.

Repeat from time to time.

I can't believe I never knew

I've just been strolling down Recollection Lane, listening to some great Aussie hits at UteUbe. Apart from remembering that Ella Hooper flies straight through my first hotness filter and would be at short odds to get through the next one, I checked out some 'gurge, some 'gurus and some 'gAustralian Crawl.

There was this awesome clip of Oh No Not You Again (great song, buy the whey), with beautiful early, early 80s fashion. But it wasn't James Reyne on lead vocals. Or was it? Maybe if I squinted my eyes it was, except there's another guy who crops up with some backing harmonising at choice moments during the song and he looks much more like James Reyne. Could it be the Joey Travolta/Frank Stallone of the Reyne family, David? No, it turns out it's actually Guy McDonough, brother of the band's drummer Bill.

'the Hell?!?!

I am very disturbed by this. Imagine that you discovered that half the songs by some band you like are actually sung by different people and you never realised. Never even had an inkling. I'd listened to this and many Crawl song so many times, and always thought it was James Reyne singing. He has the twang and everything. Now I don't know what to do, or where to go. What else did McDonough sing? How can this happen? My head is spinning like a top and my whole world is crashing down around me.

It reminds me of some Brasilian friends of my sister who lived in London. I met them and was shocked and delighted to discover they were huge Cold Chisel fans. Now my memory is a little hazy on this, but I either introduced them to Australian Crawl, or I helped them decipher the lyrics of the original Mr Unintelligible, James Reyne. Or was it Guy McDonough?!?! I am absolutely shattered...

Accounting for taste

With the league season over, but still two intercity train trips to make each day, my mind has turned to some of life's great topics - love, justice, the absolute, as well as a range of topics unrelated to league. One of these topics has flitted across my mind from decade to decade, without even so much as a second dwelled thereupon: could it be possible to account for taste? Taste in... hotness?

Many studies claim to show the factors which count in interpersonal attraction [citation needed]. Typically some blend of youth, symmetry and in males, relative power. If you want to know the average preferences of an average person, this might come in handy. But as the Surrealist Committee for Investigation of Claims of the Normal points out, it is exceedingly hard to find a typical, normal, average, standard person with likewise preferences. And to my mind, all the interesting things are left out of these studies anyway.

So what is hotness? Forgetting for the moment any deep philosophical discussion of the nature of hotness, let's start as any good scientist would, by producing some units. Consider the figure below, which I will dub the Hotness Scale.

On the Y axis we have Depth of Hotness. At its most shallow, we have Attention Capture. As we move further up (deeper in hotness) we enter the arena where a person's hotness has a Life of Its Own. This ranges from them making multiple involuntary appearances in your mind, through to the varying shades of crush, to the maximum: Lost Cause. There is no way, no how, that this person can ever not be hot. Surrender, all ye who enter here.

On the X axis is Duration of Hotness. This is a simple chronorithmic scale, ranging from 1 second to 1 day, 1 month, a year and all the way up to a lifetime.

On the Hotness Scale, the letter A could refer to glancing at an attractive person in a magazine. B could be some kind of crush, while C represents my hotness rating of wifey.

We are all familiar with some typical trajectories on this figure. There's love at first sight, which starts off at a very deep level of hotness and continues. There's the slow and steady burn, which starts near the origin and follows a line roughly corresponding to the equation Y=X. There's the Friend to Lover transition, in which someone coasts for some time at minimal hotness (they may not even be on the Hotness Scale) before a sudden nonlinear episode kicks them into deeper waters. And there's the U-Turn, in which someone becomes less hot, sometimes very much so. This can happen anywhere on the Hotness Scale, but is most frequent in the lower left quadrant.

To my mind, anyone on the Hotness Scale is hot. What they all share in common is the ability to pass through the beholder's Hotness Filter. The Hotness Filter consists of a series of pores, each corresponding to some quality or trait in a person. Now you and I may both have a pore corresponding to eyes, or waist to hip ratio, or amount of denim worn, but they probably won't be the same shape. My denim filter may exclude people who wear double denim or greater. Yours may let these people pass through. So in accounting for taste, I want to know what dictates the shape of the many pores in someone's Hotness Filter.

In fact, there are several Hotness Filters. I counted at least five, and you don't necessarily pass through them in any particular order. They are

1. Attention capture hotness. It could be an image on a screen, or walking past someone on the street. For a split second at least, someone has captured your attention because they are hot.
   
2. Interaction hotness. Some people who pass the first filter get blocked here because of some information gleaned when you interact with them e.g. they stink, they vote Liberal, they care about politics etc.
   
3. Contact hotness. Entering into quite close proximity with someone is another kind of filter. Pheromones start coming into it here.
   
4. Going out hotness. Getting serious now. They have to pass the "I'm coming back for seconds" test here, among others.
   
5. Commitment hotness. To love and to hold etc.
   

Our filters contain lots and lots of information, with pores corresponding to the purely cosmetic, the profound and everything in between. And our filters evolve over time too.

There is another aspect to this that I think we all understand quite intuitively, which I think of as a kind of temperature. At low 'temperatures' we are less likely to find someone hot e.g. while skydiving, when feeling nausea. At high 'temperatures' we are more likely to find someone hot e.g. alcohol, after two years of abstinence, after eating half a dozen oysters. (Nb. too many oysters probably turns the temperature down). Think of temperature as making the pores in the Hotness Filter bigger or smaller. Proximity and total eye gazing time may turn the temperature up.

There's also a kind of Hotness Geometry, involving the angle from which you view someone, the distance (1 cm vs 1 m vs through binoculars) and dimension (ie on paper/screen/photo vs in real life).

Well, all of this didn't get me any closer to understanding why people's Hotness Filter pores are the shapes they are. In fact, I started to wonder whether it even makes sense to speak of the independent existence of stable filters and pores. Could it be that the Hotness Filter is actually created when someone passes through it? Could the fluid interaction of beholder and beheld be decisive in shaping what we thought was something fixed and pre-existing? How very quantum if that were the case.

I had to end my cursory excursion into Hotness Theory there, as my stop came up.

The name on everyone's lips - Del Potro

The correct protocol for any commentator on sporting events who makes a prediction that actually comes true - providing you squint your eyes and adjust for the Doppler effect - is to reference the original prediction and gloat. So without further ado, here is what I said a few months ago about the tennis:

I wouldn’t be surprised to see a non-Nadal/you slam winner as early as Wimbledon or the U.S., which is something you couldn’t have said confidently the last, what – five years?

Hey presto, Juan Martin Del Potro beats Federer to claim the US Open, taking the fifth set 6-2. That's gotta hurt the Fed Express, he's had such an amazing record of beating upstart punks in slam semis and finals.

I also said that what makes it so hard for players now is they have to beat Federer and Nadal to win a major. Del Potro did this, but Nadal wasn't at his peak so I'm not quite prepared to declare him better than both. It will be very interesting to see how the next year of slams plays out.

For my next major prediction, Bernard Tomic will win 10-15 grand slams, possibly all at the junior level.

Weeping Tooley

July 31, 2009 - Bruce, ACT

The Canberra faithful are calling it a miracle. So they're bringing their cameras, their rosaries, their children and grandchildren to an otherwise quiet sporting field on the outskirts of town. "To me, personally, it is a miracle. You believe it or don't believe it, that's okay. But I strongly believe it", says Belconnen resident Linda Jones.

At the Canberra Stadium, an outdoor statue of the Tooley Daley appears to be shedding some kind of beige substance from the midregion. Tears - of a sort - that stream down his shorts onto his legs, testing the faith of all who come."I think that at this time in history, in terms of what's happening in the Australia, what's happening in the NRL, that this is possibly a sign", says Kingston Resident Malcom Yang.

But fearing they were put there by pranksters, a cleaner here wiped the statue clean, only to have those drops return over the weekend. Many are so convinced it's real, they weep.

"It took us a while to realize it was the statue that was... leaking," says Stadium cleaner Imad Diouf. "My manager and I both collapsed when the truth sank in." The statue's emissions have since been so constant it has forced the cleaning staff to place cotton balls between the legs to collect the moisture.

The Stadium has now contacted the NRL in hopes an investigation will be launched.

SOOIII - it's French for that was a good game of league

After the first two State of Origins this year, I felt like a fuddy duddy. I felt old. Origins, you see, I said, Origins just ain’t what they used to be. Sure there’s intensity, sure they’re the best players, but… something’s missing. The emotion, the suspense, the awe. Heck, even for a regular season game, SOO1&2 just weren’t that good. Well, much like Michael Jackson until a few weeks ago, the child in me is back, and much like Michael Jackson until a few weeks ago, I feel alive. That was one helluva game!

Onto the thoughts, reflections and deep philosophical ponderances.

I really hate Brett White. And I’m a nswelshman! I hate him for at least two reasons. First, he beat up on Steve Price. Now I haven’t seen the replays so I don’t know if White knocked him out or if it was Waterhouse with the diving clothesline. Price was in there swinging too. But you don’t start a fight with Steve Price. I’m sorry, you just don’t. That’s like starting a fight with Hazem El Masri or Steve Menzies. Steve Price is one of the cleanest, most respected guys around, plus he’s old. And he used to captain the Dogs. White has a track record here too. I could have handled pretty much any other QLD player going off in a neck brace, but this just left a sour taste in my mouth.

Secondly, White cost NSW the Hayne try, thereby ruining what would have been a perfect finish to the game for NSW. Instead of seeing endless replays of Hayne - who else - skirting the touchline then powering through several defenders for the defining try to turn it into a thrashing, that whole thing becomes virtually erased in our memories. At least it lead to the angry bomb – more on that in a minute. White reminds me of the ignorant gland from the Blazing Entrails episode of Ren and Stimpy. It’s a big dumb galoot that Ren finds beating up on Stimpy’s brain, causing excess stupidity. I don’t have a picture to hand, more’s the pity, but if you come over to my place I can show you on dvd. Alright, that’s probably going a bit far.

There was some supreme attacking football in this game. Hayne and Inglis continue to stun. There’s something about games like this, the GF and GF qualifiers, and the rare club game, that bring out the best in the best players. Inglis is surely the best player in the game, I only wonder why he doesn’t dominate every game he plays. You can’t push Inglis back. No one else would have gotten back into the field of play when he did. So he's very strong, very fast and has an awesome fend. How many times did he tell the Wolfman not to argue with him?

In fact, as of SOO3, the fend is back. How many brutal fends were there in the game? Hayne absolutely smashed Michael Crocker, Boyd got Hayne a beauty at the end, Hayne and Inglis did it the whole game through, Watmough was doing it. A few years ago, I was truly excited about the SBW-lead resurgence of the shoulder charge as the pre-eminent display of power and poise at high velocity (speaking of which, how good was the Hodges almost try?) in rugby league. Now it’s the fend. We need a fends highlights package. Badly.

Generally speaking, I think the credit for the repeated line breaks and attacking raids during this game has to go to individual skill, will and power rather than team execution. It seems like the best recipe for a game like this is to unleash your best players and piss off the game plan, or at least your structured attack. It is a truism that you can’t build a good team, contend for a premiership, without a good 1,6,7 and 9. (Some people call this the spine, but you got a spine like that, you are one sick person. Since when do the halfback and five eighth stand behind the hooker anyway?) Unusually, the 1,6,7 and 9 for both teams were solid but none of them were dominant, or game changers. For NSW, this was a big improvement on games 1 and 2. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great performances there, but I don’t think any one would have a single one of those eight players down on their top three for the match.

Anthony Watmough was a line break machine. Did I see him run around Slater at one point? Someone did, only to get tackled by another player running back in cover defence. But to get past Slater, arguably the safest cover defender in league, was something else. Reminds me of that origin when Big Willie Mason burst through the line with only Slater to beat, and carried Slater for twenty metres, only to lose the ball over the line. Slater is persistent.

There were also some huge tackles, such as Price on Perry, and Tonga on I’m not sure who, early on. Kimmorley on Inglis was a good one too. But you can rely on big tackles in games like this – that wasn’t what made it stand out, though it helped. Speaking of Kimmorley, Brett, we get it – you can bomb. But usually a playmaker tries something different if a tactic fails the first five times. The crazy thing is, NSW could have had several more tries if they’d actually run the ball. Did you see their carries? Such power. Creagh scoring the winner was the epitome of this to me. And still, the bombs kept coming. The one time I would have liked to see a kick, it didn’t happen.

The most beautiful example of thinking on your feet and sizing up the moment came when QLD bombed with a minute and a half left on the clock, just so they could smash NSW in possession. Any club game, even most origin games, the team would have passed a thousand times, tried a dud chip kick and probably lost it into touch. What QLD did is about as Tao as rugby league gets. We need to see more of it. If only NSW had kicked ahead once they had the ball. They spread it, and looked as though they might have had a chance for a second before it was quickly snuffed. But if they’d put in a long kick, it would have been great to see Hayne and Jennings and Morris competing with Slater and Inglis and Boyd for a final piece of glory. Oh well. We got Ben Creagh running away from Justin Hodges instead.

Some more random thoughts
- Cameron Smith is the ultimate little tough guy. He’s like the skinny guy from predator who gets flattened with a falling log but insists he can make it. Except Cam Smith can make it. He takes a licking and keeps on ticking. I don’t know what it is, some people are just frigging tough like that.
- Darren Lockyer’s Angel is having a tough time getting to the next level. Yes he’s good, but he’s not quite that good. Dave Taylor played a better game against the Warriors than Sam Thaiday ever has.
- I can’t believe we still haven’t figured out pre-game entertainment. How bout a song that actually makes the people *feel* something? I dunno, You got the touch by Stan Bush? Surely one of these could work? The other thing we could do, seeing as how people are there to watch a rugby league game and all, would be to play some inspiring highlights. Individual player highlights, big match highlights – for SOO3 they could have just played the last two minutes of that origin game QLD won at the death in the 90s. That’d gee up the crowd, wouldn’t it? I want to see them frothing at the mouth. By the way, did anyone else find Grinspoon singing Champion before game 2 supremely ironic? Isn’t that whole song about what dickheads homeboys who wear the champion label are?
- Did anyone else think the referees allowed a lot of on the ground roughing up and holding down? I know they sometimes let things like this slide in origin, but usually just in the first frenetic spite-filled exchanges, then they start penalising. This was going on up until the last seconds. I gotta say, Barett’s non-reaction to a first minute face grind from JT shows he’s not stupid – well at least that wasn’t stupid, he still might be stupid.
- Bummed that I missed two tries in the first five minutes of the second half cause I was watching the Chaser. A try each in the first five minutes after halftime? That never happens!
- The shots of the NSW and QLD coaches boxes during the game were priceless. Big Mal was sitting there, eating popcorn and looking as glued to the screen as the rest of us at home, while Neil Henry was all stern and focused and presumably sending orders down to the players. Meanwhile in the NSW box Bellamy had the look of an angry man whose anger has become so all-encompassing that even when things go their way they still can’t celebrate or smile. The two raised hands of Joey Johns, and one raised hand (…) of Tooley Daley, were in stark contrast.
- Finally, I am once again left wondering how much better Origin could get if a few more people were let in. I refer of course to the practice of denying non-qld&nswelshman a piece of the Origin pie. Who wouldn't like to see a Tuiaki or Vatuvei come charging at the line? Or back in the day, a Utai or SBW busting through tackles? Or a Kidwell or Ropati knocking opposing forwards out? Or a Holdsworth or Te Maari flying the West Australian Flag? Who?!

Yonex, Silvestre, Gauche

I had to give it up. Smoking six cigars a day has been killing me, goddamn i love it though. it makes me feel so alive.

this is what briar tung thought to himself as he stubbed out his seventh cigar for the day in an ashtray he'd fashioned from a disused dog bowl that used to belong to his neighbour, Bette Midden. Briar had only two weeks until the Olympics was starting, and he somehow had to conjure up the form to defend his 200m IM title. People nowadays take for granted that he is better than Michael Phelps, but you have to remember, back in 2012 Phelps was gunning for his world record 18th gold medal in this event. Briar gained a mental edge by stubbing his cigar out - the third of the day, if you must know - on Michael Phelps' coach's hand, couple hours before the final. He'd been this close to being thrown out of the games. Anywho, that was all water under the bridge now. Tung and Phelps' coach were married now, even though Burt Oast continued to coach Phelps. Tung kept trying to convince him to convince Phelps to switch to track and field, with only limited success.

briar tung's uncle, bey Barre, was a very, very fat man. even still, he could run the 100m dash in under 11 seconds, and was the one who'd originally turned tung onto sports. hell, if he could win gold at the senior olympics, while smoking a shisha pipe, briar tung could do anything. and he did, much to the delight of people all around the world. he was a modern day tiger woods, someone who really captured the imagination of people large and small. it might have been his cigar habit, people were sick of having idols who were better than them in every way.

Bey Barre was now a commentator with seven olympics. he covered dressage and athletics, plus a little diving here, a little rugby there. man for all seasons, you could say. he would give briar a pep talk just before the final, just in case he hadn't blown the cobwebs out. it went a little like this:

Briar Tung, I stand before you a broken man. The race is over, and you haven't won. You had more talent in your left scrotum than every other competitor in the field, but your concentration let you down. as soon as you lost concentration, you lost technique. you started to worry, and the race was already lost, even though you were a full body length and a half in front.

By this time tung was so worked out he'd yell out - STOP! no!!! to which his uncle would say, oh, why ?you gonna prove me wrong? you gonna prove me wrong?! YOU GONNA PROVE ME WRONG?!?! AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they'd then each share a quiet hug. and tung was so focused and ready to jump out of his skin the opponent didn't stand a chance. especially if they were rattled by their coach being attacked earlier in the day.

The End

A disaster story

Petersham, NSW 12:57
John Matlock was sweeping his driveway. same driveway he’d been sweeping every day for nigh on 6 weeks, ever since he was born, apart from a few years when he hadn’t been sweeping. he looked up the street, then down the street, then up again. ain’t that a kids rhyme? he thought to himself, chuckling angrily. Chuck, as he liked to be called, picked up the paper off his lawn, then cast a sideward glance at his neighbour, Bette Midden. she normally picked her paper up at roughly the same time, and even though they’d gotten into fisticuffs a few times over the years, they held a deep respect for each other, because they eached subscribed to the same paper.

but she wasn’t there this morning. strange, he thought to himself. that was when John Matlock looked up the street again and almost had a movement – there wasn’t a single person in the whole street. he quickly pulled out his mobile and called a few random friends and family – no answer. this was starting to freak Chuck out. he’d served in acapulco for a few years, and after retiring from the army he did some black ops in syria and new zealand. but in all his years he’d never seen anything like this. nothing could prepare him for this moment – this ‘event’, this ‘abnormality’ had wiped off every single human from the face of the country except him. or so he thought…

Williamstown, NSW 12:58

Mary Gaberdeen was a truck salesman, working for the department of criminal affairs and multiculturalism out of williamstown, near newcastle. she was on the phone to her husband, Hawn the man, having a heated conversation in fact.

Look, I told you already, I need you to pick up the kids – no, Hawn, that’s not fair – look would you just listen to me for a minute?! Fine, I’ll pick them up. Bye for now!

This was turning into a real clusterfuck of a day, she thought as saliva squirted into her mouth. Her belly was like an angry sea, sloshing around juices and prompting her to seek out food to remedy this unpalatable situation. She decided to head for Allan Hot Food, a place somewhere - i don't know where - that did the best chips and gravy. She checked her wallet for a money, and there was some for her to buy lunch. But just then the phone rang again. It was Hawn.

Look, what do you want now, honey?

Hawn started speaking, but in the middle of the sentence she heard the faintest yelp, and then the line cut out. She was absolutely buggered if she knew what was going on, but it started to freak her out. She was below quota for the month, her tummy was rumbling, and now it didn’t seem like a single human soul was around her for now. Things were getting weird. She started the walk to Allan hot food, slightly freaked out by the quietness for this time of day.

Blacktown, NSW, 13:05

Madison and Tony were making out. They'd been going at it for a while, their relationship had finally reached the point where this kind of action was possible and indeed desired by them both. They were around the corner from the local cinema, listening in, or at least pretending to. As the pressure built between them, Tony had to take a breather for air. He had a blocked nose. All of a sudden, they looked around and there was no one there.

Hey, where’d everyone go?

I dunno honey, don’t worry about it at the moment.

But there was a nagging feeling in the back of Tony’s mind that maybe, just maybe, things weren’t alright. He pulled out his phone and started to record the couple as they resumed their intimate throes. Madison responded appropriately to the cues, standing up and doing the slowest, saddest dance Tony had ever seen. He paused the camera.

Hey, where did you learn that dance?

It’s called the Mabinoggian, Tony. I learned it from my grandma, she was an irish dancer back in the sixties. It’s the last thing she taught me before she died.

Woah, Tony replied.

For some reason they decided to take a peek into the drive in, but despite the crashes and bangs from the latest reese witherspoon flick, no one else was around. this was starting to get really weird.

Canberra, ACT 1415

The Government had assembled its finest men and women to deal with the situation. Kevin Rudd called across to his deputy Julia Gillard.

Beats giving it to Malcolm Turnbull, eh Julia?

It's quite a rush Kev, but it's slightly tempered by the fact that he and his family are probably dead.

A trace of a hint of a tear appeared in Kevin's eye, but it disappeared in much the same way a shitload of people seemed to have in the last hour and fifteen minutes.

A man in a defence uniform stepped forward to the table to brief them. He looked harried and old, like he just couldn’t handle this situation.

S-s-sir, at approximately thirteen hundred hours eastern standard t-t-t-t-t-time, some kind of energy disturbance appeared over the country. It has the effect of getting rid of people. As far as we can tell, more than half the country’s gone – Geezuz christ, called out Kevin Rudd – I’ve made contact with the only four people left in the country outside the ACT, all of them localised to the eastern seaboard. A couple called Madison and Tony, a lady called Mary Gaberdeen and an old guy called John “Chuck” Matlock. the australian capital territory appears to have been spared, but riots have already started between the better off people and the less educated poorer people. Casualties have been reported your h-h-h-h-h-h-h-honour

Thankyou chief superintendent brigadier Stevenson. I know you’ve lost family in this. So have I. The important thing for us to remember that we were elected to serve the australian people. and while there may only be a few left here, at any given time there are thousands of them overseas. it is to them that we are now responsible.

No one was prepared for this situation, but they had no choice but to deal with it now. This was really happening. Meanwhile, Julia Gillard thought to herself, This is going to be a fucked up day.

Two days later

Bring them in, Julia

the prime minister’s lush office had been transformed into somewhat of an ad hoc ops room, with plush couches, big screen monitors, telefax machines and desks, and a dozen people repeatedly tapping away, empty cups of coffee sprawled across the floor, hundreds of bags of lolly gobble bliss bombs stacked in the corner.

kevin rudd had assembled a small team of what remaining civil authorities there were. there was an engineer, a finance man, a schoolteacher, julia gillard and brigadier stevenson. julia walked in with four confused souls.

what are we doing here, asked ‘chuck’ matlock. I need to call my wife

my kids, my prime minister. can you tell me what happened to my kids?! cried out mary gaberdeen in anguish

tony and madison were mute. they were young and confused

thank you julia. you can leave now. kevin had julia gillard running a small brown bag team, assasinating the few remaining foreign spies in canberra and the surrounding suburbs.

ladies and gentlemen, you’re probably wondering why you’re standing here before me. I’m afraid I have some bad news. you might want to sit down. won't make a frickin lick of difference though. Kevin wasn't too worried about swearing now. two days ago an energy wave of uncertain origin struck australia. it seemed to target humans in particular, and you’re all we have left. small portions of papua new guinea were affected, as was the solomon islands.

the room fell into awed silence. it was as if they were in some disaster movie, only this was the real thing.

it hasn’t taken long for the world to respond, kevin continued. the US has bolstered its troops in the malacca strait, and the iranians have started taking hostages in iraq, and the chinese have called in an extra 3% of their army reservists. the middle east is turning into a shitfight, asia is on the brink of chaos and new zealand is looking like a safe refuge. any questions? kevin allowed himself a moment to survey the room. he couldn’t believe that he’d adjusted so quickly to this bizarre new world he found himself in.

someone rushed in the room and called out ‘ mr prime minister, mr prime minister! come quickly!

No I will not come quickly! what is it woman?

all the lost people of australia – they’ve turned up in russia!

kevin rudd’s jaw dropped as far as his tendons would allow it. this was a disturbing new development. his thoughts wondered to his wife, therese rein. she’s alive, he yelled out

THE END

***

Post scriptum. The preceding slightly fantastic tale was inspired by my reading of a pretty, pretty, pretty lame disaster book. As is my wont, and I am wont to do, i refused to keep reading once I realised this. I remember a book i read called Earth Abides, and it looks a whole heap better in comparison. It had none of the ridiculous flourishes of some books, it was believable, and kind of eery. it is my great pleasure to recommend that book.

This is a story inspired by, rather than about Tooley Daley

nodgrass was ill at ease. he’d just eaten a chocolate croissant that sat badly in his estomago. that’s because it was a piece of shit – literally! figuratively speaking, of course! but these kinds of stomach ailments wouldn’t put him off his task at hand. tooling off in public. his idol was Tooley Daley and he made sure to offer a sacrifice – thousands of thousands upon thousands of little boys – each day, in his own special way. nodgrass finished himself off then returned to his desk, where his boss awaited him

where you been, noddy?
just out for a minute, what’s up boss?
it’s this report, noddy. I need you to take a look for me. I have a meeting next week and I’m just gonna go over there for a little while.
no probs boss. anything in particular you want me to look for?
yeah, someone lost a rare two dollar note in there. that’s the main thing

with that nodgrass redirected his vision away from his boss’ abs and towards his computer screen. he had a learning difficulty.

THE END

SOO yesterday

well, in the absence of a grand thesis, A Sports Guy offers the following thoughts and recollections from another episode of the greatest game in the history of sports' greatest series of games... State of Origin!

The game just wasn't that good. It picked up in the second half when NSW got close, but it was ultimately characterised by opportunities blown rather than seized. That's not what footy's all about! In particular, the Lockyer and Folau tries were an absolute joke. Inglis, ok, he's as hard to stop at the line as Willie Mason in his prime, harder actually. But those two soft tries were pretty much the game - apart from that NSW defended well on their line and the Qld attack wasn't great. All four halves had quiet nights, other than a bit of passing.

I obviously haven't watched enough football this year, at least with the sound up, because I now fully understand my mate G Man's dislike of Gus Gould. Gould has something to offer, no doubt. There are precious few voices out there with the spark of life. But he just can't expand enough to fill a void that big, much as he tries. A large percentage of Australians were praying he would keep poking Rabs in the ribs last night. His warm up speech was woeful. I think he might need a holiday.

Thank Christ Jarryd Hayne's not a QUEENSLANDER!!!, otherwise things would be grim, grim, grimmer. He made Billy Slater look like a slouch, though Slater was tired. Reading an SMH article about his resurgence as a man and player, I was struck by his comment about being impressed by how hard the Fijian side trained during the World Cup*. People said the same thing about Michael Jordan - he trained as hard as he played. Could something so simple be the key to success? Probably helps to be a hulking freak of an athlete too.

It must be a strange experience for Craig Bellamy. He's normally used to his finely crafted well honed Melbourne team doing what they do. But this team was a shambles, poorly assembled and full of players who must surely hate him. How else do you explain the David Williams chip ahead and Jamie Lyon run into touch in the dying minutes? The use of Josh Morris was embarrassing, while Farah, Wallace and Gidley all had virtually no impact. I think Nate Myles kicked better than Wallace last night. Lockyer didn't kick a lot, but his little chip at the end to force a repeat set was pure class - something only Joey Johns or Shifty Sherwin could have done.

For me the low point of the game was Paul Gallen being stuck in a tackle 30m away when a fight broke out involving Hard Man Mick Crocker (or is he an Enforcer? or a Grub? No, that's Gallen. That reminds me, remember when Tonie Carroll used to be Darren Lockyer's Protector - no wait, Minder? It looks like Sam Thaiday played that role last night, but what I really want to say is, can we please call him Darren Lockyer's Angel? That would be great.)

I think we can look forward to Game 3. NSW won't give a flying f*ck and neither will Qld. As a result we might get a decent game. Hopefully there'll be a few selection surprises, such as Les Biles being installed as a selector, Jason Alchin as NSW coach and Jason Taylor as starting NSW halfback. NSW truly blew it, but Qld is a much better team anyway so that's alright. In the long tea break of the soul, NSW players will surely admit that 'twas their fate to play in a Qld-dominated era. These things wax and wane, like the grime in a shower and NSW will have their chance again. That may be little consolation to them as they drown their sorrows for the next 72 hours.

* Not a real World Cup

A Sports Mailbag

Continuing the fine tradition of completely ripping off The Sports Guy, here’s A Sports Guy’s first ever mailbag. Actually, I didn’t really open a bag with mail from these people, but I like to think if they did write and it ended up in a bag, I would open it and read and reply as follows.

Q: Oh yeah, I am feeling it. Nadal out, then two come from behind five set victories which sandwiched me knocking off a local hero. And now the final against the amazing Robin Soderling, who the last time I checked has lost every single one of the nine times we’ve played. My question is, after I win the French, thereby equalling but effectively also surpassing Pete, what should I focus on next?
-- R. Federer, Paris

A Sports Guy: Look, I don’t blame you for being cocky. You’ve got a little of your swagger back, even as you look more vulnerable than ever. If you do win the final, you will be hard pressed to find new challenges. How does simply staying at or near the top sound? Nadal ain’t going away, Djokovic has broken through once and, assuming he doesn’t lose interest, has at least one more slam in him. Andy Murray’s got the hunger (Wimbledon, anyone?), and there’s a couple other up and comers that sense that their time is coming. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a non-Nadal/you slam winner as early as Wimbledon or the U.S., which is something you couldn’t have said confidently the last, what – five years?

Your trajectory now is sadly only downwards, but only someone like you could be disappointed with what that means - winning two, maybe three more slams in the next few years, with an outside chance of a sentimental victory at Wimbledon afterwards when you’re well and truly into the Legionnaire’s hat phase of your career.

By the way, I disagree with your statement that winning the French will allow you to surpass Sampras. Obviously you’re implying that because he never won on clay and now you have, you’re at last the better champion. Thing is, not only did Sampras never won on clay, he never even make the semis. This is your fourth final in a row, with only Nadal standing between you and the last three trophies (though he stood between you and the trophy in the way Jaws stood between swimmers and carefree frolicking in the ocean). It’s only total Slams that will really let you surpass Sampras (winning more Wimbledons would be a nice touch), but you long ago surpassed him on clay.

Q: I don’t get it. I beat Nadal, and then unlike almost every other giant killer in grand slam history, I win several more matches to get to the final. Yet people think Federer will win. Surely he’ll be easier to beat than Nadal. What gives?
-- R. Soderling, Paris.

ASG: That’s a fair point actually. Not only does no one except Roger Federer’s psychoanalyst give you a chance of winning, not even the analyst wants you to win. Despite (or is it because of?) Federer’s unbearable loss at Wimbledon followed by his choke at the Aussie, people love him more than ever. After the Australian Open you couldn’t have even convinced his wife that he was the number one anymore, yet still he’s the people’s favourite. Along with Robby Ginepri, he really is the people’s prince. Sorry Robin.

Q: You know how I was incredibly philosophical and mature about my loss at the French? It was all lies. It kind of sucks being number one now.
-- R. Nadal, Mallorca

ASG: Chin up buddy, you’re still young. You’ve been around for what seems like ages, but you’re only 23. You’ve easily got another four, five years at your peak, if you’re so motivated. In fact, I’d kind of like to see you pick up another three or four French Opens. Assuming you keep picking up the odd other slam, in the eyes of the public this will actually elevate the French, which has always played Cronk to the other slams’ Inglis, Smith and Slater.

But you better get used to guys structuring their game on how to beat you, not Federer. That’s what makes it so hard for tennis players now – they have to figure out how to beat you and Federer. But it will also bring the standard of play to another level. Anyone who can beat both of you – in the same tournament – will be something to behold. Sorry Robin.

Q: How long am I gonna have to hold up the fort until some other decent Australian players come along? Currently the next best player after me is Pat Cash, and he’s ranked 112 on the Seniors Tour. The XYs are in worse shape now than the women, and they only have one active player. I just want to settle down and become a colour commentator, I could so do that. I mean, how the hell is Darren Cahill getting paid by ESPN?
-- L. Hewitt, Adelaide

ASG: I totally agree that you’d make a great commentator. You’ve never been afraid to speak your … [searching for the right adjective] … [still searching] … active mind and you’d be an asset to any commentary team. Australian tennis is in worse shape than men’s basketball – at least the NBL gets media coverage when it dies in the arse. Bernard Tomic, where are you??

As an aside, you can hold your head up when you retire, assuming you retain full use of your neck muscles. Now is as good a time as any to honour some of the greatest lesser great names in tennis. That’s right, I’m talking about… the Two Slam Wonders. Without checking the sport stats vault [Whatever that is, I want one. It would need to be updateable and searchable, and I’m only really interested in Rugby League, Basketball, Tennis, World Cup Football and maybe cricket and some olympic sports. There must be websites with this information, but I want it in a single resource, at my fingertips, and the more quirky stats it has the better. A Sports Gal would be so ashamed of me right now.] I get the feeling that women’s tennis has produced more of these than men’s tennis. Winning a second Grand Slam really carves out a space for you. It says ‘the first one might’ve been a fluke, but this one wasn’t, I swear to god.’ Hmm, right now the only other member of the TSW club I can think of is another Australian, Pat Rafter. Great player to watch, would’ve won Wimbledon if it wasn’t for Crying Pete and Crazy Goran. Sorry, where was I?

Q: When will people start calling me supercoach?
-- M. Meninga, QLD

ASG: After handing over defensive coordination to Trevor Gillmeister, offensive coordination to Neil Henry, substitution coordination to Kevvy Walters, on field drinks supply & tactical update coordination to Alfie Langer, team bonding coordination to Julian O’Neill and TV viewer irritation coordination to Ben Ikin, I’m not sure you’re technically a coach any more. But you’re definitely a supersupervisor. You’ve got more people to thank than an Academy Award winner.

Q: I’m a lifelong NSW supporter and I’ve had a gutful! Those banana benders had better enjoy the next few days, because they’ll be in a world of pain come game two. The NSW boys are gonna come back with such fury, such passion, such determination and such skill that the cane toads won’t know what hit ‘em. CAAARRNNNN NSW, FIRE UP!!!!
-- Passionate NSW supporter, NSW

ASG: Oh dear, I’m hallucinating again. NSW doesn’t have any passionate supporters. There can’t be that much difference between country NSW and country QLD. But I guess there’s a world of difference between Brisbane and Sydney. Whatever it is, Sydney once again lays claim to some of the lamest sports fans in the world. Of course, individual teams have some crazy loyal supporters, but in terms of overall fan base, match attendance, amount of noise and atmosphere generated we suck. Go team!

Beak Reader

Falling fancifully in my tree
A thought was intercepted
Steal my berries will you, c^^t
For I’m a beakreader

Tis a gift I’ve had since birth
and honed with hours of practice
Some birds fear me - with good reason
They’re not used to being eavesdropped

Many stories I have heard
But one sticks in my craw
A tale of lust and mystery
concerning a macaw

Sometimes fleeting, rarely absolute…

Guest Post by Gavel
Witnessing scenes of unbridled joy can be fun…

Last night was cold and wet. Luckily I was warm watching TV. A game of footy, two dud teams. Sharks (hehehe) and Eels (hohoho) - both sans their best players on SOO duty. This year, even with their best players, these teams hover between poor and frail.

Anyhow, players ran one-out from dummy half, or made simple passing moves at a modest pace. The Eels soon led a low-scoring affair. Ho hum. Until about 12 minutes from time when the Sharks jagged a try to draw level! Not in the script. Then with 5 to go Shark skipper Barrett sent a wobbly drop kick one centimetre over the cross-bar. The Eels were not up to the challenge, and before we knew it the full-time siren signalled victory to the underdogs.

That was when something funny happened. Now there wasn’t a ‘crowd’ as such, only small pockets of fans dotted around the ground. However there was one noticeable group of about 30 or 40 Shark fans, all decked out in their matching blue Sharks jerseys. This group was right on the boundary fence, and the final play involved a Shark taking the ball into touch right under their noses.

They erupted in glee, and so did the Shark players, who all raced over to that area and jumped on top of each other. Scenes normally associated with grand final victory. Fans and players, relief, joy, redemption, victors at last, grins, shrieking, whooping, group hugs, dancing, the whole bit. Players on one side of the fence, the fans right there with them on the other side. It was a party!

It was stupid, and yet I couldn’t help thinking it was nice to see people so happy! The high for those fans and players was so intense, it made me wonder…

Now most people would have heard about the notorious Sharks this year. Matt Johns sex scandals, bankruptcy, the CEO and the female staffer with a black eye, prostitutes & sex toys in the dressing sheds, star player drug bust, major sponsors bailing out. This week the team captain fined for a racist remark. And oh yes, nine losses in row… and counting.

That’s as low as a club can get. The frustration of the players, the disappointment and angst of the fans, would have been building for months, reaching a crescendo of misery with the succession of scandals and disasters of the last month.

Three aspects of the joyous celebration struck me.

Firstly, the group aspect. A group of fans. A group of players. I was struck by that. Sharing the emotion with their comrades almost seemed to be itself a factor in its escalation.

Secondly, expectation. More accurately, lack thereof. Eels were favourites, the bookies had opened a market on whether the Sharks would ever win again. Eels led until the last minutes. Had the sheer unexpectedness of the victory made it that much sweeter? I was struck by that question.

Thirdly, the very depth of emotional low that immediately preceded the fine event. What a turnaround! Do we first need a depth in order to scale a height? That thought also struck me. I was thrice struck.

Whatever the psychological mechanics, the net result appeared nothing less than ecstatic joy. Of course, when they woke this morning (or possibly this afternoon) the mood may have been tempered somewhat with the realisations they still have a terrible team, are still last, and still devoid of prospects. The club’s survival still hangs by a thread. And its culture is still derided and despised.

Perhaps therein lies the rub. The Sharks had plummeted so low that one very ordinary, narrow win was cause for such uncontrolled joy and celebration? Ah, the sweet relativity of success.

Language

It's been said, I have a ponshon for languages. I don't doubt this, although I have no idea what a penchant is. Being in Italy has awakened my foreign language brain module, but I don’t feel like it’s yet wiped the sleep from its eyes nor stretched the stretches out of its sleepy limbs.

I am troubled by the access to Italian grammar that I have. The LP book contains but a few phrases, useful though they are. We’ve also a tiny Italian phrasebook, with a decent mini-dictionary at the back. But what I really like when I’m learning a language is a nice thorough guide to conjugation, prepositions and other key words like ‘more’ and ‘too’. Without this, how the hell am I going to construct whatever sentences suit my fancy at the minute, such as “Do you have life insurance?” Hang on, the little book might actually help me figure this out… “Ha l’assicuarazione della vita?” Alright!

As I was saying, the mini-dictionary is decent, and does include some verbs and some conjugations, but it doesn’t spell out the rules that I might determine for myself how to conjugate some newly discovered verb. Anyway, this might all be an excuse for me not to immerse myself fully in the oily waters of the Italian language and frolic in the frothy bubbles of the Venetian dialect. Mi piace questo reggiseno! E tuo?

Perhaps I’ll go and join the Potsdamer Institut for Klimaforschung, thus combining my love of languages with my love of institutes. Wifey encourages this development, so long as she gets first dibs on housespousehood. And the child still sleeps. But before any of that could happen, I’d have to establish myself as a bona fide climate scientist, and I’m yet to do this. In fact I have a fear that perhaps I’m only good for studying, not doing science.

The other night I was reminded of a habitual dream I used to dream, in which I am somewhere about a school or campus, and vaguely uneasy, because yes I’m late for, or have completely forgotten to go to German class! Oh no! I’ve actually missed a heap of these classes! Granted, my German has fallen from a great height, so even down here it’s ok. There’s not too much to worry about. But it’s not like me to miss classes! Ah, blast. Hang on, am I even studying German? Apparently so. Sometimes I realise in the dream that I’m not any more. But the dreams have always taken place at a time when I don’t study German. What a strange recurring dream.

Susudio

I may just have discovered Phil Collins' inspiration for this song. The Italian verb Sudare means 'to sweat'. Assuming he had a few problems in translation, the chorus of this song means 'I'm sweat-sweat-sweating'. What a revelation! This could be my career highlight to date.

Springtime in Venezia and the weather is warm. Big surprise!

As I write this, I am looking into the Cannaregio apartment that my family and I have been staying in since last Friday. On the wall in front of me there is a watercolour of a big white cruiseship entering Venice, browns and blues and mustard. To my right, three windows line the wall, and through them I can see old tiles and older tiles, wires and antennae, the odd rooftop deck and in the distance, a hazy blue grey horizon. Rain must be coming, I think, until I look up into the bright blue sky. Just a dirty sky then.

The whole thing is 32 square metres, twice the size of the Saarbrucken apartment I called home for a year waaaaay back in 2000. It feels small because of the design, not the absolute size. The bathroom is a walk in closet, narrow enough to make turning around a difficulty. The kitchen is a kitchenette, fitted out with gas hotplates but no oven. The bedroom is probably the nicest room in the house. No need to make things cramped there. Just a nice big bed, beautifully firm yet soft (how do they do that?), a set of drawers and a wardrobe. There is room for little Saskia’s portacot to sit beside the bed.

The worst feature of the bedroom is the low doorway, against which I have crushed my lovely head at least three times.

We are on the fourth floor, and despite my best intentions I do not foresee any of us (save Saskia) gaining weight this holiday. Not only do we need to drag our sorry carcasses up four flights, but there’s a 7kg baby, a three kilo pram, a variable weight backpack and any shopping we may have been foolish enough to do. Last night this included 18 kilos of water, half naturale and half frizzante. I was comforted only by the though that we weren’t drinking osmium, 22.4 times denser than water.

I continue to be amazed by our little girl Evie. Just now she put herself back to sleep by plunging her head down onto the recently abandoned dummy lying in her cot. She has been sluggish this morning and is covered in mosquito bites, the poor thing. Dio mio, for a fly screen. The day before yesterday she rolled over for the first and second times. The first time Rebecca and I both missed, as we studied our phones with new sims intently. I looked down, saw Evie on her stomach, nonchalant as you like, and gasped in shock and delight. A few hours later, the scene was repeated, fortunately I saw the whole thing. Sadly for Rebecca, she was in the can at the time. Even worse, her parents saw the whole thing too (Evie rolling, not… you know).

Evie charms and woos people wherever she goes. I can almost see her ego swelling as she fells one stranger after another with her knockout smile. It has been hot and I hope she’s not suffering for it too much.

Venice is an amazing city, in a totally different way to how Saskia is amazing. It’s like a golden rock rolling downhill into a bottomless chasm, onto which hundreds of thousands of people keep flinging themselves. It’s hard for me to imagine how this charming, difficult city has a future.The people grow old and the local population wanes, the city gets dirtier and dilapidateder, supplying it with food and energy gets costlier, tourists demand more and more, but contribute little to the infrastructure needs of the town. And if those crazy scientists are right, sea level rise is a’coming too. But I love the lack of cars.

Today I’m off to the Ludoteca, an ye olde church being used for an art exhibition by some Aussie artists. I’m supposed to bath Evie before we go, but it’s getting on and I don’t want her to go totally psycho and still be 45 minutes away from Rebecca.

I’m finding myself more and more in harmony with the Tao these days, though of course having said that now I’ve thrown it off balance and it’s disappeared. )Incidentally, I also discovered there is no Tao on airplanes.) I’m thinking of my family and friends. I’m wondering if the Bulldogs beat the Dragons.

human kindness

sitting, huddled over his computer, perpy tapped away at the keys. with his beak. for perpy was a bird! but in fact, perpy was, like you and me, a robot. bruce got to thinking - if i can't snap out of this funk then i'll never achieve my goals in life. and if there's one thing i want to achieve in life, it's my goals! perpy pecked a hole in bruce's teeth until bruce cried with pain. stoppit! it was all too much so perpy went to bed, and bruce followed her. as is so often the case these days, the bed was cold, so perpy warmed it up by releasing body heat. for this bruce was thankful and bruce thanked perpy in the usual way - a five star salute to the dog star sirius, using only a teaspoon and some bubic. they were so tired - dog tired - that they very easily entered a state of almost dreaminess, and this was a real pleasure.

a sports guy

In which we realise the folly of predicting the future, and pass judgement on all 16 NRL teams.

A frequent way of gauging how a team is doing is to check out how their opponents have fared. Lost to team x? Well that's ok if team x has been on fire lately. Beaten team y? So what, so have everyone. Only problem is this doesn't seem to have been very informative thus far. Or to be more explicit, my tips have been unfailingly failing of late.

Eels - turned the corner or just lucky to run into a Cowboys team that did the opposite of turning the corner (Took a step backwards? Nah, too cliched. Let's say the Cowboys turned around, headed back to the corner they'd just turned, saw the Eels lying face down in their own vomit, picked them up, nursed them back to consciousness and then drank the dregs of whatever it was the Eels had been drinking)
Cowboys - doing shocking, but you can never write off a team with JT, Matty Bowen and Aaron Paine. Hang on, sure you can. Good things to miss the semis. Which reminds me - have you noticed how somehow Cooper Cronk has snuck into Melbourne's elite four? Everyone keeps saying you can't write off a team with Greg Inglis, Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and... Cooper Cronk. What the? From now on I'm calling Cronk Ringo.
Sea Eagles - assuming Brett Stewart returns in 10 weeks, Sea Eagles are hoping 20 points is enough to sneak in to the top 8. Because they can't lose with him and can't win without him. And I still think he can win top try scorer of the year.
Storm - remind me of the Bulldogs of 2007. Gutted by a bad loss to end their season, they never really got rolling. They kept promising to... but never did. Still, any team that's got....
Titans - remind me of the Titans of 2007 and 2008. They need to tank a few games now so they can turn the corner in the second half of the season.
Rabbitohs - I hate to say it, but I don't think they can win with Jason Taylor as coach. Sure, they've got a stack of other problems, but the comp's pretty close this season and a good coach makes a big difference. He's helped make them competitive again, but like Ivan Cleary with the Warriors, doesn't appear to be capable of getting them over the hump from threateners to genuine contenders.
Sharks - I've tipped them more times this year than they've completed sets. Surely they've gotta pull together for Sticky and pull out a win against (...checking their next game...) the Panthers. At Penrith. I am definitely tipping the Sharks to win that one.
Roosters - Brad Fittler, wonder coach. I just wanted to see what those words would look like together. The Dogs have got some good players coming through this season, so the Roosters are looking specials in 2010.
Knights - ever noticed how the media is suddenly taking them seriously, and pretending that they've taken them seriously since the preseason? And that Brian Smith is a good coach again? For Smithy's sake, I really hope they don't tank in a grand final qualifier.
Broncos - I had them down as the only consistently good team this year til they stunk up the joint at Novacastria. Only team I would bet my wife's savings on to make the top 8.
Raiders - they are good things to put together a run at some time this year and have Matty Johns tell us how they are going to dominate seasons 2011-2014, once their young blokes get some experience. Someone remind him no one good has stayed in Canberra into their prime since Clyde, Sticky and Tooley (look up Roy and HG's State of Origin commentary).
Panthers - equal 7th, in the 8 on for and against. A couple of losses away from Elliot getting fired. Wait, they re-signed him? For two years? I love my footy!
Dragons - Dragons fans are shitting themselves because everyone expects them to play consistently now they have Wayne "Zen Master" Bennett as coach. I don't think the rest of the comp minds StGeorge being favourites now either. That's ok, because even if they don't win this year, Wayne's building something very beautiful.
Warriors - everyone's tip to go on with things this year after their spirited finish last year. Just blew games against the Dragons and Storm because they have too many Kiwis in the side. Is there a player with a higher games odometer than Steve Price? It's more than just first grade games too, this guy hits it up and tackles and charges down and still plays rep footy, what, five years after leaving the Dogs? Unbeeeeeelievable.
Bulldogs - preseason good things to miss the eight this year, once again no one in the media admits surprise at their form. To be fair, they haven't set the world on fire, but they're topping the table despite losing two points in the Penrifgate. Was anyone else suckered by the write up a few weeks back in which Jamal Idris was touted as a potential 100m sprinter? Maybe after lap band stomach surgery. Patten made a bust, passed to Idris only for Idris to pass back to him. Would Usain Bolt do that? I don't think so.
Tigers - Is Tim Sheens a master coach? I'll have to do some research and get back to you on that. In the mean time, I'm scared by the parallels between Taniela Tuiaki and Matt Utai. And Tank goes much better with Tuiaki's name too. Let's hope he catches a few bombs before he becomes a head case.

Eight rounds in, and I don't think we've learned too much. No one is quite looking premiership material yet, but a few have ruled themselves out. In fact I can state quite confidently (i prefer to make confident bad predictions rather than unconfident bad predictions) that the table has settled into two rough groupings. The upper half (ending at the Warriors) and the lower half (Cowboys down). Don't expect much movement between those two groups.

In a side note, foxsports is reporting that Tim Sheens (or the all mighty and all powerful selectors) has showed loyalty to the Kangaroos side that lost last year's world cup final, by picking them for the anz test. Am i missing something, or is loyalty normally shown to victorious sides? I can just see Sheens informing players who missed out. Yeah, sorry mate, but Lockyer played too poorly in that test last year to be dropped on poor form this year alone. Good, I knew you'd understand. Now can we just quickly go through your lines for the media tomorrow? "Mate, I just gotta keep playing my game and not worry about the selectors." Perfect. Alright, catcha later...i love you too.. catcha". Click.

I love my footy!

The return of Selby

Well, I barely believe it even though I've seen it with my own eyes.

Selby is back.

I was rather surprised to receive an apartment buzz about 15 minutes ago, as it is late and we weren't expecting anyone. It was my neighbour from downstairs, telling me to come and see, a bike was there. This came in the wake of me putting up a sign in the foyer last night - with none of the messages contained in my previous post, i hasten to add. My neighbour's english is not the best, so there was some nuance missing in our conversation, but there is something very fishy going on here, and my poor wife is now wracking her brains trying to figure out whodunit. The most plausible scenario we've come up with is just bizarre but sometimes, the truth hurts. Wait, I mean sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.

Selby!

Farewell Selby, I hardly knew you

I can't believe it, but I have to. Some time between Friday night and today (Sunday morning) someone stole my bicycle - Selby, I called her - from our foyer. I stupidly hadn't chained her - pretty much the first time - but she still should have been protected by a locked front door. I am working through the seven stages of grief and right now I'm going through sadness. Poor Selby. There's also a little rage left over, though that's mostly subsided. It got me thinking, if there was some way I could leave a message to the thief - putting a note up on our building, or on our street, or on every telegraph pole in enmore - what could I say to make them feel bad? Or uncomfortable? Or to turn them off ever touching Selby again? Or to make me feel better? Or should I come to terms with it and stop the wheel of karma? When I suggested this to my wife she thoughtfully noted that I don't believe in karma. Sigh.

Possible messages
- i hate you i hate you i hate you
- i often rode Selby bareback and i have a bum disease
- i love you and last night i fantasised about you
- a witch doctor has cursed the bike and whoever rides it now
- i got so angry when i found the bike was stolen that i beat up some innocent people, including my loved ones
- if you plan on selling Selby, you're getting ripped off if you get any less than $400
- i forgive you
- you, your children and your children's children are banned from enmore! for three months.
- i'll see you next week eating the pudding
- you have 48 hours to return Selby before bombing commences
- if you wanna get involved, next week we gon' help the unemployed
- i know who you are, where you live, and what your insecurities are
- Selby likes to be taken out just before dusk, she needs attention several times a week, and go easy on her gears, they've had a tough life.
- the combination to the lock you also stole is 6362
- do you know who i am?
- smile - you're on candid camera
- your a looser
- you'll regret the day you ever messed with me. raaarrgh!
- i never got a bell for Selby but it was my dream to get her one of those honking clowny type ones. it would mean a lot to me if you helped me realise this dream.
- enjoy her, you lucky s.o.b.

Fridge Feelings

This evening I felt the satisfaction and pride of having an empty fridge. Vegetables eaten, leftovers finished off. I am a fortunate son of Goddess, and so do not need to worry about where my next meal is coming from.

There is also the satisfaction of a full fridge - a week of meals and snacks laid out before one's eyes, packed snugly and with tetris-like efficiency. For me this satisfaction is occasionally tinted - albeit to a minor degree - by the time old fear of wastage, spoilage and of you will, shop soiling.

Freezer feelings are separate to fridge feelings. Pantry feelings are too, but are closer kin to fridge feelings.

Right and wrong

Alright, I'll say it. The Tao is Silent is a delightful book. There. I said it.

That's not exactly the preface that this deserves but I'm not of a mind to worry about matters such as that at the moment.

The this is this:

If you want to get at the plain truth,
Forget about right and wrong.
For the conflict between right and wrong,
Is the sickness of the human mind.

I'm not sure if this is Lao Tse quoted in an Alan Watts book, or Watts himself. Must be the former.
~~~

Incidentally, the neighbour(s) across the way have had a penchant of late to repeat certain songs repeatedly. Sex on Fire by Kings Of leon and I'm Alone With You (Tonight) by.. who's that by again? Perhaps strangely, this repetition doesn't bother me (yet).

Having a baby and tiredness

I know I should be going to bed earlier. After all, little one could wake up at any moment. The earlier you're in bed, the more sleep you get, and the healthier and happier you are. But I *can't* go to bed earlier. I'm too weak. I want to stay up and drink tea and surf the innernet. I need to decompress after an easy day at the office.

What does it matter, what does it all mean?

A few thoughts on this. I've just started reading The Tao Is Silent, by Smullyan. In it, he talks about the difference between allowing oneself to sleep when one is sleepy, and forcing oneself to sleep because it's sleepytime. So i'm sadly in the latter category at the moment. I don't know what kind of life I'd have if I allowed myself to sleep when sleepy - if I could even do it. I'd probably get fired for starters, plus go to sleep around 7pm. Can you believe my eyelids start getting heavy around 7 or 8? I have well and truly bade farewell to my old late night self. And yet - an even later self has emerged, nappy in hand, somewhere between 12:30 and 1:30 recently.

But let me now backtrack and say that I feel lucky. Little Miss Hammertime has caused us very few problems. My health is fine, despite occasionally interrupted sleep. From my straw poll of other parents, I think we're pretty darn lucky. The devil of sleeplessness and concomitant insanity and rage and desperate resignation has not bedevilled us, nope, not at all.

My new goal, as of this sentence, is to get in a nap - hang on, not to nap, but to allow myself to sleep when sleepy at some point this weekend. I am going to Canberra for the wedding of a close friend - maybe too close. No, not too close after all.

Canberra, where I'll allow myself to sleep when sleepy. I'm excited!

I am still

unable to judge your present feelings, as to past events. I am a widow. I just feel so goddanged inspired. That's why I'm letting it all hang out - so to speak - for the very first time. I love. I sing. I dance, often while wearing clothes inside out. Have you ever ironed your clothes inside out? It hurts! Now that that's been said and done, we can all breathe easily. Pomegranate, Mr Neville? Do you love? Can you smell my whole life? I have been tricked, hoodwinked and I cannot believe it! A cautionary tale indeed.
~~~
There once was a man named Begbagda
he always poke his mind
and wished that he'd be wined
that's why they called him DeChauncey Begbagda
~~~
day in day out
i smile not pout
cause you're inside my brain
a vision splendy
you are trendy
quite unlike john wayne
what a hottie
yummy body
the most lovely face
how is it
that this here twit
is even in the race?
tell me that you like me
and i'll sigh a deeply smile
tell me that you love me
and i'll name our first son Gile-
s

Finding joy in a moments

It's amazing how relaxed a man can be after a single glass of wine. These days I not only don't drink much, I don't desire to drink much. It's not a frustrated feeling, just an acknowledgment of the reality of having a supercute three and a bit month old baby. But tonight, it's the end of the week, a big week, and the wife and I are having a glass of wine.

From time to time I wonder about the good life, or the good moment. I'm enjoying this one now, even though I didn't plan or predict it, or maybe because of that. Once again, I get the feeling that the minute you start searching - and hoping to find - you're lost (searching for the pleasure of it is a different thing).

Here's to calling the search off.

By the way, I keep getting the urge to let fly with some massive cursewords at inappropriate times. As above, not out of frustration, just my own silly sense of humour.

public transport observations

1. there's an inexhaustible supply of ineligible L-bus hailers
2. there's an inexhaustible supply of heartless bus drivers
3. you can count on seeing someone run for the bus/train before too long
4. you can never quite tell which emotions will be invoked by seeing someone run and miss. sometimes schadenfreude, sometimes bellylaughter, sometimes deep sadness, sometimes frustration.
5. you can count on someone unnecessarily running at strathfield train station. i find this both amusing and incredible frustrating. no, there's no train there, so you don't need to push past everyone and sprint faster than you've ever done in your life and if you just poked your head up you wouldn't need to sprint all the way to the platform before realising all of this. i do understand the anxiety induced by having your view of the platforms obstructed by going underground from one platform to the next.
   
6. the space dimensions of a train will always make it a different ride compared to a bus. you got levels, you got places to hide and hide trash, you got multiple carriages separated by flirt with death. trains are much more likely to be dreamt of than buses for these reasons and others.
   
7. sometimes i understand why people sit at the edge of a vacant seat, but mostly i loathe folk like that
8. very rarely i understand why people don't move down the back of the bus, but pretty much all the time i shake my head at people like that.
9. many people are so anxious about missing their stop.
10. people never talk to each other on public transport
    

The only way is to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living

Buzz Holling paraphrased on ecosystem and social collapse

I like it!

Definitionism

The tendency to excessively define (and occasionally thereby create) things, so as to bring them under control and demonstrate one's superior understanding of the world.

With apologies to D Coupland.

Imaginary wages

Imaginary wages war. Real wages. Fantasy land on downtime. 9 to 5 he said. He told me. Cody. Imaginary wages war. There for all to see, and them to ignore. Still there some thirty years on. The moment I was born, I never thought I'd live to see 30. Still don't. Fenestration collapse, two more to follow. Seed funds. Take it to the bank. Drift Floaters. Everyone's throwing this expression around and I don't even know what it means, though it sounds good. Wait for it. Foam.

Marketing

"The industry's regular task is to create uninformed consumers who will make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories."

Noam Chomsky, you've done it again.

1000 snuggles deep

When I first met him it was funny, because I was his daughter. But I was still admittedly nervous. We went upstairs for coffee. Things began to ravel from there, much as they always do when one refuses to relax the sphinctre of life. Sceptre of death. He's just a snappy dresser.

I grew up wearing suits. I tried jeans but I never felt comfortable as my testes often got caught in the back pocket. Go figure. Everybody knows that the good guys lost, by the way. Stoudemire, Bosh and Davis.

Winning through number crunching

In this day and age, it’s become almost passe for journalists, fans and players alike to be able to analyse in-depth the statistics from theirs and other players’ games. We take this for granted, yet this information and sophisticated analysis just wasn’t possible a few short years ago.

I guess it’s just slowly dawning on me now the enormous potential out there, if the tools are right. Check out the brilliant resultsfromtennis.com.

I’ve just done a fairly basic run, from the perspective of a commentator preparing for a big grand slam match.

And the results, allowing me to appear quite the well prepared commentating genius:

rage against the commentators

Well it certainly was a fairytale performance from Jelena Dokic at the Australian Open. She won our hearts and took us on a rollercoaster ride of emotions. It's fair to say that there hasn't been an Open this full of drama and intrigue since last year.

God I hate some of the crap that commentators come up with. First off is Alicia Molik, who is putting on a truly awful audition for a long term commentary position. Lucky for her she's only competing against Johanna Griggs, Tracy Austin and Casey Bevilaqua. Did you see her post-match interview of Dinara Safina?

Molik: How many off seasons have you had?
Safina: [blank look]
Molik: How many off seasons have you had?
Safina: What?
Molik:[thinking to herself: god, i'm asking her a supremely incisive question, that demonstrates my ability as a commentator, and she can't speak english]
Molik: [tugging collar] what i'm trying to say is.. er...ah geez... you look great, i mean when i played you, you were a fat piece of shit. What's your secret?
Safina: Shut the fuck up

The other thing I hate is when an Australian player loses and their performance is called 'brave'. This is especially reserved for really bad players, really bad losses and women players. Oh my fuck, that Jelena Dokic is so brave! If I had to go into the forest at night I'd want her with me. Did you see how she made 45 unforced errors? She's so brave. Can you imagine if Lleyton Hewitt's loss to Fernando Gonzalez was referred to as brave? Or Pat Rafter's loss to Ivanisevic in the Wimbledon final? C'mon, what is that?! Let's all try to use brave far more frequently and inappropriately. By the way, I thought Del Potro's loss to Federer was very brave.

Lastly (for now) I hate it that tennis commentators, more than cricket or league or football commentators, always give advice to the losing players. Dokic really needs to stop going for the lines. She needs controlled aggression. If I was her, that's what I'd do, and it would make me win and beat Safina. I don't know why she's not doing it. Just call the game, give us a little bit of insight due to your years on the tour, and leave it at that. BASTARDS!

Dokic should have won

A tribute to Philip Glass

Gosper Motion at its best

well i've ixhumed some fine, fine science writing and had my buddy Artful Science post it at his blog. If you want to read it, please read it
- Cure cancer? Sure can sir!
- Rethinking health promotion
- Response to green genes

~~~

We all know that Channel Nine's exciting infrared HotSpot technology allows us to detect cricketers with boners. But have they ever used Snickometer to discover the sound a ball makes when it strikes the batsman's box?

My idea of a good time

But first - shock! - there's a new post o'er at artful science. It concerns my strange and enlightening journey on the path to newborn vitamin k administration.

But second - my idea of a good time!

I have in my smoking hot beautiful hands the following books from the UNSW library

Metamagical themas: questing for the essence of mind and pattern
Perhaps my favourite work of Hofstadter's. It contains a real mix of essays and articles, covering nuclear armageddon, superrationality, analogy as the crux of creativity, nonsense (Arthur a grammar!) and many, many more. I'll own this one day.

Schrodinger's kittens and the search for reality
Physics populariser extraordinaire John Gribbin writes about light, and quantum theory, transactions and reality. If time slows down as you speed up, and if it approaches zero as you approach the speed of light, what would it be like to travel at the speed of light? Time wouldn't pass, right? So there's essentially zero time (and zero distance) between the source and receiver of a photon, even if the source is a quasar 13 billion years from your eye.

The origins of the future: ten questions for the next ten years
Gribbin again, I was hoping for more of his magic but, crucially, updated. I lost interest after the first chapter, which was actually a great introduction to the state of quantum theory/matter/waves/particles as it stands today. It's pretty fucking weird, but utterly fascinating.

Quantum psychology: how brain software programs you and your world
I picked this because it was the only title by Robert Anton Wilson they had. It's not bad, I've come across many of these ideas in Cosmic Trigger and Illuminati, plus I've realised that a lot of what he says is strange common sense (to my mind anyway), yet he phrases it in a very distinctive style, one many would call new age or oddball or dissenting or something like that. Well, the fact that he feels compelled to use the word quantum shows you what I mean. For example, perception is not a passive process of signal receipt, but active interpretation of signals based on current (and past) brain/mind states. We don't 'see reality', we weave it, and he ties this to ideas from quantum theory.

Consider a spherical cow: a course in environmental problem solving
I originally looked up a separate ecological statistics book, but this one looked far more interesting. I needed it for a small project I'm working on at the moment. A bit deluded to think I could catch up on my mostly forgotten maths, but damn it I don't care.

Ecological data
Same project as above. This caught my eye because of it's good overview of methods in ecology, including metadata and geographical information systems.

A primer of statistics: data analysis, probability, inference
My textbook from first year statistics. Great little book, starting with box plots and working up to chi square tests and some nifty algebra.

Regional climate change and variability: impacts and responses
This one could be the key to my little project, but I haven't gotten past the introduction!

Climate change 2007: the physical science basis: contribution of Working Group 1 to the Fourth Ass
Who ever heard of so many colons?! Otherwise known as the IPCC report, I'd like to check out some of the nittier grittier parts of this. Slick production. Weighty tome. Tome.

Subjective probability: the real thing
Title appealed to me, sadly the real thing hasn't corresponded to my hopes, yay my dreams. Guy writes with flair, but it ain't no good.

Ice, mud and blood: lessons from climates past
Popular science type entry for my mini-project, the first few chapters go into some interesting ideas about what the planet was like in the past. Dere was some big ice ages (Snowball earth) and some hot, hot times. Not quite sure why I put it down.

Climate code red: the case for emergency action
I saw one of the authors speak last year, and he was convinced we need to assume a war footing. Forget this 0.01% of the economy spent on climate change, we need to spend 30 or 40 or 50%. He was particularly grim about the fate of the arctic.

It's all for sale: the control of global resources
Without having read it, I reckon this is the type of book that should be compulsory reading in, say late high school. A rundown of all the natural resources that are exploited - by whom, for whom, how much etc.

Alternative lyrics - christina aguilera's fighter

Makes me that much harder
Probably last a little bit longer
Makes my schlong much wider
Thanks for giving me Viagra

Thanks to Channel Ten for endlessly playing part of this song as they promote their programme 'a smallest winner'