More Olympics. Sorta.

Australia has won another medal, this time Gold to Lydia Lassila for the Freestyle Skiing.

This puts Australia in 17th place on the medal tally board:

That's not fantastic, but still, that’s better than 18th place. So in other words:

I still haven’t watched a single minute of events yet, so don’t have much else to report. A guy at work told me that American Snowboarder Shaun White did a triple Arial McFuckburger or some shit, so that sounds pretty cool I guess. Besides that, looks like the Olympics finish on the 28th. The final event is the Men’s Ice Hockey – USA vs Canada. That would actually be pretty good, but I’m not getting up 6am (or whenever) Monday morning to watch it.

This post is light on material, so let me direct you to additional random antics from the interwebs:

Here is a wonderfully serious answer to a stupid question.


Here is a short film by Derrick Comedy called Don’t Jerk Off to This:



And on a final note, don’t fuck with this little girl:

Canangry

I always thought Canada was a nice country, full of pleasant people. They seemed harmless enough. Which makes their antics at the Olympics all the more confusing.

First up we had the violent protest against capitalism on the opening day (I’m still confused about the motive there. Stop all this ice skating and give money to Ethiopia? Hippies suck no matter which continent they’re on).

Then Dale Begg Smith took to the podium to collect a silver medal amongst jeers and boos (Smith left Canada as a teenager, as they wanted him to give up his business and concentrate on skiing. He moved to Australia, where the training was less constrictive). Followed by a barrage of twitter venom and even Wikipedia hacks.

"Way to be a complete tool Dale Begg-Smith. You got shown up on your home soil....TRAITOR!," allanetmanski tweeted.

Now this story, courtesy of yahoo News:

A Danish curler was brought to tears after a boisterous Canadian crowd intentionally distracted her during crucial shots in her team's match against the home nation. With the crowd stomping and making deafening noise, Denmark skip Madeleine Dupont missed two potentially game-winning shots and tearfully blamed the fans for it afterward. Canada won the match 5-4 in an extra end.

I’m not sure what is going on at the Winter Games. As far as I can tell, it’s a bunch of skiing, sequin covered skating and the odd extreme sport. Why are the Canadians treating it like they’re at a cage fight? I’m sure the Ice Hockey players couldn’t care less, but some of the more genteel participants are getting caught off guard. Are there spectators who have been waiting four years to let loose with their practiced Curling jibes?

Okay Eskimo, on the count of three go attack those filthy foreigners ...

I’ll stop ragging on the Canucks now, just found it all a bit curious was all. No new medals for Australia as of writing. Kazakhstan has joined the Winter Olympics table with a Silver medal. Wait, what?

Winter Olympics Update

Thought we’d take a break from my 2009 ramblings for a post on the Winter Olympics. In case you were wondering, I have six posts left for the 2009 recap. I should be finished these by Mid March, and if you want an update on this current year of 2010 so far: Haiti is fucked, and JD Salinger is dead.

The 2010 Winter Olympics have been running for about nine days, a fact which I almost forgot. I was reminded today when my workmates were chatting about the poor bastard who died on the luge track, and about our first and second Australian medals. Apparently Channel Nine have been showing a heap of coverage, but I hadn’t seen any of it. My TV is for DVD viewing and the odd bit of GTAIV when I feel like doing a burnout on a stripper’s head with a stolen motorbike. I’ve made the odd journey here and there into terrestrial television to see if it’s as bad as I remember it, and have been rewarded with something like Celebrity Dish Washing for my efforts. It’s that, or Two and a Half Men reruns. No shit, I have watched minimal TV in the last 12 months, and still have managed to see that episode where Charlie gets tricked into buying a car from Jenny McCarthy five times.

But I hate to see a major sporting event come and go without me throwing at least a few words on screen for the shoddy blog, so I switched on the TV when I got home from work. As soon as I saw Eddie McGuire, I switched it off again. I think I caught about 2.4 seconds, which isn’t enough source material for an article, so onto the net I went.

Jesus, the first few days of the Winter Olympics seemed like a never ending shit fight. First the death of the Georgian Slider in training. 100s of vigilantes caused a detour in the torch relay during a violent protest. Then the Opening Ceremony didn’t go to plan when their spectacular torch lighting mechanism suffered from a glitch, and only three of the four pillars rose to the Olympic cauldron. Finally, due to a logistical error a dozen orphans were lowered into a pit full of hungry Polar Bears.

I spent a full week rinsing my eyes with Saline solution after catching only ten minutes of the Beijing Opening ceremony, so decided to give the Vancouver one a miss. Apparently they had such Canadian luminaries as Wayne Gretzky and Steve Nash lighting the torch. Wait, Steve Nash? The Basketballer? Fair enough Gretzky, a champion Ice Hockey player who managed the Gold Medal Winning team in 2002. What the fuck has Basketball got to do with the Winter Olympics? Are they that starved for Winter sport champions they can’t pull a few out of bed to light a friggin’ flame?

Speaking of random Canadians, I was on the Winter Olympics page when I saw an advert promoting Vancouver, using Kim Cattrall as the Spokesperson. I didn't get a screen capture at the time, but I thought it was a peculiar campaign. Come to Vancouver, we have chips with mayonnaise...and 60 year old whores.

The web site also gave me my first glimpse of the Olympic slogan for these games:

I chucked that phrase into google image source, it gave me this:

The website is truly a page of wonders, I sat there staring at the Vancouver mascots for a good ten minutes, trying to work out just what the fuck they were supposed to be:



Sumi is "an animal spirit who wears the hat of the orca whale, flies with the wings of the mighty thunderbird and runs on the furry legs of the black bear."

Quatchi is a hockey-happy sasquatch.

And Miga is a sea bear. Which is an Orca that turns into a bear when on land.

It seems that we have to come up with some kooky combinations to create original mascots these days. Here is my design for the 2036 Adelaide Winter Olympics Mascot:

Mr Chotley: A Squark (half Squirrel half Shark) who wears a bow tie made out of frozen peas.

Still, the biggest event at these Games has been the death of 21-year-old slider Nodar Kumaritashvili, it seemed everybody and their dog were completely shocked at his death. Who knew flying down a metre wide icy slope at 100kmh on a board smaller than a coffee table could be dangerous? The event not only put a shadow over proceedings, but also gave some competitors pause for reflection on their own lives. Eight hours of training a day for four years for an event lasting less than a minute, Jesus – is it really worth it?

My favourite sports quote so far this year has come from this Winter Olympics, and it’s going to be a hard one to top. Usually interviewing Sports personalities is a cliché ridden affair baring tedious fruit, but check out Argentinean Slider Ruben Gonzalez, who just realised at his fourth Olympic games appearance that he is well and truly fucking over it.

”I realised at the Opening Ceremony last night that this wasn’t for me anymore. I didn’t know how to celebrate, so at one point, when I would normally be hanging off every moment, I went outside and got a hotdog. This is my last Olympics. A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have said that. I wanted to keep going. Yesterday it gave me perspective. There are other things to do in life.”

God bless Gonzalez for providing a brutally honest bit of speech amongst the sea of teary eyed saccharine diarrhoea these kind of tournaments usually bring. For some reason it reminded me of a quote from Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

“..with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

Anyway, here is Australia’s Medal Count

Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 0

Gold was for the women’s Snowboarding half pipe, Silver for the men’s Moguls (which as far as I can tell is “lumpy skiing”). Australia has been competing in the Winter Olympics since 1936, but didn’t win a medal until 1994 (bronze for the short track relay). Our best result between 1936 and 1994 was a 6th place in a 10km speed skating race. Unsurprising we are crap at winter sports, considering our country is essentially a giant frying pan full of sand.

More on the Winter Olympics in a week or so.

Your oxymoron for today is ”Saccharine Diarrhoea”.

S & H

The next update is very close, I can feel it’s hot musky breath on the back of my neck.

In the mean time, go kill a minute or two at the British Pub Name Generator.

And next time you’re in the UK, make sure to drop into my new pub “The Swan & Hostage”. It’s an authentic British pub experience, complete with unfriendly Polish chicks behind the bar, a wide range of sports on the TV (provided you like Soccer, and by Soccer we mean the top four teams) and original oak floors that stink of vomit and stale beer since the smoking laws came in.

Our pub features a fantastic bar menu including fish and chips, pie and chips, steak and chips, chips and chips, and our unique “Sushi” (chips carved to look like fish).

If you can name Football managers from the 1970s, you will love our Sunday afternoon Pub Quizzes, and if you don’t mind getting glassed in the face, try your hand at our fortnightly pool competitions. For those fearless punters after a truly blood curdling experience, try your hand at our Tuesday night “Murderous Music Challenge” – a series of drunk British Women will get up and sing Karaoke while you are forced to sit and listen, and if you can last longer than a minute without blocking your ears or crying, you win a free pint.

The Swan & Hostage
32 Bumsweetie Road
(Between ASDA and the stray dogs home)
Shroppinghamshirevilleshire

Open every day
Noon until really late (11pm)

2009 part 5: Swine Flu

Swine Flu rocked the world for a while there. The disease is still infecting people at an accelerated rate (at the time of writing there are 1.4 million cases including 24,000 recorded deaths attributed to the disease worldwide), but you don’t hear about it as much anymore because, well, we all kind of got bored with it.

I was running a leader board of swine flu tallies for a while there including multiple posts mocking the disease, but then I found out about a mate’s mother dying due to complications brought on by the disease, so decided to put that series to rest.

This final take on the subject will include a list of the 10 most afflicted countries (from stats that were updated on the 9th of feb), just to show how swine flu numbers have leapt dramatically in a few countries. Australia was a front-runner for the swine flu epidemic, but now it looks like we will drop out of the top 10 within a month or two. Nice to see China finally stop lying about their numbers. Too bad north Korea doesn’t follow suit – South Korea is reporting over 100,000 cases, while the North is reporting 50. Yeah right. Even Micronesia owned up to 79.

GERMANY: 215,881
PORTUGAL: 166,922
CHINA: 120,940
SOUTH KOREA: 108,234
BELGIUM: 76,973
MEXICO: 69,824
BRAZIL: 58,178
UKRAINE: 57,862
USA: 44,640
AUSTRALIA: 37,642

In the last few months I’ve read of Swine Flu II scares, and how a group of vets caught Horse Flu. No news of Squirrel AIDs as of writing, but I’m quite happy to leave these animal flus to the annals of 2009.


Next post: The 2009 Neck Up Awards part 1.

2009 part 4: Climate Change, the Environment and Green Issues

Who gives a fuck?

2009 part 3: 10 Celebrity Deaths

I wanted to peruse a comprehensive list of deaths, so first went to Wikipedia’s “notable deaths of 2009” article, but those clowns are insane. They had over 300 names for January alone, and I don’t really consider a dude who won a Bronze medal for cycling in 1936 as memorable.

I’ve ranked these deaths in order of impact from ”Who gives a fuck?” to “Holy shit, they died? Really? Oh well. Who gives a fuck?”. Of course your own list may look a little different, if you’re a 60 year old American, you might have given two shits that Ted Kennedy carked it for example.

Here be 9 persons and 1 animal who shuffled off our mortal coil last year, join me as I trivialise decades of their lives and achievements into a sentence or two.

Dom Deluise, 75

Actor, Blazing Saddles.

Cause of death: complications from diabetes and high blood pressure

Bea Arthur, 86

Old dude chick from Golden Girls

Cause of death: cancer

Farrah Fawcett, 62

Actress. Possibly batshit insane.

Cause of death: Anal cancer.

John Hughes, 59

Director. If you don’t know his films, then you weren’t alive in the 1980s. (Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club , Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off )

His last film was Curly Sue in 1991, and then he disappeared from the public eye entirely in 1994. He was a farmer in his last years in Illinois, that’s random.

Cause of Death: Cardiac Arrest.

Dakota Fanning, 15

Actress.

Cause of death: Died in early December when a semi trailer carrying pitch forks toppled onto her in a freak accident.

Sam the Koala

Icon of hope during the Victorian bushfires.

Cause of death: Koalaymidia

David Carradine, 72

Old school actor, but you’re probably familiar with him from his surge of work in recent years. He’s been in 26 films and 11 TV shows since 2000, most notably as Bill in Kill Bill and trying to steal Jason Statham’s heart (literally) in Crank 2.

Cause of death: Unusual Circumstances (ie burping the worm with a belt round his neck).

Brittany Murphy, 32

Actress. Made famous by roles in Girl Interrupted, 8 Mile and Sin City.

Cause of death: pneumonia, with secondary factors of iron-deficiency anemia and multiple drug intoxication.

Brittany Murphy was 2009’s traditional yearly “Actor fucking around with their medication, to disastrous results”, though her death wasn’t as much of a shock as Heath Ledger’s. Ledger went on to win a posthumous Oscar, while Murphy’s last half dozen films were direct to DVD releases.

Her husband Simon Monjack was completely devastated by her death, and it was no wonder, the dude was punching well above his weight. Murphy often looked like a crack whore that didn’t know what day it was – but could scrub up nicely when she made an effort. Meanwhile, Monjack looked like a spruiker from a Bulgarian Strip Club.

Patrick Swayze, 57

Actor. Fuck you if you don’t know who he is.

Cause of death: Pancreatic Cancer.

Not really a shock death, as Swayze was on his death bed for quite some time. Swayze is one of those dudes nobody gives a fuck about (check out his last 14 films on imdb, you may find them in the bargain bin at Blockbuster if you’re lucky) until he dies, and then we’ll have a nonstop barrage of clips of his work. Well, his work from 20 years ago anyway. I still think every bouncer should watch Roadhouse as the bible for proper bar room security etiquette.

Michael Jackson, 50

Singer.

The guy who everybody considered a joke, up until he died, then everybody missed him immensely. This is the death you’ll still be hearing about a decade from now, as court battles and inquests continue. He’s the Lady Di for the 21st century.

DJs continue to squeeze Jackson songs into their sets to relieve of us of the terrors of modern music. A Jackson song here and there helped me through the pure horror of Ace of Base in my uni days, built up my resistance to Usher in my London days, and now provide me with a vaccine to the gential wart that is Lady Gaga.

Our grandchildren will be getting jiggy to Billie Jean, during breaks from the war against the I-Robots.

Next up: Climate Change, the Environment and Green Issues.

2009 part 2: Those Effin' Pandas

2009 produced it’s fair share of new celebrities. People who were once unknown but by year’s end had become household names. Adelaide’s two biggest stars for the year weren’t people, but were in fact Giant Pandas: Wang Wang and Funi.

Wang Wang (the male) is on the left, Funi (the female) is on the right. No wait, Funi is on the left and Wang Wang is on the right. No...I was right the first time, Wang Wang on the...Fuck it, I’ll give Wang Wang a Male wig and Funi a Female one so we can tell them apart.

Better.

What follows is a timeline of notable events in the Adelaide Panda Phenomenon.

2007: Chinese President Hu Jintao offers two pandas to Australia as a goodwill gesture during a visit to Australia.

When Hu Jintao offers pandas, you best take them.

It is decided that Adelaide Zoo will house the panda enclosure. This is a Zoo where a 75 year old Flamingo was nearly beaten to death in 2008, and a bored Orangutan simply climbed out of his enclosure and went for a walk in 2009. We also own an epileptic Lion. If the director of the Zoo turns out to be David Lynch, I would not be surprised.

The pandas chosen for the Australian adventure are Wang Wang and Funi. “Funi” means “lucky one” which is kind of nice, I guess. “Wang Wang” means “net net”, which makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

June 2008: Thailand learns of Australia’s impending panda extravaganza, and tries to steal their thunder by releasing pictures of their own family of pandas. Some notable animal experts doubt the validity of their claim.

January 2009: With news of a late 2009 opening of the panda enclosure, the panda news machine starts to heat up.

April 2009: The panda news hits full swing, as Wang Wang and Funi grace the front covers of South Australian newspapers (the Sunday Mail and the Advertiser) and magazines.

May 2009: The general public starts to tire of panda news.

June 2009: Wang Wang and Funi are declared the most important addition to the Adelaide Zoo, since the extremely rare Whore-Turtle “Francine” of 1993.

July 2009: The reveal date edges closer, as the media ups the ante with even more coverage of the panda story. Front page news gives way to four page spreads and fold outs. Radio stations get on the band wagon with promotions and gimmicks, including triple M’s mind blowingly clever wordplay:

August 2009: The general public starts to choke on the saturation of panda news, and their fatigue gives way to a slowly simmering hatred.

September 2009: Panda merchandising goes into overdrive. Consumers could now get their hands on:

The Wang Wang and Funi Book.

The Wang Wang and Funi dolls.

The Wang Wang and Funi Commemorative stamps.

The Wang Wang and FuniBoard Game.

I’m not sure what this is. Backscratcher maybe?

October 2009: The Wang Wang and Funi Christmas float is revealed to the public.

Early December: Almost every man, woman, and child within the limits of the greater Adelaide area have well and truly had a gutful of “those fucking pandas”.

November 25th: (From the LA Times): According to Zoos SA president Heather Caddick, the pandas are expected to generate more than $600 million (Australian) for the South Australia state economy during their time here, with an anticipated 262,000 foreign visitors and 1.3 million Australians visiting Adelaide to see the animals.

That’s a lot of cash, more than enough to cover the $1 million a year hire of the pandas, and the $8 million it took to build the enclosure. Kind of makes me wonder why there are so many charities and fund raisers set up for the panda cause. It also makes me wonder why foreign visitors would fly all the way to Adelaide just to see the pandas, it’s not something we’re usually synonymous with.

Mexico, France and Germany also have giant pandas in their zoos. I bet you didn‘t know that. And if you did, did you ever sit down and think “I would love to visit Paris. Check out the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the pandas....”?

Probably not.

November 13th: The float is included in the annual christmas pageant, as well as two actors in panda suits seen here with the King and Queen of the pageant. Staring at this picture makes me wish I had some Shrooms.

November 28th 2009: The fucking pandas finally arrive in Adelaide. Their plane lands by a runway lined with giant plastic pandas, and well wishers who stopped snorting glue long enough to put together welcome signs.

December 11th: The pandas are revealed for the first time to a lucky group at a high society fund raising dinner at the zoo. Tickets went for a hefty $1000 a head, and it was unclear whether you actually got to fuck the pandas for that price. Wang Wang and Funi were welcomed to Australia by Governor-General Quentin Bryce (who wikipedia tells me is actually a chick), and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Junsai declared that he already had some great names worked out for the future offspring. This was good news, as usually baby animals in the Adelaide Zoo are named by school kids, in competitions promoted by McDonalds or other fast food establishments. This process can lead to some embarrassments, such as in June last year when a retarded kid by the name of Eric won the opportunity to name the new cheetah cub.

It’s a moot point anyway, as a panda cub may not even eventuate. The mating season window for a giant panda is exceptionally small, with the female having an estrous cycle lasting only 2 – 3 days, which occurs only once a year. Half the time the female produces a cub, only to sit on the fucking thing and kill it anyway. If she has two, she will abandon one and leave it to die. The father plays no role in raising the young. Is there any wonder this fucking species is endangered?

I’ll stop writing for a second, because cutting and pasting from wikipedia is producing far more amusing results:

”Initially the primary method of breeding Giant Pandas in captivity was by artificial insemination, as they seemed to lose their interest in mating once they were captured. This led some scientists to try extreme methods such as showing them videos of giant Pandas mating and giving the males Viagra.”

Indeed.

The Berlin Zoo has a panda named Bao Bao that has not mated in 25 years, despite various attempts at hooking him up. We’ve got Wang Wang and Funi on loan for less than half of that time scale.

I wouldn’t be painting the panda cub nursery anytime soon.

February 1st 2010: Uncle Beef writes a post about Wang Wang and Funi.


FOOTNOTE: Here is a quick guide for the non-South Australians explaining a few entities you may not be familiar with.

The Sunday Mail: Our perennial weekend news paper. As a whole, South Australians generally don’t take a shining to anything exciting, dangerous or controversial. Low key and up beat is the order of the day, and the Sunday Mail represents this ideology.

Front page news will include a picture of school kids celebrating their perfect High School graduation scores, a retired footballer celebrating the birth of his third child, or a photo of a disgruntled pensioner in her front yard leaning against her gate – angry at the local hoons who drive their cars late at night. If you explore the paper deeper, you may find a small article about an earthquake or a presidential assassination somewhere on page 37.

I had to give the Sunday Mail kudos a few months ago though. Usually I scroll through the paper with deepening apathy (I read it because they usually keep a copy in our staff canteen), but they actually got an emotional response out of me. In a late December edition, there was a whole section on top fives for the year (movies, tv shows etc). One writer put together a list of “Top 5 things we are sick of”, and Wang Wang and Funi were included on that list as a pair of overhyped, overrated pandas. This was after a full year of Sunday Mail front pages and two page spreads reporting on the animals. I physically frowned at the hypocrisy on display.

It’s not all bad with the Sunday Mail though. Due to it’s many pages, it is ideal for spreading out on the kitchen floor when you are toilet training your domestic pets. It also makes a decent makeshift club when rolled up tightly, and ideal for hitting homeless people with.

The Advertiser: is pretty much identical to the Sunday mail, but as it is a daily publication, it is less formidable as a weapon. I found a homeless woman going through the cans in my bin today, and it took five swings of my rolled up Advertiser before she ran off crying. It would have only taken one swing with the Sunday mail.

Triple M: is that laborious radio channel you’ve probably caught your parents listening to. Though you may not have Triple M in your city, you would most definitely have a similar beast on your radio dial. It’s that station with the vanilla hosts who often do such “edgy” things as start Battle of the Sexes competitions whereby bored housewives are encouraged to ring up and talk about how badly their husbands snore. The hosts will embark on pointless conversations, until they run out of shit to say and then will literally look up jokes on the internet to tell (have you heard the latest Tiger Woods joke?? LOLZ!!!). The music consists of one cassette tape they bought in the late 80’s consisting of American Pie, Piano Man, Khe San, and half a dozen Crowded House tunes. They leave this album on repeat, breaking it up occasionally with commercials for local bakeries and car dealerships.

It’s piss.

The Christmas Pageant: Is an annual parade held down North terrace, and is the biggest of it’s kind in the world. The pageant has been running since 1933, and last year was led by Pogo the clown:

Because nothing says Christmas like a terrifying 20 foot clown.

The Governor General of Australia: This is more an explanation for the international readers. Australia is part of the Commonwealth, meaning we are under Britain’s wing. This means that we have to go to stupid wars happening thousands of miles away that having nothing to do with us. But to be fair, it also means bastards like me can go live and work in the UK for a few years. The Governor General (who is currently Quentin Bryce, a name that sounds half Reservoir Dogs, half The Power of One, but as I pointed out earlier, is actually a chick) is one of those useless figureheads Australia needs as a Commonwealth. Her responsibilities include hosting Dinners for pandas, playing online poker with the Queen once a week, and getting free Jamie Oliver cook books in the mail.

Thus end my panda post, which honestly turned out to be ten times longer than I was expecting. Next up: Celebrity Deaths of 2009. FUN!