tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68022927510111632892024-03-13T22:52:40.977-07:00We Need To Talk About ToddEleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.comBlogger195125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-82242071970085369292014-03-10T13:23:00.000-07:002014-03-10T13:24:53.569-07:00Canberra Raiders 2014: Die Harder<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My friend
supports the Broncos. This automatically renders him incapable of understanding
the slaughterhouse of the soul struggle of supporting a second-tier team. He is
also a Queenslander. Frankly, seeing these sentiments strung together on a screen
like this is making me question how we are friends at all. Thin ice!
<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyways,
because no discussion of the Raiders is complete without reference to the
astonishingly innovative ways in which they hemorrhage young talent, and
because I still look back on said hemorrhaged talent with a honey-glazed glow I
guess I was moaning some wretched sentiment regarding Carney or Monaghan or
Ferguson or possibly, depending on the extent to which he had already inflamed me
with his airy upper-echelon assuredness, Travis Waddell. I can’t remember the details
exactly. It was only two days ago but my mind has a tendency to slip a gear
when it comes to the Raiders. Mental health experts would have me believe that
this, much like my night terrors, is a side effect from suffering under the
sustained weight of terminal failure and disappointment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Oh,’ he said, with the inane breeziness
common to breakfast TV presenters, ‘you should be used to it by now.’ Of course,
this is exactly the type of innately annoying and unsympathetic thing a Bronco supporter
would say. Storm fans too, tenfold. The Gina Reinharts of the NRL. Totally out
of touch. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway. I
told him it never stops hurting. Because it doesn’t. But I enjoyed the sound
and sensation of saying something as arresting as this so I added an apocalyptic,
cinema-trailer-narrator-type element to my delivery – IT NEVER. STOPS. HURTING.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Because just
like life in general, there is always another punishment, another casual
outrage, another loss. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, so what. We die harder. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-58487079222169091752013-10-05T15:17:00.000-07:002013-10-05T15:17:52.202-07:00Regrettable Incidents Involving Tracksuits
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Has your
search for meaning in the NRL this year left you with feelings of futility, pointlessness,
and the creeping realisation that this time invested would probably have been
better spent searching for the colt from Old Regret? <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If so, forget
the grand final today. There’s nothing in that for us. What we need is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">relief.</i> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This brings
us, inevitably, to Blake Ferguson. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I normally
take pleasure in the psychological destruction of grown men but there is really
nothing pleasurable about watching someone who is too stupid to run their own
affairs fall into the ruinous hands of Sam Ayoub. It’s a total depressant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GnJdnTazGno/UlCPGt6o8zI/AAAAAAAAEf0/JZoEe62eahs/s1600/ispring+065.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GnJdnTazGno/UlCPGt6o8zI/AAAAAAAAEf0/JZoEe62eahs/s400/ispring+065.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When the
Daily Telegraph isn’t classily covering the case of a well-to-do white boy who
got a) a lot of ass and b) murdered, they do a little round-up of legal matters
which in theory profiles vaguely notable members of the public who run afoul of
the law but in reality functions as an installment-based chronicle of Lara
Bingle’s failed attempts to master the art of driving, basic sign reading, and
simultaneous driving and basic sign reading. Her efforts to overcome her
limitations appear to be ongoing. It’s a process. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway, they
did a little piece about Blake Ferguson. The Telegraph is as we all know a
subtle and nuanced newspaper not known for its dramatic flourishes but they
seemed to be suggesting that Blake Ferguson is a culturally illiterate imbecile
unsuited to performing everyday tasks - in this case, dressing himself – unsupervised.
</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wo9GkHEuPi0/UlCOm0FD8MI/AAAAAAAAEfs/sUiQBAV0h80/s1600/bf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Wo9GkHEuPi0/UlCOm0FD8MI/AAAAAAAAEfs/sUiQBAV0h80/s400/bf.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It was all
extremely cute. I mean, isn’t everything now? The cult of cute has colonised
contemporary consciousness, and mine, to such an extent that I find a
footballer who is abundantly unqualified to dress himself and stands accused of
drinking and touching cute. What can I say. I am a product of my times. I’m not
proud of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before they got to the cute, though, the
article led with a bold claim that there was a turn of phrase being used with increased
frequency in Sydney conversations: </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“That’s so rugby league.”</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Please. At
best, Joe Hildebrand made it up while he was microwaving his muffin in the tea room
or something. And let me ask you this, Joe. Are <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> able to enjoy a robust nocturnal social life in which you
manage not to glass, attack, insult or urinate on anyone? Yeh. I didn’t think
so.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“The expression refers to situations
where a person demonstrates an extreme lack of self-awareness or understanding
of potential consequences.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Think Todd Carney in a Canberra pub
without a urinal. That said, over to you Blake Ferguson.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">The item
goes on to describe the events taking place just prior to charges being laid
against Ferguson, when plans were being put in place to take him from the
Crowne Plaza in Coogee to Waverly police station. Ferguson’s only instructions,
apparently, were </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“dress appropriately.”</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> But when a group of managers and
legal types arrived at the hotel to pick Ferguson up, they found him wearing a
tracksuit, rather than a suit. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Further, </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“Law & Order understands it was not a matching tracksuit either.”<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Arrangements were made for Ferguson
to swap attire with a dark-suit wearing manager.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Some time later Ferguson was still
wearing a very white pair of socks. Law & Order contacted Ferguson’s lawyer
at the time, who said ‘As a general rule white socks should never be worn with
a suit unless you’re Michael Jackson.’”</span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></b> </div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rugby league
has a bad name already, so who really cares, but this article could well set back
public perception of the noble mismatched tracksuit a decade or more.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "Calibri","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">In any event, I sympathise with Blake.. I too
have been caught wearing a tracksuit in less than ideal circumstances. Like the
time when I answered a kno<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">ck on my
door that turned out to be my estranged father who I hadn’t seen in 16 or so
years. I was wearing a tracksuit then. Ugg boots, too. So rugby league. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">
</span></span><br />Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-48182607339003459642013-10-03T02:36:00.001-07:002013-10-03T20:19:02.711-07:00Breaking: I Feel Bad & Blame the NRL <br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">My mum called
and I told her I felt very bad, like shit, and she said she also felt very bad
and like shit. She asked me are you keeping up with your blog and I said no. She
asked me are you going to watch the grand final or not even bother and I said
yeah, I’ll watch it, and she asked who are you going for, the Roosters and I
said yeah, the Roosters and it’s hard to say but upon reflection maybe my reaction
wasn’t quite in line with the spectacle and scope of the occasion. I don’t know.
All I know is that I am adrift from my moorings and football is no longer my
psychic anchor. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Are these two
factors related? Whatever, it’s too late to find out. This is probably for the
best. My frame of mind is in no way right for another long and maddening year
of total involvement, total immersion. I cracked under the strain in June,
things still aren’t right.</span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I understand
that there are people who have maintained an abiding interest in the
machinations of the NRL and that despite it being rendered a flaccid imitation
of its former self they are still invested and interested in the cheap,
second-rate product that’s been passed off to them. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I had a
boyfriend and his mother was constantly disguising the cheap wine and cheap
milk she’d buy by decanting it into superior bottles. She was Sicilian and
overly concerned with appearances. She offered him $500 to cut off his dreadlocks
and when he refused, with extreme prejudice, she took me aside and offered me
$1000 to do it “while he sleep”. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The NRL is
watered-down liquor in a flashy bottle. It’s also sort of a simulacrum of
itself. Like how McDonalds sell you the picture of the burger, the burger as symbol,
not the actual burger, so that what you’re buying is effectively the imitation
of the idea? What we’re watching, or increasingly not watching as the case may
be, is an imitation of the idea. I find it extremely difficult to concentrate
on the cheap realities of the game under these conditions. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’ve been
forced to seek my exit from a world I find hostile and complicated elsewhere. In
gentle narcotics, mostly. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s
probably a problem. I’m suffering, WNTTAT is suffering, we are all suffering.
Except those who aren’t, of course. And good for them. I wouldn’t welcome them
into my home or anything, but good for them, the McDonalds eating fucks. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-65267636269812072152013-09-16T14:05:00.000-07:002013-09-16T14:22:55.848-07:00The Young & The Restless Raiders<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I understand
that blog wise I have – what is the correct terminology here – dropped the ball.
This ball dropping extends to all areas of my life. Whatever. Dropping balls is
as legitimate a lifestyle as any. Just ask the Raiders.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the event,
I actually blame the Raiders. Who doesn’t. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Raiders
were the one relationship I trusted to sustain, distract and comfort me in
times of uncertainty and I didn’t notice it happening at the time but at some
point during the season this relationship took a grievous turn toward
near-total apathy so that three months’ worth of incidents and machinations
failed to elicit any emotion or response from me at all but seeing the Raiders
describe Jarrod Croker as a “flashy” player on Facebook causes me to flip the
fuck out. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Setting
aside the season-spanning, serialised saga of ceaseless negativity, the Raiders
appear to have reached a new juncture in their grim narrative by categorising
Croker as a “flashy” player.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is what
they’ve come to. They are so parched of hope and devoid of talent that Croker
now rates as a flashy player.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ye Gods. Because
no offence to Jarrod but I register strong objections to this claim. Actually,
offence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He doesn’t
pass, he can’t tackle, and even if you don’t take into account the permanent
internal damage that missed kick in 2010 obviously inflicted he still looks
like he’s perpetually on the brink of a psychic meltdown and needs his mum. </span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Mb8YmxO8Z4/Ujduz_-vAiI/AAAAAAAAEbo/iB4Kd9Bzbhs/s1600/isep+071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="313" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Mb8YmxO8Z4/Ujduz_-vAiI/AAAAAAAAEbo/iB4Kd9Bzbhs/s400/isep+071.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is Croker holding back the beckoning abyss</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Leaving
aside his undiagnosed and chronic PTSD, the nice – not flashy, nice - thing about
Croker is that he has no desire to ever leave Canberra. He is HAPPY in Canberra.
He enjoys a FULL AND VIBRANT LIFE in Canberra. He didn’t even want to leave Goulburn
to move to Canberra and make grade because the carefully laid out roads alarmed
and overwhelmed him. There is something essentially decent about this,
especially in light of what has been happening at the Raiders for a long time but
was thrown into rude relief this year so that they are now what are referred to
in professional media circles as a “problem club”, which is also nice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PS7jbXOfBS0/UjdvH96fyhI/AAAAAAAAEbw/N5DlCdZGWVw/s1600/iau+029.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PS7jbXOfBS0/UjdvH96fyhI/AAAAAAAAEbw/N5DlCdZGWVw/s400/iau+029.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is Dugan signing with the Dragons</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course, the
professionals are right, but most of this year’s unpleasant ‘problems’ are representative
of a psychological syndrome at the Raiders that I notice has become steadily
and now suddenly worse as the years wear on – that of finding Canberra a
dissatisfying and dispiriting place to live and play in. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Canberra is
not going to change. Young and restless players are going to continue to find
themselves trapped in Sartre-like “huis clos” – a “no exit” hell of their own
making, and will continue to lose fans and alienate people by seeking or
forcing releases. </span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rz6igMB3NR0/UjdxVhpbVkI/AAAAAAAAEcY/7NYmVxZHx3o/s1600/iraids+018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rz6igMB3NR0/UjdxVhpbVkI/AAAAAAAAEcY/7NYmVxZHx3o/s400/iraids+018.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
Here is Blake being bad </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Short of
relocating the entire club to Perth I don’t know what can be done about this. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Performance-wise,
the Raiders veer between the passable and the incompetent. Off-field, they have
always maintained a relatively calm surface which has been ruptured at
obligingly spaced intervals by the sort of scandals that are better understood
if you keep a copy of the ACT’s criminal statutes handy and prominent.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The gradual
and then sudden unspooling of Todd Carney’s entire Canberra career, Joel
Monaghan being blown by a teammate’s dog, Josh Dugan confounding everyone by turning
out to be a total dickhead and Blake Ferguson making me so sad I can’t even bring
myself to mention him beyond this point on here are some of the more seismic
ruptures. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">See also: </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Coach Furner’s
sacking <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The senior
player revolt that led to Coach Furner’s sacking <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hemorrhaging
hundreds of points in a series of huge late season losses<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Suffering
the most catastrophic loss in club history – Storm 68 Raiders 4 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dropping from
a lofty ladder position to one lower than Clint Eastwood’s balls but still
higher than the Eels<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Papa Josh announcing
his plans to join the priesthood<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anthony
Milford’s attempts to avoid having to suffer the dreadful corrosive reality of
living in Canberra now that people outside of Canberra know his name<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Papa and
Milford going rogue and getting on the drink two days before their must win
match against the Warriors in Auckland which <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Papa
throwing up in their hotel corridor <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Letting Sam
Williams go and now facing the very real possibility of going from having too
many halves to no halves next year <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sandor Earl being
awarded the opportunity to explore his capacities for regret, despair and
banned substances outside of the NRL <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The death of
#Dorguson</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ricky Stuart<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kr4ik3SI61M/UjdyJrjtNAI/AAAAAAAAEcw/OS12VqDAUng/s1600/iraids+012.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kr4ik3SI61M/UjdyJrjtNAI/AAAAAAAAEcw/OS12VqDAUng/s400/iraids+012.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here are Papa and Milford being best friends</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></o:p></span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0wyyqN6ocV8/Ujdv-1p3LpI/AAAAAAAAEcA/zOcLqEsbzPY/s1600/iraids+013.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0wyyqN6ocV8/Ujdv-1p3LpI/AAAAAAAAEcA/zOcLqEsbzPY/s640/iraids+013.JPG" width="390" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
Here are Papa's shorts creeping into his crotch </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-flyLdbPbQBk/UjdxFP7nb6I/AAAAAAAAEcQ/lLuUOWrG3ks/s1600/iraids+015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-flyLdbPbQBk/UjdxFP7nb6I/AAAAAAAAEcQ/lLuUOWrG3ks/s400/iraids+015.JPG" width="263" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is Milford's hair<br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PJliBbwAQw4/Ujdxr0gmZEI/AAAAAAAAEcg/1cMPPcrHbZc/s1600/ijuly+017.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PJliBbwAQw4/Ujdxr0gmZEI/AAAAAAAAEcg/1cMPPcrHbZc/s400/ijuly+017.JPG" width="297" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is Blake being bae</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lHKdlEtiV1w/Ujd2OOaqDoI/AAAAAAAAEdE/nJDCNhunX_M/s1600/tumblr_me1itnEfyR1qj7wrpo2_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="361" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lHKdlEtiV1w/Ujd2OOaqDoI/AAAAAAAAEdE/nJDCNhunX_M/s640/tumblr_me1itnEfyR1qj7wrpo2_500.gif" width="640" /></a></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UNy8F0XUQ3U/Ujd13wqS4fI/AAAAAAAAEc8/BGXxvZ7Q8Bg/s1600/tumblr_me1itnEfyR1qj7wrpo1_500.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-UNy8F0XUQ3U/Ujd13wqS4fI/AAAAAAAAEc8/BGXxvZ7Q8Bg/s640/tumblr_me1itnEfyR1qj7wrpo1_500.gif" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is everyone who has anything to do with the Raiders</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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</div>
</span><br />
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</div>
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</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-74792284114945961392013-08-17T16:18:00.003-07:002013-08-17T16:43:01.483-07:00Is This How Britney Felt <br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I just typed
the words <em>my interest in this season has
collapsed like a </em>and could go no further which is an actual perfect
reflection of my absence of interest and another indication that the brain
numbing tedium of it all is getting to me which is notable because there are
few things I love more than a good hard brain numbing.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J0qAHdVIo34/UhAKJpmoK-I/AAAAAAAAEbY/zG8NCTKjDRI/s1600/burn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-J0qAHdVIo34/UhAKJpmoK-I/AAAAAAAAEbY/zG8NCTKjDRI/s400/burn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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</div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Nothing much interesting happens
anymore because it has been determined that interesting things may alienate
fans except a shift in focus has occurred whereby talk is less about fans and
more about mums and dads and ugly eyeless little attempts to appeal to these
mums and dads have rendered the game a colourless and flaccid imitation of its
former self in kind of the same way that the Coalition and the ALP have reduced
themselves to wrung-out and barely recognisable imitations of the parties they
once were by focusing exclusively on appealing to the dim and pliant middle but
still expecting loyalty from their traditional supporter bases after
systematically neutralising every ideological difference that ever
distinguished one from the other in the first place and despite practicing the
modern art of apathy just existing amid all this lying dullness and cancerous
bullshit is a devastating drain on the senses and spirit and is it any wonder I
get sick just from being alive no not really <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>actually it’s a wonder I’m alive at all </span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></i></span> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GzDna-0mbgg/UhADfOA7ccI/AAAAAAAAEbA/3DRX7wkR5cA/s1600/probably.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GzDna-0mbgg/UhADfOA7ccI/AAAAAAAAEbA/3DRX7wkR5cA/s640/probably.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"></span></i><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-53164983760991564472013-07-25T18:05:00.002-07:002013-07-25T18:08:30.191-07:00Raiders v. Dugan - Judgment Day<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Spending
more time than is probably healthy suckled up to the Dugan tit? You’ve come to
the right place. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Tv7Mr4hOepQ/UfHJi3Td-BI/AAAAAAAAEaQ/KLi3dMNANb8/s1600/ipie+112.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Tv7Mr4hOepQ/UfHJi3Td-BI/AAAAAAAAEaQ/KLi3dMNANb8/s400/ipie+112.JPG" width="270" /></a></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The problem
with Josh Dugan and Canberra was that the Raiders demand low maintenance
superstars who hum along quietly. As Dugan developed from raw housing commission
colt to sleek thoroughbred his self-regard developed along with him, healthily
at first, then not so healthily, until, finally, it became toxic. </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QdM6WF7sI8s/UfHKGYt_cgI/AAAAAAAAEak/Uo5_LCI6UOA/s1600/038.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QdM6WF7sI8s/UfHKGYt_cgI/AAAAAAAAEak/Uo5_LCI6UOA/s400/038.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Basically the
Raiders are chronic underperformers and need to conduct themselves accordingly.
This means behaving in a humble and gracious manner, and keeping the ostentatious
off-field flourishes to a minimum. Dugan’s spirited accommodation of all things
ostentatious defied this and, as he tells it, led to him being very cruelly cast
out of Canberra and onto some crude scrapheap.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, what
of it? I mean he’s not the first sports star to suffer under the staggering
weight of Australia’s idiotic dislike of grossly-disproportionate-to-talent egotism.</span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ObZJ0O0DqpA/UfHJyHOnX-I/AAAAAAAAEaY/6Q-p3Nn4Mfg/s1600/iohyuh+017.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ObZJ0O0DqpA/UfHJyHOnX-I/AAAAAAAAEaY/6Q-p3Nn4Mfg/s400/iohyuh+017.JPG" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></o:p></span> </div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway.
Tomorrow the Raiders play the Dragons in what is without a trace of hyperbole
THEIR GAME OF THE YEAR. Because who among us doesn’t want to see Josh Dugan pay
and pay dearly never minding the fact that this desire is pretty much redundant
I mean it’s been <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>months since he was driven out of Canberra and
forced to seek asylum with the Dragons and it doesn’t seem to have cost him
much at all other than the small matter of his reputation and any lingering
shreds of likeability that his increasing abrasiveness hadn’t corroded in the
last 12 or so months at the Raiders anyway?<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Whatever.
Raider fans take what they can goddamn get. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And as it is
I’ve been struggling with this whole sordid trajectory since back when Dugan’s
name was first getting mentioned for Origin: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;"></span><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small;">It may help
to think of Dugan as an ex. You know how you don’t want to see them reduced to
a quivering gelatinous mess without you, but you don’t want the bastard/bitch
soaring to lofty new heights since being rid of you either? It’s a fine line
and one which Dugan has already overstepped with crude insensitivity.</span></blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Before this,
even, there was that incident during his first game for the Dragons that
constituted an irreparable defilement and has squatted toadishly in a dark
recess of my mind ever since – the moment where DAVE DUGAN filled the big
screen at Kogarah, wearing a Dragons jersey, grinning and waving and looking as
proud and florid as any father ever could. Galling! All those years at the
Raiders and the most I ever saw of Daddy Dugan was in the god-awful tattoo of Mr.
and Mrs. Dugan on their wedding day that roams across the lower half of one of his
son’s legs and stretches even my elastic boundaries of taste. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Let’s not spend
a lot of time on this. He is just an asterisk now, and I’ve already exceeded
the limits of both my magnanimity and medication on the son of a bitch these
last few months. Alls I hope for, aside from an emphatic Raiders victory, is
that he comes out of tomorrow’s game ravaged and stripped of swag, like he’s just
been worked over by a pack of wild dogs. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It would be
nice if I could say this with even a shred of certainty, but of course I can’t
what with the Raiders being an inherently untrustworthy outfit prone to
fluctuations in mood and manner that make the Greek government look stable. In
any case, it’s been real and it’s about to get realer. </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r5d36O8p-sY/UfHLKwQtCJI/AAAAAAAAEaw/WJlfkpxQ3KM/s1600/040.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="555" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r5d36O8p-sY/UfHLKwQtCJI/AAAAAAAAEaw/WJlfkpxQ3KM/s640/040.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-72290471705010185952013-07-23T13:25:00.000-07:002013-07-23T14:37:58.953-07:00PETS! WITHOUT MAKEUP!<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Hello who
wants to wade into dark waters and partake in a process rife with psychological
implications ie. marvel at the passing of time through the prism of my farmyard
pets to underscore a common humanity and the unavoidable fact that life is a
too short misery alleviated by fleeting moments of self-deception and Orwellian
dystopia awaits in very near future?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just
kidding. God, relax. But here are Babs and Claudia, then and now. Like how the
magazines do it to show weight loss and weight gain, or Sophie Monk’s lips, or
people just getting uglier as they age because it’s awesome to be reminded via
magazine that whimpering ruin is imminent and don’t forget it you pig-jowled
losers?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4Fp5nZk1dZA/Ue7lxtcXVaI/AAAAAAAAEZo/r-Sq2HJfXBo/s1600/19.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4Fp5nZk1dZA/Ue7lxtcXVaI/AAAAAAAAEZo/r-Sq2HJfXBo/s320/19.jpg" width="240" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-905-KZ00Xiw/Ue7mBZahIiI/AAAAAAAAEZw/tkbGVePC2Fs/s1600/babby!.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-905-KZ00Xiw/Ue7mBZahIiI/AAAAAAAAEZw/tkbGVePC2Fs/s320/babby!.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IeJqtwCo40c/Ue7mQSCJfAI/AAAAAAAAEZ4/GKMRZM2fjz0/s1600/17.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IeJqtwCo40c/Ue7mQSCJfAI/AAAAAAAAEZ4/GKMRZM2fjz0/s320/17.jpg" width="240" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vJ0KTX6sUTI/Ue7meRx-elI/AAAAAAAAEaA/LySVeXkE0GY/s1600/10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-vJ0KTX6sUTI/Ue7meRx-elI/AAAAAAAAEaA/LySVeXkE0GY/s320/10.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
<br />Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-11416650088791325542013-07-22T16:42:00.002-07:002013-07-22T19:00:58.612-07:00The Dugan Saga<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Fucking Josh
Dugan. Ever since he left the Raiders he’s been a source of renewable energy as
far as irritation is concerned. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I didn’t overly
mind him going to another club at first. I didn’t want to go down the ‘if we
can’t have him no one should’ pathway because it is an ugly way of thinking and
one best left for the family court systems and dissatisfied fathers who kill
their partners or children and then themselves. And just quickly while I’m here
has Dugan’s stinking shitbag of a spawn been born yet? Because if any stinking
shitbag is worthy of commemorative crockery this year surely it is Dugan’s and
not, as general frenzy would have us believe, Prince William and his cardboard-cutout-gyro-reticulate-eyed
wife’s Royal one? </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Now though
he’s just getting on my nerves. Everything gets on my nerves of course. Because
they’re shot, mainly, but also because everything is fucking annoying, one vile
task after another in a vile horizonless tapestry, so much so that my mother has
developed a catchphrase out of my neuroses so that every time I say something
is getting on my nerves including and often referring specifically to her she
just says “you and your nerves”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yeah. Me and
my nerves. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In any case,
I hear he has said some derogatory things about the Raiders. I say ‘hear’
because I have not bothered to ‘read’ these things because I am ‘lazy’. And
also because I like to adhere to that great and proud tradition of writing
slanderous things about somebody without bothering to avail myself of the
information on which I’m largely basing my slander. Yeah, cunts, welcome to the
internet. </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rvmhVS5Bt3s/Ue3BzLUYh4I/AAAAAAAAEZU/XjfuA2Oz_DA/s1600/jack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rvmhVS5Bt3s/Ue3BzLUYh4I/AAAAAAAAEZU/XjfuA2Oz_DA/s400/jack.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kGl2394SRss/Ue3B9o2SkZI/AAAAAAAAEZc/XiLoVT0UAAw/s1600/jackk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kGl2394SRss/Ue3B9o2SkZI/AAAAAAAAEZc/XiLoVT0UAAw/s400/jackk.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Whatever it
was he said, it’s safe to say he doesn’t seem to have a sophisticated grasp, if
any, of the delicate circumstances surrounding him, and really why would he
what with moving fairly seamlessly from the Raiders to the Dragons to Origin? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">As upward
trajectories go it is fine and faultless, but rude post-Raider realities have
forced me to concede that what he needed was an injunction, ala Todd Carney, in
which to turn a few tight transgressive loops of a downward spiral. </span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rs46LUrj8jw/Ue3BW5h9xHI/AAAAAAAAEZA/4i4cXiuMueU/s1600/workbaby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Rs46LUrj8jw/Ue3BW5h9xHI/AAAAAAAAEZA/4i4cXiuMueU/s400/workbaby.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This didn’t
happen. Those stupid photos of him laboring manually on a building site while
wearing a pristine white hoodie don’t count and neither do any of the other
small indignities he has heaped upon himself recently and now the Dragons play
the Raiders this Saturday and I guess as grudge matches go this will be a good
one even though there is no justice because were there any justice my personal preference
for Dugan’s punishment would surely have been implemented post haste and
instead of playing football he would be spending his weekends <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>tonging sausages on a hotplate outside of Bunnings because this
far more than football is a test of the deep and involuntary stuff of a man and
quite frankly who wouldn’t want to see that? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E9RzFz39wuw/Ue3BjQKWlDI/AAAAAAAAEZI/b2QuqIHhh30/s1600/hARRY+dEAn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E9RzFz39wuw/Ue3BjQKWlDI/AAAAAAAAEZI/b2QuqIHhh30/s400/hARRY+dEAn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-28073576785445523572013-07-18T15:21:00.003-07:002013-07-18T15:24:49.833-07:00Rude Realities of Origin Aftermath<br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When
something you bother to believe in ends in disillusion AND NOT FOR THE FIRST
FUCKING TIME OH NO THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME WE’VE SADDLED UP THIS HORSE NAMED
HOPE it resonates in a painful and very personal fashion. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But, oh
well. Show me something that doesn’t. Aside from this guy of course, who seemed
to grasp which way the wind was blowing in terms of our need for comic relief
and acted accordingly and at some personal expense: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nie8ib0Qi1I/UehqsfQz-xI/AAAAAAAAEXk/bNdz_gk7DA0/s1600/iorigin+001.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nie8ib0Qi1I/UehqsfQz-xI/AAAAAAAAEXk/bNdz_gk7DA0/s400/iorigin+001.JPG" width="400" /></a></span></span></div>
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Here is a
quick education in the rude realities of recent Origin history. Multiply this
picture by 8. I am not in the mood for subtleties.</span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EN7_b0tHowM/Uehq27aXIMI/AAAAAAAAEXs/ERfO8sW9CXs/s1600/iorigin+002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EN7_b0tHowM/Uehq27aXIMI/AAAAAAAAEXs/ERfO8sW9CXs/s400/iorigin+002.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span> </div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Further
inflaming my ill temper is the just dawned realisation that next year the
referees will have TWO opportunities for their annual demonstration of just how
pliable and open to intimidation and manipulation they are.<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cameron
Smith - who according to popular sporting opinion is said to be as charming and
welcoming in his dealings with referees as a pie cooling on a windowsill – talks
pretty to them and they practically drop drawers and bend over on the spot for
him. Jesus Christ. It leaves me feeling unclean just talking about it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It also further
proves the theory that popular sporting opinion does not always refer to what I
consider reality. This, incidentally, or so the psychiatrist who I avoid making
eye contact for once a fortnight suggests, may have something to do with why
Matt Shirvington and his big swinging balls present pre-game panel shows on Foxtel
while I post on a grossly underappreciated blog? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-33466908980916370932013-07-16T16:08:00.004-07:002013-07-16T17:07:57.349-07:00Blake Ferguson & The Case For & Against Caging Footballers<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dZ1QqmGK5do/UeXRRPihrEI/AAAAAAAAEXE/u3yuMKE8vEU/s1600/iwint+022.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dZ1QqmGK5do/UeXRRPihrEI/AAAAAAAAEXE/u3yuMKE8vEU/s400/iwint+022.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></span> </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Blake
Ferguson went to court yesterday and entered a not guilty plea to an indecent
assault charge.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Court
documents allege Ferguson “touched vagina”.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The matter
was adjourned until September, so it is for Blake, as it is for everyone, a
matter of waiting. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We all wait,
at all times, for everything. For doctors, for hospital beds, for transplants,
for tradesmen, for Telstra, for elections, for planes, for your number to be
called at the deli, for something to fucking change, for death. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway, if
you’re anything like me – and if you are congratulations – you will appreciate
the high stakes aesthetics of his courthouse style. Internationally, Lindsay
Lohan and Michael Jackson set the ‘arriving at court in style’ bar at lofty heights,
well out of reach of the general population, to which, if you heed the damning
reports, you would know these vagina touching NRL footballers do not believe
they belong. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Many recent
incidents seem to have confirmed the increasingly commonly held belief that
footballers can no longer be trusted to perform ordinary individual acts in any
unsupervised capacity. Maybe none more so than Russell Packer, who not five
minutes after failing to utilise the unadulterated access to amenities that the
dressing sheds presumably provide, stood on field and, hands on hips and before
an audience of thousands, released down his leg a great stream of urine. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I’m sorry
but whether public or private there’s something unseemly about a man who doesn’t
hold his dick to do this. It’s animal. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Packer’s proof
that performing basic ablutions are beyond the realm of what we can expect from
footballers works very much in favour of the advocates moving to cage and
quarantine players for all but the 80 minutes of game time required of them
each week. As a movement, it’s gaining momentum. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">They say
that based on the current climate very little seems to separate NRL players
from the animal world already. They argue that random vagina touching and flagrant
hands free urination are but two more threads that make up the ever-narrowing
link between footballer and beast.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I don’t deny
this. I did, after all, see that stream of piss, those stained shorts, and the
sunglasses Blake Ferguson wore on his way to court to plead not guilty. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Still, I am
fundamentally opposed to this movement. In actual fact I’m an advocate for
footballers gaining recognition as a protected species and being awarded certain
civic and civil liberties that allow them to roam among us drones free and
unfettered. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This could
be a platform from which either side could win this fucking election we’re
waiting on. And wouldn’t that actually be something worth waiting for, aside
from grim death of course. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_6xVjp9yh0/UeXRoe3p9LI/AAAAAAAAEXM/W8J_SF3c8BI/s1600/iwintr+037.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--_6xVjp9yh0/UeXRoe3p9LI/AAAAAAAAEXM/W8J_SF3c8BI/s400/iwintr+037.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span></div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-35343288757130527722013-06-30T14:16:00.001-07:002013-06-30T14:16:37.173-07:00Phone Conversation With My Mother
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Cast of
characters: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Richie –
stepfather</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Jasper - dog</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Narrator –
mother<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">“Richie opened
a can of water chestnuts 18 months past their used by date and fed some to
Jasper and put the rest in his fried rice and when I told him later that you
could get botchalism from eating spoiled canned goods and said ‘oh it’ll probably
be alright as long as the can wasn’t bulging’ he said ‘the can <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">was</i> bulging’. And so then I said ‘well
botchalism has about an 80 to 90 percent fatality rate’ and he got quite upset –
not about himself but about Jasper, he was saying ‘Oh if Jasper dies of
botchalism I’d have to die too – and I’d want to be buried in the same coffin with
him, in the same grave.’”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-20460394669537809302013-06-17T14:07:00.001-07:002013-06-17T14:38:43.562-07:00Paul Gallen and Violence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Fuck the
impressionable soft-skulled children and their neurotic hovering parents.<o:p></o:p></strong></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">(I’m proud
of Paul Gallen. I’m proud of the fact that in a fortnight filled with nasty
little incidents involving nasty little people he didn’t bow to the jungle
blood-lust they call “public pressure” and offer up some excruciating contrition-speech
as per current specifications. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’m proud
that he didn’t attempt to explain away the small matter of throwing a few
punches in the general direction of some brute’s huge misshapen head as an
unfortunate byproduct of being “tired”, or use some flaccid variation of the
medically elusive brain fade/ brain snap excuse. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">He stood
staunch. Few do.)</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br />Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-11418981617086900932013-04-24T17:34:00.000-07:002013-04-24T17:34:03.437-07:00Anzac Day Unease<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Every year things tilt further off balance and it’s causing a grinding, an unease, a wearing away of the parts. I feel like it’s just me and only half of me hopes it isn’t. The other half hopes that it is. Self-generated psychic pain I can deal with. The external gnawings, they take endurance of a special kind, and extract a special price. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, we’ll see. Meanwhile the smell of something rotten hangs lower and heavier in the air. It’s like our national neurosis has taken the form of a kind of shit-mist - a dumb ether of confusion and insecurity. Today it hangs at its lowest and heaviest. Next year it will be heavier still – 2014 will start a four-year-long centenary commemoration to cover the years of Australian involvement in WW1. Jesus Mother. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Australia is still being historicised. We are a fledgling nation, so young that the newly nationalistic clamour surrounding Anzac Day would just be mildly embarrassing and endearing were it not so insidious. The whole thing is unnerving. The pageantry of it is unnerving. The cheap Australian flags, the 4<sup>th</sup> of July American style ceremonials, the entire tourist industry built around Gallipoli. But beneath all that shit it’s really the constructs and clichés underpinning the pageantry that are rotting out my nerves and making me want to draw down and bolt shut the shades.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Because<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>basically it’s all myth. National identity, mateship, the egalitarian, fair go for all idea – all myth. This would be okay were it not for the way that our memorial culture takes collective memory as historical certainty and national truth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Memory is just a prism through which we negotiate the past, and collective memory by its fucking nature contains constant renegotiations and appropriations over time in accordance with external circumstances, generational shifts and *coughJohnHowardYouCuntcough* political ideologies and agendas. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Yes. Well. It may be Anzac Day for the general pop but for me it is the one day of the year when I mourn for my incomplete national-identity-and-mateship themed thesis. I think about war every other day of the goddamn year alright, on all the days when hams on morning television aren’t providing the fucking narrative. </span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-84639140945489091712013-04-21T19:31:00.000-07:002013-04-21T19:31:14.581-07:00Boyd's Bitchslap, Hayne's Backchat, Campese's Comeback<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Can’t keep up? Allow me to bring you up to speed, time-poor peasant.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So. Six rounds down. Faulkner wrote <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As I Lay Dying </i></b>in six weeks. You really wouldn’t want to spend much longer than six weeks with Pa Bundren though would you, even if he was your own creation. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In league, the 6 week mark is really when you are forced for the first time since season’s start; when you were all flush with that dumb optimism that exists irrespective of reality, to reevaluate your top 8 aspirations. Cowboy fans and the deluded loons who annually espouse their penthouse potential I’m talking to you. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unless you are a Storm, Manly or, god help you, a Rabbit supporter, chances are that your club has already demonstrated a dazzlingly varied array of inadequacies designed to challenge your patience and sanity nearly beyond endurance. Well, endure you must. This is football, and football, like life itself, mostly consists of endurance and suffering. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Dave Taylor has been dropped, for reasons that nobody has bothered to make clear. Seemingly, nobody has had to bother because no one cares enough to ask. Those who would normally ask are too busy making off-colour and cruelly unsympathetic cracks about Josh Dugan. I suppose the word is that he has an attitude problem, but saying Dave Taylor has an attitude problem is as obvious and unhelpful as saying the Freemasons have an image problem. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Jarryd Hayne is a player operating under conditions of severe personal stress. He offsets this by engaging weekly in vigorous and one sided dialogues with referees. Sometimes he takes a few minutes time out in between bouts and plays a bit of football. The Eels are locked several years deep into their slow and untidy spiral of decline now, and the strain is showing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Ricky Stuart is operating under some stress too. All coaches do, of course, but not all coaches front post-game press conferences with the brimstone of a southern Baptist preacher and not all coaches care enough to make a $10 000 investment in the future of the game which is going straight to hell as they see it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Darius Boyd gave another arresting press conference. In it, he gave nothing away to the assembled media other than the one thing they already knew from years prior, which was that they were dealing with a halfwit who was still not even remotely acquainted with proper press conference etiquette. Far be it from me to dish out unauthorised psychiatric diagnoses but he does seem to have advanced several shades up the spectrum since becoming a Knight. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Misery continues to seep through Ben Barba’s barely maintained façade. There’s an ocean breaking inside the poor boy’s brain. You can see the tide washing in and out of his eyes. Barba was last year’s excitement machine. Josh Dugan was once an excitement machine. The game is littered with broke-down excitement machines. It’s a veritable Somme, and very sad. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Terry Campese finally made his comeback. This just leaves us waiting on Jesus now. Of course, the thing about comebacks (and this is where Terry went wrong last year) is that you are expected to come back and stay back. It’s not compulsory, but it is the preferred method.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seven minutes of flabby play does not a comeback make, although as exits go it was spectacular, in a tragic Shakespearean way. Raider fans, who are well accustomed to pain and tragedy, absorbed the psychic pain with trademark weary stoicism facilitated by extra lashings of class A narcotics. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Recently, the Raiders have overcome trying circumstances to win 2 games. In a row. I believe this is what hubris-bloated commentators officially refer to as “a roll”. The other week against the Roosters, when the Raiders finally, after 45 profoundly painful minutes of play, completed a full set of six, Brandy Alexander called that “a roll” too. Raiders. Severely lowering standards since the mid-90s. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Sonny Bill is back too. I find it hard to summon interest in someone who seems to be so solely committed to self-interest, but he has rendered the Roosters vaguely watchable, which is not a sentence I thought I would write in Braith Anasta’s absence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Finally, there’s Todd Carney to consider. Because I haven’t, for fucking ever. I realised this a couple of weeks ago. I made a note of it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Look at that unmarked neck and chest flesh. This is so sad. Lest we forget.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-35022542599311431082013-04-19T17:06:00.000-07:002013-04-19T17:25:21.177-07:00In Dugan's Defense <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Poor Dugan. Poor Boy-Bambi.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He has become a human punch line. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So he’s run his ship up onto some rocks. Who hasn’t? I’ll tell you who hasn’t – the flat-pack fuckwits who don’t have the guts or sense to get down in it. Fuck them. Fuck their lame tweets; 140 characters or less of dull, putrid, limping nothingness.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">There should be no shame in a bit of flailing around amid the deeply fallible seas of human social congress. Larry David made a career out of it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s tough for the modern footballer. Their wits are inevitably already dulled from having their heads driven down into their necks and their necks driven down into their shoulders since they were young and soft of skull. Their brains probably slop around inside those misshapen skulls like crème caramels released from their ramekins too soon. It is unreasonable to expect their behaviour to be better than that of the average firm brained citizen. It is remarkable that they can even keep abreast of the tackle count or recognise their teammates if you ask me, which obviously no one does, frustratingly. <span style="color: red;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Then, there’s the relentless tracking of personal lives, and invasive technology allowing everything to be conveyed within seconds to the wider world which, frankly, is an ugly and undignified place full of ugly and undignified people who fight like half-starved dogs over every scrap of information as it comes and clamber to post their small utterings of inanity which we now call comment. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">They are poised now, haunches flexed and empty gazes narrowed, ready to fight and froth dog-like over the corpse of Josh Dugan’s career. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> </span></o:p></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">N.B. - All the existentialism in the world will not make you question the universe so much as an idle scroll through a standard comment section or exchange in the online NRL community. The only thing that sets this little exchange apart from the ceaseless shit-stream is Dugan’s correct use of ‘too’, which no one seemed to notice or find cute, so caught up were they in the tedious indignation that passes for controversy. Whatever. I found it cute. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-75180781163505245872013-04-13T16:00:00.000-07:002013-04-13T18:33:35.970-07:00My Brother is a Self-Hating Raider Fan<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Raiders. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Maddening. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">They madden no one more than my brother. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It pains him to follow them, yet he does so forensically. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">They drive him to aggressive distraction, yet he cannot stop with them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s a deeply complicated business. To cope, he does what we do when those we love but wish to Christ we didn’t love disappoint and pain us – he treats them with obsessive cruelty and holds them in serious contempt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And while he claims to wish he could quit them, somewhere, in the dark recesses of his brain and bone marrow, there is great love and tenderness for the Raiders. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The conflict this creates<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- great and abiding loyalty overlaid with everyday weariness and woe – is essentially what makes him a self-hating Raider fan. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">My phone reception was down all night so we didn’t get to exchange the usual stream of profound and brutal texts. He doesn’t have Foxtel so he goes out in public to watch them and this probably magnifies his pain when they lose but he seems to like sitting among down-and-outs and listening to their unique commentary and some of the things he hears we immediately incorporate into our own commentary, like a few years ago, when Daniel Vidot made a break, and an old man stiffened, sat up ramrod straight and screamed </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“RUN YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> We use that one a lot. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In the early hours of the morning my sleep was ruptured by my phone barring up and receiving texts, including the mysterious question from my best friend: “Are you the feminist environmental league????” but mostly coming from my brother.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">They are looking alright but no better than the Warriors. What happened to Shillo? Is Earl down too? <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">William called. No voicemail message was left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">God Croker is a ball hog – pass it to your winger you fool IT’S A TEAM SPORT.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">William called. No voicemail was left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is turning into rot. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">William called. No voicemail was left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Total rot. <o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">William called. No voicemail was left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is the worst set I have ever seen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">William called. No voicemail was left.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This is killing me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Apparently it didn’t kill him because after he’d left (“the place went OFF after that last Lee try!”) and returned home he had the wherewithal to call my old broke-down phone, which I had had the wherewithal to switch on, and after raving excitedly about the mystifying nature of the Raiders, which is what we do following 90% of their wins and most of their losses too when I think about it, he said </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">“Alright I have to go – my Kiev’s will be overdone – I slipped home at halftime to put them in the oven – but I tell you, if they’d lost I would have come home and thrown them against the wall!”</span></b><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He would have, too, and the thing is it requires almost no imagination to envision the circumstances in which this could have occurred. Maddening. </span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-64637221490521616512013-03-13T19:38:00.000-07:002013-03-13T19:39:45.841-07:00Things I've Tried Telling Myself Today To Paper Over The Pain of Losing Josh Dugan<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">1.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His inherent douchiness was getting harder and harder to defend<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">2.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The more weight he’s put on the less I’ve liked him<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">3.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He’s having a baby and look what happened to Lleyton Hewitt when he had a baby HE LOST HIS MONGREL AND WENT TO SHIT <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">4.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He’s having a baby and will instantly become less cool, more fool<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt 0.5in; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">5.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He’s having a baby and I am unable to relate to people with babies SO BYE<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">6.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The Ray Lewis tattoo<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">7.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He is constantly CONSTANTLY fucking injured. Why bother packing on all that unsightly extra muscle if you’re still doubling over grimacing in apparent agony twenty minutes into every game you play which due to your underlying flimsiness is actually only every fourth or fifth game anyway? I believe this is what old man Hellier called a Catch 22, although I have not read the book I mean have you no I didn’t think so. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">8.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Reece Robinson makes a fine fullback<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">9.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Reece Robinson is *fine* generally<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">10.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">His beard I mean why hide the hot especially if its dwindling anyway<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">11.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">What was with the boil outbreaks<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">12.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The senior players no longer wanted to play alongside him and by play they mostly mean witness him injure his ribs ankles knees shoulders ego<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">13.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He has a Staffy and in real life I hate Staffys and the men who own them so this was doing nothing for my integrity frankly<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">14.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You can’t polish a turd<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">15.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">He’ll always be my Bambi</span></span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-49353284799553084462013-03-13T14:04:00.001-07:002013-03-13T14:04:25.406-07:00Canberra Raider Fans - A Guide<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Raider fans can be divided into two loose groups*. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">You have your deluded fools – know them by their seemingly bright but actually dead-from-never-having-lived eyes - and you have your weary fatalists – jaundiced, hollow of eye, with a keen sense of the absurd and the tragic and a propensity for passing dark comments concerning the soul-crushing shuffle toward grim death that passes for life. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you’ve ever trudged down the cycle way and through the tunnel in the bush out the back of Bruce stadium to return to your freely-parked car after a rude loss in what was most probably just one in a spirit-sapping string of rude losses you will know them, this second type.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Few who have stared into the void can resist the lure of anarchic, mounted-curb parking**. Something – or everything - about it attracts the jaundiced fan while the perky optimists who have never seen into the abyss or screamed into the sky hand five dollar notes to men in hi-vis vests for the privilege of parking in an orderly and easily accessible fashion. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you don’t attend Raider home games, and quite frankly who can blame you, the delusionals are still easily identifiable. Just follow the Raiders on Facebook and scroll through the avalanche of comments that appear after every post. Like most breeds of idiot they are not shy about making their presence known. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I think this is the year for the Raiders. Go Raiders. Mack us proud boys. Goo the green machine! 2013 here we come. With Berrigan back we can’t loose!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have nothing against delusions. Some of my best friends are delusional. But the reality writ large on a brightly lit screen can be jarring if your nerves are at all raw. It is for this reason that I suggested several Raider fans I know start filing their nerve endings in February. I did not know that Josh Dugan would run sharply afoul of coach Furner after only the first round and have his $650 000 a year contract most probably evapourate in a dramatic swirl of pre-mixed liquor and profanity. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I praise Jesus that I didn’t know either because no amount of nerve-filing could have prepared them for this and they would have rotted out with the weight of it. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So when the Raiders announce their round 1 team lineup on Facebook and they’re missing three of their four spine players and are without a goal kicker and several hundred people who are blind to weird and volatile realities post comments like GREAT SIDE and WE WILL CRUSH THOSE PANTHERS LIKE ANTS<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>there’s that one guy who writes “we’re fucked”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, guess what? He was right. We really are fucked. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And you know what else? We kind of like it that way. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">*Please note that I am ONLY talking about Raider fans here. Do not assume that fans of other troubled clubs *coughCRONULLAcough* have the same or similar characteristics. For example, it is my understanding that fair portions of the Shire’s population have been inspired to go out and get commemorative Sharks neck tattoos this last week, rendering them eternally ridiculous. No, they are a team with their own unique problems and fans, and just as Germany is a country now forever stained in our collective consciousness by a string of poorly-received 20<sup>th</sup> century wars and related unpleasantness, so too are the poor Sharks. It’s all very unfortunate but then show me something in this world that isn’t. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">**Because everybody knows that the way you park provides clues about your essential character. Like when George Costanza compares parking garages to going to a prostitute: why should he pay for it when, if he applies himself, he can eventually get it for free? Yes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-82539449558908639452013-02-27T10:56:00.000-08:002013-03-13T15:08:42.944-07:00Josh Dugan What The Fuck Has Happened<br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">That's enough with the tattoos now Josh you used to be cute I'm sad</span><br />
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-73884036039198719252013-02-20T16:08:00.000-08:002013-02-20T16:55:04.079-08:00The Raw Obscenity of Tom Waterhouse & Associated Social Decays<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">This stinking age we live in, Christ. A return to the age of the cave looks more and more appealing. This, and I’m not even depressed. Fun Fact: I’m too bone-tired to feel depressed over the summer months because I’m busy working like a goddamned Aesop grasshopper so as I can spend the autumn and early winter months idle and unhinged, fully immersed in neuroses, woe and NRL. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And still - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>through this brutal summer landscape - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>blasts a drugs in sports scandal. I was very shook up and wretched for the first week following the announcement, braced for turbulence, calling and haranguing my mother spluttering IT’S NOT JUST THE RANK ILLEGALITY THAT OFFENDS -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and then getting rolling and shouting overwrought things like THE CLUBS HAVE FAILED IN THEIR DUTY OF CARE THOSE FUCKERS HAVE FAILED THEIR LEAGUES THEIR PLAYERS THEIR FANS -<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>- <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>spouting vicious theories regarding lax administration, festering corruption and Machiavellian plotting and then rounding it all off with some rude references to Tom Waterhouse. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, why not? Waterhouse’s high visibility and shit-licker visage make him an obvious poster-boy for the unease surrounding the morphing of sport into the entertainment industry and the unprecedented extent to which it has been seduced and subverted by gambling interests and oriental fish tattoos. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And then the Raiders were named. The Raiders?? The Raiders!! They of the hapless fadeouts and injuries in endemic proportions? Is there no decency at all remaining in this heinous fucking age? These are dark waters. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But three weeks later and the whole thing has become a tremulous melodrama with unsavory political associations and the consistency of your mother’s Christmas trifle. You know, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wobbly</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And here, the murk descends. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Because Australian sport is about much more than sport.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For most of us, our first and most powerful response is emotional. My earliest memory of rugby league is my big brother crawling under his bed in the manner of a dying dog after Penrith beat Canberra in the grand final and not coming out for quite some time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And because sport is essentially human drama. I suspected this deeply at the time of that grand final loss, and adult hindsight confirms the impression. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">And now, twenty two years after that Raiders Panthers game, the totally unsurprising revelation that the brutal, pigs-at-the-trough commercialisation of sporting codes has correspondingly commercialised the market for performance enhancing drugs. Professionalism gives winning an obscenely greater value than merely competing. And a win at all costs culture cultivates fertile soil for corruption. All of this is a rank affront <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">; the shadow, the murk, the stupidity, the limping bullshit, the lies. </span>We are all under our beds now.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-4293810976975988742013-01-19T18:29:00.003-08:002013-01-21T00:16:08.268-08:00Bernard Tomic's Grim Odyssey<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;"></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me that they can’t stand Bernard Tomic I’d have,like, 30 dollars. </span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">It totally annoys me. I have long been of the opinion that only myself and Belinda Neal are authorised to express unfettered disdain toward total strangers. Who are all these other under-informed and over-opinionated imposters and why do they remind me of nothing so much as those dogs that bring discredit to their entire species by standing and barking witlessly at people and/or inanimate objects? <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Women handing me change from cash registers tell me they don’t like him. “Why can’t he just keep his mouth shut?’ they say. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They shift uneasily on their swollen ankles as my avian, specifically seagull stare penetrates their stinking souls. Their disapproval is without context, and they have ham-hock cankles. I reject their reality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">My mother tells me she doesn’t like him. ‘Why doesn’t he smile?’ she says. I do not tell her to look forward to being strapped upright and unattended in an unforgiving chair while pureed corn beef dribbles down her chin later in life because she’s heard it many times now and the threat is in danger of losing its potency so I just bark <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">“HE DOES FUCKING SMILE: AFTER HE WINS MATCHES ON WITS AND GRIT AND WHILE HE IS BEING INTERVIEWED BY JIM COURIER AND JIM COURIER’S SPECTACULAR SWOOSH OF STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE HAIR HE FUCKING SMILES. BESIDES, HE’S OF EASTERN EUROPEAN DESCENT – THEY HAVE POOR DIETS MADE UP OF TERRIBLE CLAGGY FOODS AND WHILE OUR PEOPLE WERE CLEARING BUSH AND RELEASING CRATE LOADS OF RABBITS INTO WHAT WAS LEFT OF IT HIS PEOPLE WERE BEING ETHNICALLY CLEANSED AND RAPED BY COSSACKS WITH A GIDDY LUST FOR ATROCITIES, OR SUCH IS THE COMBINED TOTAL OF MY UNDERSTANDING OF AUSTRALIAN AND BALTIC HISTORY.” <o:p></o:p></b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway, no matter. Now he lives the Kanye West version of The Good Life, splitting his time between the Gold Coast and Monte Carlo; but don’t worry, Old-Worlders, because his grim odyssey is not over yet - he supports the Titans in what is an obvious nod to ancient ancestral hardships and struggle, and long may it flourish. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Speaking of ancient struggles, over in Hollywood Dax Shepard is unhappy that Justin Beiber has moved into the mansion next to him - “The music and the parties and the paparazzi,” Dax reveals. “I mean, it’s like living in Lebanon now.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">A provocative claim, but perception is a curious thing. What might represent ‘reality’ to Dax Shepard (he dates Veronica Mars you know) is outright unrecognisable to, like, the less obnoxious and those of us who have the misfortune of not being, like, American. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">I don’t know. Maybe Tomic’s various neighbours think the same thing, what with the 5:30am spa-bath based brawlings and the revving of high performance luxury cars and the crunch of jack-boots on gravel as police try to gain racially-motivated entry and the assumed explosions of Old Man Tomic because if there’s one thing years of tennis history has shown it is that it really helps to have a paranoid, delusional or manic father in your corner, and that it is best to hang fast to their principles, even to the detriment of your career. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Anyway, what a fucking baller - <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean have you ever tried to even clamber <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">out</i> of a spa-bath when you’re out of your mind messy? Remember the attorney in the White Rabbit “I want a rising sound” bathtub scene in Fear and Loathing? It’s not easy, even for the lithe and spry, which you, reader, are probably not. Look at you, right now, wincing even as you shift in your ergonomic executive swivel chair, regretting that attempt at blow-drying your balls in the gym locker room earlier. Don’t you feel stupid!</span></span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-86090738513018523422013-01-18T20:31:00.000-08:002013-01-18T20:48:04.945-08:00The Dirtiest, The Hardest, The Best<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">The whole rotten edifice of Lance Armstrong’s dream world comes crashing down and I’m so busy fangirling over Bernard Tomic I barely have time to enjoy the full reveal of the cold, calculated glory of Armstrong’s sociopathic nature. What can I say. It’s a rich life. It’s also one full of extremely flawed men. Some of them are the greatest sportspeople of our age; the rest of them are my ex-boyfriends. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">I love Tomic and I kind of like Lance Armstrong too, or at least I did until yesterday. The more strident his lies the more I liked him. The chilling demeanour, the callous disregard for others, the brutal denials, the cancerous balls, calling that female accuser a fat prostitute… I also recognised the ‘if something’s worth doing it’s worth doing right’ ethos inherent in his diabolical master-plan – my favourite ethos, as it were. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jonathan Horn in The Age criticised the people who have come after Armstrong wielding flame-throwers: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">“All sense of proportion has been lost. Lance Armstrong isn’t Jimmy Savile. He isn’t the subject of a royal commission. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In an ethically bereft sport, he was the dirtiest, the hardest and the best.” <o:p></o:p></b></span></i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-size: large;">Goddamn right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He doped hard he rode hard and he lied hard. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">It’s been real. </span></span><br />
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-81663599174018753632012-12-15T00:41:00.001-08:002012-12-15T00:41:50.885-08:00List of Things That Get On My Nerves<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">List of Things That Get On My Nerves <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Unsalted food<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">People who refer to magazines as ‘books’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Grey Nomads<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Grey Nomads who call their caravan arrangements ‘rigs’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">People with food sensitivities<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">People who wax lyrical about Shantaram<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Shantaram<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Olive oil<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">People who use the terms ‘bucket list’, ‘me time’, ‘retail therapy’ and ‘flick me an email’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Police procedural TV shows<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Baz Luhrmann’s ultra-modern soundtracks<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Baz Luhrmann movies<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Coffee table books<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Brunch<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The self-help industry<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The vitamin industry<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">South Australia<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Women who fan their faces with their hands when crying/trying not to cry<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Those inane configurations of ornamental letters people have in their homes spelling out words like Eat, Peace, Love, Family, etc<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">The words “I’m on a detox”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rapid fire TV dialogue as popularised by Aaron Sorkin<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Instagram food photos<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Q&A audience questions, Q&A tweeters, politicians on Q&A, Q&A generally <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Animated movies<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">People who still morally denounce Woody Allen’s choice of wife and use this as a reason for not watching his movies<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">People, pretty much<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong>Seasons greetings and jingle bells. It’s been real. <o:p></o:p></strong></span></span></div>
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-21620084272408194192012-12-14T10:47:00.000-08:002012-12-18T23:49:59.565-08:00Coping With Canberra - A Raiders Progress Report<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the football fan, summer is the soul’s winter. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For the footballers themselves, summer is the season in which to comfortingly return to character. <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> <strong><u>As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly: Proverbs 26, 11. </u></strong></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">In Canberra, the Raiders are busily engaging in vivid and unrestrained off-field activities which cast an impression of quality living.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">>>Quality living by Canberra standards I mean. Some other, non-geographically specific things which cast impressions of quality living: STD’s, rural road signs all shot up with bullet holes, getting bit by an animal while trying to get it stoned, ever using the word ‘repo’d’, seafood extender, painting unventilated rooms, ugly dogs hurling themselves against chain-link fences, trawling YouTube for footage of Flynn from Australian Idol’s rendition of Push Up! in morning’s earliest hours, tobacco-stained ceilings, managing to have both long hair and a sunburned scalp, throwing up in potted plants and any type of heaving be it dry or otherwise, threatening loved ones with shoes, staple guns or other unconventional weapons, having part of an eyebrow missing, petrol station pies, Lowes. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It’s grim there you know. Faded, and with a weird melancholy. So while Bernard Tomic is brawling with his friend in a spa at 5:30am on the Gold Coast, which sounds hedonistic and hot, the Raiders are making the most of things in their own ways. Recent efforts have achieved some solid results, and ACT police have netted several Raiders in their wily civic web. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">-</span><span style="font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Jack Boom was thrown out of the Foreshore festival and into the drunk-tank for several hours. I read this in the Tele and then never heard a thing about it ever again but I totally buy it the boy is clearly a fiend anyone with a face as sweet as his is a certified fiend. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Well, shit. We liked Brando as Stanley Kowalski didn’t we, all mute surly attitude and explosions of raw seething brutality? What’s the goddamn difference? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Just as the game itself is an acquired taste, the occasionally unwholesome extracurricular activities of the most abhorrent members of society ie. football players are seen to be unpalatable by many also. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are probably the same flat-pack people who have never slept with a second cousin more than once, never had a dark and savage night of the soul, and never sawed the roof off their car. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So, whatever. Football is an acquired taste. My best friend told me her boyfriend regards with distaste footballers and the women who love them. He takes it to mean they’re rough or whatever. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But, Canberra. It’s weird there. As anyone who has lived there for any stretch of time will appreciate, the urge to throw bottles from balconies at cyclists is a powerful one which is not easily denied. I myself had to consciously keep two hands positioned on the steering wheel at all times when driving such was my urge to run cyclists down in my car. Nothing personal, you understand, it’s just that they somehow became a very visual and ever-present reminder of my culturally bankrupt and capitalist wasteland surrounds. This created an uneasy atmosphere of foreboding and also made driving something of an ordeal. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">So I understand and sympathise with any bottle-throwing, spitting, heavy drinking, drug use, destruction of property and homicidal rampaging that goes on in Canberra. I actually endorse it. Distractions and delay tactics employed by those seeking to avoid the inevitable incursion of real life are a necessary component to coping with Canberra. If I wasn’t so burnt-out and unambitious I would run for office and seek subsidisation for it from Medicare myself. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">((*</span></span><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">not talking about J-Bo, Gav or Terry Campese anytime I talk about how fucked Canberra is. They all come from Queanbeyan, anyways, and besides which they are three of the best and most well-bred things – animal mineral vegetable or other - to come out of this stinking age we live in.))</span></span><br />
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Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6802292751011163289.post-7107842605831910222012-11-21T20:29:00.002-08:002012-11-21T20:43:10.153-08:00The Shoulder Charge<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt;">
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I tend to be too lazy and depressed to work myself into a froth of indignation and in any case I need to save my energy to expend on anxiety attacks but I appreciate the indignant people who froth and foam. Especially the ones who flesh out my half-baked and unsubstantiated theories. While they are busy doing that I usually just emit a sustained groan and descend deeper into an unseen void. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I understand that the outlawing of the shoulder charge has upset many people, including but not limited to Sonny Bill Williams, who tweeted about it. He also went to see a movie. He had a large popcorn, a Coke, and the clear eyes and smooth visage of one who sleeps soundly at night. Quade Cooper was with him. He didn’t look too good but that’s probably because he’s not, I don’t know. Anyway, the entity behind veritable website <a href="http://thepublicapology.net/">thepublicapology.net</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>understood where my concerns rested and tweeted me this picture pointing out the sizes of the Cokes concerned while everyone else was in a shoulder charge related frenzy. It’s nice to be understood. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I myself see nothing much wrong and plenty right with any action that renders men 1. Concussed and lying prone like huge sweating hams, or 2. Reeling around like drunken Irish villagers. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Rugby league is a methodically brutal game punctuated by stylish explosions of violence. The shoulder charge is the very quintessence of the game. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Some are so good that if ever asked to present a solitary work for admittance to a higher realm, the perpetrators would surely consider submitting their finest and most destructive shoulder charge. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">But now “people”; brain surgeons and former players, I don’t know, have decided the shoulder charge is a pestilence for all concerned. Dreary repetitive assembly-line mediocrity hangs in the air like the stink of beef tallow out the back at McDonalds. Where is the spirit in this life? The fervor in these times?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Their argument seems to be that it dulls footballer’s brains and wits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Footballers are not a people one normally associates with sharp practices. Most of them are already on the brink of incoherence at the start of their playing careers. They seem very nice but they do exhibit an almost effortless idiocy and can seldom maintain a satisfactory level of intellectual discourse as it is; what difference does it make if their brains start to crackle and smoke and sometimes shoot sparks like faulty wall sockets later in their lives, condemning them to a future of witless dereliction and semi-demented poverty? It’s more than most of us are promised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Anyway, there are many things that can disorder and scramble a brain. Youthful pharmaceutical adventures, epilepsy, aneurysms, the heat, the horrors, being brought up from the bottom of the ocean too fast and of course the creeping ineradicable awareness of the decay eating away at the fabric of the world. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Life is nothing if not a series of traumas big and small. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Eleanorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08493553177283147574noreply@blogger.com0