James Graham Grinding on an Old Lady

There is nothing more terrible than the NRL season yielding to another filthy and relentless Australian summer. Well, some things maybe. Being tasered to death by fucking cops when you’re just a Brazilian boy on acid.  And cops in general, the cunts. Tussling with the Kafkaesque qualities of Telstra. The faces of people in food courts. A guy I work with who I blather to about what cars I see myself owning in the future telling me he’s started pissing blood. Watching my littlest cat Gepeto crying and writhing on the carpet after an apparent but unfounded snake bite and thinking he was about to die right while I was watching Intervention (Michael, meth addict) last night. These things are terrible too.

Anyway. Summer is a horizon-less wasteland. People seem to enjoy it. I don’t understand this but I have also never understood people in fact I pretty much hate them uniformly.

Wanda – I can’t stand people. I hate them. Do you hate them?

Henry – No. But I seem to feel better when they’re not around.

-Barfly

Still, it’s not like there’s nothing going on. Just yesterday I say photos of the Kangaroos. In training shirts. With necks and shoulders spilling out of every outlet. JT, and Billy. Good stuff, this. But insubstantial. Not enough.

I also saw photos of a gathering Tigers  Sharks coach Shane Flanagan had orchestrated; a meet, greet and get elegantly soused in the yacht club event to welcome the entire Tigers team minus Robbie Benji and Lote all the incoming recruits. And Todd Carney and Luke Lewis were seated together looking fucking lewd and generally bringing credit to their entire species just by sitting there. They can’t help it. They just have a seedy air of salaciousness about them that renders them automatically awesome.

(My brother took a long range punt on a Sharks Bulldogs grand final next year, with Bulldogs for the win. If they make it to the grand final it will totally inspire me to go out and get a commemorative neck tattoo. I don’t go for them or anything but they’re that kind of team. A team to, I don’t know; bring you to your happy place just by having a go.)     

And naturally the Bulldogs Mad Monday fallout bullshit continues. I say ‘continues’ but I mean ‘is now being perpetuated by radio stations and the like who in admirable attempts to really get to the crux of the sensitive and contentious issues at hand have started asking highly qualified media commentators and social analysts LIKE LAURYN EAGLE to comment on said issues and then immediately reporting on her comments and having others pass comment on her comments and reporting dutifully on that and so on and so forth seemingly forevermore until suck me off you dumb dog becomes, like, this decade’s Carpe Diem or whatever’. I don’t know. It’s cannibalistic and unseemly. I love it. (Not really, though.)

Probably what really happened at Belmore version #1

& #2

Things have strayed into Woodward and Bernstein territory what with talk of tapes and recordings and allegations of highly sophisticated spy equipment and meticulously researched revelations like did you know there is a 91 second YouTube video of that fiend James Graham grinding on a very old woman in the lounge area of a northern English pub that culminates in the very old woman putting her hands down his pants and going the grope and that the Bulldogs are attempting to argue that the whole Mad Monday incident was a misunderstanding stemming from this video whereby a player who is recounted as  saying “There are some ladies here to stick their heads in your pants” actually said “There’s no old ladies here to stick their hands in your pants”???

I didn’t know this. Did Channel 9 know this? Did it really happen like that or are the Bulldogs attempting to create an entirely new version of reality? Does it even matter now?

I do not have the answers to these questions but I too grapple with the underlying issues of truth and reality on a daily basis and understand the elusive nature of both. For example, today I finished one squeeze-bottle of sauce and opened a fresh one and the old one was labelled 40% lower in sugar and salt but I hadn’t know that when I bought it otherwise I never would have bought it because I love sugar and think very highly of salt too I mean for much of human history the pursuit of salt drove men to every edge of the world and anyway I hadn’t thought the reduced sugar and salt sauce tasted particularly different or particularly offensive until I opened the regular sauce and holy fuck it tasted amazing it was sweet it was salty it was altogether delicious and in that moment I knew that the sugar and salt reduced sauce had been a lie and  that I had lived that lie but hadn’t known it was a lie until I tasted the truth. 

Anyway. I don’t see the sense in asking Todd Carney’s girlfriend (Lauryn Eagle that is) what she thinks about women’s role in society, even if she is an ex-waterski champion. Personally, I would have approached Kochie’s Angels for comment long before asking for Eagle’s opinion. You know, step off Catherine Lumby and Eva Cox.    

I understand though, all of this inanity. It’s the off season, after all. The Daily Tele sports section seems to be experiencing a slump similar to the one currently over/underwhelming me. This is why they did a full page article on balls. Nuts, I mean. Not, like, Steedens and Sherrins and the teeny tiny child fingers that stitch them in unlit and unregulated hives of exploitative labour all over India in an appalling but all too common example of fat first world manufacturing industry’s reliance on and exploitation of developing nations and their heinous role in perpetuating global inequality and repression.

No.

“League star proves he’s one tough nut.”

Well, shit. You don’t buy a meat pie for the meat. Nor do you buy the Daily Tele for the (metaphoric) meat.

As it happens I think balls are great in both a general and specific sense so an entire and alarmingly graphic article all about them and the injuries they are evidently able to withstand was and remains very pleasing. Some of my favourite phrases and sentiments are as follows:

 “When trainers performed an X-ray on Livers, they found his testicle had ‘shattered like a light bulb’”

“…had his scrotum ripped open”

 “…had his scrotum torn”

“…leaving one testicle hanging free”

“…after being rucked viciously by a Frenchman”

“…had the physio stitch up his scrotum, then returned to the field before he was concussed by a blow to the head. Shelford does not recall any of that game”

“…was struck by a knee to his groin and his testicle exploded”

 “Surgery was performed to remove his right testicle”

“He returned to the rink two days later to the chant of ‘Balls of Steel’’  

“…his scrotum swelled up so badly he could not run properly”

“Livers recovered to father two children”

Cameron Smith Making Me Say Wow Now

The Storm.

Sons of bitches know how to win a grand final.

What the hell kind of performance was that?

I don’t know. And critiquing high-caliber, clinical playing is not my forte what with the Raiders thing, you know…but I liked it, I loved it.  

It felt like a grand final. Last year’s was such an interminable affair that the only thing I can recall is Steve Matai’s bison- like head getting opened up right above the eye, a big scoop-n-split that sent blood flowing artfully down his face. Other than that I got nothing and I’m none the poorer for it. Let’s move on. Back to Sunday. To headier times.

To Joey Johns THE EIGHTH WONDER OF THE RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD behaving adorably even when ESPECIALLY WHEN being dispatched from a Blackhawk helicopter, fleeing from the Apocalypse Now-esque blade situation and fighting his way through the hurricane-strength wind that looked for all the world like it was going to tear away his suit pants and jacket in a spectacular wardrobe malfunction.

Speaking of tear-away pants how is this seedy photo of Channing Tatum from back when he was a stripper?

Anyway, the game.   

There was a good stink that caused Gus Gould to employ the words ‘brouhaha’, ‘melee’ and ‘fracas’, as well as the phrases ‘an allegation of biting’ and ‘they’re not exchanging Christmas cards’.

What he didn’t say was words to the effect of

“Allow me to give you a brief lesson in the human condition. Humans are about 70% water, and the rest is all guts, bone and minerals. But, although we are a highly evolved animal, we sometimes experience slippage and revert to raw savagery. James Graham appears to have suffered such a lapse by appearing to catch hold of Billy Slater’s ear with his teeth and appearing to tug at it with a good amount of force and barbarism.”

He didn’t have to say it. The implication was clearly there.   

There was the Storm being as clinical and cold of heart as ever. It would have been a harrowing, harrowing experience for Dogs supporters. They just didn’t get a goddam look in. Ever. It even depressed me for twenty minutes or so before I pulled myself together enough to revel in the splendour of the Storm and the stricken looks of the blue-and-white-wearing crowd as the experience became increasingly unbearable. Poor bastards. In football we try to grasp a feeling outside of ourselves and our tarnished existences. This is preposterous because very few of us, proportionally, follow a winning team. In reality, football, like life itself, is mostly about endurance and suffering.

Aside from or in spite of the cruel and awful nature of existence from which there is no escape outside of death my wish-list from a previous post was pretty well fulfilled. I take satisfaction from this, because if not this then what?..

1.Craig Bellamy got the Gatorade dumped on him. From behind. He shook his fist and grinned and looked a.) a bit like Mickey Rourke and b.) like he wanted to crash-tackle the culprits and grind them playfully into the ground. He looks so fun, what with his air of salaciousness. I would love to get loaded with him.  

- ‘Insiders’ who were at the Novotel after the game reported that Bellamy “was merrier” than any time they could remember, and that Billy Slater had “forgotten the bitten ear”.

2.Cameron Smith looked happy and relieved and gave a rousing, statesman-like speech. How can he be so laconic and so slick at the same time? He’s terribly talented. Authentic, too. This is where Cooper Cronk is lacking. His Clive Churchill medal acceptance speech sounded totally computer generated. When he addressed the team with a stilted “and to the playing group – you are my mates” it sounded exactly like those drooling aliens on The Simpsons when they had designs on becoming president and tried to talk as earthlings would.    

Anyway, Cameron Smith impressed me deeply and I really haven’t shaken off the sensation and it’s a little disconcerting but really, how good is he? Very, is the inevitable and undeniable answer. Very.

“I’ve been asked a few times whether this one would be sweeter,” Smith said after the game. “I guess there’s a small spot that says yes.”

The Dogs are Having a Party! And Bellamy is Invited!

One more game, the Big One, and then the fall of civilisation i.e. THE OFF SEASON. Again. Christ. Cultural bankruptcy beckons.

Well, in the meantime, I hope it’s not rational opinion, objective analysis and up to the minute betting odds you’re here for. If it is, you are clearly lost. You are probably one of those dickheads who are not only inept navigators but are also unable under any circumstances to ask for directions due to your overinflated ego in which case I will offer unsolicited directions STRAIGHT TO COOPER CRONK’S WEBSITE coopercronk.com. Douches will find it informative and inspiring. Everyone else will find it squirmy-funny and unsettling on a sliding scale. Exactly how unsettling you find it will depend on your tolerance levels for new age rhetoric and raging narcissism. Mine, as it turns out, are low. Lower than Clint Eastwood’s balls, if you will.

I look forward to the day when I can invest emotionally in a grand final. Hoo boy won’t that be something? In the meantime, we have the Bulldogs playing the Storm. And while it’s a shame the Raiders or the Sharks didn’t get through (and what a final that would have been and one day will be god willing please god), it’s fantastic the Rabbits and the Broncos didn’t make it either. One hand washes the other, and so forth.

In any case, I’m not too concerned with who wins. I see pros and cons for each outcome.

For example, on the one hand I would love to see Craig Bellamy getting a giant bucket of Gatorade dumped over his head. Which indicates I would like the Storm to win.

On the other hand, I would love to see confetti and shredded raffle tickets mashed with glitter and whatever other garish pulpy matter they void onto the field and the heads of the victors from the air above rain down all over Michael Ennis. He does such a good job, not only playing a vigorous and antagonistic brand of football and captaining a team but in keeping track of what make and model of car every player from every other club drives so that he can cut any opponents brake lines at only a moment’s notice. That’s a real one-percenter. Take note, aspiring sociopaths. I would like to see him holding that big trophy thing aloft while grinning toothily and I would like  knowing that all the while the hamster wheel inside his head was still turning, turning….

If this is indeed the outcome, let it be known that the real reason for the Bulldogs’ hot blaze of glory has little to do with Des Hasler’s scientific and analytical style of coaching and penchant for making players ingest imported calf-blood milkshakes and everything to do with the fact that HE CREATED A NEW TEAM SONG PARTWAY THROUGH THE YEAR TO ‘MAKE IT RELEVANT’ AND WHEN THE PLAYERS, WHO ALL COLLABORATED ON THE LYRICS (AS IS EVIDENT) BELT IT OUT THEY ARE LED BY FRANK PRITCHARD ON GUITAR. It climaxes with the following:

“The Dogs are having a party,

The Dogs are having a party,

And (insert defeated team) are in the bin!”

Well, we’ll see about that. Literally. On Sunday.

Anyway, continuing with the one hand washes the other theme, I’d also love to see Cameron Smith really inconsolably upset, stricken, ashen, bereft, but, by the same token, I’d quite like to see him pleased and at peace too. I like to despise him and enjoy despising him but every time I see him on panel shows and hear him give his lucid analysis I end up thinking he’s great and admiring him for the obvious ice that runs through his veins. Is he going to make a great coach one day OR WHAT? It is my personal dream (not the only one, but one of several) that he coach the Raiders one day. To September glory, obviously. It is important to have long-range goals and dreams. That’s what the professionals tell me. The ones with framed qualifications hanging on their walls. But I digress. The other thing that impresses me about Cameron Smith, aside from him being very cool and very controlled and thus the ultimate big game player is that he is a great lover of history. I understand this to mean that he spends his free time on elaborate civil war reenactments and listening to Wagner’s operas at very high volume. Blake Ferguson and Sandor Earl spend theirs at Time Zone. Playing Guitar Hero.

Actually, I don’t really need to see Cameron Smith happy at all. I just remembered all those Origins. I’ve seen quite enough. Too much, as it were.  

This brings me back to Bellamy. Everything about the Storm brings me back to Bellamy. He’s the only thing I actually like about the entire outfit, including but not limited to the playing roster past and present, the shady fiscal history of the club and their associated moral transgressions, their colours, their mascot, their name, the name of their home ground, their wrestling skills and subsequent talent for slowing the ruck down to a slow benzodiazepine crawl, their staunch structure and their annoying and frequent habit of winning games with ease. What’s to like?

Well, Bellamy.

Bellamy coiled like a reptile in the coaching box.

Bellamy radiating a barely suppressed rage.

Bellamy contorting his elasto-silicone face into all manner of gruesome and painful expressions.

Bellamy inflicting irreparable damage on Mount Franklin bottles.

Bellamy rolling his eyes in their 360-degree-gyro-reticulated sockets.

Bellamy extending his telescopic hyper-stalk neck to full height.

Bellamy conveying the impression of a man perpetually on the edge of violent explosion.

Bellamy actually exploding violently.

Bellamy.

Recently Bellamy said that, retrospectively, he finds his behavior in the coaches box “quite embarrassing at times. [But] not all the time.”

“I don’t particularly worry about it too much but I don’t like it when they see me going off and saying the things I shouldn’t be saying. It is embarrassing for me and a little alarming for people at home watching.”

It’s not alarming, Craig. It’s awesome. Don’t change.

Mark Geyer is Great.

Mark Geyer rode a bull the other day. I don’t know why. He said “I’m 43 with five kids, I don’t need this” but then he did it anyway. First he rode a smaller bull called Ginger, but then he climbed aboard the ominously named Chainsaw Massacre. “They say it is the toughest eight seconds in world sport. I experienced two seconds and I have to agree. I came straight home to bed – after buying two longnecks on the way.”

James Metallica Hetfield is releasing his own line of fashionable eyewear. He says it is “built to look faster than a speeding riff and to handle the life of a road dog like me”. I think MG should be doing something like this too, I would buy MG merch. Who wouldn’t? He was some player. He was big boned and short tempered; a strange and dangerous individual who on no account should have been approached.

Then he married one of Brandy Alexander’s sisters. In today’s terms, this would be like Benji Marshall marrying Robbie Farah’s sister. Awesome, in other words.

Sister Alexander and Geyer babies – five of them – all given bogan names furnished with extra vowels and probably even some apostrophes too. I love it. Inter-team breeding should be encouraged. Players who cooperate should be awarded with cash and boat bonuses. Dynasties are sort of a thing of the past but they should be promoted as the way forward. It starts here.

Postscript:  At the very start of the season Mark Geyer picked the Bulldogs as the team to win the competition. I laughed, the people on the panel with him laughed, we all laughed. Well. Jesus Christ. The man is the Nostradamus of Penrith.

Josh Dugan's Sweetness..& other stuff

Weird things are happening everywhere.

It’s a strange season. Cosmic aberrations abound.

Darius Boyd has taken to weeping in dressing sheds at half time, and probably at full time too, poor little pie.

Mitchell Pearce is picking up Pussy Cat Dolls and maybe (unsubstantiated) Nicki Minaj while on Blues training camp in Melbourne.

Luke Lewis has been stood down as captain; a masterstroke devised by Ivan Cleary and designed to simultaneously demoralise and galvanise while at the same time helping to keep Lewis’ self-esteem in check.

Des Hasler has nothing to maniacally rake his fingers through after shaving off his lion-like mane.

Krisnan Inu has abruptly been sold to the Bulldogs and may turn out to be coachable after all.

The Sharks have been winning games.

Jamal Idris has gained weight and grown so puffy that his edges resemble rising pizza dough that’s been set aside in a bowl on a windowsill. 

Todd Carney came down with a shocking case of the Yips during his Origin debut and made numerous strange and unhelpful contributions to the game.  

Brent Kite took over Billy Slater’s high-ball duties in Origin because Billy Slater couldn’t take one to save his life. His uncharacteristically tenuous command of a fairly simple skill was a welcome development. It was also totally disorientating.

The Bulldogs and the Eels have become my favourite teams to watch; for entirely different but equally rewarding reasons, including but not limited to Jarryd Hayne's lazy charm and Josh Reynolds' abrasive feistyness.

There are some unshakable certainties though.

Brett Stewart remains as aggressively petulant as ever.

Luke Lewis continues, despite his tribulations, to trail a vague air of menace and mongrel behind him.

Laurie Daly’s eyes still look like cornered rats.

The police have netted another Rooster in their wily civic net.

Chris Sandow continues to do his best imitation of somebody who can play.

Timana Tahu continues to do his best imitation of somebody who is not a psychopath.

Dane Tilse still looks like someone who is making good progress on his learn to read program but still has to move his lips to get through the longer words.

Queensland continues to win with a good amount of ease.

Josh Dugan’s sweetness and beauty continues to trouble the air around him.  

Cameron Smith is as irritating as ever.

Braith Anasta’s head is still magisterial and profound.

Dave Taylor’s head still looks like something on a spit.

Wayne Bennett’s press conference comments still have no chance of being mistaken for an author being interviewed on Radio National.

Daniel Vidot is proving to be just as much of a liability for the Dragons as he eventually became for the Raiders.

Hating on referees is now seen to be an even more legitimate and desirable pastime for players, ex-players, fans, coaches, journalists, children, livestock and judges on The Voice.

Willie Mason is still boss.

- All this is about all I ask out of life.

Des Hasler Giving Me A Nose Bleed

Y'all better get ahold of your socks because I'm about to knock them off. This Manly shitfight, and the Des Hasler defecting to the Dogs thing? I am bereft of opinion*. Interest, too. I know. I can scarcely believe it myself.

Occasionally I have found my mind drifting idly toward the topic, but it tends to skip right over the Manly boardroom bit and settles instead on Michael Ennis. As in I start wondering what Michael Ennis makes of all this fuckery. I know the answer. He'd be fucking loving it. If anyone has a keen understanding and appreciation of primordal psychological warfare it is Michael Ennis. Bitch RESEARCHES the lives and backgrounds of players from opposing teams so as to be able to sledge them to the best of his already impressive ability. That is some shark-like gusto right there. Respect. By the by, did anyone notice how much street talk was thrown about in the 2011 season? Everyone started talking street, myself included. Exhibit A: Tim Sheens saying 'respect'. As in: "I'm really impressed with what the Storm acheive - respect." Well, I found this extremely odd. That's all I'm saying.

Deep though my respect is for Ennis and his special kind of glowering, insane resolve, I feel mild envy bordering on wild jealousy when I think of his club's culture. I mean, Jesus Christ. One minute they're embroiled in the Coffs Harbour rape scandal and the next they've got the shrewdest CEO in the league rebuilding on every level and orchestrating the coach-poach of the century, what the shit?? What the shit, yes, and also word to the Raiders, what's your excuse?! A dog blew Joel Monaghan and the photo was a social media sensation the world over - where are the reverberations and instigations of positive change from that crisis? Leave it to the Canberra club to not make an occassion of such an unfortunate incident. That's just typical of the whole flaccid and lacklustre place. It's a monument masquerading as a city. My mother just visited me. She recounted a small altercation she had with a man from Canberra on the beach in Jervis Bay recently who, as well as being something of a dickhead, was also a self-proclaimed dog whisperer who suggested in a pompous and condescending fashion that she bring her crippled whippet up to Canberra for some 'treatment'. "Oh no," she said, (with her usual force and conviction, I imagine) "I'm not going to that place. Horrible. My daughter lived there last year and had a total breakdown and as soon as she moved away she made a complete recovery - forget it." Isn't that just the last word in excellence? For all her early flirtation with senility she still has some serious form. Respect.

Where was I? Oh, right, Des Hasler. So I saw him in his new blue and white Bulldogs training shirt and found it a jarring and unsettling and altogether satisfying sight.

And then, because I am highly skilled in the art of relating everything no matter how obscure to the Raiders, I immediately thought of how jarring and unsettling and altogether unsatisfactory it will be to see Josh Dugan in a different coloured shirt when that terrible day comes. A non-lime green shirt. My god. I call this 'Looking Into The Face of Something Horrible'. It is an undertaking I try to avoid. Something else I try to avoid is anything pertaining even loosely to Brett Stewart; unless of course it affords me opportunities to bitch extravagantly about him. I thought that the talk about him exercising his Des Hasler get-out clause for 2012 would grant me this opportunity but DAMNATION the sulky bitch will be remaining at Brookvale until the end of 2014. Apparently. As Dessie just demonstrated with superb rat-like cunning, things change. And as the slippery-as-a-greased-pig Tim Moltzen proved, contracts and signings don't mean a goddamned thing. It is my Christmas wish that 2012 is the year of Brett Stewart's ultimate undoing. He's already out on the ledge. Some small episode, coupled with the fact that his mind is already snagged on the belief that the NRL and the wider world have fatally wronged him, could well combine to ensure his slow descent into hysterical paranoia kicks into overdrive and leads to full-throttle implosion. I know, I know. I do occassionally have the urge to perform acts of anarchic subversion. More common, though, is the urge to see Brett Stewart suffer in his jocks. I tend to go with my neuroses and prejudices because they stay solid when everything else is as shaky as my mother's trifle. Crumbs of comfort and such.

So, yeah, UP THE DOGS. I find it strange to be condoning the Dogs, I really do. Still, it's like Best and Less. It's not that there's anything wrong with Best and Less per se, it's the customers. With the Bulldogs it's the fans. They're grotesque. Look into a Bulldogs crowd. It looks for all the world like some very large mission or asylum has just turned everyone out for the day. I love this, of course. Also, I envy them their deranged ugly fanaticism, expecially when it intensifies to fever pitch, which is pretty much their restive state. "Unfortunately, I can't remember a thing about the game. But the police told me I had quite a good time" - words every Bulldog fan worth their salt has said on at least one occassion. L'adore.

........I wrote this and then I went to sleep and had a dream about Des Hasler. I sat next to him on a team bus and we spoke in low intense voices about important and high-risk coaching strategies which have unhelpfully eluded me upon waking. I do remember that he was seething with raw intensity and barely leashed rage. Like Brando as Stanley Kowalski, only less surly and more savvy. His eyes were kinder too. But only just. He was so intense that I got a nosebleed and had to swap seats with Steve Matai. What a guy. What a dream. What a game. Goddamn.


*Over the course of writing this my perceived lack of position on the matter has proceeded through a series of well-worn phases - hating on Brett Stewart, loving on Michael Ennis and fretting for the Raiders -  which have all restored in me the reassuring sense that I am in charge of things**.


**Which I'm really not.

Gasnier's Last Squirt of the Sauce.

I was thinking today. I do this sometimes, it passes the time.
Here's a selection.


1. Bulldog fans are fat, ugly, and hopelessly deluded. Triple threats, in other words. How's this for optimism:

"Stay true bulldog fans! Our triumph will be of 2004 proportions when we get through this rough patch." 

Rough patch? They're not the two words I would have chosen, but I suppose we can fill in the gaps on our own. That is a team mired in misery, isn't it? Even Andrew Ryan looks sad - not 'sad because my facial features are arranged in an unusual fashion sad', but actually, legitimately sad. He said last night post-loss that the Doggies

"need to, uh, have a bit of a look at ourselves, all 17 of us"

and it damn near broke my heart. And I hate the Bulldogs. By the way, that quote is typical, wildly understated footy-speak for "WE'RE FUCKED. WE KNOW WE'RE FUCKED. NEXT." 

The Bulldogs, 2011.

2. The song Crimson and Clover. I thought about it because I listened to it about thirteen times. Tell me this song doesn't make you want to go lose your virginity in a meadow all over again. Exactly. I can't imagine ever saying such a thing about another song either, it's that fucking good.

3. Lady Gaga's Sydney visit. We are Australians. We need a token international celebrity flown in to validate us every now and again. This is an integral part of the Australian cultural experience, and one we all understand, especially around our *ahem* awards seasons. Giving Gaga the keys to the fucking city though? I cringed. Then I saw her trying to mount and molest Clover Moore during the presentation and all my uncomfortable, cultural-cringey feelings dissloved, because she looked like more of a fool than we as a nation ever could. That's what I call validation. Viva Australia!

4. Mal Meninga is a nasty whiny bitch. And possibly a crackhead. How else to account for his wild claims? A conspiracy against Queensland that the NRL, the ARL, and the entire state of New South Wales - including the NSW media and the Blues coaching staff -was in on? That is some deluded cracktalk right there, bitch is badly paranoid and in a bad way if he believes that. Missed it? Here's some of what he wrote in Brisbane's Sunday Mail:

"It was a victory against the very rats and filth that tried to poison a monumenatl team with lies, personal attacks, arrogance and disrespect. But rather than be a cause for celebration, the Queensland team this year found itself the victim of a smear campaign so mailicious and orchestrated that it tainted the entire code of rugby league."

Holy shit, how high is this guy? I mean, in his eyes he is nailed up on the cross right now and awaiting resurrection. Still, this is the man who jumped ship to take the money and join the Super League in 1997 and asked, as explaination

"What has rugby league ever given me?",

and if that doesn't indicate that something has long been lacking in terms of this guy's essential decency then nothing will.

5. My thoughts surrounding Mark Gasnier announcing his retirement range from mildly to wildly inappropriate. Not because I'm mad or sad or feel betrayed or anything, nothing that ordinary. No, my feelings on the matter are more abstract, by which I mean my feelings toward Gaz are inextricably tied up with the whole sauce squirting scandal circa 2005. I just feel that any man who would announce his intentions via a random woman's message bank by saying

"There's four toey humans in a cab", and then back it up with

"Fire up you sad cunt!" 

 is a man worth knowing.

And, what the hell, he only just bulked up again after coming back from France as an emaciated Birkenstock-wearing husk last year, WHAT THE HELL, GAZ?

Has he had that baby and got a glimpse into The Void or something? YOU'RE ONLY 29, GAZ! I feel like what is needed here is for Gaz to be fed some of his own words - namely, to be told to FIRE UP. Yes, his announcement does have me slightly rattled, well spotted.

I take some comfort in the fact that I am not alone in this. Over on the Twitter, someone else - also a man worth knowing, I suspect - responded to the news with four perfectly chosen words:

"Toey human number one?"

My.Thoughts.Exactly. Vale, Gaz.



Toey Humans numbers 1 and 2 and Public Urinater number 2 aka Watmough



My brother has a halarious story about the time he saw Gaz on North Curl Curl beach with two girls and a surfboard. I can't re-tell it because too much context is needed, besides which I just said it's halarious so that's way too much pressure for me. Suffice to say that Gaz comes out of it looking just as endearingly foolish and dimwitted as he normally does, so no alarms, no surprises.