PARTS FOR PART'S SAKE

Press Release
The AGB will not be talking to Channel Seven.

Lose It Or Boos It
Sunday's tank match, an idea: Mad Saturday.

Gaymo
Asked the students how their trivia went last Wednesday. "Shithouse, Tony, and the host is a gay emo," one replied. Naturally I corrected them: "That'd be Tone."

Hitler Yoof
Bizarre episode of the Einstein Factor last week. In a Smart Kids contest, three youngsters, one boy and two girls, were on deck to strut their stuff. The boy's special subject was Gary Kasparov and he blitzed. Can't remember what the first girl's topic was (TT: Boynton reminds me it was frogs of FNQ, or more accurately after looking it up accurately, Frogs of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. What fool said all girls think about is boys? It's not easy being teen. Teen, green: that's a joke, boy. I keep pitchin' 'em, ya keep missin' 'em.), and anyway, she was a strange zombie child. The second girl must have thought she was on Straya's Top Model the way she kept tossing he hair, but interestingly, her special subject was Adolf Hitler. She did fairly well, but at the end Barry Jones asked her "What text would you recommend as a starting point on Hitler?" To which she replied "Mein Kampf. That way you can see where he's coming from." I'm sure she didn't mean it to come out like that, but what if she did? Either way it stunned Barry, the other two panel members and Peter Berner into an embarrassed silence.

It Takes Two
No, not the TV show, the staplers here at school. The first staple always comes out gnarled and you have to hit it again.

Chicken Rexona
Couple of weeks ago this bloke wanders into the restaurant where we do trivia and before sitting down with his team pulls out a can of deodorant and gives each underarm a quick phhht. Through his shirt, too. The odour lingered for ages.

Another "Bloke"
I'm no great Liberal supporter, I just hate Labor. Why? I'm not really sure. I just do. And yet I'm a long time unionist with lots of friends in the unions. I was in the ETU for 22 years and they did alright by me. Now I'm in the AEU and they do alright, too, and will do even better under a Labor government (ostensibly, anyway) which is good for me work-wise. Yet I hate Kevin Rudd in roughly the same measure lefties hate John Howard and hope, probably vainly, that Labor get stomped in the election so that we see that grotesquely unattractive smirk - more of a shit eating grin, if you ask me - wiped off Rudd's dial.

Peerless
Whenever bloggers promote blog polls, they often add that blogging isn't a popularity contest. Of course, it's a popularity contest, and the blogger promoting the poll usually hopes they're the most popular. With that in mind, I'll promote the only poll I'm likely to win: Geoff Honnor's. (Hope that crack about Kevin Rudd doesn't cancel out the ideology bit.) Sure, Geoff wrote that nearly two years ago and much of stuff I've done since is rubbish, but once a winner, always a winner. Right, Ben Johnson?

Comments

[TimT]

I caught that Einstein Factor, but missed the 'Mein Kampf' bit. Pity. My one enduring memory of that show is the light of triumph and victory reflecting off that boy's braces at the end of the show.

[TimT]

They have a Spelling Bee competition on SBS at the moment for kids, which is amusing, but the producers have stuffed the rules up - they don't always use the word in a sentence, and sometimes the kids get caught up on homophones. One gave the correct spelling for 'Tourney', though was marked down because they were looking for the word 'Tawny'; another gave the spelling 'Corners' though the examiners were looking for 'Cornice'.

I'm all for bloodsport/kids on game shows, but you've got to get the rules right!

[Tony T.]

I was amazed by how much these three knew. Even more so that they knew about "proper" things, not New Idea shit or crap telly.

The boy's braces reminded me of me. The fact that he knew stuff didn't.

[Big Ramifications]

Here's a "part" for your asses.

Woz watching the women's shot put at the World Champs. Round 5, and some German bird threw her way to bronze contention. Then a Kiwi bird (the eventual winner) I think.

Two throws later and the German is back in the circle. I notice the graphic didn't have her most recent throw so I'm thinkin' "this must be a replay".

But did the peckerhead on SBS realise? The guy WHO GETS PAID MONEY to do this job? No. So he's prattling away as if it's a different throw. It wasn't until the Kiwi bird reappears that the penny drops.

[sound of crickets chirping for 20 seconds]

"Erm. Just a recap of round 5 action there."

---

And anyone notice the plethora of gratuitous vulva shots? Curiously, none on the 16 year old Aussie pole vaulting bird wot is related to that Russian bird. They were doing close ups of her HANDS(?!??) I wonder if it was an age thing?

[Big Ramifications]

ps: Dogupyaz.

[Tony T.]

That'd be arses, Notorious Biggy Baby.

It's a wonder the Channel Nine cricket commentators don't fall into the trap of re-commentating replays. They have so many it throws me out every time I look away and then look back, thinking that the last ball looked just like the previous one.

[Ann O'Dyne]

regarding Part the 8th of that Post:

You'd be the Winner in People's Hearts Tone.

[Professor Rosseforp]

Hey, Big Ramifications, I saw some of the women's shot putt, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record, if you take away the crouch at the beginning, their action looks like they have been to a Sri Lankan Spin Bowling Academy.
None of them got much turn on the pitch, though,and the bounce was virtually non-existent.

[Tony T.]

A: In my best Chip 'n' Dale voice "Thangyoo, you're too, too kind."

P: There'd be a lot of sweeping, then, and maybe DK's aluminium bat would find a niche. And aside from the fact it would dent less, it would turn a tonk into a tink.

[os]

Onya Tone, I don't like that little rag of a man either.
The Chess kid was brill on Kasparov, but also on the general questions - frog girl didn't have a general clue comparatively.
Times have changed, when I were a lad, Mein Kampf was on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in Australia. I first got a copy when teaching history in Merredin in 1975, but my copies of Mao's LRB and that Danish thing for schoolchildren date from uni days.

[Tony T.]

Lefties complain that Howard's cricket tragicness is a scam to wow the battlers, or batters, as the case may be. And I tend to agree. A real cricket fan can spot a real cricket fan from miles orf, and this 'ere real cricket fan has his doubts about Howard's cricket fannedness.

But I get worse from Kruddler. My bullshit detector heads into hyperdrive when he smarms onto the telly. I prefer Keating; at least he didn't pretend to be anything he wasn't.

My best mate is a history teacher with as broad a knowledge of 20th century Germany as anyone I know. He reckons MK is a numbing bore.

[Nabakov]

"Howard's cricket tragicness is a scam to wow the battlers, or batters, as the case may be. And I tend to agree."

I reckon it's more a case that like most professional pollies, he decided to adopt a team and/or sport because it's actually a pretty handy icebreaker when you have to meet briefly lots of people with whom you may not have much in common.

"Gidday mate, how about those Pies/Wallabies/Socceroos/Warnie, hey?"
" Er yes, how about them, Prime Minister/Premier/Minister."
"Great talking to you, just great. Gotta go now."

And of course associating yourself with the baggy greenies over the last 15 years or so wouldn't do any harm for someone trying to project themselves as a winner after a pretty ordinary innings in the eighties. And I'm sure he probably gets right into the stats side of it. But no, he's never struck me as one who could really appreciate the intrinsic poetry, drama and existential tedium of a tight five day test ending in a draw.

Speaking of existential tedium I have a copy of MK. You're welcome to borrow it. Not so welcome to return it. It really is bum-numbingly dull. The only interesting thing in it is that Adolf laid out exactly what he going was to do (ie: exterminate the Jews and Slavs and seize Mittle Europe and Western Russia) and no one paid any attention at the time - perhaps because no-one could be arsed reading all the way through.

Incidentally do you have my copy of David Thomson's 'Suspects'?

[Tony T.]

Suspects? Umm ... ... errr ... ... ahhh ... maybe an unknown person slipped it into my pocket, but I can't remember if it's there.