BOLT WATCH

I do not want my outrage tempered by knowing the facts. The Herald Sun today is as miserably dishonest as you could get away with in a mainstream newspaper, commencing with this outrageous and unsupported caption.

Comments

[Adsy]

The VB gods strike again. Alcohol content reduction anger from above. I think that's what they were on about.

[Tony T]

Well, I don't know about that. But then maybe they'd been on the piss when they claimed the Bridge made a good lightning rod despite the fact that the lightning hit something several miles behind the bridge.

[TimT]

I think I can hear the angels of commercialism singing.

That may or may not have been deliberate, but this article by a Daily Express reporter certainly was...

[pat]

That bolt would've hit way out west. What's with the superimposed Kempsey Briefcase?

On another note, what a fantastic weekend of sport ahead:

1) Parra vs Broncos
2) 2nd Test Oz in Windies
3) Tah's take on the Crusaders

And to top it all off New South lead the Queenssssslanders in SoO. Haven't heard from CB for a while.

[pat]

Phew...what a half.

Parra should be leading 24 - 10 but for an incorrect call of a forward pass (of all things given the abundance of short balls in this game) and Hindmarsh bombing a dead set right on the blower.

Too many shots of Lockyer on his excercise bike, no one willing to smash Hodges in the head, the ref's constant whistle like he's wearing hot pants and waving a glow stick at an all night gay rave, and Gus and Rabs, constant Gus and Rabs, are the only detractions of this game.

[pat]

GET that one UP YA snoz!

Less urgency and Fui Fui's on tha BURST!!!!

PARRA, clap clap clap...

[pat]

16 penalties in 52 minutes Gus notes. 3 in a row to the Broncs pat notes.

18 all.

[pat]

Brilliant stuff my F*cken arse. This commentary is shithouse. Broncs were offside/forward to go ahead and the refs turned the game into a hands off farce. Shut up Snoz you dickhead.

[pat]

Come on EELS! Broncs 26-22

[pat]

BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Come On EEEEEEEELLLLSSS.

26 -26 kick to come

[pat]

BUll fucking shit.

Man... I really feel like smashing something.

[pat]

In the interests of sportsmanship, glad tidings, bum pats, nods and winks, I deleted my sour grapes post before sending it on its way to the gods.

Broncs...Wayne...gawd...God!...God?! you deserved that win. (Grits teeth, refrains from smashing hole in Active TFT).

That was the best I've seen from Parra all year. And to lose like that hurts bad.

PJ, Mountain Man Wallace, you're still my golden boys.

Parra, keep it up. If we can play like that week in and out then we'll win this thing. But, by geeez that hurts.

[Tony T.]

Just heard the result. Gruesome.

[Professor Rosseforp]

Commercialism speaking with forked [lightning] tongue.

[Francis Xavier Holden]

I was most impressed t'otha day to see up the commercial end of my street a vehicle with a perfectly formed map of australia in the coat hanger aerial. [not strictly a map I suppose but an outline]

Not one of your hastily bent "looks a bit like" but a bloody good facsimile, (like Benji or Nick The Mad Russian)- neatly executed.

Anyway - what the hell are you doing with a case of VB stashed away? Blogging under false pretences?

[pat]

Like a dog returning to its own vomit I made my way to the local watering hole to invest my good time in some Union watching.

Like KFC it looks good, smells great, and the first bites or two are delicious but when you've reached the end of the 5 pack you're sweating in a fat oozed delirium, sick to the guts and swearing you'll never do it again.

The ref was outstanding. Union is probably the only game where the game is incidental, the ref is all that counts. You develop a nervous tic after 5 minutes, as your eyes are drawn to the minutest of movements of the refs arm. "Is it a penalty?" you jitteringly inquire "Nah,he's just scratching his nuts." is the blessed reply.

I still have no idea why Beale's try was disallowed in the 2nd half. Probably something to do with the moment being far too entertaining.

Back to the Crusaders grind, and penalty upon penalty. Dan Carter kicks a field goal. Another one for the ages. I'm sure the kiddies will say "Remember when Carter kicked that field goal from 20 metres out right in front after we had the ball for what seemed like a fortnight and couldn't make any ground?" "Yeah, who can forget...what a moment, what a game.!"

It was an evil night full of bad omens. When the Karaoke kicked in right on full time and the lights dimmed as a morbidly obese lady started wailing Chris Isaac's "Wicked Game", I knew then that I have become cursed. With that a melancholy set in of Edgar Allen Poe proportions so I took to the smokers car park declaiming to the local toothless, bearded, hillbilly what farce Rugby Union is, and that it is appropriate that the game end with that shocking rendition of Isaac's beautiful song. It was with some dismay that when I returned I realised that the singer was the hillbilly's wife.

After making a hasty retreat to the TAB bar, what seemed like the sudden appearance of angels fell upon me in the guise of the scintillating Panthers up against the Cowboys. But no it was not to be as the game became excruciating. The final moments were as if the Tell Tale Heart were in this room and that it was I, yes I who has brought this accursed luck upon all and sundry.

Somehow, the Panthers got home by a point in Golden Time.

Even though I'm shooting 0 from 2, there's no way Oz can lose the cricket. No way.

If we do, then it's time I paid the Parish Priest a visit and make a formal request for an exorcism. Till then I shall stay away, for I am unclean.

[Professor Rosseforp]

Pat, the Parish Priest will fall into a dead faint when he hears you have been watching Union instead of League -- although if he's Irish he might accept it. Or if it's an Anglican priest, she may not know the difference between league, union or VFL.
I loved the Scottish ref at the World Cup a few years ago. I remember him looking at a player, after awarding a penalty, and you could hear through the microphone, "No, I'm deadly serious." But of course, we could only guess at what the player said.

[CB]

"Haven't heard from CB for a while."

You rang? Twas a satisfactory day post Qld SoO kicking round these here parts. Talk about bitter, invectively-challenged, two-pot pissants. I'm looking forward to the next game, if only to see the other side of the drawling cesspits that Queerlanders call mouths slam shut.

[pat]

Yes Prof, it is a peculiar game mingling together the most abject parts of the human soul to form the greatest abomination known to mankind.

William James was certainly on to something when speaking of the Healthy Minded's lack of inspiration from the two mainstream Churches;

"Protestantism has been too pessimistic as regards the natural man, Catholicism has been too legalistic and moralistic, for either the one or the other to appeal in any generous way to the type of character formed of this peculiar mingling of elements."

and it is even more certain therefore that Union must have stemmed from the fusion of Protestantism with Catholicism, for the game certainly is the epitome of pessimism combined with the worst excesses of legalistic moralising.

CB, I thought you were a Queensssslander. It always struck me as odd as you are far too articulate to be born of that state of decrepitude. I hope you are right about the next game. Looks like Lockyer's back and you'll have hell to pay if they win.

[pat]

Sadly, I'll be back to watch the Bledisloe and oddly, Ben Ikin is my favourite commentator. Such is the perverse world I live in.

[Professor Rosseforp]

I dedicate this blog entry to my primary school teacher (a Roman Catholic of the old variety) who told the girls from the Salvation Army home that the Salvation Army is not a denomination, so for scripture they would have to sit with the Anglicans or Atheists -- in both cases leading straight to hell and eternal damnation.
Pat, I think your remarks and William James' are too deep at this hour of the morn -- in fact that other James, James Joyce, is probably less impenetrable than William. I read in the letters column of the Sydney Morning Herald recently that his Ulysses is the greatest novel ever written. I'm probably not the first to conclude that it's also probably the greatest novel never read.

[Tony T]

Am I missing something? Who has a case of VB stashed away?

I imagine wading through Ulysses is like wading through the Union rule book. Unlike the Union rule book, though, I certainly plan to tackle Ulysses at some stage.

[pat]

Like "The Purloined Letter" the case is hidden in plain sight. Ezekiel 8:5 "lift up thine eyes now the way toward the north."

[Tony T]

The lie: "How do you like my sly stab at stealth marketing VB? CUB paid me a motsa, y'know."

The truth: "How about that! I see it now. Amazing that I didn't notice it in the scanning."

[pat]

Perhaps Finnegans Wake is meant for you Tone as it features the constant re-occurrence of your favourite number - 32. The key to the number is explained in Ulysses as "The law of falling bodies, 32 feet per sec per sec." 32 therefore is the number of The Fall!!

However the number is always prefixed by 11 being redemption. And the full number is a reference to Romans 11:32 "For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all." There is no sin so great that God cannot forgive with His mercy. Exciting stuff hey!!?

Like all good pseudo-intellectuals my one and only very brief brush with Joyce was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. My circumstance was not so dire, as it turned out, that I should ever complete the thing. I remain forever a mere Pseudo Echo, consigned over and over to lame cover songs.

The Ezekial reference is apt though: "So I lifted up mine eyes the way toward the north, and behold northward at the gate of the altar this image of jealousy in the entry." The Great Abomination! Luther would have been horrified to see his glorious Einbecker supplanted by this cheap impostor.

[Tony T]

You keep talking like that and you'll attract Aaron Baddeley. Or an Anglican High Priestess.

Anyway.

Allow me to do the maths.

The Fall - F
= The All

The All + C
= The Call

The Call + guitars
= One hit wonderfulness.

[pat]

Excellent song, thanks for that. The old codger on synth is quite funky not to mention mystical as he starts on the left and somehow ends up at the rear, synthesiser still fully in tact.

[CB]

"CB, I thought you were a Queensssslander."

Nope. Born in Springvale, grew up in SE S.A. Spent last 18 years in Qld, and stay only because of the weather. As a rule, I regard your average bored-an-bread Qld'er with scant regard, deep loathing and extreme suspicion. If they shake my hand, I check for my watch. If they tell me it's Monday, I check my watch. If they barrack for the Brisvegas Boncko's, then the partisan barracking verges on myopic, insular and so ridiculously over the top that it resembles a kid who's thrown it's dummy out of the cot.

In short, I don't like 'em.