Oh, and didn't I piss myself laughing when I saw the bowling figures from Australia's record breaking win against Namibia this morning? For those of you who haven't seen them let's do a quick review shall we?

Glenn McGrath 7 overs, 7 wickets for 15 runs (2 wides)
Andy Bichel 1 over, 2 wickets for 0 runs
Brett Lee 6 overs, 1 wicket for 26 runs (5 no balls)

So, that Glenn McGrath performance was pretty special eh? You'd hate to be the dud who got flogged by a team that barely made 40 in their innings wouldn't you? WOULDN'T YOU? Ha ha ha ha ha, excuse me while I regain some composure.

Now, please try and explain to me just why Lee is Australia's "most exciting bowling prospect in years" (copyright - everyone). I predicted a long time ago that he would be too useless to even make an impact against the second worst ranked side in the competition and it looks like I was right. And don't start claiming his wickets against India were any good, both of them involved idiots swinging at balls that would have been called wide anyway.

Dear Jebus,

Please let him cost Australia the World Cup final against New Zealand.

Yours sincerely,

Adam from Auckland.

UPDATE - Duncan is my brother in marketing tool related skeptiscm. I feel like i'm a member of the Conspiracy Theory Society or something. Can you see the episode of the ACB version of the X-Files now? (No, I don't care that it's been axed)

Mulder: "We're recieving strange reports of up to two individuals not believing our hype about Brett Lee being the greatest bowler since Lillee"
Scully: "Dear god! We better arrange for a few more teenage girls to publicly swoon over him and we must organise a starring gig in a couple more crappy cereal ads or we'll never get a crowd next summer."

Best thing seen today, and let me say i'm quite serious here so any stereotyping is a not a result of personal bias so you can't sue me, a young blonde woman pretending to read the book of the movie Artificial Intelligence from St. Kilda Junction all the way to Glenhuntly. The only problem? She was holding it upside down. Ladies and gentlemen I kid you not. I even got far too close for comfort just to make sure it wasn't one of those two-in-one novel things - sadly not.

Maybe it's got something to do with the fact that dumbass school kids are too busy protesting to learn anything.

Actually, I used to quite like those "all students go on strike" days because it meant the 90% of morons and drug addicts at my school didn't show up and the rest of us could actually learn something for a couple of days per-year.

I can't believe the ICC are questioning the validity of Kenya's World Cup win over Sri Lanka, yet nobody has said anything about that highly suspicious extra-fest in the India/Holland game earlier in the tournament.

If they still think that match fixing starts and ends at game results after all these years (and the Hansie Cronje debacle) then they're bigger morons than the awarding of co-host duties to Zimbabwe would suggest. The advent of spread betting means that you can win or lose money on almost any aspect of the match - and extras are one of the most popular bets on the subcontinent. I stand by my slanderous assertion that there was definately a fix on extras during the Dutch innings of the earlier game. I assume it was done then because they thought the minimum of people would be watching.

General skeptiscm about the genius of The Office. I must say that I didn't quite realise how much I was enjoying it until about episode four, and now that i've seen the whole first series on DVD about six times (sad isn't it?) I appreciate it even more.

Although I do concede that most of the non-blog related people i've beaten with a stick into watching it have returned with the "it's ok, but not as good as you promised" verdict. David Brent is still my favourite philosopher ever.

"You grow up, you work half a century, you get a golden handshake, you rest a couple of years and you’re dead. And the only thing that makes that crazy ride worthwhile is ‘Did I enjoy it? What did I learn? What was the point?’ That’s where I come in. You’ve seen how I react to people, make them feel good, make them think that anything’s possible. If I make them laugh along the way, sue me. And I don’t do it so they turn round and go ‘Thankyou David for the opportunity, thankyou for the wisdom, thankyou for the laughs.’ I do it so, one day, someone will go ‘There goes David Brent. I must remember to thank him."

Genius.

I've been writing a lot recently about how I hate Telstra Dome, so in the biggest cosmic "up yours" in history i've just spent a whole day staring out a window at the horrible place. I could have chosen to sit somewhere else, but then I wouldn't have had the drama and excitement of the Spencer Street rail yards to look out on.

Further inspection of it's structure still shows a distinct lack of domeness (that's a word now i've decided). The beams on the roof try to make it look like one, but without much success. I guess they'd run out of names after Telstra Stadium and Telstra Park were already taken. What's wrong with the Telstra Arena? Idiots. They have a Dunkin' Donuts Arena in Rochester, NH - that's an exciting trend in corporate sponsorship. I'd like to one day be able to watch AFL at Copperart Park.

Anyway, we had to do a customer service course today. It was all pretty much stating the obvious (don't tell annoying old ladies to hurry up and die etc..) but I did have a chance to impress the world with my acting skills when taking part in one of those normally tedious roleplay things they always make you do. We had to do something "the wrong" way so I decided that I was going to be the worker who gets belted by an irate customer. Suffice to say the way I took the punch and my subsequent death scene was extremely well received, and would have brought a proud tear to the eye of any professional wrestler who observed.

P.S - I bet you can't tell I wrote the last three posts while I was waiting for Blogger to stop doing maintenance can you?

Washington Post interview the author of the worst book ever. Here's a summary of the plot,

George W. Bush would secretly arrange a giant parade in Washington honoring the richest people in America, who would march front to back in order of their net worth. A cadre of earnest, teetotaling college students would get wind of this and, encouraged by Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, rise up to stage a heroic counter-parade honoring basic American values like morality and hard work.

The article is an absolute classic. He really has no idea how stupid and pointless his novel is.

Greenpeace have apparently decided that the Chinese opposition to a war on Iraq makes them one of the "peaceful three" nations in the world.

To quote a great man "WHAT IN GODS NAME WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING?" It's bad enough that Beijing won the right to stage the Olympics (with their new mascot Thomas the Tank) after the Tianamen Square debacle and continued atrocities in Tibet and against their own civilian population but for super-lefties to ignore all this just because it makes some kind of point about their current issue-of-the-week is just obscene.

Dear Greenpeace,

Go back to getting yourselves killed by Norweigan supertankers you hypocritical wankers.

Yours sincerely,

Adam.

Jacques Chirac is allegedly coming to Australia. Now the big question, will the same people who protested against him when France were blowing up sizeable chunks of the South Pacific now come out and praise him for actively opposing the war on Iraq? At least for once you could say that the protestors were being consistent, they've stuck with a solid anti-war/weapons platform over the years and Chirac has been the hypocrite picking and choosing when and when not to support military aggression. I guess you could say he's consistently been in favor of nations having weapons of mass destruction but why bother, it's only France.

Hands up if you can honestly say you thought he was a dickhead then, and is still a dickhead now. Hooray for us.

Letters to the paper whinging about the "get on with it" war are starting to get rather tiresome. There's one classic in the Herald-Sun today about the shot (now that's a poor choice of words) on last week's front cover of a soldier kissing her child goodbye as she left for the Persian Gulf.

The point to it was that it's a massive outrage that a woman with children should be going off to fight a war. My problem with that is that you'd think if she had any problem with it herself she might not have, you know, JOINED THE FREAKING ARMY.

Being in the army isn't all about getting tax free pay and sexually harassing your colleagues. You are usually expected to go and fight a war if one breaks out. Hmph, if only I wasn't so tired I could write a 2000 word essay on this topic.

I got the most bizarre SMS yesterday from a number not in my phone book,

sadam is evil. I can't believe john said I was giving comfort and aid. united is the only way we'll bring him to justice we so have to do what's right for good.

Huh? I wrote back but they never responded to "Who are you and what the hell are you talking about?" I think either a semi-literate person is trying to take the piss or i've been inadvertantly signed up to the "nutters and crackpots SMS super-service".

I like the way they can't decide whether they're pro or anti war, I appreciate that in a mystery stalker.

In other news, the Federal Government has found some non-war related issue to make themselves look like idiots on. Get thee out of our bedrooms you idiots! I hope there isn't a Federal Election anytime soon, because I sure as hell don't want to vote for anybody at the moment and because i've always said that if you don't vote you have no right to criticise the government i'd have to shut up for the next three years.

I f'ing hate Colonial Stadium/Telstra Dome/Hell on Earth. Really I do. I quite enjoyed Melbourne's 43 point win over Richmond tonight, but it's all ruined by having to play at that overpriced sanitised shithole of a ground.

Mind you i'm not happy with the MCG since they killed my beloved Ponsford Stand, i'll have to put up with the Olympic until they knock that down and replace it with another awful Southern Stand-style atrocity.

Other points from tonight,

a) The Wizard Cup rule changes are awful, I hope this is the last year of the madness.
b) Richmond are SHIT. Brisbane would have beaten them by 150 tonight. They might run Carlton close for the spoon this year.

Football, it's nice to have it back.

Pat Symcox is a hero, not just because he had a frozen chicken thrown at him on the SCG a few years back. The back page story in the Herald-Sun today about him telling Hershelle Gibbs to fit in or f*ck off is accompanied by a picture that I found quite amusing for some reason.

Read the whole story here if you're more interested in hearty analysis of the story rather than reminisicing about his run in with long deceased poultry in Sydney.

I used to like the Proteas (quiet you) when they had Symcox, Fanie DeVilliers, Dave Richardson, Donald and Rhodes at their peak and Hansje before he got busted for being a cheat. Now there's nothing interesting about them.

Meanwhile, in other news. American school fails to consider that free speech might extend to clothing. All together now "and they wonder why everybody hates them?". Very sad.

Finally, Harness Racing champion Shakamaker is being retired after Saturday night. I'll fondly remember his win in the 2000 Interdominion which landed me a tidy sum. Of course when it comes to great horses, nobody can ever take the place of the myth, the legend, the Count.

No idea who Andy Roberts is (he's certainly not the same Andy Roberts who moved from Crystal Palace to Wimbledon for a club record fee during the 1997/98 season), but he links to me and appears to work for a Country and Western radio station. So he gets my personal thumbs up too.

Yes, I am available for interviews on all subjects (Yeah go on you media bastards, you know you want to), even country music. I used to watch CMT all the time before it got molested and turned into the ill-fated Music Country. Of course this all lead to the creation of MusicMax, which is the best channel on Foxtel so I guess it all balanced out in the end. Now I can watch my TV god Doug Mulray host Live from the Basement every morning from 7am. Watch it and keep the great man in a job.

I do miss those rather jolly ads for the CMT Top 10 countdown though, and the hardcore airplay of Diamond Rio videos.

Nostalgia = last refuge of the idiot.

I was going to restrain myself and leave the Australia/India game alone, but I must say I almost flipped it when all the press concerned Lee's 3/36 off 9, rather than Gillespie's 3/13 off 10. If you can't market a fast bowler who looks like a serial killer then you're not really trying in my opinion.

Besides, two of Lee's wickets came from particuarly stupid shots. And don't tell me that it was a 'trap', because any half decent batsman would have flayed him to all parts of the ground.

They're resting him against Holland, which is probably a good thing for the Dutch. After his attempted murder of Alex Tudor during the Ashes you'd have to wonder how much glee he would take trying to knock over (quite literally) an entire team of amateurs. Glenn McGrath is playing though, because you'd hate to actually give some time off to the best fast-bowler of the generation who has had a recent injury.

See people, you shouldn't encourage me.

The most interesting thing about going back and forth from the city every day is following the massive flame war going on on the walls between Camberwell (maybe even further back) and East Richmond. It's all about some comedian coming in writing his own hilariously stupid and often misspelt comments over the graffiti that's been there for years. Sample insults include "I tag because I like to have sex with men", "suffor!" and "taggers are fagorts". It's a highly intellectual debate, but unfortunately the graffiti artists haven't put their reply to the allegations down yet. A 0-0 draw on the intelligence stakes, but at least it provides some entertainment during the trip.