Whoo!

Spin Starts Here rules;

In a statement the Pope said:

“OMG WTF???? ROFL!!!!!11!! U R A BUNCH OF FAGZ!!1!!!!

I AM DA P0p3 N AM DA 1337est!!!! U Hax0rZ R GHEYZ!1!!!!!”

Come on down! And then piss off again

The Price is Right is back on Australian television tomorrow at 5:30pm. And it's hosted by Larry Emdur too. Have we not moved on from 1997 yet?

I won't take this new incarnation seriously until some nutcase creates a website to archive how often each mini-game is played like this American nutbag.

Seriously though, couldn't we do something a bit different? Who could possibly object to seeing the return of Supermarket Sweep or Press Your Luck hosted by Ian Turpie? The two greatest game shows of our time, sadly neglected.

Emdur out! Turpie in!

A highbrow evening in Melbourne

Classy way to spend a Saturday night. At the Greyhound Racing in Broadmeadows. $5 entry, free parking and a guaranteed good night out for all. Especially if you're picking winners left, right and centre like I was.

Tonight just galvanised the dream of buying a dog and naming it after our (faltering severely) indoor soccer team - that's Chickempron Submarine for those who came in late. If we get enough people to go in on the scam idea it might just work.

UPDATE - I forgot to mention that whilst I saw plenty of 'colorful racing identities' (i.e potential crooks) there were no sightings of men in trenchcoats kicking dogs or injecting them with large quantities of canine steroids. Which was disappointing. Maybe next time!

Failed footy tips ahoy

Way back, in a long gone era (Sunday March 2nd to be precise) I made a bold prediction of how the final AFL ladder would pan out. Let's analyse those selections now, and see just how wrong I was.

Port Adelaide
Pre-Season Prediction - 1st
Actual Place - 1st
Mid-Season Prediction - 3rd

No idea how they're top. Maybe I just can't understand how any team could successfully manage to make Melbourne look good and still be atop the ladder at the halfway mark of the season

Brisbane
Pre-Season Prediction - 2nd
Actual Place - 3rd
Mid-Season Prediction - 1st

Hit by the kind of shocking injury run that they managed to avoid the past two seasons and were absolutely porked by the red-hot West Coast last round but they'll still finish top. Not entirely sure they're going to win the whole thing though.

Adelaide
Pre-Season Prediction - 3rd
Actual Place - 7th
Mid-Season Prediction - 5th

Strange to see them as the worst of the interstate clubs but have been a bit disappointing so far. I've no doubts they'll get better, but their finals series may very well be a one game affair this year.

Geelong
Pre-Season Prediction - 4th
Actual Place - 14th
Mid-Season Prediction - 12th

Whoa, what was I thinking here? Must have been seduced by the half-decent performance of a young team last year and the fact that they've got a jolly theme song.

St. Kilda
Pre-Season Prediction - 5th
Actual Place - 10th
Mid-Season Prediction - 9th

Who can tell with this bunch of idiots? Beat a good team one week, get flogged by some duds the next. Sack one of your ruckmen and watch the rest go down with injuries at a record setting pace. They'll probably win the bloody Premiership now just to irritate me.

Collingwood
Pre-Season Prediction - 6th
Actual Place - 8th
Mid-Season Prediction - 8th

I stand by my prediction of the Magpies entering the kind of post-Grand Final hell that both St. Kilda and Melbourne experienced after their appearances in the big game. They won't even make the 8 next year, so enjoy it while you can Pies fans.

Hawthorn
Pre-Season Prediction - 7th
Actual Place - 12th
Mid-Season Prediction - 11th

Look to have got their season back into gear after Schwab was inches away from being out of a job two months ago. Some mentalists are even talking finals - which is a bit over the top if you ask me. Still, the coach will survive and they'll be a good side next year - which is more than we can say for some teams.

Fremantle
Pre-Season Prediction - 8th
Actual Place - 5th
Mid-Season Prediction - 4th

Happy to say that I'm one of the few who tipped the Dockers to make the 8 this year. I might have even ranked them higher were they not the kind of team to implode at the slightest hint of pressure. Who knows, they still might. Probably not a Grand Final contender, but it would be quite comical if they did make it.

West Coast
Pre-Season Prediction - 9th
Actual Place - 2nd
Mid-Season Prediction - 2nd

Didn't think they'd be able to maintain their shock good form of last year but I was wrong. So wrong in fact that I'm tipping them to go on and win the whole thing. That'll jinx them then.

Essendon
Pre-Season Prediction - 10th
Actual Place - 11th
Mid-Season Prediction - 10th

Past it. Extremely mediocre. Next.

Melbourne
Pre-Season Prediction - 11th
Actual Place - 15th
Mid-Season Prediction - 16th

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I thought I was being the ultimate pessimist picking us to not only miss the 8 but miss it by a mile but it turns out I was actually being optimistic. Clearly the worst side in the competition at the moment and an absolute lock to finish last. Will be lucky to win another game this year.

North Melbourne
Pre-Season Prediction - 12th
Actual Place - 6th
Mid-Season Prediction - 7th

Won four in a row, had a draw, lost the next four and now they've won four. What the fark is going on there? Still likely to cause an upset and make the eight. I can safely say that if it ends up as interstate madness in the finals I'll be going for them.

Footscray
Pre-Season Prediction - 13th
Actual Place - 16th
Mid-Season Prediction - 15th

Were never going to do anything this year, but the actual extent of their absymal performances this year have been a shock. Three times they've thrown away games against far better teams and will win a few more before the end of the year. Must be looking forward to their game against Melbourne with some glee.

Sydney
Pre-Season Prediction - 14th
Actual Place - 4th
Mid-Season Prediction - 6th

Excellent list of youngsters, but they'll struggle to keep the intensity going for the whole year. Surely Barry Hall is only a couple of weeks away from doing something majorly stupid, getting suspended for five weeks and blowing the whole year for them. I predict he'll headbutt somebody.

Carlton
Pre-Season Prediction - 15th
Actual Place - 13th
Mid-Season Prediction - 14th

Expected to be shit. Are shit, but better than some. It's going to get progressively worse for them over the next couple of years - so Blues fans should enjoy only being semi-terrible this year. More people looking forward to an easy win when they play us.

Richmond
Pre-Season Prediction - 16th
Actual Place - 9th
Mid-Season Prediction - 13th

So, they're not going to finish last. Got that one wrong. But all the yellow and black mutants who thought they were going to snap the Premiership drought as the side sat second on the ladder a few months back had better get ready to wait a few more years because they've hit the wall and are absolutely no chance to see September action.

The others...

Port Adelaide to beat Brisbane in the GF
Can't see it happening now. I'm going for a West Coast-Brisbane GF with the Eagles winning.

Peter Bell (Fremantle) to win the Brownlow
Almost certainly not, but he'll surely run in the top 10.

Matthew Lloyd (Essendon) to be a one man team and win the Coleman
Well, I'm right on track here. Two out of 19 isn't too bad is it? IS IT?

What I Saw Today

Melbourne has been infested by Rugby Union (aka: Kick and Clap) fans. It's really disturbing, they're everywhere. Unfortunately the large group of England fans who were walking down Elizabeth Street didn't stop to engage in some of the conduct much loved by their football fan brothers and throw somebody through the window of a bottle store.

The other strange thing I saw/heard was a punk singing Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine" at the top of his voice whilst I was trying to play the No Fear pinball machine.

Crazy days.

Life Kills

Pro-Life types are generally morons. So says Caz, and I agree wholeheartedly. See my 10,000 posts on the same subject in the past - no links required there's enough of 'em.

Try this excerpt from her rant on for size -

The quiet ones didn’t bother me so much. They’d just kneel there for hours praying for the “murdered souls”, silently waving their placards. They’d wheel out disabled and deformed people in wheelchairs for the sympathy vote too, as if to say “What if our parents had aborted us?” This one old dude had this cardboard box with Astroturf in it and plastic fetuses. I used to ask him how much it cost to get a raffle ticket in the meat tray draw and get him all riled up. Ha!

Pure genius.

It's a funeral

I just saw an ad for that useless Channel 7 comedy show Big Bite and dear me what a complete mess that looked like. Taking the piss out of wacky foreign people on SBS - welcome to 1991. Jokes about Greg Matthews hair? That's a bit more contemporary, say 1995 at the best. And some pissweak comedy stuntman that couldn't be more ripped off from Shitscared and All Aussie Adventures if it tried. 

Is sketch comedy in Australia dead? In this reporter's opinion, yes.

Crazy Melbourne #1

The National Gallery in Melbourne has been under reconstruction for years now. I last went there in 1997 I think and it's definately been shut down since at least '99. They say it's opening again in November this year, but that's about the forty-third different reopening date they've given in the past couple of years so I'll believe it when I see it.

Anyway, all the outside of the building has been good for in that time is hosting a flame-war between various factions of Melbourne psychopaths on the yellow construction walls. Usually it's some far left-wing knobs writing stuff about how Howard/Bush/Israel = KKK/Hitler/Great Satan or something but once in a while the other side fires up and you get some great thesis about what complete bastards the Palestinians are. Every few days the wall will be wiped clean (even though you can still see most of what was written left underneath) and the process starts all over again.

Recently, though, the hippies have started to express a bizarre desire for the welfare of poultry and related products. Last week it was "Save Chickens, not People" and after a couple of other livestock related 'posts' they've come up with the greatest piece of graffiti ever. In five foot high letters on the Southbank Boulevard side of the wall it now says;

"GIVE ME CHICKEN OR GIVE ME DEATH"

Pure genius! It's the best thing an anarchist has ever done.

It's very hard to come up with catchy titles all the time isn't it?

A day off blogging, my phone line died AGAIN. And I had to wait for Telstra to come and fix it AGAIN. This has happened the last two times it's pissed down raining and will probably happen again next time.

During all this I had a horrible revelation last night. For years, ever since it's release, I've slagged off that Alanis Morrisette song "Ironic" for trying to pass off several different scenarios as irony when they're clearly not. It only came to me at about 7pm last night that maybe the whole point to the song was to be ironic about the fact that she was singing a song about irony that contained none. If you know what I mean, I can't explain it.

I hope not though, I'd hate to have been scammed by a perennial 'where-are-they-now' candidate like Alanis

Californian political update

Arnold Schwarzenegger as Californian Governor?

If that's not the biggest publicity stunt ever I'd be surprised. New blockbuster movie comes out, Arnold gets his name plastered across the worldwide press - film makes much money and everyone is happy as political ambitions are quickly forgotten. Well, actually I suppose the whole Jesus making a comeback three-days after being nailed to a cross was probably a bigger stunt but the validity of that story has always worried me so we'll give the nod to Arnie on this one.

Pop quiz

Which of these men is a clown?



If you said the three idiots posing with Ronald McDonald you'd be right.

Company executives feel so confident that on Wednesday they announced plans for its first global ad campaign. The new theme: "I'm lovin' it."

The campaign will attempt to reinvent McDonald's as a place for the young and hip — and not just for the Happy Meal set.

A burger made by spotty 15-year-olds being paid $25 a week? I'm lovin' it!

I can honestly say I must be the only person in Australia never to have worked in fast food. I filled in an application for KFC once, but on their personality test I filled in the question "Are you an angry person" honestly and said "all the time!" It had been a bad day. It's always a bad day.

He's Back

The question of whatever happened to my old sparring partner Voice of the G (see somewhere on the blogspot site, I can't find the link for the life of me) has been solved.

He's doing an ad for some riggy property deal going down in Melbourne. And I thought he must have been dead.

No sign of a comeback rendition of "Nothing Beats the Footy at the MCG" though, (un)fortunately.

Terrific Irony

Some kids from Milton Keynes make a model of the rancid little hockey stadium their pissy football team will play in one day (not before 2014 at this rate though) and win a trip to the Millenium Eye - an overpriced and useless project much like the Franchise themselves - for their efforts.

Milton Keynes steals football team from London and then sends kids there as a prize. Are they secretly admitting that MK is a shithole or what?

And to prove what a mad and sick place MK is the second place-getters won a trip to France. How is that a worse prize than a trip to a fairground attraction? Do they have to meet Jacques Chirac or something?

Oh dear

The great MX (crappy free Melbourne newspaper) boycott continues, but on the way home I was looking over somebody's shoulder at the 'news in brief' column and saw a headline that surely only made it in as part of an "I bet you won't print that" competition.

Man fingered over sex attack

What were they thinking?

Talkback hosts are morons. Shock! Horror!

FromHBD comes this tale of outrage and disgust from two of Sydney's most prominent equal rights advocates *cough*

Two gay Sydney males, who hug each other and appear to sleep in the same bed, were beaming into our living rooms via a new reality program, The Block, at the baked-beans-on-toast timeslot of 6.30pm Sunday.
That's as prime time as television gets and all this, reproved 2UE broadcasters Steve Price and John Laws, was courtesy of the trusted Nine Network.
Further, argued Price, the former Melbourne broadcaster, it was presented by kid-friendly Jamie Durie.
"I just have a query about why Channel Nine needed to include a gay couple in the mix," said Price, just after 8am last Monday. "Two blokes. Nice enough guys, I guess... [but] I can tell you that The Block will attract a lot of kids, a lot of viewers under the age of 10.
"Do I really need that conversation late on a Sunday at the end of a great weekend of relaxation? Do we really need to know these blokes like to renovate in their undies?" [...]
Last week, Price said to Laws: "Once Kerry Packer gets hold of this there's going to be trouble."
Laws: "I don't know what's happened to Kerry's taste. He probably doesn't know that's on at 6.30."

SWEET JESUS NO! They sleep in the same bed? Well, I can feel society's moral code crumbling all around us. Let's all go out and beat up a priest and burn a church down now shall we? It's called real life you bogans.

Of course Price probably needs to generate some controversy to justify his absolutely shithouse ratings. I stopped listening to talkback radio when that idiot Stan Zemanek appeared in Melbourne, and I've just realised why I never went back to listening to it when he got the sack.

You know who'd go really well on talkback radio? Me! Alert your local struggling radio station. I'll work cheap.