Pearls before swine

Me? A'ight, I guess. Fuckin' completely fuckin' over fuckin' looking at fuckin' houses, since you fuckin' asked. Yourself?

This eve's WoB is a GROHL - not a beardy ex-Nirvanan drummer type but a Grab-bag of Random Offcuts, Herpes and Leftovers. Herpes, of course, being the gift that keeps on giving. Speaking of communicable diseases:

Swine Flu. It won't kill you. It won't kill anyone you know. It hasn't even killed anyone worth knowing in terms of the actual numbers of WHO-confirmed victims - about as many as your average NASA shuttle mission gone tits-up. Basically, it's a bit shit really. It's a disease contracted and perpetuated primarily through the media, like SARS, Y2K and Kyle Sandilands. But it may have an upside... one hell of an upside. It may, nay almost definitely will, make pork cheaper. And paying less for quality pig extract is something that's worth the odd global pandemic for. (Says he, smugly, at the furtherest end of an easily defendable island at the other end of the globe from Oinkflu Ground Zero.) I'm not about to recapitulate here my own or others' persuasive arguments as to why or how Ms Piggy's most succulent bits are the king, queen or demographically elected head-of-state of meats. They just are, FACT. Objectors, disputers and playa-haters are directed to ingest a bacon sarnie, a bag of pork scratchings and a large earthenware gourd of shut the fuck up.

Meanwhile, in unrelated news, Facebook memes are fucking annoying. You know the ones. Five greatest 80's music videos. Five best cities I've lived in. Five most impressive shits I've done, with net weights and photographic evidence. Seriously, who gives a fuck? That said, there were two I wasn't even game to get started on, for fear of being there all day. The memes I mean, not the... anyway. One, fairly obviously, was my five favourite beers. Only five? You mean this week? Tried just picking a subset, like the five best beers which Carlton and United managed to fuck up by no longer making available to the general public, but after Kent Old Brown, Reschs Smooth, Sheaf Stout* and Empire (technically not much of a beer but somehow getting one in an actual glass bottle from a beer tent at Homebake has elevated this long-lost CUB concern to deity status) I just got depressed and went looking for amateur girl-on-girl porn instead.


* Yeah OK, Sheaf Stout is still available, but it's brewed at Southbank in Melbourne since those venal CUB douchefelchers shut down and sold off the Kent Brewery on Broadway. Ditto Reschs Real, DA, Poisener and all the other Sydney-based CUB produce. Could be worse of course, they could be brewed at Yatala, CUB's south-east Qld facility, where beers go to die. I challenge doubters to bench-test Sydney-spec Carlton Draught (brewed in Melbourne) against its Brisbane-borne equivalent and tell me it's the same beer. Moral of the story: SEQ water is arse filtered through arse.

The other, unsurprisingly, was the 'five albums which shaped me'. Which being an insufferable music git I took Very Seriously and interpreted as NOT my five 'favourite' albums necessarily but the five which had the most bearing on my musical tastes. Resulting in:
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced (1967)
The Sex Pistols, Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols (1977)
Motorhead, Ace of Spades (1980)
The Datsuns, The Datsuns (2001)
The Black Keys, Thickfreakness (2003)

Of course as soon as pressing the big Confirm button on that lot I thought of half a dozen others which could or should have been there. AC/DC Live only missed out on the basis of not wanting to undeniably prove to everyone I know that I am an irredeemable bogan from the sticks whose dream car is a Monaro GTS. The Stooges' Raw Power should have been there. And hell, TISM's Machiavelli And The Four Seasons got played until its ring got lasered off when I first got it back in the day, as did the Presidents of the USA's debut, Veruca Salt's 8 Arms To Hold You, Regurgitator's Unit, Frenzal Rhomb's A Man's Not A Camel, Airbourne's Runnin' Wild... could have been there for weeks. To noone's benefit, least of all my own.

Framing the same question of beer rather than music tends to tease out the cheap 'n' nasty end of the spectrum. The old man tended to populate the fridge with Reschs Real and Tooheys Red, (a) because he was cheap and (b) as it was as convincing an argument against teenage drinking as ever there was. Rubbish like Carlton Cold and Hahn Ice tended to figure prominently in early dispatches. Uncle Ted (Extra Dry) was a big favourite for many years, then international lagers, homebrewed creations and God knows what else. Nowadays, my favourite beer of the moment - whatever moment - is the beer I'm drinking in that moment, because it's the one which has been picked out to accompany and complement that moment. Except for the 500mL cans of Grolsch which are packing out the lower half of my fridge at present; they were chosen as they were Cheap As Fuck. ($6 a 4-pack. Argue with that to your detriment.) It's the hard-to-find shit which triggers the nostalgia, though. Southwark Stout, if you can find it, may be the greatest dark beer in the history of stuff. It's black as pitch and richer than Rupert and had a justly-legendary reputation in the college I stayed at during my early yrs at uni, largely because the bottle shop over the road stocked it (as well as something called Polish Drinking Spirits - 80% proof - in no way recommended for consumption by anyone). Little Creatures Pilsner off tap from the Australian Hotel in the Rocks is purest concentrated Win. There's a brew-pub in Canberra - perhaps the only redeeming quality of the Nation's Capital - called the Wig and Pen which does an Aviator Bock which is truly awe-inspiring. But, in all honesty, finding good beer - any good beer - for cheap is one of life's simplest and most rewarding pleasures.

So our World Of Bollocks Challenge for this Weak is - name the album and/or the beer that shaped you, in 25 words or less. Cos I'm in a position to take the moral high ground when it comes to brevity and shit eh.

Bonus points if you can explain (a) what the fuck this girl is doing to this lizard, and (b) what the fuck it has to do with getting a career in science.

The Doctor is OUT.

Getting wet with Kate's dirty sister

Red Bull Racing's Sebastian Vettel has been widely heralded as the new Michael Schumacher. If I was him I'd be pretty fucked off by being compared to such a talentless, humourless hack as the big chinned one. As discussed previously, Seb seems to be as good value as he is good behind the wheel. He walked it (or perhaps waded) from pole position in Sunday's largely-underwater Chinese F1 Grand Prix, even trouncing the finest race driver ever to have once been a ballboy for the Canberra Raiders, his Strayan teammate Mark 'Hopalong' Webber in the same car. And then went on to explain why he gives his cars girls names. "My original car was called Kate. Like a ship, it should be named after a girl as it’s sexy." Erm, whatever does it for you, Seb. But then he took Kate out in Melbourne but the pair of them got wiped out and she ended up completely smashed. Her replacement was faster, more aggressive and trickier to handle but ultimately, a better ride. She was dubbed Kate’s Dirty Sister. And, as per reputation, she went like the clappers.

Update of another racing-related story previously followed on the World of Bollocks - turns out Indycar driver and former Star with whom Dancing was televisually availed of the US populace, Helio Castroneves won't be grabbing his ankles in the shower block at the county farm any time soon. Well, not unless he's got a new hobby his Penske team aren't aware of. He's been acquitted on all counts of tax evasion brought against him by the Feds, leaving his replacement, Woomby Land refugee Will Power (yes that is his real name) out of a full time gig once more, and the rest of us wondering what the fuck the Feds thought they were doing bringing the case in the first place.

But the most intriguing entry in this edition of Recycling A Bunch Of Old Shit We Talked About Fucken Ages Ago is... this. Ben Elton once said that the most pressing question facing society at that time was 'the Australian question', which was, as he put it, 'Which of Hi-5 would you shag first?'

Here's your answer.

Yeah, it's the blonde chick from Hi-5, slutting it up an absolute treat in failing ACP wankers' interest mag Ralph. No idea whether she has a sister called Kate.

We dealt with Kellie's marital issues in a literature review from our occasional gossip-mag correspondent, Munter the Invercargill truck driver, which also included the Munter's first experience of her line of work:

So anyway, this one was worth the price of admission alone. Strawberry blonde, like Nic Kidman back in the day before she fucked off and married that impotent Scientologist midget with the big honker and the miniscule cock. Slender as you like - the Munter tends to prefer them with a bit of meat on their bones, but I wasn't gonna kick her out of bed if she farted - great legs, tits, and an arse you could open a stubbie with. I had me usual seat, kicking back with a beer - Jesus they charge like a wounded bull these days - as this chick started doing her thing. Her eyes meet mine, she's got this dirty little grin on her face. None of this 'going through the motions' rubbish you get with some other so-called 'professional entertainers'. 'Going through the motions' is what you used to do swimming off Bondi before they extended the outfall - it's not what you want when you lay down your hard earned for a bit of fun yeah? Anyway this one was no talk and all action, me favourite. Harder than four unit maths I was. So she crawls on all fours across her little stage in some sort of skimpy skin-tight athletic legging sort of schtick - not the usual get-up but I wasn't writing to the ODT to complain. "I'm a dirty little piggie," she purred with that spank-my-arse grin. Fuckin' bet you are luv, I nodded. "And I need to take a bath...." At that point I almost knocked me beer over on the remote control...

It'd be less disturbing if it hadn't actually happened. Half-seven in the morning, hungover, seedy, cradling strong stovetop-espresso, mesmerised by and not dealing well with all the vibrant colour and movement on the crystal bucket, is NOT the time of day you expect to see a slammin' strawberry-blonde hottie crawling around on all fours declaring she's a dirty little piggy who needs a bath. (Aforementioned dirty piggie pictured left in happier times.) You're not equipped to deal with that sort of input the morning after a few too many Chateau Dodgy home brews on a Sunday night watching the world superbikes. At least we weren't, until Craigos and I came up with the lightbulb moment of muting the synthetic kiddie-centric pop bilge and instead supplying some more appropriate form of audio accompaniment. Like Black Sabbath, or Frenzal Rhomb. You've not lived unless you've watched a trio of Hi-5 hotties gyrating to something like Lord Of This World or Russell Crowe's Band's A Fucken Pile Of Shit.

Which brings us to the point of the, um, exercise: kids TV hotties. The handwringing over Kellie togging off for ACP's leery lensmen is nothing new; it goes back, waaaaayyyy back, even beyond Sophie Lee's fishnet miniskirts and sultry pout on the Bugs Bunny Show in the early '90s. Kids TV and hotties have always gone together: Terasa Livingstone, Sofie Formica, Catriona Rowntree - hell, even Ranger Stacey if you were that way inclined - and a bunch of others now long-forgotten and not a little moth-eaten, but who back in the day were the evolutionary precursors of modern-era kids TV hotties like Kellie, the ginger one and the Asian one from Hi-5. None of whom have still got a gig on the show of course - one married the token straight one from Savage Garden, one fucked off to Seven, and one - our favourite one (Charli, though marginally hotter, was fundamentally more annoying) - stuck with it right to the end, then went and quasi-nuded-up for Ralph. Which was, and is, why we love her so.


It's almost enough to make you forget she was partly responsible for inflicting the Teen Queens upon us.

Almost.

The Doctor is OUT.

PS It's Craigos' 31st today. If you run into him, buy him a beer.

Get this India

The Thirty-Nine Steps was legendary Hitchcock. The Thirty-Ninth Game, by comparison, was just legendary cock. This was the short-lived plan for the English Premier League to play an additional round of games every year, with each game played at distant locations around the world in order to spread the Premier League gospel in Thailand, Botswana and Uzbekistan. It was less popular than chlamydia (certainly far less popular in the key 18-35 male demographic) and was, at last notice, on the most backward of backburners at English FA Headquarters. After all, what domestic sporting competition would be so arrogant or condescending as to think their petty domestic squabbles would be of interest to the citizens of a foreign city with no relationship to either team?

Erm... heaps, apparently. From the NFL playing regular-season games at Wembley Stadium to the sickening prostitution of the Bledisloe in Hong Kong, everyone's in on the act. The Australian V8 Supercars are persisting with a round in Bahrain despite the failure of their mission into Shanghai. The AFL made a laughable attempt to play preseason football in Dubai, where in a couple of weeks the Pakistan cricket side will set up permanent camp. But, as yet, no national tournament has ever been transferred in its entirety from its home nation to another - notwithstanding the example of the NHL which is effectively a primarily Canadian league played in a primarily American context. Not until the Indian Premier League Twenty20 cricket circus upped sticks and moved to South Africa to avoid getting blowed up in national election strife that is.

The IPL is a misnomer. It's not Indian - not this season, anyway. It's not a League, because a League infers a structure based on rounds of home-and-away games between the teams involved, which is hard to organise with no home or away teams existing. And it's not Premier, because while Holden used to ship a bunch of cars to South Africa back in the '60s and '70s, Premiers (and Kingswoods) were rebadged as Chevrolets. So it's as much a frothy confection of superficiality and arse in name as it is in reality. It is, as someone here said, basically a bunch of cashed up Indian businesstwunts and Bollywood celebritards playing Fantasy Cricket with Monopoly money. The best and brightest international mercenaries spliced into squads made up of emerging Indian nobodies about which you know bugger-all and care far less. That said, it's kicking off in an hour and a half and the last one had the entertainment qualities of badly dubbed foreign porn - lots of appealing action, even if the plotwork-goings-on are laughably bewildering most of the time - and most importantly Warnie's underdog tribe of baked-bean-scoffing, Winnie-Blues-puffing, VB-sinking bogans knocked over Indian golden boy MS Dhoni's Chennai concern. Picking former NZ captain Stephen Fleming (who, judging from his Fujitsu aircon commercials, is made entirely of wood) to open the innings in a Twenty20 slogfest would appear to be the Golden Boy's most egregious error of judgement in the event.

Despite being reigning champs Warnie's lot, the Rajasthan Royals, are still being largely ignored by the fawning Indian cricket media, in favour of Sachin's Mumbai Indians, MS Dhoni's Chennai Super Kings, Yuvraj's Kings XI, Kievien Pietiersien's Bangalore Royal Challengers or Roy Symonds' Dickhead Chargers. This is probably due to Warnie's selection regime of only picking players called Shane. Or Shaun. Or, at a pinch, Siddharth, which is Hindi for Shane. Possibly. Look for further big-name Shanes to be targeted by the Royals' headhunters, including Shane Bond, Shane 'Hammer' Heal, Shane St James and Twania Shane.

The Royal Challengers recruited Pietersen for the season not based on his form (if any) for England but on their policy, demonstrated in their signing the Washington Redskins cheerleaders for season 2008, of always having enormous tits about the place. Signing highly moob-escent eater of pies Jesse Ryder will also contribute to this aim, one way or another. But not in a way that will help anyone keep their lunch down.


Meanwhile Roy's Dickhead Chargers have taken a leaf out of Warnie's IPL textbook, seeking and signing a coach with the same scientific balance of pies, beer, sledging and essence-of-sweaty-bogan which propelled the Royals to such success in season 2008. I give you the man, the mountain, the legend, 'Boof' Lehmann.

So who'll win? Fucked if I know. All I know is who you should cheer for.

Thumbs up:
The Deccan Chargers, for being the epitome of Strayan bogandom - Roy, Boof, Gilly, and being named after a Valiant
The Rajasthan Royals, for Warnie, the Shanes, and laying bets that Graeme Smith will find something else to break during the course of the tournament
Kings XI Punjab, partly for another bunch of Strayan journeymen but mainly for that poundworthy Bollywood hottie who owns 'em

Thumbs down:
The Mumbai Indians, 'cos Sachin's a knob (to be fair so was Bradman)
The Knight Riders, solely for having the fuckedest name in the history of all fucked sports franchise names. Besides, if they fuck up, Baz McCullum turns out for NSW in the T20 Champions League.

Pass conceded:
The Bangalore RCs. They've got Kegs Ryder, they've got thermonuclear-hot cheerleaders, and they're owned by a brewery... but they've got Kevin Fucking Pietersen.
The Chennai Super Kings. Named selves after a brand of cement: whimsical. Believe signing Freddy Flintoff will make the difference: delusional. But last chance to see Haydos going postal on opening bowlers.
The Delhi Daredevils. Seriously, who gives a fuck.

Actually, not an unfair assessment of the whole IPL concept.

The Doctor is OUT.

Keeping it real

I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself. Actually, if my entire garden had been emo, clearing all the shit out of it over the Easter break in preparation for selling the place would have been a whole lot less of a monumental shitfight for the ages. As it was, it was three days, multiple trips to the tip (sorry DCC, the 'Resource Recovery Centre'), and ending up with arms that looked like those of an enthusiastic amateur self-harm aficionado - not to mention the gouge out of the forehead from the Tree That Fought Back.

Let's just put that on pause a minute. Resource Recovery Centre. Who the fuck are they kidding? It's a tip. It's a fucking rubbish dump. You take your rubbish there and you fucking dump it. Why does that process need to be dressed up with euphemistic PR bollocks? It's like having a big poo. Calling it something more marketing-friendly ain't gonna make you more or less inclined to do it, it's kinda a requirement of continued function. The new generation of dumps, though, are pretty average, with each type of waste categorised and streamed according to where it goes and what needs to be done with it, and hell hath no fury like a council munter finding out you've put non-branched green waste in with the branched green waste. They charge you money to dump stuff and bleat at you when you dump it even marginally imprecisely. Bollocks to that. We used to have an old-skool council rubbish dump - basically just a hole in the ground where you chucked stuff in - a few kays out of the Broom on an old sand-mining lease and that was awesome, like an adventure playground for mischievous youth. The old man's HT Kingswood 253 V8 ute was retired from duty there, though much of the good gear (like the disc braked front end) found its way into his HG panelvan. Another day which lives in the memory (for other reasons), we found a stack of hastily turfed girlie magazines (someone obviously just got a girlfriend, or at the very least, someone's bedroom just got cleaned out by his mum).

In conclusion: V8s and tits - why rubbish dumps were cool.

The point of all the deforestation in the backyard was, in the immediate term, to make the house more saleable by actually making it possible to walk around the garden without getting touched up like Macaulay Culkin at the Neverland Ranch by random bits of foliage. This, in the real estate game, is termed Adding Value. I would term it Not Being A Complete Fucktard, but it seems that the real estate game is full of complete fucktards who miss even the most obvious plot points ref. how to present a house for sale, judging by some of the rubbish currently being listed. Indeed, some of the aforementioned comprehensive cockbugles are allegedly professional real estate agents. However, anyone who's ever had anything to do with a real estate agent in any professional context, whether as a tenant being alternately ignored and persecuted by their property manager, an investment property owner being fed a line of bullshit by the same property manager, a potential buyer being jacked into a Dutch auction solely against themselves, or a prospective seller having an Industrial Revolution's worth of smoke blown up their arse about the prospects of a quick and profitable sale in a market showing less signs of life than Anna Nicole Smith, the concept that professional real estate industry members by and large may in fact be an all-inclusive farrago of douche-felchers will probably not shock or astound.

That said, our dude seems to go a'ight. We've had peeps through the place already, and the actual Marketing Campaign (other than the website listing) doesn't even kick off until the weekend. The photos of the place on the interdweeb look fucking choice - hell I'd buy the place again if we were able to fit us plus our forthcoming newbie into it somewhere - and they've been good personages to deal with. OK it's barely three days into proceedings but it's promising. The agency we eventually went for goes all-in on the flashy shiny marketing - doesn't cost more than Their Competitors but looks a hell of a lot better - and our realo (himself very flashy and shiny, that's his black Audi A6 in the street at right) is very big on taking lots of photos with his suitably exxy digital SLR. Though a glance at his CV indicates point-and-shoot was his thing in a previous career - ex NZ Army, then ex NZ Police Armed Offenders Squad - leading to two conclusions: (1) Lerm may have long-lost rellos over here and (2) tyrekickers and timewasters will likely be dealt to with extreeeeeeeme prejudice. Which we like here at the World of Bollocks. Though when he says he's a 'professionally trained negotiator' one does wonder whether this is in the field of closing real estate deals or talking heavily armed munters out of heavily barricaded remote farmhouses and into the nice clear open field so the AOS boys can take him down.

Either way I'm not expecting arguments.

The Doctor is OUT. As you'd expect from a 'motivated vendor on the move'. Sounds like I'm on a diet of prunes and Metamucil for Christ's sake.

The most difficult job in the universe (other than being Madeleine Albright's fluffer)

Yeeeaaaaahhh, back with another one. We're told, by People Who Should Know - mostly out-of-work coaches in sportsmedia pundit roles, that coaching teams in modern professional sport is a Serious Undertaking. It's complicated. Multi-layered. A science in itself - combining elements of sports science, political science, physical science, medical science, even chemical science if you happened to be helming the Astana tilt at the last Tour de France they were allowed in. It involves being all things to all people - a negotiator, a mediator, a motivator, a psychologist, a doctor, a Machiavel, an accountant, a HR manager, a legal expert and a public relations advisor all at once. It is very, very difficult. And it is not, repeat NOT, all about stomping about the dressing sheds shouting swearily at overpaid, underperforming prima donna sportswankers until they actually pull finger and put in.

This morning, at half time in the second-leg UEFA Champions League of Champions League quarter-final between Liverpool and Chelsea, things weren't looking terribly flash for the West London concern. Sure, they brought a two-goal lead into the match courtesy their 3-1 win at Anfield the week before, meaning the Scousers would have to score at least three goals without reply in the second leg at Stamford Bridge to get past them. Liverpool were without their inspirational captain and Scousest Man Alive 2002-09 Steven Gerrard, due to injury. Liverpool were also playing on the 20th anniversary of losing nearly a hundred of their supporters, crushed to death in the third-world insanity of Hillsborough, which would either inspire them or, surely more likely, render them emotionally crippled by the gravity and enormity of the occasion.


Half time: not so much. Liverpool 2 Chelsea 0 (3-3 on aggregate), the former needing just the one more for a famous European comeback - to rank along side their astonishing resurrection from three-nil down to a penalty shootout win over AC Milan in the 2005 final - and more to the point, they looked worthy of two-blot and more, Chelsea playing like a stoichometric array of busted arses and lucky to be still in the tie at all.

Full time: Liverpool 4 Chelsea 4 (5-7 on aggregate.) The greatest game of European football since that six-goal Champions League final, and before it the UEFA Cup final of 2001 which Liverpool won 5-4. The key point, though, isn't that if you want a good game of Euro footer, get the Scousers involved. It's that at half time, Chelsea were shot ducks, regardless of whether they were technically ahead on away goals if the result stood as it was - which it definitely wasn't the way they were playing. After the half they went out with a sense of purpose - that purpose being to hammer in goal after goal to counter the barrage from the red side of the pitch, every one of Liverpool's equalled by one of theirs. After the half, in short, the overpaid, underperforming prima donnas of Chelsea actually pulled finger and put in. And why was that, do you think? Through some complicated, touchy-feely, psychological-parameter-balancing motivational technique on behalf of their work experience coach, Aussie Guus Hiddink?

Well, yeah. If you count stomping around the dressing sheds shouting swearily at them as a motivational technique. First half: Chelsea play poorly. Half time: Chelsea get ripped a new set of arseholes. Second half: Chelsea score four goals.

Coaching. It's complicated, I tells ya.

The Doctor is OUT to investigate whether he can get his UEFA coaching badges from some dodgy online outfit like Alan Shearer presumably has.

Massively self-indulgent 200th post

(now with medals, for no apparent reason whatsoever)

Yup, it's the World of Bollocks' bicentenary. Which means we probably should get Les Gock to write some God-awful spangly margarine-ad jingle about 'giving us a hand to celebrate' (not that sort of party I thought), glossing over the so-called 'black armband view of history' (thanks v. much the Former Member for Maxine McKew's Seat) which rightly points out that most of the jokes were stolen from their traditional owners.

(Couldn't find a vid link of the desperately egregious 'Celebration Of The Nation' ad campaign but here's an equally painful Swan bicentennial beer ad covering much of the same territory. 1988 in the house, y'all.)

Anyway instead of that crap we'll just do a bunch of self-indulgent navel gazing as usual here when turning over posts with lots of zeroes in the number...

[Utterly seamless post-posting edit: as per the end of the original Bollocks 101 hundred-post compilation package we're again highlighting the posts deemed to be World (of Bollocks)'s Best Practice, which have been awarded Genuine Bicentennial Medals (left) as handed out ceremoniously to, then lost unceremoniously by, the school children of 1988. Nearly-there stuff worth a look gets a 1982 Commie Games memorial 50c piece (right). Finally, our EURO2008 coverage is marked with a Euro (see what I did there?), either for the round-ball freaks to find or for the rest of you to avoid.]


BOLL 200 Fundamental and Applied Bollocks
Full year subject
Prerequisites: BOLL 101 Introductory Bollocks
Corequisites: KNOB 101 Scatological Humour, BEER 223 Applied Beer
Summary of key lecture content:

Bollocks 101. As with any long-running series, milestones such as the 100th episode (or even the 138th) are contractually required to result in a clip-show style extravaganza of self-congratulatory onanism and historical-revisionist exclamation of one's significance, importance, legacy etc which would make even Nine's Danny Weidler vaguely embarrassed.


Community Service Announcement. Rugby World Cup preview: having choked in the semi, and seeking to avoid being lynched on arrival at Auckland Airport, the entire All Blacks team will agree to be bought wholesale by Ernesto Bertarelli, and will go on to win the 2011 Rugby World Cup for Switzerland.

The correct collective noun for shout-outs is: (a) A 'cacophony'; (b) A 'holla'; (c) An 'Oscars speech'; or (d) A 'metric shitload'.

Grand final special: neither grand nor special. The story of a football club called Port Adelaide. They stink. The End. It was for good reason that HG Nelson started calling them as the Port Adelaide Dickheads midway through the second quarter; they were less use than a busted arse on International Busted Arse Free Day. As for the Sons Of God, the Ablett boys demonstrated conclusively the important role played by good genetics in being a top-line AFL footballer. As well as the important role played by not being on smack.

Bathurst Beer Bingo. You may be one of the many people who 'don't get car racing.' Maybe you have ovaries, or are of lefty environmental leanings, or are a big poofter. Our sympathies; the rest of you softcocks have no bloody excuse.

I predict a riot. A CORRECTION to the post 'Community Service Announcement': in this, we erroneously made the claim that the New Zealand All Blacks™ would 'choke' in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup, in line with previously established protocols of behaviour. We apologise unreservedly for our error, which was in effect to vastly underestimate the capability of All Blacks™ to 'choke', having not even made it as far as the semi before activating Plan A, a.k.a. Operation 'Early Mark'.

Them's the brakes. Who the fuck would invest their pride and joy with Supercheap Auto Car Insurance? And if you make a claim, are you only allowed to use cheap shitty plastic parts from China for the repairs?

Waiting to exhale. As the All Blacks choked in France, meanwhile on the drive home from the airport after his humiliating Chinese F1GP retirement, a dejected Lewis Hamilton decided to stop for petrol...

The Evander Holyfield Experience. The Gold Coast Indy is a fuckin' zoo. It's all about piss, promo girls and petrolheadedness, in that order, and if you're among the four percent of people who have actually turned up to watch the race... fuck it, you really should have set the VCR instead. You'll be lucky to see more than the beer queue and the shitbox R&B outfit at Shooters Island.

Literature Review with Dr Yobbo. Our favourite paper of the week is the following.
Yes, they're serious.
And yes, they actually got this published.

Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?
Miller et al., Evolution and Human Behavior 28 (2007), 375 – 381

To see whether estrus was really “lost” during human evolution (as researchers often claim), we examined ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by professional lap dancers working in gentlemen's clubs... These results constitute the first direct economic evidence for the existence and importance of estrus in contemporary human females, in a real-world work setting. These results have clear implications for human evolution, sexuality, and economics.

And of course, these results have absolutely NOTHING to do with three seedy, dateless male researchers' enthusiasm for writing off nine months' worth of 'working lunches' at Santa Fe Gold and Crazy Horse as research expenses.

Literature Review with Dr Craigos.

Electrochemical synthesis of metal and semimetal nanotube–nanowire heterojunctions and their electronic transport properties
Yang et al., Chem. Commun. 2007, 1733-1735

Here, we demonstrate a facile approach for the building of metal and semimetal nanotube–nanowire (NT–NW) nanohetero-junction arrays by sequential electrochemical deposition of two materials inside the nanochannels of anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) template. Herein we take metal Cu and semimetal Bi as examples. The heterojunction arrays of CuNTs...

Ah. And suddenly, the stunt goes horribly wrong. From that point on in the text, there are no less than fifty occurrences of Derek and Clive's favourite noun, not to mention numerous carefully annotated diagrams, complete with arrows helpfully pointing out CuNTs of interest.

Tintin and the rodent exterminators. Election night coverage usually raises more questions than it answers, such as 'What do the ABC do with Antony Green between elections?' Presumably keep him in some sort of hermetically-sealed stasis pod, to be cracked open every three to four years for the distinctly odd-looking electoral geek to pour forth earnest randomness that even rugby's Gordon 'Insert Random Player Fact Here' Bray would be proud of.

So as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted... Yesterday arvo Harbhajan Singh was brought before the beak after the close of play to answer for having called Roy Symonds a monkey, on the basis of his being a dark-skinned banana-bender who happens to pong a bit. What the Harb failed to understand was that (a) 'monkey' isn't a very nice thing to call a gentleman of West Indian extraction and (b) Roy pongs because he never washes his dreads, and it's not as if the Turbinator is in a position to make the big calls related to sweaty, stinky personal headwear lifestyle choices; there's a valid reason there's not a queue of Indian teammates wanting to sit next to the Harb on the team bus back to the hotel at the end of play.

Literature review with Dr Munter. Children's television has certainly changed a lot since the Munter was a little tacker. Back in the day you didn't see Play School presenters like Noni Hazlehurst on all fours begging to be hosed clean. Well, not until her acting career really started to go downhill and the MILF porn sites started recruiting.

Monkey magic. Given the attention of their rabid media, are India's cricketers now the England footballers of world cricket? Although maybe without so much of the sinking of piss, the spit-roasting of Page 3 slappers and the pedalling of ghostwritten World Cup 2006 diaries (memorably summarised by Newcastle's Joey Barton as 'I played shit, here's my book')

Fully Sikh mate. The Indian team's claimed that the Harb actually meant 'monkey' as a term of endearment towards Symonds in line with the allegedly positive connotations usually ascribed to the word in Hindu circles, ignoring the fact that Harbhajan is about as Hindu as Tom Cruise; if he were any more 'fully Sikh' he'd be a subwoofer in the boot of a lowered Civic in Punchbowl.

A band by any other name would sound as crap. Rainbow Junk's work sounds somewhat like Californication-era Chili Peppers newly back on the smack and feeling vaguely melancholy about it. From a lyrical perspective, they choose to take an abstractist deconstructional approach to their art (read: they make less sense than Mark Geyer after nine cones - yours or his, it wouldn't make much difference.)

Leaf Hedger drops off the twig.
[What, after a title like that, you even need content??]

As the dhey is long. Ledger's passing left more questions than answers, one of the most pressing of which is that of 'How completely tardescent do you have to be to actually Google 'Keith Fletcher' instead of 'Heath Ledger'?'

What a friend we have in Cheeses. Blur bass player Alex James lives in a house (a very big house) in the country, doesn't drink smoke laugh takes herbal baths in the country... Sorry. Anyway he's got a farm in the Cotswolds and makes cheese. Not dick cheese either, the proper stuff. "Cheese was the glue that held Blur together so long," A Friend was quoted as saying, "but it wasn't until recently that Alex discovered Liam (Gallagher) and Noel (Where's me fruit platteh) shared their obsession." Oasis, for their part, are no strangers to producing their own cheese (insert Be Here Now joke here, pause for editing.)

Nineteen and... oh. The New England Patriots, made 17-point favourites by the Las Vegas bookies for Superbowl XLIII, were so unconcerned about the New York Giants threat in the days before the game that they set about trademarking the phrase '19-0'. The score of freshly completed Superbowl XLIII, for those playing at home: Giants 17, Patriots 14. By fuck we love a karma smackdown here at the World of Bollocks.

The Drugs don't work. Knowledge is power, and power is money. Believe me I know, the fucking power company just put the cost of ours up, they must be rolling in the stuff.

Losing streak. On top of all its other many contributions to sport and society, World Series Cricket also delivered the nation THE GREATEST TV AD JINGLE EVER RECORDED. (Vale John Meillon; you oughta be congratulated.) Altogether now: "Symmo's knockin' streakers on their arse..."

Celebration day. The stats on bike rider longevity are not good. Particularly the mid-life-crisis munters who decide to relive their yoof in their fifties by getting back on two wheels, usually predicating their getting off two wheels and getting into the front of a truck, bus, poorly-driven Korean hatchback, powerpole, irrigation culvert or other assorted roadside furniture. Bikes are fun, but they're seriously fuck-off dangerous. Scratch that: bikes are fun BECAUSE they're seriously fuck-off dangerous.

Brown out. The two main reasons Nathan Brown got the arse from St George: (1) His teams didn't know how to win, because neither did he; and (2) His players were too young, immature and/or stupid to follow game plans on the field or conduct themselves properly off it, because he was barely 15 minutes older than them and still got carded at Liquorland when he went to buy beers.

Achtung baby. FIA President Max Mosley was particularly unrepentant about the Nazi connotations, declaring them 'entirely false'. All of which would be perfectly acceptable and potentially believable, given the UK tabloids' penchant for massive hyperbole and distortion of the truth, except for the fact the son of the wartime British Fascist leader who was going to be post-war Chancellor once Adolf finished mopping up western Europe was found in a dungeon being barked at for five hours by German dominatrixes (dominatricies?) dressed in Nazi war uniforms, while they whipped seven shades of shite out of a bunch of other rent-a-shags dolled up as death camp attendees. With no Nazi connotations whatsoever.
Riiiiight.

Recent and decent. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are it's not a fucking squirrel.

Sitch for brains. Flashback. It's Christmas night 2007 and there's absolutely diddly fucking squat on TV, other than The Panel's Christmas Special. And by Christ, have you ever seen such a fat, smug, faded bunch of has-beens as the former doyens of alternative, edgy Australian comedy - the ones whose original '80s ABC show used to follow on straight after The Young Ones, for fuck's sake - now fat and indulgent from their own success, and the Ten network's endless pandering to their every whim. And Rob Sitch, front-and-centre, bald, belligerant and spouting bollocks, barely one nylon-polyester ponytail from turning into the insufferable dinner party wanker he used to parody.

Comment allez vous? It may surprise you to know that I talk a fearsome amount of bollocks. I do this because I believe very strongly that bollocks must be spoken, and for bollock dialogue to be properly propagated throughout society, individual talkers-of-bollocks must strive with every effort to expedite this. Plus I like the sound of my own voice and shit. (Check that. I do not actually like the sound of my own shit; the acoustics in my local 'facilities' are somewhat tinny.)

Rust never sleeps. Die Another Day was the worst Bond film ever, made by a cross-dressing sheep shagger who thought what Bond really needed was to be air-dropped into a XXX sequel by way of Once Were Warriors. (In case you're wondering, that XXX link IS work-safe... most of the ones which Google found weren't, surprisingly enough.)

Solo Man. In terms of shit team names, the new Indian Premier League stands alone; it seems IPL policy for at least half the sides to have some sort of royal connotation to their name - the Rajastan Royals, the Bangalore Royal Challengers, the Punjab Kings XI, the Chennai Super Kings etc. Although to be fair the Royal Challengers are named after a line of spirits marketed by that bloke from Kingfisher, while the Super Kings are named, quite brilliantly, after a brand of cement. FACT. For their part, the Kolkata Knight Riders are named after David Hasselhoff, and as such are fucking rubbish.

Fuel's gold. Last week, another vision of the future came true which only five years ago would have seemed as likely as that epileptic slaphead greenie from the Oils becoming Federal Minister for the Environment. Last week, for the first time in the history of the universe, I paid more than $2 a litre for petrol. I was at Caltex, because they're obliging (read slutty) enough to accept supermarket fuel discount vouchers from anyone who waves them under their nose. Which is where you go 'Hang on, if he's paying with a discount voucher he's paying less than two bucks a litre'. Or you go 'Fuck me this is tedious, he's lost the plot, I wonder whether they still have porn on the internet, better check.'

Hot for teacher. It seems that throughout the history of male adolescence, everyone has had the fantasy of their year 12 maths teacher draped laschiviously across the back seat of their car, begging to be treated like a sex slave. Everyone except me, it would seem, as my year 12 maths teacher was a crusty, fusty, doddering old relic, vaguely resembling a lobotomized Fabio Capello and propped up solely by Valium and whiteboard marker fumes.

The rise of Danger Mouse: where the fuck is Baron Silas Greenback when he's needed. The Captain had a saying, steeped in personal experience, which still rings true to this day. Actually, he had two. One was 'Never go out with a violent drug dealer's underage girlfriend' (don't ask) and the other, delivered one memorable evening in the heady rock-and-roll confines of the Yamba Bowling Club auditorium, was 'Cowbells are where it's at.' A sentiment on which southern California's nastiest all-girl rock group the Donnas would undoubtedly agree, and not just because like the Captain's band they featured a feisty five-nine blonde drummer who everyone wanted to snog. (Except in the Captain's case 'everyone' solely meant 'elderly Japanese male tourists mistaking Surfers' Cavill Mall for a walk-in rentboy dealership'. Again, don't ask.)

Yobbo on Euro: the beginning. It's half-past 2008 and as all Worldly folks out there would be aware, June in an even-numbered year means it's time for one thing and one thing only: England to bleat about not being in a major international football event again.

This just in... Austria vs Germany will be border hostilities of the highest order. An organised, civilized modern democracy, the commercial, intellectual and social powerhouse of the region, versus their retarded cousins from the hills, a nation of alcoholics and bogans famous only for producing Hitler, Schwarzenegger and that seriously dodgy cunt with a very misguided take on the old slogan of 'Lock up your daughters'. Yes, it's State of Origin all over again, just with an overwhelming whiff of bratwurst and Becks.

Great. Can we have Greg Inglis back now? The Stefan Kuntz Golden Boot for Best Named Player of EURO 2008: This award came very close to being renamed the Quim Perpetual Trophy in honour of the splendidly nicknamed Portuguese reserve 'keeper. However Quim managed to fuck his wrist (and you thought that was just a German thing) in training the day before Portugal's tournament opener and as such is sitting out the tournament in the 'Guesers' hotel bar.

Revenge of the Soccerwhos? Misleading non-football-related headline of the day: BBC Online - Gaza 'hurt by Palestinian feud'. You'd have thought with his alcohol-and-kebab-fuelled fall from grace in the years since he was a decent footballer he'd have more to worry about than whether the Palestinians were going to accept his 'Friend' request on Facebook.

Czech and mate. Spain and Sweden, having been drawn together in qualifying as well as the tournament proper, have seen more of each other than Britney and her therapist. Both entered battle like flatmates duelling at backyard cricket - a fight to the death, but for fark's sake don't spill yer beer you tryhard. And of course, there's always got to be someone who has to bollocks it up for everyone by being the uber tryhard of all time; I give you David Villa, scorer of a supremely arsey injury-time winner, his fourth goal of the tournament. Yeah good on ya Davo, now go and get us another beer ya poof.

Swiss Toni says... Italy are into the quarters, but they are playing some dour bloody football, not helped by the fifty billion golden goalscoring opportunities pissed away each half by Luca Toni, their lead striker. At least I think that's the role he's trying to fill. He may actually be a performance artist doing some interpretive piece based upon the lesser works of former Italian striker Filippo Inzaghi, which basically involved being offside half the time, falling over the other half of the time and looking about as sturdy and masculine as a Thai ladyboy.

The Adventures of Captain Unpronounceable and Shaven Arse. Russia suck at football. The last time they lasted beyond the first round of any international tournament was twenty years ago - that's twenty years of turning up, playing three bad games of football, going home and having potatoes thrown at them. And having been torn an exciting range of new arseholes by the Spanish in their first group game, then flatulated past the Greeks with of the dreariest 1-0 wins since old-skool Italy were punishing their way around the world, any change in plan looked unlikely at best. Prognosis: fucked.

Big girls don't cry. So Cristiano Ronaldo's a big girl then. Meanwhile, The Footy Show with Fatty Fucking Vautin is about as pleasant to watch as goat electrode porn.

Ornithology 101. On the balance of play Croatia deserved to win more than Turkey, and would have if any of Team Tablecloth's strikers could hit a cow's arse with a banjo, or could convert even one in every ten chances presented to them by the likes of Modric and Rakitic down the flanks. Ivica Olic (whose name loosely translates as 'Luca Toni') wasted more opportunities to score than an overly picky fat bloke at Santa Fe Gold.

Work experience kids: why they make poor international managers. Roberto Donadoni vs Luis Aragones: the most one-sided Italy vs Spain duel since Valentino Rossi wiped the floor with Sete Gibernau. Aragones might be an elderly crank with batshit racist tendencies but he is An International Manager. Donadoni couldn't even work out in two hours of football that Luca Toni is a fucking rubbish striker, and subbed everyone else instead. Not to mention giving certified genius Alex del Piero a grand total of eleven minutes to go find a winner. He might be a genius but he's not a fucking miracle worker.

Launceston: producer of export-quality fucktards since 1974. 'Tenterfield Saddler' was both a song by renown son-of-the-Tablelands Peter Allen, and a beer brewed in its honour. Appropriately it tastes highly reminiscent of something which has been in long-term contact with a stockman's sweaty arse. The saddle I mean, not Peter Allen.

Basel: faulty. The Turks did what every unfancied team in this tournament has done: chucked the form book down the Insinkerator, turned up to play, and had a fucking go at them. They threw everything at ze Chermans including the kitchen sink, the steak knives and that big fuck-off radial heater the doner meat gets vulcanised on. Hamit Altintop was more ubiquitously visible than a Hilton sister at a premiere, while midfield playmaker Kazim Kazim (Colin Richards to his former teammates at Sheffield Utd) banged against more wood than Jenna Jameson.

Russia vs Spain, the Cliff Notes version. Based on the rubbish weather at EURO 2008, don't go to Vienna for holidays in summer unless you like being pissed on from a great height. Likewise certain parts of Amsterdam I'm told.

Yobbo on Euro: the end. Spain deserved their win, took it classily, celebrated it respectfully, and only a miserable, bitter, delusional fool would say otherwise. Cue German goalie Mad Jens Lehmann then, who's declared that the ref was biased for ignoring the blatant headbutt between Podolski and Silva (that'd be the one where Podolski headbutted Silva, yeah?), various penalties that should have been, free kicks that shouldn't, and other crimes against humanity that it's fair to say exist solely inside Jens' tortured head.

Dick gets shafted. The Dick in question is shrivelled old Dick Johnson, Ford Bathurst hero of the previous millennium and owner of the most Austin Powers-esque name in motorsport since Dick Trickle retired from NASCAR. And unlikely as it might seem, the shafting was done by Dick's long time alma mater, the Ford Motor Company. It might be time for Dick to put it away before he becomes impotent and gets the sack. Dick's record stands on its own but it's been a schlong time since he was relevant and one would hate all his hard work to have been in vein. One hopes he has the foreskin... foresight to figure this out himself.

Not a sausage. Through the years fundamentalism has worn many faces, each of them uglier than Kyle Sandilands and equally as morally reprehensible. However the new fundamentalism is not Islam, nor corporatization and globalization, but the twin pillars of health-and-safety nazidom and environ-mentalist-ness. Self-appointed guardians of humanity are telling us what not to eat, what not to spend our money on, what suburbs not to buy in, and even what not to wear - and the latter from a haggard pair of skeletal mavens you wouldn't root for practice. And you can already hear the deafening chorus of self-righteous green-gilled arsewits craving the coming apocalyptic clusterfuck of high fuel prices, high food prices, credit crunchy goodness and global warming just so they can wheedle out a half-mongrel over the experience of lecturing the rest of us that THIS IS ALL OUR FAULT for driving cars, flying on planes, using electricity and breathing air, and not joining them over in the corner munching on soylent tofu bran-snacks, plaiting their armpit hair and wondering why they haven't scored a shag in four and a half years.

Visiting the Ghents. Belgium is an irrelevant country in the middle of western Europe where your grandfather's mates are buried because the English are cunts. Aside from chocolate and pedophiles, Belgium is most famous for beer. In particular, Trappist ales and lambic beers made with billion year old wild yeasts which impart into the beer delicate tastes of stonefruit, washing detergent and vaginal thrush. The only thing fruitier than the taste are the pretentious ponces who drink the stuff. In particular the highly punishing aficionados of Hoegaarden, a spicy, clove-scented witbier whose name translates rather aptly from Flemish Dutch as 'compost of the prostitute'.

What I learned on my holidays. Afrikaans may be the language of love, but Flemish Dutch gets the chicks hotter, wetter and nastier than a dockworker's armpit. On a related topic, the Flemish Dutch for 'Art' is 'Kunst'. Particularly appropriately given that the Museum of Contemporary Art translates as 'Museum Actuele Kunst', which is quite fitting seeing as though contemporary art is a load of old vag.

Bye-O-Wolf. There's a Kate Ritchie sex tape?? Oh THAT's wrong. That's deeply, deeply wrong. I know her career's gone a bit arsebag since she quit Home and Away, but seriously... for Christ's sake, who's going to be next? Alf Stewart? I don't want to see his flamin' mongrel, that's for sure.

The glorious unCERNtainty of existence. The purpose of the CERN Large Hadron Collider is to try and get at the most fundamental unsolved questions of the universe, like the mechanism of how gravity acts on mass, what dark matter is (other than the stuff which is used to make the griddle marks on chicken burgers), whether the Higgs Boson is truly a 'God particle' or just a highly obscure snowboarding manouevre, and why noone at CERN can manage to pull a root.

No time to dally, Em. I hate the Melbourne Storm. I always have, and so should you. They are a venal, disreputable, unethical post-modern invention of money and greed which speaks directly to the soullessness, the corporatization and the disgusting cancerous avarice of modern sport. The Melbourne Storm are everything that is wrong with the world. They have no soul, no heart, no fanbase (certainly not one that would stick around if a Super 14 team rocked into town - count the number of Kiwi faces in the crowd this weekend, they're the munty ones) and no reason for existing, other than to make money for their media magnate overlords. In conclusion, the Storm are arse, and I hope they die in a ditch like the scrotal fungus that they are.

Makin' bacon. The Rock's marketing tactic of throwing bacon butties at morning commuters is The Greatest Radio Station Promotion EVAAAARRRRR, and has resulted in me driving aimlessly around and between any and all traffic-lighted intersections in the local area at morning peak fifteen-minutes, hoping against hope that I'll come across a girl in a tight-fitting The Rock T-shirt and jeans who'll sidle over to my car in the fleeting opportune moments afforded by the red, with a promising smile, and offer me a taste of her bacon sandwich.

EXCLUSIVE: GERMAN F1 DRIVER 'LIKEABLE' SHOCK! The Poms seem to think think they're a shot at the Ashes now they're unbeaten under the skunk-headed Saffer's captaincy. Did I tell you I saw him in person a block from Lords the day he got the job, getting shepherded about the place by a bunch of blazer-wearing twats? Did I gratuitously namedrop the fact I was in London and you weren't? How much of a complete fucking punisher do you think I can be about it? That much? Fair enough.

Me gone. Girls called Megan are hot. Fact. This is an irrefutable, non-negotiable point of law, just as girls called Sharon are buck-toothed slappers and girls called Charmaine are men dressed as ladies. Logically then the greatest hot-chick name of all time would have to be Megan Fox. Says it all really - she's a Megan, she's a Fox, The End. It couldn't have been a greater case of nominative determinism had she been called Megan Vixen, Megan Jesus Fucking Lord Look At That or Megan Arghhhhh I'm Spent.

Something else gone. Ginger beards look good on noone. Unless you're a geography teacher, don't grow a ginger beard. The end.

So, um, how about them Broncos? Not many people know that professional dugong impersonator Phil Gould IS actually a dugong. He was found washed up in the Nepean River near Penrith's training ground in the late '70s, and they figured he looked slow, fat and stupid enough to play in the forwards for the Panthers. The Choccy Soldiers weren't going that well for frontline grunt and/or poke back in the day.

Football, meat pies, Kangaroos and Holden cars. Throughout its history, the Great Race at Bathurst has been accused of glorifying various immoral and unsavoury activities through the identity of its naming rights sponsors, such as Tooheys (encouraging the abuse of alcohol and drink-driving), Gallagher (smoking cigarettes, particularly obscure Irish ones), Hardie-Ferodo (smoking brake pads), FAI (sending insurance agencies broke because you're a clueless fucktard, Rodney), and James Hardie (giving your employees mesothelioma).

Big Red Car, we like to ride. And by 'ride' I mean 'hit with a hammer'. Several hours of A320-bound dullness await as we to try and entertain an energetic 20 month old kid whose favourite things in the world - climbing on stuff, falling off stuff and complaining about it, squealing loud enough to pierce eardrums - will be effectively off limits for the duration, which will frustrate both him and the mild ADD he inherited from his old man. Fortunately, one of his other favourite things in the world, flirting with waitresses, air hosties and other attractive girls in service industry professions (something else inherited from his old man) will be no problem at all - it is a Pacific Blue flight after all.

(Green and) Gold Coast Indy. Helio Castroneves' trademark 'Spiderman' fence-climbing victory celebration in the Indycar Series is unlikely to translate well to his likely new digs, given that the Feds have indicted him on multimillion dollar tax evasion charges, and the fences he's accustomed to climbing aren't usually electrified and topped with razor wire.

End of an era. Chateau Dodgy I was of a rare breed of St Lucia sharehouses - rare in this decade of slap-dash 2bdr apartments for Africa - in that it was pretty much your archetypal, Felafel-style decrepit old Queenslander. Old mango tree shedding its contents over the driveway. Three bedrooms in various states of disrepair. Batshit insano female flatmate incapable of maintaining continuous gainful employment, relationships with men, relationships with humans of any sort, or any fair share of housework, billpaying and/or grocery shopping. Kitchen best characterized as biohazardous. Enormous back deck with a view of the backyard that can only be described as stellar. (Literally. The backyard was largely taken up by a stand-alone flat inhabited by Stella, a statuesque late-twenties/early thirties blonde with a penchant for getting changed with the French doors open.)

The Big Yin. Billy Connolly was a massive part of my childhood, or more accurately my adolescence. Basically, Billy Connolly taught me to swear. There is nothing on Earth, if not the Universe, funnier than agitated swearing in a Glaswegian accent. And if ye done like it ye can fuck off Jimmeh.

Strange brew: How to make beer cheaply and badly, or well and for almost as much as you'd end up paying at Dan's, by Doctors Craigos and Yobbo. Be guided by our shared genius, i.e. don't fuck the same things up that we fucked up, or at least not in the same way. In particular don't let your seedy flatmate fill up the brew vessel with water out of the hose.

On polar opposites. Life is an exercise in polarization. Wherever we go we're polarized, asked to pick a side. As TISM observed, "Yob or wanker, wanker or yob, pass me the brush to tar ya; take your choice then live your life, c'mon pal whatareya?!!" We make these choices, or these choices are made for us, from the day we gain consciousness. Black or white. Boy or girl. Vegemite or Marmite. Stones or Beatles. Labor or Liberal. Evolution or creation. Buffy or Faith.

Pidge's Pink-Off. Your Correspondent has two unbroken hands and two functional wrists and even he wasn't keeping out the ball which castled the (grudgingly mumbled) heroic Graeme Smith. Then again Your Correspondent has a forward defence which wouldn't look out of place in Under 10s Kanga Cricket, largely because it hasn't developed any further since then.

Insert 'Deliverance' theme here. Whether Poonce Harry's latest act of pig-headed inbred stupidity reflects the institutional racism inherent in the military, the institutional racism inherent in the upper echelons of the British class system, or the fact young Harry is a complete fucking knob, is not the question. The question is, how do we eliminate this sort of hideous casual bigotry from modern society? And, more importantly, however do we make it up to the little Paki bastards?

A fish out of water. As for PETA... Jesus fucking Christ. All I can recommend for this august body is that perhaps it should just stick to its core business. Encouraging easily misled ‘politically aware’ twiglet actresses into nuding up in public.

I don't know much about art... and that's it. Entropa: a gigantic Airfix model kit of Europe. Italy is a football pitch. France is on strike. Bulgaria is a toilet. Denmark is a Lego sculpture. Romania is a Dracula theme park. And fittingly, the UK, most Euroskeptic of all EU nations, isn't there at all. Yeah, it's just a bunch of cheap, tawdry national stereotypes, but it's all in the execution. Which is what they probably would have done with Czech artist Dangerous Dave Cerny back in the Soviet days.

Can we fix it? Yes we Khan. The Kubler-Ross model has pretty much entered into pop culture now - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance - and is trotted out as a template for dealing with any form of grief or tragedy. Family bereavement, terminal illness, drug addiction, divorce. To which we can now add having the laptop drive on your MacBook pack the fuck up with extreme prejudice.

Roy, shut up. If Symonds had been playing rather than giving sweary drunken interviews, Qld might not have capitulated in the semi like an ordered stoichiometric array of busted arses to a Victorian side with less creative talent than the Ting Tings and less attacking threat than a dugong armed with a wet sock. If you're not playing in the final, your opinion as regards who should be playing in the final is less relevant than the Reverend Fred Nile.

Turning up to work on Straya day: un-Austrayan. Alex Lloyd's 'Amazing'. No, apparently he is. And you just thought he was fat, overrated and minging.

Whither the five litre keg? Never trust a beer with 'Red' in the name. It is a cast-iron, Teflon-coated, Kevlar-reinforced guarantee of absolute fucking awfulness. Same with 'Blue'. Or 'Gold'. Any colour at all, really, Including 'Blonde'. Especially 'Blonde'.

By Christ we're rubbish at cricket. Watching the Strayan cricketers unveiling the continuation phase of Operation Enduring Suck, the big questions are, in order: (1) What the fuck? (2) What are the odds of 'David Warner' and 'context-appropriate shot selection' ever being used in the same sentence? (3) How much shit am I going to cop tomorrow from smug Kiwi fuckers at work unless these useless twunts extract the digit? and (4) Is it just me or does Ricky Ponting look vaguely Down's Syndrome?

What's a-martyr you, eh? We all have mates with shit habits that they need to lose, for their own personal development as much as their social acceptance. Burping, farting, nose-picking, not getting their round in, nicking your porn, nicking your girlfriends, hanging a crap in a brown paper bag and lighting it on the doorstep of the local police station... while these are some of the reasons I stopped going out with Australian girls, perhaps you've seen similar antisocial habits in associates of your own.

The Man Don't Give A F**k. So quoth Welsh indie rockers the Super Furry Animals in the late '90s - probably their best song, all told. Saw them with Custard and Eskimo Joe at the then-new Roundhouse Bar at UNSW about ten years back. Can't remember a fucking thing about their set. Dare say it was something to do with the $2.50 bottles of then-also-new Tooheys Pils. What was I on about?

Stick this in your pipe. Bagpipe music is absolutely fucking awful and all bagpipers should be summarily executed. Bagpipers playing the 'Scottish heritage' card to justify their aural sodomisation of passers-by are to be dealt with in the following way, with the use of other elements of 'Scottish heritage': (1) the application of a 'Glasgow kiss'; followed by (2) deep-frying the bastard. Along with chips and a Mars bar.

Git some Junk in yo' trunk. Could have been the ritual floggings at backyard cricket and/or football that turned my bro away from sports-obsessed, beer-fuelled yobbodom and towards the dark, dissolute path that he now treads - that of lyricist-guitarist in Triple J Unearthed nominated psychedelic rock group Rainbow Junk - but I'd like to think it's just the greater access to freebie top-shelf spirits and dirty, dirty rock chicks hot enough to need oven gloves for correct OH&S-approved handling.

D-Day for the evo devos. I'm not writing a blog about evolution for Darwin Day. It's dull. And more importantly... it's all a bit serious. And we don't do serious at the World of Bollocks. What we do is cheap, sensationalist, puerile rubbish full of second-rate, undergraduate knob and plop jokes. And by Jesus suffering fuck we're proud of it.

You're not fit to wear the shirt (and vice versa). Why the fuck does a team whose jersey can, by definition, clash with noone elses, need a fucking away jersey? Who else are South Sydney going to play across the course of a year who there could possibly be a colour conflict with? Seriously, who the fuck are we going to clash with? Freddie Krueger?

Rabid (for) Beckham. AC Milan's Brazilian playmaker Kaka is so good at football it almost makes you ignore the fact his self-appointed nickname means 'poo poo' in almost every language on Earth.

Colour of a two cent piece: dirty f--ken copper. Live cricket - what's the point? It's several hours sitting on your arse waiting for something, anything to happen, only to discover not a fucking thing actually will, just like The English Patient. But what that leaves out is the fun of the game itself, the fun of watching a large and lively crowd entertaining itself when the former wanes in intensity, and of course, the fun of sitting in the sun for seven hours drinking beers until you, your mates and assorted noble-hearted volunteers have assembled a beer cup snake that reaches all the way around the ground, out the gate and halfway to the 'Gabba busway stop.

Following on and/or through. Like the old Inuit Eskimo saying goes, unless you're lead dog in the sled pack, the view never improves.

Is there more to life than sport and beer? AC Cola mixes well with nothing, other than possibly drain cleaner; it tastes of arse tsuzjed with zest of more arse; and four cans in 12 hours will turn your piss the colour and aroma of inferior grade energy drink. Indomie Mi Goreng is nastier than German porn and is one of those things best done when you're young and stupid, like goth chicks.

The Brown Hornet rides again. I'm considering promoting the use of 'FTP' with reference to stuff which is a'ight but not quite For The Win - eg 'Peter Siddle FTP!' or 'Cold day-old BBQ sausages FTP!' ...Actually who the fuck am I kidding, cold day-old sausages FTW this day and every day 'til the end of eternity.

Is it cold in here, or is it just you? Fake nipples. Seriously. Not only that, but fake nipples that cost twenty bucks a pair - plus shipping and 'handling'. Presumably that's what some fucker will end up doing - which can only end badly when they come off in his hands. Bit of a passion killer that one, on a par with genital herpes, Dutch ovens and Kyle Sandilands.

New music roundup, in which Dr Yobbo buys new CDs and complains about them. Bono says Chris Martin from Coldplay is a wanker... Jesus, where do we start with that one, we could be here for days. A sanctimonious self-aggrandizing cock sledging a marshmallow-soft arriviste ponce - neither of which Your Correspondent would piss on if they were on fire - for the International Pot-Kettle Heavyweight Championship. Fuck it, write your own material for that one.

Bowled out. At supermarket booze prices it's far cheaper for the Scarfies - archaic slang for Otago students based on their winter attire, though these days the uniform seems to be black puffer jackets, skinny jeans, bleached blonde hair and a deeply cretinous look on one's face - to stay at home and get fucking trashed in their third world scum-landlord flats than to head out at a reasonably social hour and knock back a couple of jugs at traditional student watering holes like the Cook, the Bowler, the Oriental or the Gardies. Which is what the fluoro-clad nuff nuffs of Gen Y do, before heading out much later in proceedings, more off-chops than a meeting of PETA, to vomit on each other and not be let into pubs.

The art of being a crappy guest. Ask a Man U fan how they're travelling this morning after being touched-up by their Scouse arch-enemy, and you'll know how Easts' fanbase will have reacted to Souths smashing the living shit out of them this afternoon. That is assuming (a) Easts still have a fanbase and/or (b) 80 minutes is sufficient timeframe for the extraction of all of the shit from your average Easts supporter, given how jam-packed-full of same they appear to be.

Craptastic 4: Return of the Ginger Minger. So it'd appear that Ipswich's favourite former fish-and-chipper, celebrity bigot and electoral funds misappropriatrix may or may not have got her condiment shakers out several ago in the presence of an ex equipped a Box Brownie and basement level standards in bedfellows. The mind boggles. I'd have preferred Hungry Hungry Hippos but Toyworld was out of stock.

FAO Morissette, A., ref: definition of 'ironic'. Spider Kalac almost single-handedly won a 2006 World Cup first-round match for his ancestral homeland of Croatia. Unfortunately he was playing in goal for Australia at the time.

Australia's Most Bestest Town In Australia. Things to do in Yamba: Visit the legendary surf break of nearby Angourie. Get dropped in on by legendary surf king Nat Young. Punch him in the head. Marvel at the mystery and wonder of the famous Angourie Blue Pools, daredevil swimming hole for generations of local kids. Wonder not at the lack of mystery as to why noone has been allowed to swim there in ten years since it became the Blue-Green Algae Pools.

WTF? My boss uses swearing for emphasis, clarity, comic relief and simply for punctuation in the finest Antipodean tradition and has even been bestowed the honorary title of "King of the Sweary People" by fellow academics. The lab is accepting tenders from interested and talented fabricators for a custom-designed crown for HRF'nH Peter I as we speak.

Offend in every way. The Spanish are wont to deal with particularly obstinant rivals by declaring their fervent wish to defecate in the milk of their mother. Fellow Spaniards may find this prospect mortifying; I dare say most Australasian mothers would probably just go back down the shops and buy another two litres of Trim. After giving the perpetrator a good clip around the ears and directions to the nearest public convenience for future reference.

This one's not particularly funny. Sorry about that.
Munter nodded laconically. “The Big Fullah upstairs had money on your Rabbitohs winning the Premiership. Not a fuck were they getting it done after losing the first four of the season, were they now.”
“And so… he nukes the Septics??”
“He moves in mysterious ways,” Munter observed, “or so I’ve heard. A bit too fucken mysterious for my liking, but you get that on the big jobs.”

A pack of McLiars. McLaren have always been a bunch of fucking muppets; from team principal to drivers alike, they were wankers all. Prost was a haughty backstabbing dwarf with a honker bigger than a MP4/2 nosecone, Senna was a delusional demolition-derby dickwad who talked to God in his cockpit, Hakkinen was an intellectual and conversational midget, Mansell was too fat to fit in the car, Coulthard was useless and remarkable only for his aerodynamically designed jaw, Montoya and Alonso were made considerably more shit by their time there, Raikkonen was even more conversationally constipated than Hakkinen, Kovalainen was and remains a walking, talking, living non-event. And as for Hamilton...

He got game. The chorus lyric to the Offspring's Genocide is NOT 'Donkey Kong, every day.'

And on that bombshell...

Enjoy your Easter break. The Doctor is OUT.