On yer bike pal

A week in the Tour (or to be more culturally sensitive, le Tour) has come and gone, with some fairly predictable results: A sprinter is in yellow. The route makes two fifths of fuck all sense. Phil Liggett keeps pronouncing Liquigas as 'Leakygas'. Someone has crashed into a motorbike. The Manx Mong has won a stage or two (usually by being led by the nose right to the line like a blind mole rat) and wailed like a little bitch on the occasions he hasn't. All as per programme.

Apart from two points of atypical atypicalness: noone has been busted for drugs yet, and reigning Tour champion Alberto C*ntador keeps falling off his treadly.


Now, you'd figure someone who'd won the odd Grand Tour, like El Twatador, would have a grasp of that critical, if underrated skillset of not crashing your very expensive, very flimsy racing bicycle into things, like the ground, or other people. Apparently not, given that C*ntador has managed to drop it into the bushes on more stages than he hasn't so far this year. The causation factor remains obscure. An inner ear imbalance? Choosing slicks rather than wets? Nudged off by jealous competitors? Or is he just a fucking tosser? Disturbing as it may seem, despite the camaraderie and code of ethics amongst the peleton, it may well be that C*ntador is being quietly eased into the roadside furniture by his fellow pros, just because of who he is. A fucking tosser.


However, it has enabled possibly the most ironic piece of commentary to ever pass the lips of prehistoric cycling commentarialist Phil 'Leakygas' Liggett, as broadcast on Stage 6 this morning NZST: "Now, they won't attack Contador while he's having bike trouble..."

A courtesy he didn't extend to Andy Schleck last year, of course.


The Doctor is OUT. It's a pity C*ntador isn't.

Flogging a dead cash cow

So Queensland won the State of Origin again. Hmmm. Sorry for the typo. To 'win' it suggests they'd ever lost it, or were ever in danger of being in a position to lose it. No. Not against the weakest generation of NSW players since the Origin concept was first synthesized, thirty-some years ago. Still, the rather dubious win for NSW in Game 2 should confect just about interest in the old and tired Origin format to keep it limping along for another few years, so the owners and connections will continue to coin it in, the banana-bending banjoists get something to twang about again next year, and everyone's a winner.


Particularly the New Zealand Rugby League.

I hate to draw the attention of the Republic of Quoinslaaaand to things which involve dirty un-Australian foreign types from overseas - let's be honest, they're not great with foreigners, unless they fly into the Goldie on Deathstar and take photos of their koalas or invest in their property developments - but in the past six years of Maroon Origin dominance, the same six years since NSW's Generation Y-The-Fuck-Have-You-Been-Selected took centre stage in the sky blue, New Zealand have started routinely beating the sorry fuck out of Australia at international level. After never having beaten Australia in any form of significant tournament in the history of geological time, the Kiwis are now the reigning World and Four Nations Champions. Let's not pretend about this. They didn't get better. Australia got worse. Australia's playing squad became infested with Origin-sated Queenslanders, (in)bred from the cradle to consider their state colours more important than their national ones. Like Texas without the Mexicans. (A situation both Texas and Queensland would probably prefer.)

The end result typically looks something like this.


Now, Your Correspondent is the last bastard to give the inept muppets of the NSWRL a free ride, but it's probably not fair to sheet entire blame their way for Australia's failures at international level as a result of their state producing a generation of desperately incompetent fools who couldn't play their way out of a wet sack of shite if Joey Johns had personally written the play-by-play instructions and had it tattooed up their arm, Todd Carney style. It IS fair, however, to blame the rugby league gods of the Democratic People's Republic of of Capricornia for not turning up in international footy because they can't be fucked. And it is definitely fair to pin Blessed Saint Darren Fucking Lockyer for presiding over more international failure in green and gold than any Australian captain since Ponting got the arse. Yeah, congratulations Queensland on six in a row. Yay for you. Meanwhile, New Zealand are World and Four Nations Champions. Reckon you might actually get around to doing something about that?

The Doctor is OUT.

Flagging interest

There's a guy - I assume it's a guy - who lives on one of the main streets that lead from our new place to the centre of town. He has a big old house that fronts onto the footpath, painted regal blue and white like some kind of lost consulate for a faded colonial power with ideas above its station. Britain, f'rinstance. The house has a flagpole, and the flagpole, it might surprise you to learn, has a flag on it. A different one each day. Sometimes in honour of anniversaries and national/provincial days, sometimes just because the guy - I assume it's a guy - is feeling particularly Benin that morning.

What you can't see in that picture is the whiteboard he sticks up in the window explaining what the flag is, what the occasion is, why it's been run up the flagpole and who might normally be called upon to salute. What you also can't see is the people who presumably used to knock on the guy's door every morning to ask what the flag is etc.

I bring this unremarkable slice of humanity to you with no great intention of solving the world's ills, just to celebrate the beauty, humility and utility of a group of people I like to call the Benign Anoraks. Flag guy - and I'm quite sure he's a guy, because 99.95% of all Benign Anoraks are guys - knows a lot about flags. Owns a lot of flags. Loves flags, collects flags, invests in flags, understands their symbolism and their significance. And every day, he gets to share just a little bit of his Benign Anorakness with the rest of humanity, dusting a little bit of vexillophilic wisdom on the Great Unwashed and making everyone else's day fractionally less miserable and crap, as they motor past with an eye to the flagpole playing another round of What Flag Has Old Mate Put Up Today, rather than thinking about the heaving tower of shite in their work in-tray or the argument they had with their missus last night.

This is the way of the Benign Anorak. Someone with an encyclopaedic, all-encompassing and slightly offputting obsession for something, who chooses to use that power for good, not for boring people arseless in post office queues. Like Flag Guy, for instance. Like the group of model train engineers who throw open their club workshop every month or two and share their toys with everyone - like a full scale train which runs along an old abandoned bit of track along the beachfront. Like the crusty old home brew enthusiasts who offered advice and enthusiasm to Dr Craigos and I in the Old Chateau Dodgy Brewhouse days of the early Noughties.

I come before you tonight to admit that I, too, was once a Benign Anorak, when my PhD supervisor twigged that all the space in my head that was supposed to be filled with SCIENTS was actually filled to the lighting gantries with overwhelmingly comprehensive and massively pointless expertise re the worth and workings of shitbox used cars. With that, he asked whether I'd be happy helping a newly arriving Japanese postdoc and his wife to find a car to buy. One not-entirely-dodgy '97 Festiva later - though not before the most entertainingly terrifying test drive in history (one Japanese couple with limited grasp of English and the workings of a manual gearbox, one smartarsed PhD student with an eye to beer o'clock, one 6'5" Polynesian used car sales dude who ended up whiter than a ream of Reflex A4) - a legend was born. Dr Yobbo, Benign Anorak of the Moorooka Magic Mile. Ten or so people in three years I helped into wheels, mostly through work, and not all of whom wanted to sue afterwards. Honest, that guy actually WANTED to buy a Westinghouse-white 1991 Saab 900. Really. And the only guy who didn't listen to me - that being Dr Craigos - ended up in a maroon Daewoo. The Benign Anorak has your back. Put your faith in the Benign Anorak and he will lead you to the promised land of Motorama!


Cool bananas!!

However, these days I've retired from International Benign Anorakage, and hassle used-car salespricks purely for my own amusement rather than the benefit of others. Still, I feel that we all have special skillsets and Mastermind-grade areas of expertise - some too embarrassing to acknowledge, perhaps - that we could benefit the rest of humankind by sharing with everyone. Gentle people of the Interweb, I ask of you - what is the special skill YOU have developed over the years which, properly harnessed, could one day make you a Benign Anorak?

The Doctor is OUT.