I'd like to dedicate this one to the ladies

...Specifically Anne Hathaway.



Yep, the noted Shakespearean actress (see what I did there?) got caught going commando at a recent opening. Of her legs! HAHAHA! Because you could see up her skirt, and that's something that's relevant and exciting to everyone with a mental age of 12 and a masturbation habit bordering on the obsessional.

Not linking the original. It'll take Google Image Search all of 0.015 seconds to find.

Now, I like looking at pretty ladies' rude bits as much as anyone, but seriously, we all outgrew looking up girls' skirts sometime in year 8. OK, year 10. 11? Whatever. It's not cool. And it's fucking bizarre that the only thing keeping the paps who snapped Miss Hath's flaps from upskirting charges is the nebulous status of celebrity. Apparently, it's perfectly alright to capture and coin it in from someone's inadvertent Sharon Stone moment when they're famous. Anyway, she knew this would happen. She chose to dress like that. She figured it was a risk worth taking to avoid the dreaded VPL. She probably wanted the attention. She was asking for it...

That. Shit. Can. Fuck. Right. Off.

And yet the Celebrity Upskirt is an entire industry in itself. Fat sweaty bald men with erect lenses crowd around premiere limos, waiting for a crack. At photographing Hollywood's starlet du jour attempting to navigate herself and her spangly cocktail frock out of the back seat without giving HELLO!, OK! or FUCK OFF!! a double page spread of her gynaecological blueprints. It's cheap, tawdry, exploitative and a sorry statement about gender politics and the economy of celebrity. And there is only one group of people who can save us.

The Mazda motor company.

The core issue, of course, is that conventional car doors open in such a way that to navigate around them en route to your further destination on the red carpet, you are called upon to splay your legs and display your undercarriage. However, certain cars have reverse-opening or 'suicide' doors - old Rolls Royces, certain long-wheelbase New Minis and the Hyundai Veloster, whatever the fuck that is - which hinge from the rear, enabling a demure knees-together sidle-and-swoosh exit for your Anne Hathaway types. Problem is, none of these cars is appropriate for Hollywood premiere duty. The Mini would be too mini, the Hyundai would be too Hyundai and the old Roller would deposit most of its internal fluids over the red carpet as it Failed To Proceed.

However, the Mazda RX-8 would be perfect. And here's why.

Except Mazda have stopped making it. 

THE FOOLS.

DO THEY NOT REALISE THEY COULD STRIKE A FEARSOME BLOW FOR FEMINISM BY RELEASING A NEW VERSION DESIGNED FOR CHICKS WHO CAN'T BE ARSED WEARING KNICKERS TO THE MOVIES???

Also, it's got a fucken rotor, and rotors are where it's at.*

Get to it, Mazda. Hollywood is calling.

The Doctor is OUT.

*The Duffer, In The Worst Possible Taste

AU: not gold

The AU Falcon was, and remains, an utter shitbox. Slagged at launch for being fuglier than a HD widescreen screenshot of a Kyle Sandilands colonoscopy, it proceeded to age more shabbily than John Laws, while going through similar amounts of Valvoline. Diff whine, brake shudder, strut tower rattles, driveline clunks, steering box graunches... it's probable there doesn't exist an AU Falcon that doesn't have more creaks, groans, twitters and squawks than an old wharf in an onshore swell, being shat on by a horde of ungrateful seagulls. By far, most AU Falcons served their penance as taxis, racking up multi-equatorial mileages freighting pissed nightlifeists hither and yon in vinyl-seated, grey-plastic-swathed discomfort. And fair enough too; if there was ever a car which deserved to be vomited on with nightly regularity, it was the AU Falcon.

So what do you do with an ex-cabbie 2001 AU once it's finished making people sick on the streets of Melbourne?

Well, you could cram a turbocharged 438ci Windsor V8 into it and take it salt flat racing at Bonneville Speed Week...

...which is exactly what a bloke called Norm from Melbourne did. (It's always a bloke called Norm. Unless it's a bloke called Bruce.) As reported in this month's Australian Muscle Car, he "decided to build an AU Falcon after a mate who worked for Ford said the AU was an ideal candidate due to its slippery, aerodynamic shape." Which is a polite way of saying that it looked like a turd that had been polished too hard. Suspicions remain that the BA Falcon was actually meant to be the model released in 1998, however someone in Ford Design borrowed a clay mockup of the prototype and accidentally ran it through a car wash. Norm's BA had 760,000km on the clock when he bought it off the cab company. The kilometres it has covered since have been at markedly faster speeds - his best run at Bonneville this year over the measured mile was 380km/h, and he reckons 450km/h is feasible.

Just imagine the dif whine at that speed. Not to mention the strut tower rattle. It'd sound like a cage of budgies hooked up to Motorhead's rock festival PA system.

The Doctor is OUT to windowshop for cheap used cars that aren't AU Falcons.

This man needs a steak and a beer

Peter Siddle was on my television this morning. At least, it looked like Peter Siddle. Albeit a strangely shrunken, drawn variant thereof, as though the Alpha Bogan of Austrayan Criggit had somehow been transmuted into a parallel universe and replaced by a malnourished doppelganger. Perhaps the result of Criggit Astraya taking its state-level sponsorship deal with a certain cuntiferous health insurer a little too far. Or perhaps it was an elaborate Halloween stunt on the part of CA to have Seat Piddler front the media made up to look like Skeletor. No, not Jessica Rowe, the REAL one. But no, as the story turns out; apparently this anaemic looking Siddle is entirely Part Of The Plan. On the encouragement of his girlfriend, he's dumped meat and booze, and a bunch of weight.

Of all the fucking terrible ideas Seat Piddler has ever had - up to and including the soul patch and the Southern Cross tatt which makes him look like an out-of-work Cronulla lifeguard looking for Lebs to punch on with - this is by far the fucking most terriblest.

Not just because he now looks spindlier than Bruce 'They're trying to sticky-tape him back together' Reid.

Not just because all great fast bowlers should be fuelled on raw red meat and boots up the arse from Captain Grumpy.

And not just because the much-vaunted, new-look, leaner-and-meaner Siddle got taken to the fucking cleaners by a hundred-year-old angry midget from Launceston in his most recent Shield outing.

No, more than all of that, because of the dangerous precedent set by the last hero-worshipped Victorian sporting legend who suddenly turned vegetarian and teetotal on the urgings of his missus...

Smirk all you want, but hear this: it's a slippery slope. All I'm saying is if Siddle turns up next summer promoting the fuck out of a cricket bat with a matchbox of crystals and glitter Sellotaped to the splice, you can't say you weren't warned.

'Course this won't actually be a problem in the cricket world, they're used to boxes full of bollocks.

The Doctor is OUT.

Been a long time since they rock 'n' rolled...

...Five years in fact, since Led Zeppelin's reunion gig in London in tribute to Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records, which has belatedly begat a concert film Celebration Day, out next month on CD, DVD and Blu-Ray, in time for Christmas in good thing-shops everywhere. Buy it for someone you care about, or someone you don't who hates Led Zeppelin. The best bit: there's a cinema print, which for a concert film is absolutely ideal; unless you're a stoner, an amnesiac or an insufferable musowanker, you'll never watch a concert film more than once or twice anyway.

I saw Celebration Day this evening, stone-cold sober on a wet, ugly Thursday night on the Riviera of the Antarctic, in a movie theatre half-full of boomers and students. It was still epically fucking wonderful. Who'd have thought a hobo, a bank manager, a nightclub bouncer and your doddery old grandad could make such astonishing, intoxicating noise, for what must have been well past their bedtime. Player ratings to follow.

Jimmy Page, lead guitar: Dazed and confused. Sweated, swaggered, staggered and generally looked like someone's mildly demented grandpa dancing at a wedding after a few hours on the good brandy. However, if multiple decades of smack DOES have a lasting effect on motor function, it doesn't fucking show in the man's playing. Mesmeric. Up to his old tricks with bows and double-necked SGs. Looked genuinely thrilled to be there. Then again after all he's been through (and all that's been through him) you'd be genuinely thrilled to be anywhere.

John Paul Jones, lead bass, keyboards and simpering: businesslike. Smiled at one stage. Though that may have been indigestion. No, I still haven't forgiven him for those last couple of shitty Zep albums he helmed, or for bollocksing the Datsuns' sound.

Jason Bonham, lead drums and backing vox: Man of the match. Bonzo Jr was, not to put too fine a point on it, brilliant. No particular experience playing in front of this size crowd, or under this weight of expectation, and he HIT THE FUCKING THINGS LIKE THEY'D SAID STUFF ABOUT HIS MUM. A metronomic colossus. In truth, the band's sound was and is built on the engine room of the drums, and the only reason they sounded good was Bonzo Jr driving the bus from the back. And despite being absolutely entitled to be there, Bonzo Jr also managed to channel every Gen X Led Zep fan's joy in not only being able to see the mighty Zep live again, but to actually participate in the moment. You've never seen anyone so happy to be hanging out with his dad's scabby old mates.

Robert Plant, howling wolf: Plant was a'ight. Lacking most of the top of his range, but that went sometime in the mid '70s after a throat op. I once committed the cardinal sin of suggesting to an insufferable musowanker that Chris Robinson (who howled vocals on the brilliant Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes double live album from the turn of the millennium) was actually better value on the pipes than Plant. I'll qualify that by saying better than Plant era 1972, obviously not. But Plant era 2000 (or even 2012)...

Doesn't fucking matter, anyway. Because he's Plant, and this was Zep, and it was epic. They were a rock and roll band, and we will never see their like again.

Unless someone gets me the DVD for Christmas of course. *cough*

The Doctor is OUT.

Feeding the chooks

When I was a kid, hardware stores were one of my favourite places - second only, perhaps, to auto parts stores - to spend time. Spend time I did, of course, with the old man forever needing to restock and tool-up for various home improvement missions. This was the era before big-box retail, when hardware stores only contained actual hardware, rather than homeware, whiteware, teetering skyscrapers of 99c plastic buckets and endless crates of parallel-imported landfill-elect shit from China. Fuck you, Bunnings. Old-school hardware stores reeked of potential creativity. Of all the possibilities promised by every shade in the Dulux paint chart, by all the different varieties of stick-on mailbox letters, by endless lengths of timber and the hi-vis orange sturdiness of the Triton Workbench. Also in variance to their current equivalents, old-school hardware stores also contained people who actually knew stuff about hardware - in fact, becoming one of those cheery, helpful, expert-on-everything blokes who staffed hardware stores of the time was and perhaps still is one of my only career goals. Because, as Red Dwarf's Craig Charles once said in a book largely ghost-written for him, there is nothing in the world more useful than Someone Who Knows What They Are Doing.

Because I am now a Lifestyle Farmer (translation: a wanker townie with three chooks in his backyard), I now have reason to frequent rural supplies stores, such as I did this morning to pick up 10kg of shell grit and a large fuck-off bag of layer pellets for the girls. And I've come to the conclusion that rural stores are the new old hardware stores. Like old-school Mitre 10s or BBC Hardwares (remember them? Anyone? Bueller?) everything in a rural supply store is there For A Reason. No cafe. No soccer balls. No fuck-off-cretinous branded stuffed toys. Everything that is stocked is there because it is fit for purpose and because it is needed to do a job. Huge rolls of fencing wire and stacks of star pickets. Back-breaking bags of horse feed and fertilizer. Proper fucking boots you can drop bricks on and still have toes. The whole place exudes 'Fit For Purpose'. Which, when you're a wanker townie pretending to be a Lifestyle Farmer, is exactly the look you're trying to appropriate.

Our local rural co-op, one of the biggest in NZ, is called CRT. To my knowledge, not the same CRT as in Australia, but walking through their feed shed this morning a childhood earworm suddenly lurched forth from prehistory like a creakingly hideous and obvious horror from a condemned carnival Ghost Train:

Your local bloke from CRT
Is the bloke for the man on the land to see
Because he gets to know you per-so-nal-ly
The local bloke from CRT...

Ack. The 1980s were shit weren't they? Particularly on regional television. NRTV, we're a part of yoooouuuu....

The first and only time I can recall going into a CRT as a kid was in East Lismore. Which, then as now, was a shithole. As good a place as any to place a rural supplies store, on the Kyogle Road. From memory it was actually on the site of an old Norman Ross store - which dates it, and me - which once Gerry Harvey had subsumed into his egregious empire, had been abandoned to the likes of CRT and a local cash-n-carry discounter called 'Jack the Slasher' whose business branding could have been rethought more carefully, I figured. You never knew whether the proprietor was about to go you with a bowie knife or piss down your leg.

From what I remember of Lismore CRT, rural supplies places haven't changed much in 20-30 years. And that's a good thing. Long live old things which are old. Erm, we seem to have reached the end of this post, and there isn't really a witty punchline to finish it off. However, feel free to use the space below to write one in for yourself.







Haha! Not bad. Bit derivative, but what do you want for nuthin'.

The Doctor is OUT.

What lies beneath... or within... or something

Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or MRI, is a imaging technique used in medicine to visualize internal structures of the body in detail. MRI makes use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), a technique beloved of physical chemists and biochemists to help them understand molecular structures, to image the nuclei of atoms within the body and build up a 3D picture of internal structure. This is particularly useful when looking for gross differences in organs or other body componentry associated with disease. ('Gross' meaning outward anatomical description, not as in 'fuck that dude's bowel looks gross', although these definitions can overlap in clinical presentation depending on how professional your radiologist is.)

Of course, you don't have to use MRI for medicine. Pretty much anything can go into a MRI machine. Even the contents of your vegetable crisper, as per this bloke at Boston U with a lot of spare time on his hands and on his instrument booking sheet.

Orange you glad this is from a dedicated research instrument and someone's not waiting an extra week to have their brain tumour imaged

This, not to put too fine a point on it, is fucking cool. I think we in the life sciences (the Royal 'we' meaning everyone else who still has a job in the life sciences), who are very familiar with techniques like this, or at least seeing the results of them, forget that being able to see inside stuff which is inherently not-see-inside-able by design, is often found to be immensely fucking ace by the majority of non-SCIENTS types. We can get a bit blase about 3D rendered reconstructions of MRI or confocal microscope images spinning on some droning dullard's conference Powerpoint slide. Stuff like the above - while utterly pointless and almost definitely a waste of profoundly expensive instrument time - has a massive capacity to capture the imagination of Normal Humans and should never be underestimated.

I mentioned above that MRI data isn't the only way you can 'see through' solid biological objects. Confocal microscopy, which is a big-shiny-expensive way of imaging samples with fluorescent labels introduced into the sample, also uses the same idea - that of taking multiple 'optical sections' through a sample, sometimes called 'Z-stacking' (i.e. taking lots of 2D images at varying points through the imaginary Z-axis of the sample, then computationally stacking them all on top of each other.) You can even do this with high-powered stereomicroscopes - the sort you'd use to look at larger solid objects like insects at high magnification - with an electronic motor that can 'step' the focus drive through the image, to capture images with a CCD camera at each different stage, then piece a completely-in-focus high-magnification version of the object together. The complication here is that the higher magnification you use, the shallower your depth of field becomes - or in other words, more of the overall beastie will remain out of focus. Same is the case with 'non-confocal' fluorescent microscopes. Confocals are clever because they can effectively 'blank out' all the out-of-focus light information which comes bouncing back to the viewer when the fluorophores in the sample are illuminated.

What all these techniques depend absolutely on, therefore, is deconvolution software which can piece together a coherent, in-focus 3D image from partially-focused 2D Z-stack images, those 'optical sections' I described above. (Compare this idea to an 'actual' tissue section - for instance what goes on in a pathology lab where a piece of tumour sample gets 'fixed', embedded and sliced very thinly for staining on a histology slide and examination by a pathologist. You could theoretically recreate the 3D structure of the tissue sample by 'serial' sectioning and staining a series of sequential slices... but it'd suck. And this is a cleverer and easier way to do it.) Obviously, the ability of the software to take on board all the masses of information it gets from a huge Z-stack of high-res images, identify the out-of-focus information, and discard it so sense can be made and a coherent overall picture can be formed, is the most critical part of the whole process.

And it struck me while I was contemplating all of this, that this is pretty much what I've had to train my brain to do as a means of counteracting anxiety.

I've mentioned before my run-ins with the Despair Squid. What anxiety is (for me at least) is a massive unwanted oversupply of unhelpful thoughts effectively crashing the system through a monumental DDoS. Everyone's different, everyone's triggers vary and everyone's techniques for dealing with are going to be very individual, but the inability to slow down the thinking process, challenge 'catastrophisation' (a word I really like) and reintroduce some rationality to the discussion, usually correlates with Despair Squid Wrestling. So this idea of taking one's thoughts apart, top to bottom, piece by piece - optically sectioning them if you like - then analysing each of them, challenging the data, throwing out the out-of-focus noise and retaining the useful stuff in order to piece together a more coherent view of the situation - that's actually one of the more apposite analogies I've found for my particular process of seeing off anxiety.

I have no idea whether this will be useful information but I thought I'd share it with you.

Flangebadger.

The Doctor is OUT.

Eyes down and glasses up... it's Bathurst Beer Bingo 2012

Because watching six and a half hours of bewinged taxis lapping a hill in central-western NSW SOBER would be cruel and unusual punishment.

THE PRIME DIRECTIVE
The object of Bathurst Beer Bingo is to make it to the finish of the race. Thus, strategy is key. Your Correspondent plans a conservative strategy of early double-stints on Coopers Sparkling, with a reserve of Coopers Mild for the sprint to the flag.

THE RULES
DRINK for the following:

The RACE START.

Declaration of SAFETY CAR PERIODS.

Crowd shots of COMPLETELY OFF-CHOPS SNAGGLE-TOOTHED BOGAN MUNTERS.

SWEARING ON RACE RADIO.

The first usage of the phrases 'GAME ON' by the Seven Communtery Team. All subsequent uses will NOT be Drinking Offences as you'd all be fucking trolleyed before the second round of pit stops. See also 'THE RACE IS GOING OFF' and utterly context-bereft references to Peter Brock.

Instances of the Seven Communtery Team attempting to sell TICKETS to things, particularly the LAST 30 LAPS. It's not a fucking chook raffle at the bowlo you arsebadgers.

Sightings of WILDLIFE on the racetrack - kangaroos, horses, snaggle-toothed bogan munters. SPECIAL PENALTIES apply to violent contact between wildlife and race entrants (see below)

Sightings of the WEATHER RADAR, particularly if the weather is NOT PARTICULARLY SHIT

Majestic and arty super slo-mos of absolutely fuck-all of significance

FPR'S TIM EDWARDS BLEATING ABOUT BEING HARD DONE BY AND TRIPLE 8 HAVE CHEATED AND IT'S NOT FAIR I WANT A PONY ROLAND HAS A PONY

You can have a pony when you win something, you whinging toolbag

The now-traditional 50 CENT PARTS BREAKING AND FUCKING UP SOMEONE'S RACE. This has been indexed with inflation up to and including $2 parts.

CARS EATING THINGS. Specifically, objects being ingested into air intakes, such as plastic bags (eg Mark Skaife 2002), beer cartons (Allan Moffat 1971) or kangaroos (Jim Richards 2004)

Instances of TRADITIONAL BATHURST SCHADENFREUDE ie when some prick you hate blows up and/or bunkers it in the kitty litter. This category is entirely subjective and may result in drinking whenever anyone fucks up. Competitors are reminded of the Prime Directive (see above).

PITLANE
The following will be assessed as Drinking Penalties:
Use of RACE TAPE
Use of SLIDE HAMMERS
Use of a PORTALOO to sulk in after spilling half a tank of fuel down the road by driving off too early
Use of a STUPID FUCKING HEAT GUN for NO APPARENT REASON other than to ensure Larko doesn't fuck about with any of the team equipment

The following are SPECIAL DRINKING PENALTIES and require the complete consumption of one's drinking vessel:
Running over WILDLIFE
Running over WESTLIFE, or any other anthem-singing prick
PUNCHING ON amongst competitors, commentators or grid girls
The SAFETY CAR CRASHING, BREAKING DOWN or otherwise FUCKING UP
Someone drawing a COCK AND BALLS on Larko's whiteboard
Someone drawing a COCK AND BALLS on Larko's forehead
Anything else WEIRD that looks like it DESERVES A SKOL

Have fun, and remember, motorsport will be the winner on the day.

The Doctor is OUT.

Because not enough people have expressed an opinion on the Bulldogs being dickheads to women again

Meh. That was pretty much my reaction to the reaction to the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs' Mad Monday 'celebrations'. Apart from my reaction to Bitin' James Graham's costume, which was ACES.

Duff Man is thrusting in the direction of the problem

I arrive at 'Meh' through every reaction having an equal and opposite re-reaction: both sides are fucked. The Bulldogs, obviously, are well out of order, particularly after their history, particularly because perception IS reality in this instance. The reality is the Dogs players in question are Neanderthal, misogynist, juvenile, over-pampered fuckheads. The media went looking for a story because they knew there'd be one - and sending someone like Jayne Azzopardi to stake out the site rather than a sports journo tends to indicate Ch9's news directors had fingers crossed for a suitably offensive response. It was cynical TMZ-level pap-work and it was rewarded with a result. The whole incident is basically a bunch of bratty schoolkids poking zoo gorillas with sticks and then running to teacher when they get shit hurled back at them. Both sides can go intercourse themselves with a frozen penguin. Meh. The end.

The greater issue, of course, is that losing grand finalists have no place in the competition and should be compulsorarily dissolved and all their assets sold for Friday night beer money at NRL HQ.

Let's look at the facts, people.
Canterbury, losers 2012; disintegrate into rancid misogynist pissheadery on Mad Monday.
Warriors, losers 2011; team disintegrates into playing like unmitigated arse, coach fired under acrimonious circumstances, team complete rubbish ever since.
Roosters, losers 2010: see Warriors, 2011.
Parramatta, losers 2009; see Warriors, 2011 and Roosters, 2010. Then triple it.
Melbourne, losers 2008: two sets of books. All toys confiscated and protagonists sent to their room.
Manly, losers 2007: They're Manly. 'Nuff said.

Every beaten finalist has gone on to embarrass themselves and humiliate the game in the years following. They have become a burden on the sporting public of Australasia, a farrago of shambolic fuckwittitude which cannot be allowed to continue. Therefore, I propose that beaten NRL grand finalists be drop-punted out of the NRL competition the moment they get their losers' medals on the dias. The great Newtown Bluebags, who lost in 1981 and disappeared into a financial black hole shortly afterwards, are now mourned as victims, but in truth, they are pioneers for a more dignified and heroic way forward.



Crush the losers. You know it makes sense.

Well more than anything that bloated fucksmear Kekovich has to say, anyway.

I am well hung. Over.

Like many of you, I have a hangover. I do not want it, and furthermore I feel I have not deserved it. I didn't drink nearly enough to warrant this silverback gorilla of a hangover (thanks v. much Therbs). I will therefore be taking my case against this injustice to the Court of Arbitration for Hangovers in the Hague. The Hague, by the way, was originally named for the noise made by visiting American college students after nineteen Heinekens and a couple of choofs of tourist grade mull.

I didn't always get hangovers. I was young, and my liver was an open book. My first recollection of hangoverdom was post-New-Years sometime last millennium when the Famous Dawso and I made the laughably poor decision to split a $20 carton of Reschs Real. It wasn't particularly evil - the hangover I mean, the Real obviously was. For most of my 20s, my hangovers were of the 'minor annoyance' category. I can only recall one which actually prevented me functioning - the morning after Origin III in 2000, which NSW won by a million billion to nil. It was actually 56-16 or something but it felt like a million billion to nil. Particularly if you were a Blues supporter in Brisbane. Muahahahahaha.

I still have the stubby cooler from that night. It's seen better days, as have we all, but as you can see it's still helping to create hungover realities.

There are a million billion supposed 'cures' for hangovers. Caffeine. Lardy salty food. Black Aspros. Bloody Marys. The hair of the dog that bit you. A kebab and a Powerade. (Which definitely has its place in the 'preventative' column. Our traditional 'last round of drinks' on big nights at the uni bar was a detour past the 24 hour servo at the bottom of our street for a Powerade and a chicken Hero roll.) Some go for sex and Vegemite toast. In series, not in parallel. Unless you're into crumbs in the bed.

Unfortunately, the truth is there is no cure for hangovers, only prevention - drinking less. Which, as I recall, Iggy and the Stooges have an apt commentary upon.


I actually like this version more than the Stooges, for which my brother considers me a heathen. Then again he does paintings of God having a flog.

The worst part of any hangover is its timing. Not just the lengthening to two- and even three-day epics as one enters one's thirtieth summer and beyond. Just the fact they roll up on the least appropriate mornings. Like, as happened to me several years in succession, the morning of December 31st. Or even, if you're really unlucky/disorganised/stupid, the Saturday of Grand Final weekend.

Yeah, about that. Since you asked, I'm on the Bloods and Berries. For the record, that's a match prediction, not a hangover cure. My faith remains implicit in the Holy Trinity of coffee, bacon and flu tablets.

The Doctor is OUT.

Merc-enaries for hire

And then there were four. Mercedes-Benz are following Nissan in joining the new-look V8 Supercar Championship from next year onwards. Current Merc GT team Erebus are merging with long-term Ford stalwards Stone Brothers Racing, with their three entries for Lee Holdsworth, Shane van Gisbergen and Tim Slade becoming E-Class AMGs from 1 Jan 2013.

This development has made a lot of people very happy. Stone Brothers are happy, because their Ford deal was expiring at the end of the year, and this gives them certainty for the future. Erebus are happy, because they get to go racing at the top level. AMG are happy, because they get to sell Erebus-SBR a bunch of shiny new hardware. V8 boss Tony Cochrane is happy, because he gets his fat face on TV a whole lot more, and there's nothing the Coch likes more than that. Even Ford are happy, because they didn't have enough cash to splash on retaining SBR while also planning to expand their factory team to four cars, and this gives them a face-saving 'out'.

The only people not particularly happy about Mercedes-Benz joining V8 Supercars are Mercedes-Benz.

Having previously refused to take part in the series, and having seemingly tried valiantly to prevent the Erebus-AMG deal from getting up, M-B Australia made the following statement through gritted teeth:

“Our position on entering V8 Supercars has not changed, we have jointly with AMG approved to offer Erebus Motorsport the opportunity to purchase the requested technology and support via the Customer Sports program.
“Erebus is a highly valued customer and they have an existing relationship with AMG via the Customer Sports program. The Erebus Motorsport-SBR entry into V8 Supercars is an extension of that relationship.
“We are not directly involved and we have no plans to undertake any sales or marketing activities in conjunction with this effort. There is no Mercedes-Benz or AMG money inherent in this new entry, the entire project is funded by Erebus Motorsport.” 

Translation: We don't fucking want to be here.

There are two rather interesting elements of this whole deal, and this is one of them: that M-B Oz, Carlos Tevez style, are basically refusing to play. Even to the extent of having 'no plans to undertake any sales or marketing activities' - even if the AMG Mercs finish 1-2-3 at Bathurst?? - which would seem a particularly snotty response to someone wanting to promote your product for free on the national stage. Erebus and SBR are clearly not muppets, they know how to prepare and run race cars, so it can't be through any fear of a badly-run V8 Supercar programme embarrassing the brand. Perhaps it's fear of success instead.

For reasons best known to theirselves, Mercedes-Benz Oz have always dodged their round when it comes to motorsport, unlike their fellow Krauty manufacturers Throughout the 1980s and '90s, BMW Oz backed a factory team in touring cars, joined by Audi in the 90s with the advent of the Super Touring formula. Audi continue to run a GT program, having won the last couple of Bathurst 12 Hour enduros with factory R8 GTs. Even Porsche, much more of a niche manufacturer in the local market, have been supporting local motorsport since the early '80s in the GT classes. M-B have never been interested. Presumably winning Bathurst doesn't mesh with their marketing aims of selling optioned-up SLK cabrios to Double Bay ladies who lunch.

In short, M-B's apprehension about V8 Supercars can be summated in three words: Here Be Bogans.

The other interesting factor in this whole deal is the driving force behind it. As discussed, it's not Mercedes. It's not Ross or Jimmy Stone, and it's certainly not the Coch. It's Erebus owner Betty Klimenko.

Betty's the one on the left

At this stage, even diehard motorsport aficionados are going 'Betty Who?', which is better than going 'Betty Boo' because she just mimed to a backing tape which apparently was a crime in 1989, before becoming compulsory for all pop singers sometime in the 00s.

Ms Klimenko is a successful property developer, daughter of the bloke who co-founded Westfield with Frank Lowy. She likes her tatts and her Goth-black frocks, and she loves her AMG Mercs - enough to set up a race team to run the awesome SLS AMGs in the GTs and the Bathurst 12 Hour. It's been the refusal of Ms Klimenko to take 'Bugger off' as an answer - and the keenness of AMG Customer Racing to expand on their existing relationship with Erebus - which has gotten this deal off the ground.

Admittedly, second-gen property developers don't have a great history in V8 Supercars - most recently Craig Gore, son of Joh's old white-shoed mate Mike, ran his own WPS team in the mid '00s, until the financial wheels fell off/he hurt his hearing in a helicopter prang and had to avoid loud racecars (strike out which version you prefer). WPS were Wright Patton Shakespeare, Gore's financial services, company, but most around pitlane figured it stood for We Produce Safetycars given the regularity with which their entries found themselves in the scenery.

Which is yet another example of how, as anyone in motorsport knows, the only sure way to make a small fortune out of racing is to start with a much larger one. But Klimenko and her team, whether on the racetrack or in the boardroom, have demonstrated they can discern their arse from their elbow without reference to an annotated copy of Gray's Anatomy.

The fascinating thing about this arrangement - the 'merger' of Erebus and SBR, effectively a takeover in all but name - will be how the personalities interact of Klimenko and the Stone Brothers, a pair of typically staunch, taciturn Kiwi blokes whose Australian reputation was built on being the technical nous behind Dick Johnson Racing in their successful Sierra days, before striking out on their own in the mid-90s. You couldn't find a more diverse melding of personalities if you tried to cast one for reality TV.

Actually, there's an idea for free. Bugger this Shannons Supercar Showdown shite Ch7, get some camera crews into the Erebus-SBR garages over the off-season...

The Doctor is OUT.

Hold me closer, Tony Danza

I'm not a big metalhead. I wouldn't know Glenn Danzig from Tony Danza. Which, if not justifying the piss-awful mondegreen of this post's title, does go some way towards explaining it to the court, m'lud. It seems that over the years, metal has splintered and fragmented into yet more sub-genres - thrash/death/nu/hair/black/grey/Norwegian Blue (innit, lovely plumage) - proving that music, like the major schools which underpin crazy-straw design, is fractal in structure. Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite them, and little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.

All of which is very interesting, but this is a blog about Queenstown.

I went to Queenstown this week. I tend to do this every year about this time, partly just to see if it's still there, and has as such not yet disappeared up its own glittery Aspen-meets-Surfers ringpiece. But mostly for SCIENTS and beers. The final week in August is the traditional home of what has now become Queenstown Research Week, encompassing QMB, MedSci, the AWBCR and enough satellites to recapture the entire of Google Maps. Being a semi-retired man of SCIENTS I went to precisely no talks and instead took the Monsters to see if we could freak out any Deathstar pilots on descent to Queenstown Airport with Monster v1.0's Ben 10 ray gun.

No, of course I'm kidding. There was cloud around. At least one. No way they'd fly in that.

Frankton Arm

Which kinda brings me to my point (yes I have one). Queenstown seemed to be crammed full of Strayans over here for a bit of powder action. As well as QRW it was also Gay Ski Week, which explained the hairdo on the bloke in the supermarket coldroom who asked me whether Tui was drinkable, as well as the accent. And why not come over - flights are cheap, the AUD is strong, and the locals are friendly. (I assume.)

Well here's a reason. There's no fucking snow.

Compare and contrast:

Remarkables, 2012

Remarkables, 2011

Remarkables, 2010 (from the Gondola)

And...

Walter Peak, 2012 (cloud-obscured, but clear of snow in upper Frankton image)

Walter Peak, 2011

Walter Peak, 2010

I don't ski - something to do with having the grace and balance of a concussed hippo on PCP - but this, to my inexpert eye, would appear to be a shit season. Still, cheers for coming over and wasting your money in Central, boarders and plankers of Straya. By the way, that's a great haircut, dude. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Oh yeah, one more before and after shot.

September 1, 2003

September 1, 2012

The Doctor is OUT.

Dat's all folks

Just when you thought the '80s revival was spluttering to a fluoro-clad halt, comes the big news: Datsun are back. 

Yes kids, thirty years after shitcanning it as an ongoing branding concern, the Nissan Motor Company are bringing back the mighty Datto. And I for one am thrilled to bits. Because like most of the known first world, old busted-arse Dattos are iconic of all Aussie and Kiwi motoring adolescence. Whether it's the memory of a shitbox 120Y in the wanted baby-poo green-brown-whatthefuckISthatcolour, or rat-arsed 1200s and 1600s howling and gargling gravel down some long-forgotten 70s rally stage, or Farmer George Fury whistling the factory Bluebird around Mount Panorama... by which stage they were officially called Nissan, but by fuck it was still a fucken DATTO. Even Allan Grice, one hell of a great racer at Bathurst before he became one hell of a shit Nats MP for Broadwater, put it well back in 1991 when having scored a hard-fought podium behind the all-conquering Nissan GT-R, quipped 'the Datsuns were too strong for us today'.

Datsun Saves... long ball to Valiant, crosses to Torana XU1... GOOOOOAAAALLLL

Dattos were ALWAYS shit. It started with the names - Cedrics and Fairladys and Sunnys and Stanzas (neatly echoed by the Nissan Tiidas, Qashqais and Jukes of today, indicating the parent company still picks its names on the basis of a thousand monkeys vomiting on a thousand typewriters - but it seemed a Datto was never actually new, but always suspended in a particular kind of mid-70s crapitude, characterised by being desperately fucking gutless, handling like a binliner of warm livers and having all the poon-pulling power of a freshly polished goitre.

So it was for my first car, a powder-blue 1976 Datsun 180B with a vinyl rooflining resplendent in Benaud Beige, metal sunshade, wind deflectors and no-speed auto. It's hard to deny the fact that it was a real nanna's car. I know this because I inherited it off my real nanna. She went to a better place... a 1995 Suzuki Baleno. Only marginally better, granted. I went on to better things myself, an '88 six-cylinder Skyline. Still keeping within the Nissan family, though.

My theory is that a large proportion of the Western world's formative motoring experiences were had in Dattos, or their immediate descendents. The most terrified I have ever been in a motor vehicle was on the narrow, twisty, undulating back road between Faulconbridge and Springwood in a mate's urinary-tract-infection-yellow 1981 Bluebird with stale Cruskits for brake pads and overtensioned pogo sticks for shocks.

Apart from the other mate with a Pintara and a deathwish.

It's sure - and almost somewhat sad - that the new Datsuns won't be anywhere near as shit as those dusty '70s relics of memory. They'll be basic, reliable and frugal, and as far away from the 120Y (or even the Nissan Juke-R) as feasibly imaginable. And worst of all, they won't be coming here. Nissan has earmarked the Datsun brand for developing markets, like India, Indonesia and Russia.

So looks like the only new Datsuns you're getting hold of anytime soon is this.



Play it loud.

The Doctor is OUT.

Pack it in

So Big Tobacco has lost its appeal. Well, we knew that 25 years ago - smoking's been totes uncool since Bag The Fag.



...anyhow* Overly Large Tobacco have been shitcanned in their attempts to prevent the Strayan Gummint from enacting legislation which would force all cigarettes to be sold in plain olive- or khaki-green packaging. As the NT News pointed out, this should dramatically reduce rates of smoking in their readership catchment: PUTTING CIGS IN KHAKI PACK LIKELY TO HELP CUT DOWN NT SMOKERS. HARD TO FIND KHAKI PACK IN KHAKI SHORTS, SHIRT, BAG, HOUSE.

Putting everyone's durries in matching phlegmy-coloured cardboard of course makes all of Dimensionally Extraneous Tobacco's attempts at brand differentiation worthless and pointless. Noone will know that you fancy yourself as a Marlboro man, riding roughshod through the untamed wilderness of Montana, despite being a bespectacled 43 year old tax accountant from Burwood with a 1998 Camry and erectile dysfunction.

...IN MY PANTS

Unless.

You know where this is going to go, people: the same way it always does. Humans can't handle the inability to differentiate their status by the shiny shit they carry around. From laptop skins to Xmas reindeer antlers on family wagons, people be taking their standard-issue identikit units of consumption and personalising the very merry fuck thereoutof. Expect the humble cigarette tin to make one grand motherfucker of a comeback, from its fringe populations in the hipsterland communities of Newtown and North Fitzroy. Think of them as iPhone cases for the cancerous-elect.

More to the point, there's probably a huge opportunity for the peeps who do good business out of recreating ciggy logos for models of race cars (now legally required to be sold without the insignias of the brands which sponsored the teams in question back in the day) to run off reams of stickers to be sold at newsagents along side the khaki-clad FATAL DEATH BRINGING CANCER STICKS OF FATAL CANCER BRINGING DEATH. You want to show the world you're on a Holiday to Freeport with your old mate Peter Stuyvesant? Peel the stickers, slap 'em on, slot the pack into a prominent shirt pocket, and as a prominent brand of the '80s would have it, You're Laughing.

Or, for the tight-arses (or the fashionably obtuse), there's always the option of a B&H-gold Sharpie from the stationary counter.

Extra hipster points for neat colouring in.

The Doctor is OUT.

Cheap thrills

...Was an album by Frank Zappa, but that's not important right now. Casa del Yobbo has undergone regime change recently with Your Correspondent being installed as Puppet El Presidente (or at least stay-at-home-Dad and house husband by appointment), which has resulted in a lot of changes round these parts. Mostly money-related. Mostly lack-of-money-related, in point of fact. But that's all good, because as it turns out, Your Correspondent is secretly a cheap bastard, and has quite enjoyed busting out his secret squirrel cheap bastard skillset.

There is an art intringent to being a cheap bastard. The art is in being able to find quality products, particularly in the realm of non-core indulgences, which you can live with, in lieu of (a) going broke-ass broke buying your Usual Preferred Brands or (b) actually having to give up coffee or beer, because FUCK THAT SHIT.

The engaging challenge in this process is finding stuff which isn't abject fucking slop. F'rinstance, drinkable beer around the $30 a carton mark. As discussed previously in these pages, in the previous millennium where this critical pricepoint was nearer $20 a case, Your Correspondent's old man used to fill his fridge with the likes of Tooheys Red and Reschs Real, presumably to prevent Your Correspondent from pilfering it. This congenital cheapness is presumably Y-linked; I object to having to pay more than ten bucks for a bottle of wine, which in the current wine-glut NZ market involves no particular hardship.

The commodity price for beer is more immune to supply-and-demand fluctuations, sadly. Not to the point of justifying Real or Red, of course. Unless you absolutely, positively, need to clean the barbeque. My weekend go-to has become Haagen, a NZ-brewed Eurolager ripoff which manages to squeeze a remarkable amount of flavour into a $15-a-dozen product. The NZ beer market being what it is (ie cheap), you can often pick up genuine imported Eurolagers like Heineken around the $40-a-case mark. For special occasions, like. Months with a vowel in the month.

Coffee's another indispensible expenditure, for sanity at least. Found out this week that the Caffe Aurora stuff I'd always been fairly sniffy about was actually Vittoria's 'second label'. At half the price, it's not half the quality, and it's still better than Blend fucking 43 or those nasty pod-based extractions of arse.

Food costs money, which is an unfortunate state of affairs. However as discussed at Mother Focaccia today, the cold climate chef's secret weapon, the slow cooker, has an inordinate ability to turn dirt-cheap cuts of meat into glorious flavour-infused WIN. Buy one. Now.

All these incremental adjustments mean your family can continue to maintain a high standard of living on a single income, while still being able to afford the important things which make a difference to your life. Like Sky Sports.

The Doctor is OUT.

How to fix the Olympics

(NO, not like THAT, badminton teams)

The Olympics, as has been well established by the proceedings of the last five days, are shit. No getting around it. It's a piss-dismal shambles, a farrago of masturbatory irrelevance, a bucket of arse. Shit sports, shit weather, shit hosts, shit coverage, shit uniforms. Shit, really. It needs sorting.

And Your Correspondent, it may not surprise you terribly much to learn, is just the man to sort it. The World of Bollocks presents a seven point plan in ten point font entitled:

How To Unfuck The Olympics

by Dr B.A. Yobbo age 34 ⅓

1. It's a scientific fact that the Olympics are overrun by a bloated shit-porridge of massively irrelevant sports. Dressage. Ping-pong. Things Britain are good at. All has to go. Of course, it's not always necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater, unless it's baby recycling this week. Some 'events', those contrived beyond recognition from actual sports, could be revitalised simply by introducing some much needed REALISM. For the pigeon shooting, use real pigeons. For the Laser sailing, use real Lasers. And for the trampoline, use real tramps.

Protest lodged: tree failed to give way to starboard

2. In order to bring efficiency and on-time delivery of sportainment to the attention-deficient masses, the bloated fixtures list of several core sports will need to be pruned. This can be done by streamlining all the myriad variants of each sport into the one race. In the case of swimming, any half-sober sports scientist will admit that breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly are all just flawed, sub-standard ways of getting from one end of a pool to another. Swimming races will henceforth be held as 'whoever can get their arse down the other end and back the fastest, short of strapping a Mercury outboard to your ringpiece'. If you can do the entire length underwater, good fucking luck to you. If you can run along the bottom like Fred Flintstone driving down the shops, more power to you son. This should reduce the swimming programme down to a reasonably manageable size from its current length of half the cuntbadgering Olympics, and should free Ray Hadley up to do what he does best, ruining rugby league on TV and being a racist cunt on radio. Athletics events will be held under similar rules, which should bring a merciful end to the practice of 'walking' events, in which participants are required to lurch about as though incredibly angry about having a dislocated arse.

3. Given recent unpleasant events, in order to ablate certain clear and present confusion about the nature and object of the sport, and in particular that the aim of the exercise is to play well and win, the sport will be renamed GOODminton.

Bunch of cocks

4. Synchronised anything will be banned immediately and its practitioners sent away for re-education.

5. TV coverage of the Olympics will be drastically revised. In order to the endemic parochialism, condescention, borderline racism, froth and bullshit of pretty much all Olympic coverage, commentators will be wired up to Twitter, such that they receive a short, sharp electric shock to the rude bits whenever they say anything fucking stupid. For OH&S reasons, a mercy rule will be applied at a point to be determined by IOC medical staff, which is good news for dribbling arsehats like Rebecca Wilson. For certain sports where it is clear that only a handful of commentators can effectively explain the nuances of the events, commentary will be outsourced to experts in the field. All cycling commentary will be contracted out to Sherliggett, mainly for the lulz and the drinking for Big Fuck Off Chateaux, with the IOC genital electrodes primed for any gushing mention of British cycling awesomeness more than five times a minute. Finally, all gymnastics commentators will be immediately fired and replaced by Roy and HG.

DRINK

6. Following on from point #5, as a result of heavy criticism of US Olympic broadcaster NBC over showing Olympic events on delay in order to fill preferred programming timeslots, NBC will now be covering all Team USA competitors and teams live. However, in order for NBC to meet its commitments to its sponsors, all American competitors will now be required to compete on delay. It shall be interesting to see whether the 2012 Dream Team can monster the basketball competition while having to turn up to play four hours after everyone else has fucked off and the arena has been locked up.

7. Two words: Monster trucks. 

I don't care how, just find a fucking way to get them in there.

The Dark Knight Rises

Any questions? Make the invoice out to the usual shell company in the Caymans there Jacques.

The Doctor is OUT.

History is written by the winners. Of history-writing awards, mostly

So, getting old is a bag of poo. Things get wobbly, hair departs, music becomes shit and the kids won't get off your lawn. Also, you find yourself Turning Into One Of Those People. One of Those People who stay in on Friday nights, instead of more exciting alternatives. One of Those People who considers buying a Volvo, instead of more exciting alternatives. One of Those People who read in bed, instead of more exciting alternatives.

I have become a person who reads in bed. I don't like it. I suspect I will soon start watching One News, voting National and fearing the darkies. But it's a convenient flat surface where people will leave me the fuck alone. Right now I'm reading Michael King's The Penguin History of New Zealand. I say 'right now', which is not strictly accurate; it would make it hard to type. Michael King was a prominent NZ historian who died in 2004 courtesy a dodgy section of State Highway 2 through the Waikato. This occurred right at the height of his fame like some sort of beardy historian rock-star of sorts, as the Penguin History of NZ had been released the year before to massive acclaim and unprecedented sales figures. NZ has an interesting history - the last country in the world to be discovered and settled, in which the preceding few thousand years of human civilization were recapitulated on fast-forward over the course of a couple of hundred - and King's account is supposed to be one of the best. We'll see. A tad hard to make definitive judgements on page 29 of 570.

Yep. Not only reading in bed, reading HISTORY in bed. Stick a fork in me, I'm done.

Why read a history of a country you don't belong to? To understand it. As an acknowledgement that this couple-of-years-at-most OE is becoming a one-way trip. I am not a New Zealander, but I've helped make two. Since moving here I've bought three houses, held four jobs, been married, become a father, fought cancer, discovered pinot noir and figured out how to make brussel sprouts so that they don't taste of arse. This is starting to feel like home. Which, to an Australian, is supposed to feel like blasphemy, treachery and/or lunacy. Says more about Australian culture than NZ, of course.

The idea of national identity, and the idea (pushed particularly hard by MSM muppets during the Olympics) that you should only have one and it should be defended at all costs, has always grated on me. National identity is a very personal thing, but IMHFO it's got fuck all to do with flags and anthems and how loudly you can bray and brag about your nation's perceived awesomeness. The Olympics, and most media coverage thereof, is exhibit A for How To Do It Wrong, with the media and the lowest-common-denomunter punters pitched into a headlong arms race to see who can be the most cravenly cuntiferous. It's all a bit piss-dismal and ridiculous really, and is a fairly good reason to give the Olympics the swerve, in the most part. That, and the fact most of the 'sport' involved is Michael Mouse In Extremis, or gelded variants of proper contests. If you're going to get flag-wavingly, foreigner-baitingly frothy about sport, it might as well be one which isn't something inherently shit like dressage, ping pong or synchronised drowning.

Disclaimer: Burger Rings are not an official sponsor of the games of the XXXth Olympiad

This Olympics, I am mostly a New Zealander. There's something kinda refreshing about a nation that doesn't expect by right to win, and doesn't throw its toys out of the cot like a two-year-old when it doesn't. About coverage that celebrates participation, the efforts of other nations, and the making of finals over medal-fetish fappage. Admittedly, it's by necessity rather than design... but it's refreshing, just the same.

Not to mention the best thing about pretending to be a New Zealander at Olympics time: no longer having to pretend to give any kind of fuck about swimming.

The Doctor is OUT.

Tictacal misjudgement

Hello there. I made a mistake this week. It's known to happen, mostly in weeks with an E in the week. This particular mistake was made in the checkout of Pak N' Save South D (aka The Land Which Time Forgot But Munterdom Definitely Recalls Very Well Thanks V. Much). Many mistakes have been made in Pak N' Save South D, usually sartorial or hygiene related to the shoppers therein, but this was related to a regrettable impulse-purchase. To wit, my impulse-purchase of New Strawberry Fields Tic Tacs.

Do not impulse-purchase New Strawberry Fields Tic Tacs.
They are not very nice.

Now, all taste is subjective (particularly bad taste) and there may be some of you who will like and enjoy the taste of New Strawberry Fields Tic Tacs. I am not among your number. I am among the number of those who feel they taste of arse frosted with low-calorie non-dairy gluten-free extract of arse. Actually, scratch that. They taste worse than arse frosted with low-calorie non-dairy gluten-free extract of arse. They taste exactly like that sickly strawberry fluoride paste the dentist smears all over your molars last thing before reluctantly letting you out of the seat to dry-retch most of it back out again. That sickly strawberry fluoride shite is BY FAR the worst thing about going to the dentist. Apart from everything else that happens there.

Actually, dentists get a bad rap. I've had a pretty good run with dentists. For years I went to the same dentist, an old flatmate of my uncle's from his uni days. He had a laugh like an unmuffled two-stroke motocross bike, and he laughed a lot. He was good at his job, great with people, and seemed much happier than any dentist would seem to have a right to be, given the perception of dentists as the most miserable and unhappy of all the medical professionals - borne out by the stat that they do themselves in at a higher rate than any of their colleagues. For most routine dentists - the ones who haven't gone specialist and coined it in - the heavy workload, the pressures of keeping afloat (for most are effectively running small businesses with high capital equipment costs), the mindnumbing repetitive tedium of the work, the unpleasantness of hurting people on a daily basis, and the fact that unless you DO specialise you're left in a situation where you'll never have the potential to earn more than you do on day 1 of the job, and probably less as your fine motor skills degenerate with age - it's not that hard to see why it could turn you miserable, if you weren't already.

Hey, I just demonstrated a link between dental and mental health. Where's my research grant HRC yafargencunce.

It's entirely possible that seemingly cheery blokes like my old dentist were and are faking it, of course. Few people wear their mental health status on their sleeve, particularly in professional environments where ego and image are key, like medicine, politics or sport. Former All Black Sir John Kirwan was knighted as much for his frank public admissions about his own depression, and fronting a rather-bloody-excellent campaign directed at people who were suffering in silence with their own mental issues, as for playing wing in the 1987 World Cup side. Still, there's got to be many more people hiding their battles than there are people admitting them.  Not to be flippant with the current tragedy of the moment just to link an idea in, but it's pretty fucking obvious old mate from the Aurora mass shooting was harbouring some deep and troubling mental issues which he wasn't declaring to friends and family, judging by the cascade of commentary from former contacts re how nice, pleasant, charming and well-adjusted he was. Now, admittedly in cases like this where we're all asking 'Why??' and the answers are obscure and obtuse, humans have a tendency to want to interpret what data there is to fit their preconceptions - which is why a lot of us suck at science - and I'm probably as guilty of that as anyone. In the maelstrom of confused messages which was spilling out of the ether in the immediate aftermath of the shooting what I picked up on was 'failed PhD student'. And knowing that doing a PhD under the American system (far, far more vicious, intensive and competitive than in Australasia or the UK) is probably the most psychologically fraught process anyone can go through, short of SAS torture-resistance training and organising a wedding, and that anyone who was used to going through life being a A-grade winner (as per his academic history to that point) wasn't going to take well to hideous failure, I joined the dots I wanted to join, and blamed the stress and shame of beginning and failing a PhD for making his brain go 'ping'.

Others, of course, joined other dots to place the blame on America's ludicrous availability of assault weapons, the violent fantasy world of Batman movies themselves, or some inherent 'evil', whatever that actually means in a neurological sense. I have a problem with the last one, and my old mate Mel has written a highly valid thinkpiece on't which saves me from doing the heavy lifting here - but it is never someone's choice or someone's fault to suffer from a mental illness. It's difficult to keep that front of mind when the act involved is one of the deepest, 'evillest' bastardry imaginable - and you could definitely say that about Aurora. But we have to.

And what it reminds us is that one's sanity and grasp on reality, or whatever impersonation you are doing of same at the moment, is the most precious thing you have, and you have to protect it at all costs. I know this. I went slightly mad about 18 months ago. Well, I was always slightly mad, as anyone who's known me would admit. But the pressure of the job I was in, coupled with the mortal fear of death which comes with cancer treatment, raised my background levels of slightly mad to actually-in-need-of-help. Some people are visited by the black dog. I've had run-ins with it myself. I don't like dogs much. Personally, I wasn't visited by the black dog as much as the despair squid. (Hat-tip to Red Dwarf for that one). I had anxiety. Chest-bursting, brain-clamming anxiety which would manifest itself as a fear of as much as putting on my shoes and walking out the door. Days spent sitting on the couch staring vacantly at ESPN. Months of oncology counselling. Zombie drugs of various stripes. Till the epiphony came that what I was terrified of was going to happen anyway - eventually - and I needed to make the very fucking most of the days between then and now. And furthermore that working at a high-pressure gig which was not-very-slowly killing me was about the worst use of those days imaginable. Cancer and work didn't make me mentally ill - I've always carried a background level of anxiety around with me, and it wouldn't be unfair to retrospectively chalk up my own PhD- and postdoc-level difficulties to anxiety and depression masked largely by beer and swearing - but all you need is a trigger event to tip the balance from getting-by to limp-home-mode.

I'm now in the process of rebuilding myself - my mental health, my physiological health (being now several pies-and-sauce over par from what would be acceptable in polite company, thanks to a variety of factors) and my sense of what it is I'm actually going to do with the next 30 or so years before my true calling as a grey nomad in a campervan comes around. So far, house husbandry is agreeing with me very well. Perhaps the job I'm best cut out for is the job I should have been focusing on all along, ie dad and hubby. Doesn't pay well, but employee satisfaction is awesomely high.

This isn't a post about me, and it's not a post about old mate from Aurora. It's about you. If you are one of those people struggling in silence, pretending you're OK, just fucking stop it. Go get help. It's a bit humiliating; suck it in. You have people who care for you and depend on you, even if you don't think so. JK's programme is a good, anonymous start. Go from there to whatever works for you. The world is a beautiful, amazing place, and you and yours deserve to enjoy it. Get better. Have fun.

So, in conclusion: Strawberry Fields Tictacs - no.

The Doctor is OUT.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, unless it's Manly

Ah yes, it's NRL Rivalry Round again and you can just smell it in the air. No, sorry, that's Dunedin International Airstrip where you can smell it in the air, particularly when the dairy farm upwind is milking. Poooooo. Anyhoo, rivalry round. Where traditional emnities are stirred, grudges are inflamed, and Books of Feuds are dusted off. Mate against mate. Hate against hate. Souths against Easts. Parra against the Dogs. Canberra against... the Gold Coast.

Hmmm. There's a grudge match for the ages. Taking that one to the grave. What is it about Raiders v Titans that so stirs the soul? What is it about those two mighty teams, unified by a burning hatred that goes back GENERATIONS*, that captivates the attention of the entire rugby league world, NAY UNIVERSE?

*Mayfly generations. Fuck off, it counts

The answer, of course, is 'Absolutely Fucking Nowt'. The Book of Feuds for those two clubs would amount to a four-page pamphlet, most of which would be taken up by glossy ads for Gold Coast timeshares. Which illustrates the issue with NRL Rivalry Round. Some of the rivalries are, let's say, ever so slightly piss-ant. One would be forgiven for thinking Rivalry Round is just a way of disguising the fact the fixtures-calculating Amstrad had a RAM crash and spat out more than the usual number of all-Sydney matchups this week.

Look, NRL. If you're going to do Rivalry Round, do it properly. Set up some quality matchups which will provoke some proper hate. Even if it involves upgrading the fixtures computer to a Vic-20. Or even if it means cheating like a seven-times Tour de France champion and just making shit up that works for you. In Rivalry Round, teams should play their most hated rivals, the teams they hate and fear the most. The Dragons would play the Sharks. The Cowboys would play their bitter in-state rivals the Broncos. Wests would play the GWS Giants, at tackle netball, and would still beat them by 100 plus. Easts would battle apathy and indifference (no change there then). Melbourne would play the NRL salary cap auditors. Finally, Manly would play everyone in the competition, either via a selection of a composite 'All Stars' style selection or just Manly's 13 players vs all 195 starters of the other NRL sides at once. The latter alternative would of course be grossly unfair and would likely result in serious injury to many or all of Manly's players, which is why I personally favour it.

What do you think? Oy'm Dr Yobbo wi' a Y.

The Doctor is OUT.