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.