A sledgendary perfomance

Yesterday's play at the 'Gabba proved it wasn't just the government of Queensland who'd gone back in time 30 years. This was an Australian performance from generation(s) ago. Snarling fast bowlers with filthy porn-stashes. England getting fucknihilated by more than a Matty Hayden knock v Zim. The Australian captain scoring big and sledging bigger. You knew it was a day for the ages (or at least from ages ago) when Channel Nein deigned to exhume Billy 'The 12th Man' Birmingham at the tea interval for his first ever appearance in the central commentary position - largely because the living legend he's made his living at the expense of was too badly injured to object in person - despite his Brown People Have Funny Sounding Names schtick last being even vaguely amusing way back into the dim distant reign of King A.B. The Grumpy.

Breakhisarminharf? Sunil Havascar

Border, of course, was the last Australian captain given the reins of a genuinely average side, one saddled with the dubious 'talents' of the likes of Mike Whitney and Fat Cat Fucken Ritchie - if you think those useless fucking pricks were shithouse in the media, you should have seen them play - and one where the only option left for the best bat in the side was to put the entire fucking omni-shambles on his back and carry it, seething and snarling, all the way to the fifth day. Twas the making of Captain Grumpy and the team moulded in his image. So it seems for Clarke, who through a similar personal growth opportunity as A.B. (that being being the only decent player in a shit side, hence having to lead said shit side through a sea of shit), seems to have transmogrified from Brand Spokesmodel-In-Chief for Cricket Australia And Selected Corporate Partners to the fucken captain of the fucken Austrayan fucken cricket team, and don't you fucken forget it or we'll rip yer bloody arms off.

Come to think of it, maybe Clarke's sledging role model wasn't A.B. after all...

Never been seen in the same room together. Just saying.
We knew she'd be back.

Yet ridiculously, there's been a lot of angst from limp-spirited oxygen wastrels about Clarke's 'vicious foul mouthed sledge'. To those people it can only be said, fuck the fuck off. Fuck the fuck right the fuck off to fuck, then fuck off some more. If you have a problem with the Australian cricket captain correctly placing a gobby English wanksock back in his box, YOU are the problem with Australian cricket. Sledging's tops. Go away.

Furthermore, you can't have a runner if you're a fat, overweight cunt.

As for the 'OMG WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF POOR JIMMY' bleeding hearts, saints fucking preserve us. Fella has a bat for a reason. It ain't for decoration. He's won and drawn tests with it. They make arm guards these days too. It's Clarke who will pay personally for that sledge, in the form of more chin music from Anderson and the Combined England and Wales Cricket Board Fast Bowlers' Union. Which, as Martin Crowe neatly dissected on Cricinfo over the weekend, might be problematic for him, given the issues he's beginning to develop with short-pitched bowling. But that's captaincy. You're (usually) the best player in the side, that's why you have the armband; take on the worst the opposition can throw at you. Follow me lads. Lead by example, by words and by deeds. And occasionally by offering mouthy Pom tailenders the odd complementary visit to the RBH fracture clinic.

The Doctor is OUT.

Effin' P

New Zealand is not a chest-beating, flag-waving sort of place. Overt displays of nationalistic pride are, if not frowned upon, then quietly mumbled-about under the breath in that talking-without-your-lips-moving way beloved of Kiwis and championed spectacularly by the current coach of the All Blacks. They, of course, are one of the few exceptions to that rule. Slagging off the All Blacks - unless you're a card-carrying member of the sports media, whose job it is to do so - is tantamount to treason. Along with calling jandals thongs, not knowing the words to Dave Dobbyn's 'Loyal' or being in any way adequate at cricket.

Add one more to the list: disparaging Fisher & Paykel whitegoods. Or 'whiteware', as the locals quaintly call it. F&P are a homegrown Kiwi success story, led by innovative Kiwi design and number-8-wire Kiwi ingenuity to make great Kiwi products for real Kiwi Kiwis, and also foreign types who are not Kiwis, on account of being foreign. So what if they're owned by the Chinese now; most models can still be persuaded to play God Save New Zealand if you hack the service modes. Slagging off F&P product in New Zealand - and even more so in Dunedin, where the ingenious DishDrawer dishwasher was first conceived, designed, engineered and manufactured - is akin to wiping your fetid ringpiece on the silver fern after taking a dump on Sir Ed's grave.

F&P 'whiteware' fucks me off no end.

It wasn't always the case. In my yoof, we had a F&P fridge which lasted some 15 or more years. This was long before F&P was a 'thing' - the turn of the 90s, from memory - but the thing was bristling with clever, underplayed design features. It was an upside-down model, which meant you had a larger usable freezer space, but all the fridgey stuff you actually wanted access to on a regular basis, like the milk in the doors, was at a sensible adult height. It never broke down, it didn't make a lot of noise, and it survived two teenage boys opening it every five minutes to see if a plate of cold sausages had magically appeared in the middle shelf. Sadly, the ability to magic-up cold sausages was one skillset that was beyond it. But it was a good device.

Fast-forward to today, where I have spent half the morning swearing at the bleeping washing machine, and the other half swearing at the bleeping Dishdrawer. That's not self-censorship, the pricks of things bleep all the fucking time. The washing machine is a clusterfuck of buttons and lights which alarms pathetically if the load gets out of balance by so much as three socks' worth. All anyone wants in a washing machine is a big fuck-off vat with a big fuck-off dial and an On button, not the control panel off a fucking A380. Same goes for dishes. Dial, switch, ability to wash things. Nup. The Dishdrawer is the quintessence of design-led tossery, of pretence over substance; a clever idea which would be much fucking cleverer if it DID A DECENT FUCKING JOB OF WASHING THE DISHES. Instead, it films your wine glasses with detritus, leaves plates caked in meal runoff, floods itself, drowns its own electronics and goes fucking apeshit at you at 2am. I have spent more hours of my life decoding the service mode of that fucking dishwasher than I have servicing any of the last four cars I have owned.

Which leads to unpatriotic responses such as this:

All the Fisher & Paykel things are giving me the screaming shits today. JUST FUCKING WORK, YOU OVERCOMPLICATED PISS-BRITTLE WANKSOCKS
— Dr Yobbo (@DrYobbo) November 22, 2013

And so say all of me.

The Doctor is OUT.

Parenting, the Dr Yobbo way

I got sunburned on the weekend. Or sunburnt, depending on your view. These things happen when you spend most of a day standing on the side of a road in Central Otago. Admittedly it wasn't just any old road, but part of the salaciously sinuous serpentinious hotmix (sorry, came over all Troy Queef there for a moment) that makes up the new Highlands Motorsport Park outside Cromwell.

Guess I can see the appeal of the location

So I got sunburned (or sunburnt) and yeah, I'm not happy about it. Partly because the sun was only out for about two hours. Partly because that was about the only spot on the entire South Island that wasn't slumbering under chilly cloud. But mostly because this wasn't your common or (working in the) garden variety sunburn. This was falling-asleep-under-a-Saturn-V-launch stuff. It's now Wednesday and I finally no longer look like a Klingon. On a scale of one to Klingon I probably rate about a Niki Lauda. Now I'm just waiting for Ron Howard to make an award-winning moofie from MY gripping origin story ref. being BBQ'd to a crisp on the side of a race track.

Nobody likes a quitter, Niki

But at least it amused my children. And provided a Teachable Moment, as insufferable Septic wanktards might phrase it. There are many different ways to go about parenting - most of them wrong and ineffectual, judging by the entitled little shits making up pretty much the entire under-30s population of the Western world - but my preferred method, one which I've refined over many years, is the Berenstain Bears School of Parenting.

The Berenstain Bears School of Parenting can best be summated in this diptych from The Bike Lesson:

Or to paraphrase: when you fuck up, as you inevitably will, because you're a man - claim that shit. What's going to compel a kid to slip, slop and slap in the summer sun - empty cajoling from mum, or a clinical demonstration of what happens if you don't, from your used-to-have-a-face-but-it-fell-off father?

Exactly. And the same goes for why you shouldn't turn your back on the waves when you're in the surf. Or kick rugby balls near the goldfish tank. Or wear bare feet on the kitchen tiles after Mum has mopped the floor. Or why you should always keep your eye on the ball at a T20 game in case it comes at you with intent to cause grievous bodily harm to your cup of chips.

That is what you should not do. Now let that be a lesson to you.

You've had your 15 minutes in the spotlight, Supernanny, but I think I'll take over from here.

Soon as I get out of triage.

The Doctor is OUT.

A wee problem

How's your day going? My morning was going great until I stood in a puddle of someone else's piss. Again. As both Mr 6 and Mr 4 disclaimed responsibility I am forced to presume that my wife is the causative agent for the dampness of my socks. Now I'm all for equality of the sexes but it needs to be understood that the 'Girls Can Do Anything' bumper sticker mantra does not apply to 'standing up to piss'. Sorry, feminism.

In truth, despite their protestations of innocence, it's not hard to track down the culprits. Getting them to correct their recidivist ways is more of an issue. I've tried ranting, cajoling, encouraging, more ranting (I do a lot of ranting), even suggesting that their teddy bears might be repurposed as bathroom mops, but my socks are still suddenly and stinkily wet as of tooth-brushing-o'clock every morning. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it's pissing me off. Particularly considering I'm getting not a lot of key senior-leadership-group support for my admittedly hardline solution to the problem: everyone under the age of 7 can bloody well sit down to piss. Because if you can't take control of your dick and use it in a responsible and respectful way, you vacate your rights to use it at all. However, in the end, it's probably my fault; as Bomani Jones would call it, insufficient daddying. I didn't give them enough guidance. Literally. So we mop up, and we carry on, and we try to do a better job tomorrow morning. All of us.

Advice unheeded

Which brings us to these little shitcunts. And these. And these. Not just the little boys responsible, but the societal and legal fucktardery which allows it to (a) happen (b) be swept under various ADF/police-issue rugs (c) be mansplained and victim-blamed into the realms of minor misdemeanours. Rape is rape. It is never the fault of the victim. If you think it is, you are not part of the problem; you are the fucking problem.

A lot has been said, and needs to be said, about this, and there's clearly a fucking shitstack of insufficient daddying going on in the world which is far more egregious than mine. But my conclusion is this: If these little Roastbusters pricks were my offspring, they'd be sitting down to piss for the rest of their days. Because if you can't take control of your dick and use it in a responsible and respectful way, you vacate your rights to use it at all.

*cough*

The Doctor is OUT.