Monthly Archive for March, 2004

Holy poop! The Age published one of my photos on their My Melbourne website.

Here’s something I didn’t know. Noam Chomsky has a blog (via Spouting)! That’ll keep me occupied for a while and most probably keep Tim Blair in front of his computer and off the streets for a few months. It’s all good.

Yep. It’s time for my kiss of death. One other master blogger has had the guts to post his version of the round 26 AFL ladder. So here’s mine…

1. Port Adelaide
2. Hawthorn
3. West Coast
4. St. Kilda
5. Geelong
6. Fremantle
7. Brisbane
8. Carlton
9. Richmond
10. Essendon
11. Footscray
12. Melbourne
13. Collingwood
14. Adelaide
15. Sydney
16. The Canberroos

If you don’t care about AFL this won’t mean a thing to you, and I hope it doesn’t put you off reading this blog. If you do know a bit about it, you’ll be calling me a complete wanker. Ooo, don’t worry, I can hear you shouting out in agreement from over here. Guess what? I don’t care, because I’m not following the AFL this year. I’m boycotting it because it’s run by a bunch of misogynistic bastards. You just wait. Me and my girlfriends are going to storm the ground in our thousands this Friday night. The entire Richmond and Collingwood teams will be beaten to death by mock-up wooden vaginas. Not even the runners or the coaching staff will be spared, especially Jimmy Jess. John Howard will be waging the “War Against Rampant Self Adulating Footballers” on Saturday morning if he wants to win the next election.

ps. If this actually happens, it was nothing to do with me. Especially if Jimmy Jess gets cleaned up by a giant wooden vagina. But you would have to admit, it would look good on television.

This is a great photo (via roseability).

Thank fuck this working week is over. It’s been dragging on like a Catholic priest’s Easter sermon. Not that I’ve seen one of those in recent years. It’s been ages since I sat in a pew. I prefer the pews at the MCG or the local pub these days. Religion has worn itself out as far as I’m concerned. Mum and Dad took myself and my sister to church until we were about 14 or so. I can’t recall why we stopped going. I think it was something to do with the local parish starting to get antsy pantsy about how much money was given to them. They started issuing payment packets with your name or “parish client number” on it, so they could keep track of who was the better Catholic.

The first memory of church I have is in a small country town in Victoria. Kyneton. This was where I spent the first 4 years of my life. I remember my parents telling me a few stories about those early years. Once a big truck rumbled past the church and I proclaimed to all and sundry, “Mummy, big fuck, big fuck.” That wasn’t all. One day someone dropped the collection plate, sending money rolling everywhere. I instantly yelled out, “aww SHIT.” If I remember correctly, I was taken outside…and probably home with my embarrassed parents.

Then there was the local priest at the Kippa-Ring church in the outer-northern suburbs of Brisbane. He had an awesome nervous twitch. His eyebrows would constantly move up and down in the manner of a mexican wave while his voice spoke in monotone. I found this intriguing. So did just about every other kid.

That priest moved on then there were a succession of part-time priests, one of which was arressted for drink-driving and assaulting a police officer. At least that’s a more respectable charge than molesting children.

Father Donlan is the priest I remember most fondly. He was the priest at the Redcliffe church. He was a gentle old man. You could tell there was no bullshit about him. He was in his late 50s and had lots of beer bottles at the back step of his residence. “That’s cool,” I thought when I was ten years old, “he’s like my Dad.”

The only other time I went to church was about two years ago when I stayed with my aunt. She’s a Catholic sister. A Sister of Mercy who loves the nags and a brandy. Good old cattleticks.

I won’t be going back to a church too soon though. Like I said above, I see religion as a cause of trouble these days and not a way to find inner peace in a fast paced, rough and tumble world. I suppose I have been taught the morals of the Catholic church. You know, treat others as you want to be treated etc. But I’ve worn rubbers, had sex before marriage and coveted a few neighbours in my time. Oh well, none of us are perfect ‘eh! At least I’ll have a doozy of a confession visit next time, whenever that may be.

A Southern Californian council decided to ban styrofoam cups when it learnt that they were made with dihydrogen monoxide, a substance that can be deadly if inhaled. Yep, dihydrogen monoxide is another name for water. Heh heh heh…

So I played in a cricket grand final yeserday. My first. My club (Richmond Union) got absolutely flogged by the Abbotsford Anglers. It’s not such a good feeling but beer helped our team forget about it last night. Nevermind. There’s always next year.

There was one thing I thought about while catching the train to West Richmond station to pick up my van at the cricket club. After all this train bombing business in Spain, Melbournes train network is ripe for the picking. There’s bugger all station staff and no guards (not security, I mean those dudes who blow the whistle). Not that adequate station staff stopped what happened in Madrid, but a human presence at Melbourne stations would be more satisfying for many travellers.

As far as my old entries go, they’ll be missing for a while. When I exported them, Microsoft Notepad couldn’t handle the file size and converted it to a Wordpad file, which added spaces and carriage returns at the end of each line. 700 entries have to be edited if I want them to be seen again. I’ll do it, but it may take several weeks.