News from the Antipodes
There are times when I honestly think we have joined Alice in Wonderland.
Items appear in the news and I seriously wonder about society’s sanity, or maybe it’s just me being an old codger who just can’t keep up with the times?
There’s an item in the news today about shit-balls appearing on Australia’s beaches. These balls apparently consist of a mixture of cooking oil and soap scum molecules, combined with blood pressure medication, pesticides, hair, methamphetamine and veterinary drugs. Blood pressure medicine and methamphetamine? Is this everyday diet for your average Australian? Really fucking weird.
However that snippet giving us an insight into the lives of your average Aussie was topped by another, coincidentally also from the same penal colony – Raygun retires from breaking after Olympic backlash.
My first reaction to this startling news was to wonder what the fuck “breaking” is. Is this a competitive sport where people throw dinner plates against a brick wall? And who or what is “Raygun”. I had a suspicion that my mental facuties were going to be stretched once more and I was right.
“Breaking”, it seems consists of writhing around on the floor in a series of moves that are neither dance nor a sport. And they are actually calling this an Olympic event? Fortunately I note that it was only an “event” in Paris, hopefully for the first and last time in history. How did they allow it in in the first place? How is it judged? What the fuck is it? I can’t even understand how they allowed it in in the first place.
I will be totally honest here.
If I saw her in action, my first reaction would be to phone for an ambulance…
And I’d tell them to hurry.
Gotta get down with the kids, innit?
Truth is, the Olympic Games are full of things which are actually circus acts, athletic and artistic maybe, but they’re not sports.
Anything which requires a judging panel, rather than objective measurement, is merely a circus act.
Ernest Hemingway once observed that there were only three true ‘sports’ – bullfighting, mountaineering and motor racing – because you are always ‘sporting’ with your life, you may die doing it. The rest are just pastimes.
I always judged on the basis of survival. Running and the throwing of most things fits into this category. Though I suppose that if you try “breaking” in front of your enemy, they would take pity and let you live?
“Anything which requires a judging panel, rather than objective measurement, is merely a circus act.”
How do you feel about the ski jump? It struck me as stupid that you have an objective measurement: i.e. how far the jumper jumped, but then “[the] competitor’s aerial style and other factors also affect the final score”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ski_jumping
Why? Why isn’t the one who jumps the greatest distance the one who wins?
Fat balls. Wasn’t there a huge one in London that was clogging up the sewage pipes? I remember hearing about it on the news. Like 15 tons or some ridiculous amount.
I remember that one. Apparently it was down to chip shops dumping their waste down the drains or something along those lines. I did feel sorry for those unfortunates whose job was to maintain the sewers. Not the most delicate of professions?
She’s hardly the Rocksteady Crew
Never heard of them. I live a sheltered life…..