A note to cyclists

Clearly a fetish

I'm not talking here to the ride it to work and back kind of cyclists, but to the multi-coloured lycra clad type. What you do is not a sport. It closely resembles a sport but consider: you need specialised equipment and lubricants to participate, the classic version has obscure french terminology, there are various shapes of foam rubber involved which you - excuse me - sit on! It is commonly done in large groups where participants seem to spend a lot of time looking at the bottom of the person in front of them.

Any activity that requires you to dress up like a perverted clown to massage your prostate with a custom formed piece of latex is not a sport it is a fetish. Particularly if you if you get up early in the morning to do it and shout to each other outside my bedroom window before I am awake.

Mountain bikers can stop feeling smug at this point, you do all this in the mud and rain and have clothing brands with names like "Muddy Fox".

Whilst I'm at it I'm sure there are several other sports that are little more than an excuse to engage in otherwise suspect physical encounters and hang around in changing rooms:

• Wrestling - Putting on a leotard to grapple each other to the floor and hold each other down. This is quite obvioulsy a fetish and greco-roman wrestlers need to be reminded that these wrestlers originally used to be naked and oiled.
• Judo - Really this is a sub-set of wrestling that shows off the Japanese capacity for taking things a bit too far. This is wrestling that you need to put on pajamas to take part in and then grapple each-other to the ground in an attempt to hold one-another down with your faces in each-other's armpits. Clearly a fetish.


Oooh chase me, chase me!

• Rugby - Using a funny shaped ball as an excuse to chase each-other around and wrestle each-other to the ground, in the mud! Until recently this was done in practical hard-wearing clothing. Now it seems to be done in skin-tight Lycra.
• Climbing - Uncomfortable harness that is particularly tight around the groin area, rope, silly little rubber shoes and again skin-tight bloody Lycra.
• Speed skating - This is a really weird one, a fetish where people with huge thighs to dress up in what amounts to a skin-tight Lycra gimp suit to chase each other around on ice. Bizarre.


Oh I'm comin' to getcha'

I'm sure there are more, I'll add them as I think of them.

Bleeding edge news and Tuesday blues

"I could use a hug about now"

With the APEC summit about to happen in Sydney and an opportunity for Australia to showcase its' position as a real economic and political player on the global stage the biggest news story over here at the moment is obviously going to be about a drug taking rugby player.

Last weekend Andrew Johns was arrested in London with an ecstasy tablet in his possession. That's right, one tablet. This is surprisingly convenient for him as if you get caught with one tablet in the UK you can say it's for personal use, if you get nicked with even only one more than that you get done for possession with intent to supply. A man of Johns' size, and apparently considerable experience with controlled substances, will probably want more than one pill to get his rocks off all night. Someone, possibly someone wearing a blue uniform, has done him a big favour and stepped on the rest.

Johns has pleaded that he has been battling bi-polar disorder and that he was using alcohol and drugs to self-medicate, something his doctor almost certainly told him not to do. For a start alcohol is a depressant and won't really work, the drinking experience would feel hollow and shallow and make the problem worse, especially if you drink predominantly filthy Australian beer.

As a second point MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, whilst effective immediately, with even casual use has the side-effect of a nasty comedown when it wears off. With continued use you get delayed comedowns that take place a day or two from the high. These exhibit themselves as a rather dark and tearful mood a few days later - commonly known as the Tuesday blues.

There are a couple of points here that I don't like:

1. Johns' symptoms are as much a result of his self-medication as they are anything else. Given the length of time he's been using it will now be impossible to distinguish between these and the original depression. This doesn't matter however, the treatment will be the same.
2. Successful intoxication of any kind requires knowledge. Johns should have done his homework before stealing the key to the medicine cabinet.
3. Self-medication my arse. He did it to get wasted, just like the rest of us do.
   
4. This isn't exactly news now is it.

A sportsman exhibiting risk-taking misbeaviour? How unexpected. Amazingly he also has a ready excuse designed to provoke sympathy rather than a backlash, gosh I couldn't have predicted that either. Channel 10 has a rather unfunny sketch comedy called The Wedge in which there is a character called Mark Warey, a generic sports star who is constantly apologising for his bad behaviour. If bad sports star behaviour and subsequent apology and sob-story is such a staple of the social cannon that it appears in a slightly sub-standard comedy show as a weekly event then this can't be considered particularly shocking or revealing no matter who that sportsman is.

In a country about to host one of the world's most significant economic summits where the government is using anti-terror legislation to monitor protestors, where the country's largest city has had the central district fenced off to prevent protestors being able to get within 500 metres of anyone significant, where the federal government has stepped in to Aboriginal communities and effectively rolled back previous native land title legislation for a 5 year period there are much weightier things to talk about that are directly in the public interest.

England take on the Windies

On Maroubra beach. Amazingly we won. The teams are all retired internationals. The downside is that the beach is that bit crowded, and the seating banks are complete eyesore.

A long, good Friday

At 7am local time the Soccaroos (euugh) made it through to the last 16 of the World Cup. The first time they have ever done so.

Australia has got right into the 'soccer'. I have a feeling not much work will be done in Australia this afternoon. I'm terrified of going to the pub tonight it'll be a mess.

Weightlifting

Wandering into the pub with little to do but wait I found my eyes inexorably drawn to the television. When the revolution comes television will be banned from pubs outside of Sundays, international games of (assosciation) football and rugby (football) and made mandatory during the world cup.

Because the commonwealth games are currently being held in Melbourne anything that happens to be happening at the games is televised in every pub nationwide. This includes 'minority sports'. No, not the Mornington Crescent semi-finals or even the Octopush grand finals but sports that are either a waste of human effort or a simple passtime that, through the usual idiotic human tendancy of taking a good thing too far, has been elevated to the level of an international event (Synchronised swimming and table tennis respectively).

Because the concept of sport is as old as humanity itself and because not everyone is particularly good at actual games the Commonwealth Games actually contain very few games. Physical games, according to anthropologists, are a hunting and warfare substitute and so anyone who wants to play physical games should be encouraged to do so as the might otherwise try to kill something or someone.

But what about the people who are only good at one aspect of games? What if you can only throw things a really long way but not accurately enough for this to be any use? What if you can only run very quickly but only in a 400m oval? Well then for you we have athletics. Athletics are sport reduced to a single component and because the concept of 'I can do anything better than you' is somewhat older than humanity athletics have been around a similarly large amount of time.

Unfortunately the reduction of sport to it's most basic competetive element seems to invalidate the endeavour for the casual observer - "He can only throw things a really, really long way, but I bet he couldn't hit a target, especially a moving one". To combat this the proponents of athletics insist that there is actually a technique to what they are doing. Sadly the value of this too is hidden to the casual and uninformed observer. Some athletic disciplines recombine the disciplines into a single event to try inject a little versatility back into the equation; triathlon, heptathlon and decathlon for example. Even these are these are only combined reductions but at least the participants are capable of more than one thing. Other 'sports' don't even harbour the hope of this - such a one is weightlifting (yes, I know it doesn't fall into the athletics category but it's just a stupid idea).

Even if you recombined other athletic disciplines to create generic areas of sporting activity like running almost does to make say, Throwing (javlin, discuss, shot-put, frisbee) or Jumping (long jump, high jump, triple jump, pole vault and hopscotch) weightlifting is limited to lifting things in different ways and increasing mass. To stop the biggest person winning every time there are weight categories in weightlifting. The lowest men's category is 56Kg and less. I weight nearly 70Kg and I'm a scrawny and out of shape 5'9". The lowest women's category is 48Kg. Watching the light category lifters is a totally shameless freakshow for dwarf fixated perverts that should not be allowed on TV before 9pm, if at all. Most of the other weightlifters don't exactly have the appearance assosciated with being an athlete. In fact most of them have the physical carriage I assosciate with too much beer, chocolate and sitting on your arse watching TV.

Not enough thought has gone into weighlifting, they don't even try to lift different shapes. Surely lifting a spherical weight requires an entirely different technique to lifting the classic dumbell configuration? Even this slight variation doesn't happen in the competetive sport. Instead weightlifters create bizarre arbitrary and painful methods for lifting. Two of them. With silly names. Weightlifting is composed of 'the clean and jerk' and 'the snatch':

• The Clean and Jerk
  1. With back breaking effort and a pelvic thrust far from sexual in intent lift the dumbells vertically and bounce it off your pubic bone (it's always fun to watch the audience wince at this point)
  2. Crunch your body underneath the bar so that it rests accross your collarbone and use the strength of your thighs to stand up - try not to follow through
  3. Drop your body weight and straighten your arms above your head whilst thrusting one leg out backwards
  4. Stand up - try not to follow through
• The Snatch
  1. Grab the weight from the floor and hoist it upward whilst crunching your body underneath it straightening your arms and squating underneath it - all in one movement (it's always fun to watch the audience wince at this point) - try not to follow through
  2. Stand up - try not to follow through

See, easy when you know how.

I was watching two sizeable Indian women lift heavier and heavier weights, they were great at the clean and jerk but probably lost sight of the snatch some years ago. It wasn't the fact that this activity had been elevated to the status of a sport that fascinated me but the fact that people seemed perfectly happy to sacrifice rectal integrity to do it competetively. It seemed certain that one of them would prolapse at any moment. I can't be good for the chalfonts.

I want to see the application put back in to weightlifting. I need it demonstrated to me that this is a worthwhile endeavour. I want to see actual feats of strength not peculiar contorsions. Next time out weightlifters will have to lift up a car whilst someone changes each tyre in turn. They can start with a Smart car and move up to Landrovers and then on to trucks. The little guys should be pretty good at this, not being much taller than a jack at full extension anyway. Other useful weights lifted could include...er...well I don't know actually. I can generally lift everything I need to.

I can say with a fair level of security that, barring being kidnapped by aliens and being put in some bizarre intergalactic circus, nothing would ever persuade me to put on a leotard and lift things so heavy as to threaten high speed anal leakage. Since I am having real trouble thinking of things that I need to be able to lift that I can't perhaps weightlifting should just be remoed from competition altogether. The fatties will just have to go back to wrestling.

Weekend body boarding

When we moved from our last pad we bought a fair amount of kit from Loopy Lou, our affable but bonkers landlady. This included 2 used but serviceable body boards. Naturally as we live on a pretty good surf break we have been trying them out.

This is an enterprise not without its' hazards as the swell off the ocean comes straight into Maroubra. It gets fairly big and there can be a lot of white water to get through (if you have google earth installed on your PC click on the image to get go to the place marker).

The Sunday before last we had a great afternoon mucking about in the surf which was a fairly consistent 2-3 feet. Due to the physics of waves one in every few is much bigger than the waves around it having been amplified. This means that fun 2-3 foot waves can frequently include a 4-5 footer that can catch you completely unawares. The usual side effect of not spotting this wave until it's a bit too late is that you get completely wiped out by it. Just as you are recovering from the near inevitable drubbing the waves behind the monster normally hit you (they say here that it's the fourth wave that kills you, I have only ever been hit by 2 at time but I am not gong to get complacent). Whilst this sounds terrifying, in practice you don't actually have much time to be scared and self-preservation takes over.

We had had 2 good hours of catching waves pretty easily and not getting hit by anything. At about 5pm the waves started to get a bit bigger but I hadn't really noticed. In fact I didn't really notice anything more than a bit of a bumpy ride until I reached the beach and turned round to see Emily get sucked into the top of a 5 foot wall of water, which then fell on her. The two waves behind it predictably did their worst and she got out of the sea hyperventilating and shaking. Game over.

Unperturbed this Sunday we went out into a much bigger swell with 2 guys who've been doing this for 16 years or more. Using a current to get behind the breakers we soon found ourselves in what Coastalwatch described as a 3 foot swell. Beg to differ, by about another foot. Whilst this may be an illusion created by the fact that when you are in the trough of a wave it looks twice as big as it is, it was a pretty convincing illusion.

This was fun for a while, even restfull, watching big blue and green mountains roll underneath you. I will confess to being a bit scared by how far out we were but soon realised that we were pretty safe, as far as shark bait goes. Catching the first wave in proved pretty easy, the damn thing was so powerful you didn't need to do much to get it. Em got hit by it, and then the two behind it. It is a reassuring testament to human resilience that she got out of the water in one piece. Scared but otherwise unhurt. It took us a while to pluck up the courage to go back in.

This time Emily catches the wave, then gets hit. I get hit twice and then catch a wave. This time though there is a difference, the lifeguard is watching. The net result is a bollocking for not knowing what we're doing (exacerbated by our English accents no-doubt). It's a fair cop guv'. That night lying in bed I can still clearly feel the waves rolling under me. Closing my eyes results in flashbacks of breaking waves. Not the most restful night's sleep I've had. Still, I would happily go for an hour or two of it now. It's 3am and I'm supposed to be playing tennis at 7.

Bowls update...

Bowls proved typically sedate, sadly, but with a few interesting additions.

There was the ever predictable cold fizzy alchohol, which combined with the high temperature made for a slightly hazy experience. But what really made it for me was the four-piece jazz band who played loungecore/cool-jazz versions of contemporary hits. My favourite was probably Guns 'n' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine which was very good indeed. Radiohead's Creep wasn't bad either and the couple of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs I heard from them were pretty good too.

Lawn bowls is quite unnecessarily difficult. Why people take it up at retirement when at best they have only 2 decades to practice is quite beyond me (and no they don't bowl overarm here).

Bowls & football

Going bowling this aftertnoon with work...

...Crown Green bowls. Yes the 'Pensioners in White' sport. It is unbelievably popular here, every suburb seems to have it's own club which is well used.

This may have something to do with the Aussies winning the Bowls World Cup some years ago, apparently. The Aussies, by their own admission, take no interest in a sport until they can win it and just don't talk about it if they lose.

Imagine the fervour a few weeks ago when the 'Socceroos' qualified for the World Cup, you know the real World Cup, football with a round ball. You have to call it 'Soccer' here because 'Football' means AFL and 'Footy' means rugby, usually rugby league.

I watched a documentary about the origins of Aussie rules football a few weeks ago. The game was developed by Tom Wills a Rugby School alumnus from the rules of Rugby football and an Aboriginal game played with a stuffed possum - I kid you not.

Tom Wills coached a team of Aboriginals to play rugby despite the fact that the Aboriginals were responsible for his father's death and was a bit of a visionary as far as Australian sport is concerned. Unfortunately he was a raging alchoholic and stabbed himself to death in a fit