Raving and Drooling – A lion’s tail

If you’re familiar with the Paul Kelly song “Bradman” about Australia’s most respected cricketer, Sir Donald Bradman, it contains a particular line in it that Englishman Maurice Tate famously said to the Australian batsman.

“Hey whitey, that’s my rabbit”.

I was curious about the meaning of this quote, and it’s hard to find, but the best I can find is that Tate used to jokingly suggest that Bradman was his “rabbit” as a put-down.

While I was looking for the meaning, I found a few classic sporting quotes on an Aussie football site that I thought I’d share. Cricketers in particular it seems, have some of the finest wits in sport, so here’s a few random quotes.

“Nobody died out there today” – Pat Rafter

“There are two teams out there, but only one of them is playing cricket” – Bill Woodfull

“There’s more to boxing than hitting. There’s not getting hit, for instance” – George Foreman

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered” – George Best

“I never criticise referees and I’m not going to change a habit for that prat” – Ron Atkinson

“I always walk with a one iron in a thunderstorm because not even God can hit a one iron” – Lee Trevino

“I can sell out Madison Square Garden masturbating” – Mike Tyson

In response to a request from a reporter to “Give us a quick word”, Gordon Strachan replied “velocity”.

“Yes they’ll be having a party and they wont even be drunk” – Cathy Freeman after winning gold at the olympics.

Javed Miandad once said to Merv Hughes “You’re just a fat bus conductor”. A couple of overs later Merv gets his wicket. As Javed walks off Merv shouts “tickets please”.

During an Australia versus South Africa test, Daryll Cullinan is up to bat against Warne with Mark Waugh giving him a mouthful from first slip about “not being a batsman’s fingernail”. Cullinan truns around after a ball and lets rip with “At least I am the best cricketer in my family”… Bravo. That sure cut him down to size.

So there you go.. now I’ve talked about everything.. even sporting quotes. Oh and by the way, wasn’t the rugby great last night ? Australia trounced New Zealand. Yay !

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them
But they were only satellites
It’s wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish I wish I wish you cared

- Billy Bragg. “A new England”

Some people aren’t happy with their lives. Apparently they’re boring as shit and even when these people think they are awesome and they have it made, they tend to have to put shit on others. In Australia it’s sometimes called “Tall poppy syndrome”, though that normally implies a certain level of success. Sometimes it’s just a case “Damn. I wish my life was as interesting as this person’s”.

Well anyway, thanks to my wonderful blog, and the many, many people who read it, I’ve become a meme. Not like a famous meme. But I do have 4 pages on memegenerator.net so I guess some people had a lot of spare time to spend making fun of me. Whiiiiiich is sorta pointless because I already make plenty of fun out of myself. I mean c’mon. Do you think I would tell you stories about getting robbed by hookers if I was concerned you might embarrass me by bringing them up later ? I don’t care ! It’s funny ! It’s a life experience and I love it.

I mean, I reckon my life is goddamn hilarious and awesome right now and it amuses me so much that not only my ex-wife, but all my ex-friends from more than 11 years ago still read my blog religiously. I mean, they read it so often they even manage to read stories that I’ve chosen to delete less than 24 hours later. So I guess these people, though they claim to despise me and think I’m a loser, are avid readers of my adventures.

And the cool thing is. They don’t even believe that they’re true. They actually think it’s creative writing, when it’s really more like a public diary of my life. That’s sorta flattering. I guess their lives are so regular and boring that they think that I couldn’t possibly be doing the things I claim to be doing. Hahaha, sucks to be you guys I guess.

So anyway, hello Joanna, coz I know you have a fucking miserable fucking life… living in fear of your fiancé finding out that you’re still married.. raising three kids with no job on a shitty cop’s salary and wishing to hell you could do something cool with your life like going and living in Asia… having no computer because you have no money etc. Sucks to be you. I’m sure if I was you I’d be living vicariously through the adventures of my ex-husband and tsk’ing at everything I do so that you can feel superior somehow.

And hello to #warez-oz on EFNet also. It cracks me up that 11 years after you kicked me out for “stealing my best friend’s girlfriend” (though frankly I see it more as her dumping him for me), you still hold a grudge to the extent that I fill up 95% of your ban list on IRC. ROFLMAO. And the dude you’re defending isn’t even part of the channel anymore hahahhaha. As if you could stop me joining if I wanted to. What’s the point in banning me ? Oh my god you think your lives are so awesome because you have some “stable job” doing whatever fucking boring shit you’re doing. And then you see me having fun running around Asia or whatever, and your response is to take unflattering photos of me and turn them into memes so that you can laugh and make fun of me to make your own shitty lives feel better by comparison. Nice work. But I understand. You’re pathetic and bored so you have to take it out on others by trying to imply their lives aren’t as great as they make out.

Well sorry to disappoint but I’m having the time of my fucking life. Getting left by my wife was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I’ve discovered a whole new world. I do so many more things now than I used to. I work more professions and I meet more people and I visit more places. I’m loving it. (Oh wait, is that copyright McDonalds ?)

Come on guys.. You’ve read my blog and the best you can come up with is saying that I’m pathetic for giving roses and “getting no action” or making fun of my comment “It’s hard to distinguish between the stories I tell in my head… and the ones that actually make it online”. Which is also good, because taking quotes out of context is also ideal meme fodder.

One funny thing is how they’ve used my phrase “You can’t make this stuff up” to describe ordinary situations such as “Drank in a bar” or “Met a woman”. Good work. That’s actually how memes work, so that’s actually pretty good shit. “Tiprat 4 life” was a great one too. I’m so glad to see that phrase has had a resurgence in Australia in the last year while I’ve been caught up in Vietnamese culture. “Triprat” was always an awesome phrase and I love that it’s become popular again and I’m so amused to be called that. It’s the Aussie equivalent of being called “White trash” by the way if you don’t know what it means. “Tip” means the garbage dump, so basically they’re saying I’m a rat that scrounges at the garbage dump. LOL ! That’s pretty funny.

Anyway, for those of you who haven’t seen. Here’s just two of the memes that were made up about me which sorta cracked me up. Mainly because they’re the most pointless ones. I mean… The Daniel Morcombe one is great coz I have to give them credit for being so creative as to link me to Daniel Morcombe’s death. I don’t really know why, but I guess that’s why it’s so funny.. because it’s so random LOL ! And the one about Asian pop music ? Well that’s just funny because it’s fucking true ! Who needs meaning in songs when you can listen to bubbly Kpop ? Is that supposed to embarrass me or something ? ROFLMAO… If that was your intention, you certainly failed ! I’m fucking proud of loving bubbly Kpop music. Go listen to your shitty Evanescence or whatever shit you’re listening to and pretend that it has fucking meaning, I don’t give a shit. I reckon “Shampoo” from After School probably has ten times more meaning to it than any Lifehouse song or other crap.

Anyway here’s the memes. Laugh away. I did :”)

Ahahahaha. Am I offended ? No. Am I amused ? Definitely :”)

Postal workers are bastards, right ? I know what they’re like. They’ll toss your fragile package onto your verandah from your front gate. They will lose your mail and not give a crap. But I guess from time to time they will go above and beyond the call of duty. Like this one postal worker in Russia who found this package.

I know. You don’t get it, right ? Well let me explain. This package contains a Harry Potter book. It was sent by a French girl to her friend in Russia and she wrote the address on it exactly as her friend had emailed it to her. The problem is that her email client wasn’t setup to display Cryllic character sets and her email program substituted regular western diacritic letters instead which bore no relationship to the actual letters that she SHOULD have written.

When this arrived in Russia thanks to the fact that the only legible bit of information was the postcode, they must have been scratching their heads going “What the HELL is this meant to be ?” But apparently some bright young nerd said “I think that’s western special characters. I think someone’s computer has screwed up and they’ve written the address in the wrong character set” and the postal workers set about typing those characters into a computer and figuring out which Russian characters they corresponded to in order to decipher the address.

What she wrote was in the standard Windows character set was:

òÏÓÓÉÑ íÏÓË×Á, 119415

ÐÒ.÷ÅÒÎÁÄÓËÏÇÏ, 37,

Ë.1817-1,

ðÌÅÔÎÅ×ÏÊ ó×ÅÔÌÁÎÅ

But what she should have written, in KOI8-R, and which the postal workers deciphered it to say was:

Россия Москва, 119415

пр.Вернадского, 37,

к.1817-1,

Плетневой Светлане

Apparently the package did indeed reach its destination and one young Russian student was not denied his wonderful works of J K Rowling. Just goes to show, sometimes postal workers do give a shit. Enough of a shit to spend hours deciphering an address written in the wrong alphabet.

Good story, right ?