World Strip Poker Chamionships

Paddypower.com is holding the world’s first strip poker chamionships next month in London. Is it too late to convince Star City to hold a tournament of their own, with the winner being flow to London to participate in the world championship?

Get on it, poker lovers!

Observations

1. Learner drivers. When I was learning to drive, and I mean really learning – the first couple of lessons where you drive around at 3.7 km/h, take 4 minutes to turn corners &c., I had the common courtesy to drive on a weekend in an industrial zone: no traffic, no people trying to get from A to B, no chance of running over small children/animals. Learners these days however, like to drive around my local area at ~1.6 km/h, waiting for minutes on end at stop signs, and frustrating the average Joe trying to get home to get some work done (aka me). GET OFF THE ROAD! Redfern is surrounded by industrial estates. You don’t need to drive here until you work out how to use the accelerator.
2. Multiculturalism. Whenever I have refereed the state youth league, it has always been two ethnic based teams: Olympic (Greek), Bankstown City (Lebanese), Rockdale Ilinden (Macedonian) &c. Yesterday I turned up to the Canterbury/Bankstown v. Marrickville game expecting much of the same. This time however, I think there were about 15 different nationalities represented in each match. It was an encouraging sight – maybe it has something to do with abolishing the ethnically-based NSL and the founding of the A-League. The day only saw one small all-in-brawl, and if it was between two ethnic rivals, there would have been knives drawn. Go multiculturalism!
3. Sleep. I have recently discovered that getting anything other than 6 hours ± 30 minutes sleep makes you really tired. From now on, I am only sleeping from 3 – 9 am.

UNSW: Worst Uni Ever.

This is my view of the action in my first (and probably last) lecture at UNSW. On the wall: a sign saying “Report overcrowding. Extension 56639″. Unfortunately, not being a native of the uni, I don’t know what the first 3 digits should be.

I haven’t been home for 24 hours, I still have a slight hangover, and I desperately need a shower.

The Iranian lecturer drones on in his own personal version of pigeon English. I’ve already mastered Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Spanish, Bahrainian, South African, French, Kiwi and, worst of all, American. Spare me this bullshit!

The carbon dioxide concentration is now building up to a dangerous level. Breathing… difficult… head… spinning… can’t…type… please sue… U…N…S… … …

Belated Birthday Wishes

To my good friend, Honest Johnny.

Inspired by my fellow marsupial Nick, I am going to write a Haiku just for you.

Dear Little Johnny
You’ve been at the helm ten years
Seems like a hundred.

Although I know that
Kirribilli’s nice for you
Get the hell out now.

Farm Antics on YouTube

Web 2.0 – spreading stupidity around the globe.

Multiplying Marsupials

That’s right the number of marsupials occupying this web space has recently doubled.

Nick‘s travel blog is now up and running for those who care. Today he has an interesting article on Reply-Oriented Emailing Outcomes Matrices.

Downtime

Hi all,

Had some downtime today, now everything is hopefully back together again. I have so many rants stored up but not enough brainpower to put them into words.

Tomorrow rehearsals start for the 2006 engo revue. Somehow I managed to be roped into being director. Bad move. Anyway, on Thursday the annual farm trip starts so it’s booze, dead animals and explosives all the way. That being the case, there will be (probably) no updates this week. Amuse yourself by playing Eternal Lands instead.

Vanstone’s “Down ‘n’ Dirty” Piggery

While perusing the front page of the SMH this morning (as I do), I suddenly came across this headline:

Vanstone faces accusations of animal cruelty over her share in piggery

Now, is it just me, or did anyone else have the following image flash in front of their eyes after reading that?

Eeewwwww… disturbing. Now you know what it’s like to live inside my head.

Amanda Vanstone was quoted as saying “I don’t know much about pigs, but I like a ham at Christmas and I think there is nothing wrong with eggs and bacon.”

This woman is running our immigration department? What the hell is going on in this country? I have a good mind to offer Amanda shares in my latest emu farm venture.

Au revoir.

Don’t Worry (Be Happy)

A report released today claims that Australia is the 139th happiest country in the world – ranking below places such as Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, Cambodia, East Timor, Uzbekistan, and every single Asian, Carribean, South and Central American country. These are placed rules by warlords, wracked by civil wars, and filled with bird-flu carrying poultry.

So what the hell went wrong with Australia, you might ask? Further inspection reveals some interesting information. The report was written by “Friends of the Earth” – a bunch of hippie activists trying to free whales &c.

The scoring is based on three factors – “Life satisfaction”, life expectancy, and ecological footprint. Let’s skip over the obviously dubious first factor and go straight to a comparison with Vanuata, the happiest country on Earth.

• “Life satisfaction” – Australia 7.3, Vanuatu 7.4
• Life expectancy (years) – Australia 80.3, Vanuatu 68.6
• Ecological Footprint – Australia 7.7, Vanuatu 1.1
• Final Score – Australia 34.1, Vanuatu 68.2

Now wait a sec. We practically tied the first category – okay it’s probably a better life in Vanuata where you spend your days hanging around drinking cocktails, so they deserve the extra 0.1 of a mark. We kick their arses in life expectancy. We lose miserably in ecological footprint.

No mention anywhere of how good your football team is, by the way.

Anyway, so by virtue of these results – 1 to Australia, 1 to Vanuatu, 1 category tied, they get twice the score as we do. Hands up everyone who is really that unhappy due to the fact that instead of sacrificing 11.7 years of our average life span, we contribute an extra 6.6 points of ecological footprints? Not me!

Sure, it’s not a good thing, and if this was a “top ten greenie countries” report then by all means put Australia down the bottom next to the US of A. But in a happiness report, I’ll take Australia over a war zone anyway. I’m sure Shazza, Tracey, Bruce and Big Kev will agree with me too.

Howard and Costello Marriage Lives On

After a rocky couple of days Little Johnny and Peter Howard-Costello have renewed their wedding vows in an emotional ceremony in the cabinet room this afternoon.

The fights started when Costello claimed that, when the couple first came together, Johnny had promised that he’d let Peter wear the pants after 5 years or so. Little Johnny strongly denied the accusations, and the media vultures swooped in to inflame the situation.

Despite a lot of publicity being generated around when Johnny is going to hand the pants over to Peter (usually coinciding with slow news days), the two have remained unshakeable for the best part of twelve years. It was only when Peter tried on the pants while Johnny was out of the country that real problems began.

After Costello went public this week, Australia was braced for the biggest celebrity break-up since Tom and Nicole. After sitting down and talking the situation over with their close friends, the couple decided to remain together, with the pants-handover question still unresolved. The only question that remains is, when will Costello finally get to be the man in the relationship?

Little Johnny’s going to think about it this November. Let’s hope that their marriage counsellors are ready for a lot of conflict if he decides to wear them for yet another year.