Round 21: Pride and Prejudice

As we mercifully draw nearer to the business end of the season, teams start playing for more than just two points to add to their tally on the ladder. Some are trying for a top four spot; others play for a chance to be in the top eight. A few are trying to avoid the wooden spoon, and the rest are basically there for shits and giggles.

Panthers vs Cowboys
The Cowboys are halfway between “shits and giggles” and “avoid the spoon.” With the team that they have, they should be a bit higher up the ladder instead of, you know, equal last (I’m not counting the Storm). The Panthers probably deserve to be a bit lower down the ladder by the same rationale, instead of, you know, equal second. Their current form (i.e. shit) is more where the Penrith lads are at, but they’ll hold onto their top four spot with a win over the ‘Boys this weekend.

Broncos vs Dragons
I’m on the Dragons train and I’m not getting off just yet, even though “star recruit” Mark Spazzy-Gazzy Gasnier is back in town and fucking things up for them. If this was a Mighty Ducks movie, he would realise that he’s not the great white hope that the media claim him to be and would step down so someone younger, stronger and faster and preferably isn’t 96% retarded can have a crack at the game. Alas, he’s not in a Mighty Ducks movie and is threatening to lose the minor premiership for the red & whites. The Broncos are playing well and will be pushing for a top-eight appearance (and they probably deserve to) but my money this week goes to the Saints in a game that will be closer than Gasnier’s eyes.

Knights vs Sea Eagles
The Novocastrians will be looking to play for pride this week. It won’t work, much like the rest of their season. I guess it’s hard to be proud when you’re taking orders from Kurt Gidley. Those Manly boys should be able to wrap this one up fairly comfortably.

Bulldogs vs Rabbitohs
Even though they have lost the biggest man in league to injury, the Bunnies will welcome back the smallest man in league from injury. If they can get a decent look from the refs this week, Souths should win and take another step towards cementing their finals spot, but it won’t be an easy feat against a Doggies team that has sorely underperformed this year and will be looking to finish on a high.

Eels vs Roosters
I’m still not entirely sure how an entire football team can base their entire season on the form of one player, especially when that player is a fullback, and even more so when that fullback is Jarryd “Can I have a Y for yellow please, Burgo” Hayne. But over the last month or so, he’s repeating his performance of last year (i.e. trying) and the team is winning. The Eels’ grand-final march of 2009 was a one-off though, and any ideas of another Blue and Gold bogan army will be stopped by the Roosters this week. Please please please.

Tigers vs Sharks
This game should be as one-sided as an Iced Vovo, but has the potential to end up more like an Oreo. The Sharks have the team to spring the upset and revive a bit of Cronulla pride into the arse-end of the season, whereas the Tigers will be looking to prove that their good mid-season form wasn’t a fluke. The boys from Balmain are copping a lot of flak for being pussies and taking dives, so look for someone to take advantage of a Paul Gallen “tackle” and send him back to the judiciary. I’d love for the Sharks to win, simply because I don’t like the Tiges that much, but I don’t see it happening. Start planning your end-of-season trip, lads.

Warriors vs Titans
It’s the CLASH OF THE TITANS… and the Warriors. Grah. The Warriors have snuck themselves into the top eight without too much fanfare, while the Titans have been steadily sliding back down the ladder to where they belong. To win this game, the Gold Coasters will have to find the tryline, something they really haven’t been able to locate too frequently for a while now, and I don’t see it happening this week. Warriors by a dozen.

Storm vs Raiders
With the spoon already locked up in the Storm's trophy cabinet, the Melbournians really don’t have much to play for, other than a desire to piss off a whole bunch of teams who are trying to qualify for finals football. I foresee the Storm spoiling Canberra’s current run of wins and annoying the Raiders' faithful. I don’t think the Green Machine will be too surprised by the loss though. Just quietly, I don't think they expected to win three games all season.

And these tips will follow you…

Fig 1. A text-book tackle from Shaun Kenny-Dowell. Note the use of the fingers in the eyes.

how talking can be an extreme sport

It’s time to dust off the crowbar and start cracking skulls again. This week, I’m smashing the shit out of five phrases that really piss me off.

1. “Literally.”

A lot of the people who say “literally” to emphasise a point use it in such a way that they make it obvious that they literally don’t know the literal meaning of the word “literally.”

“He ate so much he literally exploded.”

Did he really fucking literally explode? I’m pretty sure he didn’t. If you drop a ‘literally’ within my earshot, I will literally beat your face with my crowbar. Literally.

2. “My bad.”

My bad? MY BAD?

“Oooh, sorry, didn’t mean to drop that piano on your grandmother. My bad.”

“What?”

“My bad.”

“…”

“…”

“Your bad what?”

“…”

“…”

“What?”

*SMACK*

“Oh, was that your head meeting my crowbar? My bad.”

3. “Ain’t.”

What the fuck is this word short for?

“That ain’t my crowbar!”

No, it’s mine and it’s heading towards your face.

4. “Think outside the square.”

People who say that they think “outside the square” are dicks. There’s no square, there’s no box. There’s just thinking… and there’s a crowbar.

5. “That’s impossible – they proved that on Mythbusters.”

Just because two fat fucking idiots on a TV show can’t hack through a pig’s head with an axe with one swing doesn’t mean that I can't cut through eighteen vikings with a blunt razor. The Mythbusters guys can’t get laid either, but other people are doing that. The only thing those guys can do is wear stupid hats and grow shitty facial hair. That myth has been busted, and so have their faces. By my crowbar.

Dojos all over the world are popping up to teach self-defence against crowbar wielding psychopaths like me

Round 20: Surely this season is almost over?

Round 20 throws up a nice mix of hard games, easy games and games that will make you think “why am I still watching this sport?” Don’t worry, we all wonder that around this time of year.

Bulldogs vs Eels
Do dogs like to eat fish, or do fish poison dogs when they eat them? This is the question we must ponder for this stoush, and it’s not an easy one to answer. And so I won’t. The Eels will win this one on the back of recent good form and general fortune from Jarryd “The Hayne Train” Hayne.
Dragons vs Titans
It’s the CLASH OF THE TITANS... and the Dragons. Flying fire-breathers. BANG BANG BANG. I don’t think I need to explain anything further.

Raiders vs Sharks
There are few certainties in tipping rugby league, and one of them is on show this weekend – the loss of a coach and the sudden turnaround of form. Ricky Stuart pissed off from the Sharkies earlier in the week due to them being fucking terrible. This should automatically grant them a win, but the Raiders are shit hot at the moment and nothing will stop them from rampaging into the top eight, rolling the Sharkies this weekend by a billion. Seriously. A billion. Look for Joel “Big Deal Around Here” Monaghan to score at least seventy-nine thousand tries. And look for Adam “I’m Shit” Mogg not to.

Cowboys vs Knights
This is historic – I am tipping the Cowboys, because I like men in arseless pants. It’s handy that the Cowbs will have their butts to the open air, because it will make it easier for the Knights to kiss them. Fucking stupid Knights.

Storm vs Panthers
The Panthers are impressing no-one lately, not even their own mums, despite sitting in second place on the ladder. It’s also fairly impossible to know what the hell the Storm are doing these days, other than spending trillions of dollars that they shouldn’t have. Weighing up these factual facts that I haven’t made up or embellished at all, I’ve decided to tip the Storm for no apparent reason.

Rabbitohs vs Warriors
The Bunnies are playing like men possessed lately, despite not being able to buy a victory from a two-dollar shop with a low-interest gold credit card. They’ve got my money this week though, even though I kind of have a soft spot for those Warriors. I think it’s because of all the apostrophes and vowels in their names.

Manly vs Tigers
Dear Diary,
Today I did something I’m not proud of – I tipped Manly. I just think that the Tigers have been really lucky to have won the games that they have, and that’s about to end. Don’t judge me. Also, I had a burrito for lunch and it was really nice.

Broncos vs Roosters
I don’t think I can go against the Broncos at the moment – without checking any stats, results or scorelines, the Broncos are playing out of their skins right now. Add that to the fact that I hate a lot of the Roosters players, and it’s a fairly easy decision to make.

The albino kid who let his mum cut his hair just wants to be part of the team

Don't tip my tips, my tippy tippy tips, I just don't think you'd understand.

headlines are my life

Welcome to the Evil Breakfast News. I am Mister and this is what’s happening in the world today (and over the past few weeks when I haven’t posted anything. Apologies for that, but I’ve been busy).

Dum dum dun dunnn dum dum duh dunduh (no, that’s not supposed to sound like the Gargamel part of the Smurfs theme song, it’s meant to be a news theme).

Our opening story today takes us to ye olde Englande, where scientists claim to have found the answer to one of life’s great questions:

What came first, the chicken or the egg?

For billions of years, people have wondered how a chicken could exist, since it must come from an egg. That egg, though, must have come from a chicken. So what’s the deal? How did all of this craziness begin? These noble giants of the scientific community have given us the answer: the chicken was first.

Researchers have found that a protein called ovocleidin (OC-17) is crucial in the formulation of eggshells, and it is produced in the pregnant hen's ovaries. Ergo, henceforth, thusly, the chicken was first.

Except they haven’t: But the researchers have not yet managed to answer how the protein-producing chicken existed in the first place… which kind of makes their previous statement of having “solved” the question fairly redundant. It would be like me saying, “I have cleaned my shower. Except for all the mould and pubes and soap scum.” Don’t mind me while I await new developments in the science world before handing over your Nobel Peace Prize, lads. I’m hoping that the guy who mashed blue and yellow Play-Doh together to make green has something new up his sleeve.

More in science news: British scientists are wasting everyone’s time, and I need to clean my shower.

It happens to the best of us sometimes

In environmental news, the oil rig that has been pissing oil into the Gulf of Mexico since April 22 has been stopped by the placing of a cap over the offending leaking hole.


I’m assuming that BP have never seen a bottle cap before. If you have a bottle of water and you take the lid off and turn the bottle over, the water will come out. If you put the lid on, the water will stop flowing out. After watching oil flog out of a great big hole, it has just occurred to them to try to “cap” it. Captain Planet is weeping in his giant blue house and scrubbing penguins as we speak.


In entertainment news, Hey Hey It’s Saturday is still shit.


A couple of years after being axed from Channel 9 after twelve million years of being a shit tv show, even for Australian audiences in the 80s and 90s, it was brought back for the audience of 2010. One can only assume that it returned so host Daryl Somers could finally finish telling a joke, laughing at it himself and then explaining it to the crowd, be interrupted by the dickhead in the voice-over booth and be upstaged in the personality stakes by a pink ostrich puppet.


Here’s how to fix Hey Hey in 3 (ish) simple steps:

1. Put it on a fucking Saturday or change its fucking name. The fucktard in charge of plonking this on a Wednesday should go back to England and be put in charge of solving chicken and egg mysteries.

2. Make it an hour-long show. It’s hard enough watching Dazzler struggle through a single segment, but when he stretches it out for two hours, it’s just fucking painful. Better yet, get rid of him. Better yet, get rid of everyone who had a part in this show, the last show and is thinking about being involved in any future shows. Especially the duck.

3. Keep the ostrich.



In recent news, Lindsay Lohan has been described as “a Hollywood star.” That is all.



In sport, the Australian cricket team collapsed quite horribly to be all out for fuck all and nothing against a very ordinary Pakistan team. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, considering their last match was saved by two of the worst cricketers Australia has produced in the past trillion years, Shane Watson and Marcus North. The state of Australian cricket has fallen so far that no one is even bothering to call for the captain, Ricking Ponting, to be sacked. And that, my dear readers, is a hard fucking time for us all.

This makes me sick

Round 19: Broken fingers, broken noses

Round 19 is throwing up a few games that promise to be abso-fucking-lute crackerjacks, for whatever that means, and will be like picking a broken nose with a broken finger... difficult. Hence the title. I’m sure you can see what I did there.

Rabbitohs vs Dragons
The first of our nose affairs. If you’re tipping purely from the NRL ladder, you’d assume this should be a piece of piss for the Dragons, but Souths do enjoy tossing in a bit of unpredictability just to piss people off. Despite losing last week, they really are playing some good footy. But I’ve put the child-locks on in my Dragons band-wagon and will not be getting off. Drags by a dozen, even with Spazzy Gasnier getting in the way.

Titans vs Broncos
IT’S THE CLASH OF THE TITANS… and the Broncos. This all-Queensland bash will ensure that XXXX continues to be sold throughout the Sunshine State, and will also provide us nose-pickers with another itchy problem. I’m going for the Brisbanes this week – they are playing better footy than the Titans, they have momentum and most importantly, they don’t have Matt Rogers playing for them. Sold. Broncs by 8.

Warriors vs Storm
The Storm keep on digging themselves in a bit deeper with their salary cap bullshit, don’t they? And whenever they pick up their shovels for another go, they decide they need to prove to their fans and sponsors (probably their sponsors more than their fans) that they are the real deal. And whenever they do that, the fucking Warriors are there to cop a hiding. If this was any other week, it would be a busted digit going into a wonky nostril. As it is though, it’s a flogging on the cards. Storm by 20.

Panthers vs Eels
Toot toot - the Hayne Train is back in action. Well done, Jarryd, you’re doing what you’re being paid to do. Congratulations. Actually, that’s more than I can say for myself - this blog is proudly brought to you by the Australian Government. Unfortunately, when Hayne is scoring tries, it means that Parra is playing well. The Panthers played like shit last week, and I really don’t know if it’s within them to turn it around. But they’d better, because I’m backing them. Just. Fingers & noses, baby.

Sharks vs Sea Eagles
Another grozzie-grab game – this round is producing either tears of pain or very itchy noses in almost every match. Crickey. The Sharks haven’t been as shit as everyone thought they’d be, and Manly have been producing occasional moments of brilliance (as well as more frequent moments of retardedness). I’m going Manly, but only because I still don’t trust Trent Barrett. Sea Eagles by 7.

Raiders vs Knights
Pick pick pick. Ouch ouch ouch. I hear that Adam Mogg is out with some kind of injury, which will boost Canberra fans as he really is the world’s fucking worst player. A further boost will be provided by the news that Josh Dugan has decided to stay with the Green Machine for a few more years – I can only assume he has a shady past and some outstanding arrest warrants that the Canberra management are helping him with – this is all pointing to a Raiders victory (by 14 points). Unfortunately, it’s a game that they are expected to win, so this is going to affect them badly. I’m going to stick with them, but they’ll hang on by the skin of Dave Shillington’s hairy ballsack in a 2-point finish.

Roosters vs Bulldogs
I’m expecting the Roosters to cheat their way to victory in this game (as they do in most games), but it won’t be easy with Brett “this is how they cheated back in my day” Kimmorley playing surprisingly well for someone with Alzheimer’s and osteo-arthritis. I’m super happy that Canberra has put in a bid for the world’s most wrinkled player next year, too. The crowd will have to cheer extra loud, as I’m pretty sure hearing aids aren’t allowed whilst playing. Roosters by 8 in a game that will be closer than it should be.

Tigers vs Cowboys
The only team bad enough to lose to the Cowboys these days is Canberra. The Tigers should run in at least four-thousand tries, and convert at least eight-hundred of them. I’m no mathematician, but that should give them a 24-6 victory, yes?

Tipping you is easy ‘cause you’re beautiful.

Roles reversed: Using state-of-the-art photography techniques, this photo makes it look like Kimmorley isn't a hobbit.

Round 18: Go hard or go home

So State of Origin is finally fucking over for another year. The Queenslanders can go home, beat their wives, sleep with someone else’s wife, drink some XXXX and fall asleep in the back of their ute and dream happily. The NSW players can go home, beat their wives, pack rape a 16-year old and knock back a couple of eccies with a bottle of scotch and drive over a guy on a bike and spend the weekend “assisting police with their enquiries.” He’ll dream happily too, but only because he can’t remember if he won the footy or not and still has millions of dollars to roll around in.

Roosters vs Rabbitohs
It’s not often that you can use the term “traditional rivals” and actually mean it. But these two teams hate the fucking shit out of each other and aren’t afraid to show it. I see Souths winning the game, the fight and the mascot race at half-time.

Tigers vs Titans
It’s the CLASH OF THE TITANS… and the Tigers. The Tigers have a horrible habit of playing really poorly when they come up against a shit opponent. I don’t see that changing this week, considering the Titans are the shittiest of the shit. Tigers by 2.

Manly vs Raiders
My apologies to all the Manly fans out there because I forgot to tip their last game.
Apologies to the Raiders fans out there because the Raiders suck.
Apologies to the Raiders because I’m not tipping you this week.
And the Raiders can apologise to me whenever they want for being so fucking bad.

Bulldogs vs Storm
Bahahahahahahaha Storm.

Knights vs Sharks
God, there’s always one drooling mess of a game each week, isn’t there? I’m going to call on Paul the Psychic German Octopus. He went for the Knights. As much as I think he’s kidding himself, I’ll trust the little eight-legged fucker this time.

Panthers vs Warriors
I really don’t think the Panthers have the balls to make it to the Grand Final this year, despite them running second on the ladder right now. But then, the Warriors just won’t be the team to shake them.

Eels vs Cowboys
Edit: There are always two drooling messes of games each week. Welcome to Droolfest Part 2. If I had to give a flying fuck about the outcome of this match, I’d pick the Eels, just because it’s hilarious to see the Cowboys flap around the bottom of the table.

Don’t stop tipping!

Round 17: Origin 3-D

Sorry - my computer has been fucked all week. Stupid fucking computers.

This week’s tips are in 3-D. OOOOOOH. AAAAAAAAH. What a waaaaank.

Broncos vs Tigers
The Broncos have a thousand players out due to Origin duty; the Tigers… not so much. The Baby Broncos may have the swagger but not enough substance to knock off the Tiges this week. Just don’t expect too much from anyone and you might not be let down.

Sharks vs Bulldogs
For some reason, the Sharks’ go-to man Trent Barrett has not only been called up again for Origin duties, but has been named as the captain. It makes me think that my State of Origin debut (as captain/coach) can’t be too far away. Without Trent to sort them out, the Sharks will flounder like floundering flounders and the Doggies will take the points in what promises to be a monumental shitfest of a game.

Raiders vs Roosters
Todd Carney, the leakiest man in the world, is coming back to the nation’s capital. I am salivating on myself like the rabid Raiders supporter that I am at the chance to lean over the fence and yell streams of abuse at the human fire extinguisher, but the Raiders have been playing so abysmally poorly of late that I just can’t tip them. My money is on the Chooks, but I’ll still be prepared to dance like a spastic if the Green Machine springs an upset. I might even give Josh Dugan a lift to the game.



Warriors vs Eels
Oh Christ, I don’t know. Warriors. Just because I don’t like the Eels, and the Warriors really don’t do enough to warrant being hated by anyone. And if I don’t hate them, they must be doing something right. I fucking hate everyone (except Brett Mullins).

Dragons vs Panthers
HOLY CRAP THIS GAME WILL BE AWESOME except it won’t, because it’s Origin week and all of the best players will be away from club footy. Ergo, flip a coin. Mine says Panthers, but I’m thinking of tipping the Saints anyway, just because I like that Soward fella. But not in the same way that I like Brett Mullins.

QLD vs NSW
NSW have brought back "the bash brothers" Gallen and Bird to try and scare the Queensland pack. You. Are. Kidding. Right? Right. Gallen and Bird are scary to two people in the world: The girls that they beat up and smashed in the face with glasses. Last time I checked, those girls weren't part of the QLD team, so the Blues can expect another desmolishment.

And that’s the way the tips go.