The Biggest Loser

England losing to Sri Lanka by 10 wickets with 10 overs to go was a pretty dismal effort, the symmetry of the scoreline only serving to magnify the scale of the thrashing.  Not one wicket taken.  You really shouldn't be getting clobbered like that in the knock-out phase of the World Cup. 

As bad as that was though, England weren't the biggest losers of the evening.  Not even close.  For at the same time, we also had the State Election results in NSW.  Such was the one-sided nature of this contest that the words "bloodbath" and "slaughter" were being used to describe the result.  And that was in the opening remarks to the coverage - before there were any results to report on.  I've never seen an election where there was so much certainty before they started counting.  And so it turned out.  According to Luke Foley, who had the unenviable task of being the Labor spokesman for the coverage, it was their worst performance since the 19th Century.  Now that's some defeat.

Not Sure Why Zone

So we've got a No Fly Zone.  I remember when that was achieved by just spraying the room with Mortein.  These days apparently it means bombing every piece of military gear in sight. 

Now don't get me wrong, when it comes to colonels, I'm more of a Sanders man than a Gaddafi fan, but to me, apart from the fact that shooting up tanks and supply trucks seems to be more of a "No Drive Zone" approach, it also seems that we're a bit more involved in the war than is suggested by the term "No Fly Zone".  So it's another war with a spurious euphemism used at the outset to justify it.  That would be this war's "Weapons of Mass Destruction" then, no doubt to be followed at some point by an emphasising of the need for "Regime Change".

Of course when I say "We", I don't mean Australia.  No, when our former Prime Minister was out on the hustings spruiking the No Fly Zone, what he really meant was just that one should be set up.  With other people's planes.  After all, it's very important to make sure other people stand up for what you believe in.  Somebody's got to fight for my right.

Makes you feel so proud.

Live Long And Prosper

It's William Shatner's 80th birthday today.  The records say he was born in March 22, 1931 in Canada.

We were only discussing him in the office the other day and someone pointed out that he didn't look 80.  While there were some murmurs about plastic surgery, I put it down to his ageing more slowly than everyone else as happens with high warp-speed travel.

Close Shave

While it wasn't the best game of the final series, the A-League Grand Final certainly had a grandstand finish last Sunday.

Brisbane Roar's 2 goals in the last 3 minutes of extra time, took the game to 2-2 and into a penalty shootout, which they then went on to win 4-2.  That also took their unbeaten run to an amazing 28 games.

The real highlight however, occurred before the match. Robbie Slater boldly tipped "A two-all draw with Brisbane winning the penalty shoot-out".  This was followed by manic shrieks of laughter from co-panelist, Mark Bosnich, who promised to shave his head and run around the ground naked if it ended that way.  Well, after consulting the police, the streak is apparently off but he is going to have Robbie Slater shave his head on 30-March, the hair being donated to a friend's children's alopecia charity.

Great tip, great bet!

Alphabet Football: The B&W Show

The English Premier League is entering its final phase, and as it stands, it looks like this:

Pos	Team	Pld	GD	Pts
14	Blackburn	29	-12	32
15	Blackpool	29	-15	32
16	West Brom	29	-15	32
17	Birmingham	28	-12	31
18	West Ham	29	-13	31
19	Wolves	29	-15	29
20	Wigan	29	-23	27

That's a lot of teams beginning with "W" currently propping up the table, and a lot of teams beginning with "B" sitting nervously above them.

If it were to remain as it stands, the bottom 3 would be the same bottom 3 that were there at the start of the season when the teams were listed alphabetically.  If things are to be resolved alphabetically, this must give great heart at the other end of the table to Arsenal fans.

The only team missing from the alphabetical tussle at the foot of the table are Bolton Wanderers, who are doing very nicely thank you, in 7th spot. 

This is a shame, from a purely lexical point of view, as they'd potentially qualify as either a "B" or a "W" when taking their full name into consideration.  On that basis, I'd also be worried about what the future holds if I was a "W"est "B"rom fan.

Mighty Grand

Instead of spending all that money trying to convince me that Angus beef is something new and special, couldn't McDonalds have spent some time coming up with better differentiated names for their Angus burgers?  Instead, they gave us the Mighty Angus and the Grand Angus.

Mighty and Grand; look up one of those in a thesaurus and you'll find the other.  In a rare moment of verification, I thought I'd check that and sure enough, a search on "Mighty" in Thesaurus.com yields:

august, bulky, colossal, considerable, dynamic, eminent, enormous, extensive, extraordinary, grand, great, heroic, high, huge, illustrious, immense, imposing, impressive, intense, irresistible, large, magnificent, majestic, massive, moving, notable, prodigious, renowned, stupendous, titanic, towering, tremendous, vast.

Funnily enough, most of those are also much better names.  How about an Angus Stupendous, or an Angus Illustrious, or perhaps the Angus Colossal?  Not so hungry?  You can downsize to the Angus Considerable?  Or maybe you just like to keep it simple, in which case, it’s the Angus Huge for you.

Meanwhile back in the the real world, it’s back to the Mighty or the Grand and trying to work out which one has the extra piece of salad on it.

Marketing Madness

Today in the supermarket I saw a product on the refrigerated section that caught my eye.

It was manufactured by "The British Sausage Company with a "Uniquely Australian" sticker on it. The product was Boerewors, very tasty South African sausage. But to get this straight now: that's a uniquely Australian, British sausage company selling South African sausage.

Just thought I'd clarify that.

Beatles Bits & Pieces

I read somewhere (not so recently) that in the first week their catalogue was made available for download last November, the most popular Beatles song was "Here Comes The Sun". Now, while that's a fine song, you can't help wondering if that wasn't also a consequence of people just wanting some heartwarming distraction from the freezing cold weather they were having at the time.

And on another Beatles-related note, a rather poignant observation about Brian Epstein was made in The Word magazine, namely that he would never have heard "Hey Jude". Obviously one can simply work this out by knowing the relevant dates but when it's put like that, it's rather sad.

Zu Are You?

Here's a list what Google Instant serves up when you type in the first letter for each letter of the alphabet (in Australia, on my PC, at any rate):

• ANZ
• BOM
• Centrelink
• Domain
• Ebay
• Facebook
• Gmail
• Hotmail
• iTunes
• Jetstar
• Kmart
• Lasoo
• Myer
• Netbank
• Optus
• Paypal
• Qantas
• RTA
• Seek
• TPG
• UAC
• Vodafone
• White Pages
• XE
• YouTube
• Zu

Clearly, banks/money, real estate/shopping, email/social networking, the odd holiday and even the weather all loom large, but Zu? Apparently it's a shoe store. Shoes? Really? Who are these people?