The 1000 Day Holiday

On Sunday I attended the Sydney Swans vs West Coast Eagles AFL game.
In the attempt to establish what is Australian culture.

Basically the day went like this:

No Pre Game Cheerleaders

organisers spent 10 minutes setting up these huge banners for the players to ‘break thru’ when they run onto the field.
in practise, they kinda break it, kinda lift it up and run under it.

Very Gay.

Organisers then spent another 10 minutes folding up these banners.

The game itself is highly reminiscent of Scrag at school.
Game theory is the same. Get the ball.

As for the major Gay points:

if you miss the goal, you still get a point for trying really hard

all the rules are based around, we wont penalise you since you tried really really hard
ie, you can run out of bounds, but you must keep the ball inside the line.

the refs love to wave big flags at each other and have a tendency to run backwards as fast as they can while following a curved boundary line.

there is a square in the middle of the oval just to prove the grounsdmen can draw a straight line.

There is no cheerleaders at half time

Highlight of the day:
When the little kids came out at half time to play mini games of AFL

It revealed what I had been thinking all along.

In Rugby or League when the players are young they all chase the ball around the field.
As they progress, more game theory and tactics are applied. With them spreading over the field.
AFL is played as well by 5 year olds as it is by grown men, they all chase the ball.

Then to finish the day off, they have a time where everyone and their dog can go onto the pitch and kick balls to each other.

This results in 3000 or so footballs flying in every direction. Generally smacking unwitting people who are looking in the oposite direction. This is something this country needs more of.

Natural selection.

It was a fun day, got to take the piss out of Micky and his sport for a good couple of hours.

Todays Quote:

Shane was discussing how brisbane’ites seemed much more laid back compared to sydney.
Saffron imparted:

People who live in hot places are happier

I said that didnt seem right if looking at iraq.

I cant believe I havent documented some of the funny quotes happening around our flat of late.

We were at Brunch at Concrete in Pyrmont on a Sunday morning after a decidely hard nite.

Saff, Shane, Kristen & myself in attendance.

I ordered the big breaky, and thats all you need to know for this story.

About 10 minutes after my food arrived, saff got that perplexed look on her face and kept looking at my food.

Then it came

How do Japanese people eat a big breakfast with chopsticks. It would have to come out all chopped up into little bits.

a little while on, the next one flowed forth

This is so good! We should do this annually.

Shane subtly prodded, with a statement saying he’ll meet us here on the 3rd of july next year then.
Saff didnt pick up on it.

And not until we raised it directly on the way home did she click.
She just thought “it meant something else”

tee hee

Well I’m off to Brisvegas Friday - Tuesday.

Played paintball on Sunday with the Underwater Hockey guys. it was a large open course meaning not much up close action. However still very good fun.

Caught up with Tahlia too.

Peabody (the new flatmate) lasted just a week before being hospitalised. I thought it very polite to offer some of my curry to him, however having a pipe inserted in his stomach to drain an infection doesn’t rate my cooking too highly.

But in all reality. It coiuld have been the tequilas!

As a college student in 1964, David J. Hufford met the dreaded Night Crusher. Exhausted from a bout of mononucleosis and studying for finals, Hufford retreated one December day to his rented, off-campus room and fell into a deep sleep. An hour later, he awoke with a start to the sound of the bedroom door creaking open—the same door he had locked and bolted before going to bed. Hufford then heard footsteps moving toward his bed and felt an evil presence. Terror gripped the young man, who couldn’t move a muscle, his eyes plastered open in fright.

Without warning, the malevolent entity, whatever it was, jumped onto Hufford’s chest. An oppressive weight compressed his rib cage. Breathing became difficult, and Hufford felt a pair of hands encircle his neck and start to squeeze. “I thought I was going to die,” he says.

At that point, the lock on Hufford’s muscles gave way. He bolted up and sprinted several blocks to take shelter in the student union. “It was very puzzling,” he recalls with a strained chuckle, “but I told nobody about what happened.”

Hufford’s perspective on his strange encounter was transformed in 1971. He was at that time a young anthropologist studying folklore in Newfoundland, and he heard from some of the region’s inhabitants about their eerily similar nighttime encounters. Locals called the threatening entity the “old hag.” Most cases unfold as follows: A person wakes up paralyzed and perceives an evil presence. A hag or witch then climbs on top of the petrified victim, creating a crushing sensation on his or her chest.

It took Hufford another year to establish that what he and these people of Newfoundland had experienced corresponds to the event, lasting seconds or minutes, that sleep researchers call sleep paralysis. Although widely acknowledged among traditional cultures, sleep paralysis is one of the most prevalent yet least recognized mental phenomena for people in industrialized societies, Hufford says.

Now, more than 30 years after Hufford’s discovery, sleep paralysis is beginning to attract intensive scientific attention. The March Transcultural Psychiatry included a series of papers on the condition’s widespread prevalence, regional varieties, and mental-health implications.

Sleep paralysis differs from nocturnal panic, in which a person awakens in terror with no memory of a dream. Neither does sleep paralysis resemble a night terror, in which a person suddenly emerges from slumber in apparent fear, flailing and shouting, but then falls back asleep and doesn’t recall the incident in the morning.

Sleep Paralysis can cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

9am headed for the Spit Bridge. Very broken from the previous nite at the Tilbury Hotel.

However I put in the yards, got into my wetsuit and jumped in the sea. Some things just have to be done to bring on consiousness and possibly sobriety.

We paddled up around a few bays, and while in the effective middle of no where in particular we noticed a odd looking boat put putting along.

Coming into focal distance, it was covered in vittoria coffee signs. At this point the other 3 were waving, hooting and hollering. And indeed the little boat put putted over and made us Cappucinos et al in the middle of the harbour!

Between that and falling out in the mub between the mangroves it was a very cool morning.

Been there, done that? Then put on your horse’s head and get ready for a bizarre journey. Jordan Baker reports.

In the new age of travel, tourists will visit the Opera House blindfolded and ski Thredbo in a horse’s head. They’ll choose their destination with the roll of a dice, arrive on a penny farthing then play croquet on a roundabout. Government waiting rooms will become tourist attractions and brides will hitch-hike from Yass to Yemen wearing their wedding dress.

When freewheeling hippies first hit the Asian trail, travel was adventurous. But these days we think nothing of crossing the Nullarbor, cruising the Mekong or trekking in Antarctica. There’s a guide book to every corner of the globe and Intrepid is the name of a tour company. Travel ennui is setting in; we’ve been there, done that and have the stubby cooler to prove it.

So for the jaded traveller there’s a new frontier: experimental travel. It’s based on the theory that while there might not be anywhere new under the sun, there’s always a different way of looking.

The Lonely Planet Guide to Experimental Travel, by Joel Henry and Rachael Antony, introduces travel of the mind. It proposes bizarre experiments to help travellers get more out of new places or look at old ones with fresh eyes.

Adventure Travel Article

A 15-year-old girl has been rescued from the top of a 40-metre crane she scaled while sleepwalking in London, according to reports.

The girl was spotted on the crane’s boom by passers-by, who called police to the building site in Dulwich thinking it was a suicide bid, the South London Press reports.

But the girl, who has not been named, had apparently managed to climb up the crane and walk across a narrow metal beam while fast asleep on Saturday night

A firefighter from the Forest Hill station then climbed the crane to wait with the girl until a specialist crew arrived.

Dangerous Sleepwalking News Article

Well the hermit fell for the highly technical

“emergency situation at home, blank lines, then har har its a joke” email

midnight where she is, and she was ringing my cellphone, home phone, and undoubtedly the other flatmates as well. heheheh

made my day.

To: The Hermit
Subject: rent!

haha, guess waht

the landlord called me today. he was quite panicked.

he said that we hadnt paid rent since march 14!

I checked, and he was right.. muahahahahahahahahahah!

So we are moving out this weekend…

not!

bahahahahahahahahahah
naah, the AP stopped/cancelled/deleted….. i guess after a year, i
cant remember how i set it up..

but anyways, got him paid uptodate so hes happy.

a report on goings on:
we have a canadian dude moving in saturday or sunday.
seems to be nice n relaxed.

and saff hasnt been turning off the electric toothbrush chargers.. and
we havent burnt down!

GRIN

have fun