Warning this blog contains images of a salacious nature and language which may offend some people.
Well this isn't going to work!
Or this!
Or this!
Or this!
This is Lindsey Vonn – Women’s Downhill Gold Medalist. Lindsey does not wear this stuff when she is skiing – it creates too much drag and makes her nipples rock hard.
I have revised my thinking about the Winter Olympics. I have decided that the scariest sport is the Downhill. This is seriously scary. This is trapped in an elevator with Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin scary.
I watched Lindsey Vonn win the women’s downhill in spectacular fashion. Prior to this I saw four other skiers come to considerable grief by crashing at very high speed. I mean these crashes just go on and on and the girls slide for miles after hurtling through the air upside down for a while. I took a couple of shots of some of the interesting positions they achieved.
They demonstrated quite clearly that the fastest way to the bottom is not backwards, sitting down, lying down, lying on your stomach or somersaulting. The fastest way is the Vonn way.
Fortunately none of them was badly hurt but I am they all looked pretty shook up.
Lindsey is just in a class of her own and knocked their socks off. An astonishing woman. Gorgeous too.
In answer to the question I didn’t ask or answer yesterday but should have – the test of whether or not a Blog is good is if people read it.
I have seen many Blogs which to me seem to be – let us say – less than interesting - but which have hundreds of followers and probably thousands of readers. If this is the case then they serve their purpose. Who am I to judge the blogs of fellow bloggers. I don’t and I won’t.
I mean - Marilyn Manson has a fan club. I hope I never meet any of the fans but I am sure they are totally dedicated and follow him slavishly.
I may have maligned Lady Ga Ga by suggesting that she may go the way of so many pop stars. There is a story in the Sydney Morning Herald that she is totally dedicated to her art and that her idea of a good time is to lash out and have a bowl of Pasta on Sunday.
She also says she has nowhere to live - which seems a bit rough – not having a mantelpiece to put all those Brit Awards on - thank goodness for those feathers in winter. However she seems a decent enough Sheila and is welcome to kip here (I will have to check with Cate but I am sure it will be fine).
And speaking of things in the world of fashion. I always thought that Victoria Beckham was a completely vacuous air head who would never make any contribution to humanity other than being a clothes horse who always stands about with a posture like she either has a full nappy or an angry gecko in her underpants.
However – it appears that she does in fact have some talent. I was looking at her Autumn/Winter 2010 collection in New York (isn’t she a bit late?) and – if indeed she did design these frocks – I am impressed.
I am not a Fashionista but I appreciate good clothing – you know the stuff that can be worn – not the feathery, stringy, shimmering, rubbery, sequinny, plasticy, surrealistic, gossamer wreathed - alien creature type stuff that you simply could not wear anywhere – even to a fancy Dress Ball.
Cate has some wonderful clothes – she goes mad every time she goes to the USA – and really knows how to dress – and looks fantastic in everything she wears. (Grovel ends).
This is not a skill she has been able to transfer to me. Incidentally my Black T Shirt suppliers in Sydney (Remo) are going to stop stocking my favourite Ts – the Bastards! So I have bought 30 and they are being delivered to my son in Sydney and I will collect them when I am there – or he will bring them if he ever gets off his boney ass and comes to see me.
Back to Victoria Beckham’s Collection - of course none of these dresses could be worn by anyone who weighs more than 30 kilos – but they look terrific. Not a feather in sight.
What do these women eat that they can be so thin? Oh – I see! Nothing for me thanks – I’ll just lick a lettuce leaf and inhale some green tea steam. For dinner I may suck a stick of lemongrass.
I need to report on the Opera Ball held in Vienna. There are more than 300 Balls in Vienna each season and this is the biggie.
I watched part of it – along with 1.6 million Austrians - and saw this fantastical parade of men and women dressed to the nines poncing about and having a fine time. There were Debutantes, displays of dancing, singing and all sorts of exciting stuff.
Many of the people who attended don’t look particularly comfortable. I guess they don’t get dressed up all that often and feel a bit awkward. Helmut has probably just realised that he didn’t get his dinner jacket dry cleaned after last year’s Ball and the vomit stains are still there.
Apparently the only bad part about the Opera Ball is that there are so many people in attendance it is difficult to get to the bar to get hammered – which to my way of thinking you would need to do to make the night bearable – but then this is not my idea of a good time – in fact it is my worst nightmare and I would rather disembowel myself in the woods with a stick than go to the Opera ball – but you all know what a curmudgeon I am.
The Austrian Times reported on the event (I have left some boring bits out):
"This year’s Opera Ball went down without major scandals in contrast to previous editions. Burlesque artist Dita Von Teese, star guest of Austrian entrepreneur Richard Lugner in 2008, made headlines by locking herself in the toilet in a bid to escape the paparazzi. Lugner’s 2007 VIP guest Paris Hilton did the same. And, according to the shopping centre manager, Grace Jones "had sex before, during and after the ball" in 1996.
Lugner (aged 77) ensured most of the spotlight was on him and his entourage – featuring his 20-year-old girlfriend, his ex-wife, their daughter and her boyfriend.
Another Opera Ball guest who attracted a lot of attention was Katie Price. The British TV celebrity attended the event on invitation of Austrian business couple Irene and Alexander Mayer.”
And yes – this is the same Katie Price (AKA Jordan) who was recently awarded a prize for having the ‘Worst Breasts in Britain’.
I am sure this is not an objective award – I mean how many did they check?
But the picture does tell a story and I am not going to quibble with that particular award. They may be the only breasts in Britain that have to have their own Zimmer Frame. Poor Katie also won the award this year for the ‘Most Hated Woman in Britain’. They apparently don’t like her much.
It is time for me to bludgeon the Austrians again about cigarette butts. I have this in my diary ‘monthly rant – cigarettes and butts’.
I was coming back from buying a vast quantity of wine at Wein and Co and was sitting at the traffic lights on my bike when this asshole took an enormous drag of a cigarette and blew his disgusting smoke all over me. He then flicked the butt into the middle of the road.
I did the only appropriate thing in the circumstances. I got off my bike and battered him senseless with the tire pump. He will be pissing blood for a month. When I had finished with the lesson of the day I took his pants off and painted his bum black – then inserted a cigarette butt into each of his nostrils.
I left his bleeding, pulped, blackened remains lying beside the road. As I walked way I flicked a playing card onto his chest. It is the Ace of Hearts with ‘Nichtraucher’ emblazoned it.
I wish!
What I did was sigh (I do that a lot here) and shook my head sadly.
What is it with these fucking people. They are the world's greatest recyclers, there are hordes of street cleaners, there is very little graffiti, they are the only people in the world I have ever seen wait for the walk signs at traffic lights – but they pollute the city and restaurants with smoke and with billions of cigarette butts - and allow their very big dogs to shit all over the streets.
This is seriously fucked up and needs attention. (Rant Ends)
Has any else noticed that William is turning into a curmudgeon. He now has a bee in his bonnet about visitor trackers on other blogs.
I think he is still snowed in and can’t get outside to commune with nature and his Donkeys (the names of which I have forgotten). My apologies to William’s Donkeys – I am usually so good with names.
You will have to sort out the lamps in your guest room if Lady Gaga is coming (or have you done that?). And yes, I did notice that about William.
ReplyDeleteI wish I knew what nichtraucher meant. I'll have to use my imagination (or dictionary).
Nichtraucher = nonsmoker.
ReplyDeleteBadger's obviously becoming infected with the Denglish bug! I know I bitched about the use of Denglish the other day, but it is something that most Ausländer find themselves slipping into from time to time, especially when you're using German a lot. I try to draw the line at speaking English with German word order because it makes one sound like an idiotic Yoda impersonator ('for another coffee time we have?'), but it is easy to slip into. The worst thing is that Austrians with advanced English find this either not so amusing or downright insulting, and those with middling English think that English can't be so difficult after all if we put the verb at the end just like they do! This last situation requires a convoluted explanation that boils down to the fact that you're being a berk, which is embarrassing. I don't think it's as criminal to pepper your English with the odd German word, and many Austrians find this habit quite endearing. Echt, Wahnsinn!, Untermensch (I reserve this for Herren Haider & Strache), dabei, Frechheit!, freilich!, natürlich!, praktisch, wurst (not as in sausage, strictly das ist mir wurst, or whatever!), jawohl, genau...
Anyway, back to Badger's blog... Yes, Katie Price is a stain on the face of modern Blighty, and thoroughly deserves her most hated woman in Britain award. She is truly awful, and the worst thing about her is that British girls of a certain age look up to her as a role model, which means that in 15 years we may well wake up to a society of Katie Prices. If she were the most hated woman in Britain I don't think it would be so bad because most people would just ignore her. It's that she's a woman who people love to hate, and therein lies the problem.
The Opernball used to be a stuck-up affair, dominated by snobby elites with nothing to be snobby about except for their noble titles, which get dropped with abandon even though it is strictly illegal here. So it was in need of someone like Lugner, who started off classy with the likes of Sophia Loren and Faye Dunaway. Obviously he went too far a long time ago.
Among the countless blogs I've skimmed through over the last few years, I've only seen a single example of the real-time site-meter of the kind that irritates me: the Tasmanian frog-pond blog. I was so intrigued that I tried to obtain details concerning the installation of this kind of gadget (not because I wanted one for Antipodes, but simply because I was curious to see what it was all about), and I discovered that it's a paid monthly service. The blogger who invests in this service is apparently concerned by the geographical origins of visitors, and the exact time they spend visiting the site. I was a little dismayed to hear that the lady, as a consequence of my curmudgeonliness, decided to take down her site-meter, and I strongly encourage her to reinstall it, because my personal reaction is probably excessive. There may even be visitors who take pleasure in seeing their arrival signalled at the frog-pond blog. It's true that my personal attitude towards blogging might be a bit weird. I don't really care a lot about having a lot of visitors, or knowing where they come from. The only reason I installed meters on Antipodes, a few months ago, was because I had been invaded by Chinese porn spam, and I appealed for help to Chuck at The Real Blogger Status... whom I recommend to every blogger [display]. Among other advice, Chuck considers that it's basic good sense to install the three particular gadgets that you now find at the end of my Antipodes blog. But I never sit in front of my computer asking myself how I can possibly evaluate and increase my audience. My sole preoccupation is the challenge of expressing myself optimally and correctly in adequate English. It's hardly a secret that I look upon Antipodes primarily as a kind of "antechamber" into the domain of my ongoing creative writing (a constant exercise, or a "sounding-board", as I said somewhere). On the other hand, I never bother to "advertise" unduly my English/French writing projects.
ReplyDeleteHey! That 3rd picture is how I skied that one time I tried. When I finally made it to the bottom, I went promptly to the lodge and started drinking.
ReplyDeleteSounds to me, considering how many die on the slopes every winter (according you this blog) the Austrians are merely trying to ski like the pros.
"After putting in the worst first run of the 11 finalists, Bright bounced back with the best of the night ... "
ReplyDeleteThat was pretty cool. :-)
Yes, Badger, why did God endow us with good aerodynamic skin if it was not to be used for skiiing?
ReplyDeleteCoffee. Out the nose. In a good way. Thank you to the visit to my little ol'blog. oh, and the bit about the angry gecko in her pants, I have been trying to figure out what the problem was there forever. Thank you for clearing that up. Nail on the head!!
ReplyDeleteI must have messed up my day count again.
ReplyDeleteYesterday was Friday, no new post here.
Must mean you published Sun through Thur.
I am learning. I am learning.
There's rumor we shall see the sun tomorrow.
Be ready! :-)
I woke up this morning to learn that we had won a gold skeleton. Still trying to work out what it is.
ReplyDeleteI know it’s been quite a few days since you posted this piece. I have been reading it but only got back from the hospital today to finish. I’m astounded at the skill you use telling us of your thoughts and observations, great writing. While away I worried the post might disappear without my being able finish it. Thanks for sharing, I will certainly be back for more.
ReplyDeleteNow, just a few more days to read the other comments, wow, your readers can write loads! Just the other day I was telling.....