Hooray for England!

I am delighted to report that after the Poms gave us such a rubbishing in the UK press over our dismal effort against Germany - England has managed to scrape together - rather badly I might say - two draws and now has to beat Slovenia to remain in the tournament.

Most of the England players looked like they would rather be somewhere else (and in fact the goalkeeper from the first game was). There was not much sparkle and you wonder what the outcome would have been if they had been playing someone other than Algeria.

This is a delicious situation and I will watch the next game against Slovenia with some relish. Not because I particularly don’t want England to get through to the next round - on that point I am ambivalent - because they cannot win the World Cup - but because they are so arrogant and pompous about Australia.

I think I have about 25 music channels on Sky Satellite TV and about 4 of them are showing non-stop English football anthems - ‘Hooray for England’ and all that stuff.

I wonder if they will keep playing them if England does not get through to the next round?

I imagine so - I don’t think many football fans in the UK actually require football to sustain them. 30 pints of beer and a broken bottle seems to set the average fan up for a top night - regardless of the outcome of any game played.

It is an English tradition that when they play in continental Europe and lose - they sack the town. This is sort of revenge for the Saxons, Normans and the Vikings. I think they may be a bit more circumspect in South Africa because it is a long way from Blighty.

I could meet a girl named Destiny

Peoria.

A year or so ago I bought some roof racks and bicycle racks for the car and collected the package but did not open it. When I opened it a month or so ago I found not two roof racks and two bike racks - but only one bike rack. Boy did I feel silly!

I contacted the man at Wiesenthal who said that I would need the invoice so that they could trace it. I am not sure why. They had the parts there. Did the invoice have a map on it - or a code showing where the parts were hidden? Wouldn’t the missing boxes be where the first one was?

Well, I don’t have a copy of the invoice - just a credit card statement showing that I paid the money. All I got was one box - no invoice.

Why don’t they have a copy of the invoice? They issued it.

We got nowhere and I had given up - but Rozalin was not going to be beaten and began a program to stalk the Spare Parts Manager into submission.

This she did and he eventually cracked under the pressure when she sat outside his apartment at night knitting and watching the Nightmare on Elm Street movies on her iPod Touch - while her baby cat Balu played with the wool.

He checked his inventory - and discovered the additional bike bits nestled in the back of the cupboard. What a Champion! And this without the magical invoice. And yes I have now opened all the boxes. I still don’t have an invoice but I have all the parts. Of course putting them together is another matter entirely.

But when I do we will be ready to go cycling in the countryside. Except that on Friday Cate goes to the USA for two weeks - then we go on home leave to Australia for two weeks.

Cate said I should go the the USA with her which is just fine except that the place I would be is Peoria - which I have visited before - and I know is the Paris of the mid-west - but to my way of thinking lacks something.

Don’t get me wrong it is a lovely clean town with big wide streets full of god-fearing Republicans. They have bible conventions there - how cool is that!

I think what it lacks is Pizzaz.

And they don’t much fancy pharmacies. In Vienna there are pharmacies on every corner. In Peoria you have to walk 6 blocks to find one. What is this about? Surely Americans must need pharmacies as much as anyone else - probably more in a town that has more than one a Cinnabon store.

And she will be working all day and every evening and a boy like me could get into a lot of trouble in a city like that. I could - for example - eat steak every night in Shula’s or St Elmos Steak Houses (where one just has to start with the world famous Shrimp Cocktail).

Or I could end up in Patty’s Showclub where I might meet a man named Joey and a girl named Destiny who would slip me a Mickey Finn and I would finish up in the slammer with my picture on the front page of the Peoria Star - wearing my underpants on my head - and my credit card has been used to buy a Mint Green Cadillac Escalade SUVS with Pirelli Gravel Ts - I know how these things work. The possibilities are endless in a roaring frontier a town like that.

The Wiesenthal stock control system must be a bit like the one at Spar. At Spar when they run out of something - it often never returns to the shelves.

The things that have vanished over the last year include Muffin’s favorite cat sticks, my favorite ice blocks, Cate’s favorite Muesli and my favorite breakfast cereal. There are others but I don’t remember what they were as sadness makes me lose my memory.

Who did Australia play in the first game? Did we win?

We find these things - and develop a passion for them and they just vanish. This is the Spar with the Wall of Pasta. Phil Spector would be proud of it. An entire wall filled with Pasta - it’s a breathtaking vista - and they scrimp on space for Cate’s chocolate. Heartless Bastards!

I had a half-hearted conversation with the Spar person to see if there was any particular reason they did not restock some items - but it was a desultory conversation which was never going anywhere and we both parted company feeling unfulfilled.

I now have to scour the city for Cate’s Muesli - (Muffin and I have moved on from our previous desires) and it is simply not good enough.

I have promised viennesewaltz a good Wiener rant in the not too distant future. This is on the way - but I can’t say exactly when.

Don't tease the Panther

Viennese dwarf Panther.

This week’s LoL moment comes courtesy of Glenn Beck - and yes I know he provides more than his fair share - but he’s a really funny guy.

Glenn is issuing a book with his name on it. No he did not write it - there is a ghost writer - but he says that the ideas - such as they are - were his. And what ideas they are.

It is his opportunity to again spew out all the vile poisonous sludge that comprises his daily media offerings which he scatters before the dumb farmyard animals who tune in to hear and see how Adolf Hussein Obama - the Hitlerite, Marxist, Muslim, Kenyan born, Jesus hating desecrator of Christianity, defiler of all that is good in the world and now perpetrator of the largest oil spill in history is going to confiscate all their guns, put them in concentration camps and kill not just their first born but even their second and thirds before he gives the country to the evil illegals who will make all the white people domestic servants and increase the tax rate to 99%. This is after he doubles the prices of Big Macs and Coke. The Heartless Swine!

Media Matters has done an analysis of the farcical plot and the execrable writing and to save you the bother I have read some of this.

It does indeed look like a totally gruesome pile of sludge and is used as an outlet for all the jumbled, fucked up hodgepodge of chicken gizzards and crazy bat shit ideas that infest the steaming festering sludge that in Glenn’s funny little head pass for brains.

One quote sums up the novel. This is in respect of the hero suggesting to a woman that she should not attempt arouse him sexually.

"Suit yourself, lady. I'm telling you right now, you made the rules, but you're playing with fire here. I've got some rules, too, and rule number one is, don't tease the panther."

Brilliant stuff. It does not get any better than that!

But hey - it does not matter what it is - it will be a best seller. All Glenn Beck’s books are best sellers. He has large radio and TV audiences and these knuckleheads buy his books in droves.

Free speech and free enterprise at work in the home of the brave. Would you have it any other way?