Has it come to this?
Qantas selling the pride of the fleet, the flag bearer, the internationally renowned City of Tamworth to the deviant Persians? (Qantas planes sold to Iran).
Oh the perfidy, the vile depravity. Now the pond can live with the City of Mildura and the City of Geraldton being sold to the Persians. They're small, irrelevant towns of no real consequence to the national psyche.
But Tamworth is the country music capital of the country, the quintessential definition of what it is to be Australian, unlike the alien and the 'other' and the foreign Scott Morrison warns us about so bravely -people to be feared because they're ruining our way of life, and the right to get fat on American soda and fast food.
Aban Air, the Iranian airline which took the keys to what had been the City of Tamworth, wanted to fly it between its base in the Iranian capital Tehran and Bangkok in Thailand.
There it is, in black and white, a direct link between the Persians and the sanction busting City of Tamworth. Is it now called the City of Ahmadinejad?
Oh sure Qantas has tried to explain - Qantas on defensive after jumbo ended up in Iran - but there will be a hard rain to fall for this ...
Why it's almost enough to make the pond turn to the Bible ...
Second thoughts, how about we just turn to meditating on assorted religious follies as befits a Sunday (unless you place the sabbath on the Saturday, but really can we cope with all forms of religious eccentricity? Next thing you know you'll want the pond walking everywhere, dressed in a quaint period hat).
Perhaps we should first stop in at the Church of the Footy Boofhead, which regularly conducts services on a Sunday?
Or perhaps not, since it might cause deep anxiety in the casual pond reader, along with bewilderment and perplexity.
There's been another blow to the pious today, or at least the Church of the Sharkie, an extreme form of the cult that lurks in the Shire:
It's all there in Shark Attack, yet another disruption to Sunday services.
What do do?
Well the faithful always turn to St Gus of the Gould, the patron saint of boofheads, who is always on hand to soothe and placate and explain why footy is the greatest Sunday service of all, and sure enough he's at it again, leading a holy trinity of defiant souls:
St Gus of the Gould presides over the Nine network televisual feasts for Footy Boofheads who can't make it to the church for the service
These days the service is distinguished by the patronage of St Tom of the Waterhouses, willing to take bets on anything, from racing flies to how quickly a bicep can grow using peptides.
Now the irony is that the Church of the Sharkie has long been a dismal cult, because no matter what's been attempted, it's been a loser. Hand it to Lance Armstrong, at least he didn't get caught, until he finally decided to give up and confess, and in the meantime, he won big, well at least until he lost.
But St Gus of the Gould, forthright as ever, has a solution to lead his band of followers out of the wilderness:
Unfortunately, with all that's happening in rugby league, everyone has questions and wants answers. I am sick to the stomach of this whole affair and the damage it is causing - all the way from the hysterical press conference in early February that unfairly tarnished the reputation of our country around the world and the reputations of our sporting stars past and present, right though to the outlandish statements and misinformation being reported today. None of this is helping one bit.
To my mind, this whole process requires investigation. Perhaps one day this will happen.
But I humbly suggest that for the time being, everyone should just take a deep breath and exercise their right to silence. (Real offence in all the hype is a flawed process)
Yep, it's silence, and innocence, and innocence, and innocence, or at least guilt until proven, and just try to prove it, ya dirty dogs, and it's lawyers at ten paces, and the Bart Simpson defence, I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove a thing, and if I did do it, it was the club officials that made me do it.
You have to feel sorry for some of the boofheads in service to the church. You want to inject me with what? Oh sure, feel free, just following employer orders ...
So hard for bears of little brain, in thrall to a large honey pot.
St Gus of the Gould asks many questions in his coverage of the greatest service at all, but seems inherently confused in his defiance. Witness his line:
To my mind, this whole process requires investigation. Perhaps one day this will happen.
Which somehow magically transmutes into this by close of column:
I am sure that whatever the final result of these investigations, rugby league will come out of this a stronger and better game.
Hopefully this will all be over soon.
Perhaps he should be re-dubbed St Gus of the Strident Cliche.
Meanwhile, the faithless keep trying to explain why there's no smoke and no fire, though suddenly a bunch of church of the Sharkies officials were stood down.
Yes, if you've got a Sunday to spare, you can meditate on why it was deemed necessary for players to be given regular injections, in Sharks allege cover-up.
Perhaps what was most interesting during the week leading up to the service was the righteous indignation of the Church of the Sharkies that they'd discovered the dobber who'd dibber dobbed them in.
Why if he'd said nothing, everything would be hunky dory, and church services could go on as usual and the faithful could keep on worshipping their drug-infested, gambling-addicted, gambling industry-supported false gods.
It's enough to make the faithless avert their eyes, or turn towards Rome, because that's where the genuinely exciting action is taking place.
Why it's only a few more sleeps before the church will unwrap its very next pope, who, thanks to the likes of Martin Luther, Calvin, Knox and even traditionalist Catholis, we know as the head of the whore of Babylon (wiki it here for a Sunday meditation).
It takes a calm, canny, completely scientific mind to wield together recent events in the church and climate change, but by golly, in his week old blatherings for the Sunday Terror, The Holy Father Retires, Cardinal Pell manages it:
Bazinga, take that heathens and climate scientists.
It turns out that Pell attends to the weather at all times, and no matter what the circumstance or predicament of the church:
...While the church, the ship of Peter, had known some days of fair breezes, sunshine and good catches of fish, it also encountered rough waters and bad winds during his pontificate.
Strip that saint hood of the strident cliche from St. Gus and give it to St. George!
He preached a beautiful sermon explaining that God is always with us, even when He seems absent.
Or even when She seems absent.
Sadly there seems to be no rest for the prattling Cardinal, as he's been put on a hit list, as you can read in George Pell on clergy sex abuse victims' hit list.
But, but, billy goat but, the world of climate science could fall into complete disarray without the Pellists' splendid insights into extreme weather events.
What's even worse is that the poor old Pellists copped a drubbing from Rome, as you can read in Vatican says Cardinal George Pell not 'media savvy'.
All that furious scribbling for the Sunday Terror but he's not media savvy?
But the pond did love the frock and the leer to camera shot used to illustrated the story:
Meanwhile, it's the fashion to fill in the time before 'new pope eve' playing party games, like guessing the wealth of the church, and discussing how many pieces of silver it scored for recognising the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini.
According to Roman Catholic Church's wealth impossible to calculate, the $92 million has grown to a tidy $655 million. And you can read the story of that figure here at The Guardian in How the Vatican built a secret property empire using Mussolini's millions ...
Nice work if you can get it, peddling the tales of an impoverished carpenter about camels and rich people and eyes of needles and the joys of poverty...
All this fuss and hoo ha allows very little time to meditate with the angry Sydney Anglicans this Sunday, but we should note Michael Jensen's poignant concern for one Dorothy Carey, given dysentery, mental breakdown and death by fever serving the missionary madness of her husband, William Carey in India (The tragedy of Dorothy Carey).
Jensen cluck clucks and tut tuts about Carey sacrificing his wife, but never quite reaches the conclusion that the world might have been a better place if Bill Carey had stayed at home looking after the kids while Dorothy could head into the temple to preach about a better world for women ...
You know, the angry Sydney Anglicans can ask poignant questions like Why don't we have more Asian Senior Ministers, but never seem to be able to wonder, why don't we have more Senior Women Ministers preaching in the temple? (Anglo-can?)
Perhaps because they're still stuck with Adam and Eve as a guide to male-female relationships.
For sheer pleasurable befuddlement, there's surely no greater fun than reading Answering QandA, wherein you get the sense that even the dimmest of angry Anglicans realised that Dr. John Dickson got taken to the cleaners by cosomologist Lawrence Krauss (as you can see here).
It turns out that QandA might not be a decent tool for evangelists, and the conversion rate for Dickson might have been low, so it's important to work out how to harass your friends, neighbours and workmates by using the program as a springboard to indoctrinate them in the ways and wonders of the angries:
Apologetic people?
The pond will believe that when it sees angry Sydney Anglicans apologise for their unseemly abuse of gays and women, and apologise for their sordid support for the victimisation of gays in Africa, forced to live unbeautiful lives before the pharisees and the hypocrites ...
Well, if we're going to abuse the concept of the Gentiles by appropriating its meaning (the nations distinct from the Jewish people), by golly the pond can abuse the concept of the pharisees ... (the Jews who thought they were a different class of Jews, much like the angry Anglicans think they're bloody exceptional people with their false Uriah Heep style humility) ...
So there it is.
You have the church of the boofhead, or the church of the Pellists or the church of the angry Anglicans. Or any other number of services to while away a Sunday. Before Tamworth became a part of the Persian empire, the pond always enjoyed a Sunday service of a nice cup of tea (black, no sugar, and certainly no milk) and a nice sponge cake.
May you enjoy your choice of service this Sunday, and may your god go with you, and may She keep you off the drugs and the gambling and away from extreme weather events and wild-eyed missionaries of the angry kind ...
Jeez Dorothy, I don't know about this. You just can't poke fun at this cult, it's just not done.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the injections weren't for physical performance enhancement, they were an attempt to raise the IQ of the game. But, as the old saying goes, somewhat paraphrased "You can inject a player with whatever but you can't make them think" which leads one to the obvious conclusion that the drugs were totally ineffective.
The real problem with this cult and their brethren across the country is gambling as the Crime Commission report explicitly states. And both the NRL and the AFL are ducking that one as fast as they can. Anyone would think that they and their broadcasters have a financial tie with the bookies (hollow laugh).