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Souths Turn 105 Today

Posted on by Matthew Green

On the 17 January, way back in 1908, the South Sydney District Rugby League Football Club was founded at Redfern Town Hall and Rugby League was born. Nine teams comprised the competition that year. They were, in alphabetical order;

Souths won the inaugural game of Rugby League, held at Birchgrove Oval, by defeating North Sydney 11 points to 7. South Sydney finished as minor premiers that year and went on to win the very first Grand Final by beating Eastern Suburbs 14 points to 12.

Since their auspicious beginnings Souths have gone on to win 20 premierships in total, a Rugby League record in Australia. We have also produced 64 Australian internationals, another record.

In 1925 Souths went through the entire season undefeated. They were the first Rugby League team to do so and are still one of only six teams to have ever achieved that milestone.

In 1951 Souths defeated Manly-Warringah 42 points to 14 in the Grand Final to claim their 13th title. It still remains as the highest score by any team in a Grand Final and the third highest margin. Manly gained some credibility back when they belted the Melbourne Storm 40 points to nil in 2008 😉

The miracle of ’55 saw Souths will eleven straight sudden death games in a row to claim their sixteenth premiership trophy.

The ’60s and ’70s saw four more Grand Final successes for the Rabbitohs, but times have been very lean since. In 2012 Souths finished third, which is their best performance since taking out the minor premiership in 1989.

With the largest membership base of any Sydney team, effective recruitment strategies and strong ties to the indigenous community, the Souths are poised to bring home their 21st premiership trophy.

Glory, Glory to South Sydney and happy birthday to the mighty Rabbitohs.

Birthday

Impending End and the Super Zombie

Posted on by Matthew Green

 

So with the Mayan philosophy allegedly coming to fruition this Friday, and the imminent rising from the grave of our decaying loved ones, I thought I’d pose the question;

What if Superheroes were zombies?

Zombie Heroes

Zombie Robin the wannabe Dark Knight doesn’t worry me whatsoever. A silly kid in spandex tights with a fetish for trapezes and undies on the wrong side of his leggings, is no bigger threat than any other member of the living dead, but how the hell do you outrun the corpsified Flash? Our only hope here is that one of his legs rots off and he becomes the Hobble or perhaps, the Crawl. Actually, you don’t have to be able to outrun the Flash, you just need to be faster than the guy next to you 😉

The Green Lantern is no problem. Zombies are just mindless eating machines, so without the willpower to wield the ring he’s just another shambling walker with an allergy to shotguns.

I won’t even comment on the fact that Wonder Woman still looks hot regardless of the drooling cadaver she has become 😉 However, I’m not sure I want her wrapping the lasso of truth around me.

The guy below could be a bit of a challenge though.zombie_cartoon_characters_02

Batman, or The Zom as he would be known, may only be human, but he is a human with superior strength, agility and a hankering for dark alleys. Lets just hope he’s too busy slugging it out with zombie Joker.

And what about these guys and their cohorts? Yes, Zombie Avengers would make a cool movie. But I’d rather not have a fetid Thor whacking me with his hammer from hell.

MARZOM2001

I wonder whether Wolverine would actually look like a walking corpse or would his mutant healing skills keeping him fresh?

Would Spidey’s webs be decayed upon deployment?

Will the super soldier have the cranial capacity to swing the shield, or can he be brought down like any other man with Kevlar body armor?

Hopefully Jarvis would not allow the putrefied Tony Stark to don the iron suit, but could we actually stop the Necrotastic Four?

Zombies hate fire so I guess the Torch is a no-brainer (pun intended) and Mr. Fantastic can be stopped with a puddle of Supa Glue, or by being tied to a lamp post.

However, an indestructible rock-skin Thing and an invisible zombie!!! Well that’s just downright unsporting.

And what would the jolly green giant say? ‘Hulk smash’ or ‘Hulk eat’?

zombie-hulk

Perhaps with his limited vocabulary all we would hear is ‘Brains’, which would be funny – for about 0.03 of a second.

Unfortunately, the only way to stop the big fella is to wait until he changes back into Bruce Banner.

Or maybe Superman could help?

Unless of course he looks like this, and then we’re all screwed.

Zombie Superman

50 Fascinating Factoids – Part 2

Posted on by Matthew Green

Following on from last weeks round of fascinating fun and frivolity, here are factoids 26 – 50.

26.) The University of Alaska spans four time zones.
Which is why their students are always late to class.

27.) The tooth is the only part of the human body that cannot heal itself.

28.) In ancient Greece, tossing an apple to a girl was a traditional proposal of marriage. Catching it meant she accepted.
Throwing it back at your head meant she wanted a food fight.

29.) Time-Warner Corporation paid $28 million for the copyright to the song Happy Birthday.
Good luck collecting those royalties, knucleheads.

30.) Intelligent people have more zinc and copper in their hair.
And they don’t work for Time-Warner.

31.) A comet’s tail always points away from the sun.

32.) The Swine Flu vaccine in 1976 caused more death and illness than the disease it was intended to prevent.
That’ll do pig, that’ll do.

33.) Caffeine increases the power of aspirin and other painkillers, that is why it is found in some medicines.

34.) The military salute is a motion that evolved from medieval times, when knights in armor raised their visors to reveal their identity.

35.) If you get into the bottom of a well or a tall chimney and look up, you can see stars, even in the middle of the day.
Go jump in a well and test it out. Go on, I’ll wait 😉

36.) When a person dies, hearing is the last sense to go. The first sense lost is sight.
Ergo, don’t sit around the hospital bed saying ‘is he dead yet?’

37.) In ancient times strangers shook hands to show that they were unarmed.
Now we do it to spread Swine Flu 😉

38.) Strawberries are the only fruits whose seeds grow on the outside.

39.) Avocados have the highest calories of any fruit at 240 calories per hundred and fifty grams.

40.) The moon moves about two inches away from the Earth each year.
Byee!

41.) The Earth gets 100 tons heavier every day due to falling space dust.
Well that explains the layer coating my credenza.

42.) Due to earth’s gravity it is impossible for mountains to be higher than 15,000 meters.

43.) Eucalyptus leaves do NOT get koalas high.
Are you sure?

44.) Soldiers do not march in step when going across bridges because they could set up a vibration which could be sufficient to knock the bridge down.

45.) Everything weighs one percent less at the equator.
Sweet! I’m heading up there with some scales tomorrow.

46.) For every extra kilogram carried on a space flight, 530 kg of excess fuel are needed at lift-off.

47.) The letter J does not appear anywhere on the periodic table of the elements.
Neither does Q.

48.) The first testicular guard, the “Cup,” was used in Hockey in 1874 and the first helmet was used in 1974. That means it only took 100 years for men to realize that their brain is also important.
Most men don’t think with their brains. Its the little head that makes all the crucial decisions.

49.) Mickey Mouse is known as “Topolino” in Italy.
Goofy is known as “Silvio Berlusconi”.

50.) Women are actually better drivers than men.
Yeah, right 😉

50 Fascinating Factoids – Part 1

Posted on by Matthew Green

My mate Mort, a true gentleman of Pittsburgh, sent me most of these tidbits. Surely a distinguished statesman from the good ol’ US of A wouldn’t fib?

1.) If you are right handed, you will tend to chew your food on the right side of your mouth. If you are left handed, you will tend to chew your food on the left side of your mouth.
If you are ambidextrous does that mean you dribble?

2.) To make half a kilo of honey, bees must collect nectar from over 2 million individual flowers.
No wonder the little buggers always look exhausted.

3.) Heroin is the brand name of morphine once marketed by ‘Bayer‘.
And to think, this was 1895 – way before Woodstock.

4.) People in nudist colonies play volleyball more than any other sport.
Hopefully they also wear a lot of sunscreen.

5.) Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952, but he declined.

6.) Astronauts can’t belch – there is no gravity to separate liquid from gas in their stomachs.
They can flatulate though, and there’s nothing more horrid than a fart in a space suit.

7.) Ancient Roman, Chinese and German societies often used urine as mouthwash.
Ugh

8.) The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows. In the Renaissance era, it was fashion to shave them off!

9.) Because of the speed at which Earth moves around the Sun, it is impossible for a solar eclipse to last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds.

10.) The night of January 20 is “Saint Agnes’s Eve”, which is regarded as a time when a young woman dreams of her future husband.
It is also a poem by Keats

11.) A googol (not Google) is actually the common name for a number with one hundred zeros.
A googolplex is 1 followed by a googol of zeros, or 1 with a million zeros following it. It has nothing to do with a popular search engine.

12.) It takes glass one million years to decompose, which means it never wears out and can be recycled an infinite amount of times!

13.) Gold is the only metal that doesn’t rust, even if it’s buried in the ground for thousands of years.
Hmm, I didn’t think that any precious metals actually rusted. Rust is peculiar to iron and compounds made with iron. Regardless, I will not be burying my vast stash of gold bars any time soon 😉

14.) Your tongue is the only muscle in your body that is attached at only one end.

15.) If you stop getting thirsty, you need to drink more water. When a human body is dehydrated its thirst mechanism shuts off.

16.) Each year 2,000,000 smokers either quit smoking or die of tobacco-related diseases.

17.) Zero is the only number that cannot be represented by Roman numerals.
i – i = ?

18.) Kites were used in the American Civil War to deliver letters and newspapers.
That must have been one long piece of string.

19.) The song, Auld Lang Syne, is sung at the stroke of midnight in almost every English-speaking country in the world to bring in the new year.
Not sure why though. It is a stupid song.

20.) Drinking water after eating reduces the acid in your mouth by 61 percent.

21.) Peanut oil is used for cooking in submarines because it doesn’t smoke unless it’s heated above 160°C.
However, if you’re allergic to peanuts do not become a submariner.

22.) Airports at higher altitudes require a longer airstrip due to lower air density.

23.) The banana cannot reproduce itself. It can be propagated only by the hand of man.
So how did it get here in the first place?

24.) The roar that we hear when we place a seashell next to our ear is not the ocean, but rather the sound of blood surging through the veins in the ear.
Really! I just figured the little crab had his tiny television turned up too loud.

25.) Nine out of every 10 living things live in the ocean.
Like crabs with loud television sets.

Tune in next week for more Mort madness with, Fascinating Factoids – Part 2

Inner City Oink

Posted on by Matthew Green

I’ve written before about the pneuma of the urban dweller. Smokers desperately inhaling their last puff of poison before boarding the train to work. Boofheads going nun-bowling and smelly swearing students show boating in front of schoolgirls. That’s all part and parcel of life in the big city and it provides a vibrant backdrop for the upcoming eight hours of mundane office work most people endure. Public transport however, is not the only place in Sydney inhabited by ‘colourful’ characters.

I like to go for a run in the mornings and, whilst my usual route crosses some unpleasant roads, the overall experience is generally peaceful and serene. Today however was a little different.

Wyndham Street in Alexandria is a busy thoroughfare of commuter vehicles, buses and trucks heading for the fringe of the city and the north. From 6:00am onwards there is a steady stream of carbon monoxide belching from blackened exhausts and a cacophony of horns honking for no apparent reason. It’s enough to make you sick – literally. In the midst of this motorised chaos was a cyclist, weaving in and out of traffic, with headphones in his ears and no helmet on his head. Was he drunk, on drugs or just plain stupid – I don’t know. We call people like that ‘temporary Australians.’

A few minutes later I am jogging down Bourke Street in Waterloo and another cyclist almost cleans me up on the footpath. I ride a bike too and I don’t like battling for space with cars, so I understand the desire to get off the road. However, what you may not know dear reader is that the footpath I was on runs parallel to a purpose-built bike lane. Yes there is a lane dedicated to push bikes. Only push bikes! No cats, dogs, kids, cars, camels, goats or joggers are allowed on it. Just cyclists. Yet this fool figured he was better off bashing into pedestrians. Seriously fellow riders, it’s no wonder motorists hate us.

After a cursory spray of bad language from yours truly, which was met with a flippant flipping of the bird from the two-wheeled twat, I headed back towards Redfern Park. As I enjoyed a long cool drink from the bubbler I felt a dog snuffling around my feet. It’s a very family friendly park full of people and pets so I leaned down to give the little fellow a pat. But this weren’t no canine. Instead of a cute little puppy there was a huge black pig snorting and lapping at the water I had splashed onto the ground.

Pigs don’t scare me, but seeing one in the city is certainly a strange sight, especially one so at ease with humans all around. I plucked up some courage and gingerly touched his head. It was covered in thick bristly fur that felt more like a scrubbing-brush than the soft hair of a typical domesticated animal. His curly tailed wiggled. Suddenly high-pitched whistle shattered the serenity and Bacon Sandwich (or whatever his name was) oinked and shot off across the grass to play with his owner. He had a lead. He chased tennis balls. He wrestled with the other dogs. Clearly Porky was a pooch, or at least he thought he was. With a fat and happy hog frolicking in the fountain I headed home to shower and go to work.

The train ride was largely uneventful, until it began rattling its way out of Wynyard Station. A couple of girls, with foundation like Liquid Paper and teeth bleached beyond a whiter shade of pale, plopped their dainty derrieres in the chair opposite me and proceeded to critique my fellow passengers. With high-pitched squeaky voices and an annoying penchant for finishing their sentences with an inflection as if posing a question, where no question existed, these two little bimbos from Ella Baché squawked on about how grey hair makes you look old. Its called DISTINGUISHED ladies. Thankfully they got off at Milson’s Point and gave everyone’s ears a rest.

As I arrived at my destination I reflected on how my day had begun.

Out of the idiot, the ignoramus, the bimbos and the swine; piglet was the nicest person.