Harmstrong

I will not be watching Lance Armstrong's interview with Oprah.

Why?

Because I don't want to hear him say 'sorry'. It is far too late for that now. 

"No question is off-limits", we've heard Ms. Winfrey say in a grab to attract viewers. Highly dubious that, considering the interview will not be broadcast live, nor will it appear in full. Maybe Lance needs to practice some carefully rehearsed lines of contrition, sincerity and regret. And tears. If a full confession could apparently land him in jail, you can bet we'll hear the usual repeatable platitudes. They will go something like this:

"I've only got myself to blame."

"I've hated myself for not telling the truth."

And the classic non-apology: "I understand that I've hurt a lot of people..."

Well even if he does utter an apology, it would be entirely for the wrong reasons. The fact that he is being interviewed by Oprah, a close friend and long-time supporter of Lance, instead of a judicial body, is a cop-out and is providing air-time and significant celebrity gravitas to a man who simply doesn't deserve it.

nydailynews.com

Supporters may cry admonishments to those who are interrogating the issue. "Trash him all you want, he won the Tour de France seven fucking times. And if everyone was doping like they say, then he was still the best of the dopers. It doesn't take away from the training required or the mental and physical exhaustion and blah bleh bluh..." This kind of argument seems to me tantamount to Lance's guarded admissions. It is stating, in opaque roundabout ways, that if one wants to be the best (and even merely being considered to compete with the best) in the world for cycling, one must ingest (or inject) performance-enhancing drugs. 

I suppose that corruption is inherently institutionalised and entrenched at all levels, not just in sports, so it might be unfair to victimise Lance so much. Scratch any surface and you'll find all sorts of disingenuous aspects. But this is different. Lance is such a larger-than-life character that it's more like the public are watching a character from a fictitious story fall from grace. That he has made himself (not to mention his charity donations and awareness-raising for cancer and research) so frightfully conspicuous over the years compounds the need for justice. Even if that justice comes in the form of a sentence that you'll never hear leaving the lips of Mr. Armstrong: "I will donate every cent I make from now on to reimbursing the funds that have been fraudulently paid to me."

Maybe I'll tune in after all.

The Guy With the Handlebar Moustache

Today is the first day of Decembeard. While many males will celebrate this day by shaving off the hairy caterpillar that has taken residence on their upper lip and grown heartily over the last month, I use today as a reminder that November need not be the only month of the year in which men can assert their neglected masculinity. Strident ownership of a 'stache, and the proud displaying of, can make a man feel (and look) truly invincible. And I've come to accept that I will be stared at, even ridiculed at times. These are facts. But those who feel it in them to point and/or laugh behind my back: the joke is on you.

I found a short story when searching online for some beard wax, and  I will reproduce it here. Please note that while this is a work of fiction, it speaks from the heart of every man with a handlebar moustache.

I don’t know you, but you know me.

I’m that guy with the handlebar mustache.

When you spot me, you nudge your buddy and say “Hey… look.” (While talking to your brother the next weekend you recall my face and say “you should’ve seen this guy with a handlebar mustache who was working at Chuckwagon Charlie’s.” And he replies, “oh yeah, remember that guy with the handlebar mustache playing horseshoes at the company picnic?” Indeed you remember. I do too.)

You see me at the grocery store. We pass going opposite ways down an aisle and you spot my handlebar mustache. When we pass again on the next aisle, you’ve prepared your kid for my handlebar mustache. He silently points at my face as you pass.

But I’m used to you and your kid. I’ve heard all the jokes, all the remarks.

“Hey look, it’s Rollie Fingers!” you say to your girlfriend, just loud enough for me to hear.

She notices my handlebar mustache, giggles then turns to you and says, “what’s Rollie Fingers?”

Sometimes you even stop me.

“I love the mustache; what do you call it?” you ask as your index finger makes a swirling motion up around your mouth.

“It’s a handlebar mustache,” I say, calmly, politely, recognizing your intended sincerity.

Do you really love my handlebar mustache? Would you grow one yourself?

You probably like its oddity. 

I’ve thought of shaving it 25 times (usually upon waking up from the dream where I’m trying to run but am held back by the handlebar of my handlebar mustache hooked around my waist.)

More than once I’ve thought that instead of being that guy with the handlebar mustache, I could be some other guy. Like that guy who always has a toothpick in his mouth. Or that guy with the beret. Or that guy with the long white beard and the bushy white hair who’s constantly getting the Kenny Rogers treatment.

But I always find myself stuck to the handlebar mustache.

I’ve thought of ways to better utilize it. I’ve thought about walking around on stilts at an amusement park, smiling and handing out plastic handlebar mustaches to youngsters. Or I’ve thought of customizing a bike to have handlebar mustache handlebars. I could ride around state fairs and be that guy at the state fair on the bike with the handlebar mustache handlebars.

I look in the mirror every morning and know that I could end it at any moment and become just a guy with a mustache.

I can live with the jokes, the comments, the stares. I can live with a style that — let’s face it — hit its peak in the mid-1800s.

Two snips and it would all go away. An insignificant amount of hair would lie unknowingly innocent on my bathroom sink. I wouldn’t feel a thing. But in the end I would no longer be that guy with the handlebar mustache.

by David Holub

(retrieved from http://www.johnnyamerica.com/archives/2005/08/03/14.49.07/)(edited 1.12.2012 Stewart Wallace)

I couldn't have said it better myself. Particularly, the "two snips" idea, that we have it in us the power to end it all in a matter of moments. But it is the fact that we do not choose to end it, despite weathering the slings and arrows of a judgmental public. When the handlebar returns to the front of the fashion pack, you saw it HERE first. 

We are the children of the Revmolution.

Another day, another outrage

Victims, of any kind, have a right to absolute justice and I and many welcome the Royal Commission into the Catholic church and the perennial sexual abuse of their younger and more vulnerable charges. To my surprise, some bishops have actually welcomed the inquiry. If we are serious about tackling this execrable scourge then no doubt it is the right thing to do and should not be confined to an investigation into the Catholic church only. It should be broad and far-reaching. But it has finally come to this and I'm concerned about the over-representation of abusers and pedophiles in the CC. Maybe it's because CC leaders find it too easy to "pretend" to be celibate. Perhaps they were deviants prior to entering the CC and did so because they saw their victims as easy-pickings, as abhorrent as it sounds. In which instance the royal commission must extend to any institution where children are left at the mercy of groups of male figures of authority and are, essentially, unsupervised and unregulated (boy scouts, juvenile detention centres, boarding schools, etc). And as a result of non-reporting, the culture has managed to exist for....... well how long is a piece of string (or a string of rosary beads)? The culture has begot a culture of its own. The church has taken it upon itself to turn a blind eye to the cruelty and dehumanization inflicted on these victims, in the name of God. If this isn't a glimmering sample of how religion poisons everything then I haven't grown an overly-manly-man mustache this month. 

hdwallpapersarena.com

Without any segue I'd like express my opinion on the government's plan to have all Australian students speaking an Asian language by what was it, 2015? 2020? 2050? I can't remember because I like to shelve things that are ludicrous into the less accessible recesses of my memory. Business conducted in any other language (not just an Asian one) works up to a certain point, but BIG business is always conducted in English. I read somewhere that to become a fluent speaker of Mandarin Chinese would take a student 20 hours a week for their entire schooling life. In other words, torture. Given the chance I'm sure only a quaint percentage of students would elect to study it. We should instead be giving a massive bloody Gonski and look to fix up our own English education in schools. But it's the Asian Century, our beloved Media has been telling us lately. Umm, no it isn't. It's been the Asian Century ever since Asia existed. Again, Australia needs to get over itself: we are not better than these guys and all we can ever hope for is to play catch up and not fall too far behind. The rollout of the NBN should go a long way to support this game of catch-up. Both major parties as well as the Greens agree with it. If we show a lack of conviction to embrace communications technology then we lay bare our ignorance and complacency for our intellectually superior neighbours to see. We need to be able to show them that, as a rich and imaginative nation, we are at the forefront of thinking and of business transformation. I can hear you sniggering. The total blowout cost for the plan is now over $30 billion and we've yet to see it in most places. Say that again slowly.

gawker.com

PSYchotic Le Tour Italia

"Who, me? Nah, the whole world has got it wrong." - Lance Armstrong. (not a real quote).

telegraph.co.uk

Now this is just starting to get sad. Denial is so unbecoming of a professional anybody, and the mendacity has been dripping from Lance like perspiration. Apparently he's removed "Le Tour de France Winner" from his Twitter bio, but still no whiff of a confession to doping. I wonder what information all the runners-up are changing on their own bios. Can anyone name any of the second-place Tour de France finishers from the Armstrong years? Or are they all just as guilty and that's why they aren't raising their hands? There's an ominous absence of the chinking sound of $ hitting the counter. The biggest cheat: no. The worst cheat: nup. The Greatest Cheat: nail struck firmly on head. Nobody wants a supernormal explanation about the whole thing, since I would wager most folk have already made up their minds about him, Lance (we must be careful and consider the amount of funds he's helped raise for cancer research). But a terse admission would be nice. 

At least the blame has not been shifted, as in the case of the six poor Italian scientists on charges of manslaughter for "overly reassuring" comments to the townsfolk of L'Aquila. You've simply got to be kidding me. Was it a requirement of the scientists to be trained in political communication, to mitigate the seismic concerns? They were clearly not educated for proper felicitous information transmission and this was their downfall. Contradict the boss and lose your job; don't contradict the boss and go to jail. It seems in this instance the politics of the situation failed them (but moreover those that perished in L'Aquila) spectacularly.

boston.com

On the subject of failure (and to follow up from my last post) I couldn't go past a look at the Australian visit of K-pop mega- (for the nonce) star PSY (real name Park Jae-Sung, which would make his name, to us, Mr. Jay Park). Winning over audiences here wasn't a difficult task for the bloke but the visitation wasn't without its controversies. The dummy was spat because of a question by an interviewer about a drug incident from far-distant 2001. Innocuous as it was, my impression is less tempered by the drugs and more by pre-Gangnam Style discourse, like he's now famous enough to cross the threshold into the realm of Untouchable. Cry me a river, Jay. This time next year everyone will have forgotten your name and your little dance.

The Slipper of Shame

It is so hard to decide what to be outraged about these days. Who can blame the mainstream media for not knowing which triviality to beat up out of all proportion? 

Look no further than Peter Slipper and his "vile" texts about female genitalia and alleged harassment of a former staffer, which culminated in his resignation last week. Most of the media missed what was actually written in these texts. If the description of the content is as vile as they say, then I'm one of the vilest creatures I know. It would appear as a serious condemnation of a significant proportion of the male population, as the ol' bearded clam (or in the case of Slipper, shell-less mussels), appears in many open conversations around the world without any need of furtivity. According to anyone with two brain cells to rub together, Slipper's private messages are none of our business and should not impact on his ability to do his job. So what if he made an off-colour remark - it does not make him unfit for public office, and if all our politicians were judged this way then we'll soon be seeing lots of empty seats in parliament. 

Grow up, pathetic children of Australian media. If a vagina cannot be described by likening it to a mollusk, then we've lost a few centuries of progress. 

I have another question to ask. Does anyone believe that Alan Jones's comments about the Prime Minister's late father were deserving of headlines for a straight fortnight? Moreover, the resultant fallout and hypocrisy from Jones in labelling the cyber-terrorists out to ruin him is equally petty and childish. The way Jones is carrying on he’ll be nailing himself to a cross any moment now. Crikey.com.au commenter Keith summed it up tersely: The mob mobilising shock jock is complaining about a mob being mobilised. But back to my question: who bloody cares. 

In entertainment, I'm late to the party. Gangnam Style by Psy has finally reached #1 on the charts and the youtube clip has reached half a BILLION views. I won't be viewing him on TV as unfortunately he'll be appearing on The X Factor and Sunrise next week. This is a complete soap opera social media phenomenon that cannot be avoided, try as you might (I certainly did, and failed). The rise of Psy is owed somewhat to a carefully managed pop-campaign,  but moreso to the capabilities of users of social media to share and promote these otherwise little-known quirky acts, and it is for this reason that I have found myself ensnared. The teenage me, drenched in angst and Slipknot, would have me shot. But I'm honestly glad to see Korea get the spotlight for any reason that isn't (a) Samsung, and (b) complications with the North. The unsuspected consequence of course is that this surge in K-pop interest may lead to everything else that is endearing about Korea being overshadowed by the horsey-dance. Or it might have the opposite effect. Time will tell for the ROK Tourism office.