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Monday 7 April 2008

Rules and Instructions 7: How Not To Watch Any Sport -- by DocShoot

Avoidance rules and principles for the Sports Disadvbantafged (basically physically too stuffed to participate but still helplessly addicted to watching)…

1. THE AWAY RULE:

Live in the Southern Hemisphere…
The majority of key events will always be after midnight and in the wrong season…

2. THE TOTAL RUINATION RULE:

Have hordes of small children - your own and others - running all over your house…
Surprise Sub-rule: Destruction of Weekend sport you had pencilled in for watching – just when you finally remembering to get hold of the TV guide you hid on top of the cupboard and planned it all you find children in your lap…
Lost Horizon Sub-Rule: Video player – the one you used to tune the telly with is now totally confused by accidental weird and untraceable programming done by stubby little butter-covered fingers
Chubby Little Chewy Sub-Rule: The telly is now stuffed anyway - because somebody chewed the buttons off the channel changer and the emergency biro which could poke the button stubs into action has disappeared - the previous telly which actually had manual controls as well (even though the controls got clogged up with honey and wheat germ – they still worked sometimes) is being used by the child minding centre whilst theirs is being fixed… I need a medium ball point urgently…
The No Alternatives Sub-Rule: The radio is now out because all the high quality recyclable alkaline batteries are somewhere at the bottom of the chook food bin under 200kgs of grain and mash and I promised at christmas never to use horrible disposable ones ever again for the planet… and the radio wall-cord got chewed through that day mrs williams dropped her 3yo off for an hour and we didn’t see her again until the pub closed… the car radio might have been an option but the peanut butter sandwhich was never properly fished out of it and it makes an awful crackling…
The Last Resort Fading Rule: The TV guide (lifeline if you have a friend with a telly that works) has just now got itself torn into shreds during the demolition of the book ‘Walk With the Animals’ and nobody knows where the sticky tape is any more…
The Sanity Clause: The chance of getting to the club to watch at least one game is now gone this weekend since the car is now fully booked and besides can I mind the youngest who endlessly poohs his nappy and if you get time could you look at the leaf guards on the guttering and… sorry, there ain't no sanity clause

3. THE MY MONEY IS TOO HEAVY RULE:

Support a team which has the slightest chance of having a win…
Principle: the gods may grant you a glimpse (albeit in replay) of any game your side is destined to lose, but you may only read about your wins in the print medium after a news commentator has already spoilt the result…
Sub Rule – the tease and tease again followed by despair:
the house will magically empty for you and the telly will magically fire up when two uninteresting teams are competing in the Kafiristan B-grade shuttlecock semis, or amateur horseshoes between two Florida retirement homes with commentary in translation…
and worse still, a side you cannot bear will always be available for viewing…
and worse than all that, if your side is winning and you manage to catch a glimpse of the game live through a RetravisionTV outlet window while holding the shopping, brushing flies away and wrestling three little children into submission with dripping ice creams and you pray that she will be a little longer looking at shoes, your side will immediately slump and start to get trashed while you watch …

4. THE PRECIOUS SOUVENIR GRAND FINAL SCARF RULE:

What you get for stashing your club paraphenalia somewhere around the house…
Rule: It will pop up to shame you every time your side has been humiliated,
However, at half time when you are winning it is nowhere to be found… the second half can be largely wasted in searching unless you actually do find the precious scarf and hat and get back to the telly screen… and when you do you will find Bindy’s jungle clubhouse has taken over the transmission waves and serious trouble lies ahead… or else your side has slipped back into the same kind of useless losing torpor they always display when you are watching

5 – 8 inclusive. THE BLIND FREDDY’S STUPIDITY RULE:

Marry a Sports ignoramus
OH NO!!!
Rule: all sports lovers will be won by charming and caring attitudes and witty intellectual badinage and fantastic sex life and forget forget forget to ask the all important most critical question of all until it’s too late… then discover one is expected to discuss the latest dissertation on Keats and Irish Political History whilst the first ten minutes of the match ticks by in the back of your head and you are wondering who is on the bench and… Yes of course I am listening dear…

9. THE TEN MILLENNIA I SPENT ON MARS RULE:

Live in some ridiculously remote paradise where the locals don’t understand your sport.
Also known as The Ultimate Sacrifice Rule: usually for work or love, sometimes for escape or other desperate reasons one may find oneself living in a place where civilisation has not yet arrived:
Results in frustrated sports lover having to wear earplugs for weeks and not look at any news or results or anything, until a couple of precious videos arrive in brown wrapping paper and a night is booked with the only other cultured person on that part of the planet in front of their telly which still works on any channel other than childrens approved (a night married up with a sickie from work the next day)… and videos carefully to be played in the correct order…
only to discover that the wrong games have been sent and your supposedly civilised new chum actually follows a poisonous and prohibited team and some very difficult decisions / compromises present themselves…

10. THE CONTINUAL DISILLUSIONMENT RULE:

Believe that there is something inherently ennobling in sport and that you will find it rubbing off onto yourself by watching and being elated…
Also known as Tinkerbell’s Pixie Dust Rule;
Power and flight, the dreams of the sports watcher, suddenly wear off mid flight, and another urgent dose is always needed to keep the self aloft but it’s so hard to get… especially if you follow a shite team and your next best is only mid way on the ladder…
And worse still if your main hero gets traded away… ooh the pain of rule 10, the pain… ooh the pain…

46 comments:

Zephirine said...

Doc sent this with a nice coloured background and graphical trimmings, but I couldn't get Blogger to read them.... grr..

Anonymous said...

Doc - Have you set a webcam up in my South London home and used it to research this piece?

Fantastically funny for everyone for whom it isn't awesomely accurate.

Thanks Doc!

Anonymous said...

I haven't even read this in full but I am smiling and feeling warm and fuzzy!

Anonymous said...

Read it all, and can't decide whether to laugh or cry.
Brilliant, doc, just brilliant.

Think I'm laughing more than crying.

Anonymous said...

Wrote something about a hero here
http://www.thegoogly.com/

DoctorShoot said...

Having given Docette a gleaming new Tshirt to sleep in I may just have bought myself a couple of hours over the next few weeks...
but the Swans have just won two in a row so I guess they are due to lose...

OK OK let me see...

Saturday night 7.10pm in Sydney should be on here about 8.30pm so:
If I cook Docette and the elves some tucker early and do baths and read stories and get a top video out for Docette and sneak the old tiny telly into the spare bedroom....

Anonymous said...

All you need is Bread of Heaven. Solves all ills. And That's How You Watch Sport. Be Welsh, and Sing!!

offsideintahiti said...

Strangely familiar, Doc:

"Live in the Southern Hemisphere…"

Check. I've missed practically everything this season.


"Have hordes of small children - your own and others - running all over your house…"

Check. And only one of that half-dozen is actually mine.


"Marry a Sports ignoramus
OH NO!!!"

OH YES!!! She's useless. Check.


"Live in some ridiculously remote paradise"

Well OK, but does that really make up for it? Check.


"And worse still if your main hero gets traded away"

Better not get into childhood traumas. That nearly put me off football for good. How can you trade people? How can people leave THEIR club?

Well done, Doc, I'm angry now. Off to chew on a grapefruit.

Anonymous said...

Made a cup of tea - thought this would be the place to come back to.

Why isn't it? Why am I just crying?

DoctorShoot said...

yes Offie
adventures in paradise with sport on a local level... touch footy is our biggest go here and for all ages though it is on par with lawn bowls for spectators... tennis and squash played badly... surfing...
oh dear... do I have to participate to enjoy..?

perhaps being a well catered to spectator is for the city dwellers along with opera and fruits from all nations...

might join you in a scotch mimi...

guitougoal said...

Great piece doc, I am used to shitty teams, funny what they can do for you, they may turn a gloomy day into a perfect day just by winning.

DoctorShoot said...

Guito
Yes it's true that the elation one gets from winning is multiplied by the power of the number your side is from the top of the table... and I apologise for not properly accrediting those moments,

So
I should have included:
11: The Saving Grace Principle: - (also known as the flogging hairshirt principle)
Those of us accustomed to regularly having to explain away a flogging (or worse still cope with one in silence) know that 'how we played the game' actually means something after the fourth beer...
and if you never get to watch your side play you can always pretend it doesn't matter this year for the following reasons:..

DoctorShoot said...

MotM
my family wrote this piece for me, all I did was put the words in...

file said...

cheer up Docker you're not alone as this thread proves

a great piece clanging with all of the doom laden bells of verisimilitude!! And how generous of you to credit the real authors here too

suffering acutely from the "10 years I spent on Mars" here where they think Curling and beating seven kinds of hell out an opponent on ice counts as sport and wouldn't know a Uropean Championship quarter-final if it bit their nose off

my previous woes in How Not to Watch Sport were chronicled in The FA Cup (Directors Cut) on pseuds but there were some new horrors here, thanks Doc, especially the Chubby little Chewy Sub-rule which sounds like a killer

some positive minded soul should come up with Rules for Imagining Sport Where None There Is

Anonymous said...

Actually I'm learning, after several years, about how to survive in one sports environment when supporting an entirely different sport.

Be bolshie is one way!

DoctorShoot said...

filo
all that sepak tekraw and street soccer...
I think you are distinctly a troppophile... and already due for the next posting to..?

on the imagining side of things you might like to know that I have in fact scored the winning goals / runs / times in most of the major sporting events of the past fifty years including the Olympics...
and never a steroid touched my lips...

file said...

...necessity is the mother of imagination; DoctorShoot: the greatest striker, batsman, athlete the world has never known, aah but we've been sorely robbed

will you be taking part in the Beijing Olympics or are you boycotting it as I am?

(I refuse to imagine myself the pentathlon, decathlon and fencing gold medals as a protest against Chinese human rights abuses but may allow myself the pipe dream of a Tibetan Jesse Owens winning an unprecedented 10 gold medals and celebrating with a defiant Om in solidarity with his oppressed brethren (and sistren)... the whole Olympic stadium will vibrate with a sympathetic OOOOMMMMMM and the resultant spiritual mass will reverberate around the world and usher in a new dawn of world peace and mutual respect ....

Zephirine said...

Yeah, File, I'm liking that idea. Perhaps if we all Om together...?

guitougoal said...

may I OM with you? il like OM, Olympique de Marseielle, O my gosh, O mimi, Obama Mama-few friends sent a memo to Baron de Coubertin,
"Dear Baron,
About your Olympic Games.Those celebrations of youth and fitness put into effect a century ago to produce a race of happy people who would never again have to go to war, Well, it's gotten a little out of hand Baron.What you had in mind it's not alive anymore, not this year in Beijing.You better make sure the Dalai Lama is part of the opening ceremony otherwise this parade of the nations that opens your Games will be filled with party poopers."
Filou, Guitou, SuperDoc and Zeph with Mimi too.

offsideintahiti said...

Free Tibet

guitougoal said...

Offie,
Off side in Moorea, it's OM too.

offsideintahiti said...

And the Ocean goes "Offffffffffffffffffssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...."

file said...

meanwhile in the BaiYing Olympic Stadium...

Jesse Tibet: Oooommmm

Chingnese: Shhhhh

Ooommm, shhhh, ooommm, shhh, ooomm ...

but what I really wanna know is:
Om any roads must a man walk down before you call him a man?

DoctorShoot said...

filo
marathon runners; many
unless you are female

DoctorShoot said...

I am imagining a total boycott except for the walking marathon which I will enter riding a llama namned 'daley' and refuse to be flagged out as protest...

and will enter the arena ahead ofg the pack to startled cries of alarm...

and waving my little red book to all and sundry claim to be the reincarnation of chairman moo

DoctorShoot said...

I am imagining a total boycott except for the walking marathon which I will enter riding a llama namned 'daley' and refuse to be flagged out as protest...

and will enter the arena ahead of the pack to startled cries of alarm...

and waving my little red book to all and sundry claim to be the reincarnation of chairman moo

DoctorShoot said...

ohm y dog
now I'm posting twice in the excitement...

file said...

The Llama Daley!!! Better than the Daily L'armes

I'd imagine that might be another way Not To Watch Any Sport to add to your list

ps/ troppophile?!? enrich your word power with the Docker eh?

file said...

o and pps/ is the reincarnation of chairman moo; chairman moo 2?

DoctorShoot said...

yes

at least for those of us who remember chairman Mbootoo
(uganda or congo or thereabouts... also a human corrections (sorry rights) number...

DoctorShoot said...

I was sort of hoping that the Bj Olimpicus would be held in March and they could add an extra day and call oit the long one reborn...
but too late for that...
our PM has just announced his schedule might not get him to the opening ceremony...
could be an all china affar?

DoctorShoot said...

ps Filo
I thought 'tropophilous' was too easy and gifted to you in particular so spread a little troppo con carne across it... :-)

offsideintahiti said...

BJ Olympicus? Interesting. Although, I'd love to read about the rules before I sign up.

I don't know if you two have taken your medication, but I hear a daily lama is good for you.

guitougoal said...

no china affar, Bush is going because he keeps borrowing money from them.He sold out human rights for dirty money.
In S.F the passage of the torch turned into a hot pursuit of the torch, the officials kept changing the route to fool the Tibetan activists.It turned out to be Absurd, a farcical Olympic hide and seek game.

guitougoal said...

btw Doc,for your Llama you'll get a better price in Delhi on your way to BJ and they are new, the new Dehli Llamas are ready for the olympics.

offsideintahiti said...

That's just the problem, Guitou, I heard they weren't ready. Admittedly, it wouldn't be the first case of Delayed Llamas.

Zephirine said...

I believe the Spanish for "they call me a llama" is "me llaman una llama"

...which surely has to be the chorus of a daft Europop song...

Zephirine said...

OK, it's not exactly Europop but here's proof that there are people out there a lot crazier than us...

file said...

whoa, allegro non troppo! it's easy and yet strangely challenging to sing along to that song (scherzo certainly and yet somehow legato too)

Is that Guito's new single then Zeph? Make sure your commission is paid

there should be a scale of craziness, like the Richter scale or the Beaufort scale whereby no. 7 would probably be Llama related japes...

file said...

just realized why The Llama Songs sounds so familial

guitougoal said...

me llama llama y mi mama se llama mama llama y mi
papa se llama papa llama y se tiene una yamaha-
la yamaha de papa llama...ouf!
richter scale of crasiness filou?

Zephirine said...

Guitou, you're onto something there, that could be the Euro-hit of 2008, sung by drunk English people in nightclubs all over...no, maybe not.

Yes, it took me a while to click that it was the Major-general song, explains why it's so catchy anyway, old Sullivan could write a tune.

Offie, maybe we could script a street-smart indie film called "Y Tu Llama Tambien?"

file said...

Bravo G!! C'est trop mais c'est pas assez

dyunno in Tibet they don't have mini cabs only dial-a-llama (but he's in exile so he might be late)

perhaps he's got me coat...

file said...

o yeah and 9.2 near the epicentre, watch out for tsunamis of amusement on the open seas!

offsideintahiti said...

Filou, your Llama-wool coat is safe here with me.

Tsunamis? Where? Should I climb the nearest coconut tree?

file said...

thanks Offie, it will look nice with your loin cloth and when they ask me to get my coat I'll say 'Offie's got it'

tsunami's of amusement; waves of laughter, if you're up a coconut tree when it hits you'll be dunked in giggles like off-macaroons