Confusion and Caramel

I'm personally in a really good mood today - driving to work, sitting by the side of the road, I saw a cheeky midget. I love cheeky midgets - I see enough grumpy midgets, to see a cheeky midget really put a spring in my step. My beautiful girl with the blue eye shadow was at work, being her ever helpful self at the shop counter, and my favourite video on Youtube, the moving tribute to Alan Didak set to Delta Goodrem, got a well deserved shout out in the Herald Sun. And, just to put the cherry on the cake, I saw some bogans arrested in the shop where blue eye shadow girl works which I always enjoy. I love bogan theatre, to the point that I was going to pull up a chair and get some popcorn (the cinema kind, not the horrible blue kind you get at parties). "Idintferkindonuffink", that's always a great bogan thief phase, and they kick from the bottom of their legs, from the shoe down. I always love to see what the bogans have stolen, and today, it was a putter. I don't know how you steal a putter, or why you steal a putter. Maybe at Royal Penguin the bogan found out that while his long game was standing up to pressure, he was missing crucial putts and thought "Imaferkinstealone" from a low budget shop (not that you are low budget blue eye shadow girl). There was a chase, he made it almost to Boost Juices stand where the girls loathe you (and I mean really loathe you - outside of the sheer hatred of the bar staff at The Quarry, it's probably the least friendly girl group in the whole of Tassie - to the point you think, I wonder if this actress/model has spit in my Guava drink) before slipping over and almost breaking his neck while his girlfriend squealed something about "Leavemalonhesonlyakerd" or something...outstanding work...people who go on about the rise of the bogan and the decline of society, they just don't understand good solid cacks...

Despite this frivolity, it's been a pretty awful day for Tassie - it seems like we've lost Cadburys factory in Claremont, well, they are sacking 200 people, but they say the job cuts are simply part of a bid to turn the plant into, let me get this right, a centre of excellence for producing moulded chocolate blocks, which sounds like they've opened the Ponds Institute or the Max Factor Laboratories in the middle of downtown "C". I don't know what a centre of excellence for producing moulded chocolate blocks does, well, apart from produce bloody rippingly excellent moulded chocolate blocks, but it apparently requires 200 less people to operate it. This is terrible news because obviously because of the job cuts, but I hate Cadburys anyway, since they got rid of the DMCs, the much lamented and missed dinner plate sized M&Ms style chocs - and it robs us of the best tourist attraction in Tasmania, the Cadburys chocolate factory tour. I've often thought of the Cadburys chocolate tour as being like knowing you are going to play a great game of catch and kiss (where this nonsense to call it kisschasy, like the lame band, has come from I don't know) after triple maths - sweet delight after utter tedium (or if you prefer, Shane O'Bree taking ten minutes to get the ball to Medhurst). The tour part of the tour is massively lame - look kids, it's a bewildered and low paid Malaysian woman in a hairnet glazing a Walnut Whip, don't all take a photo at once - and tedious and involves a lot of boring men pointing to machinery parts and conveyor belts. However, after, what, 3 hours, you get your reward - the big barrel of cheap chocolate. Yes, at the end of the tour, you are depositeed blinking into a shop with a sawdust floor where there's buckets of cheap chocolate and licorice. It's fat kid paradise, and I remember when we went, almost being barged into a big stand of boxes of caramel by a porcine young girl in a "Sexy Biach" (sic) T-shirt that seemed hand made, and then thinking how brilliant it was when, on the bus back to town, she choked on a Chupa Chup and had to be revived with a massive slap on the back from a man in a Tassie Underwater hockey T-shirt. I think she thought it was love, he thought it was duty, and there was a mass of confusion on both of their faces as they munched seperately and thoughtfully on their respective free goodies. There's no way there's going to such a hormonal mass of confusion and caramel (I should have caused the blog that..) in a centre of excellence for producing moulded chocolate blocks, and that is quite frankly sad...

The Devils, for what it's worth, are our VFL Australian Rules team - they play at the level below AFL standard (where the Pies play) and should, should, be a great signpost on the way to getting an AFL team (don't laugh, I've had my Believe bar). However, they are about to get the arse because we can't afford them, and Scott Wade (a man who's grasp of decision making makes Burt Reynolds decision to make Cop and Half (yes! Finally I get in a reference to Cop and A Half!) seem inspired) has decided to bring back the Statewide League instead. Yes, we're going to stick to West Sydney by bringing back East Launceston (go you mighty Demons!) vs Lauderdale in a statewide mate vs mate struggle. This is obviously such a stupid decision, you'd imagine Scott Wade would dump Ana Ivanovic for Catriona Rowntree because CR has frequent flier points. I might have referenced before though, I can't talk, well, I can, I'm not a selective mute, but I didn't do enough to support the Devils, unless you count my going to 1 game, at Bellerive, when we made the Preliminary Final a few years ago, and that wasn't entirely Devils related - I went, with jet lag, just to see the semi legendary Clarence (they were playing the curtain raiser) water boy slash scoreboard attendant. I can't remember the team, it might have been Longford, but there was one day at Penguin when some team came with two water attentends - one amazing, ridiculously beautiful female who was allegedly anyones for a Violet Crumble (no, wait, that was Bracknell, sorry for questioning her purity) and one twin brother of Mick Martyn. It was hilarious to see Longford players lie in the Penguin mud, pretending to be hurt, asking for water, and then suddenly recovering if it was Igor that came out with the water or the Deep Heat. Clarence though, he was in charge of both water and the scoreboard, and memorably asked us what 3x6 was, because he couldn't keep up. Anyway, the Devils got flogged, and I haven't thought about them much until today, but for some reason, I have a Tassie Devils cap, and I have no idea how I got it - this is much like my Delta Goodrem DVD...when the hell did I buy that...

So having suffered the loss of our chocolate economy and our football team, local pride has been seriously wounded, but better news is at hand, because it's nearly cricket season (next year football in Tasmania is going to be 6 months of waiting for cricket season), and it's almost time for colourful football identities who's teams aren't involved in the finals to come down and talk about...the finals they failed to get to. Russell Robertson, Kevin Sheedy, Richo, they'll all be out and about speaking at local football club lunches to slightly put out coterie groups, and I hope at least one of them makes a big Jason Saddington style faux pas. I'm a massive rap for cricket season, but what I hope happens is some kid steps up and wins the handball competition at one of these functions. If you don't know, it's a bit of a tradition at these appearances that people line up to try and handball an Aussie rules football through a hoop, and if you do it, you can guarantee immortality within your local community, "aren't you that bloke than when Justin Murphy came to town" style. You can get free beers forever. Your team may vanish, your job may go because you don't fit in at a centre of excellence for producing moulded chocolate blocks, but you can always be the bloke who...I'm afraid at Penguin in the 80s, I choked at my big handball moment. I remember the Sherrin, the target outside Cut Price Sams, the line over which I could not step, the mildly interested shoppers, and the celebrity, well, it was actually the double act of Terry the Tipster Morris off local radio ("Give us a tip Tezza" I think was his catchphrase) and the 1985 Queens Quest winner, Jeanette Hamilton from Ulverstone (boo, Miss Penguin was robbed, she didn't even win the Miss Personality award...it's politics I tell ya) resplendent in sash and red hugging top. Maybe some albino cleavage distracted my young eyes (which may be unfair to the lovely Jeanette, but that's how I remember it) but my final handball clipped the inside of the bullseye, and agonisingly, deliberately and awfully fell to the floor, and I felt awful despite TTTM giving me a voucher for the Soapbox and I lost to some smart arsed kid called Glenn who hit a bullseye despite the handicap of eating a Redskin split at the same time. So he became "Aren't you that kid" and I became someone who in an hour had a doctors appointment...

If nothing else, I hope someone restores some local pride here in Tassie by getting their picture in the paper for their incredibly accurate handballing. That's much better than getting in the paper getting your blood pressure taken at the doctors...and after the day that state has had, we need all the local heroes we can get...