Re: Suck It Up! I Always Say.

1

I think this trait is more characteristic of rugby players than Austrians.

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2

Closed tag did not.

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3

Clicking the pic link, maybe we can hypothesize that the people who love Australians love australians because they can play rugby and look like hearthrobs from teen movies instead of monsters like the English rugby players.

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4

Hey, American Footballers have been doing this for years.

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5

Lott just did the tip.

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6

Ronnie Lott does the aftergame broadcasts in San Francisco. He gets so happy when the 49ers win that it is fun to watch.

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7

But he's not a rugby player. He's a football player (Aussie rules, that is) and they trend away from the squat, scarred, toothless rugby phenotype.

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8

Right. It's much more of a soccer look, and no one's prettier than soccer players.

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9

When he says "I love my footy" he means "I love to play football", not "I love my foot." Australians talk like that all the time.

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10

I suppose next you'll tell me that when I say, "I love hoops," I'm saying that I love basketball, and not these big hoop earrings I just bought.

(Actually, I did realize that about "footy," but you're not the first person today to assume that I'm an idiot, and you probably won't be the last.)

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11

I didn't think it was unreasonable to think a sentence like this

Is the fact that they can use words like "footy" when talking about elective amputation ...

might be misunderstanding the word "footy." So, sorry about that.

but you're not the first person today to assume that I'm an idiot, and you probably won't be the last

Whatever.

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12

Someone tell me how the kids are using "whatever" nowadays, so I can know whether I've been dissed.

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13

no one's prettier than soccer players

And this is of course Ogged's true objection to the game.

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14

I wish I could jump in and tease Our Favorite Soccer Mocker, but I wouldn't want to sully our recent tennis consensus.

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15

The tennis consensus being that the Agassi game was great?

SB, I meant to ask you--what was the Oompa Loompa reference? And did it have anything to do with my friend Sheila?

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16

This is like being trapped inside Pierre Bourdieu's nightmares. Every comment ruthlessly mined for maximum one-upmanship to increase the accumulation of one's blogospheric capital.

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17

Healy concedes! Ten points from Slytherin!

No, seriously, Kieran, while I'm the world's expert on "footy," I've never quite understood how "whatever" is used, so I couldn't tell if you were saying "Brother ogged, surely you're being too sensitive, join me for a virtual beer," or "I'm not going to dignify that idiocy with a response."

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18

Also, despite appearances, we are a friendly, collaborative lot, and what seems like oneupsmanship is usually just faith that our attempted cleverness will be improved upon by the next comment.

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19

Accusations of Slytherin membership? Is there no depth to which us dastardly liberals won't stoop? Also, isn't the obvious analogy for Timberites Ravenclaw?

Also, you're lucky this hasn't degenerated into a thread where typos are noted.

I also wasn't sure if Kieran's "whatever" was actually expressing irritation or just good humor.

And no one here has ever tried to one-up anyone else.

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20

Re 16: Isn't Kieran just playing part of the game himself even as he takes a shot at it? I didn't have any idea who Bourdieu was, and had to look it up.

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21

Well, that's just the kind of paralyzing self-analysis that I wish people could avoid. If it seems like a Bourdieu nightmare to you, you should feel free to say so, and people will either know what you mean, or ask, or look it up. (Which isn't to say that Kieran isn't a bad person. He is.)

More specifically, I didn't think Kieran was complaining about the type of oneupsmanship that has to do with erudition. (What exactly he did mean by that stuff about "mining" and "blogospheric capital," god only knows.)

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22

You know what he means. Give Kieran back his blogospheric capital. Don't act all innocent.

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23

The tennis consensus being that the Agassi game was great?

That, and more generally, that tennis is a sport.

The Oompa Loompa remark was just to let us imagine that ogged's porn preference runs to all-singing, all-dancing magical midgets. It didn't involve Sheila, as far as I know.

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24

Onballer is not so much a position as a generic term for a set of positions - the 'rover' and 'ruck rover' positions, both of which tend to follow the play up and down the field more closely than the other positions (Aussie Rules being primarily a man-on-man positional game). The 'ruck' position could also be included, but is usually distinguished, because of its special role when play is restarted after a score (from a bounce or ball-up) or from the ball going out of bounds (from a throw-in).

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25

Isn't Kieran just playing part of the game himself even as he takes a shot at it?

Well as Bourdieu well knew, the best way to win this sort of game is to pretend you are not playing, while insinuating that were there a game (which of course there isn't) you would be winning handily.

Footy is more entertaining to watch, though.

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26

Amputate a finger with anaesthesia? Big deal. This guy is much, much tougher.

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27

25: I was going to agree sarcastically, along the lines of "No, I'd rather watch a bunch of pasty people at computers one-upping each other at the injoke derby than watch soccer," but in fact it's true.

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28

Also, you're lucky this hasn't degenerated into a thread where typos are noted.

And it's not like we don't have the opportunity.

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29

I think Kieran has gone slightly mad. He's now taking shots at his wife on the front page of CT. My limited exposure to philo-types has convinced me that they are generally the smartest people in the room (mathematicians excluded), and certainly smarter than even very smart sociologists. I'm pretty sure she can figure out a way to dispose of his body without implicating herself.

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30

Laurie Paul asserts of her cat that she could not have been a banana. But what if it had been zapped with a wand of polymorph?

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31

Actually then it would just have turned into another kind of animal, and not a comestible—never mind.

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32

Is the implication of 28 that there's a typo (or other grammatical error) in the quoted line? If you say there is, I believe you, but I can't find it. I know there are errors that have gone unremarked on in the thread in general.

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33

pasty

Speak for yourself, white (insofar as a Jew can be white) man.

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34

another kind of animal, and not a comestible

Those are hardly mutually exclusive categories, my good Ben.

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35

fucking Australians, anything to change the subject from that of *cricket*, working class sport of the world in which we beat them this week. "Footy" is a sport so utterly pointless that nobody, not even the Irish, will play against them.

Ahem

In the town, where I was born

Lived a man, who was a thief

And he told us of his life

Stealing bread and shagging sheep

So he went into the nick

The magistrate, he had to see

And they put him on a ship

To a convict colony.

You all live in a convict colony, a convict colony,a convict colony

You all live in a convict colony, a convict colony,a convict colony

to the tune of "Yellow Submarine"

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36

Laurie Paul asserts of her cat that she could not have been a banana. But what if it had been zapped with a wand of polymorph?

Interesting choice of objects. What if her cat had been zapped with a "wand of polymorph" (**inner dialogue: wand of polymorph??...oh, just let it go.**) indeed.

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37

28: One typo in each of the updates. The point being, I was sweet and restrained in not pointing it out, until your comment made it necessary to do so. (Actually, it wasn't necessary at all, but I hate exercising restraint because it's so hard to ensure you get proper credit for it.)

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38

I hate exercising restraint because it's so hard to ensure you get proper credit for it.

Yes, exactly.

Apostropher: in nethack, comestibles (which includes corpses of just about anything) are a different class from living animals.

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39

re 15/23 - I was wondering, because Ogged is not alone in his Oompa Loompa fetish.

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40

That photo/caption is deliciously wrong—out of the ashes of Sheila's dignity, a naughty phoenix.

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41

Footy has a point. It's all about hitting people and kicking goals. What else is there in life?

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42

I'm way late to this thread, but I'm amazed that no-one, particularly no-one Australlian, commented on the irony of a Welshman accusing anyone of being a sheepshagger.

On second reading, though ("In the town, where I was born . . ."), I suppose dsquared was just asserting that Wales dealt with its sheepshagging problem by just exporting it to Australlia. Those crafty Welsh . . .

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