What if you lived in Australia?

[Estreeter]

Originally Posted by palo5

I thought Australians ate jumbucks at billabongs

Originally Posted by blondifan

I think i feel a fast food franchise coming on.

I think we have a logo for our first store.....And the door is open for palo too become the little closet capitalist I know he is

[palo5]

Originally Posted by Estreeter

I think we have a logo for our first store.....And the door is open for palo ...

I'm not ready for that

There are language difficulties, you see. I thought Barbies were dolls for little girls until I visited Australia

[Sir Honkers]

Originally Posted by palo5

There are language difficulties, you see. I thought Barbies were dolls for little girls until I visited Australia

why would you think we threw a shrimp on a dolly?...although what you pay for shrimp these days I wouldn't be throwing any on the barby either.

[rupertramjet]

Should an Aussie dwarf be worried?
Throw another shrimp on the Barbie!

[blondifan]

Only if they're not Aussie shrimps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7y6iE0aB5s

[palo5]

...there's a good chance you're on drugs and involved in crime

Probe finds widespread use of drugs in sport, crime links

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/sport/probe-fi...#ixzz2KCRF4fFS

Says super-sexy Sport Minister Kate Lundy



(Seriously, does she remind you of anyone?)

But... 2/3 of Australians aren't surprised

If you click on the smh-link above, there's a poll at the bottom of the page:

Poll: Are you shocked by the findings about widespread illegal drug use and links with organised crime in Australian sport?

Yes. I thought it was a minor problem - 33%

No. Athletes are likely to use illegal substances - 67%

Not dumb, these Australians

For our next subject, we know Comrade Estreeter plays golf...

[Tmee2020]

Originally Posted by palo5

...there's a good chance you're on drugs and involved in crime

Probe finds widespread use of drugs in sport, crime links

Watch this space.

It's hard to say at this early stage, it would seem that the football codes are the sports most in the headlights over this.

Watching the ground-breaking Four Corners programme about Lance Armstrong, what struck me about it was the concession that drug testing was unreliable for everything that mattered- EPO and blood doping being the methods used by drug cheats these days. Other methods were needed, in Armstrong's case testimony sworn under oath by just about everyone in his team. Finally a concession, after years of dragging the names of those that spoke out against him through the mud.

For the most part administration of testing and penalties has been left to the controlling bodies of the sports concerned, with pathetic results.

Do what you like, just don't get caught. We will have the final say on the tests, so you probably don't have much to worry about there.

Whether it's cycling, the IOC, athletics- it's the same.
Just before the 2000 Sydney Olympics the drug testing agency had a blood test ready to go, and- of course- the IOC disallowed it. That is the mentality you are up against, nothing changes. Marion Jones doesn't get rubbed out because she fails a drug test, but because she's telling porkys under oath.

The other thing with the Olympics is, once the two weeks of the games is over, the caravan moves on and no-one cares. Except in the very rare instance when someone goes to jail.
Have a look at the 1988 100m final. That's the one, the Ben Johnson race. Of the top five, only Calvin Smith never tested positive for a banned substance during his career.
"But we've cleaned up our act since then." Pigs arse.

Cycling is another case in point. Same story, we're so thorough with our testing now. 1998 Tour de France was a fiasco, the event was nearly called off halfway through. Just taking the Tour de France, forgetting about the Olympics which of course is another sorry story from 2012- how many winners, going back to 1998, have a clean record? One, maybe? The seven that Hamilton won now have no winner. We don't really know, we can't tell, who is clean and who is not from all those years.
They could have said, Okay, we go down the list of finishers, and the first competitor that we get to who has not failed a drugs test is the winner. We don't care if that is #32 overall.

In this whole sorry story of drug abuse at international level Australian athletes are probably no better or worse that anyone else. Maybe something about this will come out. If it's about just the football codes - AFL and NRL- then that is a very small stage, still shameful though of course. But we shall see.

[winebeavis]

While scouring youtube looking at Olivia Newton-John videos (and wishing to god she would have done porn from maybe 1973-1978.) I found a clip of a young ONJ singing "Christmas Time Down Under." See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLUJ21H0-Vs From a movie.

So, how exactly does Christmas time work in Australia? I'm guessing the whole winter cold stuff doesn't really seem to work. Frosty the snowman makes little sense. Same with the whole "A Visit From St. Nicholas" scene. Now that I think about it, maybe it makes more sense for santa to go down chimneys in warm weather when they are not used.

I understand that some place have different legends and traditions. I was in the Netherlands over the season a few years back and (I'm probably going to mess this up) Santa came from Spain on a horse and had a slave. Also the shoes went outside as well.

I know so little about Australia.

So, how does Christmas work down under?

[buccaneer64]

Our family (and a lot of others) spend most of Christmas day at the beach (we have a BBQ). As for the general winter theme of Christmas promoted by most western countries - it just doesn't matter. Only kids care about the whole Santa thing and they're willing to ignore anything that doesn't make sense if they get a reward - similar to the religion itself.

Oh yeah, I forgot. Some of the surf lifesaving clubs organise for 'Santa' (sometimes wearing board shorts and sun glasses) to arrive by boat/dingy/jet ski for the kids:

[MrBombastic]

As a kid, very similar to the middle picture of Santa in the dingy/boat, I remember one time when Santa arrived by boat. Don't ask me why, when, how or where... but I do remember that being a pretty cool thing at the time. This was probably around 20 years ago - sometime in the '90s most likely. I can't remember Santa arriving by boat thesedays but maybe that does still happen in some places.

Also as a kid, I remember there being a "special broadcast" from the North Pole about Santa. Something that kids would buy into. Again, I don't remember that happening in recent times either.

This last Christmas, I just spent it with family as usual. Here in Australia it's Summer at Christmas, so alot of people may spend it outdoors in various ways. It's still celebrated but obviously not with the "White Christmas" theme that they have over in America, though it does snow at various snowfields here, maybe even in the Summer months.

People still buy presents and put up trees. I'm not a church-goer but I assume the Christians still go to church to celebrate Jesus' birth, just as they do in other countries. Alot of the regular traditions happen here, just in the opposite direction.