MALARKEY SQUAD

Credulous tales from Coogee News Ltd’s Roaming Journo Squadron

MARY WINS SAINTHOOD

Welcome back to the blog blog-fans, this week in the year of our Lord Mr Lillee, Coogee News Ltd’s journalist(s) have:

· Noted with very real interest that Mary MacKillop has been held responsible for the requisite amount of miracles—miracles!—and hence is now up for a sainthood gong after a long overdue period of being good and being dead. Well—hasn’t it been a long time coming for Mary! What in the name of holy blue bejeezus balls does a person have to do get a sainthood in 2009? Rid Ireland of snakes? Stop rugby league players from being naughty? Hold back the very tides!? For fuck sake, Pope. We were beginning to wonder what you and all the Papal … whatever they call those fellows who get about in the gear look like they’re one of Darth Vader’s bad-priests … what? Yes—what have you people been doing over there with your candles made of frankincense and your myrhh and your grey dusty breath of Moses kept in venerable old pots? HM? Answer us!

· Never mind—because while stocks and belief in the Pope’s holiness might be down, what a massive win for Australia! How great that plucky Mary MacKillop has finally won a Sainthood. I for one can now rest easy, and I’m very pleased that Mary, too, can now rest easy, or whatever it is you do in heaven once you’ve carked it on Earth and have to spend your time floating about playing the flute in a dressing gown with Elvis.

· Now. Can someone tell me. Honestly. What. The. Fuck. Is going on? Really: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Have magic tricks become currency? Are miracles of the supernatural the new facts? Mary MacKillop has been turned into a Saint up there with Patrick and John the Baptist and Joan of Arc—she’s been elevated to the rank of deity. A demi-god, perhaps, even a real god, once with power over life and death and lightning and tsunamis and sheep that go crazy and run about rap-dancing and robbing banks and walking on two legs and talking about house prices over lattes in the latest Paddington “be seen” venue—after someone got better despite having cancer because someone prayed a lot to Mary MacKillop for this to happen? Mary’s been dead since 1924, how the fuck did she do that? Some form of magical ESP from space? And if so why didn’t she cure all the people with cancer including kiddies who had leukemia but still died despite people praying to Mary MacKillop, has she been on holidays up in heaven? Did she have an RDO? Or did she not want those people to continue living? And what sort of Saint does that, picks and chooses who lives and dies? Hey? That’s what fucking Pol Pot used to do. And how the fuck was Mary responsible for anything anyway when ultimately there’s only one True God who commands Top Billing as the great master puppeteer in the sky over-lording the destiny of the humans and the other mammals and the birds and volcanoes and forests and Danny Wicks? Hm? Inquiring minds would know. Because it really sounds a little far-fetched.

· (And look, if you’re upset about this rank atheism and are about to fire off a missive about the best form of swimwear to consider when doing laps in the lava during Hell’s Lake of Fire Classic then please—please—stop first and consider that you—yes you, pilgrim—are also an atheist.

· What? Yes—YOU are an atheist. We are all atheists. The religious, the mad, the job lot of us. Consider: I would suggest there are after-life theories that you do not think hold much water and are hence atheistic towards. It might be those proposed by Christianity (eternal life in paradise), Islam (eternal life in paradise, with virgins), or that mooted by Buddha (mosquitoes who become men), or even what Darth Vader eventually became when he shifted over to the Nice Side of The Force (a shimmering thing who was ghost-mates with Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda and who’s to say he wasn’t not me Elvis). Whatever. But let’s say you are Anglican or Mormon or that funny one with Tom Cruise in the skivvy laughing like an idiot— whatever —I would assume, unless you are a multi-faith follower—a sort of wanton whore for multiple Lord(s), if you will, you shouldn’t, but if you do—then you would believe that Buddhism or Hinduism or Tom Cruise-ism is not the True Way of the Lord(s). You don’t reckon that’s what happens when you die so you are an atheist towards it. You might even say pah! Or perhaps bah! Bah humbug!

· I would further suggest that if you categorically do not believe that when you die that you are going to sit up in Valhalla with Thor eating a giant slab of turkey brisket, or ride over the sun on a skateboard with Rah or Zues or The Thetian Hordes, or spend eternity with seventy-two (72!) virgins because you’ve blown up a bus (and may I add as an aside: you fucking idiot, that won’t happen) or become reincarnated into a saltwater crocodile or a dung beetle or the Malayan horseshoe bat, then if all these fates, and all the others postulated by we scaredy-cat-of-dying cave-men over the millenia, if they all sound a bit cock-a-mamy? Then you—you, friend—are an atheist. A Non-Believer. A merry scary heretic. Welcome to the club. We might only have 80-some years until we’re less animate than Walt Disney in an sub-arctic ice grotto, but we’re gonna make em rippers.)

· Danny Wicks? Stuffed if I know. Maybe the Devil made him do it. Let’s just say this: these rugby league fellows are not, and this may come as a shock, but they are not blessed with the intellect—or even the vocabulary—of Stephen Hawking, the squawking little robot man who is good at mathematics. Apparently he’s a beater of women, Stephen Hawking. Fucked if I know how he does that but there you go. I think he runs into them with his little robot computer mobile. [Stephen Hawking robot voice]: Get … out of … my way … woman ... I’ve got some … equations … and fucking … space … things, to work out. Now … go get me … some Doritos … and a beer … and Rugby League Week. Good times.

· Good Times were being had by one rugby league fellow partying like Danny Wicks’s products were rattling about in his caboose at the Jack Newton Celebrity Classic held up at Cypress Lakes and to which I got a gig and played golf with Geoff Lawson and got on the ink for three days it was tops.

· Geoff Lawson? An 8-marker who plays at Bonnie Doon in Sydney Town and who is 52 but doesn’t look unlike the old Geoff Lawson who ran in quite quickly from the Randwick End and dragged his foot along the popping crease in the course of 46 Tests for Australia in which he took 180 wickets at 30.56 from 1980-1989 . Nice fellah. Story about him out in Inside Cricket mag in Feb.

· Celebrites? Celebrities, even? Bob Hawke sang Waltzing Matilda and everyone sang along, it was choice, and Jimeoin was funnier than Billy Connolly on the piss. So got on the piss and pissed in the pocket of that once-fat Pom Dicko from the television though I didn’t for long because he’s an alcoholic on the wagon and I was well past bedtime, and gibbering for Australia, so he told me sorry he had to find someone and off he went to find him, five metres away. Ha. Also shared Incredible Tales with John Blackman from Hey Hey (a show further past its use-by than Aeroplane Jelly) and Paul Gow who plays golf quite well and … that’s about it because I was shy. Funny old gig, The Jack, once your mates have gone to bed you sort of wander round looking for someone to talk to like the new kid at school, and usually without luck, especially in my case because all I could manage was a once-fat boring Pommy off the piss. (Not so) Good times.

· Current! Coogee News Ltd stories doing the rounds include:

1. Being touched up at golf by Greg Chappell in Inside Cricket magazine;

2. The Brumbies Rugby season preview in Inside Rugby magazine;

3. Top Ten Golf Courses in Australian Traveler magazine;

4. Todd Carney: I Promise To Be Good in Rugby League Week magazine;

5. Retirement Planning: Going to Hell in a Hand-basket in Satan’s Servants magazine.

And that is all the malarkey from the squadron for now.

And bye for now.

Thank fuck for that exhalt Coogee News Ltd’s editorial team, and there is much rejoicing

Date: 21-Dec-2009

Former Australian fast bowler Geoff Lawson partying at the Jack Newton Celebrity Classic at Cypress Lakes. Look at him. Going off.

How sports journos party: with the editors of Inside Sport (l) and Golf Digest (r), and an Australian fast bowler. Good times. Nerdy ones, granted. But good.