Showing posts with label Bathos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bathos. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Word of the Day: Thingo

With nothing significant to report from Canberra, the front page of today's Hun is devoted to the dastardly 'West Gate Bomb Plot' of recently convicted terrorist wannabe Abdul Benbrika. According to The Hun's Keith Moor:

One of the most chilling conversations taped by police was between Benbrika terror network member Fadi Sayadi and an associate as they discussed destroying the West Gate Bridge...

Sayadi suggested it would be possible to snorkel or scuba dive under the bridge and plant "thingos underneath".


Obviously Sayadi wasn't talking about water-lilies; nonetheless he sounds completely clueless. Anyone wanting to plant thingos under the Westgate Bridge need only take a walk through Westgate Park in South Melbourne. Once you had your thingos in place at the base of the Eastern pier you could hop on the ferry to Science Works, where a short walk will take you to the Western pier with its memorial to the workers who died when the bridge collapsed during construction.

If Sayadi had ever made that little trip he might have seen how difficult it would be to bring down the West Gate Bridge with thingos, however well placed. Still, it's a good excuse for THe Hun to milk the story for another day while they wait for the man who would be Prime Minister eventually to make his move on Malcolm Turnbull. Since that's going to take at least six years we can all look forward to a lot more well beaten-up crap on The Hun's front page.

Friday, August 22, 2008

Over the Top

I got sucked into reading this piece in yesterday's Age by the first paragraph:

EVEN though it was just a skeleton, there was still something that said Australian larrikin about the soldier's remains that lay as he fell on a shell-blasted Belgian battlefield 91 years ago.
I just had to know what it was about this skeleton that alerted its finders to its nationality. Was it the cheeky, devil may care grin on its face? A certain louche set of his broad manly shoulders, relaxed but not slouched? The straight spine of a man not burdened by class distinction? Loose hips and rangy legs used to taking long, loping strides over a wide brown, sunburnt country? The answer came in the second paragraph:
In the green summer fields the archaeological team that uncovered him last week, was able to identify his nationality by the rising sun badges in the earth beside him.