Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on May 11, 2004 16:55:02 GMT -5
Here's a first topic for the Sport forum:
I would enjoy playing virtually any sport. I can understand the appeal of most of them but cricket just drives me nuts.
What a complete waste of time. What sort of sport lasts so damn long that you have to stop to have lunch and a nice English cup of tea, then repeat the same thing for days on end.
It's like baseball in slow -motion and endlessly monotononus.
It is a quant remnant of a pastime invented by the idle, rich upper -class English to fill an afternoon while they lived off the profits of their vast estates.
It lasts so long the only people able to watch are the retired, the neoveau-rich and the unemployed - how can they expect to attract people to watch, in the afternoon when most ordinary people are at work?
Being American you probably couldn't care less, being Irish I couldn't either, but it still baffles me.
Can anyone nomiante another pointlessly dull sport?
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Post by Golyadkin on May 11, 2004 19:36:12 GMT -5
What about golf? That's dull.
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on May 12, 2004 17:13:49 GMT -5
I agree about golf. - horrible clothes, ridiculous rules and ruinously expensive.
Wasn't it Mark Twain that said it was a good walk spoiled?
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Post by Golyadkin on May 12, 2004 19:14:44 GMT -5
I haven't heard that, but I'll look into it. Oh, and a few other boring sports: fishing shuffle board (if you can call it a sport) bird watching (yes, it is qualified as a sport) chess
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on May 13, 2004 17:42:16 GMT -5
Bird watching I can actually understand as at least they are watching nature and showing an interest in the natural world (however obsessively).
What I don't understand is train or plane spotting. I don't know if people in the U.S. do this, but in Britain and Ireland it has become almost a sport or bizzare pastime. Guys (it's nearly exclusively guys) sitting around, stereotypically in mackintosh jackets with notebooks recording train and plane details in every weather. Some idiots actually got aressted in Greece last year for trespassing on Greek Air Force properties to pursue their weird hobby.
Chess is definitely boring, but again I can understand the appeal. It's one of the oldest board games around - at least a thousand years old - and it does need a certain amount of cunning intelligence. Very popular in Russia/ Eastern Europe - perhaps it's so cold sitting a table for hours on end indoors is appealing. The 'Grandmasters' are always some Russain guy who takes it all sooo seriously.
P.S. don't blow my cover!!
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Post by Golyadkin on May 14, 2004 8:00:34 GMT -5
I do enjoy chess, but I just think that it's dull to watch. Oh, and, no, we don't have plane and train watchers here. But we do have Republicians. They're REALLY dull. Oh, and what is that about your cover, Stephen?
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on May 14, 2004 15:18:01 GMT -5
I was going to use a pseudonym on the John-Keats.com forum. but naively decided to use my own name because I thought that I was being more honest and, (in my pretentious way) I thought I would be making a point about the obligatory anonymity and facelessness of most people on the 'net who want to use it as an escape tool where they can become who they want to be, rather than who they are.
I wanted to put myself and not some fictional version of myself onto the web, unafraid of falling into the trap of the tempting wish to reinvent oneself at a tap of the key.
Anyway when I joined laziness I just decided to play the game just a little bit, but it wasn't meant to fool anyone - I knew you would figure out my flimsy disguise.
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Post by TitanianAnthrax on May 27, 2004 1:06:22 GMT -5
i personally think that watching any sport is rather stupid. i mean mostly all you get to do is see people run around like a bunch of idiots.
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on May 27, 2004 16:30:26 GMT -5
At last a new post!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's true watching sport is a bit of a bore, I always used to love playing sports, than watching them - you feel powerless to join in.
I was never very good, but was enthusiastic about playing sport with friends as it was a group activity and we never took it too seriously.
It's usually people who are totally unfit and rubbish at sport who despise it. Also the most enthusiastic fans are those who are mostly beer-swilling, overweight, middle-aged men who are insanely jealous of the young, fit and wealthy guys who play it.
P.S. I just thought of a sport that is well worth watching.
Women's tennis at Wimbeldom - for purely sporting reasons of course!
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Post by Golyadkin on Jun 6, 2004 10:29:21 GMT -5
Has T.A. just insulted football?!? (Both kinds, American and European) How dare you!
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on Jun 6, 2004 16:56:50 GMT -5
I don't know much about American football (strangely inappropriate name for a game which requires the players to carry the ball much of the time!). Wasn't it invented by some Irish immigrant or something?
TitanianAnthrax should check out real football (your 'soccer') - a game that is fast, furious and exciting, and beloved of most of the rest of the world, and billions can't be running around like idiots for nothing.
There is also a very popular type of football in Ireland called Gaelic Football, which is a modern form of an ancient Celtic game, which is a kind of cross between soccer and the N.F.L - not a game for the faint-hearted!! It is a purley amature sport, but played very seriously indeed and greatly popular across the entire country, regularing attracting massive crowds to games.
Also, in Australia, there is a game (which is a bit similar to Gaelic football) called Aussie rules, which enjoys incredible support in Australia; and as a home-grown sport is something they are greatly proud of.
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Post by TitanianAnthrax on Jun 6, 2004 18:27:06 GMT -5
I actually played soccer when i was in kinder garden or first grade or sometime in elemetary school. besides isn't soccer known for horrible fan riots ( although i believe every sport has had those).
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on Jun 7, 2004 16:08:22 GMT -5
It is true that football/soccer has a dark history of violence, but in the past decade or so, the number of incidents has greatly declined (at least in England), and, apart from some stupid England football hooligans getting drunk and causing trouble in European competitions, there has been nothing like as much violence as in the 80s.
There's currently a film being made about the subject, starring, bizarrely, Elijah Wood as an American student caught up in a football riot.
Frodo could deal wth Sauron and a tiny ring, but will he be able to conquer the orkish football hooligans?
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Post by TitanianAnthrax on Jun 11, 2004 0:48:46 GMT -5
i just thought of something more boring than watching sports. watching people play cards. they actually have annoucers for that. you do not need anoucers for a card game
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Maddalo
Jr. Member
Oh what a misery it is to have an intellect in splints!
Posts: 70
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Post by Maddalo on Jul 1, 2004 5:11:19 GMT -5
Playing cards is bad enough - how low-tech, but actually watching it on T.V.?
I'm sure doctors could recommend a suitable treatment for this weird hobby.
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