You Can't Coach That

Saturday, May 05, 2007

My Dear Inspiron 8200

I know that we have been fighting a lot lately but I am determined that things will change. Yes I swear and threaten to send you to computer heaven when you are slow to execute my frantic and often ill considered commands. We have been through much together over the years. There was that time you got a virus and I was up all night looking after you, nursing you back to health. Not to mention that nasty worm infestation that we don’t talk about when company comes to visit. If anything these trials and tribulations have strengthened the bond between us.

Now that you have a nice new install of your favourite operating system your manners have improved considerably as has my temper. I promise not to burden you with too much worthless junk masquerading as useful software if you promise not to freeze for no apparent reason more than once per day. I will diligently defrag your hard drive and clean your registry on a regular basis.

I honestly didn’t mean it when I said you were for the scrap heap. I can see our time together continuing for the foreseeable future. In the unlikely event that a new computer does come to visit I promise to turn you into a lovely Ubuntu machine.

Yours lovingly

Coach

“You can’t coach that”

Friday, May 04, 2007

A sponsored post:

Dating, I am so glad I don’t have to do it. I am in the incredibly fortunate position of being happily married to a saint. She has to be a saint to put up with yours truly and all my s#@t. We met in high school so I have had precious little experience in the dating arts. I often wonder whether I would have been very good at it as I got older. It was a pretty easy thing to do as a teenager but I can imagine it gets a heck of a lot harder as the years tick over. At 15 you are supposed to have bad skin and be socially awkward. It’s not a good situation at thirty however.

I wonder how I would have approached the dating challenge as an adult. Would I have been the clubber type? Would I be the dinner and movie dater or perhaps the bar-b-q with friends type? Could I have turned to an online dating service? Probably a beer and pie at the footy - romantic I know.

To end on a humourous note, here are some translations of common lines in personal ads [via: no marriage]

# Strong woman - Bitch with a severe case of self entitlement.

# Classy - Bitchy 45 year old real estate agent type.

# Seeking gentleman - Looking for rich guy who isn’t interested in sex.

# World traveler - would love to go to Europe as long as you’re buying.

# Intelligent - She isn’t but thinks she is, and you’d better entertain her.

# Rubenesque - Fat

# Sarcastic - Bought into the whole Gen X irony thing and is really a miserable bore to hang out with.

# Make me laugh - You’re expected to be highly entertaining right away.

# Sick of bar scene - She doesn’t get hit on at bars due to one or more physical flaws.

# Friends first - Reformed nympho

# Shapely - Fat

# BBW - Grossly, morbidly obese (Bring Burgers With)

# Snuggling and Warm Fires - No Sex

# Enjoys Traveling - You’re paying, right?

# Meaningful Relationship - Slavery

# Nurturing - Smothering

# Sassy - Insufferable by the third date.

# Bubbly - Happy all the damn time to the point of annoying.

# No games! - I won’t put up with your games, but I will gladly infuriate you with mine.

# Eccentric or quirky - Psycho…

# Grown up man - Sucker willing to marry and support my lazy fat ass. 

Friday, April 27, 2007

Well not literally who invented them, obviously birds invented the whole egg thing. What I really mean is who thought up the idea to eat them? I just can’t imagine someone sitting around the campfire, or wherever people sat in the pre-egg eating days, and upon observing an egg fall out of the back end of a nearby chicken saying to themselves “I think that would make good eating”. It fell out of the bum of a bird! (I know, not the actual bum but in the vicinity). Why would you eat something that did that. Did people have a “let’s eat things that are excreted by birds” weekend? Was it a dare? Hey I dare you to eat the white shiny bird turd.

I am equally perplexed by the concept of potatoes. While they are one of my favourite foods, after all they fry up a treat, I just don’t get why anyone would dig one up and eat one. Imagine the trial and error involved in finding out that potatoes are a form of fuel for humans. How many thoroughly disgusting things were consumed on the way to discovering what would one day become the humble chip (french fry for you Yanks). The thing in its natural state could easily be mistaken for the droppings of a giant Wombat so how many times did people eat the droppings of giant Wombats before they found potatoes (another flaw in my logic of course, potatoes aren’t native to Australia and Wombats are thin on the ground in Ireland).

Chips and Eggs for dinner tonight I think.

“You can’t coach that”

Monday, April 23, 2007

Wanted - One Blog Assistant.

Duties include reading dozens of interesting blogs, summarising the interesting and informative articles and drafting a series of witty and topical comments for my perusal and final approval. Suggestions for equally informative and interesting articles will also be expected.

The successful applicant will have the following qualities:

• The ability to read (at least until after the fourth drink of the day after which time allowances will be made)
• The ability to type with at least one finger.
• An excellent command of the Queen’s English (Swahili will also be spoken after the fourth drink of the day)

Physical characteristics are not important, however should you be interviewed on a day my wife is out of town, blonde hair, blue eyes and large breasts will be all that I will notice.

Renumeration will be based on a percentage of the advertising revenue generated here so it would be helpful if you were financially secure.

EDIT: Duties will include keeping up to date with numerous Technorati Favourite exchange programs  

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Sorry folks, i couldn’t resist this one.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Enough said really. If you have a better caption please leave a comment.

[original image: Reuters]

It has been reported that Chinese smugglers are making a fortune selling imported pianos and dodging a sizable amount in taxes at the same time. Police in Shanghai have seized 5000 illegally imported pianos and there are eight cases before the courts.

What I want to know is how do they finds condoms big enough to fit a piano inside, not to mention a “piano mule” willing to do the hard yards and stick it where the sun don’t shine.

“You can’t coach that”

[via: Reuters]

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

The issue of teachers’ salaries is always near and dear to my heart so I thought I would share the following. You may have seen it before but I got a chuckle out of it when someone sent it to me recently.

I, for one, am sick and tired of those highly paid teachers. Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year!

It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do, Baby sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That’s right! I would give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked, not any silly planning time. That would be $15.00 a day. Each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children.

Now, how many do they teach in a day? Maybe 25?

Then that’s 15 x 25 = $375.00 a day.

But remember they only work 200 days a year! I’m not going to pay them for any vacations. Let’s see? That’s 375 x 200 = $75 000.00. (Hold on, my calculator must need batteries!)

What about those Leading Teachers or the ones with Masters Degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be that fair. Let’s round it off to $6.00 an hour. That would be $6.00 times five hours times 25 children times 200 days =$150 000.00 per year.

Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!

THERE SURE IS, HUH?

My first post was a serious one concerning teacher pay and I dare say I will have more to say on the subject at a later date - bear with me.

“You can’t coach that”

Saturday, April 07, 2007

My six year old daughter has just started school at a Catholic school and has therefore been learning about the Easter story. She has had some refreshing insights into religion lately and these are some she has shared with us this Easter:

• No one liked Jesus, He had no friends because they put thorns in his head.
• They didn’t know that Jesus was so good, they killed him. I bet they are sorry now though because he is famous.
• You can’t eat meat on Good Friday because god is made of meat. He is also made of chocolate and that is why we have chocolate Easter eggs.
• We are lucky that God made Mars because soon we will run out of room in Australia and America and we will need somewhere else to live.

“You can’t coach that”

Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Overheard at the UN?

I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

“You can’t coach that”

Saturday, March 31, 2007

I have seen on a number of blogs that I read (most recently at the bet shop boy) that China is restricting its citizens’ access to the “net” through what is being dubbed “The Great Firewall of China” (that one comes straight out of the genius department ). You can check out your url to see if it has been blocked here.

Well the good news for me is that I am OK, 100% safe, if you are Chinese nothing to see here move right along. Yes, the citizens of that great collection of humanity can currently soak up all the coach wisdom that they like.

I think I see an opportunity for world domination here (insert evil laugh). Based on a quick (5 minute) search of some of the best known blogs that I can think of it appears that all the popular, high traffic blogs are blocked in China (that’s the market research done). Therefore all I need to do is promote myself as “The Blog for China” and I will have all the readers I need in no time.

I suppose there is a small problem related to the language. I wonder how you say “You can’t coach that” in Mandarin or Cantonese.

Afterthought - I think I need another blog category - “Crap”

Friday, March 30, 2007

Dear Madam Finance Minister (a.k.a. my beautiful wife)

Further to our recent discussion regarding the purchase of a new personal computer, I would like to make my final arguments. These are set out below.

1. I am aware that we already have 6 computers in the house and only four occupants (and one dog). You however have dozens of shoes and only two feet.
2. While a new computer will allow me to engage in additional hours of gaming at the expense of talking to you and the children, I will be more prepared for the eventuality of Australia being invaded by murderous aliens and will therefore be able to protect my loving family (as long as I can find a gun that uses a mouse to aim and shoot)
3. Yes, it really is important that Word documents load two tenths of a second faster and that spreadsheets calculate a fraction of second faster.
4. Yes, when I told you that there has been an upgrade to the internet and it only works on dual core processors now, I was lying.
5. No, computers are not just porn machines, I really do use mine for work

And my final argument:

I really, really, really want one.

Your ever loving husband

Coach

Saturday, March 24, 2007

A google search for the term “stupid criminals” returns 113,000 hits, so I am aware that I am not leading the field here. I haven’t even checked as to whether these two stories are reported elsewhere. They are local stories for me so I thought I would share them.

They both relate to ram raids where a car has been used to drive through the front doors of a shop after hours.

Case 1: A ram raider targeted a store that sells surveillance equipment. What he failed to realise was that the store made exceptional use of their state of the art equipment and the police had several excellent images for identification purposes and he was know to them. Case closed.

Case 2: Two exceptionally bright (and perhaps very lazy) felons decided that the best car to use for their ram raid was their own - yes folks their own. The unfortunate thing for them was that when they drove the car through the front doors it become stuck and they could not get it out. They had no choice but to abandon the vehicle and make their escape on foot. The police were able to apprehend the men based on the address on the registration. Case closed.

“You can’t coach that”

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

To whom it may concern

As discussed yesterday via the hidden microphone behind the mirror in my bathroom, I am interested in joining The Conspiracy Theorists Association of Australia.

I have been interested in your organisation for quite some time and believe I have all the qualities necessary to make a valuable contribution. I cannot tell you what those qualities are because there are three people looking over my shoulder as I write this and they are sure to report their findings. You can however contact the Federal Police who I am sure will be able to supply you with all the hidden video you need to assess my application.

References are available from xxxxxxx and xxxxxxxx (this section of my application has been censored to protect the innocent)

I have taken the precaution of writing this application in biodegradable ink that will disappear within two hours to safeguard against the interception of my mail that has been ongoing for some time.

I look forward to your acceptance of my application and communication of this should be via the microwave link which was implanted in my head when I was in kindergarten.

Should I not hear from you I will assume that the organisation has been taken over by an unfriendly foreign power and I will instead continue my career in Federal politics.

Yours faithfully

Coach (or is it?)

Friday, March 16, 2007