Excuses

We all deploy them.

Excuses, or their 'slightly weaker cousin in a cheaper suit' – rationalisations.

They come in handy when we fuck up. Or forget. Or fail to achieve things that seem like "gimmes" or expected results.

I'll start with one right off the bat! It's been a few weeks since my last blog, because ... well, I've had shit to do ... I've been really busy at my real job. There was this deadline, see.

And it was raining. A lot.

There was a plague ... locusts! A flood! Then ... a fire!

The sun was in my eyes!

It wasn't my fault!

Two weeks ago, there was a boatload of Kiwis down in San Francisco harbour looking hard for some sort of excuse like one of those. Maybe even more than one.

There was this incredibly expensive, rich-guy's hobby-horse thing, see ... a little thing called The America's Cup. And the Kiwis lost. Bigtime. In the grandest fashion imaginable.

In perhaps the greatest choke of all time, in any sort of sport or self-inflicted bit of public humiliation, this boat load of 'expert' sailors went up 8-1 in a race where the winner was the first boat load of guys to win 9.

So, doing the quick math ... all they had to do was win ONE MORE. You know, like those eight OTHER times.

There was only one other boat involved. That would be the one losing, 8-1.

Then the wheels fell off the wagon (or the spinnakers fell off the mega-yacht's mast, as it were ...) and not only did the Kiwis of Team New Zealand blow 8 straight races to LOSE 9-8 ...

... the other boat-load of mostly-Kiwis (under the guise of being "Team America") had to come back from minus-2 at the start of the whole sordid affair, because they got caught cheating and were assigned two penalty points. (Cheating? Were they using a motor? Warp engines?)

So, in fact, Team New Zealand lost 11-8. After being up 8-1. There were two extra, added "IN YOUR FACE!" points in the tally.

Stand back – there is a big choking hazard here.

Can you say: all aboard the FAIL BOAT?! Hey, CHOKE MUCH?

There have been many teams and/or athletes who've choked on the verge of victory ... who have blown goats, sucked canal water, or just totally lost the plot, and choked SO hard, so as to lose what appeared to be a "gimme" of a winning series. But these guys ... hell, they lost so abjectly and stupendously bad, they temporarily made Toronto Maple Leafs fans forget about their 47+ years of absolute, consistent failure.

(It's never too early to put the boots in on Leafs fans!)

It seems there were NO excuses forthcoming from the big-money-boys who funded this expensive debacle ... nor from the skipper, or the sad-sack lot of meatbags on the boat posing as world-beating sailors.

And really, how could there be? It was broadcast daily in High Definition on TV for all to see. They just blew it. They folded up like a cheap lawn chair in the wind.

They were this close >|< to the finish line, and couldn't step over it.

It's a good thing the media-saturated public forgets about these things fast, and easily ... here in New Zealand, it's been two weeks since this outlandish whack of self-inflicted humiliation, and we're already off riding the high tide of an unbeaten All Blacks side as they approach one final game in the series to determine who wins a best-of tilt between NZ, Aussie, South Africa and Argentina.

Who cares about a bunch of rich losers in a boat anyway? It's the proven All Blacks, all the way now! They hardly ever lose ... mostly ...

Providing they beat South Africa tomorrow ... it'll all be in the bag.

But back to this yachting nonsense for a second.

There is one other particularly annoying thing about this whole America's Cup fiasco of a ... hobby? Yes, I'll borrow Neil Miller's wisdom and call it what it is. It's a hobby. It's not a sport. It's not even a game. It's a upper-class, rich-bastards time-waster of a hobby. It's a jaunty bit of "Look what we can spend our money on!"

Actually there are THREE things that are also annoying about all this. (Hey, I just woke up ... that's my story, and I'm sticking with it!)

(1) It's a thing that precious few people in the world can relate to, first-hand – because not many people can afford a massive, expensive thing like a yacht. Not many of us can even afford to buy a ticket to go for a ride on one.

So it's nothing like an actual sport like rugby, or hockey, or baseball, or soccer, where anyone can find a ball and an empty field (or a puck, a stick and a rink) and go out with their pals and have a go ... even as kids.

Kids in the poorest countries in the world will find a way to play a game of soccer. Some of those kids can (and do) grow up to be pro soccer players. But for lots of them, they start out playing with an old, hole-ridden, deflated ball, and no shoes.

To be a kid capable of going out to race a big expensive yacht ... well, being born into privilege in a first-world country is only part of it. You have to be that, plus, you need to live in a city near an ocean. Plus your parents have to be willing to fork out a bunch of dough for said yacht ... and, those parents also need to be willing to let you and your layabout, punkass friends to go out on said yacht, because chances are high you'd run the thing into something and sink it.

There's no way in hell most people in the world would have a chance to ... or even consider ... waking up on a Saturday morning to amass their pals for a bit of a jaunt on the high seas, speeding around in a hugely expensive racing yacht – against a bunch of OTHER rich kids with the same sort of yacht at their disposal.

This is a thing that – if you do indulge – that demonstrates you are clearly one of the top-echelon 1% rich-twit bastards of the world.

(2) The nerve of some marketing maven by calling this Team New Zealand boat "The

Good on you, marketing mavens. The "people"
actually bought into this travesty!

People's Boat"?! What "people" would this be? The middle-class working joes of New Zealand? The people on welfare? Even those of us with decent enough jobs to buy good craft beer?

How about ... NO!?

Man, kudos to that bit of marketing genius ... because many "people" here even bought into it!

Oh, the third reason?

(3) If we need any other proof that this is the lamest sort of hobby/event that tries way too hard to be taken seriously – there are the many and varied excuses wherein a race cannot go forward ... the things that can cause this 'hobby' to be delayed/cancelled make golf look like a hard-core, blood-spattered game with top athletes having at it, tooth, fang and nail.

This particular event in San Francisco got called off for things like "There's too much wind"; "There isn't enough wind"; and "Someone thought they saw a whale swimming around".

Seriously? Too much wind to race a boat that is propelled by ... wind? And ... A whale? They live in the sea, and that's mostly what they do?

A whale of an excuse ... not!

Those sentient sea creatures who are really good at avoiding being bumped into by a bunch of clowns in a sailboat.

That's the rumpus, right there. That ... is one of the lamest excuses yet.

Why not just tell it like it is ... clearly when that "Hey, I think I saw a whale in the harbour!" call went out, it was because some (or all) of the guys were too hung-over to be out racing on the water, because they were in Team New Zealand's boat, in the process of being soundly beaten, like rented mules ... caned like red-headed step-children, that you keep in the attic, because they owe you money.

And they were all pouty about it. And so they got drunk the night before. And now they're too sick and pouty and mopey to go out again today, and have their asses handed to them ... again. So ... yeah. A whale. Sure, that could happen. Let's call off this race, OK? Can't be going out there and maybe hurting a whale.

But on to more important things. Let's go All Blacks!

And as I'm publishing this blog the day before the All Blacks play the Boks ... I hope my next Blog isn't all about a bunch of lame excuses as to why the All Blacks lost.

This just in, you twerking
twerp. This is NOT sexy.
You look brain-damaged.
And infectious.

Oh one other thing that just crossed my newly-coffee-infused brain ... what is the excuse for this creature called Miley Cyrus all over the TV and the net? What appears to be a teenager who just grew breasts, and who is now hell-bent on showing them to us (not to mention her skinny ass, and, her biological-meltdown-cesspool of a tongue) is now news-worthy.

There seems to be NO excuse.

We need to nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

And hey! Don't forget to tune in to all things beery and fun over at Brew-Ha-Ha, where Don is always ready to serve up some suds-fuelled hilarity! And over at Shwa Stories, my mate Glenn has his finger on the pulse of all things Oshawa-ish! (Say that 5 times, fast!)



Until the next (ideally excuse-free) blog, I'm always, absurdly,