The big soccer final is this weekend. A coupla dozen limp wristed shirt-swappers are going to chase a leather balloon around a paddock in Yokohama to ascertain who can get it to the back of the net the most when it counts. Wake me when it's over.

Threatening to eclipse the big event is a turn-up in Pomgolia (Limeria, Wasp Island, England) where the classic tale of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is having to undergo nomeclative surgery in order that hunchbacks not be offended.

Political correctness takes place in the places fewer people really give a shit.

The Bell Ringer of Notre Dame is still going to be as ugly as fifty pigs and lust after the underaged Esmerelda. Poor misunderstood Quasimodo. Poor deformed, illiterate, deaf Froggy toe-rag.

If only he'd used his testicles for niceness instead of evil.

All the world is utterly fucked save thee and me, and I'm really not sure of me.

I'm blatting (blogging to you) for the first time in a month for one good reason. I've been reading Rageboy's EGR newsletters one after the other because Topica.com no longer sends me any email.

BASTARDS!

I'm missing out on all the good shit. I go there to post my newsletter and while I'm there - if I'm not busy stirring up hornets nests elsewhere - I read the efforts of Rageboy and Terry Mertens and occasionally re-read some of my own stuff. (That's why the first line of this particular bit of blattery.)

I'm suddenly aware that there is a conversation going on around me and that some pretty wired people are involved. The try hards who lurk where I stir up those hornets are just too damn ignorant of everything except their own opinions. That wouldn't worry me, but reading that crap, it becomes clear that not only are they largely incapable of stringing two sentences together, they are manifestly incapable of coherent thought.

Ho Ho Ho you say... and then I go off and read a few EGR's back to back and make blatts about incoherent thought?

Well, yeah. As it happens I do.

The difference is EGR is real in the sense that what I'm reading is what he's thinking insofar as I think he's honest enough to share his - fuck, I don't know what you'd call them - musings with us, I guess. And besides, I'm interested in Chris because he's interesting.

Now if that isn't the understatement of the year, I'll kiss his arse. Chris Locke interesting... yep. The sun is that warmish thing in the sky that keeps us from freezing to death, unless you're stranded at the South Pole in which case you'd be entitled to ask for your money back.

My idiot older brother got home from work just before. Just before midnight actually. Wandered in, went straight to his room and shut the door. Well hi, how was your day? Really? Well fuck you.

Then the ol' lady comes home. We have one of those automatic garage door jiggy boos - you know, push the button - open sesame and all that.

Well, mid open there was an emphatic sort of popping sound. I had high hopes that the thing had blown a fuse and I might get even just a couple of minutes more of peace and quiet, until I realised she'd only been inching the car forward as the door opened and she'd run over a gum nut.

So I prepared myself - I girded my loins - for the nightly diatribe of the occupational travails. Women shouldn't be allowed to work together. Seriously. They can't get along, they harbour deep resentment of one another then bring it all home to share with anyone stupid enough to even pretend to listen.

This, people, is the real reason football is televised.

But I'm spared this horror for the evening. She's picked up one of my most treasured resources - The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations. Which means I'm in for another sort of horror.

I'm trying to compile a few thoughts about the idiot brother, and she starts quoting from the damn book.
I wanna know what's currently going on with the Colorado bushfires - the Australian news has moved on to other far more mundane things, like Australian politics (Anarchists should all move to Australia where the government is rapidly fading to the status of irrelevence - even dipping occasionally into the realm of absurdity.) - I wanna know why Rageboy AND Chris Locke have stopped replying to email.

Here's the gist of it:

I want Rageboy to do a tour of Australia. I've hooked up with a smart cookie who knows all the right people and what strings to pull, but he needs something to sell to the people who pay for these things.

So, I email Chris, tell him, yeah the fee isn't the problem, it's just that over here, you're not all that well known. Less well known than you ought to be. So I need something to keep the potential sponsors interested. Comprende?

And that's not all... when I rang him up, he said he'd love to come to Australia - who wouldn't - if some rich motherfucker would pay for him to come over.

Not a problem I think. I'm on the job. Now he goes bush and won't answer his emails. So, EGR I think to find out what's been going on, since Topica seem determined to keep me in the dark, and lo and behold, he's been blogging his brains out for the last 5 weeks.

You're all to blame for this. If you weren't here, neither would he be, and I'd have got an answer to my emails.

So, there's a solution here. All of you know Rageboy. So all of you have to let him know that ChatRat has been waiting patiently for an answer to his emails about him coming to Australia.

In the meantime, as I look at the clock on my puter, I notice it's almost 2 in the morning and I really should do something about my eyeballs which appear to be sinking further into my cheekbones the more I sit at this painfully slow machine.

Would it help if I said "PLEASE"?

PLEASE!

Ok, rant over. You better check your eggs now, they're probably ashes.