Politics, Sports and Some Aussie Ad Goodness
The calls for cricket players doing their jobs in the spirit of the game lost just a little more clout this week. The hottest cricketers from the biggest national and local teams, including Andrew Symonds, star of the Australian national team and star of the race row that marred the Aussie's test match against India, took to the auction blocks for purchase by teams representing the Indian Premier League. Let's pause for the irony. . . .
Okay, Symonds, stepping down from the auction block, went for $1.35 million. Others went, one after another, some for considerably less money. The task? To play the controversial Twenty20 version of cricket over the course of 44 days. The festivities begin in April.
Parliamentary Antics
Australia's government today reverted to childhood by protesting, like children, about the absence of most of Labor's bigguns, including the prime minister, Kevin Rudd, himself. I've been watching some of the question sessions on ABC in order to learn about this wacky parliamentary system of government, and it's been interesting. The speaker has to tell people -- adults mind you -- to quiet down. And today, the spectacle was out of control because what is called the Opposition (the Bush side, if you will), which is not in power, bitched and moaned over the PM's absence.
Oh, the PM, by the way, was in Queensland taking a look at the flood damage incurred by the state's highest rain totals in, I heard, about 20 years. At least he wasn't dancing in Africa.
Them Aussie Ads
No matter how much I hate the tune, I am unable to tear my eyes from the screen as one might do at a train wreck. And no matter how much I hate the tune, I can recall it at any time without pause:
