I have often snarked about the superiority of Rugby Union over the lesser forms of foreign sportsball. We have already had a look at Rugby League here… So in this exciting edition of Foreign Footy I will illustrate the majesty of Rugby Union. What could be better than 15 athletes trying to move a ball to the end of the field and touching it down to score (OK, they kick through posts too)?
Try!
Go for posts, sir!
Watch a great try Here is a kick for ya. Here is a drop kick.
How about when the other team is allowed to tackle you – and when you are tackled to the ground, you have to let go of the ball, and the action continues (a ruck).
Ruck
If they don’t get you to the ground or out of bounds – then the ball carrier turns into a beef bone being fought over by two packs of wolves (a maul).
Maul
A maul clinic.
No NFL 3-5 seconds of action and a halt for 45 seconds or more.
It just doesn’t stop – in this case, Welshmen never yield.
In fact, the only time the action stops is when the ball goes out of bounds, a penalty is called or there is a score. OK, at halftime and the game end too, pedants…
Oh – none of that blocking stuff allowed. No forward passes either. Run with it forward, kick it and chase it down or pass it sideways or backward to a teammate.
When the ball comes back into play, it is either the Line-out (a throw in that would make NBA players wince).
Lineout
A lineout. Sneaky, sneaky Kiwis.
Or the most GLORIOUS of athletic activities known to Mankind – the scrum!
Crouch…bind…set!
…and drive!
But seriously – if you want a good intro to the rules of rugby look here.
You want the full set of rules (or “Laws” – yeah, that does make a libertarian wince to see them called “Laws”) try here.
If you want to see a match, played at a high level – put yer eyeballs on this.
SPOILER ALERT!!!
…
…
…
The good guys win.
Just wanted to be on this early. Thumbs up on the posting title. Too bloody true,mate.
And yeah, France vs NZ 2017. A very good game, and hard to find better on youtube.
Watched a New Zealander watch rugby in a bar in Albuquerque. I haven’t ever seen anyone so enthusiastic and animated about anything.
I dunno, if you’d brought in a sheep or two, you might have a different and more entertaining story.
*narrows gaze*
Ewe would take a cheap shot at Kiwis, 6.
Thanks Swissy. You know, I can’t even be arsed to read/understand the rules of rugby. I just know that it’s the only televised sport other than mixed martial arts that can hold my attention.
Best way to learn it is by watching it with someone who knows the sport. When I first started playing I was handed the rule book and it made absolutely no sense.
After a deployment to Iraq years ago I was stuck in Kuwait for a week or so waiting for the flight home. Sat in the barracks watching the sports channels all day. Seemed like the only things they showed were rugby and cricket. I spent the first two days explaining what was happening to everyone around me and after that they were hooked…
I don’t have a fancypants cable TV package, and only subscribe to Amazon Prime and Netflix. I could see myself subscribing to an HD streaming service for rugby if such a thing existed. It would be awesome to have access to live streamed and/or archived Rugby Union, Sevens, and Tri-Nations games.
lol Tri-Nations isn’t even a thing anymore.
There are ways to watch. Does this site allow messaging or list my email anywhere?
There’s always that discord server
Pusher.
I prefer “strident enabler”, if you don’t mind!
As far as I understand, you can put a hyperlink for display in your profile under the Website field, but no PM.
Eh, all my contact info was already supplied to the world by the Feds anyway, so I can post it here too. Email me at shedendblue(at)gmail(dot)com and I can walk you throug some options.
FWIW there is a torrent site which presumably our hosts do not want me linking directly to which is named “across the [name of the sea that separates new zealand from australia]” which has lots and lots of all sorts of rugby, including Sevens, to download. Let me know if that’s not enough information to get you some rugby.
@Mods : Please feel free to edit/delete if not allowed.
Ehhhh, I’ll consider it. Frankly I’d rather pay a subscription, even in foreign currency (0% foreign transaction fee card!), so long as it meant access to the live events in HD.
I think that Americans would gladly watch rugby but the sports channels can’t figure out how to wedge in enough advertising with pre-recording games and chopping them up.
I was in a BBQ place a few months ago waiting for my order. They had a Team USA rugby match on the TV and everyone in the place was watching, they even cheered when the Americans scored.
without
It’s certainly better than imported Mexican (or women’s) soccer.
Gooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllll!
TTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?
Is “arsed” the the next “gingers”?
are there any other UK terms that have slipped into North American vernacular without anyone noticing?
Arsed slipped into Canadian vocab around 20 or so years ago, at least in my experience.
this is why we need the northern border wall
I wish “tosser” would become more pervasive this side of the pond. It’s hilarious.
We need to work hard to import more Australianisms. British slang and cusses are OK, but Australian stuff is like the Mantis Shrimp of colloquialism.
+slag
i worked for the brits for 8 years. One of my first bosses (from the midlands) was particularly fond of the term “streuth“. I liked it mainly because it seemed a more-polite way of calling ‘bullshit’ on someone.
i think i picked up some affectations but they were mostly pretty subtle. probably the most persistent has been my dropping “zeds” from “ize”-suffixed words, because i had UK (@#*$@# spellcheck on all my computers for like 10 years.
i drew a line with my colleagues = if you’re American, and you start saying “al-you-min-eeum” or “shed-joo-ull”, you have a problem.
IIRC, “al-you-min-eeum” is in fact the correct name of the elemental metal, whereas “aluminum” is a trade name (I thought created by ALCOA). Aluminum is made from aluminium. Of course, the Wikipedia article about it substantially disagrees with me. (I got my info from my wife’s maternal [British] grandfather, who spent his life making “aluminum” cans.)
That comports with what I understood too.
Aluminum</em) should derive from alumina in the same way that thorium and magnesium would, but I remember some controversy about IUPAC adopting aluminium as the official name in the 1990’s, which just goes to show, just because you’re a scientist, doesn’t mean you are in any way rigorously consistent.
Everyone knows that scientists are scumbags anyway.
Explain molybdenum.
It’s … complicated.
Well, ‘streuth’ is interesting. It’s a re-import to the Brits from the Australians, and a contraction of “God’s Truth”
But the Aussies have some interesting (and confusing) ones that I’ve documented elsewhere (might have been at the old site).
Durex is probably Britain’s most recognized brand of condoms. In Australia, it’s a brand of adhesive tape. Confusing, when you’re making that late night purchase at a convenience store.
The real entertainment is phrases like “seeing a brown friend off to the sea” or “choking a darkie”. Then there’s the slightly more obvious “syphon the python”. All of which were in common conversational usage when I was over there.
It’s comedic gold, Bruce. Comedic Gold!
“Dropping the kids off at the pool”
Yeah, the imagery is there, but so much Australian slang seems to throw in some idle racism too.
Confusing, when you’re making that late night purchase at a convenience store.
No kidding. When I want sexytime with duct tape, a rubber is no substitute.
The converse being true, of course. I’m sure some Australians in London sending gifts back to their family in Sydney get a bit of a surprise too.
I really miss playing rugby. Played a lot more 7s than regular though. Just couldn’t justify the risk any more after seven concussions and three knee operations though.
Strangely, I never got injured playing rugby, lacrosse, or my brief foray into ice hockey. But I did tear up my knee doing the limbo at a summer camp where I worked…
I feel like the lack of pads used when playing Rugby gives people a bit more pause before laying you out with a concussion inducing hit.
A bit like the studies they do that show cars tend to drive closer to bike riders when they are wearing the full reflective garb.
I think that’s part of it, plus there’s that huge incentive not to get your head trapped between the opposition’s loose head prop’s groin and the grass. I always wore shinpads, a boxer’s mouthguard and about 4ft of duck tape around my head to protect my ears, but nothing extreme.
I just rubbed my ears with Vaseline before the game and during halftime they stayed attached. (Played Hooker)
I was loose head prop. One particular team who we used to play were tactical ear-grinders.
Our tight head needed a couple of stitches after playing a game against them once, and I didn’t want to sport a matching disfigurement. I don’t count that as a rugby injury because it wasn’t exactly an accident.
I tried to time my last shave make sure my beard was as rough as possible for the other Hookers and Props who like to rub.
Played against Harvard Business School once. Their Hooker wore shin pads and kicked me in my shin during every scrummage. Right at the end, he didn’t notice one of his pads was turned around and I punted him with my steel-toed boot. Only time I ever had a penalty called on me – totally worth it.
The ear-grinders were the London Met Police team. In the 80’s those guys were real bastards (some things never change and are true worldwide, huh?).
Most of them really looked like they should have had to be on leashes when they went out on patrol.
7s is the ultimate exciting ball sport. Fight me if you disagree.
Too many people on the field in 15s, too much big-group-of-big-guys-muckling.
Sevens is… run… hit.. throw… catch… run… hit.. throw… catch. That’s what a spectator sport should be like.
My initial thought whenever I see Rugby…
If someone would get downfield and throw some blocks, they could get the field wide open.
A good rugby match isn’t meant to be people chasing a track-star down the field (although it happens sometimes). It’s a confrontation, a test of wills, strength and endurance. Who can keep up the pressure and pace through two 40 minute halves of non-stop brutality?
They used to say similar things about the NFL, especially when the West Coast offense was introduced.
Lots of complaining about finesse and dink and dunk. Until it started winning championships and everyone adopted it.
Except really, the so-called West Coast had been a mainstay of the Unitas-led Colts back in the ’50s. It just wasn’t called that.
Before the Walsh 49ers, what was called the West Coast offense was the downfield passing game pioneered by Sid Gillman with the Rams in the ’50s and refined as Air Coryell by Don Coryell with St Louis in the early ’70s and San Diego in the late ’70s into the ’80s.
I’m a Giants fan who grew up on the Parcells teams. Neanderthal football will always have a special place in my heart.
I grew up a Patriots fan and while I vaguely remember the ’76 screw-job Al Davis pulled, ’78 was the first season I watched every game. The season the set the team rushing record which will probably never be broken no matter how many games they add to the schedule.
http://www.patriots.com/news/2016/08/28/record-no-rush-be-broken
If that’s the kind of rugby you want to see, watch RU Sevens. The USA even has a pretty good team.
I have a triple option team to watch starting soon enough.
Aww, what a cute cheer pyramid they are making.
Damn I love real rugby! Ruck and maul for two 45 minute halves – not timeouts. Twenty minutes into the second half you start to know real exhaustion and agony – no other sport comes close.
If I was about 25 years younger, I’d be training for the fall season with a club team right now.
If I was about 25 years younger, I’d be new in NYC, unmarried, a non-parent with what I’m told is an attractive English accent and concentrating on something quite different from Rugby.
Finding a dentist?
Playing villains in American movies?
Teeth are pretty good for a Limey – front ones anyway.
25 years ago I would have been competing with the likes of Alan Rickman, Anthony Hopkins, Jeremy Irons, Bob Hoskins and a fuckton of other genuinely talented actors, so I’d have been more interested in the groupies.
I did actually have a conversation in London with Rickman once, about 2 or 3 years before he played Hans Gruber. I’m hugely conflicted about him. He really was a very good actor, but he was a totally committed PC prick too, but quite affable if you stayed away from Thatcher-era politics and economics. I heard thru’ a mutual friend that when he got the Die Hard gig, he thought his agent had got the numbers wrong.
He was hilarious in Galaxy Quest. “May I remind you that this man is wearing a costume, not a uniform!”
Product of the old-school RADA training. They have to do drama, improv, comedy, the lot. It really is one of the last valuable things about British culture, assuming the very term isn’t an oxymoron.
He was also wonderful in Bottle Shock.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ElmDQVkrWg
I don’t think I ever saw anything he wasn’t good in, really.
Explaining what marmite is?
Oh, that’s easy. You just re-run the old Cheech and Chong sketch with the two native america indians:
(Can’t believe I could still remember the name of the sketch, “Chebornek“)
How about when the other team is allowed to tackle you – and when you are tackled to the ground, you have to let go of the ball, and the action continues (a ruck).
OT: New Zealand woman gets blown away by her Virgin Islands vacation.
I’ve been on that stretch of road separating the fence from the beach. Those people are nuts.
That isnt the Virgin Islands.
I have been there. The bar right next to that beach is awesome for stupid people watching.
Kind of scary landing though.
St Maarten is one of my favorite spots. Most vacation spots I find great but have no interest in going back. I want to go back there.
I particularly enjoyed the French side, where I had one of the best scruffy-beachside meals of my life. I begged the café cook for the recipe. He laughed. A lot.
I was mostly on the Dutch side, I spent a couple of days on the French side. I enjoyed the Dutch side more.
The French have the better beaches though.
Not even in the top 10 in crazy airport landings:..
How about St. Barth?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a11Z14xync
Watching landings at the old Hong Kong airport could be pretty thrilling.
Pilot was obviously drunk.
Seriously though. Landing gear. How tough is that stuff? Plane touches down at an angle and the landing gear has to take it, wow.
Look for flight test videos of the 747. The gear is designed to withstand huge yaw angles on landing. That video was far from the worst I have seen.
I’ve been in a landing like that, it’s pretty fucking scary if you’re looking out the window. The plane’s coming down sideways, you wonder for a split second if your time is up, then touch down and it suddenly straightens out.
I flew into Kai Tak a number of times. The good airlines always put good pilots on the HK run, so being onboard, the landing just felt aggressive on that final jink onto the runway. Big planes too.
I’d rather that than a landing I did at Barra airport in the Hebrides. There are lots of Youtube videos, claiming it’s spectacular, etc, but it isn’t. You’re landing on a flat beach, the surface highly variable. The pilot often has a conversation with a local about how uneven the sand is, and then in he comes. A beach landing isn’t *necessarily* a bad thing … except …
… on bad days, you can experience a lot of tidewrack and garbage on the beach and occasion they get the local to go out and remove any big bits that might impede a landing.
I had a late evening landing there once where some guy and his horse were trotting along the strand like he was filming a remake of “The Quiet Man”, and Barra is visual-only and at the time had no ILS (and no landing lights) it was a bit touch-and-go in more ways than one.
I flew in on that landing. I thought the approach was screwed up and we were going to hit a building and die.
And then I realized that was the REGULAR PATH and I thought they were fucking insane.
The one in Nicaragua? or Guatamala? is the scariest I have seen. But St Maarten is the worst I have done.
Also OT: If your ATM starts asking for help, you should listen.
Imagine if you tried to help the guy in some way and ended up getting in trouble yourself. That possibility might dissuade some people from trying to help.
France versus ….. New Zealanad?
And just how good a sport can it be if France is one of the best at it?
I like to joke that Rugby shows which is the greatest nation in the world… New Zealand or Fiji.
Stealing jokes from the Simpsons?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZjtX1QrYW4
There are certain regions of France where the Gaulish blood still runs thick. Those tend to be where French rugby is popular if memory serves
Like the Jets are one of the best in the NFL?
I saw a World Cup match in the 80’s where the All-Blacks beat them like a drum. Haven’t seen that many bleeding, crying Frenchmen running for the sidelines since the Blitzkrieg.
I know nothing about rugby so I’m only mentioning France since they’re in the linked video that is billed as the greatest rugby game of all time.
The French have become a lot more competitive over the last couple decades or so. Oppo teams can’t simply assume they’ll be able to crush them the way they used to back then. That ecological niche is now filled by (I’d say) the Italian team, and sometimes the Scots.
The Scots have been playing a lot better recently. Yeah, they came in last in the 2015 Six Nations, but have played better since.
**trudges out of thread to the plaintive sounds of bagpipes**
Sad Bagpipe?
Aren’t they all? (well, they are when I attempt to play them)
My Normandy cousin played rugby in one of the regional leagues there. He’s the same age as me (59), and his broken, battered, wrecked body is a mute testament to just how seriously they take the sport of rugby there.
Particularly when they’re playing against visiting teams from the UK, which are invariably referred to as Les Anglais regardless of where in the UK they’re from. There is no mercy offered or given.
Oh yeah, my cousin also walks really funny, and one of his knees is all-but-completely non-functional.
Still one of the most cheerful people I know. Successfully defended his PhD. thesis in History last year at Caen. Very impressive d00d.
All those men hugging each other is just darling!
Ahhhh, go tighten your leather jockstrap!
OT: FFS, I want to choke which of the previous owners of my home last touched plumbing.
I’m in the process of remodeling a bathroom, when I discover that the interconnect from the sink basin to the discharge pipe at the wall is this massive clusterfuck intermixing 1 1/2″ metal pipe joints, PVC, and to make it extra aggravating: the douchenozzle applied thick layers of epoxy putty over all the threaded shit, because apparently that’s so much easier than doing everything correctly using plumbing gaskets and consistent threads. One of the crucial joints up to the discharge rotted all the way through with rust too, with a 1 1/2″ diameter male pipe going into the 2″ outer diameter PVC discharge pipe. WTF, I find there’s epoxy putty all over the metal-PVC junction at the discharge pipe so I just said fuckit and took an angle grinder to that bullshit. Now I can start over by adapting the discharge pipe directly down to 1 1/4″ fittings and correct it.
Nothing like PVC dust and fumes to round out the early afternoon.
My sister-in-law bought this “great” house on the east side of the state. The previous owners thought a hot tub would be like totez awesome. So they shoved it in a room without adequate ventilation, which caused mushrooms to grow on the wooden floor. The floor was on the verge of collapsing by the time the house got sold. At least the SiL got a great deal on the house – paid a lot less than the average in the neighborhood but ended up throwing wads of cash fixing everything that was done so poorly. She did sell it a profit just before the market came crashing down in ’08ish.
It was also originally a one story house and the previous owners just slapped something together for the upstairs. The whole structure felt unstable.
Having been through five (1) bathroom renos/tear-down-and-completely-rebuilds myself, I feel for you. I don’t have anything against DIYers (I’m one myself, and enjoy it), but fer Chrissake, learn how to do correctly whatever it is you’re attempting to do, or sub out that part of the job. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve torn open a wall in an older home only to discover that it was apparently Amateur Hour in 1958 (or during the last reno in the 80s) and everybody was auditioning in my house.
In the Calgary house, the copper piping for the domestic water supply was so much spaghetti that even a professional plumber couldn’t figure it out. I said “let’s tear it all out and start over,” and we did. The repairs were fast, cheap and logical, and we got hot water out of every faucet in the house within seconds (instead of the 90 seconds or so it was taking in some parts of the house before).
The water supply o o
and the drain O
Should like like this that makes the “surprised by cock” expression, right?
o o
O
Well, this asshole planned this thing so that it looks liked a deformed stillborn mutant with 12 chromosomes
o o
O
Fail. Sigh. Anyway, the discharge pipe is like 1/2″ from the hot water source, while the cold water source is like 5″ to the right. Stupid as hell.
I actually volunteer a good bit with Habitat for Humanity. Not because I care about my fellow man (I don’t) but because I wanted to learn DIY skills by practicing on someone else’s house…
Just went through this.Idiot glued all the threaded connections! I had to open the wall, cut it all out and start over. Grrrrr.
If I ever have to do any major replumbing, I’m goin’ Pex.
That is all.
Yep. Modern tech has done wonders for plumbing. Had a buddy who started as a plumber 40 years ago, and there were occasions he remembers as an apprentice where he had to join two cast-iron sections of drain pipe together by pouring molten lead (!) into the seam. By the time he finished his apprenticeship, they’d already graduated to using hot bitumen for the same procedure. That newfangled plastic stuff had already been around for awhile, but the guy who taught him was hard-core old school.
The old Poly B stuff was crud (although to be fair, it was mostly the fault of the crappy plastic compression connectors they used — the copper ones were fine), but modern PEx is a freakin’ miracle for the DIYer.
The mere ability to supply one faucet from one pipe run via the distribution manifold makes the whole issue of isolating individual leaks so painless, it’s a no-brainer.
If I ever have to do any major replumbing, I’m
goin’ Pexhiring a plumber.But I can change my own tires, dammit!
One of the funny things about this part of Connecticut is that you just can’t get plumbers and electricians who want to do anything ‘smaller’ than a major, major remodel. So despite Fairfield County being one of the richest regions of the US, it’s hard for what counts as ‘regular folk’ to get handymen at any price, so I know a lot of people living in what for here is an ‘average’ price house, who do a lot of their own remodelling when they’re not equity analysts in NYC.
Wiring in the US is – to use a British term – a piece of piss – as is plumbing. If you can snake a line and use some really simple tools, you can get a job done that you *literally* can’t find a guy to do. If you do find one, they’re so busy you have 10 week wait times. And in my case, if I do the work, it’ll pass code.
It’s like there’s some weird economic principle here that isn’t being observed.
Same issue here in the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District). Except that, since most of the people who live here have learned helplessness, they don’t even do it themselves. The government, of course, is now pushing additional certification regimens on people such as “handymen,” which is choking off the supply of reasonably-priced people who can do odd jobs. If you don’t have a Red Seal, you’re not supposed to be offering even the most basic of services.
Dumbasses and witlings, the lot of them!
Everything I do along the lines of carpentry, plumbing, electrical, etc. looks exactly like I did it – in short, like it was done by a fat, nearsighted old man with shaky hands, little knowledge, and less patience.
Fortunately, I can afford to pay people who know what they are doing. So I do that. Also extends my lifespan, as Mrs. Dean can be . . . unforgiving.
I have great respect for electricians and plumbers – they do not have a pleasant job, especially here in Florida. I will willingly pay someone else to crawl up into my blazing hot attic to run lines. Our house is on a slab, so any new work will go in the attic, and I will gladly pay someone to go up there to do it. Seeing that the average high during the middle of winter is around 70 degrees, it is hot up there year round.
Rip out the junk and do it right.
In-laws recently bought a house that had some interesting electrical done on it. Extension cords used like romex cabling that needed to be plugged in to make another outlet or light 30 feet away work. Ohh boy. There are switches with seemingly no purpose.
I always got a bang out of the octagon boxes used to do multi-way splits of a branch circuit (sometimes using old extension cord wire), completely buried in a wall or ceiling with absolutely no indication that it was there. Not to mention double-taps on the breaker box. Fargers.
Over the 3-4 years it took to redecorate our house, I stripped all the existing wiring out and put in Romex. We had a godawful mess of greenfield and – because this was a 70’s house, we had some of that nasty aluminum wiring that needed special outlets and switches.
Ah yes, Al/Cu wiring. Otherwise known as “50 different house fires just waiting to happen.” I hate that stuff.
All gone. Thankfully.
We have aluminum wiring in our house right now. They used the pigtail connecters to mitigate it, but I’ll be replacing it all as soon as I can. Oh the joys of home ownership.
‘Course, almost nothing compares to knob-and-tube wiring. Found some of that stuff during house inspections of places we were thinking of buying.
Not.
Interested.
I feel your pain. We’ve been discovering random things like that in our house as well. Most confusing – the washing machine drain started backing up. When we examined it, we found out that the prior owner had swapped the line that connected to the sewer with one that ran out into the middle of the back yard and into a french drain. Actually drilled a hole in the concrete wall to do so. One call to the plumber and about 5 minutes with a power snake and the sewer line was clean and functional again. So instead of just snaking the line, he drilled a hole in the house.
Idiot.
Nice.
My favorite remodeling story (and I’ve got a few) goes like this.
I bought a 65 rancher with a walk out basement. Unbeknownst to me, it had cast iron pipes underneath the basement slab. Everything above grade was copper.
After three years or so with a full family instead of one little old lady, stuff started backing up. After some investigation (and much cursing) I decided to attempt to sleeve the pipes (blow an epoxy soaked sock back up in the cleaned pipe to reinforce the iron). So I called a contractor who specialized in it.
He cleaned the pipes with a jetting system which worked great. Then because he was looking to expand he asked me if I would demo an air compressor to him for the sleeving process. I said sure and brought a 55hp 210cfm mobile air compressor in for him to try. Easy demo.
Basically, they soak a sleeve with epoxy and then blow it up into the pipe like unrolling an inside-out sock. However, this contractor had been using a fairly small compressor and was not prepared for a full industrial sized unit so the sock blew out very quickly. He was impressed, so I thought “great!”
We work all day to finish this job, then at 5pm I decide to go to the basement bathroom. I open the door to find that everything in the septic traps, everything in the toilet, every last little piece of shit in the line including a least one big fat turd has been air fired like a pumpkin chunkin straight onto the ceiling and walls from every drain in the bathroom.
I was not pleased.
+
My plumbing issue is suddenly no BFD
Close the door, silicone sealent around the edges and in the keyhole. Back away slowly.
I read a story one time about a guy who was about to go to sleep, went into this master bathroom to take a shit, and heard a strange rustling noise under the floor. He noticed one of the tiles seemed to be loose so he pried it up and found a whole nest of huge black ants. He said he dumped about a can of raid into the hole, put the tile back, closed the bathroom door, drank about 3 shots of whiskey and went to bed.
close door, walk away, let house go into foreclosure.
You almost made legitimately choke on my lunch from that story in the middle of the office.
Same here.
I hope you didn’t tell the contractor, so his other clients could share in the fun.
Good God.
“Honey, mail the house keys back to the bank. We’re moving.”
Heh – friend of mine decided to clean out his sewer line since it was clogging up. “Why,” he thought, “I’ll just use a ShopVac and suck the blockage into it.”
According to him, he got a flood of poop – ankle deep – in his basement. Yumm.
He must have one hell of a good shop vac.
yeah – that’s how I heard the story from him – a long time ago. Maybe he snaked it and pulled the everything back with him? Dunno.
I dunno, if he had a really big george stuck in the bottom of the downpipe and hit it just right with the shop-vac , it’s easy to imagine 20ft x 4in diameter column of waste water and solids ending up in basement.
I was not pleased.
Which sucks, but since you were demoing a compressor for the contractor, you can’t even blame him.
Yeah, I bore some responsibility for that one, especially since I recognized the turd.
That was a long night and a lot of chlorine fumes inhaled.
Here’s the real pisser.
I asked the contractor three times if he had made sure not to extend the sock so far as to cover the septic line drop from the main floor. He assured me he had. The next day, half of the upstairs sinks and toilets are overflowing. The backup ruined the sock installation so we had to saw out the basement floor and replace with PVC anyway.
I hope you got your money back. Failing that, I hope you hooked your compressor up to the sewer line connected to his office and gave him both barrels.
He had to assist me with the rest of the plumbing repairs and give me a discount (The other half of the installation went fine).
I’m holding out for when Jugger finally becomes a thing
Oh my god, that is incredible. Is that the fantastic Rutger Hauer???
Sadly, old Rutger looks like the late, beatified Teddy Kennedy nowadays. But yeah. Totes Rutger.
Rutger Hauer always, always does post-apocalypse correctly.
Rutger Hauer is the star of every single “absurd B movie worth-watching” from the 1980s and 1990s. I imagine desperate producers who had some shitty screenplay would say, “we’ve run out of options: its time to get Rutger Hauer drunk again”
I thought the more-surprising castmember there was Vincent D’Onofrio
One of the most interesting things about the Intersting Mr. Hauer is that despite him making a memorable series of Guinness adverts in the 80’s, he was/is reportedly a lifelong tee-totaller.
When I heard they were going to remake The Hitcher all I could think was it’s going to suck without Hauer.
Of course, modern Hauer is fun too…
OMG. I hope that all the good parts aren’t just in the trailer. I need to watch this.
my favorite rutger hauer flick:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk2MrCYp2MM
Get me Bruce Lee!
It apparently is a thing.
Jugger “Captura vs Skull!” 12th Jugger Championship Berlin
Rutger Hauer and Joan Chen?
COUNT ME IN
I think I watched that movie very late one night.
League learns from union: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVxidAB0AHc
Check out try starting at 1:30
Without knowing much about rugby, that looked pretty.
I’ve red it all and I still gotta go with Calvinball with booze.
Does playing the damn sport help it make sense?
Absolutely.
Football with no forward pass or forward fumbling or blocking. You have to fumble and the ball stays live when you get tackled. If you kick it, its live like a kick off – so run like hell after it. Score by a literal “touch down” [in the try zone (end zone)] or by kicking through posts like a field goal (off a penalty) or a drop kick (old, old school football had this too).
You now know 80% of rugby.
Last 20% largely revolves around the imaginary line that stretches across the field from the ball – don’t go on the other side of that line and do anything or you are off-sides. When people pile up around the ball, no going around them to get at it – you have to push them back to get at it. No kicking or biting or hitting….at least when the ref is looking. No tackle around the head or hitting guys in the air. After that…an awful lot goes. My favorite – a guy on the ground won’t let go of the ball, so you “rake” them with your cleats.
Most of the last 20% of the rules are where to spit the blood, teeth and cartilage.
” don’t go on the other side of that line and do anything or you are off-sides”
Unless it’s an “accidental” offsides.
Thank you. I’m gonna watch a match and see if I can get it.
It took me awhile to understand lacrosse as well. Not everything can be as straightforward and beautiful as hockey, I guess.
The France-NZ game in the article is a good demonstration of the game.
I was in one of them there furriner countries when the US was in the world cup, and everybody was flabbergasted that I wasn’t watching and got all freaked out. So I watched it, even though I hate soccer, and sure enough, it was the panzy-ass flopfest I fully expected it to be. A rugby game came on after, and it was like the perfect antidote to the poison I’d just been watching. I could not figure out what the fuck was going on a lot of the time, but those were some tough bastards, mauling the shit out of each other and getting bloody doing it. It’s good stuff.
It’s a fun sport. I should put on some weight if I want to play with people my age.
Some of my best life experiences were on a rugby pitch (to say nothing of the drunken debauchery afterwards.
Good times.