Due to circumstances outside our control, our increasingly inaccurately named “liveblog” series on the Welsh campaign at the Rugby World Cup is now running over a game behind schedule. IT IS STILL, AWESOME, THOUGH. As always, these words are mine, and [these words are Tom’s].
Wales seem to be playing Shane Williams at inside centre. That’s… interesting. Oh, it’s some other S. Williams. Never mind then. [No two ways about it, Wales are expected to Haskell-DOMINATE Namibia today. Even with the B team. So, points, performance, poise, and no injuries—no pressure boys!]
Commentating are Martin Gillingham and a Welshman! (Michael Owen, no, not that one.) Ref is Steve Walsh, “formerly of New Zealand, now of Australia.”
From the kick-off, Wales are awarded a scrum. The Namibian facing The Best Rugby Player in the World™, Gethin Jenkins, collapses the scrum immediately, and Jones pops over the ensuing penalty:
Wales 3 - 0 Namibia
Good ’tache Namibia No 5. [With a ginger handlebar like that, you may well make it into the Hair XV my good man. Sterling effort.]
By far the most frequently posted clip is the Evolution of Dance routine by comedian Judson Laipply. As someone who spends way more time than is healthy watching dance on YouTube, I find that tremendously depressing. Really? There’s people that think that’s the best dancing on YouTube?
Yes, Evolution of Dance is an interesting routine, but, to be honest, you are out of your freaking mind if you even try to argue that it’s better dancing than Turk busting out some new jack swing in Scrubs. Ugh.
Every couple of years or so, a hip-hop dance video suddenly explodes out of the hip-hop community and into the general public’s conciousness, and people who normally have no interest in dance start forwarding me links to it.
Having had a little time to think about it, I’m now a little more bullish about the Welsh performance against South Africa. At times, it really was like watching a completely different team from recent Six Nations tournaments. The level of competence and, dare I say it, professionalism was a cut above. Let’s just hope that they can carry it over into today’s game against their World Cup bête noire, Samoa. [An opening point of irrelevance: of the two Samoan wingers today, one has a brother who plays for Fiji and one has a brother who plays for England. It’s a crazy mixed-up world out there kids. The old joke comes to mind—good job we’re not playing the whole of Samoa… Wales, for their part, have a No. 8 whose Dad played for Tonga, and even someone from North Wales. Diversity!]
It’s the Rugby World Cup! And you know what that means. Yes! Super-insightful and timely running commentaries on all three four of the Welsh games right here, on WYWG! As always in WYWG’s “live” sports blogs, the normal and amusing words like these are written by me, WYWG, and the [bracketed, italic, and dreary words like these] are written by WYWG’s close ally, Tom. Apologies for the delay in this first update. I know you were all eagerly expecting it on Tuesday afternoon. WYWG’s excuse is that WYWG was on holiday in Tuscany. [No excuse for neglecting WALES!] We hope to resume normal scheduling [i.e. just a few days late rather than a whole week] as of the Samoa game on Sunday.
I’m watching on ITV Player. What a novelty! The picture freezes during the Welsh national anthem. I’m not sure if the pause is in the video feed that ITV are using or if it’s just a glitch on my internet connection. Either way it can’t be a good omen.
“ I do work on the road using a MacBook Air, not an iPad, because I’m one of those users for whom the iPad’s design compromises get in the way, and slow me down. But I like having the iPad as a separate device, for reading and video. ”
Click to embiggen and for more great shuttle pics. (Copyright: Reuters/NASA)
This photo terrifies me. My greatest fear is floating stranded in space, only metres away from my spacecraft, but with no way of propelling myself towards it.
“ Oooh. Sick burn. Walt should give out some ointment with a burn like that. Walt
should smother a guy in industrial fire-fighting foam when delivering such a
third-degree burn. ”
I hadn’t been to the real USA for some time1 so I was surprised to see that many food outlets have rebranded their “All You Can Eat” buffets in a manner which is presumably intended to promote more healthy eating. As if somehow it were the wording used rather than the very concept of offering unlimited portions of food that has turned so many people into fatties.
I didn’t notice any difference in average waist-size of the clientele of the new slimline “care to” eateries vs the old-school “can” establishments, but I guess my sample size wasn’t really high enough to draw any scientific conclusions.
