Posts by Danielle
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I could definitely get behind the Nelson 'HA-ha'. Whom do we approach to get that written into the rules?
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I want more of that weird mariachi band, thanks. The entire half-time show could centre around the mariachi band and it wouldn't be too much for me!
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My grandfather was just a metaphor for people in our lives who might care about something that we think is stupid - but we're still nice to them about it, because they're our family or our friends and we don't want to make them feel bad. You know? I'll just shut up about him now.
I never received any years of abuse for not liking rugby - and I actively hated it for the first 25 years of my life. But I am a woman. So perhaps my attitude to this is not as informed as it might be if I had the Y chromosome. And I think it is horrible to be tormented for difference at school - I agree that if people are being hassled for not liking rugby, of course that needs to change. That's not cool.
Trying to be really, really reasonable here. :)
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And in some ways I feel like your nice old Grandad is making presumptions on my feelings that I really don't appreciate.
Hey, my Grandad isn't the one being presumptious. *I* am. Additionally, I'm not trying to be confrontational here *at all*. Seriously.
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More musing, not directed at anyone in particular. The thing is that although I do care, I am not insistent that others care. Feel free not to care, it's no skin off my nose. I am also vaguely uncomfortable with certain aspects of the 'cult' myself. And yes, of course, it's all much less important than so many other things, I know, I know. I do know all that.
But... the schadenfreude. I have plenty of friends who don't care - I'm a white upper-middle-class woman in Auckland who hangs around with twee, arts types - but only a few don't have the empathy gene, and those few are making me a little upset this week. Again, I am probably a hippy and you can all mock and scorn me, but in some ways I feel that someone who spends the time to publicly say they're 'amused' when the ABs lose is kind of indirectly being mean to my nice old Grandad. In other words, not all - or even the majority - of the fans are crazy morons to whom you can unthinkingly feel superior. (It's - possibly unconsciously - a rather classist smugness, in any case.)
Rugby has, historically, for New Zealand, signified many things for over a century. Both good things, and bad things (colonial difference, masculinity, racism, multiculturalism, professionalism...). And of course it's arguable that it's signified too much. But being horrible about the people who enjoy it doesn't help our national identity to become more well-rounded. There are other ways to do that, and I'm sure most of us are already involved in them.
(You should probably also note that I am such a fucking dork that I just got all verklempt at the New Zealand Herald story on the welcome home. So... ignore me.)
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Apparently some of the players are reluctant to come home right away, which is unsurprising in light of the treatment we have dished out to previous All Black sides.
My husband told me a story about the Houston Oilers today. In 1979 the Oilers were beaten horribly by the Pittsburgh Steelers, but the fans held a pep rally for them when they came back to Houston. So the Astrodome was filled with 70,000 people, waiting there after midnight to welcome home their crappy, loser team. That is ridiculously heartwarming shit. I wish we could manage to rustle up a little of that generosity of spirit. Not that the team is beyond criticism, I'm not saying that at all, but... oh, you know what I mean.
Yes, I am a stinking hippy. Feel free to mock and scorn me.
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Erm, aren't the players being "gracious" because they're contractually obligated to?
Which marks the official point at which this thread has made me more depressed than the actual match result. Cheers.
I couldn't see where this had been said, however I think it's BS.
To clarify: I didn't ever believe that assertion was true either. I have just been increasingly depressed by the meanspirited ways in which some people are expressing their disappointment with the result, and that one - that someone is willing to believe that graciousness in defeat is merely a matter of contractual obligation - was the final straw for me. This 'there is absolutely nothing good to say about the team' kind of transferral is to be expected, I suppose, but it's still a bummer. I feel so sorry for the ABs. I wouldn't swap my crap-paying no-pressure job for theirs, ever. Shudder.
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Erm, aren't the players being "gracious" because they're contractually obligated to?
Which marks the official point at which this thread has made me more depressed than the actual match result. Cheers.
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Grow up.
Hey! I was moving from 'bargaining' to 'acceptance' this morning, and you ruined it by being all mean!
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(Heh. I've turned into one of these 'we' people, unconsciously. I mean, *the All Blacks*, the team I support, lost the game. Not me, personally.)