Forget our ongoing Phelps: Demi God or Douchebag? debate. I think it’s a good day for a little vintage Olympic goodness.

And yes, I am going to write all of this from the top of my head without doing any research of any kind. Not even googling. I’ve had a weird sportscrush on Popov since I was ten and I just think he’s lovely. Judge me if you like.

Remember when swimmers wore speedos, and had body hair? Amazing.

This is a boy who first learned to swim when he was terrified of water.

Who held the 50m freestyle world record for almost a decade.

Who – when he won the 50 / 100 sprint freestyle double for the second time at the 1996 Olympics (the Johnny ‘Tarzan’ Weissmuller double) – gave his 100m gold medal to his coach, Gennadi Touretski, to say thank you.

Who – when he was stabbed in the streets of Moscow a month after the Atlanta Olympics – endured emergency surgery and three months of rehab to come back and win his two pet events the next year at the European Championships.

And who – now that Aussie waterbaby Eamonn Sullivan holds both of the world records that used to be his – is nothing but excited to watch Sullivan and Alain Bernard go faster.

And if you’re wondering what all these things mean: they mean he’s a classy bitch. Happy friday, kids.

(this post is alex popov-approved)

Damn these Olympics. It’s fair to say that we have kind of lost our minds in all the excitement. If Olympics is my crack then I’m pretty much Doherty right now. I should just give up and start painting pictures of the Olympic rings on my flat walls with my own blood.

To give you an idea of just how far gone we are, the Qantas Liesel Jones ad just came on tv and Kiki and I both had to take off our geek glasses to wipe away the tears. It was the war veteran in the medals that really did us in. IT’S ALL JUST SO EMOTIONAL.

We are also in the middle of a spirited debate on whether beach volleyball is a sport that can be legitimately included in the Olympic Games. On the one hand, it’s hot people in skimpy outfits. On the other hand, it’s hard to eat a pack of tim tams looking at that. In the pro column, the crazy Chinese DJ just played Billy Joel’s ‘Uptown Girl’ and Tie Me Kangaroo down, but more importantly – is it even beach volleyball if there’s no beach? That’s not a beach. I think it’s just a sandpit. At least at the Sydney games there was a real beach. GOD NOW I’M ALL CONFUSED.

We are no fair-weather Kookaburra fans. We have been all over our hockey-playing boys since … well, ever. It makes no sense, because we know no one who plays hockey, and we’re certainly not hockey-playin gals. Kiki because she has no hope of ever simultaneously coordinating her legs, her arms and a hockey stick, and me because I played it for two weeks in year five and was politely asked to transfer to netball because I was too violent to be trusted with a stick of any kind. True story.

Kiki is proud to say to that her best ever Olympic experience was spending two weeks after a tonsillectomy dosed up on painkillers and watching every single event through a pethadine haze. Apparently she was so overcome with excitement when the Kookaburras finally took out the Dutch in the 2004 gold medal match – after years in the hockey wilderness and the shadow of the Hockeyroos – that she burst a blood vessel in her throat. She may have been sitting on her own in the living room at 5am and choking on her own blood but that didn’t stop her screaming. True story.

Why is it that we kind of hate soccer, which seems to have almost exactly the same rules, but hockey is so amazing? Who knows. It Just Is.

One reason might be that our boys are so universally adorable. Perhaps even more adorable than their coach, Barry Dancer. Best. Name. Ever.

Have you met Desmond Abbott? Little Des just scored two fantastic goals against the Canadians in his first ever Olympics and made our hearts dance. There are not enough men named Des in this world. REPRESENT, LITTLE DESSY!

The Aussie hockey site tells me Des is an exciting, silky skilled midfielder/striker. Silky! We love you silky Des.

It also tells me that Jamie Dwyer – our fearless hockey captain – goes by the nickname Foetus. FOETUS. I love Australians. We greeted the news of his corked thigh in tonights hockey game with twin cries of ‘nooooo, not foetus!’ We’re ever so glad it’s just a muscle strain, foetus darlin.

Did I forget to mention that the Kookaburras are the whoriest team in the whole competition? No, sleeveless tops aren’t regulation, and yes, other teams wear sleeves. What can we say? Our boys just like to show off their incredibly toned and tanned arms and … wait what was I saying? Oh yes. THEIR GUNS NEED TO BREATHE! DON’T LOCK THE GUNS AWAY!

I especially enjoyed Matthew Wells’ bare arms waving his hockey stick at the umpire in the Australia-Canada match to dispute a decision. Ooooooh angry mans. Matty Wells can give me a bit of stick anyday.

Hockey has that magical property, like firefighting uniforms, of making everything uncontrollably hot. On a related note do you think they mist them in between halves? They’re all so … glistening. It also has the massive advantage of involving hockey sticks, so we can make as many pervy ‘stick’ jokes as we like (see above).

Possibly my only complaint is that the 2008 boys have decided not to sport their seventies terry headbands this Olympics. Bring them back, babies? Just for me?

Well the completely and utterly expected has finally happened. Remember all that stuff I said about the Olympics? As predicted: complete bullshit. The Olympics isn’t too much sport, nor too many sports, and there is absolutely no chance of my boycotting anything in it. I’m done for. I may never sleep again.

I spent last night huddled in the green tv glow in my terry robe, clutching my tumbler of diet coke and promising myself just one more race and then I’ll go to bed. Just one more. One more can’t hurt, right? A person only needs five hours … four hours sleep. Right? That’s all the guy in The Firm slept for and he outwitted the mob.

Then all of a sudden they were replaying Stephanie Rice winning gold and I had to watch that. Then I kind of had to watch our boys in the rowing, because it’s not fair to neglect them, is it? It would be sportist. And sexist. And gymnastics … well look I just really like gymnastics, ok? I love how gymnasts are just so … gymnasty. Their whole bodies are shaped for nothing but gymnastics. They’re human bonsai; modern and socially acceptable demonstrations of the victory of determination and conditioning over human genetics. You can’t look away any more than you could look away from those gory pictures of freshly unbound Chinese feet in history books at school.

So instead of focussing on work (and thankfully instead of scratching imaginary bugs through my skin) I’ve been reading the Olympic schedule for the day and jonesing for more. Do you know what I had to miss to go to work today?

Swimming finals, synchronised diving and equestrian events.

EQUESTRIAN EVENTS. Is there anything I love more? No, no there isn’t. Needless to say I am pissed. It’s the cross-country too, bitches, and there is no other event with as high a probability of someone falling face-first into a pool of murky river-water as the cross-country. Not even steeplechase, and you can quote me on that. I already missed out on watching live dressage yesterday thanks to Channel Seven and itis unnecessary broadcasting of some inconsequential and unimpressive bottom-of-the-table AFL game, and all I have to say is there are no hats in AFL. It cannot hope to compare with an event where men and women in blazers and sixties riding helmets prance on horseback in diagonals.

It’s magical. Like watching a dog walk on its hind legs. I’ve decided I really enjoy watching humans defy the natural order of things. I also like seeing ponies with their hair all done up and their hooves all shiny. It’s like the horse formal. I wonder if any of them shag in uncomfortable positions in a horse trailer afterwards.

And, yes. I am an angry addict when I don’t get my fix. Wanna make something of it?

Do you know that diver Matthew Helm has vertigo? I shit you not. He stands on a 10 metre platform and dives through a fear of heights. And I AM MISSING IT. You’d be angry too.

Plus what if some of the Americans turn up to their events in their ridiculous newsboy caps? I will be devo. If a yank wears a lame Kangol hat and no one makes a bitchy joke about it, what’s the point?

So in case anyone else is feeling as bitter and yearning as I am today, I’ll leave you with possibly the greatest piece of photoediting I have ever seen. This is what you call JOURNALISM.

The Sydney Morning Herald Olympic Gallery of Shirtless Men. Bravo, Herald. Bravo.

[pics: Getty Images / smh.com.au]

This post should actually probably be called ‘more stuff about all men are liars‘ or something, but … there just isn’t a song called that, okay? Also it’s my blog post I can call it whatever I want.

You only have to click on the ‘wouldn’t cry if they died’ tag on this blog to see that I Do Not have a ladyboner for Sam de Brito’s column on www.smh.com.au, but I only realised today that BITCH DOESN’T LIKE US EITHER.

I feel … oddly validated. Kind of like the time I walked past a girl in chenille hotpants and she made a face at my outfit.

In response to his blog on men being more romantic than women, our girl Jessica left a comment stating what I can only describe as the blindingly obvious, especially when the topic was romance outside of long-term relationships.

“… send some footy tickets to the cute boy in marketing or ask that tasty tradie does he have dinner plans? Terrifying, huh?”

And no, you can’t lie when you answer this question. It would be terrifying. Only not just for the lady risking her heart. More like terrifying for the poor bastard getting the tickets and feeling that inevitable lurch in the guts as he has nightmarish visions of family station wagons and mothers-in-law and thinks (as most men would in this situation) that she’s trying to get her talons into him. Because women who pursue men are either man eaters or desperately looking to trap a husband, right?

I’m not saying that thought is accurate. It could well be alarmist and ridiculous (it is in my case at least). But I know you’d be thinking it.

And in fairness, I should also post the reply to her comment:

Jessica, relax. It’s just a blog post, which was just a column. I know sometimes my writing can be taken as fractious, but it all springs from a desire for greater understanding and communication between the sexes. Do I achieve that all the time? No, but this is the 357th post I’ve written in two years, so forgive me if my tone wanders outside those parameters at times. – Sam

Wow. Perhaps we have found a worthy adversary, ladies. Look at how he uses her first name (even though she didn’t leave a full name in her comment) to imply a sense of omniscience and control. Observe the brilliant use of “it’s just a blog column”, which I believe can also be translated as “being patronising”, or even “calm down you hysterical woman”.

But best of all, I enjoy “this is the 357th post I’ve written in two years”. DING-DING-DING we have a winner! It’s such a compact and efficient way to say to a commenter I HAVE A REAL COLUMN ON A NEWSPAPER WEBSITE AND YOU DON’T. Aaaah dear. Amazing.

WE LOVE YOU DE BRITO. KEEP ON STOPPING BY!

But this blog isn’t going to be about That Other Column and why I mock it so often (let’s just say everyone needs a hobby and leave it at that).

I want to talk about romance. That Other Column asked women “when was the last time you did something spontaneously romantic?” What I would like to know is when has anyone done anything spontaneously romantic?

Surely the very idea is a contradiction in terms. What could be less immediate or spontaneous than what we call romance? Love can be unexpected and sudden when it appears. And when you look at a person the rush of love that you feel in your guts can make you do unexpected things on sudden whims, like pressing the top of your forehead under their jaw just to feel how warm their skin is, flinging your arms around them so the whole length of you is touching, or offering them the last party pie.

(Greg Bird suggested that last one. He’s so sweet)

But romance? Spontaneous? Never.

Romance is the product of thought, planning, and – possibly most of all – cultural conditioning. Everything that we brand as romance has an air of calculation about it, including picking the right restaurant in advance, or planning a trip to Paris. It’s not fresh in the sense of being spontaneous, just as it’s not fresh in the sense that these are learned behaviours, the same gestures that thousands of men have made before because That’s What You Have To Do.

Surely romance is nothing if not the descendent of that most artificial and mannered expression of love in western culture, Courtly Love, where love was made a pursuit or a discipline. Men sought to win a woman, so they created forms of writing and speaking and addressing a woman to flatter her, and deeds to demonstrate their worthiness. It was inevitable then that the ideals of Chivalry (that most Masculine of codes) became bound up with Courtly Love and proving yourself as a Knight became yet another way to win a woman.

Only now, Courtly Love has been renamed Romance, and times have changed the words and the deeds the way they change everything. Rather than deeds on horseback to show bravery, or addressing sonnets to a noblewoman, the rules of romance have men writing notes to send with flowers to demonstrate devotion, or booking French restaurants to show their prosperity and savoir faire. Rather than being taught Chivalric tenets, men are raised to know that they should open doors, or at the very least that they must never hit a woman.

I think CS Lewis was more insightful than anyone when he called it “love of a highly specialized sort, whose characteristics may be enumerated as Humility, Courtesy, Adultery, and the Religion of Love”.

Romance is a religion, of sorts, with its own particular acts of penance and devotion. We are born alone – solitude our original sin – but with effort and with ritual (a christening, or three expensive dates) we can be washed clean of it.

We are taught to honour the sacred days: St Valentine’s Day, the name days of our Patron Saints, our anniversaries. We learn that the right kind of penance(ten hail marys, twelve long-stemmed roses) is sufficient to atone for misdeeds.

And even though women fall in love every day, this isn’t love we’re talking about. This is romance. If women were called fools when they first dreamed they could be priests in the Catholic Church, they are greater fools if they think they have any role to play in romance.

Just as women did not write sonnets of courtly love, they do not perform the rites of romance. They are not its subjects, but its objects.

And if women making romantic gestures troubles men or makes them uncomfortable, should we be surprised? For straight men and straight women at least, the roles of romance have developed over hundreds of years with man as actor and woman as prize.

Reversing those roles as a woman, sending tickets, buying romantic gifts, planning expensive trips, is still culturally shocking.

And if women like me already find romance cloying and confining, is it really likely that we’ll start buying disgusting stuffed toys and empowering ourselves through romance anytime soon? There’s no incentive to turn the tables and participate in something you’d rather didn’t exist at all.

I’ll ask again. When is the last time you did something spontaneously romantic?

When was the last time romance was spontaneous at all?

Would you like the last party pie Greg Bird?

It’s fair to say that a lot of things annoy me, you know, just in general life. But today my brain has thrown up something in particular and I need to let it out. Bearing in mind that Channel Ten has only in the past week axed the truly heinous Big Brother after ten seasons, how is it possible that there has never been a second series of the truly brilliant Outback House?

It’s been three years already. PICK UP YOUR GAME ABC.

Now that was a cracker of a show. To explain the premise, well, there’s not much to explain. If you can’t figure it out then I’m surprised you can work the internets. A whole lot of people get sent to a house – in the outback, funnily enough – and have to live like it’s 1861. But since it’s the ABC, none of the reality TV contestants are exotic dancers or have personality disorders. (Wait, maybe one does, but he leaves, so whatevs). That’s kind of a first for a reality show.

Because it’s an ABC show, there are also no prizes. Aunty doesn’t belive in competition. But what it does have in common with every other reality show is the sheer unadulterated joy of laughing at your fellow human beings. Part schadenfreude, part cameraderie.

Laughing at their ridiculous circa 1861 costumes. Laughing when they have to get up at 5am to cook breakfast. Laughing when looking after sheep is Just Too Much for one boy and he has to be sent to grow vegies. THE SHEEP! THEY SCARE ME! And perhaps most amazingly of all, laughing when the adorable boys on the show are actually intentionally genuinely funny. Because if there is one truth we can all acknowledge about Australian men, it’s that if you put them in a group, they will make you laugh. Boys will be boys, so to speak. One truth that is lesser known is that this humour will only be heightened when they are busy trying to figure out how to put on long johns and build a sheepdip.

And in the grand tradition of other ABC stalwart shows like Australian Story, Outback House will make you cry like a bitch. My family has successfully banned me from watching Australian Story because I inevitably become too emotional, but even they loved this show too much to cut me off. IT’S WORTH THE PAIN. I would try and explain how utterly heartbreaking it is to watch shepherd Bernie’s adopted baby lamb Ali struggling to hold on to life without a mother, but then I’d cry again and I have non-waterproof mascara on. Ok it seems just mentioning it is enough because I’m teary now. After three years the cut still runs deep. Intern Brownie, bring me a hankie?

But I think most unexpected of all was finding out that Outback House is also code for Hot Man Factory.

Not that the boys were mountain trolls when they were selected for the show (and re: that, thanks ABC production staff!) but riddle me this. The Paul Newman of the whole enterprise, also known as Peter: hotter before, or after?

Before:

After?

I REST MY CASE. Had women known that the 19th Century outback was so conducive to hot bitches, perhaps Australia’s inland country would have been populated more densely and speedily. In much the same way that pretty much every man alive is hot wearing chaps and competing in the PBR, it seems every man is hot in 1861 costume.

In fact, I would like to suggest that the NSW government begin financing a state-sanctioned Outback House rehabilitation centre for Ksubi warriors and other assorted metrosexual inner-city dwellers. Their families can then stage interventions for their troubled sons and send them to the outback to regrow all their missing body hair, get a little dirty and have their lady sunglasses crushed in a special vintage machine. It’s just Scientific Fact that all men are hotter when they’re sent to the outback. It is also Scientific Fact that it makes women uglier, but that’s ok because I don’t plan to live in authentic 1861-era conditions and problems that don’t affect me are by definition not problems. Bring on the new season I say, so I can stalk the participants. Yessssss.

I have a confession to make. While I like to think of myself as vaguely talented at some things – like Irish accents, and applying liquid eyeliner, and analysing early 20th century poetry – other things just aren’t really my bag. And one of those is Proper Relationships. I am unequivocally crap at them. I love the mans, it’s just that the thought of being An Official Couple with one makes me feel like I’m about to break out in hives.

I start out ok in the relationship game. Girl Meets Boy, I’m fine with. Girl Dates Boy doesn’t worry me. Girl Kisses Boy is kind of my specialty. It’s just some of the bits that come after: the kissing each other in public in daylight, meeting people’s parents, changing your facebook status, using the word ‘boyfriend’ and OH MY GOD IS IT JUST ME OR ARE THE WALLS CLOSING IN A LITTLE BIT?

And don’t worry, I won’t go into why I’m like this because people who use the internet as a shrink are totes tragic. Yes?

But being the freak I am has made me realise all the more clearly that every single boy in existence seems to think every girl in existence is aching to be someone’s Girlfriend. And there is nothing that you can say or do to make them think otherwise. It outrages me, because as well as being terrified of being tied down, I am a proud bitch, and being misrepresented offends my sense of pride.

Kiss a boy but don’t shag him, and he thinks it’s a ruse: withholding sex to try and lure him into a relationship so he can get it. Kiss a boy then shag him, and he thinks it’s a ruse: luring him in with the sex then blackmailing him with it to get him to commit. (I’m not quite sure what happens when you don’t kiss a boy because I’ve never been able to manage that but let’s assume it’s more of the same).

What is it about a girl who gets your name wrong that suggests she is looking for a life mate? And in what way does drinking box wine on someone’s terrace at 4am imply that you are there for long-term romance? Is buying a pizza in the street together some international suggestion that you move in together that I’m just not aware of?

Because every one of these things has led to the ‘Official Disclaimer’.

‘It’s just that I’m really not looking for a long-term relationship right now’

Oh, really?

It has also, once, led to a man trying to avoid me because he thought I would fall to pieces if I found out he had a new girlfriend. Narcissistic, much?

Excuse me while I combust with rage. Whatever logic these boys are following doesn’t stop them hitting on you, but they include the disclaimer anyway. I have tried to figure this out for about eight years now, and I’m not there yet. I don’t phone-stalk boys. Not even when I’m drunk. I’ve never accidentally said out loud to someone ‘OMG I WANNA HAVE YOUR BABIES’. So I don’t see how it’s me per se that is giving out commit-to-me vibes.

So why the don’t-get-attached speech? I’ve conducted wide-ranging surveys and pash-experiments; I even asked Intern Brownie what he thinks, but he’s happily married so was no help at all.

Maybe it’s because chick-flicks have given us all a reputation as man-obsessed marriage-seeking pods. Maybe Fatal Attraction has made men paranoid. Maybe they’re so self-obsessed and egotistical that they can’t possibly believe anyone could resist wanting to be with them forever. I’ve even wondered whether it’s because guys are often completely insecure about the ladees and want to emotionally reject someone first to avoid potential emotional rejection.

And worst of all, then I realise I’ve wasted full minutes of my life worrying about something that annoys me. It’s the same feeling of frustration and regret I get after reading a Samantha Brett column. So in the interests of my mental health I guess I have to let it lie, but if anyone has the answer, the Pope will bless you if you tell me what it is. Just print this out and take it to Randwick Racecourse.

PS It occurs to me as I post this that it will push my beloved High School Musical 2 post off the front page. So for my own sake: here’s Chad again.

Things are a little hectic at Oh Errol, and we’ve realised that not only have we been tragically neglecting everyone who’s emailed us, but possibly even missing out on covering some lolz zac efron or footy happenings. God forbid.

We’re also kind of soft at heart, so we’ve decided to help out a strapping young man who’s having some employment problems at the moment by offering him an Errol internship.

In return for answering our mail, mixing our vodka ginger ales and snuggling us on cold nights while we watch the footy, he will be sleeping in the guest room and welcome to as much peanut butter toast and time in the hot tub as he likes.

Some might call this shamelessly ripping off the gofugyourself girls. We call it Giving Back.

And we’ve already picked the lucky boy too – the prettiest blond in rugby league and one of my teenage crushes, Nathan Brown. We’ve been so impressed by Intern Brownie’s recent work coaching the Dragons (seven wins in a row!) than we had to have him on the team.

… also maybe a little bit impressed by those pics he included in his resume. So if you have any questions that need answering about footy, love, or that require Brownie’s special brand of careful consideration:

Email us bbs. Intern Brownie likes keeping busy. Also long walks on the beach, Samoyed puppies and the ‘Greg Bird’ ads on Foxtel. He told me so in the interview.

Because Cripples McGee and I are both:

a) massive nerds,

and:

b) dirty perves,

we took our tracksuited selves to see Prince Caspian at the Rouse Hill Cinema of The Future. (By ‘Cinema of The Future’, I mean in the sense that it has massive seats – for the fatties of the future – and parking spaces that know when they’ve been parked in. AMAZING).

And on the nerdy side, it delivered. Gryphons! Fierce black Centaurs with dreadlocks! Men in velvet tunics and chain mail tights!

But more importantly – oh, the perving. Luckily there are apprently no other nerds in the hills so we had the whole dark cinema to ourselves for a running commentary on how hot a man wielding swords and mortally wounding other men is. Why is it hot? Who knows. We don’t find it hot when men shoot each other in movies, so why do my pants seem to love hand-to-hand combat so much? Even always-the-ugly-brother Edmund starts to look kinda hot after he kicks a man in the face and stabs him in the throat.

And as always, we have a lot of opinions. For all the breeders reading, you can guess by all the stabbing references so far this isn’t really a movie for the kids.

For all the Centaurs reading, Kiki wants me to point out that she is all over the idea of a Centaur boyfriend. Sure they’re not the prettiest boys on the block, but I can’t argue with the fact that it would be handy to have a boyfriend that also doubles as a mode of transport. You wouldn’t even need a car!

And Prince Caspian. Oh, Prince Caspian the vacuous. He’s pretty when he’s sleeping, not so much when he talks. Or moves. Or opens his eyes. When he announced ‘I … am Prince Caspian,’ we cried with laughter. Are Narnian heroes supposed to be Spanish? Or fake-tanned?

Joo made a funny joke! I laff!

Surely Narnian heroes aren’t supposed to be this funny.

Look at his little vacant eyes, darting around, trying to figure out where he is and who all these strange badgers are. He’s the Harry Kewell of Narnian royalty.

His one moment of intellectual achievement in the movie is when a mouse points a sword at his throat and he correctly identifies ‘joo are a mouse!’ (To answer your question, yes mice carry swords in Narnia. Everyone does. Leaving the house without one is like forgetting your house keys over there.)

But clearly the star of the movie is the delectable William Moseley as “High King Peter … the magnificent”. That’s how he introduces himself, and I am not going to argue.

Thankfully, he’s also 21, so we don’t have to feel dirty for checking him out in his wartime British public school uniform. We’d still check him out if he wasn’t, obvs, but it’s nice to be free of external judgment for once.

He’s as pretty as our beloved Zac Efron, but decidedly less homo. Kind of if Zeffie was … a dude. Of if Zeffie didn’t like other dudes. Same highlights!

And as far as the Christian message goes in the Narnia books, we would just like to say that if Jesus actually was a lion, and you could snuggle in his snuggly mane like the kids do with Aslan, maybe people would reconsider the attractions of Christianity. Especially Kiki. What’s cuter than a snuggly golden lion? Just a suggestion, J-man.

To summarise: we laughed, we cried, we creamed our trackies.

If we lived in an age before television and moving pictures, the text of this post would simply read: ‘Because he is a hot bitch’.

Maybe I’d mention his ponytail a little too, because those were some good times. God knows it wouldn’t mention soccer at all, because I care not for soccer.

But because I can see him move and talk on the ‘television’ and understand words and sentences in the language they call English, I know that Harry Kewell is so very much more.

Harry Kewell is just so … special (and yes I mean that in That way). And I love him … the way you love a special child.

Oh, Harry.

When our idol Errol was confronted by journalists and by his place in history he dripped gems like:

I despise mediocrity above all things. I fear it, yet I know some of my performances have been mediocre. I also know that I have turned in half a dozen good performances. I call myself a bum; but I have been working hard most of the days of my adult life.

What would I be like at seventy? At seventy I confidently hope I will have had at least eight more wives, have grown a stomach that I can regard with respect and can still walk up the stairs to the bedroom without aching or groaning.

 

When bowed by the weight of World Cup competition, living under the burning eyes of the world’s media, Our Harry pondered, and pondered, and finally – ever so slowly – said in his tiny slow-mo British halfwit voice:

Well, You’ve got to believe that you’re going to win, and I believe we’ll win the World Cup until the final whistle blows and we’re knocked out. Innit? *

All my Torchwood love is thanks to Kiki. Much like Jessica’s footy obsession, I initially resisted, thinking it would just be like Buffy which I straight up hate with the fire of a thousand suns. But Kiki was persistent and she made me watch a YouTube fanvid (lol! fanvids) of Captain Jack getting it on with a dude – bitch got me right in the vagina.

Torchwood is by no means a ‘good show’ in terms of dialogue (well it has awesome dialogue but it’s no No Country For Old Men. Which actually I haven’t seen or read and have no knowledge of how good it’s dialogue is, I just know Zeffie said he wished he could do a film like that, and that’s good enough for me) or character consistency or any of those fancy things, but it honestly has everything you could ever need to be entertained. Mans kissing, girls kissing, aliens kissing, SO MUCH KISSING. All of them are shagging each other on and off, except Jack and Ianto (two dudes! Yes!) who shag regularly and play naked hide and seek (fo rlz. They actually talk about this in one of the episodes. Unfortunately we don’t see it. BOOO).

It brings the lolz, and the violence, and the sads. It even made our cold-as-ice friend Yassy shed a tear (which she stresses was a LONE TEAR). Some of the stories really make you think too – I couldn’t sleep the night me and Kiki watched the episode where they talk about it being ‘just darkness’ after you die. Neither could she, apparently. Why we didn’t crawl into bed together and spoon all night to soothe our fears of death I’ll never know. It’s also totally self-referential, like in this one ep where Captain Jack has this guy all up in his face and he’s like “So, this is quite homoerotic”. YES. YES IT IS JACK.

The hetero stuff is pretty hot too. Take this for example, when Owen pins Gwen up against a tree and says: