Breaking: In “Attack of the Dead Men” moment, brave Western Australian city Perth declassifies surfing as exercise!

"Be responsible and go home."

Humans, while often low, snide and selfish, can sometimes rise to the greatest heights of honor, dignity, selflessness. History has shown us we are at our best with backs to the wall, fighting impossible odds in some inspired last stand.

There are many famous in history, from the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC to the Siege of Mecca in 692 but my favorite is 1915’s Attack of the Dead Men.

In short, the Germans, whilst fighting The Great War, were seeking to overtake Osowiec Fortress, in northeast Poland, held by a few battalions of Russians. They waited until 4 a.m. on that early morning of August 6th, for favorable wind conditions, then bombarded the fortress with a mixture of chlorine and bromine gasses. Following the poisoning and waste-laying, over 7000 German troops advanced, expecting little resistance.

The Russians did not have gas masks and were greatly destroyed but one bold sub-lieutenant, Vladimir Kotlinsky, the highest ranking survivor, railed the remaining few, who wrapped urine-soaked rags around their faces, and charged the enemy.

The Germans, it is said, became panicked by the appearance of the Russians, who had turned black and yellow from the gas and were coughing up bits of their own lungs as the hydrochloric acid began disolving their flesh, and retreated so fast that they became entangled in their own concertina wire.

The five remaining Russian guns finished the Germans off.

Kotlinsky died that evening and the Germans took the fort two-weeks later but for one glorious moment, the ragtag were royalty.

Very similar, I believe, to the the plucky but under-gunned grumpy local viciously attacked on all sides by energized VALs who have picked up surfing during quarantine because it is “a great way to remain socially distanced, outdoors, while exercising.”

This categorization of “surfing” as “exercise” the root of many evils for we know that, while sometimes the arms can become a little sore, surfing is NOT exercise but rather a grand waste of time.

Well, the brave Western Australia city Perth appears to be making a last stand. The region is under another Covid lockdown though residents are allowed outdoors for one hour of exercise a day.

Except local Tania Edwards was out walking but became confused after seeing police tell surfers the sport is not classified as exercise.

She shared a video of the encounter to social media which shows police telling beachgoers “surfing is not deemed exercise, be responsible and go home.”

“We saw this police boat coming along shouting with his bull horn,” she told 6PR’s Liam Bartlett.

“I think the government is doing a great job, but I just thought that was a bit strange.”

Not strange.

Brave like the Russians.

Surfing is NOT exercise but rather a fantastic way to sit and stew.

We are all Perth.

Attack!


“I’m gonna stab the fuck out of you, bitch!" says teen as daddy kicks hell out of girl on ground.

World’s second-best big-wave surfer Shane Dorian urges the examination of facts in Ma’Khia Bryant shooting while skewering mainstream media outlets for reckless race-baiting: “The media is so effed up with this stuff… pushing a narrative that brings them ratings”

"Police officers need to be accountable, and so do the rest of us."

Hawaiian-born Shane Dorian, the second-best big-wave surfer in the world if we’re to accept the notion that Kai Lenny is untouchable, has waded into the furore surrounding the fatal shooting of a black teenage girl by a cop in Columbus, Ohio, last Tuesday. 

Ma’Khia Bryant, who was sixteen, was shot in the back by a cop as she screamed “I’m gonna stab the fuck out of you, bitch,” and attempted to drive her eight-inch blade into a girl in a pink tracksuit, and while her daddy kicked hell out of another girl on the ground. 

According to CNN, the fight was between Ma’Khia and two other former foster children over a “messy house and unmade bed”.

In a recording of the 911 that got the cops there in the first place a female voice says, “Get here now! We got…girls here trying to fight us, trying to stab us, trying to put her hands on our grandma. We need a police officer here now.”

“I’m gonna stab the fuck out of you, bitch!” says teen as daddy kicks hell out of girl on ground.

As it has with other police shootings of African-Americans, mainstream media went full-throttle on the race card, cops got a blood-lust for hunting blacks etc. The basketball star LeBron James added a little of his own fuel to the fire when he tweeted, “You’re next” alongside a photo of the cop and an emoji of an hourglass. 

Now, Shane Dorian, who is forty-eight and who was the world number four in 2000, has gone to Instagram to tell his almost half-a-million followers, 

“Would not want to be a police officer these days. Thankfully this officer was able to save this girl’s life. The media is so offed with this stuff. Pushing a narrative that brings them ratings. Police officers need to be accountable, and so do the rest of us. Breaking the law should have consequences fo police officers, and for the rest of us.”

Alongside a CNN logo, Doz writes, “Sketchy media outlet.” 

Fair comment, I’d suggest.


Death from Below: Northern California surfers reel under new horror as scientists reveal just as many lyme-carrying ticks around area’s beaches as woods!

First Great Whites, now this.

Surfers have long been the focus of many, many terrifying natural phenomena from man-eating sharks to scary riptides to reef bashes, drownings, angry seals, clueless VALs, the World Surf League CEO Erik “ELo” Logan.

Yikes.

Lyme-carrying ticks, though, provided no worry.

Those nasty critters were for our woodland hiking friends to deal with and nasty is an understatement.

Lyme disease is one of the very worst plagues, very difficult to diagnose and causing fevers, rashes, aching joints, sleeplessness, semi-lucid hell.

Well, according to a new scientific study just released, there are just as many lyme-carrying ticks around Northern California beaches as there are in its woods.

Lead author Daniel Salkeld, a research scientist at Colorado State University, told NBC News, “We went into new habitats and found them in numbers we didn’t expect. A few years ago I would have said the ticks there wouldn’t have been infected because there aren’t any grey squirrels, which are the source for Lyme in California. I think they’ve been under our noses all along. We just haven’t thought to look very closely.”

Grey squirrels are, of course, thought to carry the ticks but a working theory suggests that northern California’s rabbits are transporting the li’l bastards around.

“This is a great study,” said Laura Goodman, an assistant research professor at the Baker Institute for Animal Health at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. “There is a bias in this country where people think they are only at risk when they go into the woods. But really, prevention and vigilance should be practiced everywhere outdoors, and we should be vigilant year-round.”

Great study my ass.

Lyme disease.

Ugh.


Surfline gets trapped behind World Surf League Wall of Positive Noise, sends SOS in form of overhyped swell: “Para bailar la bomba se necesita una poca de gracia!”

La BOMBA!

The world’s largest surf forecasting website Surfline spent much of last week hyping, re-hyping, a south swell due to hit California that was going to be so wild, so wooly, that only one name would do.

LA BOMBA.

The bomb.

La Bomba would travel north from Chile to mainland Mexico, where it had properly lit Puerto Enscondido’s famed Mariachi Pipeline, and lay waste to every south facing beach from San Diego all the way to Crescent City.

La Bomba would be great, it would be grand, it would be unlike anything else ever, a full hand jam off the top etc.

I was excited to surf La Bomba and to see others surf La Bomba too but then a fine sailing wind reared its head and seeing as yo no soy capitán but certainly soy marinero, set out to sea with my very best friends leaving cell phone service behind.

We gusted back into range early last evening, colorful spinnaker fluttering, and the first thing I did was to check with other friends, to see if they were still alive after experiencing La Bomba or if they had been exploded.

“It was ok…” was the universal reply.

Was La Bomba a dud in California?

Had those other friends been surfing the wrong spots at the wrong times?

Or, has Surfline become unwittingly trapped behind the World Surf League’s patented Wall of Positive Noise™, stuck issuing Newcastle-esque projections to non-professional surfers too? The Huntington Beach-based company has, for the past few years, been the World Surf Line’s exclusive forecasting partner and the event forecasts have become increasingly surreal. I can’t imagine that sort of “cup-not-only-half-full-but-overflowing” attitude couldn’t help but infect day to day operations.

Mightn’t one of the programers, someone who escapes the daily Joe Turpel morning affirmation readings and ELo smile exercises, have slipped an SOS to the surf world in the form of La Bomba?

Para bailar la bomba, para bailar la bomba se necesita una poca de gracia. Una poca de gracia pa’ mi pa’ ti y arriba y arriba. Ah y arriba y arriba por ti seré, por ti seré, por ti seré?

Or maybe those other friends were surfing the wrong spots and the wrong times.

What was your experience with La Bomba?

Has it not really hit yet?

Sailing, man.


Mick's "retro beach pad" in Rainbow Bay, very near Snapper Rocks.

Opportunity knocks: Rent Mick Fanning’s own “retro beach pad” metres from Snapper Rocks’ infamous Superbank for only $400 a week!

Fifties-fab and pregnant with the fingerprints of the Gold Coast's most successful surfer ever… 

The world surfing champion turned property tycoon Mick Fanning has listed his “retro beach pad” at 2/219 Boundary Street, Rainbow Bay to rent for a very affordable four hundred dollars per week, with a sixteen-hundred dollar surety, refundable if you don’t destroy the joint. 

The apartment, one of two in the duplex, features two bedrooms, one bathroom, and is, even at the slowest canter, or with legs heavy from much surfing, ten minutes walk from the Snapper Rocks jump rock (if you dare). 

Mick, who is forty, bought the duplex in 2005 and two years before his first world title, for $1.39 million. 

The following year he bought another joint for $1.2 mill and in 2007 swiped his card on an apartment block in the same street, number 213, for $3.1 million before selling it in February, this year, for $2.86 mill.

The shock loss, close to a mill after a fancy reno and buying and selling costs and maintenance, was a lesson in the caprices of the Australian property market. 

Rent Mick’s apartment here, move in date May 7.