common wealth games?

[vickista]

as u guys probly already know if u live in a commonwealth country melbourne is hosting the 2006 commonwealth games, i was just wondering though apart from hearing on the news about any medals ur country may have wondo you ever hear anything about the games? coz i mean maybe it only happens hear, but we never hear anything about the commonwealth games when there in other countries other than the medals australia wins.

[zorra_chiflada]

nah. it's hadly a big deal in the rest of the world.
australia loves it because it's the only thing it's good at. but it's not like the big countries are in it.

[rirv]

It's on TV all day here.

[CJM]

CBC runs it throughout that day/night, here.

[vickista]

It's on TV all day here.


i spose thats bcoz england are 2nd in the medal tally, and also becoz its places that were colonized by england, but i mean i wldnt expect it to be big anywhere else, england yes, australia only when its here, but i doubt the other countries pay that much attention.

[faz]

We're 6th. Is that good?

[vickista]

We're 6th. Is that good?

well genrally 6th is good, but considering the HUGE difference between australia(1st) and england(2nd) its not very good(n) although u are doing better then alot of other countries(y)

[Rancid_Beasties]

The Commonwealth games are stupid. We like clean swept the gymnastics, yet we havent won many, if any, medals at olympic level for ages.

[zorra_chiflada]

the commonwealth games are like a primary school athletics carnival

[Rancid_Beasties]

the commonwealth games are like a primary school athletics carnival
The ones where everybody gets a ribbon, and they divide the races up to such a point that theres only 3 in each race so you get 3rd regardless of how crap you are.

[zorra_chiflada]

The ones where everybody gets a ribbon, and they divide the races up to such a point that theres only 3 in each race so you get 3rd regardless of how crap you are.

haha
at ours they had a "4th" ribbon as well. haha
hahaa

[vickista]

:BREAKING NEWS:

13 commonwealth athletes have so far gone missing from the games, 11 of them from seara leone (spelling?) one from india and the other one i cant remember. presumably they are seeking to be refugees in australia bcoz there own countries aren't as well off.

but the thing that pisses me off is that when the Athens 2004 Olympic Games were on they bagged the shit out of it and told aussies not to go coz it wasnt safe and all that shit, when it was PERFECT, and there so secure that already they've lost 13 athletes.

[zorra_chiflada]

they ran away because sierra leone is a shitty place
and they probably couldn't get refugee status here.

[vickista]

they ran away because sierra leone is a shitty place
and they probably couldn't get refugee status here.


yeah i noi but they ran away from places were there should be games security, so why isnt security doing ther job, and why did they bag athens about it, wen athens went off without a hitch!

coz ther racist fuckers thats y.

[Rancid_Beasties]

So you think we should keep the athletes from poorer countries prisoners, only allowed out of the athletes village to compete? I think that is pretty racist.

[Audio.]

I heard this news on The Guardian


Friday March 24, 2006
The Guardian

Melbourne is the proud capital of street painting with stencils. Its large, colonial-era walls and labyrinth of back alleys drip with graffiti that is more diverse and original than any other city in the world. Well, that was until a few weeks ago, when preparations for the Commonwealth games brought a tidal wave of grey paint, obliterating years of unique and vibrant culture overnight.

This may seem like no great tragedy to readers of the Daily Mail, but Melbourne's graffiti scene is a key factor in its status as the continent's hothouse of creativity and wilful individualism.

Melbourne became a hub of stencilling for reasons no one seems particularly able to explain. Its laid-back atmosphere and sense of isolation most probably have something to do with it. Painters there have never been as shackled to the New York school of large letters on subway trains that took a stranglehold everywhere else. Rather than scrawling their name across a window, most preferred to paint something a little different: a dog chasing a butterfly on a mailbox, for instance, or a couple kissing in the space left where an old poster has been ripped away.

Witty, playful, often angry, the free rein taken by Melbourne's street artists became about much more than just daubing on a wall. It has drawn in generations of artists, thinkers and tourists to explore and experiment in the city. It gave fresh life to the worlds of fashion and music and is arguably Australia's most significant contribution to the arts since they stole all the Aborigines' pencils.

"The Melbourne scene is incredibly diverse," says Alison Young, head of the department of criminology at Melbourne University. "The range of artists includes people in their 40s, in their teens and a relatively large number of women." Young was commissioned by the city council to draw up a draft graffiti strategy last March in which she recommended tolerance zones be set up where street art and graffiti be allowed a small space within the city, where writers and artists would be at a lower risk of being arrested. "This was rejected by the city council, despite it generating lots of public support and despite evidence being presented that zero tolerance, for lots of reasons, wouldn't work."

Instead, the council doubled its anti-graffiti budget. "The clean-up is an imposition of a supposedly mainstream, or dominant, cultural view," says Young, "in denial of the diversity of cultural styles that actually exist within a city space."

What is disappointing about the authority's attitude is that Australia is probably still the only country in the world to have elevated a graffiti writer to the status of national public hero. Arthur Stace was an alcoholic from the slums of Sydney who found God while listening to a Baptist preacher in a hostel in the 1940s and took to writing the word "eternity" on the ground in chalk. He rendered it in meticulous copperplate script more than half a million times across Sydney over the next three decades, becoming an urban legend before his death in 1967 at the age of 83. He has since been honoured by a plaque, a range of council-approved merchandise and was the centrepiece of celebrations when the word "eternity" in his trademark hand was lit up in 100ft-high letters on Sydney harbour bridge to mark the new millennium.

Then came the Commonwealth games and a redoubling of the city's efforts to rid itself of the evil graffiti menace. "Cleaning crews have been at work all along the main railway line that runs from the centre of the city to the main sporting venue for the games, destroying miles of continuous artwork," says Jake Smallman, who has edited a recent book called Stencil Graffiti Capital: Melbourne, compiling some of the city's more inventive street art. In February, police were rumoured to have infiltrated an exhibition showcasing photographs from the book as part of an intelligence-gathering exercise. "Graffiti's not art," said the police minister Tim Holding, in response to the book. "It's vandalism and it's something we all deplore."

Melbourne's innovative painting scene has been a key player in the global development of street art in recent years. Rather bizarrely for an art form that requires a casual interpretation of the law, graffiti has been steeped in rules and conservatism ever since Taki 183 picked up a can of Krylon spray paint in New York in the 1970s. A strict code was soon established that decreed what a piece should consist of and how many you needed to paint to achieve a certain status. It is only since the omnipresence of tags (graffiti signatures) has turned them into a kind of forgettable urban wallpaper that the art form has started to evolve again. Modern street art is the product of a generation tired of growing up with a relentless barrage of logos and images being thrown at their head every day, and much of it is an attempt to pick up these visual rocks and throw them back.

The street art destroyed in Melbourne will survive on graffiti's new best friend - the internet. The web has done wonders for graffiti; it perfectly reflects its transient nature, and graffiti is ludicrously overrepresented on its pages. The ability to photograph a street piece that may last for only a few days and bounce it round the world to an audience of millions has dramatically improved its currency. On the other hand, the internet is turning graffiti into an increasingly virtual pastime. It is now possible to achieve notoriety by painting elaborate pieces in secluded locations, without the associated risk of arrest that is usually attached. By posting photographs online you can become a significant graffiti writer from a town where none of your work is actually visible.

The precedent set by Melbourne does not bode well for London in the build-up to the 2012 Olympics. The games will be set in east London, where Hackney is one of the few remaining parts of the city where affordable studio space for artists still exists. After the warehouses have been flattened by compulsory purchase orders, the pots of grey paint will be opened and an area rich in street culture and frontier spirit will disappear. Factory doors whose flaked layers of Hammerite reveal history like the rings in a tree stump will be thrown on the fire. Disused cranes perched on top of foundries like skeletal crows will be torn down. Everything will be replaced by a cardboard-partitioned village perched on a pile of cheap laminate flooring. And if you think the graffiti will be removed so it can be replaced by vistas of clean urban space, think again. Every meaningful spot will be clogged with giant billboards by the likes of McDonald's encouraging you to get fit by staying at home and watching the games on TV.

This is not to say that every city should aim to look like the south Bronx, or that regeneration cannot be a good thing, but society's headlong march into bland conformity should not necessarily be welcomed with such open arms. In the 1990s, large sections of football grounds were demolished to make way for executive boxes - only then did people start to complain about the lack of atmosphere.

Melbourne and London are genuine epicentres of the skewed human touch that can bring a little sparkle into the drudgery of public space. A feat that is of immense value, despite its apparent worthlessness. And a feat that is not so easily achieved by trying to run around a track in under four minutes.

[vickista]

So you think we should keep the athletes from poorer countries prisoners, only allowed out of the athletes village to compete? I think that is pretty racist.


no no no!

i think that if there that desperate to leave there country then by all means let them run away but there visa's only last a month and once the goverment finds em they'll most likely be taken back to there own country. But there should be some security, i mean wat if some dude comes in with a gum and blasts the bejesus out of athletes, security shld be there for that reason.
(a far fetched senario i know, but could happen)

[vickista]

the sierra leone athletes have officially had there visa's revoked. poor things they dont have money or food or accomidation or anything, and they'll get sent home whether they like it or not... things must be pretty bad there then if there that desperate to leave.:(

also if u watched either the opening or closing ceremonies may i apologise for the fucking pointless show we put on.(n)

[Planetary]

who's that australian swimmer guy that is like a fish.

but eight feet tall and size 100000000 feet.

he should be disqualified from swimming, as should peter crouch from football for being too tall...

[jammytastic]

fuck the commonwealth games.

its all about the games on e4!

see shane lynchs dive? fuckin deadly so it was.

javine is the biz.

[Rancid_Beasties]

who's that australian swimmer guy that is like a fish.

but eight feet tall and size 100000000 feet.

he should be disqualified from swimming, as should peter crouch from football for being too tall...
Do you mean Ian Thorpe?

[vickista]

Do you mean Ian Thorpe?


but he didnt compete @ the games so i dont think so.

[Rancid_Beasties]

but he didnt compete @ the games so i dont think so.
Who else could it be? All our other male swimmers suck.

[vickista]

Who else could it be? All our other male swimmers suck.

hehe:D true but wat about the dude who replaced him in athens 2004?or it cld be klim, hes pretty tall.

[Mcmac]

no no no!

i think that if there that desperate to leave there country then by all means let them run away but there visa's only last a month and once the goverment finds em they'll most likely be taken back to there own country. But there should be some security, i mean wat if some dude comes in with a gum and blasts the bejesus out of athletes, security shld be there for that reason.
(a far fetched senario i know, but could happen)

the athletes are aloud to leave to go shopping and clubbing and stuff. It's almost impossible to get into the village if your not supposed to be. I know some1 who got stripped searched like three times to go do security work for the commonwealth games.

[Junker]

im not familiar to these games your talking about :(

[vickista]

about 6 sierra leone athletes were caught, they brought there families with them and there asking to stay bcoz otherwise they'll be killed. australia better keep them here, if they send em bak ill have mr howard assanited, monkey faced prick.

[hitmonlee]

i like it when the games are not in australia, as then there are obscure sports on at 2am. i missed most of these games. turn on the tv and we are winning another medal. boring. i like watching men's gymnastics. and womens rhythmic gymnastics.

[vickista]

i like it when the games are not in australia, as then there are obscure sports on at 2am. i missed most of these games. turn on the tv and we are winning another medal. boring. i like watching men's gymnastics. and womens rhythmic gymnastics.


Yeah i no nines coverage was shit, they never showd the other countries, its always better wen its not here coz they dont mention them very much. yeah i like mens gymnastics too, and womens all round not just rhythmic.

[hitmonlee]

oh and diving! especially synchronised diving. i enjoy that.

im not familiar to these games your talking about :(

:) you're not missing much. its the countries that form the commonwealth of nations (ex commonwealth countries too?) doing a mini olympics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_games

[zorra_chiflada]

hey, do you remember the 13 year old or whatever. she was really short. i thought she was a midget

[hitmonlee]

the diver? i saw her interviewed and wanted to know how old she was. god she looked as young as 10!

[zorra_chiflada]

yeah. i thought she was like 5

[Gareth]

yeh that diver girl...it was kinda creepy to be honest.
like that strongest kid in the world guy, with the 8 pack abs...that's the height of creepy.

the game are pretty much b grade.
except the sports that only commonwealth countries compete in, like netball and rugby sevens.
and they aren't even in the olympics.
but if they make people feel all warm and fuzzy, then that's nice.

[vickista]

the diver? i saw her interviewed and wanted to know how old she was. god she looked as young as 10!


yeah umm i think her name was melissa wu.

[Junker]

and womens rhythmic gymnastics.

For some reason i like to watch this too.

[Rancid_Beasties]

For some reason i like to watch this too.
Its the lyrca. Why do you think so many people watch the WWE.

[Junker]

Its the lyrca. Why do you think so many people watch the WWE.

Mystery solved :D

[Freebasser]

YES! Let's watch people participate in sport so that the spirit of the British Empire may live on!

Long live the Queen!

*throws bricks at computer*