Deadline

I have been promising, or threatening people with this for ages so here it is, finally. The Deadline article that disturbed me. It is rendered even more disturbing by the fact he took it out of the vaults and reprinted it. See for yourselves:

As it turns out, Tana Umaga was not the only one having trouble with his ‘man bags’ this week. Having ended my delivery day at the end of a long week I quickly put down my two ‘man bags’ used for my delivery (large leather sacks of a non descript nature, of equal proportions and weight, that I love to swing around). I then elected to have an Emersons (Dunedin’s real beer) or three before moving off home. Or at least that was the plan. At this point, unbeknownst to me, things began to go wrong. While stopping off at a bar to undertake my one last job for the day I let my man bag hang down at my feet some where in the depths, where all is dark and gloomy and it pays not to look down.

In an equally dim lit (or if you prefer intimate) environment I became engrossed in the curse of all mankind – text messaging. Fuelled by not enough to eat, a beer too many and the startling discovery that I no longer have 20/20 vision I inevitably sent a highly embarrassing text to the wrong person. To be precise, one of my business clients. Attempts to rectify the situation and convince said client that I was not a sex starved Australian cricketer were only made worse as I had sent them half the intended message so even my apology was not making much sense. It was at this crisis point (after moving out of the bar having grabbed my ‘two’ man bags roughly, without looking) that I got a tap on the shoulder. A rather irate gentleman was understandably not impressed by the fact that I ad just walked off with his partner’s bag, a large black leather sack, of nondescript nature roughly the same size as the man bag I drooped over my shoulder.

Escorted back to the bar by some codger convinced that he had nabbed the leader of an international man bag burgling ring, I was not overly worried, believing that when we got back to the bar the finding of my other man bag, where I had left it, would make it clear to Inspector Clueso that it had been a genuine mistake. It is, however, at this point that the more astute readers will realize why I talk of putting down my ‘man bags’ at Inch, but make no use of the plural when describing how I entered the second bar. Yes in the interim I had become just like Hitler who as legend has it only had one man bag. Luckily however having managed to call the bartender at Inch and secure the fact that my second bag was not a work of fiction, combined with the mediation skills of the bartender and the not so hostile members of the offended party, I managed to escape being lynched, by my…er, man bags.

The moral of the story is clear; never take your eyes of your man bags. Try not to do anything too complicated when you have yet to stash your man bags some where secure. If you do find yourself drunkenly fondling some one else man bags in a darkened environment be sure at least to know their first names beforehand to save you from embarrassment later. Yet, in the end if all else fails and the cops do get called, take a leaf from Umaga and put you’re an bags on Ebay. At least that’s one way to pay the court fines or meet some new friends.

And That’s The Bottom Line

I don’t know where begin on this, so I shall not even start at the moment. I typed it up as it appeared in the paper, and the irregularities in expression, italics and grammar are not mine. Don’t know what that story about Umaga selling the bag on Ebay is about either.