Men and women of Carlton (Digs and Bluebelles)

In the well-known card game 500, a laydown misere occurs when the hand you have been dealt is so weak, it doesn’t need to be played but just laid out on the table for the world to see. That’s what happened to our brave boys on the Western Front on Sunday.

I have no other scientific explanation for the Bluebaggers inability to defeat the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant’s two ninja mutant turtles with numbers 3 and 4 on their backs. Last year, we were 44 points up in the last quarter when Springfield did to us what we did to Essendon the previous week.

They reckon it will cost more than a $1 million to secure the signature of Chris Judd if he chooses to leave Perth at the end of the season and comes home to Melbourne. You don’t have to be Einstein to realise that on this performance it would be money well spent. When the heavens opened in the first quarter and filled the Springfield Oval to the brim, Judd acted like a Cartesian diver bobbing up and down with the ball in his hands.

Have you ever noticed the facial similarities between Chris Judd and Mr Burns from The Simpsons? Mr Burns has always suffered from a bad press but we reckon it would be “excellent” if he escaped from all the trouble in Springfield and pulled on a Carlton jumper “with all the champions, they like to send us”.

Weird Uncle Einstein use to always say that beneath every great AFL player, there is a Carlton player struggling to get out. How true is that? Mr Burns would fit in so nicely in the Princes Park locker room. We would have to find a new number for him because there is no way that Our Murph would ever give up his cherished number 3.

We are told that inside Mr Burns’ mansion in Springfield there is a room containing a thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters, a bottomless pit, a human chess board, the largest television in the free world, a 'Hall of Patriots' commemorating his ancestors, a laboratory, a botanical garden of vultures bearing his likeness, a safe containing a Beefeater guard, and a theatre showing round-the-clock plays regardless of whether there is an audience. How cool is that?

He sounds very much like that Frenchy philosopher Rene Descartes that we told you about the other week. Like Mr Burns, Mr Descartes made a fortune playing the stockmarket. But Descartes's true idiosyncratic genius was epitomised by his tendency to work in a large bread oven where he spent much time meditating. We kid you not.

At some stage I suppose we are going to have to talk about the football – but I think I’ll leave that till next week when we play Fitzroy at the Optus Dome. On Wednesday, some small comforting pleasure may be derived from watching Collingwood and Essendon engage in the annual mutual disemboweling exercise that I know is so dear to your heart.

Gold skullcaps this week go to the Four Goal-kickers of the Apocalypse, Skinny Lappin, Fish Fisher, Scotto Scotland, and the Fev Jezzavola. Silvers go to Joey Anderson for his first game and Cloakroom Cloke for knocking-up the man in the spotlight from Springfield in the last quarter.

We leave you this week with the last image from the changerooms as the Baggers did their warm-down to the tune of the Donkey Serenade:

There's a song in the air/But the fair senorita doesn't seem to care/For the song in the air./Oh, I'll sing to the mule/If you're sure she won't think that I am just a fool/Serenading a mule./She'd love to sing it too if only she knew the way./But try as she may, in her voice there's a flaw/And all that the lady can say/Is hee-haw-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w-w/Senorita, donkey's feet are/Not so fleet as a mosquito/But so sweet like my Chiquita/You're the one for me!/Ole!/

Carna Blues! Don’t let the lion sleep tonight. – TERRY MAHER.