Column 8

The following item has been sent in by a previous editor of Column 8, and as such we can't name him. But John (oops!) has a theory on the legless seagulls we've been discussing here for some days. "Everyone knows that seagulls bite one leg off so that they get more sympathy from people at the beach, and therefore get fed more hot chips than two-legged gulls." Stands to reason.

Pipe Dream Slithers Away

IT'S not the orange-bellied parrot this time - but the welfare of the striped legless lizard that may halt controversial Victorian pipeline work.

No Memory Of 'legless' Time

A BARMAID who drank herself "legless" cannot remember punching another barmaid and kicking a policeman, Maitland Local Court has heard.

Can't We Just Say No To A Few Drinks?

IT'S always hard to pinpoint exactly when the festive season starts but it is generally accepted that it ends with the Australia Day weekend. Thankfully, for those of us not partial to drinking ourselves legless, it's over for another year.

Vale Striped Legless Lizard, Earless Dragon?

Life is tough on the fringes - especially for non-humans, reports Clay Lucas.

Nice Little Urners

IN years gone by, it was generally assumed that Australia's cricket selectors could drag 11 legless drunks out of the nearest pub to perform the time-honoured ritual of thrashing the Poms.

Endangered And Legless, 70 Lizards Shown The Way To A New Home

IN THE past seven days, endangered species have become front page news, disrupting multimillion-dollar plans by government and industry.

Once Were Losers

As Homer Simpson says, trying is the first step on the road to failure. Going further takes guts, flexibility and a determination to succeed. There's a moment in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where John Cleese's Black Knight sits limbless on the ground after losing a duel, his suit of armour now more like a waistcoat. His vanquisher turns to leave, but the legless, armless knight refuses to concede defeat. "You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!&

Model Of Courage Dies In Hang-glider Crash

True grit killed 40-year-old Peter O'Loughlin, an armless and legless pilot who nose-dived into the ground in a hang-glider. Mr O'Loughlin's courage became a byword in the Newcastle region when he lost all four limbs after crashing a hang-glider into an 11,000-volt power line at Pokolbin two ye

Cerebral Dance Includes The Legless, The Elderly And The Obese

THE COST OF LIVING Seymour Theatre, August 18 DV8 Physical Theatre's new work has piercing images and vignettes that you won't forget that will make you think differently. At its best, it is a mixture of the shattering, the hilarious and the deeply affecting. The Cost of Living, otherwise

A Couple Of Legs Up For Christmas

It's the time of the year when many people become legless . . . but the German cyclist pictured was making sure it wasn't going to be her. She earned a few wolf whistles as she cycled along with a rather sensual pair of mannequin legs in her basket. * * * A teenager failed to appear in Por

Miss 'em All - The Long, Short And Tall Of Sideshow Alley

If anyone knows whatever became of Zimmy the Legless Wonder, veteran showman Bill Dwyer would dearly like to know. He remembers how Zimmy would astound Showground audiences by walking on his hands along a board before diving into a tankful of water where he would eat a banana, drink a bottle of s

A Walk-up Start To Getting Legless

If you drink and drink, you're a bloody idiot. I HAVE been asked to convey to you my thoughts about the more challenging portions of the holiday season (or what one festively- seasoned pal refers to sternly as ``the pisstivities"). Social scientists would do well to study why at this time of

Slurs, Blurs And Hiccups

I HAVE been asked to convey to you my thoughts about the more challenging portions of the holiday season (or what one festively seasoned pal refers to sternly as "the pisstivities"). Social scientists would do well to study why at this time of the year everybody is either legless or drunk,

Pull The Other One

from John Drake. My regrets to Messrs Johnstone and Le Lievre (10/10), but it's something like 30 years since the New Yorker magazine ran a cartoon of a couple eating in a French restaurant while through the open door could be seen a couple of legless frogs in wheelchairs. It was the first ti

Sinise Goes Legless For Forrest Gump

`Forrest Gump' has become the fourth-biggest film in cinema history. JIM SCHEMBRI talks to the man who plays a war veteran with a cause. IF YOU want to make Gary Sinise laugh, just ask him about legs. He just hasn't had much luck with them in films recently. ``It doesn't look like it, does it,

Russians Shamed By Yeltsin's Shaky Step

Moscow, Friday. It was the nearest any of his supporters had come to saying that the President of the Russian Federation was actually drunk, yet there it was yesterday in print, along with two pictures of Mr Boris Nikolayevich, one showing him all but legless. Even so, the weekly Moscow News f

Elusive, But Not Extinct

Aprasia aurita, better known as the slim, underground-living Mallee worm-lizard, is back from the brink of extinction. This elusive member of the legless lizard family was not seen in the Mallee from the time it was discovered near Ouyen around the turn of the century until 1985, when only seven

At Last We Can All Suffer For Our Art

WHINGE, whinge, whinge, moan, moan, moan, gripe, gripe, gripe. Aren't you sick of it. Hardly a day goes by without some spineless, good-for- nothing mother staggering out of a maternity ward, or some legless worker, or public transport user, or homeless child, or bishop, or human rights commissioner

Channel Challenge Packs Them In

Mustafa, the legless Egyptian, was there last Tuesday morning. So was Ted, the 58-year-old Irishman, who recently underwent a heart-bypass operation. Hugo, the Mexican lawyer, rolled up with his psychologist, whose normal work is preparing the terminally ill for death. Swimming the English Chan