Cartoon : An avid fan rooting for the laundry?

By Ed Stein published on 23 November 2010.

An avid fan is someone who is really enthusiastic about a sports team and he (or she) watches that team regularly. I really love to read and so I am an avid reader. The adjective ‘avid’ is used to describe your enthusiasm for any activity which you like to do a lot.

If you are an avid fan of a sports team such as Olympique de Marseille, you root for that team when you watch a match. When you root for something or someone, you support them. When our students take the DCL exam, we root for them!

In the cartoon, the lady doesn’t quite understand the level of avid support the men have for the Broncos because they are rooting for the team in the Bronco uniform no matter who the players are. So, she states that they are rooting for the laundry! Your laundry is your dirty clothes that need to be washed or those clean clothes that have been already washed.

Vocabulary In the News : 11 September 2009 – The Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)

A readable pdf format you can download can be found HERE. To access The Sydney Morning Herald, go to: http://www.smh.com.au/

- According to article in the left-hand column, Australia’s wealthy are getting walloped by the economic downturn. In other words, they are being hit hard by the economic meltdown. A meltdown is the sudden and complete failure of company, organization or system. The author of the article also says that the rich are bearing the brunt of this economic crisis. If you bear/take the brunt of a storm, you get hit by worst and strongest part of that storm. http://business.smh.com.au/business/rich-get-walloped-by-the-downturn-20090910-fjej.html 

- Well, the world finally knows the truth about Semenya’s sex. The secret has been stripped bare. If you strip bare, it means you take off all your clothes until you are completely naked for the whole world to see. In this context, the truth has been uncovered about her/his (who knows what possessive pronoun to use now!) sex for everyone to know. We also can use the term in forestry, agriculture, etc... For example, there are areas of West Virginia’s mountains that have been stripped bare of trees in order to mine for coal. So, you want to know more about Semenya’s sex? Then you’ll just have to read the article! A video is also available at the link. http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/secret-of-semenyas-sex-stripped-bare/2009/09/11/1252519599453.html

- The Australian Wheat Board (AWB) is being taking to court and scrutinized (examined) for alleged kickbacks, in the form of transport fees, given to the Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq when there were sanctions in place. Kickbacks is simply money paid illegally to someone in exchange for something they have done for you. To scrutinize something is to examine it carefully. What is also under scrutiny is how much did Prime Minister Howard’s government know. http://www.smh.com.au/national/iraq-payments-were-approved-at-top-level-awb-20090910-fjek.html 

Front page of the The Sydney Morning Herald taken from http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/

Culture Spot: The Great American Sport

Here’s a link to a great article on the history of that great American sport: baseball!

Play Ball! by Harry Katz