Reinhardt’s amazeballs ewebumsuckers

The genesis of this post comes from a typo and suspected typo. I will start with the suspected typo.

Last week I read a press release announcing the BBC was remaking Blake’s Seven. The press release says: “Joe Pokaski and Martin Campbell have worked tirelessly with the Georgeville TV team to create an amazeballs reboot of this classic space opera...”  Amazeballs? WTF? I was debating whether this was a typo or some new term used in the media when Adrian Bedford, a man more up to date with language than I am, told me that it was a new term used on the internet to express excitement and enthusiasm. I had never heard it before, but that very night I heard it used in a television commercial. So I had to look it up.

According to the Urban Dictionary, amazeballs “is some annoying term Perez Hilton keeps trying to make happen, by saying it repeatedly, even though it makes no sense, and getting twitter followers to try and make it a trending topic, to make himself more famous for no reason.” It goes on to say “The fact that someone like Perez Hilton can make six figures by being an annoying douchebag is amazeballs.”

But that is not quite true, according to Slate, the originator of the term appears to be fashion blogger Elizabeth Spiridakis. Who would want to claim credit for such a grating nonsensical term? And who would want to use it? In my opinion anyone who uses it is just a ewebumsucker. Pronounced u-bum-sucker. Think sheep and brain nosing. Feel free to spread the term.

Now we get to the typo. In a status update in Facebook last week when referring to Gina Rinehart, I misspelt her surname Rinehardt. A typo? Or had I subconsciously equated her with one of the main vampires called Rinehardt in Justin Cronin’s novel, The Twelve?

This typo alerted me to the fact that The Twelve could be seen as a parable for the Australian mining industry. In The Twelve, the lead vampires have bitten and turned millions of followers, a bit like our mining magnates who have bitten all those mining workers with the greed to dig up all of the ore until there is no more.

The lead vampires and their followers (nicknamed dopeys) kill nearly all of the humans in North America. That means the vampires nearly run out of their much needed resource, blood. The twelve lead vampires then desert their followers, who are left to wonder thirsty and aimless until they mass suicide.

So what will happen in Australia when the ore runs out and there is nothing left to mine, or if the world actually does something about global warming and no longer wants our coal? I keep on wondering who will buy those million dollar homes in Perth when there are no more mine workers.

So, are mine workers and the majority of the Australian public, Rinehardt’s amazeball ewebumsuckers?