Scratch
Here you will find older scratches, musings and other detritus that once were located on the front pages, but have now faded.
Filed away here to collect dust and cobwwwebs in perpetuity, links may break, facts may change and data may corrupt.
On occasion I may come down here to tidy, but for the most, I prefer to leave the past where it lies.
Beach Volleyball
The BBC recently ran a story about how Charlie Saikley, the "godfather of beach volleyball" has died, aged 69. The article goes on to describe how Saikley "took an indoor sport and took it outdoors" building up from a single match in 1943 (wasn't there a war to be fought?) to an Olympic sport.
The issue I have with Volleyball, is I find it difficult to discriminate where the sport ends and where the gratuitous ogling of oiled, bronzed, toned (but most importantly) scantily clad individuals throwing themselves about, begins. This is not aided by such games as Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball. I always felt it was just me, but no, I take solace in the knowledge its the BBC aswell.
Take this image, captured from the BBC page in question:
Best practice dictates that to allow visually impaired viewers to access the information, captions and tags should be descriptive enough to convey the meaning of the photo. The caption reads:
Before Charlie Saikley, the sport was barely played outside CaliforniaThe 'Alt' tag reads
Beach Volleyball
Surely, it has not escaped anyones notice that the photo is not of Mr Saikley, a beach or nor of a simple volleyball. It is, for want of a better phrase, a scantily clad arse. Would it not be better to come clean, admit the truth and set both to 'gratuitous bikini shot', thereby dropping the pretense and acknowledging the prime reason people watch beach volleyball is that mud wrestling is on hiatus.
24 Jun 2005 8:26 | (0) comments | Thoughts