On Sheep; the Fucking Thereof

Josh writes:

Oh, for Christ's sake -- are the British still going on about it? Have they no originality? If that's their attitude, I'm not even going to bother coming up with an original reply -- here's something I wrote a while ago:

Oh right, the sheep-fucking thing.

Saw an editorial in an Aussie paper last week commenting on New Zealanders taking exception to Waltzing Matilda being sung at rugby games or something. The article suggested that New Zealanders wouldn't be able to understand why the swagman would want to get the jumbuck into his tucker-bag, when with a bit of sweet-talk, it could be coaxed into bed. For fucking. On account of how we New Zealanders all fuck sheep.

It surprises me that people still make sheep-fucking jokes about New Zealanders. No, I'll rephrase that -- it doesn't surprise me at all that people still make sheep-fucking jokes about New Zealanders, not if they still make jokes about Canadians being boring or the French being surrender-monkeys or the Irish/Polish/whoever-lives-in-the-country-next-to-ours being stupid. I guess it's just that since I have long since outgrown this level of humour, I expect the rest of the world to have done so as well. How egocentric of me.

The thing that gets me is the logic that must be behind such accusations of farm animal abuse. I haven't travelled abroad enough to have been called a sheepfucker to my face, but I wish I had, just so I could ask the person why they thought New Zealanders fuck sheep. I can only assume it'd go like this:

"You New Zealanders fuck sheep!"

"Why would you think we fuck sheep?"

"Because your country is full of sheep."

"So?"

"So you're surrounded by sheep all the time."

"So?"

"Well if I was surrounded by sheep all the time, I'd certainly... um... never mind."

It seems to me that levelling accusations of Flossy-bothering is a sure sign that the accuser would be out with the velcro gloves the first chance that they got. Which means they're probably just jealous. Sad, really.