SPORTRITE - Body's okay, it's just that Sparc's brain isn't working

JUST in case you were wondering, the world did indeed end sometime last week.
At about the same time as an application to receive a Mission-On Upball was granted and a small blow-up plastic beach ball arrived in the post, complete with instructions on what to do with it.
This was a very exciting development at sports central. Those monotonous television adverts featuring a bunch of hyperactive musos with big hair-dos had proven to be irresistible, despite the fact that whatever they were singing during the 35-second advert was completely indecipherable.
The last attempt to translate the lyrics went something like this: Upball! Cos-me-balls-arrrgh-dancin'-furry-daaaaay.
Anyway, who cares, the last time any understandable lyrics penetrated the ``commentary and talk-back callers only' filter at sports central we all sang the chorus: "Welcome to the Hotel Caaaaaliforrrrnyaa."
If we could remember the next line we would enter Stars In Your Eyes immediately.
Which is completely unrelated to this question: What the hell is Upball?
Turns out it is an initiative driven by Sparc, otherwise known as the Sport and Recreation Commission and is apparently an attempt to re-introduce human beings with that strange object called a ball.
And what a fine and comprehensive attempt it is too.
The ball, once blown up, does indeed resemble a round bouncy object that bounces. This is very useful considering the helpful instruction manual that accompanies the ball.
The manual has some real gems of information included.
Try these: Keep it in the air for as long as you can by hitting it with your hands. Instead of using your hands to hit the Upball ... try kicking it. Stand in the middle and try to put the Upballers off by making silly faces.
That last one sounds a bit like David Nucifora's game plan for the Blues. But the gem is this one: Can your body and your brain work at the same time?
Ummmm, O for awesome?
These are indeed very sad and strange days when a government-funded agency spends an in-ordinate amount of money marketing a blow-up ball and feels the need to send an instruction manual to make sure we know what to do with it.
It may also be a sign of the times. Hand any six-month-old baby a ball and watch what happens. The ball normally gets thrown. Admittedly, this particular activity is not restricted to balls. Dinner, the TV remote, the car keys and fine crystal heirlooms get the same treatment.
Hand a ball to a six-year-old and stand back as over-bearing parents clamour to the rescue of their children. Does the ball have any traces of peanut? Will the ball be shared in an indiscriminate but non-gender specific fashion? If the ball is kicked, does that represent some form of reckless anti-social behaviour? Well, probably, but it is bloody good fun as well.
We should probably applaud this SPARC initiative, but feel the need to guffaw in a suitably dismissive fashion at the same time.
Making sure the next generation of human beings are accorded the sheer abounded joy that a ball can engender is indeed a noble task to tackle. But publishing tens of thousands of glossy instruction manuals on what to do with a ball must surely be the biggest waste of money since a Chinese Emperor decided to build a bloody great wall to repel invading armies.
Babies will still throw a ball even without an instruction manual. The Mongols have yet to arrive at the foot of the Great Wall of China too. The day both, or either one of these, change will indeed be the end of the world as we know it.