I'm not sure that I have mentioned, recently, my love of Mediawatch on Football365. When the media back home does something stupid, normally in relation to football, they are on hand to point and laugh. Take for instance the front cover of today's Daily Mail. Where, for those to lazy to follow the link, the geniuses (or genii) thought it would be a good idea to put a picture of England's latest hero, Wayne Rooney, next to the headline "THE BABIES WHO LIVED AFTER BOTCHED ABORTIONS". But then again most of the headlines in the Daily Mail are unintentionally funny anyhow.
Now for Ryan's quick capsule review of his watching experience yesterday. I should probably start with the dream I was having on Monday morning. It was one of those huge epic dreams where lots of things happen and you're never quite sure what's going on. There was some running around an underground bunker, a good few minutes spent beating up my laptop when it wouldn't work, a pretty girlie and some swimming in icy cold water to retrieve little fluffy penguin toys. If anybody out there is of oneirocritical nature (my
Ask Oxford word of the day), then maybe they could explain to me what this dream meant. All it meant to me was that I woke up having strained my lower back.
Having sat around all morning at work listening to Five Live's Wimbledon coverage and match build up, I was somewhat excited by the time the TV coverage started 15 minutes before the match. I couldn't sit still and was pacing back and forth across my flat — although this was partially due to the fact that my back hurt while I was sat down and didn't while I was standing up. As far as the TV coverage goes, the BBC coverage was just about a thousand times better than the abortion that ITV offered up.
Then the match started. Croatia scored. And I was sad.
Eventually England equalized. I jumped up in celebration. Then I landed. And my back was in bloody agony.
Then little Rooney had a few moments of magic. The Croatian goalkeeper was described as Mary Ellen with chocolate wrists. England still couldn't defend set pieces. And we won 4-2. I was very happy. Although I still struggled to sit down, as my back still hurt.
Same again against Portugal please. Minus the excessive back pain.
And finally, my childish giggle of day. It came during the pre-match build-up from the mouth of the excellent Alan Green, describing Michael Owen's current dip in form: "... I don't think he has been pulling off defenders as well as he might have been..." followed seconds later by "... when he's got a defender up his backside he's got a big problem...". So you heard it hear first Michael, well second I suppose, make sure you pull of their defenders before they get up your backside. Sage advice I think.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Thursday, June 17, 2004
Stating the bleeding obvious
I opened my browser this morning and the top story on Yahoo! was ENGLAND FANS DRINK BEER. Tomorrow I'm looking forward to ENGLAND FOOTBALLERS KICK BALL.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Dead dove love
Now it's not very often that I actually laugh out loud whilst reading , but this article made me... well chuckle at least.
I love the imagery of the Sri Lankan public security minister throwing a dead dove in to the air. I can just imagine all the dignitaries standing in a line holding their tired doves and then they throw them in to the air and one of the plummets to the ground. Dead. It sounds like something from a Monty Python sketch.
It makes you wonder why the minister didn't realise that his dove was dead. Or maybe he did realise but by then everyone was lined up and ready to go, so he just thought maybe if I throw it really hard nobody will notice.
I love the imagery of the Sri Lankan public security minister throwing a dead dove in to the air. I can just imagine all the dignitaries standing in a line holding their tired doves and then they throw them in to the air and one of the plummets to the ground. Dead. It sounds like something from a Monty Python sketch.
It makes you wonder why the minister didn't realise that his dove was dead. Or maybe he did realise but by then everyone was lined up and ready to go, so he just thought maybe if I throw it really hard nobody will notice.
Ryan's t-shirt's day out in Washington
I forget to mention in my last post that my t-shirt also had a fun day out in Washington on Saturday. I wore my, correctly spelled, "You're sh*t and you know you are" (you can see me wearing the misspelled t-shirt over here — by the way, why does misspelled look like it's spelled incorrectly? I even looked it up in the OED, no hyphen or nothin'), as usual, it got a fairly mixed response from the people and tourists of Washington.
There were the positive responses — "Mom, look at his t-shirt", "That's great I've got to get one of those" and "I was just reading your t-shirt, it's cool". There were the indifferent responses — from the foreigners who no speaker the good english, to the Americans who no speaker the good english, to the majority of people who don't read what's written on t-shirts and finally to those who read it and didn't care. Then there were the negative reactions — the disapproving looks of some of the pensioners at the memorials and the somewhat horrified look of some of the parents with little kiddies. Then there were the look of people as I walked past United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — I swear I could not have had more horror filled looks if I had walked past wearing a necklace of dead babies and a swastika t-shirt.
Needless to say, my t-shirt had an enormously fun day out.
There were the positive responses — "Mom, look at his t-shirt", "That's great I've got to get one of those" and "I was just reading your t-shirt, it's cool". There were the indifferent responses — from the foreigners who no speaker the good english, to the Americans who no speaker the good english, to the majority of people who don't read what's written on t-shirts and finally to those who read it and didn't care. Then there were the negative reactions — the disapproving looks of some of the pensioners at the memorials and the somewhat horrified look of some of the parents with little kiddies. Then there were the look of people as I walked past United States Holocaust Memorial Museum — I swear I could not have had more horror filled looks if I had walked past wearing a necklace of dead babies and a swastika t-shirt.
Needless to say, my t-shirt had an enormously fun day out.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Football, politics, memorials, museums and fleas
Bollocks. Bugger. Bastard.
I'm sitting here still in my England shirt wondering how the English football team managed, to coin a cliché, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I'm also wondering what I'm going to say to my French colleague at work tomorrow... and I was so looking forward to rubbing her face in the French defeat until, right up to the 89th minute. Still things could be worse. At least we played okay in the first half, and nearly wrapped it all up with Beckham's penalty in the second half. But the French footballing clown and the French footballing genius had other ideas, it would seem.
After the football I had a little lie down and listened to Alan Green's 606 football phone-in. It was the usual mix of doom and gloom merchants saying how England were shit and are going to go straight out the tournament, and then there were the rah rah crowd who think because we managed to lose to France in stoppage time that means we are going to go on and win the whole thing. All very interesting and amusing.
Still at least we won at cricket.
Apparently, there were elections for the European parliament this week. Needless to say, I neither knew nor voted... in fact I'm not sure if I'm eligible to vote. The good news is that in Britain we had record high voter turnout. The bad news is that this record now stands at 38.9% (or at least it does on Sunday night before Northern Ireland have got round to counting their votes). Less than 39% is a record high. You can tell that the UK populous are really engaged by the European parliament.
It's somewhat distressing that over 750,000 people voted for the, largely racist, British National Party. Not really sure what to say about it except that's a lot of people who are feeling marginalized. Reading their website is part hilarious and part terrifying. Lots of claims about electoral fraud and other nonsense. And an article about this story about an underwear ad that upsets some muslims because it was put up next to a mosque. Now obviously it is ridiculous that anyone would not want to see four pretty girlies wearing nothing but G-strings. But this is not the BNP's point. Instead they are upset, that something was done because some muslims were offended. It is somewhere between surreal and ridiculous.
Yesterday I was in Washington, DC. It was a lovely sunny day and Washington looked very good in its post Reagan mourning glory. I got to see several memorials Washington, Korea, Lincoln and Jefferson to name a few. In Lincoln's big white edifice they have engraved two of his speeches. The first is his "Four score and seven years..." Gettysburg address and the second is his second inaugural address in which he waffles on endlessly about God and the civil war. It made be go grrhh. Some of what he says is very good and the rest is so dripping with religion that my spine goes all icy. I'm not a big fan of any connection between church and state.
I also got to look around a few of the Smithsonian museums. The Hirshhorn museum was largely disappointing as modern art museums go, although there were a few good exhibits... particularly one photo exhibit whose creator I don't remember. The air and space museum was also disappointing. Too much of it was rah rah isn't America great. And too much of it was dumbed down. But it had an Eric Idle song and a Bacofoil covered moon lander, so it wasn't all bad. By far the best of the three museums I looked around was the Natural History museum. Lots of interesting stuff about animals and rocks. I never knew that mammals had extra bones in the ears. Or that Monotreme was the name for an egg laying mammal, like the, hilarious, duck-billed platypus. Lots of pretty things and big skeletons and all in a gorgeous old building. I was very impressed, it felt like a museum. On the way to find a restaurant we walked past the Spy Museum, I'd really like to find out what is inside the Spy Museum. It could be very interesting or very shit.
Oh, and on Friday night I stayed at a hostel in Washington. It was a nice big old house, close to the metro, with a porch and a big back garden. And during the night I got bitten something like 70 times by, I guess, fleas. Which put something of a damper on my view of the place, Washington and hostels. By now most of the bites are fading away, but a few are still itching. Bastard little creatures.
I'm sitting here still in my England shirt wondering how the English football team managed, to coin a cliché, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I'm also wondering what I'm going to say to my French colleague at work tomorrow... and I was so looking forward to rubbing her face in the French defeat until, right up to the 89th minute. Still things could be worse. At least we played okay in the first half, and nearly wrapped it all up with Beckham's penalty in the second half. But the French footballing clown and the French footballing genius had other ideas, it would seem.
After the football I had a little lie down and listened to Alan Green's 606 football phone-in. It was the usual mix of doom and gloom merchants saying how England were shit and are going to go straight out the tournament, and then there were the rah rah crowd who think because we managed to lose to France in stoppage time that means we are going to go on and win the whole thing. All very interesting and amusing.
Still at least we won at cricket.
Apparently, there were elections for the European parliament this week. Needless to say, I neither knew nor voted... in fact I'm not sure if I'm eligible to vote. The good news is that in Britain we had record high voter turnout. The bad news is that this record now stands at 38.9% (or at least it does on Sunday night before Northern Ireland have got round to counting their votes). Less than 39% is a record high. You can tell that the UK populous are really engaged by the European parliament.
It's somewhat distressing that over 750,000 people voted for the, largely racist, British National Party. Not really sure what to say about it except that's a lot of people who are feeling marginalized. Reading their website is part hilarious and part terrifying. Lots of claims about electoral fraud and other nonsense. And an article about this story about an underwear ad that upsets some muslims because it was put up next to a mosque. Now obviously it is ridiculous that anyone would not want to see four pretty girlies wearing nothing but G-strings. But this is not the BNP's point. Instead they are upset, that something was done because some muslims were offended. It is somewhere between surreal and ridiculous.
Yesterday I was in Washington, DC. It was a lovely sunny day and Washington looked very good in its post Reagan mourning glory. I got to see several memorials Washington, Korea, Lincoln and Jefferson to name a few. In Lincoln's big white edifice they have engraved two of his speeches. The first is his "Four score and seven years..." Gettysburg address and the second is his second inaugural address in which he waffles on endlessly about God and the civil war. It made be go grrhh. Some of what he says is very good and the rest is so dripping with religion that my spine goes all icy. I'm not a big fan of any connection between church and state.
I also got to look around a few of the Smithsonian museums. The Hirshhorn museum was largely disappointing as modern art museums go, although there were a few good exhibits... particularly one photo exhibit whose creator I don't remember. The air and space museum was also disappointing. Too much of it was rah rah isn't America great. And too much of it was dumbed down. But it had an Eric Idle song and a Bacofoil covered moon lander, so it wasn't all bad. By far the best of the three museums I looked around was the Natural History museum. Lots of interesting stuff about animals and rocks. I never knew that mammals had extra bones in the ears. Or that Monotreme was the name for an egg laying mammal, like the, hilarious, duck-billed platypus. Lots of pretty things and big skeletons and all in a gorgeous old building. I was very impressed, it felt like a museum. On the way to find a restaurant we walked past the Spy Museum, I'd really like to find out what is inside the Spy Museum. It could be very interesting or very shit.
Oh, and on Friday night I stayed at a hostel in Washington. It was a nice big old house, close to the metro, with a porch and a big back garden. And during the night I got bitten something like 70 times by, I guess, fleas. Which put something of a damper on my view of the place, Washington and hostels. By now most of the bites are fading away, but a few are still itching. Bastard little creatures.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Avoidance
I'm not really sitting here writing this entry... really what I'm doing is sitting here and reading all about sockets and Being Productive... honest guv'nor.
I'm back in lovely State College, sitting in my little cubicle hunched over my laptop, trying to work out why my right hand is hurting so much (no sniggering at the back). I'd like to blame it on the fact that I've been working so hard... but really? Nevertheless it's hurting, right in the bit between my thumb and index finger. Hopefully, it will stop hurting in a little while.
I wrote a cheque (or is it actually a check that I wrote, being as it was from my American bank) and signed a lease agreement and, hopefully, I'll be able to move into my apartment sometime at the start of July. Somewhat inevitably I ended up plumping for the place above the bar. Or more correctly, it's actually above a sewing shop which is next to a bar. The bar is a cafe-bar and is pretty good as bars go. It has some sofas, which are always very good things for a bar to have. It also has a very new age-y paint job, lots of swirling colours and that sort of thing. A couple of days before I saw the flat above the sewing shop, I went to the bar with a fairly old Israeli professor who used to go there to play chess. It's not really the kind of place one expects to find an aging physics professor.
Slowly and not entirely surely, I am revising my opinion of Columbus. Maybe it's more of a city than I was giving it credit for. I suppose after a couple of months of living there my opinion will have grown some roots and decided what it wants to be when it grows up into a belief or an assertion. But for now it's just bobbing about in a pool of uncertainty.
Quick update: my hand is still hurting. A lot.
I spent Sunday afternoon being licked by a very cute dog and being barked at by another cute dog. I also ate a veggie burger. It wasn't as bad an experience as I've been led to believe the veggie-burger-eating experience can be. But on the other hand, it wasn't as good an experience as eating a genuine — made with real meat, not mushed up bits of cow unpleasantness — burger. Still a fun time was had. I got drunk, played people the FCC song by Eric Idle, and told them how I have a propensity to write naughty words on things (in particular, how I wrote "a word which was rhymes with a kind of boat you find on the river Cam" on the empty television box that sits beside my sofa-bed... and how I did this just before my mother spent two nights sleeping on the sofa-bed). It's all part of my "get Americans to use more colourful language" program. I'm starting small, but there are now a few pockets of Americans who understand Big girl's blouse. The revolution will continue.
Oh, by the way circumlocution involving the river Cam is just me trying to avoid some of the strange words people are using to find this site. If you search using msn (boo, hiss), it is possible to find this page whilst searching for the word pretty combined with the afore-unmentioned word. In fact this site is the 12th, and first non-pornography link. Not to mention the hordes of people who arrive at my blog after searching for a misspelling (or should I say alternative spelling) of the word meaning: Unnatural connexion with a <meaning: A quadruped, as distinguished from birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, etc., as well as from man.>.
Well, I think I've avoided so well that it is now time for lunch.
I'm back in lovely State College, sitting in my little cubicle hunched over my laptop, trying to work out why my right hand is hurting so much (no sniggering at the back). I'd like to blame it on the fact that I've been working so hard... but really? Nevertheless it's hurting, right in the bit between my thumb and index finger. Hopefully, it will stop hurting in a little while.
I wrote a cheque (or is it actually a check that I wrote, being as it was from my American bank) and signed a lease agreement and, hopefully, I'll be able to move into my apartment sometime at the start of July. Somewhat inevitably I ended up plumping for the place above the bar. Or more correctly, it's actually above a sewing shop which is next to a bar. The bar is a cafe-bar and is pretty good as bars go. It has some sofas, which are always very good things for a bar to have. It also has a very new age-y paint job, lots of swirling colours and that sort of thing. A couple of days before I saw the flat above the sewing shop, I went to the bar with a fairly old Israeli professor who used to go there to play chess. It's not really the kind of place one expects to find an aging physics professor.
Slowly and not entirely surely, I am revising my opinion of Columbus. Maybe it's more of a city than I was giving it credit for. I suppose after a couple of months of living there my opinion will have grown some roots and decided what it wants to be when it grows up into a belief or an assertion. But for now it's just bobbing about in a pool of uncertainty.
Quick update: my hand is still hurting. A lot.
I spent Sunday afternoon being licked by a very cute dog and being barked at by another cute dog. I also ate a veggie burger. It wasn't as bad an experience as I've been led to believe the veggie-burger-eating experience can be. But on the other hand, it wasn't as good an experience as eating a genuine — made with real meat, not mushed up bits of cow unpleasantness — burger. Still a fun time was had. I got drunk, played people the FCC song by Eric Idle, and told them how I have a propensity to write naughty words on things (in particular, how I wrote "a word which was rhymes with a kind of boat you find on the river Cam" on the empty television box that sits beside my sofa-bed... and how I did this just before my mother spent two nights sleeping on the sofa-bed). It's all part of my "get Americans to use more colourful language" program. I'm starting small, but there are now a few pockets of Americans who understand Big girl's blouse. The revolution will continue.
Oh, by the way circumlocution involving the river Cam is just me trying to avoid some of the strange words people are using to find this site. If you search using msn (boo, hiss), it is possible to find this page whilst searching for the word pretty combined with the afore-unmentioned word. In fact this site is the 12th, and first non-pornography link. Not to mention the hordes of people who arrive at my blog after searching for a misspelling (or should I say alternative spelling) of the word meaning: Unnatural connexion with a <meaning: A quadruped, as distinguished from birds, reptiles, fishes, insects, etc., as well as from man.>.
Well, I think I've avoided so well that it is now time for lunch.
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Thoughts from a Columbus coffee shop
So, here I am in lovely Columbus. Well, Columbus anyhow. I'm not really sure what I think of the place. I don't think it's really a city, not in the European sense of the word anyway. But it's certainly more of a city than State College. It seems to be the kind of place where it is really rather difficult to live if you do not possess a vehicle, so maybe I'll get myself one when I move here. There are certainly some nice bits and pieces of Columbus but, to my mind at least, they don't really coalesce in to a real city. Then again, it could just be that I have particularly strange idea about what a city is.
Hopefully, by the end of today I will have started the process of renting an apartment. I've had a look at a few places already and I'm going to see another place in about an hour, conveniently located above a bar. Earlier today I had a look around some apartments in a big, old stone building, with solid walls and squeaky wood floors. It reminded me somewhat of the big old Victorian house, well okay I had a pokey flat in the basement, I lived in when I first went to University. Anyhow, one way or I another I'll pick a place and try and sort out the application this afternoon.
Last night I went to see The Day After Tomorrow, it was alright. Nothing amazing, but an okay disaster movie. With some beautiful visuals, and your typical middling plot. What it did have was as much product placement as it could squeeze in to the film. The product, as far as I could tell, was anything that Rupert Murdoch had a grubby finger connected to... it was made by 20th Century Fox, which strangely enough Mr Murdoch (or the company which owns his soul) owns. We had the Los Angeles FOX affiliate, Sky News, Sky Sports, Manchester United (although BSkyB might have flogged their 10% recently) and the Weather Channel (which I'm guessing is a part of the Murdoch empire). And those are just the ones I noticed... and I'm usual fairly unobservant. But nevertheless it was a pretty good way to spend a couple of hours. Plus, of course, it had a pretty girlie... and she was playing a smart, pretty girlie... so even better.
Hopefully, by the end of today I will have started the process of renting an apartment. I've had a look at a few places already and I'm going to see another place in about an hour, conveniently located above a bar. Earlier today I had a look around some apartments in a big, old stone building, with solid walls and squeaky wood floors. It reminded me somewhat of the big old Victorian house, well okay I had a pokey flat in the basement, I lived in when I first went to University. Anyhow, one way or I another I'll pick a place and try and sort out the application this afternoon.
Last night I went to see The Day After Tomorrow, it was alright. Nothing amazing, but an okay disaster movie. With some beautiful visuals, and your typical middling plot. What it did have was as much product placement as it could squeeze in to the film. The product, as far as I could tell, was anything that Rupert Murdoch had a grubby finger connected to... it was made by 20th Century Fox, which strangely enough Mr Murdoch (or the company which owns his soul) owns. We had the Los Angeles FOX affiliate, Sky News, Sky Sports, Manchester United (although BSkyB might have flogged their 10% recently) and the Weather Channel (which I'm guessing is a part of the Murdoch empire). And those are just the ones I noticed... and I'm usual fairly unobservant. But nevertheless it was a pretty good way to spend a couple of hours. Plus, of course, it had a pretty girlie... and she was playing a smart, pretty girlie... so even better.
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