Monday, January 25, 2010

Moral Emptiness

Disgusted at the overrun slop houses and the hideous sceneries in which I found myself, I cursed under my breath and denounced this wretched piece of land I am trapped in. I was resigned to enduring a stretch of insipid sights until I reached my office, when the Divine intervened.


At a traffic light I beheld a most glorious sight. A fair-skinned lady in office attire, of good height and of voluptuous form, stood in stark contrast to the vastly inferior specimens around her. Her ample bosom, big as watermelons and no doubt as juicy, arrested my attention, and riveted my feet to the spot in their majestic tyranny. Her dolled-up face, while not compelling in the classical sense, wore a knowing look that was surely born of experience, Her eyes betrayed an innate lustfulness, of her need to ravish and be ravished. Her proud posture accentuated her tantalizing curves, and when the light turned green, it took all my immense willpower to free myself from her spell, and to stride forward as she did, not to drool as, with each step she took, her firm bosom seemed in danger of ripping asunder her overstretched bodice. If all women were like this, there would be no frustration. Calamities shall cease, and peace shall reign supreme.


It goes to show that sometimes you just have to rail and rant to get what you want. Maybe there is really a god and if you can grab Its attention you can get It to grant your wishes. Well, I am going to give this divine derelict many earfuls until It gives me a winning set of seven numbers. It is not having peace anytime soon. It could also buy itself a few nights of peace by allowing me to enjoy the strumpet. Surely, her affection is worth its weight in gold.



* * * * * *


I am writing this in an uncomfortable state. I am cold, sleepy, depressed, and cannot wait to get the Hells out, go back home and sleep. My intestines are churning from the three cups of coffee and one can of Coke I took to keep myself conscious. My stomach does not digest caffeine very well and I figure that if I keep this up I may die of caffeine poisoning one day. My eyes are blurry from staring at the screen all day and I hate the glare from the merciless sun that beats relentlessly down on this shithole. A few white strands down the middle of my unruly mop disrupt its black entirety. This is obviously a sign of stress, for I have been overtaxing both halves of my brain. When you are unfortunate enough to exist in this shithole, you age faster; your eyes are dull and soulless and your posture is bent from oppression and no shard of meaning can be glimpsed from your vapid existence.


A profound moral emptiness envelops my psyche; to say I feel Enkish will not be far from the truth. The Marquis de Sade wrote his incomparable 120 Days of Sodom on a long roll of toilet paper during his imprisonment. Days after days of tortuous monotony can drive the stricken mind to abyssal depths of despair or inspire it to elysian flights of ineffable inspiration. The mind, disposed of its idle fantasies of moralities and hypocritical onanism, lapses into emptiness, and it is out of this emptiness that one perceive the true reality behind its flimsy fabric, and behold it for its nakedness. It is precisely this moral emptiness that have inspired both ‘monsters’ and ‘saints’, from Vlad Tepes Dracula to Siddhartha Gautama, to allow them to transcend their frangible mortalities and to ascend to godhood, to immortality.


(The fourth cup of coffee now, with Milo powder added.) – 5.25pm

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Superb Rant!

Found on Toffeeweb:

Fan Articles

Message board rant

By Sam Higgins : 22/01/2010 : Comments (40)
This little beauty is doing the rounds on the net at the moment. It's a rant left on a QPR messagebaord. I know the Editor doesn't approve of putting up posts about other clubs — but this is more about football in general and many of you will be nodding your head in agreement to most of it...

Rant written by QPR fan on messageboard....


I take more pleasure in seeing Chelsea lose than I do in seeing QPR win at the moment.

I sat through so many matches when we were absolute dogshite under the likes of Ray Harford and with people like Paul Bruce, Matthew Brazier and Mark Perry in the squad and I never felt like this.

The club isn't ours anymore but moreso than that - football is just properly gash these days.

I mean really gash.

Football generally.

I hate nearly everything about it these days....

I hate the Prem and the myth that it is exciting this year. Man City breaking into the top four isn't exciting. They spent loads of money. It's no more exciting that Nameless Fuck getting to number 1 in the charts after winning the X-Factor.

I hate the myth of Arsene's kids. Buying some French kid when he's 17, playing him in the League Cup and then selling him when he's 20 after about 3 appearances in the league is NOTHING SPECIAL.

I hate hearing about Liverpool/Man Utd's debt but nothing ever happening about it. A club needs to go to the wall for the money thing to change but it doesn't happen. Why the fuck are Charlton, Leeds and Southampton still in business?

I hate Frank Lampard's stupid fucking face. I hate that Joe Cole's tongue is never in his mouth, the downsy spacker. I hate John Terry being England captain when he's CLEARLY AN OAF.

I hate young exciting wingers who have nothing but pace. Tony Scully had nothing but pace.

I hate Harry fucking Redknapp. And Jamie Redknapp. And Louise Redknapp... And the Wii.

I hate Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer.

I hate Garth Crooks.

I hate Garth Brooks a lot for that matter.

I hate Sky Sports.

I hate that when a lower league player beats 10 players and chips the keeper it doesn't matter but if Rooney scores from more than 20 yards it's amazing.

I hate that female sports journos are now mandatory.

I hate Mark Lawrenson for not coming out. 'I do like a big man at the back'. I bet you do...

I hate any advert that portrays football to be about anything other than pain and disappointment.

I hate Lee Hughes and the fact that he makes a living from the game. I hate Marlon King and any team that signs him when he gets out. I hate that it'll probably be us.

I hate Phil Brown.

I hate 'well the ball is a lot lighter now and will cause goalkeepers real problems this summer' before EVERY FUCKING TOURNAMENT!

I hate that Kieron Dyer earned more in the time I took to write this post than I'll earn this month.

I hate Adrian Durham, Ian Wright and Alan Brazil.

I hate Gazza. Either die or shut up. Stop fucking lingering.

I hate hearing about Hillsborough more than I hear about Heysel or Bradford.

I hate Leeds.

I hate Roy Keane.

I hate grown men wearing football shirts of their team whilst shopping on a Saturday when their team is playing at home.

I hate that I don't hate Roy Hodgson.

I hate Jermaine Beckford and any player who has neck tattoos.

I hate songs being inappropriately taken as club anthems and then sung in a manly way. 'I'm forever blowing bubbles....'. Gaylords.

I hate Danny Dyer and anyone he's ever interviewed.

I hate the book 'Cass' by Cass Pennant. It is honestly the stupidest thing I've ever read. Chapter 1: Millwall. 'Yeah we took 50 to Millwall. They had 1000 in their mob but we ran 'em up and down the street'. Chapter 2: Liverpool. 'Yeah we took 50 to Liverpool. They had 2000 in their mob but we ran 'em up and down the street'. Fuck me... Jade Goody's autobiography is probably better. Even her non-ghost-written one.

I hate that all good youngsters end their careers at Spurs before they start.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Wednesday @ UniShit; and Good Slop

There are many things one can do on Wednesday nights. Some blokes go to the club - it's ladies' night - to try to score. Being long-suffering students of UniShit and hated atheists (some asshole up there hates our guts), our lot was to rush straight from our gulags to UniShit.

After coughing out $32 to take a cab there, we were half expecting that we would be turned away due to the long queue. To our consolation, the queue was unlike Saturday’s. It reached nearly to the end of the corridor instead of all the way down into the stairwell. XH and I lined up and entertained ourselves by stating facts about this ‘flophouse’ of a university. As usual, the queue was ugly and the surroundings unsightly. It was a credit to the underpaid staff’s regard for their own safety that they did not get rid of the people still queuing when the clock struck 7.30pm (closing time).

Two latecomers, incensed at being denied entry by a puny UniShit staff, removed the flimsy barrier, walked past the poor man like he was not there, and proceeded to take their rightful places in the queue. I was impressed with the two fellows. Despite their late arrival, they had every right to collect what was owed them and they asserted themselves most remarkably. Too bad the Dean and his management team were not there. Their confrontation would have been most spectacular.

UniShit are so incompetent they cannot even barricade an area properly. They could have effectively prevented any latecomers from barging their way through by putting attack dogs at the exit and entrance. Sadly, they are so cretinous they could not even come up with a simple solution like this. I read that they are offering degrees with majors in military studies. I do not want to imagine what their graduates will be like.

We went to West Mall and settled on a Chinese restaurant for our slop. After the shit we had for the day, we fully deserved some good slop and holy meat. We were not disappointed. The slop was good and the pork and beef were a treat to our delicate palate. There was a couple sitting on both sides of us. To my left a pretty dolly from China was patiently listening to the meaningless patter and chest-thumping boasts of her Singapore paramour. The former specimen was typical of the local species – inarticulate, ugly and out of shape; the latter had a nice rack and smooth skin that made me want to caress. I watched the dolly force smiles and I pitied her. She was clearly too good for the slobbering and stupid Neanderthal seated across her. She should be with me instead. She wouldn’t have to fake orgasms.

To my right sat a teen couple. Their roving eyes for each other and the heat emanating from their bodies betrayed their licentious and their burning desire to copulate. As XH and I were criticizing the general intelligence of the local population, Ris Low, the ‘emo-ness’ of most Arts students, that vindictive cunt from China who won’t pay XH, so on and so forth, they were also talking to each other about us. I prefer that they join in the conversation. If they are offended they should tell us and we would have been all too happy to educate them. Sad to say, like most of younger generation, they lacked both wit and guts. Lastly, if they are so desperate, they should rent a room. There are several hotels in Geylang that offer two hour packages at highly affordable prices.

Sunday Entertainment


For once, my weekends were not boring! Thanks to the geniuses who decided to organize an outing, I was saved from being bored to death! I felt like crying. An exhibition followed by a hike – it does not get more enriching than that. You can check out Body Worlds.


The arrangement of the Body Worlds exhibition was designed to match the various stages of a human’s lifespan. In the first section, we saw jars containing fetuses in various stages of their development. Farther in were body parts encased in glass displays and plastinated figures mounted prominently in different poses. Initially the desiccated cadavers were still young – at least they were at the time of their demise – but they became ‘older’ the deeper we went.


The plastinated figures fascinated me. At first I thought they were cleverly produced models but upon closer inspection of their forms and reading the descriptions next to them dispelled me of my erroneous perception. Network of nerves and sinews ran across the figures’ opened up bodies, conveying a sense of horror and morbidity.

Interspersed among the figures were organs, and body parts, some of which showed signs of the ravages of disease. On the walls were mounted posters showing famous sayings about mortality, and also of scientific knowledge about the human body and its processes. A soft background tune brought to the images of life and its sacredness of it.


I had thought that a Viking funeral may be the most spectacular way of disposing my carcass after my demise, but maybe I should leave my carcass to science instead. All I need to do is to sign a form, send it to the relevant authorities, and I will be immortalized. I can imagine my acquaintances’ gasps of disbelief and awe as they look upon my desiccated form. Hey! That is my friend! They can display me next to a computer monitor and keyboard, title the exhibit ‘Overworked Bastard’ and hang our flag next to it. It should make the cover of Time magazine.


On second thoughts, they probably wouldn’t choose to put me on display. It takes an entire year to plastinate a human carcass and as Auntie Gwen said, they don’t want to waste the time and effort to plastinate a less than perfect specimen. This means that 99.9% of my countrymen and women can look forward to staying in a tiny urn in a crematorium after they have outlived their usefulness to the State, regardless of their intentions to plastinate themselves.


The exhibition also offered advice on how to live a long and meaningful life. Expectedly it was the usual canon about keeping stress levels down, being happy, eating good foods, exercising often and finding meaning in life. I don’t see how all these are possible when you are trying to make ends meet by working the longest hours in the world and being grossly underpaid for your labors. As for being happy, you might as well ask a Sudanese living in his shithole of a county to be happy. Happiness is not something you can will into being, contrary to what the Buddha said. (That’s right, I just insulted the Buddha. So I’ll come back to this shithole in my next life?) Happiness occurs only when the conditions necessary for its occurrence are satisfied. As for the exercising and eating good food, for some of us these are simply impossible. How in the Eighteen Levels of Hell can you find the time and energy to exercise when you work from morning till night and when you get home you are so fucking exhausted you cannot even have the strength for sex with your partner? As for eating good food, the slop in this shithole just isn’t nourishing enough. Just compare the average built of my countrymen to that of, say, a European or American. The fact is, despite being well-fed, we are physically inferior, and that is a fact! If you don’t believe me, just look at our professional athletes (I exclude *sports* like golf, bowling, table tennis etc). It is an embarrassment. Even the Africans are bigger than us (compare the Ivory Coast football team to ours). As for living a stress-free lifestyle after retirement, it does not happen for most of us. Go to any hawker centre and you will observe that there are plenty of old folks trying to sell tissue papers or picking drink cans from tables. They don’t do it to pass the time; they do it because they have no money. So much for keeping a songbird, playing chess, or entertaining the grandchildren and chattering with your neighbors after you retire. There is no dignity in growing old in this shithole. I hope to die as soon as possible when I am old and infirm and IF I am still stuck in this Hell.


Gina left earlier to attend her friend’s mother’s book reception at the National Library. It was a pity she could not join us. Maybe I should author a book one day. I suggested to XR on the bus that we should do a book on the Chinese martial arts. We should make it controversial by (i) disparaging all other books on the subject (ii) criticizing our martial arts and exposing its weaknesses for all and sundry (iii) writing it in a polished fashion and with proper referencing. I think with our talent and this brilliant marketing plan we should be able to make the bestseller lists. As the market here is unfit for a work of this stature, we should market it in Western countries. If there’s justice in this world - I’m dreaming so humour me – they will award us the Nobel Prize for Literature.


Anyway, I do not think they will waste a perfectly good cadaver by throwing it to the dogs. While we may not be aesthetically pleasing to be displayed in our entirety, I think our parts may be deemed suitable. They can remove my liver and point to its caffeinated state. Put a caption like ‘Liver from Overdose of Caffeine’ next to it.

In the rare event that I am rejected, it is not the end of the world, figuratively speaking. After my carcass is reduced to ash, they can scatter it across the seven seas. At least I get to ‘see’ the world at last and not stuck in some uninspiring structure in a shithole.


While the human specimens were interesting, they paled in comparison to the non-human animals’. I particularly liked the squid and octopus. They are like real sea monsters. I can almost imagine how horrifying their giant ancestors must have looked millions of years ago.


The giraffes were the biggest and tallest specimens. One stood over six metres; another was a collection of many slices of its cross-section hung laterally in a vague giraffe shape. In one corner two reindeers ‘pulled’ a wagon; in the centre of the hall a horse carried two riders. Maybe the next round they will have elephants, killer whales and giant turtles.


We left the Body Worlds show after around two hours or so. It had been an eye-opener. After meeting with a woman (who would be known as Auntie Gwen), the group then went to a food court in Novena Square for slop. I ordered holy meat. It was a shame that they gave me so little pork. It was shameful.


Anyway, during slop, the Auntie delivered an animated account of her trip to Peru. I listened with apt fascination as she narrated her group’s difficult trek up the hills, and salivated in response to her gushing over the succulent rat meat she ate in a Peruvian village. We laughed at the outbursts of her friend, who is a scholar and ‘a specimen barely five feet in length and with short thin appendages’. Overstressed by the rigors of her misadventure, this highly-educated and urbane lady was reduced to grunting one syllable ejaculations of ‘fuck!’ every time she went through a trial or tribulation. The moral of the story: Most Singapore scholars are useless when the going gets tough.


As is my custom, I publicized UniShit and its infernal educational standards. Diane and the Auntie looked quite shocked at my vehemence, with the latter soon verifying the truth of my assertions. She had the misfortune of working with UniShit graduates and they were pretty incompetent. I applaud her for her refreshing honesty. We need more assertive women like her.


A journey of a thousand miles begin with a single step, so claimed the ancients. Being insignificance by comparison, our ten kilometres trek began with monkeys. There were a family of these bipedal rascals and at the risk of life and limb, I snapped a few pictures. They were anti-social delinquents, interested only in the scrapes of slop they found and not in interacting with their bigger cousins. I fantasized about throwing Psycho in with the lot. Fur will fly.


Anti-social bugger.


My photo-snapping meant that the main group had moved a considerable distance ahead, leaving XR and I with the monkeys. We tried to catch up with them but they moved at demonic speed. By the time we crossed the bridge they were nowhere in sight. XR did a disappearing act after we lost sight of them. He was taking pictures of the scenery and when I turned around he was gone, possibly abducted by aliens.


Confident that the aliens would find him boring and return him, I went after my group. I took big Neanderthal steps, loped, shuffled my feet quickly and after 20 minutes or so I appeared next to the Auntie, who was behind the two guys and two girls. After hearing that XR was taken by aliens, she chided me for leaving my friend behind and asked me to call him. This I did, but I could not get through. (I guess the reception was abysmal in the spacecraft.) At any rate, we continued for some time, constantly keeping ourselves out of the way of the joggers.


When we reached the river, Diane and Zhouyue decided to wait for XR. (They too, were confident that the aliens would return him, or they didn’t know any better.) So the two guys, Auntie Gwen and I carried on for possibly another one kilometre. We found ourselves next to a golf course and the reservoir. The weather was cool and the skies grey with the threat of rain. We spotted the trio in the distance. I waved my arms, and Diane responded similarly. It was like in a movie. We just needed Tom Hanks and his friend, the late volleyball Wilson.


Our next stop was a five or six-storied tower. The view was spectacular – I couldn’t see Alaska, but I could sure see a few flats on the horizon – and the air was cooling. The Auntie collapsed like a sack of potatoes and in her delirium, ranted about ice kacang and cold beers. At the risk of being thrown off the ledge by a delirious woman, I added that we should have ice kacang with durian and mango. The other fellows were enjoying the scenery as well. We saw many trees, but few birds. As if our brain drain is not severe enough, now even the birds are emigrating en masse in Exercise Bird Drain. I can’t blame the bird-brains though.


We reached a ranger station and after emptying and refilling water, we moved on. A short distance ahead was what looked like a military installation. There were some big ugly green warehouses in a fenced up perimeter. At the guard post a security guard struggled to keep the sandman away and a few metres from her a few monkeys seemed to mock her misery.


Then I was nearly attacked by a monkey. I saw this fellow squatting on the grass patch besides me and being the friendly person that I am, I went up to it, held out my palm and said, ‘Take me to your leader.’ Obviously unimpressed, this vicious primate suddenly charged at me. I had to backpedal furiously to save myself from a mauling. Bad monkey! No bananas for this murderous son of a baboon!


My fortuitous escape was followed by another. XR and I went to the wrong trail but we were fortunately Diane saw us and led the wayward flock back. Before her intervention I espied the buxomy Caucasian broad I saw at the ranger’s station earlier making her way down the other trail. By the time we returned to the right path she was already out of sight. Rats. Nice rack though.


As we continued up the trail I told XR about my incident with that monkey. He suggested that the creature, being the leader of his troupe, was probably peeved at my request that he take me to his leader. Quite possible. Unlike his fellows, he did not run away from him at my approach. Anyway, the next time I see him, his troupe will have a new leader.


XR, Diane and I shot the shit while we walked. There wasn’t much sunlight seeping through the green canopied above us, but thankfully the air was not as humid. I explained to my friends that the importance of running when absolutely necessary i.e. playing football, or getting money for my annual fitness test. Of course, when the scenery merits it, I will definitely be extremely motivated. Such situations involve a few voluptuous goddesses jogging, their ample bosom bouncing synchronously with their every stride, and me jogging alongside them and making polite conversation while basking in the full extent of their beauteous glory.



Dusk is the most beautiful.


Our entire hike took us little over than two hours. I consider it to be a remarkable achievement. We maintained a brisk pace throughout and even the Auntie, who was still recovering from her fever, kept up. Everybody was strong. I would even say that our group is physically superior to most of this shithole’s denizens. After our exertions we rewarded ourselves with slop at the Newton food centre. The Dumper should have been with us. We would have made pigs of ourselves. Long live holy meat!


And so we split up for home. I was a bit envious of XR. He has intelligent friends while over half of my friends are not too far from Ris Low. I seem cursed that nimrods, emotional freaks and other assorted horrors tend to come to me. My existence is so pointless.


Friday, January 15, 2010

Wizard and Glass



I have to be honest here – I did not finish Wizard and Glass. Thirty pages into the book and I decided that enough was enough. The fourth volume in the Dark Tower series may also be a standalone novel, but it is as bad as most sequels.

The story begins with a group of adventurers stuck on a sentient conveyance. They then challenged this bio-mechanical contraption to a riddling contest, with defeat culminating in their deaths. If this silly scene does not deter you from reading on, the chaotic patter that passes for dialogue would surely bring you to your senses.


Over the years, King’s devotion to character development has enabled him to create well-fleshed out characters in It, Carrie, and Salem’s Lot. Unfortunately, for Wizard and Glass, his attention to detail becomes obsessive, with disastrous effects. His characters’ endless flashbacks to their earlier lives distract the reader from what is an already haphazard storyline.


Stephen King has reached the stage in his literary career where anything he churns out will make the bestseller lists. Still, one might expect an immense talent like he to respect himself to not produce such drivel, and enough decency not to make people pay money for it.


Stephen King may be a word wizard, but Wizard and Glass makes me want to put a shard of glass to my wrist. My advice to anyone who wants to go it a go: Do not litter. Put trash where it belongs.



Rating: 1.5/5

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Really Overworked.

I saw this on my gulag's notice board.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Football Focus

What happened in the past 48 hours showed how football is a fickle and often emotional and irrational business.

12 hours ago, Everton defied their critics to hold the Arse to a 2:2 draw at their ground. We could even have won it if luck had been on our side. James Vaughan missed when clean through and then the Arse got the second of their deflected goals in injury time. While victory has eluded our grasp, one cannot deny that this is the best performance from the boys in what has been a wretched season. We made one of the best sides in Europe look ordinary, and we did it without our best centreback and our best playmaker. I think the team ought to be applauded for their Herculean effort.

Imagine my shock and disgust when I read some of the comments on one fan site.

According to Michael Kenrick, who is on the site’s Editorial team:

“I truly believe it is Moyes�s fault. Killing the game is just not in his repertoire. The players are not trained to think in those terms. They are trained to defend en masse, and nick a goal if they can. This game was a perfect opportunity to put Arsenal to the sword, and I�m sorry but we failed. Yes, I do blame Moyes!”


It seems that whatever David Moyes (Everton manager) does, he is criticized. He can be too defensive at times but when he chooses to go for broke last night, he is also criticized. It does not take much logic to realize that not even the best manager in the world can do a thing about it if his forwards cannot hit a barn door from five yards.

Secondly, training a team to defend en masse is not only technically sound, but an essential component of modern football. You build a football team from the back. Why does Jose Mourinho win trophies? Because his teams always have a strong backline. A single goal can decide a football game and if you cannot defend, you will win nothing. Watching Everton last night, I was reminded of FC Porto, who won the 2004 UEFA Champion League. The tactical discipline, short, intelligent, and pragmatic passing, and committed work rate were a joy to behold. No more hoofing the ball 70 yards into no man’s land and our breakaways were a refreshing change from what has been dished out by the team prior to the game.

Everyone who has blue in his heart is no doubt gutted that we could not hold out for a win. Moyes and the boys should be still be commemorated for a job well done.

Not happy at being refuted by fans, Mr. Kendrick defends himself by spluttering more balderdash.

“Paul: "... but the way Arsenal play sometimes that happens." � And the way Everton play, those things don�t happen for us. It�s more than just luck. It�s about having the winning mentality. As a manger, it�s about communicating that to the players, inculcating it into their every thought and action. Moyes always comes up short. Instead of that mentality, it�s "keep it safe", "play it square", "hoof it away", "all back for corners", "maintain your shape"...

Drives me fucking mad with despair when you see what we could be achieving with this team. And a game like this underlines it for me far more than those utter embarrassments against Hull and the like.”


Pray tell, what is wrong with ‘keeping it safe’, ‘play it square’, ‘hoof it away’, ‘all back for corners’, and ‘maintain your shape’? Aren’t all these what any manager would expect from his defenders?

As for ‘maintain your shape’, which professional team does not maintain their shape? Hell, my Sunday League football team is as hopeless as it is, but even we don’t run around helter-skelter! I don’t know what game this joker was watching last night, but we played some very good football and in wintry conditions too.

His other comments:

‘Phil, I think if you analysed the game carefully, you would still see far too many opportunities when the Everton players were making poor decisions while in possession of the ball. For me Cahill is the major culprit in this regard, but his brilliant work to set up the second goal shows what he is capable of. In all honesty that goal was so unusual for an Everton side under Moyes, I could hardly believe my eyes! It was almost a breakaway except the crucial element was Cahill holding the ball perfectly and then playing a perfectly timed killer pass. But too often he would choose to go the other way, or pass it back. The only explanation for me is the overall approach to playing the game, which is something that comes from Moyes. We play in his image. We don’t know how to go for the jugular. '


You know you can't do a single thing right
when you are blamed for every fuck thing,
including global warming, the financial crisis
and the death of Michael Jackson..



When shit happens and it is not the gaffer’s fault, the blame always goes to Tim Cahill. He might have wasted a few opportunities but the same could also be said for his teammates. To single a player out for criticism is more often than not unreasonable and in this case, totally unjustified. This is a player who has played in four different positions to plug the gaps in a team decimated by injuries and against the Arse he and Fellaini ran their classy midfield ragged. To digress slightly, he may not be firing all cylinders this season, but the same goes for most of the team. Football fans who were singing his praises last season are now calling for him to be transferred. Shows you how fickle, ungrateful, hateful, and illogical football fans are.

And in football, there is nothing wrong with passing the ball backwards or sideways, especially when there is not a single teammate in front of you. Kendick’s incessant wailings are childish and uncalled for. I don’t know why imbeciles always get into editorial teams and in the media.


Anyone who is taking a course in the Arts should follow football. It is the most artistic and emotionally driven of all sports. It is the most popular game in the world, probably because it has elements unique to it. The bulldozer charge of an NFL quarterback is crude compared to the mazy dribbling of Messi or the lightning fast stepovers of Ronaldo as he attacks the flank. The best baseball pitch and basketball free throw cannot compare to the ineffable beauty of a free kick that curls around the wall and into the back of the net. Imagine the level of skill needed to control a 70 yard long ball using your foot without breaking stride. Or the telepathic understanding of a well-drilled group of players who string 40 passes together without an opponent even getting close to the ball.

Football is also the most emotional game ever. Rangers and Celtic are spilt along religious lines. Fierce rivalries manifest themselves in their boisterous and - at times gory - glory in derbies, when two teams from the same city or area play each other. El Salvador and Honduras went to war after a football match, the football being the last straw for the fermenting hatred between the two countries. It is tribal warfare without the spears, sabers, AK-47s, genocide and pogroms. It is US vs THEM and Gawd helps those who get in our way.

Football allows people the opportunity to let loose their pent-up feelings in an acceptable fashion. All the screaming, shouting , cheering abusing the opposition is a therapeutic exercise unmatched by the costliest shrink session or yoga class. Humans are essentially animals, and tens of thousands of years of social and biological evolution have not eradicated our natural aggression. You don’t even need to hold a grudge against the other team. All it takes is some choice words from ‘that mob’ about your ancestry and even a mild-mannered man may be driven to retaliate with some choice words. For that 90 minutes, you can be yourself. No need to put up appearances for the sake of social convention. You can drop that façade of civility and return, to a degree, what you really are. We are all animals.

Rooting for a football club is essentially an egoistic exercise. You identify with your club because you need to identify with something in the way religious people are religious because they need to identify and believe in something greater than themselves and which represents what they live for. The club is everything you believe in. It is your job, loves and hatreds, family, cherished beliefs and other things more. There may be , physically, no correlation and similarities between a game played with a ball chased by 22 players and what goes on in your daily life, but to a diehard fan, the game exemplifies what he is. Ask any football fan and he will tell you how crappy he feels when his team loses, and when his team wins, suddenly every shit thing in life will turn out fine. The sheer amount of emotional energy invested by supporting the team creates strong bonds between the fan and his beloved team. For many fans, ‘the team is me.’ What happens to the team happens to him. Every goal scored is a validation of his superiority and every goal conceded is an personal insult; he feels every injury suffered like it is his own; suspensions makes him feel he is in jail. Football offers a ray of light at the end of the tunnel that is life for a football fan. No matter how wretched life is, there is always a chance of you ultimately winning in the end. Like when your team wins a game or lifts the cup. That is you. Is it logical? No. But humans are emotional and logic and reasoning often fly out of the window.


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The BBC has just reported that the Togolese have decided to play in the African Nations Cup after all.

After what has happened, to make Togolese team play in the tournament is inhumane. Although the Togolese say they will play in memory of their dead colleagues, the more realistic among us would no doubt wonder about what caused their change in attitude. In Africa, the wiles of the regimes take precedence over the rights of the people. Imagine the amount of dirty money African politicians and organizers will lose if the tournament were to be called off.

My cynicism notwithstanding, one cannot deny that organizers are obliged to provide security for players and supporters and this horrific incident only underlines their inability to do so. Trying to deflect criticism by saying that the Congolese should have flown instead of travelling by road through the separatist region of Cabinda is a pathetic excuse and downright irresponsible.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) should not escape criticism for the way they planned the African Nations Cup. Why is Angola, a country that is being ravaged by civil war allowed to host matches? Who was in charge of security and why was the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda given free license to attack the Togolese team bus? Where were the security forces when the attack occurred?

Managers in the Premier League may have vested interests of their own in suggesting that their African players be allowed to return to their clubs in England, but this does not mean that it isn’t good sense to do so. If the organizers cannot guarantee the safety of the players and their fans, it has no right to insist that they stay. Taking the moral high ground and criticizing the English Premier League and other European leagues for their selfishness is sheer petulance. European clubs, who pay huge salaries to their African players, are perfectly justified in wanting to protect their assets. The commercial interest aside, basic human decency demands that after such a tragedy, players should not be made to force their already fragile emotional psyche through the rigors of a cup competition.

CAF should not use the Munich Olympics as an argument to continue the tournament. Despite its troubles, Europe in the 70s was a lot safer than present-day Africa. After the murder of Israeli athletes, the organizers did tighten up security. I cannot say the same for Africa. Most of the worst genocides in recent years have occurred in Africa. Ivory Coast, Angola and Sudan are still embroiled in civil wars. Even South Africa, among the more developed of African countries, is suffering from high crime rates. Africa, as a whole, is not fit to host any major event, let alone a sporting spectacle of such magnitude.

Arguing that the African Cup of Nations must go on in order to send a strong message of African solidarity to criminals and terrorists is ludicrous as it is exasperating to hear. The only way to send ‘a strong message’ to violent people is to fight fire by fire. You send in the army to exterminate them. You don’t risk the lives of ordinary people in a half-baked PR exercise.

This terrible incident has raised concerns about Africa’s capability to host the 2010 World Cup and rightly so. If there is a lesson to be had, Africa must stop hiding behind their excuses and start to take responsibility. They can start by cancelling the 2010 African Cup of Nations.