the apprentice: stamford bridge
after roman trump abramovich gave the famous “you’re fired” and a P45 revolver to avram grant, the hunt is on for the next person in the hotseat.
hurry, end the suspense!
you look so defeated
and so, i got a queen-sized bed all to myself now.
you used to think that someone would come along
and lay beside you in the space that they belong.
other side of the mattress;
the boxsprings stayed like new
but what’s the point of holding on
to what never gets used
other than a sick desire for self-abuse?
thank you avram
i may have been a critic at times, but as news trickled in that avram grant has been sacked, i surprised myself, i felt a little tinge of sadness.
for here is a man who went about his job quietly and in a dignified manner despite all the ridicule and pressure thrown at him. from me included, i am guilty to say. and for all of our fears that he “isn’t the right man”, he brought us to within a whisker of the premier league title. he had also broke the curse of liverpool in champions league semis, and we were a few wet blades of grass away from being crowned champions of europe. he did throw the carling cup away, but i’d give up a hundred carling cups for the premier league and champions league double. and in these two competitions, i don’t think avram can be faulted much.
i still maintain that there’s someone out there who can lead chelsea better, but it’s been an interesting ride. from a season that promised so little and threatened to implode, grant had brought us so close to unparalleled glory. alas, in the end it was not to be.
but, thank you avram. for your sake, i hope you prove yourself and everyone wrong wherever you go next. (just don’t do it against chelsea, thank you very much)
i’d say,
i wouldn’t say that i’d spend my time trying carefully to thread over burning, burning, burning bridges. that which you’ve burned.
a blacker shade of blue
ten years on, nobody will remember that chelsea played them off the park for a good 75 minutes. or that we hit the post twice. or that we had almost three times more shots. for when the dust settles, all that anyone will remember, is that the game was decided by the russian roulette that is the penalty shootout, and we were the losers.
king henry’s war cry
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o’erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O’erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill’d with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!
Fathers that, like so many Alexanders,
Have in these parts from morn till even fought
And sheathed their swords for lack of argument:
Dishonour not your mothers; now attest
That those whom you call’d fathers did beget you.
Be copy now to men of grosser blood,
And teach them how to war. And you, good yeoman,
Whose limbs were made in England, show us here
The mettle of your pasture; let us swear
That you are worth your breeding; which I doubt not;
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’
here i dreamt i was an architect
by the decemberists
And here I dreamt I was a soldier
And I marched the streets of Birkenau
And I recall in spring
The perfume that the air would bring
To the indolent town
Where the barkers call the moon down
The carnival was ringing loudly now
And just to lay with you
There’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
Save lay my rifle down
And try one, and try two
Guess it always comes down to
Alright, it’s ok, guess it’s better to turn this way
And I am nothing of a builder
But here I dreamt I was an architect
And I built this balustrade
To keep you home, to keep you safe
From the outside world
But the angles and the corners,
Even though my work is unparalleled,
They never seemed to meet
This structure fell about our feet
And we were free to go
And try one, and try two
Guess it always comes down to
Alright, ok, guess it’s better to turn this way
And here in Spain I am a Spaniard
I will be buried with my marionettes
Countess and courtesan
Will fall beneath my tender hand
When their husbands were not around
But you, my soiled teenage girlfriend
Or are you furrowed like a lioness
And we are vagabonds
We travel without seatbelts on
We live this close to death
And try one, and try two
I guess it always comes down to
Alright, it’s ok, guess it’s better to turn this
But I won, so you lose
Guess it always comes down to
Alright, it’s ok, guess it’s better to turn this way
going cold
i used to rule the world,
seas would rise when i gave the word.
now in the morning i sweep alone,
sweep the streets that i used to own.
fact of the day
you can get sore gluteus maximus muscles from playing badminton.
coldplay rebels
looking at the lyrics for the new coldplay songs, i thought for one second that “WHOOO the decemberists have a new album and i didn’t even know!”
even the first two lines off violet hill go like this:
Was a long and dark December
From the rooftops I remember
clarification: i love the decemberists.
———————–
update: coldplay and the decemberists are under the same label! (capitol records)
thought of the day
tragedy resides next to happiness, and they both compose the staples of our existence.
hmm.
it was always a big ask. but well. this time round, it just wasn’t meant to be.
onward to moscow boys!
blueballs phrase of the month
presenting: the inaugural blueballs phrase of the month:-
testicular fortitude
- noun
1. boldness or courage
Will Mr. Bruce and his charges have the testicular fortitude to square up to the Mancs?
random aspiration of the day
if i don’t make it as a teacher, i’ll shall leave my life behind to be a 30-year old pilot cadet.
quote-unquote
“The most likely scenario for Hillary to become president, however: Barack Obama wins 54% of the remaining pledged delegates and 60% of undecided superdelegates, and Hillary shoots him in the face with her fake Hitler Gun, and then Al Gore becomes president again at the convention and she shoots him too, the end.”
LOL!
bixby canyon bridge
i descended the dusty gravel ridge,
beneath the bixby canyon bridge.
quote-unquote
from the april 25 issue of malaysian newspaper, the sun:
“seller of chocs laced with viagra faced with stiff sentence”
STIFF SENTENCE! LOL!
very long thought of the day
i was talking to a very good friend about the merit of building castles in the air. literal structural difficulties aside, we disagreed upon almost everything.
i’m a big fan of dreams, really. i dream i would one day sit on a deserted island (i would preferably own the island), with a supermodel girlfriend beside me (i would preferably own the girlfriend) and with a state of the art titanium and precious-stone-laced macintosh notebook beside me, (i would preferably own the macintosh notebook too, really) its bulletproof and toothpaste-proof screen flashing green lights indicating more and more capital gains by the second.
eeyer, what fun is that anyway. my life would be so vacuous save for some tantric sex with a hot woman. (when she’s not being moody or having her period) so no, i dismiss all thoughts set out in the above paragraph. so i opt for a more poly-centric approach in favour of this uninspiring life.
or more precisely, those thoughts vanish in an instant when my mum wakes me up in the morning saying it’s time for me to go to work. and here, my very good friend says, is why dreams are bad. “snap back to reality” was the advice.
for all my intimations of wanting to be a wild man, i err on the side of caution more often than not. i am big on dreams, but small on courage. on one hand i tell myself i can make it big with my tiny, miserable portfolio built up on foreign exchange trading, and on the other hand i hope my agent would find me a nice, stable job somewhere. the dreamer in me says i should stay at home (or wherever my dreams take me) and monitor the markets all day, the realist wants me to quit this volatile affair and just content myself with a 9-5 (8-6 usually) job.
so i stay firmly in the center, getting a job and went stubbornly carrying on with my investments, hoping that one day i will be on the island, with or without the supermodel girlfriend. it’s not much, and i probably know being in the middle takes me in the direction of neither. but this little dream sustains me. also, aside from that, i dream of being a well-loved, radical, brilliant teacher, but i realise first i need to actually get a degree. and may my dream sustain me through my uni years.
so, what’s the point of this rant then? totally none, besides my view that while it’s important to be grounded, allow some room in your psyche for the dreams that you may have too. it may be bad to let your dreams grow into an un-handleable monster, but don’t suffocate them either.
integration (of some degree at least) between blacks and whites, the landing on the moon, penicillin and the light bulb. these are all things great, daring dreamers worked tirelessly and spared no effort to bring about. their dreams grew into monsters, possibly taking over their lives, but they handled them well enough.
for all we know, (and to obvious protestations from the religious) the universe dreamed itself into being. after all, it is dreams which orient our landscapes.
so there, one day someone may find a way to overcome structural difficulties, and actually build a castle in the air. (and i would own one of those too) till then, a tiny 2-room apartment which came with an unserviced housing debt will do just fine.
a man with his feet too firmly on the ground has trouble wearing pants.
