I've been watching many many episodes of Grange Hill on the You Toobs today. Series 9 from 1986. A classic series. This was the year of Zammo's heroine addiction, which if I hark back to when I first saw this series, I had predicted to my school chums. "He's got a heroine addiction," I told them. "That's why he keeps selling his stuff, a heroine addiction."
I had a huge crush on Laura Regan at this time. I had just started wanking in 1986 and I should imagine she was the reason. I bet she'd love to know that. I'll tell her if I ever bump into her. Hi I'm Rich, I started wanking cause of you.
Danny Kendall was my favourite character. The 4ft 5 rebel who smoked twenty Benson's an episode. Back in the 80's kids like him at my school had their own class now they have their own syndrome. Oh how I wish I could go back to the 80's; a better time, a simpler time.
This is the skinniest building in New York. It's number 75 1/2 Bedford Street in Greenwich Village. At a gossamer-tastic 8.5ft wide and 32feet long and can be yours for just $2.6m. Bargain.
It's most famous owner was Edna St. Vincent Millay the lezza poet from whom we get the phrase burning the candles at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
It gives a lovely light!
She's living life in the fast lane is what she means and it will shorten her life but she doesn't care cause she's having such fun. I don't buy that, she was only 58 when she died but I think this is a clear metaphor for sharing a dildo with another female. Saucy minx. I like her style. That must have caused quite a scandal in the Village in 1920. Labels: Culture, Places
Wayne Rooney diving
There has to be intent for a foul to be given in football oui? Therefore our goalkeeper's arms being in Wayne Rooney's way for him to fall over is not justification for a penalty. There is no intent on bringing Rooney down. Almunia's intent was purely just to do something silly and come charging off his line for no reason. This was just a coming together of bodies, which is still allowed in football as it still a contact sport just about. So it possible to have a collision that is not a foul, or a dive it's just a collision. Although this was a dive.
The football media's reaction please had that been Eduardo going down in that exact foot dragging arms in the air way at the other end? At the very least he'd have been deported.
I'm still trying to work out how even with the benefit of numerous replays, he didn't think Fletcher's tackle on Arshavin was a penalty so I can't really comment on that. The tackle which was exactly the same as Robin Van Perie's a few minutes later for which a free-kick and yellow card were given. I'm starting to suspect he doesn't like Arsenal.
Rich is getting angry.
Cotton pickin' muffin eating sombiaaaatchI'm doing OK. I just beat Clyde. He called me a muffin eatin' moron. Charming!
: Labels: Nonsense
Arsenal will be drawn against teams that are fucking miles away is what I think. Russian and Ukrainian teams are nailed on to be drawn against Arsenal. On this occasion I fully expect CSKA Moscow and Dinamo Kiev to be this season's commy opposition with a token German team (Wolfsburg I think) completing the group.
That is of course unless UEFA have suspended proceedings while they investigate the heinous Eduardo diving incident. I've heard tell of a UEFA investigation with a possible retrospective punishment for the dive. No investigation about England's problems with hooliganism and our ability to host a future world cup following the West Ham Millwall mini war. Just a thorough probing of Eduardo's doings.
As far as I can recall, an episode of gamesmanship of this ilk has never received so much as a blink of an eye from UEFA. Not even when Ryan Babel dived in the Champions League semi-final against Arsenal awarded with a penalty which ended our tournament. Can't recall them ever investigating Rooney's efforts, Drogba's or Steven Gerrards and they're much better at it than Eduardo.
Platini hates Wenger, that's what this is all about. My singing squirrels are in Switzerland as we speak and have Platini's office phones tapped. Last night after he'd phone a homosexual sex line and wanked off into a tuna baguette - which he then ate with a glass of chilled Chianti fffft fffft fffft - he then phoned his Mam and spent an hour ranting about how shit Arsenal were and how they're a mongrel team of Arsene Wengers bastard children. All sons of whores which the Arsenal manager visits in the small hours of the night in seedy docklands brothels.So anyway, just to recap - Eduardo's dive has been met with a furore from the footballing meeja that has eclipsed their anger following rioting from the previous nights confrontation at West Ham. Perspective? Who needs perspective when you've got rabid foam mouthed xenophobia and a very selective amnesia, that's what I always say.
Absolutely shocking scenes at the Emirates tonight. Celtic ought to receive some sort of fine or a ban for their behaviour. There's really no place for that kind of thing in Professional sports. What they do in their own league is their own business, but that surely can't be accepted in the Champions League.
Their kit was just awful and it must necessarily have had an influence on their state of mind. Boruc's violent assault on Eduardo - a player only just back from a serious injury - was just disgraceful and the Celtic players' surrounding the referee attempting to intimidate the official was just inexcusable. No place for it. Utterly shameful and eclipsing the violent scenes at and around Upton Park. I still feel queasy.
A kung-fu kick to Bendtner's head and a boot to the back of the knee.Shameful shameful scenes. Shocking.
.....Assuming the boys are fit for this weekend I fancy them to win at Old Trafford. Three successive (technical) loses for Utd so far make the 11/4 price for an Arsenal win very juicy indeed.
: Labels: Betting, Football
This is an accumulator. It was going well right up until Newcastle gave up a one goal lead to go in at half time 2-1 down. To add insult to injury I was unable to lay the bet off when they took the lead as there's no in-play market on Betfair for this game. Rich is getting angry.
Update - I take it all back. Marvelous
I can't sleep tonight. I've loaded up on gummy bears and they're sitting heavy in my stomach. They're addictive are gummy bears. There's a potent chemical in them that can monkey with your brain, but I do so love their fruity goodness.
I haven't been sleeping well recently to be fair to the gummy bears people. I feel quite pathetic and weedy as we speak if the truth be told. It took me nearly an hour to make a sammich last night when I got home as I found it an exhausting process and a mentally taxing one. I also became cold and violent shivering ensued causing an almost fatal accident with a sharp piece of bacon.
I shall really have to load up with protein drinks and meat sammiches if I'm to have any chance of focusing this weekend at the APAT event. I fear I may run out of steam before I get an opportunity to give my chips away to all and sundry via poor play and over optimistic bluffing.
I'm struggling with just the idea of being awake for a whole day's play. It makes my knees go wobbly. If they didn't have a dress code at Dusk Till Dawn I'd seriously give some thought to showing up in my slippers and dressing gown. One needs to be comfortable. Alas, I shall have to buy the soundtrack to the Rocky films to see me through the weekend and help me man up.
Sport now and how surprising that West Ham's fixture with Millwall was marred by several disturbances. By disturbances I mean 40 year old fat cockneys running onto the pitch and baring their horrible fat bellies. Very disturbing indeed. Why did they not venture any further than the half-way line? Standing on their tippy toes shouting "caaaaaaaarm on then" to their opposite numbers some 60 yards away behind a wall of riot police wasn't too macho really was it as posturing goes.
I'm no authority on preventing football violence, but I did think the strategy of reducing Millwall's ticket allocation in the hope that there would be less of them to police was slightly naive. They essentially guaranteed violence outside the ground with this tactic.
Much better to give Millwall fans the whole end and contain them within the stadium where no one would really get hurt than have them pelting around the streets in awful Burberry clothing demolishing the local vicinity and denying the locals the use of the kebab shops. I've had a look at various London webcams and the damage is horrendous. The rioting must have spread to the entire East End and South London too judging by what a shit state the place is in.
Faaaaaackin' come on neeeeeeeenDo you find Fiona Bruce attractive? I don't. A lot of fuss is made over her, but I just can't see it and I have a newsreader fetish too. She looks a bit like a Klingon to me with her funny eye brows. It must be something she does in bed that's given her such a sultry reputation. She's probably an arse licker and piss whore. They're very rare. Of course once you find one there's no going back is there?
Left, Bruce an alleged arse licking piss whore and right, a Klingon Much like watching sport in High Definition. They say once you've experienced High Definition you can never back to just normal telly. Once you've found a woman prepared to lick your arse you're never going to satisfied with one who just gives blowies are you? Bruce is probably an arse licker and almost certainly a piss whore. Elsewise her popularity makes no sense. No sense at all.
I've had my flat tyre fixed. It had a lovely knife sized slash in it. I'm pissed off. That's three times this has occurred. My anger has not even been assuaged by Manchester United's third successive loss to meager opposition.
Two newly promoted teams and Wigan and no wins other than a 1-0 and a 5-0 which against those teams are essentially losses. Ferguson for the chop?
I'm going to splurge on some Lego to calm myself down. I'll bid you good day.
Another confusing gallimaufry of Premiership wagering propositions tomorrow and several opportunities to lose a considerable sum of monies. So I'm not playing. No. I won't I won't. I will have a little paper trade though just to give an empty flat afternoon some sparkle.
While last week we saw so many many away wins, I feel the theme for tomorrow will be the bore draw. With the exception of Arsenal's game of course where Portsmouth will be driven to the very brink of desperation by a spellbinding array of red shirted wizardly - an orchestral delight conducted by the Russian maestro Andrey Arshavin - his firm muscular thighs working like pistons carrying him powerfully like a locomotive, his shirt moist with perspiration clinging to the contours of his sculpted torso.,.
.......So anyway yes, I think Birmingham ought to draw with Stoke, Hull also ought to draw with Bolton and so on down the fixture list. Manchester City and Arsenal the only exceptions with respective home wins. If I must place a wager tomorrow it'll be a Derby/Leicester double.
I've gone off Cesc, I now love Andrey
A beautiful man, I love him
I'd still give him one though. The end.
Finally this evening, just in case I don't get up in time tomorrow, I should like to inform you I'm having a horsey bet tomorrow at Stratford. Three bets actually. Two singles on Keltic Lord and Lord Baskerville respectively and a double featuring these same two.
Keltic Lord because it's owned by a chum and it won over course and distance last week very impressively and hopefully the old boy won't be too knackered out to do it again and Lord Baskerville because there was a documentary about John Baskerville last night and he is on my list of greatest ever Britons so this must surely be a sign?
I'd also really appreciate it if the groundsmen at the Oval could produce a pitch so flat as to make Holland look like the Alps so even England could get 500+. A draw will win me a half a bag of sand with which I could then over-indulge with the Lego bids and give this APAT event a bash.
I know it's early but I think Manchester United's two* losses so far this season is evidence that what I have been saying about them for the past three seasons is in fact true; The table HAS lied. I fucking knew it!!
A team comprising Park Ji-Sung, Michael Carrick, John O'Shea, Patrice Evra, Darren Fletcher and many many more equally worthless spud faced chancers cannot possibly be the best team in Manchester much less the country and certainly not Europe. Oh how they mocked me, but who's mocking who now?
It is clear Ferguson's Faustian pact with Beelzebub has been the only thing standing between them and a place in the Coca-Cola Championship and midweek games against Plymouth in front of crowds of 5,000.
If Ferguson had not sold his blackened soul to the devil himself there would have been no titles these past few years, no Champions League, no glory. Now the deal is done and it's time to pay the piper. What is so deliciously poetic about Satan's brand of justice is his taking the form of Michael Owen to deliver Ferguson's fate.
Owen has already stolen David Beckham and Robbie Fowler's youth, England's pride and many a chairman's millions and the inescapable agent of so many downfalls has finally sought the path of the damned for Ferguson too. The Prince of Darkness in his most unassuming form, but the original red devil.
So young, so innocent, so deadly Labels: Football, Nonsense
Sacked? 22/1 into 1/2 this afternoon.
Update: My singing squirrel in Merseyside has told me that Rafa is just "in a mood" according to an insider and hasn't actually left yet. Just in case this is nonsense I've had a few shillings more on Mark Hughes to be first Premier League manager to leave/be sacked as he's now 14/1 out from 6's.
Poker or Lego, that it should come to this.
It's sunny today and earlier I enjoyed a nice glass of lemonade in the pub while reading my book about how sexism is mostly bollocks (if you'll excuse the para-phrased pun) while taking sneaky ironic glances at the bronzed eye candy stretched out on the church green; legs, navel, perspiring heaving bosom (possible asthma attack actually given the pollen count but it looked erotic).
It was only on my return home I was able to concentrate on a matter of great importance which has been troubling me for nearly a day now. Regular readers of my blog will be aware of my quest to find a specific Space Lego model. It has become clear that if I am serious about this purchase it will lighten my wallet to the tune of at least £100.
As an alternative I could put my name in the hat for a seat in the APAT World thingy Main Event at Dusk Till Dawn at the end of the month. It's a close contest. My early equations are just muddying the waters. By my calculations it would take me approximately 52 minutes to put together the Galaxy Explorer, while given my previous efforts in 10,000 chip deep-stack tournaments and given that I have clearly gone at the game, I would enjoy 102 minutes of poker.
The difference of course is that after building this retro-tastic Lego Spaceship I could spend the rest of my life marveling at it's splendor and bask in the warmth of the nostalgic memories it provokes from a more innocent time or just take it to pieces and sell it on, possibly for more than I paid for it. After busting out of the APAT event, 100 miles from home I'd only be left with nothing but a sense of empty frustration and deep seated inadequacy.
Of course, no matter how thinly you slice something, there are always two sides. It is possible that at 35 I'm too old to be playing with Lego and there is always the smallest chance that I could rediscover some form and progress in the tournament, even to the money stages, something I haven't achieved since the very first time I played one of these events two years ago.
I think the draw for a seat is tomorrow. I need to clear my head and decide. I think some me time is the order of the day. Once I've released my own muddy waters I shall make my decision.
We can all get along as long as we cant see each other
"Nothing" is going to change his mind people NOTHING! - Gokan appears to feel he's being genuinely stoic here. Not if she kills children, not if she drowns puppies, not EVEN if she's black - so there!! It's this kind of progressive thinking that has seen Barack Obama voted in as President.
It's a testament to how far the USA has come in just a few short centuries that they're now prepared to put up with niggers in all walks of life if they really really have to, or where they didn't realise they existed. GOD BLESS AMERICA.
Lego update and some other stuff
I haven't had any caffeine for the last three days. No coke, tea, coffee nor noffin. Instead, I have been drinking orange juice, water and pomegranate juice. I also had some horlicks last night which was awful - I made it wrong I think. It had the texture and consistency of a camel sperm and was how I imagine it might taste too.
The point of all this? I wanted to see if not having high concentrations of caffeine pelting through my system all the time would help me sleep better and maybe not give me quite so many freaky dreams when I do finally nod off.
It hasn't worked. I shall just have to try mixing Vodka and night nurse again. I'm going to have some tea now.
Football wise I should like to declare Arsenal as top of the league. I see no reason why this should change from here on out. I was going to bet on Totterington today, but I can't bring myself to profit from their success. Also, there was another absurd minutes applause for Bobby Robson before the game (even though he died about three weeks ago) and Liverpool do so get geed up when they've had occasion to indulge in their passion for mawkish tragedy.
I have now failed twice to land a Galaxy Explorer through Ebay auctions. The first effort ended in utter failure when my highest bid of £58 fell £50 short!! My second failure, just a few minutes ago, was a consequence of a poor broadband connection which cut out as I attempted to steal away the goods with a last second bid. I grow frustrated.
Very much looking forward to football tomorrow. My enthusiasm has been renewed. I am ready. It's been tricky wading through all the nonsense in the newspapers to find something interesting and informative about the new season. The Telegraph for example are running an article today I'd usually expect to find in the Daily Mail about how English players are now a minority in the Premiership.
This is of course not true. Of the 595 players in the Premiership 45% are English. That's 268 players from England. Far more than from any other country. English players are only a minority if you lump all the other players not from this country into one category, which would be daft and just an extension of our rabid xenophobia.
The argument that England's shrinking numbers in the top league will hamper the national team from winning anything is also nonsense and the very oldest of chestnuts. It's actually more likely that football in this country discriminating against it's own players will kill off any chance England have of winning the World Cup rather than ship loads of Jonny Foreigners coming over here and stealing our game.
Football discriminates against the middle classes. That's a fact. How many players can you think of who have an education beyond Comprehensive school? How many players have fathers whose occupations required an education beyond just Comprehensive school? About 5 I think is the answer. Education is frowned upon still. This is actually a fact and has been proven. Also, the Asian community are faced with the same levels of discrimination that black players endured in the 1980's...probably worse actually. If we limit our own pool of talent then we are of course limiting our ability to win nationally.
So let's hear no more about this foreign invasion soiling our national teams' prospects. It has improved our game and I deny anyone who has watched Dennis Bergkamp, or Thierry Henry or Gianfranco Zola, or Christiano Ronaldo to argue otherwise. So there.
The "experts" have been discharging verbal diarrhoea regarding the Premier League in equal quantities. Most pungent I find are the deposits left by anyone who used to play for Liverpool - Hansen and Lawrenson especially - who year after year insist that this is the season Liverpool finally become Champions. Of course, they won't.
Arsenal will definitely slip out of the top four this season apparently. Of course, they won't. I'm biased here of course, but Arsenal are in better shape now than last season. I want it on the record that a second placed finish at least is more likely than them dropping out of the top four.
Manchester United are in deep shit. They have to find about 30 goals from somewhere having let Ronaldo and Tevez go. Owen is worth 10 at the most. Chelsea look the strongest team to me. With the exception of some really shit teams - your Hulls, Pompeys and Burnelys - everyone else could finish 5th or 17th. That's what I think.
I shall probably not have anything like a proper bet on tomorrow's game as I generally prefer to wait until the players' tans have faded and some kind of form has started to develop before I start putting my Lego money on games. I do fancy Fulham to beat Pompey though and I shall have a small interest in them possibly in a double with Stoke.
I like the 6/1 you can get on Mark Hughes to be the first manager sacked. I'm amazed he still has a job to be honest. The man uses all of his 35 IQ points just to dress himself, how someone has trusted him with a cabillion pound football team is a baffling state of affairs.
Just for fun cause I know how to enjoy myself, I shall list my predictions for this weekend's fixture.
Aston Villa v Wigan - Villa win
Blackburn v Manchester City - Blackburn win
Bolton v Sunderland - Draw
Chelsea v Hull - Chelsea win
Everton v Arsenal - Arsenal win obviously
Manchester United v Birmingham - Draw
Portsmouth v Fulham - Fulham win
Stoke v Burnley - Stoke win
Totterington v Liverpool - Draw
Wolves v West Ham - West Ham win
I thought, before I went to bed tonight, I'd place a long-term Yankee wager as something within me told me I should. This bet pays £10,000 from an £11 investment and if it comes in I shall almost certainly invest the money in Lego.
So now in chronological order: College Causeway to win Irish Derby - 5/1; Kevin Shaffel to win the WSOP main event 10/1; New York Yankees to win the World Series - 3/1; Baltimore Ravens to win the Superbowl 22/1.
There's some optimistic selections in this wagering quadraplex, but every oak tree was once an acorn and ...and you know, stuff.
Let me refer you back to a post of mine from last December:AWESOME SPACE LEGO
I've found one. It's on Ebay. I've just bid for it. It will be mine.
It's the only way of seeing out a season without suffering serious emotional trauma. Our footballers are a collection of over-privileged, pampered big girls and prima-donnas, so we must be the audience for their performances instead of supporters. We must detach ourselves and the game from reality just as the players have done. We must embrace its absurdity and cruelty. Welcome its injustices and be cautious of its rewards. This is not sport, this is pure theatre and all the world's a stage. Only then can the game be beautiful again.
Terms and conditions: None of the above applies to Tottenham and Phil Brown who will still be regarded as utter utter cunts who will be hated to the very core of my soul until my dying day.
The end. Labels: Football
They've banned the Barmy Army trumpeter/bugler fella from Headingley tomorrow. It's not necessary, it's not sporting, it's just not cricket apparently!
Our Government and local authorities are so consumed with politically correct mamby-pambying that it has seeped into our culture and we're now incapable of distinguishing between good old fashioned hijinks - the sporting of fancy dress, the rear-goosing of waitresses, the playing of trumpets and the serious incitement that causes genuine offense and physical harm - anything that happens at Tottenham.
Can our sports fan strata not re-organise themselves? Our working class football fans have complained for years now that they're being squeezed out of stadia by the wealthier nancy boy middle classes and now the nancy boy middle class cricket establishment are complaining about being squeezed out of cricket grounds by yobbish working class largered up buglers and flag wavers and lord help us, booers. Can't we all just get along? Obviously not.
Why not un-gentrify football and re-gentleman cricket? Just let the noisy under-classes back into football and the quieter prawn sandwich middle-classes can then re-acquaint themselves with the Gentleman's game? Or could we all not just relax a bit and do both?
P'raps cricket's guardians are right to complain. The under-classes who have infiltrated cricket might only be booing today, but who knows what noises they'll be making tomorrow: Geering? Whistling? Saucy chanting? Who knows where it might end. Someone might even end up calling Ricky Ponting a wanker, then where will we be?
It's a slippery slope and perhaps cricket is now on it and slipping at an unrecoverable rate. An inexorable descent into the murky depths of our nations most base emotions which football took a good three decades ago and - despite all the new stadiums and Sky Sports graphics and shiny tight suits wrapped around boy-band/ex-footballer hybrid pundits - one it can never recover from.
Cricket purists have time to process the death of their game though - they have time to grieve. Like a terminal cancer yet to take hold, it'll be a good few years before cricket grounds have to tolerate the bi-weekly scenes of Stamford Bridge and White Hart Lane - filled with fans who have lost their opposable thumbs through a process of devolution possibly as it isn't required when giving the Nazi salute or opposition players the finger.
If this is the beginning of the end for cricket's traditional support - the bushy tashes, the outrageously coloured blazers, the Adam's apples the size of cricket balls, the crafty snooze beneath the peak of a weathered trilby - I'm sure I speak for football fans everywhere who watched the beautiful game turn ugly, when I say we are sorry for your loss old boys. Still, you had a good innings.
Vladimir Putin
Now then, I've never been a fan of the season long wagers, but something caught my eye this afternoon and I must discuss it with you. It concerns the Top scorer market for the Premiership - specifically the prices for Eduardo da Silva and Andrey Arshavin priced at 27.0 (Betfair) and 28/1 (skybet) respectively.
"This price is crazy no?"I am ignoring Nicolas Anelka as he remains a self-absorbed rat faced nancy boy who is just as likely to start crying as score a goal. I'm also dismissing Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney. Owen is a sprout faced munchkin who is so plagued by injuries he'll be lucky to see out more than 15 games. Wayne Rooney will simply be given too much to do and won't be able to focus on scoring goals.
I'm also discounting Emmanuel Adebayor as his goal scoring chances cannot surely be as abundant in a team of indiviuals at Citeh as they were at Arsenal. He is also a fraud and will soon have to accept how average he is and what a mistake he has made. As a rule of thumb, players leaving Arsenal for pastures new are rarely able to reproduce the form that got them thinking they were now too good for Arsenal. They over-estimate their own worth, and under-estimate the worth of the team they were a part of. It is written.
So anyway, given that Cristano Ronaldo is now no longer a part of the equation, by my way of thinking Eduardo and Arshavin - who couldn't be any more predatroy if they were lions hidden in the long grass of the Serengeti stalking lame Wilderbeast - have only to out score Torres and Didier Drogba. This makes a mockery, a mockery of the 26/1 and 28/1.
Why might Torres fail? Simples - Rafael Benetiz. He's Spanish and old and would have lived through the latter part of Franco's rule. Therefore like most Spaniards of his generation he has an accute sensitively when it comes to being told what to do.This in my opinion is why he has ignored the entire football community's advice when it comes to playing players out of position and rotating his squad unnessesarily. Torres and Gerrard must enter the Liverpool changing room each Saturday with their fingers crossed that there isn't a pair of goalkeeping gloves laid out on top of their kit.
I feel 28/1 that Torres plays at left-back in a Premier League game is a more realistic price than Andrey Arshavin's price to win the golden boot.
This leaves only Didier Drogbam who is of course crazy. Just the slightest difference of opinion between him and his manager will see him spiral into a period of lunacy which could last up to three months.Three months of spending his time in a dark room wearing clogs and writing poetry when he should be scoring goals. He is simply not emotionally stable enough anymore to win this award and with all this in mind I hereby declare the value wagers in this market are Arsenal's diminutive snipers - Eduardo da Silva and Andrey "I am Gooner" Arshavin.
Spasiba.
Labels:
Betting,
Football
Given how absurdly competitive Celtic and Rangers are when it comes to pre-season friendlies against English teams as a consequence of their inferiority complex, I feel there may be monies to made in this afternoon's Emirates Cup decider between the Arsenal and Rangers.
Rangers I suspect will come out huffing and puffing jeered on by their away support and given how lethargic Arsenal are early on in these games, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that Rangers could score and may even make it to the half-time intermission with a lead.
Obviously they'll run out of steam in the second half and Arsenal's class and ruthlessness will ultimately see them through to victory, much the same was as George II defeated the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden - fittingly with his Army dressed in red and white.
I shall therefore be wagering a few English Sovereigns at 30.0 for a Rangers/Arsenal - Half-time/Full-time result.
The end.
* Erm..I appear to have greatly over-estimated Rangers.
2min GOAL - Arsenal - Jack Wilshere
10min GOAL - Arsenal - Eduardo
Found this picture just now. Binions' new poker room. Or it was new to me when I went in April this year. Couldn't figure out why the poker room I was used to seemed so empty, then wandered past this place and everything became clear. Nicest poker room in Vegas in my humble opinion with the best dealers.
I'm almost ready for the football season. Not quite, I'm glad we still have a couple of weeks before the circus begins again, but a pre-season tournament is just the ticket. Some good football without the stress. A pleasant intermission from war films and may even aid my treatment.
I usually won't bet on Arsenal for silly superstitious reasons, but this rule doesn't extend to pre-season games and I fancy them to win quite well today against an Atletico Madrid team who must be a good two weeks behind Arsenal fitness wise. La Liga doesn't start until 30th August and they do get to enjoy more of a summer than Premier League footballers anyway so given that we're the home team too we really ought to win this one.
Having said that, I may just have a few shillings on Jose Antonio Reyes to score the first goal. There's a frustrating history of ex-Arsenal players coming back to Highbury/Emirates and scoring - I think even Kevin Campbell scored against us when he returned with Forest or maybe it was Everton.
I was one of the few Arsenal fans who appreciated Jose's efforts at Arsenal. He struggled off the pitch, subjected to some predjudicial abuse only football fans/players can get away with in public, was kicked from pillar to post on it and I think it rained every day he was a Gooner, so not surprising he wanted to leave really. I think he did about as well as a Spanish Gitano Gypsy could have been expected to do, all things considered.
Arsenal win 1.81
10/1 Reyes 1st goal scorer - Reyes score anytime 5.6
It's been raining a lot recently. I don't like the rain. It brings me down man. I experience a sort of climatic ennui during extended periods of rain that renders me opinionless. What's the point of having a blog if you have nothing to say, that's what I always say.
I had some stuff I had occasion to opine about regarding Gordon Brown earlier in the week and David Miliband. People of this ilk usually angry up my blood something fierce and I must necessarily suppress my rage through uncompromising blogging and the eating of raw meats. Not this week though. Two paragraphs in, I decided that I could not be arsed and could only find energy enough to have a lie down instead.
I can't afford such lethargy this weekend however. Not with the Pigeon's game only 48 hours away. With about 100 Pigeon's games under my belt I have yet to unlock its secrets, but I have identified a few areas which need addressing.
I have come to accept after much soul searching, that is to say the searching of my soul not yet destroyed by unpredictable re-raises and re-buy period miscalculations, that aside from a lack of patience and focus, entering into the game with an impending sense of misfortune and inevitable doom is the primary source of my vulnerability. Psychological impotence. An Achilles heel if you will, only higher up.
In order to work my pessimism and sense of hopeless futility out of my system I shall spend Saturday and Sunday watching a selection of war films. I will begin with some American films presenting the same symptoms as my Pigeons' failures in order to meet and accept my own deficiencies and resolve my inner conflicts; Platoon, Full Metal Jacket and the catastrophic miscalculations and complacency of Black Hawk Down.
I will then progress to some more successful British campaigns - as we are of course world champions of war - specifically where we prevailed despite the overwhelming odds and adversity; Zulu, Lawrence of Arabia and finishing with possibly the finest victory of them all - The Battle of Britain - won with a little luck, a little cunning and some good old fashioned British spunk.
Can it purge my demons? Will my catharsis allow me to dream or will I still cry myself to sleep on Sunday night? Will I tear through the field like Peter O'Toole's "Aurens" thrashing his way through the Turkish army with the manic cackle of blood lust fever or will it be a bridge too far?
Take that Fritzy