 - Last login: 2 months agoJaCk044
- Jack is a 45 year old guy from England, UK.
- Likes 1,212 pages, 1,139 videos, 1 photo • 89 fans • Received 53 reviews
- Member since Apr 21, 2007
A wandering wordsmith, professional tea drinker and consumer of web-trivia ... "Hang the sense of it and keep yourself occupied".
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May 15, 12:11am
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Daily Zen: dailyzen.com [dailyzen.com]
Céad mílle fáilte:)
Desktop designs: psptuts.bravehost.com/Tuts/main-index.htm [psptuts.bravehost.com/Tuts/main-index.htm]
Poetry: dragonsdream.bravehost.com/Gallery/poem/poem-index.htm [dragonsdream.bravehost.com/Gallery/poem/poem-index.htm]
Animation: dragonsdream.bravehost.com/Gallery/main-gallery.htm [dragonsdream.bravehost.com/Gallery/main-gallery.htm]
The Art of Jim Fitzpatrick: jimfitzpatrick.ie [jimfitzpatrick.ie] />
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May 15, 12:11am
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The weird and wonderful world of Jacek Yerka
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May 13, 11:18pm
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With Cats, some say, one rule is true:
Don't speak till you are spoken to.
Myself, I do not hold with that -
I say, you should ad-dress a Cat.
But always keep in mind that he
Resents familiarity.
I bow, and taking off my hat,
Ad-dress him in this form: O CAT!
But if he is the Cat next door,
Whom I have often met before
(He comes to see me in my flat)
I greet him with an OOPSA CAT!
I've heard them call him James Buz-James -
But we've not got so far as names.
Before a Cat will condescend
To treat you as a trusted friend,
Some little token of esteem
Is needed, like a dish of cream;
And you might now and then supply
Some caviare, or Strassburg Pie,
Some potted grouse, or salmon paste -
He's sure to have his personal taste.
(I know a Cat, who makes a habit
Of eating nothing else but rabbit,
And when he's finished, licks his paws
So's not to waste the onion sauce.)
A Cat's entitled to expect
These evidences of respect.
And so in time you reach your aim,
And finally call him by his NAME.
So this is this, and that is that:
And there's how you AD-DRESS A CAT.
(from; 'Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats' - T. S. Eliot)
coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Classes/Summer97/SemGS/WebLex/OldPossum/oldposs... [coral.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/Classes/Summer97/SemGS/WebLex/OldPossum/oldposs...]
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StumbleUpon - poddyss web site reviews and blog
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May 13, 1:46am
30 reviews
stumblers, rock-music, satire
http://poddys.stumbleupon.com/
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As an Englishman living in Florida he has managed to retain the sense of humour necessary to maintain a semblance of sanity in that crazy country...and what he doesn't know about music isn't really worth knowing:)
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May 12, 12:45am
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Ryan Giggs: 758 games...
manutd.com/default.sps [manutd.com/default.sps]
...and counting:)
youtube.com/watch [youtube.com/watch]
Even though United won the Premier League title, football365.com/Gallery_Detail/0 [football365.com/Gallery_Detail/0] ,17732,13282_3552340,00.html again, yesterday the most memorable moment came when Ryan Giggs stepped onto the freshly laid turf at the JJB stadium to equal Sir Bobby Charlton's playing record. Giggs has often been compared to George Best but i think a closer comparison can be made to a much earlier 'wing-wizard': Billy Meredith.
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MANCmeredith.htm [spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/MANCmeredith.htm]
Giggs has been a consumate professional throughout a career which brought every honour a player could possibly win and, to show the footballing God's have a sense of occasion, it was fitting that Giggs should not only score the goal which clinched the title but also lift the trophy at the end of an enthralling season. He could end his career in the biggest club game in Europe, the champions League final in Moscow, and make his final appearance to set a new record but he wouldn't mind warming the bench as he's done more often than not this season as long as he gets to lift one more trophy...the God's have one more special occasion in store for a true legend.
Ten Premier League winners' medals.
Four FA Cup winner's medals
Two League Cup winner's medals
...and (so far:) one Champions League winner's medal.
but it takes someone special to conjure a moment like this: youtube.com/watch [youtube.com/watch]
Immortal.
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May 11, 3:51am
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Today also commemorates the birthday of Sir Thomas Lipton mitchelllibrary.org/lipton/ [mitchelllibrary.org/lipton/] ) who developed the first commercially viable teabags. An anonymous book of English Victorian manners, 'Don't: A manual of Mistakes and Improprieties' (1880), offers advice for tea service. "Don't press food upon a guest (though whether this means to offer plate after plate of food or to simply squash cream cake into the unfortunate's face, remains unclear). This was once thought necessary, and it was also considered polite for a guest to continue accepting, or to signify by a particular sign that he had enough...The Prince of Broglie, who travelled in our country (Scotland) in 1782, relates...that he was invited to dine with the lady of Robert Morris, and that he was repeatedly asked to have his cup refilled, that he consented. When he had swallowed the twelfth cup of tea, his neighbour whispered in his ear and told him when he had had enough of the water diet he should place his spoon across his cup, else the hostess would go on urging him to drink till the crack of dawn."
This, to many people, is still a defining charecteristic of being English, and a quirky example of this tradition may be found here video.stumbleupon.com [video.stumbleupon.com]
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May 11, 3:45am
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Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote in his 1858 book 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table'; "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."
And the manager of Newcastle United, Kevin Keegan, sparked a ragged debate at the end of this season by saying it's become nigh on impossible to break the growing gap between the 'big four' (Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool - just - and Manchester United) and the other teams which make up the richest football league in the world: the English Premier League. This debate has ebbed and flowed over recent years, washing ashore various statistics and arguments like debris from an obscure shipwreck. Many people simply take these arguments at face value and blame the 'get-rich-quick' culture spawned by Maggie Thatcher in the 80s but this is to ignore a long and inglorious 'tradition' of bungs, bribes and sheer greed throughout the history of "the beautiful game".
In fact, the first 'financial irregularity' led to the formation of the professional league --- in 1884!
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fcorruption.htm [spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fcorruption.htm]
A police investigation into football corruption is making sudden swoops upon clubs, like Birmingham City and Portsmouth in recent weeks, like cartoon-cop-characters out of a 70s B-movie (a cross between officer Dibble and Sweeny Todd - the John Thaw version, not the all-singing Johnny Depp), tipping over filing cabinets and confiscating computers to find the elusive gold-dust of hard evidence. This is a bit like looking under the cheating-wife's bed when the husband comes home unexpectedly...it's the most natural place to look first - and is always completely the wrong place to start.
George Graham, when in charge of Arsenal in the early 90s, was caught red-handed offering 'bungs' to Norwegian agents (I know, now it sounds a bit like a scene from a cheesy 50s b/w war movie) and sacked from the club. Of course, sacking him from one club didn't prevent him getting a job with another...or lucrative work in the media.
An analogy between this state of affairs in our Football League and the system of government is worth bearing comparison.
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May 11, 3:44am
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Both are elitist. Each one seeks to maintain the status quo, or indeed, widen the gap and increase the hegemony enjoyed by the priviliged few at the top of the food chain, and, like sharks, neither feels any shame at such rampant greed and not a trace of remorse when caught.
When a big company or business enterprise fails the CEO is always compensated handsomely and the England manager, sacked for not qualifying for this summer's European Championships, was compensated with two million pounds after his contract was paid off - in full - and now the smarmy c*** turns up on the BBC to pundit his way to another fat pay day!
This is the biggest cause of dissatisfaction among fans (and voters), that men who are seen to fail are rewarded nonetheless, when lesser mortals are simply sacked and have little recompense to financial succour. And, the higher up yougo, the more blatant the corruption. The FIFA President, Sepp Blatter, presides over a system so steeped in coruption and hypocisy that it can no longer remember any other state of affairs. Votes are bought, traded and horse-dealt between nations who compete to host the World Cup or the Euro's as shamelessly as any carpet-bagger would in 19th century America. I'd hesitate to imply American politics is at the root of football corruption but thie financial backing at Manchester United, Liverpool and Asrton Villa in recent years has caused a great deal of anger at grass-roots level among fans who see ticket prices go up and up...and up until a father taking his footie-mad son to a match has to fork out the best part of £100...and that doesn't include the price of a team shirt, considered an essential part of any 'true' supporters wardrobe.
I remember (in my best 'four-Yorkshireman' youtube.com/watch [youtube.com/watch] accent) a time, not all that long ago either! when the playing field appeared much more level. Oh, sure, Liverpool won the bloody league every other year (until 1990) but other teams felt they were in with a chance, a shot, at winning the title. When Nottingham Forest won promotion and then the League title in 1977 & 1978, respectively, they became the last team to do so...and it'd take a brave man to bet on them, or anyone else for that matter, doing anything remotely like it again. (Ipswich bucked the trend a few seasons ago by gaining promotion and qualifying for the UEFA cup but it's not quite the same...they went down the following year, while Forest went on to win back-to-back European cups.)
The fact is, the 'big-four' don't want anyone to break up their cosy club.
Why would they?
The top four slots offer a free ticket to ride the gravy train of European football in the Champions League - the perfect metaphor for everything wrong about the European Union. An entirely elitist competition which protects the elite clubs and condemns the rest of Europe to play catch-up. Of course, Michel Platini has tried to accomodate Eastern European clubs but until thier economies can afford to support the new system of economic privilige, they'll have to watch the final like everone else...on television, the cash-cow of the New World Order.
Without financial support from SKY the whole system would collapse - and many would say that's not a bad thing.
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May 11, 3:44am
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They are wrong but it hasn't stopped disaffected fans have formed their own co-operative clubs: FC United fcunitedofmanchester.co.uk [fcunitedofmanchester.co.uk] - formed after the Glazer's took control of Manchester United - are doing well in the amateur leagues and Liverpool fans, who mocked United supporters mercilessly when the takeover brought United off the stock-exchange and burdened them with millions of pounds in debt (underwritten by the Glazer family) are now doing the same after they in turn were taken over by an American business consortium. Liverpool fans are unhappy that the club has 'sold its soul' to big business without finding any irony in the fact that they've already "sold their souls" long before Tom Hicks and Gillette rode into town, chewing gum and making bold promises. Okay, maybe not chewing gum, but when Tom Hicks spoke of the Liverpool franchise, it spoke volumes about his lack of understanding towards the Liverpudlian community who support their team through thick-and-thin. They don't care how many shirts are sold in China. All they want to see is a team competing for the league title.
But even a club the size of Liverpool is slipping behind the corporate giant that is Manchester United simply because they cannot generate anything like the merchandise sales in the far-east, never mind the amount of match-day tickets. Liverpool's ground holds less than 50,000 while Old Trafford can seat over 75,000 in comfort. "Do the math," as they say.
Peter Kenyon, Marketing Director at Chelsea was widely derided for his bombastic claim that the Blues would be 'bigger than Manchester United' within five years. As a global brand, it might take him 50 years to come close but people like him simply don't understand the deep-rooted traditions within a football club. It's essentially about the local community, not the worldwide brand, which makes a club what it is. You cannot wave a cheque-book at these communities because they do not operate on the level that Peter Kenyon and other reptiles appear to. Money is not the driving force. Honour, passion, love and, above all, loyalty, is their motivation. It isn't something easily explained, least of all understood, by the new class of football supporter. A middle-class white male, typically, with plenty of disposable income and an instinct to follow the team in front, 'the prawn-sandwich-brigade', as Roy Keane famously described them threemonkeysonline.com/als/-roy-keane.html [threemonkeysonline.com/als/-roy-keane.html] .
The benefit of these fans is dubious: of course, they bring more hard cash into the game but force prices up out of the reach of a great many fans. Your average market trader who pops down the 'Bridge to watch Chelsea is less likely to cause trouble than your average beer-swilling, song-chanting yobbo (a debatable point, but generally, for the sake of argument, I'll go along with it) but every club has a hardcore of supporters who organise trouble against rival groups. It's a tribal thing:) Fuck-all to do with money. They'll still find a way to cause trouble whether it's at the match or in a bar later on (as seen by the Liverpool fan in Bulgaria). An early match report from the days of 'flat-caps-and-braces' gives a hint to fans motivation...football, it stated, gave the masses a way to let off steam after a heavy working week (6 till 6 - half-day Sat'day ... is why 3pm kick-off became a 'tradition'). In a sense, it still applies, though those days are long gone - along with the flat caps:) - but many people still go to vent personal frustrations on a hapless referee or a hated opposition player. Reading manager, Steve Coppell made the astute observation that trouble on the terraces at matches wasn't exclusively a football problem, neither is it solely a government problem --- it is a social problem. It applies to us all.
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May 11, 3:44am
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I find it bitterly ironic that the government has appointed a task force to find and expose corruption in football: the phrase, "check the mote in your own eye" springs irresistibly to mind, and unless this unreasoning lust for money and power is checked it will not only bring the game into (further) disrepute but will bring our society to a crisis point where the rich not only get richer but increasingly flaunt their wealth in the face of the vast majority of people around the world, heedlessly uncaring of their reactions because they hold all the wealth and power within a select group - a 'big-four' of corporations - who are protected by a security force with wholesale powers to enforce the rule of law to the point of mindless obedience.
Such obedience is expressed in the bland soundbites and hollow banter between pundits on SKY-sports and the BBC, and is mirrored in the in-house reporters at FOX-news and many other American owned media outlets who simply ignore the real story and offer `info-tainment' in place of real news. I'm not too sure who is worse: The Chinese who blanket-ban any news which shows their government in a bad light or the American-way of editing such news to leave it in the shadows, away from the bright light of public scrutiny where the damning indictment of such a society would render many politicians helpless.
The flip-side of such unthinking obedience is a blinkered loyalty to (the point of fanaticism) one's own club, which is why i'll be listening to the game at Wigan this afternoon on 5Live! and watching the highlights tonight on the BBC rather than courtesy of SKY-sports. The Beeb may be bland as unsweetened oats but at least i have the small satisfaction of keeping a few quid out of the clutching grasp of Rupert (spit-spit) Murdoch.
Mind you; i do miss 'Soccer-Saturday' ... here's why:) video.stumbleupon.com [video.stumbleupon.com] (#1200)
Truth may be as tough as Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. thinks but it's seriously bent out of shape after being kicked from pillar-to-post for over a century and needs fresh inspiration in order for it to thrive in the society we're helping to create.
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