Footballing Philosophy Corner

This week, Spurs legend Danny Blanchflower, on seeing a 35-yard punt let in by a woeful keeper in the formative years of US televised sah-kerrr, and being told by TV chiefs to 'be positive' about it, i.e., not slate the ballbag. The bigwigs told him "We think there are two truths, a positive truth and a negative truth." They struck a nerve.


"Why had such inventive souls stopped at only two, I wondered? Why not four truths? Or 10? The philosophical winds of it swept through my mind. If they had two truths they must have two gods … But if there was no bad, how could there be good? What would their reactions have been if I had said of the goalkeeper at St Louis: Well, folks ... that sure was good negative play on his part, making it easy for them to score that great goal."


More great criac in the footballing sense here, here and here.

For a Few Dollars More...

Return to Belfast is it, aye? Not fucking likely.

Predictably enough, you find me in a fairly strident frame of mind. Here I sit, with the flat in a reasonable state of repair at last, at half nine in the morning, with fuck all to do, and a little fire in my belly (along with some Nesquik cereal).

Since my last little missive I've been turned down for a gig in Teletech, the job equivalent of a Roma accordion player throwing your twenty pee back in your face. Cue an exponential increase in the applications being sent out - everything from window cleaner to shop manager, from sofa salesman to financial advisor- if there was a hole in a business in Liverpool, Belfast, or anywhere else, I stuck my oar in it. I thought I'd sniffed out a few promising leads, and was kind of half-way preparing to shift myself back off to Belfast.

But no. Every alley turned out to be a blind one. Never has one man been told politely to fuck off so many times. And with the landlord having the cheek to threaten legal action, despite the walls being the only consistently working thing in the flat, I was forced to pawn my guitar and bass. In all my years of dodging creditors, this was a new low. But I suppose there's no point having an electric instrument if it's getting wrecked in the rain as you sleep in the park.

I may well have skipped town at this point, and probably would have done if I hadn't signed a nasty little contract on the flat, which would have nicely shafted my new housemates. And just as I was about to steal a dirigible and start paddling, I got a call back off one of the sheaf of call centre applications I'd fired out over the last month. They told me to land down with some paperwork, and I'd have an interview that week. So pausing to thank whatever idiot spirit it is that smiles on me at these times, off I strut to a dole office in town.

Imagine my pleasantly surprised face as Blue Bill (one of my housemates - rampant Protestant but nice bloke, as long as you're not female and within fifty yards) sashays up for the same interview. Now imagine my look of can't-believe-my-lucktitude as the interview goes thusly:

Bint Interviewer: You done this kind of thing before?
Me: What call centre work? Yeah, I worked in-
B: Good. Have you got a valid passport and some National Insurance details?
M: Yeah, I-
(B stands up, and snatches my vaguely waved passport)
B: Good stuff, I'll just go and get these photocopied...
(B blusters out the door. I sit and twiddle my thumbs for five minutes, not moving much in case this is the Hidden Camera portion of the interview.

I started quite enjoying myself at this point, as I sat visualising myself rolling around in a big bath full of money, with my bass back, and a guitar I actually liked, with a bottle of Morgan's Spiced in one hand, and a sandwich larger than my head in the other. Full-time employment goes to my head rather quickly.

In she swings again, this time with a scowl halfway between confusion and indignation, like I'd just sneezed splatteringly over her dog)
B: This letter won't do at all, oh no. Haven't you got anything else?
M: But my housemate just landed up with exactly the same paperwork, and you said he was sweet-

Cue garbled conversation with many interruptions and talking-overances, which resulted in my having to naff off up to a different dole office to get a slightly different shade of letter from them. This proved difficult. Another cock-up had been made with my paperwork, and I wouldn't be able to get the appropriate letter until I'd submitted a form (which should have been done a month and a half earlier when I changed my address with the dole folks), which was likely to take a good week to process. Which meant the job was out the window.

But did I despair? Did I up and sell the rest of my furniture, and lope off to Belfast to hide? Not likely. And why? Because whenever you get a stroke of luck of this kind, you inevitably get a barrage of them, if you know where to look. Mine came along rather quickly.

As I sat in a not-particularly-greasy spoon eating a halal fry (how could I tell it was halal? No bacon, and beef sausages. Wasn't the best) I got a call from a number I didn't recognise. I answered tentatively. Over came a voice that suggested a forty-something divorcée with a short skirt and a smoking habit that ran into its second box by tea time. Could I make my way to Kirkby by the end of the day, she asked? No, I said. I hadn't a clue where Kirkby was, and was unsure about finding out. Could I be there by eleven tomorrow morning, she asked? I said I'd try. She husked an address to me, bade me wear a suit and bring a passport, and hung up.

I sat and sipped my mediocre tea, unsure what to make of this. Had I slipped into a Bogart film? What the hell kind of jobs had I been applying for? Only one way to find out.

The reality was a little less cinematic. The place was a call centre on the other side of Liverpool, with the feel of an airport- tight corridors, air conditioning, not enough natural light and a scrubbed formica cafeteria. It turned out I was right about the voice on the phone- she had strawy bottle-blonde hair, she'd seen far too much sun over the years, but she kept in shape. She took me to an office at the back and asked the standard call centre interview questions. I jumped through the hoops. I didn't even remember applying for this job, but I wasn't going to argue. Then she said something they always say on TV, but never in real life: "You start on Monday." I very nearly kissed her, but didn't like the thought of the sexual harassment suit.

That was a month ago. During that month I've sat and slogged through some of the most stultifyingly boring call centre training I've ever been a party to. The job doesn't seem that bad, but my classmates are idiots. Not just stupid people, the loud kind that shout over you and then blame you because they're not picking anything up. Must be hell teaching these classes, and that hell is reserved for a quiet mousy grandmother from the Midlands somewhere, who avoids passive-aggressiveness by being incredibly nice (actually unbelievably- no idea how she does it).

So what am I doing lazing about the house, with a very nice bowl of cereal, on a Monday morning, when by the terms of another nasty little contract I should be sitting wringing my hands taking my first couple of calls? Well for that you can blame banks. Generally a good crowd to blame if you're stuck, but this time may well be justified. For some reason Santander are refusing to give me the last twenty or so quid out of my account. This means I can't afford a bus, which means I can't get to work. Which is nice. And may well lead to me sitting about the house like this more often on a Monday morning. Either way, expect more of these scribblings over the next while. I'll give myself carpal tunnel otherwise.

In the words of James Brown, "Uuunnnn"

-J

Another Day, Another Dollar...

...and another fucking library. As a fat scouse mother mewls to a spluttering milk-covered baby, and some teenagers outside bray away to each other in that cadence reserved solely for young Liverpudlian reprobrates and mentally ill Norwegians,  it becomes irritatingly clear to be once again that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

You find me in a n uncharacteristically foul mood. We moved into a new house on quite a nice main road over here; the place was looking quite nice, if a bit unfinished, but Plastic Gav (the new landlord- a six-foot-plus rugby-shaped Southsider with a penchant for see-through shirts) assured us that despite the disarray of the electrics and appliances that the joint would be finished within a week.

One week on, there's no washing machine, cooker, internet or light bulbs in the hall, and the lad's only come round to fix the hot water today. So off I trot, in my usual fashion, to the library, to get some of the tension out of myself.

And to add to all this tension, every bank I've ever talked to seems to be asking me for money. And there aren't any jobs. So I'm sober. And it's not very nice.

Upshot? Well, I may be coming back to Belfast, at least for a few weeks. I hear Teletech are still hiring. Think it's time to report back to the Sky Broadband barracks... Lance IT Ballbag Lackey Hutcheon reportig for duty, carrying the last shred of my soul. It's overrated anyway.

Cigarettes

Another trend I've noticed about the Dodgy Hipsters of Liverpool, of which there are an irksome number now I know where they skulk about: why do so many of them smoke rollies? Hobo chic? Retro thingy charm? A display of dextrous attention to detail, being handy, dainty and at the same time laissez-faire, cavalier and all those other words the types probably quite like throwing into their own blogs.

It's not as if they're nice. Maybe it's an effort to save money, better spent on vintage just-above-the-waist leather jackets and pointy tan Chelsea boots. And razors that don't work properly. Dicks.

I realise the blatant cheek of slagging a gaggle of people I'd be a hair's breadth of joining if I had the money. Not intentionally mind, but I like caffeine, literature and music that isn't shit. So, apparently, do they. I also smoke rollies occasionally, but not by choice. This leads me to ponder what the difference is between the Hip and the rest of us. I know for a fact some of the other lot, the squares, the Dicks if you will (I say 'dick' because that's what we say we look like when we do something particularly maladroit or spastickish: "I was dancing like a dick last night"; "I split me pint over him- must've looked like a dick"; "Dunno what I said to her, but she thought I was a dick") listen similar same tunes, drink in the same bars, read the same dodgy novels... and yet they don't get my hackles up in anything like the same way. Bollocks to it, this is a thought for another time. To quote Bernard Black, I can feel bits of my brain falling away like a wet cake. I've been off my tiny porcelain balls on cheap coffee, running round the commercial district of Liverpool (it turns out there is such a thing) trying to hoodwink recruitment companies into setting me loose on some unsuspecting prick's call centre. I'll be back when I've had some sleep. Then some beer. Then some more sleep.

Justin Bieber's Male?

I just found out Justin Bieber, instead of being the lesbian dyke-child I thought it was, is actually a male boy-child. There was me thinking "Good for her- rare to see an out-and-proud lesbian woman doing well in pop, especially one as full-blown and butch as that. Bit of an unusual name for a girl, but she is American. Nuff said." Oh how wrong I was.

My main reason for this erroneous guess at the manboything's gender orientation was its singing voice: too high to be a bloke, too low for a typical pop songstrel. And the fact that it got a boo at Radio 1's Big Weekend there (what? The radio in the kitchen comes on by itself and I can't turn it off. I was making an omelette) was proof that the Bieber wasn't some kind of androgynous girl-looking child sex symbol, as I know recognise he/she/it/they is/are.

Admittedly I should've been wary of a jump to this conclusion. When I was a kid I thought Tracy was an odd name for a man. Then I found out Tracy Chapman was a lady, with an exceedingly deep voice (even after having seen videos on the old Top 30 Hits). Several friends have made similar mistaken assumptions about Nina Simone. Still...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaahahahahaha

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/northern_ireland/8666196.stm

Off to get honking drunk and celebrate. May have some more to say tomorrow when I stop laughing.

There's Only One Team in Europe

I was singing this to my United supporting friends last month. Little did I know it'd be true. I did know it'd take a team of fucking Argonauts to knock Fulham out, but I didn't think Liverpool would shaft themselves again (no idea why). But what now? A sea change in football? Dunno if there'll be a full-on kicking out of the old guard, but I may well stick a cheeky tenner on Paraguay for the World Cup.

Keep safe,
-j

Why Milk Cures Heartburn

It's only a theory, which still needs perfecting, but hear me out. Heartburn is called heartburn because it's fire, but it's like that greek fire stuff- it sits on the top of your stomach acid (a liquid). When you drink too much the level of the acid gets too high, and, straying beyond the asbestos-like lining of your stomach into your pansy-by-comparison throat, the lapping tongues of flame cause havoc. Or at least distinct annoyance.

Milk helps because it curdles when it gets to your stomach, especially in the presence of alcohol. And what does fermented milk make? Cheese. And what, although maybe not one of its better-known properties, does cheese do in the presence of fire? Very little. It's pretty much flame retardant. Also, quite a lot of types of cheese float, the kind of cottage cheese-ish brand you get with this sort of experiment among them. The layer of molten cheese goo rises to the top and, like a wet teacloth on a chip pan, quenches the irksome blaze.

Some people have higher natural levels of burn than others, hence some people never seeming to be afflicted, while others are persecuted, and also the phrase "fire in the belly". Need time you see someone get really passionate about something, ask them if they often get heartburn*. If ten in a row say yes, send me a decent coffee mug. I just broke my last one.

Obviously the theory needs work. Why are Rennies effective? Something to do with CO2 I imagine, killing oxygen flow. What about food? Probably working as a heat sink. But still, it's something to think about if you're waiting for a bus.

Now excuse me while I go and get sunburn on the underside of my arm, to match the now peeling top side. It was leant out behind me for wobbly support last weekend and got a fucking roasting. There's a hilarious tidemark where my watch was. Oh the pain, the pain of it all...

*My own fire level is pitifully low. Means I don't get heartburn, but it also means I've done nothing for the last month. Off to fix that.

Left hand down, give it the beans
-j

Tweet Tweet

Anybody on Twitter - which I'm reliably(ish) informed is the rest of the world - feel free to give this a going over. If any further evidence was needed that the twenty-first century has finally happened to me, here's another dollop. Now I'm off to try and finish a book, and fail because of my pitiful attention span and constantly vibrating tricorder.

Keep it up, you're doing rightly
-J

PS: Speaking of wrecked attention spans, this little piece of brilliant is also worth a look. They kick out a new one every day, and put them here.

"Who was General Malaise?"

Keeping this thing up and running's a pain in the arse while I've got actual things to do. Time was I could roll out of bed at four in the afternoon, stagger into a pair of marginally decent strides, and molest some library hardware for a while until my fingers woke up. No longer though.

For example, my comments about hair have proven prophetic- up until this morning I was forced to use shampoo of all things, to stop Saudis trying to put up a derrick on my forehead. To avoid this ridiculous, unnecessary and frivolous expense, I have got a man to bald me again. Still, strikes me as an awful waste of time and a fiver, even though I seem to have a good rhythm down: get sheared twice annually, and if any of it annoys in between times, hack it off with whatever razor comes to hand. This tactic backfired recently however, when a girl asked if I had been fighting a cat on seeing scratches on my neck. Daft business all told.

Then there's finances. There's only one thing worse than having no money, and that's having a small amount of money. When you're picking up gutter change and cutting the backs of alley sofas before the Romanians get to them, you at least know that the seventy-six pee in your hand represents the entirety of what you can spend on food. And if you want to drink or smoke, then you'd better get your charmingest smile and your cheesing trousers on. And hope you've some soap left.

It's hellish when you've a limited supply of funds, say enough to keep you in a bar for about a week straight, and you know that you will have no more for a month-odds until the next unfeasibly, incomprehensibly large student loan installment, because to get a job would be to necessitate the use of public transport, which you can't afford if you want to eat as well. And it's no fun whatsoever doing call centre work with nothing in your belly but Tesco Caffeinated Sawdust Coffee Substitute and smoke from someone else's roll-up. And that's all I'm qualified for until I get this spackering degree.

But Paddy's Day approaches, and the idea being floated is a game of Edward Ciderhands to start the day off. For anyone unfamiliar with the rules, (*clears throat, and puts on best Blue Peter presenter voice*) you will need:

-Two bottles of cider, at least two litres apiece, preferably three;
-Some sticky-back plastic (obviously), gaffer tape, or failing that a hell of a lot of sellotape;
-A good party, and some forbearing housemates.

Fairly self-explanatory- tape a bottle of cider to each hand, and on pain of a very nasty (and extremely plastered) forfeit, no freeing either hand until both bottles are empty. That means no smoking without an assist, no dancing unless it's the Running Man, and no toilet breaks whatsoever. Unless you have an incredibly helpful and understanding girlfriend. This is one of the most destructive drinking games I have yet come across, rivaled only by the Winning Streak game. But that's another story for another afternoon.

Well in any case, after whatever silliness the universe has in store for my first Paddy's away from the Old Country, I will almost certainly have no more money at all. Back to a more familiar set of gripes. Now I'm off to draw up a budget or something. Be good, keep it holy, and whatever you do, don't pull a Dara O'Briain.

-J

Well that wasn't so bad, was it?

Despite a late change of venue, mUmU was pretty good. The fourth pill was a definite mistake, and among other things turned me into a puddle for the following day and a half, but apart from that it worked very well. Need a good dose of rock for a while now though. Hence me spending an assload of time on Richter Collective and Smalltown America. Now, off for a jangle...

I Thought It Was a Kind of Hawaiian Dress...

...but apparently mUmU is a place where scousers go to listen to obscure techno till five in the morning. In fairness it may not be obscure for all I know- Mathias Kaden may be a platnum-selling Fabergé-egg-snorting chart behemoth. Still, I'm assured the tunes'll be good and the craic'll be as near ninety as possible. I'll keep ye's informed.

Now to go about the nightmareish task of finding a printer at seven o'clock on a Saturday in Liverpool. Light a wee candle for me...

Spring Cleaning

Ye gods, it's been a while. I've been floating about this winter in a haze of white powders, inferior beverages, pish music for the most part, and disappointment from a football team I wish I hadn't started watching again. Wouldn't change a thing though- the talent in this town is uncanny, and the competition being what it is (Englishmen who can't drink, can't dance and say things like "brap") I've been doing fairly well.

So what about writing? How have I been employing my hands besides hamfisting together rollies and doing the fingerbang (don't look at me like that, it's a dance)? Well there've been some short stories and a stack of flash fiction, which can be found here. Then Fantasy Bob talked me into playing space-based spreadsheet-'em-up EVE Online for a while and blogging about my experiences, the results of which can be found here - hint: my entries are the incoherent ones that slag everything off. Other than that, well, this is the first time I've had my own personal internet connection and computter, plus a lock on my door. What do you think I've been doing? That's right- listening to stolen Tony Robbins CDs and checking my Bakebook every thirty seconds. Fun fun reflexive fun.

But now there's a riffling buzz in the back of my head, as though a hive of bees is waking up. Springtime's upon us again, and with it a certain amount of energy seeps back into my sinews. And although I enjoy winter, its quotient of darkness being more conducive to acting the drunken maggot (what can I say? I get self-conscious being rubbered too often in the daytime), I've got a good feeling about this spring. Maybe it's the wide-eyed glee with which people here approach their partying, maybe it's the creaking and crackling of a long-dormant wing of my brain trying to convince me a girlfriend might be a good move, or maybe it's the five-day trip back to Belfast I've been eyeing up around Paddy's Day - if it comes off, it'll be monumentally messy - but I've got a bit of fire in the belly and an itch in the bones. I'll be back.