Every Day is Election Day

… but I didn’t so I can only promise myself I won’t deny myself next year.

Looking forward to what Unarocks has to say about the Jay-Z debacle; personally I thought it was banging, was glued to the TV all weekend. Mark Ronson’s set seemed decent too, but what do I know, because…
YES I went to Boyzone, YES I had fun, YES you can fuck off. I’m with McLynn on this one.

Mother and Orla came to visit and elder sister even stayed over on Saturday, bringing cold hard cash and M&S cookies. On the win list for sure.

Gave a voucher a battering on Benefit buying products such as this, this and that. God bless vouchers for ensuring you have nice skin on an oh-so-rainy day.

Have a woeful pain in my left arm, a sort of dull, throbbing pang of aghness, and the accountants are laughing at me, nerdy so-and-sos. Last time I said fuckers my Nan told me to say ‘so-and-sos’, so there you go Peggy. She’s probably online… she’s not a regular Nan, she’s a cool Nan. Very mean-girls-velour-tracksuit. I’m lying.

Study is crappy-pile-of-highlighed-and-starred-for-asthetics-load-of bull. So I’m dealing with it by kicking its ass.

Reading lots about the Women’s Liberation movement in the 70s, it all started with a book Reilly bought me called Monday’s at Gaj’s. Oh, the male oppressors.

Spain won. There was a Torres v. Ballack situation in Treesdale, but we couldn’t argue with the result.

I’m a bit meh at the minute, if you haven’t guessed. Darmo is coming up on Thursday, and I can tell you, I need her right now. We’re in similar situations, between projects, and both more than a little disillusioned with a plethora of stuff… but if there is one person I can rely on to supply the belly laughs, it’s my Darmo.

I lost my title at midnight. UCD seems far away. Me no likey. This may explain my aggression.

So this is the real world eh? Fucking accountants.

Want out.

What’s next?

PS - I’m liking my new phone and no I can’t do without it Declan!
PPS - Mulley on crisps and chocolate makes me want to undo my good curves work. Damn it. It’s so true. Hits the spot.

(Soccer themed, see. Deutschland über alles, ja.)

However, highlights included:

1. Getting high on Dulux as the office is being painted
2. Having a 15-minute debate about what biscuits are most win
3. The dog turd I’ve avoided on the canal bridge on the walk to work for the past fortnight is gone (avoidance win is mine)
4. Realising, before anyone else, that the painter was whistling Paula Abdul ‘Straight Up’ at 3.04pm
5. My mother saying at lunch, “You’re not as wrecked as I expected you to be, with work and study and your life being so tough at the minute”

Tomorrow is Friday, it means I can have two days off… TO STUDY! Yipee. Dontcha…

PS - Curves, or ’saggy camp’ as it’s known as in Tressdale, is going fandabby, not fatdabby.

PPS - Is it just me or are those Zurich ‘nickname’ ads ridiculously annoying?! Yes, I do mean you, Jason McAteer. Yes I am starting.

PPPS - Reilly, welcome back

PPPPS - Scally is housemate of the week, having supplied epic widescreen win of a Sanyo.

News from BreakingNews.ie - this morning FIFA’s plans to curb the international premium of the world’s major soccer leagues bit the dust with the stark - and unprovoked - statement that the proposed ‘Six and Five Rule’, where six of any team’s eleven players must be from the club’s home country, would be in blatant breach of EU principles regarding the free movement of labour.

It’s odd that it was not much more than a decade ago when in the immediate post-Bosman era, the caps imposed by UEFA regarding the make-up of club teams were decimated. I’m not sure why UEFA seem so hell-bent on having a rule hindering the ability of a team to field the players it can afford to buy and pay for.

Manchester United’s usual starting XI this year contained five Englishmen (Rio Ferdinand, Wes Brown, Micahel Carrick or Owen Hargreaves, Paul Scholes, and Wayne Rooney) and a Welshman in Ryan Giggs. Even Chelsea would usually start four - John Terry, Ashley Cole, Frank Lampard and Joe Cole (the only moderately expendable one of this quartet, and so Chelsea certainly wouldn’t dip to less than three).

Perhaps the recent empty-handedness of Arsenal is enough of a rule that clubs themselves should choose if they want to retain domestic players or not. Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand would demand nothing less.

Well, it’s old news by now, but for those of you who weren’t aware of my footballing persuasions, I’m a Manchester United fan through and through, and naturally enough I’m pretty thrilled that the Red Devils hung on to claim their tenth Premiership title in sixteen years and Sir Alex Ferguson’s 21st trophy with the club.

While the league didn’t have to go down to goal difference in the end - a margin of victory unseen since Arsenal’s epic final-minute victory against Liverpool in 1989 - and a surplus of two points only gives the due creedance to United’s indisputably stronger season, even a victory on goal difference could not have offered Chelsea fans a fair argument as to who truly deserved the title. United, for their blips, have beaten five teams at home scoring four goals along the way - as well as a 6-0 demolition of Newcastle - and twice scored four on the road, as well as an equally emphatic 5-1 drubbing of the Magpies at St James’. When truly on song, and with their solid starting eleven, United haven’t just beaten teams this season: they’ve demolished them.

Arguably United’s triumph is a vindication of the ambitious, exciting football as envisaged by Ruud Gullit and first practiced so marvellously by Arsène Wenger’s Arsenal in recent years. Chelsea’s habit of having the world’s best bankrolled squad churn out functional, phlegmatic 1-0 victories, while undoubtedly effective, has backfired, and teams showing more flair and bloodlust in preying for another goal have been rewarded for their hunger. (more…)

With a blog title like that you’d think that I might be a defeatist Birmingham City or Reading fan, but I don’t mean that Championship at all. I should explain.

This morning in the hotel (we’re still in Slovakia, slowly getting to grips with the needless pedantry of our fellow students’ unions) we noticed a group of youngish men wearing matching red Nike tracksuits. Having had a quick glance at the crest adorning them we learned that the lads were from FK Dukla Banska Bystrica, a club based not too far from here. They have a home game today at 5pm and were here for a team-bonding breakfast before the match. We also learned that the team are currently 8th in the Slovakian Corgon Liga (the local version of the Premier League).

What I found most unusual - almost unnerving - about seeing the team was the fact that they were literally sitting amongst us, without any airs or graces and simply just being. They weren’t being surrounded with dozens of nutritionists, or assistants, or logistics officers; they were standing in the breakfast queue amongst us, queueing up for the same muesli and scrambled eggs as I.

During some of the more tedious seminar sessions earlier in the week I’d been doodling on a pad and paper trying to formulate the starting eleven I’d pick for Manchester United’s UEFA Champions League final against Chelsea in a couple of weeks (I’m still wondering about the merit of Wes Brown at right back). A more obvious juxtaposition you couldn’t get - the United lads will likely be spending the days before the trip to Moscow holed up in the Lowry in Manchester, getting on the most luxury of coaches back and forth to Carrington for training, and having their five-star breakfasts sent to a private refectory. And there won’t be muesli or scrambled egg for them either - the whole breakfast menu will undoubtedly have been carefully cheoreographed by an army of fitness nutritionists days beforehand.

For a minute I really struggled to get my head around the idea of a team in the premier competition of a country’s national sport, aimlessly wandering around a hotel lobby and sipping espressos at a hotel bar. I doubted even the Drogheda United or Cork City squads would be sitting around liable to a torrent of verbal abuse (or worse) if they had to stay somewhere for a few hours pre-match.

Then I had a slight epiphany - of course they would. I had been somewhat hypocritical - before I’d realised that I was going to miss any TV coverage of United (hopefully) winning the league this time tomorrow, I had realised I was going to miss Longford play Westmeath in the first game of the 2008 All-Ireland Senior Football Championship.

Perhaps that’s a special touch that the English league is lacking - although the self-styled Greatest Show On Earth™ reaches out to billions worldwide and unifies people across all kinds of devides in ways that only sport can, the amateur locality and everyday integration of gaelic games helps so much to make Ireland so special - and when the weather gets better we get two gripping, emotional championships that shape the Irish summer like no other.

I think that if Longford or Westmeath weren’t sitting out in full open public view in their hotel the morning of the match, we’d all regret it. Maybe that’s something worth bearing in mind while I sit, clad in red and white with worry, watching United climb off their team coach in Russia on Wednesday week.