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Showing posts from April, 2016

notes on working life just before quitting

And it feels as though the mist is lifting, the lines coming clear on time's sweeping hand. In the morning grasses I crouch Blades of light falling on fresh eyes and music softly breaking against my ear We look like a row of four players in a table football team, faceless senseless clones, falling over at the flick of the wrist.it occurs to me that the office is maybe the most repressive ugly place since prison and contemplate the generations of millions and billions of people who have spent so much time chopping away at something they didn't want to do. it makes for v depressing reading / thinking, and I ponder it all as I pick up my weetabix and trample to the kitchen for some milk. Crazed tiles reaching out into the distance, the road a river of noise And bathed in a young spring sunlight The places like this, where I end up drifting on and off on the lunch hour - called a 'lunch hour' across the country and probably the world but rarely ever actually a lunch '

Football = chant = song = lyrics = words = story = literature = art

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A football match is like a book, a play or a song. It has its performance, its history and its aftermath. It is brimming in interaction, between viewer and the performance, between player and player, coach and pawn, institution and corporation, authority and law.  Ultimately, football is an art.

Sakho, Liverpool, drugs

Been a lot going round lately about a doping epidemic in football. We'll see about all that, but there's this article from the Liverpool Echo's James Pearce. It states: Klopp was fuming when informed about the failed test and the UEFA investigation at Melwood on Friday afternoon...  All Liverpool players are regularly reminded that before they take any medication or food supplements they need to consult club doctor Andrew Massey Sounds pretty much like a club statement and it's all fair enough, but would be interesting to know a couple of things... 1) Do Liverpool (or any other club) ever test their own players for use of banned substances - if not, why not? 2) All well and good that players are 'regularly reminded' to consult the club doctor before taking anything - how well educated are they on exactly what is banned and what is not?

Might be being overly cynical but...

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How hard is it for someone to hold to their beliefs before the PR men and 'political consultants' turn them into pawns?

Pawn in the game

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My grandmother came here from a far dusty land She wanted to earn some for little she had The government took her and asked her to work As an industry clerk In some factory like church Where the workers would toil for their bread And the land my grandmother had come from to here Was spilling out rotten with blood and with fear our empire had been there It ruled with its fist Local pockets it would twist For money and the soul Of poor rich young and old And the people had begun to blame on each other Then the government asked her to come here and stay Cos England was slain From war and the pain Of a driverless train And wanted cheap hands To try rebuild the land She was only a pawn in their game And the hypocrisy reminds me of today’s tired reports They hurl at the men And women and young Who flee from the gun They placed in those hands In far foreign lands For the arms trade brigade demands to be paid An

On Villa and the Premier League

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Villa being relegated is sad - a club that has won the European Cup, with some of the best and most politically active fans in the country. They will be a big loss to the league. Stan Collymore has been pretty much bang on in everything he's said - pointing at Lescott's absurd Lambourghini tweet after the 6-0 hammering to Liverpool, Bacuna's hoverboard antics at B'Ham airport after the Saints defeat and Agbonlahor repeatedly being caught on the lash during the relegation battle. It all sums up the state of Villa's squad and the utter apathy to the club's plight displayed by so many members of the first team. There's also the issue of ownership - Lerner is yet another bizarre figure who realised after a couple of years, that owning a Premier League team isn't as financially rewarding as he had hoped - see Hicks, Gillet, Ashley, Shinawatra et al. And the Lerner issue points to a deeper issue with all of this - the Premier League. Complaining about

Conversation with a jeweller

Q. Does it feel special to touch gold? A. Aha. Not really. It could be water to me. 

hurt tired and bruised

my dreams are falling out of my eyes and the wages - just calories swirling round in my thighs and utopia looks nothing more than a distant pack of lies and the city's burning a hole in my eye a hole in my eye a whole in my eye i close them, there's orange                      loping rays stretching out into space where the wolf is a friend and the ocean chokes                                  my black bones to silence where trees rest aloof and alone and where the tiger sits in the claw of a dove the machines kiss upon the feet they love our visions crane up to the top of the tower the spirits glisten bright like fragments of flower and we dance, electrons in terrabyte hour

on a curb in a day in the capital

feet wheels and wind skip along these roads crusty mountains adorn either side & blue dreams sweep the sky. beggars sit near, waiting for the dust of the golden frenzy to fall into their hands. fingers tap away on keys, waiting to break thru the crafty plastic- the feet rumble on, a blur shuffling from comfort to comfort. the buses drag from stop to stop the ties swing from side to side the colours scream from scene to scene and the world in fury, rocks from breath to breath

Guernica

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The backwards Stone Roses tracks deserve some serious explanation: why, when you play them backwards, do you hear the lyrics to the original song, rather than the overdubbed (on the original reversal song) lyrics backwards? My favourite is Guernica. Named after Picasso's famous painting on the horror of war, the tune is essentially Made of Stone played backwards. This fits well - the guitar notes and drum beat of Made of Stone are haunting, eery and together with the lyrics, evoke images of sudden destruction, of a world being burned to the ground before the listener's eyes. In reverse, the tune is accompanied by what sounds like rotor blades hammering through the wind, and which may be simply Reni's drum beat turned on itself and sped up. You wanna hurt me stop the row The both of us are stitched up now  This seems to me to be a commentary on the inevitability of war between elites, between the people commanding the horror. The only way for one to truly hurt the ot

London and the colonial hangover

a city full of cunts who think that people need to be guided like cattle by white men in suits