June 2006 Archives

'The peculiar sensation of being Irish' is the title of a brilliant book by Pat Ingoldsby. It is also an accurate description of how I've been feeling in the lead up to England's quarter-final game against Portugal this Saturday at 4 p.m.

Normally speaking, Irish, Scots and Welsh fans (along with, let's face it, everyone else) are traditionally expected to boo, hiss, shout and insult the England football team at almost every opportunity. 800 years of opression. Constantly going on about '66. The smugness of Hansen, Lineker et al. The barbaric behaviour of 'En-ger-laaaaaaand' football fans. All of these are reasons cited for 'home nations' football supporters turning on England every time the World Cup comes around. And this tournament has been no different whatsoever with the usual outbreak of ignorant, xenophobic England-hating all over northern Britain and southern Ireland.

Not this time

But, this time, I'm not participating. I've had enough of the pathetic, neanderthal behaviour of Irish and Scots football 'fans' behaving like insular, parochial rednecks towards a country that we live beside and with which we are inextricably related. I'm gonna put my very neck on the line and state, categorically that I, an Irishman who supports the Ireland football team, (drum-roll) would like to see England do well. And I'd like to explain why.

Wayne Rooney is the most exciting football player I've ever seen. I've never seen anything like him. Not ever. As one Guardian journo recently described him, he is 'part bulldozer, part ballet dancer'. You see, I never saw Pele play. I never saw Cruyff or Beckenbauer. I saw Maradona in '86, but I was a kid and have a very hazy memory of it.

And, quite simply, I want to see Rooney play. And I mean play. I want to see him hammering into defenders and scoring hat-tricks left, right and centre and I want to see him do it against the best in the world - because I think he's that good.

The best against the best

Very simply, as a fan of football, I want to see the best playing at the top of their game against the best. The fact that he's an Englishman is an irrelevance to me.

Now, before the patriotism police start baying for my blood, I would like to say this: if England do win the World cup, it's entirely possible that I may never stop puking. I honestly don't know how I would handle it. I suspect a month locked in my flat might help. To begin with.

Ultimately, I think I'd like to see the Argies win. They've been the most entertaining to watch - playing some superb football along the way. And Riquelme is an absolute master at his profession.

Talksport radio

I suppose this post was born out of my listening to Talksport these last few weeks. Sure, some of the pundits are twats and some of the callers are utter morons, but it makes a wonderful breath of fresh air from the smug, comfortable punditry of Hansen, the obnoxious Ian Wright and the pathetically mono-syllabic Alan Shearer. Talksport is a wonderful station, run by fans, for fans. And sometimes these fans can be very insightful. Throughout this World Cup, Talksport have provided the best coverage of the games - by a country mile.

But what's also amazed me is the staggering level of hostility coming from Scotland. A lot of it is just harmless banter (which is always fun), but a lot of it is not. The Scottish animosity to England is ridiculous - far beyond anything that you hear in Irish pubs when England play. There are many Scotland 'fans' who really, seriously need to grow up.

So the Argentinians to win. But Rooney to dazzle us all along the way. I hope.

More:

Talksport Radio

Owen Hargreaves' blog

(LONDON) Porn industry moguls are reporting a marked spike in the conumption of dodgy web-cam recorded midget porn. Variously known as 'prog-porn', 'short-porn', 'runt-humping' and 'knob-polishing', pornography for persons of restricted growth has become a inter-web boom industry due to the shorter download times involved, leading to calls (from concerned housewives from Clontarf, north Dublin) for unionisation, wage controls and careful regulation of the burgeoning industry.

'Tis the dwarves that go swimming wi' little hairy women!'

'Short people equals shorter downloading' said Widget BallBagg, president and CEO of 'Progporker Productions ('hot, hairy dwarf action for the discerning bed-sit wanker') in an intervierw which he gave us yesterday. 'People just seem to be going hog-fucking-wild for midget porn'.

Top selling titles include the animated adventures of Tweaky from Buck Rogers ('Beedy-Beedy-Fuck!') and the scandalous 'Short Legs Big Schlong' trilogy starring that lisping twat from Fantasy Island.

We'll have more from the exclusive interview with Widget in a later Globaleyes.

I've really been enjoying this World Cup. There's been some stunning football and some wonderful goals. The Argentinians have been sublime and the Germans a surprisingly entertaining outfit. Jesus, even the Spanish played some useful football before Zidane and the boys woke up. But this week, I've found myself getting progressively more and more alienated from this tournament. A combination of scandalously bad refereeing and, related to that, the outbreak of diving, faking and basic cheating is turning my stomach to the stage where I can't stand it anymore.

Previously on Globaleyes, I had been complaining about the behaviour of the Italians. But that was before the game against the Americans and the blatant dive for a penalty against the Australians. And, I'll be honest folks, I've had enough.

Dive Bitch Dive

The Italians are a disgrace to the name of football. But they're not alone. It would seem that having watched the Italians dive, cheat, fake and play-act their way into the last eight, that other squads have asked themselves why they shouldn't flounce around like a bunch of petulant children too. And no wonder: combined with the influence of the cheating Italians, players have also been influenced by the sight of referees sending off men for no reason whilst turning a blind-eye to bare-faced diving and nasty, vicious play.

Henry dived yet again last night, later claiming that 'in his head' he isn't a cheat. Right Thierry. In your head is it? So, the next time that a child-molester faces conviction he can claim that 'in his head' that child looked eighteen. Fuck off you cheating cunt.

Figo and DeRossi

But he's not alone. England goalkeeper Paul Robinson should have been sent off for wasting time against Ecuador. Figo should have been sent home - for head butting an opponent. As should have DeRossi for his assault (and that's exactly what it was) against Brian McBride (who, notably, didn't behave like a whining child but left the pitch pouring blood without a word). I'm fairly sure that you can think of about five examples that i haven't mentioned.

We all feel pain the same way, so I just don't understand why footballers behave like this. I have never seen rugby players rolling around screaming like that. Has anyone? It's becoming clear now that professional footballers are a shower of spoilt, pampered, over-paid mincing fucking fairies who are an embarrassment to men everywhere.

De wimmin

Now, I watched some of the women's World Cup last year - not all of it, just a few games and a highlights package here and there. Not once did i see a female player behaving like that. Not once. If the women can play the game without recourse to amateur dramatics and hysterical play-acting then so can the men. It's embarrassing that women's football is now the standard bearer for fair-play and professionalism and that the male sport is a sham, run by useless Swiss numpties who neither know anything nor care about the game, marshalled by trigger-happy, egomaniacal referees who aren't fit to organise a round of drinks and played by whining, moaning, money-grabbing bitches whose posturing deserves to be ridiculed on the front page of every newspaper on earth.

Think I'm over-reacting? A popbitch quote from a few weeks ago claimed that Rio Ferdinand had claimed that 'the music, the fashion, the TV, the football all go to make up Rio'.

You fucking twat.

Tuesday, 20 June 2006. I'm in a bar in north London, watching the England vs. Sweden game. There's about 400 people in the bar, singing chanting and generally having a great time. English, Irish, American, Israeli, Swedish and everything else in between.

After about five minutes, those of us at the far end of the bar begin to notice something odd: the three hundred people who are watching in the main section of the bar seem to be recieving the television pictures about three seconds after we do. Everytime that Rooney charges at the Swedes, a scream goes up from our end, followed by the inevitable 'Ooooooooo shit...' as he fails to bury it. Those in the delayed section are anxiously snapping their heads from left to right, desparate to know what's going to happen. Stuck in a three-second time-warp the majority of the pub are tortured with indecision: should they stay where they are, or try to keep an eye on those with the 'future' screens to see the result of each attack as it happens?

33 minutes

Joe Cole stands 35 yards out. A defender clears to him. He chests it, lets it drop and unleashes one of the most ridiculous shots I've ever seen: a searing, looping volley which arcs perfectly from left to right, swooping over the keepers head and in the top corner. Fuck me. Then, it happens. Remember, we're three seconds ahead and when our area explodes in cacophanous noise, every single person in the other section of the bar, in perfect unison, violently snaps their head left and then instantly back to the right, giving 400 England fans a severe case of whiplash.

I haven't laughed like that in quite a while.

Tuggers of the Interweb Unite

Now. If you're perusing this you are likely to be a member of one of two categories of reader. You are either a regular Blather or Globaleyes reader who has wandered in here and is currently wondering what on earth this is all about or, you are a member of that second group of readers who has googled the words 'irish porn' or 'lepreporn' and found your way here. Whatever your reasons, allow me to save you a wasted kleenex, £6.95 and a possible trip to a shrink.

Heavy breathing

Last year, our sister blog Shitegeist carried a piece concerning the emergence of what has become known as 'Lepreporn' - the nascent Irish porn industry. And judging by the constant google traffic from people searching for this term, there seems to be considerable interest in the subject. God help the lot of ye.

'Sniff, sniff'

What I do know is this. Irish porn is real. It's out there. And it's for sale. How do I know this? Well...

Last Xmas just gone, a mate of mine (for once that isn't a euphemism - I'd admit to buying it if I had) was home from Spain, who presented me with a burned DVD. It was the imaginatively titled 'Fucked in Ireland'. Now, lookit, I don't have any moral soap box to jump up and down on about this (I really don't) it's just that, well, how do I put this, it's fucking awful.

'ROIDE ME YE MAD CUNT YA'

'Fucked in Ireland', is a grotesque, ninety-minute barf-fest of pythonesque absurdity. I manged to watch about five minutes. For the first two , myself and the mate were convulsed with good manly back-slapping 'would you look at the head on yer man' laughter, but as the seconds rolled by, our initial mirth gave way to a slow creeping horror - a horror (the horror!) akin to watching a slow-motion sexual car crash.

It's one thing to hear mid-coitus encouragements roared into camera in an American or German accent (as it should be), but it's entirely another when choice phrases such as 'fuck me you dirty cunt ye' are yelled out in a nasal, north-Dublin screech that you could shatter reinforced glass with.

Add to that the fact that this is one seriously rough bunch of folk we're talking about here (a gang of oompa-loompa faced brassers getting remorselessly speared by a pack of hulking great hairy-arses) and it all adds up to one deeply traumtising viewing experience. Think 'Society' meets 'Your sister's home wedding video'. Or something. Something worse.

Anyway, in summary, rating the movie on the Big Birdbath StiffyOmoter (patent pending), 'Fucked in Ireland' doesn't so much get a floppy one out of ten, as much as it gets a 'dear God, my balls just shrank back up into my stomach' minus two. Avoid like the clap.

+More+

Lepreporn - the adventure continues on the Snackbox diaries

(BERLIN) US Special Forces staged a dramatic pitch invasion during the United States vs. Italy World Cup game this evening, after comments from American players about 'greasy, oily Italian bastards' were miscommunicated back to intelligence sources in the Pentagon who informed the White House situation room about a possible threat to American Oil interests in Europe.

Soldiers opened fire on Italian footballers Alessandro Nesta and Francesco Totti, prompting US manager Bruce Arena to state that 'finally, they have a reason to be rolling around on the ground screaming like women in labour'.

Casualty reports are fragmented at this point, but sources close to the White House indicate that several Italians have been subject to 'rendition' orders. Complications arose when US soldiers refused to carry out the orders as the Italian footballers kept hitting on them.

(inspired by a ninebar joke on p45)

Now, this is one mean pussy.

On June 4 a black bear wandered into a West Milford, New Jersey, back yard, was confronted by a 15-pound (7-kilogram) tabby cat … and fled up a neighbor's tree. Hissing at the base of the tree, Jack the clawless cat kept the bear at bay for about 15 minutes, then ran him up another tree after an attempted escape.

More:

Cat chases bear up tree .

Wunderbar! Another gem from the world of Flickr:

Photo by Straight from the Cask .

Now don't get me wrong. I love football. I love it so much that I have forgone sex in preference to watching football. I have turned down orgies to watch football. Ok, well not so much with the orgies, but the point stands: I love football.

So, it pains me to say that there have been a number of instances at the current world cup which have prompted an almost overwhelming urge within me to put my boot through the tv screen. There's been some shambolic refereeing. Despite hammering the Serbs 6-0 today, Argentina had a perfectly good goal disallowed and then saw the man who scored it, Crespo, get a yellow card for having the temerity to point out to the linesman and ref that they were, in point of fact, a pair of myopic twats.

But my largest gripe comes not from the predictable cack-handed officialdom, but from the disgustingly unprofessional behaviour of some players, in what can only be described as bare-faced play-acting in an effort to get an opponent booked. Van Persie did it tonight against the Ivorians (Drogba must have loved that) and I'm sure that you've spotted many examples yourself. But by far the worst offenders have been, of course, the Italians.

Diving, cheating, play-acting, moaning, nazi-saluting, bung-taking whining bitches. I truly, deeply hate Italian footballers. Why, can someone please explain to me, does every Italian footballer go to ground writhing and screaming in simulated agony, every time that an opponent challenges him? Watching the Italy vs. Ghana game I lost count of the number of times that I saw Italians hit the deck like they'd been shot when Essien and the lads tackled them. It was utterly embarrasing. Are these guys not ashamed of themselves? Do their countrymen not feel disgusted that their football team are cementing their international reputation as flagrant cheats? Never mind the fact that they behave (and look) like a bunch of mincing, moaning metrosexual shirt-lifters. I don't know why they don't just get it over and done with and put the fucking dresses on.

I hope Italy get through their group. And then I hope they get a team of quality who rip them to shreds and send them home crying to Moma, exposed for what they are: the biggest fannies in the world of football.

(image by publicenergy, used under a CC license)

We begin as we began

Saturday 3rd June 2006. 6.12pm.

The road to Ennistimon is so Irish you could almost bottle it. Twists, turns, grass and dolmens. Hills winding every which way. As the car launches us into another in a series of wild, juddering bounces myself and the chief discuss pressing matters.
'Did I tell you that I modularised the front page now?' he says excitedly.
'Really' I say levelly.
'It means that if I make a change in one place, that change takes place on every page. Very handy for the individual pages. No more arsing around with html. It all gets a bit messy. I have my reservations about div tags but I think I know what I'm doing now.'
'Uh huh'
We exchange that look - the one that lets him know I haven't understood a word of what he's said.
'Never mind'