The Second Coming of GOD

Greetings, gentle readers.

So the weekend has drawn to a close and what do we find? What we find is this: the forces of goodness and light have been thrown into disarray. Not only have Liverpool’s last three league matches yielded a measly single point out of a potential nine, but two of those games have been lost to “big” teams, meaning that looking at the standings now, Liverpool trail Man Ure by six points and Chelski by a whopping twenty-one points. We still have two games in hand, but we’re going to be playing those over the next two weeks, as, in typical marathon-style, we play Charlton away at the Valley Ground on Wednesday, 8 February, then Wigan away at the JJB the following Saturday, before playing Arsenal at Anfield on Tuesday. And then to cap off an exhausting week, we play Manchester United in the 5^th Round FA Cup tie that everyone wants to watch. Things look bleak.

Not only have the results of recent note been rather less than encouraging, but the game against Chelski caused even more problems. Pépé Reina, the stalwart goalkeeper who has been providing Liverpool with solid protection at the back, and safe, confident assurance in defence, has been suspended for the next three games. Now this is not necessarily bad, as this means a return to action of the Pole in Goal, the Dude himself, the man with the magic thighs that stunned crowds by the Bosphorus — Jerzy Dudek. Of course, he hasn’t had a first team start all season, so he may be a tad rusty, but it’s still a bad sign when you have to play without your first-choice keeper for three games, or in this case for Liverpool, six days.

On the positive side, Rafa Benitez and the new Boot Room Boys have pulled off the transfer miracle of the season, signing God himself to a six-month contract on a free transfer. That’s right. The Toxteth Terror has come home. More than four years after his sad departure for Leeds, and then later to Manchester City, Robbie Fowler has returned to Anfield where his fans still swell in their legions. He never looked like enjoying his football whilst he was away, always doing a steady journeyman’s work, racking up the most goals for the Man City squad last year, but without any sense of pride or accomplishment. Now the home-town boy is back, reunited with the other home-grown Scousers, and how we need him to pot some more of his trademark goals at the moment. It was too much to expect divine intervention to intercede at this stage of the season, but lo and behold, such deital assistance has come.

For those of you who aren’t aware of Robbie Fowler’s god-like status, I’ll endeavour to re-post my original angst-ridden dirge when I heard the Gérard Houllier had sold the legend himself off. And to Leeds, of all places. (shudder)

In any event, I shall be watching the Charlton game with baited breath, and awaiting the true Second Coming of God as Robbie lashes down his holy wrath upon Charlton Pathetic. I’ll dredge up my older article and post that later, and I’ll have to get back on track with my top 20. After all, the Premiership is past the half-way point, and I haven’t even reached #14 on the list yet. I shall return, and hopefully bring news of wondrous things and amazing exploits. Good night England, and the colonies.

-mARKUS

¥Justice for the 96¥

More Ghastly Poetry

So I had to write some senryu poetry to help out a friend of mine, and I came up with this wee guy:

through kaleidoscope
of eyelashes blurred with tears
rainbows in your smile

After thinking about it, I started to think that "Japanese Poetic Forms" has an equivalent aesthetic value to "Nazi Gourmet Cuisine" or "Mongol Embroidery." So I came up with this little slap to the Nipponese death merchants that raped Nanking, marched thousands to death in Bata'an, and flouted the Geneva Convention for the Treatment of Prisoners of War...

terror in Nanking
cherry blossoms and carnage
stained with Bushido

Not that I'm some sort of racist or anything, but I'm tired of the Germans getting all the bad rap historically. Everyone forgets Stalin murdering the kulaks and starving the Ukrainians. Chairman Mao's casualties of the Cultural Revolution are quietly ignored as a footnote in a record book of ChiCom indiscretions. Pol Pot's auto-genocide is quietly harrumphed by such weasels as Noam Chomsky. Incidents of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, Rwanda, etc. have become as pedestrian as each release of a Kevin Costner movie.
But no, every time a politician has to open his yap and try and appeal to some sort of culturally ingrained horror and revulsion, it's always about the Germans. Moammar Qadafi is the most evil man since Hitler. Saddam Hussein is the most evil man since Hitler. Manuel Noriega is the most evil man since Hitler.
I reckon that it's time that the blame for all of the world's suffering and tragedy gets spread around a bit. I'm just starting with the Nipponese, since their tradition of ruthless exploitation has essentially begun anew following the reconstruction period of 1946-50. They still treat other Asians as second-class human beings, and other Asian nations are just slop-troughs filled with natural resources for their ravenous zaibatsus to devour. So two fingers up 'em from me.
Cheers,

-mARKUS
¥Justice for the 96¥