Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Slippery People

Monday, May 20th, 2013

When it comes to backsliding, how do you do? Ever attained enlightenment, only to find yourself in a boozy dimptray, letting everyone down? Backsliding is the willing young apprentice who suddenly goes off the boil, the cook whose dishes become unpalatable overnight. In the Church of the Red Devils it’s a small number of talented young men who not only failed to continue improving but actually diminished in their overall abilities and contribution to the team. If you want me to name names here they are, in no particular order: Nani, Carrick, Hernandez, Welbeck, and Evra (he’s a bit older but his form dipped at least two years ago and he’s only 31 now). Evra’s role in the 2010 French World Cup scandal may well have burst his personal bubble, but the rest of these lads were on an upward arc that inexplicably went avacado-shaped for no apparent reason.
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Jet Black Box

Monday, May 20th, 2013

You may have noticed that I was serving a suspension from the UWS summer special. I received a red card for describing an alleged incident in 1988 that occurred in the Forresters pub in Prestwich following a toilet visit. It involved my penis being shaken in close proximity to Nico in order that whatever urine may have been retained in the folds of my foreskin would be expelled in the German rock icon’s face. So, for the sake of the record (and the editor, who’s fucking shitting himself) let me correct this: I emerged from the lavatories and proceeded to shake my performance-pampered fuckstick (that’s a cock that’s had a bit of a going-over prior to flopping into the public realm for “entertainment purposes”) in a manner that I KNEW would attract Nico’s attention from the buke she was engrossed in. I am ashamed to say that my efforts failed on every level. Almost; she DID perform a token brush of an imaginary droplet from her right eye. Cooper-Clarke, E. Smith, that bloke from 10 cc and Graham Nash were all there and not a one of ‘em said owt, so what does that tell you about yer fair fuckin’ city, you delusional Salford cunt? I’m originally from Langworthy, by the way, and frequently drank there as an adult, yer ‘Onour (i.e. You, You Petty Fucking Twat), so I’ll let meself in.
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The Twat Pack

Monday, May 20th, 2013

A pale blue sky with white clouds shines upon a clockwork boulevard where boatlike cars cruise, giant fins alive with prismic halos reflected from the sun. Office buildings protrude upward like glassy cacti; packed with twats of every stripe, all anxious to take a better holiday than their friends, to drive a better car, to have their kids score higher on meaningless school exams.
Meanwhile, in a cool dark place where a greasy man in a string vest pours cheap tequila and domestic beer, we cackle at the saps out there on the consumer treadmill. Being the winner isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, this we know. Jonny Heaven is passed out. Clever Tommy sings along to The Look’s “I Am The Beat” on the juker with no trace of irony. I’m evaluating the stones with an eyepiece and Supernanny’s watching the TV news with the sound way up. They’re talking about the heist: How we stole GM off the yanks and got burned on some flip jobs we tried to palm off on other mobs. String Vest can smell the money and asks if we want a girl, and maybe a hotel room. Clever Tommy stops singing and tells him to mind his own fucking business. He sparks up a Cuban then boots Heaven in the nuts to wake him. Now the Juker’s playing Tracie’s “The House That Jack Built”…What the fuck was Paul Weller thinking there? Even Clever’s stopped singing and that’s saying something.
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Pat the Gumshoe

Monday, March 11th, 2013




Pat was a gumshoe, the good kind. Used to be a mulligan but couldn't dig the grease that was in it. So he went dolo, with a capital D. Switched from drinking with the bulls to hangin' with Lally at the barrel house. He still had the button-man instincts. Didn't hesitate to burn powder if some gink and his gaycat went off the track and started squirting metal. When the broad with the munitions came into his office that hazy lunchtime, he figured her for some flour lover stuck on one of the local redhots. He was dead right. Strung him a line about how her guy had come over all swell daddy like he had the bees, then disappeared into thin air. Pat knew a worker when he saw one and she was one such bim. Musta thought pitchin' woo a coupla times was enough to earn her this wrong gee’s cabbage. Pat already had it sewn up; that morning a skid peacher had fingered the local trouble boys for a soup job that went down. Turns out they was looking to get the bulge on their rivals by blowing a keyster full of shamrock peas but the peterman went over the edge with the rams and turned ganzl in some flophouse. He even doped on the high pillow, so they put the curse on him. Now he’s holed up in some scatter with nothing to lose. Pat ankled down there for a schnoz but the peacherman wouldn't jaw. Being the good kind, Pat sprung for some giggle juice and the stoolie went green after a few pops. That’s how he got where he was once the sunski went down; standing in a dark hallway, ear-hustling on the chairman reaming his babbos. Hopin' this wasn't no trip for biscuits. Pat’s wearing iron, like usual, but these trouble boys ain't the kind to just put the screws on a seamus if the gat was cocked. He wanted to toss ‘em a notion that maybe that green ice was all fugazi and the mark was storing knockoffs for some bigger players. Thing was, these bangers would read the fumes like duck soup if he tipped his mitt to the grift, and Pat was shaking. First time in his life, wantin' the flivver every time that big torpedo snapped a cap in there. That’s when this dolled-up tomato appeared with some ugly fire extinguisher holdin' a bumbershoot over her. Must have been the boss’s squeeze. Pat reached for the Chicago lightning and the big lug wasn't far behind. The lobby was all noise for a tick. It got worse when one of the crew busted out and got a wiggle on with a typewriter. Pat dug deep and dropped the two of them just like in the old days. The rest of the outfit were ready to spit beans, but Pat knew how to handle a chopper and did a little typewriting of his own. The Irish beryls were in a big velvet bag. Pat stuffed it in his flogger and clean sneaked out the gate. It was rainin' pitchforks when he exited into the street. The hayburner was three blocks away. The stench of all that liquid iron clung to his beezer but he felt good about rubbin' out another nest of trouble boys. He just had to get his flippers on a certain skate-around and give her the news. Heck, maybe she’d skate around with him for a while once she saw the green grass. He’d need a few shots of brown plaid in him tonight and not that coffin varnish he usually snorted at Lally's barrel house. He’d give the panther sweat a rain-check and hit the Strip. Find that flapper and show her the high life like the good kind lived it.

And that, my friends, is the story of Pat the Good Kind. A one-man gangster squad that had the mob on the back foot for several years. I was fortunate enough to know Pat, and we exchanged many letters back in the days when letters were a thing. Sometimes I feel as though I made it all up (mainly because I did), but other days I can see his ruddy face and bushy eyebrows atop eyes like chestnuts. Pat the Good Kind lived like a lion. He hated those who hunt in packs- err, hang on, lions hunt in packs…let me put that another way…he detested those who preyed on the defenseless, be they police or wiseguys. Some say he killed over 200 men during that glorious run, but others say it’s time I acted my age and stopped writing this shite because I’m 47. Personally, I believe in fighting for the truth, and so did Pat the Good Kind. We can all devote our lives to a football team, or some socialised role we’re made to feel guilty about for not fulfilling, while remaining as sheep. I’ll always remember Pat’s last words to me, in a busy bus station in New York: “You’ve made me up, you daft cunt.” Goodnight, Tatlock.

City 2 United 3: UFOs Seem “Alive” and City are Shit!

Sunday, December 9th, 2012

Just watched the derby on television in America like a typical United supporter. We were in serious danger of being roundly hammered for long spells at Council Central but our superior finishing and underlying quality shone through once again. Balotelli and Mancini kept up their double act, Gareth Barry is still a horrible fouling cunt and Carlos Tevez remains a rotten little rat in dire need of a good talking to. When Rio Ferdinand was hit by coin while celebrating by one of City’s pie-faced morons, their true colours were truly shown. Spoilt brats who, after making the big time for a couple of years and buying trophies, they now think they are owed victories, especially over their larger neighbor. I am now very interested in what kind of punishment the Football League or the FA or UEFA or FIFA decide is appropriate. The best would be points docked, say six. It’s no more than they deserve. News is coming in from GM Police that a rabid pie-face was nicked inside the ground for inciting racist chants, but we really want the coin-thrower caught and made a proper example of. Mostly, though, we just want City to have points docked for being classless nouveau riche shitbags. They claim they’re gonna be extending the Council House soon, adding a third tier behind each goal. It will still look like a dead hooker’s bruised privates, but I suppose you can only work with what you have.

On a slightly different note, have you ever noticed how many UFO abductees claim that the craft they were taken in appeared itself to be “alive”? I was watching a NASA video last night, a film of the space shuttle and its famous working arm, and it occurred to me that as technology improves that arm will gradually be sheathed in ever-more complex forms of instruments, many of which will be made from organic materials possessing a lifelike flexibility. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if we were to develop some kind of breathable “skin” with which to sheath all those “vital organs” required to take precise and accurate measurements of the ether. This material will possess innate intelligence and will indeed seem to be alive. So, to recap; City are fucking wank, and one day the space shuttle will come to life. Tara, kids.



A horrible blue c*nt.

Meme Machine

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

So this is it; everyone’s playing musical arses as we ride the seat of our man-pants all the way to Memphis. Not the actual Memphis, a metaphorical one that symbolises the end being nigh like a dirty Bitter Tashman in a sandwich board declaring the fact on the road to ruin. When an ubermortal like SAF says this is Ruby Tuesday or bust (I don’t know what that means) you know it’s strap your balls on time. The 4-4 with Everton suggested something fundamentally wrong with our back passage. Upon shining a policeman’s torch into that murky area, I think I may have found the culprit: We are severely lacking in the meme department. Knart-a-meen, Twatlock? Chelsea have Sideshow Bob and England’s Not-Really-Got-A-Cracked-Rib-‘Cos-Nobody-Could-Play-Premiership-Fotball-In-That-Condition; city have a whole gallery of funky looking villains; Arsenal have Oxtail Chamberlain and Freddie Van Mercury, and our friends Liverpool have too many to mention. But where’s our own private freakaho? Rio makes a pretty good Nessie, but probably only in my eyes. Nani Davis Junior would provoke hysterical bleating from liberal goats hungry for a witch to hunt. But Phil Jones, famous for his hilarious array of tortured gurning expressions, may well be our man; the meme machine. What we need is a massive banner of *that* face passed round Old Trafford, raising masses of uncontrollable laughter that distracts the opposition while United pile on the presh.
But memes, they’re all the rage. The Most Interesting Man in the World is a good ‘un but there’s always room for more: Twittercide Attention-Seeker (a pathetic dude who threatens to delete his account as if anyone gives a flying bollix); Cross Channel Synergy Guy (a know-nowt div who tries to make money by telling other people how to make money online despite never having made any himself); Personal branding (the sad cunts who nobody knows, ‘cos they’re not even remotely famous but who discuss themselves in the third person and upload pics of themselves holding massive wads of cash with their dad’s Bentley in the background). I could also mention Handbags not Handguns, Fadcinations, Astrosplosh, The Legend of Bonefang and Museum Units, but I’m not gonna. Instead I’m gonna make a confession: I want Chelsea to win the UEFA Champions League! I know, it goes well against the grain, but if you can’t appreciate the game Chelsea played in Barcelona there’s a withered, dead jellyfish where your heart should be. And yes, I’m avoiding talking about what happened in Quadrant Two, when a square-headed beast of a bastard bulged the netting…The memes began right away on this supposedly momentous occasion. That one shot showing masses of ticker-tape raining down as the teams came out was *clearly* CGI; an obvious ESPN conspiracy. Maradona was there – the father-in-law of Sergio Aguero – well I never! WTF?!? Oh, the lizards had done their homework here. Setting up a Global Elite picnic at the Council House as ABU’s around the globe wanked into inflatable blue moons (there’s one for you bitter b’stards). City were unchanged. United had four changes. Everyone was talking about how good our bench was, FFS. Our bench! Not the actual bench (though that might have been pretty decent as benches go, it hurts to admit) the cunts sitting on it: Berbatov, Hernandez, Young, Welbeck, Fabio, Valencia. Lord Fuckerson once again terrified own people with his terrible tinkering. city’s humourless hardmen must have been laughing into their inflatable Kakas, as they kissed and shagged them prior to KO in a lusty weird group in the dressing room. Our lads looked good standing in formation at KO, but city looked nervous and Carlos Jackalface was popping up AOTS. David Silva, the current world record holder for distance-from-tip-of-nose-to-back-of-head-ratio-to-overall-height, was racing about like a demented gadfly, and then, in first-half injury time, it happened. “It” isn’t Chris Smallman failing to outjump his robot nemesis and the ball being in the onion bag, no. “It” is Steve McManaman’s Happy Monday “Step On” howl, issued in response to a ball being cleared around the 58th minute mark. “It” is destined to be THE mash-up meme of the century. If someone hasn’t already done it, I might well take up the reins on that one myself. Cheers Macca. I’ll squeeze at least 48 webinars on “Viral Videos and conversion metrics” out of that little beauty. Editing and Photoshopping a vast library of footage and pics with thought and speech bubbles and serious headlines followed by hilarious taglines, etc. We are all artists, after all. The Mark E. Smith Guide to Writing Guide is HIGHLY recommended to those seeking success as a poet in the north Manchester tradition, but don’t bother if you’re an egg-stained stinking be-tashed blue cunt. Like Mark himself, ironically. Sorry Mark. I can still see you now, shitfaced in the pubs of Prestwich. Maybe you were in the Forresters the night I shook my cock dry in Nico’s face and asked her if it was as big as the Lizard King’s. But I digress.
Speaking of lizards, the sight of Maradona celebrating at the end will haunt me forever.

Dzeko and Hyde

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012

Do we dometimes trep ta roe an wehg ‘n tourp hca fghro shfan. OK, *dusts self off* let me start that again. Ah might a bin movin a bit too rapid fer meself there. Tonight “Mad Men” Season 5 began with a 2-hour special. Don Drapegoat and Co. schmoozing and snorting vodka like water. The amount of cigs and booze they get through is a trifle much innit? No wonder Drapegoat looks half-pissed all the time. Being a working class hero, you’ll prefer the stuff with the hops and barley but ‘ave yer ever tried Chilean Charlie? Bizarrely, a feller ridin’ a Harley, face all gnarly, agreed to a parley where they played Bob Marley, birds swingin’ some major rackage, game for delivery of a backstage package, key by the three, talc on yer goatee, calm the fuck down Tatlock, you’ll be an amputee, these brethren of Little Pea blow up like TNT, The Nameless Thing, walkin’ with the king, put your head in a sling, fire it cross the border like the fucker got wings. Yeah, I know; I love Chicharee, getting poofy for he, that lesbian lookalike glowin’ like Chablis, but what about Tony V, confidence like a .50 BMG, goin’ rat-a-tat-tat, take that yer twat, tearin’ 600 new arseholes in Balotelli’s hat, and I know this is pathetic – do the arithmetic, I’m a childish old cunt but I’m unapologetic. Some of you probably really thought I was an international gangster there, but I’m not. No, honest, really, I’m not even Mexican. I’m just all hopped up on Chilean Charlie. You heard it here first, you savage red bastard. *grinds teeth* That’s right, I’m overlapping into the sordid world of #internewt symbolisms, an amphibious realm where the mudflats meet the pissflaps in the poison penalty area studded with potholes near Tockholes. Sorry, I promise I’ll try to stop doing that.
It’s tense as we enter the final furlong, with just United and city neck and neck like two beasts on a rancid racecourse nostrils flaring flanks streaked with blood and sweat trailing steaming lashing tails crowds bawling and shouting having a flutter don’t stutter you nutter one step from the gutter with dogshit a clutter a cutter through butter like Tiger Woods’ putter you’ll feel the steel hear the spiel when the Bittermen kneel at the heel of Emile as the lights congeal on the silver trophy makin an appeal to a dude named Kofi an shady deals with firms like Sanofi for superdrugs that go under the radar from Sarajevo to Zadar, can’t run can’t hide yo comin on the ride legs astride sacrifice a virgin bride on an altar stone she layin prone feel the nose-cone hear the drone Red Devil make her moan from Salford Quays to the Andes we got the candies from Nam to the Dam we behaving like Zandies, so Google that you twat or ask David Platt a buh beh jeh deh guguh de lat yeah that’s scat, cat, but it make no sense so up against the fence an drop the pretence it should be an offense to be so dense but yo blue Magoo so Zou Bisou Bisou feast yer eyes on the prize we nineteen you two so what you gonna do when the Roon bites you like Shamu with his trainer it’s a no-brainer the galaxy is a planar swirling container a dervish entertainer with ziggurat insaner than the rabble an their babble spittin words like scrabble come an have a dabble Bertie Bitter Ferg’s no quitter chasin triumphs broadcast from the Crystal Palace transmitter raisin a titter to litter the sky like glitter when we reds dance and advance like a knight with a lance viewed askance by the giants of France Germany Spain where Andean cocaine arrives on the plane up the arse of the mule they call Raoul poor fool be pickin it out of his stool an bound for Liverpool no money for fuel just two Berretas some poorly scrawled letters an a suspicion his betters are bad bedwetters it’s Chilean Charlie drivin yer barmy fer Isabel Sarli from Medellin to Cali throw in the towel yer hybrid monkey-owl a scat cat sat on a rat whose stalkin a gecko that looks like Deco but it’s really Edin Dzeko an there’s nowhere to run to baby nowhere to hide it’s a nause with no get-out clause running into quicksand that looks like mint sauce man city are shite they’re collapsing as I write cos now is the zeit when Fergie’s Army bite in vintage black an white like the Orca with a ragdoll they need more than panadol to salve this pressure valve our candle too hot to handle an we carryin it through scandal like a vandal nerves of steel an yeah the Bittermen will kneel. Well, after that blast of utter nonsense the last eight people who bother to read me will finally throw the towel in as my fellow wordcunts of United We Stand rejoice in my final destruction. Or not. Do zombies fart?

Riffle in the Sluicebox

Friday, June 1st, 2012

Inspired by the recent adventures of Giggs and Scholes, I’ve embarked on a regime designed to transform this balding fatty into a ripped ol’ motherfucker: P90X, elliptical, running, yoga, you name it. Might even get a bike to ride to work. Who knows, maybe I’ll be on the plane with the lads come June, you can call me a loon, but that shower of wank have been walking the plank (yeah Roon) as winter ends and fair weather friends come out to play, and scrap the sleigh, I’ll be hittin the road with a lightening load, see the blubber recede like I’m livin on speed, but I’m gettin very nervous now we’re headin for spring, an the ABU perverts gettin ready to sing, they all makin motions wid their arms just like wings and they prayin that we crash again an don’t win a thing, but it doesn’t really matter if we bring it or not, cos we gonna fill Old Trafford fer the n’th game on’t trot, an sneering down upon em we the haves they have-not, seen a ground jam-packed like this in a supposed boycott, they don’t get our mindset consequently stinkpots, aaand that’s enuff. I don’t even fucking live there, so who am I to write about “us” filling OT? What I’m trying to say is we come from a cuntoid nation and we’re the Coca Cola of the football league. All the patriots detest us ‘cos we’re so massive. Anyway, Scott Parker was made England kapitan and his boss Harry is soon to be Commander-in-Chief. How nice. Don’t the media get giddy when something “properly” English, i.e. southeast-based, seems imminently successful? The beautiful people at the Emirates make Stamford Bridge look like East Fife FC and that wispy sideburned twat Theo Ballcock hobnobbing with royalty, ‘cos he wrote some shit books. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve got nowt against Parker Bowles. Charlie made the right move there. You never forget the proper dirty bastards, Peoples’ Princess or fucking not. Ah, England. A nation in drunken paralysis with a mahoosive inferiority complex based partly in truth. A manic land where indulgent brains inflate with imaginary memories, then hit the jagged rocks of reality where they burst and flutter like condoms on a vile beach. The jagged rocks are, of course, international football tournaments. Our lads, raised on a strict diet of spuds, must face athletes whose mothers make a different tea every night, each meal boasting a 400-page history stretching beyond Moorish palaces and medieval pirates. Today’s noble Englisher is a bollocksed fusion of savage tribalism and pampered ignorance. He thinks M&S boxed dinners are a gourmet treat and well worth a tweet. Hybridised and bloated, one minute he’s in it to win it an the nexx he juss floated. Maybe he’s fighting bulls down in Spain or the official supplier of Googleplex cocaine, or he took a golden parachute off to the coast, where he spends his time thinking and burning his toast, or he’s a priest of soccernomics with prophesies rich, or taking brass rubbings down at Hanging Ditch, but most likely he’s just shrunk from shootin up junk, or suppin’ Belgian ale that was brewed by a monk. I’ve forgot what I was on about now. Was it JOLEoN, JOLEoN, JOLEoN, JOLEoN, I’m begging of you, please don’t be a cunt?…no, that wasn’t it…and cunt doesn’t rhyme with monk, anyway…hang on…oh yeah, I may have to come out of retirement and rescue this nation’s hopes on the international stage. I would, of course, require my own dressing room, mainly so I could hide my superabundant man jugs. But once out on the pitch motherfuckers better KNOW…they only one letter difference between “Vaseline” and “Baseline” an I got em all friekened o’ me diminishin waistline, they be runnin like bitches wid their arses drippin, knowin this fatty gonna give em a whippin, an the midfield’s shut tight like a membranous filter, so we got em willy-nilly as we disrupt they kilter, but I’m dreamin like a knobhead as I type this shit out, and I’ve gone over the deadline while dreamin this rout, smokin clip-assisted reefer as I head down the wing, droppin magic beans as I send in an in-swing, an Pea is on the end an it’s bulging the string an it’s FUCKIN YEAH!!!! Innit. Oh, ‘ang on, Pea plays for Mexico, not England. Stick it up yer arse, then, ‘Arry. Not interested.
In other news, the man who is possibly Quadrant Two’s most famous son, Openshaw Monkee Davy Jones, has died. Gorton’s John Thaw, and cricketer Roy Collins, born in Clayton, are also in the running, but I vote Diminutive Davy as the Q2 main man. Not bad, really. Very famous. A lad from the slums made it to the pinnacle of Lalaland Mountain. To what do we attribute this meteoric ascent? Ecolicious endocriminology? Noble DNA? Tip yer hat to psychology, it won’t go away. Davy was a red who apparently hated city, according to the dogma circulated by UWS letter-writer Ramon. But this is Manchester and we need the proof.

The Weakest Link

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Sound the bells, Quasi lad, ‘cos Easter’s coming early this year. David de Jesus is undergoing a slow crucifixion, me hearties, and the only man to benefit from it is Michael Scapegoat Carrick. De Jesus performs like the image off the Turin shroud come to life. Two-dimensional (needs some chips, pudding and gravy), faded, ghostly; such is David’s intangibility in the box. Meanwhile, Scapegoat is enjoying a half-decent resurgence, much needed in the absence of virtually the entire team due to injury, tinkering and alleged punishments. There will always be weak spots in systems, all the way down to the infinitesimal. Inside atomic nuclei there are particles that jump onto other particles in patterns at fantastic speed, making sure the atom doesn’t blow itself apart due to incompatible electronics. Football teams are the same; there’s always a negative point, relative to the rest of the team. The trick is making the team cohesive enough that the negative spot moves from man to man, always away from the action. Barcelona are organised so that their negative spots are actually luxuries; an extra man in support during attack, or defensive play, or most likely overkill in the middle where an extra brick in the wall can win or lose a game. Much of this is due to the fact Messi is worth two good men while Iniesta and Xavi are worth one and a half apiece. United, on the other hand, seem to think it’s OK to put their weakest link anywhere they want. Even in goal. When Liverpool scored their first at Anfield in the cup game, why did Lindegaard start warming up on the touchline? Was he told to? Either way, it was a sickening sight; does any team playing remotely sensible football take chances like that at Anfield, or anywhere, really? I can’t decide whether SAF’s in cahoots with King Kenny, or he’s just hellbent on taking the piss and never quite getting away with it. Nani’s implosion, the Evra-Suarez affair, and now Lindegaardgate. The place seems mysterious and cursed, though I suspect more earthly reasons lie behind our failings.

Anyway, enough drivel. I’m experiencing the mildest winter in over a decade here in Connecticut. Time is flying and the buds will soon be popping. It seems like only yesterday we were commemorating Munich in 2011. I don’t feel right making emotional proclamations about the Babes. I never saw them play as a team, or felt the excitement build as the 1957-58 season gathered pace. I wasn’t even born. All I have are quotes and film footage and photographs of those young men who died. It doesn’t mean I don’t feel the pain. But listening to first hand accounts from the tribal elders is infinitely more powerful than listening to kids getting their Stone Island knickers in a knot ‘cuz some scouser (who himself wasn’t even born when Hillsborough happened) sings their famous Munich song. It’s time for dignity, but if the boys wanna fight you better let ‘em. And if someone else tells someone on a fucking internet message board that that song’s about the Quality Street gang please ask them what they actually know about THAT as well. And if YOU think I just said the famous Munich song is about the QS please determine the highest toilet in Manchester and have a good wank on it. And if you think by TOILET I meant council estate and by HIGHEST I meant Roflcoptr, then – alright, I’m as confused as you are, now, you cunt. Thanks a fucking lot. And I was doing so well for a while there an’ all…typical.

Anyone who understands my words knows I detest the clichéd bollocks that many partisan football writers serve up, including United supporters, but Paul Scholes has really got me going lately. Someone should compile a YouTube of his recent exploits with the Kinks’ proto-punk tune as a soundtrack, because Scholesey’s back like a superhero wreaking havoc with opponents’ defences. We were knocked out of the cup because of our weakest link, yes, but also because our strongest one was substituted. How long will we wait before another can fill those regal ginger boots? I bet Paul hasn’t got his fucking Twitter handle monogrammed on the bastards either. Having said that, he communicates with SAF via homing pigeon, so it’s swings and roundabouts I suppose.

I don’t make a lot of money from my writing (“No shit!” they shout, holding up “MIKE DUFF WALKS ON WATER” banners and wearing “MEATBAG BITES YER BALLS” scarves) because writing is for deranged hopheads who dream of fame and fortune while deliberately avoiding it. If we were mid-table every year it’d just be more funny words to sling at the shirts. Trophy winning has been fun but it’s not a patch on getting wasted and nearly nicked week in and week out, while ducking and diving through the tangled lianas of the Manchester ecosystem. I suppose it’s apt that some of us are now corpulent and old and happy to stand by as the young boys wanna fight. Yer better let ‘em.

Zombie Football Apocalypse

Thursday, January 5th, 2012

The balmy weather has finally broke and my teeth are chattering like Yootha Joyce on meth. Sub-zero winds sheeting across from the fields, all the logs lashed down under several tarps outside. Fucking New England. It’s like a nuclear winter. At least I have my satellite dish and 56-inch TV. Ian Darke and Macca telling it like it is. Fox Soccer Channel in HD. I saw a coyote the other day outside an abandoned farmhouse it has adopted for the winter. Wild animals living amongst us here in Plasticland. The suburbs expanding their manicured tendrils out into the forests. More and more yanks are getting into the English Premier League these days. They watch it on telly and talk about it using their own vocabulary, which sadly is being slowly adopted in the UK. Expressions like “assist”, plus a growing obsession with stats and Man of the Match (soon to become MVP, mark my words) indicates that a dead-end has been reached. It’s the start of the Great Cultural Merging, the thin end of the zombie apocalypse wedge. Some of them have even been over there to attend games, probably infecting other shitheads with their agonising suburban virus in the perfect cunt storm. I picture hordes of vacant-eyed ghouls swarming the filthy neglected streets near football stadia. JCL disease mutated into a cell-dissolving epidemic that causes peoples’ flesh to drip like candle wax, melting their replica kits, sagging until they are skeletal from the waist up. Their internal organs protected by polythene megastore bags worn as shirts, their legs a mass of oozing nodules, scaly and hardened under an ozone-less sky. Lurching, Frankenstein’s monster-like, in the general direction of foodstuffs. The only thing that keeps them going are the brains of real football fans who they pursue relentlessly, to gang-scoff, sinking rotten teeth into their skulls and draining off the knowledge they so greatly desire. The fact that their team has bought success, or is controlled by heartless aliens with no emotional investment, doesn’t bother them. They just want to devour the brains of real fans and wallow in the fake glow of fake success. Their faces bear a familiar lifeless gormless soulless dickless cuntless expression as they stumble towards their Mecca, dripping flesh and blood and the occasional eyeball. Stooping, scooping armfuls of manure from the police horses and launching it aimlessly into the air. Unintelligible cackling and moaning passes for banter, and their terrace “songs” sound like the ghostly strains of a foreign army dying of hypothermia. These clueless fuckers will be roaming the streets looking for people like you, as the petrol runs out and Jaffa Cakes rot on supermarket shelves.

And don’t be thinking it’s limited to the British game. Longtime sports fans here in the US also complain about the JCL invasion. Red Sox fans at Fenway Park, actually glad that the Sox were shite this past season, hoping it would send the zombies to Yankee Stadium instead. We’ve all been JCL’s at one time or another, but it usually assumes a more innocent form than the current hideousness. For instance, I remember a record stall in the Underground Market around 1977-78. We used to go and look at the records and the lad behind the counter probably thought we were clueless 11 year old divs. When he learned I had a copy of the Angelic Upstarts’ “Teenage Warning” on red vinyl I saw a new respect in his eyes, although it could have been raw hatred, I’m not sure. Unfortunately, these JCL football zombies have no such devices at their disposal. All they have are jester hats, face paint, mobile devices and Estuary accents. Argh! You know what you need to do, Tatlock. Move fast and move now.

Otherwise we’ll be living in garbage strewn tent cities surrounded by immense packs of wild dogs. Fox Soccer Channel, Sky and MOTD will still broadcast intermittently via pirate relay stations that strive to remain undetected by the melting football zombies. You’ll have to keep fit, living on veggie shakes and riding stolen vehicles. In a croc-skin hat with a bottle of Jose Cuervo and a pair of .50 calibre revolvers, mowing through the stumbling plague victims like a speedboat over a bloody swamp. Your missus nagging you from the back seat for drinking and driving and not wearing a seatbelt.  Fuck all changed there, then, I suppose. Only kidding, Tatlock. Always wear a seatbelt. Most of the worst cases are Chelsea and city supporters hellbent on finding delectable football brains to pick at and glean a clue. They also eat babies, the sick bastards. Mutated footballers’ carcasses litter the freeways, their egos inflated as big as dinosaurs but completely harmless.

In the meantime the David De Gea nightmare continues, Phil Jones is thanking the stars he’s not Colin Gibson following his howler in Geordieland (talking of bloated mindless animals in replica shirts) and the Bittermen are being professionally bastardly in ways that would make Muammar Gaddafi cringe if he wasn’t in a hole somewhere with a big knife up his arse. Goodbye…

XXXodus

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

This year a new .xxx domain was introduced for adult websites, sparking a demented stampede as purveyors of digital wanking fodder and normal civilians scrambled to protect their name from porn pirates. I recently searched for manutd.xxx on GoDaddy and learned it’s been secured. Shame; I could have started a belting site with birds wearing United socks and fuck all else. Maybe even had Dwight Yorke on as a special guest. Never mind. I also tried mcfc.xxx and guess what? Yep, the dense blue cunts haven’t protected it. I could buy it right now for $100 and you still can (probably). Some decent photoshopped images of Balotelli with a hotdog up his arse, or Tevez sucking Mancini’s salami would have gone viral like herpes, y’all. I predict a mass exodus from the traditional .com and .net domains by the flesh industry. I also predict another mass exodus, only this one isn’t funny; the returning to the roost for all those city fans who came across to the red side of Manchester back in the dark old days. Think about it. They left their original team for one that was more successful. There’s no reason they won’t do it again, with even more justification in their Judas brains. It’ll start when the Citizens have their first title, and are making serious headway in Europe (so that’ll be now, then). First they’ll craftily manipulate pub conversations back to their schooldays, hoping someone chimes in with the usual “You used to be a blue twat!” jibe. Next, they’ll start polishing the secret turd that lies deep in their heart, or at least rolling it in glitter. That sparkly turd was their first love. There’ll be tutting, head-shaking, as they rustle the Sunday paper sports section and request not Holt’s but John Willie Lees bitter. That’s when they’ll give it, “Well, y’know I WAS always a blue when we were kids wannah?” before vanishing in a poof of rancid smoke from the ghost dimp of Peter Swales. It’s only a matter of time. How many of these weasels still have their sky-blue, white and burgundy scarves from the 70s, hidden away in the loft, just in case…? I’ve seen the future, Tatlock, and it’s ugly.

The Etihad is pulling them home (which is confusing for ‘em cos they were at Maine Road when they left) where they’ll be reunited with their high school sweetheart. Fact is, Bertie was just waiting, like a feral dog in a shallow hole, pining for its master to feed it. And now the feeding has begun, and the secret bitters will return to their vile slum. They’ll now have intelligence, garnered from being allowed into Red conversations, from reading Red literature and learning Red respect for tradition and history, and most of all from PRETENDING to support the Reds for decades, thousands of matches, hours of footage, innumerable memories of quality times engraved like the ripples of a Red sea on the horizon of their minds.

An if they need an excuse to hurl abuse at the useless shower turned the season sour, when the pseudo-Germans delivered their sermons, sent us packing without attacking, and their appetite for Thursday night, takes second place in the steeplechase, to the Champions League an brain fatigue, all us reds reading back page spreads, bout the boys in blue an their how d’yer do, cos the nightmare’s ere an it’s fuckin queer, but an Arab’s better than a septic debtor, who drains our blood an sells us Bud, in plastic bokkles for plenty cockles, an hearts are cold cos it’s getting old, but there’s always porn if you’ve got the horn.

Yep, always that dot triple X. Did anyone actually expect the game we got in Basel, the frazzle, blue light on the tiers that dazzle, where’s Ravel, awaitin the gavel, an on this yank channel, the announcer wore flannel, but the pseudo-Jerries picked their chances like cherries, and Rooney was there, combin his hair, hidin from crosses, collateral losses, an a sigh of relief when the ref blew his queef, cos it’s less games to play, so it’s easier pay, and you’d do the same, an feel their blame, an United are shit, there yer go now it’s writ, cos we’re complacent cunts used by Germans as grunts, from human migrations through continental nations over thousands of years on icy frontiers, we’re the hooligan slob that won’t shut its gob, flotsam an jetsam, from Hastings to Wrexham  – just detritus, racked with arthritis, an buildin em buildings in exchange for their shillings, then leaving an weaving, west is the best, delivered by’t river, North Atlantic romantic, triffic Pacific, tribal motions cross oceans, a vast monolithic, secretly captured in old hieroglyphic, but now we are static, our boozing’s erratic, we could learn a lot from the folks Asiatic, we’re destined for belly, too much vermicelli, sat watchin X Factor addicted to telly, Britain an yanks we’re the junkie food cranks, an the Queerbeasts are buyin and sellin our banks. Shame, really…Europa League here we come, then. Let’s all laugh at city? Anyone?

The Tashmen Cometh

Sunday, October 30th, 2011

Well, it’s been an age since I last wrote one of these. So long, in fact, that I suspect the editor left me out of the last issue and gave some no-mark a tryout. But now I’m back, assuming I was ever away, with some firm words for whoever’s picking the team these days. When Kevin Keegan called the United selection “an insult to Liverpool” before the Anfield game I agreed totally. One of the biggest outings of the season and our best lads were left gurning and farting on the bench. Rooney’s head not being “in the right place” presumably meant it was up his arse. All because he got sent off for England a few days earlier. Who gives a fuck? It ain’t fuckin rocket science. I believe Ferg’s afflicted with Nou Camp Syndrome; he believes that every time he saves benched players for later in the game they’ll score, we’ll win, and he’ll get that dog-with-two-dicks feeling all over again. Some people said don’t knock the master; wait until we beat city at OT, and then apologise to him. So I held my tongue and promised I’d make this article one long “Sorry Lord Ferg you’re ace” type effort if we beat the not-all-that-Bitters-anymore. Well…we all know how that one turned out don’t we? Piss at Liverpool, nearly beaten despite a 2 goal start vs. Basel at home, then pasted by the worst people imaginable. And they put that banner up for the silverware jubilee, “the impossible…made possible”. Named the United Road after Lord Ferg. Fucking hell, it just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it? To cap this all off we saw Frank Lampard win the World Cup for his country at Wembley and had to endure the commentator delightedly describe JT’s pat on Frank’s back as “Some cheerful banter between the Chelsea lads on the bench…” I don’t know about you but at that point I genuinely wanted to chew the Queen’s fingers off one by one and spit the bones in Trevor Brooking’s face. England cunts. To add to the stress, Connecticut was hit by an unseasonable blizzard. This fucker came so early that the leaves were still on the trees; it brought the biggest oaks to their knees, giant boughs down everywhere, driving over power lines like Red Adaire, the whole fuckin’ region blacked right out, people frantic – no generators about, it all went cunt-shaped when the lights turned off, scary as fuck like Boris Karloff, basement bleedin flooded an the log fire burnin, babies wrapped an hooded an the earth is turning, eight pissin days not a spark in sight, no fuckin internet we’re in the shite, torches-a-plenty batteries none, toaster n telly totally gone, baby needs warm milk, all that ilk, so I jump in me motor an it runs like silk, drove down south at an ‘undred plus, bought a generator as big as a bus, problem solved, congratulations, but that snow left widespread devastations. But not as widespread as the carnage wrought by our noisy neighbours at OT on that fateful day. Admittedly, United gave up before the last two or three goals were even scored, but that’s the atrocious Hobson’s Choice we’re left with. It doesn’t end there, though. There’s also been a lot of whingeing cunts claiming poppies are a symbol of bigotry, oppression, racism, you name it. These are the same shithouses who strut about with their shithouse mates, imagining themselves to be revolutionaries, or even freedom fighters. Most, if not all of them, would be on their toes in adrenalin surrender frenzy if ever confronted by the gun. But fuck those people. Attention-seeking gorps. Admittedly, those who champion the morphine secreting flower tend to be those who use expressions like “Star Track”, “skating ring” and “card shark”, but that’s cos they’re the people, the 99%, those who compose the meat of humanity. And they champion wearing it not whacking it up yer arm. So think on. You wannabe-a-liberal-victim tedious tit. I’m not gonna lie to you. While writing this I’ve consumed strong Belgian ales and some Blue Moonshine, the most powerful herb I’ve ever encountered. Meditated on the Manchester Equation, concluding that the ratio of sound people to inbreds is inversely correlated to the square root of the linear distance from town in any direction – but only insofar as one remains in the same Quadrant. Quadrants are unequal in quality and distribution. If you were to travel through Quadrant One and into Quadrant Two, you would find that sound people and not-rights would assume a layered arrangement not unlike the gaseous swirls of some alien globe. The sad part is, the not-rights are dancing atop bonfires and abandoned cars, like semi-human beings flush with the dawn of their arrival. City dominating world football is proof positive that civilisation is on the brink of total collapse, indeed is part of that collapse. We’re heading into a Planet of the Apeths scenario that inevitably leads to widespread dildo use among the new militia that will come to dominate the Earth. Fellow reds, I hope you’re ready to fight to the death…the Tashmen Cometh.

Home Grown

Friday, October 28th, 2011
Since our second goat kid was born I’ve lived in a smudge bubble of sleep deprivation, delectable cuddling and hysterical wailing. The new football season has given me some distractions in the form of our young stars exploding out of the traps with some irresistible movement and attitude. This flat screen TV we’ve got is proper top. Rubber dinghy rapids and gangster shit lookin 3-D cuz it’s HD. Threw out the old telly, ‘cos it was shite, got a 56-incher it was dynamite, but within a very quick fortnight, I’m takin’ it fer granted like the heat and light, become a spoilt cunt you want a bigger one, an’ stronger weed to watch it on, plus barrel loads of Holts’s bitter, an a million followers on Twitter, an yer own podcast tell it like it is, be the realest voice in this football biz, got a bomb out front an a pool out back, a Somali slave with a circumcised crack, don’t get me wrong it wasn’t me, I rescued her clit from a doctor or three, now she serves pure blunts packed with AK, an so much charles you’d need a sleigh, seems the reds are playin every day, this HD trip is the only way. Probably. But not necessarily. If I lived there I’d go all the time. Then again, this telly clapping lark is pretty good; no spending all me wages, no crowded pubs full of 30-year old geeks in Adidas reissues thinking they breathe the history of Casual, feel the pain of Munich and are all-round martial artists (despite never having thrown or received a punch outside their vapid video games), no queuing for plastic bottles of Bud, no tram/bus/taxi home pissed out of my swede, no missus waiting with the rolling pin, no – hang on, who am I kidding? It’d be bang on, boozing and bantering like bejasus wi’ the Cottonopolonians, surely. But the telly’s hitting the spot. The 8-2 over Arsenal was rampantly surreal, and Hurricane Irene didn’t knock out the signal. The young kids are bewildering; Smalling, Wellbeck, Jones, Young, Cleverley, Rooney, plus Chicharito, Valencia, Anderson and Nani, means we’ll be pushing the competition all the way again this season. The first six of those are all English, a startling statistic when compared to that fly-by-night magpie’s dosshouse across the city. When they did Tottenham 1-5 they cannot have known what awaited them later that day at OT. Anderson’s bizarre stare into Szczęsny’s eyes while Rooney struck home the fourth had echoes of his previous Agadoo stunt on Lehman in 2008 as Hargreaves put that free-kick in. Unfortunately, Hargo’s leg
came off as he hit the ball and has never been found. Football junkies have quested for it ever since. According to legend it is lodged high up in an old chain-pull cistern in a pub toilet outside Keighley. Rooney, on the other hand, is made of different stuff. His legs are pure man-meat slathered with liquidised tonsils from the throats of cheetahs. Not very sanitary as you can imagine. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger; I know people on the inside. They tell me things.
Fergie had his Holy Grail, an he grabbed it by the tail, back in A.D. ‘ninety-nine, washed Treble down wi’ finest wine, our first League Cup A.D. ‘ninety-two, another excuse to ‘ave a few, liquid diet in the Rainy City, where the grass is green an the girls are pretty, easy life with beer goggles on, shaggin ‘em with or without Avon, a chemist ‘ead or a hippy chick, they all feel the same when they on yo dick, don’t let her blow you if it’s Yom Kippur, smokin’ home grown an bein immature, cuz I’m in the States soakin up the sun, in two minds whether to buy a gun, off a Puerto Rican in a parking lot, to take right home an have a frot, the gun that is, not the lad, but you knew that, Tatlock, didn’t yoh?
I sincerely hope you’re on drugs while you’re reading this because I’m on drugs while I’m writing it, with “Krafty” blowing my ears out on the phones, phasing into Iggy Pop’s “I’m a Real Wild Child”. That’s correct; I’m an old cunt living the life of a teenager. Men now remain as kids forever, livin till their boats should be like shoe leather, but it’s metrosexual man-bag dreams, internet warriors an facial crèmes, reverse aging they got the power, inspired by skirts like Beckhambauer, an Ronny Naldo adoptin a kid, they got him on’t’ books at Real Madrid, but back to’t craic, not the circumcised knack, I’m talkin bollocks banter ‘n’ attack-attack-attack, Reds runnin down’t wings - speeds measured in Mach, Tony V’s hit the sound barrier – a capybara on his back, but he don’t give a shite, no he don’t give a cack, cuz Ashley’s on track is he gonna have a whack? No, pass it off to Roon with his bacterial plaque, he dummies an it rolls right back, to Wellbeck who does a mad switchback, and buries the fucker in the onion sack.

Peterloo Mascara

Friday, October 28th, 2011

So we beat the Bitters at “Wembly” with a gaggle of gifted kids, having been fluked into a 0-2 deficit at halftime. Some people – usually the losers – claim the Charity Shield isn’t a real game, but I think the sight of Micah Richards’ studs-up challenge on Ashley Young tells another story. Ironically, city are using the “under strength” excuse, despite having all their main steamers on the pitch that day (excepting Tevez). De Gaea endured a nightmare 45, especially their second goal, when his little pogo motion took him out of sync with Dzeko’s shot, thereby delaying his dive until it was too late. That’s right; I’m a goalkeeping specialist now.
History flutters its eyelashes and a million monkeys jump to attention, defying convention and avoiding pretension, Scholesey’s orange napper’s got midfield in the crapper, alas, poor Carrick, he’s on fly agaric, I knew him well, tin-bath Geordie bell, when his mam she ‘ad nuffink, except an old cufflink, that was once Supermac’s, made from recycled tacks. What’s wrong with Fletch, that poor Scottish wretch, he’s a rake on the take, an he needs a good steak, while Nani’s emerging, downfield he is surging, a harbinger of doom, statue in living room, and he does like a strop, but where will it stop, I can’t take it no more; a fucking big face on the planet next door? A boat-race on Mars, gazin’ out at the stars, rocket fuel in our cars, let’s put some aside while we still know the score, ‘cos the planet is Red an’ – OK, none of that made any sense, I know.
Arsenal are fragmenting, with Flabbergast off to Catalunya, Bendtner off to anywhere, and Wenger probably off his head. Ever since the Handbags Era and the food fight (not to mention apeman Keown mocking Ruud after his penalty miss) I have nursed a strong urge to piss on Highbury/Emirates from a hovering Harrier. The only downside to this is that city could be guaranteed a permanent slot closer to the top. And that’s never a good thing.
One thing I’m sick of, no, not Paul Dickov, is the Bitters’ small mindset, must be a blind get, to not see the irony, of their Prima Donna tyranny, dissin’ Roberto, that poor little squirt-oh, an’ that Ballotelli, should give him the wellie, I watched them at “Wembly”, they became very trembly, when de Gaea cocked up, thought he’d won ‘em the cup, but it’s a shield you daft gets, an’ despite all our debts, we cleaned up again, it was on News at Ten, right after the rioting, an’ a bit about dieting, showed Nani break free, outran shite Kompany, and buried the ball, just like fuck all, and the Bittermen cried, and denied and denied, that the shield’s important, as is Rooney’s new implant, Colleen must be buzzin’, his napper is fuzzin’, but the streets are aflame, and no-one’s to blame, for kids who just burn things, livin’ on Burger Kings, Planet o’t’ Scrotes, an’ carnival floats, bearin’ footballing prizes, in various sizes, will not satisfy, the hungry magpie, cos all that glitters, has gone down the shitters, an’ the youth want a piece, an’ they’re not gonna lease, they ain’t lookin’ to buy, as the missiles fly, but United’s in debt, Glazers not finished yet, there’s a chance they’ll sell, to ‘im from’t’ oil well, while the Megastore cranks, and Gilgamesh wanks, ‘cos the boycotts ‘ave died, town’s fires subside, but I’m ‘ere in the States, degrees high ninety-eights, Nu England Bayou, climate changin’ hey-ho, an effect domino, the odd tornado, but enough about me, wharrabout Ste, with his infected groin, an’ American coin, with forehead so crinkled, his bollocks all wrinkled, he’s on his way out, with a bad case of gout, while Kenny the Saviour, and the gifts that he gave yer, stands forlorn on the side, his eyes open wide, ‘cos the Red Sox are watchin’, his face is all blotchin’, he’s spent a pile, but they’ll lose by a mile, ‘cos Carroll’s a drunk, an’ Suarez smokes skunk, an’ Henderson’s shit, but Phil Jones is a hit, and so is Young Ashley, attacking so brashly, and it’s time to stop this, it’s turning to piss…
So, another season to look forward to, and though we say it every year, this one could be a biggie. The performances in the States and against city at Wembley have raised everyone’s expectations, with good reason. The whole Sneijder to United saga, a soap opera of truly gash proportions, and bested only by Ronnie-to-Real and Cesc-to-Barca, has become little more than a tedious sideshow, knowing the likes of Cleverley is waiting to prove himself. Once young Tom gets his tendency to let fly, Gibsonecstasy style, under control, he will be an asset. Hopefully not one we sell to Sunderland for five million, though.
I’ve got my BBQ on, my slave girls waving huge peacock tail fans languidly in my general direction, and a hard-on that’s gonna have to wait until halftime to get sorted. Are YOU ready to rumble, fellow Reds..?

Unbelievable

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Have you ever been stoned off yer face an had a thousand brilliant hypotheses, but not wrote em down and consequently lost every last one of the fuckers, but it probably made no sense in the morning anyway, faded like a pair of Tesco jeans you’d mistook for Levis in the exploding firework tangents of THC to the brain insane as the scissoring tendrils of cosmic expansion fail to explain how the Milky Way is a giant spunk stain or why Rooney’s dustbin’s full of Rogain cuz he fink like Samson the hair is to blame for dippin form so he’s feelin shame that slavery to fame, of bein too tame when the television call his name out loud to the crowd an the furrow he’s ploughed might turn out bollocks like the Turin shroud, all for nowt, no doubt, runnin outta stout, givin grief to the thief when you’re low on beef an a thought gets caught in a coat you’ve bought like a moth, a sloth or unsightly wart, showbiz with no jizz, a frumpy block on yer granny-shaggin cock while yer screamin brood’s got one eye on the clock, an Fergie’s in the ear of the fourth official, claimin his outlook’s prejudicial and we’re deep – well deep – into injury time, playin like a team from the five n dime (a dozen), ten a penny its British cousin, Crossroads Benny with his broken antennae, against Norwich two but Arsenal many, so what’s the scrip, why the slip an when we goin see Nani flip, an Tony V beat fools for free, send crosses through’t mush to Little Pea; prays pre-game int centre circle cravin salvation like a newborn turtle crawlin to’t light in’t shimmerin sea whence all life sprang ‘cludin’ you n me, then bung – we’re talking Park Ji Sung – racin like a fish with a transplated lung, tearin like a greyhound whose arse got stung, by the knife n fork when the dinner bell rung he sends the ball to Ashley Young, with cheekbone frown an skin o’ brown he swerves inside an bends it round the goalie who is on his arse an sympathy is sparse, they’ve took it back to the middle, rarin to go like they’re on the fiddle, but they’re cookin on Calor, not short on valor, so let’s put some red in that prison pallor, those mind games forever, Ferg’s life endeavour, chippin away at whoever’s in second as the scousers’ perch it beckoned, now we’re scenario bestest-case, like a dirty big spiked mace on their stricken face, sad losers think they’re givin chase, United’s number one just in case, you didn’t notice an it’s fuckin ace, but countin chickens what the dickens plenty crumbs n finger lickins like the FA champs an Europa tramps, for second rate managers and their aide-de-camps, cos money’s not everythin it can’t buy love, an a hamstring’s just a hamstring innit, Guv, to the toppermost supporters of the biggest club where the dream is real an so’s the craic in’t pub, while the problem child refuses to go on as sub, so welcome to a place that’s small and wet, like the patch on yer sheet where you won’t beget, any fond memories cos they’ll all forget, an Carlos doesn’t want to be Mancini’s pet, giant ego maybe – but whingeing like a dingo took yer baby? – or Hart’s been replaced by Massimo Taibi, Hargreaves and Vieira (who’s changed his name to “Sarah”) are thinking MLS an a life in the Sierra, is preferable to Mancky, them fannies gone all yankee, but sunshine an ackers is another word for “knackers”, when yer peak has passed yer join the lower caste, Beckham stands aghast at English football’s motley mast, an its flag is flyin high, just a pound sign in the sky, for the mercenary type who are always on the gripe, they’re forever bendin rules an lookin down on mules, cos they’re thoroughbred twats with the morals of rats, keep their shit buried – just like fuckin cats, incapable of compunction, hid by super injunction, while they lappin up the choicest minge while you just get dysfunction.

Anyway, as I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted by one of my eighty six other personalities, when you’re the worse for wear on the weed and the brain is exploding like Roman candles, each ball of coloured fire trailing new ideas outward, outward in jolting streams of realisation, you do start to have some funny thoughts. Everyone has an opinion, even if it’s just a carbon copy of the bloke’s next to you. Opinions lead to ideas, which cause people to develop new ways of doing things. For instance the other night I was talking to a spider about geology (or was it airbeds, I forget?) and it said something to me I’ll never forget: “Biggie Smalls is the illest.” Just like that, out of the blue. And the worst part was, its voice was identical to that of Emlyn Hughes, which kind of makes sense, but it was still unbelievable.

Soap and Water

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

So the crane fly and the Jack Russell have gone. We all knew it was coming, but the sense of vulnerability is physical now it’s happened. Can’t we sign Shay Given and Joey Barton while we regroup? Take them on loan? My head is whirling here on the plastic prairie. We’ve been on a six-hour tornado warning tonight. Several twisters touched down less than ten minutes away. Hospitals are packed with trauma victims (makes a change from gunshot, I suppose). A cowboy caravan will roll into town in the morning, offering expert construction advice. But fuck that. VDS and the Ginger Prince have fucking fucked off. Two gaping holes remain, like punctures inflicted by some alien drilling machine in the Madcunian crust, or a giant vampiric beast called Time. It’s draining the lifeblood out of the squad, and all we have to replenish it are vague rumours of continental wunderkinds and shit declarations of “pride” in how we got our legs slapped in the CL final. Bunch of dozy knobheads. Wake up and smell the bell cheese. The terminals need a scrub, the verdegris is rampant. The spark is fucking GONE. Didn’t yer dad always tell yer to wash behind it? Alien drillers or vampiric beasts, something is TAKING resources away from this great club and GIVING nothing back in return. There’s too much schmeg in the system. And now the summer is upon us the rot will only get worse.
John Hemming’s unmasking of Bryan Giggs days ahead of the Messicre didn’t help. An attention-seeking shithouse ignorant of social media, believing he was telling the nation something sensational: Mister Wales has been shagging Missus Wales. Catherine Zeta Jones might have summat to say about that, like, but she’s mental, so it’s a one-horse race, really. Having said that, mental birds are good fun, especially the Welsh ones. Missed yer chance there, Bryan. Fucked it all up at the final hurdle. Christ, can’t footballers fulfil our dreams anymore? Oh, forgot about you, Scholesy, sorry. And Edwin. Yep, you two have been gigantic. Not gigantic enough to beat city and Barcelona at Wembley but pretty decent anyway. Pair of fucking slackers. Only joking lads. Fucking CUNTS. Oops, Jesus, what am I saying? – I’m a bit pissed and writing daft things. It’s alcohol-induced Tourette’s, honestly. I’m just feeling vulnerable and lashing out at easy targets. Do one more year each, you sad twa- alright, I’ll let it go.
The one silver lining in the Giggs saga was telling my wife that the player she admires most for his skill and humility – comparing him to me as an example of a “good man” – has been boning some minx behind his wife’s back. Her shattered illusion of Giggs’ perfectness means I can drink even more and if she says anything I can wag my drunken finger at her and say, “A few scoops is nothin’…Giggs…look what he did….”
Silver linings, aye. Speaking of which, outside this window there’s an amber sky below an opaque black cloudline whose deathly tendrils keep threatening to become twisters. Constant media warnings; tornadoes ten minutes away in Springfield. At least four dead already. The weather’s crazy this year. My hypothesis is that we’re in the midst of an Epoch transition. Gonna be a lot of things going extinct, maybe even us, and what doesn’t will be forced to evolve into something else. It might not be human-caused either, so don’t be getting all ashamed, or proud, or whatever.
Which brings me to the “pride” issue. All those who hammered on about how well United played against Barca at Wembley. I assume they were watching a different match than me, because I saw nothing to be proud of. I’m not saying I was ashamed either, but proud? You’ve gotta be midnight tokin’ pal. Living away from Manchester for 17 and a half years makes you see how biased you lot back in the Old Country are. I watched a United game live on telly with my dad once. After about two minutes of totally objective commentary, he jumped up, saying, “Ah’m not listenin’ ter this! Bleedin’ hate us, they do!” and proceeded to mute the TV while listening to a Manchester radio commentary instead. From the radio issued the voices of an ex-United player and a known United fan. Rattling on about the dirty tactics and inferiority of the opposition compared to the noble reds. My dad turned and said, “Now, this is a lot more honest.” It was an eye-opener; I’d actually found the television commentary to be slightly in our favour if anything. So when all the “pride” talk erupted in the wake of our second drubbing by the Catalans, I shouldn’t have been surprised. Top reds and all that.
My wife is seven months pregnant. She’s out now having her napper done at “Hairdresser on Fire”. True story, take note Morrissey. She phoned earlier to warn me of the tornadoes, but decided to press on with the mission. The nesting instinct has kicked in. It’s a dog’s life. Building fences, chopping trees down, painting bedrooms, you name it. I’m knackered. It only seems like yesterday when I was writing these same things. That was two years ago. Our daughter is already a beast. History repeats. Time is round and space is curved. Things grow, in size and ferocity, until something happens to tame them. You start with an Eden but people come and vandalise wantonly. Then someone lays the law down and we start again. No matter how idyllic your picnic, the animals are always gonna find the party. The Hells Angels were attracted to San Francisco in the late 60s like football lads drawn to raves in the late 80s. Hillsborough was football’s Altamont. A cleansing made from pain and death. Layers of red tape and sanitation brought in to quell the panic and deflect the blame. Each time the kiddies go too far they cop for a blast of cultural Domestos. It’s up to us to provide a resistance to that and push back. Prolong the party. In 1999 we went all the way and no-one could stop us. This year we fell twice at Wembley, with the soul of the world against us. Everyone wanted city to win the semi. Nobody expected us to beat Barca, including ourselves. Two years ago we won our third title on the bounce. I was waiting for our first child to appear while fretting over Planet X and the New World Order. Nothing’s changed in that department. Something mysterious and irresistible waits in our future; an answer that casts an immense shadow on the present. The universe is constantly morphing from a simpler to a more complex state, and this thing is both complex and simple. It’s a transcendent bridge between epochs, an evolutionary punctuation. But I’m rambling here, so I’ll stop.
Or will I? Sir Alex isn’t gonna be around forever. The successor must soon be chosen. Recent developments on the Iberian Peninsula have brought a certain Special One’s pedigree into doubt. Typical of football’s fickleness. What Real did to Spurs, Barca did to Real. According to popular imagination, Spesh spent the second leg curled up in a ball in his hotel room, having publicly melted down in the days prior. When I phoned my dad a week or so back, he said, “We should go for that Pep Guardiola. He’s good ‘im…” No trace of irony, nothing. He thinks Pep will leave Barcelona to live in Manchester. He’s probably still listening to “honest” radio commentary while watching United on telly, an’ all. Actually, I think he’s boycotted Sky, so maybe not.
Back to this tornado-blighted side of the pond. For several weeks United tickets have topped all others, including NHL and NBA playoff tickets. Just shows you how popular we are here. The yanks are getting proper giddy at the return of their heroes. The only puzzle for me is why the MLS All-Star Game is being played in the tiny Red Bull Arena. Maybe there’s an agreement that United will help pay for America’s first purpose-built soccer stadium. With a tiny 25,000 capacity it won’t be the same as last year’s finale in Houston, that’s for sure. The game at Gillette Stadium is tempting, but the realisation that Scholes won’t be playing ever again hits me like a punch in the gut. He’s gone. The Ginger Prince has left the building. I watch the Youtube of his greatest passes for the umpteenth time and take a swig of something lively. And what of Giggs? First in and last out of the Class of ’92. Scholes has taken a training job at United, but when Giggs retires I foresee him disappearing into the valleys. Skiing Snowdonian slopes in the dead of winter night, dressed in black. Scything to a halt outside isolated stone cottages before plunging inside and shagging their luscious inhabitants to within an inch of their lives. Mister Wales, the black and silver Super Goat. Might wanna consider that aspect of him when marketing to the yanks, Mr. Gill. It has legs. Goat legs. If yer reading this, get in touch and I’ll send you the artwork. Makes the Silver Surfer look like John Terry in Moscow.
The Premier League season ended amid the FIFA fiasco, as certain managers came and went, but Mr. Blatter endured. The usual suspects played musical benches and realigned themselves with new clubs. It’s embarrassing; a clique of blokes just taking turns at doing a shit job. Like Australian telly actors. Every role has the same few cunts popping up. Hughes has left Fulham. Villa fans are still rueing the shame of Houllier kissing the Kop’s ringpiece when they played there. Rumours of Rafa coming to fill his boots sent them into frenzy; if Houllier saluted the mickeys what would fucking Rafa do? What would Jesus do? What would you do, dear Scholesy? I know, you’d kick their fucking balls in and that’s why there’s a black hole to fill in midfield. I can’t imagine who’ll manage it. See y’all next year, top reds.

The Tongue Remains the Same

Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

There’s been times this season when it looked like we couldn’t win a carrot. Arsenal were the team to beat and Rooney was on his bike. That’s not a metaphor, by the way. And now look where we are. It never rains but it pours, as the saying goes. You go months without discovering a single conspiracy theory and then nine arrive all at once. That’s how Lizard Wenger must feel at the moment. Caught in a web of weirdness so unlikely there simply has to be people pulling the strings. First Shake Man Sewer pays off Bolton to let Stoke leather them five-nil. This has the unintended side-effect of giving Arsene a false sense of security when the Invincibles (lord help us) go to the Reebok. There was the outlandish finish at the Emirates against Liverpool, the ref giving penalties like a drunken sailor. Being told to “piss off” by Kenneth Dalglish on world television. And the Spurs comeback at the Lane saw plastic bottles bouncing like ‘70s superballs. Make or break time at Bolton, despite a penalty miss, saw the Trotters walk all over crybaby Cack Wilshere and his whingeing friends. If only Chelsea could provide such epic flopping, we’d be parading the trophy round Manchester already. Oh, wait…only city are allowed a parade, I forgot. Apparently United haven’t done enough for the image of Manchester around the globe to deserve one.
Of all the planets in all the galaxies in all the parallel universes, why did I have to be marooned on this one? Chicharito’s ancestors predicted the current Age would end on December 21, 2012, and the symptoms have been deepening for a while. city winning a semi-final tells me the end is nigh. That those clowns are in a cup final is a major indicator of the coming global cataclysm. If the blues are winning on the big day with seconds remaining, get ready for a fucking big meteor shower 18 months early, ‘cos some things just aren’t meant to happen. As we approach 2012 we should expect a ton of mass extinction documentaries and other lovely stuff pertaining to the apocalypse. We have entered a period I call the Time Radius. The Time Radius is a kind of backwash we are passing through and it affects things in hideously crude ways. Cover versions of good songs by shit bands, for instance (see “Ever Fallen in Love With Someone You Shouldn’t Have?” by Fine Young Cannibals or “Dock of the Bay”, by Michael Bolton). All the remakes of films like Willy Wonka, The Italian Job, Jason and the Argonauts, Planet of the Apes – absolute and utter piss. Fact is humanity’s hit a wall somewhere up ahead, or at least our collective unconscious has, and our creativity’s washing back over us and latching onto old ideas and deciding it’s OK to recycle. But it isn’t. When a species or an entire Age hits its limit, you will see Hilary Duff singing “My Generation”, or Manchester city qualify for the FA Cup Final. It’s very strange, and very wrong. It means we are going extinct.
Then again, maybe this world ain’t so bad. There must be planets out there with truly abysmal conditions. There’s probably one where every living thing agglomerates into a single gigantic erect tongue of slime every 26 thousand years, to tower beyond the upper atmosphere when a neighbouring planet passes by so it can lick its surface and fertilise the other in an act of cosmic cunnilingus. Panspermia, they call it. I imagine that would be almost as bad as supporting city. Especially if you were down where all the phlegmy cannon fodder was, rather than up at the tip, doing the business with the superior DNA. Speaking of which, we could do Blackpool a huge favour if our title is already won when we play them last game. I like the Tangerines. If only ‘cos they’re called the Tangerines. Right now it’s looking like the three W’s are going down; Wolves, West Ham and Wigan. Hopefully the pie will survive, but not at the cost of a tangerine. One person who didn’t survive – in the cruel world of internet warriorhood, that is – is Darron Gibson. Dgibbo28’s epic Twitter fail is old news, but it serves as a solid demonstration by United fans that, though we’re #winning the league, there’s no room for complacency. Or shit players. Perhaps Dgibbo28 expected to receive a cyber arse licking from his army of adoring fans. If so, this confirms that he and those who rate him suffer collective delusions of slurpiture. To earn a global anus tonguing from the internet you’ll have to do more than kick a ball quite hard and inaccurately, Dgibbo28, you arrogant cringemonger.
While we’re on arrogant, with the upcoming United tour of the USA, I foresee myself organising a night out with Wazzaroon08, Giggsy and Chicharito. It’d be brilliant, stumbling home with Wazza and Pea, plus the bloke my missus would probably leave me for in a heartbeat….fucking hell, you could do me a proper favour there, Ryan, lad. Only joking, of course. Thankfully there’s no value in the market or she’d have fucked me off years ago. Me and Gibbo are brothers in that regard. Being married ain’t easy, and those of you who are wed know the score. It seems there’s three-month shagfests with slags you meet in pubs, or else there’s marriage. That’s the choice, as far as “relationships” go. There’s one night stands, obviously, but they don’t count. And then there’s wanking.
Wanking, as 100% of you know, was revolutionised by the internet in approx. 1997. Many of you never really went for hard copy wanking tackle; nudie books just didn’t agree with you. Too easy for yer mam to find it, slipped inside that Stranglers “No More Heroes” album. Barring the odd nicked one, or some rain-sodden discovery in a derelict house when you were 8 years old, paper-based stimulants were off the menu. I remember a cartoon on a stairwell wall in Cowper House, Kersal back in the ‘70s. It was a drawing from inside a woman’s body, with an erect knob emerging from a slit with a smiley face on the end, and the knob was saying, “It’s nice in here!” It wasn’t a bad cartoon cock, as cartoon cocks go. Some stippling on the bell-end, a few veins, and a fine distribution of spiky hairs on the bollocks, which for some strange reason were also inside the woman. That was childhood for you. Tiny things pleasing tiny minds. The odd discarded rubber Johnny under a bridge in the park was enough to send you into near-mythic delirium. Then you became old enough to have sex and go to football and act the goat. Seen it, been there, done it, etc. By the mid-90s you were 29 going on 50. Bored, shagged out, married and fat. So when the Web hit you with its motherlode of porn, you were like the American Indian in the face of alcohol. You had no resistance to it. Days spent sitting in darkened rooms, pants round ankles or completely off, tugging one’s member violently to an abominable digital compendium of tits, fannies, legs, arses, faces, hair, you fucking name it, sunbeam. It’s OK. I feel your pain. I know how it is to realise you quite fancy hanging old women. Birds with glasses on. Hairy arsed ugly slappers. Fat cunts. Freckled bony sluts. You dirty pervert. Anyway, as a result of this situation, I have developed a fantastic new Web tool for gentlemen such as yourself: The Wank Tracker. Now, I’m aware we’re in the running for a splendid Premier and UEFA Champs double, but forget that. The Wank Tracker is the answer to all your prayers. No longer will you wonder what happened to that life-changing photo set of “Brooke” (“Babes” section, oddly enough) that had you quaking with aftershock-lust all Saint Patrick’s Day, 2000, or that unbelievable redhead (“Moira”) in the lilac panties that almost sent you mental back in the scrotum-draining spring of 2002. They’re gone forever, like ships in the night, but no longer, thanks to my invention. I can see you now, a wad of bogroll at the ready, staring goggle-eyed at the clock in the lower right corner (“Christ, I’ve been at it an hour ‘ere and no joy!”), your town halls about to explode as you frantically hunt for something decent. You’ll never suffer the unrequited Barclays ever again. The Wank Tracker will record those more memorable cuntquests in a spreadsheet, week by week. All your cyber-tugging back over the years, thanks to its Web-based application. No more saggy old emergency pull-offs. Private login, encryption, the monty. You know it makes sense. And then there’s the Wank Tracker Pro, but don’t me started on that. Suffice to say it won’t be cheap.
But back to the Time Radius. The edge of human destiny. Time catches up with everything in the end, even light. Death itself dies, given enough time. Diseases can be passed through time – by genetic inheritance. It’s horrible, but these little glitches in the molecular structure finish us off eventually. Even if your name’s Poly Styrene or Buckminster Fullerene, for that matter. Unfortunately Poly’s recent passing was somewhat eclipsed by heated discussions involving city fans’ disrespect for United’s history and the songs they like to sing about us. That many United supporters had been so moved by the screening of the TV film “United”, despite Matt Busby’s family insisting it was unrealistic and innacurrate, didn’t help; the Bittermen chanted about “Munichs” the very next night at Blackburn. Like Mr. Ferguson once said, “they’re a small club with a small club mentality”. We’re both made of the same stuff, but it seems we just have more. More quality, more trophies, more fans (both local and otherwise) and more class. In short, we’ll always be the Cock of the North and they, by comparison, will always be Manchester Clitty. As we wrap up the campaign, it’s easy to rue the FA Cup semi-final as a treble that got away. Fact is, we’re revving on all cylinders at exactly the right time, and maybe, just maybe, we can do something really special this year. Whether it’s to see magnificent Barcelona, or the mouthpieces from down the road, have a nice Wembley, lads.

HAARPing On…

Tuesday, June 14th, 2011

Spring has sprung like Zebedee on crack, pipe down at the back ‘cos this May could be cack, though it might just be a belting craic. Not for the faint of heart-strings, knowhatImean, wack? Mancini and his robots are revved up for this semi-final. United must feel like the poor Japanese in the face of their punishment from the World Bank earthquake machine. Shake Man Sewer has unlimited beadage available to fund his little hobby horse. But don’t worry; we’re gonna sign Reina and Torres and the Qataris are buying us and Benzema, Schweinsteiger, De Gea, Banega, Rodwell, Sneijder and Kaka and Mourinho and – bollocks, I’ll have a cuppa and calm down. I’m sitting here, dithering like an alcoholic whippet, worrying about which component(s) of the treble we can afford to write off. There’s the League and Arsenal; could we really live with ourselves kissing goodbye to Number Nineteen? I think not. Then there’s the Champions League and Chelsea; can our Gibsonesque gimps put the pretenders in their place? Hard to say. Last, and by all means least, we have the FA Cup and the Bittermen; a devalued trophy we totally blew off in favour of the Intercontinental Cup after our ’99 treble, suddenly infused with meaning due to the bizarre fact that Manchester city have managed to beat Leicester, Notts County, Aston Villa (wow, Villa?!) and Reading on their way to their first semi-final since Albert Tatlock last got his end away. How horrible will it be if the Q2 whores edge us out at Wembley? I’ll never be able to utter the phrase, “when city beat us at Wembley…” ever. EVER. Granted, those words aren’t as difficult to say as “Bernard Breslaw”, “architrave” or “tundish”, with a straight face, but they are vile and without logic. In 1999 we flipped our middle finger at the FA and fucked off to Japan to beat Palmeiras 1-0 with a Roy Keane strike and Mark Bosnich minding the goal. Evergreen Ryan Giggs was Man of the Match as United became the first and only British team to win the trophy. But this year’s FA Cup has suddenly become important. Not because of the trophy itself, but because city are Chelsea Lite and as such must be battered on and off the pitch and sent home to their stinking hovels with welts, blisters, lacerations and piles. If our current squad of unstable crybabies, Amazonian cheekboners, Toltecs, beanpoles, French Action Figures, retirees, “clients”, sweet Transylvanians and shrunken-headed rapists fail to dispatch those blue cunts I will be fucking seething. Chelsea and Liverpool bullied us. If city do the same I may kill someone. Probably Darron Gibson, not because he’s crap, but ‘cos he spells his first name with an “o”, the annoying gobshite. Or maybe Michael Carrick. If he was a horse, they’d shoot him. As will I. Chris Smalling will help me dispose of the body. He’s proved very useful lately. I bet he can carry and dig with the best of ‘em. NOTE: I’ve just gone to Smalling’s Wikipedia page and discovered someone’s been pissing about. Here’s what it said: “Chris Smalling also had multiple trials with many County Cricket teams, but was considered too good to play for them, and opted to play football instead. He is widely considered the best centre-back in the world.” “And it wasn’t me, hand on heart; I’m on a second warning with Wiki and will be barred for life for a third. My assaults on the Michael Jackson and High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program pages put me in very hot water, so I’m on the straight and narrow these days. Bullying geek bastards. It’s their “time”, apparently.
Bullying is ugly and wrong, but sport is a physical contest and inevitably the big boys get to throw their weight about. We are seriously lacking in the weight throwing department these days. Nani’s serial humiliation at Hamford Fridge and ultimately Anfailed proved this beyond measure. Little Pea also comes in for too much stick and there’s no-one to watch his back. Even Rooney, as game as he is, seems to reserve most of his short-arsed venom for the officials rather than the David Luiz’s of this world. Then again, I can’t blame him; Luiz is proof there’s plenty of value in the market if you know where to fucking look. This bullying of United players by shitehawks like Gerrard and Ivanovic is painful to watch, but it might be on its way out. The fact that football has become a form of showbusiness may mean a shift downward in scale. Just like Hollywood actors are really miniatures of the characters they play (i.e. Harrison Ford is actually four foot nine and seven stone, but they make him look like a six foot hunk), footballers may soon be required to fulfil similar criteria. Nobody over five-three will be permitted to participate. HDTV and Max Factor will create a pop culture wonderland of little men who look awesome. Evra and Park will be the dominators come the titchy revolution. Tevez will be a raging beast. That midget feller who plays for Marseilles will be the new Messi- oh wait, Messi’s smaller than him. Either way, it’s the future. But until then Fergie needs to sign some big steamers who can sort it out in the middle. They say it’s the size of the fight in the dog that matters, but living in the States I’ve grudgingly come to admit that sometimes bigger is better. Mega and Meta. Macro and Micro. Two fractals in a modern sporting dichotomy. Giants versus elves. Football freakonomics bows down to physics at the end of the day, ‘cos 15 stone of bone, ligament and muscle trumps 10 of skin and bone. When Beckman became the bend it king and other set-piece specialists emerged, football took a step towards a more American approach. The game was dissected, butchered into clinical moves and zones. Having big guys in the engine room became imperative. Sure, football’s always had its centre-halves, but power and speed are now as important as heading ability and grit. Each player now serves a more defined function even as they’re expected to cover more ground. United are currently struggling with a jack-of-all-trades gaggle. Utility men like Rooney, the twins and O’Shea shuffled about the peripheries of a misshapen blob. Rooney’s work-rate and support skills have won matches, but his salary means either Chicharito or Berba must start on the bench. Now Tony V is back the pressure is off Roon and on the opposing defence. That’s the way, a-ha, a-ha, I like it. The novel formation Ferg fielded against Arsenal in the FA Cup was a stroke of genius, but we’re gonna need some steel against dirty bastards like Barry, De Jong and Kompany in this Wembley test. The latter is a square-headed cyborg, but even he couldn’t control Luiz at Chelsea recently, and Aleksandar Kolarov nearly snapped his foot off in a tackle with the onrushing Brazilian phenomenon. Sorry to be kissing Luiz’s arse a bit here, but WHY DIDN’T WE SIGN HIM? EH? Was it ever even a fucking rumour? Never mind, there’s always Sergio Canales if rumours are your thing. The truth is we just need a goalkeeper and two monsters in the centre of the park and we’re fandabbyfuckindozy. It could be worse; we could be bringing Peter Schmeichel out of retirement, a la Arsenal and Lehman. How embarrassing and strange is that? But enough about football. It’s shit.
Don’t get me wrong; “bigger is better” has its applications, but I’ve not turned into a dumbass yank. Anyone who’s been around competitive people knows that it really is about vibes and body language, perceivable clouds of pheromones and neurotransmitters that combine to send complex messages. These aromatic halos are instantly deciphered by the ancient brains around us. It’s why toddlers seem to read our minds when we try to outwit them with semantic codes. We say more to each other with these silent clouds of information than we ever could with silly words. And right now we’re oozing a queer blend of confidence and fear on the pitch. United are strong yet weak but the big time may be something we little people don’t completely understand. Conspiracies are probably rife. Fact is, we should have also won at Chelsea, but refereeing decisions obstructed us and Fergie was right to question biased ref Martin Atkinson. Things could be worse, as I say. We could be poor Arsenal, bringing out an old man to stand between the sticks, having crashed out of three – that’s right, three – competitions in a couple of weeks or so. Wenger will be pacing the sidelines in his tortoise coat, his reptile boat race grimacing madly in the title run-in. A very dear friend called John Burney died last week, aged 52. John told me recently that he thought the 3-1 loss at Liverpool was “a fix for the betting”, and I am inclined to agree. It’s John’s funeral tomorrow and I am drinking (again) tonight, while I look at photos of Carr Clough, Prestwich, Rainsough, Whitefield, town, etc, thinking of all the times we had. I can see him now, in leather soled shoes, man-pants, a smart shirt under a lambswool v-neck sweater. Hair swept slightly back, with an amused expression on his face. On his knees, helpless with laughter, to be exact. In a pub. Only the good die young and John was very good, and he believed in speaking the truth. He watched United to the very end and never lost his sense of humour or dignity. Most strangely, the least prestigious of those three competitions is the FA Cup, and it’s the one we HAVE to win. I just wish John had lived to see it, whatever the result. There’s no need for any bigonomotry for this one – it’s as big as it gets, let’s not kid ourselves. So if you’ll excuse me, I must play some music and look at some pictures and relive many memories of a great man and United supporter about whom many tales could be told. As Dr. Seuss once said, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened”.

Who’s That Lion on the Runway?

Saturday, April 23rd, 2011

February’s over. March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb, as the saying goes. Another five weeks and it’ll be 60 degree weather here. Time to celebrate the spring and strap one’s balls on for the title run-in. Good riddance to February, nowt good about that month, really. The annual remembrance of Munich reminded us not just how terrible the air disaster was, but how few people now survive who were personally affected by it. As a result, “my” Munich will be forever preserved in the words and emotions of my parents’ generation. People who loved to watch the Busby Babes, and who were devastated when they were snatched away. Not everyone saw it that way, though. Back in the 80s it was common to see a full Scoreboard End of scousers singing their famous Munich song, bouncing to the rhythm of cruelty while we spat and threw missiles and climbed the railings to show our displeasure. Munich may have sewn the seed of a global brand, but it’s also a painful target painted on our collective hearts. It’s part of football culture. Now we’re all a million years old it’s easy to slag kids off who sing Hillsborough or Munich songs, but they’re young and they want their share of the scandal. Imagine if a top Premiership side was wiped out today. Would those same kids sing songs about that? Or a hundred young people crushed to death in a badly designed stadium? When I heard about Hillsborough I was in my flat, alone, painting a sign. I felt only shock and horror. Three miles up Bury New Road, 25% of a pubful was cheering each time the death toll rose on the television. Would I have been cheering among them had I been on the lash that day? I don’t think so. Testosterone is paradoxical stuff; it makes heroes and villains of us in unequal fractions. When 24-year old Harry Gregg climbed back into the burning wreckage to save fellow passengers he showed his true colours and has been revered as a lion of a man ever since. Would I have entered that burning aircraft to help others? It’s easy to say yes, but that kind of heroism is very rare. 99% of men would have been grateful to have survived, with little thought for his team-mates, much less the pregnant woman and her toddler Gregg rescued from that dangerous smouldering slushpile.
Slushpile. Now there’s a word. It’s what publishers call their unsolicited manuscripts. I fancy meself a writer so let’s talk about me now, shall we? I’m currently writing fifteen different stories, not one of which is vaguely normal or sane. One’s called “Big Fat Horrible Twat and the Slave Girls”. That one’s about this big fat horrible twat – and I mean a really sweaty overweight couch potato with hairy earholes and a stinky arse – who enslaves these perfect, sexy young girls and spends his days crawling all over them, sticking his tongue into every orifice, forcing his engorged member into their rectums and, having forced them to live on a diet of donner kebabs, chips, pudding and gravy (and not washing his cock afterwards), taking the whole funky sweaty sexy disgusting bacchanal up a level as each day passes and the slave girls slowly become big fat horrible twats themselves. But it’s only a first draft, so it might change. Another one is, “It’s All Gone Cunt-Shaped”, about Liverpool and Chelsea’s recent non-challenge for the 2011 Premiership title. In this one, the two football clubs are taken over by shape-shifting aliens who desperately try to knock us off our perch by fielding superpowered ringers in place of mortal footballers. Unfortunately, an alien posing as Gerrard forgets which side it’s on when Liverpool play Chelsea at Anfield (a bit like last season) and its heart rips itself in two right there in front of a confused Kop. Basically, it all goes proper cunt-shaped and United rampage through the earth’s footballing crust, tearing it asunder like a great steel ramrod, causing an explosion that destroys the planet, and consequently the aliens. But it’s a first draft and will definitely change.
Now back to reality. Only joking. The most important thing for me this season is that city don’t win anything, followed by city not finishing in the top four, followed by city never winning anything ever again. Have you noticed that new feeling you get now when they show the bottom half of the table? What you’ve never had you never miss, and boy do I miss seeing the bittermen languishing in sixteenth. Now it’s like, “wait, where’s ci-?” and then you remember; they’re right behind us, their Pot Noodle/Not Poodle breath on our necks, singing Munich songs in their sleep. It’s a dose of angina every time I see them in the top four. Balotelli’s stegosaurus head, Barry’s Goth features and poor grimacing Shay Given, completely out of the rotation. Mancini is so paralysed and clueless he daren’t even bring his “reserve” goalie in for odd games and give Hart a rest. But I’ll shut up; why should I give him football tips?
We’re still the team to beat. Chelsea have their African shooters, city their second-tier superstars, but United composes an eclectic bunch of pagans and kings. When Chicharito prays in the centre circle before games it’s a big V-sign to the European media. He’s Mexican; he doesn’t give a shite what they say about him in the Daily Star. He’s the antithesis of an England World Cup ditherer. He tore Wigan apart like a Toltec sword with a smile on his face. I’d be willing to bet Chicharito would have gone back into that plane to rescue his fellow passengers, too. He is fearless and will make life hell on winklepickers for Mancini or whoever succeeds the Italian for the next several seasons. It must be hard being a football manager though; corralling numerous megalomaniacs, settling disputes between team-mates, etc. The respect Sir Alex instils is the exception not the rule. Arsene Wenger seems to enjoy a protective yet stern effect on the Arsenal players, while Mancini builds his mountainous bench and tries to arrange those bitches as best he can. It must be like juggling irritable Chihuahuas. Chicharito is no Chihuahua – he’s a puma – and Fergie’s teaching him the ropes. Successful managers have to be control freaks (or great leaders if you must be polite). The kind of men who create a dimple in the spacetime around them, such is the mass of their ego. You know the type: Everything about their body language screams, “I am in charge”. You have your work cut out to get from under such domineering bleeders. That depression in spacetime translates to another in your central nervous system, and it drains you. You’re like a spider in a web. If you ever escape you must remain beyond the periphery of their spell, for the mangle is always ready to suck you back in. Ronaldo escaped the clutchment, but Rooney didn’t. Probably ‘cos Ronnie’s a merciless knave, with a full-length mirror permanently in his head, but Rooney’s just a snide elbow merchant. People like that are psychos. Real ones. A few hundred years ago they’d have been dungeon keepers, knights, lords and masters. Today they’re celebrities, sportsmen and politicians. The key to being a successful secret psycho is keeping the urge down to size. Reserve a small compartment in your head where a full-blown murderer’s mindset roams free, but in midget form. A cub, not a full-grown lion, so you can control it while removing genetic samples. Not that I’d know, like.
But how does SAF get so deep into the heads of his rivals? I think I know. I reckon Fergie is capable of remote viewing. After a glass or three of wine he enters a hyper-reality neither inside nor outside his swede. Cruises the universe until he arrives at the Galactic Federation Headquarters. There, he liaises with his reptilian overlords. Makes plans for the conquest of humankind. Some of you may already suspect that Fergie is a lizard. He’s certainly known to exhibit the strategy of the Komodo dragon when dealing with his enemies; the Komodo bites its prey with toxic gnashers, then calmly observes the victim as it slowly succumbs to the poison. Messrs Keegan and Benitez fell foul of particularly virulent infections, but there are many other carcasses rotting in the deserted gulleys of Premiership history. I’m afraid we’re almost out of time, Dear Reader. And that’s a shame. I was just getting into YOUR head there…
The farmer from down the road ploughed our driveway the other day. There’s a pile of snow on the lawn 30 feet long and 10 feet high. I bought him a bottle of Crown Royal for his troubles. Worth every penny. It is dark now, and I can see three snowmobiles racing across the field over the way, their eerie headlights and chainsaw-like engines cutting in and out of the woods. Nasty, dangerous stuff, snowmobiling. Those motherfuckers can easily do 100 MPH, and sometimes the elastic recoil of an unseen bump can damn near take a man’s head off. If I saw one of those boys wipe out would I run across a thousand yards of three foot deep snow to help him? Brave possible coyotes, cougars and bears here in the wee hours? Fucking right I would. But it’s nothing compared to what Harry Gregg did in Munich. I watch every Premier League game here, with my satellite dish. They start around 7:30 am with the time difference. Then another at 10 and one at 12:30. If we’re the third game it makes us look even better. The boys in red sweeping the pill about so gracefully. Our relentless passing is like a machinegun in a Vietnamese jungle, going “n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n” only each bullet is in fact a Nani banana cross to Rooney, or a hairy Raphael coconut to Chicharito, or a Scholes lob on for Berbatov- I’d better stop there. But I’ll say one more thing; just like in Vietnam, this season it’s gonna be n-n-n-n-nineteen.

Flesh and Blood

Saturday, March 19th, 2011

We’re having the snowiest winter on record here in Connecticut. There’s three feet on the ground outside this window, far as the eye can see. A vicious meringue touching the bottom lip of my satellite dish on its pole on the back lawn. I go out every couple of days, wade through the white and shovel it aside; anything to maintain the football seepage into my brain. The Premier League’s the best on the planet, I hear you say. A league invented by Tatlocks but lately invaded by foreign quimmage. In the last mag, you may have noticed me trying much too hard and slagging the middle classes. So I’ll try and slag the working classes now instead. What a queer and wondrous muppet football is today. A working class sport, played by preening whingers who live in massive mansions. I watched Notts County vs. city and was disgusted by the commentator bigging up the Premier League, as city’s dirty bastards bullied the smaller County lads all over the park. “There was once a time when lower league clubs could intimidate players from more skilled divisions by roughhousing them,” he gloated, “but nowadays the Premier League is so good that the players have skill AND physical strength. That’s why we watch them every week, all over the world…” Do shut up, you pompous salesman. As he said it, I re-checked the scoreline, while city’s millionaires scurried about like barking spiders chasing their blue moon. Their fans were lobbing missiles at the County players and stridulating like a gaggle of amorphous sluts in “kiss me quick” hats whenever city stumbled into their opponents’ box. Mancini increasingly resembles Police Chief Brody manning the bench like a demented zamburakchi with his eye on the prize. A suit, a coat, two scarves AND a snood? He’s having a fucking laugh. We love to go on about “our” league being the world’s best, but how many of those athletes are actually English? Football is utterly neglected in its homeland. The government are partly to blame; they could easily have set aside more generous funds to maintain our national sport at the level where it belongs, but football is working-class, so fat fucking chance of that. The continentals must think we’re a nation of unorganised clueless slobs, concerned more with smashing bus-stop windows and being admitted to hospitals for stomach-pumps than taking ourselves seriously. You can guarantee that if football was a middle-class game it would be in better shape financially and organised properly at the schoolboy level. Middle-class people play the game of life like Germans play football; just a cunt hair this side of legal, and oftentimes those lines get bent with the help of poorly sighted refs, lawyers or worse, friends in high places. Very few football clubs have a clue when it comes to bringing up the kids, but we should be proud that United is an example to all. Ferguson and Co. just keep ‘em coming, from Manchester to Mexico. Money is something our players learn the value of by earning it. United are a family and city are an institution. Red is a warm, corpulent colour and blue is a brittle chilly one. It’s all about coming in from the cold. Basking in the blazing embrace of success. We’ve no idea how it feels to have supported a team that’s been complete shite for decades. city have been in such a deep hole for so long they’d sell their firstborn if it guaranteed a trophy in May. If they’d actually landed Rooney when he handed in that transfer request there’d have been mass priapism from Sharston to Simister; the entire south and east of the county riddled with engorged rampaging cripples in bad jackets. It’s strange how different geographic locations emit characteristic vibes. Break it all the way down to the smallest living thing, a primeval bacterium, and all around its circumference there’ll be pulsating pheromones and enzymes. Microbes possess photosensitive cells, and even fungi secrete digestive acids onto their prey. Urban environments are the same, and on up to the biosphere itself. The earth is an organism, and like an organism it has its armpits, arseholes and eyeballs. When I see photos of Eastlands from above, I think of a gaping, sterile blue fanny with giant, drained white pissflaps and parasitic worms spiralling from its corners. Old Trafford reminds me of a red blood corpuscle; full of iron and oxygen, delivering strength to those who feed on its cytoplasm. Our individual bodies are like football grounds; sources of competence chemicals or the odd, blistering fart. The coastline of our nation could be described similarly – chalk erosion lapping from the south coast into the sea…radioactive balls of shite breaking off Sellafield and washing up on Irish beaches…likewise the entire planet….greenhouse gases, volcanoes, zinc smelters, acid mine drainage…..yep, there’s a big difference between an arsehole and an eyeball. Yer either doing yer bit and contributing, or else dragging down the standards like a whore at life’s rich pageant. That’s the difference between us and you, Mister Magoo.