/
The always excellent Phil Ball on Barca-Chelski and Madrid-Ars*nal.

I agree with everything he says except about the sending off of Asier Del Horno for Chelski. He says it’s a clear sending off but Messi went looking for the foul, launching himself in the air well before Del Horno made contact. A yellow card, yes. A red? Doubtful, especially when Messi contrived to explode into flames after the collision yet made a miraculous recovery after the Del Horno had been shown the door.

As a footie apologist in this country, the one charge I cannot refute is the omnipresent irritation of players taking dives and feigning injury. It is unquestionably the worst part of the game and it was on glorious display in the Barca-Chelski game. Both Del Horno and Messi rolled as though they’d been thrown from a moving train. What most Yanks fail to understand is that this reprehensible play-acting is not because the athletes are wimpy but because they’re trying to gain an advantage. Witness the result of the clash at hand: Del Horno gets thrown out of the game and Chelski has to play the entire second half with one less player—-imagine a period-long power play in hockey. While perhaps not that dramatic, being up one player definitely gave Barca the advantage, an advantage they used, running out 2-1 winners away from home, meaning Chelski now need to score at least two goals in Barcelona in the return leg. Would Del Horno have been sent off had Messi sprung off the ground? The world will never know.

Anybody want to volunteer to write a half-dozen Old Norse poems in English using the dróttkvætt metre for me? I want a story to open with an eight-line poem and it just dawned on me that I have no idea how to write it, much less the four or five others I’m planning on incorporating into the narrative. :neutral:

See, good poetry can propel a story to ethereal heights while bad poetry sinks it pretty damn fast. That and the fact that the best Norse poems liberally use kennings (i.e. “whale-road” for the sea, “food for ravens” for dead bodies) that a modern reader may or may not understand makes this a tricky project.

Good thing it’s on the backburner, then.

Current Mood – Not Bad |
Currently Listening To – Joe Strummer – “Earthquake Weather”