I've never been one for World Cup Fever. I just have to watch the games of the Rugby World Cup however. This morning, Sunday 8.30am, we went around to the pub, Simon's Irish pub, The Shamrock (highly original name) Porto Alegre, Great Place!! (that's got to be worth a free Guinness at least), to see Argentina and Ireland. There was: myself, Welsh; Simon, Irish; Sergio, Argentinian and Francisco BRAZILIAN! We were drinking beer at 10am on a Sunday morning.
Argentina lost 15 to 16. Close game.
Next week we're going to do the same, it's Wales against New Zealand! WHOA! I would like to say that Wales have got a good chance of getting into the quarter finals, BUT.......
Okay, we're likely to get thrashed. Anyway it's a good Sunday morning programme, beer and rugby. Or maybe I'll go to church instead.... NOT!
Pouring rain. All my weekend plans gone to hell, cutting the grass, washing the dogs, taking Fran to the park to practice skateboard, running around the park as part of my new get-rid-beer-belly campaign.
An update on the rugby, Wales have beaten Italy today and so are through to the quarter finals. Next week we play New Zealand, the All Blacks. Slim chance.
Here's a funny one: Australia 142 v Namibia 0. Crack another tube Bruce! ppshhhht!
I guess Namibia are out.
I've been abstaining from beer during the week. Two or three beers a day doesn't make me an alcoholic, but my belly is expanding. This expansion must stop before I get a hanging-over-the-belt beer gut, that's the worst type. So from now on, only beer at weekends - I may make some exceptions, it's not a strict rule, - and more excercise. Maybe eating churrasco just once a weekend could help also.
Today I'm going to talk about TITS.
For a great part of my life I lived in Cyprus. 1972-1974, 1981-1984 and finally 1986-1989. In those 80s years I was a horny young squaddy, going to the beaches of Ayia Napa and Fig Tree Bay was some kind of exquisite torture. The girls of Finland, Denmark and Sweden would wear something about the size of a postage stamp on just one part of their bodies. Nothing More. I would say Nothing Less, but less would be impossible anyway.
For the European, semi and complete nakedness is something quite normal and acceptable at the beach and in the sauna. Complete families. We don't see couples humping away on their beach towels, we don't see guys sporting and flaunting erections up and down the water's edge. There are no wild sexual orgies on the dunes. For all our European prudishness (that term may only apply to the English actually), being naked is fine. The German and Scandanavian cold aloofness also works when their naked. In public situations, this cold aloofness helps in disassociating nakedness from sex.
The hot blooded Latin race however cannot make this disassociation. The daring girls who take off that little top part are abused, called whores and arrested by armed thugs calling themselves "keepers of the peace". The only mixed saunas are to be found in Farrapos and the guys certainly don't go there to sweat out the flab. It's a cultural thing, hundreds of years religious oppression means you will burn in hell if you show your naked body.
Come on, everyone's got tits. Even me. I'll have to drink less bee
Millions of people all over the world are at this moment watching the World Cup.
Yup. And YOU don't know about it because you live in Brazil, unless you happen to be zapping through NET and come accross ESPN Brasil, at 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning.
I'm talking about World Cup Rugby.
The first person to say "Isn't that like American Football" will get their heads duffed in by Charrua Rugby Club Porto Alegre. American football is for BICHAS.
Here are some important results so far:
Wales 41 - Canada 10.
Check it out.
Well there's a thing. Part One has apeared. Ignore the brief summary and read the real thing.
Today is churrasco day.
Today I invite Dickens, Joyce, Wilbur Smith and Ken Follet to eat churrasco:
So, guys what do you think?
"It is the best churrasco, it is the worst churrasco, the picanha is very mal passado, the picanha is very bem passado", shut up Dickens you boring fart.
"up from the Dee the picanhasco eats we eats the picanhasco, it verilly makes it way into our guts to be processed processed and possessed, po po po possessed. This is what Bloom thinks when he eats his sausaigão, and Bloom eats. It."
"The FRANGO guerrilla unslung his AK47 'banana' rifle from his shoulder and let blast short taps into the picanha. The picanha, blood spurting everywhere, falls onto the plate, the soldier quickly despatches the bloody lump with his razor sharp combat knife"
Ken? "Oh, Fuck Off"
Well there's a thing. Part One has apeared. Ignore the brief summary and read the real thing.
Today is churrasco day.
Today I invite Dickens, Joyce, Wilbur Smith and Ken Follet to eat churrasco:
So, guys what do you think?
"It is the best churrasco, it is the worst churrasco, the picanha is very mal passado, the picanha is very bem passado", shut up Dickens you boring fart.
"up from the Dee the picanhasco eats we eats the picanhasco, it verilly makes it way into our guts to be processed processed and possessed, po po po possessed. This is what Bloom thinks when he eats his sausaigão, and Bloom eats. It."
"The FRANGO guerrilla unslung his AK47 'banana' rifle from his shoulder and let blast short taps into the picanha. The picanha, blood spurting everywhere, falls onto the plate, the soldier quickly despatches the bloody lump with his razor sharp combat knife"
Ken? "Oh, Fuck Off"
After a long absence, here I am. The absence was due partly to writer's block (damnfuck laziness) and partly to lack of time. In it's turn, the lack of time was due to a Sociology test followed by a Linguistics test followed by an English Culture test. In two of them I THINK I did pretty well and in one of them I KNOW I did pretty well. Guess which.
Today I've been organizing my life. In fact, I've organized a part of my small office space and that could be some kind of Freudian way of saying I've been organizing my life. I've had 3 new shelves put up and I've been transferring books and beer jugs. That's my life; books and beer jugs.
One shelf is Penguin Classics, it goes like this: Verne, Stevenson, Verne, Conrad, Hardy, Lawrence, Collins, Dickens, London (Jack, not the city), Conrad, Conrad, Swift, Jerome (K), Dickens. You may have noticed that Conrad is prominent there. Once again thanks to Victor. I'll have to get Dickens together more, he's spread out a lot.
After a short break. The above shelf: Wilde, Saki (WHO the FU..?!), Brontë (which one?), Dickens, Dickens, Dickens, Eliot, Lawrence, Dickens, Defoe, Dickens, Collins.
End of part one, before my computer freezes up on me again.
Part Three.
If we are what we read then I'm some kind of weird alien of boring fart 19th Century gentleman with a perversion for Hollywood adventures. Apart from Dickens, Ken Follet and Wilbur Smith feature highly in my collection.
Who, you may ask, are KF and WS. Well you'll just have to go and find out for yerselves.
Today has been a day of weirdness. Aside from the office organization, that I see now that all the explanation that I had written for this blog has been lost somewhere in the ether (Part One, and I'm not going to type it all up again, you'll just have to make inferrences), my monitor on which I am typing this, went PFFF. Banging on the top, the usual emergency method, didn't work this time. I had to beg a monitor from a student.
On this borrowed monitor I am typing my thoughts and drinking beer
Diolch yn fawr once again to Victor who has set up a statistics page for me...I can see how many people have been visiting my site and reading this really interesting stuff......millions......well okay then...2, and that's me and Victor.
Continuing the story...
Llywelyn the Last was killed by a common English soldier on 11 March 1282.
See you not the rush of wind and rain?
See you not the oaks lash each other?
See you not the ocean scourging the shore?
See you not the truth is portending?
See you not the sun hurtling the sky?
See you not that the stars have fallen?
Have you no belief in God, foolish men?
See you not that the world is ending?
Sang his bard at his death.
"And then all Wales was cast to the ground", Brenhinedd Y Saesson, Welsh chronicle.
Today I have to face 11 hyperactive young teens and teach them passive voice in all verb tenses.
Llywelyn Fawr wouldn't have had such difficulties when facing the English King John over Menai Straights. King John had an army over 15,000. Pull up another mangonel.
Llywelyn Fawr was the grandfather of the previously mentioned Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. What's bizarre is that Llywelyn Fawr ('the Great') married King John's daughter. King John thought this would bring the Welsh under his controll.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
Teenagers ! Once more into the breach!
"Never forget, Llywelyn, that the world's greatest fool is a Welshman who trusts an English king"
Dafydd ap Gryfydd to his brother Llywelyn (the last Prince of Wales)
Llywelyn made several treaties with Edward I "Longshanks" - "Hammer of the Scots" and of the Welsh so it seems - he of "Braveheart" fame - only to have Edward go back on his word.
Edward gave refuge to Welsh rebels, including the above Dafydd who at one time plotted to assassinate Llywelyn, then, on the day of Llywelyn's wedding produced a document to Llywelyn strictly forbidding him (Llyw) to "offer sanctuary to the King's enemies". This was, by the way, at the wedding of the bride that Edward had kept captive for 2 years before allowing Llywelyn to marry.
The English Barons were given free reign over the borderlands - in Welsh territory English law applied. Welshmen and women were harrassed and killed, when the relatives took this to the justiciary, THEY themselves were imprissoned for "breach of the King's peace", made to pay fines, had property confiscated and were publically humiliated.
This is part of background info to the "Y Ddraig Goch" story.
Where's me beer
