sick of this shit

Arsene is not impressed.

Why the hell is it so hard to win a flipping league game, Arsenal? Scratch that, why the hell is it so hard to score a flipping goal? This is our fifth consecutive league draw, the last four of which have been nil-nil.

Yes, we are missing lots of players. Fabregas, Eduardo, Adebayor, Rosicky (who?), Walcott...all very important, and I have no doubt that the team will improve when they return. However, there comes a time when complaining about injuries just isn't enough. The problem is that the team we're fielding at the moment should be good enough to beat Fulham at home. I mean, give credit to Fulham, because they're very good defensively this season, and they played well and deserved to get a point from the match.

But that's the problem, isn't it? We didn't deserve to win. Our finishing was shocking, and it wasn't limited to one specific player. It's like the team is going through a communal slump in form, and it's freaking annoying. Is it really so difficult, as a professional football player, to find the back of the net?

I guess some people would tell me to stop complaining. At least we're not losing, right? Yes, I know that there are many teams that are worse off than us. But the big four are held to a higher standard, and when they aren't performing up to their potential, then it is disappointing to the fans. And being one of the "big four" and not actually being in the top four is definitely disappointing. Not playing Champions League football next season will be disappointing.

One of the announcers during the game kept going on about how Arsenal fans were some of the most "unforgiving" of all Premier League teams. All I can say is that right now, we seem to have just cause. You can't tell me that Man United fans would act any differently if they were in our position. Actually, they'd probably jump ship and go support Chelsea or something. Fucking glory hunters.

I don't mean to be a bitch though, really, I'm just frustrated. Get it together, guys! Make me happy again.

for gina

My friend Gina had a bit of a bad day yesterday. So I made something to cheer her up. And photobucket sucks, they blocked it for copyright infringement. Lame. Youtube to the rescue!

(Yes, I realize the music and the pictures don't really fit together, style-wise. Just go with it.)



I hope you feel better soon!


Also, the Hottie World Cup quarterfinals are under way. Don't forget to go vote for your favorites!

what would we do without youtube?

I love the random things you can find on the internet.

John Cale of The Velvet Underground on an American game show in 1963:

The second woman asking questions cracked me up. WTF kind of questions were those? This whole thing was just so weird and random and hilarious.

Ingram Hill covering Chris Brown's "With You" in a bright pink studio:

Video description: So, the spirit of Chris Brown took over Phil's body, and he said that we needed to cover "With You." The rest of us were a little unsure, but after Phil suggested we paint the walls pink, we changed our mind. So on a rainy, strangely warm January day, we did all that... even the paint job.

Thom Yorke dancing to M.I.A. in a DJ booth:


The Smiths on a kid's show called Charlie's Bus sometime in the 80's:

One of the strangest clips I have ever seen. So many good things about it: notice Johnny Marr giving some kid the wanker sign at 0:19, Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now being played when the children are going through Kew Gardens, Sandie Shaw singing Jeane to them on the lawn (real uplifting songs there), and Morrissey's constant looks of disdain towards the camera.

"Where are we going?"
"We're all going mad."
"I thought we were going to Kew Gardens!"

What a weird decade.

quick notes

Lots of things have happened over the past few days that I haven't had the time or energy to blog about, so I'm just going to do a quick rundown and stick them all in one post.

1) Arsenal beat Roma 1-0 earlier this evening on a Van Persie penalty. Again, Bendtner was kind of shite. Eboue got a standing ovation when he was subbed off, which is good I guess (that the fans aren't booing him anymore at least), but he's still pretty crap too. Positives about the game? Um, we won.

2) This article says Fàbregas is scheduled to come back for the Man City game in April. My Citeh-loving buddy better come through with those tickets. I don't even care if I have to sit in the away section.

3) My sister got engaged. I haven't actually been able to speak to her about it yet (she told me on Facebook while I was in Brighton, haha) because she's always out when I call. So I don't know all the details yet, but it's pretty exciting! For those who don't know, the sis is 22 and is due to graduate this spring; her fiance is 24 next month, graduated a year ago, and works for a bank in Pittsburgh.

4) I have three essays due soon. One every week until the end of term, specifically. I should probably start writing those.

5) I'm starting to think about where to go in April, when I have a month off of school. If any of you have input, feel free to leave it in the comments!

6) Don't forget to vote in the Hottie World Cup! Specifically, don't forget to vote for the USA in the Hottie World Cup! We're beating the Italy B team, but not by much.


You should also vote for the Dutch, because they're behind. Ditto Croatia. They also have awesome promo videos:



First round voting ends at 12:01 am GMT on Thursday. And thanks to Kickette, Unprofessional Foul, The Offside, and everyone else who has helped to spread the word!

"astublieft don't arrest me...dank u!"

Okay, I'm back. Sorry I've been a little behind on my travel updates, but sometimes typing up several days' worth of adventures seems a daunting task, and then I tend to procrastinate. Story of my life.
So I finally got across to continental Europe last weekend, and it was fabulous! We only spent a few hours in Bruges, but there's not too much to do there other than walk around and see the general prettiness of the town, so a few hours seemed to be enough. We also went into about five different chocolate shops. And then we got back on the coach and headed to Amsterdam. (We also watched In Bruges on the trip...I was the only one who laughed at the Tottenham joke.)

(These two shots are of the same building, I just couldn't fit it all in one frame.)

We got to our hotel in Amsterdam around 8:00, and had a half hour to go unpack and get ready before going out with the trip guide to buy public transportation tickets/have a walking tour/go clubbing. Buying tickets for the trains, trams, buses, etc. was kind of a nightmare. I'm really not impressed with the city's transport system. But it got us where we needed to go (eventually), so I guess it's not totally useless.

Clubbing in Amsterdam is fun, although drinks are super expensive so you either have to buy cheap booze from a grocery store and drink it beforehand, or go sober. Although as a girl you can always wrangle a few free drinks out of people. Also, don't wear a dress if you go dancing, unless you want drunk guys putting their hands up your skirt. Not so fun.

But they played lots of Spanish music (including Juanes and Ricky Martin! And the Macarena, no lie) so we all had a great time. The next morning we woke up early, had a delicious free breakfast from the hotel, and headed to Edam.

This town is really pretty, although I wouldn't want to live there. Far too quiet...except for the hot naked man in one of the windows of the houses we walked by. I didn't see him but other people filled me in. But anyways, Edam is famous for its cheese, so of course I had to buy some. Smoked goat cheese, to be specific, and I've been eating it all day today. So good.

After Edam, we got back on the coach and drove to Volendam, a town on the coast.

It has a cool old windmill that isn't actually in use anymore, but people still go to take pictures of it. Because what's a trip to Holland without a windmill?

We then walked around by the water, ate some ice cream even though it was pretty freezing out, and looked in the souvenir shops. Then back to the hotel to figure out what to do in the afternoon--we decided to do a canal tour of the city.


After the tour, we had been planning on going to the Van Gogh museum (especially since they have a special exhibition at the moment and have The Starry Night on loan from the MoMA), but we were kind of exhausted by this point so we just went back to the hotel to freshen up before going out.

[Random side note: Raul almost caused me serious injury on Saturday night. Or at least moderate embarrassment. We were getting ready to go out in the evening, and were waiting down in the hotel lobby for the rest of the group to show up, when we decided to check out the hotel bar area. I was leading the way, and to the left I noticed that they had the Real Madrid game on a big screen TV. Probably because of all the Dutch players. Anyways, cue a Raul closeup...I had my eyes on the screen, wasn't looking where I was going, missed two full steps down, and fell flat on my face into the room. To add insult to injury, one of the bartenders came over and asked disapprovingly if we were already drunk. Usually you see people falling OUT of bars at the end of the night, not tripping INTO them in the evening.

Embarrassing story interlude over.]

So again, we stayed out until all hours of the morning dancing (also walked through the red light district...interesting stuff...) and again didn't drink much but it was still tons of fun, and again woke up early to see as much of the city as possible. We were going to try to fit in the Van Gogh museum and Anne Frank's house before we had to leave, but ended up doing neither--lines were too long at the Van Gogh so we ended up going to the Rijksmuseum instead. It was still very cool, lots of Rembrandts and Vermeers. But I'm definitely going to have to go back to Amsterdam again someday to do the touristy things that I didn't get to do last weekend.

I know this was a super long post already, so I didn't go into all of the drama that happened with the actual group--let me just say that I now know why American tourists have such bad reputations. I can't even believe the idiocy levels of some of the people on the tour with us. But anyways, all in all it was a very good trip.

cross your fingers for me

text by Ali

Hopefully this trip will actually go through without any hitches. I leave tomorrow at 5am ish, and come back Sunday night. If we happen to miss our transportation and end up in Newcastle for the weekend or something, you'll hear about it then.

this is serious.

Teams posted 20th Feb, and voting begins on the 23rd. You know you want to join in.

the ski trip that wasn't, part three: final destination

[Part one]
[Part two]

We woke up around 9 am (with no traces of hangovers, another sign that those shots were barely alcoholic), packed our belongings, and headed out to find food. We stopped at a cafe that served breakfast all day, and I ordered a traditional English breakfast because I hadn't tried it yet. And jeez, is that a lot of food! And it's very fried and greasy and heavy. Not bad, but definitely not something I can do every day. Or, you know, year.

After very substantially breaking our fast, we walked back to the station and hopped a train to Portsmouth. We only stayed long enough to look around near the train station a bit, then got on a ferry to the Isle of Wight.

fortressy thing on the coast, seen from the ferry

The island was much bigger than we thought it was, and everything closed at 4pm. Seeing as we didn't get there until 2:30, this meant that we didn't have time to see Needles Park or the Dinosaur Museum. Heartbreaking. But we were all about spontaneity this trip, so we went to Sandown instead to walk along the beach and eat lunch/dinner (I think we decided it was Lunner?).

"1, 2, 3, everyone turn around!"

Sandown beach and cliffs

Seriously guys, no loitering. DEFINITELY.

We ate fish and chips on picnic tables with a gorgeous ocean view, and then trained the seagulls to snatch thrown chips out of the air, because Victoria didn't finish her food. I did, and it was my second huge fried meal of the day. (I felt so weighted down after all the heavy grease, so I went to the grocery store today and bought nothing but fruit and veg for a major detox. Seriously, America is known to be the fat, greasy, fried food capital of the world, but I have been eating so much more unhealthily here. Why isn't everyone 300 pounds in Britain?)

We had been thinking about going to Winchester and Salisbury, and maybe even stopping by Stonehenge, but we didn't have the time because no one had enough stuff to stay an extra day. So this marked the end of our impromptu journey to the coast. It was unexpected, and it wasn't a different country, but it ended up being such a good time. And I spent less money than I would have in Norway.

But since I didn't get to leave the UK last weekend, I signed up for a trip to Bruges and Amsterdam this weekend. And it's through a legit travel company, so there's no chance of it being canceled. Should be a blast.

the ski trip that wasn't, part two: winging it

[Part one here]

Since precise planning led to nowhere but trouble, we decided instead to throw planning out the window and go on a spur-of-the-moment tour of the coastal towns of southern England. First stop: Brighton.
We've all decided that we love Brighton. The seaside was the perfect way to get our spirits back up. Plus, the fact that the beach is pebbly instead of sandy is great--no mess! Also, I love beaches in the winter because of the whole not-getting-burned-to-a-crisp thing. So we spent a nice relaxing hour or so just chilling on the seashore, and then we meandered over to Brighton Pier.I rode the bigger roller coaster and the big crane-arm-swingy thing (yes, that is the technical term for it), but most of the rest of the group were too chicken to go on the scary rides so they did the slide and the twirly one. Then we got noodles from a vendor, and Leonore got hers stolen by giant seagulls. Serious, these birds are totally Hitchcock-esque. But we got chocolate waffles on sticks, which made it all better.
Après ça, we walked up to the Royal Pavilion, which is this very cool building that George IV used to hang out in.After a few pictures, we headed back to the beach to watch the sun set.
We had originally thought that we would only spend a few hours in Brighton then head somewhere else or go back to uni, but we were having such a good time that we decided to stay overnight. So we found a Walkabout hostel that had rooms for £10, and went down to the pub area for dinner and drinks. Fortunately, because we were in an English pub instead of a Norwegian club, I got to watch the Arsenal FA Cup replay. And of course we all know what happened there.The rest of the group weren't into football, so they couldn't understand why I was flipping out so much about Eduardo's brace. But I didn't really care. After the 4-0 win and the triumphant return of the Crozilian, nothing could spoil my mood. We stuck around for a while, and met some British randoms after an awkward picture-taking incident. One of them was in love with my friend Victoria, and gave us £20 to spend on drinks, so we got lots of shots. Which did nothing. We suspect they weren't real alcohol.

We eventually got bored of the pub, so we left and walked around Brighton looking for a dance club open on a Monday night. The guys followed us, claiming they knew where to go, but we ended up at a grody hole-in-the-wall pub far away from the beach. So we left (after Mark got Victoria's number) and went back to the hostel. One of the windows in our room was broken and they didn't have enough bedding for all of us, so even though I was sleeping right next to the heater it was absolutely freezing. But I guess you get what you pay for. It was still totally worth it, because we had a fantastic time.

Part three, coming soon.

the ski trip that wasn't, part one: murphy's law in action

As I wrote previously, I had a ski trip to Oslo, Norway scheduled for the past few days. As it turns out, we didn't actually go. So here's what happened.

We were scheduled to fly out of Stansted on Ryanair at 6:30 am Sunday, but getting to the airport was a bit of a hassle. We took a minibus from Egham to London in the middle of the night, and from there were supposed to hop a coach from Liverpool Street Station to Stansted. But our minibus driver got lost so we were driving around the dark streets of London in circles for absolute ages. When we finally got to the station we had missed our scheduled coach, so we had to take a later one (which didn't even leave on time), and by the time we got to the airport we had about a half hour before our flight left. But because it was Ryanair, check-in was an absolute nightmare and not everyone got their boarding passes. Even for those of us that did get our passes, by the time we cleared security and bolted across the airport, we had missed our flight. So we had to walk all the way back through security and get in this huge queue to try to buy new tickets...which turned out to be £200 at the cheapest.

By this time, we were exhausted from running across the airport, sleep deprived since we had stayed up all night, and bummed about missing our trip. We sat in Costa for a while, eating breakfast and trying to figure out what to do. Half of our group decided to go straight back to Egham, while seven of us figured that we'd stay in London for the day. One of the girls has an aunt that owns a hotel in Sussex Gardens, so she got us a reduced rate there and we decided to stay the night since we had our bags already packed and all. So we dropped our stuff off, then had a child-like regression therapy day in Piccadilly Circus: Burgers and milkshakes at Ed's Diner, hugging giant teddy bears at Hamley's toy shop, and a night at the Trocadero Centre arcade. Then we went back to the hotel, ate chocolate, listened to music, and planned what to do next.

Stay tuned for part two...

back in a few days

Okay everyone, I'm off to Oslo for a couple of days! May or may not go skiing, I haven't decided yet. There are apparently lots of other things to do in Norway (like the viking museum!) so it should be fun either way!

Will update when I get back. And crossing my fingers for an Arsenal win on Monday!

what ballers do on their off time...

thanks Venice!

there's clearly something wrong with my brain

I was going to blog this earlier but I totally forgot about it until now.

So three nights ago I woke from a very vivid nightmare at about four in the morning. One of those sudden eyes popping open and heart racing deals. Now this is unusual for me because I rarely remember my dreams, and pretty much never have nightmares. So what was so scary to my subconscious that it left such a lasting impression?

Well in my dream, there was a murderer loose on the RHUL campus. At least, I think it was here; I don't really remember the specifics in the beginning, but they're not really important. Anyways, people started turning up dead, and no one had any idea who was behind the grisly murders. For they were bloody--almost Jack the Ripper-esque. We were all terrified that it was someone we knew, or someone we were about to meet, and the police had no leads so they were pulling everyone in for questioning. I remember two friends of mine (twins) made a cameo; one died, and the other was very nearly accused of being the murderer. I also remember having a pizza with some random guy, and being terrified that he was gonna turn around and knife me.

But it wasn't pizza dude. The dream progressed and somehow I ended up at a football pitch that I knew to be Anfield, although it didn't quite look like it. It was more like an arena, with walls right around the field, kind of like a baseball stadium. Suddenly someone comes out of the shadows, crazy-eyed and holding a machete.

No lie, the scary murderer was Robbie Keane. He started swinging his machete and yelling "come on you Reds!" and mass pandemonium ensued. There weren't many people on the arena-field-thing, but the crowd was going crazy, screaming and everything. Keane started chasing people around the pitch, and luckily I was able to climb one of the walls and sit on top of it safely (he's not tall enough to reach me, see). Unfortunately, someone else wasn't so lucky. Some random guy ran into a door in the wall, Keane followed him, the crowd went silent in shock...

...and then I woke up.



So the current theory on where dreams come from is that they are a result of neurons used recently during the day, firing at random to strengthen connections while you're asleep. Your brain tries to make some sort of sense out of these random bits of information, so you end up with (usually weird) stories. I can rationalize the process while I'm awake, but still. WTF is wrong with my brain that it came up with this??

new place, same old habits

So my New Years resolution to stop procrastinating totally isn't panning out well. I have a 1500 word essay due tomorrow and so far I've written...250. AND I had all day yesterday to write it because I had no classes. I even put myself in voluntary isolation by refusing to sign on to AIM or MSN, and I still couldn't convince myself to work.

I just have a problem working without pressure. I can't force myself to write essays unless the deadline is mere hours away. As strange as it sounds, I write better like that. Even the knowledge that I would want to watch international football matches this evening/tonight didn't force my brain to concentrate and get my shit done early. So now I'm going to stay up all night to write about the limitations of the DSM classification system.

Sarah's timetable:

3:00-6:45 = Attempt to work. Try to get at least 1/2 of essay written.
6:45-8:45 = Croatia vs. Romania. Check up on a certain Arsenal player's progress.
[8:00-10:00 = France vs. Argentina. Mild interest, but probably won't catch much of it due to previous and next matches listed.]
9:00-11:00 = Spain vs. England. Theo being injured means I have (less than) zero interest in team Engerland, so viva Espana!
11:00-12:00 = Work? Doubtful. Will probably screw around on facebook until...
12:00-2:00 = USA vs. Mexico! Not merely a friendly like the others (pssh, like anytime we play Mehico could be considered "friendly"), but the first match of the final World Cup Qualifying round. I will no doubt be exhausted by this time, but there is no way I'm missing the game.
2:00 - ? = Nap. Will wake up in a few hours to finish essay.
12:00 Thursday = Deadline.

ugh.

Well...that was annoying.

0-0 draw and two players off injured. And of course, a first half red card. (I don't even know what to say about Eboue anymore, he's just...aglfdkjsdfjgs!) Considering these hitches, it was good to hang on to a nil-nil draw. Considering we were playing Tottenham, we desperately needed the points, and Eboue was a total douche when he didn't need to be, the game was not satisfying in the least.

And because of the hamstring injury to Ade and the buckets of blood pouring from Clichy's head resulting in necessary subs, neither Arshavin nor Eduardo got playing time, even though they were both on the bench for the first time (at least this season, in Dudu's case). Ah well, baby steps I guess.

Speaking of Eduardo though, I went to the official Arsenal store yesterday and got this:


I'm pretty excited about it, no lie. I can wear it next season while watching Arsenal compete in the UEFA Cup...

britpop: blog challenge eight

The return of the blog challenge saw all of us assigned a specific era in music. Vanilla Bear first suggested that I do Britpop, because well, we are talking about me here. But I didn't know if I could do the 90s English music scene justice, seeing as I knew nothing about it at the time it was going on. And I'm actually not as big a fan of Britpop as I seem to be; I know little if anything about some of the smaller bands and one-hit-wonders of the time, and I don't really like Suede. However, I decided to come up with a list anyways, and it ended up being a lot longer than I had anticipated.

Create a playlist at MixPod.com

I was going to comment on all of them, but I'm getting lazy so you're just going to get a list.

1) Teenage Fanclub - Your Love is the Place Where I Come From. Songs From Northern Britain, 1997.

2) Blur - The Universal. The Great Escape, 1995.

[I'm adding the video to this one because I love it. Damon Albarn does a pretty darn good Alex DeLarge.]

3) Pulp - Disco 2000. Different Class, 1995.

4) Manic Street Preachers - A Design For Life. Everything Must Go, 1996.

5) James - Laid. Laid, 1993.

6) Echobelly - Great Things. On, 1995.

7) Super Furry Animals - God! Show Me Magic. Moog Droog, 1995.

8) The Verve - Bitter Sweet Symphony. Urban Hymns, 1997.

9) Ash - A Life Less Ordinary. A Life Less Ordinary (Single), 1997.

10) Oasis - Live Forever. Definitely Maybe, 1994.

Well that was fun. I now have the urge to drape myself in the Union Jack and go hang out in Camden Town.

oh snap!

1) Hahahaha!

2) I want to go to Liverpool for £12. I may have to research this. Bet there's some catch to it.

there's a first time for everything...we hope

Fun fact: Arsenal have never beaten Tottenham with Cesc Fàbregas out of the lineup since he started playing for them. This bodes well for us, seeing as we're playing them away on Sunday sans skipper.

This facial expression pretty much sums up my feeling on the subject.

I'm not really one to believe in superstitions or curses or anything of the sort (unless it involves the Chicago Cubs) but this particular streak may be more than coincidence. Quite simply, we play better when he's around. On paper, our results haven't been too bad since El Capitan was injured, but watching the games is another thing entirely. Of course he's not the only one out of action, and maybe Arshavin will help get the creative juices flowing again. But until then, it's back to boring, boring Arsenal.

he puts on women's clothing, and hangs around in bars

A friend of mine linked me to this article, because he noticed something odd about the person pictured. See if you can tell what it is.




...



We're not the only ones who see it, right?

[Random note: I really hope I never have to do a google image search of John Terry again. I have no desire to see him shirtless. Although the crying pics were pretty amusing...]

hey look, this time it's real. i swear.

Okay, I think I can believe it now. This transfer has been far too exhausting. I need a nap. Or a drink.

puppy!

His name is Jackson, he's 3 or 4 months old, and part collie or hound or something of the sort. My mom and sister picked him out from a shelter in southern Virginia and brought him home a few days ago, so we're not sure of the specifics. Apparently Geisha (our first pup) isn't too happy with the arrangement, but she'll get used to it. She's a bit spoiled; she's had the full run of the house for long enough!


My sister said that she keeps growling at Jackson and he thinks she's playing and will start chasing her. She seems to be getting tired of his puppy "let's play!" antics, but I'm sure she'll grow to love him. Ditto my dad, who is also not too impressed with the new addition to the fam! But I am. I'm rather sad I won't get to meet him until the summer though.