If Real end up going through in this tie, it'll be purely cos of Ronaldo.

holy shit! totally missing it. i don't know how the fuck to cheer for schalke. heil schalke? lol. sorry. but great! COME ON SCHALKE WIN THIS ONE.

and hurray bundesliga. yes i read the article-- was funny. there've always been ultras though. e.g. adlerfront (from frankfurt) have a website.

anyway i won't interrupt your viewing. sounds awesome.

No probs, half time. Real have been awful besides Ronaldo. Schalke have been bombarding them.

cultural anthopologists welcome:

http://www.adler-front.com

primatologists welcome too

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great that huntelaar is playing cuz he's suspended in the bundesliga as you read

Yes Huntelaaaaaaarrrr!!!!!!!

well shit almost almost almost

and jico asked me the other day how can i get excited about the bundesliga bhuahahahaha

i'm going to have to watch this recording ASAP

It's a shame you now know the score but yeah, watch it if you can. Real certainly have nothing to be proud of in going through. Ronaldo and Casillas were all that stood between them and total humiliation. very impressed with Schalke's Max Meyer. Only 19 and had the Real defence in his pocket. But make no mistake, Schalke were good but Real were appalling and still managed to score 3 against them. Although in fairness to Schalke, the position they were in they were really just focusing on attack for 90 mins.

oh no shame at all-- i was watching the live updates on the guardian website. it's like the old days of listening to games on the radio (i have this uncle who would really get into that). so i suffered or rejoiced every time something popped up. i even threw my fists up when huntelaar scored his last goal. hilarious.

I don't have a telly anymore so when I can't watch online, or at the pub, I rely on radio commentaries. So long as you don't mind not having a clue what's actually going on, it's great.

no tv anymore?? you watch the prem online then?

Yeah, or at the pub. I don't live in London anymore so going to the actual games wouldn't be an option now even if I could afford to.

and for movies? i mean i get not paying for cable, but movies need a big screen (i haven't gone to a movie theatre in years now-- i don't miss the fucks taking phone calls 2 rows behind me).

ps- didn't you live in some kind of green-everywhere village or something? i seem to recall... or did you move recently?

DVDs now, on my Macbook. It's pathetic, I know. But when I look out of my window I see swans swimming idly by, so I'm more than happy.

I used to live in a kind of urban village in London but moved out of London altogether last month. Now I'm in the proper countryside in a tiny place on the river. Sort of similar to Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn's set up in On Golden Pond. Genuinely idyllic, so long as you can handle the remoteness.



My neighbour

holy fuck! that looks great.

i live in a place more remote than you (this is not a cock contest-- just explaining that i understand-- i have no rivers, only dust). i even eat the muttons i kill! (no joke there). so, remote as fuck.

it's a pretty swan, i'm sure would make a great roast, but you need to get yourself a big plasma (or whatever comes after) and a blu-ray player. that way you can also connect your macbook via hdmi to watch games.

BIG SCREEN, MAN!! the content is up to you.

Yeah, I'll get a proper screen once I'm properly settled but right now I'm just trying to find space for books. But I have to say, since moving here, I'm really happiest just having a cup of tea and looking at the view from my window. I'm pretty much a hobbit now. I envy you for all that space you have. As remote as I am, I'd love to get even remoter, but for England this is about as remote as it gets.

do you mean to say you're in wales?

that's fucking awesome

burn the books!

ha ha ha

no...

i regularly go over my stored books and i realize lots of them are shit and i'll never read or consult them. so i trade them to the used-book man. i usually get art books which are expensive and not ipad-ready. 20 shitty paperbacks = 1 color-plate volume deluxe

No I'm in Kent

Almost all of my shelf space is taken up with books, mostly art related. I teach art history so it's kind of a professional necessity. Besides a few novels, DVDs and CDs, that's about it.

And, while I'll always support West Ham, if only in spirit, I do like the idea of following a local team, so I'm now a default Maidstone Utd fan. £10 to get in (as opposed to about £50 at WH) and they're currently top of the Ryman League so look odds on for promotion to the lofty heights of the Conference South, then it's just another five league promotions before the Prem and European dominance. Haha.

Gotta be wary of the local ultras, though.




Will probably go to the Classico against Lewes on saturday.

This past few days I've just had no interest in watching football. Then of all the fucking times I miss two days of football these shockers happen. Saying that, a friend text me after the game saying it was a disgrace to football.

The game wasn't great. Very niggly all the way through. Starting to come round to the criticisms levelled at Costa now. I still like his aggression but tonight he was little more than a thug. And watching Thiago score to dump Chelsea out was just one of those beautiful things.

---

bayern took their revenge on shakhtar too-- i didn't have a chance to see it but i saw the demented score-- though it's no longer a surprise

Feel slightly bitter-sweet about the Chelsea game. Always nice to see them beaten but I was kind of hoping for a big Mourinho v Pep match-off final (draw permitting). Although, even without last nights loss, watching highlights of Bayern, I think they'd have destroyed Chelsea. They have to be favourites now.

i am not fond of predictions or odd-making which is why i don't gamble, but barcelona has to be a contender and who knows--- maybe even dortmund, or leverkusen make the final.

i have to wonder why bayern played so poorly vs. shakhtar in the away game-- maybe angela merkel asked them to be kind for foreign policy reasons ha ha. i'm willing to seriously entertain that thought. but a 7-0 result vs them is not that impressive-- it was more so vs. roma.

then again bayern has a way to get entangled with their own feet every now and then. the final is a single game after all and luck can have a big part. shit, even man city could possibly win it all.

anyway, i'll change subject to ask-- kent? i'll have to google the place. so what took you there? girlfriend? work? both?

Over two legs I'd have to fancy Bayern but, you're right, in a final it can be anyone's. Remember how Chelsea defied all expectations in beating them a few year's ago.

As for Kent, I just got sick of London. I'd lived there all my life, in different parts and it was seriously starting to do my head in, even though I was increasingly seeking out 'greener' less urban parts of it. But those are becoming stupidly expensive. Anyway a friend told me about a place going cheap and I took the plunge. It's definitely going from one extreme to the other but that suits me.

Some pictures I've got online of spots within a few mile radius of me

i googled kent-- looks nice & it's closer to france.

that looks amazing-- where i live we have forests but it's just dirt-- and mud when it rains.

e.g., a google of "juniper pinon woodland" turns up...



makes you thirsty just looking at it, doesn't it? it's a fucking desert. (that's not where i live, that looks more like a suburb, but the geography is the same).

desert or not, i can't complain about the space and having few neighbors (the fewer the better).

so what do you do for work? new job? teach online? commute by train? started a religious cult? did you buy the place? are you renting? why so stingy w/ the information? ha ha ha ha.

It looks perfect!

Yeah, I bought it but it's basically a shack so I'm effectively rebuilding it as I go along. That's how I could afford it.

I teach art history at a university in London so I have to commute. It's expensive, about £40/$60 a day, but I'm only in for a maximum of 3 days a week and I've been staying at my girlfriends in London to cut down costs during term time. But I have stupidly long holidays in the summer when I only have to go in for very occasional meetings, plus I'm able to do 90% of my admin online, so it actually works out really cheap compared with having to rent in London.

oh i understand the setup now. there were big holes in your original story. congrats on buying a shack!!! shacks rule.

btw. look up ianto evans on cob buildings-- if you ever wanna put a studio or something on your land or rebuild differently, or have options. i have his book (kindle version).

evans is the one that gave me the idea you were in wales. he grew up there (fleeing the german bombings) and in the cob house book he called it "the indian reservation of the british empire" or something of that sort-- so when you said you were super-remote i thought--wales! the holy land of zeta! etc.

anyway, yeah, ianto evans. good stuff. check him. or-- look at THE WOODLAND HOUSE which is by one of your compatriots who makes a living as a coppicer and charcoal burner, probably somewhere near you.

dammit, man. so many possibilities living in the sticks. and you ahve rain! rain means more plants. plants are good.

Cool! Thanks. I'll definitely give him a look.

Funny, my dad was evacuated to Wales during WW2 so he may have a point. Although he hated the place. Said he'd have rather taken his chances with the luftwaffe than with laverbread.

haaa haaaa haaaa haaa!

i've never heard of laverbread before. now i'll have to investigate...

--

eta: it's seaweed! i love seaweed! wtf, demon's dad! it's THE WELSHMAN'S CAVIAR!

I like it but it's got a very distinct taste that people seem to either love or hate. It definitely doesn't taste like other seaweed I've tried. Lovely with cockles.

Bitch, we need to talk about Lukaku! Why we can't see performances like we did tonight more often I'll never know. Anyhoo, going into the second leg with a lead. Bring on the next round!

Then we'll get to Sunday and i'll be despairing at how shit Everton are, and that Lukaku can kiss my ass.

staring the bayern/shakhtar recording right now...

I shitload more green than the "Angeles National Forest" i go hiking in..

like kim says in her book-- there's a bunch of burlap under LA

england looks amazingly green though--and kent is supposed to be greener than the rest from what i read


i had to google to understand, since i wasn't aware of where everton was playing-- i thought you didn't care about the europa league!

at least the last time i asked about it everyone here told me not to give it a 2nd thought

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my take on the bayern/shakhtar:

while 7-0 is an impressive score, it was made easy by the fact that a shakhtar player was thrown out on minute 2 of the game.

don't mean to be "negative" by dismissing such an absolute victory, but what i saw during the first half was a bayern that missed many many many many chances to score.

first half ended 2-0; it could easily have been 33-0 the way things were going. but it didn't.

and this is what i worry about-- the awful conversion rate in the first of such dominance -- all the tikitaka in the world scores no goals. this is when bayern can look awful (awfully ineffective that is).

2nd half with rode in for robben was when things went bananas-- well rode came in the first 1/2 with a robben injury.

this time there wasn't so much pass spaghetti in the area, but they scored more.

bernat in for ribéry, was good. dante for badstuber, just fine. happy to see badstuber recovered--and even score. i thought he'd spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair the way he was going.

Kent is dubbed the garden of England. It is very green, mainly because it gets a stupid amount of rain, so while it looks pretty it's heavily prone to floods.






It's interesting if the club you support are in it, otherwise you tend to ignore it.


He reminds me of Adebayor, ie good when he can be arsed otherwise a complete waste of time (and £28m).

sweeettt.

see, in a place like that you can have a dairy cow in your backyard. how much space have you got?

farm nerd talk: in a place like wisconsin (green) you can have a cow feed off 2 acres-- in wyoming, it's like 20 acres per cow. where i live it's more like 100 acres per cow (since hills don't count for cows--at least officially-- and this is hilly terain). the productivity of your land must be insane.

if you have a small space, a dexter cow might fit.



dammit, man. consider the cheese. or the steak!


i love you sam! i'm happy to see sam go. i love you again sam! :D

Actually LA itself has be named the most tree populated urban center in America, there is literally a tree for every person however our natural chapparel is much different, so when you leave the city for the nearby mountains there is less green because there is less water away from the aquaduct fed city

Haha. I may be overreacting in wanting Sam out but where have I ever shown any love for him? If I was I was definitely being ironic. A grudging respect at times, maybe, pragmatism in terms of our position, definitely, even happiness when he was upsetting Mourinho and Van Gaal, but love? Never. For the record, I hated him being appointed in the first place but understood the reasons why. I wanted him out last season but saw an upturn in the way we played at the start of this one, but since Christmas we've started to implode again. I don't want him sacked before the end of the season, I just don't want his contract renewed in the summer. Although, again, I understand the reasons why the board would want to.


Having animals would just mean something for me to worry about. I've moved here with the very intention of minimising it. I'm a few miles away from a large town, where I do my weekly shop, which works for me. I look at a cow and just think hassle.