Picture of the Day

Not good for my nerves but, thankfully, good triumphed over the opposite of good today.

Funny that, in denying Celtic a stonewall foul, the referee allowed Celtic to catch Rangers napping and Jota popped up with the only goal of the game. Cue perfect celebration at the Rangers end and another potential treble forthcoming.

No words

Round 187: Utter Pish

Darts Thrown: March 28th/29th 2019
Blog Written: March 29th 2019

Highest Score: 129
Lowest Score: 3
Sixties: 27
100+: 5

Blogger's Note: Written in haste, so there will be spelling mistakes and slapdash grammar.

Wow, round 187, and yet the first shaming pic to be posted. Again, wow.

To cut a long story short, one of my many failed New Year's Resolutions for 2019 was to throw at least 300 darts (100 throws) every day. It came unstuck at some point in the second week in January, but for all that I have persevered with the darts and at the time of writing - 88 days into the year - I'm to Round 187 in the 300 darts routine. At some time I will upload the previous 186 rounds . . . but not today.

Any thoughts on Round 187? Not really, it's just a variation on a theme. Spread over two days 'cos at some point I was too shagged tired to complete the round in one session. (A theme of my darts practice these past couple of months.) I'm playing with mismatched darts, which I'm sure doesn't help but it's no excuse for the continued inconsistency. There's occasional pockets of play when I'm in "the zone" but looking at this round, I don't think that happened this time.

The book in the picture? Peter Tatchell's 'The Battle of Bermondsey'. Have I read it? No, but I am reading it at the moment. I've not been reading a lot of books these past couple of years - still buy the fuckers, mind - and if I finish this book, it will be the first book I've read this year. Why am I reading a book published in 1983? Well. it's a book I dipped into at some point in the 80s when I first got interested in politics. I'm sure Hemel library had a copy, and that's where I would have found it. Some of it is coming back to me whilst I'm reading it, so I obviously read more of it first time round than I originally thought. I picked up this copy second hand last year (maybe) via Amazon. I'm not sure why I picked it up. Probably 'cos it was super cheap (my first consideration whenever buying a book). partly because I have a tendency at times to dig out old books that I made had read when I was much younger. Not sure why. Maybe just the literary equivalent of rebuilding your old record collections. It won't be the only old book that turns up in my rounds. I'm also an admirer of Tatchell, even when I don't always agree with him, and reading about Tatchell and the Labour Left in the early 1980s somehow chimes in/overlaps with Corbyn's Labour Party of today.

In other news:

• Celtic are playing Rangers on Sunday. I fear the worst despite what the pundits say, but I always fear the worst on such occasions. It takes at least 4 goals to calm me down, and I don't think Celtic have 4 goals in them at the moment. I'll happily chow down on crow come Sunday, if I'm proven wrong.
• Brexi-shambles is continuing as I write. No idea what the fuck is going on at this moment in time -  and I do occasionally try and keep up - but it will probably result in some posh cunt being Tory Prime Minister this time next month. Where's the hue and cry mob camping out outside David Cameron's gaffe? Why does he get to retire quietly with his farm animals?
• As I mentioned Tatchell's book, here a link to a Socialist Standard article from '83 which touches upon the gutter press's hounding of Tatchell.
• With regards to the Socialist Standard, I'm still continuing with the digitization project which partially explains the lack of book reading and the dearth of original posts on this old blog. In recent days, issues from January 1931, May 1993 and June 1979 have been completed. You show check them out.

Sep 2, 2018: Celtic 1 R*ngers 0

Don't be fooled by the seemingly close result. R*ngers got their arse handed to them on a cheap knock off plate from the Barras. Hit the woodwork four times, dealt with some dodgy refereeing and all the media talk of Slippy G. closing the gap is postponed for another couple of weeks.

Boyata was immense . . .  Brown didn't rise to the bait and the provocations  . . . and this screen grab suggests Nacho Novo wishes he was somewhere else:

Lest we forget . . .

. . . they were cheering their heads off when the draw was made:




Rumour has it the self-same individuals were throwing themselves into the Clyde after this.

A Judy Collins fan blubs . . .

One drawback of leaving stuff on your desktop that you were meaning to use in happier days is that if you leave it lying around long enough, it will come back to bite you in the arse. December 30th 2017 was not a good day . . . and nobody in green and white was laughing. 

Granted, it could have been a lot worse. Can Dembele do an offski for a shedload of cash now? I fear my current hoops dream, Leigh Griffiths, will go the way of Riordan and McCourt. (I know, I'm stretching it a bit here.)

The above screen grab has been waiting patiently on the desktop since the 18th of August of last year. I really missed my punchline there, reader.

"You can't go back . . . "

I still wish I was a Partick Thistle supporter but this was rather well done:



Bit of a massacre.

A slow dance, some romance and R*ngers didn't stand a chance

Deserved it.

Going into the game I thought they'd get walloped and I was so, so happy to be proven wrong.

McCourt answered his doubters and showed that he could perform in a big game. His reverse pass in the first half that created a scoring chance for Forrest was the pass of the game . . . Miller went missing . . . Samaras should have got a hat trick (and deserved it) . . . Mulgrew was good going forward but scares the hell out of the spectator when called upon to defend . . . Ness looks like one for the future for R*ngers . . . . and Forrest still looks like he'd get carded if he tried to get into an over-12's youth disco.

R*ngers are still the favourites for the league, but this win makes it much more interesting.

The St Genevieve Day Massacre?

OK, this is the set up. Since they got beat 1-0 by Seville in early December, R*ngers league form has been as follows:

12th Dec R*ngers 3-0 St Johnstone

15th Dec Dundee Utd 0-3 R*ngers

19th Dec R*ngers 6-1 Motherwell

27th Dec Hibs 1-4 R*ngers

30th Dec R*ngers 7-1 Dundee Utd

That's 5 victories on the bounce, with 23 goals scored and only three conceded. They're leading the SPL by seven points having played one game more than Celtic but also have a goal difference advantage of +16. And stats like that mean something in the SPL.

They're that rampant at the moment that even Kenny Miller is scoring goals. I repeat: KENNY MILLER is scoring goals. He was as surprised as the rest of us and needed to rest his studs on Darren Dods shins, thus missing out on today's match.

Oh yeah, about today's match. Despite Celtic going into today's match on the back of that great escape from Vienna and recent form of 5 wins and 1 draw in their last six home games, it doesn't look good for us. A defence that is currently auditioning for Danny Baker's next football blooper dvd, and Boruc with aspirations to take on the starring role in a film of this footballing legend of yesteryear all adds up to what couild be known in future years as the St Genevieve Day Massacre.

And yet? And yet I haven't been as excited about an auld firm game in a long, long time. Like a Socialist Standard front cover it could be a thing of brilliance or an absolute disaster. I'll be smiling whatever happens. The only thing that could have made today better is if it had been played at Ibrox.

Mid-Manhattan, here I come.

Auld Firm Sign Language

"Walter, your shower of journeymen were this close from finishing 2008 unbeaten at Ibrox."

I wasn't expecting that.

Pictures of Smiling Babies Increases Blog Traffic . . . amongst friends and family

Negotiations over the 'Socialist Standard subscription as a Christmas gift' continues apace:

'You're kidding me on? I don't believe you. You mean every single article concludes with the same final paragraph? What about the book reviews?'

'I'm going to clean your clock in a minute if you don't tell me a real bedtime story! Ire of the Irate Itinerant doesn't count.

Tell me that one about 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' again. I love that one. See when you told me Frank McAvennie used to be a top class striker, I knew then it was a fairytale.'

'OK, this blog has now officially jumped the shark. Once you decide to actually get back to real posts rather than falling back on YouTube clips, Weekly Bulletins and unsanctioned pics of me, then you can get back to me. I might - just might - stop pretending to be asleep all the time.

PS - I'm still adamant that I don't want the Socialist Standard in my stocking come Christmas morning. Get me a sub to the New Yorker instead. The cartoons are funnier.'

Hat tip to Auntie Anne for the pics.

Manhattan Bound

What with my ongoing bloggers block indifference, I haven't really been mentioning the SPL much since it started up again a few weeks back but August 31st means this place and, who knows, maybe come 1pm my time I'll actually be back in the flow of blogging again.

Aye, and I also predict that Derek Riordan will bag a hat trick today.

I'm not going to venture a prediction on the score today, but I do hope Celtic, as the home team, can at least buck the trend of yesterday's SPL results:

Pringle sweaters for goalposts

I can see where Barry Glendenning is coming from:

"I don't buy this stuff about players being tired. When I was a kid I used to play football from after breakfast in the morning until it got dark at night every day during the school holidays, taking occasional breaks only to eat, or play tennis and/or golf. What's more, the standard of football we were playing was a lot higher than that of most SPL games." [From his minute-by-minute report of Celtic's victory against R*ngers in today's Guardian.]

It's an old joke and it's fitting that he got it out of the mothballs for this special occasion.

Tennis, golf and breakfast. I think Mr Glendenning was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Still too dazed, heady and in a dreamlike state to cough up a few comments about the game - now would be the perfect time for me to try and get my head around dialectical materialism - but I thought I would post a link to the Guardian's minute-by-minute report as part of my ongoing blog project of constructing a shrine to my once fading memory. No I don't know what that means either, and I just transferred the words from my head to the keyboard to the screen.

Press publish.

Heartache deferred

A bagel, a coffee and a probable heartache

Get the jokes in before Gloomy Sunday

Via the New York Celtic Supporters Club FAQs:

Is there any place to avoid in New York City ?

New York is one of the safest places around these days and anyone exhibiting common sense should not run into any problems. The lack of a Glasgow Rangers presence makes for a pretty pleasant environment. However visitng Celtic Fans should note that the New York Rangers Hockey franchise despite being uniformed in sickly shades of red white and blue do not represent North American relatives of our cloven hooved friends.

Or as one Urban 75er puts it:

"as my friend dara once said to me "our bigotry's so much more romantic than yours".

Hat tip to Kara for the original quote.

"But, David, I think I should be leading."

News just in:

David Weir and Gary Caldwell get voted off Scotland's version of 'Dancing With The Stars'.

No Chance