what can we learn from today?
Following the week from hell, where every day was worse than its predecessor and by the end we’re all uttering the phrase “well at least it can’t get any worse…” purely to see if it could I’ve noticed a few things from the world around me that I have to share.
Despite the increase in technology parenting continues to be an impossible job for most people and the percentage of batty parents raising batty offspring shows no signs of decreasing. Case in point: I was warming down at the gym and sharing the mat space with a mother who INSISTED on hogging 2 mats even though she didn’t need them for the stretches she was doing. Halfway through my time a boy came over, probably her son who told her he was tired, sat down and then got the third degree from his mother as to how on earth was he tired seeing he’d just somehow done his 45 minute workout in under 15 minutes.
The boy was between 8 and 11, not secondary school age by any extent. Clearly didn’t want to be in a gym on a Saturday morning and then tried to placate his mother by doing dips in front of her while she stretched.
This led to the line of the morning of “You’re not dipping correctly”.
Yeah, nothing like tearing the confidence of an 8 year old in a gym.
I recently bought two CDs of albums I had when I was growing up. Sleeper’s ‘The It Girl’ and Madness’ ‘Keep Moving’. I have these albums but only on cassette and thought it’d be nice to have the disk version, seeing as it allows both now to reside on my iPod. The fact I noticed is that most albums from the era of cassettes and LP’s (records for those not possessed with the jargon) usually had their ‘single quality’ songs at the start of each side of the LP. I.e. with an album of 10 songs it would be songs 1 and 6 having potential.
Madness in particular are common for doing this. But transfer that onto a CD format and it’s really disjointing. Like the flow of the album’s derailed midway cos current albums (mostly CD) cram all their cream at the top of the playlist, the standard gradually reducing until the final two songs are obvious filler. Why they do this I’ve no idea, guessing it’s to hook the customer but I don’t know.
We’ve all forgotten that now, it’s the norm, but when you see the old albums remastered it does make me go ahhh…
Finally Wayne Rooney. Read a fascinating piece on him on the ESPN website a few nights ago. And why it was fascinating was it was taken from an American perspective. Which when it comes to Premiership football players means it’s pretty much impartial. Yes we know he sleeps around on Coleen (the wife) and has had a hair transplant but UK papers don’t look into Rooney on a national scale besides cheap laughs and celebrity lampooning.
America, for whatever reason doesn’t. or they didn’t in this article.
The funniest thing about it was the language barrier between Rooney and the interviewer. Which was gargantuan.
“It’s English Jim but not as we know it”
And while Wayne’s cursed with a Liverpool estate upbringing and the education which goes along with it he also speaks how many English people speak. That is we refer to ourselves in the second person singular. ‘You’, meaning me. I do this, everyone in work does this. Americans don’t do this. And the direct quotes in the article were funny because I could understand them but I could see many an American reader going ‘”WTF???” in front of their laptops.
Syntax aside the interview focused on two things. The fact that Rooney can visualise what he plans to do in a football match before it happens, similar to Tiger Woods and his golf game apparently it allows for the brain to forge pathways allowing muscle memory quicker access to certain functions (in layman terms) in the motor aspects of the brain. Wayne is meticulous about this apparently; it is the foundation of most of his so-called ‘natural talent’ that the media hark on about.
The other fact is that the UK tear down their sportspeople in certain sports as soon as they become too successful. Rooney, Beckham, Flintoff all get their expose in Murdoch’s rags portraying how horrific they are off the pitch. The public NEED that!!!! They need these people to be fallible and flawed. I have no idea why this is but then I have my own personal concerns (speech, lifestyle) and as a result I’ve never taken interest in seeing others ripped of theirs.
“Innate talent over hard work. These are deeply held notions in England, this most class-obsessed of nations…”
I don’t know if the above quote is true of this country. All my sport inspirations (with the possible exception of Rod [Woodson]) have been try-hard, scrappy overachievers. Which doesn’t play to the English perspective of talent and ambition.
Or does it? The Olympic swim and cycling teams who stole the show in Beijing were hardly offered everything on a platter. But you rarely get the media focusing on the long hours Chris Choi (cyclist) has to put in to be as good as he is. Or his background and where he came from as an individual. I don’t know, I don’t think the above quote is correct but I don’t think it’s 100% incorrect either. especially when it comes to tennis in the UK we lack that drive that some of the European countries have simply because we have too much here as opposed to the former Balkan countries who have been in flux (militarily or otherwise) since the early nineties.
Finally the article closes with a sad acceptance of the media’s portrayal of Rooney as this inarticulate, football playing thug. Who has natural ability handed to him from on-high and has used it to sleep with a lot of women other than his wife. Which I think is a shame. He reminds me actually of Blaster off MadMax 3. He is what he is, it’s not his fault. I just wish sometimes the UK media saw the good side rather than focusing on and revelling in the bad.
Despite the increase in technology parenting continues to be an impossible job for most people and the percentage of batty parents raising batty offspring shows no signs of decreasing. Case in point: I was warming down at the gym and sharing the mat space with a mother who INSISTED on hogging 2 mats even though she didn’t need them for the stretches she was doing. Halfway through my time a boy came over, probably her son who told her he was tired, sat down and then got the third degree from his mother as to how on earth was he tired seeing he’d just somehow done his 45 minute workout in under 15 minutes.
The boy was between 8 and 11, not secondary school age by any extent. Clearly didn’t want to be in a gym on a Saturday morning and then tried to placate his mother by doing dips in front of her while she stretched.
This led to the line of the morning of “You’re not dipping correctly”.
Yeah, nothing like tearing the confidence of an 8 year old in a gym.
I recently bought two CDs of albums I had when I was growing up. Sleeper’s ‘The It Girl’ and Madness’ ‘Keep Moving’. I have these albums but only on cassette and thought it’d be nice to have the disk version, seeing as it allows both now to reside on my iPod. The fact I noticed is that most albums from the era of cassettes and LP’s (records for those not possessed with the jargon) usually had their ‘single quality’ songs at the start of each side of the LP. I.e. with an album of 10 songs it would be songs 1 and 6 having potential.
Madness in particular are common for doing this. But transfer that onto a CD format and it’s really disjointing. Like the flow of the album’s derailed midway cos current albums (mostly CD) cram all their cream at the top of the playlist, the standard gradually reducing until the final two songs are obvious filler. Why they do this I’ve no idea, guessing it’s to hook the customer but I don’t know.
We’ve all forgotten that now, it’s the norm, but when you see the old albums remastered it does make me go ahhh…
Finally Wayne Rooney. Read a fascinating piece on him on the ESPN website a few nights ago. And why it was fascinating was it was taken from an American perspective. Which when it comes to Premiership football players means it’s pretty much impartial. Yes we know he sleeps around on Coleen (the wife) and has had a hair transplant but UK papers don’t look into Rooney on a national scale besides cheap laughs and celebrity lampooning.
America, for whatever reason doesn’t. or they didn’t in this article.
The funniest thing about it was the language barrier between Rooney and the interviewer. Which was gargantuan.
“It’s English Jim but not as we know it”
And while Wayne’s cursed with a Liverpool estate upbringing and the education which goes along with it he also speaks how many English people speak. That is we refer to ourselves in the second person singular. ‘You’, meaning me. I do this, everyone in work does this. Americans don’t do this. And the direct quotes in the article were funny because I could understand them but I could see many an American reader going ‘”WTF???” in front of their laptops.
Syntax aside the interview focused on two things. The fact that Rooney can visualise what he plans to do in a football match before it happens, similar to Tiger Woods and his golf game apparently it allows for the brain to forge pathways allowing muscle memory quicker access to certain functions (in layman terms) in the motor aspects of the brain. Wayne is meticulous about this apparently; it is the foundation of most of his so-called ‘natural talent’ that the media hark on about.
The other fact is that the UK tear down their sportspeople in certain sports as soon as they become too successful. Rooney, Beckham, Flintoff all get their expose in Murdoch’s rags portraying how horrific they are off the pitch. The public NEED that!!!! They need these people to be fallible and flawed. I have no idea why this is but then I have my own personal concerns (speech, lifestyle) and as a result I’ve never taken interest in seeing others ripped of theirs.
“Innate talent over hard work. These are deeply held notions in England, this most class-obsessed of nations…”
I don’t know if the above quote is true of this country. All my sport inspirations (with the possible exception of Rod [Woodson]) have been try-hard, scrappy overachievers. Which doesn’t play to the English perspective of talent and ambition.
Or does it? The Olympic swim and cycling teams who stole the show in Beijing were hardly offered everything on a platter. But you rarely get the media focusing on the long hours Chris Choi (cyclist) has to put in to be as good as he is. Or his background and where he came from as an individual. I don’t know, I don’t think the above quote is correct but I don’t think it’s 100% incorrect either. especially when it comes to tennis in the UK we lack that drive that some of the European countries have simply because we have too much here as opposed to the former Balkan countries who have been in flux (militarily or otherwise) since the early nineties.
Finally the article closes with a sad acceptance of the media’s portrayal of Rooney as this inarticulate, football playing thug. Who has natural ability handed to him from on-high and has used it to sleep with a lot of women other than his wife. Which I think is a shame. He reminds me actually of Blaster off MadMax 3. He is what he is, it’s not his fault. I just wish sometimes the UK media saw the good side rather than focusing on and revelling in the bad.