Beyond the Ordinary

Here's a documentary about stuff.
First of all, in all likelihood, this will get you dizzy.
Second, try to focus on just one thing. Life is too short anyways.
Third and last, enjoy (although I assume you already are...).



Made by Jae Gyoung Oh, Manuela Lizarralde, Eugenia Camargo


Welcome to my life.

Some Serious $H!T

Yay, Asians.

We start seeing the overlying nature of these groups, such that one of their principles is that "with numbers there are no laws." Ah, what words to live by.

And yet, despite the ultra-violence I was expecting, there has yet to be a proper hooligan, and I couldn't have phrased it better than Buford did:
"People had been loud, grotesque, disgusting, rude, uncivilized, unpleasant to look at, and in some instances, explicitly repellent - but not violent."

Never mind, here comes the violence. When beer bottles rain from the sky and strike the English fans in the head, no one does anything, except the fans themselves. No innocent bystander wants to get involved and no policeman wants to get involved.

Due to the social nature of these groups, they have, in a way, been isolated from the rest of the world in such a way that problems have to be internally solved (which isn't too hard since there is power in numbers).

In the middle of all this, again, is the narrator, who still seems to be at some sort of limbo between being an innocent journalist (hah, oxymoron) and a fervid football fan. Yes, he's in the middle of all this, but as a reader, he still seems like that-one-guy-who-happened-to-be-there. This of course, was more accentuated by his inner chanting of "I will not $H!T myself, I will not $H!T myself," when things start to get violent. There are firecrackers, eggs, and wifi routers being thrown everywhere, stuff getting lit on fire, and possible bowel activities getting warmed up right under Buford.

And still, in the middle of all this, "nobody did a thing".

Then the police. Then a goal. Then another goal. Euphoria. Disappointment. Pride. Screaming. Shove. Counter-shove.

There's just so much action, and everything seems to accelerate as the adrenaline jumps out of the book and shoves itself up my eye sockets, threatening to keep my brain cells hostage.

Wow. Soccer is some serious $H!T.

Among Them

It's apparently quite easy to become one of them if you're a journalist.

Bill Buford is asked whether he was from the Express. He's not. He's asked if he's here to write about the football supporters. He is. He's told that they're not hooligans. He says he knows. At this point, they were probably very doubtful, questioning the reason this guy could even possibly be here.

Anyways, back to the first statement. One sentence was enough for the narrator to become one of them. When asked what he was doing here, he answered that he was here to "get very, very pissed."

Enough said.
Welcome to the club.

After being admitted into the gang, the narrator starts learning of the Manchester United fanbase hierarchy, among other things.

At this point, I seriously question myself: why go through all this trouble? Aren't journalists supposed to be leading a dull life, waiting in front of Chris Brown's house to ask him why he- you know, never mind.

Don't forget the Leprechaun costume.

Why is he doing this? He's obviously not a football fan. Not yet, at least. What's his point?

Yes, this is going to help him write an article (or a book in this case), but what is the purpose? There must be something.

He wants to show.

Show what?

"Them."

Where's the Mean Guy?

Have you ever had one of those days when you were expecting to have a great day, and suddenly a bunch of football hooligans come out of nowhere, proceeding to urinate out of a bus while chanting "Fudge the Pope"? Me neither.

Bill Buford had one of those days, and surprisingly enough, he wasn't being urinated on (nor was he the Pope). As our narrator gets slowly assimilated into being a "thug", he starts to learn their ways, consequently learning how to urinate out of the window with the most optimal aim. While this doesn't actually happen, being among "them" is teaching the narrator how things work in this new community he now finds himself in. 

Despite this, I think he hasn't met the most hardcore of said fans, because so far, I haven't seen anyone get beat up and frozen into a grape-flavored popsicle for supporting Chelsea. I can safely deduce this because we've only heard stories, through other people such as Roy, about people getting savagely assaulted for picking up a stick to defend himself.

Before ending this post, I got to think: when the author says "among the thugs", is he implying that he is among them, but not actually one of them?

Juan-Hundred Women

First, I'll apologize for the pun in the title. Sorry.

Before proceeding with more thuggery, I would like to mention Don Juan, a play by Moliere that I saw yesterday.

There will be spoilers, by the way. If you wish not to see some details of the play, you might wish to go to Youtube and watch some teenagers jump onto treadmills and get launched into a one-way ticket to getting a couple million views.

There's a man, and as it is with any movie or play, the man is into some hardcore stuff. In this case, Don Juan, the protagonist, basically goes around seducing girls of all age, beauty, and sex (?). Despite being wealthy and stuff, he spends all his time hitting on girls, leaving them as soon as he gets tired of them. I suppose he REALLY wants that one game achievement, although I'm not sure if it's worth it for only ten gamer points.

Or going to hell.

There are constant connections to religion in the play, and it is most obvious at the end, when Don Juan is dragged to hell by none other than a holy statue thing after having ruined many relationships. It seems the world is a better place after Don Juan is taken to the deep abyss of death and the lack of video games, except for Don Juan's servant Sganarelle, who laments his inability to acquire coffee anymore.

Whether or not the play was originally meant to be closer to a comedy than a preachy religious vending machine, the one that I saw was closer to a comedy, and I liked it. There was one scene in which Sganarelle threw a baby in the air (I won't explain the context), and my friend almost choked on his abundant supply of Pringles and ice tea (otherwise known as extreme sugar water). However, I think that because of this lightheartedness and funniness throughout the play, the grim ending seemed rather abrupt, which left me in a very slight sense of "just like that?"

Nevertheless, it was one of those things that made me laugh that day (don't underestimate that statement, as we live in a world where texting LOL apparently translates into "Lack Of Laughter"), and I am grateful. It even made me think of joining the theater stuff, if only to be part of such laughter-inducing productions. In conclusion, that was "Juan good play".

Whether I'd go around doing what Don Juan did is still undecided.

Thugs and Balls

I thought I was reading In Cold Blood. I'm not.
I'm reading Among the Thugs instead.
But you don't care.

The beginning talks about how the narrator came to realize how extreme sports fans can become, wrecking trains and throwing banana peels in front of convenience stores. He also realizes that this is quite frequent, basically happening every Saturday.

I knew this was true to a certain extent because of those scenes of Eurotrip or something, but I certainly thought that it was a major exaggeration. Maybe it wasn't too far-fetched of a portrayal from actual Manchester United fans going to bars and chugging down a couple (and by that, I mean an ass-tonne) drinks (and by that, I mean some cups of tea), proceeding to wreak havoc across the streets.

Now, football (or mostly any other sport for that matter) isn't really my thing, but this book seems interesting. For one, it has violence, and honestly, who'd decline some violence, especially when you don't actually take part in it?

The title suggests that maybe, just maybe, the narrator will join these sports "thugs" or something. Heck, there's even a picture of a very high looking guy with a smoke jutting out of his mouth on the front cover. Some of the words on the back cover describe the book as "unnerving", "pungent", "grotesque, horrifying, repellent and gorgeous". They even compare the book to Clockwork Orange, so we can already sort of tell what kind of stuff is going to go down.

Shown in picture: Clockwork Orange.

Now imagine the same with a football and a cup of tea.

Plus, it's British.
I'm looking forward to read some more.

Scotty doesn't know.

The Elephant's Demise

Remember how we mentioned Gandhi and Churchill during the last posts?
Well, what a better way to conclude than with a story about elephants.

Have you ever had that moment when you just had to shoot an elephant?
Me neither. But George Orwell did. Well his character did. In "Shooting an Elephant".
Here's the basic story: the narrator goes to Burma, where he kills an elephant. Yay. He says he killed the elephant merely to "not look like a fool" in front of the natives, who were excited to see what the narrator would do to the escaped rogue elephant.

Knowing that we've been seeing some British and Indian stuff lately, I immediately knew that this had something to do with it, and it came to me rather easily.

The narrator is describing or portraying the nature of imperialism, especially the British one. Britain only does it to avoid looking like a fool. Basically. So the narrator symbolizes Britain. What about the elephant? It surely symbolizes countries under the imperialism. They are portrayed as beasts, and they just won't die. Or something like that.

Orwell successfully manages to shove his opinion about British imperialism into this seemingly-not-totally-innocent story about killing elephants.

I shall cut this post a bit short because I am utterly demotivated since the last time my post got deleted stuff.

Have some salad.