bicyclemark

I Speak a Different Kind of Football

I may or may not have mentioned that I’m involved in the We All Speak Football initiative that brings together a boatload of bloggers/vloggers/podcasters to produce content about the tournament and spend a few days partying in Berlin at some hipster penthouse apartment. Myself I leave for Berlin this weekend.

Yahoo photo, not mine. But contrary to the neverending amount of writing about the games and the players and the stadiums, I will be doing no such thing. While I like watching the matches; I suffer watching Portugal, I root for the Australians, I love the Côte D’Ivoireans, there are many aspects surrounding the games that I do not like.

First and foremost is the nationalism. The rabid, “we” beat “you”, rally around the flag, life will improve if we win, type spirit that surrounds so many games is not only alarming to me, it is sad. Sad because the world is a shadow of what it could be if governments and citizens had as much interest and invested as much money in infrastructure, education, science, etc, as they do in sporting events and of course – the other nationalistic passtime: making war.

I digress. Over the next few weeks, especially in my podcast and vlogs, I will be focusing on the theme of the social circumstances outside the games. Themes that address immigration and immigrant populations and their focus on the game. Economics, especially in the context of Berlin and Germany, and who benefits and who is left out in the cold during and after the tournament. And of course, the media, as the business of news reduces their attention on the real injustices and issues the effect people everywhere, and focus instead on people wearing funny makeup at the stadium in Leipzig.

All this and hopefully more, coming this month, so stay tuned, and better yet — subscribe to the feed. The first podcast of this series will be ready ~~tonight~~ later this week… unless I burst into flames during this Northern European heatwave.

Too Busy, I Refer To Yeast

photo by Madge I thought after this weekend life might get care free and easygoing. It probably is, but I’m buried under last-minute editing work because I live below the poverty level and needed the income. For all those who want to move to europa and live the life, beware, good paying jobs, hard to come by for ze foreigners.

In the meantime, instead of talking any further, I’m going to drop everything and go lead our frisbee team against the other cityleague teams. Work stuff will have to wait. For you the reader, I recommend Madge and Yeast Radio, her video’s from Romania are interesting on so many levels, especially when the local man tries to pick her up.

Why Admit It?

There are so many ironies and things that just make no sense in this world, obviously we’ve all noticed that at some point in observing how things work. On the one hand the government, any government, but lets just say the American one – can seem very in control, very underhanded, and very capable of anything. But then something will happen that shows the government is incapable, inefficient, and generally a mess. I just noticed the latest one:

The headline on the BBC reads: Triple Suicide at Guantanamo Camp

Three guys hanged themselves at the Guantanamo Concentration Camp. That in itself isn’t surprising, actually a total of 3 deaths is pretty low for a prison where prisoners are subject to all sorts of torture. But what baffles me is why they admit it. Why tell the world? They rarely let any information about the place out. Even photos are pretty controlled. The military has reported that there have been 41 suicide attemps. Why even admit that? I would have assumed they would never release such information, and claim things are perfect at the prison and all is under control.

But they don’t keep secrets very well. Or somehow information gets out that you can’t believe they actually admit. Maybe it’s even too hard to face the truth for tax paying citizens who fund this torture camp. So the military just reports the shameful truth about prisoners who have no rights and may not have committed any crimes and how their killing themselves to escape the horrors they are subjected to.

If there’s a strategy here… I can barely see it.

Ij Summer Evening PhotoEssay

It’s the busiest weekend of the year for me. Which means, while I’d very much like to dig into the issue of Europe’s shameful collaboration with the CIA secret torture flights and prisons, and I’d like to talk about my worldcup fantasy team and why its interesting, all of that will have to wait until the weekend winds down. Til then… here’s a photoessay of one of the events I organized for this weekend… a cruise on the Ij.

Imaginary NeoCon Land

An imaginary terrorist was killed today.

Check that. We are supposed to believe, because experts tell us, that an imaginary terrorist was killed in Iraq.

At the same time, political leaders, with almost invisible public approval ratings, and even less visible understanding of how many people’s lives they’ve helped ruin around the world though their modern day crusades, they like to imagine that this will somehow bring peace.

Politicians teach our children so many strange lessons these days: Violence is a good answer to violence. Killing people solves problems. Bombing them is good for them. And try never to think about or be considerate to your neighbors, no matter what you do.

Are there still humans on this earth that don’t work for the british or american governments that actually believe peace will now follow?

Still.. big day huh.. they killed that actor who plays that terrorist guy on TV.

Sometimes You Just Miss Family

My family members are pretty avid readers of blog. At least as far as I know. I try never assume that they are or aren’t reading. But I can tell you it’s been a world of help in keeping in touch.. for a boy that has lived across the ocean for the past 5 years. 5 years!

Years and numbers and family came to mind today as I had lunch with BlondeButBright. Truth is, BBB and I don’t see each other that much, but I’m one of her biggest fans in this life. Over some good soup we talked about how time passes here in Amsterdam, and we meet people who remind us of ourselves when we arrived. Sometimes thats a good thing, other times there’s just nothing more annoying then seeing yourself.. again and again. I think it has taken a toll on both of us. But we’re still hanging in, and we agreed that we still love this town and what we’ve done with our years here… it’s a work-in-progress.

She spoke of going home for much of the summer and I admit to yee the blog readers that I’m jealous. It seems like it would be great to be able to be back in New Jersey for a spell, with my parents and my bro and little A-Ren who now says “stop” when he thinks something is too much. Come to think of it, it would be great to be able to be in Portugal for a while and be with my grandparents, as grandpa goes for some important yet routine eye surgery. Is anything routine when you’re in your 80’s?

But back to my point, I wish I could be in these three places right now, and ultimately that is not possible and therefore, somewhat saddening. Time passes. Families grow and get older. I start to wonder if I’ve spent my time correctly; made the right choices, or if I’ve missed some of the most important moments with some of the most important people in my life… my family.

Then again, like BBB and I spoke about today, lots of things are happening and the way things are now is not how they will always be.

In the meantime, I pick up the cross word puzzle out of the newspaper every morning at work. I find time to try and do the puzzle.. not because I like crosswords, but because it is what my father does, and we always do together when I’m home. We’re connected you see… it’s a direct line through the crossword puzzle on a six hour time difference.

postscript thingy: happy birthday to my compadre the mindcaster, few hours late, but it’s the blog-thought that counts.