Team Matters

There's little be said about my soccer team but I'm saying it anyway. To start with, despite religiously attending five training days a week, we haven't been in any competitive league for more than a year now. This has made many of our talented members move on to more "serious" outfits. When professionals emigrate to greener pastures, we call it brain drain; but soccer should be talking about "leg drain".

The few friendly matches we have played against ragtag opposition have dangerously exposed our lack of exposure. Team chemistry is severely lacking. This means our formation disintegrates five minutes into the match as some of our more adventurous players pursue the ball to the ends of the earth, venturing far beyond the prescribed limits of their position. But all is not lost. We have registered few heavy losses (7-0 once), many narrow losses, some draws, and one narrow win which I celebrated on Twitter all day.

Gone are the days when boys dared not bring their girlfriends to training for fear of unwelcome attention from other players. It was severe. Even average-looking to attractive female strangers passing by were subjected to all sorts of catcalls, brash demands for their cell numbers and shouted lewdness. I got embarrassed to be associated with my team during these wild displays of uncouth conduct. But boys will be boys. Nowadays, however, the guys have transformed into austere gentlemen, if not suave womanizers. A competition appears to have emerged as to who will bring the prettiest girlfriend to sit on the sidelines (the grass), presumably to watch two hours of other people playing soccer. But most of them bring out their internet surfboards and zone out while the respective boyfriend labors valiantly on the pitch to impress. It is like dancing for the blind.

I try to maintain focus. I go there to play soccer.

I've always wondered why I love soccer so much despite its obvious pointlessness, and the answer came to me albeit rather painfully. One of my high speed dashes down the right wing was cut short by a ruthless defender's leg, I tripped on it, fell hard and bled at both knees. However, thanks to adrenalin, I continued playing for thirty minutes after that injury until training ended. I even walked home uneventfully. But as the adrenalin finally subsided in my body, the pain set in, and I became as an old man debilitated by gout: sore, stiff and awkward. A friend of mine who met me limping on the homeward stretch walked up to me and said I was walking like one freshly circumcised.

Point is: I love soccer because of the adrenalin, and I didn't even know it until the adrenalin ran dry.

Could You Be Loved?

Love is a universal enigma. My own quest to understand it is still a work in progress. This quest has led me deep into the remote hinterland of the internet; far past the blogosphere's delineated "there is no political correctness beyond this point" limit. And I daresay I have attained a rudimentary grasp of the basic skeletal structure of LOVE.

Let us just limit our discussion today to heterosexual love, alright?

The bulk of this post is borrowed from the article "Sexual Frigidity Is Caused by Feminism." (In fact, that article is better than this one!)

By design, men and women experience love differently.

Men exchange love for power. Women exchange power for love. (Women surrender their power in exchange for male love.)

This partly explains why the genders do not exactly read from the same script. Women think men don't think in the correct format and vice versa. This apparent incongruity is as it should be - by design, for the greater good.

(This arrangement serves to establish families)

The sexual act practically embodies this power-love transaction. Therefore it is impossible to have a purely physical fling, because the sex act is primarily and inescapably a deeply spiritual experience.

I read somewhere that perversion is eroticized hatred. The description fits, in every twisted instance. It is utterly revolting what emerges when hatred replaces love in the sex equation. The entire framework is inverted, corrupt to its roots, and its fruits stink. I will explore this aspect in another post.

Feminism is a threat to the stability of society, it's got women seeking to consolidate power rather than surrender it. Men do not want to compete with women! Thus the genders get lost in the no man's land (PUN) of feminism.

Could you be loved?

Good stuff

Here's a wonderful post on CariPau's blog you won't regret reading. Enlightened me for sure.

Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight

1 Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judaea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituraea and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene,

2 Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness.

3 And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins;

4 As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;

6 And all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

7 Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 

8 Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 

9 And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 

10 And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? 

11 He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. 

12 Then came also publicans to be baptized, and said unto him, Master, what shall we do? 

13 And he said unto them, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. 

14 And the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages. 

15 And as the people were in expectation, and all men mused in their hearts of John, whether he were the Christ, or not;

16 John answered, saying unto them all, I indeed baptize you with water; but one mightier than I cometh, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: 

17 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable. 

18 And many other things in his exhortation preached he unto the people.

19 But Herod the tetrarch, being reproved by him for Herodias his brother Philip's wife, and for all the evils which Herod had done,

20 Added yet this above all, that he shut up John in prison.

21 Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,

22 And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.


Luke 3:1-22.