Things I am now officially bored of.
1 – The Interlull
Perhaps it’s a sign that my life is simply too niche. That I should find other interests to keep me occupied throughout spells when there is no Arsenal. But what?
Crossword making? Nah. Skydiving? No. Wingsuit jumping? No chance. There’s simply not enough margin for error in that pursuit. The idea of flying through the air and skimming across the treetops is exhilarating, I’m sure, but the idea of being obliterated because you get it wrong by a few feet is not so appealing. I guess there’s also a good reason why you don’t see any senior citizen Wingsuit flyers.
I like the ‘Being splattered’ factor to be almost at zero when it comes to the sports I play. Football – sure you can get a clash of heads when some bloke pushes you into your other centre-half and his ridiculously concrete head splits your eye open and you both have to go to hospital; or muscle pulls, tendon tweaks and, if you’re really unlucky, something a bit worse if you meet Taylor Shawcross, but those risks are offset by one very important consideration: there is a football.
If you were to rank the spherical objects of most importance you’d have to say Sun, Earth, Football, Moon. Yeah, without a moon there’d be no tides and sea-monsters would rule the waves from their cavernous underground lairs, but you don’t play football under the sea do you? Former Real Madrid goalkeeper Julio Iglesias might have tried to woo people with his silky oceanic tones but we’re not fooled.
A football also gives running purpose. Running for the sake of running? I don’t get it. Running to escape from something? Sure. That makes sense for me, but running just so you can be good at running? Unless you live somewhere where escaping is a vital skill, then you’re just being daft.
However, running after a football, running with a football, or running after someone else who has the football so you can get the football back off him, now that’s running I can get behind. You might argue that some running for the sake of running makes you better at the purposeful running during a game, but the answer to that is simple and obvious: simply play more football then you’ll be better at running as well as having the enjoyment of a game of football.
People try to make life so complicated.
Anyway, back to my initial point that a wealth of pastimes might enable somebody to cope better with an Interlull. I get that, but at this point in my life I’m just too old to scale a skyscraper using sticky pads like they used to in cartoons and Batman and that, and then leap off with a GoPro camera attached to my head.
That said, I really, really want a GoPro camera even though I have no practical use for one. I had thought about strapping it to the dog, but it’s not like Archer goes white-water rafting or anything. Still, every time I’m in an airport and browsing the electronics shop to pass time because I’m there ridiculously early the urge to buy one is almost overwhelming. And not the entry level one either. I want the full top of the range 4k triple HD one so I can … I dunno … capture the intensity of walking around Dublin.
Imagine the thrill of the YouTube experience as you watch a man stroll from Kimmage to Harold’s Cross to Rathmines and back again, all set to heavy rock music, pausing from time to time for his dog to wee on somebody’s wall or on a tree or that one time when I was looking at my phone and not paying attention when he weed on somebody’s car wheel and the person who owned the car was in the car but it was an old lady and she looked terrified of either me or the German Shepherd and didn’t say anything.
I think once you start down a road like that there’s no coming back. Soon you might not be strolling at all, but walking briskly, and you might even go further afield to showcase the delights of other neighbourhoods and parishes and it would become an addiction and where would it stop at all? I still want a GoPro camera though. The same way I want a Segway.
Don’t you judge me.
I’m also quite bored of House of Cards Season 3. Like many of you I enjoyed Frank Underwood’s Machiavellian schemes and underhandedness to become President of the United States of the USA in the first two seasons, but this time around it’s all a bit underwhelming.
You know what it needs? Frank and his mate, Crippled Pete, racing around the corridors of the White House on Segways with GoPro cameras attached to their heads. If they added some of that shit I would be back in like it was a game of football on a warm, summer’s day.
Arsenal content? Sorry, they’ve made that impossible with their ‘internationals’. If you haven’t already you can check out yesterday’s Arsecast Extra which has some brief Arsenal related discussions as well as talk of Morocco, why trailers are too long these days, James’s long-lost but now-found basketball playing secret brother and lots more besides.
Listen here.
Right, I can’t do it anymore. There are friendlies tonight, some of our players are involved but from tomorrow we can, hopefully, get things back on an Arsenal track.
*Segways into the distance*
