This annual, painful break in the footie season (affectionately known as “summer”) really gets on my nerves because there’s very little to report, except transfer rumors. Some of which are true, many of which are not. John has already lamented the same thing but I’m getting really bored with “Ronaldo to Man Ure no he’s staying” and “Adebayor to Milan no he’s staying” and “Barry to Liverpool but he’s too expensive unless Crouch goes to Pompey” and “Ronaldino to Man City except he’s going to Milan” and “Lampard and Drogba to reunite with Mourinho at Inter” and, worst of all, “Robbie Keane to Liverpool” because if there’s a shred of truth in that last one, Spurs can kiss their season goodbye.

I also can’t believe what I’ll call “the Chelski effect” that has bloated the price of transfers. £30 million for Adebayor? At that rate, £17 million for a player like Barry seems like a steal. That’s also in the neighborhood of Luca Modric, Spurs’ biggest signing to date, and I would take those two over one Adebayor any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

The rumor I like the most is David Villa to Liverpool to reunite with Fernando Torres, although that’s never going to happen. If by some chance it does, then suddenly I’m much bigger Liverpool fan.

I have to say Riders of the Purple Sage is pretty good, especially on audio. There’s ample opportunity to zone out for a minute or so only to come back and realize you haven’t missed anything plot-wise. And this is much more what I expected from a Western, what with the murderin’, and rustlin’, and stampedin’, and seekin’ of vengeance. It’s not the best book in the world, but it’s pretty entertaining.

But very few books can hold a candle to Blood Meridian, which I am rereading and have decided goes into my “All-Time Favorite” book list. I was switching off between this and The Orchard Keeper, which I haven’t read previously, but I’ve been reading way more of Blood Meridian because it’s just so undeniably awesome. Check out this sentence when the Americans filibustering in Mexico stumble across an Indian war party:

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or bilblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bulls or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon ground and their horses’ ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
Oh my god, said the sergeant.

Things don’t go well from here…

Current Mood: Good |