Since Amy’s due on Sunday, May 10th, I’m trying to get all of my final papers done by the Friday before, May 8th. Normally they wouldn’t be due until the 18th or so, so effectively I’m shaving about a week-and-a-half off my semester. If that doesn’t happen I can always ask for an extension, but I’d rather have things totally done and dusted before life goes wonky.

It feels like I’m reading about three hundred different things right now and trying to keep them all separated in my head. I have classes where I’m reading social and political philosophy in one and business and technical writing teaching theory in the other; on the side, I’m reading chapters out of Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community, finishing Borges’ Ficciones, and I’m listening to Octavia Butler’s Kindred. And then there’s the small matter of reading the essays from English 101 along with the material I’ve assigned…

Oddly enough, I kind of like it. It’s strange how I find myself making connections between all of them, including the business writing stuff. And then it all comes around when I’m thinking about what information I privilege when I teach.

I had a dream last night that I got to hang out with Fernando Torres in a hospitality tent at the FA Cup, after Liverpool lost to Newcastle. He was telling me that if Liverpool kept playing like they were, he thought they would still win the Premier League title. I wondered aloud if Newcastle was going to do the dubious double of winning the FA Cup and getting relegated.

Dreams often have a grain of truth in them, and both Liverpool and Newcastle are out of the FA Cup. That leaves Liverpool winning the title or Newcastle going down. I know which one my money is on.

Oh, one last snitty “I was here way before you” comment directed to FSC’s Mark Rogondino. This past weekend, he said that Newcastle had been in the Premier League since the year it started back in 1992. “Before then,” he said, “They were playing in the Championship.”

Wrong. In 1992, the old First Division became the Premier League. To make things confusing, the old second division renamed itself the First Division, even though it was the second-tier league. This continued until 2004 when the First Division decided to brand itself the Championship and the second division (which was formerly the third division) changed its name to Football League One. So to correct Rogondino’s statement, he should have said, “Before then, Newcastle were playing in the Second Division.” Which wouldn’t have made sense to most viewers but would have been factually true.

The sobering thing is that I remember reading about the proposed name change to the Premier League in Soccer America, which I read during study hall in high school. The claim back then was that the marketing ploy would help brand English football and would help it get a foothold on a global audience. (Back in those days, the Italian Serie A was the place to be with AC Milan winning everything in sight.) So, how’d that work out for them?

Current Mood: Tired |