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quickquip

Listed below are comments made by quickquip between Wednesday, 20th August 2008 and Tuesday, 1st September 2009.

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Maradona turns to fans for helping hand 05:01am on 01 Sep 2009 Whether or not "the fans were mad if they believed their ticket money paid the players' wages", far more importantly, the fans are mad to pay such inflated prices for tickets to begin with, no matter where it goes. And the fans are even madder to pay ridiculous prices for replica shirts made in Asian sweatshops. And television is more mad to pay astronomical fees for broadcasting rights to saturate the airwaves with such trivial pursuits. And chairman are maddest of all to pay players such insane wages for playing a kid's game!
Barack to the future 04:52am on 08 Nov 2008 Well, it's unclear just how "stoopid" this "we" thought Amerika was but, on the whole the sham election proved it's still pretty stuuped - and so is "we". Barack Obama is president-elect, elected largely on empty cliches about non-existent "hope" and "change". A typical machine politician of Amerika's fradulent two-party system that keeps power concentrated in the hands of a tiny wealthy elite who control both major parties and pull the strings of puppet candidates like Obama who - like Tony Blair - feign "change" but represent the status quo repackaged to deceive not only stoopid American voters but equally stoopid outside observers. The chances of Obama instigating any real changes in American domestic or foreign policy contrary to the designs of his corporate patrons is about as likely as the chances of West Ham winning the Prem. Which is why, actually there was not such a heavy turnout in the nominal election between the two corporate-sponsored candidates - and that does matter a great deal. In fact, in most elections in America, about half the electorate usually doesn't bother to vote at all since there's effectively so little difference between the major parties and their candidates other than their personal style or appearance. So those non-voters, ironically may actually be the ones that prove America is "not quite so stoopid as we thought it was."
In retrospect 04:51am on 24 Aug 2008 It's unfortunate some of China's "worst fears" weren't realized, or better still that those so-called "worst fears' were not actually their best hopes. Not only did the odious Bush have to mar the Opening Ceremony but his repugnant picture has to once again besmirch this blog sight. It's unfortunate in fact, that there were VIP boxes at all in a 'peoples' republic', or that brutes like Bush and Putin and Hu should be in them. It's equally unfortunate that there wern't more - or any - protestors there from Tibet and Chechnya and Iraq and Palestine and elsewhere. That's really what the whole airbrushed show was lacking. But since the Olympics are about crude national jingoism and VIP privelege, it's not surprising. And while the Chinese elites hobnob with Western elites and "gain a whole lot of confidence" - the peasants and workers in China and their counterparts around the world go on toiling and moiling all day long far from the VIP boxes, as if the whole thing never happened.
Is it time for a really modern pentathlon? 08:22am on 23 Aug 2008 Well if the Olympics are to be based on "things a soldiers should be good at" then a modern Pentathlon and modern Olympics should no doubt reflect that. Unfortunately, it probably does. The Olympics are nothing if not a celebration of crude nationism with an almost bellicose edge to them. A modern pentathlon would probably consist of firing chemical weapons, dropping cluster bombs, manuevering attack helicopters, torturing prisoners and destroying civilian infrastructure. Ameica would be a shoo-in for the gold and Israel would no doubt claim the silver but there still could be quite a bit of fierce competion (excuse the pun) for the bronze. On second thought, instead of eliminating indiviual priveleged events, why dont we just eliminate the whole martial spectacle called the Olympics. There's got to be a better way to sell advertising.
New story for China? 07:55am on 23 Aug 2008 The Olympics are but a small fillip. They didn't make Greece a 'world power' or Australia or Canada, etc. Much is made of the Olympics in the heat of the moment but their effect is quite ephemeral. Nonetheless, China as waking giant presents intriguing prospects. First of all, they have to get their own house in order and live up to their socialist ideals instead of accelerating further into another capitalist class divided society. The large majority of Chinese are still too poor to afford a ticket to the Olympics but there is a smaller class that is getting fabulously rich off the rapid uneven development. Secondly they could conceivably serve as a counterweight to the world's leading hegemon. What keeps most people "lying- awake-at-night-worrying" is the out-of-control United States. If China can do something about that, we'd all be indebted to them. Go China!
Are the Olympics the new football? 04:52am on 22 Aug 2008 Yes, "the England football team gave another uncinvincing performance at Wembly" - but in front of 70,000 spectators! For an insignicant friendly. When a practice ping pong match or BMX ride draws that kind of crowd maybe we can believe it. The Olympics in fact benefits greatly from its relative novelty. As well as all the hype surrounding its manufactured mystique. A steady diet of these kind of events week in and week out might not wear so well. Still football is oversold and overpublicised, as well. To call it a "religion" is actually more of an indictment than a compliment. It's time all sports were put back into perspective and ordinary people participated more and watched less.
China's Olympic highlights 04:17am on 22 Aug 2008 This is a little premature isn't it, there are still three days to go with many of the major events still yet to be decided, are you at a loss for other more immediate ideas? Anyhow, the most memorable China moments, since the question is posed so parochially, are all the missing persons at so mant of the events. Why is it, that in a country of 1.3 billion and counting they can't even fill the venues with a few thousand spectators? Are all the Chinese workers and peasants priced out? Couldn't they at least bus in some people from Tibet or something to fill all those empty seats?
Latin fancy lights my fire 06:18am on 21 Aug 2008 Yada, yada, yada...first it was Phelps, then Hoy, now Argentina, one shooting star after another, "like nothing else ever witnessed". Anyhow, it's really not necessary to state the obvious, everybody knows it's true, football shouldn't be there, to be sure - or many other team sports or frivilous games that hardly qualify as 'sports' like ping pong or shooting. Football has long since ougrown the Olympics, the World Cup has become a bigger attraction than the Olympics in total. A rump football tournament, especially one with artificial selection constraints is largely irrelevant so it's a little hard to get too incandescent over a semi-final match that has teams with big names but doesn't carry much weight. Even if Argentina goes on to win the gold, it will be a somewhat hollow victory given their poor showing in recent tournaments that do matter. Since 1990, Argentina hasn't made it past the quarter-finals at a WC. During the same span, Brazil has been in three WC championship matches, winning two of them. In the football universe, winning an Olympics youth tournament is pretty small potatoes compared to that.
Chinese applaud Taiwan 'warlord' 05:10am on 21 Aug 2008 It's still not clear however, why Taekwando is an Olympic event at all unless sport is not only politics by other means but war by other means as well. It's also rather curious, the divergent views vis a vis the IOC and FIFA regarding British participation. Wheras in the Olympics the GBR is a single entity, but in football the 'home nations' are firercely independent and are given a special dispensation by FIFA to wrap themselves in their own indiviual 'national' flags. Which has produced the obvious problem when the two overlap, of whether or not to field a GBR football team at the Olympics. The best solution would probably be to rmake the whole question moot by dropping football from the Olympics altogether (along with Taekwando) and a lot of other extraneous events. Nonetheless, the problems faced by athletes from Taiwan/Taipei, or just about any other Olympic 'nation', pale dramatically in comparison to those endured by would-be competitors from Palestine. A flag is about all they have thanks to the US and Britain. Yes, sadly , "Palestine isn't independent but it wants to be", the most poignant line in any Olympic blog to date. Congratulations to the four courageous Palestinian athletes who somehow overcame overwhelming obstacles to even make it to these Games at all. That's an Olympian feat in itself!
The Hoy Wonder leads British bonanza 06:08am on 20 Aug 2008 When Chris Hoy or Phelps or Bolt win a decathlon maybe we can start to believe all this overblown GOAT hype. And when Team GB win a Tour de France maybe we can start to believe all the cycling team hype. Not to take anything away from their great performances at these Games but let's not lose all perspective in the euphoria of the moment. Jim Thorpe is still the greatest Olympian of all time, anyway - and he did it all without a full time "sports psychologist"!

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