Techie, Geeky, Sports Cognoscenti

Techie:
I've managed to teach myself some basic CSS programming, courtesy of W3C schools. Hence the changed layout. It's remarkably easy and surprisingly fun. A good thing to do when you're sick in bed. I'm currently tinkering with Flash to prepare for my all new artistic project... which will go up January 1st, 2006.

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Geeky:
Have switched from Firefox to Camino, Mozilla's lightweight browser created for Macs. You can't really fiddle with the extensions as much, but it's faster, has less of a tendancy to crash, and, personally, I like the layout much better. Bigger windows, smaller icons, and none of this titanium silver bullshit. Looks like white paper. Plus, because the search engine plugins need to be installed manually, I'm learning even more about html.

Today, three boxes worth of books arrived at my doorstep. It's the three boxes of books I managed to whittle down from the over twenty-one boxes of books standing guard in Canada. It's out of control. I need two new bookshelves. There's a mixture of fiction, poetry, art theory, philosophy, and guides to the occult, mysterious places and extinct species. My mother also packed me some fresh white undies from the Gap, moisturizer and very fancy La Creme de Earl Gray tea. Thanks Mom!

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Sports Cognoscenti:
The French National football team are finally qualified for the World Cup. None of this sudden death second place loser crap. They won, fair and square, against a very weak team. The fact they only scored 4 goals was shocking.

For those who saw the game: What the hell were they doing in the second half? Sleeping? Complete lack of rhythm and drive to create space and passing. There was this one moment, around the 78th minute, when Dhorasoo held the ball for a throw-in and after almost ten seconds he dropped the ball and Sagnol took his place. Sagnol didn't have anyone to pass to except Dhorasoo's slowly receding back. What was he doing with his back to Sagnol? What was he doing not turning around? What the hell? Don't you run when you play football? Don't you face your teammate who's holding the ball? Don't you get ready for a pass? So STOOPID!

Another thing that really bugged me, that has bugged me about the French national team since the Euro... Where's the eye of the tiger? We saw some good attacks tonight but there was still a serious problem with energy and aggression. It seems they spend so much time being veterans you'd think they were already disabled and on their pension... take the money and run, so to speak. They can literally blank out for a whole game. I'd like to give them some cocaine one time, just so they can feel what it's like to play Maradona style.

But, technique is really important. Look, the first goal was scored by a spectacularly technical pass by Sagnol to Zidane. Gorgeous. With passes like that, how can you help but score. If Cisse missed the mark, it's because sometimes this guy's wooden leg needs some more GPS. He gets there with pure arrogance and chutzpah, which, hell, this team does need. Train your wooden leg, Cisse!

Either than that, people need to just get off Domenech's back. He's your coach, whether you like it or not. Changing coaches and doubting their choices only makes for an emotionally fragile team that doubts the head which governs the body. Look at how messy Marseille is now. What a disaster. Domenech was criticised for cleaning house but he's right, in many ways. The French young'uns need to get some serious play action otherwise this generation will suffer for lack of experience when Zidane, still the footie wizard that he is, finally makes his curtain call. Fresh blood! Fresh blood! Even if you lose the World Cup 2006, you'll stand better prepared to really kick ass in 2010.

Final note: Domenech should never be mic'd when singing La Marseillaise. It's a very disconcerting, not to mention disconsonant, sound.

And bye bye Thuram. On vous adore.