Dodgeball's comin' to town!

Well not exactly; it's coming to Halifax which is just an hour train ride from Manchester.

For those of you who might not know what dodgeball is, either because you didn't have a childhood or because you know it by another name, it's a really simple game; 6 players to a team, 2 (or 3 sometimes) balls in play and a whole lot of whackin', catchin' and dodgin' action! The aim being to eliminate the other team's players by either hitting them with one of the balls or catching one of their throws. That's basically all there's to it. Also, if you manage to catch a ball one of your teammates can come back into the game and to keep the game safe and friendly, head shots don't count.

The dodgeball fever has already caught on across the pond in the states, aided greatly by that movie starring Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller, and it's slowly but surely clawing its way through the UK. Here in Manchester we've been going at it since last October thanks to this guy called Nathan who had the idea of forming a dodgeball club. It has had quite a but of success; there are around 8 or 9 teams and we play every week just for laughs.

My team is mainly made out of my mexican friends here in manchester and lacking a better idea for a name we 'chose' (it wasn't really a choice but the only thing we could come up with in the heat of the moment) to call ourselves Corona Team.

Although most match play in the manchester uni league was friendly, we did have a tourney on the last week before the xmas break. Corona Team fought bravely through the group stage and semifinals and come the final we were one game up only to see our lead and the tournament slip out of our hands in a 2-1 defeat to a very good and balanced team called Intermenan.

Now the uni league is in a hiatus until the exams finish (next week or the week after next) but in the meantime the UKDBA (the official dodgeball authority on the UK) is organising its first tournament in the north of England, to take place this Sunday Jan. the 29th in Halifax. Team Corona will be present sending 4 players to integrate a 9 player combine which will be representing Manchester University.

So call it geeky, dorky or whatever you may but unless you try it you'll never know how much fun you're missing out on. Wish us luck, if we win I'll tell you all about it, if we don't I'll make up something about how we gave our best and all that crap to keep my team's moral high.

To kill a mockingbird

In my infinite (and quite unsuccessful) quest to become a little more literate I came across this book titled To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Being raised by the television as I was, I had heard about this book before on a Simpsons episode, I'll tell you about my complicated relationship with the yellow-folk in some future post, when Homer said something like:

Books are useless! I only ever read one book, "To Kill A Mockingbird" and it gave me absolutely no insight on how to kill mockingbirds! Sure it taught me not to judge a man by the colour of his skin... but what good does *that* do me?

I didn't make much of it at the time but and forgot about it until one day I was searching for some books on ebay and I saw it there for like 99 pence. I mean if they offer you a pulitzer for 99p you have to take it, right?

So long story short, I eventually got around reading it and I must say it's one of the best books I've ever read. The book is set in a small Alabama town of the 1930's, and it's the account of 3 years in the lives of a little tomboyish girl, Scout, and her big brother, Jem, the offspring of a local lawyer Atticus Finch.

People say it's a coming of age story, and it is, as you get to see how the kids are forced to become young adults when their father takes the case of defending a black man in a rape trial in an extremely prejudiced deep south USA society. As the book goes on you can see how Scout and Jem's views towards life change and how in turn this changes them and their relationship with each other and with the world they live in.

I don't want to say to much about the plot since a full review would take me a very long time and effort to write and I'm not a book reviewer. If anything I just want to focus a bit on Atticus Finch (father to Scout and Jem) and since I can't seem to structure my thoughts properly here's an extract from Wikipedia:

"Atticus Finch is one of the most important characters in the story. He represents morality and kindness. He defends Tom Robinson because he feels that not doing so would make him a hypocrite. Atticus serves as a guiding light for his children, always calm and patient. He allows them to come to the understanding that, although evil exists, one should not dwell on that but should instead realize that the existence of this evil is a sign that there is work to do, and progress to make. His strong presence in his children's lives prevents them from becoming symbols of destroyed innocence..."

I can't help but think that if everybody conducted themselves a little more as Atticus does through the book the world would be a better place and not the dumphole it is now.

Look, anything I say here won't make justice to this beautiful (I cant' find any other word to describe it, and believe me when I say beautiful is a word I use maybe once every 1500 sentences...in fact this may be the 1st time I use it in writing!) book so if you ever come across it don't miss the opportunity to read it, I challenge anyone not to be touched by this story and its characters. I guess what really got to me was Scout's innocence and how she retains it even after seeing all she sees (mainly because of the way Atticus educated her and the way Jem protected her) but at the same time all these experiences gave her a sense of reality, a sense of knowing that bad things happen to good people in this world and you can't change that; evil will always exist (as Jem learnt) but you still have to live your life the best you can and treat others with the respect you'd like to be treated with no matter who they might be.
No wonder Harper Lee never wrote another book, how could you possibly follow up this one?

If you're not big on reading, there's a movie out there starring Gregory Peck and a young Robert Duvall. I haven't seen it but it won 3 oscars and ranks at #40 at the imdb.com's top 250 movies of all time. Imagine the kind of performance Peck gave that it got Atticus Finch voted the top screen hero of the last 100 years by the American Film Institute.

So, if you do read the book let me know what you think.

Victor (note to self: I need a cooler screen name)

Blogger's block

So I guess I'm back at blogger.com last time I was here I had a bad experience with tryin' to post stuff (it simply took ages!!!). I've gotten to the conclusion that maybe I just caught a bad break or the server was overloaded or something like that, so I'm back.
It's been a month since I've posted anything either here or in my other pseudo-blog at msn spaces (which btw you can find here, go on and have a look!) so I decided it was time to make my triumphant comeback. Small problem though, I sat at the computer and I automatically ran out of ideas....I've been reading some other blogs and I find that many people just write about things that happen to them everyday and make a blog outta that. Truth be said, I don't think I'm that kind of a blogger. I mean, who the hell is gonna be interested in knowing that today I woke up at 10:30 because I stayed up late last night watching the nfl playoffs which by some happy accident called world time zones start 6 hours later for me than it does for 'normal' people, ie, people living in the american continent. Not happy with staying up until 2 in the morning watching football I followed it up by watching a bit of the australian open, a very big tennis tournament that takes place in melbourne, 'til around 4. Australia of course being on the other side of the world and 11 hours ahead of the greenwich meridian time (where I'm at at the moment). Getting back to my point, would you be interested in knowing I tend to alter my daily activities depending on the sporting events of the season? Yes? Maybe? Nope? What's that?, you'd rather shoot yourself in the foot instead of reading this rubbish? Don't worry, foreseeing this I've supplied a box full of guns at the back, just choose the one that suits you better.

Ok, enough of this. I guess this counts as a post even if it's a pretty shitty one, but hey who cares? It's not like anybody's gonna read it ;)

I promise the next post'll be great!

Looking forward to your collective disappointment.