I’ve been on a movie watching kick lately, since my girl is out of town. She and I were watching ‘the Shield’ and ‘Deadwood’ religiously, so there was no room in the queue for anything else. When ‘Deadwood’ started sucking, we just switched over to non-stop ‘Shield’ … that show is amazing.

On the agenda for today was, effectively, a pornographic movie called ‘Shortbus’ … which was so awful I turned it off after less than ten minutes. It’s a bad sign when a movie consists entirely of fucking (and hokey changes of character that involve panning through a pastel drawing of New York), complete with ejaculations, and it’s not even remotely erotic. Plus, I don’t even like white people, let alone watching them fuck … and the token Asian woman doesn’t count, fill in your own aspersion. If there’s an option on Netflix to give a movie no stars, this one’s got it coming… hardy, hardy har.

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I dislike Roger Federer. I don’t like his beady eyes. His raptorish nose. His floppy hair.

I don’t like his steamrolling dominance in his sport. Don’t mistake me; I admire a great talent and he is certainly that. I respect his ability. I think he has great skill and he uses it incredibly well to be so indomitable.

But I still don’t like him. In fact, I dislike him most of all because of his dominance.

In my professional duties as a soccer blogger I once wrote that rooting for Manchester United is like rooting for the A-Bomb. You know it’s going to decimate its opponents. Is it really that much fun to witness total devastation? Would it not be a much more uplifting and human story for the target of such a rending catastrophe to survive and prevail?

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My beloved Magpies were relegated today. It’s an experience American sports fans who only watch American sports don’t have to encounter. When your team sucks, they just suck. They finish last and there’s always next year. The Premier League is much harsher. When you suck, if you suck badly enough, there is no next year for you.

Newcastle United will be playing in the second-tier of professional football. That would be like if there was a league below the NFL that consisted of teams full of pro-caliber athletes but who weren’t quite good enough to play at the NFL level. The Bengals and the Lions would certainly be demoted to this league, if it existed.

That’s one of the beautiful things about English and European football. If you suck, there’s a penalty worse than last place, there’s no reward of a first-round draft pick … no, you get relegated. Demoted. You are no longer worthy of playing at the highest level because you weren’t good enough to meet the cut. Now you have to toil with the rest of the best, the teams that aspire to greatness but haven’t quite made it.

Gone are the lucrative TV contracts. Sure, you get a few million quid in a parachute payment, but your earning potential has been slashed. Bad management, shit ownership, uninspired, pathetic excuses for pro-ballers … it all compounds to see you off to the Fizzy Pop league where you better hope you can find your game or you’ll be as sad and pathetic as the once-mighty Leeds United.

Now, I’m a Geordie. I love my Mags. But I can’t deny they’re awful. They’re an embarrassment. They’re bloody fucking pathetic and getting sent down is all those bullshit tossers deserve. It’s the fans who suffer, but the fans were denied players who gave a shit, they were denied management who gave a shit, they were deprived of anyone remotely competent of making a decent, informed football decision and now, unfortunately, the fans have to pay for it.

When you run your club like a fucking lemonade stand, though, this is what happens. This is what happens, Larry. This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass!

So, yeah. I have the utmost hope that they get their shit together and win the LC next season and come right back up. Wipe the smirks off the ugly faces of those dirty fucking Mackems who had a good laugh at our expense.

I just hope that fat cunt Mike Ashley doesn’t start crying in his beer about how bad a fucking decision he made when he bought the goddamned team. Fat cunt. If the guy had any business acumen at all and any fucking football sense, he never would have sacked Sam Allardyce who, unpopular as he was, is at least a fucking manager of quality. Kevin Keegan is a cunt. God, I said it. Crucify me you Geordie lemmings; he’s not the fucking Messiah. The Messiah doesn’t leave in ‘97 and he doesn’t leave again in ‘08. He’s rubbish.

Joe Kinnear is rubbish and Alan “I don’t have all my coaching badges yet, but what the hell” Shearer is rubbish. I don’t fucking care how many goddamned goals he scored for us when he played, he didn’t fucking have his boots on while he paced uselessly back and forth in his skinny fucking ties on the sidelines as this disastrous season came to a close. Fuck me.

So, yeah, I’m a little incensed. I’m also at least three sheets to the wind.

But there is no fairer world than European Football. When you suck, you suck and you pay for it and pay the Magpies have. They sucked. There’s no getting around that. There’s no one else to blame for the troubles and the failures. Newcastle United couldn’t score, couldn’t defend and couldn’t win. If only Sunderland could have come down with us then we’d have all three of the shit North East teams in the Championship where they belong.

Fuck you, Sunderland. Your time will come again. How many times have you been relegated in the last 16 years? Yeah. I thought so.

I slept through the Red Wings game today. I couldn’t help it. I was watching the first period and I started to get that feeling, that all-encompassing fatigue that comes from having eaten something containing gluten. When it comes, I have to conk out else expend an immense power of will to stay awake. So, I slept. I missed periods two and three, and the resultant 5-1 victory by Detroit over the Avalanche.

When I woke, my stomach and its associates were extremely displeased. Another sign that I’d eaten something I shouldn’t have. It’s my own fault, though; I played fast and loose with some cold cuts today, buying a brand I’d never before bought and not asking to read the ingredients. Celiac disease is such a bummer that sometimes the frustration and annoyance borne of rooting out every potentially contaminated food is too burdensome to invite. But then the result of not being diligent is so bloody unpleasant that I feel like an ass for being so cavalier about something so debilitating.

I’ve got a hockey game tonight and I always play like crap after I’ve eaten something containing gluten, because I’m totally enervated from consuming it. My hope is that I’ve enough time before the game (11:30 tonight) to try and eat some good carbs and protein, all of the food g-f, and build up a good store from which to draw. Just hope my stomach can calm down in time.

Newcastle played today, too, and they came back from a 2 – 0 deficit against West Ham to draw 2 – 2. The Magpies are now undefeated in their last seven games, I believe. Good stuff all around, sports-wise. Food-wise… I’ve got a long way to go, it seems, before I really learn my lesson about my illness.

I’ve already gone over tonight. Tomorrow is the first full day of two without work and I’ve got a couple things slated, watching Newcastle United in the morning and playing hockey at night. That leaves doing taxes during the day or, more likely, grabbing some groceries.

My girlfriend was watching “The Secret” while I puttered around the web, checked my work email and tried to fill the time between the end of the Rangers game (a disappointing loss) and going to bed (as much as I enjoy sleep, a different kind of disappointment).

It’s a captivating premise, that all you have to do is believe the world is yours and so it is. Believe you’ve got money coming and there you have it. Believe you’ll get the hottest chick to lay you and, bingo, she’s in your bed. It’s easy for anyone to dismiss such a philosophy as crackpot-ism and snake-oil salesmanship, but who’s really to say that having it all isn’t just a result of knowing you’ll get what you want?

To me, it’s asinine that only Scots and Britons (and the Dutch, etc.) had the opportunity to get rich in America. By and large, they’re the one’s who did it. Inventing things, starting companies like U.S. Steel or Standard Oil. How does one have the foresight and the wherewithal to do that kind of stuff? I seriously doubt that John D. Rockefeller or Cornelius Vanderbilt had some intricate knowledge about oil and shipping and that’s how they began their businesses. I’m willing to believe they simply knew they’d be big-time and decided “I’m going to do it this way” and so struck out and did it, wooing people with their confidence and charisma into investing in their ideas and buying their products.

Confidence and charisma are the currency of all human interaction. Rich people amass their wealth through whatever variable means, and there are people getting rich all the time. It’s a cop-out to say “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” because it’s a half-truth. Rich people are getting richer because they know how to make money and their money makes them money whether by investment or just accruing interest. Poor people either fiscally stand still or lose money because they have no idea how to better their economic situation, and some know only how to worsen it.

Back to confidence and charisma, it sells things. Anything really. Gatorade. Infomercial wares. From the top-shelf to the bottom-shelf there is psychology behind the method of sale that entices someone to buy. Those with money tend to keep toward the higher-end items and avoid the lower ones, but those without money are susceptible to all forms of coercive vending. In essence, those with high-value are secure enough to avoid being attracted to low-value merchandise while those with low-value are desperate for anything; they’ll take the lowest thing and pine for the highest.

People are still making themselves, even now … despite talk of “it’s impossible to get rich today” or “all the good ideas are already taken” … it’s just that the bulk of people are mired either in the middle or at the bottom and the negativity that festers there is infectious. It serves a main purpose of undermining the ambition of anyone who desires something greater by shattering their aspirations.

Looking back on almost every moment in my life, I have been a negative, choleric individual. It’s easy to be. It takes very little effort to loathe everything and everyone, and it’s a simple cop-out, a way to avoid trying and to placate lethargy. I’ve been told a million times that being a downer really doesn’t hurt anyone but me and those closest to me. The rest of the world wants me to be down, wants me to be miserable; it’s less competition for them or it feeds their schadenfreude to see someone stuck in a depression. Unhappy people revile the contented and the happy. It’s a cocktail of jealousy and rage. No one wants to be a miserable piece of shit, but those who can’t figure out how to be anyone else want everyone else to feel as much like garbage.

So, too, though, do those at the top want to keep down anyone without the right kind of attitude. Someone who doesn’t evince all the characteristics of go-get-em-ness is an undesirable to those with the means of including an aspirant in the culture of wealth and prominence.

As I read somewhere, it’s not about selling out so much as buying in. And, honestly, what would most people rather be: a sellout with a nice home and nice things who is confident and happy and therefore a positive, attractive force … or someone who didn’t sellout and touts their integrity while they claw through life practically destitute and perpetually desirous of more and better things while at the same time resentful of those who have “it all”.

Sometimes it really does seem like there’s a secret to life and that some folks really know what it is, while others just don’t have a clue. Take Mike Bloomberg for example: he knows nothing about computers, but computer security is how he made his fortune.

Chew on that for a while and tell me it isn’t easy if you just know how.

I’m not a huge Easybeats fan, but I recognize their place in musical history and that album title is apropos of today. Not thinking about Friday, but it is Friday and I’m thinking. Close enough.

Rangers take on the Islanders tonight at the Garden, the second game of a home-and-home between the teams. I’m a Red WIngs fan but I can’t bring myself to buy the Center Ice package and I like hockey too much to avoid watching it so I’ve adopted the Rangers to have a team to watch and for which to root.

It’s been an interesting season so far. A lot of parity in the league, but my Wings have stormed to another President’s Trophy. I think they’ve got a great shot at winning the Stanley Cup this year, but the team that wins the league isn’t always the team that wins the Cup.

Rangers, I’m sad to say, don’t have a chance. They play a boring brand of hockey to begin with, but their offense is anemic and their defense is laughable. Their goaltending isn’t consistently reliable (not that the Wings have the best goaltending; they don’t) and I don’t think the Rangers have the character to persevere and get 16 post-season wins out of four best-of-seven series.

Still, tonight there’s a game and it’s something to watch. Tomorrow, Newcastle United plays Reading. I’m hoping the Magpies can manage their third straight win, but the Royals have been looking good of late. It should be, as the Brits say, a “cracker”.

I’m by no means a foodie, nor a gourmand, but I do enjoy food when I don’t have to make it. Unfortunately, my reliance on others to prepare food for me is severely hampered by my body’s violent aversion to wheat, barley, rye and possibly oats. Pretty much everything has wheat in it, whether in the form of flour or something else.

When forced to pay attention to such things, it’s almost asinine some of the things with wheat as an ingredient. Soy sauce?!?! It makes going out for sushi a real pain; unless a place has La Choy (no wheat used in the fermentation process), then I’m dissolving my wasabi with water or rice vinegar if they have it (if they actually understand my request. The language barrier is usually pretty big in sushi restaurants).

I needed a snack the other night while out at Pete’s Candy Store’s Wednesday night “Quizz-off”, so I went to the (what do you call an Asian-run bodedga) and bought a bag of Doritos without reading the ingredients. I looked them over when I got back to the bar and, sure enough, there was “WHEAT FLOUR” staring me in the face. I had to take them back and exchange them for potato chips (read those ingredients really closely). It’s a complete hassle.

Worst of all, I can’t drink conventional beer. I love beer. Tough shit, though. I’m stuck with ones made from sorghum or rice or any non-wheat or -barley grain. My one consolation is that whiskey is okay for me; distillation removes the gluten. I’ve tested it. Bingo.

Still, a life without real beer is pretty sad. And sadder still is a life without donuts. I miss kaiser rolls, too. Gluten-free bread sucks. It’s very dense and not at all pillowy.

Sometimes I want to go buy a sixer of Newcastle Brown Ale (Come on, United!), buy a deli sandwich on a poppy seeded kaiser roll and have a donut for dessert … then I remember feeling every day like I was poisoned, waking up with a hangover when I hadn’t had a drop, and getting sick all the time because my immunity had plummeted like mercury before a storm … and I push that idea aside and thank my lucky stars I’m not allergic to peanuts.

I suppose “Magpies” is better than “Barcodes” or “Referees”, but it’s hardly a fearsome appellation. Still, I love Newcastle United all the same, despite their repeated tendency to break my heart. I’ve been used to middle of the table performances for a while, now, but I never thought of relegation as a possibility until this season; they’ve truly been horrendous for large parts of the season.

Today, though, they trounced Tottenham Hotspur, 4-1, and it was a thing of beauty. If this game and the last, a victory over struggling Fulham, are a sign of a resurgent NUFC, then I’m fine with Kevin Keegan sticking around as long as he likes. This time, though, it’ll be nice if he doesn’t stop at 2nd place.