The ice mountain beckons

Awakened again to the sound of cursing, as the temperatures in Ottawa were at -22ºC. Drove Ottawacker Jr. to school again – the benevolence knows no limits. Ottawacker Jr. was complaining because the school board had removed the snow mountains from the play ground. It is fair to say he doesn’t like his new principal: the old one was more of a human being than an automaton, so this will be his first dealings with someone devoid of emotions. Still, it might do him good in the future world of AI. Apparently, the snow was removed because children weren’t making “good safety choices” when playing on it. FFS: they are kids; if you put a 10-foot pile of snow in the playground, almost every kid I know is going to climb up it and slide down. Good safety choices, my arse.
 
Spent a lot of the morning sorting through boxes, then had a nice chat with Mitch on the phone, and settled down to watch the silent version of the Aston Villa vs. Liverpool match. Now, I’m no expert, but it seems to me that the team is misfiring. The midfield – once such a source of strength – seems depleted and out of sorts. The game ended 2-2, but we should have won. There again, we could have lost. It’s one of those results that, when taken in isolation, doesn’t seem that bad. The problem is that there have been about six of these “isolations” in the past month or so. Only time will tell. The good news is that the 115ers lost.
 
Talking of the 115ers and corrupt middle-eastern investment, I saw a news item on TV5 yesterday about how the president of PSG (another of those “nice” clubs) has got Ligue 1 in his pocket, and was railroading through beIN Sports offers for television rights over DAZN. Guess who runs beIN? That’s right, the Qataris. As a result, it looks like DAZN is going to forego its payments to Ligue 1, as it hasn’t been getting the revenue it needed to operate. The news report showed the online meeting between all the club presidents of Ligue 1 – and all you could here was the shrill shouting of a piqued Qatari as he refused to allow anyone to talk. Some of the presidents – i.e., the Lyon one and the guy from Lens – were calling him out, saying it was a complete conflict of interest and “bullying”. Interesting times – this has allegedly been the same kind of tone the Manchester City lawyers have been taking with the FA in England. At least in England there is some competition – in Ligue 1, PSG have been as dominant as Celtic have in Scotland.
 
Now what bullshit has Trump been up to today? Oh…..