Aberdeen v Ross County

Premier League, Pittodrie (11/08/12)

Last week’s defeat against Celtic was (arguably) undeserved and (inarguably) a bit of a sickener. Jamie Langfield has been subjected to vitriolic abuse throughout the course of the week - which seems a bit pointless and crass - but I’m sure he will already have been fully aware that his excitingly mental abberation was the difference between (a kind of) success and failure.

Hirpling to his goalkeeper’s defence, Methuselah was quick to point out that Langfield’s position in the team was far from certain. As a pick-me-up, this may reasonably be considered as somewhat lacking in effectiveness. As a statement of intent, however – why should any player feel that their place in the team is assured? – it seems perfectly fair to me.

Besides, the manager was more concerned with the marking at the corner that preceded the Celtic goal. Knowing nothing of the tactical ins and outs of such recondite matters, some of us are forced to simply nod along sagely at these managerial remarks, whilst pulling a 4-4-2 kind of facial expression in the hope that our silence is mistaken for detached expertise. The return of defender Mark Reynolds from Sheffield Wednesday during the course of the week is bound to eradicate these defensive frailties, in any event, so let’s all stay calm.

But Aberdeen were magic last week, no complaints. Dull and fairly toothless, true, but well-drilled, mobile and effective. In light of what we’ve seen for what seems like an eternity, this legitimately equals “magic”.

Worryingly, newly-promoted teams often seem to have an early season habit of menacing their more esteemed competitors. Ross County are perfectly free to act in such a manner, of course, but they’d be well-advised waiting until after Saturday before doing so. Let’s just leave it at that.

As I’m actually going to this match – wonders wil never cease – I’m forced to post this critically important pre-match thread a day early. I could guess what the teams might be, right enough, but this would feel like a particularly bad life choice.

Prediction(s): Aberdeen 3 Ross County 1

....and the attendance will be 13,129 (which is great).


In other news:

Not particularly relevant to anything, of course, but I’ve always quite liked this piece of writing for some reason and felt it deserved an outing on the Aberdeen board - a place of exalted intellectual enquiry. The difference between the classification of the mad and the feverishly religious has always been particularly marginal – and quite right, too, some may say - and I’m sure you’ll all be keen to discuss this vexing conundrum silently in your heads; just as surely as I’ll discuss it silently in my own head as I make my way towards old Aiberdeen.

I’m normally very shy, but here’s something I made earlier:

[video=youtube;DxtSXiSBo9o]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxtSXiSBo9o[/video]

 

Never read such bullshit in all my life.

































The attendance will be 13,982.

 

I see I was 28 out with my crowd prediction. Not bad.

 

Ha ha, you were embarrassingly wrong with your prediction, stop trying to deflect from that fact. The official attendance was 14,010, and you predicted 13,982. And you call yourself a football fan?

I’m a bit staggered by that figure, actually. I mean, it was a good attendance, obviously, but it looked and felt like a far bigger crowd than that. Gliding elegantly towards the stadium, I had a gathering expectation that the place might actually get filled. Not so, of course, but I would seriously have put the attendance at somewhere closer to 17 - 18,000. It’s going to niggle me, I can just tell.

Is it? Belter. I’ll away off and watch it right now.



Internet time-lapse gags: always go down well with the punters. Did you laugh and laugh?

(I can see that this question sets you up nicely to respond “no and no” – which would hurt, Rebel – but I’m going to take my chances and be done with it.)

You will have greatly enjoyed watching the game on BBC Aldi, however, this much seems certain.

 

Gaelic speakers are above such things, Rebel.

Unless you're trying to say - and I think you probably are - that my mother spends all her time watching teuchter clart on BBC Albadeen and that her life is one long filthy stretch of groany self-pleasuring and bucolic scat worship? Talk about taking things too far.

Have a word with yourself, right, and keep that kind of muck off these boards.

 

"The end of the world is experienced as a transition to something new, vaster, and is felt as a terrible annihilation. Despairing agony and blissful revelation occur in one and the same patient. At first everything seems queer, uncanny, and significant. Catastrophe is impending; the deluge is here. A unique catastrophe approaches. It is Good Friday; something comes over the world; the last Judgment, the breaking of the seven seals of the Book of Revelation. God comes into the world. The time of the first Christians is here. Time wheels back. The last riddle of all is being solved. Patients are exposed to all these terrifying and magnificent experiences without showing it to anyone. The feeling of being quite alone is unspeakably frightening." Taken from Dr Karl Jasper’s General Psychopathology (introduction)

Psycho can I ask what is the condition that Dr Jesper is actually referring to here is it a form of bipolarism?

I know old Craig is a bit long in the tooth, but Methuselah is a bit harsh

 

Good question. And now I’m in a tizz trying to remember if it was Jaspers himself who wrote this piece of writing or whether he was quoting someone else. (I just grab anything and everything I like and store it away for future reference in a vast, generally pointless scrapbook of entirely disordered doom and despair.)

But still, in this particular instance, the writer is describing the end of the world as experienced (quite specifically, I think) by schizophrenics. This would certainly make sense, I feel, given the overarching focus of Jaspers book, General Psychopathology, and his interest in acute manifestations of (what many may class as) delusion - for want of a better word.

But I’ve no expertise in this area whatsoever and may very well be talking significant levels of ****e. (I rampaged through my mother’s textbooks when I was younger – she was a clinical psychologist – and still can’t help myself reading this stuff whensoever it should fall in my way.) Are you interested in this kind of thing? Or did you maybe just like the descriptive nature of the writing? Or both? Or neither? Explain yourself, man.

Anyway, the last time I saw this piece of writing referenced anywhere was in a (highly readable) thesis about William Blake (William Blake's MILTON: Meaning and Madness). And Blake, of course, was one of those people who, depending on your view, was either a visionary or completely and utterly barking mad. I like to think he was simply a barking mad visionary, however - to give all aspects of his multiply fractured personality due credit.

Another reason I like this piece of writing is that it neatly captures what my uncle tries to articulate when he periodically goes off his head with madness. He’s big on religion – fierce, I’d say – and it becomes increasingly hard to determine the differentials between hardline religious outpourings and the ravings of the clinically deranged. Trying to judge when to have him committed has often been a frigging nightmare.

I digress.

I feel bad about Craig Brown now. I should never have called him Methuselah. He'll probably die next week and I'll feel horribly cheap and small for calling him names. Nightmare.

Take it easy…..

 

My reasons were probably a combination of those you cite. It is an excellent piece of writing. I also studied psychology at University eons ago and still remain curious about it. I have met people in my life, like your uncle, who this description seemed to fit like a glove. It's bloody frightening to see it when it kicks off isn't it?

In some ways the writing is fairly ambiguous and I thought could fit in with a number of conditions. I would agree with your assessment of old Bill Blake that is how I have always viewed him. Do you think "A poison tree" was his prophetic take on internet forums?

Don't crucify yourself over wee Broon I am sure he was called much worse during his time in education.



[video=youtube;z8V0N8BPRDI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8V0N8BPRDI&feature=related[/video]

I added this as an afterthought just remembered about it. An alternative take on William Blake

 

Exactly. Nicely said.

Even if this extract was written specifically with schizophrenia in mind, the pleasing ambiguity you mention lends itself to a wide range of mental “disorders”.

And I place this word within inverted commas, Mr M, as I’m always going to slightly wonder at the precision and/or validity of any diagnosis and have often found myself viewing the seemingly “mad” as being recognisably sane and the notionally “sane” as being utterly mental. (And no, this isn’t merely some pissy little play on words.) I'm glad you liked it, though, as it has always appealed to me on a number of levels. And yes, it can be disconcerting and frightening and laceratingly sad to witness someone gripped by such fevers. It can also be ecstatically dark and funny, however - just as I like it - and the potential for enjoyably head-wrecking conversations is ever-present. I'm always mildly hopeful that my uncle will stun me one day with some Blakean flight of fancy and burst out into poetic recitation or commit a brazen act of Art right in front of me. Even in the liberation of what most would class as madness, however, his mind seems very obviously restricted by a life-long obsession with religion and his imagery comes straight from the textbook. He needs to up his game.

But who on earth is that playing Blake in the clip (is this from an actual, you know, film?) and why has he got a gun? Is it meant to be funny - because it made me laugh, for some reason? But it’s quite intriguing, obviously, in a distinctly weird sort of way, and I’m tempted to feel that the world might be a better place if the only people in possession of firearms were poets – or at least those of an artistic bent. There may still be bloodshed, of course, but irreflective literalists would surely be eradicated from the gene pool quicksmart and it’s kind of hard to see that as being a wholly bad thing. Dullocide? Dullocaust? Already my imagination runs dry, for shame.

Was Psychology a supplementary subject during the course of your studies or was it the only subject you focused on? (That was a clumsy sentence, sorry, but maybe you'll get the gist.) It doesn't sound like you took it up as a profession, in any event, so I'm left (nosily) wondering how you came to be exposed to the "mad". As a by the by, I seem to remember that a Celtic fan on this site (DevAdvocate) studied Psychology on some level. Could be wrong. We do need a Psychology ward on this site, however, so maybe the pair of you will hook up and build it. I'll be the receptionist.


A POISON TREE

I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

And I watered it in fears,
Night and morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with smiles,
And with soft deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright.
And my foe beheld it shine.
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veiled the pole;
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretched beneath the tree.


A "prophetic take on internet forums"? Oh, that's good, although I had to work for a while - as well as having to look the poem up, which always feels like failure - to appreciate the possibilities.


And finally....

Inside the internet there exists a seething multitude of people who leave me quietly praying that psychologists and psychiatrists and all those other lovely head doctors are aggressively trawling these halls in search of trade.

 

Shall endeavour to get back to you on this old chap I'm bloody knackered at the moment and can hardly think.

just a quick one the actor in the video clip was Johnny Depp from a film called "Dead Man". He plays an accountant who kills somebody and goes on the run. Depp's character is called William Blake. He eventually travels around with an educated Native American Indian who thinks Depp is the William Blake. It's fairly watchable.

 

Damn. I thought it might have been Johnny Depp, but didn't trust my initial instinct. I don't tend to watch films these days, for some reason, but was aware of this particular actor as my wife is a long-time admirer of his face. I'll see what she has to say about the film and then maybe give it a go. It certainly sounds gratifyingly implausible and the clip you posted was winsome.

No worries about responding to anything, by the way. If you do, you do. And I'll not be holding it against you for too long if you don't.