Happy Face

I'd definitely support that. Anything that could remove homophobia before birth would be a good thing.

You've got me thinking it could be a tactic going forward though. When Leazes is being partuicularly destructive in football, start a General Chat topic on evil muslim gays protesting good, honest, British invasions. Dangle it like a carrot under his nose and lead him away from the football. When he gets a bit beyond the pale in there, start another football thread about Ashley outshining Shepherd in every way. The lifestyle choice view is a funny one like. As if people would choose a life of persecution and discrimination. If anything, a lot of gays choose a straight life to make it easier on themselves publicly. There's no-one straight thinking "why should those gays enjoy all the bashings, I want some of that!"

I just thought the article was funny. Surprised it even warrants so much discussion on here in an age when male Teletubbies are walking around with handbags. ARS

It's not as if Dale Winton is feltching David Walliams nightly on our screens. kids can be kids and still watch Julian Clary on countdown Walliams is married! Hard to believe mind. I know he's married, but he acts all gay on pre watershed tv as much as Winton. The 'damaging our kids' line of thought would make them as bad as each other, wether or not they actually love the cock at home.

It's not as if Dale Winton is feltching David Walliams nightly on our screens. kids can be kids and still watch Julian Clary on countdown

Love how it's the acceptbility to kids comment that received a backlash, rather than the shooting of the celebrity gays.

It must be awful, being a homophobe. Having to spend all that time obsessing about what gay people might be doing with their genitals. Seeing it in your mind, over and over again, in high-definition close-up. Bravely you masturbate, to make the pictures go away, but to no avail. They're seared onto your mental membranes. Every time you close your eyes, an imaginary gay man's imaginary penis rises from the murk, bowing ominously in your direction, sensing your discomfort. Laughing. Mocking. Possibly even winking. How dare they, this man and his penis? How dare they do this to you? Obviously you can't fight the big gay penis in your head. It has no physical form, so you can't get a grip on it, much as you'd like to. You'd love to grab it and throttle it until it splutters its last. That might bring you closure. But no. So you do the next best thing. You condemn homosexuals in the real world. Maybe if they could just stop all this "being gay" business for 10 minutes, you'd get some respite from that scary headcock. It might shrivel away completely, leaving nothing behind. Except maybe a nice bit of bum. No, dammit! Forget I said that! No bum either! Of course sometimes the act of condemning homosexuals in the real world overlaps with the imaginary realm. Over the past few weeks, games company Electronic Arts has been subjected to a letter-writing campaign from idiots outraged by its decision to allow players to define their characters as gay in a Star Wars game. The Florida Family Association says, "children and teens, who never thought any way but heterosexual, are now given a choice to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender" – adding that even if they chose to be straight, they would still "be forced to deal with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender characters chosen by other players". Personal choice and co-operation: two appalling threats to our youth. They also claim "there were no LGBT characters in any of the Star Wars movies". I don't know which wacky re-cut version of Star Wars they've been watching, but I saw the original when I was about six years old and even then I was struck by how outrageously camp C3PO is. He was a gilded John Inman in space. And what about Luke Skywalker? Apart from briefly kissing his own sister, he shows no interest in women whatsoever. The first film is a tender gay parable in which Luke falls in love with Alec Guinness and gradually "comes out" as a Jedi. The final scene oozes symbolism: having penetrated the Death Star's trench in his phallic spacecraft, he closes his eyes, submits to his true inner instinct and triumphantly blasts his X-Wing's seed into an anus-like aperture, causing an orgasmic eruption that changes his universe for ever. It's hard to see how they could make Star Wars any gayer, unless they gave the Millennium Falcon a handlebar moustache. But hang on, some of you are saying, this is a video game we're talking about. Isn't this gay content a bit shoehorned in? Sonic the Hedgehog never agonised over his sexual identity. He was too busy sprinting through a rainbow-coloured landscape leaping at rings. True, but that was in 1991 – which in "technology years" was about nine millennia ago. It's like comparing a cave painting with a surround-sound 3D movie. EA's Star Wars title in question is an MMORPG or massively multiplayer online role-playing game with more than a million subscribers: real people playing and interacting with each other in real-time, and hey, statistically, at least three of those people are going to be gay. The least you can do is let them reflect that in the characters they pick. But wait: there's even more gay content in another EA space epic, Mass Effect 3, which to the uninitiated is a bit like playing through an entire Star Trek boxset. It's bold space hokum and it's great fun – and just like Star Trek, it includes a range of potential love interests for the main character. Previous Mass Effect titles have let you play as a woman and – gasp – seduce other women: this final instalment is the first to give players the option playing a man who woos men. Play your cards right (or play your dialogue tree options right) throughout hours of gameplay and you'll be rewarded with a short, chaste love scene in which two bare-chested men kiss and cuddle in bed. Players have complained bitterly about the ending of Mass Effect 3 – not because of the potential for homosexual love, but because they found the narrative underwhelming. The game has a variety of different endings, depending on your decisions: some have moaned that none of the possible endings are happy or satisfying enough. In fact, they've moaned so much, EA has hastily released an additional ending free-of-charge, so these players can experience "further closure". I can't work out if that's depressing or sweet. On the one hand, they're spoiled little emperors with a mind-boggling sense of entitlement: it's one thing to be disappointed by the end of a story, but another to demand the author sits down and writes you a new one RIGHT NOW. You need "further closure"? What's wrong with you? But on the other hand, it's a sign that players sometimes invest so much of themselves into the characters they play, they care about them to a degree that should make any author jealous. Sneerers will doubtless leave comments about "saddoes" and "shut-ins", oblivious that by doing so, they too are playing a character in an immense MMORPG called the internet. Face it: you've even chosen a nickname and an avatar just to join in. Allowing players to identify their characters as homosexual isn't, as the anti-gay campaigners claim, a tokenistic novelty, but an unavoidable consequence of the fascinating evolution of video games. Not that there's much point explaining that to them. They don't believe in evolution either. And they wouldn't hear you anyway over the thunderous roar of dicks screaming for ever in their frightened mind's ear. http://www.guardian....-gay-video-game

Diary of Anne Frank Didn't expect it to be so touching, knowing so much about it beforehand, but every mention of persecution turns my stomach. Can't wait till she gets her drum kit.

Ex-NUFC David Ginola ‏ @DavidGinolaCeze Les Ferdinand ‏ @BigLesFerdinand Peter Ramage ‏ @peterramage83 Keith Gillespie ‏ @KeithGillespie7 Ruud Gullit ‏ @GullitR robbie elliott ‏ @robbieelliott3 Paul Dalglish ‏ @pauldalglish bradley h friedel ‏ @friedel_b Shaka Hislop ‏ @ShakaHislop olivier bernard ‏ @seedorf77 Stephen Ireland ‏ @StephenIreland Wayne Routledge ‏ @WayneRoutledge Joseph Barton ‏ @Joey7Barton Shay Given ‏ @No1shaygiven Ole Söderberg ‏ @Oliinho Warren Barton ‏ @warrenbarton2 Darren Huckerby ‏ @hucks6dh6 Andrew Cole ‏ @vancole9 mick quinn ‏ @mickquinn1089 Nolberto Solano ‏ @NolbertoSolano Current NUFC Papiss Demba Cisse ‏ @CissePapiss Robert Elliot ‏ @the_dilsh Peter Lovenkrands ‏ @lovenkrands11 Tim Krul ‏ @TimKrul jonas gutierrez ‏ @elgalgojonas Ryan Taylor ‏ @TaylorR1984 Cheick Tiote ‏ @CheikTiote24 yohan cabaye ‏ @YCabayeofficiel Haris Vučkić ‏ @VuckicNUFC jeff henderson ‏ @henderson_jeff Greg McDermott ‏ @McDermott8 Ryan Donaldson ‏ @rydonaldson Conor Newton ‏ @Conor_Newton1 Bradden Inman ‏ @brad_inman8 Fraser Forster ‏ @FraseForster James Tavernier ‏ @James_Tavernier Paul Dummett ‏ @PaulDummett shane ferguson ‏ @shane_fergie Samuel Ameobi ‏ @Sammy_Ameobi Danny Simpson ‏ @dannysimpson_ Nile ranger ‏ @NilePowerRanger Adam Campbell ‏ @adamcampbell_ mehdi abeid ‏ @reelM_abeid Remie Streete ‏ @Remiestreete80 philip airey ‏ @Airey9 Demba Ba ‏ @dembabafoot stephen folan ‏ @StephenFolan Any more to add appreciated....or any of those which are fake and need removed

I'd keep Simpson and Guthrie.

Got up to episode 5 of season 2 last night. The scalping How Homeland beat this for the best drama Golden Glode is beyond me. Like when they gave it to 24 over the West Wing. Madness.

The thing is when you get to the size Chelsea are now even without Roman they'd be difficult to compete with. They're almost self sufficient now. Their annual income is £225m more than any Italian team, almost £100m more than Liverpool and Tottenham, that's nothing to do with Abramovic, that is their income end of story. When you build a club and put corporate structures in place like they have, they're there to stay, hopefully we can compete one day. They've managed to get the wage bill down to 75% too, from a high of 82%. Still think it'll need to come down further...but a champions league win would do that by increasing turnover even further rather than by getting rid of players.

The journos on Twitter and the punters on ITV fawning over the Chelsea performance boiled my piss too. I'm not comparing Swansea to Barca (like some people) but when Swansea passed it about the halfway line for 90 minutes against us without creating a single credible chance, they got plaudits for their beautiful brand of possession football. NUFC got hardly any credit outside of the North East for having the tactics and the players to completely nulify them and hit them on the break. Last night Chelsea were battered, Barcelona were all over them, with possession football that actually created dozens of chances (most inside the box) and hit the woodwork twice. Having ridden their luck this much, Chelsea get a world of praise for their staunch defense and Barca get laughed out of town for not being able to turn on the style on a cold wet windy night in England. Journalism based entirely on the underdogs and partisan favourites.

http://www.salon.com/2012/04/18/attacks_on_rt_and_assange_reveal_much_about_the_critics/singleton/?mobile.html

Nobby's profile pic on Twitter @NolbertoSolano

Spakey Chelsea

A bit more to look at there. The trend id for a tiny drop off in the points scored for each of the best, worst and average promoted teams totals. Not significant iyam. Interesting how the best and worst lines seem to follow each other (apart from a few years), thought they'd be more independent.

That was gonna be my quiz question, who's scored most points in the 20 team system. Impressive that they got 66 points.

I don't think promoted teams are struggling particularly more than they were. All 3 have gone down only once almost 15 years back. Of the teams relegated immediately, 13 went down in the first 10 year of the PL, and 13 went down in the last 10 year. That said, the argument could be made that 2 or more of the promoted sides have been relegated immediately 4 times in the last 8 years (50%). It only happened 3 times in the first 11 years of the Premier league (less than 30%).

The Alabama Shakes album is on Spotify now.

It was much harder in 97 - up until 97/98 they only let the League winners in, hence the reason why we never made it under Keegan, despite finishing 2nd and 3rd but got in under Ku Klux Kenny. Under todays system, Keegan would've qualified twice. Apologies. Should have said harder to finish 4th. xx

Always enjoy a good KSA paean to the man. I had a drawing of him on my wall. I thought I was 10 or 12 thinking back, but he didn't get here til '94 so I must have been 15

By the way. On 11/01, this was the position... 3. THFC 45pts ... 7. NUFC 33pts Both had played 20. Fucking brilliant to be the ones clawing back a 12 point deficit since the new year.

In 03/04, after 33 games we were also 5th (boooo), on 9 less points having scored 5 less goals, so this is an even better chase we're mounting than then. We were even on points with 4th (Liverpool) at that time as well, but we had a game in hand on them too. We only took 6 points from the last 5 games then though. Think we'll make a much better go of the run in as the underdog punching up than we did as the favourites scrapping to save face.