RAWK Goes Into Meltdown (2011/2012)

I think we should allow a youtube video on autoplay in this thead, playing the X Files theme.
 
Yeah that was a mini spack-attack. In the middle of trying and failing to sort it, I actually said 'feck', Caf-style, but I've totally lost my voice and nothing came out, which was probably just as well.
 
Had a look at their transfer forum..
They are trying to be clever with the thread titles... its hilariously bad
 
I'm not being unkind, but the famous scouse sense of humour often seems clunky to me, like the worst of Carla Lane's writing.
 
'Evening, chief. :)

I dunno, it just seems so 'heavy' & clumsy. For example, a typical RAWK tagline might read:

'Kop Legend
Bit metrosexual
Likes crisps'
 
SteveJ said:
I really have no words for this...although it could be a wind-up:

A King Among Men
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:lol: x 10.000 -- simply one of the funniest posts ever written on any message board, even if it is a pastiche. I have to quote some more, Steve, so the linkphobics can feel the full impact and understand that they must read this masterpiece in full --

Bob Sacamano @ RAWK said:
I had a dream before I awoke, and fittingly it was a dream about Kenny Dalglish managing Liverpool to victory over Manchester United. To see him on the pitch that morning mere moments after waking up was indescribably surreal; a dream come true in the most literal sense. One might expect ebullient optimism or unfettered excitement given the occasion. The most revered man in the illustrious history of Liverpool Football Club has come back to accomplish that long-awaited restoration. Liverpool belong at the top of the table, and the European Cup belongs at Anfield. It was the Return of the King, the Return of Glory.
And yet I was gripped with fear when I saw Kenny, and I was overwhelmed with sadness.

[...]

Perhaps my sadness and fear were natural consequences of an adolescence conditioned by the deconstructive forces of modernity and post-modernity. I never witnessed the Golden Age, and should our barren spell continue indefinitely, future generations might even question whether it was a myth, a legend that has its roots in history, but whose implications are merely products of imaginative patriarchs desperately seeking to find meaning and significance where there was none.

I imagine the disciples felt much the same way (albeit on a larger scale!) as they fled Jerusalem in the wake of Jesus’ crucifixion.
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Understatement of the Century ahoy! :D

I understand your sentiment but the analogies you use to portray that are a little off kilter for me.
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Quite a good one here talking about Jonjo Shelvey:

A season out on loan to a Premier League team like Bolton or Norwich will benefit the lad greatly. He needs more first team games under his belt at this level for him to continue his progression. He looks like a hybrid between Gerrard and Alonso and if nurtured properly, could run our midfield for years to come.
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Cross between Gerrard and Alonso?
 
Fiskey said:
Cross between Gerrard and Alonso?
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geraldo-rivera.jpg

Geraldo?


gonzo_mcc.jpg

Gonzo?
 
Waltraute said:
:lol: x 10.000 -- simply one of the funniest posts ever written on any message board, even if it is a pastiche. I have to quote some more, Steve, so the linkphobics can feel the full impact and understand that they must read this masterpiece in full --
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RAWK won't let me in - says I have to be a member! Paranoid feckers :lol:
 
Crustanoid said:
RAWK won't let me in - says I have to be a member! Paranoid feckers :lol:
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They've removed the thread. :(
But it's futile trying to sweep it under the carpet, the Google cache always provides. Enjoy!

Bob Sacamano @ RAWK said:
The Jews are a hopeful bunch. Egyptian exile, Babylonian and Assyrian captivity, Roman occupation—how a relatively small ethnic group could survive (let alone flourish!) despite such circumstance is clearly a testament to their almost pitifully obstinate expectation of imminent restoration, and some might say conclusive evidence of Divine favor. A mighty king from the tribe of Judah, a descendant of Abraham and David, would surely emerge at any moment to deliver the Jews from their enemies—those wretched and defiled idol worshippers who dishonored the God of Creation—just as YHWH had led them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land.

Alas, the people of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were improbably vindicated by their God. The king arrived just as they said he would, defeating their enemies with ease, and inaugurating the Kingdom of God on earth. The God of the Jews was, after all, the King of the universe, and demonstrably so.

Only the Jews didn’t notice.


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I hate when Liverpool play Manchester United. Not because I am overcome with nerves or dread the prospect of defeat at their hands (though that is certainly true as well!), but because the match always starts at the crack of dawn here in the States. The prospect of groggily searching for a grainy and inevitably unreliable stream on some shady website with more pop-ups than a children’s book is almost enough to keep me anchored to the mattress.

But this day was special. I had a dream before I awoke, and fittingly it was a dream about Kenny Dalglish managing Liverpool to victory over Manchester United. To see him on the pitch that morning mere moments after waking up was indescribably surreal; a dream come true in the most literal sense. One might expect ebullient optimism or unfettered excitement given the occasion. The most revered man in the illustrious history of Liverpool Football Club has come back to accomplish that long-awaited restoration. Liverpool belong at the top of the table, and the European Cup belongs at Anfield. It was the Return of the King, the Return of Glory.
And yet I was gripped with fear when I saw Kenny, and I was overwhelmed with sadness. I feared that the game had passed him by, that the Golden Child was progeny of an irretrievable Golden Age, that our enemies had grown too strong for complete restoration to be possible, that our own fans might withdraw their support at the first sign of adversity. I feared that the world had changed, and there was no way back. Not even for the King.

Nothing saddened me more than the thought of a dejected Dalglish unceremoniously abdicating his throne and wondering where it all went wrong, wondering whether it was better to stay retired, wondering whether the Golden Age will ever mean anything again or, worse yet, whether it actually meant anything in the first place.
Perhaps my sadness and fear were natural consequences of an adolescence conditioned by the deconstructive forces of modernity and post-modernity. I never witnessed the Golden Age, and should our barren spell continue indefinitely, future generations might even question whether it was a myth, a legend that has its roots in history, but whose implications are merely products of imaginative patriarchs desperately seeking to find meaning and significance where there was none.


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I imagine the disciples felt much the same way (albeit on a larger scale!) as they fled Jerusalem in the wake of Jesus’ crucifixion. They had committed their lives to his ministry, witnessed his power to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, provide food for the hungry, inspire hope in the hopeless. They witnessed his public confrontations with the Pharisees and Scribes, where he exhibited unprecedented command of the Hebrew Scriptures. But this man was not merely a wise rabbi, charismatic teacher, or erudite ***********. He labored on the Sabbath, granted forgiveness apart from priestly intermediaries, and enjoyed table fellowship with the dregs of society. The significance of these activities was not lost on his contemporaries. Jesus was both announcing and inaugurating the kingdom of God on account of his own authority; he was not a man of the law, but a man above the law. And so the disciples were convinced that the promised Messiah had arrived at long last. It was only a matter of time before Jesus made a call to arms and sparked a revolution to drive out the Roman occupiers and reestablish the Davidic Monarchy.

Imagine then the shock at seeing this Jesus hanging on the cross. In a culture defined by the pursuit of honor, crucifixion was the most dishonorable form of execution available to authorities. The inscription above Jesus which read “King of the Jews” was characteristic of Roman condescension toward their Jewish counterparts; “here is your King, nailed shamefully to a tree…Caesar is the ruler of the world, and YHWH is not.”

This was a crushing defeat for the followers of Jesus. That he was crucified meant precisely that he was NOT the promised Messiah. The Jews were still under Roman occupation. Their so-called Messiah was dead.

How is it then that three days later, these same disciples (and many others!) were once again proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah?

Easter is the story of vindication. God reversed the condemnation of Jesus and raised him from the dead, thereby justifying (the act of a judge ruling in your favor) him and declaring him righteous (a status created by a judge, NOT a moral quality) or “in the right.” The disciples were, in fact, right. Jesus was the Messiah. And the Jews were, in fact, right. God did raise up a king from the seed of Abraham who defeated their enemies and brought about restoration. And the God of the Jews, YHWH, was and is, in fact, the God of the universe.

That only a small minority of Jews came to see the events of Jesus’ crucifixion and the empty tomb in this light indicates a disconnect between expectations and reality. It is not merely an issue of morality or ethics, but of vocation.


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And this brings me back to my fear and sadness. Perhaps for some, the defeat to United that day, our subsequent failure to qualify for Europe, and the prospect of coming up short again next season would be enough to indict our King. Others are more patient, granting Kenny sufficient time to build the squad in his image with complete confidence that eventually he will succeed. I don’t share that optimism, but nor would I dare declare Kenny a failure.

Paul, the greatest theologian who ever lived, plainly declared to his Jewish brethren that “if we are justified by the works of Torah, then we our still in our sins.” This profound statement encapsulates the divide between the small minority of Jews who followed Jesus and the vast majority who did not. Justification meant belonging to the people of God. The Jews of that day believed that keeping Torah marked them out as the true people of God. And yet here is Paul, a Jew of Jews, a Pharisee of the tribe of Benjamin, declaring this is not so. “For we are not justified by the works of Torah, but by faith.” The true people of God are not marked out by keeping Torah, but by faith (faith meaning the Greek work pistis which presupposes mere belief and further connotes faithfulness or loyalty). Torah cannot declare you “in the right” before the judge; in fact, it does the opposite in that it only demonstrates your guilt.

And so it is with Liverpool FC. We are not justified by results, but by pistis. If we place our confidence in results, we will inevitably stand guilty before the judge, for even the greatest teams must suffer defeat. We will lose matches. Many matches. And while Kenny is certainly capable of achieving success, the landscape of football has changed so dramatically that repeating our dominance of the 70’s and 80’s is all but impossible.

Nevertheless, when Kenny steps down he will be vindicated, for he understands his vocation. The Jews were called to holiness by YHWH and were expected to be the people through whom God would restore his creation; yet they failed again and again to live up to their vocation until God raised up a faithful Jew through whom the restoration plan could proceed and through whom the ultimate enemy—death—could be defeated. Jesus understood the telos or goal of humanity; we are called to reflect God’s image to his creation, to be faithful stewards in anticipation of the day when we are handed the keys to kingdom. This was the stumbling block for many Jews, who thought that the restoration of their political monarchy was the final goal.

Let us not lose sight of our vocation as Liverpool supporters. The goal is not to win as many trophies as possible, for we are not justified by results. Football is so much more. It is a cause for celebration, a means of reconciliation and unity, and an agent of healing. Never was this more evident than during the aftermath of Hillsborough, when the Liverpool Way was on display for all to see. As someone on this very forum once said, Kenny does not have to adapt to the Liverpool Way; he IS the Liverpool Way.
And so when we place our pistis in our very own King, we do so not out of the expectation for a cabinet- full of trophies, or the ruthless vanquishing of our enemies (although I’m sure we’d all welcome that!), but out of loyalty and faithfulness to the Liverpool Way.

Remember then that a King walks among us, demonstrating that the Golden Age was real and that its significance was more profound than we could have ever imagined. And when Liverpool lose their next match, we will be content, for we know that we are not justified by results, but by faith.

We are a hopeful bunch indeed.
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ciderman9000000 said:
I call Poe's Law.
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Yes, it's impossible to know if this is a sincere post or a parody. We all want to believe it's a pastiche, but who knows? The Numinous Liverpool Football Club fundamentalists have made the distinction impossible to uphold, and in the end totally irrelevant.

"Jesus understood the telos or goal of humanity; we are called to reflect God’s image to his creation, to be faithful stewards in anticipation of the day when we are handed the keys to kingdom. This was the stumbling block for many Jews, who thought that the restoration of their political monarchy was the final goal.

Let us not lose sight of our vocation as Liverpool supporters. The goal is not to win as many trophies as possible, for we are not justified by results. Football is so much more. It is a cause for celebration, a means of reconciliation and unity, and an agent of healing."
 
:lol:

RAWK is the pure e-embodiment of Poe's Law in action; half of them are mental, half of them have got to be taking the piss, there's no means of differentiation between the above two groups and so there are bannings galore and content deletion for suspected parodists. If something's posted that's less mental and conformist than the usual crank ramblings then it gets removed, because the poster was clearly not a true fan, yet if something gets posted that's more mental and conformist than the usual crank ramblings then it also gets removed, because the poster was clearly parodying the true fan. The site thusly doesn't function as traditional messageboard, it's more a holding-pen from which the eternally deluded attempt to differentiate themselves from the persistently WUMimg, and they inevitably find the task to be an impossible one.
 
ciderman9000000 said:
The site thusly doesn't function as traditional messageboard, it's more a holding-pen from which the eternally deluded attempt to differentiate themselves from the persistently WUMimg, and they inevitably find the task to be an impossible one.
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Just imagine being a mod there. I almost feel sorry for them --

WUMing or not?
[Posted by a soi-disant Liverpool supporter, not by a Barça fan]

posterjv.png
 
Waltraute said:
:lol: x 10.000 -- simply one of the funniest posts ever written on any message board, even if it is a pastiche. I have to quote some more, Steve, so the linkphobics can feel the full impact and understand that they must read this masterpiece in full --
Click to expand...

Perhaps my sadness and fear were natural consequences of an adolescence conditioned by the deconstructive forces of modernity and post-modernity. I never witnessed the Golden Age, and should our barren spell continue indefinitely, future generations might even question whether it was a myth, a legend that has its roots in history, but whose implications are merely products of imaginative patriarchs desperately seeking to find meaning and significance where there was none.
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I don't even...
 
Do people really think Ferguson gives a shite what happens when he goes? He publically comes out in support of the owners who have put the club in massive debt. Polar opposite to Benitez who arguably lost his job ousting them for the good of our club.
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And thus, Benitez is the better manager. Am I right?
 
There's more historical revisionism about Benitez than there was about Stalin.
 
Do people really think Ferguson gives a shite what happens when he goes? He publically comes out in support of the owners who have put the club in massive debt. Polar opposite to Benitez who arguably lost his job ousting them for the good of our club.
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quote of the century?
 
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