The ‘World Famous’ Zombie Lesson – EFL lesson for English language students

Being an English teacher can be difficult and sometimes when energy is low in the class I feel this lesson really helps to bring the levels right back up. It's great for General English and I have mainly done it with upper-intermediate and advanced students but the truth is this lesson has so much scope and depth for language learning that you can add to it and take as much from as you want.... so ladies and gentlemen I give you the world famous Zombie lesson invented by myself (because I love zombies and you should always use your passions and interests to re-enforce your lesson cause I believe if you love it, your students will too)... and it is my proudest achievement so far to date in the English language learning world. J

Introduction – I usually start with the topic of zombies – 'what they are' etc to illicit the vocabulary that they will need such as – death, re-animation (this one can be tough), zombie, walking dead etc. I also ask them if they have watched ‘The Walking Dead’ as this can scupper the gist task 2... so you need to establish who has seen season one of AMC’s ‘The Walking Dead’ and who has not. Once you feel you have enough vocabulary feel free to move on.

Gist Task 1 – I show them the first of two videos. The first is the longer version of the season one trailer for ‘The Walking Dead’ and takes about four minutes. I ask them to watch so they can tell me what is happening in the trailer.

After watching the above trailer the students will then quickly talk in pairs and discuss what they saw. What you can teach here is passive and active voice such as ‘the car was being chased by the police’ against ‘the police were chasing the criminal’ or ‘the policeman was shot’ and ‘the criminals shot the policeman’

You also want them to tell you what happened in the trailer – you can watch it above to list your own objectives. I usually use it to teach present continuous with present simple or past continuous with past simple (interrupted past). I will usually have taught this structure in a lesson before. So for example ‘the police were chasing the car when it rolled over’ or ‘the Sheriff was riding a horse when he bumped into a horde (crowd could be more useful J) of zombies. They should also mention the fact that the policeman is looking for his wife and son.

Follow-up to Gist task 1 - I usually get them to write up the story of the trailer to re-enforce the grammar and vocabulary used. (You can already see how many different points you can focus on in this lesson)

Gist Task 2 - So now I show them the second, slightly shorter, 2 minute trailer and this is the point you need to have established who has watched the show or who not. This second one is similar but just more concise. What I get them to do is watch the video and then in pairs make predictions about what will happen during the season. I give them the protagonists name (Rick) to make it easier for them. If there are people who have watched the season I always put them together with people who haven’t to ask them questions. 'What do you think will happen to Rick?' etc. 

Here you may need to pre-teach how to express opinions such as ‘I think, believe, feel (teach them as synonyms in certain cases and that in these cases think and feel are not used in the continuous tense), reckon and even hope etc along with making predictions such as ‘I think Rick will find is family’ or (using evidence in the present) ‘I feel we are going to see a lot of zombies being killed’ (again passive voice).

Follow-up Task – Well here you can do a few things such as make a presentation about what they think will happen or again a writing task to re-enforce the language or just leave it as a speaking task and report back to the class.

Main Task (option 1) – Here is where things get a little more fun and I teach ‘making suggestions and expressing opinions or negotiation skills’ which could be the main aim of the lesson (it usually is with mine). I set a scenario of a zombie apocalypse and tell that, in my case, zombies are all over London and on Oxford street but they have not yet entered our building. That it is just us left and for the exercise imagine that their families and friends are safe. Tell them that we need to escape before the zombies come in and kill us all.

Before I give them this task I usually pre-teach modals and grammar structures such as:

‘Need’ for necessity

‘Must and Have to’ for obligation and very strong suggestions

‘Should and Ought to’ for strong suggestions

‘Could and can’ for possibility and ability

‘Second conditional’ (If I were you...) to make suggestions

Etc... 

there is so much language that can be taught here. You can also re-enforce that when acting as a modal ‘have and ought’ need to have ‘to’ or the ‘infinitive with to’ while the other modals use the ‘infinitive without to’ except for ‘need’ which uses the ‘infinitive with to’ or a noun. You can also show them that second conditional to make suggestions usually uses ‘were’ and not ‘was’ so ‘If I were you’ not ‘If I was you’ but you can teach them neither is wrong in reality, just that ‘were’ seems to be preferred.

After this I get them to write down a few ideas with a partner such as ‘we need to take water with us’ or ‘we should make a weapon’.  After a few minutes I split the room into groups and get them to make a plan of how to escape so ideas like ‘build a ladder’ or ‘steal a car’ (you can talk about the alarm attracting the attention of the zombies) or ‘run for your lives’ have all been ideas I have heard. When they have created a plan I get them to tell the room their plans. Then I tell them they all need to agree on one plan. Here they should use comparatives such as safer and better or superlatives.  When they agree on something I get them to report the final idea and the lesson could be/is over and ‘we escape’.

Main Task 2 – this is an alternative or an extra depending on how long your lesson is or how you feel J. It is a writing task.

I ask the students to write a story. This is creative writing so you need to ask them to decide in pairs the characters and the setting for the zombie apocalypse. I get them to write a 180 – 250 word short story. In this they will use ‘past perfect, past simple and past continuous’ among other tenses and get them to read it back to the classes. This only works if you’ve pre-taught the tenses.

Again the scope from here is limitless as sometimes I get the students to choose their favourite and then tell them Steven Spielberg has bought the rights to the movie so now they need to write a scene from it and then get them to act it out... oh and specify that all students must be human, being a zombie just allows them to avoid using English haha.

Conclusion... well I hope you love my Zombie lesson as much as I do... and I am sure there is so much more scope to be had from it so I would welcome any ideas you all may have.  It has always been a success in class and raised the energy levels and trust me when I say I have done it quite a few times J.

Thank you for reading and let me know how it goes.

Roy

PS thanks to AMC for giving me something so amazing to teach :) 

        

The party never dies... ish

So this weekend my friends and I wandered off for the weekend to Chatham-del-Sol in sunny Kent... possibly - not really sure where the hell it is to be honest... but it does have an island where they used to build nuclear submarines and now you can't plant root vegetables cause of the nuclear waste - which is exciting as there is a distinct possibility that the first wave of X-Men may now be living in a town south of London... or many people could be suffering radiation poisoning, which is not so exciting - so I prefer to live in the belief of X-Men.

That said we did go kayaking and then went for a little party... This video was inspired by my Spanish students who love that song that says 'I went to Spain', 'What the fuck' and 'La genta esta muy loca' and may I say the party never dies ... ish (its possibly time for me and my friends to be put out to graze... but I have no intention of going out gracefully - not when I've got these silky dance moves)

The birth of a new word!

As an English teacher it is my duty to educate my students how to speak English grammatically correctly and also to be able to identify the correct adjectives and vocabulary to use in an everyday life...

My job does not include the creation of a brand new word... however...

I have a student in my morning class by the name of Alvaro from Spain who enjoys extreme sports and is what most people would refer to as an outdoor type of person. Somewhere along the line during class joking and conversation Alvaro came to be regarded by the class as something close to the Spanish Chuck Norris.

It was in this mornings class that we were talking about adjectives to describe personality including words like calm, bossy and adventurous.

It was upon this word I took to the board and wrote this as a joke...

Alvarious (adjective)
/æl-vɑr-i-əs/

- used to describe someone who is exceptionally adventurous 
- a person who laughs in the face of danger 

"I'm feeling very alvarious tonight"

"He must be incredibly alvarious if he wants to jump out of that moving plane without a parachute"


I had forgotten the influence of the board and upon turning round at least one student was faithfully copying down the new adjective. Ben Parker's words "with great power, comes great responsibility" that he said to Peter Parker sprung into my mind and while the majority of students had already grasped it was a joke I explained that this wasn't a real adjective... or was it? Technically any word that gets used is a word, even if it is not official in the Oxford dictionary, and that is the clincher. If a word is used by enough people to enter the common speech of the population it will become an officially recognised as a word. Therefore from this day forward the word alvarious will be used on a daily basis for it already is a word and the birth of that word was today.

The latest of the English Idioms...

Well so I thought I would share some of the articles I have been writing to help people on here as well ...

so here goes...

Here is the latest one I wrote on the origin of the phrase The Bee's knees

Where has the wombat been?

For those of you wondering where all the posts and blogs have wandered off to, be not alarmed... I have been occupied on trying to help people...

I know... crazy right? In a time where money is tight and gives us an excuse to say 'charity begins at home' with a little more conviction, there are a lot of people trying to do something. By trade I am an English teacher so I gained a knowledge of grammar and my first language. I also saw how important it was to help people who are trying to learn. The English that is not spoken around the world contains many words from different languages and it is no longer the same language that left these shores in the time of colonialism. In fact, I believe in the future it will evolve even more, very quickly, into something barely recognizable to what we speak today. There are words like Shampoo (of Hindu origin), Potato (from Spanish) and Kindergarten (German) already firmly planted in the language. In fact it has roots from Latin (words like prefer and adore), Germanic (Hound and Land) with many other major contributors (Nordic adds many words, usually in the form of words beginning with kn, like knife).

This is only going to increase in the future, and it will serve to bring our broken world further together and allow is to communicate in a common language.

The one thing I noticed is that English relies heavily on idioms and phrases, in fact there are over 25,000 of them and that number grows everyday. Therefore, I decided to write a definition a day for many of idioms to help English language learners around the world. I also decided to include the origins of these phrases for people who already know them and wish to see where they came from.

I put all of the links to each article on this blog...
You can click on the 'help with english link' above or just paste the link below:
http://citizenwombat.blogspot.com.br/p/help-with-english.html

I hope you enjoy :)

Silvio Berlusconi Strikes back

A day after Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to four years, reduced to one, he has decided to reassure the fans of bunga bunga parties the world over that he will stay in politics.

Determined to 'right the wrongs' in the justice system he will make sure that what happened to him won't happen to other 'innocent' citizens...So let me get this straight... he feels aggrieved, hard done by and like the Erin Brockovich of Italian politics... 

This is a man who is also being investigated for soliciting sex with a underage girl, a man who has been charged with numerous allegations and always walked away.. the man is a legal teflon. Sometimes he has not got off due to acquittal but rather that the trial exceeded a time period and the case was dismissed automatically. So now I ask you, while some celebrate the victory of a conviction what has actually been achieved?

Well he was sentenced to four years - that was immediately reduced to one through some amnesty law that only the Italian judicial system can seem to understand and ordered to pay 10m euros in damages... for what amounts quite simply to tax evasion... so has he been carted off to the lock up? of course not, cause he's appealing... and the appeal process that could take several years, which on a probable note means he will never serve the sentence... Also he was banned from office for  5years... but does this mean that this ban is also suspended? could he realistically return to office, where the Prime Minister cannot be found guilty of any crimes and get off again? It seems that in Italy the Magna Carta was never translated!

So what we have now is a man, who has been found guilty, probably not going to serve his sentence and being encouraged to re-enter politics to right some  wrong he feels he has been served?  He feels he has been persecuted by the judges that tried him... which I'm pretty sure is how anyone feels when they get sentenced to jail.  

The only brightside I can see to this is that without a man like Berlusconi, the only clowns left to blog about would be in the circus.

      

Weekly Wombat (Since last time to 17/10/12)

So it's been another period of time since the last weekly wombat and here goes...

In the news this week Police taser a blind man while looking for a samurai, a man cooks a squirrel burns down a block of flats and Obama gets some balls!!!

1) In a time in England where the police needs a bit of a PR boost after the controversies of the cover-ups of the Hillsborough disaster and the apparent reports of Jimmy Saville's pedophilic activities not benig followed up the police needed a positive story ... so when reports of a samurai pacing the streets of Chorley in north west England came through the police burst into action. What they didn't need was to end up tasering a 61 year old blind man mistaking his white stick for a samurai sword...

If it wasn't so tragic you'd laugh... however what ended up happening was so distressing that it defies any possible belief... a man, who has suffered two strokes and cannot see anything was suddenly struck by something he described as feeling like a shock from an electric pylon, was tasered by a police officer who could not distinguish the difference between a sword and a white stick!!!

later a man was arrested for carrying the sword... but seriously... can we start testing for common sense soon?

2) and now in America... continuing the theme of animals from last week and common sense - a man found some roadkill in the form of a squirrel and thought 'waste not want not' therefore deciding to take the rodent home and grill it... he used a propane blow torch to singe the fur but instead set fire to his apartment and damaged a total of 8..

in a time of austerity and financial constraints I'm sure everyone in that block of flats was delighted to see the 'new gordon ramsey' save the pennies, grab a dead rat thing and set fire to their homes...

I now endorse McDonalds over roadkill... and that's saying something

3) And finally, if the reports are to be believed, the man we know President Obama decided to turn up for his second presidential debate... After Romney stormed it in the last it's nice to hear the Barack realised his 'I'm an insurance man and don't really care' routine wasn't working and decided to fight...

I was not polarised in this situation at all... until Romney started speaking and then I thought, wow... I really don't want to see America go back to the blunders of Bush or Righteous Regan eras...

I did however love Romey's 'binders full of women' comment - I love the idea that in his office Romney has binders full of women... what the fuck was he talking about? and where does he come up with this material? Cause he should bottle it and send it to some comics if he really is serious about being the President of the States...

I think... if Romney and Obama were in a head to head to see who could be the new Stand-Up sensation, then I'm afraid to say rollover Seinfeld... Romneys in town, Barack... you should just stick at being president... it's what you do best

John Terry - An Ambassador for England

I think that football sometimes reflects the make-up of society and can reflect the society it comes from when talking in the terms of national teams. This is not a football blog but it seems to be the second post in as many weeks that focus on the subject. This is cause, quite simply, even though we're pretty crap on the national level, football is a pretty major passion in England.

The national team is seen to be representative of the culture that it comes from, however in the case of Asian footballers we have none in the current national team... and the only player of Asian origin to play for England was Frank Soo who played during the war... even though Asian people make up 7% of the British population... but anyway this post is not about the genetic make-up of the England team ... it is in fact about John George Terry...

John Terry is the captain of Chelsea football club and the ex-captain of the England national team. This means that at one point he was the most prominent ambassador for the English national football team - when we went to another country he was the first port of call, the front line man and the person we feel best represents our team... our leader.

He's been charged over the years with assault and proven innocent, parked his car in a disabled bay and accused of sleeping with his teammates girlfriend ... and he has not been tarred by any of it..,

Then he called Anton Ferdinand a "fucking black cunt". I have seen countless times f****** black c*** written in the papers, but lets not mince our words here cause the word I find most offensive is the one that they have left in... His defense is that he was asking Mr Ferdinand if he had thought he'd called him a "fucking black cunt", which seems about as plausible as Nicholas Cage winning an Oscar  Because the court could not establish the tone of Terry's voice he was again acquitted...

The English FA then tried Mr Terry and basically dismissed his defense as a load of bollocks and decided that the term 'fucking black cunt' had been used by way of an insult... so lets look at this... he used the term including the word 'black' to describe Mr Ferdinand's skin colour as way of an insult... however they did say that while he had racial abused Anton, he was not in fact a racist...

He was given a four match ban, a fine and sent on his way... and the fact he has been declared 'not a racist' means there is nothing to stop him from returning to play for England or evening managing a team in the premier league... This is in stark contrast to Luis Suarez who speaks Spanish calling a Frenchman 'negro' - which means black in Spanish and is commonly used in South America as a way of describing someone... After living in South America I can say that some of the things I heard felt pretty racist - for example to call some negro in Britain would be highly fucking offensive, but in Brazil if you called someone Preto (or black in Portuguese) this is very upsetting and racist for Brazilian people... Luis came from Uruguay and did not understand the language or the culture - I have corrected people, who's first language is not English, in the past who think that it is acceptable to call someone 'nigger' because they heard it in a rap song. These people simply do not know the difference... Luis however was given an 8 match ban....

John Terry did know the culture, he speaks English as a first language... he knows that the word black is offensive. If Anton was indeed being an idiot he might have been worthy of being called a fucking cunt, or a dickhead but it had nothing to do with the colour of his skin... I have met good people and pricks from all nationalities and ethnicities, but it has had nothing to do with where the are from... some people we simply don't like and when I choose to tell people they annoy me I don't feel the need to reference if they are white, black or green... it is inconsequential... to do this I feel would be racist - and I am not a racist person.

John Terry did do this and he too apparently is not racist - it's just his actions were a bit racist that day... if the circus that is football was truly representative of British society does this mean we would see criminals using the defense 'I'm not a rapist, I was just a bit rapey that day' or 'I'm not a murderer, but what I did was a bit stabby'. This idea that I'm not racist but one person is a 'fucking black cunt' seems to come straight from the Nick Griffin school of thinking when he called a pair of people Fenians, but does not mean it to imply to every Catholic...

Everyone has prejudices - the key to being a good person is not to be blinded by them and to give everyone an equal chance.

@roywoodhouse

Weekly Wombat (23/09/12 - 04/10/12) giving you more than 7 days!

This week on the weekly Wombat...

The Americans ask David Cameron whether the Magna Carta is overrated, Steve jobs is seen on a truck in China, Batman gets arrested and Obama makes Reagan MK2 look good...

1) On a recent trip to the US to boost tourism to the UK... cause in a time of economic woe most peoples first choice of destination would be the Island of Britain with its warm weather, sandy beaches and smiling natives... wait wait, I have dyslexia - I mean Bali... David Cameron decided to go on the Letterman show. It was there he was asked the million dollar question of is the Magna Carta really that important? In a time where current issues need addressing to save society as we know it it's great to see that the British Prime minister also has time to debate a burning issue and relevant question that started in 1215 with the signing of the document...

I would like to ask a question to Mr Letterman... who the fuck cares? seriously? I mean is there not some more serious issues that we should be discussing here? like... trillion dollar debts, over spending by banks, world poverty, climate change, racism, sexism, the struggle for equality... no wait, the signing of the Magna Carta and it's significance on modern society is way more important... thanks David Letterman and David Cameron for putting life into perspective...

The Magna Carta states that no one person is above the law, not even the king... so arrest the bankers and the people who fucked it all up in the first place then... but seriously there are far more important things to discuss as whether the Magna Carta is relevant today...

2) Ok so this is a weird one... the late Steve Jobs was seen on the back of a truck in China.. The snap (seen below) started an internet phenomenon...

After Jesus on toast, Mary on a cloth and Chairman Mao was seen on the moon it was only a matter of time before Steve Jobs was seen on a truck in China... people are debating whether Jobs has been reincarnated and wearing a turtleneck and holding his chin in China, or whether it is a waxwork or even a cutout or a doctored photo... It could indeed mean that Apple has moved on from Ipads and started making Ipeople that can be 'recharged' - one thing is for sure... this changes everything

3) What is the world coming to when you can't dress up like a complete tosser, try and solve crime without being arrested... Well it turns out that we do in fact live in this world...

and here he is... having traded Gotham for Michigan has now been arrested twice for getting in the way of solving crime. I happen to love these people who try and solve crime dressed up in homemade costumes, they even have one in Sao Paulo, Brasil, and think that anyone who tries to make a difference for the better deserves a little bit of recognition ... So well done Mark Wayne Williams from Michigan... but if you happen to be somewhere where the police don't want you to be - like a crime scene where they are trying to use sniffer dogs who are getting distracted by your scent, go and grab a coffee in the bat cave, cause if you go to jail you can't do much good in there - and I'm not sure quite how long you'd last... everyone can help someone everyday... you don't need to beat up a mugger, just help and old person cross a road or buy a homeless person a coffee.. and luckily you don't need to dress up like a prick to do it :)

4) and finally! Obama and Romney took to the stand and in what was expected to be a political KO for Romney made Obama look about as passionate as an insurance salesman... Please Barack ... tell me this was some sort of mercy, that you didn't want a landslide victory that made you look too good... cause Romney seems to be the most scary candidate since Reagan.  When Reagan was in power with his finger on the button not just the enemies of America cowered... the world went running... so please Barack, get your head in the game... stop telling people that you were not the perfect president, that you will not again be a perfect president and start saying come on... look at him... then think 'it could be worse'... either that or why not debate over the relevance of the Magna Carta cause that seems like a pretty hot topic right now and take Rommey to the cleaners... I have one more suggestion... if you want another term power... forget the promises and the rhetoric, just offer to release the files displaying the truth about the Kennedy assassination.... Bribery will get you everywhere...

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Twitter - Griffin-style

I have a love/hate relationship with twitter... on one hand it's great way for great, interesting and funny people  to share 140 characters and letters with other people in the hope of attracting other peoples attention to legally stalk them... in fact of all stalking techniques twitter is the greatest... so if you fancy stalking me - @RoyWoodhouse

On the other hand is a way for less great people to also share their views in 140 characters... step forward Nick Griffin. (for anyone who doesn't know he is the leader of the British National Party - which is a right wing party in Britain that promotes anti-immigration and has 'in the past' supported white nationalism and tend to be anti-Islam) In other words the BNP seemingly stands for everything that Citizen Wombat opposes.

It's not to be said the party is in itself racist... as has often been denied by Griffin (I usually put a Mr in front but I thought I'd miss it out this time), it's just ironically it seems to attract white skinheads who have a tendency to fear anything other than what they know and have put the word Islamaphobia in the English dictionary - oh and I hate this fucking diagram with the brains showing White, Black and Asian brains all the same size and a tiny racist brain... The reason I hate this is cause racists aren't going to get the metaphor - and it's not the truth - they just don't use their brains as well as the rest of us... so I think the advert should read more like "Racists are retarded and/or cunts" (I was going to put an asterix in cunt, but then I didn't want anyone to take that wrong)

Back to Griffin. The other day he decided to turn up in Northern Ireland during the Unionist Parade (called the Orange Men) who are pro-Great Britain. Now what a truly amazing man to turn up and add his weight to this rather volatile situation - which in this case is a little bit like throwing a very fat tank of fuel onto a bonfire next to a petrol station in the middle of the Kuwait oil fields... so thanks for going to that! He did say "Obviously there was no connection between the British National Party and the organisers of the parade, I was there as a member of the public." which to me sounds like no-one fucking wanted him there...

On another level he said "I had one long ten-minute discussion with an Orangeman who didn't agree with me. We had a good discussion and we shook hands at the end of it," which on another level says that while the other guy didn't agree with him the Northern Irishman was a polite man.

"Everybody else that I met either just said I had a right to be there or wanted photographs taken and autographs" was by far the highlight of my read of what he said ...  Look at the picture above - I don't think I'd recognise him in a crowd... let alone walk over to him and ask him for his autograph... we're not talking Brad Pitt or George Clooney here.. I'd struggle to pick the politician out, who is blind in one eye like a proper bond villain, in a line up of five men... which again shows me that either the Northern Irish have a fantastic knowledge of British politicians faces or this comment is full of shit.

Anyway I have gone off topic... cause the reason for this blog is that after receiving comments on twitter from a couple of Republicans (Pro-unified Ireland) about his lack of welcome in the Emerald Isle he decided to use the word Fenian to describe them. Fenian for anyone who doesn't know is a incredibly offensive term for a Catholic and should never be used, and if you do know it I hope you've never used it in an aggressive or abusive manner... if you have click the little x in the top right hand corner of this screen, never come back here and then promptly go fuck yourself.

Since calls of inspiring racial hatred have fallen on deaf ears I feel the need to say that to use a derogatory term to describe someone of a different faith or appearance to yourself is indeed racism and when you do it on a social media platform like twitter is it not inspiring others to feel the same?

Anyway he decides that upon a bit of pressure that he will not be taking his comments down, which is nice to know he sticks to his bile, and that he used the term Fenian just for these two people and not to describe Catholics in general.... so below I have the quick...

Nick Griffin Guide to Casual Racism

1) Find someone you don't like
2) Find a way to describe them in a derogatory way
3) Say you don't describe everyone in the same way and just use it for said target

cause for Griffin it isn't racism if you only use it selectively...

For anyone that thinks the same as this bile... please again look to the little x at the top right....

New Zidane Statue Proves Context is Everything

Context: The 2006 World Cup Final saw Italy and France line up against each other to claim the ultimate 

international footballing prize. It was a close fought match which saw both teams score in the first 20 mins (courtesy of goals from Italy's Marco Materazzi and France's Zinedine Zidane...which is ironic considering what happened next). Then out of the blue Materazzi said something to Zidane and the Frenchman end up turning round and headbutting him... but this wasn't a normal headbutt - no this was a special kind of headbutt that was directed at his chest. Zidane later justified his actions saying that Materazzi had made nasty comments about his sister - oh dear... it is clear to see that Zidane is not a man to enter into banter with over jokes about his mother... He also wanted to say that he was sorry for his actions blah blah blah... but that he did not regret his actions blah blah blah (if I was you I would Zidane)

I was honestly hoping that Zidane would say that he was very sorry that he headbutted him in the chest and that if he had the chance again he would clench his fist and smack him in the face or at least headbutt him in the face like a 'normal' human being. Instead we are left with possibly one of the strangest looking on pitch offences in my mind ...

Roll on six years and just as we were beginning to forget one of the most stupid moments in a world cup final when boom... someone makes a statue of it... yes why not? I mean a man headbutts another man in a match needs to be molded into a bronze statue for the world to see because without it life would just be meaningless... As if the 715.1 million people globally who watched the match live wasn't enough, now the rest can catch a glimpse as well... all you have to do is visit Paris... and here it is...

Ok so we've had the context, but lets de-contextualise it... seriously what the fuck is going on there?... What is happening on Materazzi's face? Is he in pain or is he enjoying this? And Zidane... is he sniffing him, or staring at his crotch? Zidane doesn't look like he's attacking more just looking ready to give Materazzi that face all over again. I am not saying that either man is in fact gay... I'm just saying that whoever made these statues might have wanted to consider a bit of contextualisation here... If we look here and at the actaul photo Materazzi's arm is now above Zidane's which seem to change the feeling of it... that clenched fist looks less like a punch and more like a... Ok so I could go on, but I have had my fun and feel it's time to move on.

The point I also wanted to make is why make a statue of this? This was a moment of violence in a match that  detracted from what should be a peaceful event that brings people together... why immortalise a heabutt.. and a badly directed one at that, when we should maybe immortalise an image of someone lifting the cup... It seems very strange that this of all things was chosen as a great idea for a Bronze statue in Paris...

So, on a day today when John Terry was found guilty by the FA of racial abuse towards Anton Ferdinand, will an artist be commissioned to immortalise this dark moment of sports and society? I fucking hope not... or perhaps it could be an image of Joey Barton stubbing a cigar out in a team mates eye? or Roy Keane breaking Alf-Inge Haaland's legs in a career ending two footed challenge? Of course we won't (I do still have a tiny of fear that human beings can be this ridiculous) so why on God's green earth do we see this?

Please, feel free to explain this to me cause - I am obviously rather heathen and just don't get 'art'.

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