Death in the 21st Century

It's 00.02. I'm trying to force out an episode synopsis to feel like I've accomplished something on a busy day of little writing and being ill. It's not coming out. I'm even concentrating. By concentrating, I mean that Twitter isn't open in the background.

It's 00.02 and the following iMessage appears on my screen from Justin:

I'm sure you've seen

But Robin Williams

:(

I reply:

Please

I really hope that this isn't what I think it is

I haven't seen

At this point, I know exactly what it is. My eyes begin to well up, not quite enough to form visible tears but enough to feel a weight amassing beneath my eyelids. And it dawns on me that this is the first in a terribly long time that I have not found out about a death via social media.

The Hypothetical Guardiola Conundrum

Last night it was confirmed that Bayern Munich would be playing in the Champions League finals, at the expense of Barcelona, who suffered the greatest aggregate defeat of the club's history. Aww. One can't help but acknowledge the irony of the team that Pep Guardiola will be managing next decapitating the team he left behind, seemingly in ruins.

For the last few weeks I've been reading Pep Guardiola's biography and, after a considerable amount of time of believing that the squad's ability trumped that of Pep's managerial ability, I think I have been converted. This embarrassing defeat for Barcelona with virtually the same squad that Pep left Barcelona with goes some way to proving that.

Positive Start

On the final day of 2012, I posed a question on facebook and twitter: 

What was your proudest achievement/biggest moment of 2012?

In hindsight, I think it would have been better wording had I gone for 'proudest moment' and 'biggest achievement' instead. Moving on, the responses were beautiful and wonderfully positive and I'm always happy to hear of good things happening in people's lives. 

At the end of the year, there tends to be an air of cynicism as people begin to look forward to the year to come. This cynicism tends to be aimed towards, but not limited to, two types of people:

1) 'this is my year' people

2) 'new year, new start' people