Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, and it was Rabbie's 250th birthday.
Today, there may be trouble ahead, and it is Chinese New Year - 新年快樂恭喜發財.
So, how to celebrate?
With some of Burns' demotic verse?
With a celebration of Harmony and memories of the highly successful Olympic Games, perhaps?
Or shall we just take the piss out of Manchester City instead?
No contest.
Barry Winston is a bearded 28 year old Manchester City/ Abu Dhabi United fan - the beard is only mentioned for comic effect...
So delighted was young Mr Winston that his team had purchased Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite (Kaká) that he had a 12.5 centimetre high Kaká tattooed across his chest, with the slogan "City till he dies" emblazoned underneath by needle.
Not content with this degree of misplaced trust in Garry Cook, the "mesmerically ghastly executive chairman" as Marina Hyde perfectly termed the Slime, Barry then decided to have a life size Kaká head tattooed on his back.
Here, at least, good fortune worked in his favour because the Brazilian head is simply amorphous-latino.
It could be anybody.
So Mr Winston is partially saved by a dodgy tattooist, a Mancunian boom industry, it would seem.
Garry Cook is exactly the sort of man who should not be allowed into the game of football.
Garry Cook is exactly the sort of man that ScudamoreWorld requires to market the brands.
Garry Cook is a triumph of moral decrepitude.
Garry Cook used to work for Nike where he blinkered his view away from the issues of child labour and the global sweatshops, and successfully promoted the brand of Michael Jordan instead.
Garry Cook was the perfect choice to work alongside His ####################### ################### Excellency. That was when his legal status allowed Doctor Thaksin Shinawatra to wander freely around this country, with his ownership of a leading club not suffering any concerns due to the Premier League's alleged fit-and-proper-persons test (FPPT).
Marina Hyde on Garry Cook: "Asked how he felt about working for the former Thai PM, condemned by Human Rights Watch as a "human-rights abuser of the worst kind", Garry replied: "Is he a nice guy? Yes. Is he a great guy to play golf with? Yes. Does he have plenty of money to run a football club? Yes. I really care only about those three things. Whether he is guilty of something over in Thailand, I can't worry … I worked for Nike who were accused of child-labour issues and I managed to have a career there for 15 years. I believed we were innocent of most of the issues. Morally, I felt comfortable in that environment."
He should be fine in East Manchester then...
Over the last week, there has been some stuff and nonsense uttered over the hyperillusory transfer of Kaká to Abu Dhabi United.
Somebody or Other: "[City are] being held to ransom in their search for the world's top players."
Arsène Wenger: "Kaká bid not in the real world."
Garry Cook graced us with "Milan bottled it", before insulting Kaká's father and agent, and then went on a management-speak MBA-based diatribe where he evoked images of "a journey" and spoke of "humanitarian potential factors".
Well it is East Manchester, I guess...
Garry Cook is failing in his job - as Marina Hyde correctly concluded: "... the City chairman would do well to admit that for all its vaingloriousness, and for all its farce, nothing about the entire Kaká saga has made the club look more amateurish than his charmless bleating about it afterwards."
And then there were the failed bids for Henry, Buffon, Santa Cruz and Villa (although Valencia's financial plight might secure the latter for a vastly over-priced £70 million).
And then there was paying £43 million for Bridge, Bellamy and de Jong (although the transfer fee for the latter would have ebbed from £19 million to just £2.3 million if Abu Dhabi United had waited for the summer - its not like they're going to win anything, after all).
And then there was the inability to create a big picture and a longer term strategy that might entice Kaká the footballer, as opposed to Kaká the brand to East Manchester.
Cook simply reasoned that the £500,000 per week wages and the chance to be as famous in capitalism as Mr Jordan would be temptation enough.
When the Kaká camp asked about future transfer and business strategy, Mr Cook did not have an answer because no such longer term strategy exists, Cook's City Energy Drinks nonsense aside...
And then there was letting down the one prized asset that Abu Dhabi already possess, Robinho.
So delighted was he with Mr Cook's negotiating talents that he walked out on the club.
And to help explain this business model and the integrity of the operation of which he is a part, Mr Cook stated helpfully: "... the expectation that is set by the public space of who we are and what we represent is not truly who we are or what we represent."
It's like the Enlightenment never happened.
Nike's gain is our loss.
"Finance is full of illusions and uncertainties" - J.K Galbraith.
Abu Dhabi United is not a sustainable business model in the longer term.
Here's why.
Last summer, when oil hovered around $150 per barrel, the sovereign wealth-funds (SWFs) of the oil-rich nations rushed in to support western capitalism that was reeling from both the credit crunch and the corrective strategies of Hank Paulson et al.
Oil is currently less than one-third of this price and the Depression has not yet begun in earnest.
We need to check out the impact of such price volatility on incentives.
Within a year, the flow of capital from SWFs has largely dried up due entirely to the oil price and the economic climate.
But there has been an additional impact.
Funding for clean-energy technology has also plummeted in the Recession/Depression, as capitalists make the choice that oil is still viable for now on a profit and loss basis, obviously ignoring the impacts on climate change.
The oil industry has a built-in strategic assured self-destruction built into its business model.
When the price is low, profits are low, and clean technology is held at bay to the detriment of the super-eco-systemic risk. The planet deteriorates...
When the price increases, profits increase, but clean technology becomes price competitive to the detriment of the oil industry and the countries dependent on Black Gold.
Either way, Manchester City are not sustainable in the longer term under the current ownership.
Garry Cook's vision thing fails on another level too.
The pursuit of Kaká was primarily for control of the man's global image rights.
Garry Cook wished to possess the Kaká brand, steal the public face of the man for proprietary profit.
He should look back to the 1920s and 1930s - image rights will seem just a trifle superfluous in the Depression. The narrative will no longer be able to be told.
Depressions give you Woody Guthrie not branded hyperentities promoting a dead consumerism.
There is also the issue that is being carefully ignored - His Excellency Thaksin Shinawatra.
The Smiling Assassin still owns 25% of Manchester City and remains as an honorary president of the club.
Being barred from Britain due to his corruption and fraud issues in his native Thailand, Shinawatra is currently jetting around Asia and the Arab world trying to do deals. He is also trying to foster a revolution against ######################
############################################ but that is neither here nor there...
When Shinawatra was prime minister of Thailand, he was ######### responsible for what Amnesty International called the "systematic" murder of Muslims in the restive south of the country.
Why is this man still allowed to own ANY of Manchester City?
Why is he still an honorary president, alongside truly honourable characters like Tony Book?
And why are so many City journalists, David Conn springs to mind, undergoing selective journalistic revisionism regarding their euphoria and adulation of Shinawatra after the rigged Munich 50 year anniversary match?
And still their silence will not do.
Where is the call by City fans for Shinawatra to be stripped of all links, financial or otherwise, with the club?
Where is the incentive from ScudamoreWorld for this to come to pass?
Or do Shinawatra's continuing arms-length sponsorship arrangement with the PGMOB match officials via the AirAsia entity and his value in other aspects of the Premier League's expansion into Asia mean that he can order ######## so long as his cash is ofshorky and his tee-shots are straight and true.
Aside from issues relating to the Depression, the football world has other issues that will limit the future growth of the industry.
When Victor Chandler International relaunched their spread betting operation last week, Chandler stated: "The reason why the Premier League and all the big [football] leagues are so popular in Asia is there is no question about football's integrity. Any reports of irregular betting patterns are just 'blips'".
Where to start?
Firstly, the Premiership is so popular in Asia EXACTLY because of how fixed the games are.
Secondly, ScudamoreWorld wishes to market itself to British customers as an operation based on integrity.
Thirdly, we would ask Mr Chandler whether the £12 million in bets placed with his company in Gibraltar #########################################################
################################################### was just a 'blip'?
When the full effect of the corruption underpinning football is in the shared consciousness of the football fan, the game will be lost.
When betting money takes over a sport, you get horseracing or greyhound racing.
The markets are dominant, the sport is hyperreal.
Football is not a sport.
It is a corrupted product - a product existing outside the bounds of its original purpose.
When the current wave of hyperowners retreat to their offshore financial centres, football will be left totally in the clutches of the gambling industry.
Perhaps then ScudamoreWorld might be good enough to campaign for a levy on the bookmaking organisations who leech their profits off our sports without providing anything in return.
Michel Foucault: "The last crime cannot but remain unpunished."
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