Alert! ... Pirate Internet ... Alert! Accept Transmission!

We are here, we stand up straight and we look with brightened eyes to the horizon that holds all of tomorrow's possibilities. An horizon that has a graceful champion in its place, a leader who stands by saying that we can do, and we should expect, better and a field of magicians at the ready.

Match Pricks has survived that stranglehold and struggle that was May of 2009. We have survived the sleepless nights and the haunting bellows that come with each slowly passing minute. We have survived to see the age-old axiom - maktub, or 'it is written' - destroyed, shattered in all of its hubris. We are bloodied, we are bruised and we are a little dizzy but all the same we will be heard ... nothing is written. Nothing is a fait accompli. 

There is too much joy to suckle on, to taste and to feel - like the wind slapping at our faces. Too much fun to be had - like finding the bottom of a series of vodka tonics and that pressing hope of what's to come. Too many bright colors to see, graceful poets to hear and unwritten endings to witness. And we want all off it ... every last drop. So open up that spigot and let freedom roar.

May saw a gag-order of monumental and global proportions canvass the world of football. If it wasn't United, it wasn't happening. Jintao and his henchmen the world over grabbed a hold of humanity, of basic rational, and squeezed the life, passion and creativity out of each soul who dared to dream of something great happening. People who stayed. People who didn't quit. People who thought what if? to themselves in furtive corners with the burden of a simple hope that they wouldn't be found out by those freedom crushers like Kim Jong Il, Patrice Evra, Hu Jintao, Puty Put, Roman Abramovich and Sir Alex Ferguson.

From sea to stormy sea, the Internet is being taken from free people everywhere. It's being taken from supporters of poetic football, from dreamers of a higher ideal and from lovers of freedom. With the Internet at their side, the Poles might have been, today, celebrating 45 years since the fall of communism in their country rather than 20. With the Internet at their side, those school boys and girls in Beijing 20 years ago might now be developing applications that make Twitter look like something that is all together too 1992.

Well today, we have broken through the dusty rubble, friends, and today the Internet is able to bring us all such gems as this ... 

A couple of short weeks ago, a few men stood up for all of us dreamers out there and gave us such a wonderfully dream-making display that we can hop right into the Silly Season with as much gusto as it appears our young hero, Lionel Messi jumped clear into about five pitchers of an almost purple sangira. Mmmm, yeah, it must've been purple, dogg. Purple Rain. It explains a lot when you think of it that way, doesn't it?