Hertha All Over

Greetings, gentle readers.
Now that I've got a full (and understandably confusing) schedule for my spinal correction surgery, things have gotten a lot more busy.  This is inconvenient, as I dial down one anti-convulsant medication and simultaneously dial in a new medication.  Mix that with a healthy dose of opiates, and you've got a bitches brew that would make Miles Davis blanch.
I would prefer to avoid spending any more time than is necessary on the jackanapes acting as the head of government of the United States.  Poe's Law dictates that anything that I write satirically could rationally be interpreted as factual because the subject matter is already incredible.  That being said, it seems that Reince Priebus has been made to do the fandango.  Surely the thunderbolts and lightning are not only very frightning, but imminent for many of the White House staff.
Now that the iPod nano has been discontinued by Apple, not only are a number of third-world children forced to look for a different sweat-shop in which to work, but my shower companion will cease to have any further relatives or model-descendants.  It is the terminus of a species.  That being said, here is what it played for me during my last shower:

Music Playlist

• Cordelia, by the Tragically Hip.
• Quiz Kid, by Jethro Tull.
• Evangeline, by Matthew Sweet.
• The Saint, by Orbital.
• 40 ft., by Franz Ferdinand.
• Eenie Meany, by Jim Noir.

The easiest conclusion to draw from this song selection is that there are some very positive things waiting to happen.  As I mentioned in a previous entry, though, Burroughs requires a loss of rational analysis, and an appreciation for the subconscious need for the human mind to connect dots and find patterns.
I promise to return the next time that I screw my courage to the mast and wash myself.  Goodnight England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Dates and Times

Greetings, gentle readers.
If you are wondering at the delay between my previous entry and the current one, I am currently switching between one anti-convulsant medication prescription and another.  As I start transitioning by taking one fewer pregabalin capsule every three days, I need to wind up my gabapentin dosage by more more capsule every five days.  The net result is that I've been a very dozy boy as the two medications combine in my system to turn my skeletomuscular system into mush.  The other practical upshot is that I haven't had a shower since my last post, and thus was unable to use my iPod's random shuffling playlist to motivate myself to create this post.  It was actually a bit gross, to be honest.  If anyone has a strigil, I would beg use of it to help sluice off some of the dead skin.  But on the plus side of the shower, there was the music.

Music

Here are the serenading songs that accompanied my journey from being covered in sweaty, sticky filth to being a healthy picture of happy hygiene.

• To Love Somebody, written by Barry and Robin Gibb; performed by Lightning Seeds.
• Do You Wanna, by Franz Ferdinand.
• Kwela Man, by Johnny Clegg and Juluka.
• Blister in the Sun, by the Violent Femmes.
• Marooned, by Lightning Seeds.
• Born Too Slow, by Crystal Method.
• Bottom of the Sea, by George Thorogood.

For those of you counting, yes, this is a very long list.  It was a long shower.  I needed it.

Cherchez La Femme

Many people have asked me questions about Donald Trump.  Is he an idiot?  Is he a maniac pretending to be an idiot?  Is he some sort of sociopathic monster with a hidden agenda disguising himself as an idiot?  Or is he just an onanistic fool who can't help being an idiot?
As a quick aside, I'm reminded of AJP Taylor's answer to the question of, what was the immediate cause of the First World War?  He wrote the following about Archduke Franz Ferdinand:

"Franz Ferdinand was a brutal and obstinate man, impatient with opposition, unsuited to a democratic age.  He had one redeeming feature: he loved his wife.  It irked him that she could never share his splendours, could never even sit by his side on any public occasion.  There was one loophole.  The Archduke was a field marshal and Inspector General of the Austro-Hungarian army.  His wife could enjoy the recognition of his rank when he was acting in a military capacity.  Hence he decided, in 1914, to inspect the army in Bosnia."

Donald Trump has an inferiority complex which leads him to compulsively seek to embellish his accomplishments and stroke his own ego at the expense of others.  His broad and ostentatious campaign trail claims about winning, conquering, and making things great, wonderful, and stupendous are all about achieving.  Even his speech to the Boy Scouts of America was filled with tales of his own election win - against all odds, defying pollsters, defeating a crooked opponent, and rising in triumph.  None of that had anything to do with scouting, but he loves to hear people cheering his actions, even if they are three-quarters of a year old.
And that's the point.  He hasn't accomplished anything since becoming President.  His executive orders have been defeated by the Supreme Court, all attempts at Health Care reform have failed in both houses of Congress, and he can't unilaterally pass a bill into law.  It won't be long until people realize that he's just played golf and tweeted away his presidency.  No legacy.  No monuments to his presidential actions.
But the president can do something unilaterally, without the House of Representatives or the Senate.   As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Trump can issue military policy without needing any democratic validation.  So just as Franz Ferdinand provided Gavrilo Principe with an opportunity to plunge Europe into slaughter because he loved his wife, Donald Trump has alienated the entire LGBTQ community, as well as human rights activists and cowards, by denying transsexuals and transgendered persons the opportunity of military service.
On the one hand, why would you want to reduce the available pool of humanity that you can feed into a ghastly decades-long meat grinder of a conflict in the Middle East?  If people want to be blown up by children orphaned by American bombs, why not let them?  And if they want to shoot those kids instead and return Stateside with PTSD, haunting nightmares, and a government that sees them as an unnecessary drain on resources, why not let them enjoy the psychological horror and homelessness?
On the other hand... erm... actually, there is no logical upside to this action, either politically or militarily.  The only thing this decision does is deflect away from Trump's Russia scandal and total failure to successfully act on any of his campaign promises.  So before we have a chance to stand around and laugh at his impotence, he does the one thing that he can do undemocratically - pick on another minority group.
And I've run out of steam again.  The next time that I hose myself off, I'll try and explain everything that has happened with my medical situation and the surgery that is scheduled for 21 August 2017.
Until then, good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Friday Night Lights

Greetings, gentle readers.
This may be an important occasion to note that I am posting on consecutive days.  That I have been unconscious during the vast majority of the intervening time could be a factor.  I've got an enormous checklist of emails to be sent, forms to be filled, and cheques to be written, but I am putting aside those onerous responsibilities to blurt out my thoughts on this particular medium.  Nothing quite like the mute shouting nothing to the deaf, one might say.

Music

I doubt that anyone cares, but at some point in history, someone might put these posts on ping-pong balls and pull them out of a bingo machine tumbler to reveal the history of the English-Speaking Peoples, or Why Billy the Bin-Man Ate That Thing Last Thursday.  Any road, here's the shower music list:

• "Tired All The Time" by Big Sugar
• "So Let Me Go Far" by Dodgy
• "Live and Learn" by The Cardigans
• "Novocaine For The Soul" by Eels
• "Kilimanjaro" by Johnny Clegg and Juluka

Films

• "Going in Style" is a wonderful little film.  If you've always liked Alan Arkin as the crusty old bastard in films like "Grosse Pointe Blank" or "So I Married An Axe Murderer" and if you know that he's been around since the late fifties/early sixties, your heart will leap to know that he FINALLY gets to have it away with Ann Margret, who is almost the same age but many multitudes of pulchritude greater.  Sir Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are ostensibly the lead characters, but Arkin drives the logic of the film.  It's not an all-time classic, but it's fun to watch.  Kenan Thompson is a particular nugget of delight in this silver mine.
• "Predators"  Adrian Brody must have owed some money to someone nasty.  For those of you who have read the "Walking Dead" graphic novels, the device that allows Thomas to be the character that lulls you into complacency before nauseating you out of your socks is employed here to much less effect.  To put this into context, Thomas forced Jeff Han to stop reading the graphic novels altogether.  This film is such a bland ripoff of the original "Predator" film that he wouldn't even notice.  There weren't even any character idiosyncrasies memorable enough to recount. 

Rant

I don't hate Jimmy Fallon.  Hate isn't a language in which I have fluency.  He's a chipper little fella that wants to be in the same orbits as the stellar celebrities upon whom he fawns.  My problem is the enthusiasm he injects into his obsequious catering to the egos of his guests.  A typical expostulation might sound like:

Barry Manilow.  He's just the greatest.  He's my jam.  I listen to his music every day.  He's all I dream about at night, and everything that fills my days with hope... blah blah blah, etc., etc.

And yet, 24 hours later, he'll spew forth a bellyful of the same analingual tripe about someone who wouldn't pee in Barry Manilow's mouth if Barry was dying of thirst.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Killer Mike (who wasn't born when Barry Manilow had his last chart hit).  He's my jam.  He's my one, my only, my everything.  If I chose my time of dying, I would listen to Killer Mike, because he's the greatest musical act ever to have occurred in human history.

His sycophantic drivel never seems to slow, unapologetically flinging itself into a mocking self-parody.  Monty Python might imagine himself blurting out something like:

This guy who hits kittens with mallets to make squeaking noises, he's my jam.  He pounds those mallets, man.  Roots!  From Philadelphia!  Can you play "Good King Wensceslas" on a tray of squealing kittens?  I didn't think so!  This man has revolutionized music as we know it.  He's just great.  I've named my firstborn child after him.  I've volunteered my tongue as a boot polish instrument because of my soul-bound worship of his greatness.

In short, I tend to tune the wee chap out after his monologue, because it embarrasses me to see a grown man humiliate himself in such a ritualistic fashion.
In conclusion, it's not all bad, but there are some really crap bits in life.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Good News!

Greetings, gentle readers.
Well, it looks as though my insurance company has decided to approve my long-term disability.  That's good.  In addition, my neurosurgeon has agreed to perform surgery on my herniated C7 spinal disc.  That's also good.
I'm going to proactively procrastinate and say that I commit myself to greater detail, but now is not an opportune time.  Quick list of tunes, and I'm off.

Thursday Shower Playlist

• Punch and Judy by the Lightning Seeds
• She's All That by Big Sugar
• Love Fool by The Cardigans
• Enola Gay by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

And that's it.  Good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Punching My Card

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'll have to subscribe to the adage that brevity is the soul of wit tonight, since I'm going to need all the sleep I can get ahead of an appointment with a neurosurgeon tomorrow morning.

Womenfolk

So Canada's next Governor General and BBC Wales' next actor cast to fill the role of the next incarnation of Doctor Who will both be female.  Congratulations to space-faring astronaut Julie Payette, and charming, intelligent actress Josie Whittaker.

Shower Music

Today's playlist went as follows:

• Darts of Pleasure, by Franz Ferdinand
• Dinosaur Act, by Matthew Sweet
• Some Kind of Wonderful (live), by Grand Funk Railroad
• The Sea, by Melanie Chisholm

Draw whatever conclusions you may.  I need to swallow some of my new anticonvulsant medication in advance of my appointment in the morning.
Until next time, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

My MP3 Playlists Are Random, My Drug Tests Are Not

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'm going to try for a big one today, so here's hoping for some endurance.

Would Everyone Please Be Quiet

The old joke goes something like this:  a man asks a woman if she'll have sex with him for a million dollars.  She says yes.  He repeats the offer, but for fifty dollars.  Her response: "No!  Do you think I'm a whore?"  The man replies that she has already said so, he is now haggling.
If you think human rights mean anything, then shut the hell up on social media about Omar Khadr.  Any complaint whatsoever about any facet of the case means that you care nothing for human dignity or rights, much like any admission of cash-for-sex means that you are a whore.

Burning In My Heart

I live at an intersection where passing trains regularly cause motorists to be delayed for 5-15 minutes and back up traffic for blocks.  Temperatures over the next few days are expected to soar into the thirties in terms of degrees centigrade, or near triple digits Fahrenheit.  That means a lot of cranky, sweaty, thirsty people are going to be idling their vehicles all day in front of my house.  A lot has been made of the human ability to turn human misery into financial gain.  Since I'm sidelined, I'm unable to take advantage of this sort of suffering, but I can offer any potential entrepreneurs a prime location for an ice cream or lemonade stand.  For a reasonable percentage of the profits, of course.

To Be An Invalid

Speaking of being sidelined, as I eagerly await the Canada-Honduras Gold Cup showdown tonight, I am also cognizant of my appointment this afternoon at the nearby medical diagnostic laboratory.  Once there, I am expected to provide a urine sample.  Of what medical or pharmacological condition am I suspected?  The answer is none.  In fact, the sample to be analyzed is for the purpose of proving that I am on drugs.  I have been on prescription opioid analgesics for some time now, and  the College of Physicians and Surgeons in this province have a policy that I need to be tested in order to show that I have in fact been ingesting the medication, and not selling it off to nearby addicts.  In short, I need to have demonstrable evidence that I've been baked out of my tree consistently, and not slipping meds to the druggies.  Should be the easiest test I've ever taken.  It still sounds ironic, considering the discrepancy between the expectation of the purpose of a drug test, and the fulfillment of that expectation.

Musical Interlude

As I've already taken a couple of breaks, I'll try and wind this up succinctly.  Here are the tracks that accompanied my last shower session:

• Counterfeit Blues, by Corb Lund
• Savoy Truffle, by The Beatles
• Zingane Zami, by Johnny Clegg and Juluka
• Spunky, by Eels
• Africa, by Toto
• Bullet with Butterfly Wings, performed by Frida Snell; written by Smashing Pumpkins (Billy Corgan)

If one is unable to find any pattern or predictor within this list, one should by now be able to draw some conclusions about me from the aggregated tracks from all of my posts.
That's it for me.  I'll likely be unable to do much until tomorrow, so I'll try and get some more notes down.
Goodnight England and the colonies,
—mARKUS

Watchmen Reference

Greetings, gentle readers.
I think that it was Alan Moore's words that inspired me to start keeping track of the songs randomly selected by my iPad during my showers. His character Adrian Veidt is seen to say the following:

"... seemingly anticipated by Burroughs' cut-up technique. He suggested re-arranging words and images to evade rational analysis, allowing subliminal hints of the hints of the future to leak through...This jigsaw-fragment model of tomorrow aligns itself piece by piece, specific areas necessarily obscured by indeterminacy. However, broad assumptions regarding this postulated future may be drawn. We can imagine its ambience. We can hypothesize its psychology."

Given that hypothesis, here are the stochastic individual points of reference that my MP3 player has given us today.

• Beat on the Brat, performed by U2; written by the Ramones. 
• Boom Like That, by Mark Knopfler. 
• You've Gotta Look Up, by Dodgy. 
• Bullets for Bafazan, by Johnny Clegg and Juluka. 
• Separate Ways, by Journey. 
• Carry Me Carrie, by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. 

Any speculations on the picture that can be formed from this abstract set of words and phrases are gratefully accepted. If one were to believe that there is a subliminal truth to be found in these dots, surely the repetition of the letter B would have to be a part of that message. I will take this opportunity to grab some rest and try and generate some text worth reading in the near future.
Until then, goodnight England, and the colonies.
—mARKUS

More of a Weekly than a Daily

Greetings, gentle reader.
As so many late night chat-show hosts are fond of saying, I'd like to "get right into it."  Trevor Noah seemed to have spearheaded the charge of overusing this phrase, but he was enthusiastically reinforced by Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon, and Conan O'Brian.  Pretty sure that Jimmy Kimmel and James Corden also bandy the phrase about with reckless abandon, but I don't watch their programs enough to draw any conclusions.
That being said, I would like to try and create entries with more regularity, but just haven't seemed to be able to do so.  In keeping with my "easy topics" lead-offs, here is what blurted out of my iPod during my last shower:

• Don't Try to Lay No Boogie-Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll, by Long John Baldry
• Cop a Plea, by Big Sugar
• Mad World, performed by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews (written by Roland Orzabal)
• Hey Bulldog, by The Beatles

What conclusions can we draw from the music?  Well, there's certainly a fair share of Canadian content, what with Big Sugar being Canadian and Gordie Johnson being a good Medicine Hat boy, and Long John Baldry adopting Canada as his home country after finding little but rejection and despair in the UK.  Nelvana Animation Studios still has much for which to thank dear Long John as the voice of all their sneering evil villains.
In other bits, "Mad World" was at once Roland Orzabal's greatest creation and greatest disappointment, since he was over-ruled by his producers and executives at every creative stage when he originally recorded the song as the lead singer of "Tears for Fears" but heard his true intentions manifested when he heard the arrangement with simply a piano, cello, and single track vocal that Gary Jules created.
Apple recording engineer Geoff Emerick has gone on record saying "Paul's bass line was probably the most inventive of any he'd done since Pepper..." but "Hey Bulldog"  somehow ended up on some sort of list of B-sides and castaways within the vast Beatles catalogue.  For most of my life, I always thought that the Beatles hated the whole Yellow Submarine project because it was carried out rather independently of them, and they had no creative influence.  It wasn't until the release of the "Anthology" videos that I realized that they originally hated the film because they couldn't voice their own characters.  That's reasonable.  Who could do a better impersonation of a person than themselves?  Anyone answering "Rich Little" gets a roundhouse slap to the ear for being a jackanapes.
In cinematic news, anyone interested in watching the quasi-biopic-western "Hickok" should probably save him or herself the time and effort.  History buffs will be irked by the squirmy little liberties taken with documented fact, including some mysterious avoidance of some of the saucier details. Those preoccupied with the written word will find the dialogue predictable and pedantic, and cinephiles will see that this is a bland aping of  1993's "Tombstone" including an obvious nod, when the Hemsworth brother tells a character on a departing train to look for Wyatt.  Bottom line:  watch Tombstone, and leave this one be.
I'm fading, so I'll just say that I'll try and reinforce these positions of new releases with evidence later:

• Revolt - 1.8 out of 5.  Thranduil tries to save humanity in a confused tale of alien invasion.
• Security - 4.1 out of 5.  Antonio Banderas is average in an above average mall-cop shoot-em-up, featuring Sir Ben Kingsley and (spoilers!) a fantastic background character named Vance.
• Churchill - 3.2 out of 5.  Brian Cox does Churchill as though he were Albert Finney doing King Lear in 1983's "The Dresser."  Some historical inaccuracies, but Miranda Richardson is awe-inspiring.

My faculties betray me, but I'll try and get more thoughts cemented into the electromagnetic ether as soon as it becomes practicable.
Until then, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Canada Day, Part 150

Greetings, gentle readers.
In order to combat my natural inclinations toward sloth and idleness, I set myself a number of topics upon which to expound in such a way as to always have a ready excuse to prattle away.  One such subject was the music that my iPod plays whilst I shower.  I've always suspected that there was something a bit strange about the tracks that appear.  On one occasion, I was driving northbound on Broadmoor Boulevard in Sherwood Park when the wee machine played a track from the Hillsborough Justice concert recorded live at Anfield in 1997.  Ian Broudie of the Lightning Seeds was just introducing Holly Johnson to the stage, and as the music begins to swell behind him, he announces "This is for everyone who's ever walked down Hope Street."  As I heard him say that over the car speakers, I replied aloud, "I've walked down Hope Street.  From cathedral to cathedral.  And I HOPE to get back there again."  I snickered at my own half-witted comment.  At that precise moment, I crested a hill and the billboard sign in front of the Salisbury United Church read,  "There's always hope."  I've been suspicious of the little Apple product ever since, and several similar incidents over time seem to have reinforced my wariness.
Moving on, here is what resonated in my bathroom earlier today:

• A Good Place - The Lightning Seeds
• Graffiti on the Train - Stereophonics
• Boys of Summer - Bree Sharp (Don Henley cover)
• Some Days Are Better Than Others - U2
• Can't Get It Out of My Head - Electric Light Orchestra
• Step On Me - The Cardigans

If these track titles form any sort of narrative, I'd love to hear it.  Surely the human imagination can connect the imaginary dots of these musical notes to form some sort of meaningful constellation.
Tonight, I'm obliged to visit a friend's house to observe some national celebration-type activities.  Before I set off, however, I thought I'd indulge one other of my prescribed avenues of discourse:  a quick voyage through my consciousness and a brief insight into the sorts of associations my conscious and subconscious minds make on a regular basis.  So if you've got your tickets and boarding passes, let's go for a quick trip.

• A friend posted an NRA propaganda video on Facebook.  Thoroughly vile thing, and I'm sure that it's gone viral across the interwebs by now, but that led to —
• Charlton Heston, the NRA spokesbeing renowned for his scenery-chewing overacting skills, who starred in the often overlooked film —
• Gray Lady Down, which was a late seventies disaster movie that basically ripped off "Airplane" but placed the action in a submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic.  The film also featured the ridiculously under-rated actor —
• Stephen McHattie, a fantastic Canadian actor who, for me, was the best part of the film adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel "The Watchmen."  If you, gentle reader, have not seen the bonus DVD feature "Under The Hood," you are leading an incomplete and inauthentic existence.  "Watchmen" was directed by Zack Snyder, who also directed Stephen McHattie in —
• "300" another graphic novel adaptation with a very stylish ambience, but a very subversive subtext.  A stark and grim imitation of "300" just happened to be on my television two days ago, and it was awful.  Not just by comparison, but as an object example of creative manifestation.  The piece of visual garbage that functions as a cinematic abortion of the stuff with which Zack Snyder wipes his fundament after venting a particularly abrasive three-coil cornback rattler is —
• "The Bad Batch."  This is where my narrative ends because this film was so amateurishly mediocre that I cannot stomach giving it more attention that a random puddle of dog vomit. If you ferociously masturbate to "300," but need the extra stimulus of "Sucker Punch" to reach a volcanic climax, this is your film.  

That's it from me for now.  Happy birthday Canada, and may populist despots worldwide tremble at the strength of our diversity and spirit of community.
Good night England, and the colonies.
—mARKUS