This Pilgrim's Progress

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'll lead off with a quick update about myself and my state of physical being.  Those of you with no interest in that sort of thing can just skip down to the next subheading - no harm caused.  I'll try and keep the self-indulgence to a minimum for those with the fortitude to tolerate my strangled bleatings.
Since being diagnosed with high blood pressure, diabetes, and whatever else could interfere with a normal recovery from spinal surgery, I gave myself a right proper bit of exercise yesterday to see what that would do.  Quick rundown:

• Up at 0800h to take pain, vitamin, and anti-spasmodic pills.
• Off to Whyte Avenue to watch the Liverpool match at 1030h.  Thanks for the lift, Jeffy.
• Ate bangers and mash for breakfast at half-time.  My blood-pressure med capsule disintegrated in the pill bottle, but the diabetes stuff made it.
• After a gruelling, heart-wrenching, nerve-jangling match that never seemed to end, left the pub around 1300h.  Match discussion found at next subheading for those that haven't already skipped ahead.
• Chatted with Paul and Craig about Liverpudlian matters until 1600h.  An awful lot to discuss.  Quick notes:  keep Craig away from George Gillette and Tom Hicks, research the band "Kappa", and ask for Paul the bar manager the next time I'm in the Cavern Club.
• Walked home.  Took an hour, but I made it through the veil of sweat and managed to grab a super donair from Campus Pizza en route.  Another round of pills — a little late, but I managed it.
• Finally stopped flop-sweating around 1730h.
• Took a glucometer reading at 1800h and got the lowest reading I've ever scored on the vampiric little device since I got it.
• Tutored a friend's daughter in high school chemistry from 1900h to 2200h.  Luckily, it wasn't the mechanically and mathematically grinding stuff, like redox or stoichiometry, but it took a certain mindset to approach stuff like Van der Waals forces.  My apologies to Darrol Colgur for stealing his business.

After that, I started getting the sleepies.  I needed to stay awake until midnight for the next drug dose, but I was literally blacking out.  I've been tired, exhausted, weary, etc. but this was something else.  I bit my tongue because I fell asleep mid-bite while trying to eat a piece of chicken.  Every blink meant that I could topple over and crash to the floor because I was dropping out of consciousness uncontrollably.  I couldn't even get one of those jaw-cracking yawns going, because I would blank out just as I started to inhale.
Anyway, so that was my day of exercise, and maybe I'll have another go at one in a few days.  My siblings have been scampering all over various mountains in some sort of Spartan Race thing, but I'll take my accomplishments where I can get them.
Well then.  That's that.  Subheading?

The Former Filbert Street Foxes

Playing Leicester twice in one week is never a blessing, and certainly not one for a team whose confidence is shattered, and whose team cohesion has been battered an bruised for weeks on end.  Transfer problems, contract negotiations, thoroughly vicious eviscerations and excoriations by the press, and exotic illnesses and injuries left a team ragged and shaken to face the champions of the league not two seasons past.  Twice.
Outfoxed in midweek (as it were), Liverpool desperately needed a win on Saturday.  The team had not won a game in the last four tries, and the patterns were looking horribly predictable - loads of positive, offensive pressure that fails to result in a goal, followed by whatever team then counterattacking the tired LFC side and scoring some generally soft goals.  The more soft goals, the more people pilloried the defence.  The more the defence became self-conscious and nervous, the more brittle their formation and coordination became.  And thus the cycle of self-doubt caused the implosion of the team.  Nervous keepers and defenders make for twitchy midfielders.  Elementary mistakes become the hallmark of the self-fulfilling prophecy dictated by the media.
The net result is that, for neutrals, this was a thrilling, heart-stopping adrenaline rush of a game.  Five goals, fabulous free-kicks, a penalty-kick save, crunching midfield tackles... just an action-packed spectacle.  For interested, biased, and committed observers, this was an increasingly powerful series of anxiety waves pummelling increasingly timid shores.
When the fourth official announced at the end of the game that there would be five minutes of time added on, a groan rose from the crowd.  Liverpool was winning 3-2, but confidence that they would win the game was at an absolute low.  Every free kick was met by drawn faces peering in terror through splayed fingers.
"Why does every game have to feel like a fooking cup final?" cried Danny to people shaking and clammy with sweat.
That being said, the game ended favourably for all those involved in the pub.  It was just a terribly hard row to hoe.  Every hope was precariously balanced like the highest peak of a house of cards, and every achievement haunted by the spectre of a corresponding collapse.
Liverpool wins, stops a ghastly winless streak, and head into the forthcoming midweek European adventure in Russia away to Spartak Moskva with a little more grit in their determination and a little more spark in their attitude.  It just felt as though it required a labour of Heracles to accomplish an ordinarily commonplace objective. That was frustrating.

The Song List

I'm going to start wrapping this up, because as refreshed as I am by last night's rest, I feel the weariness calling me to nap-land now.  Here is the itemized list of musical accompaniment entries during my last ablutions.

• I Feel Fine, by The Beatles
• Gijim Beke, by Juluka
• Joy, by The Lightning Seeds
• Let Love Rule, by Lenny Kravitz
• Unknown Soldier, by The Doors
• Wild World, by Cat Stevens
• Suspicious Minds, as performed by Dwight Yoakam
• Europa, by Prozzäk
• To Love Somebody, by The Bee Gees

Some quick notes:
- Yoakam's version of "Suspicious Minds" is, in my humble opinion, better than the Fine Young Cannibals cover version from the 1980s.  The drums and the Chet Atkins rhythm guitar riffs are well worth the price of admission.
- In a strange reversal, "To Love Somebody" is the best Bee Gees song when it's not performed by the Bee Gees.  I much prefer the version performed by The Lightning Seeds, while a significant lot of others prefer Janis Joplin's version.  I think it's well worth a comparative listening session over afternoon tea.

Take a Knee

I'm flabbergasted that people are still working themselves into a proper huff over sports figures kneeling/sitting/reclining/reposing in a lotus position during the playing of their national anthem.  Of course I speak of Americans - the people who can rarely recite the lyrics of their own national anthem, let alone sing them.  Enter Rosanne Barr.  Have a go at "The Star Spangled Banner," babe.  Listen HERE.  Maybe you don't like her.  How about nine time Olympic American gold medallist Carl Lewis?  He has a go HERE.  Or any supposéd celebrity who reckons that this is easier than "O Canada"?  Suffer through the catalogue if you like HERE.
I'm sorry.  What does an old British upper class drinking song set to Francis Scott Key's lyrics have to do with athletics?  Whatever.  Americans who think it's part of a sacred pagan ceremony to honour their flag or bald eagle or roadkill cuisine may want to read the story of the music.  It's right HERE.
Oh wait.  It has something to do with the military.  Maybe it has to do with former Arizona Cardinal player Pat Tillman who was riddled with bullets and killed by friendly fire after publicly criticizing the war in Iraq.  The U.S. military shot him to shut him up, then tried to cover up the whole matter, and now the military are telling Americans how to be patriotic?
This boils down very easily. 
Free speech is an absolute keypoint of western "free" democracy.  Kill that, and any blitherings about "freedom" wilt like snowballs in the sun.  You must be able to express yourself or you are not free - you are a slave.
The United States has a problem.  You can read about it here:  https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/
Disbelieve it, and you are in denial.  Deny it, and you're a fool.  Bringing media attention to this problem via the most popular sports vector in the land is a relatively prudent and non-violent means of increasing consciousness.
So what's the problem?  Does the national anthem equal the flag?  Do they both equal the military?  Is that what America stands for - drone bombing kids in Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria?  Would the NFL be happier drawing pentangles with the blood of the innocent at the 50-yard line?
Even if you don't agree with the U.S. military going into countries where they aren't welcome, extracting resources that aren't theirs, and billing the American taxpayer for the lot, then you must agree that American military veterans are treated like crap.  Hmm.  Except when they come home disabled, shell-shocked, and unemployed, you can buy their foreclosed houses cheap!  Yay!  http://www.hudforeclosed.com/government-foreclosures-info/va-foreclosures
In short, who cares that someone is protesting institutional racism and violence?  Unless it is someone who enjoys living under such a regime and prefers to have his or her circus entertainment regulated ferociously, I can think of no reason.
You want to find someone who thinks the system is unjust and will say something about it? 
I am Kaepernick.
Until later, goodnight England and the colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Charity Begins... Somewhere, I Guess

Greetings, gentle readers.
One of the things that always strikes me when I visit England is the amount of charity appeals.  From handouts on the airplane across the Atlantic that ask for donations along with your immigration details to eager students with clipboards standing outside tube stations, appeals for charitable causes are positively ubiquitous. Children, veterans, the handicapped, the disabled, the third world, endangered animals, exploited geographical features, and a cascade of other worthy causes jostle for the contents of one's wallet incessantly.
In the wake of hurricanes Katia, Harvey, Irma, and Jose (and an earthquake in Chiapas and Oaxaca), all manner of celebrity figures have been participating in charitable fund-raising to aid the victims of the disasters in the Gulf/Caribbean.  Hundreds of thousands of people are homeless, dozens dead, and infrastructure throughout the region is shredded.  In the United States, Florida and Texas are pleading for billions of dollars in federal disaster relief.
But wait... just a few months earlier, hadn't the Trump administration released its $4.1 trillion-dollar budget, complete with a 10% increase in military spending?  Didn't that budget call for a complete defunding and stripping-down of the EPA, FEMA, and other federal agencies?
All this brings me to my real point - values.  Let's try this syllogistically.

1. Caring for the disadvantaged is an absolute moral and social good.
2. The government should act as an agent for the body politic.
3. Therefore, the government has a responsibility to perform charitable work.

In other words, since someone decided that a publicly-funded fire department worked better than the alternatives, people have been discovering that some things are better off being administered by the government.  Why then do a host of television personalities need to petition millions of viewers to donate money to victims of natural disasters?  Shouldn't government be doing these things?  Shouldn't tax dollars be earmarked for helping those in need?  In fact, isn't that the greatest possible use of public funds?  Instead of endless rounds of telethons and appeals, why not use tax dollars to fix the problem?
It is usually around this point that some sneering evangelical Christian representative of the alt-right will snort that it is expressly against the teachings of Jesus Christ himself to take hard-earned money away from someone and just give it away to some slacking and undeserving poor person.  I'll leave the theological nitpickings of scriptural minutiae to those who enjoy such pursuits.  What I will assert is that a redistribution of wealth provides dynamism within an economy.  Paying teachers, nurses, and first responders (public employees) a decent wage is not a case of squandering money extorted from taxpayers, and subsidizing victims of disasters is not simply an exercise in profligacy.  Money redistributed by the government in this way will be spent on goods and services within the economy, providing cash flow and productivity.
In short, shouldn't we all quit bellyaching about how the government spends our tax dollars, provided that the government is there for us when mother nature wipes out our house and home?  This is not a compact to be entered lightly, and it provides obligations on both the public and the government that represents it.
Finally, a quick look at the playlist from my last shower.  I've run a bunch of scripts on the iPod Nano over the past few days, so I'm not sure how inspiring the stochastic song selections of the miniscule entertainment maestro will be going forward.  In any event, let's wrap this up so that I can grab a nap.

Shower Songlist

• Lost in Space, by Apollo 440
• Run Around, by Blues Traveller
• From the Bottom, by The Blues Brothers
• I Put a Spell on You, by Roxy Music
• You're the Storm, by The Cardigans
• Beatles Megamix - featuring:
• And I Love Her
• Nowhere Man
• Baby You Can Drive My Car
• Ticket to Ride
• Get Back
• Here Comes the Sun
• The Ballad of John and Yoko
• I Want to Hold Your Hand

And that should just about wrap it up for me.  I was a few hours late for one of my drug doses yesterday, and I'm just getting back into shape after some very bad feelings.  Translated - time for a nap.  Liverpool FC did very little to elevate my spirit with striker Bobby Firmino missing a penalty shot and erstwhile defender Dejan Lovren cocking up on a massive scale and gifting Sevilla a goal only five minutes into the game.  It's sad when a player screws up so completely that it is actually more embarrassing than an own goal.  I would rather he just shot the ball past our own keeper rather than perpetrating such criminal mediocrity.  Bah.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Busy Doing Nothing

Greetings gentle readers.
Well, it's been an action-packed week in the duplex domicile of the disabled, the humble habitation of the hobbled, and the residency of the reluctantly reclusive.  A week that began with a bank holiday Monday, saw record high temperatures midweek, and will end with a return of English Premiership Football after an international break has also seen some intense happenings within the house as well as without.
One of my oldest and steadfast friends, Kelly Lipke swung by with his 3-year-old daughter Anneke and spent a couple of days and nights gathering some strength to rendez-vous with his sons Toby and David and thereafter set out for Lloydminster to catch up with his sister Nadine.  That sentence was tiring to type, but trying to keep up with the energy level of a three-year-old is positively exhausting.  Those who have watched me babysit will know that I turn into a neurotic bag of quivering paranoia any time I'm near small children.  My imagination immediately populates my mind's eye with every possibility of injury, harm, perturbance, damage, distress, distension, or misfortune available.  Anything smaller than a tennis ball can be ingested, with horrible results.  Anything sharper than a toothbrush is obviously a decapitation hazard.  Anything flexible and longer than an arm's length?  Strangulation.  Fifteen minutes of me watching a child usually ends with me hyperventilating in a foetal position under a blanket in a corner of the room, trembling uncontrollably.
That being said, I want to get to something that my old chum Eoin Kenny mentioned in a recent Facebook post regarding the regulation of discourse, discussion, dispute, and debate within that forum.  Essentially, I've grown tired of the anxiety generated by people lashing out with ad hominem attacks, illogical argumentation, gaslighting, and overgeneralized association.   I've given up.  I don't even make statements any more.  I just cut and paste links to primary sources of information and (perhaps unadvisedly) assume that facts will take precedence over opinions.
I'll get to my brief and wonky analysis of Facebook argumentation right after my listing of musical tracks that played during my last shower.  Why?  I need another shower because it is becoming a hygienically categorical imperative, and I can't be trusted to keep two sets of musical tracks chronologically accurate.  So let me get this out of the way, and I can move on to the more entertaining stuff.

Random Track List

• I Want You to Want Me, by Cheap Trick
• Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa (Sad Song), performed by The Commitments
• Get Back (The White Label Mix), based on The Beatles
• Goodbye Train, by Big Sugar
• Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by the Alan Parsons Project

Right.  That's that done and dusted for posterity.

The Art of the Argument

This is all totally hypothetical, and any geographic areas or persons or individuals mentioned herein is done solely to provide colour to examples that exist only in the world of ideas.
Arguments begin without much provocation or inflammation.  All it takes is a meme, a phrase, a chart, or a graphic that can be spun to advance some form of agendum.  Most people that use Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms have their favourite pet interests that they have internalized to the extent that any perceived criticism of whatever politician, musical artist, charitable organization, medical condition, etc. is transformed into a personal assault, and is treated as such.
This means that the agora, or marketplace of ideas, is excluded from the dialogue before it even begins. The battle lines of defensive outrage have already been drawn, and any transgression is met with maximum viciousness.  The corresponding effect of people being ready to leap screaming into any conversation involving whatever they personally champion is the trolling effect.  If one understands that a person is a die-hard, quivering-lip fanatical devotee to the musical warblings of Stan Rogers, that kind of emotional investiture creates vulnerability.  A troll is therefore someone who sees instances of hysterically irrational advocacy as prime targets for half-hearted provocation in the hopes of ridiculously hyperbolic responses.
In the example listed above, a troll might post something like "Stan Rogers never really believed the works of the Group of Seven to be authentic." in the hopes that Stan Rogers aficionados will fly off the proverbial handle and lose track of all reason and dignity in an effort to sully and rebut the troll's assertion.  Evidence, documentation, and logic become secondary to the objective of troll and victim to humiliate and to retaliate, respectively.
Most interchanges between people over social media have degenerated into this model.
"I like butterscotch ripple ice cream."
"Goddammit, you snowflake liberal rudy-poo candyasses just won't leave Rutherford B. Hayes alone!  Why do you have to second-guess his every decision, just because he lost the popular vote to Sam Tilden?  Why doesn't the MSM cover voter suppression in 1876?  Nineteen!  Nineteen!"
I thought I would just like to document some of the ways dialogue used to operate back in the day when ICQ and MySpace were still going concerns.
Again, completely hypothetically, I'm going to throw out an assertion, and then respond to it in different ways.

Posit:  "Cincinnati sucks.  I hate that place."

Educational Contradiction

"Surely you can't hate the whole city. I mean, look at the size of your baseball memorabilia collection.  Surely the Cincinnati Reds of the 70's have some value. What about the name?  The great semi-mythical hero of the Roman Republic must deserve some merit."

Six Degrees of Association

"I find it hard to believe that you would hate something so intricately associated with Dr. Johnny Fever."

Apples Never Fall Far

"What's the difference between Cincinnati and the rest of Ohio?  Akron, Toledo, Columbus, Dayton — you can't hate ALL of them."

Faux Agreement

"Well, I know that it's not exciting as Cleveland.  In fact, there are a lot of river cities in the midwest with better food, culture, architecture, and civic engineering.  I might even call the place a mediocre backwater.  But isn't hate a strong word for such a weak place?"

Personal Revelation

"I never liked Cincinnati myself, until I received an e-mail telling of a brave little girl who was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of five years old.  She needed multiple courses of chemo- and radiotherapy and was kept in the pediatric intensive care ward, away from her family for days at a time.  Her family was forced to remortgage their home after they had exhausted all of their personal loans and lines of personal credit.  The last I saw, her family had raised over $7500 by crowdfunding efforts and the prognosis looks good.  The people of Cincinnati seem to be generous and warm-hearted, and unworthy of hatred."
"Goddammit, you snowflake liberal rudy-poo candyasses, always talking about health care!"

That's it for me.  I think I may have over-extended myself on this particular epistle, so I am going to abruptly draw it to a close.  Until the next time, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Recovery and Stuff

Greetings, gentle readers.
So the swelling from my intubation has gone down enough that I can swallow solid foods without too much discomfort.  Apparently I'm also a diabetic now, so I've got stacks of medication to choke down at regular intervals throughout the day as well as a glucometer to accompany my sphygmomanometer in my ever-increasing shelf of clinical medical equipment.  The glucometer even links via bluetooth to my mobile phone and tracks all of my charts and graphs for me.  It's all very high-tech and funky - the sort of equipment one might expect to see in Oscar Goldman's lab on "The Six-Million Dollar Man."
That being said, I may as well go through the usual motions.

Football

Yeah, let's start with sports.  This weekend marks a big international break from league play around the world, so that the finalists for the Russia 2018 World Cup can be confirmed.  Belgium, for example, have now mathematically confirmed their attendance at the enormous spectacle, while Hungary will definitely not qualify for the trip.  World champions Germany sputtered and lurched to an unconvincing 1-0 victory over the Czech Republic, meaning that despite winning every single qualifying game thus far (some by staggering margins), Deutschland has not mathematically clinched a spot at the big show because of plucky minnows Northern Ireland.  Norn Iron has won all three home qualifying matches, keeping a clean sheet in each game, fuelling speculation that the wee nation may qualify for its fourth World Cup Finals.  In so doing, the Northern Irish will look to add to their already significant World Cup achievements:
Northern Ireland is already the least populous country in history to have:

• qualified for more than one World Cup Finals tournament
• scored a goal in a World Cup 
• won a match in a World Cup
• progressed beyond the first round of a World Cup

Germany need just one more win against Norway to lock down their qualification, but their half-speed win over the Czechs also made it easier for Northern Ireland to qualify for the second-place playoffs.
Meanwhile, in CONCACAF, Canada defeated Gold Cup finalists Jamaica 2-0 in a friendly.  But that is not the story of the game.  The story of the game is what happened to 16-year-old phenom Alphonso Davies, young player of the very same Gold Cup tournament.  Brought on as a second-half substitute, he took about six minutes of physical bullying, harrying, shoving, and pushing before being ridden to the ground by a Jamaican defender.  As he rolled about trying to get back on his feet, his boot came awfully close to the defender's right ear.  One little flash, a twitch, and Davies' studs made contact with the defender's face.  Oh, don't worry.  The Jamaican will live, and his family have been notified of the 10 nanoseconds it took him to recover from his grievous wound.  But the red card came out and Davies was gone for the game and will now be suspended for the next three international matches.
This was a great moment for Canadian football.  The young lad will now have time to reflect on his reflexes and his impulse control during a period when Canada is not under pressure to win qualifying matches.  His sending off did not affect the outcome of the game in which he was censured, and his absence will give the rest of the team time to gel around newcomer Scott Arfield and goalscorers Junior Hoilett and Anthony Jackson-Hamel.
In any event, I finally took a shower after my external steri-stitches fell off.  Here's what the iPod said:

Music

• Lost in the Supermarket, by the Clash
• Our Space, by the Cardigans
• African Herbsman, by Bob Marley and the Wailers
• I Wished on the Moon, by Billie Holiday
• Masculine Eclipse, by Beautiful South
• Brimful of Asha, by Cornershop

Meanwhile, I'm crying tears of exhaustion again.  Blood sugar and all that sort of biz.  All makes sense now, what with the insulin and all.
Until the next time, good night England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS