Super Stuff

Greetings, gentle readers.
In addition to a myriad of other things, I am now attempting to use a new external keyboard.  It's an Apple product, so it obviously sacrifices practicality for aesthetics, but seems to be basically functional.  It's clunky, loud, and uncomfortable, but it's better for my spine and it took me fifteen minutes to clean, so I'm using it.

The Super Bowl and Orwellian Perpetual War

In "1984" George Orwell postulated a future in which all of the world's geopolitical nation-states had formed into large continental blocs in a state of continuous war with one another.  It's a system that creates fear with which to manipulate the population, a consumption of material that creates a need for constant industrial production, and a military enforcement of the status quo.
The United States apparently used Orwell's book as a blueprint for progress and development following the Second World War.  President Dwight D. Eisenhower admitted as much in 1961, when he noted that following the armistice in the Korean conflict, the American military refused to demobilize.  The economy of the nation had become addicted to the manufacture and use of weapons, and the deployment and loss of human assets.
The United States had one, brief window that afforded it the opportunity to escape the vortex of that addiction.  After 17 years of bloodletting and destruction in Vietnam, President Richard M. Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973.  It took another two years for the fighting to stop, but American combat troops were no longer being fed into a relentless and purposeless slaughter.  For a few years, the United States did not declare war on anyone.  Instead, the CIA began a rather ruthless program of supplying arms to countries so that they could butcher one another and indeed their own people with incredible ferocity.  In a foreign policy whirlwind that must have been the inspiration for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's cold-blooded interventionism, the people of East Timor, Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Zaïre, as well as large swathes of the developing world were drenched in the blood of innocents by tyrannical despots. 
Basically, the United States under Jimmy Carter stopped sending invading troops, and instead became the arms dealer supreme to any military junta or dictator that loudly proclaimed opposition to communism.  The Cold War was fought by proxy in the Third World.  The debate as to whether this state of world affairs was preferential to U.S. military interventionism was cut short by the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, who was elected partially as a result of the Iran hostage crisis.  Parts of the Third World were now swinging toward zealous theocracies, and the CIA could not control or direct them.  Direct "boots-on-the-ground" invasions were once gain required to enforce American hegemony.
Once the invasion of Grenada created the idea that the U.S. could send ground troops to a foreign country, open fire, and successfully resolve a situation without becoming embroiled in a decades-long nightmarish murder hole, the door was once again open to sending soldiers abroad.
And so we find ourselves in the present day, where the war in Afghanistan has now eclipsed Vietnam as the United States' longest war.  To be honest, it now seems naïve to protest, lobby, or campaign for the U.S. to end the war.  It is obviously far too profitable and advantageous for those in power to continue sending more troops, weapons and ammunition to Afghanistan, where they will be duly employed and expended.
The only downside for those running the war is the return of living troops.  Wounded and traumatized veterans are not profitable.  Luckily for those in power, the awful experience of being an occupying soldier in a foreign country and experiencing constant, possibly lethal hostility from local people is enough to make people want to take the easy way out.  Those soldiers who top themselves absolve the government of the responsibility of caring for them. 6,500 veterans called time on their earthly existence in 2012 alone.  Yup.  Americans are killing themselves at a faster rate than Afghani children can blow them up.  But for every one that snuffs him or herself, a happy accountant crosses another line off a ledger of veterans' benefits recipients. 
So rather than opposing the war - the tactic that successfully caused the withdrawal in Vietnam - I reckon the only way to save lives of every allegiance and nationality is to call for a win.  Support the troops wholeheartedly.  Call for 100% commitment and conscription.  Win the war in Afghanistan so thoroughly that there will never be conflict there again.  Fulfill every obligation so that the United States can put a big check mark in the "W" column and bring all of its soldiers back to their families.  Why send in troops if not to solve a problem?  So, in the words of Bradley Cooper, "Let's Git 'Er Done." 
So in conclusion, instead of insisting that NFL players taking a knee to protest excessive police violence are being unpatriotic, I would suggest that every able-bodied American that isn't rushing to an enlistment office is disrespecting their flag, country, anthem, and national identity.  If you're not doing what Pat Tillman did sixteen years ago and rushing off to defend democracy, you have no moral high ground relative to NFL players.
It only took four years for the U.S. to rid the world of Nazi Germany.  After seventeen years, Afghanistan is still the same God-despised pesthole that the Soviets occupied until 1989.  Surely Americans can summon the collective national willpower and gumption to wipe out the rebels that they enthusiastically armed and trained not so long ago.

Shower Songlist

• Lazy Afternoon, by Bree Sharp
• December African Rain, by Johnny Clegg and Juluka
• Since You've Been Gone, by Kelly Clarkson
• Ska and Reggae, by The Hopping Penguins
• You're the Reason I'm Leaving, by Franz Ferdinand
• I Touch Myself, by The Divinyls
• Tired All The Time, by Big Sugar
• The Ballad of John and Yoko, by The Beatles

Well, it could be tat I'm just feeling exhausted, but the only real common factor here that strikes out at me is that there are no single word song titles.  Usually, there's at least one song with a single name or word, like "Eileen", "Michelle", "Kashmir", or "Showdown."  Hmm.  I wonder if that's significant at all.
In any event, my next installment will likely be posted from Calgary, where I shall be residing as a guest of my mother.  Who knows what insights may present themselves to me as a result of the change of scenery.
Until then, goodnight England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

In Search of Authenticity

Greetings, gentle readers.
And so I have returned to my awkwardly placed and uncomfortable keyboard with an aching spine and thorny disposition to rail and harangue at popular culture once more.  Since I've already had a go at militaristic and jingoistic propaganda designed to make young Americans believe in the moral rectitude and patriotic value of running off to a foreign country and being an imperialist aggressor, maybe I'll have a run at the aesthetic failures of other attempts at cinematic enterprises.  Next up in my metaphorical crosshairs are a numerically significant category of films - biographies.

BioPics

I'm fairly certain that it was not my conscious decision, but a pack of recent dramatic productions have seemed to be biographies of 20th century individuals.  And they all seem to suffer from a similar malady of mediocrity.  I'll drop a few examples:

• "Battle of the Sexes" - Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs
• "Rebel in the Rye" - J.D. Salinger
• "Goodbye, Christopher Robin" - A.A. Milne
• "Darkest Hour" - Winston Churchill

There were a pack of others that I've viewed recently that are similarly flawed, but history has already condemned them to the rubbish bin, so I don't need to savage them any further.
The problem here is that I can see how these films were conceived, produced, and created, and I can see the artistic compromises made.  What this means is that actual historical fact takes a back seat to someone's directorial conception of a narrative.
Quick aside here - I haven't yet seen the film "The Post" starring Odenkirk, Hanks, and Streep.  Listening to Tom Hanks describe the film in an interview with Graham Norton, he gives the impression that this particular production may have had enough clout and money to shrug aside the usual studio marketing considerations and done some things purely for artistic or factual purposes.
So, pushing "The Post" aside until such time as I can properly evaluate it, this recent host of biographical dramas appear to be running off the same assembly line.  Sure, they have different feels, different casts, tone, setting, incidental music, editing, etc.  But what they all share is inauthenticity.  If the point of a biographical film is to bring the audience to a closer and greater understanding and rapport with the subject, then a lot of people are following the wrong playbook.
Here is what I sense:  some scriptwriting/creative story people get a hold of some biographical material, but not autobiographical material.  Then, they get some production people interested. 
"Oh.  That guy who wrote Winnie the Pooh.  People know him.  We can get some funding and insurance for something about him."
Then they get the actual film people involved with sets, locations, cameras, costumes, music, and the rest of it.  The director gets the script and storyboards the shots.
This is where Salinger, Milne, King, Churchill, etc. get left behind.  The information of their lives is boiled and distilled into little discrete granules.  Episodes, vignettes, anecdotes, and scenes are all crunched into things that are dramatically and cinematographically interesting.  Then they are shot and stitched together and presented as a story.  Remember that I said that the source material is distinctly non-autbiographical.
So what you get is a pastiche.  A montage of snippets of conversation and tableaux of images.  Here is the one time that Billie Jean got very abrupt and snippy with a reporter.  Here she is being apologetic to some hotel staff member who recalls her being very kind.  Here she is being very aggressive and forthright, as one of her colleagues depicts her as being at the time. 
These individual and disconnected soundbites and snapshots make for some interesting mise-en-scènes in terms of directorial decisions, but they are unhelpful to an audience seeking to understand the nature of the character they are observing.
It's sad, really.  "Goodbye, Christopher Robin" appears to want to press home the point that Winnie the Pooh destroyed C.R. Milne's childhood, life, happiness, etc.  If that is the objective of the narrative, it doesn't quite succeed because it doesn't give enough evidence.  There are a few scenes where A.A. Milne's son is given the lines to say that Winnie the Pooh has destroyed his life, blah, blah, blah, but the choppily edited excerpts of that life are so discombobulated that one can't attribute the character's misery to any specific one of a myriad likely sources.  His mother resents him, his father has PTSD, his nanny is Scottish, the family doesn't live in the West End... all sources of heartbreaking anguish and sorrow and all blamed on a fictitious bear.  It sounds nice as a pitch to a production company (fuzzy, lovable bear harms inspirational child), but when you have to cherry pick from very sparse source material, you end up with a makeshift narrative that doesn't have enough fabric to cover the entirely of the matter.

Showering Serenades

• Blue Light, by David Gilmour
• Straight to Hell, by The Clash
• I Want to Be Your Man, by The Beatles
• In the Evening, by Led Zeppelin
• Big Shot, by The English Beat
• Dr. Evil Edit, by The Alan Parsons Project
• The Rain Song, by Led Zeppelin

The most interesting thing to note in this instance is not just that Led Zeppelin had two tracks appear - a statistically unlikely occurrence - but that every single artist or group listed is English.  Not Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish, but English.  The English Beat is even explicitly named.  What does this mean?
Granted, some of my Liverpudlian mates may argue that the Republic of Merseyside is an unofficial political entity, considering the way we were treated during the Thatcherite years of repression and poverty, but according to the geopolitical landscape as reckoned by the international community and the United Nations as a body, we are dealing with England as a subunit of the United Kingdom.
Does this forebode some sort of international development relating to dear old Blighty?  One can only hope that there will be some sort of Brexit reversal, transportation nationalization policy, overwhelming Tory defeat, Jeremy Corbyn election triumph, and NHS revitalization.  They would all be wonderful outcomes, but any single one will suffice to assuage my sense of existential political angst.
And so until next time, goodnight England, and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Cynical Cinematics

Greetings, gentle readers.
It's been an interesting week of reversals.  Since my last rather scathing condemnation of the Philadelphia Eagles, and North American sports in general as being dour, perfunctory executors of pedestrian, lowest common-denominator actions required to win, things changed somewhat.  Last weekend, the Eagles abruptly stopped doing the absolute minimum required in a game, and took chances.  Gambled.  Risked.  Dared.  Challenged.  And in so doing, triumphed over the odds and the expectations in breathtaking fashion.
The Eagles that triumphed last Saturday stood tall and proud over their opponents because they triumphed over fear.  They stopped begging for crumbs and started pushing their luck.  That was when spectators no longer watched the percentage probabilities tally up in a stultifying ledger of accounting tabulations, but watched a Nietzschean triumph of willpower, stewed in a rich, heady broth of confidence and exuberance.
But enough about sports.  What about films?

Enlist ASAP

Not many people have seen William Hurt's film "Varian's War."  Nor should they, really.  It's not terribly good.  The only reason I bring it up is that it's a mediocre film set during the Second World War, and released in 2001.  IMDB says that there have been 142 commercial films released since the turn of the millennium that are specifically centred around that conflict.  In the 1990s?  29 films.
Cut to the chase.  Particularly since the World Trade Centre attack, American troops of occupation have been deployed throughout the Middle East to no good end.  How does a government convince a voting general public to condone or even advocate an expensive war that costs thousands of lives without benefit?  Propaganda certainly doesn't hurt.
It seems that eighteen years of being told that war is OK is starting to wear thin.  Shooting evil Nazis is good, but after 65 years of shooting Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Heydrich, Goebbels, their underlings, their chauffeurs, their relatives, people who met them, and people with similar initials, the fun may be wearing thin.  The past 20 years has been an enormous glorification of international conflict during "the good old days" when the enemy wore uniforms and invoked the Geneva Convention, instead of being six-year-old kids with pipe bombs hidden in baskets.
It's been almost 20 years of Americans being blown up by IEDs in Afghanistan, and the veterans who inconveniently survived their tours of duty and also not committed suicide have started to let it be known that defending democracy is not all it is cracked up to be.  Pat Tillman was about to be a very prominently visible and vocal critic of American imperialism before he was brutally shot to pieces by friendly fire.  Regardless of his silence, people are starting to realize that stationing occupying troops in the Middle East is less fun than sending troops to Vietnam ever was. 
So if you're an able-bodied American who believes in patriotism, the star-spangled banner, the American way of life, freedom, democracy, and that sort of thing, you must feel that there is an inexorable social force that pushes you to support the military, love the troops, and believe in the truth and justice of the causes for which they fight.  Cinema has played a large part in creating that social pressure.  Fighting the Nazis was good enough for people 60 years ago, so you should morally equate that to splinter-bombing Yemeni orphans with drones today.  And every day.
And now that newer generations are starting to lose the immediacy of the relevance of the Nazi threat, Hollywood has hit us with "12 Strong" and other films that lionize troops in Afghanistan.  Why not?  They won the war, didn't they?  Or stopped terrorism?  Or stabilized the region?  Or... anything? 
The film debacle the bugs me the most was the release of "Thank You For Your Service" in 2017.  A typical buddies-go-to-war thing reminiscent of an amateurish and sophomoric attempt at "The Deer Hunter" that has already been forgotten, it was obviously released to smother any SEO data related to "Thank You For Your Service" (2016) - a venomous assault on the U.S. Government and its failure to support its own troops in terms of mental health.
In conclusion, cinema is a medium like all others in that it has been manipulated to convey a political message.  That being said, Hollywood mainstream films have demonstrated a tremendous preponderance toward militarist government propaganda.
I will attack my next category of films soon, wherein I shall examine biopics.  But now, a quick list of musical tunes, and then I shall retire for the evening.

Shower Songlist

• The Battle of Evermore, by Page and Plant
• Waterfall, by E.L.O.
• Ain't That A Shame, performed by Cheap Trick
• Runnin' Against The Wind, by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
• Free As A Bird, by The Beatles
• Night Flight to Venus, by Boney M

Gosh, I'm drawing a blank on any sort of thematic continuity between these tracks.  Perahps it will make more sense in retrospect.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Enervation

Greetings, gentle readers.
Well, the diabetic blood-glucose thing has apparently worsened rather severely, and it's gotten to the point now that a half-hour's worth of physio exercises leaves me exhausted and out of action for the better part of a day, and a full hour's worth of exercises forces me to spend over a day recovering.  Accordingly, I'm tracking some dietary and medication changes before starting a new pharmaceutical regimen later this week.  Hopefully, that will give me enough stamina to get more of these entries committed to an unsuspecting and disinterested public domain.

American Sports

Somewhat uncharacteristically, I've watched a few NHL games recently, and a few things started to become clear to me.  Try and follow me as I walk through these.
The Edmonton Oilers are snakebitten.  This is a team that is penalized, in at least a couple of cases, twice as often as opposing teams.  Officials send Oiler players to the penalty box often, in crucial situations, and in questionable circumstances.  Edmonton also seems to have an awful lot of bad luck in terms of injuries, disqualified goals, and the lack of rule enforcement on other teams' play.  The team's morale is mercilessly crushed two or three times per game, and the psychological toll on the players is obvious.
The Las Vegas Golden Knights are setting records not just for major league hockey, but in terms of all major North American sports franchises in terms of victories, goals for/against, home and road records, etc., etc.  In much the same way as the Oilers seem to be handicapped by league officiating, the Knights are basking in the glow of welcoming warmth given by the league that eagerly accepted their $500 million US expansion fee.  Half a billion dollars appears to not only have given them some instant all-star players through a generous entry draft structure, but also some tendencies toward generosity in terms of scheduling, television marketing, and game commentary.
Meanwhile, in the NFL, the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Atlanta Falcons in a game involving two touchdowns.  One for each team.  And one of those wasn't even converted.  Not that people expected much from an Eagles team missing its Pro Bowl superstar talisman quarterback through injury.  Oh, and they are also missing four other star players through injury, so their game plan was somewhat conservative.
Contrasted with North American sports, hitherto undefeated and all but statistically proven league-leaders Manchester City lost a thrilling 4-3 game to Liverpool FC in the English Premier League.  The Citizens shrugged off the loss, and celebrated a tremendous game played with verve, strength, daring, and a boatload of courage.
The conclusion that I'm starting to draw is something like the Vince Lombardi (and Red Saunders) quotation "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing."
In England, Manchester City congratulated themselves broadly on coming back from 4-1 down in the second half of a game, and fighting back to nearly earn a draw when most teams would have run up the white flag and tried to play damage-control to save further embarrassment.  They lost, but with honour and dignity, and without sacrificing their team philosophy or strategy.
In Philadelphia, Eagles fans were singing in celebration of a dire, boring, and listless win in which their place-kicker couldn't convert the single touchdown that they scored.  It was pragmatic, ugly, but clocked in as more than satisfactory.
In the NHL, no Canadian-based team has won the Stanley Cup in 25 years.  In that time, seven different American-based franchises won their first ever championship.  The lesson seems to be that Canadians will watch hockey regardless, but American return on sports investment hinges on winning games.  When that sort of investment involves hundreds of millions of dollars, franchise owners expect a lot of wins.
The bottom line for Edmonton Oilers or Toronto Maple Leafs or Montréal Canadiéns fans is that they cannot afford success.  Literally.  The league stands to earn far more revenue from ice hockey cold spots like Raleigh, NC or Columbus, OH than a Canadian location.  Las Vegas just paid $500 million to play, and they are getting the run of the table.  If a Canadian team folds, as Québec City's did, the League will shuffle the franchise south and collect another franchise fee.  If a Canadian team manages to stay afloat, it will be a punching bag for whomever was the last to sluice cash into the league's coffers.
The question, and it's a very Canadian one, is whether Canadian hockey fans will follow the American model or the British one.  An American solution is to abandon history, tradition, philosophy, and character and pursue victory at all costs.  The British solution would be to maintain one's character and honour in the face of all odds. 
When the New Jersey Devils won their first Stanley Cup in 1995, they employed a tactical system involving a "neutral-zone trap" that essentially meant that if they did not have possession of the puck, they would drop into a formation designed to create turnovers.  If they had the lead, they would play for as many whistles and stoppages of play as possible, deliberately going offside or icing the puck dozens of times.  The games would be boring, lack flow and offence, but gave the Devils loads of wins.  Similar tactics were used by the Dallas Stars, Florida Panthers, Buffalo Sabres, and the Mighty Ducks with similar results.
The question is this - would an Edmonton or Toronto fan accept a mind-numbingly boring playing style if it meant more wins?  Or would they instead prefer to play an open, forechecking, fast-paced game and accept their lot as perpetual also-rans?  If the Oilers suddenly decided to ice the puck on every play to avoid ever having to make a line change, I'm fairly certain that attendance would drop off more sharply than if the team missed the playoffs for ten years straight.
I just hope that Canadian NHL teams can hang onto their style and identity until all of the artificially inflated and superficially supported teams south of the Mason-Dixon line collapse under the weight of their own self-imposed financial structure.

Shower Songlist

Here are the songs my iPod selected for me during my last cleansing experience.  This time I reckon that there are actually some thematic elements that appear less opaque than usual.

• UKRIP, by Dodgy
• Boom Shalacka, by House of Pain
• Second Hand News, by Fleetwood Mac
• Love Me Two Times, by The Doors
• All That She Wants, by Ace of Base
• Don't Look Back in Anger, by Oasis
• Jericho, by Johnny Clegg

In case I'm imaging connections where none exist, it seems to me that there is a theme of repetition and recrimination.  Refutations are welcome.
In any event, this enervated pilgrim needs to return to his rest.  Until next time, goodnight England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Righteous Bills

Greetings, gentle readers.
O, the world is a tumultuous and ridiculous place.  It seems as though the most appropriate metaphor available is that of the Nuremberg Elephant - we are bungling and blundering our way into an awful political morass, but we are only following orders in doing so.  The United States Constitution -  a wonderful document, by the way - is under assault and will require some severe examination in the next few months.  What parts of it shall remain important to the American way of life? 
A lot of people don't even know what that document says.  Take the first lines, for example.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

I don't think people value the very beginning of American democracy.  If you value the ability of multinational corporations to profit from accidents and illness, then obviously the Welfare of the general population is lower down on the list of priorities.
So right off the bat, the current state of affairs has little to do with the founding documents of the American Empire.  The welfare of the people is not important.  Incarcerating them and shooting them seems to be more important to the operational arms of the state than protecting or blessing them.  I'm sure that the people of Yemen, Niger, and Afghanistan are very appreciative of having democracy defended at them every day.  Every bomb, drone,and bullet that defends democracy through every child's skull is a testament to how well the common defence is being upheld.  Seventeen years of defending poppy fields in central Asia provides a shining example of democracy in action.
According to the United States Department of Defense [sic.  Defence is a noun, defense is a verb], 2,254 servicemembers have died thus far in Afghanistan.  Insofar as the U.S. government is concerned, that's the good news.  It's the wounded that are a headache.  The American government has demonstrated numerous times over the past months that it doesn't want to deal with veterans.  The homeless, illness, and suicide rates are more than uncomfortable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/kristof-a-veterans-death-the-nations-shame.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1

In short, American troops are dying around the world on a daily basis to get things like opium and petroleum for their government.  Those that aren't killed by resentful children and families who hate occupation forces have to live with the guilt and self hate.  The government is filled with glee when PTSD-wracked individuals take the short road because it is easier on the budget.
So as the American Empire rumbles on towards its own destruction, people have to start making value judgments about what parts ought to be salvaged.  Should the resources of the nation continue to be spent bombing, torpedoing, and shooting the rest of the world in an Orwellian war on everyone in the name of "defence"?  For people who love to gripe about how their tax dollars are misspent, click here.
What parts of the American Constitution do people like?   What bits would they like to preserve when it all comes crumbling down?
Obviously the part about killing other people.  The United States is the world's greatest arms dealer.  If Americans aren't killing people, they are selling them the weapons to do it.  Oh, yeah, and it's for defence.
Let's start with the Bill of Rights.  Are the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution relevant any more?

1. Freedom of expression.  Quick summary - this is an all-or-none game.  Either you have freedom of expression or you do not.  Are you free or a slave?  If neo-nazis can't speak, neither can you.  People cannot understand this, and this is where the first amendment dies.  Oh, and Americans don't understand the separation of church and state, so this amendment never made any sense to them anyway.  Gone.
2. Freedom of murder-weapons.  Two hundred and fifty years ago, it was a good idea to have a muzzle-loading musket to keep redcoats away from your haybales.  Now, it appears to be constitutionally mandated that every primate old enough to be drafted into the armed services should have a weapon capable of murdering scores of people as quickly and from as far away as possible.  This constitutional amendment will never go away because Americans love guns, love killing people, and love killing people using guns.  I reckon the new constitution will comprise this one single principle - give us guns so that this land shall forever be free of the awful burden of empty hospitals and unfilled graves.
3. Quartering soldiers.  The founding fathers thought that it was really important that the constitution of the United States have something that says that something shall not be done "...but in a manner prescribed by law."  Wow.  I think this one can disappear without much notice, considering that the rest of the document describes "law."  Gone.
4. Search and Seizure.  Considering that the President of the United States has proclaimed that he wants to expand the scope of "Stop and Frisk" procedures (see here), civil rights are on the way out.  Colour this amendment toast.
5. Self-incrimination.  Not a chance.  This will evaporate faster than you can say "forensic accounting."
6. Rights of an accused at trial.  Considering the number of political figures that are facing indictment, this amendment may become a foundation-stone for an entire cadre of people that are exonerated due to technical legal principles.  Jared Kushner's grandchildren may well be named Sextus because of the umbrella-like shelter their grandsire was afforded.
7. Twenty Bills.  $20 is worth a jury's time.  It's not worth anyone else's any more.  Gone.
8. The Cruel and Unusual Punishment thing.  Is the death penalty cruel punishment?  While you debate that, this amendment dies.
9. The "Just 'cause I didn't say it" amendment.  This has been used to advance human and civil rights, and therefore has no place in the United States of the twenty-first century.  Authority and populism are now synonymous with ethical correctness, and therefore this amendment is likely to be discarded.
10. States rights.  The Attorney General of the United States has just declared that federal law enforcement can effectively disregard state legislation regarding marijuana.  In other words, this amendment is already toothless, and will be tossed out as soon as it is convenient.

In conclusion, things are going to get worse before they get better.  And they are going to get a lot worse.

Songlist

And here are the songs that accompanied my latest shower.

• Skinhead Love Affair, by Bad Manners
• Forever Man, by Eric Clapton
• Girl Watcher, by Big Sugar
• Wheel in the Sky, by Journey
• Change, by Lightning Seeds
• Give Peace a Chance, by John Lennon

That's all I've got for the moment.  Time to lie down.
Cheers, and goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Auf Wiedersehn to 2017

Greetings, gentle readers.
This morning was a good morning by my standards.
I was up before the dawn, scarfing pills and washing them down with a freshly made pitcher of limeade.  Splashed some habañero hot sauce, soy sauce, and yesterday's leftover wor wonton soup into a big tupperware bowl and microwaved it longer than you would expect.  I turned on the telly and waited for the Manchester City v. Crystal Palace game to convulsively spasm its way to a baffling nil-nil conclusion before starting the hitherto unseen film "Birdman" featuring Michael Keaton (real name: Michael Douglas).
The frost and ice on the windows indicated that the weather outside was murderously frigid.  The deep chill that arrived at the beginning of the holiday season has yet to cease besieging the people of the north.  New Year's celebrations nationwide have been cancelled, relocated indoors, translated into online activities, or projected onto warmer electronically virtualized environments.  Ghostly draughts whispered through the house as the others dreamed lazily in their warm beds.
The warm broth of the soup was soothing and comfortable, a contrast to the frenetic bebop drum riffs that accompany the film's opening scenes.  My tastebuds entered some sort of zenlike experiential dimension wherein every flavour and ingredient was disintegrated and compartmentalized.  The chives and ginger in the wontons were nice and fresh, but the bak choi in the broth was a bit too old and bitter. 
Meanwhile, "Birdman" was bemoaning the enormous existential tolls paid by actors who sacrifice their souls and lay bare their deepest sufferings in pursuit of the fundamental rapport with the human condition.  Actors risk everything while the rest of the bungled and botched humans drag out lives of quiet desperation in anonymous inauthenticity.
In the end, the mystery meat was lovely, the dumplings were filling, and "Birdman" was not as much of a self-indulgent thespian wankfest as it could have been.  The pain was manageable, the light was self-fulfilling, and traffic was subdued enough for me to recognize individual trains as they scraped past the house.
Quiet.  Relatively undisturbed.  Allowed to believe that I may exist alone.
And then the year turned.
Until next time, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS