Civil Discourse

Greetings, gentle readers.
Another day, another mass shooting in the United States.  This is the cue for thousands of people to clamour for some sort of solution or remediation.  There is a problem, and the solution is ridiculously complex and difficult.  But before anyone can come to any sort of consensus of how to start approaching the issue, the entire environment of the conversation becomes polluted so that the objectives are lost, and all that remains is rancor, malice, and disrespect.
This about clouding the issue and muddying the waters of a serious social discussion.

Definitions

Douglas Adams made several references to philosophers as pure sophists, wasting time examining inconsequential shades of meaning in the terms of questions, rather than looking at the salient concepts or ideas behind any given question.  His point was that because philosophy as a whole does not hold any concrete answers, it is better to evade questions that give nebulous answers.
In an era where the President of the United States routinely tells untruths and challenges any contradictory evidence as being fake, it has become easy to derail legitimate inquiries by suddenly making the conversation about language.  Take THIS article to see the impact that language spin has on discourse.
I will give you a prime example of what I am describing.  When polled about their preferences regarding guns in the United States, there is a marked discrepancy between the numbers recorded when the question asked "Do you believe in increasing gun safety" rather than "Do you believe in increased gun control regulations?"  More numbers HERE.  It's much like the abortion debate, where both opposing camps sought to spin their stance positively into the pro-life and the pro-choice campaigns.  Eager for popular approval, each tried to use language with affirmative connotations to market their platform.
Equally distracting and confusing are statistics, and the language associated with them.  "Mass shootings" are different than "mass killings" and "multiple homicides" and "serial murders."  Someone will try to express the immediacy of the issue by citing a statistic saying that there have been x mass shootings in 2018, or x mass shootings per day in the 21st century, or a mass shooting every x days.  Rather than recognize the concern or the enormity of the numbers, a common deflection is to challenge the wording.  How many people must be killed for it to be a "mass" shooting?  Does it require an automatic weapon?  A single location?  Once it is established that a mass shooting involves a distinct number of deaths (in excess of three?  Four?), and not just woundings (even if they later turn out to be fatal woundings), and that it must all be conducted on public property, the conversation has been sufficiently deflected to the point that everyone must spend their time recalibrating their numbers and searching for examples and counter-examples.

False Equivalences

If one can get past the smokescreen that everyone is using the wrong words to ask the questions about why the last batch of innocent people were gunned down, then one is confronted by the weird and logically convoluted maze of false equivalences.  There are a variety of these, but there are four big ones that I've observed in the American "Why are so many innocent people being shot dead" debate.

1. America is Exceptional.  And not in a good way.Gun deaths of any sort - homicide, suicide, accident, indigestion - are lower in every other country on the planet.  Even the ones with civil wars.  Any stats that compare the U.S. to, say, Switzerland will look ridiculous, but that's because the Swiss didn't build their confederacy on slavery, have a solid social safety net, and mandatory conscription in their armed forces.  The Swiss are responsible, trained gun owners with low societal instance of poverty and discrimination.  Any question that asks "Why can't the U.S. be like [insert country here]?" is foolish because the U.S. is inherently culturally flawed in ways that other countries haven't considered yet.
2. Appeal to the Founding FathersThomas Jefferson was a very insightful fellow, and between him, Alexis de Tocqueville, and a pack of other enlightenment thinkers, we have documents like the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and Bill of Rights.  In those documents, there are several enshrined principles like the separation of church and state, and the checks and balances on the different branches of government.  That being said, these men were not infallible.  The Amendments to the U.S. Constitution are testament to that.  It took the American Republic almost a hundred years to do something about that slavery thing, and suffrage for women was an even tougher struggle.  To speculate about the founding fathers' thoughts about modern weapons is about as useful as asking them about vaccines or marijuana regulation.
3. ReligionThere are numerous dog-whistles that bring all the evangelicals baying into one's yard.  Even if the discussion is about red wine with veal, religious folk will blurt out enough outrage to derail any topic if given a chance.  In other words, if you don't want to discuss guns, the conversation can be easily be diverted by creating a false equivalence between gun regulations and abortion, the holocaust, or the Spanish Inquisition.  I suppose that such comparisons seem relevant because they involve death and some sort of government involvement, but otherwise, they are logically unrelated.  I have no idea what this sort of idiocy is trying to assert.
   
   
   The logic of this argument is not even weak, it is non-existent.  But because Planned Parenthood has been introduced as a villain (unfairly), suddenly the discussion has again been deflected and the problem goes unaddressed.
4. Racism
   Speaking of dog-whistle speech patterns, there is no deflection tactic quite like the scapegoating tactic.  Essentially, if a problem is identified as being immediate and dangerous, rather than looking for any sort of personal responsibility or communal involvement, why not place the blame for all of society's ills – including the most recent tragedy – on a specific group?  Instead of the usual "foreign boogeymen" of Jews or gypsies, the United States of the present day is terrified of the people it has disenfranchised.  The families fleeing the constant drone bombings in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. join those who are fleeing the death squads in Central America that have been sponsored by the American government.  If you want to start investigating, you can start by looking at Berta Cáceres and articles like THIS.  In short, some people like to portray the problem of people being shot as a result of those darn foreigners.

If you can fight your way through all of this distraction and deflection, you might start to see your way through to the truth.  The problem is the culture.  Culture is not the product of an individual, a government program, or a linguistic trend.  I will outline a larger plan later, but here is a quick outline:

• Stop desperation.  Reduce poverty and property crime will decrease.  I promise.
• Invest in the future.  Let people know that they are wanted and then welcome their contributions.
• Let freedom ring.  Stop censorship.  Period.  Let gory dismemberments be put in the same category as full frontal nudity.  Let Nazis expose themselves as fools.  Let all of the flowers in the garden blossom before you trim them (using logic and reason) rather than using authority to stifle their expression.

Meanwhile, here's a break from all the political stuff.

Shower Songlist

As always, I ask for someone to find a common thread between all of these song tracks, and although no one ever has, I ask regardless.

• Never Say Never, by Melanie Chisholm
• Pretending, by Eric Clapton
• Fools, by Lightning Seeds
• Pimper's Paradise, by Bob Marley and the Wailers
• So Long To U, by Beautiful Small Machines
• Carnivale de Paris, by Dario G

And with that, I bid you all a fair adieu.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

The Triumph of Mediocrity

Greetings, gentle readers.
Elements and categories of popular entertainment have always had their ebbs and flows in terms of quality, quantity, and sophistication.  The Aztecs had all sorts of sports that involved horrific mutilations performed on the losing competitors — a tradition carried on in modern day Latin America where, as Douglas Adams notes in "The Meaning of Liff," the ball games consist of the ball being hit against a wall until the prisoner confesses.
For most of the 20th century, artists aspiring to become popular entertainers needed to sacrifice all dignity and integrity at the feet of the gatekeepers of their chosen industry.  This was particularly true for women.  Carrie Fisher rather succinctly described it in the title of her book "Surrender the Pink."  Apparently, those were the words - verbatim - spoken to her by a producer as he gestured her toward a proverbial casting couch.
The bottom line was that the people with the power and authority to sign the contracts to make someone a star of stage, screen, airwaves, vinyl, etc. were generally odious men with a penchant for using sexual degradation to emphasize their dominance.  The victims tended to be women like Fisher, or pre-adolescent boys like Coreys Haim and Feldman.  The bottom line is this:  in a society where there is an overabundance of people willing to do literally anything for fame, and the avenue to that accomplishment is guarded by skeezy, power-happy, flabby old men, the tendency for that situation to involve abuse was nigh-universal.
Then came Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement.  Suddenly, skeletons were coming out of closets and the world's worst-kept trade secret was suddenly front-page news.  Marlee Matlin, Rose McGowan, Annabella Sciorra, Ashley Judd, and dozens of other celebrities were suddenly fountains of information about the price of access to the red carpets and Beverly Hills cocktail parties.
I'm just going to throw three observations out there, the last leading to my overall theme about the relationship of talent, skill, and sophistication to successful entertainment careers.

Not everything is being revealed.

For those aspiring entertainers that were abused, debased, defiled, humiliated, molested, and raped, I can offer sympathy, support, and solidarity.  That being said, there are two elements that made the casting couch culture function:  people desperate to be famous, and grotty executives that can create careers with a contract.  I suspect for every person who was mistreated by said grotty executives, there is at least one other person who walked into those sorts of "negotiations" with his or her eyes wide open, prepared to do whatever it takes to get that record deal or daytime soap role.  There's a reason the system was so pervasive and enduring.  The same thing that made victims ashamed to come forward is the same reason that mediocre talents were able to gain access and exposure.  There are a thousand more stories yet to be told, and not all of them fit the narrative of patriarchal exploitation.

This isn't the most salient example of rape culture.

Around the same time as Harvey Weinstein and his ilk were being harried onto private jets for some intense therapy in Switzerland, a disgusting cretin named Roy Moore was campaigning to win a Senate seat in Alabama in a special election to replace Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, who had left his post to become U.S. Attorney General.
Roy Moore has been accused of varying types and degrees of sexual misconduct by the women listed below, who state that he interfered with them sexually while they were still younger than the age of majority.

• Leigh Corfman
• Wendy Miller
• Debbie Wesson Gibson
• Gloria Thacker Deason
• Beverly Young Nelson
• Gena Richardson
• Becky Gray
• Tina Johnson
• Kelly Harrison Thorp

Since coming forward, these women have been harassed and bullied by those who suspect them of lying with the intent to slander the candidate.  Tina Johnson's home in Gadsen, Alabama was burnt to the ground on 3 January 2018 in a suspected arson attack.
In short, Roy Moore defeated Donald Trump-endorsed Republican candidate Luther Strange to become the Republican nominee.  It's fairly upsetting that Republicans would choose the worse of two evils, but then in the final election, Moore almost managed to win the Senatorial seat.  Were it not for the concerted and earnest efforts of black women, this disgusting piece of subhuman garbage would have joined the ranks of the other quasi-evangelical hypocrites that clutch their bibles as they violate every ethical principle they purport to represent.  So America owes a debt of gratitude to women of colour, but the fact remains that Moore only lost by 1.5%.  That's a hair's breadth.  That a ghastly kiddie-diddler could potentially get elected to the United States Senate based on what one supposes must be partisan and identity politics is a terrifying prospect.  But how is such a thing plausible?
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the forty-fifth President of the United States.  In a single swoop, his election legitimized and validated every outdated and outmoded racist, sexist, exclusionary, and xenophobic mode of thought.  In what esteem does the leader of the free world hold women?

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them.  It’s like a magnet.  Just kiss.  I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it.  You can do anything… Grab them by the pussy.  You can do anything.” —Access Hollywood, 2005

And what about people from Mexico?

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending the best.  They’re not sending you… they’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us.  They’re bringing drugs.  They’re bring crime (sic).  They’re rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people.” — Presidential candidacy announcement, June 2015.

How about people of a religion like Islam?  He even speaks of himself in the third person for this one:

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” — Rally in Charleston, SC, December 2015

So that's gender, nationality, and religion.  How about LGBTQ rights?

"It’s like in golf.  A lot of people — I don’t want this to sound trivial — but a lot of people are switching to these really long putters, very unattractive.  It’s weird.  You see these great players with these really long putters because they can’t sink three-footers anymore.  And I hate it.  I am a traditionalist.  I have so many fabulous friends who happen to be gay, but I am a traditionalist.” — New York Times interview, May 2011

Oh, and then there are his views on veterans.

“[John McCain’s] not a war hero.  He’s a war hero because he was captured.  I like people who weren’t captured.” — Ames, IA in July 2015

The list goes on and on.  His creepy statements and photographs involving his daughter Ivanka are a tad more than nauseating, and his personal attacks on Megyn Kelly, Rosie O'Donnell, Mika Brzezinski, Lindsay Lohan, Kim Kardashian, and Kristen Stewart are stupefying as well as profoundly stupid.
The man holding the highest office in America speaks in the dog-whistle language that appeals to the lowest and basest human instincts of selfishness and paranoia. 
With such a role model, it is not difficult to imagine that hate-filled deviants should coast to pre-eminence in his poisonous wake.
Oh, and by the way, here is a list of some of the women who have formally complained that the president's conduct constituted sexual misconduct and/or assault.  The complaints include groping, fondling, kissing, and other forms of unwanted physical attention.  Again, in a world where women should be allowed to speak their truth to power and should be taken seriously, believed, and supported, people like Oprah Winfrey and other #MeToo and #TimesUp activists are profoundly silent.  Easy to use social media to pick on Hollywood sleazebags, but when the rot is in the Oval Office, suddenly nobody has anything to say.

• Kristen Anderson
• Mariah Billado
• Lisa Boyne
• Rachel Crooks
• Tasha Dixon
• Jessica Drake
• Jill Harth
• Cathy Heller
• Samantha Holvey
• Ninni Laaksonen
• Jessica Leeds
• Melinda McGillivray
• Cassandra Searles
• Natasha Stoynoff
• Bridget Sullivan
• Temple Taggart
• Karena Virginia
• Summer Zervos

The bottom line here is that you can accuse, shame, excoriate, and ostracize Harvey Weinsteins all the live-long day, but as long as the 45th President of the United States sets the example that legitimizes pussy-grabbing and all of the other dehumanizing practices he praises, Oprah Winfrey's "new day" is not on the horizon.  The roots of patriarchal misogyny are deep, and they are institutionalized in organized religion as much as they are in the current White House administration.

The same system is still being perpetuated, despite #MeToo.

And finally we end up at the intersection of politics and the arts.  Using the old casting couch culture, talentless mooks could make their way into positions of public exposure.  But has shouting down Harvey Weinstein eradicated that culture?  The existence of Trumps and Moores would seem to indicate that while some progress has been made in the entertainment sector, society as a whole still seems to value the idea that amateurish schmucks can jump the queue and go from shower-stall crooner to multi-platinum recording artist, or from junior high school Broccoli Stalk #3 to Matt Damon's next love interest.
It has been said that excellence within the context of a particular discipline can be achieved with ten thousand hours of applied learning and practice.  However, the shortcut of sacrificing one's dignity and self-respect seems to be equally acceptable.  Sure, fellating Howard Hughes will no longer get you a role in a major motion picture but rather a potential prison sentence for necrophilia, depending on the legal jurisdiction you inhabit.  Instead of debasing one's self in private, the new fad is to force people to do so on produced television.
The latest thing is "The Launch," a reality television show.  Let's examine some of the elements.  The prize is fame, exposure, and a record label contract.  In order to win the prize, you must win the favour of a grotty, middle-aged white man.  In the meantime, your rehearsals and practice time is aired in front of a viewing audience eager to relate to common, ordinary "Harrison Bergeron"-esque talentless performances.
No sex on air, of course, but I'm sure the interwebs will compensate for that soon enough as soon as some of the contestants are thrown onto the trash heap of pop culture history.  And Americans are very shy about sex.  Where Yankees used to chastise British people for being prudes, the amount of censorship in the United States is reaching ridiculous proportions.  How many television networks were allowed to repeat the president's statement “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” verbatim?
To echo the great Lenny Bruce, American media bathes in blood.  The violence available for viewing on any of the major networks is as intense as any centerfold from "Fangoria" magazine on a daily basis.  But any tender and loving moment between two caring individuals that shows a nipple?  Verboten.  Thrown onto the bonfire of "degenerate art."
What does "The Launch" mean for American society and its valuation of art?   Well, apparently the contestants don't even need to win the competition, as they can now release singles directly to iTunes and Spotify and whatever other online distribution system and start racking up platinum sales before the show even concludes.
This essentially means that popular music now is not being performed, recorded, and distributed based on merit.  These are not virtuoso musicians that have spent the 10,000 hours to perfect their art.  They haven't fine-tuned and honed their stagecraft by playing at gigs in venues of different sizes with audiences of different tempers.  Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork paid their dues and busked on streetcorners, and learned what riffs got the most pennies in a hat.  Then they managed to get songs written by Carole King and Neil Diamond to propel them to stardom as The Monkees.
The bottom line here is that the vast majority of popular music being marketed at the public now is less sophisticated and authentic than The Monkees.  Mediocrities that haven't even convinced the grotty white guy to award them the victory are flooding the market, and because the delivery system is so automatic and convenient, money is flowing into the studio labels for free.  That's right, studio A&Rs can release five or six singles (one from every competitor) without signing any of them.  Eventually, they'll sign one of the groups, offer them something miserable, milk as much sales as they can, and then drop them in the dustbin.  Why?  To do anything else would require investment.  This is about profit and getting people to pay them money, not about rewarding artists for artistic merit.  Reality TV exists as a cheap way to fill airtime where there are no expenses for scriptwriters or directors, and the unpaid warm bodies double as performers and marketing devices.
Does anyone remember the group "Next"?  They were number one on Billboard's Top 100 Hot Songs in 1998.  Can you name the single?  Yup.  Twenty years from now, the poor William Hung wannabes that embarrassed themselves on national television will be wishing that they had the kind of enduring fame that Bobby Pickett earned.  Meanwhile, the public will at least have the convenience of deleting the unoriginal filler from their smartphones rather than grow to adulthood and have their shelves cluttered with anodyne dreck that any six-year old with a 1982 Casio electronic keyboard could produce.

Shower Songlist

Again, like a crossword puzzle, anyone who can determine the common factors among all or most of these tracks gets to act intellectually superior and smug for an undefined period of time.  Outwit the shuffle function, and you may demonstrate some sort universal principle of existence.

• Tusk, by Fleetwood Mac
• Help Me Rhonda, by The Beach Boys
• Fifty Mission Cap, by The Tragically Hip
• Bombs Away, by Johnny Clegg and Savuka
• Around the World, by Aqua
• Kashmir, as performed by Jimmy Page and Robert Plant (Unplugged)
• Ring of Fire, by Johnny Cash
• Hockey Night in Canada Theme, by CBC musicians of some sort
• Rockin' World, by Joe Strummer
• Brain Drain, by Lightning Seeds

And I think that's about enough out of me for the multiple sittings that it has taken.  Hope that most of it is coherent.  Until next time, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Mason-Dixon Hockey

Greetings, gentle readers.
It's a topic oft-beaten like the proverbial dead horse or rented mule or some other unfortunate ungulate, but I'll return once again to that well in search of some sort of purgative satisfaction.  I watched a fair portion of a game of hockey between the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers.
Let's address the points one by one.
I have nothing against the poor schlubs who play for the Florida Panthers.  They are doing a job and they are being paid handsomely for doing the thing that they love.  I'm sure that workers at the factories that produced Zyklon-B in the 1930s and 1940s took that same job satisfaction home to their families.  In fact, I feel very sorry for them.  They were even more depressed and unhappy than the Oilers, who were forced to play in front of their illustrious forebears of 35 years prior who conquered all before them in ridiculously awe-inspiring fashion.  Quick note - the team of 1984-85 had three players who scored over 100 points (Gretzky, Kurri, Coffey).  Those three won the Art Ross/Hart, Lady Byng, and the Norris Trophies, respectively.  The team also finished the season with 109 points, despite only clocking TWO shutouts.  In an 80 game season, they scored over 400 goals meaning that they averaged FIVE goals per game.
The present day Oilers can't measure up against that.  They are a faint echo of nigh-godhood.  The league is prejudiced against them.  The city is fighting through a deep financial ambivalence about the new arena.  Much sadness.  The Panthers are much worse off.

League prejudice is off the intercoursing hook.  There was one brief tableau in the game when all of the Oilers players stopped playing and gesticulated at the nearest official.  There are four of them on the ice, for those that have stopped counting.  In the first period, the Oilers were penalized for having six (non-goaltending) skaters on the ice, for which Darnell Nurse served a two-minute penalty.  When the Panthers committed the exact same offence later in the game, it went unregarded by the aforementioned four officials, despite the pleas of the legal five skaters for the Oiler team.  I get it.  The NHL wants teams in big money, large catchment American markets.  The recipe for making Americans pay money for things they don't understand is to advertise aggressively.  Advertising in the United States is built on exceptionalism - we are winners, be a winner, join us.  Add them together, and you have to give victories to teams that need exposure, not those that earn wins through skill, endeavour, or tactical acumen.  Any sort of merit, really, other than the potential to earn money.
Further to the above point, it is nice to see that ice hockey is getting more television airtime.  There seems to be a game on every night.  Unfortunately, those games invariably feature one of three teams -  the Tampa Bay Buccalightning, the Florida Trail of Tears, and the Las Vegas WrongMetal Knights.  (for those not keeping track, Nevada is the SILVER State.)  Those three teams get inordinate media exposure as per the All-Star Game, as well as disproportionately favourable treatment from the league and the officiating crews thereof.  The Mickey Mouse team from Anaheim received the same treatment when it paid in its huge franchise expansion fee.  Money talks, and athletic sportsmanship walks.If you've got a half-billion dollars to throw at Shorty Halfman, you too can have a WINNING (though not necessarily successful) NHL franchise. 

Too long; didn't read:  as soon as Quebec or Winnipeg didn't make the numbers, the NHL shut the doors on them.  But look at the numbers for Arizona, Florida, and Carolina according to ESPN.  They suck worse than the Canadian franchises ever did, but they get bailed out like the bloated and irresponsible Wall Street institutions that have morally bankrupted the... whoop, getting off topic.
Before I cut to the musical interpretation bit, I want to stress this one point.  I feel sorry for the poor bastards that play for the Florida Panthers. They play in an empty mausoleum of a building in Florida filled with empty corporate banks of seats and pensioners that want a coffee in an air-conditioned building.  When they are on the road, their relatives are too ashamed to cheer when they score a goal, so all of their accomplishments may as well be performed on the dark side of the moon during something that really captures the American public's attention, like a fidget spinner or a new iPhone app that defines pronouns.
So the game last night had lots of goals, including one from a penalty shot.  Whee.  The Oilers were just trying to show the legends in the rafters that they had graduated from juniors, and the johnny lunchbucket that scored a hat-trick for the SwampGator Seminole Killers got as much applause as Harvey Weinstein at a #MeToo luncheon.  Florida scored seven goals.  Seven.  Three for Johnny Lunchbucket.  The lads on the bench could barely raise their gloves for a celebratory fistbump because they were so busy calling their agents and screaming "Trade Me Right Fucking Now!" 

Conclusion

So what?  Who cares? 
Answer:  because every once in a while, there is some asinine pillock who will assert that, because he or she has met a professional weasel-fondler once, that the experience has given the person the authority to dictate that spectators cannot influence sports. 
"It doesn't matter how loudly you shout at your television, it won't change the game."
You've heard it.  You may have even said it.  It's still wrong.
If a tree falls in a forest and no-one applauds it, facts A and B are disconnected and unrelated.  Human emotions are not so easily categorized and dissociated.  If you win a gold medal at the Olympics and your mother cries when you wave to her from the podium, you may as well ask that tree to replant itself and fall all over again for all of the good an analogy will do.
If you don't think that the fans can help their team, fine.  The Toronto Maple Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967, and they've sold out every game for the intervening fifty years.  Newcastle United haven't won the English top title in over ninety years, but they routinely sell out an enormous stadium with a capacity of over 52,000.  The argument can be made that goodwill and passion are meaningless when faced with those examples.  If one accepts that argument, then human achievement is equally meaningless. 

Plato reduced humanity to needing, reasoning, and esteeming.  Freud rephrased that as the id, the ego, and the superego.  The conclusion is the same - you need to eat, breathe, drink, stay warm, etc, to live.  Yay.  If you don't meet those criteria, you're not reading this and I don't care about you because you're dead.
The reasoning or ego bit is a little more complex.  HOW do I get food, build shelter, drink non-contaminated water, avoid death by predators, etc.?  If you have parents that held more than a passing interest in you, these are not that complicated.  Some people have progenitors that never had a pet and always wanted to name something LeDaDawnequisha.  We all have our crosses to bear.
The Superego, or as the SPA (Socrates-Plato-Aristotle) would call it, the thymos (θυμός) is the WHY.  An accomplishment is not an accomplishment if it is not praised or esteemed as such.
I'm sure that lots of homo sapiens sapientis ran a lot.  Some of the footprints are still immortalized on the Eastern Cape of Africa.  But we don't know who did it.  Identity becomes important when we consider Pheidippides.  Who is he?  He ran the first marathon. 
Go run 26 miles and 385 yards.  Maybe you feel happy.  Maybe you get some serotonin happening in your system.  Run the same distance in Boston on the third Monday in April, and a different thing happens.
Bottom line: humans are social animals and we need to feel wanted and important in one another's estimation.  If you think that athletes are any different, you are either a sociopath or fast on your way to becoming one.

Shower Songlist

• Big Love, by Fleetwood Mac
• Misty Mountain Hop, as performed by Dread Zeppelin
• Drag City, by The Beach Boys
• Nkosi Yamakhosi, by Labysmith Black Mambazo
• Hey Little Girl, by Bad Manners
• Memphis Tennessee, as performed by George Thorogood
• Theme From Something Important, by the Traveling Wilburys
• Tubthumping, by Chumbawamba

What are the thematic conclusions that we can draw from these songs?  Hurm.  There are a few that seem to deal with female children, although in profoundly different ways.  "Memphis Tennessee" is a love song from a father to his daughter, while the others deal with romantic sorts of attachment.  As always, I would really appreciate any sort of interpretation.
That's it for now.  My medication schedule is in a tizzy, and I need to do some medical paperwork. And thus, until later, I bid thee a fair adieu.
Goodnight England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS

Tremendous Amounts of Snow

Greetings, gentle readers.
What we find is this:  Calgary is being smothered under a blanket of snow over a couple of dozen inches thick.  Traffic is treacherous and everyone who thinks that running light rail transit above ground in a country that experiences five months of winter a year should be shot and left in a ditch to be repeatedly showered with defecation.
That being said, I'm actually going to lead off with my iPod playlist, because we can comfortably segue from there.

Shower Songlist

• Blue Light, by David Gilmour
• How, by Lisa Loeb
• Auf Achse, by Franz Ferdinand
• Flight of the Phoenix, by Grand Funk Railroad
• No Time, by The Guess Who
• Natty Dreadlock-Rastaman Vibration-War Live Medley, by Bob Marley

From here, let's look at the lyrics of the last track.

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior
Is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned -
Everywhere is war - Me say war.
That until there are no longer first class and second class citizens of any nation
Until the colour of a man's skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes -
Me say war.
That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race -
Dis a war.
That until that day - the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality
Will remain in but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained -
Now everywhere is war - war.

Placed in the context of the American political atmosphere of identity and division, Marley's words seem to echo strongly.  The fact that race has been repeatedly displaced as a point of discussion means that the current political establishment has no intention of actually addressing, let alone resolving the issue of unequal treatment under the Constitution on the basis of skin colour.
To rephrase that, whenever the point of unfair, unjust, and unequal treatment is raised, it is recategorized as something else.  NFL players began taking a knee during the national anthem to protest police brutality being disproportionately applied to people of colour.  Instead of discussing police violence, escalation tactics, and the extension of stop-and-frisk-style profiling based on skin pigment, we are asked to discuss patriotism.  Taking a knee is not seen as protest, but as disrespect for the national anthem.  And disrespecting the anthem means disrespecting the flag.  And disrespecting the flag is somehow disrespectful towards America's teeming and swelling ranks of veterans of their interminable foreign wars. 
Cops shoot unarmed black men at an alarming rate around the country, but a protest of that state of affairs is translated into a conversation about anthems, flags, veterans, and patriotism.  Somewhere in that translation, the question of race is buried, and the political establishment dodges another point of controversy.
Why does the establishment want to avoid discussing race?  Because it it part of the mechanics of American governance.  I'm reminded of President Lyndon Baines Johnson's famous quotation,

I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it.  If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.  Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.

If you think that sounds a little cynical for the 36th President of the United States to say, you can check the veracity of the quotation HERE.  To quickly summarize, if you want people to vote against their own best interests, let them vote in favour of their basest instincts.
To extend Johnson's thought about pockets, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. reached a similar conclusion:   race is inextricably tied to economics.  Both King and Johnson believed in a "War on Poverty" because scarcity and need breed desperation and degradation.  When economic hardships are no longer a factor, discussions of a shared humanity can be more easily facilitated.  Unfortunately, in order for the political status quo to maintain its structure, a disadvantaged underclass is required and thus racism is an institutional function.
More on this later, but for now I must needs bid adieu.
Until next time, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

February Polar Vortex Express

Greetings, gentle readers.

Sports

First off, my congratulations to the Philadephia Eagles for winning their first-ever Super Bowl.  They not only defeated a significantly favoured opponent, but they did it using an entertaining and heroic philosophy.  Gambling on fourth-downs, trick plays, and two-point conversions, the Eagles demonstrated guts, confidence, and commitment to the fans.  Backup quarterback Nick Foles also managed to get into the history books for a number of different reasons.  He's one of only three guys to win the Superbowl despite starting three or fewer regular season games.  Of those three, he's one of two to get the game MVP award.  And he became the first man in NFL history to both catch and throw for a touchdown in the final game.  Combined, both teams contributed to the greatest total number of yards ever gained in a Super Bowl game.  A delight of a game, even for a neutral.  Which I am not.
On the negative side, the officiating crew responsible for the debacle at Anfield earlier in the day managed to swaddle themselves in shame and controversy.  If Liverpool FC's last game in the FA Cup showed how video review can make a game intolerably slow-paced, this game demonstrated how badly oversight is required to defeat rampant incompetence, corruption, or both.  It is rare for a team to receive a yellow card for "simulation" (diving) and then consequently receive two consecutive penalty awards for players collapsing to the ground in similar fashion.  Tottenham managed to wrestle a draw from a game in the dying minutes with some extraordinarily generous decisions from the referee and his assistants and it should be safe to say that the finances of those concerned will fall under some scrutiny.

Weather

Back in the day, Calgary was the home of the winter Chinook wind, a warm and moist breeze that gave week-long reprieves from otherwise relentlessly frozen, snowy, arctic conditions.  By the same token, Edmonton was just cold.  Desiccating, debilitating, depressing, and dehumanizing cold.  Childhood memories of walking backwards through the snow because the howling icy winds would freeze your eyelids shut were punctuated by thoughts that just 350 kilometres south, people in Calgary could walk to school in short sleeves because of that amazing and supernatural Chinook.
The world is a different place now, and Calgary's seasonal get-out-of-jail-free wind has become a thing of the past.  Whether that is because of massive tectonic activity shifting the Earth's axis of rotation, or because of sunspot activity, or anthropogenic climate change, or some sort of combination of factors, the past is gone, and it has been replaced with a fresh kind of hell for all concerned.

Shower Songlist

Considering the inches of fresh snow and bone-chilling conditions outside the window of my room, the conclusion that my iPod has a sense of humour is entirely viable.

• The Boys of Summer, performed by Bree Sharp
• Cruel, Cruel Summer, performed by Ace of Base
• Girlfriend, by Matthew Sweet
• In the Night Time, by George Thorogood and the Delaware Destroyers
• Strange Disease, by Prozzäk
• Communication, by The Cardigans
• Devil's Been Busy, by The Travelling Wilburys
• Waterfall, by The Electric Light Orchestra
• Achilles' Last Stand, by Led Zeppelin

Basically, the first two tracks seem to be the anomalies here, since they are both seasonally related and cover versions of songs written and originally performed by other artists.  Beyond that, there don't seem to be any readily observable commonalities between the songs.
And now, with an aching stomach and numb, tingling arm, I must bid adieu for the nonce.  I got a fair bit of physio exercise in today, but that also means that the exhaustion is decidedly more palpable.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Southern Exposure

Greetings, gentle readers.
So here I am in chilly Calgary for the Groundhog Day weekend.  My arrival in Stampede Town nicely coincided with another pronounced appearance of the dreaded Polar Vortex on meteorological maps around North America.  Essentially, freezing blasts of ultra-cold air from the North Pole are streaking across Alberta, cutting a swath through the great plains down to Chicago before sweeping northeast again towards the St. Lawrence River.  The immediate practical upshot is that while yesterday's weather forecast called for slightly cool weather and light snow, the reality is that today's weather has been bitterly nasty with enough snowfall to cause the shutdown of several of the city's main traffic arteries amidst almost 300 vehicular collisions.
It's also been interesting to observe the close of the January transfer window in the English Premier League, as Henrikh Mkhitaryan and an awful amount of money left Manchester United in exchange for Arsenal's wantaway Chilean star Alexis Sanchez.  Arsenal also added Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang from Borussia Dortumnd to augment an already strong attacking front line.  The result was a 5-1 crucifixion of Everton earlier today, throwing newly appointed Everton manager Sam Allardyce into new dimensions of puce apoplexy.
Tomorrow morning will see Liverpool face off against table position rivals Tottenham Hotspurs, and I intend to retain consciousness through all of it, so I'm going to slither off for a quick kip now.
Before I go, there must be time enough for...

Shower Songlist

• All Along the Watchtower, by Dylan and the Dead
• My Beloved Monster, by Eels
• Sugar Coated Iceberg, by Lightning Seeds
• Face Down, Ass Up, by 2 Live Crew
• Missionary Man, by Annie Lennox
• Working in a Coal Mine, by Devo
• Doctor Jones, by Aqua
• The World Tonight, by Paul McCartney
• We've Got To Get Out Of This Place, by The Animals
• Wild Side, by Max Creek

As to any sort of thematic relevance within this particular list, the only speculation I might make would be that they all seem to make some sort of reference to geography in the lyrics or the title.  Except for the 2 Live Crew thing, which doesn't reference a whole lot of abstract anything.  I guess that would make the rest of them appropriate for a commentary on my temporary relocation.
I'll try and expand on some of my points tomorrow, when I've got a bit more energy.
Goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

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

Cinematic Observations

Greetings, gentle readers.
The past few days (and a free trial subscription to the Hollywood Channel) have afforded me the opportunity to screen a few films of yesteryear and make some ruthlessly cynical observations about them.  Let's revisit some of the films that ran their fingernails across the chalkboard of popular culture all those years ago.

Ladyhawke

This is a film that seems to have improved in people's recollection in proportion with the length of time elapsed since the last viewing.  In short, it looks better in the rear view mirror the smaller it becomes.  Is it as good as we remember it being?  What are the mediocre parts that our subconscious is concealing from us, to spare our childhood innocence?

Cast

Everyone loves Matthew Broderick.  Period.  Not just because of the adolescent ebullience of "Ferris Bueller" or the Civil War anti-slave monument "Glory" or his Broadway work.  He's just been around forever, an unchanging avatar of impish goodwill and positive energy.  If the audience response from the recent film "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" is anything to use as reference, Rutger Hauer is still a folk hero.  As any hardcore gangsta-rap aficionado will tell you, Michelle Pfeiffer still has enough street cred to stop a drive-by shooting with a single arched eyebrow.  Even John Wood is recalled by many, although only as Professor Falken from the equally-revered 80s cult classic "Wargames."  It's possible that some may recall his excellent and tear-jerking performance in "Shadowlands" as Christopher Riley, but that demographic is ridiculously small.  In fact, beyond myself and a fellow named Colin Mitzel, very few people recognize the devastating emotional power of that film.
Finally, fans of the original TV series "The Prisoner" will fondly remember Leo McKern as the most enigmatic of the actors to portray Number Two.
In short, Ladyhawke has no shortage of acting talent or pedigree. Why on Earth was this film not given a triumphal procession at the Academy Awards en route to some sort of AFI recognition as a masterpiece of modern cinema?

Plot and Other Stuff

The epic, legendary, faerie-tale scope of this film place it firmly in the genre encompassing other fondly esteemed films as "Willow", "The Hobbit"', and "Labyrinth."  Like those other classics, picking out logical inconsistencies or other narrative flaws is futile.  Suspension of disbelief trumps everything, and the power of character in the spotlight of myth is the dynamo that drives the story.  Bizarre developments like summer crashing into the depths of winter within 48 hours, or the mechanics of crossbow construction and ballistics can be gleefully dismissed because of the intensity of the clashes between good and evil, right and wrong, and love against the forces of avarice and malice.

So What's Wrong?

Why is "Ladyhawke" not rated as a classic, or even a great film?  Everyone is welcome to their own speculations and calculations, but I reckon that there are two things that torpedo the production: editing and music.
The cinematography itself is not totally garbage.  As I mentioned, there are some great shots of scenery and sets, mountains and cathedrals, and some great pageantry using costumes and uniforms.  That being said, the post production staff must have been a troop of foeces-flinging spider monkeys.  Shots are cut and spliced helter-skelter, with very little attention to continuity or even linear narrative exposition.  Several scenes are dropped (or flung) at the feet of the audience without any establishing shots, dialogue, or segues. Several sequences of cross-cuts are supposed to increase tension through simultaneous and time-dependent actions, but are so sloppily dredged into one another as to provide all of the dramatic impact of a runny bowel movement.  The beautiful Italian landscape and mediaeval sets make for some wonderful mise-en-scéne shot constructions, but some of the shots are haphazardly stapled together to produce jarring disturbances in the storytelling process.
Finally, there is the music.  There are two flavours on offer throughout the film - a sombre and dramatic orchestral score underpinned with Gregorian chants and pentatonal progressions, and a pop-rock electro-synth bastard byproduct of rejected Alan Parsons Project riffs.  The latter has not aged well.  Unless you are abnormally nostalgic for side-ponytail haircuts, legwarmers, and extended montage sequences of learning to gleam the cube, the music is absolutely repellent and thoroughly incompatible with the film.
In conclusion, a solid post-production team should be able to overhaul this film and create a new special edition from the existing component pieces and some appropriate musical passages.  In fact, this should be such an elementary exercise that I am surprised that there hasn't been a "Blu-Ray Platinum Collector's Edition" released yet.  It should only require a 12 year-old with Adobe Premiere Pro, a 16-track sound mixing board, and a 1981 Bontempi organ.  Film executives, take note - you don't need another sequel, reboot, or comic-book adaptation to fill your production and release schedules - just fix "Ladyhawke" and collect the spoils.

The Inglorious Bastards

Quentin Tarantino's remake of the 1978 original had a number of very subversive elements in it.  People who have been brainwashed into thinking that Tarantino is some sort of gore shock-filmmaker because of ignorant reviews of "Reservoir Dogs" and disturbingly sycophantic reviews of "The Hateful Eight" will happily buy into the idea that his "Inglourious Basterds" is a gleeful shoot-em-up of Nazis, who are cinematic shorthand when it comes to cheap villains. 
It's very simple.  Nazis are evil.  Those who do something to oppose them must therefore be good.  No further character development, script, or exposition of any kind required.  If the morality of a grave-looting defiler of antiquities is in doubt, just remember that he's against the Nazis, and that will tell you that he is a good guy.
"The Dirty Dozen" is a typical redemption story of ne'er-do-wells turning from criminals to charming rogues by dint of slaughtering a few hundred on-screen people in SS uniforms.  It's a tempting template: good guys shoot loads of Germans, no moral questions involved, the world is saved, and everyone can congratulate themselves about the appropriate and justified use of lethal force in a good, proper, and ethical war.  Pass the ammunition and expand the Defence Budget again.  Producers get funding and insurance without a problem, the project is greenlighted by the studio, and the film makes it's prerequisite 250% return on investment.
The thing to notice here is that both the 1978 original "Inglorious Bastards" and the 2009 "Inglourious Basterds" are deeply subversive.  What do I mean by this?  The filmmakers play an elaborate joke on the audience and their expectations.
The first film sets up the usual conventions - Americans represent decency, democracy, freedom, etc. while the Germans are brutal non-humans that act as living target practice, forming an agency for Americans to prove their innate goodness through murder.  But somewhere along the lines, the Italian filmmakers got a little cheeky.  Serious cracks appear in the depiction of the American troops, first through a scene showing American officers gunning down their own deserting forces, and then later through an extended dialogue between two Americans featuring some race and gender baiting that would send entire college campus populations fleeing to their safe spaces.
By the end of the film, after the vast majority of charming rogues have bravely sacrificed their own lives to defeat the godless Huns, it turns out that the one notable survivor of the original gang is the most racist, rapiest scumbag of the lot.  So racist that he calls Fred Williamson a nigger to his face.  The film concludes with the predator walking off with an innocent French nurse whom he intends to rape, murder, and dump.  Unflattering portrait of Americans in Europe?  Probably.  An unsettling conclusion to an otherwise stock B-movie plot?  Definitely.
Tarantino ups the ante in his seemingly generic WWII shoot-em-up of a similar name.  In this film, we see a complete inversion of tropes.  The SS baddies are slick, cultured, educated, erudite, and impeccably well-mannered civilized sorts, while the American revenge-fantasy liberation heroes are knuckle-dragging, slobbering barbarians who delight in gratuitous gore and monosyllabic threats.  To top it off, the revenge fantasy here is JEWISH.
Let's recall that the United States refused to allow refugee ships of Jews leaving Europe to dock, like the SS St. Louis in 1939.  Later, after the United States had declared war on Germany, they actually persecuted Jewish refugees as German spies, and sought the death penalty.
Quick aside - the current presidential administration's predilection for a "Muslim Travel Ban" or for denying entrance to Syrian refugees sound an awful lot like this statement by William Bullitt, the American Ambassador to France:

"More than one-half the spies captured doing actual military spy work against the French Army were refugees from Germany.  Do you believe there are no Nazi and Communist agents of this sort in America?”

How about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

“Not all of them are voluntary spies.  It is rather a horrible story, but in some of the other countries that refugees out of Germany have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they found a number of definitely proven spies.”

And as The Smithsonian reports:

"Until the very end of 1944—by which time photographs and newspaper reports had demonstrated that the Nazis were carrying out mass murder—Attorney General Francis Biddle warned Roosevelt not to grant immigrant status to refugees."

Remember the poisoned Skittles tweet by Donald J. Trump, Jr.? 

“If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three would kill you. Would you take a handful?”

History let the American government watch innocents perish before.  It seems to have given the current administration a similar pass.
So here's the fantasy - the American government was not complicit in the holocaust because of its xenophobia, and Jews are magically given some sort of agency to "strike back" in revenge for the holocaust... during the holocaust.
Laughable, given the historical circumstance.
And so we find Brad Pitt leading a group of murderously thuggish "Jews" to run about in Europe, killing as many Germans as possible in retribution for a then-ongoing genocide.  One wonders how an elderly rabbi would view the depiction of urbane, polite, cultured, and literate German officers being beaten to death and torn to bloody ribbons by slavering, grinning troglodytes with Stars of David around their necks.  Or even how these bloodthirsty brutes emerged from their yeshivot, their minds twinkling with talmudic meditation, before deciding that they would much prefer bludgeoning skulls to bloody pulp instead of reading the Torah.
In short, Tarantino pulls audiences in with the expectation that they will be gratified by seeing justice done in a hideously entertaining way against villains who thoroughly deserve it, and thus rectify all of the horrid, atrocious things that really happened in history.  He then confuses them by making the baddies educated and civilized, while the good guys are grunting neanderthals.  The introduction of the "Bear Jew" character actually depicts him emerging from a cave with a baseball bat.
Finally, the viewer is left with one of two options - a distasteful and repellent victory for the forces of "Good", or a sad and tragic defeat for the forces of "Bad."  In the final analysis, it is a challenge to audiences to determine if they can make their own moral evaluations, or whether they just accept conventions blindly and identify with whomever wears the proverbial white hat.  Douglas Sirk would be proud.

The Comedians

Given a scriptwriter of Graham Greene's calibre, and a cast that includes Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, James Earl Jones, Peter Ustinov, and Sir Alec Guinness, one might think that this film would be requisite viewing for film aficionados.  Strangely enough, very few people have even heard of the production.  I think that it's worth watching for several reasons. 
First off, the script is tight, economical, and neat.  Very few words or scenes are wasted, making the entire production tense and gripping.  Guinness has a smaller role, but commands attention during every appearance.  Taylor and Burton exude a confused and conflicted obsession for one another — a parallel between their real selves and their characters in the film that draws the eye in an almost hypnotic spiral of emotional turmoil. 
Second, the film deals with an emergent post-colonial dictatorship in the third world.  The film treats this sort of potentially explosive setting with respect, and allows the audience to experience the situation dramatically, rather than editorially describe the conditions.  For example, "Star Wars Episode IV:  A New Hope" begins with an introductory narrative crawl that declares that Rebel forces have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.  No subtlety here.  In contrast, "The Comedians" presents characters and events dispassionately and lets the viewer decide where good and evil, or right and wrong reside.
Finally, this film has some fantastic roles for minority actors.  Not just for 1967, and not just for a film set in Haiti, but in general.  James Earl Jones, Georg Stanford Brown, and Cicely Tyson turn in magnificently nuanced performances.  To the best of my recollection, this is the earliest film roles I can recall for Zakes Mokae ("Cry Freedom") and Roscoe Lee Browne (TV cameo artist extraordinaire), making this a film where super-mega-millionaire-stars Taylor and Burton are almost upstaged off the star billing.
More films to come when I build up some more stamina to document my responses to them.  "Battle of the Sexes" is likely to come under scrutiny soon, as my mother and I recently watched the Emma Stone/Steve Carell vehicle in Calgary.

Shower Songs

And finally, here is the playlist that accompanied one of my showers in Calgary, during the time I spent over the holidays in my mother's house.

• Devil Went Down to Georgia, by The Charlie Daniels Band
• Roxanne, by The Police
• All Your Base are Belong to Us, by Zerowing
• One of those Rivers, by Dodgy
• He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother, by The Hollies
• Lord of the Dance, performed by Captain Tractor
• Magneto and Titanium Man, by Paul McCartney
• Catholic Girls, by Frank Zappa

And until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

The Giving Season

Greetings, gentle readers.
Allow me to sketch a quick tableau of a family Christmas gathering.  The hearth fire is puttering away radiantly, the tree is adorned with all manner of shiny and pretty baubles, the gifts and snacks are heaped high in their own realms, and everyone present is smiling contently with stomachs full of a hearty meal.
But this is Christmas, after all, and Christmas means acquisition.  Gather ye consumer goods while ye may.  It is not long before the carefully wrapped boxes of things are being distributed to the awaiting crowd.  Let's fast forward an hour's time.
There are heaps of presents stacked in corners of the room, organized and readied for transportation, and a couple of toys are making obnoxious noises and worrying the puppy.  One teenage girl surveys her loot - a box.  The other kids got presents.  She got the empty container that might have held a present, but didn't.  Don't get me wrong.  A cardboard box can be thrilling, particularly to a kitten.  However,it looks a bit lacklustre in comparison to the turbo drone aircraft in front of the teenage boy in the centre of the room, or the 3-D virtual reality goggle set his father wields.  The girl smiles bravely.
The girl's father sits across the room.  He has already refused several invitations to sit closer to middle of the congregation.  Whatever reasons he had seem justified as round after round and circuit after circuit of gift recipients are named, and his name is notably absent from the rolls.  Finally, a present is passed over to his corner.  It's a frying pan that is divided into several sections, allowing a person to cook an egg, two rashers, and some hashbrowns simultaneously.  It's a wonderful present for a person who lives alone and has to prepare breakfast for one every morning.  It's a great way to let a person's food feel close to other foods, and not alone and abandoned on the stovetop or in the kitchen.  It's not a good present for a single father.  The subtext reads:  you will never have custody or share your life with another, so get used to feeding yourself.  This is an efficient way to do so.
Before long, the gifts are distributed, the stump of the tree is visible beneath the boughs, and the father quietly excuses himself, takes his bachelor's frying pan, and leaves without much ado.  His daughter heads upstairs to the guest room to play with her empty box.  The other parents play card games over coffee while their children try on their clothing, read their books, and take pictures of their toys with their smartphones.
So, in conclusion, if going to attend a festive gift-giving celebration where there are likely to be second-class citizens, bring a few extra presents that can be quickly addressed on the spot.  It's a small sacrifice to make.  It doesn't upset the more fortunate, and brings a disproportionate amount of joy to the overlooked and ignored.
I never thought that a specific occasion was required to mandate that one person give a gift to another.  If you care for someone, give that person a gift, where it be a peck on the cheek, a line of poetry, an afternoon's worth of housework, or whatever.  It is really disappointing when you realize that you only get gifts from people who feel obligated to go online sometime in November and order something that ticks all of the boxes for an appropriate present, before perfunctorily handing it to you and washing their hands of another odious responsibility.
So after another heartwarming holiday season, it's farewell from me and may authenticity pursue you doggedly for the rest of your days.
Goodnight England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS