This Pilgrim's Progress

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

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

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

The Former Filbert Street Foxes

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

The Song List

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

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

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

Take a Knee

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

Charity Begins... Somewhere, I Guess

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

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

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

Shower Songlist

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

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

Busy Doing Nothing

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

Random Track List

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

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

The Art of the Argument

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

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

Educational Contradiction

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

Six Degrees of Association

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

Apples Never Fall Far

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

Faux Agreement

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

Personal Revelation

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

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

Recovery and Stuff

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

Football

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

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

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

Music

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

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

After the Slab

Greetings, gentle readers.
Well, it appears that the surgery went well, since I've got a report indicating that there are zero post-operation complications.  Of course, now I'm in piercing, rending pain.  The collarbone muscles that the neurosurgeons cut to get at my spine are connected to everything in my upper thoracic cavity.  Breathing is hard, a swallow of water feels like a pine cone going down my throat, coughs are pure torment, and I haven't had the catastrophic misfortune of a sneeze yet, but have great justifiable cause to fear one.
That being said, I'm just going to blast out my shower playlist and run away before I get drawn into the big topics that the Atlantic Monthly magazine has tossed about recently, like women acting catty towards other women in the workplace, or Antifa violating the social contract of exclusive legitimacy of violence.  I might also add at this point that, due to an enormous wound on my neck, I can't really shower, per se, but rather dunk my head and wash it before hosing off the rest of my body, avoiding the over-sized compress that conceals the steri-strips acting as temporary sutures.  Steri-strips that would just as easily wash away in shower water as keep my insides from defying my skin and heading outside my body.
Here we go...

Almost a Narrative

Romeo and Juliet, by Dire Straits
Turning the Town Red, by Elvis Costello
More Today than Yesterday, by Spiral Staircase
Cruel, Crazy, Beautiful World, by Johnny Clegg
Auf Achse, by Franz Ferdinand

And that's it for me.  I need to take some more medication and lie down for a while.  The hospital kept me well juiced with Dilaudid, and I need to reckon up how I can match that dosage with my flavour of opioid.
Until next time, good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Pre-Op Jitters

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'm going to have to make this a brief as I dare, since I'm strung out on four different medications and tears of exhaustion are dripping onto my pants.

Religion Poisons Everything

I could go on at length about how the Bible in general, and the Old Testament specifically is a load of crap.  On one level, it's a bunch of shit gurgled out by a pack of ignorant desert-dwelling barbarians who hadn't developed any sort of knowledge as a society.  Their maths were garbage, their medicine was non-existent, and their science was founded on fear, superstition, and arrogance based on cultural insularity.
Slavery, rape, genocide, and barbarous cruelty aside, I want to briefly touch on the bit that I feel is highly apropos at the moment.  Not to trivialize the fates of the Midianites or the Hazorites, but they're no longer around to complain, are they?
One of the sneaky little divine admonitions of the Bible is not to wear clothing of different threads sewn together.  Chapter 22 of Deuteronomy basically says not to wear a material of wool mixed with linen.  That's pretty stupid.  One can brush it off as being as comparably stupid as the other forbidden things like pork and shellfish.  Food we can understand.  People in a desert that can't understand parasites or bacteria could interpret trichinosis as God's will not to eat swine, and spoiled oysters as the angels of the firmament directing people away from sea creatures without gills or fins.
"See?'  one may cry, "They're just ignorant.  They didn't know any better, so maybe one of the high priests got a rash from his wool/polyester blend bell-bottoms, and decided God was speaking to him again, like the time God asked Abraham to slay Isaac or killed all of Job's kine."
Things get a more sinister when you compare Deuteronomy ("The Book of Really Bad Ideas") 22:11 with Leviticus ("Another Book with Really Bad Ideas") 19:19, which says,

"Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee."

It rambles off to talk about scourging women that lieth with men, etc., but the damage is done here.  Don't mix breeds of cattle; don't mix seeds in a field; don't mix threads in a fabric.  This is no longer blind ignorance and stupid superstition.  This is the foundation of racial purity ideals.  When people run around, shrieking about "taking back their birthright" or "reclaiming their country," that sense of entitlement is not rooted in historical fact - it's rooted in revelatory scripture.
The fact that white supremacists have submitted to DNA tests that overwhelmingly point out that their genetic purity is utter bunk is irrelevant.  Science is irrelevant when God the tyrannical totalitarian is in the house.
The bottom line here is that white nationalists would have no traction without being given legitimacy by religious scripture.  It's not hard to extend this statement to slavery under the Confederate States of America, an institution only made possible under the auspices of "muscular Christianity."  As Robert E. Lee wrote:

"The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence."

Right.  I'll wind up quickly with my last playlist from my iPod Nano.

Shower Showcase

• Overland, by Stereophonics
• Suddenly Monday, by Melanie Chisholm
• Heart Refuse to Pound, by Big Sugar
• Teacher, by Jethro Tull
• Lucille, written by Albert Collins and Little Richard; performed by Paul McCartney and John Lennon in 1974
• Cartoon Heroes, by Aqua

I again yield the floor to anyone who can draw some sort of thematic conclusion from these disparate components.
My surgery is on Monday, and I suspect that my next post will likely be after I'm released from hospital.  Until that point, I must bid my adieus.
Good night England and the colonies,
—mARKUS

Final Week Countdown

Greetings, gentle readers.
A quick update on my health, not that anyone asked.  I've passed my pre-operative medical examination and it looks like we're going full steam ahead on Monday 21 August.  Apparently, my blood sugar registers as borderline diabetic, so I'm probably going to have to do some more A1c tests at some point.  In the meantime, the guy who eschews wearing jewelry now has a semi-permanent surgical wristband with which to decorate himself.  It's a pretty orange-pink and has a very stylish bar code.  Medically speaking, I'm reminded of a conversation from the film "Exorcist III":

Kinderman: "I thought you said there's nothing wrong."
Dyer: "My brother Eddie had these same symptoms for years."
K: "Your brother Eddie died at the age of 30."
D: "So what?  He got killed in Vietnam."
K: "There could be some sort of connection."
D: "A connection?"
K: "Are you sure it's not serious, Joe?"
D: "Well with Eddie..."
K: "Will you shut up about Eddie!"
D: "With my brother it was nerves."
K: "You make a lot of people nervous."
D: "Only sinners."

Sports

Liverpool FC just played their first match of the season, and, as so often tends to be the case, there are some positive and some negative conclusions to be reached.  The scoreline was an attractive one for the neutral observer at 3-3.  For LFC fans, it was worryingly familiar.  Too often, far too often in the past has the team made routine games seem like desperately panicked attempts to salvage dignity in the face of abject disaster.  Matters of simple execution become white-knuckled, nerve-fraying seconds of fingernail-chewing catastrophe.

One might suggest that sports have a greater emotional impact with increased tension between teams of comparable quality.  Others would argue that any discrepancy between ability and performance creates disappointment.  In this case, a team that can manhandle a team full of international stars like Bayern Munich 3-0 in a preseason game two weeks ago should be able to demonstrate the same precision and discipline against Watford.  As the great Bill Shankly said,

"Football is a simple game based on the giving and taking of passes, of controlling the ball and of making yourself available to receive a pass. It is terribly simple."

Watching players unable to replicate displays of simple competence breeds frustration and anger.  So rather than seize upon individual gaffes and failures, I will be a bit more obtuse and look at systemic failures which prevented the players from succeeding.  I noticed three things that manifested to a lesser degree during the preseason games, like the Audi Cup.

1.  Command at the Back

When Franz Beckenbauer was winning everything in Europe in the mid 70s with West Germany and Bayern Munich, his analytical mind kept drawing him toward the position of sweeper.  Someone who, when the team did not have the ball, could dictate to the defence how to cover, move, intercept, and tackle any oncoming assaults.  That person had to be behind the defence so that he/she could see the entire pitch and all the other players on it. When Beckenbauer moved to the New York Cosmos, began working on implementing that role himself - marshalling the defenders, solidifying possession, and then driving the next attack forward.

As strategy and tactics in world football developed, the rôle of the sweeper became integrated with other positions.  Sweepers became a luxury, and that manpower was required in midfield to cope with some of the newer systems like the WiBl/WoBl (With Ball/Without Ball) 3-5-2/5-3-2 and 4-3-3/4-5-1. In some teams, like the Manchester United of the 1990s and 2000s, they relied on a "sweeper-keeper."  Peter Schmeichel and Edwin van der Saar became the backfield generals that could command the backline, shriek at the back four to either step in line to form an offside trap, or to break to man-on-man coverage.  Manuel Neuer continues this tradition for Germany and Bayern Munich.  Other teams relied on a central defender to control the offside trap, and to direct coverage for blocks, tackles, and interceptions.  Some examples of centre-backs acting as the coördinating defensive general are Tony Adams, John Terry, and Fernando Hierro.  Wide full backs that famously directed traffic for their teams include Philipp Lahm and Paolo Maldini.  Finally, defensive midfielders that performed the traffic cop rôle include Marcel Desailly and Matthias Sammer.
Getting to the point - Liverpool doesn't have an individual that can perform this function.  Joel Matip is athletic and talented, but doesn't communicate.  Dejan Lovren is constantly out-thinking himself and questioning his own decisions.  Simon Mignolet is too focused on the ball to try and give instructions to anyone else.  Insofar as full backs go, Robertson and Alexander-Arnold are too unproven, Moreno and Clyne are too inconsistent, and when James Milner plays at left-back, he tries to lead by example, not by direction.  In the midfield, although Henderson, Wijnaldum, and Can like to play deep in their own end to start attacks from within their own half, none have any inclination to direct a defensive scheme.
Problem:  Nobody bossing the back-end.
Solution:  I had hoped that Ragnar Klavan might act as the shouty veteran for a while until Matip grows into it, but he's proven as uncertain and shaky as Lovren at this level.  I don't suppose Willem II have any big, Finnish defenders available during this transfer window?

2.  Space between the Lines

Many long-serving LFC fans will remember the animated antics of Rafa Benitez in the technical area at pitchside.

One gesture that he seemed to make on a rather regular basis was to hold his hands vertically, in parallel, thumbs pointed to the sky.  He would then squeeze his hands together, like clapping with a cushion between his hands.  His facial features would contort as he frantically tried to communicate this point to the players on the field.  Of course, what his gesticulations were meant to convey was that the space between the defensive, midfield, and forward lines should be compressed.
What does this mean?  Basically, the way that the players positioned themselves on the field did not suit the style of play indicated by the manager.   As I previously mentioned, Henderson, Can, and Wijnaldum all like to drift closer to their own net in the hopes of leading an attack.  In so doing, they left a huge gap between themselves and the trio of Mané, Firmino, and Salah.  In the Watford match, whenever the midfield received possession of the ball, they were forced to:

• pass through traffic and risk interception
• pass laterally or backwards to the defence
• pass over the top with 45-yard long balls

So either the midfield players need to press farther forward and the defence needs to coordinate steps forward in tandem, or the entire philosophy needs to change so that surrendering the midfield and sitting deep in defence works with long-ball, low percentage kicks upfield for the forwards to chase.
Problem:  Liverpool players are too far apart for short passing lanes.
Solution:  This may sounds sacrilegious, but the team needs less McManaman-esque free-wheeling, and more regimented positional play.

3.  Set Plays

I have harped on about this particular topic at length and on multiple occasions, such that I'm afraid that most of my acquaintances are well and truly sick of my hectoring.  Rafa Benitez reckons that a decent team ought to score at least one goal for every ten corner kicks.  That's reasonable, and it's therefore a cause for concern when a team concedes a goals from only three corner kicks, particularly since the ball took multiple touches within the 18-yard box.  Those same multiple touches created the swirling chaos that resulted from a set piece throw-in.  Strangely, part of the solution can be found by watching the 1981 film "Escape to Victory."

Granted, there aren't a whole lot of tactical bits of wisdom in the film.  That being said, consider Shankly's quotation that I cited earlier about simplicity.  Stallone's character (Robert Hatch) spends a fair bit of time badgering Michael Caine's character (John Colby) for one thing:  the place where a goalkeeper stands during a corner kick.  Colby brushes Hatch off repeatedly, thinking that Hatch is being facetious.  Eventually, Colby relents and tells the secret: "The far post, facing the ball."  Why there?
The answer lies in being able to see the flight of the ball.  Being able to spot the height and swing of the ball allows a goalkeeper to make a decision about whether to challenge for a catch or punch, or to stay deep in the 18-yard box.  The goalkeeper can also direct defenders in such a way as to allow the fewest touches and the fewest bounces of the ball by getting the soonest first contact.
The same logic applies to attackers of the ball during a corner.  Attackers should always be in motion, moving toward the ball in such a way that the attacker can always rush to meet the terminal point of the ball's flight.

Shower Music

Many apologies, but I've been at this off and on all day, and I just can't continue.  Don't even know when I'll get up enough gumption to have another shower and then have another go.  If anyone has any questions, please leave them in the comments section below, and I promise that I'll get to them. So here's what my iNano played for me during my last ablutions.

• Gloria, by Them
• Six-Blade Knife, by Dire Straits
• Why, by Melanie C
• Jungle Telegraph, by Eels
• Senikhumbule Unomathemba, by Ladysmith Black Mambazo

I don't know.  It may portend something interesting on the African continent.  Maybe not.
I've got to sign off and nip out for a kip, or tap off for a nap, or whatever it is that young people say these days.  "These days, these days..." as Vesuvius, the fourth Doctor's robot companion from Doctor Who Weekly, issues #1-8 would say.
Till next time, goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Sit Down Next to Me

Greetings, gentle readers.
Those who are visiting this blog for the first time, and interested in political and/or academic topics should probably skip this entry and either use the search bar or scroll downward to get to the relevant content.  I'm feeling a bit wretched, so I'm just using this bit to make sure that I am exhaustively cataloguing all of the music that plays during my showers.  This experiment involves finding patterns in seemingly random things, like a Rorschach test.  Because I need a nap, here goes:

iPod Nano Rave-Fest Mania

• Three-Minute Song by Big Sugar
• Time by Pink Floyd
• Smitten by Bree Sharp
• All for You, Sophia by Franz Ferdinand
• Girl Can't Help It by Journey

Reading through the list in a linear fashion would seem to indicate that there is some sort of chronology-related theme that transitions into some sort of destructive romantic cataclysm, involving a hideously dread-filled feeling of inevitability.  It's also interesting to note that I used the example of Archduke Franz Ferdinand to explain one of the POTUS' tweets in a blog entry last week.
In any event, I'm bagged.  I can't sleep in my normal foetal-position because my muscle relaxants screws up my joints.
That being said, good night England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS

Heritage Day Festivus

Greetings, gentle readers.
In the words of the illustrious Trevor Noah, let's get right into it.

Politics

By and large, a lot of people tend to believe that university level degrees in philosophy are worthless pieces of paper that lend no credence to any kind of qualification, and give no indication as to employability.

• Number One - universities and colleges are not job-placement facilities.  If you don't understand the point of a liberal arts education, announce it loudly in public and someone will inform you.
• Number Two - philosophy grants people the luxury of a larger perspective.  What do you want from your government?
  No, not something like a 2.5% increase in GDP per annum.
  What does good government actually mean?  What values does a good government hold?  Should security be a greater consideration than privacy?  Is compassion a greater attribute of government than fiscal transparency?
• Number Three - philosophy transcends arbitrary political divisions.  It doesn't matter if you're a member of the Whigs or the Know-Nothing party, slavery is almost certainly a bad concept.  And yet, there are people today that would argue about that.  Republican Ben Carson seems to imply that slavers did human cargo a favour by transporting them to a place with new hope and new masters.

Process of Elimination

I don't want to dwell on the president of the United States, because it is psychologically unhealthy to give any sort of attention to narcissists, but I did want to have a bit of a yammer that ought to appeal to my age demographic.

Jack Klugman

If you can remember the television show "Quincy M.E." you're probably asking yourself  where your life went.  You should also remember the opening title sequence, in which Jack Klugman performs an autopsy in front of a class of medical students.  With each procedure, one or two students faint dead away out of shock or disgust.  Eventually, Quincy removes his latex gloves in an empty examination room, as all of the students lie collapsed unconscious.
My point is this:  let us create a thought experiment.  The 45th president of the United States currently enjoys a 30% approval rating amongst the polled American voting public.  Let us consider that segment of the American public to be the innocent and naïve medical students about to be exposed to some very raw and graphic scenes.
Considering that a lot of the current president's support comes from highly religious evangelical groups, this is of great interest to me.  People who whip themselves into a froth about bathrooms or what people do in the privacy of their own homes or any sort of transgressions against the code of conduct indicated by the biblical Book of Leviticus have seemingly identified with the 45th president to an overwhelming degree.  A man who is now on his third wife and proudly declares that he can go about doing anything to women like "grab them by the pussy" is now being lionized by the largest American body of self-righteous moralists.   When will they sheepishly admit that their hypocritical admonitions of others have finally come to rest on the lintels of their own henhouses?
I will now lay out a hypothetical timeline of events, each point resembling another medical examiner pathology procedure that might be considered shocking or traumatizing.  Instead of  autopsy slicing and sawing, I will create fictional American political events that have some speculative basis.  Create an imaginary supporter of the 45th president in your mind, and as you follow along the timeline, imagine when that construct will abandon the cause in disgust, much as Quincy's disciples succumbed to unconsciousness.
So... pick the spot when one of the 30% will jump the ship:

Executive Orders

• The president issues a direct edict decriminalizing polygamy, saying that it would be great for America to have bigger, more powerful family units.
• Roe v. Wade is overturned, and measures are drafted to ensure that expectant women will do nothing to endanger the foetus during gestation.  In unrelated news, medical insurance premiums for obstetrics triple in cost.
• A new presidential executive order increases powers of police units, including granting all police officers complete immunity from prosecution whilst in the process of performing their duties.
• After increasing American military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen, the president assigns Jared Kushner to personally assess the situation on the front lines and create policy recommendations for further Middle East intervention.
• The president issues an executive order that decriminalizes incest, saying that his presidency is one of love.  Voices of opposition are heard, and Tay-Sachs disease is mentioned, but the measure is implemented regardless.
• A bill in the House of Representatives regarding the price and availability of pharmaceutical products in the United States passes, to the astonishment of a large number of lobbyists on the Hill.  Bipartisan enthusiasm is highly publicized before the mid-term elections.
• A new executive order is released, mandating that all for-profit incarceration facilities must be kept at maximum capacity at all times.  State and federal judiciaries are instructed to add prison time for all offences.
• After Jared Kushner is hideously maimed by an IED in Madan, Syria, he is patched up in a veteran's hospital in Bethesda, MD and sent to a facility in Portland,OR to recover while his marriage to Ivanka Trump is annulled.
• The president announces plans to wed his own daughter, saying that he is the candidate (sic) that supports family values and that "Chinatown" is a great film because Jack Nicholson is tremendous.  The announcement is quickly followed by the announcement that Ivanka is already six months into her pregnancy.  The date of conception appears to be at a time when erectile dysfunction pharmaceutical remedies were made affordable, and when Jared Kushner was overseas on assignment.
• North Korea launches an ICBM toward Los Angeles.  While the space-based defence system is able to destroy the delivery cylinder before it could deploy its multiple, independently-targetable re-entry vehicular warheads, a North Korean submarine plants a 20 kiloton device in the waters near Miami and destroys most of South Florida.  The U.S. Navy cries that it will retaliate after it has finished spending its new trillion dollar budget increase on retrofitting every ship in the fleet in dry dock.
• Amidst a crisis involving an underfunded FEMA and the dying refugees from Florida, the president announces the birth of his new daughter/grand-daughter, whom he promises to be "Barron's new best friend."
• The United Nations decides that North Korea will surrender all of its weapons or face sharp military action.  Contemporaneously, the U.N. sets a worldwide schedule for the decommissioning of all coal-based power plants.  Citing American exceptionalism, the president declares open defiance of any international declarations and regulations.
• As the bulldozers and earth-movers finish a channel amputating the radioactive lower half of the Florida peninsula from the continental United States, the president announces that the nation is getting a huge circumcision, and that should make all Jews happy. "Shouldn't it make them happy, folks?  Shouldn't it?" he shouts at a bewildered crowd of refugees.
• Following the release of relevant statistics, the United Nations declares universal sanctions on the United States for violations of trade agreements, human rights, and national sovereignty.
• The president appears at a rally, clutching an infant.  Stroking it salaciously along the line of its diaper, he announces that this is the "greatest baby ever, the best" before licking it along the side of its head.

Now, consider all of the imaginary people standing at the beginning of the thought experiment.  At what point would they start to sit down?  How many are still standing at the end of the experiment?  I'm just curious where the threshold of nationalistic fervour that dictates the support of the Commander-in-Chief regardless of... well... anything, really... actually lies.  Would the POTUS have to physically throttle some of these voters to death personally before they begin to see some flaws in his decision-making skills?

Conclusion

I'm tired, and I've spent far too long writing this exhaustive piece of dreck.  I must go.  Until next time, from me it's good night England, and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Them Long Weekend Blues

Greetings, gentle readers.
I was told that I needed some method of notifying people when I published a new post to the blog.  I hope that I've put an email notification in the margin.  I'm never sure when this thing transitions from a design view to an external view.  If I've made a mistake and accidentally published a dancing baby or some other website dreck, please let me know as soon as fast as the speed of love.
Feeling a bit woozy this afternoon, so I'll try and be quick about things.

Tales from the iPod Nano

Here's what my little musical pal played for me during my shower earlier today.  Once again, the challenge is to determine if there is a deeper theme or motif that links the tracks to one another.

• Paralyzed, by the Cardigans
• Brown-Eyed Women, by the Grateful Dead
• Kevin Carter, by the Manic Street Preachers
• Since You've Been Gone, by Kelly Clarkson
• Love the One You're With, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young

Are there dots to connect?  Crossword clues to intersect? Who knows?  I just know that I can't mess with the song databank until I rebuild the iTunes replica software that lets me play with the Nano.  That means that until my new workstation is operational, what's on the Nano stays there.  No additions, deletions, or manipulations.

Football, Football, I Like Football

... and I'll travel anywhere to see my favourite team.  (to quote the immortal Alan Randall)  For those that don't know, my favourite team is Liverpool Football Club.  For those North Americans who don't follow the English Premier League, here's a brief introduction from HBO's John Oliver:

In any event, the Premier League starts in eight days, as the Mighty Reds of Liverpool travel to Watford's Vicarage Road stadium to the north of London.  That means that I have slightly more than a week to try and summarize the off-season personnel transfers and the pre-season friendly matches in order to try and present a complete picture of what an objective observer might be able to expect from the team over the course over the gruelling season ahead.  I don't have the time or the energy today, so what I will do is try and explain what makes European football different from North American sports.  This way, when I make a remark like "a deep domestic cup run" or "depending on the January window," readers will have some form of context.

European Football

First off, I'm going to frame this in reference to the NHL, since demographically my readers are more likely to be Canadian than American.  Those more familiar with the NBA, MLB, or NFL should find some very comfortable ground upon which to tread, and I am more than welcome to open a conversation where direct comparisons can be made.

The Name

European (and indeed World) Football is named for the ball sport wherein the ball is predominantly played with the feet.  Only one player per team is allowed to use his or her hands to touch or control the ball legally, and even then, only within a specifically designated goal area.  When a conflict arose in the 19th century about naming sports in the United States and Canada, the Rugby-descended rules were chosen to be named "Football", and the FA (Football Association) rules were designated "Soccer" as a contraction of Association Football.  What North America calls soccer, everyone else calls football.

The Draft

There is none.  European football teams like Liverpool don't draft players at any sort of eligible age or scholastic level.  Teams generally have an academy where young players are coached from a young age and signed to contracts at different ages and maturity.  Teams that finish lower in league standings receive no reward for failure.  In fact, there is an ominous fate for those that finish too low.

Playoffs

There are none.  The round-robin elimination bits that NHL teams do in the post season are done contemporaneously with the season.  The champions of the English Premier League are analogous to the NHL's winners of the President's Trophy.  Weird thing here is that where the NHL playoffs determine a single winner, England has TWO domestic cup competitions:  the FA Cup and the League Cup.  The former is open to all teams, including non-professional and semi-professional ones, and the latter is only open to the top 92 professional teams.  Practical upshot - within a couple of weeks, a team could theoretically win three major domestic trophies in one season.  By the same token, a team could be knocked out of both playoffs before Xmas, but still have a chance to win the League.

Relegation

Rather than try and enforce parity by giving sad sack teams first pick of young talent, teams that finish too near the bottom of their national league face relegation - being sent down an entire league level.  In the NHL, finishing last gives a team a very solid chance of getting some young talent for nothing.  Under the European system, a last place NHL team would be sent down to a lower level, such as the AHL or WHL, to be replaced by the best placed finisher from that lower level.  Advantages:

1. There are no "races for the bottom" like the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 1980s when they wanted to draft Mario Lemieux.
2. Conversely, no-one wants to "drop" down a division and make less money from attendance, advertising, television, and marketing.  That makes the last few games of every season ridiculously dramatic, as the failing teams desperately flail about in a mad attempt to save their money, dignity and players.
3. Meanwhile, the best teams in the lower divisions savagely battle it out in bloodthirsty, end of the season duels to try and secure golden tickets to the cash-laden gravy trains that are the higher divisions.

Trade Deadlines

Trades as the big four north american sports leagues know it don't really exist.  Players are commodities.  They are bought and sold, and their values are basically defined by the contracts they have signed.  A team in Paris just recently bought a Brazilian named Neyman Jr. from Barcelona of Spain for an incredible amount of money.  The Spanish (Catalan) team didn't want to sell him, but his contract had a buyout clause and so business was concluded. The details can be found here.
But, like the North American sports leagues, transactions have deadlines.  After the first month of the season, all transfer dealings are closed. During the month of January, though, a transfer window opens, and clubs can once again merrily buy and sell players like chattel.
Finally, because of a Belgian named Jean-Marc Bosman, if a club lets a player's contract lapse, and that player finds himself out of contract, like Bosman, he becomes a completely unrestricted free agent, and can go to whichever club wants him, usually the highest bidder for his wages.

Conclusion

I've been at this all day, and I need to have some closure in my life.  If such it may be called.
I shall endeavour to return when I am forcibly roused from unconsciousness by my medication alarm.
Until then, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Medical Update

Greetings, gentle readers.
First of all, it could be pointed out that this is the second blog post in a single day.  I'll discuss the pharmaceutical conditions later, but the more important thing is that I've actually also taken two showers in the same number of days.  That I still have any energy left is testimony to something.  I'm not sure what, but I'll be certain to blather about it later after... the iPod Nano shower playlist.

Music

• My Daddy is a Vampire, by the Meteors
• Fools, by the Lightning Seeds
• Go for a Ride, by Caesar's Palace
• Forever Again, by Melanie Chisholm
• Sorcerer, by Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham

This list seems to have some sort of thematic reference to role-playing, but what would I know about such things?

Spinal Tap

So here it is - full disclosure at last about my disability, drug use, surgical appointments, and future prospects as a professional baseball pitcher.  Not that anyone asked.
I've got what's known as C7 radiculopathy.  In short, I've got a disc between my C7 and C8 vertebrae that has been pinched, herniated, and has now closed my nerve canal on the left side of my spine at that spot, causing some severe pain and paralysis on my right hand side.  Yes, I know.  Left, right... the human body always does those crazy cross-over things, like the cranial hemispheres.

Drugs Are Our Mates

For the past few months, I've been running through varying doses and prescriptions of all manner of drugs.  The best combination that I've found thus far has been a high dosage of oxycontin mixed with a correspondingly eye-watering dosage of an anti-convulsant called pregabalin.  To me, that sounds like an expectant dwarf, and the side effects would seem to indicate to me that there is some sort of connection.  Never before have I had occasion to use the term gynaecomastia.  I recently tried to switch from the pregabalin to something called gabapentin, which sounds to me like a club of five gossipy women.  That didn't work out so well, so it turns out that I would rather grow breasts than lie in a foetal position, moaning incomprehensibly for hours.

Cuts Like a Knife

So I had a consultation with a neurosurgeon, who reviewed the MRI with me in all of its three-dimensional glory.  He approved me for spinal fusion surgery, and within that very week, I was scheduled to have a tube shoved into my thoracic cavity through the front of my neck (just dodging the esophagus).  When Darcy Henton told me of his operation, I thought he was taking the piss.  The spine runs along the dorsal side of the human thorax, not the ventral side.  Why mess about with the lungs and other squishy bits inside the chest cavity?  Anyway, that tube is then supposed to jam a plug between my vertebrae and then fuse the whole assembly such that the nerve is fully insulated from any future pressure.  Apparently, there may be some problems with neck flexibility down the line, but any potential difficulties pale in comparison with the screaming agony or drug-induced doziness that present themselves as the only two other alternatives.

In Conclusion

I've been conscious and semi-productive for far too long today.  I even tried to do some dishes.  It's time to lie down again.  Combine my exhaustion with my disappointment that Liverpool lost the final of the Audi Cup in a penalty shootout yesterday, and you've got a sleepy little camper who needs to rest up for the Athletic Bilbao match on Saturday.  I'll try to summarize the LFC preseason at some point before the kick-off against Watford at Vicarage Road, but certainly not now.
Until next time, good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

July is Gone Already?

Greetings, gentle readers.
Now that my surgery is upcoming, the past few days have been filled with paperwork, ensuring that there is insurance, that disabilities and recoveries are covered, and that all of the people who want post-dated cheques get them, along with a reminder that in Canada, we use the spelling of "cheques" with the "qu", not the "ck" of the unwashed masses south of the border.
Have also discovered that rather ordinary things like my sleeping position can greatly affect how I feel the next day.  That, and switching anti-convulsant medications was a bad idea.  After getting into a good rhythm with my pain meds and anti-convulsant, switching the medication basically dropped me back to square one, with the twitching, and the sweating, and the hey hey hey.
That being said, I barely made it through my last shower and, having done so, became a worthless, semi-comatose invalid for the rest of the day.  Here's what I heard over the course of that shower:

Music

• Sleep in Late, by Big Sugar
• Time After Time, by Cyndi Lauper, performed by Eva Cassidy
• Take Me Home, by Melanie Chisholm
• Digging for Words, by Juluka
• Big Shot, by the English Beat

The Eva Cassidy song (like most of her songs) seems a bit haunting considering her early death from a metastasized melanoma in 1996.  That reminder of the shortness of our existence seems to draw some sort of theme of the temporal around this entry.  It also seems poignant that Cyndi Lauper, eternally remembered for girls just wanting to have fun, penned this haunting song about two separated individuals who cannot see the future for one another.

Veterans

I find it interesting that it so much easier to donate to charities if you're in the UK.  For example, to donate toward the establishment of a Behavioural Health Division of the U.S. Armed Forces, you need to go through the rigamarole of using a credit card or PayPal to give them money and go to this site to complete all of the forms and paperwork:  https://secure.squarespace.com/commerce/donate?donatePageId=57ffe275be6594d853ccfe64
The other thing one could do would be to elect government representatives (like Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)) that are committed to helping veterans, treating PTSD, and working towards establishing military processes to minimize the emotional impact of waging awful war against people who would prefer if you bombed someone else.  Or continue to vote for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or any other hypocrite committed to militarily-enforced regime change.
Meanwhile, in the UK, if one wanted to help wounded and damaged veterans debilitated during their service in the middle east, one simply needs to send "HERO29 £3" to 70070 on one's mobile phone to add three pounds to one's monthly mobile bill.  The complicated donation stuff is still there at https://www.ssafa.org.uk/give,  but surely the best way to garner donations for a charity is through the least tortuous path.  If it's simple, surely people would be more inclined towards it.
Actually, now I'm curious about the mechanics of the mobility networks and the ability to do those sort of text "SOMETHING" to XXXXX sorts of transactions.  I'll do some investigations.
But that's it for me for the nonce.
Good night England, and the colonies.
—mARKUS

Hertha All Over

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

Music Playlist

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

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

Dates and Times

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

Music

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

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

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

Cherchez La Femme

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

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

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

Friday Night Lights

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

Music

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

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

Films

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

Rant

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good News!

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

Thursday Shower Playlist

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

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

Punching My Card

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

Womenfolk

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

Shower Music

Today's playlist went as follows:

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

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

My MP3 Playlists Are Random, My Drug Tests Are Not

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

Would Everyone Please Be Quiet

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

Burning In My Heart

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

To Be An Invalid

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

Musical Interlude

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

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

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

Watchmen Reference

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

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

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

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

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

More of a Weekly than a Daily

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

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

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

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

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