The European Champions' Cup Final, 2018

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'm going to spend the majority of time in this post talking about Liverpool FC's participation in the European Cup Final of 2018.  There's a whiff of conspiracy and some photographic evidence, so if you enjoy that sort of thing, it might be worth a read.  If you don't, I've got a random list of songs that might have some sort of prognosticatory value.  I'll lead off with that, so that the athletophobes can just skip the remainder.  Cheers.

Random Track List

• Bitterblue, by Cat Stevens
• Carry Me Carrie, by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show
• Gabriel's Mother's Highway Ballad #16 Blues, by Arlo Guthrie
• Mr. Blue Sky, by the Electric Light Orchestra

Konfusion in Kyiv

I'm going to be as uncharacteristically sparse in my descriptions as possible here to spare my readers' time and cut straight to the chase.  Liverpool lost the world's biggest football club game on 26 May by a score of three goals to one.  There were some bits of controversy, particularly since two of the goals scored by their opponents were due to spectacular Liverpudlian goaltending failures.  Here's a quick summary of the game.
The game starts brightly, with Liverpool playing a pressing game versus Real Madrid's tiki-taka tactics.  This means that the Spanish club was playing to keep possession, and hope to move the ball forward into promising attacking positions through accurate passing and positional distribution.  Liverpool's plan was to allow Madrid to have possession, but to harry any Madrid players with the ball into making a mistake and creating an interception.
The game was fast-paced and exciting to watch in terms of athleticism and rapidity of movement, but for all of their energy and enthusiasm, LFC were unable to turn several promising opportunities into goals.  Then, in the 26th minute, this happened:

 Sergio Ramos (Number 4, wearing the captain's armband) uses his left arm to lock Mohamed Salah's right arm at the elbow, and then throws his left leg in front of Salah, tripping him.  As thew two fall to the ground, Ramos twists his body so that their combined weight falls on Salah's extended and locked right shoulder, snapping it.  Liverpool's top goal scorer for the year is injured and has to leave the game.

 By the 37th minute, Liverpool have clearly been in the ascendency, having forced two corners and taken nine shots on the Madrid net, but they are now without their most prolific attacker, and have been forced to substitute on Adam Lallana, recently recovered from long-term injuries.

 Click on the image above to see the video of what happened just a few minutes after the game restarted, following halftime.  Madrid had earned a corner.  As the corner was taken, Sergio Ramos gave a ringing great elbow to the side of Liverpool goalkeeper Loris Karius' head.  On the following sequence, Karius receives the ball, and immediately throws it at Madrid forward Karim Benzema.  The ball hits Benzema's foot and rolls into the Liverpool net.  One - nil  to the Spanish team.

 Karius is shown here looking a bit blank following the goal.  Just four minutes later, Liverpool centre-back Dejan Lovren outjumps Ramos (again) at a corner and nods to ball down to winger Sadio Mane.  The Senegalese winger pokes the ball past Madrid 'keeper Jesus Navas, and the game is tied at one.

 Here we can see Karius' reaction to his team equalizing the score.  Fewer than ten minutes later, however, Madrid substitute Gareth Bale unleashes an unstoppable overhead kick that screams into the top corner of the Liverpool net.  Karius has no chance, and the Spaniards lead the game by a score of two goals to one.

 Karius again seems somewhat phlegmatic about having surrendered two goals in a European Cup Final.

Again, you may want to click on the image to see what happens with fewer than eight minutes remaining in the game.  Gareth Bale collects the ball on the right wing and hits a speculative, long-distance drive towards the net.  Karius extends his arms and allows the ball to hit him in the hands... whereupon they deflect the ball at a strange 135° angle and into the net.  Final score:  Real Madrid 3 - 1 Liverpool FC.
It is a fairly simple premise to suggest that the two catastrophic goalkeeping mistakes made by Loris Karius should never be made by a professional at this level.  In fact, they should not be made by a 12-year-old Victorian-era orphan with malnutrition, rickets, and consumption.  A 24 year-old pro that makes either of these mistakes has just ended his career and will now have to find another source of income for his family, as well as endure the enmity, scorn, and suspicion of the entire community surrounding the sport.  So why commit professional suicide?

Theory One - Concussion

The elbow that Sergio Ramos delivered to Karius' ear in the 48th minute is now suspected to have caused a concussion that adversely affected his performance thereafter.  This LINK reports that the Massachusetts General Hospital has diagnosed the head injury and the potential results.  A more detailed report can be found HERE.
If the man had a bruised brain, it would certainly go a long way to explain why he essentially scored two goals into his own net.  His neutral emotional responses to the goals would therefore be less phlegmatic and more dazed in nature.

Theory Two - Crooked Business

For those who enjoy a good conspiracy theory, this one goes something along these lines:

• Some sort of gambling concern or conglomerate has an interest in Real Madrid winning the game within 90 minutes; no extra time, no penalty shootout.
• Something fishy goes on with Ramos, as he rampages about and knocks Liverpool's premier goal-scorer out of the game with no disciplinary action - no free kick, no yellow card, not even a glance from the referee.
• At half-time, Salah is gone, but the game is still tied and hangs in the balance.  A lot of money is at stake, and some phone calls/texts are exchanged during the interval.  More intervention is required.
• Ramos bangs Karius, another foul without any notice from the officials.  
• Karius scores on himself by banking the ball off Karim Benzema.  Is he concussed?  Is there a gun pointed at the head of his dachshund? Either way, something is off.
• Liverpool equalize, but Karius is either too woozy to understand what's going on, or he realizes that he will have to concede more goals for Madrid to win.
• Bale scores a beautiful overhead bicycle kick, meaning that the scoreline is now safe for those betting on Madrid.  Karius seems relieved.
• With time ticking down, Liverpool start to throw everything forward in a desperate attack.  Given the explosive pace of Sadio Mane and the diabolical trickery of Roberto Firmino, it was a serious possibility that Liverpool could grab an equalizer and send the game into extra-time.  With single-digits of minutes left on the clock, Gareth Bale hits a speculative ball at the Liverpool net from 40 yards out.  Does Karius deliberately fluff it into his own net?  Is he unable to focus his eyes?  Either way, the result is made safe and the clock runs out to end the game.
• In the weeks after the game, rather than celebrating and gloating, Madrid begins to disintegrate.  Zinedine Zidane resigns as the team's manager, game-winning-goal-scorer Gareth Bale begins complaining loudly in the press that he does not receive adequate recognition or respect from the team, and superstar Cristiano Ronaldo joins the Portuguese national World Cup squad amidst new speculation that he is looking for an exit.  (See HERE)  Not exactly a happy family proud of a well-earned accomplishment.

In any event, the primary motivation in any conspiracy would be money.  If there is any advancement in this sort of theory, it would be from bookmakers who lost considerable sums on remarkably similar wagers of huge value.

I have started to publish some of my exhaustively lengthy book reviews on GoodReads.  In future, I'll try and balance that sort of work with these sorts of posts.  Until then, good reading and good evening.
Goodnight England and the Colonies,
—mARKUS

Where's the Precipice?

Greetings, gentle readers.
As the United States caroms from one constitutional crisis to another, I'm reminded of a series of science fiction novels written in the late 80s and early 90s of last century by an author named David Gerrold.  I hope. I read a tremendous amount of material that was being consumed at the time by a friend of mine working as a security guard, and I'm fervently wishing that I'm not confusing this SF literary franchise with another.  Any road...
Take away the wonderfully fantastic alien elements and world-creation efforts, and you are left with some occasionally good writing and an alarmingly good premise.
After the aliens invade using ecological tactics and humanity responds, we are told in flashback of the state of the world after World War Three.  As it turns out, the United States had made itself something of an international pariah and bully and eventually pushed world affairs to the state where it involved a nuclear confrontation between itself and everyone else.  Bottom line:  rather than exterminate all life on the planet, the brinkmanship negotiations cause the U.S.A. to capitulate and submit to Treaty of Versailles-like conditions:  demilitarization, political and economic reorganization, educational reform, and the same sorts of thing the IMF pushes on debtor-nations worldwide today.
Why discuss this sort of Hard-SF Lit now?  There are a couple of lessons buried in all of the red alien worm infestation and flame-thrower combat sequences. 
One is that the present-day United States cannot continue on its current course of regime-changer and arms-dealer to the developing world.  In the seventies, Americans finally forced their government to abandon a perpetual war in Vietnam, only for the Carter administration to begin a new policy of systematic destabilization and insurgency throughout the Middle-East, Africa, and both South and Central America.  Today Americans find themselves stuck with both horrible policies.  American troops of occupation are being slowly bled to death in Afghanistan and Iraq, American tomahawk missiles intermittently sprinkle over Syria, while American drone bombers rain devastation on Yemen, Pakistan, Libya, and others.  Augmenting these overt efforts are special ground forces in Mali, Honduras, and another dozen or so developing nations.
Take the current murderously awful foreign policy agenda and combine it with a regime that suddenly has every student in the country googling "emoluments" and constitutional experts worldwide shaking their heads in astonishment.  It may mark the point where American exceptionalism becomes ostracism and the greedy nature of the American military-industrial complex overwhelms the rest of the world's ability to sustain it.
Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change Accords and the Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action are actions indicative of an isolationist, xenophobic, and protectionist ideology.  Continued scrutiny of arms sales to countries and agents with sketchy human rights records and terrorist actions is starting to impede American arms sales overseas.
Are we reaching a point where the international community needs to behave as they did at the Treaty of Versailles and forcibly intervene in American internal affairs in the higher interests of all humanity?  Will the American people reach a breaking point where they suddenly demand a reform of their own governmental system?  I hope for the latter. 
Here's why.
We have all met American citizens.  They are friends, relatives, and colleagues.  Almost to a single individual, and almost to a fault, they are good people.  They are gracious hosts and generous contributors to communal endeavours.  In times of disaster and crisis, Americans are often the first to offer assistance.  According to data acquired by the Gallup World Poll and published by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans are consistently near the top of the World Giving Index, only being outdone in generosity by citizens of Myanmar in 2015.  Odd, considering the Rohingya crisis, but we'll wait on the revised standings of that Index.  Meanwhile, Americans continue to do as they have done:  give until it hurts, as the saying goes.
In short, Americans are the global citizens that donate time, money, and effort to help strangers and charities.  So at what point do Americans lose that caring and sharing feeling?  Surely the preamble to the American Constitution has enshrined that compassionate feeling in their government when it says in its preamble,
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, 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." (Emphasis mine)
So where is the disconnect?  When did people stop seeing taxation as a way of helping fellow citizens? 

• The people of Flint, Michigan are still dealing with a poisonous water supply and now proceeding with legal proceedings against the people that poisoned it.  
• The people of Puerto Rico still haven't recovered from last year's hurricane damage, and are bracing for a new year of increasingly violent weather.  
• The federal government still hasn't recognized universal health care as a human right, leaving the poor and uninsured to perish in the face of rising medical and pharmaceutical costs.

Why are American citizens suffering and dying in the world's most compassionate country?  I'm reminded of Stephen Colbert's Showtime election night special when he openly lamented "How did our politics get so poisonous?"  If you haven't seen it, or don't remember it, it's worth a watch HERE.
Somewhere, there is a specific point where people have become suspicious of giving taxation money to their government because they believe it will be put to nefarious purposes, like the Republicans who campaigned against JFK in 1961 because they thought that a Roman Catholic president would turn over the government to the pope.  Or the Democrats who campaigned against Ronald Reagan in 1979 because they feared he would usher in a new era of "cowboy-style" international interventionism. 
There is a point where the good-natured spirit of helping becomes a paranoid hoarder that lashes out like some sort of Gollum whenever asked to contribute to the public well-being.  I'd like to think that if we look carefully, we can track the whole philosophical trail where people can discover where their moral paths diverge.

• I am prepared to sacrifice something important to help a neighbour or friend in need. (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to sacrifice time with my family to help strangers in life-threatening situations (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to put my life and well-being at risk to assist families of other ethnicities or religions (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to donate funds and items to a centrally-administered agency to help with disaster relief. (Yes/No)
• I am prepared to pay my tax dollars with confidence that the officials I helped elect will distribute that money equitably to benefit all citizens. (Yes/No)

I'd like to think that we can identify that point where the consensus of compassion begins to dissolve, and we can start to build a solution from that point.  This is the spot where major problems like immigration, school shootings, health care, and education should find their root sources.  People often forget or obscure that point of reference.
When Americans realize that their social contract should be forged in goodwill and compassion, and not in mutually assured destruction, perhaps they can renegotiate their relationship with their own government so that transparency and accountability become the watchwords of the new covenant.  Perhaps that is the legacy of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and her staff at the Democratic National Committee who decided that their charter explicitly allowed them to ignore the democratic wishes of their constituents - that the politically active and aware voters they spurned will create a revolution to overturn the self-destructive status quo.
And that's about all I can muster at the current time.
Looking forward at another assault at the keyboard in the future.
Cheers, and goodnight England and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

False Flags Flying

Greetings, gentle readers.
First off, I would like to recommend the film "Last Flag Flying."  If nothing else, the ensemble acting talent and charisma of Laurence Fishburne, Bryan Cranston, and Steve Carell should pique some interest.  Amidst some charming and humorous scenarios are some very profound insights into American foreign policy today as viewed by Vietnam War veterans.
The bottom line is that the war in Vietnam should have acted as an object lesson.  When Nixon and Kissinger ordered the withdrawal and cessation of hostilities, that should have been the wake-up call that George Orwell's warning from 1984 was real.  The war was unwinnable.  In fact, the Pentagon Papers proved that not only was there no achievable victory condition, but that both American policy makers and military authorities were fully aware that they were feeding young men and women into an interminable meat-grinder.  The military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower described in his 1961 speech (transcript here) was in full effect - politicians use the government's foreign policy to justify purchasing bombs and bullets from manufacturers, who employ voters.  The more bombs and bullets expended, the more employment, and thus, more electable officials.
The fact that the recent missile strikes on Syria did no damage to any military targets is irrelevant to the point of those strikes.  The stock value of Raytheon, the manufacturer of those missiles, rose by almost $5 billion as those five dozen missiles crashed into suburbs and fields south of Damascus.
This leads to the real point of this particular set of ramblings:  Syria.

Syria

For years now, media and journalists have been attacked as being biased manipulators of opinion.  Social media has also been drawn into the fray, as Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms are accused of shaping popular interpretations of events.  Every entity with an agenda has tried to shape the narrative of the conflict in Syria to their own ends.  Russia wants a friendly, warm-water naval base, the Americans want an ally that borders Iraq, Europe wants a stable, secular state that can deal with the regional refugee crisis, Israel needs to balance Sunni and Shiite factions against one another while drawing international attention away from their own ethnic occupation and settlement issues.
Here's the bottom line:  Syria is a mess, but there are no easy answers.  There are no good guys and bad guys.  There are lots of weapons and loads of despicable people, and millions of innocent people trapped in a hellish sea of destruction with them.
Americans don't quite understand this.  At all. 
First of all, their entire society has been browbeaten into polarizing everything, particularly politics.  If you are a Republican, you must be a racist believer in waging war on women's reproductive rights while you imprison the homeless, and if you're a Democrat, you're a godless baby-killer who wants to give away money to crack-whore parasites.  Second, American exceptionalism means that every international problem has a uniquely American solution that foreigners haven't considered because they weren't introduced to the Founding Fathers, Liberty, Freedom, Patriotism, etc. as infants.
Third and finally, as the world's largest and most heavily funded military, Americans feel obligated to be the world's policeman in a very patronizing and condescending way.
So in a quick-bullet form, here's how we end up with the awful mess in Syria today.

• Bashar al-Assad is an awful person.  No question.  Secret police, torture dungeons, censorship, repression, the lot.  His regime is nasty and not particularly concerned with human rights.
• 2011 sees a large populist surge through the Middle East as predominantly democratic and liberal causes unite to protest and challenge the ruling governments of Tunisia, then later Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, and... Syria. 
• President Barack Obama's State Department sees an opportunity to use protesting students, nurses, journalists, et aliter to further their objectives.  
• Under the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and following the principle of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", U.S. security agencies begin to start supporting and funding insurgencies.
• Guns, bullets, missiles, armoured vehicles and other pieces of military hardware flood the region:  rebellious forces need to get some, and repressive governments need more to reinforce their dictatorial and autocratic rule.

Long story short - with the exception of Tunisia, the corrupt dictatorships win.  They have bigger and better armies with more training, better leadership, and lots more guns.  But now there are tons of rebel pockets and enclaves armed to the teeth with modern weapons and feverish religious purpose.
In Syria, the rebels became allies with, and in many cases, joined forces dedicating to creating "The Islamic State."  ISIS, ISIL, or whatever other names you can append to them, are the assorted sweepings of Al-Qaeda, Taliban, and other militant Muslim fundamentalist sects that have networked, found geographic areas to pool and store resources, and have created avenues and pipelines for selling petroleum products to create revenue.
The unhappy innocent civilians who were previously being oppressed and denied civil and human rights are now being slaughtered by the thousands as the various factions fire bombs, missiles, artillery shells, and other destructive munitions at one another.  Countries such as the United States that acted as arms suppliers to the region are now denying refugee status to those trying to escape the ubiquitous carnage wreaking havoc there.
Right.  On to more harmless things.

Random Musical Hit-List

• Walk on Water, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Ghost Riders in the Sky, by The Blues Brothers Band
• Top of the World, by Chumbawamba
• You Bet Your Life, by Lightning Seeds
• I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, by Duane Eddy
• Before You Accuse Me, by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• Cigarettes and Lies, by Lightning Seeds

Aside from the weird case of double-repetition of artists, there doesn't seem to be a clear unifying theme.  There is some sort of nebulous feeling of something legal or judicial involving accusations, proof, obfuscations, authority, and punishment, but that might just be me projecting some sort of subconscious summary of late-night television chat-show monologues.
I've been feeling weird recently due to some changes in the pharmaceutical regimen, but I'll try to get back to more regular submissions to this area as well as my book reviews, including that of Trevor Noah's recently released memoir.
Until then, good night England, and the Colonies.
—mARKUS

Jiminy Crickets

Greetings, gentle readers.
In contrast to some of my more recent contributions, this particular missal should be particularly fluffy and insubstantial.  For those sick of political commentary and philosophical critiques of contemporary society, this may be a welcome change of pace.   Let's start off with my random song mix of the day.

Showertime Song Mix

• Behind Blue Eyes by The Who
• The Last Saskatchewan River Pirate, performed by Captain Tractor
• Water by Melanie Chisholm
• Missionary Man by the Eurythmics
• This Flight Tonight, performed by Nazareth
• I Grieve, by Peter Gabriel
• America, by Bree Sharp
• Fortunate Son, by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Again, any thematic unity that can be found in this list would be welcomed.

Cricket

Yes, it's that time of the year again.  The Indian T20 Premier League of Cricket is on, and the next six weeks will be filled with the sound of me tormenting my flatmates (and anyone else within earshot) with endless gabbling about googlies, boundaries, cow corners, and yorkers.
We are now five games into the competition, and some alarming things have been made evident.  First, I should probably have done more than ten minutes of research before selecting my online fantasy team.  Second, my coaching advice to teams in the IPL is almost identical to the advice that I gave to the Philadelphia Eagles early in the NFL playoffs - if you play using boring, defensive, safe, cynical, and pragmatic strategies, you will always be losers regardless of the score.  If you succeed on the scoreboard but alienate your supporters, players, and sponsors, you do not understand sports.
Here are the facts - boiled down so as to make the conclusions blindingly obvious.

• There have been five matches, each one starting with a coin toss.
• In all five games, the team that wins the toss has chosen to bowl first.
• In all five games, the team that bowled first and batted second has won the game.

Logically, the team that wins the toss wins the game.  Why?  I'm reminded of the joke of the two campers that spot a bear.  The punchline is simple:  "I don't need to be faster than the bear.  I just need to be faster than YOU."
The team that bats first sets the pace.  The second team doesn't need to play their best; they just need to be better than the first team.  In a couple of notable cases, if the first team plays it safe and tries to defend their wickets instead of scoring runs, the second team doesn't need to work very hard to surpass the score and go home early.  In fact, in the fourth match between the Rajasthan Royals and Sunrisers Hyderabad, the Royals played such a cautious and pedestrian game that Sunrisers were able to win by NINE WICKETS. 
Let me break it down.

• Rajasthan failed to hit a single ball for six.  Imagine a baseball team that never hit a home run.  Didn't even try.
• No Rajasthan player hit for fifty or more runs.  This is a multi-million dollar accumulation of international superstars, and none of them managed to average two runs per ball. 
• Sunrisers only needed three batters to win the game.  That means that after they finished fielding, more than two-thirds of the team had the rest of the night off.  
• The commentators were joking that they could go down early and start handing out man of the match awards after the 15th over.  It was not an exaggeration.  
• In a game with 120 deliveries (pitches), Sunrisers were done after 97.  No need to play the rest.

In short, Rajasthan fans had little occasion to rise to their feet and/or cheer.  Their team quietly plugged away and basically scored one point per delivery, ending with 125 runs on 120 balls.  Their opposition laughingly disposed of them and went home early, leaving home fans, sponsors, and investors alike feeling ripped off and disappointed.
All five games have followed the same story arc, with different variations on the theme, but the bottom line is the same one that ought to have been driven into everyone's psyche after the final game of last season's competition - aggression, daring, and risk reward those who employ them. 
When bowling, an aggressive and attacking player will try and get the ball around or through a batsman in order to knock the wickets.  That risks a batsman knocking the ball and scoring multiple runs, but might yield an out.  Ten outs, and your opposition is done.  A defensive bowler tries to throw as many balls as possible that skirt the boundary of legality in an effort to run up the cricket equivalent of a pitch count.  120 balls, and your opponents are done.
When batting, a defensive player blocks the ball down to the ground with his bat.  No possibility of the ball knocking a wicket or a fielder catching a fly ball.  Basically, a baseball bunt where the batter is not forced to run to first.  It's safe, and it works in conventional cricket, where matches can go on for three to five days.  In T20 cricket, every time you don't treat a ball as an opportunity to score points, it's an opportunity lost.  And you're boring the pants off your fans for no good reason whatsoever.
So in conclusion, when I cursed the Philadelphia Eagles for cowards and lackwits after their first playoff game in the NFL, I did so with the best intentions, and the sea-change in their philosophy justified my rancor.  They won the Super Bowl after changing their strategy to accommodate 4th-down gambles, QB sneak plays, 2-point touchdown conversions, and balancing aerial and ground-based offensive plays - the stuff that is precluded by a defensive mindset.
Using the same logic, the first team that will bat first AND win an IPL T20 match this season will do so by throwing caution to the wind, by swinging for the fences, scoring centuries, and never taking their proverbial foot from the accelerator pedal.  The more I see teams hedging their bets, choosing the safe option, or taking the easy way out, the more I'm convinced that the boring and conservative mindset of test cricket is infecting the explosive and improvisational nature of twenty-over cricket.
Until next time, I'm changing my fantasy team so that all of my Rajasthan Royals players are replaced by Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Daredevils.
Oh, and I did fairly well in choosing a bunch of Chennai Super Kings players, but they have now been riddled with injuries and will be unlikely to continue their good run of form (including a win involving a last-ditch hit by a man with a torn hamstring).
Right, I'll soon be back detailing the injustices and wrongs of the world around us, but until then, good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

Ray Wilkins, R.I.P.

Greetings gentle readers.
In light of the recent announcement of the death of Ray Wilkins, former English football player and manager, I thought that I would repost an interview with the man from January, 1997.  It was originally published in the magazine "Total Football" and since the publication is now defunct, I have no contact for copyright information.  I doubt that anyone would want to persecute me for it in any event.
Here is the text of the article:

Ray Wilkins is... The King of Calm

Ivor Baddiel attempts to annoy Ray Wilkins but discovers a man of great patience and tranquillity. Damn.

Ray Wilkins is the kind of bloke you want to be with in the event of an earthquake. As you're hurtling headlong down a bottomless pit, you can just hear him saying: "Yes Ivor, you're right, this is a difficult situation, but if we keep our heads, there's no need to panic."
The guy is football's James Bond. He can be shaken, but never stirred. His repertoire consists of relaxed, slightly bored, mildly amused and, on the odd occasion, concerned. But outrage, psychotic temper tantrums and losing his rag, he just doesn't do.
Witness the recent Eric Hall video, Monster Hits - ish! where Ray is set up to believe that he's on a panel with Eric and Gary Stevens on a TV show being beamed live to 40 million viewers in the US. Halfway through the 'show', Gary admits to having been offered money to throw matches on a number of occasions and, at one point in his career, actually accepted one of these bribes.
Ray's reaction on hearing this is to rub his right eye a number of times, play with his wedding ring and explain how flabbergasted he is. At no point does he betray any signs of deep discomfort and, at the end, when Eric, in true Jeremy Beadle fashion, lets Ray in on the joke, he doesn't chase Eric around the studio brandishing a kitchen knife or laugh hysterically till he's sick. He simply smiles a lot and looks ever so slightly relieved.
"They set it up so well," says Ray, "and Gary, well, he must have his equity card now, the way he played it. But I kept thinking: 'Why are they just putting my face up on the screen?' 'cos I could see it on a monitor, and it was only afterwards when they done me, I thought: 'That's where I should've spotted it.' I felt a right mug after when he'd done me like a kipper, but it's typical Eric, isn't it? It's just a laugh. I got caught out. It was a bit of harmless fun.
Clearly no burning cesspit of resentment there but when I met up with Ray recently, I'd loaded my interviewer's gun with a few tricky bullets and was ready to fire a couple at him to see if he'd flinch. He took the first, concerning his none-too-successful venture into management squarely on the chin without a wobble.
"I enjoyed management. I think probably one of the biggest problems I faced as a manager was that all the players were my friends. I'd only finished playing with them six months before, so consequently picking the team was difficult. I could only pick 11, so naturally on the Monday morning the door's being knocked down by five or six. But that's management and it was tough. If I go back into it, I'll make sure I don't know the players for a start, but I don't think I'll do too many things differently. I just wanted to be as honest as I could and the players to be as professional as they could, and that was basically my philosophy on it.'

His brow unfurrowed, I went for a little jab just below the belt and suggested that playing at Hibs with lads half his age must be a bit odd.
"Yes, it's a strange feeling to be honest. I'm probably old enough to be some of the players' dad, but I've never really looked on it like that. I feel very young in spirit, so I don't have hang ups about it. Some of them are a bit cheeky, but I like that, because they're not putting me somewhere I shouldn't be. They're just treating me as one of them, and as a player I'll take that all day. It's not a problem."
Obviously, it was time to turn the heat up a little and delve deeper into the murky waters of Ray's past. His time at Paris St. Germain, for instance, can't have been overly joyous.
"That was probably one of the hardest periods of my footballing career purely. simply because they had three foreigners there, myself, Susich and Calderon. We had a lot of trouble scoring goals and as they were two forward players, the manager preferred to play them instead of me, so I was actually playing in their reserve side in the French Third Division. Going from AC Milan's first team to that was a bit of a shock to the system, but I wouldn't change anything. Although it was a bad footballing experience, I think you have to have them to appreciate the good times."
How very philosophical.
By now I was the one feeling the strain, but I hadn't finished yet, not by a long chalk. Everyone has their breaking point and I reckoned a sneaky question about Ray only ever playing a square ball might just tip him over the edge. I was wrong.

"One of the biggest problems I faced as a manager was that all the players were my friends..."

"I've really no qualms about that at all. Those critics have been media people. If you look back over the years and the managers who have bought me, I think they've got far more knowledge of the game than any of those critics ever had. My philosophy on football is if you've got the ball you can do something with it. If you give it away easily, then it takes you 10 minutes to get it back, and also you can't get a goal.
"Some people think that's quite negative, but then I'm not too concerned about that. I would sooner see the ball passed to one of my team-mates than to someone else. I've never ever worried about what anybody thinks about the way I play."

Fine, Ray mate, I didn't want to do this. but the editor insisted I come back with pictures of you weeping or I was out of a job. So, what happened at the 1986 World Cup, then? Eh?
"It was one of those crazy things that footballers do. I'd been booked before for a fall on the half-way
line and I was in an advanced position on the left-hand side of the field, I'll never forget it, and the guy gave me offside.
Well, I was looking across the line and I couldn't see it personally, so I threw the ball on the floor, but
unfortunately on the first bounce, it skidded up and walloped the ref. He got slightly irate with me and I was off.
"The rest of the World Cup was just an absolute disaster. The worst feeling I had was when Bobby Robson had used his second substitute against Argentina in the Aztec. I knew then that if we didn't win that game I would take no further part, because I'd been suspended up until that game. When the final whistle went I just thought: 'Well Jesus Christ, what a nightmare to have missed that one.' it was the worst moment of my career, but even though it might sound silly, I wouldn't change it.
"I don't think any footballer can go through his career without a blemish. Football's a game of extreme emotions and you're going to get tied up in it, you've got to. If you love and care for it as much as that, every player must get involved at some stage."
Football might be a game of extreme emotions, but if he didn't start showing some of those off the pitch, it was the Job Centre for me. It was time to get personal and find out where the Butch nickname came from.
"My father called me Butch when I was a baby. Apparently I was big, fat and hairy. Where all that's gone I've no idea, but the name has stuck. I didn't like it at all. It's not very nice being called Butch. All my brothers and sisters called me it, and they still do. I accept it from them, but thankfully, from everybody else, it's disappeared."
If only he had grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and threatened to put me in hospital if I ever mentioned it again, but, as he calmly signed more autographs - a group of kids had interrupted us on average about every five minutes and he couldn't have been more courteous to them - desperation turned to rudeness: "You're bald!" I blurted out.
"l suppose I do have a receding hairline. Ivor, but my philosophy on it is easy come, easy go. I get some stick for it, but at the end of the day I'm in pretty good shape for a 40-year-old, wouldn't you say?"
Yes, I would have agreed if I hadn't been crawling out of the restaurant, a broken wreck left to ponder the advantages of a stress free life. Ray, meanwhile, was happily signing more autographs for the youngsters.

—  from Ivor Baddiel in "Total Football" issue 17, January 1997.

Ray Wilkins, MBE.
14 September 1956 - 4 April 2018
R.I.P.

Back to Goodreads

Greetings, gentle readers.
I'll be back at length before long, never fear.  Until I am, here is one of the many book reviews that I intend to start publishing.
The Away Game: The Epic Search for Soccer's Next Superstars by Sebastian Abbot
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The premise of this book shows great promise. Everyone loves underdog, rags-to-riches anecdotes, and the narrative of third-world African children being whisked away from poverty and into the sparkling dream castle of a Qatari football academy sounds like Cinderella recast into a sports paradigm.
There are two stumbling blocks that inhibit any real joyful or life-affirming interpretations of the work - the style and the content.
I recall watching early North American broadcasts of English Football. The commentators seems at pains to use the entire and clearly-enunciated phrase "Barclays English Premier League" at least once during each passage of play, as in "That's the sort of passing play one has come to expect from the Barclays English Premier League," and "Many players find it difficult to make the transition from another league to the physical demands of the Barclays English Premier League." After a while, it ceased to sound sincere and instead just sounded like routine and contractually obligated product placement.
Somehow, the author of this book seems to think that dropping the name "Messi" every three paragraphs will keep reader attention or add some sort of credibility to the exposition of events. As a reader, I found it tedious and artificial.
As for the content [SPOILER ALERT], the largest problem with the entire framing of the historical situation is a sham. The real point of this story is not that there are some bright and talented blood-diamonds-in-the-rough waiting to be discovered in Africa, but that poverty and institutionalized corruption has made talented children into yet another resource to be exploited and trafficked. Everyone lies, cheats, bribes, and steals in order to get money - including the children themselves - making the whole story just a depressing voyage into cynicism.
A typical example would involve a young player showing tremendous promise, evaluated favourably by scouts and coaches, and then he suddenly runs off with the first agent that offers cash because the academy will shortly discover that he has been lying about his age. Then you realize that most of the kids have faked their birth date because that is how the system works. As soon as they are told that there is an MRI test that can scientifically verify their age, they suddenly grasp for the first handful of cash they can grab.
Even if they haven't lied about their age, many young athletes are governed by family members or other figures of authority that make decisions based on how much they stand to gain personally from the player's success.
In short, sympathy for 13-year-olds striving to transcend abject poverty starts to run dry when you discover that they are, in fact 16 years old, and the money that they have been wiring home to their destitute families has been appropriated by the local church or some belligerent coach or uncle.
Finally, you are left with a collection of sob stories of fraudulent and cheating failures blubbering about how much they love God and wish that God would give them another chance. That they betrayed the trust and faith of others in them seems to be an afterthought.
The one case of success presented in the book is a Senegalese boy who was born into a more middle-class family than his peers, and one who kept his head down, did as he was told, and played within the lines. Not exactly fairy-tale stuff.
The book is worth a read, but it only starts feeling authentic when the reader appreciates that the narrator is thematically untrustworthy. The language used is appropriated from a thousand inspirational posters and motivational speeches, but the bottom line is that poverty creates flaws in the human character that football cannot repair.


View all my reviews

Cheers,

—mARKUS

Post-Alpine Conclusions

Greetings, gentle readers.
Having already spent far too long rambling about how any political discussion can be railroaded, deflected, conflated, and otherwise avoided, it distresses me that the same techniques are still being used rather flamboyantly in both social as well as mass media circles.  The notions that bullying or violent video games are somehow the causes of mass school shootings are not only nonsensical, but they belie a tendency of an increasingly ignorant and insular population to find a simple solution to a complex problem.
CBC Radio recently ran a piece on the enormous pressure piled upon food and nutrition in terms of human health.  Every food marketing campaign will have you believe that removing meat (or dairy or gluten or whatever) from your diet, or adding a portion of kale (or ginkgo biloba or quinoa or freekeh or whatever) to every meal will miraculously change a person's life.  Exercise, psychology, and genetics be damned, these foods will fix whatever ails you.  Or so quacks like Dr. Oz would have you believe.  Why do people subscribe to these quite obviously stupid recipes for a panacea? 
Answer:  they want a single, simple answer given to them in such a way that they do not need to invest or commit anything of their own, other than to blow their money on whatever is being advertised and flogged at them.  Eat (or omit) substance X from your diet and all of your problems are solved.  No work, no effort, no muss, no fuss.
The same principle applies to really horrible and complicated problems.  Abortion?  Anyone who says that there is a simple solution is, quite simply, an idiot.  I don't care what "side" a person tends to advocate, it's an awful surgical procedure that literally and figuratively scars a woman for life.  That being said, anyone who reckons that outright banning the procedure in every conceivable circumstance [sic] is somehow socially responsible is an ass.  Equally idiotic are those who reckon that the procedure should be made readily available without accompanying counselling and support structures.
In terms of stopping school shootings in the United States, since that's the only place where it seems to manifest as a chronic problem, the application of such policies as transparent backpacks, armed teachers and support staff, dissuading bullying, or supplying buckets of rocks to classrooms are manifestly stupid approaches.  Again, it is the simple-minded thinking that leads people to believe that one action or policy will fix an enormous issue in the same way that eating quinoa will cause your metastasizing pancreatic cancer to go into remission.
But what if I said that all of these moronic ideas had something in common.  Transparent backpacks that rob citizens of their right to privacy, legitimizing violence as applied by public officials, escalating violent encounters, recognizing an inherent antagonism within social structures...
Let me suggest that if one really wants to remedy violence and militancy with a society, one should start at the top down.  Violence in the United States is not fundamentally legitimate because films and video games are violent, it's because the Unites States as a political entity is violent. 
When did the following become acceptable?

• A standing, mobilized army during peacetime.
• Maintaining 800 military bases worldwide in over 70 countries.
• The Department of War renamed the Department of Defense
• Mercenaries became Military Contractors
• Declaring war and deploying troops and equipment without Congressional approval
• Unauthorized surveillance of American citizens and their communication.
• Daily drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

All of these ongoing policies establish the United States as an international bully with no regard for civil or human rights.  The racism inherent in "stop-and-frisk" policing, mass incarceration, and the bizarre war on drugs shows that the American government has no more regard for its own citizens than for the peoples of the world at large.  With this sort of role model, little wonder that dissociated people purchase some readily available assault weapons and pull the trigger in the direction of a congregation of other people.  Churches, movie theatres, schools, whatever.  Since the highly mythologized westerns of the early 20th century, justice always seems to be delivered from the barrel of a gun within an exceptionally American [sic] context.
So here's my deal.  If you want fewer incidents of mass gun violence in the United States, start with the government as an international player.  Pull the troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq.  Prevent the creation of more PTSD patients, and reduce the burden on the Veterans Administration to cover the medical cost of wounded veterans.
Then, start acting as though civil and human rights are important.  Universal health care and an increased emphasis on education would be a good start when creating new federal budgetary strategy.  Active programs to examine and remove institutionalized racism would be another fantastic initiative.
Why are these things so tough?  Because the U.S. has already driven a long way down the militarist and nationalist road.  Luckily, there are some trends that provide encouragement.  In 1994, only 10% of the U.S. population had passports.  If that isn't evidence of a closed and insular social mindset, I'm not sure what is.  Luckily, that percentage has now risen to over 40%.  There is hope that Americans can see that there is a world outside their window, and that there are other ways that they can live their lives other than under the heel of the military-industrial complex.

Musical Interlude

Find the common factor:

• Hey Ya - Outkast
• Rescue - Echo and the Bunnymen
• Jealous Guy - John Lennon
• Eight Miles High - The Byrds
• Monster Mash - Bobby Pickett
• Free Bird - Dread Zeppelin
• Everybody Needs Somebody - The Blues Brothers.

That's it for me.
Cheerio and good night England and the colonies.
—mARKUS

The Answer to the Gun Problem

Greetings, gentle readers.
I recently spent a ridiculous amount of time and column inches rambling about the reasons why it is impossible to create a normal and civil conversation about the number of mass shootings in the United States.  Before I could reach my conclusions about how to transcend those discussions and achieve consensus, I was overcome by exhaustion and forced to abbreviate my observations.
Thankfully for those that wish to follow my ideas and cannot wait for my body to achieve the sort of physical condition to mechanically express the logical conclusions of the arguments, there are other minds at work in the wide world.
As a prime example, I would like to refer you to this article:  HERE.  It does the exact opposite of what I've done — it skips past all of the awful rhetorical tricks and procedural sidesteps and gets to the actual problem.
To summarize: there is no quick answer, no bill, no regulation, no executive order that will cure this epidemic.  To even insist that there is one is foolish.
Here's the thing - the culture is violent, and this is the one occasion where trickle-down works. 
If the government establishes its core values as those of compassion and caring, this culture of violence will decay.  Other than that, here are four steps to stop your citizens from murdering one another.

1. Stop drone-bombing countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Chad.  If you want to declare war, declare war.  These extra-jurisdictional killings are awful, illegal, and set a bad precedent for your own children.
2. Admit refugees.  If you are going to widow women and orphan children, consider their lives valuable enough to consider them worthy of admission to your awful country.
3. Stop occupying countries.  Nothing screams hypocrisy like enforcing military law on a bunch of innocent people while screaming that you are forcing liberty down their collective throats.  After 20 years, Afghanistan doesn't seem to have created a functioning democracy.  Conclusion:  Americans are terribly good at shooting people in the cause of democracy, but have no idea how it works in any sort of practical manner.
4. Stop creating or supplying insurgencies.  Why did five American Marines wash up downstream in Niger last year?    Isn't it odd how American Marines show up whenever a trade negotiation for natural resources goes sour?

In short, take everything the Nixon administration learned, add a couple of Carter things in, and then ignore everything else since, and you might be able to form a foreign policy.
In short-term, band-aid solutions won't work.  Politicians might be able to score points from little policy changes, but those victories will be meaningless.  The country as a whole must be able to shift from an ignorant global bully to a an entity capable of contributing to significant economic and climate change. 
A country committed to values of compassion and accomplishment could be one that could establish public works programs of renewable energy sources and develop technologies for the stars.  A country mired in entrenching its citizens in centuries-old cycles of poverty is destined to reduce society's ambitions indefinitely.

Meanwhile...

• We Could Live, by Big Sugar
• If That Were Me, by Melanie Chilsholm
• Come to California, by Matthew Sweet
• Halloween, by Aqua
• Follow Your Daughter Home, by The Guess Who
• Suspicious Minds, by Fine Young Cannibals

And that is all there is left of me.
Good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS

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