Closing credits (2017)

Zero degrees, Fahrenheit. “Feels like −11°,” says the Weather Channel. Plenty snowy, too.

No heat in the church building, so tomorrow’s service is canceled. I’m glad Karin gets two full days off (the 31st and the 1st).

And so ends 2017. This is my hundredth entry of the year.

For providing material to discuss, I wish to thank:

Karin.

The kitties, Jasper and Ziva.

All the soccer players.

The weather.

Kazuo Ishiguro.

Bertrand Russell.

Russell (the dog).

My other family members.

My tutees.

The LimeBikes of South Bend.

The fire department of South Bend, for turning us out of our first marital dwelling. (That building has been demolished. There’s a vacant lot where once was so much love.)

The church camp.

President Lenín Moreno.

President Donald Trumpie.

ProQuest, for storing many dissertations.

The State of Wisconsin.

Brianna and other in-laws.

The Bee Gees, for singing “Fanny.”

The Isle of Man.

Wilkie Collins.

Flashman.

The Irish. I didn’t blog about them, but they figured prominently in what I read and watched on TV. A nod, also, to the Scottish (it goes without saying that I was obsessed with the English and the Australians). I wonder if 2018 will be the year of the Russians.

I hardly saw any new movies. The most I did was to catch up on the offerings of the last decade. Two standouts were It Follows (2014) and Man on Wire (2008). Tonight I saw Nerve (2016), which was a cut above most of what gets released nowadays. (It strikes me that all three of these movies supply a good dose of existential dread.) I did watch a lot of TV. I spent many happy hours immersed in Broadchurch, Midsomer Murders, and Shetland – British crime shows – and in Rake, which is about lawyers and politicians in New South Wales. (I was transfixed, if not happy, watching The Fall, another British crime show.) Of these, I urge everyone to try out Rake; as one reviewer puts it, beneath its farcicality it’s about how to be good. Man on Wire I also unreservedly recommend. It’s about how sometimes a person’s calling has nothing to do with being good, but with doing one beautiful and useless thing.

Good night!

I am lavished with more gifts

I wish everyone a happy Carlos Muñoz Day. In South Bend, it’s seven degrees, Fahrenheit (“feels like −8°,” says the Weather Channel). There’s no way, no way, I’ll leave the house unless it’s to eat in a restaurant.

The Xmas dust has nearly all settled. Karin’s relations don’t practice the “Secret Santa” method of giving; instead, everyone gives to everyone. Karin gave to her little nephew and niece a miniature toilet that sprays water on people’s faces. This gift was hugely successful. In turn, Karin & I received a Crock-Pot, slightly better than the one we already had; a coffee maker, slightly better than what we had; and lots of candy. Karin’s dad gave me a t-shirt that says got philosophy? Karin’s mom gave me a book: Batman and Philosophy: The Dark Knight of the Soul. One of its contributing authors was David’s teacher at Western Michigan University; I’m dismayed that his contribution, “Could Batman Have Been the Joker?,” isn’t listed on his C.V. The last gift from Karin’s mom is yet to be delivered: David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

On Saturday morning, I awoke at 7:00 to watch the Spanish clásico. It was worth the early rising. Messi was brilliant. The two goalkeepers, Navas and ter Stegen, were brilliant. But the game’s best play was by Sergio Busquets, who set up the first goal with a few calm turns and a short pass to Ivan Rakitić deep in Barcelona’s half of the field. As soon as Rakitić touched the ball, I could see that everything would “break” for Barcelona, that Real’s defenders would be drawn out of position and Barcelona would “run the table” and score. It was one of the best goals I’d seen all year.

After the game, some commentators talked about how this clásico lacked luster, how Barcelona and Real Madrid are in dynastic twilight. Nonsense. As long as Messi and Busquets are playing, Barcelona will be a special team.

Xmas’s eve’s eve’s eve

One third of my vacation is spent. I didn’t write as much as I should’ve done. I can’t even claim to have rested well.

My cold persists. Its decline, while slow, is at least steady. (Karin’s cold yo-yos up and down.)

Ziva has been discreetly vomiting – we think she’s trying to work a furball out of herself. Tonight, Jasper did a tremendous vomit. He scarfed down his quarter-cup of supper (he isn’t used to dieting yet). What goes down (like that) must come up. Karin took pity and gave Jasper a little more food.

Thanks to my “Secret Santa,” I’ve received the first four volumes from my wishlist. Just eight more volumes to go.

Festivities begin tomorrow with a full night and morning of partying at Karin’s dad’s house. Then, we’ll spend Christmas’s Eve at my Uncle John’s & Aunt Lorena’s house. As always, I look forward to the mini-wieners and other snacks to be served there.

The Peruvians got an early Xmas present. Paolo Guerrero’s ban was reduced to six months. He will play in the World Cup. To the authorities, he offered up the old “coca leaf, not cocaine” defense.

Howards End (the book)

Emelec beat Delfín to win the Ecuadorian championship. Barcelona failed to qualify for next year’s Copa Libertadores.

The Oakland Raiders, whom I’ve been casually following this season, came within inches of scoring the touchdown that would’ve kept their playoff hopes alive. Rather than score, they did this.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The good news is that my health is much restored. My cold lingers but no longer pains me. I’ve been resting at home, drinking water and tea and dosing myself with Mucinex.

Karin, who’s been tending to me, is a little sicker now.

Last Friday night, we went to a birthday party for my dear grandpa (his ninetieth).

Today, the air was rather warm, and I walked for half an hour by the river. I wore a coat that one of my fellow tutors gave to me on the last day of the term.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My newest reading project is Howards End by E.M. Forster. This is the book of the Wilcoxes vs. the Schlegels: the materialistic English vs. the romantic “German” English. The book also depicts a few representatives of the hapless English poor, whose role is to be the grass trampled upon by the two warring upper-class factions.

Walkabout (the book)

It’s been cold and very snowy, and I’m sick. This is what comes of walking outside without a coat.

Happily, tomorrow is the semester’s last day, and the stream of tutees has pretty well dried out. I sit at my work table and read. One book I’ve finished is Walkabout, the classic Outback story by James Vance Marshall. In tone, it’s very different from the movie that was made after it.

Spoiler alert!

In the novel, the death of the “bush” boy is less bleak than it is in the movie. The white girl looks at the “bush” boy with terror because he’s naked. The “bush” boy infers from her terror that he’s going to be visited by the spirit of death. Then he catches a cold from the white boy. Coupled with auto-suggestion, this is enough to kill the “bush” boy.

The white girl feels remorse and allows the “bush” boy to die with his head upon her lap. In death, then, the “bush” boy is comforted.

Still, it isn’t what one would wish to read while suffering from a cold.

End of spoiler.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Karin & I took Jasper to his annual veterinary check-up. He weighed 14 lbs., approximately 133% of his ideal weight. Karin & I have reduced both kitties’ rations. We’re also policing Jasper so that he doesn’t steal food from Ziva.

Snow

… has begun falling upon South Bend. A good few inches have stacked up. Trucks plow and salt the roads. When I go out walking, I wear two tattered, hooded sweatshirts – I’ve outgrown my winter coat.

It feels as if winter has been here all along.

Xmas gifts have been arriving through the post. I thank whoever sends them (my siblings and I are using the “Secret Santa” method). I, too, have been ordering gifts for my designated beneficiary.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I congratulated Edoarda & Stephen for staying at home the last few wintry days. Stephen, who’s just had his wisdom teeth removed, alternates between viewing the TV, sleeping, and throwing up. Edoarda watches over him.

Karin & I visited E&S last night. We viewed the episode of The Office in which Steve Carell spanks his jackass of a nephew. That justice of that scene was most pleasing.

At my own office, the year is slowly, strenuously concluding. Yesterday, one tutee asked me to proofread seven pages – hardly an unusual request. But the next tutee brought in 14 pages, and then a third brought in 28 pages, single-spaced. Her expectations were too high. Each tutoring session should require 30 minutes or less. (And, besides, we tutors aren’t supposed to proofread – we’re obliged only to explain “patterns of error.”)

I suppose there are moments in every job when the worker questions the wisdom of his industry. I was far beyond that stage. I only wanted the suffering to end, and it did, several hours later.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Paolo Guerrero’s ban for taking cocaine has been extended until November of next year. Peru will miss him in the World Cup.

Meanwhile, the ban upon Emelec’s stadium has been rescinded (alas). What’s more, Ecuadorian TV companies have been forbidden from broadcasting the domestic finals – I’m not sure why – and the referees are threatening to strike for past-due wages.

Fire

The Ecuadorian soccer schedue is winding down. Barcelona can no longer win the domestic league. The team still aims to qualify for next year’s Copa Libertadores.

The league title will be disputed between heroic Delfín, of Manabí Province, and dastardly Emelec. The final round consists of a two-game, home-and-away series. Emelec will be forced to stage its “home” game away from its own stadium due to an earlier misdeed (some Emelec fans burst open a water-filled plastic bag upon the manager of an opposing team).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It’s the week before IUSB’s final exams, and tutoring is extended two hours later than usual – well into the night. I’ve been scheduled to work during most of these lonely hours. Karin sat with me tonight and pasted things into her animal sticker book.

I’m still reading the Inferno. All along, I’ve been having trouble visualizing hell. But these pictures of the wildfires in Ventura County, California, are helping a great deal.

(Thanks, Creighton P., for sharing the photos, which were published by the L.A. Times.)

The World Cup groups

[Dreaming]

Put me in, Coach.

[Telephone rings]

What’s the score? !!!

[Answers telephone]

How many?

Twenty-six, Mr. President.

Holy cow. No wonder Dreyfus wants that Clouseau killed. He’s a one-man army. Who’s left?

Just the Russian … and the Egyptian.

Life won’t mirror art. Either the Russian team or the Egyptian team will survive Group A, but they won’t both survive it.

Nor will the Saudis survive Group A.

The Uruguayans will survive it easily enough – and with one eye upon the first game of Round 2, in which they’ll face either the Portuguese or the Spanish. Those teams will have dispatched the Iranians and Moroccans in Group B.

The other groups are less predictable.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Group C: Australia, Denmark, France, and Peru. Any of them could advance. This, more than any other, is the group of chokers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Group D: Croatia and Iceland … and, for the fifth time in the latest seven World Cups, Argentina together with Nigeria. The Argentinians have always won that fixture. The Croatians and Icelanders also are familiar foes, having played each other in recent qualifiers. A very interesting group.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Group E: The Brazilians definitely will advance. The Costa Ricans are about as good as they were in the previous World Cup, though less surprisingly so. Serbia and Switzerland have enough talent to get to Round 2. Another interesting group.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Group F: The Germans are as predictable as their trains. They’ll advance.

The South Koreans also have predictable trains. Their record in World Cups, while less successful than that of the Germans, is just as steady:

In 2002, they advanced out of the group stage.

In 2006, they were eliminated.

In 2010, they advanced.

In 2014, they were eliminated.

This time, they’re due to advance.

Will this World Cup be the Mexicans’ group-stage undoing? They always seem likely to crash out early, and yet they always scrape through to the first knockout round.

Sweden … who knows.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Group G: This is one wimpy group. The Belgians and English are talented chokers. Still, they should advance past Panama and Tunisia.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Group H: Japan has extremely reliable trains. Its recent World Cup pattern is the same as South Korea’s. Senegal is one of the most talented teams in Africa. Even so, I’ll lay money on Colombia and Poland not only to advance, but to defeat their Group G opponents in the first knockout round.

And so I conclude my expert analysis.

La finalísima

Grêmio won in Lanús’s stadium, obtaining the Copa Libertadores for the third time. Interestingly, Grêmio’s manager became only the first Brazilian to have won the tournament as a manager and as a player.

Here you can watch the highlights. All the goals are very good. Just before Grêmio’s second goal, you can hear the announcer saying that it’s a golazo, even though the ball carrier still needs to shoot past the goalkeeper.

Grêmio dominated in both games, last night and last week. After the series, Lanús’s players all wept. Barcelona would have had a good chance of obtaining the championship against Lanús. Barcelonistas will forever rue having lost to Grêmio in the semifinal.

A “civil” action

I finished reading A Civil Action, five hundred pages about why not to practice the law. A cover blurb says: “The legal thriller of the decade” (i.e., the 1990s). Indeed. No other task could be more herculean, more quixotic, than that to which these litigators set themselves.

These litigators obviously are the good guys. The two industries that they’re suing clearly are guilty of polluting some groundwater and causing the plaintiffs’ family members to die of cancer. But, righteous though the cause may be, the litigators are suing these two industries because the owners have deep, deep pockets. (You could say that the good guys are a little greedy.)

And so ensues a war of attrition. The defendants, with their unending resources, drag out the proceedings, expecting the plaintiffs’ lawyers to run out of money. The litigators plunge further and further into debt. The book opens with a flash-forward scene in which one litigator’s Porsche is repossessed. You could say that the main question of the book is: will this guy win enough money to recover his Porsche? Suspense is generated by such problems as: will he be able to pay the dry cleaners so that he can wear a suit to court?

All of which makes it seem terribly stressful to be a lawyer. And undignified. Everybody is always getting scolded by the judge – who, in some passages, himself seems barely competent. (You wonder: what is this crazy system?)

Worst of all, for the righteous litigators at least, there’s a constant crisis of the self. These smart people are pushed so hard that they end up trusting in some very dumb things, like lotto tickets and “shyster” credit cards. And horoscopes: “Whether your problems be of a personal or career nature, you must refuse point blank to settle for less than you know to be just and honorable” (emphasis on “settle”). And the judge. And even the defense lawyers. There’s a code of behavior in lawyering that encourages the litigators to trust their opponents. You can imagine how, in some circumstances, this would be a bad idea. The book’s title can be read as an ironic pun.

Thanksgiving

It’s my Thanksgiving break, so I stayed at home. Karin went to her job. I read all morning. I missed the armed robbery that occurred at IUSB. In the afternoon, I performed some chores and wrote in my dissertation. Ziva and Jasper were glad to have me with them.

In the evening, I watched Grêmio defeat Lanús, 1–0, in the first game of the Copa Libertadores’s final round. It wasn’t a beautiful game. I turned it off after the first half and watched Midsomer Murders with Karin. In that show, there was one especially nice camera shot. It was from the point of view of a murderous shovel.

For tomorrow’s holiday dinner, we’re planning to eat Greek food, not Chinese. Then we’ll go to Karin’s grandpa’s house to play Phase 10 for several hours.

I’m grateful, this Thanksgiving, for my wife and kitties.

In praise of idleness

Karin was going to take a bath. She was sad. The weekend was drawing to a close.

With some hyperbole, she told me: “I think that people shouldn’t work.”

“I basically agree,” I said. “While you’re in the bath, why don’t you read this article, ‘In Praise of Idleness’ by Bertrand Russell.”

“I’m not going to read it in the bath. That would require too much work.”

“Then I’ll read you the first bit,” I said.

“How long is this article?” said Karin after a while.

“It goes from page 9 to page 29.”

Presently, I finished reading the article out loud. Karin groaned. “You read the whole thing.”

“I guess I did!”

Then Karin took her bath.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve never believed that working, in and of itself, is virtuous. I’ve always regarded it, in its usual severity, as a curse due to the Fall – or, at least, as a natural consequence of the Fall, of humanity’s rejection of God as its sovereign.

Russell (an atheist) explains tidily why this is so. He argues that if we had good central planning, we’d be required to work considerably less than we actually do (though each of us would have to contribute his or her fair share). Not only would this bring us more freedom, it would improve civilization, make us less warlike, and allow us to be “better-natured,” i.e., kinder and more loving.

But instead our rulers are unjust, and we’ve accepted their self-serving message that working is virtuous in and of itself. And so we resent each other and have wars, and, in our meager leisure-time, we’re too tired to do anything but watch TV.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Jesus says: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

I list all the World Cup teams

Last night, I watched Peru defeat New Zealand, 2–0, to qualify for the World Cup. Earlier yesterday, Australia defeated Honduras, and the previous day, Denmark defeated the Republic of Ireland. And so the qualification cycle has ended.

Before I went to sleep, I recited all of the qualified teams to Karin:

Egypt
Morocco
Nigeria
Senegal
Tunisia

Australia
Iran
Japan
Saudi Arabia
South Korea

Belgium
Croatia
Denmark
England
France
Germany
Iceland
Poland
Portugal
Russia
Serbia
Spain
Sweden
Switzerland

Costa Rica
Mexico
Panama

Argentina
Brazil
Colombia
Peru
Uruguay

Iceland (not Ireland) and Panama are first-time participants. Peru last reached this stage when I was less than a year old.

I have vivid World Cup memories of all the other teams.

Qualification, which has nearly ended

Africa completed its World Cup qualification cycle. These are the five successful teams: Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tunisia.

In Europe, the Italians were knocked out by the Swedes. This was notable but not surprising. Since 2006, the Italians have underwhelmed.

The Northern Irish lost heartbreakingly against the Swiss. For analysis, I recommend an excellent video – “This Referee is Terrible. Never a Penalty. 12 Man Switzerland Beat Northern Ireland 1-0” – by YouTube user Themadmistake. (Karin told me not to link to this video. It has filthy language.)

The Greeks also failed to qualify, having lost to the Croatians.

Tomorrow, the Republic of Ireland will host Denmark in the culmination of yet another playoff series. And on Wednesday, Australia will host Honduras. In both these series, the initial matches were goalless.

The same was true of Peru’s first match against New Zealand. This series also will be decided on Wednesday, in Lima.

In the first game, in Wellington, the Peruvians were the vastly superior team. A timid team will bring the ball out of its own half by booting it through the air, and a good team will bring the ball upfield by performing a sequence of short passes. But the Peruvians brought the ball out simply by dribbling. The Kiwis were powerless to prevent this.

And yet the game was scoreless because the Kiwis packed all their players in front of their own goal.

Also, both teams were without their best strikers:

(1) The New Zealander Chris Wood, who was injured. He did make a rather terrifying appearance late in the second period.

(2) The Peruvian Paolo Guerrero, who’d tested positive for illicit drug use. As they say in Peru, Hoja de coca no es droga.

A song by the kitties

Karin has written a song from the perspective of Jasper and Ziva:

We love our parents
They are good to us
We love our parents
They did not dispose of us

… which is not so different from what churchgoers sing about God.

When we were orphans

Well, after this week, I know what it’s like to “throw out” one’s back. There were hours on Monday and Tuesday when I hardly could walk. To get to the toilet, I had to inch my way out of bed and cling along the furniture.

But I didn’t miss any work. At home, I rested. Now I feel downright spry.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve nearly finished reading Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans. What an odd book. It’s partly a detective story, with none of the investigative precision of the usual detective story. It’s partly a fantasy – not of fantastical physics, but of fantastical life expectations. It’s partly a heartrending memoir, with the foggiest, least reliable of memoirists.

The chaotic events and feelings of this book unfold with creeping slowness, in language exquisitely formal and unchaotic.

And yet: if this book is more admirable than affecting, more a construction than a spontaneous cry, that is not a fault.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Barcelona played well and bravely in the second semifinal leg, winning again on Brazilian soil. But 1–0 wasn’t ample enough a victory. Grêmio advanced to play in the final. Now I shall cheer for the modest Argentinian club, Lanús.

The night before Halloween

All Hallows’ Eve’s Eve … everything’s wet and dour … I’d love it if only I didn’t have to work. My back feels like it was trodden upon by elephants. I don’t know why. It can’t only be due to my tremendous fat.

In a few minutes, Karin & I will go to an appointment with Karin’s mom’s family. Its purpose is for us to plan our Thanksgiving dinner. I’ve been doing my bit, calling the Chinese restaurants to learn which of them will be open.

A dire result

… in the Copa Libertadores. Barcelona lost its first semifinal game, at home, 3 goals to 0. Grêmio was the opponent.

One more semifinal game awaits. Recent “away” performances have been good, but 3–0 surely is too steep a mountain to climb.

Last night, South Bend had its first frost.

The fall, pt. 2

So far today, I’ve walked five miles: to the doctor, to the bank, to my job, etc., etc. All the time, it’s been cold and rainy. And to think that I used to routinely do this sort of thing.

A householder on Sunnyside Ave has left out some potted ibises, free for the taking.

At the office, things are quiet. I trust the rain to keep my tutees away. What with the fall weather and Halloween, I’m reading three “supernatural thrillers”:

The Man Who Was Thursday (this is my fourth time);

All Hallows’ Eve; and

Inferno.

For this last book, I’m using Mark Musa’s evocative, elegant translation and notes (next time, I might read someone else’s). Inferno is like the Bible: each new version brings out something different. Also, like the Bible, it’s profoundly sobering.

Inferno has its quirks, though. Dante (the character) always is fainting. (Things keep getting worse and worse down there in Hell.) Also, Dante clearly thinks well of his own ability. He likes to group himself with the most illustrious fallen poets.

Raiders vs. Chiefs

Due to the harm it causes, football shouldn’t be played or viewed – especially not the NFL’s Thursday night games, which have been criticized of late. On Thursdays, the players are lethargic. They’re insufficiently recovered from their Sunday games. Thursday games are lousy to watch (or so the critics have been claiming).

Well, this year, I’ve been viewing Thursday Night Football through Amazon Prime Video. Last week’s game was very good. This week’s game was one of the best I’d ever seen. (At least, the two offenses played well.) The Chiefs aimed to preserve their lofty standing. For the Raiders, the stakes were higher: they were obliged to win in order to save their (hitherto) disappointing season.

It was all very dramatic.

There were seven lead changes. Each quarterback flung the ball farther than three hundred yards. One of them did so with a broken back.

The Raiders missed two field goals. Their star running back, Marshawn “Beast Mode” Lynch, was ejected for shoving an official.

One of the Raiders’ pass defenders dropped an interception. The ball was caught by a Chief receiver, who scored with ease.

On the game’s last drive, the Raiders needed a touchdown. They maintained possession with an unlikely fourth-down catch. Another catch brought them within a yard of the end zone.

With fewer than ten seconds remaining, the Raiders had no timeouts. “Beast Mode” wasn’t eligible to carry the ball for them.

View for yourselves what happened.

I had never, ever seen anything like this. (Another game summary is here.) Even Karin was overcome. “This game is incredible,” she said, and she was in another room.

An old stomping ground

This article has a photo of my old job site: Bed Bath & Beyond in downtown Seattle.

It’s fitting that the article is about riding the bus. That’s what I did in Seattle, in 2004, when the transport system was not as efficient.

My parents are lending a car to Karin & me. I’m studying how to drive it. Alas. I’d hoped to go all my life without driving, like C.S. Lewis did. Later, I might permanently give up driving, in the manner of J.R.R. Tolkien, who saw Mordor encroaching all around him.

A quiet holiday at home

Ahhhh, Fall Break (until Tuesday). A brief holiday, but a sorely needed one. I plan to rest and to dissertate. The section I’m currently writing is about the book of Ezekiel, chapter 4.

No holiday for Karin, even though she could use one, the poor dear. She’s miserably ill. Right now, we’re watching Pac-12 football (sort of) and she’s preparing the treasury report for our church.

The kitties just had a tremendous fight at the highest level of their cat tree. They do that sometimes. Outside, the weather is very stormy.

I read the inaugural Flashman novel by George MacDonald Fraser. Flashman is the James Bond of the 19th century, but more of a rake and a bastard, and certainly more of a coward. Unlike the Bond books, the history in Flashman is scrupulously accurate. The first book treats Britain’s imperial debacle in Afghanistan. It’s often said that U.S. officials would’ve known not to invade Afghanistan if only they’d recalled the Soviet debacle there. Well, they could just as profitably have read Flashman.

Imagine something like J.G. Farrell’s Siege of Krishnapur, comparably funny and anti-imperial but shown through a dastardly lens. That’s how Flashman is. Suppose one were to teach a course on British postcolonial novels. One couldn’t assign Krishnapur and Flashman right next to one another. They’re too alike; any reader would get burnt out. But one might arrange the books along Northrop Frye’s seasonal wheel, (i) reading Farrell, one of the gentler ironists, three-quarters through the term, and then (ii) going through one or two other ironical books before (iii) concluding with Flashman – irony at its bleakest, most wintry, and most comic.

(The kitties are fighting again at top of their cat tree. There are lightning forks outside the window.)

More results

Well, Paraguay lost to Venezuela, 1 to 0. So much for Paraguay.

Argentina defeated Ecuador, leaped over several teams, and qualified for the World Cup. Ecuador didn’t field any of the players who defeated Argentina in the first game of the tourney. That, perhaps, is the most surprising fact of Ecuador’s World Cup cycle.

In Lima, Peru and Colombia each scored one goal. Peru’s was a golazo by its talisman, the excellent Paolo Guerrero. He scored with an indirect free kick that was touched by the Colombian goalkeeper. Now, to reach the World Cup, Peru must defeat New Zealand in a two-game playoff. Colombia finished above Peru and reached the World Cup directly.

The Uruguayans scored twice against themselves but still defeated Bolivia, 4 to 2. They also qualified for the World Cup.

These results helped to eliminate the Chileans, whom the group-winning Brazilians defeated, 3 to 0.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Ironically, the Chileans would’ve qualified for the playoff at Peru’s expense had they not won an earlier judgment in court. Due to Bolivian impropriety, Chile and Peru had sued against that nation. Chile’s 0–0 draw against Bolivia was converted into a 3–0 Chilean victory, and a 2–0 victory for Bolivia became a 3–0 victory for the Peruvians. On the whole, then, the judgment benefited Peru more than Chile. The difference was enough to switch these nations’ respective, final positions (click to enlarge):

(The chart on the left gives the official, post-judgment standings. The chart on the right shows what would’ve resulted without the court judgment.)

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

All of this was dramatic enough. But it paled in comparison to what happened in North America.

The Hondurans, obliged to defeat Mexico, narrowly managed to do so. One of their goals came from a shot that hit the crossbar and bounced off the Mexican goalkeeper’s head.

The Panamanians were similarly obliged to defeat Costa Rica. Their winning goal came at the end of the game. I celebrated it with great passion. Their earlier goal was even more dramatic. It was un gol fantasma: the ball never crossed the goal line. But the shooter, Blas Pérez – my old Panamanian favorite – was fouled and should’ve been awarded a penalty kick.

Here’s a video that shows all of this in clear detail. It also shows the Hondurans’ lucky goal.

Why do I care about these North American games? Because they made possible the elimination of the United States, that hollow team, which lost against Trinidad and Tobago. And so one of my dreams, that the U.S. should fail to qualify for a World Cup, has finally come true.

Results

Though the Ecuadorians played hard, they lost, two goals to one, relinquishing their last chance of qualifying for next year’s World Cup.

They almost didn’t lose. The Chileans scored their winning goal because an Ecuadorian substitute, having just ventured onto the infirm playing surface, slipped. But the night’s other results would have sunk the Ecuadorians even if they’d drawn.

A draw also would have pretty well sunk the Chileans. Instead, momentarily, they’re vaulted into third place. I say “momentarily” because they must play their concluding game in Brazil. Whether they qualify may well depend on how few goals the Brazilians decide to score against them. The Brazilians may end up KO’ing Chile for the third consecutive World Cup cycle.

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Argentina and Peru stalemated in Buenos Aires. Their fates depend upon their respective final matches.

Sitting pretty are the Brazilians (already qualified); the Uruguayans (assured of a playoff, at least; virtually assured of direct qualification); and, amazingly, the Paraguayans. GET THIS. Right now, the Paraguayans are in seventh place, i.e., three places from direct qualification, with a goal differential of minus-five. But if they defeat Venezuela at home, they’ll at least reach the playoff (they’d overtake either Colombia or Peru) and they might even qualify directly, overtaking Chile or Argentina (or both). This good placement is due to their superb comeback victory in Barranquilla. They scored in minutes 89 and 92, defeating the Colombians, 2–1. The Paraguayans are South America’s “cardiac” team.

Then again, I wouldn’t put it past them to fail to defeat the last-placed Venezuelans.

To recapitulate, this is the table (click to enlarge):

And these are the concluding fixtures:

Argentina at Ecuador
Bolivia at Uruguay
Chile at Brazil
Colombia at Peru
Venezuela at Paraguay

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The best result of the day was Kazuo Ishiguro’s selection as the Nobel literary laureate. When it was announced, it made me so pleased, I almost wasn’t bothered about the World Cup. Ishiguro is a fine writer, and The Remains of the Day, his most famous novel, displays the sublimest English and Japanese virtues.

Karin’s birthday; tomorrow’s World Cup qualifier; this year’s philosophical job listings

For her birthday, I went with Karin to a stir-fry restaurant at the mall. I also bought her this spiffy coloring book:

Its pages, colored, should look like this:

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Tomorrow is the do-or-die game in Chile. I’d say, “Please pray for Ecuador to win.” But does Ecuador deserve to qualify for this World Cup?

Arguably, no.

However, the Chileans certainly don’t deserve to qualify for this World Cup.

Please pray for Ecuador to win.

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It’s job-listing season for philosophy departments. Despite my hard work this year, it again looks as though my dissertation won’t have progressed far enough for me to be a viable candidate.

Were I to finish the current draft by the end of this month, job-wise it’d still be too late.

I can dream, though.

One job is at a Wesleyan liberal arts college in lovely, rural, upstate New York. It involves helping to “build a program” with one or two other professors. Translation: I could teach in several different subfields outside of my own area of specialization. That’s something I’d very much like to do.

Several other jobs look good because of the nearby mountain scenery. (Actually, there are very few such jobs.)

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This year, even more than usual, political philosophers and moralists are in high demand. This trend is to my advantage.

In especial demand are philosophers who moralize about race. I believe that race is a very important topic. But this recent philosophical emphasis on race leaves me uneasy: it has a whiff of fashionableness about it. In other words, I doubt that the attention now bestowed upon race is a manifestation of good faith.

Still, if I do think of anything worthwhile to say about race, I’ll try to write it in a paper.

¡¡¡ Patada criminal !!!

My Facebook feed gives me all the minutest updates about the Ecuadorian national soccer team. As it should. … What’s remarkable is how these updates are titled. I’m reminded of the headlines of El Extra.

For example, Gabriel Achilier recently earned a red card in the Mexican league. The headline:

#LoÚltimo ¡¡QUÉ IMPRUDENCIA!!

¡¡PATADA CRIMINAL DE ACHILIER A UN RIVAL!! LO MANDARON A LAS DUCHAS … PERO QUÉ PATAZO …

MIRA EL VIDEO …

(In fact, it wasn’t a very serious foul.)

Of course, these days, most of the updates are concerned with the preparations for Ecuador’s last two World Cup qualifiers. (More precisely: these will be our last two qualifiers if we don’t finish in fifth place in South America; should we finish fifth, there would follow a two-game series against New Zealand.) Gustavo Quinteros, our manager, has been sacked. His replacement, Jorge Célico, has abandoned several regular players (e.g., Christian Noboa) and seen others abruptly retire (e.g., Felipe Caicedo). In their stead, he’s convoking rookies. I’m not necessarily in favor of dropping Noboa, but I welcome the influx of new talent. The old team had gotten far too predictable. The new players won’t have been scouted very thoroughly by our opponents.

Our next game, away to Chile, is on October 5 – Karin’s birthday. Karin isn’t very eager about this. I’ve tended to be sad on game days, lately.

UPDATE: Karin’s birthday is October 3, not October 5.

I knew that.

“Beer!”

Two entries ago, I celebrated the coming of the fall season. Now I must report that the fall has ended and that summer has come again. Temperatures this weekend were in the mid-to-high nineties (F). Skies were blisteringly clear. I kept the shades down to protect Ziva and Jasper from the ultraviolet rays.

This afternoon, Karin and her mother performed their post-equinox ritual of tromping around some local corn mazes. Karin returned sunburned, and, probably, dehydrated. She also brought home two small pumpkins that Ziva and Jasper keenly sniffed.

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At IUSB, I carry a small, green Perrier bottle. I drink from it throughout the day, refilling it at the water fountain.

On Friday, one of the tutees brought with her an old man – senile, disheveled, and toothless – who appeared to be under her care. They sat a short distance from my table while I tutored someone else.

The old man noticed my green Perrier bottle.

“Beer!” he said, and lumbered over.

“No! No!” we all exclaimed.

It was too late. The old man took a swig and sat at my table. “Beer.”

I let him keep the bottle. He was a jolly old man, prone to outbursts of contentment.

Santos vs. Barcelona

Last night, for the Copa Libertadores, Barcelona visited Santos of Brazil. The teams played the second leg of the quarterfinal stage.

Santos is the club at which the following illustrious players spent their formative years:

(1) Pelé;

(2) Robinho (a twerp); and

(3) Neymar (an arch-twerp).

Neymar has been in the headlines lately. He was caught, en pleno partido, bickering with his Paris Saint-Germain teammate, Edinson Cavani, on the question of who should take a certain penalty kick. This is what they probably said:

Cavani: “I’m PSG’s incumbent penalty-kick taker. I should take this penalty kick.”

Neymar: “My transfer to PSG cost €222 million. I should take all the penalty kicks. Give me the ball.”

I have no great love for Santos or for its twerps.

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During last week’s first leg, Santos played defensively and got a lucky goal. (To me, the goal seemed offside.) That game ended 1 to 1. And so, last night in Brazil, Barcelona was obliged to score at least one goal so as to avoid succumbing​ to the away-goals tiebreaker.

Last night’s game started with Santos attacking more than Barcelona. Then Barcelona began its onslaught. Santos retreated. Barcelona pounded and pounded, but without precision or success.

The (neutral) announcers kept talking about how Barcelona deserved to win. They had a fatalistic tone. It all seemed pretty bleak.

The goal arrived at minute 70, more or less. ¡Gol! ¡Gol! I shouted, alarming Ziva and Jasper.

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My joy was short-lived. Barcelona’s goalscorer, Jonathan Álvez, was red-carded. The teams’ roles were reversed: Barcelona defended and Santos desperately attacked.

The game turned into a high-tension brawl, typical of the Copa Libertadores. Each team suffered one more red card. Barcelona’s players guarded the result, wasting time and rolling on the ground, observing the proper etiquette.

They did just enough to win.

Santos was Barcelona’s third Brazilian opponent of this year. A fourth awaits in the semifinal: Grêmio, of Porto Alegre.

The fall

Fall has arrived: cool air, cloudy skies, a congested work schedule.

At IUSB, I’m one of the longest-serving tutors. This means that my hours are more numerous – and less regular – than in previous years. And it means that when I’m not tutoring, I’m writing emails to set up special tutoring sessions.

These things get in the way of meeting my life goals, such as finishing the Ph.D. and making enough money to sire children in good conscience. (Of course, by wishing to sire human children, I don’t mean to devalue Jasper and Ziva. I love them as dearly as if they were my own offspring.)

This week, at last, I met Russell, Ana’s & David’s little son (Ana & David are visiting from Texas). Russell is no larger than Jasper. He’s partly a terrier and partly a Chihuahua. He has a considerable repertoire of tricks.

Last night, at supper, our whole family watched Russell do his tricks. Then we watched one of our favorite movies: Citizen X, about a Soviet serial killer. The Donald Sutherland character reminded me of my Ph.D. advisor.

Thank you Uruguay, thanks Bolivia

… for defeating Paraguay and Chile, respectively, which is all that’s keeping Ecuador in the hunt. The Venezuelans helped us, too, drawing with Argentina in Buenos Aires.

(I feel like Alanis Morissette in her “Thank U India” video: chastened and nude.)

No thanks to ourselves. Last night, the Peruvians defeated us in Quito. We were bad.

It’s hard to know what, or whom, to blame. Our players? They’d do better if things weren’t so dire. Our coach? Certainly, his tactics are bankrupt, or else they aren’t suited to our personnel; but I’m not sure what tactics to suggest instead. The groundskeeping? That was a problem last night. The grass was cut short to make the ball roll quickly. But our players kept failing to control the ball.

The altitude? Last night, it didn’t help us. I think Peru may have used more “highland” players than we used.

I’d be in utter despair – I was all through the night – except that Argentina and Chile are playing badly, too, and they’re our closest qualifying rivals, and they’re whom we will play against in our last two games. I thought the Peruvians would be easier to beat, but now I’m not so sure. The Argentinians have looked tepid under all three of their world-class coaches. And the Chileans, well, they’re a disaster. And so are we. The three teams are punch-drunk and knocked down. Whoever can stand up just a little will be admitted to the World Cup.

Thank you, Paraguay

This article describes last night’s results. “South American qualifying,” it says, “is one of the best-kept secrets in global soccer.” Maybe; what’s certain is that South American qualifying is the best competition in soccer, period.

Last night, I was profoundly glad about South America. I watched modest Paraguay hammer the Chileans in Santiago. “Paraguay is such a brave little country,” I thought.

That result kept us Ecuadorians in the thick of things, even though we lost in Brazil. (Still, our defeat was a pity: a victory would have propelled us into fourth place; instead, we sunk to eighth.) Now, if we win our last three games, qualification is virtually assured.

Little Man Tate

Casemiro is the world’s MVP of soccer. Let me explain.

When I was in high school, our team gave out two awards: Best-All-Around Player and Most Valuable Player. Following that model, Lionel Messi is the world’s Best-All-Around Player. Casemiro, the workhorse midfielder at Real Madrid, is the world’s Most Valuable Player – the one who contributes the most to his teams’ successes. (Cristiano Ronaldo, who recently won UEFA’s Best Player in Europe award, is Real Madrid’s seventh-most valuable player, after Casemiro, Toni Kroos, Sergio Ramos, Luka Modric, Keylor Navas, and Marcelo.)

But back to Casemiro. On Thursday, along with arch-twerp Neymar, he’ll lead the already-qualified Brazilians against Ecuador. I expect the Ecuadorians to continue their sad tailspin. But I hope and pray for their resurgence.

This article details the Ecuador/Brazil rivalry.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to watch this game. Sheer dread.

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For the first time in well over a decade, I watched one of my favorite movies: Jodie Foster’s Little Man Tate. I remembered every line. This time, I especially noticed its echoes of Woody Allen – its jazz soundtrack and its casting of Dianne Wiest.

Of course, the movie is winsome because of little Fred (Adam Hann-Byrd). To win viewers over to his side, and to show his genius, the movie employs something like a reverse caricature. It allows Fred to speak with disarming naturalness. Usually, he speaks just one simple sentence at a time; and when he gives longer speeches, his sentences, to borrow a line from Malcolm Gladwell, “come marching out one after another, polished and crisp like soldiers on a parade ground.” Meanwhile, the movie has its other “geniuses” strain their language ever so slightly.

The result is that Fred, by comparison, seems utterly pure – Fred and his good mother, who also uses artless language.

The chicken

In the car on the way to the ice-cream stand, I put on a catchy song: “El pollito, pío,” i.e., “The Chick [Goes] Chirp” (whose YouTube video has one billion views). Then, when we arrived, lo and behold, a live chicken was tranquilly perched outside the building.

Karin photographed it.

It was a friendly chicken. The ice-cream vendors said it just showed up. It was very interested in all the people.

Celebrating Ziva

Little Ziva has lived with us for a whole year. Yesterday, to celebrate, we gave her tuna.

We also gave some to Jasper. He ate his own tuna, and then he finished Ziva’s.

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I saw the sun’s (partial) eclipse, just a few minutes ago, at a viewing station at IUSB. Many people were staring directly at the sun. More interesting than the eclipse itself was the daylight. It darkened, of course; and then it turned a lovely, golden color.

The LimeBike

As Borat says, “In my country, there is problem / And that problem is transport.”

Well, South Bend has joined in an experiment to make transport better, or, at least, more hip. It has adopted the LimeBike system.

Behold these young Seattleites riding LimeBikes.

The system works like this. Garish green bikes are planted all over the city. When you find one, you scan its QR code with your phone. This allows you to ride for up to 30 minutes.

$1 is charged to your tab.

Afterward, you leave the bike in any accessible, unobtrusive place (e.g., on the grass next to a public sidewalk).

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I strongly disapprove of car transport, and so you’d think I’d have high hopes for the LimeBike.

Alas, I don’t.

I don’t think the LimeBike ever will become popular enough to significantly change the transport system. South Benders will continue to drive.

If I recall correctly, that’s what’s happened in the Netherlands. For many years, the Dutch have had a generous bike-sharing system. And many Dutch do use it: cycling is an important part of their culture. But few Dutch commuters switch over from driving cars.

My conjecture is that no matter what country you go to, introducing more bikes won’t change the overall transport preferences.

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But suppose that LimeBikes were to become popular in South Bend, or were perceived to be popular. That would be dangerous, lest support be withdrawn from public bussing.

Mass transit is what really matters to poor people. No one too poor to own a car would wish to depend on some dumb bike. Especially not in snow or rain. And not in old age or illness or affliction.

For the occasional light errand, the LimeBike is OK. Though it isn’t cheaper than riding the bus, in some circumstances it’s more practical. But as a significant influence upon transit patterns, it’s less likely to help than to hurt.

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Also, the LimeBike reminds me of Dr. Seuss’s Pale Green Pants. I keep seeing it in strange places, as if it were following me.

This week, there’s been a LimeBike in my parking lot. Every day, the thing has moved a little closer to my building. Now it’s sitting on my front porch.

It creeps me out.

In Seattle, the LimeBike has taken to hanging from the trees.

And in South Bend, it keeps on appearing in the river, as if it were Ophelia.

News of Charlottesville

Since our return from the church camp, Karin & I have learned what happened at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

At the camp, the news didn’t reach us.

We didn’t hear it from the pulpit.

We didn’t hear it from the other campers.

Nor did we hear it on the Internet, our access to which was quite limited. (I paid $7.99 to use just 6 MB, and so I browsed very little.)

It’s possible that the event was mentioned during the Sunday morning service, which we didn’t attend.

It certainly wasn’t mentioned during Saturday night’s sermon, which ended forty-five minutes late. (That sermon was about Satanic rock music and “crossing the line.”)

On Friday morning, that same preacher had spoken rather well about the willful neglect of the truth. And so I’m puzzled why, on Saturday night, he didn’t mention what’s clearly a national crisis. Instead, in his preliminary remarks, he talked about how the camp had erected a shrine to his dead cat.

Maybe, like Karin & me, he simply was cut off from the rest of the world.

And once more to the apartment

… much to the kitties’ delight. Our reunion with them was most tender.

Here is my summary of the last three days at the camp.

It rained often, and so the paths were muddy.

We went to church twice each day. The sermon that I discussed in the previous entry was the best one by far. The others all went on longer than their allotted times, and they rehashed these points:

(1) The importance of the U.S. armed forces.

(2) The importance of the church elders (Michigan district).

(3) The importance of camp, for training the youth.

(4) Dangers that beset the youth. In this last category:

(4a) Satanism in rock music.

(4b) Activities that steer the youth away from camp.

(4c) Homosexuality.

(4d) Disney World – not explicitly named, but inferable from certain mentions of (4b) and (4c).

And lastly:

(4e) Unmanliness in various guises: being an absent father, selling one’s spiritual “birthright,” and failing to “cross the line.” (Julius Caesar, one speaker told us, heroically “crossed the line” when he crossed the Rubicon. The speaker himself had “crossed the line” many times, breaking rules at the mental health center where he worked, so that he could lead a teenager away from Devil worship.)

Yesterday, between services, Karin & I and Karin’s friend, Shad, traveled to the touristic town of Frankenmuth. Much of the town is German-themed. It’s also the site of Bronner’s, “the world’s largest Christmas store.” Like the House on the Rock, the store displays a staggering number of knickknacks. It also has a small chapel.

We returned to the camp. That night was the best night of the trip. We took lawn chairs out into a dark field and watched a meteorite shower. It was lovely, except when other campers drove near to us in their rented golf carts, blinding us with their headlights. “You’re ruining the meteorite shower!” I called out to them.

This morning, Brianna and her retinue tromped into our cabin and woke us up. We packed up our car and drove home, skipping the sermon of the denomination’s president. I plan to listen to the sermon on YouTube.

Once more to the camp

With stops, our drive to the “thumb” of Michigan took six hours. It was quite tiring – we’d stayed awake late the previous night, due to Barcelona’s victory over Palmeiras in the Copa Libertadores – and when we arrived at the camp, we wished to rest. Alas, our cabin was filled with Brianna and her noisy teenaged retinue.

One grubby youngster, Noah, unknown to us, is Brianna’s new boyfriend of some few days. The other teenagers look ganglier and greasier than last year.

“Let’s turn around and leave,” said Karin.

“Yes! Yes!” I agreed.

But we didn’t.

Instead, we went to the church service. The speaker posited a “social trinitarian” conception of the Godhead, on the basis of which he argued for the value of community – and, by extension, against leaving the church. He showed Andrei Rublev’s famous painting of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit seated together at a table. “This is a picture of God,” he said.

I was glad to view that lovely painting. But I recalled that other pictures show the Godhead as one person with three faces. The “social” doctrine isn’t the only account of the Trinity.

(Not that the speaker needed that doctrine to make his point. Community can be important even if it doesn’t exist within the Godhead.)

After church, everyone lined up for ice-cream, which was served in heaping portions. This photo shows me eating a “single.”

Illness; my mom’s birthday; libraries; Norman Podhoretz; Napoleon; the famous Danish book about traveling to Yemen

Jasper is over his gingivitis (but not the disease that caused it). He’s also past the sneezing and eye-running that plagued him last week. Now Ziva has both of those ailments. To my knowledge, this is her first illness.

Yesterday, she huddled miserably in remote corners of the apartment. Tonight, she’s more active – but no less afflicted.

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My mom’s birthday was today. I gave her some leftover pork that Karin cooked awhile ago. Then my mom asked for the recipe, and so I typed it up on LaTeX and sent it to her as a PDF.

Later, we held a supper for my mom, and Mary asked: “Mother, how does it feel to have all your children with you?” (In fact, David wasn’t there.) After the supper, we had a dessert, and after the dessert, Karin & I went to Walmart to buy medicine for the kitties.

It appears that Walmart sells The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory:

“Only 1 left!”

Even reduced by thirty dollars, the price isn’t nearly in reach. Nor does the Indiana University library system own a printed copy of the book. Nor can the e-book be accessed at my campus.

This leaves Interlibrary Loan. Thankfully, ILL is a marvel, a privilege that exceeds what any person could deserve, a manifestation of the grace of God and Caesar.

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I’m also using the library system to haul in old copies of three books recently re-released by NYRB. The first is Making It by Norman Podhoretz. A comprehensive review by Louis Menand is here.

The book itself is naturally witty, but also incorrigibly grasping. However, the author faces up to this problem rather well:

A critic with a very good pair of ears once wrote that he could hear in some of my essays “the tones of a young man who expects others to be just a little too pleased with his early eminence.”

Indeed. Podhoretz also observes shrewdly the guiding myths of Brooklyn Judaism, of the universities of Columbia and Cambridge (England), and – I haven’t quite got to it yet – of the New York magazine scene.

Still to come from the library: The Death of Napoleon, a short novel by Simon Leys, whose essays collected in The Hall of Uselessness are elegant, empathetic, and astute; and Thorkild Hansen’s Arabia Felix, about an eighteenth-century expedition of Danes to what is now Yemen. The Danes did not get on with one another. I hope to read about the details at this year’s church camp, to which, on Thursday, Karin & I will travel.

The naked prey

He doesn’t enjoy taking his medicine or having his teeth brushed, but, on the whole, Jasper seems less frantic than a week ago. One good sign is that he’s accepting his stricter diet. (The vet insisted we trim away some of his 13 lbs.) He begs less piteously over our meals – unless, that is, we’re having tuna or chicken.

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Last night, Karin & I watched Cornel Wilde’s opus from 1965. I’d seen it in the summer of 2000, late one night on AMC, after a grueling McDonald’s shift.

Here is the summary from AllMovie:

In the bush country of South Africa in the late 19th century … [a] hunting party are captured by … tribesmen and grotesquely tortured to death. The only white man spared is safari-guide Cornel Wilde. … Stripping him naked and giving him a knife to defend himself, [the tribesmen] set Wilde free in the jungle, in preparation of hunting him down like a lion. … The rest of this thrill-a-minute film follows Wilde into the underbrush in his desperate, resourceful flight for life. Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey was filmed entirely on location under circumstances nearly as dangerous as the plight of its protagonist.

Roger Ebert makes scathing criticisms, all of them just. I find the movie interesting for comparative reasons.

Jean-Luc Godard famously said: “In order to criticize a movie, you have to make another movie.” I wonder if Nicolas Roeg had The Naked Prey in mind when he made Walkabout (1971). Roeg seems to have appropriated the most striking features of the earlier movie.

Both movies are lushly colored. Both are about wandering on foot through untamed land.

There are frequent digressions from the main story to show “nature red in tooth and claw.” When the protagonists sleep, creatures crawl and slither near them. Vegetation is photographed so as to resemble the human body.

Still, Roeg performs some critical reversals.

There is the theme of black and white people together in nature. In Wilde’s story, they fight; in Roeg’s, they cooperate. The failure of that cooperation is far more ironic, far bitterer, than anything in The Naked Prey.

There are scenes of hunting in which animals are really killed. Wilde has his hunter-actors throw their spears, and then he cuts to show the speared animals collapsing. Roeg casts an authentic hunter who, in one take, chases down his prey and spears it.

And then there is the titular nudity. Both movies show some natives naked. Wilde’s look like they’re from National Geographic; Roeg’s look … indecent. When Wilde’s protagonist is made to disrobe, the foliage preserves his modesty. When Roeg’s protagonists are naked … wow.

I could go on. In Wilde’s movie, the key figures are adults. In Roeg’s, they aren’t yet fully grown: in their Edenic setting, they have all the more innocence to lose.

Wilde’s characters travel across the screen from left to right. In Walkabout, the traveling is mostly opposite: perverse, confused. In Wilde’s movie, civilization, when it appears, is a haven. In Roeg’s, it’s as unwelcoming as nature.

So: Walkabout is much, much better. But The Naked Prey is watchable. Its ingredients are distinctive and exquisite, if not so compellingly arranged. There haven’t been many other movies like it, before or since.

Little Ziva surely enjoyed it: she perched on her hind legs, her face in front of the TV.

“Gingie”

Some of Jasper’s aliases:

“Fluffy” (his middle name);
“Jaspartacus”;
“Sparty” (short for “Jaspartacus”);
“J. Clumpus Booty” (his alias when we clean his toilet).

And now, “Gingie” – for his color and his new disease.

He’d been behaving rudely, especially toward little Ziva (who’d shown signs of stress). Then, yesterday, we discovered the likely cause. We saw that his lip was swollen. We took him to the vet, who diagnosed a rare disease of the immune system – a disease that attacks the mouth and, eventually, rots the teeth.

The good news is that so far Jasper only has gingivitis (no wonder he’s been irritable). We’re treating it with steroids and antibiotics. The bad news is that the disease will stay with Jasper for the rest of his life. We can only minimize its symptoms, e.g. by brushing his teeth each day. Fortunately, by doing this, we can prevent the worst effects.

Now both Jasper and Ziva seem calmer. Karin & I are struggling to do without the money that we had to pay to the vet.

Two ex-Hammers

A year has passed since the dismal European Championship, the highlight of which was Simone Zaza’s failed penalty kick:

How poignant Zaza’s face is, how hopeful. (And Conte’s, how full of sadness.)

Last year, I wrote: “Brave Zaza, I understand your pain, and I wish you future success.”

Zaza has redeemed himself. After an awful period at West Ham, he was lent out to Valencia, where he scored this golazo against Real Madrid.

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I now look to the resurgence of Énner Valencia, my compatriot. This other former Hammer was lent out to make room for Zaza. At Everton, he hardly played. Now, he is in Mexico, with los Tigres, among strikers Eduardo Vargas and André-Pierre Gignac.

He scored three good goals in his debut with los Tigres. The second goal, especially, shows his athleticism, his ruggedness.

Why didn’t he succeed in the Premier League?

I agree with Álex Aguinaga. Some players can only function in a certain warmth.

On how I begin to write in the morning

My dissertation has taken a tedious turn. I’ve been trawling for mentions of the term ‘reasonable’ among the obscure speeches and declarations of King James II, as well as in the debate on religious toleration between John Locke and Jonas Proast. And not only in those sources: also in legal dictionaries, and in Merriam-Webster.

Soon – I dread this – I really ought to check the OED.

I wonder if it was a good idea to try to detail the pre-Rawlsian history of this moral concept. Then I remember my supervisor’s advice. “Pages,” he would say. “You need a certain quantity of pages.”

Consequently, a long footnote about Xabi Alonso, Xavi Hernández, N’Golo Kanté, and Claude Makélélé has remained in the dissertation for several months. I can’t bring myself to take it out.

The other day, I ate lunch with my old pastor, and he expressed confidence that, whatever I turn in, it’ll be of superb quality. I didn’t tell him about that footnote.

What helps me to start writing every day is this. Online, I’ve found the dissertations of many of my acquaintances. I pull them out and read a few lines. Then I read a passage of my own dissertation. My own writing unfailingly is less erroneous, less trivial, less clunky, and funnier. I decide it’s quite good, relatively speaking. And so I write all day long, except when tutees interrupt me.

The sum of small things

At last! A social scientist – “the James Irvine Chair in Urban and Regional Planning and professor of public policy at the University of Southern California” – has written the book on hipsters.

Or, more broadly, on “the aspirational class.” The book says that hipsters are just the poorest members of that class. Ha, ha!

Now I can rest. My prejudices have been confirmed. (By science!)

The driving idea behind The Sum of Small Things isn’t new. The book uses “Bourdieu’s basic thesis” – that “everyday cultural forms create and maintain social status” (p. 55) – to explain how elitists separate themselves from other people today, as opposed to how they did so fifty or one hundred years ago. So, instead of focusing on how rich people lived in mansions and carried fancy walking sticks – costly, conspicuous behaviors that helped them to maintain their social status – the book talks about foodies ordering brunch (which is cheaper but still conspicuous to do, or at least conspicuous enough).

Bourdieu’s thesis is true but awful to read about. Bourdieu was a hideous writer. I know because I own his famous book. And everything written after him follows his lead.

This new book is only slightly more readable. Here’s another passage (again, p. 55):

The accrual of different types of knowledge and the sharing of cultural capital mean that the new elites use this information to buy particular things or act in particular ways and to further solidify their position. Or, as Khan writes, “Culture is a resource used by elites to recognize one another and distribute opportunities on the basis of the display of appropriate attributes.” Nail polish color is more subtle and less expensive than yachts and handbags, but the choice to wear one color over another involves acquiring knowledge as to what is aesthetically appropriate and appreciated by one’s peer group.

Not lovely.

Here is all you need to know. Hipsters are bad. They promote a culture of snobbery and exclusion, even as they believe themselves to be doing good. Don’t be a hipster. The best thing you can do, when eating out, is to eat fast food.

“The boy ain’t right”

Whatever happened to Bobby Hill?

He grew up to be Aaron Paul.

Reëlection

I found this spelling of the word, with its casually ostentatious ë, in a recent New Yorker article about Texas politics.

How long has this been going on?

IS THIS WHERE SOCIETY IS HEADED?

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In the Copa Libertadores, Barcelona hosted Palmeiras in the first leg of a home-and-away series.

The first half was nothing great to look at. The Brazilians disrupted play as much as possible.

In the second half, Barcelona exerted smothering control. Such famed Brazilians as Ze Roberto and Michel Bastos couldn’t keep Jonathan Álvez from bringing attack after attack up the right wing. But as the minutes passed, it looked as if Barcelona wouldn’t carry a lead into the second leg.

Therefore I was delighted when one of Álvez’s shots squeaked in in injury time.

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My parents arrived from Ecuador today. They’ll be in this country until October.

Delfín 4, Liga de Quito 1; Portugal 2, Mexico 1; Germany 1, Chile 0; a futile exercise in pickup soccer

The important news is that Delfín S.C. clinched the top spot in the first semester of the Ecuadorian tournament. In so doing, the “Cetaceans” qualified to play in December’s grand finale – and in the group stage of next year’s Copa Libertadores.

This is historic. Delfín will be the first-ever Copa Libertadores team from the longsuffering province of Manabí.

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In the Confederations Cup, in the game for third place, the Portuguese scored a couple of late goals to defeat the Mexicans. Then, in the final game, the Germans tapped the ball into the net after stealing it from one of the Chilean defenders. After that, the Germans simply waited for the game to end.

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I missed the second half of that game because I was playing pickup soccer. It was not one of my best experiences playing soccer.

It was dismal to play as a fatty. I had the strength for just one sprint, and I didn’t want to expend it right away, so I let the opposing players dribble past me. Then, after an old man dribbled past me, I was like, “No more of this.” So when he tried again I got in his way and kicked the ball out of bounds. I did this several times.

I tried to stay on the wing, a region of the field from which the other team would never score any goals. Alas, my teammates failed to occupy the fullback’s area just behind me. (Perhaps they assumed that I was the fullback.) Since I didn’t run back to cover that area – and since I couldn’t have guarded anyone even if I had run back – this was fatal.

After a while, my friend Brandon – another fatty, who was playing for the other team – came over to my side of the field to guard me. I decided to perform my only sprint. I ran into the open space behind Brandon. I called for the ball. It was passed elsewhere.

A little later I decided that it was time for me to go home.

Germany 4, Mexico 1

This semifinal never was in doubt. The Germans claimed a strong lead, 2 goals to 0, by minute 8. They let the Mexicans keep the ball during the rest of the game. The other goals were incidental.

Chile 0 (3), Portugal 0 (0)

I recall those shocking days when Russia and Qatar were awarded the hosting rights of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups. Everyone in the West screamed bloody scandal. Especially the English. … And now, it’s reported that Prince William, his Prime Minister, and their cronies negotiated an illegal trade of votes with officials from South Korea (another bidding nation).

Gloat, gloat, gloat.

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Today, Portugal and Chile played the first semifinal game of this Confederations Cup. I turned it on and viewed it for ten minutes. “No goals in this game,” I foresaw.

I watched Netflix. Then I turned the game back on and viewed during minutes 83–90. Still no goals. I regretted my decision to report on the tournament.

The announcers kept saying what a good game it’d been. Maybe they were right. I couldn’t tell.

The thirty-minute extra time started slowly and finished with a flurry of attacking. The Chileans should have been awarded a penalty kick, but VAR did not intervene. Then, twice, they struck the goalposts.

The shootout was more straightforward: three shots, three goals for the Chileans; three shots, three misses for the Portuguese.

Australia 1, Chile 1; Germany 3, Cameroon 1

Because I went to church, I didn’t watch either of yesterday’s Confederations Cup games.

Karin filmed this half-minute video of Ziva and Jasper. They’re observing a fly.

Mexico 2, Russia 1; Portugal 4, New Zealand 0; New York City FC 2, New York Red Bulls 0

Today’s Confederations Cup games were played simultaneously. I watched Russia vs. Mexico, which was shown on regular TV.

The Russians started well. Two of their attacks should have resulted in penalty kicks. Neither the referee nor the VAR system awarded any foul, however.

The Russians scored the first goal after a frantic sequence. One shooter struck the upright. Another saw his shot blocked. A third shooter missed the ball altogether. He did manage to slip the ball to the eventual goalscorer.

At that time, the Russians led the group. Things looked quite rosy for them. But then the Mexicans scored with a looping, headed shot.

In the second half, the Mexicans corrected their tactical imperfections. They scored again with another looping, headed shot. The assist came in high and long – all the way from the Mexican defense – and, as he lunged for the ball, the goalscorer was kicked in the chest by the Russian goalie.

VAR disallowed a third Mexican goal. … One of the best Russian players was red-carded. … The Russians looked very tired. … Finally, the whistle was blown, and the host nation was eliminated from the tourney.

At the same time, Portugal defeated New Zealand.

Then FOX showed an MLS contest between the New York Red Bulls and New York City FC. The announcers called it the “New York Derby.” Only, they didn’t say “Derby,” as in “Kentucky Derby”; they said “Darby,” which is how the English pronounce the word. They also talked about the “Texas Darby” – Houston vs. Dallas – as well as other MLS “Darbies.”

Wankers.

Australia 1, Cameroon 1; Chile 1, Germany 1

Two good games today. The first was dominated by the Cameroonians, who, failing to win, hurt their chances of advancing to the second round. Defending, they made their opponents seem quite toothless (the Australian striker, Tim Cahill, whom the announcers covered in glory, hardly got any touches). But when they were attacking, the Cameroonians weren’t precise enough; and with one clattering foul, they gifted the Australians the penalty kick which was the tying goal.

In the second match, the veteran Chileans employed their usual suffocating press against the youthful German B-team. It brought them their early goal. Then they kept on employing the press, and the Germans passed their way through it and scored their goal.

What I’d like is for the Chileans to reach the final and to be whalloped so hard by this German B-team that they fall apart in World Cup qualifying. Ecuador needs someone to overtake.

(If you are not Germany, and you don’t have a factory of talent to depend on, these useless little tournaments lead only to distraction, despair, and death.)

Portugal 1, Russia 0; Mexico 2, New Zealand 1

I was occupied with tutoring, and so I missed Portugal’s victory over Russia. It seems to have been a dull contest. The Portuguese scored early and then defended all the rest of the game.

I did get to watch Mexico vs. New Zealand, which was entertaining. In the first half, the Kiwis disrupted the Mexicans’ attacking rhythm. Also, Chris Wood, a truck of a forward, gave the Mexican defenders fits. He eventually scored a goal. The second half was very different. The Mexicans realigned themselves tactically; came out at full speed; and scored twice, due to the slipperiness of Javier Aquino, their tiny winger.

In stoppage time, the two teams got into quite a scuffle. The referee ordered a long break so he could consult the Video Assistant Replay system about whom to punish. I was licking my chops – I thought he’d give out several red cards – but he didn’t give out any.

Father’s Day; Mexico 2, Portugal 2; Chile 2, Cameroon 0; Germany 3, Australia 2

I didn’t watch yesterday’s games. I was in Goshen, Indiana, attending a Father’s Day event. I gave my father-in-law a card, and he gave me a book of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches that he bought during a recent trip to Washington, D.C.

I, Karin, and Karin’s sister, Lily, walked for an hour down a pleasant creekside path in Goshen. I wondered how it would be to live in that city. Where would I work? There are some Mennonite colleges in the area. Could I be a good Mennonite? I doubt it. I have too much feeling for the nations.

These are the games I missed:

Mexico 2, Portugal 2;

Chile 2, Cameroon 0.

One thing made the news: Video Assistant Replay, which is being tested during this Confederations Cup. It led to the annulment of this Portuguese goal (and, I believe, to the validation of a Chilean goal that the referee initially had annulled).

Its use did not seem intrusive. I opposed VAR before this tourney, but now I’m coming to favor it.

Today Germany and Australia played. The Germans got an early goal. The Australians equalized near the end of the first half. The Germans – few of them habitual first-teamers – responded with a flurry of excellent play, quickly scoring two more goals. But not long afterward the Australians punched in another goal, keeping the Germans from leaving them in the dust. All around, it was a good show.