VALIS
That is one mental book. Already.
Looking back at Euro 96…
Shearer’s arm in the air celebration
Gazza’s infamous ‘Dentist chair’ celebration
Seaman’s legendary ‘Safe Hands’
Stuart Pearce going ‘Psycho’ after his penalty redemption
and…and…
Poor Gareth Southgate.
It was during Euro 96 I fell head over heels in love with football. And what a roller coaster of a relationship it is ♥ ♥ ♥
Our greatest chance to win something. We seem so far away from that right now. Who knows, maybe Euro 2012 could throw up a surprise. We can only hope.
"Der Ball ist rund. Das spiel dauert 90 Minuten"
Sepp Herberger
Midnight snack.
Thoughts on A Scanner Darkly
I’m working my way through Philip K. Dick’s ouvre right now, I first read The Man in the High Castle a couple of years ago because it was an alternative history novel, one of my favourite genres. I then moved onto the book that inspired Blade Runner, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? After that, it was Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. What I enjoy about Dick’s work is the sense of unreality, and the slow fall the characters have into madness. This is the same in A Scanner Darkly. Bob Arctor’s world falls around him as he becomes addicted to Substance D, the drug that has taken a hold of much of America in this world. The second half of the book is through an unreliable narrator, Arctor’s state of mind means you cannot be exactly sure what is happening is real.
The most moving aspect of the book, however, is the afterword. I don’t often read these, or forwards for that matter. But this one was something quite special. Dick himself had lived as a part of the Californian drug scene in the 1970s, and knew many people who had died because of their addictions. He lists all of his friends who died, or were irreversibly changed by drugs. But he does not blame them, as this passage so expertly sums up:
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like
the decision to step out in front of a moving car.
You would call that not a disease but an error in
judgment.
When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social
error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the
motto
is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but
the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is
a memory.
What a lovely day
The sun was shining, I finished A Scanner Darkly, had a jolly day at work, watched the Eurovision Semi-Final and laughed hard. Now can’t wait for the weekend. House parties and the Eurovision final. Things seem to be looking up.
"I would you had but the wit: ‘twere better than
your dukedom. Good faith, this same young sober-
blooded boy doth not love me; nor a man cannot make
him laugh; but that’s no marvel, he drinks no wine.
There’s never none of these demure boys come to any
proof; for thin drink doth so over-cool their blood,
and making many fish-meals, that they fall into a
kind of male green-sickness; and then when they
marry, they get wenches: they are generally fools
and cowards; which some of us should be too, but for
inflammation. A good sherris sack hath a two-fold
operation in it. It ascends me into the brain;
dries me there all the foolish and dull and curdy
vapours which environ it; makes it apprehensive,
quick, forgetive, full of nimble fiery and
delectable shapes, which, delivered o’er to the
voice, the tongue, which is the birth, becomes
excellent wit. The second property of your
excellent sherris is, the warming of the blood;
which, before cold and settled, left the liver
white and pale, which is the badge of pusillanimity
and cowardice; but the sherris warms it and makes
it course from the inwards to the parts extreme:
it illumineth the face, which as a beacon gives
warning to all the rest of this little kingdom,
man, to arm; and then the vital commoners and
inland petty spirits muster me all to their captain,
the heart, who, great and puffed up with this
retinue, doth any deed of courage; and this valour
comes of sherris. So that skill in the weapon is
nothing without sack, for that sets it a-work; and
learning a mere hoard of gold kept by a devil, till
sack commences it and sets it in act and use.
Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for
the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his
father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land,
manured, husbanded and tilled with excellent
endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile
sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. If
I had a thousand sons, the first humane principle I
would teach them should be, to forswear thin
potations and to addict themselves to sack."
Shakespeare’s best soliloquy. Falstaff explains how awesome drinking is. Obviously.
Henry IV, Part II, Act 4 Scene 3.
Perhaps if you know you are insane, then you are not insane.
