Summertime

It’s been a busy summer so far. That’s good. It keeps my mind away from haunting ghosts.

We’re painting the house, Little Boy and I. The most time-consuming part is the scraping of old loose paint. When we get as far as the actual painting, we’re almost done. We have a tall house, and I don’t like climbing high. I send Little Boy to the top of the scaffold to take care of  the uppermost part. Sometimes kids are useful. 

In Russia the FIFA World Cup is taking place, with great football games on TV every day. We watch all the games, of course. It’s the only "TV show" I watch.  The semifinals start today. Then there’s only three games left. Very sad. It always feels like drug withdrawal when the World Cup is over.

So far we see some clear trends. The European teams dominate. No South American teams, no African teams, no Asian teams made it to the semifinals.

Surprisingly, Germany was out after the group matches. The Netherlands, Italy and USA didn't even qualify.

Shia is better than Sunni, at least when it comes to football. Out of five Muslim countries, the followers of Ali, Iran, was the only one among the final 16. 

Jesus did better than Muhammad. Egypt, with superstar striker Mohammad Salah were eliminated in the group matches. Brazil and their forward Gabriel Jesus made it to the quarter finals. 

Tonight we watched the first semifinal: France  vs. Belgium 1-0. Both teams had a majority of black and brown players, ghetto boys from the suburbs of Paris and Brussels. Almost all the supporters in the stand were white. They can afford to travel to Russia to watch the World Cup live.

Tomorrow is the second seimfinal: England vs. Croatia. I hope England will win. Football's coming home. I would like to go.

(Picture taken a couple of weeks ago, when we worked on the painting the first two walls)

A-Z Challenge 25: YNWA

I have some Facebook friends who write weird status updates. Sometimes they write YNWA, and nothing more. I wondered for a while what does it mean? It seams like crazy to me to write YNWA, and nothing more, on a regular basis.

After a while it came to my mind that all these guys writing YNWA have one thing in common: They belong to the football (soccer) religion, and they worship the gods of Liverpool FC. YNWA simply means "You'll Never Walk Alone". This old song has been sung by the Liverpool FC supporters for more than 50 years, and have become like a hymn or anthem for the club. (Here is a YouTube video of the mixed choir of 45.000 voices on Anfield Road singing YNWA .)

This season Liverpool has been very good, and are currently lading the Premier League. Therefore, the Liverpool fans have written their cryptic praise quite often (but yesterday, when Liverpool lost 0-2 against Chealsea, their FB updates were more like WTF). Some of the hard-core Liverpool fans (including my brother) even tattoo YNWA or the club logo on their arms.

I don't have this religious relationship with football, and I'm not a Liverpool fan (I support Leeds United), so I don't write YNWA all over the place. But once, I went to Liverpool together with my brother to see a Premier League game, and I must admit it was a Hell of a lot of fun. I might even do it once again this fall.

(I took the picture above 3 years ago by the memorial of the Hillsborough disaster outside Anfield Road Stadium in Liverpool. In the FA Cup semifinal in 1989 at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, 96 Liverpool supporters were killed and more than 700 injured in a crush on the stand when  to many people were given entry.)

A-Z Challenge 24: Xenology (the Vatican way)

Religion is an interesting phenomenon, and sometimes it can be quite entertining too. Some years ago French literature's enfant terrible, Michel Houllebecq, said in an interview that  "Islam is the most stupid religion" (he was taken to court in Paris by a human rights group and several Islamic organizations, but Houellebecq, was found not guilty on the grounds of free speech). I’m not sure how he would rank the Catholic Church, but the Catholics do indeed stage some really entertaining shows, like the one we saw from Rome yesterday:

The late Popes John XXIII and John Paul II can now prepend Saint to their names. Yesterday, they were canonized by Pope Francis in the St Peter's Cathedral in the Vatican City (pontifex emeritus Benedict was there too, to watch the show).

Saint John and Saint John Paul will be added to the list of the 2000+ official saints that the Catholic Church already has. In addition there are thousands of unofficial saints, kind of local saints, not approved by the Pope, but more or less by acclamation in their neighborhood. That’s why the Catholics celebrate the All Saints Day (also known as All Hallows’ Day) on 1. November. The celebration starts on the night of 31. October, with All Saints’ Mass, and kids ringing the door bells asking for candy. The kids don’t know about the connection to the Catholic tradition, but who cares. Candy is candy, for Protestants, Catholics and Atheists.

I’m fine with the saint-fauna as a historical curiosity from the Medieval Times, and as a folklore tradition. Martin Luther didn’t like it. He thought the worshiping of saints was a violation of the 2nd and 3rd Commandments. It was one of the reasons why he started the reformation, but that’s different story.

What makes the saints ridiculous in the 21st century, is the formalized canonization process (from 1914, revised 1983) run by the Vatican bureaucracy. First there is the process called beatification , a detailed study which eventually leads to a written confirmation from the Vatican that the candidate-saint has performed at least one miracle, and has safely arrived in Heaven (in Internet-age this should be easy, if the candidate has updated his Facebook status). After the beatification (which has nothing to do with The Beatles), the candidate can prepend the title Blessed (Bl. for short) to his or her name.

But it takes more to become a saint. It must be documented that the wannabe-saint has performed a 2nd miracle after his death. This is the difficult part (because he wouldn’t brag about it on Facebook, of course). The written documentation of the miracle is carefully examined by the Vatican’s canonization office. For today’s canonization of the two popes, more than 2000 pages of documentation had been gathered. The Vatican takes their xenology seriously, just like they used to do with the stamp production.

I used to collect stamps when I was younger, and once I visited the Vatican's philatelist.shop, which was quite impressive at that time. Stamps used to be a big source of income for the Vatican, but I'm not sure if anyone collects stamps anymore

In some countries rhe religion known as Soccer in the USA, and as Football in the rest of the world, has become very popular. This religion has, among other merits, had great success attracting commercial sponsors.

The Catholic Church has always been good at acquiring earthly goods, and they have apparently learnt a couple of tricks from soccer. The event in Rome yesterday was sponsored by several major international companies, including Nestle and ENI (the Italian state oil company).  

Remember the 11th Commandment: “God is great; money is greater”. Amen >:)

(Do you remember Roberto Carlos’ free-kick goal for Brazil against France in 1997? It’s regarded as a miracle among soccer fans, and it’s documented on YouTube. Should be good for at least a beatification)

The Story of Christmas revised

This happened some years ago, when little boy was about five yo. They had learnt about The Story Of Christmas (Luke 2:1-20) in kindergarden. One evening before Christmas little boy and I were playing with plastilina clay. Little boy started to retell The Story in his own way, and asked me if I could model it in clay. He was the director, and I just made what he told me to.

We made Jesus in the crib and Virgin Mary and his stepfather Joseph, and the Three Wise Men who came with gold and frankincense and myrrh (Matt 2:1-15). At this point little boy started to deviate from the original version of the story. He suggested that Jesus should get a soccer ball, so I made a soccer ball for him.


Then little boy wanted a soccer match. I made two goals, and little boy set up the teams. Even Virgin Mary had to participate, to make the two teams equal.

I argued that it was not very likely that Jesus was running around with a soccer ball just a few hours after his birth, but little boy insisted. Maybe he was right, taking into account the incredible tricks Jesus did later (the water-to-wine trick, the calming-the-sea trick, the five-breads-and-two-fish trick and so on)

Defeat at Elland Road

In my country we’re crazy about English football (real football; some call it soccer). Most men and some women have their favorite team in England. Leeds united is my team. They had the best team when I was a kid, in the 1970s. You can’t change favorite team. Never. I still follow Leeds United, but not as enthusiastic as before. Now I'm more interested in skiing and science and literature and music. I don’t even know the names of the players anymore. It’s a shame, isn't it?

Anyway, this weekend I was in England to see Leeds United. In fact, we were lucky, and got to see three matches:

Saturday: Doncaster - Sheffield United 2-0

Sunday: Liverpool - Blackburn 2-1


It was cool to be at Anfield Road. We went up to the stadium two hours before the start of the match to look around, to visit the club store (bought a T-shirt for little boy who is Liverpool fan), and to see the Hillsborough memorial (where 96 Liverpool fans were squeezed to death on the over-crowded stand in 1989). Even a Leeds fan must admit that there’s something special about Anfield. The atmosphere is magic when the crowd sings “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

When we got back to Leeds, I went for a walk around the quarter and ended up with a dark malty beer in an old bar with live jazz. Nice to get some music after all the football.

Monday: Leeds - Cardiff 0-4


This was our main match, the highlight of our trip. We were on the North Stand, with the hard-core Leeds fans. The club is short of money and has a crap team now, but the supporters are still enthusiastic (or fanatic). The F-word and C-word and P-word were shouted continuously, but only aimed at the referee and the Cardiff players. I didn’t hear a single negative remark about the Leeds players, even though they lost 0-4 at home. The Leeds fans are used to hard times.

After the match we were met by 200 policemen (and women), with helmets and shields, many on horses, some with barking dogs. I haven’t seen that many police ever. They wanted to keep the Leeds and Cardiff supporters separated to avoid fighting. For some reason they hate each other.

I don’t hate anyone, but I like English football >:)

Top ten TV shows

I’m not watching much TV anymore, but since Alex J. Cavanaugh hosts this cool blogfest I’ll try to twist my brain and come up with a list of favorites.

Sometimes I watch a movie, but never TV series. I watch the news and my favorite sports, and thats it, basically. Number one on my list, no doubt, is Soccer World Cup, not a regular TV show maybe, but it feels like a very intense one, every 4th year when the ball is rolling.

The first (and last) soap I saw was Dynasty. Not sure if I liked it, but it has to be on my list. When I grew up in the 1970s, we had only one TV channel, state-controlled public broadcasting. Commercial TV, cable TV and satellite was illegal. There were incredible discussions and big concerns, in the parliament and in media; TV soaps would destroy the moral of the country and damage the fragile souls of the people. In 1981, the sensation happened; Dynasty was approved by the authorities and the public broadcasting company! The entire nation was watching.

Today we have hundreds of channels on cable and satellite, like most other countries. More junk, less quality, that's the trend.

Anyway, here’s my top 10 list:
1. Soccer World Cup
2. Alpine skiing World Cup
3. Winter Olympics
4. Summer Olympics
5. South Park
6. Stingers (Australian crime)
7. Headbanger’s Ball (heavy metal on MTV)
8. M*A*S*H
9. Twin Peaks (boring after 4-5 parts)
10. Dynasty

The evil dentist

At the place where I grew up, there was a mean and evil dentist. His office was in the school building, right by the football field (football=soccer). When the ball hit his window, he got furious. He ran out and grabbed the poor boy that kicked the ball by the ear, and pulled him into the dentist’s chair. He picked the nicest and whitest tooth in the boy’s mouth. With an evil grin on his face, he drilled out a wide and deep cavity, while the boy cried and screamed in pain. Finally he filled the cavity with dark and ugly amalgam.

Don’t you believe it?

I used to tell this story to my little boys. They believed it, and even counted on my teeth the number of times I had kicked the ball at the dentist’s window >:)))