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++>>recommended Super Bowl 2021++>>: Chiefs vs Buccaneers Live On Reddit
After two weeks of anticipation, Super Bowl 55 is finally here as the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Tampa, Florida. Watch Super Bowl Online Watch Super Bowl Online Every aspect of Super Sunday will be analyzed in great detail, from the national anthem to the halftime show to the television commercials that will run during the game. The two teams met on this same field during the regular season, with the Chiefs holding on for a 27-24 victory. This time, the stakes are much higher, with the Lombardi Trophy on the line, as well as potential bragging rights in the battle between generational quarterbacks in Tom Brady of the Buccaneers and Patrick Mahomes of the Chiefs. Since the game is being played as the COVID-19 continues to rage across the country, both teams will have travel plans and logistical processes unique to this season. Attendance will be limited to 25,000 fans, 7,500 of which will be vaccinated healthcare workers. USA TODAY Sports will have live coverage of the game and all the happenings from Tampa, and we've also answered some key questions about the matchup for anyone looking for last-minute information: How to watch Super Bowl 2021 from outside your country If you find yourself away from home for whatever reason and want to watch your regular Super Bowl coverage from abroad, then you'll need to use a VPN. This will help you access streaming services and channels back in your country of residence, helping you avoid geo-blocks so you can watch your preferred coverage from anywhere - and giving you an extra layer of online security for good measure. 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Anyone with the channel as part of their cable package will therefore be able to tune-in at no extra cost on the CBS website. It also means there are two great options to watch all the action without cable. First, CBS has its own standalone streaming service, CBS All Access, which costs just $5.99 a month - and there's even a FREE CBS All Access trial that means you'll be able to watch Super Bowl LV without paying a penny, if you play your cards right. In fact, CBS is opening the floodgates to its broadcast on its CBS Sports website, so anyone located in the US can get a 100% free Super Bowl LV live stream either in their browser or via the CBS Sports app. Additionally, CBS is available as part of FuboTV, an end-to-end cable replacement service that normally costs from $64.99 a month - but offers an equally attractive FREE FuboTV trial so you can see if it's right for you and catch the big game without dropping a dime yet again. It's one of many great value over-the-top streaming services available to Americans looking for a more affordable alternative to cable. When it comes to Super Bowl, YouTube TV also offers CBS for total coverage of the game - and we've got a complete guide as well as more additional information about watching with CBS All Access. Watching the Super Bowl on YouTubeTV watching the Super Bowl on CBS All Access watch super bowl live stream 2021 uk How to watch a FREE Super Bowl live stream in the UK this Sunday UK-based American football fans are well covered when it comes to the NFL - and are especially lucky when it comes watch a Buccaneers vs Chiefs live stream of Super Bowl 55, as the BBC will be airing the game 100% FREE! This means that anyone located in the UK can get a free Super Bowl LV live stream by using the BBC's iPlayer streaming service, which doesn't cost a penny (though you should, of course, be in possession of a valid UK TV license). 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Both Sky Sports and the BBC have coverage of the big game, but unlike in the UK mainland and Northern Ireland, the BBC isn't a free-to-air terrestrial channel in Eire. Instead, it only comes as part of pay TV packages like those offered by Virgin and Sky - and worst of all, iPlayer is geo-blocked in the Republic so you can't get a free Super Bowl live stream online, either. Or can you? If you don't have Sky (where coverage starts at 10pm IST on Sky Sports NFL) or want to get one of its Now TV passes to catch the big game, we recommend anyone abroad in Ireland give serious consideration to trying out our No. 1 overall VPN This will help you hop the digital border you need to regain iPlayer access and is working well with the service as of our latest 2021 testing. super bowl live stream 2021 canada How to watch a Super Bowl 55 live stream in Canada on Sunday Canadian NFL fans are some of the the luckiest in the world, as streaming service DAZN is offering comprehensive coverage of the 2020/21 season, right through the playoffs and Super Bowl LV, with its great value DAZN packages. It's an absolute bargain as just CA$20 a month or $150 a year, especially when you consider that you get not only NFL Game Pass access complete with RedZone, but also that DAZN's the exclusive Canadian streaming home of Premier League and Champions League soccer! 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Our latest 2021 testing reveals that our No.1 pick, ExpressVPN, is currently working with Kayo Sports and 7mate. super bowl live stream mexico Super Bowl live stream 2021: how to watch Super Bowl LV online in Mexico The NFL has been making a real push south of the border, with Mexico City normally hosting a selected NFL game each season. It follows that the sport is huge there, so you've got a variety of TV options to watch Super Bowl in Mexico. These include ESPN, Fox Sports, Televisa and TV Azteca.. Of these, our basic Spanish tells us that for anyone after a FREE Super Bowl live stream in Mexico should be able to find what they're looking for courtesy of Azteca 7, which can be watched in a browser online, or via the appropriate TV Azteca app. Not in Mexico? Don't miss the passion of your local commentary just because you're abroad - instead, try using a VPN to access you favorite Super Bowl coverage wherever you are in the world this Sunday. watch super bowl germany How to watch Super Bowl free online in Germany: 2021 live stream details Germany boasted five NFL Europe teams at one point, so it's little surprise that American football is huge in the European nation. Its popularity means that German fans can watch Super Bowl LV free on terrestrial channel ProSieban - either on TV or on the network's online streaming platform. Not in Germany? You can tune in to your local coverage from abroad simply by adding a VPN to your software roster and following our guide above. super bowl (Image credit: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) All you need to know about Super Bowl LV in 2021 The 2021 Super Bowl takes place on Sunday, February 7 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa Bay, Florida. The 65,000+ capacity stadium will welcome a limited number of fans to the game as the US continues to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the league now having confirmed that around 20,000 will be in attendance at Super Bowl LV, with a number of tickets reserved for key workers. The start time for Super Bowl LV is set for 6.30pm ET/3.30pm PT (5.30pm CT) in the US. Globally, that means the Super Bowl time is: Australia Super Bowl time: 10.30am AEDT (Monday, February 8) India Super Bowl time: 5am IST (Monday, February 8) Japan Super Bowl time: 8.30am JST (Monday, February 8) Germany and Europe Super Bowl time: 12.30am CET (Monday, February 8) Mexico Super Bowl time: 5.30pm CST New Zealand Super Bowl time: 12.30pm NZST (Monday February 8) South Korea Super Bowl time: 8.30am KST (Monday, February 8) UK and Ireland Super Bowl time: 11.30pm GMT Where is the Super Bowl on TV? America's three main broadcasters - CBS, Fox, and NBC - alternate rights to air the Super Bowl each year. In 2021, it's the turn of CBS to air Super Bowl LV. As per our guide above, if you don't have it on cable, then it has a dedicated streaming-only platform, CBS All Access, that will sort you out in time for the big game. Folks in the UK arguably have it best, though, as the Super Bowl is 100% FREE to watch on the BBC and its companion iPlayer streaming service. Provided you're located in the UK (and you should also be in possession of a valid TV license), registration takes just a few seconds and only asks for basic details like a working email address. Anyone in either country can also access their usual streaming service to watch Super Bowl 2021, no matter where they are in the world. With a top-quality VPN in your huddle, you can simply relocate your IP address back home and enjoy the big like you normally would from the comfort of your living room. New TV for the big game? See our roundup of the best Super Bowl TV sales When does Super Bowl pre-game coverage start on Sunday? Don't think about doing anything else on Super Bowl Sunday, because CBS is on-air live from Raymond James Stadium from 11.30am ET/8.30am PT, making for a whopping seven hours of Super Bowl pre-game coverage on the channel. Super Bowl 2021: full schedule and TV guide While Covid has forced the NFL to make a number of changes to the usual Super Bowl Week schedule in 2021, most of the usual events and formalities are going ahead in one way or another. Super Bowl Media Day, for instance, became Super Bowl Opening Night on Monday, February 1 and saw select players interviewed over Zoom - not the usual circus that ensues at the start of the week. Here's a complete Super Bowl 2021 TV schedule for the big weekend: Saturday, February 6: NFL Honors 2021 at 9pm ET/PT on CBS Sunday, February 7: Super Bowl LV pre-game coverage from 11.30am ET/8.30am PT on CBS Sunday, February 7: Puppy Bowl XVII from 1pm ET/10am PT (2pm/11am paw-off) on Animal Planet US Sunday, February 7: Kitten Bowl VII at 2pm ET/11am PT on Hallmark Channel Sunday, February 7: Miley Cyrus presents TikTok Tailgate concert at 3pm on TikTok and CBS watch puppy bowl 2021 live stream (Image credit: Animal Planet/Discovery+) How to watch a Puppy Bowl 2021 live stream - and what is the Puppy Bowl? Super Bowl build-up wouldn't be the same without the Puppy Bowl, a pawsome pre-game tradition now in its 16th year - so we're on Puppy Bowl XVII, officially. It sees 70 adorable pups compete in a two-hour long event pitting Team Ruff vs Team Fluff. The event is co-hosted and the teams 'coached' by two of America's least likely BFFs, Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart. A one-hour long pre-game show will recap the highlights of Puppy Bowls past from 1pm ET/10am PT, while the game itself 'kicks-off' at 2pm ET/11am PT. TV coverage is on Animal Planet, which if you don't have via cable, can be streamed using either the Discovery+ platform (from $4.99 a month, 7-day free trial) or an over-the-top cable replacement service like FuboTV (from $64.99 a month, 7-day free trial). The reason the Puppy Bowl has captured the nation's imagination is that in addition to being so darn cute, it also features adoptable dogs from shelters all over the country, so if you get tired of the usual talking heads pre-game coverage, be sure to tune in! Sadly, the Puppy Bowl doesn't seem to be available internationally, even in countries like the UK where Animal Planet is available. But anyone from the US currently abroad needn't worry as they can try our No. 1 rated VPN 100% risk-free for 30-days and tune in just like they would at home. super bowl 2021 live stream half time show the weeknd (Image credit: Michael Kovac/FilmMagic) Super Bowl 2021 Halftime Show: who's performing at Super Bowl LV? Following in the footsteps of a sensational performance by Shakira and J-Lo last year that was watched by some 104 million people (and received over 1,300 complaints), The Weeknd has been confirmed to headline the 2021 Super Bowl halftime how. It's expected to go down as the longest halftime show ever at 24 minutes, with Jay-Z and Roc Nation responsible for production of this year's entertainment. For more details, check out our full guide to the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show. Super Bowl 2021 odds and predictions The Kansas City Chiefs are currently installed as the heavy favorites to lift the Lombardi trophy for a second straight season. With arguably the league's most gifted QB in Patrick Mahomes under center, its best TE in Travis Kelce menacing opposing defences, and deadly skill players like Tyreek Hill able to break out for a big play at any time...it's easy to see why. The Bucs are the underdogs, having emerged from the NFC Wild Card picture with big wins over the Saints and Packers to get this far - and few would put another upset past them with GOAT Tom Brady under center. The combination of home field advantage and Brady being Brady somewhat mitigates Tampa's otherwise heavy underdog status, even if the 22,000 fans expected to attended is well below the normal 65,000+ capacity of Ray Jay. Still, while Tampa are a team brimming with the kind of confidence you get when you're led by TB12, most pundits are joining Vegas and the bookmakers in predicting a Chiefs win - though most have it down to be a close game that's likely to come down to the final possession.
A classic joke: A wealthy and successful businessman is lying in a sickbed, at death's door, surrounded by his wife, children, and grandchildren. Looking at their tearless faces he is struck by the realization that he doesn’t know them. They’re strangers. The entirety of his life flashes before his eyes - every inane moment spent filling out spreadsheets and languishing in board meetings and rotting on conference calls - and he croaks out, “Man, I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” The moral it’s meant to impart (or at least the moral imparted by its non-comedically inverted counterpart: I don’t know anyone who said on their deathbed, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”) is that ‘work’ is insufficient to provide existential meaning. A meaningful life is a life spent connecting with people and forming bonds with them. Or something. A phenomenon: You’re standing on a precipice (literally, as in a high roof, bridge, mountain, etc.) and suddenly, you’re struck by an urge... jump. This is common enough that it has some semblance of a name. “The Call of the Void (l’appel du vide).” Heights are a common trigger, but the same phenomenon takes other forms as well. Waiting for the subway on an empty platform, you hear the noise of an arriving train... step forward. Driving home on the freeway late at night from a long day at work, you glance at the oncoming traffic in the other lane... swerve. Hmmmmm. Three dead guys walk into a bar. The bartender asks each of them, “So. How did you die?” The first responds, “Me? Heroin overdose. I spent my whole life drinking, shooting up, or getting high.” The second scoffs, “How pathetic. I spent my whole life working. I made millions and millions of dollars... and then died surrounded by estranged family members.” The third says, “Well, I was just your average Joe, but I always made time to chat. I met so many good people and made so many good friends over the years. After a long and happy life, I died peacefully in my sleep holding my wife.” The bartender looks the three of them over and says, “Well if you’re all so different... how come all three of you ended up in the same place?”
The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?
Whether there is a literal afterlife or just a hypothetical comedic premise afterlife, the point remains. All three guys are the same. They lived “different” (I hope the air-quotes are sufficiently palpable) lives in the sense that their actions were physically different, but their motivations for living those lives were entirely the same. Just as two chess players might play different moves and use different strategies, but hope for the same end result. Let’s look closely at each of our hypothetical persons. The first guy, — Should we name them? If we are going to be dissecting their lives it feels only respectful. Let’s make this first one an M.D. and have his name be... I don’t know... Ug. — Dr. Ug, subscribed to the John Lennon school of life. (The relevant Lennon quote: “When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.”) After Dr. Ug graduated from medical school he realized that happiness felt the same whether it came from getting a degree to make his mom proud or from shooting heroin. Getting heroin requires considerably less work than getting a diploma, so he went off to do. He lived another handful of decades snorting, smoking, and injecting whatever he could get his hands on until he died while pissing himself. He lived a “happy” life. The second guy, Sir F (yes, he’s a British businessman who was knighted. If you have a better suggestion for a pun name than ‘Sir F/serf’ please let me know), got his first job as a paperboy when he was barely out of diapers. From that day forwards he slaved away his whole life, working night and day, rain or hail, holiday or weekend, until he was a renowned and wealthy CEO. The Queen knighted him. He had three wives over the course of his life, half a dozen kids, and a dozen or so grandkids. Five of his six kids took their first steps while he was at the office. He only met about half of his grandkids. All three of his wives were considerably younger than him and married him only for his money. He didn’t care. Business was booming and there was money to be made. He died of old age after spending some fraction of his fortune on a sequence of expensive medical procedures with diminishing returns. His tombstone is massive, and his name is on buildings scattered across the globe. He lived a “successful” life. The third guy, Pham Leigh Mann, immigrated from Vietnam and then married his highschool sweetheart. He lived in a small town where he knew everyone’s name. He was the kinda guy who could strike up a conversation with anyone and often did so. Mr. Mann lived nine decades and made it a point to keep up with his whole family. The yearly Mann family reunion barbecues that he hosted were eminently well attended. He coached his kids’ soccer team, attended choir recitals, drama club productions, bake sales. Everyone called him Paw-Paw or Big Pops. He lived to be 93 years old and died in his sleep. His funeral was attended by virtually the entire population of his town, and Manns across the country were sorry to see him go, but happy that he had lived such a “good” life.
Three guys walk into a bar. The fourth guy ducks.
Pre-emptive aside: Are these fellows contrived, shallow, unrealistic, strawmen? Of course they are. They aren’t real people. But they’re close enough, in each of their particular respects, to simulate an extreme version of the traits and lifestyles in question for demonstrative purposes. That aside... At a glance, Dr. Ug, Sir F, and Pham Leigh Mann couldn’t be more different. They each had an entirely different idea of how to spend their time alive. Pursuing happiness, success, or goodness until the inevitable end. One actual difference, though, is that Dr. Ug and Sir F aren’t supposed to come off well in their abbreviated biographical epitaph. Dr. Ug lived a pointless, pathetic, and self destructive lifestyle that ended predictably tragically. The ‘correct’ response is to shake your head sadly and cover your children’s eyes. Sir F was a modern day serf who scraped himself to the bone everyday in pursuit of wealth, to the exclusion of anything and everything else. The ‘correct’ response is to laud him for his business acumen while lamenting that he never realized the value of family and love. Only Mr. Mann is supposed to be praiseworthy. He lived a “meaningful” life. A “good” life.
Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn that he not busy being born Is busy dying
A question: Why did each of the three men live their lives like they did? Why pursue happiness or success or goodness? Well, for the same reason that anyone does anything: to defend ourselves against our own minds.
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living – because cognition gives them more than they can carry? Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness
How so?
The whole of living that we see before our eyes today is from inmost to outmost enmeshed in repressional mechanisms, social and individual; they can be traced right into the tritest formulas of everyday life. Though they take a vast and multifarious variety of forms, it seems legitimate to at least identify four major kinds, naturally occuring in every possible combination: isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation.
The four major repression mechanisms are basically stratagems we use to thwart the misfortune of consciousness. Zapffe describes four, but three of them seem to be the most prominent and recognizable, with the fourth playing an ancillary role. In any case: Isolation: A sort of conspiracy of silence, both intra- and inter- personal, regarding the problems and suffering of consciousness. A set of blinders, if you will. ‘Tact’ being a prime example. Anchoring: Rooting life in proposed truths and principles (ie. God, Nation, Family, Ethics, Goals, Culture) so as to gain a feeling of necessity and purpose. Distraction: The name seems self explanatory. Boredom is fertile ground for reflection, and so a constant stream of distractions must be employed to subdue the mind. ... Sublimation: Roughly speaking, “No pain no gain.” The idea is to channel suffering and self awareness into the production of some work, or to twist it in such a way as to repurpose it for chosen ends. Proponents include Jane Fonda, Benjamin Franklin, Arnold Schwarzenegger , poets, artists, etc.
NO PAINS, NO GAINS. If little labour, little are our gains: Man's fate is according to his pains.
Works of sublimation typically engage an aesthetic perspective, among others, in order to achieve the intended sublimation. i.e. A bodybuilder chasing a dream physique. The aesthetic lens makes the desired obfuscation much more palatable.
The human yearning is not merely marked by a ‘striving toward’, but equally by an ‘escape from.’ ... None has yet been clear about what he is longing for, but one has always a heartfelt awareness of what one is longing away from, namely the earthly vale of tears, one’s own inendurable condition.
Now, returning to our three posthumous friends, elements of all three strategies are present in each case obviously, but roughly speaking each man was intended to evoke one in particular. Dr. Ug employs chemical distraction. Sir F blinds himself with cultural/monetary isolation. Pham anchors himself in family, community, and an inherited ideal of a “good” life. (The secret fourth example is me, writing this as a work of sublimation.) I have previously written (albeit poorly and somewhat tangentially) about hedonism, and the claws it has dug into modern society as the mainstream ‘end.’ Hopefully it is clear that hedonistic pursuits are almost nakedly distractions. They serve to take our mind off of the unpleasant thought. (In fact, this terminology is particularly useful for diagnosing changes in malaise. For example, it is often noted that modernity has seen a decrease in the prominence of inherited culture and a corresponding increase in frivolity, dissatisfaction, and individualism. aka: A shift from “outdated” traditionalist anchoring to modern hedonistic distraction.) Extending this observation, it might become clear that virtually all forms of human activity, be it eating, having sex, watching a movie, reading a book, basking in the sun, learning a new boardgame, going to a rave, listening to music, etc., are similarly forms of distraction, designed to prevent the mind from experiencing boredom, the state in which it is most free to contemplate its inherent misfortune. For some distraction is enough, and they, like Dr. Ug, simply spend their lives in a swirl of hedonistic impressions and distractions. For others though, their lust for a greater purpose cannot be so easily satiated, and they must employ isolation and anchoring to a greater degree.
Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday neurosis,” that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. ... Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression, and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.
Viktor E. Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”
Children are a prime example. Ask most people why they choose to have children and their answer is... often quite a bit less structured than one might naively expect. Nearly everyone recognizes the monumental nature of the decision to have a child, and yet the reasons for which people make said choice tend to smack of post hoc rationalization. Some examples:
“Well it’s just something that you do when you get to a certain age.” “I wanted to have a family.” “To pass on our values.”
Etcetera etcetera. I’m sure you can see the pattern. The goal of having a child, either subconsciously known beforehand or realized after the fact, is to satiate that human desire for “meaning.” Children are a high quality, socially sanctioned, evolutionarily selected for, incredibly potent direct injection of “meaning.” How many parents vegetate while living vicariously through their kids? Their own purpose proved insufficient, and so they now try an alternate remedy. One our biology has evolved specifically to incentivize. Having and raising a child is so “meaningful” because it is an almost perfect synthesis of all four of the aforementioned strategies. Distraction, isolation, anchoring are all present, and the ‘work’ of raising the child is essentially a process of sublimation. We have evolved to find it “meaningful,” and we likely wouldn’t continue to exist if we didn’t. But make no mistake, any difference between our three fellows is simply either aesthetic or a matter of degree. There is no difference in kind. They, and everyone, act out the same play with the same sort of lines. We are being lied to... by ourselves.
One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself. He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind. Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole.
The yearly beating of french clubs in european group stages has come to an end with two teams getting out (Paris in Champions League, Lille in Europa League) and the other three (Marseille, Rennes and Nice) managing to earn a whopping combined total of 7 points in 18 matches. Congrats to them. This weekend, the Ligue 1 teams started a little marathon of four matches in ten days before the winter break with an exciting Marseille-Monaco on saturday and a climactic Paris SG-Lyon on sunday night.
Appetizers
On the day it was announced that Mediapro, the new broadcaster of Ligue 1, was giving up for default of payment after only four months, the opening match of the matchday, usually the symbol of a festive weekend, was an appealing Saint-Étienne-Angers. Yes, Saint-Étienne-Angers. 0-0. Next.
Marseille made a statement in the race for the podium, beating Monaco, a direct rival, 2-1 on saturday afternoon, their sixth straight win in the league. Despite a larger possession and more chances throughout the game, the monégasques conceded two early goals from the Benedetto-Thauvin duo who exchanged assists with each other to get that early lead. After the loss in Lille to another european aiming team, Monaco concedes another loss, a definite halt after climbing up the rankings in the past weeks.
Lens-Montpellier was expected to be a pretty entertaining fixture and it was indeed. Even though the southerners took a healthy lead in the first 30 minutes, their opponents from the other side of the hexagon came back thanks to a lucky goal and a penalty. In the middle of the second half, Gaëtan Laborde, usually assister, gave Montpellier the three points and a fifth victory across their last six matches (the other one being the loss last week against PSG).
The clash between the teams-that-play-in-red-and-black-and-that-ashamed-the-whole-country-in-Europe resulted in a win for Rennes away in Nice with a goal from Mbaye Niang at the end of a game easily controlled by the Bretons. Despite a managerial change, Nice is still struggling to get back in form, their last win dating from a month and a half (same for Rennes before this one).
Speaking of teams that hadn't won in a long time, Lorient was part of this not really prestigious club until this sunday where they dispatched Nîmes 3-0 at home. The Merlus (Hakes in english) were finally rewarded for their quality of play and their lack of efficiency (six matches in a row without scoring). Nîmes on the other end continues to fall and hit the 18th place, synonymous of a playoff spot.
After a great start of the season, Metz is starting to struggle a bit, suffering a fifth match without a win, this time in Strasbourg, at the end of a high-scoring match (for Ligue 1 standards at least). Bronn and Nguette successively gave Metz the advantage but they were answered respectively by Simakan and Thomasson.
Three days after throwing the first place of their Europa League group at Celtic Park, Lille had the opportunity to reclaim another top position in the case of a misstep from PSG at Lyon. And they did the job with a splendid strike from Jonathan Bamba and a rocket of a header from José Fonte. After a solid first half, Bordeaux was dominated quite heavily throughout the last 45 minutes and despite a recent good form couldn't avoid the loss.
The most anticipated match of the week (arguably of the whole season even) unfortunately didn't provide the most entertaining spectacle. Lyon's domination in the first half was rewarded by a goal from Kadewere following a disastrous misunderstanding between Kimpembe and Paredes. With only one shot on target during the whole game, the parisians were barely able to provide any danger towards Anthony Lopes. With that win, their first at the Parc des Princes since 2007, Lyon takes the second place, ahead of their opponents of the day.
With 0,48 penalty per match, Ligue 1 tops the rankings among the top 5 leagues in Europe (ahead of Premier League with 0,47 and Bundesliga with 0,45). Another seven of them were whistled this weekend.
1-2 Champions League group stage 3 Champions League qualifiers round 3 4 Europa League group stage 5 Europa Conference League play-offs 18 Relegation play-offs 19-20 Relegation to Ligue 2
Stade Brestois : Le Bilan didn't talk about Brest yet, not in length at least, and it's a mistake because the team has certainly been one of the most interesting to follow this season. You just have to look at the table to understand what kind of team it is. With seven wins, seven losses and no draw, the 6th best attack and the 3rd worst defense of the league, the bretons, led by the former Dijon coach Olivier Dall'Oglio, have gambled everything on entertainment in a safer Bielsist way. And it works. Of course they have conceded a lot of goals, of course they have yet to play Paris, Lyon and Montpellier but as they have shown in the past, much like their english counterparts, they are not afraid of big teams. They beat Lille 3-2, Monaco 1-0 and lost 3-2 a match they should have won against Marseille. With four wins in the last five matchdays, the brestois have given themselves a large cushion so that they don't have to think yet about an eventual return in Ligue 2. Oh yes, we didn't mention it yet, they got promoted only last year.
Downwards
David Guion : After correctly predicting the dismissals of Patrick Vieira and Christian Gourcuff in the past two weeks, Le Bilan has basically become the equivalent of the Washington Post of french football, no less. Pulitzer, here we come. Anyway, there's another man whose job is more and more in danger. And it would be by far the saddest of the three if David Guion was showed the door. Not that it wouldn't do good (the way Reims has been playing for a long time now is quite shocking) but what he has done for the club in the past three seasons must not be overlooked. For his first year in Champagne in 2017-2018, Guion led Reims to a Ligue 2 champion title (getting the UNFP best Ligue 2 coach trophy in the process), followed by an 8th place, then a 6th place (though the season was stopped early) and a first participation in a european competition in almost sixty years (stopped early in playoffs against the modest MOL Fehérvár). Sadly, this season has not been good for David Guion and his team. At all. Reims curretnly sits at the 19th place, has not won in the last five games and does not seem to have many assets to get back on track. Their reputation of a solid defensive team has disappeared and it would be unrealistic to ask Boulaye Dia (8 goals already) to carry the entire attack by himself for the whole season. Even worse, Reims president said he wouldn't oppose a departure from his striker. If he does indeed leave, Reims would need a miraculous replacement to save themselves from a sure relegation. Paris Saint-Germain : We may not get a lot of opportunities to have PSG in this category so let's not waste this golden one. Indeed, Paris has struggled lately in the league. With 4 points taken out of the last possible 12, already 4 losses in 14 matchdays (more than Lyon, Lille and Marseille combined), Paris has logically let go its top spot, reclaimed by Lille, their opponents on next sunday. In fact, PSG had not lost four times this early since 2009-2010, a season in which they ended 13th and Jean-Eudes Maurice had regular play time. Of course Paris won't finish 13th this year, they still have the best attack and the best defense of the league but it's clear that the crucial european matches against Leipzig, Manchester United and Istanbul Başakşehir have put an emotional and physical toll on players already tired since the end of Champions League this summer. One thing is certain though : for the first time since 2017, the league title is in play.
I am very, very happy. With our different systems, we have an element of surprise that we didn't have last year. It's harder for the opponents to prepare their match and it's interesting for us. Emotionally, it was very hard with the end of the european adventure. So to do a performance like that, I say bravo to the team.
Morgan Schneiderlin, Nice midfielder :
We have to keep this collective spirit, we take fewer goals but we score less or not at all, it's hard to win matches. Believe me, the fans are disappointed but we, the players, are the first to be affected by this situation. We are keen to rectify all this before the break. We don't want to spend a season playing nothing, getting bored. We're going to do everything we can to win on Wednesday.
Christophe Pelissier, Lorient coach :
It is a success both offensively and defensively. It's a perfect evening. It's a relief because it was a burden not to score, not to be rewarded. We must savour it and recover well. This victory allows us to be in the running, with 4-5 teams (Strasbourg, Nîmes, Reims, Dijon). We have a mini-Championship (for survival) where we have to perform well. We have to win that championship.
Thomas Tuchel, Paris coach :
We saw a very mentally tired team. I had the impression that the last sequence (Manchester United - Montpellier - Basaksehir) was too much for us. We missed even some easy passes. It's the fault of all of us, me first, the team. It wasn't serious enough, we must have enough quality to win every match. That remains my responsibility, that's clear.
Rerel, Paris supporter but football connoisseur first and foremost :
You give money to Arsenal, they turn it into shit.
Next matchday
Wednesday 16/12, 19:00 Dijon FCO - Lille OSC Montpellier Hérault SC - FC Metz Angers SCO - RC Strasbourg Nîmes Olympique - OGC Nice Stade de Reims - FC Nantes Wednesday 16/12, 21:00 Paris Saint-Germain - FC Lorient Olympique Lyonnais - Stade Brestois Stade Rennais - Olympique de Marseille AS Monaco - RC Lens Girondins de Bordeaux - AS Saint-Étienne Thanks a lot to Hippemann and NotMeladroit for all the clips and the tables ! For more news about the best league in the world (except for the other four) and to improve your french, come and subscribe to /Ligue1. All feedbacks are welcome ! Previous matchdays : Season 2020-2021 M1 - M2 - M3 - M4 - M5 - M6 - M7 - M8 - M9 - M10 - M11 - M12 - M13 Season 2019-2020 M12 - M13 - M14 - M15 - M16 - M17 - M18 - M19 - M20 - M21 - M22 - M23 - M24 - M25 - M26 - M27 - M28
My sister has had, well, let’s say a history of less than amicable interactions with people outside of the family. Even those within haven’t been spared her seemingly source-less ire, but those who lack the commonality of blood feel—in ways both openly and subtly hostile—her anger and unfounded spite. For as long as I can remember, going all the way back to our troublesome toddlerhood, my sister has made it her modus operandi, her prime existential impetus, to inflict harm with words and derision; with guile and deception; all out of some inborn distaste for anyone she deems—by standards unknowable—pretentious, prideful, or otherwise unworthy of some perceived self-confidence with which they allegedly carry themselves. Throughout her life, in a role immediately given to me by my parents once I had achieved the physicality sufficient to restrain her, I was made my sister’s keeper, wrangler. Any arguments or social bouts with peers, or even strangers, were clumsily broken up and de-escalated by yours truly. I can’t begin to estimate how many quarrels with girls I ended by simply yanking her away from the group, who my sister had confronted—always unprovoked—because she felt that they were too sure of themselves and their prettiness. I’m not the kind of man who assigns a value of beauty to his own sister based on primitive or outdated standards of attraction, but I can say that, in a way, I get her jealously; I at least understand how one might feel the way she feels. My family at large isn’t the prettiest stock; I’m certainly no looker, myself. But what confounds me is the resultant rage and indignation, at the mere sight of someone she perceives as prettier than herself. It’s unreasonable, nonsensical. I won’t waste time describing each and every petty, pointlessly hostile confrontation. The idea of my sister’s “condition”, for lack of a better word, has been established. She’s a moderately intelligent person, who had—at one nearly forgotten point in her life—lots of ambition, and goals unrelated to the smiting and punishment of her peers. But as life went on, and I grew older, I couldn’t always be by her side, and she eventually got into some scraps and heated exchanges that landed her before judges, and behind bars, and at the beck and call of probation officers. Nothing that would’ve brought shame to the family name—there are some among us who have as many prison stories as other families might have camping trips—but bad enough to leave her in a sorry state; living in a downtrodden, ex-convict-ridden apartment complex. That is until she couldn’t even afford that near derelict hovel, and—after a needlessly protracted request—moved in with me, in my suburban home. While our paths of life had diverged considerably, we shared one thing in common: we were both single and childless, despite being in our early thirties. Now, I knew my sister, and had put into place several contingencies, and issued many warnings, in preparation for her arrival. I informed my neighbors of her perpetually “irritable” mood, and essentially begged them—saving only a slight amount of pride—to forgive any outbursts or lapses in courtesy she may have. They assured me that they understood, and even commended me for what I suppose would be called “familial charity.” Also, knowing that without distraction my sister would simply brood and conjure up entirely imaginary—or severely misinterpreted—scenarios in which she was the target of some offense, I bought her a laptop. I figured that if she were to engage in hostilities, it would be best if they occurred online, with strangers who couldn’t send bricks through my windows or leave dog shit in my mailbox. How could I have ever predicted that she’d use the laptop to bring about the ruin of my life and home? Once she had settled in—which hadn’t taken long, considering her lack of belongings—she immediately set to familiarizing herself with the laptop. She’d had experience with computers in the past, but her recent journeys into criminality had often included the restriction from, or limitation of, access to such privileges. She was of course extremely appreciative, and promised that she would eventually pay me back; “In some way”, being the convenient follow-up. I had stocked the fridge, cupboards, pantry, closets, and drawers with all the food, supplies, kitchenware, and every day household items she’d possibly need. I furnished the guest room that had laid empty since the purchase of the house, and told her that it was hers for as long as she needed it to be. The appropriate gestures of gratitude were spoken, hugs were exchanged, her parole officer was notified, and I resumed my life as normal. The first Monday of co-habitation with my sister was, as I had feared but sensibly anticipated, a disaster. I came home on my lunch break—I had suspected, or maybe preternaturally sensed, some disturbance—to find a few women standing on my front-lawn, glaring at my house. There were three of them, and they were all fairly attractive. Ordinarily, being the simple man that I am, I’d be over-joyed to find these well-out-of-my-league women gathered on my property. But the circumstances weren’t so fantastical, and the reason for their congregation wasn’t out of any sudden and inexplicable love for me. As I parked in the driveway and whispered a prayer of mercy towards whomever might be listening from above, the women stomped on over to the car; faces scowling fiercely. I took a moment examine whether or not they bore weapons, and once I was sure of my safety, exited the car. I gave them a friendly smile, and before anything else could be done, a barrage of anger was unleashed upon me, with the single inspiration being my sister. Somehow, over the weekend of her arrival, my sister had amassed quite the following on Twitter, after having spent almost every waking moment berating celebrities, social media figures, and anyone else she could think to criticize. I chalked the rapid accumulation of followers up to old expression of misery loving—needing—company, and that all of my sister’s followers—all 12,000 of them—were equally or at least similarly bitter, impoverished, and vitriolic. Apparently, when my sister had grown tired of the larger targets, she’d focused her sights on closer subjects. The three women, during their early morning jog, had passed by my home, and my sister—always awake, always seething—had seen them go by through the living room windows. Incensed by the sight of these undeniably attractive women, she immediately put fingers to keys, and fabricated a story about the women wantonly littering throughout the neighborhood. According to the six tweets that tackled the nonexistent issue, the streets and sidewalks were “covered” with energy bar wrappers, plastic water bottles, and smears of exhaustively chewed gum. Despite having only seen the women this one time, my sister applied a history to their objectionable and totally imagined delinquency; a history that spanned further back than her tenancy of my home. Since my sister had failed to withhold—had actually proudly offered—the location of the neighborhood in which the fictional environmental offenses had taken place, her followers quickly went to action; contacting city officials, and even residents who happened to have the location in their social media bios. And, if that hadn’t been enough, my sister had stealthily yet awkwardly taken a picture of the joggers with the laptop’s webcam, and uploaded it as supplemental evidence to her tweets. Despite the absence of the garbage in the image, the mere presence of the women was sufficient enough evidence for her flock. The women, all having twitter accounts, were eventually made aware of their online denigration by my sister. Infuriated by the lies, they stormed my property and demanded that my sister come out and explain herself. Sensibly, my sister had remained inside, and continued to pour gas onto the fire behind her computer screen. All of this had occurred in five hours. I went into the house expecting a tirade from my sister about the women, but she instead sat in the living room chair—from which she had conducted her adjudications—with her hands on the armrests; her face showing an expression that said, “I know, I know.” (Upon saying her name in exasperation, she replied by actually saying, “I know, I know.”) Using the remote-access app from my phone, I disconnected her laptop from the Wi-Fi, chastised her as best as I could, and set up an appointment with a therapist. She accepted and agreed to all this maturely, without any dubious looks or gestures of impudence. Once that half of the situation had been attended to—though not really remedied—I went outside and apologized for myself, and on behalf of my sister. I explained my sister’s psychological abnormalities to the women, who eventually softened, and complimented me on my patience. They left; their tempers quelled. I decided that, given the circumstances, it would be best if I stayed home for the remainder of the day; so, I called into work and gave an excuse that wasn’t believed, but was nonetheless accepted. What had been a stressful half-hour soon blossomed into a terrifying night. My sister, being relentlessly persistent in her disparagement of the world at large, had connected her laptop to one of the few unprotected networks of the neighborhood. Once she had regained access to Twitter and her followers, she unleashed a veritable shitstorm of criticisms, insults, and essentially illegal calls to action. She fumed, she ranted, she blasphemed, it was as if the demon which had guided her hands and words towards insults and conflict had at last taken full control of her. And, unsurprisingly, her followers joined in her rage; drank of it, and finally, disastrously, left their computers, pocketed their phones, and set off on the great pilgrimage to my town. By 6pm that same day, my neighborhood was aswarm with seething Twitter users. Thousands of them laid siege to my small, barely on the map town, first rivaling and then dwarfing the humble and unsuspecting populace. When I first heard of their arrival, I stormed into my sister’s room and demanded that she order them to leave the town. But she responded that it was out of her hands, and that town would be spared, anyway; that it was the three litterers who were destined to feel the fury of the Twitter-sent forces. Sure enough, shortly after confiscating the laptop and locking it in my safe, the ground began to tremble as the Twitter horde entered the neighborhood. Every kind of person was represented in that horde; it was the single most diverse gathering of people I’d ever seen, and yet shared by all was a visage of unrestrained hatred. I hadn’t seen the three women since they’d departed my house after my sincere apologies, but staring out my window at 6:32pm, I saw them sprinting towards the property. Despite their exertions, they were all dressed casually, as if they’d scrambled from their homes in panicked flight. I stepped out to meet them, and rather than be bombarded by complaints and demands for the head of my sister, they instead pleaded with me to have her recall the encroaching army. The rest of the night, as far as it concerned the short-lived siege, happened in a violent blur. I welcomed the women into my home, and they gladly entered. My sister had crept up behind me, and upon seeing her the women practically threw themselves at her feet; begging her to call off her soldiers. My sister told them as much as she’d told me; that the situation was out of her control, and even that she was just as scared as they were. I was particularly frightened myself, as I was unsure of how I had been included, if at all, in the narrative of littering and environmental sabotage. The fact that I had just granted asylum to these social media fugitives only seemed further my potential peril. Through the front windows of my house, I saw the neighbors who had been oblivious to the e-drama retreat into their homes, as the horde finally swarmed onto the street. As if they’d been spotted by scouts, the location of the three women was known to the horde—and that great mass of enraged Twitter uses converged upon my lawn; their faces contorted into visages of contempt and long-buried savagery. Some had either brought along or appropriated weapons, while others simply stood with clenched fists and bared teeth. In the dying light of the day, they looked like a gathering of demons; as if the Earth had been thrown open, and Pandemonium had poured forth from the steaming Chthonic pits. One person, perhaps the deputized leader, spoke up, and demanded that the three women step out and face judgement. Peering through the windows, the women collectively squealed in terror, while my sister typed away on a phone she had stealthily swiped from one of them. She caught my disappointed glance, and assured me that she was, despite her previous statements, trying to redirect their ire elsewhere. Through the thin walls of my cheaply made suburban home, I heard the dings and chirps of smartphone notifications; but the horde ignored the newly issued mandates, and continued to gather around the home, and make their demands of sacrifice. Almost petrified by fear, I stood my ground—behind the protection of the front door—offering no response nor sacrifice to the invaders. This inaction, this unwillingness to throw the entirely innocent women to the wolves, only intensified the horde’s anger. Casting aside all notions of civility, maturity, and basic human decency, they at last stormed the house itself; weapons raised, faces snarling, eyes wide and red with malice and madness. I quickly dashed to the kitchen, where I gathered in my arms a bundle of spatulas, spoons, forks, knives, rolling pins, and ladles. Had I even a few moments more to think, I might’ve instead gone to the garage, where deadlier weapons could’ve been found; but oh well, I hadn’t the time to consider which objects in my house were the most effective against a small siege. I threw these items onto my coffee table and instructed everyone to arm themselves. My sister grabbed a ladle, and the women chose knives and forks with which to do battle. Just then, the front door strained for a moment against its hinges, and then was knocked completely free of them as the horde pressed in. The front windows were also suddenly shattered by people who had hurled themselves through the weak glass. Without ceremony, without the drawing of battle lines and the offering of terms, the melee was on. The battle was brief, bloody, and horrifying. In that frenetic bout, I saw the depths of barbarism that perpetually dwell within the hearts of men; kept barely at bay by the loosely held and ephemeral convictions of civilization. I also learned of the existence of a ferocity that had always dwelt within me; a reserve of primal power from which I drew the strength needed to not only defend myself, but strike boldly and savagely at my attackers. Steak knives and dinner forks were my weapons, and I swung and stabbed without care for human life. Terror and rage warred in my heart; each fearful sight inspired a greater horror, but also deepened my desire to survive against such horrors. The women with whom I had been forced to ally myself also fought with a similar primal conviction; I heard their shrieks, more like those of harpies than soccer moms, as they clashed with the veritable fiends who sought their destruction. My sister, accustomed to such vitriol, fought with the familiarity and skill of a warrior. The nightmarish battle lasted about six minutes. Somehow, despite the sharp and bluntly edged implements used, no one had actually died. Many indeed had been lacerated and stunned, one or two even temporarily disfigured; but no one had lost their life, and by the time some sense could be made of the situation, everyone was able to stand on their feet with little or no assistance. All of my companions had avoided serious harm. Someone had bitten my ankle at some point, and it kind of hurt when I put all my weight on it, but I was otherwise unharmed. The violence had been abruptly ended not by the submission of either side—I'd been in the process of slapping someone with a fork—but by another, unforeseen means of interruption. From somewhere amidst the ruins of my living room, a voice called out, saying that some moderately “influential” social media figure had made a slightly inflammatory statement during a stream. To the Twitter users, this was absolutely unacceptable, and required their immediate collaborative focus. Their collective anger towards the three joggers was immediately dispelled, and together, without further violence, they left my home. In a limping, sluggish mass they made a grand exodus from the town, back to their homes where they would assuredly launch an online campaign against the offending social media influencer. The three joggers, battered and disheveled but still very much alive, thanked me for the temporary sanctuary, and promptly left my home. My sister began tidying up the ruinous house, muttering about the apparent audacity and insensitivity of the newly infamous social media influencer. And despite the terror, the violence, and the realization that I wasn’t as civilized as I had thought, the worst thing about that night was that the three women had left with my cutlery; and I hadn’t any idea of where they actually lived within the neighborhood.
A classic joke: A wealthy and successful businessman is lying in a sickbed, at death's door, surrounded by his wife, children, and grandchildren. Looking at their tearless faces he is struck by the realization that he doesn’t know them. They’re strangers. The entirety of his life flashes before his eyes - every inane moment spent filling out spreadsheets and languishing in board meetings and rotting on conference calls - and he croaks out, “Man, I wish I’d spent more time at the office.” The moral it’s meant to impart (or at least the moral imparted by its non-comedically inverted counterpart: I don’t know anyone who said on their deathbed, “I wish I’d spent more time at the office.”) is that ‘work’ is insufficient to provide existential meaning. A meaningful life is a life spent connecting with people and forming bonds with them. Or something. A phenomenon: You’re standing on a precipice (literally, as in a high roof, bridge, mountain, etc.) and suddenly, you’re struck by an urge... jump. This is common enough that it has some semblance of a name. “The Call of the Void (l’appel du vide).” Heights are a common trigger, but the same phenomenon takes other forms as well. Waiting for the subway on an empty platform, you hear the noise of an arriving train... step forward. Driving home on the freeway late at night from a long day at work, you glance at the oncoming traffic in the other lane... swerve. Hmmmmm. Three dead guys walk into a bar. The bartender asks each of them, “So. How did you die?” The first responds, “Me? Heroin overdose. I spent my whole life drinking, shooting up, or getting high.” The second scoffs, “How pathetic. I spent my whole life working. I made millions and millions of dollars... and then died surrounded by estranged family members.” The third says, “Well, I was just your average Joe, but I always made time to chat. I met so many good people and made so many good friends over the years. After a long and happy life, I died peacefully in my sleep holding my wife.” The bartender looks the three of them over and says, “Well if you’re all so different... how come all three of you ended up in the same place?”
The sign of doom is written on your brows – how long will ye kick against the pin-pricks?
Whether there is a literal afterlife or just a hypothetical comedic premise afterlife, the point remains. All three guys are the same. They lived “different” (I hope the air-quotes are sufficiently palpable) lives in the sense that their actions were physically different, but their motivations for living those lives were entirely the same. Just as two chess players might play different moves and use different strategies, but hope for the same end result. Let’s look closely at each of our hypothetical persons. The first guy, — Should we name them? If we are going to be dissecting their lives it feels only respectful. Let’s make this first one an M.D. and have his name be... I don’t know... Ug. — Dr. Ug, subscribed to the John Lennon school of life. (The relevant Lennon quote: “When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life.”) After Dr. Ug graduated from medical school he realized that happiness felt the same whether it came from getting a degree to make his mom proud or from shooting heroin. Getting heroin requires considerably less work than getting a diploma, so he went off to do. He lived another handful of decades snorting, smoking, and injecting whatever he could get his hands on until he died while pissing himself. He lived a “happy” life. The second guy, Sir F (yes, he’s a British businessman who was knighted. If you have a better suggestion for a pun name than ‘Sir F/serf’ please let me know), got his first job as a paperboy when he was barely out of diapers. From that day forwards he slaved away his whole life, working night and day, rain or hail, holiday or weekend, until he was a renowned and wealthy CEO. The Queen knighted him. He had three wives over the course of his life, half a dozen kids, and a dozen or so grandkids. Five of his six kids took their first steps while he was at the office. He only met about half of his grandkids. All three of his wives were considerably younger than him and married him only for his money. He didn’t care. Business was booming and there was money to be made. He died of old age after spending some fraction of his fortune on a sequence of expensive medical procedures with diminishing returns. His tombstone is massive, and his name is on buildings scattered across the globe. He lived a “successful” life. The third guy, Pham Leigh Mann, immigrated from Vietnam and then married his highschool sweetheart. He lived in a small town where he knew everyone’s name. He was the kinda guy who could strike up a conversation with anyone and often did so. Mr. Mann lived nine decades and made it a point to keep up with his whole family. The yearly Mann family reunion barbecues that he hosted were eminently well attended. He coached his kids’ soccer team, attended choir recitals, drama club productions, bake sales. Everyone called him Paw-Paw or Big Pops. He lived to be 93 years old and died in his sleep. His funeral was attended by virtually the entire population of his town, and Manns across the country were sorry to see him go, but happy that he had lived such a “good” life.
Three guys walk into a bar. The fourth guy ducks.
Pre-emptive aside: Are these fellows contrived, shallow, unrealistic, strawmen? Of course they are. They aren’t real people. But they’re close enough, in each of their particular respects, to simulate an extreme version of the traits and lifestyles in question for demonstrative purposes. That aside... At a glance, Dr. Ug, Sir F, and Pham Leigh Mann couldn’t be more different. They each had an entirely different idea of how to spend their time alive. Pursuing happiness, success, or goodness until the inevitable end. One actual difference, though, is that Dr. Ug and Sir F aren’t supposed to come off well in their abbreviated biographical epitaph. Dr. Ug lived a pointless, pathetic, and self destructive lifestyle that ended predictably tragically. The ‘correct’ response is to shake your head sadly and cover your children’s eyes. Sir F was a modern day serf who scraped himself to the bone everyday in pursuit of wealth, to the exclusion of anything and everything else. The ‘correct’ response is to laud him for his business acumen while lamenting that he never realized the value of family and love. Only Mr. Mann is supposed to be praiseworthy. He lived a “meaningful” life. A “good” life.
Suicide remarks are torn From the fool's gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn that he not busy being born Is busy dying
A question: Why did each of the three men live their lives like they did? Why pursue happiness or success or goodness? Well, for the same reason that anyone does anything: to defend ourselves against our own minds.
Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living – because cognition gives them more than they can carry? Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness
How so?
The whole of living that we see before our eyes today is from inmost to outmost enmeshed in repressional mechanisms, social and individual; they can be traced right into the tritest formulas of everyday life. Though they take a vast and multifarious variety of forms, it seems legitimate to at least identify four major kinds, naturally occuring in every possible combination: isolation, anchoring, distraction and sublimation.
The four major repression mechanisms are basically stratagems we use to thwart the misfortune of consciousness. Zapffe describes four, but three of them seem to be the most prominent and recognizable, with the fourth playing an ancillary role. In any case: Isolation: A sort of conspiracy of silence, both intra- and inter- personal, regarding the problems and suffering of consciousness. A set of blinders, if you will. ‘Tact’ being a prime example. Anchoring: Rooting life in proposed truths and principles (ie. God, Nation, Family, Ethics, Goals, Culture) so as to gain a feeling of necessity and purpose. Distraction: The name seems self explanatory. Boredom is fertile ground for reflection, and so a constant stream of distractions must be employed to subdue the mind. ... Sublimation: Roughly speaking, “No pain no gain.” The idea is to channel suffering and self awareness into the production of some work, or to twist it in such a way as to repurpose it for chosen ends. Proponents include Jane Fonda, Benjamin Franklin, Arnold Schwarzenegger , poets, artists, etc.
NO PAINS, NO GAINS. If little labour, little are our gains: Man's fate is according to his pains.
Works of sublimation typically engage an aesthetic perspective, among others, in order to achieve the intended sublimation. i.e. A bodybuilder chasing a dream physique. The aesthetic lens makes the desired obfuscation much more palatable.
The human yearning is not merely marked by a ‘striving toward’, but equally by an ‘escape from.’ ... None has yet been clear about what he is longing for, but one has always a heartfelt awareness of what one is longing away from, namely the earthly vale of tears, one’s own inendurable condition.
Now, returning to our three posthumous friends, elements of all three strategies are present in each case obviously, but roughly speaking each man was intended to evoke one in particular. Dr. Ug employs chemical distraction. Sir F blinds himself with cultural/monetary isolation. Pham anchors himself in family, community, and an inherited ideal of a “good” life. (The secret fourth example is me, writing this as a work of sublimation.) I have previously written (albeit poorly and somewhat tangentially) about hedonism, and the claws it has dug into modern society as the mainstream ‘end.’ Hopefully it is clear that hedonistic pursuits are almost nakedly distractions. They serve to take our mind off of the unpleasant thought. (In fact, this terminology is particularly useful for diagnosing changes in malaise. For example, it is often noted that modernity has seen a decrease in the prominence of inherited culture and a corresponding increase in frivolity, dissatisfaction, and individualism. aka: A shift from “outdated” traditionalist anchoring to modern hedonistic distraction.) Extending this observation, it might become clear that virtually all forms of human activity, be it eating, having sex, watching a movie, reading a book, basking in the sun, learning a new boardgame, going to a rave, listening to music, etc., are similarly forms of distraction, designed to prevent the mind from experiencing boredom, the state in which it is most free to contemplate its inherent misfortune. For some distraction is enough, and they, like Dr. Ug, simply spend their lives in a swirl of hedonistic impressions and distractions. For others though, their lust for a greater purpose cannot be so easily satiated, and they must employ isolation and anchoring to a greater degree.
Let us consider, for instance, “Sunday neurosis,” that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest. ... Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression, and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them.
Viktor E. Frankl “Man’s Search for Meaning”
Children are a prime example. Ask most people why they choose to have children and their answer is... often quite a bit less structured than one might naively expect. Nearly everyone recognizes the monumental nature of the decision to have a child, and yet the reasons for which people make said choice tend to smack of post hoc rationalization. Some examples:
“Well it’s just something that you do when you get to a certain age.” “I wanted to have a family.” “To pass on our values.”
Etcetera etcetera. I’m sure you can see the pattern. The goal of having a child, either subconsciously known beforehand or realized after the fact, is to satiate that human desire for “meaning.” Children are a high quality, socially sanctioned, evolutionarily selected for, incredibly potent direct injection of “meaning.” How many parents vegetate while living vicariously through their kids? Their own purpose proved insufficient, and so they now try an alternate remedy. One our biology has evolved specifically to incentivize. Having and raising a child is so “meaningful” because it is an almost perfect synthesis of all four of the aforementioned strategies. Distraction, isolation, anchoring are all present, and the ‘work’ of raising the child is essentially a process of sublimation. We have evolved to find it “meaningful,” and we likely wouldn’t continue to exist if we didn’t. But make no mistake, any difference between our three fellows is simply either aesthetic or a matter of degree. There is no difference in kind. They, and everyone, act out the same play with the same sort of lines. We are being lied to... by ourselves.
One night in long bygone times, man awoke and saw himself. He saw that he was naked under cosmos, homeless in his own body. All things dissolved before his testing thought, wonder above wonder, horror above horror unfolded in his mind. Then woman too awoke and said it was time to go and slay. And he fetched his bow and arrow, a fruit of the marriage of spirit and hand, and went outside beneath the stars. But as the beasts arrived at their waterholes where he expected them of habit, he felt no more the tiger’s bound in his blood, but a great psalm about the brotherhood of suffering between everything alive. That day he did not return with prey, and when they found him by the next new moon, he was sitting dead by the waterhole.
My sister has had, well, let’s say a history of less than amicable interactions with people outside of the family. Even those within haven’t been spared her seemingly source-less ire, but those who lack the commonality of blood feel—in ways both openly and subtly hostile—her anger and unfounded spite. For as long as I can remember, going all the way back to our troublesome toddlerhood, my sister has made it her modus operandi, her prime existential impetus, to inflict harm with words and derision; with guile and deception; all out of some inborn distaste for anyone she deems—by standards unknowable—pretentious, prideful, or otherwise unworthy of some perceived self-confidence with which they allegedly carry themselves. Throughout her life, in a role immediately given to me by my parents once I had achieved the physicality sufficient to restrain her, I was made my sister’s keeper, wrangler. Any arguments or social bouts with peers, or even strangers, were clumsily broken up and de-escalated by yours truly. I can’t begin to estimate how many quarrels with girls I ended by simply yanking her away from the group, who my sister had confronted—always unprovoked—because she felt that they were too sure of themselves and their prettiness. I’m not the kind of man who assigns a value of beauty to his own sister based on primitive or outdated standards of attraction, but I can say that, in a way, I get her jealously; I at least understand how one might feel the way she feels. My family at large isn’t the prettiest stock; I’m certainly no looker, myself. But what confounds me is the resultant rage and indignation, at the mere sight of someone she perceives as prettier than herself. It’s unreasonable, nonsensical. I won’t waste time describing each and every petty, pointlessly hostile confrontation. The idea of my sister’s “condition”, for lack of a better word, has been established. She’s a moderately intelligent person, who had—at one nearly forgotten point in her life—lots of ambition, and goals unrelated to the smiting and punishment of her peers. But as life went on, and I grew older, I couldn’t always be by her side, and she eventually got into some scraps and heated exchanges that landed her before judges, and behind bars, and at the beck and call of probation officers. Nothing that would’ve brought shame to the family name—there are some among us who have as many prison stories as other families might have camping trips—but bad enough to leave her in a sorry state; living in a downtrodden, ex-convict-ridden apartment complex. That is until she couldn’t even afford that near derelict hovel, and—after a needlessly protracted request—moved in with me, in my suburban home. While our paths of life had diverged considerably, we shared one thing in common: we were both single and childless, despite being in our early thirties. Now, I knew my sister, and had put into place several contingencies, and issued many warnings, in preparation for her arrival. I informed my neighbors of her perpetually “irritable” mood, and essentially begged them—saving only a slight amount of pride—to forgive any outbursts or lapses in courtesy she may have. They assured me that they understood, and even commended me for what I suppose would be called “familial charity.” Also, knowing that without distraction my sister would simply brood and conjure up entirely imaginary—or severely misinterpreted—scenarios in which she was the target of some offense, I bought her a laptop. I figured that if she were to engage in hostilities, it would be best if they occurred online, with strangers who couldn’t send bricks through my windows or leave dog shit in my mailbox. How could I have ever predicted that she’d use the laptop to bring about the ruin of my life and home? Once she had settled in—which hadn’t taken long, considering her lack of belongings—she immediately set to familiarizing herself with the laptop. She’d had experience with computers in the past, but her recent journeys into criminality had often included the restriction from, or limitation of, access to such privileges. She was of course extremely appreciative, and promised that she would eventually pay me back; “In some way”, being the convenient follow-up. I had stocked the fridge, cupboards, pantry, closets, and drawers with all the food, supplies, kitchenware, and every day household items she’d possibly need. I furnished the guest room that had laid empty since the purchase of the house, and told her that it was hers for as long as she needed it to be. The appropriate gestures of gratitude were spoken, hugs were exchanged, her parole officer was notified, and I resumed my life as normal. The first Monday of co-habitation with my sister was, as I had feared but sensibly anticipated, a disaster. I came home on my lunch break—I had suspected, or maybe preternaturally sensed, some disturbance—to find a few women standing on my front-lawn, glaring at my house. There were three of them, and they were all fairly attractive. Ordinarily, being the simple man that I am, I’d be over-joyed to find these well-out-of-my-league women gathered on my property. But the circumstances weren’t so fantastical, and the reason for their congregation wasn’t out of any sudden and inexplicable love for me. As I parked in the driveway and whispered a prayer of mercy towards whomever might be listening from above, the women stomped on over to the car; faces scowling fiercely. I took a moment examine whether or not they bore weapons, and once I was sure of my safety, exited the car. I gave them a friendly smile, and before anything else could be done, a barrage of anger was unleashed upon me, with the single inspiration being my sister. Somehow, over the weekend of her arrival, my sister had amassed quite the following on Twitter, after having spent almost every waking moment berating celebrities, social media figures, and anyone else she could think to criticize. I chalked the rapid accumulation of followers up to old expression of misery loving—needing—company, and that all of my sister’s followers—all 12,000 of them—were equally or at least similarly bitter, impoverished, and vitriolic. Apparently, when my sister had grown tired of the larger targets, she’d focused her sights on closer subjects. The three women, during their early morning jog, had passed by my home, and my sister—always awake, always seething—had seen them go by through the living room windows. Incensed by the sight of these undeniably attractive women, she immediately put fingers to keys, and fabricated a story about the women wantonly littering throughout the neighborhood. According to the six tweets that tackled the nonexistent issue, the streets and sidewalks were “covered” with energy bar wrappers, plastic water bottles, and smears of exhaustively chewed gum. Despite having only seen the women this one time, my sister applied a history to their objectionable and totally imagined delinquency; a history that spanned further back than her tenancy of my home. Since my sister had failed to withhold—had actually proudly offered—the location of the neighborhood in which the fictional environmental offenses had taken place, her followers quickly went to action; contacting city officials, and even residents who happened to have the location in their social media bios. And, if that hadn’t been enough, my sister had stealthily yet awkwardly taken a picture of the joggers with the laptop’s webcam, and uploaded it as supplemental evidence to her tweets. Despite the absence of the garbage in the image, the mere presence of the women was sufficient enough evidence for her flock. The women, all having twitter accounts, were eventually made aware of their online denigration by my sister. Infuriated by the lies, they stormed my property and demanded that my sister come out and explain herself. Sensibly, my sister had remained inside, and continued to pour gas onto the fire behind her computer screen. All of this had occurred in five hours. I went into the house expecting a tirade from my sister about the women, but she instead sat in the living room chair—from which she had conducted her adjudications—with her hands on the armrests; her face showing an expression that said, “I know, I know.” (Upon saying her name in exasperation, she replied by actually saying, “I know, I know.”) Using the remote-access app from my phone, I disconnected her laptop from the Wi-Fi, chastised her as best as I could, and set up an appointment with a therapist. She accepted and agreed to all this maturely, without any dubious looks or gestures of impudence. Once that half of the situation had been attended to—though not really remedied—I went outside and apologized for myself, and on behalf of my sister. I explained my sister’s psychological abnormalities to the women, who eventually softened, and complimented me on my patience. They left; their tempers quelled. I decided that, given the circumstances, it would be best if I stayed home for the remainder of the day; so, I called into work and gave an excuse that wasn’t believed, but was nonetheless accepted. What had been a stressful half-hour soon blossomed into a terrifying night. My sister, being relentlessly persistent in her disparagement of the world at large, had connected her laptop to one of the few unprotected networks of the neighborhood. Once she had regained access to Twitter and her followers, she unleashed a veritable shitstorm of criticisms, insults, and essentially illegal calls to action. She fumed, she ranted, she blasphemed, it was as if the demon which had guided her hands and words towards insults and conflict had at last taken full control of her. And, unsurprisingly, her followers joined in her rage; drank of it, and finally, disastrously, left their computers, pocketed their phones, and set off on the great pilgrimage to my town. By 6pm that same day, my neighborhood was aswarm with seething Twitter users. Thousands of them laid siege to my small, barely on the map town, first rivaling and then dwarfing the humble and unsuspecting populace. When I first heard of their arrival, I stormed into my sister’s room and demanded that she order them to leave the town. But she responded that it was out of her hands, and that town would be spared, anyway; that it was the three litterers who were destined to feel the fury of the Twitter-sent forces. Sure enough, shortly after confiscating the laptop and locking it in my safe, the ground began to tremble as the Twitter horde entered the neighborhood. Every kind of person was represented in that horde; it was the single most diverse gathering of people I’d ever seen, and yet shared by all was a visage of unrestrained hatred. I hadn’t seen the three women since they’d departed my house after my sincere apologies, but staring out my window at 6:32pm, I saw them sprinting towards the property. Despite their exertions, they were all dressed casually, as if they’d scrambled from their homes in panicked flight. I stepped out to meet them, and rather than be bombarded by complaints and demands for the head of my sister, they instead pleaded with me to have her recall the encroaching army. The rest of the night, as far as it concerned the short-lived siege, happened in a violent blur. I welcomed the women into my home, and they gladly entered. My sister had crept up behind me, and upon seeing her the women practically threw themselves at her feet; begging her to call off her soldiers. My sister told them as much as she’d told me; that the situation was out of her control, and even that she was just as scared as they were. I was particularly frightened myself, as I was unsure of how I had been included, if at all, in the narrative of littering and environmental sabotage. The fact that I had just granted asylum to these social media fugitives only seemed further my potential peril. Through the front windows of my house, I saw the neighbors who had been oblivious to the e-drama retreat into their homes, as the horde finally swarmed onto the street. As if they’d been spotted by scouts, the location of the three women was known to the horde—and that great mass of enraged Twitter uses converged upon my lawn; their faces contorted into visages of contempt and long-buried savagery. Some had either brought along or appropriated weapons, while others simply stood with clenched fists and bared teeth. In the dying light of the day, they looked like a gathering of demons; as if the Earth had been thrown open, and Pandemonium had poured forth from the steaming Chthonic pits. One person, perhaps the deputized leader, spoke up, and demanded that the three women step out and face judgement. Peering through the windows, the women collectively squealed in terror, while my sister typed away on a phone she had stealthily swiped from one of them. She caught my disappointed glance, and assured me that she was, despite her previous statements, trying to redirect their ire elsewhere. Through the thin walls of my cheaply made suburban home, I heard the dings and chirps of smartphone notifications; but the horde ignored the newly issued mandates, and continued to gather around the home, and make their demands of sacrifice. Almost petrified by fear, I stood my ground—behind the protection of the front door—offering no response nor sacrifice to the invaders. This inaction, this unwillingness to throw the entirely innocent women to the wolves, only intensified the horde’s anger. Casting aside all notions of civility, maturity, and basic human decency, they at last stormed the house itself; weapons raised, faces snarling, eyes wide and red with malice and madness. I quickly dashed to the kitchen, where I gathered in my arms a bundle of spatulas, spoons, forks, knives, rolling pins, and ladles. Had I even a few moments more to think, I might’ve instead gone to the garage, where deadlier weapons could’ve been found; but oh well, I hadn’t the time to consider which objects in my house were the most effective against a small siege. I threw these items onto my coffee table and instructed everyone to arm themselves. My sister grabbed a ladle, and the women chose knives and forks with which to do battle. Just then, the front door strained for a moment against its hinges, and then was knocked completely free of them as the horde pressed in. The front windows were also suddenly shattered by people who had hurled themselves through the weak glass. Without ceremony, without the drawing of battle lines and the offering of terms, the melee was on. The battle was brief, bloody, and horrifying. In that frenetic bout, I saw the depths of barbarism that perpetually dwell within the hearts of men; kept barely at bay by the loosely held and ephemeral convictions of civilization. I also learned of the existence of a ferocity that had always dwelt within me; a reserve of primal power from which I drew the strength needed to not only defend myself, but strike boldly and savagely at my attackers. Steak knives and dinner forks were my weapons, and I swung and stabbed without care for human life. Terror and rage warred in my heart; each fearful sight inspired a greater horror, but also deepened my desire to survive against such horrors. The women with whom I had been forced to ally myself also fought with a similar primal conviction; I heard their shrieks, more like those of harpies than soccer moms, as they clashed with the veritable fiends who sought their destruction. My sister, accustomed to such vitriol, fought with the familiarity and skill of a warrior. The nightmarish battle lasted about six minutes. Somehow, despite the sharp and bluntly edged implements used, no one had actually died. Many indeed had been lacerated and stunned, one or two even temporarily disfigured; but no one had lost their life, and by the time some sense could be made of the situation, everyone was able to stand on their feet with little or no assistance. All of my companions had avoided serious harm. Someone had bitten my ankle at some point, and it kind of hurt when I put all my weight on it, but I was otherwise unharmed. The violence had been abruptly ended not by the submission of either side—I'd been in the process of slapping someone with a fork—but by another, unforeseen means of interruption. From somewhere amidst the ruins of my living room, a voice called out, saying that some moderately “influential” social media figure had made a slightly inflammatory statement during a stream. To the Twitter users, this was absolutely unacceptable, and required their immediate collaborative focus. Their collective anger towards the three joggers was immediately dispelled, and together, without further violence, they left my home. In a limping, sluggish mass they made a grand exodus from the town, back to their homes where they would assuredly launch an online campaign against the offending social media influencer. The three joggers, battered and disheveled but still very much alive, thanked me for the temporary sanctuary, and promptly left my home. My sister began tidying up the ruinous house, muttering about the apparent audacity and insensitivity of the newly infamous social media influencer. And despite the terror, the violence, and the realization that I wasn’t as civilized as I had thought, the worst thing about that night was that the three women had left with my cutlery; and I hadn’t any idea of where they actually lived within the neighborhood.
[Cover] [Bonus Chapter] [Table of Contents] Melinda’s Story I had a lot of trouble sleeping Saturday night. My mind kept drifting to the pizza parlor. Had I seen Eliot? Why wasn’t he returning my text? Eventually, I decided to just ask my friends from home. Brittany and Casey would know what was happening. They usually knew all the latest gossip. Although I sent them a quick text in the morning, I didn’t expect to hear back from them for a few hours. While Sarah attempted to shove Crystal’s sleeping bag under her bed, I packed my bag for another Sunday in the library. After Crystal repacked her overnight bag, the three of us headed to the dining hall. I wasn’t surprised to see Larry and Walter already eating. Larry smiled as we sat down. “So, what are we doing today?” Sarah shrugged. “I had fun watching cartoons last weekend.” Crystal nodded as Sarah interpreted for us. “I want to join you. Will you turn on the closed captions?” Walter smiled in my direction. “You’re going to the library.” I could feel my face grow warm. My eggs seemed a lot more interesting than making eye contact at the moment. “Am I that predictable?” “Well, yeah. But, you have an overstuffed bag with you.” I had forgotten. I smiled at him. “What are you doing today?” “I felt like something was missing last weekend. So, I’m definitely going to try to catch the four o’clock games. But, I’ll work with you ‘til lunch.” How could he possibly want to watch more football after playing and watching the varsity game yesterday. I easily could go a week before ever seeing a football again. But, I didn’t need to know the answer badly enough to ask him. Eventually, Larry, Sarah, and Crystal wandered over to the MAC to commandeer one of the only two televisions allowed on campus. That was my cue to go to the library. I didn’t pass a single student on my way to the study room. I plugged in my nearly-dead phone before emptying my bag. What should I start with? Walter would be joining me shortly, so maybe math? Before I could decide, my phone signaled an incoming video chat request. I was surprised to hear from Brittany so early. I was more surprised to realize I was reluctant to answer the call. Casey squealed as her face popped onto the screen beside Brittany’s. “Where have you been?” “Melly!” shouted Brittany. I smiled at the girls I had known since the second grade, realizing I wasn’t at all envious they were having a sleepover without me. “Hey. How are you?” Casey didn’t seem to hear me. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear about Eliot. Brittany nodded. “He was expelled. Everyone else was suspended, but he’s completely disappeared.” “Everyone who? What are you talking about?” Casey shrugged. “Well, that’s just it. No one knows.” “No one’s talking,” added Brittany. “Kevin said the lawyers told them not to.” I could feel my jaw drop. “Lawyers? Wha—Who can't talk?” Brittany shook her head. “Eliot’s crew.” Casey rolled her eyes, but I wasn't quite sure what she was trying to tell me. “You know. Eliot, Nick, Greg.” “Brian. Kevin.” “George.” Brittany shook her head adamantly. “Not uh. George didn’t get caught.” I was beyond confused. There was only one middle school in my town. Everyone in the ninth grade should have been in school with me last year. But, I only recognized a few of the names my friends were spouting. Of course, I knew Eliot, and I remembered his best friend, Nick, who could get annoying after long periods of exposure. Greg was another friend of theirs, a quiet computer geek who liked to play video games. I had no idea who the rest of the boys were. But, I wasn’t too surprised to learn Eliot had been hanging out with new friends. It wouldn’t be the first time I was thrown by the change in social structure from middle school to high school. I had already realized that Brittany and Casey were friends with a whole new crowd now that I was gone. Even as I tried to process all this information, Casey kept explaining. “The lawyers told them not to say anything.” “They went to court and everything.” Brittany sounded almost impressed by this information. “And now Eliot’s missing.” “No one has seen him since that night.” “No one seems to know where he went.” “George says his parents took away his phone and sent him away.” “Kevin thinks he went to jail.” “George thinks reform school. Or military school.” “Or Oakville?” I thought about the boy I had seen in the pizza parlor the night before. If his parents took away his phone, maybe he never got my message. Could that be why he wasn’t returning my message? Brittany didn’t seem to hear me. She turned to Casey. “Hey. You wanna go to the mall?” Casey beamed. “Oh my god, yes!” I nodded. “I better go, too. I’ve got a ton of homework.” Again, Brittany didn’t seem to hear me. “I’ll go ask my mom if she could drive us.” She ended the call without saying goodbye. I was a little disappointed my friends didn’t seem to have heard me. But, it didn't bother me as much as I would have thought. They were no longer as large a part of life as they had been a few weeks ago. When I put down my phone, I realized Walter was sitting across from me. When did he get here? He nodded towards the phone. “Everything okay?” I shrugged. “Yeah.” “You look a little sad.” I sighed. “I’m just . . . confused. I thought I saw someone I knew in town and my friends were trying to tell me what happened to him, but it didn’t really make any sense.” Walter raised his eyebrows. “Those were friends?” “Yeah. Why?” He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just, I never end a call without saying goodbye to my friends.” Walter opened his geometry book and placed it between us. We worked in silence for a while. I’m not sure what was running through Walter's mind. Mine kept wandering back to Eliot. What had happened back at home? Where did he go? Was he in Oakville after all? I made it to the fifth problem before Walter came to sit beside me. I found his presence even more distracting, but I said nothing. A moment later, I could feel him peering over my shoulder. Rolling my eyes, I moved my hand so he could see better. He pointed to my first answer. “Two times eight is sixteen, not ten. That changes your answer.” As he moved on to the next question, I corrected my mistake and began working on number six. I finished the assignment before Walter was halfway done, so I passed him my paper and pulled my physics workbook out of the tower of books beside me. I wanted to keep the page clean for when I had to study for my test, so I answered the questions on loose leaf instead. I got through three problems when Walter slammed the math book closed. He nodded towards my book as he returned to his side of the table. “We don’t use that book. But, I can still help you.” “My teacher didn’t assign it. I just wanted to try them. I’ll let you know if I get stuck. But, later.” I stuck the paper inside the book and placed it back on the pile. Before I could grab another book, my phone signaled an incoming text message. My immediate thought was that Eliot was finally texting me back. Instead, Crystal was informing me that Larry had his arm around Sarah. I glanced at Walter. “Do you think there’s something going on between Larry and Sarah?” “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Walter opened his physics textbook without looking at me. “I don’t know. I mean, I thought there was something there, since they’re like, always hanging out and everything. But then I thought maybe they’re just friends, since it’s not like Sarah’s always talking about him when he’s not around.” When Walter smirked at me, I could feel my cheeks grow warm. “And I’m like, probably not supposed to be saying that. Roommate confidentiality or something.” Walter gave a small laugh. “No, but it’s funny to watch them. While we were walking to breakfast, Larry wouldn’t stop debating with himself whether or not Sarah would be there. And, he spent like, literally, half an hour in my room last night talking about Sarah and Crystal. I was on my computer, not paying him any attention, but he didn’t even notice.” “Well, I think they’re cute together.” I smiled to myself as I opened my physics book. *** We had just finished translating Latin passages to prepare for our upcoming test when my phone buzzed. After checking the readout, I glanced at Walter. “Sarah’s on her way to the dining hall.” “Great. I’m starving.” I wasn’t surprised. Walter had a tendency to become hungry within ten minutes of completing a meal. I just rolled my eyes and glanced at my assignment pad. “I’m think I’m done. I only have my art assignment left.” Walter nearly whined. “That’s not fair. I’m jealous.” Smiling, he continued in his regular voice as we packed our bags. “I’m not worried about English but computer science is gonna take most of study hours tonight.” “I thought you said it was easy for you.” I followed him into the hallway. “It’s not hard. I understand it. It’s just a lot of reading, plus the computer assignment. And I’m behind. Football is occupying a lot of my time.” “Would it be easier if we didn’t study together? I mean, I’m probably slowing you down.” Walter stopped dead in his tracks at the top of the stairs. I didn’t even notice until I had reached the bottom. I looked back at him. “You okay?” “You’re kidding, right?” He stood motionless, his eyes wide. “Huh?” Walter came down the stairs slowly, as if each step took great effort. “I like studying with you. Without you, I’d probably be playing video games and not getting anything accomplished. Besides, how else can I copy your geometry homework?” I punched him playfully, probably hurting my hand more than his muscular shoulder. “I knew it! I knew you weren’t checking your answers!” When he ran away, I chased him all the way to the dining hall. We dropped our bags at our usual table, where Sarah and Crystal were already sitting, then returned to the servery to grab food. I asked the lady at the grill to make me a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, then headed to the beverage island for a glass of water. Walter placed his tray beside mine. It was overburdened with a slice of cheese pizza, a bowl of pasta with meat sauce, and some of the chicken special. He glanced between our two trays as he filled some glasses of water. “Hey! Can I put something on your tray? I ran out of room.” He didn’t wait for an answer before placing his pizza and a glass of water on my tray. He knew I would say yes. He had been sharing my tray nearly every meal all week. Sarah and Larry had texted everyone on their way to the dining hall, so most of our friends had arrived by the time I got to the table. Larry placed an arm on the back of Sarah’s chair as he looked around the table. “So, what's everyone doing this afternoon?” Forrest shrugged. “I missed last period yesterday cuz of soccer. I’m gonna try to catch up a little.” “I was thinking of exploring some of the hiking trails,” Jade said. Leif pointed a fork in her direction. “I can go with you. I’ve been running through there for cross-country.” Walter took a large bite of his pizza. “I’m gonna watch football. Even if I have to read during the commercials.” Bella laughed. “Can I join you?” “Sure.” “Count me in,” added Andy. “Yeah, me, too,” agreed Larry. “Well, Crystal and I want to go to the mall,” said Sarah. “Melinda?” I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Why not.” When we returned to the dorms after lunch, most of the girls stopped in front of Stanton to talk to the boys a little longer. I went straight to my room to unpack my bag. A few minutes later, Crystal returned alone, looking upset and somewhat annoyed. She climbed onto my bed, glaring angrily across the room as she kicked her dangling feet. I had no idea why she was so angry. I texted her as I sat beside her. What’s wrong? She sent me a half-hearted smile before furiously typing her response, her fingers flying across the digital keyboard at a rapid pace and my phone dinging every few second. Sarah had ignored her all morning. Whenever Sarah was talking to Larry, she would forget to sign. Crystal was feeling left out and wasn’t sure if Sarah even noticed her storming away. I wasn't quite sure how to make Crystal feel better, but I figured a hug couldn’t hurt. She immediately resumed her typing. I like you. You’re nice to me. As soon as Sarah returned to the room, Crystal started signing angrily at her sister. I tried not to stare, but watching them was mesmerizing. The two sisters stood in the middle of the room, simultaneously signing so quickly that I wondered whether they were even paying attention to what the other had to say. While they held their silent argument, I texted my mother a little about the first week of school. I told her about buying new clothes for dance class and going out with my friends last night. When my mom stopped responding, I glanced at my roommates. Although Sarah and Crystal were still talking to each other, they were communicating less furiously. I decided to break the silence. “Um, what time’s the shuttle?” The look Sarah sent me made me wonder if she had forgotten I was still in the room. She glanced at her alarm clock and swore under her breath before repsonding in an annoyed tone. “We missed the two o’clock. There’s another one at three.” “Well, why don’t we go hang out at the MAC until the shuttle returns? Play pool or something. Or, did you want to stay here and get some work done?” Sarah glared at her desk, indicating she had absolutely no desire to begin her homework, before asking Crystal her preference. When Crystal responded, Sarah jerked her head towards the door. “Let’s go!” Melinda’s Journal Sunday, September 17 This afternoon, I went to the mall with my roommate and her sister. We had a lot of fun together, even though we didn’t buy anything. Back home, I never really went shopping with my friends, just my mom. There is a small mall not too far away from us, but there isn’t all that much to do there. This mall, though, was massive. My friends and I made sure to walk every inch of it. I only recognized about half the stores. Even some of the department stores were new to me. If I wanted to, I could have bought exercise clothes, then gone for a run on a treadmill. Because there is a fitness center. Right there, IN THE MALL! And then afterwards, I could have had dinner in the food court before going to watch a movie. Because there is a multiplex. Right there, IN THE MALL! My mind is blown. Pat’s Story Pat’s story will begin in March Email Updates Want to receive an email when the next episode is released? Sign up for automatic updates and, as a thank you, you will receive access to An Innocent Bystander. This bonus chapter tells the story of an important event in the life of one of the characters you will meet in the Hartfield Chronicles. Episode 10
[Cover] [Bonus Chapter] [Table of Contents] https://preview.redd.it/nvqm00zyu2f61.png?width=223&format=png&auto=webp&s=09692cb46ef39249e454b5d6cf322189aaeaff41 Melinda’s Story I had a lot of trouble sleeping Saturday night. My mind kept drifting to the pizza parlor. Had I seen Eliot? Why wasn’t he returning my text? Eventually, I decided to just ask my friends from home. Brittany and Casey would know what was happening. They usually knew all the latest gossip. Although I sent them a quick text in the morning, I didn’t expect to hear back from them for a few hours. While Sarah attempted to shove Crystal’s sleeping bag under her bed, I packed my bag for another Sunday in the library. After Crystal repacked her overnight bag, the three of us headed to the dining hall. I wasn’t surprised to see Larry and Walter already eating. Larry smiled as we sat down. “So, what are we doing today?” Sarah shrugged. “I had fun watching cartoons last weekend.” Crystal nodded as Sarah interpreted for us. “I want to join you. Will you turn on the closed captions?” Walter smiled in my direction. “You’re going to the library.” I could feel my face grow warm. My eggs seemed a lot more interesting than making eye contact at the moment. “Am I that predictable?” “Well, yeah. But, you have an overstuffed bag with you.” I had forgotten. I smiled at him. “What are you doing today?” “I felt like something was missing last weekend. So, I’m definitely going to try to catch the four o’clock games. But, I’ll work with you ‘til lunch.” How could he possibly want to watch more football after playing and watching the varsity game yesterday. I easily could go a week before ever seeing a football again. But, I didn’t need to know the answer badly enough to ask him. Eventually, Larry, Sarah, and Crystal wandered over to the MAC to commandeer one of the only two televisions allowed on campus. That was my cue to go to the library. I didn’t pass a single student on my way to the study room. I plugged in my nearly-dead phone before emptying my bag. What should I start with? Walter would be joining me shortly, so maybe math? Before I could decide, my phone signaled an incoming video chat request. I was surprised to hear from Brittany so early. I was more surprised to realize I was reluctant to answer the call. Casey squealed as her face popped onto the screen beside Brittany’s. “Where have you been?” “Melly!” shouted Brittany. I smiled at the girls I had known since the second grade, realizing I wasn’t at all envious they were having a sleepover without me. “Hey. How are you?” Casey didn’t seem to hear me. “I can’t believe you didn’t hear about Eliot. Brittany nodded. “He was expelled. Everyone else was suspended, but he’s completely disappeared.” “Everyone who? What are you talking about?” Casey shrugged. “Well, that’s just it. No one knows.” “No one’s talking,” added Brittany. “Kevin said the lawyers told them not to.” I could feel my jaw drop. “Lawyers? Wha—Who can't talk?” Brittany shook her head. “Eliot’s crew.” Casey rolled her eyes, but I wasn't quite sure what she was trying to tell me. “You know. Eliot, Nick, Greg.” “Brian. Kevin.” “George.” Brittany shook her head adamantly. “Not uh. George didn’t get caught.” I was beyond confused. There was only one middle school in my town. Everyone in the ninth grade should have been in school with me last year. But, I only recognized a few of the names my friends were spouting. Of course, I knew Eliot, and I remembered his best friend, Nick, who could get annoying after long periods of exposure. Greg was another friend of theirs, a quiet computer geek who liked to play video games. I had no idea who the rest of the boys were. But, I wasn’t too surprised to learn Eliot had been hanging out with new friends. It wouldn’t be the first time I was thrown by the change in social structure from middle school to high school. I had already realized that Brittany and Casey were friends with a whole new crowd now that I was gone. Even as I tried to process all this information, Casey kept explaining. “The lawyers told them not to say anything.” “They went to court and everything.” Brittany sounded almost impressed by this information. “And now Eliot’s missing.” “No one has seen him since that night.” “No one seems to know where he went.” “George says his parents took away his phone and sent him away.” “Kevin thinks he went to jail.” “George thinks reform school. Or military school.” “Or Oakville?” I thought about the boy I had seen in the pizza parlor the night before. If his parents took away his phone, maybe he never got my message. Could that be why he wasn’t returning my message? Brittany didn’t seem to hear me. She turned to Casey. “Hey. You wanna go to the mall?” Casey beamed. “Oh my god, yes!” I nodded. “I better go, too. I’ve got a ton of homework.” Again, Brittany didn’t seem to hear me. “I’ll go ask my mom if she could drive us.” She ended the call without saying goodbye. I was a little disappointed my friends didn’t seem to have heard me. But, it didn't bother me as much as I would have thought. They were no longer as large a part of life as they had been a few weeks ago. When I put down my phone, I realized Walter was sitting across from me. When did he get here? He nodded towards the phone. “Everything okay?” I shrugged. “Yeah.” “You look a little sad.” I sighed. “I’m just . . . confused. I thought I saw someone I knew in town and my friends were trying to tell me what happened to him, but it didn’t really make any sense.” Walter raised his eyebrows. “Those were friends?” “Yeah. Why?” He shrugged. “Nothing. It’s just, I never end a call without saying goodbye to my friends.” Walter opened his geometry book and placed it between us. We worked in silence for a while. I’m not sure what was running through Walter's mind. Mine kept wandering back to Eliot. What had happened back at home? Where did he go? Was he in Oakville after all? I made it to the fifth problem before Walter came to sit beside me. I found his presence even more distracting, but I said nothing. A moment later, I could feel him peering over my shoulder. Rolling my eyes, I moved my hand so he could see better. He pointed to my first answer. “Two times eight is sixteen, not ten. That changes your answer.” As he moved on to the next question, I corrected my mistake and began working on number six. I finished the assignment before Walter was halfway done, so I passed him my paper and pulled my physics workbook out of the tower of books beside me. I wanted to keep the page clean for when I had to study for my test, so I answered the questions on loose leaf instead. I got through three problems when Walter slammed the math book closed. He nodded towards my book as he returned to his side of the table. “We don’t use that book. But, I can still help you.” “My teacher didn’t assign it. I just wanted to try them. I’ll let you know if I get stuck. But, later.” I stuck the paper inside the book and placed it back on the pile. Before I could grab another book, my phone signaled an incoming text message. My immediate thought was that Eliot was finally texting me back. Instead, Crystal was informing me that Larry had his arm around Sarah. I glanced at Walter. “Do you think there’s something going on between Larry and Sarah?” “It’s obvious, isn’t it?” Walter opened his physics textbook without looking at me. “I don’t know. I mean, I thought there was something there, since they’re like, always hanging out and everything. But then I thought maybe they’re just friends, since it’s not like Sarah’s always talking about him when he’s not around.” When Walter smirked at me, I could feel my cheeks grow warm. “And I’m like, probably not supposed to be saying that. Roommate confidentiality or something.” Walter gave a small laugh. “No, but it’s funny to watch them. While we were walking to breakfast, Larry wouldn’t stop debating with himself whether or not Sarah would be there. And, he spent like, literally, half an hour in my room last night talking about Sarah and Crystal. I was on my computer, not paying him any attention, but he didn’t even notice.” “Well, I think they’re cute together.” I smiled to myself as I opened my physics book. *** We had just finished translating Latin passages to prepare for our upcoming test when my phone buzzed. After checking the readout, I glanced at Walter. “Sarah’s on her way to the dining hall.” “Great. I’m starving.” I wasn’t surprised. Walter had a tendency to become hungry within ten minutes of completing a meal. I just rolled my eyes and glanced at my assignment pad. “I’m think I’m done. I only have my art assignment left.” Walter nearly whined. “That’s not fair. I’m jealous.” Smiling, he continued in his regular voice as we packed our bags. “I’m not worried about English but computer science is gonna take most of study hours tonight.” “I thought you said it was easy for you.” I followed him into the hallway. “It’s not hard. I understand it. It’s just a lot of reading, plus the computer assignment. And I’m behind. Football is occupying a lot of my time.” “Would it be easier if we didn’t study together? I mean, I’m probably slowing you down.” Walter stopped dead in his tracks at the top of the stairs. I didn’t even notice until I had reached the bottom. I looked back at him. “You okay?” “You’re kidding, right?” He stood motionless, his eyes wide. “Huh?” Walter came down the stairs slowly, as if each step took great effort. “I like studying with you. Without you, I’d probably be playing video games and not getting anything accomplished. Besides, how else can I copy your geometry homework?” I punched him playfully, probably hurting my hand more than his muscular shoulder. “I knew it! I knew you weren’t checking your answers!” When he ran away, I chased him all the way to the dining hall. We dropped our bags at our usual table, where Sarah and Crystal were already sitting, then returned to the servery to grab food. I asked the lady at the grill to make me a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, then headed to the beverage island for a glass of water. Walter placed his tray beside mine. It was overburdened with a slice of cheese pizza, a bowl of pasta with meat sauce, and some of the chicken special. He glanced between our two trays as he filled some glasses of water. “Hey! Can I put something on your tray? I ran out of room.” He didn’t wait for an answer before placing his pizza and a glass of water on my tray. He knew I would say yes. He had been sharing my tray nearly every meal all week. Sarah and Larry had texted everyone on their way to the dining hall, so most of our friends had arrived by the time I got to the table. Larry placed an arm on the back of Sarah’s chair as he looked around the table. “So, what's everyone doing this afternoon?” Forrest shrugged. “I missed last period yesterday cuz of soccer. I’m gonna try to catch up a little.” “I was thinking of exploring some of the hiking trails,” Jade said. Leif pointed a fork in her direction. “I can go with you. I’ve been running through there for cross-country.” Walter took a large bite of his pizza. “I’m gonna watch football. Even if I have to read during the commercials.” Bella laughed. “Can I join you?” “Sure.” “Count me in,” added Andy. “Yeah, me, too,” agreed Larry. “Well, Crystal and I want to go to the mall,” said Sarah. “Melinda?” I shrugged. “Yeah, sure. Why not.” When we returned to the dorms after lunch, most of the girls stopped in front of Stanton to talk to the boys a little longer. I went straight to my room to unpack my bag. A few minutes later, Crystal returned alone, looking upset and somewhat annoyed. She climbed onto my bed, glaring angrily across the room as she kicked her dangling feet. I had no idea why she was so angry. I texted her as I sat beside her. What’s wrong? She sent me a half-hearted smile before furiously typing her response, her fingers flying across the digital keyboard at a rapid pace and my phone dinging every few second. Sarah had ignored her all morning. Whenever Sarah was talking to Larry, she would forget to sign. Crystal was feeling left out and wasn’t sure if Sarah even noticed her storming away. I wasn't quite sure how to make Crystal feel better, but I figured a hug couldn’t hurt. She immediately resumed her typing. I like you. You’re nice to me. As soon as Sarah returned to the room, Crystal started signing angrily at her sister. I tried not to stare, but watching them was mesmerizing. The two sisters stood in the middle of the room, simultaneously signing so quickly that I wondered whether they were even paying attention to what the other had to say. While they held their silent argument, I texted my mother a little about the first week of school. I told her about buying new clothes for dance class and going out with my friends last night. When my mom stopped responding, I glanced at my roommates. Although Sarah and Crystal were still talking to each other, they were communicating less furiously. I decided to break the silence. “Um, what time’s the shuttle?” The look Sarah sent me made me wonder if she had forgotten I was still in the room. She glanced at her alarm clock and swore under her breath before repsonding in an annoyed tone. “We missed the two o’clock. There’s another one at three.” “Well, why don’t we go hang out at the MAC until the shuttle returns? Play pool or something. Or, did you want to stay here and get some work done?” Sarah glared at her desk, indicating she had absolutely no desire to begin her homework, before asking Crystal her preference. When Crystal responded, Sarah jerked her head towards the door. “Let’s go!” --- Melinda’s Journal Sunday, September 17 This afternoon, I went to the mall with my roommate and her sister. We had a lot of fun together, even though we didn’t buy anything. Back home, I never really went shopping with my friends, just my mom. There is a small mall not too far away from us, but there isn’t all that much to do there. This mall, though, was massive. My friends and I made sure to walk every inch of it. I only recognized about half the stores. Even some of the department stores were new to me. If I wanted to, I could have bought exercise clothes, then gone for a run on a treadmill. Because there is a fitness center. Right there, IN THE MALL! And then afterwards, I could have had dinner in the food court before going to watch a movie. Because there is a multiplex. Right there, IN THE MALL! My mind is blown. --- Pat’s Story Pat’s story will begin in March --- Email Updates Want to receive an email when the next episode is released? Sign up for automatic updates and, as a thank you, you will receive access to An Innocent Bystander. This bonus chapter tells the story of an important event in the life of one of the characters you will meet in the Hartfield Chronicles. Episode 10
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![[Hartfield Chronicles] - Episode 9](https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/uWYGSUMgnHL3TpAU4_bcUFENvK44IAfKwa7n8SgLW00.jpg "[Hartfield Chronicles] - Episode 9")
