Where are they now? Liverpool vs. AC Milan, 2005

Here are two football teams battling for the biggest prize in Europe. Can you guess who they are? (Cue “Camberwick Green” music¹).

Yes, it’s 2005 and the Champions League Final:

And who was playing on that night?

MILAN:
GK	1	Dida
RB	2	Cafu
CB	31	Jaap Stam
CB	13	Alessandro Nesta
LB	3	Paolo Maldini (c)
DM	21	Andrea Pirlo
RM	8	Gennaro Gattuso		112′
LM	20	Clarence Seedorf		86′
AM	22	Kaká
CF	7	Andriy Shevchenko
CF	11	Hernán Crespo		85′

LIVERPOOL:
GK	1	Jerzy Dudek
RB	3	Steve Finnan		46′
CB	23	Jamie Carragher	75′
CB	4	Sami Hyypiä
LB	21	Djimi Traoré
DM	14	Xabi Alonso
RM	10	Luis García
CM	8	Steven Gerrard (c)
LM	6	John Arne Riise
SS	7	Harry Kewell		23′
CF	5	Milan Baroš	81′	85

Of all the Liverpool players, only Stevie Gerrard and Carra can still be found (and actually they’re both out injured).

So where are they now? Here’s the tale of the tables:

Yes, where Milan lead the top of their table by 6 points, Liverpool are in 9th and yesterday lost to Newcastle, who’ve been playing so badly they recently sacked their manager (as did Liverpool last season). We’re looking at a top ten finish at best.

Two seasons ago we came 2nd in the league and Torres scored the most goals of any foreign newcomer to the EPL. Now Torres has struggled with injury and is reduced to bickering (OK, he played in the World Cup Final, but pulled up injured and didn’t score).

I’ll always support Liverpool of course and have 2005 (and 1977) to remember but A) we shouldn’t have sold Alonso (he scored the tying goal remember) and B) we really need to buy in the January transfer window. Otherwise Milan have the last laugh.

And I ain’t just being Windy Miller.

¹If you’ve never seen this or forgotten it, it was a children’s show back in the 60s-70s, and more recently was referred to in the second season of Life on Mars.

Liverpool beat Chelsea 2-0

Get in!

PKD Festival in io9

The recent PKD Festival in Colorado gets a write-up in io9, the online sf website.

The following comment caught my eye:

Finally, Lord Running Clam did his damndest to convince us that Dick’s writings contain the secrets of the Universe. But, for the most part, we already knew that.

If there’s one thing we should have learned from reading PKD and his letters, it’s that PKD is not an answer-man but a question-man. His life and writings (the two being so intimately tied together) are not insights into the arcana of the universe, but a never-ending obsessive testing and rejecting of themes and explanations. This is so overwhelmingly obvious from his work (just read his letters, volume 6 of which have finally been published) that it seems as if people must deliberately read their own desires into Dick.

Philip K. Dick letters

Updated below.

I didn’t quite believe this when I heard it a few weeks ago and so left it for a while, but I’ve just been notified by Amazon that my copy of the last (6th) volume of PKD letters is on its way to me! What a nice birthday present.

These cover the years 1980-1982, the last two years of his life. Henri Wintz, who helped type up the letters 20 years ago(!), has a few comments here. This will complete my collection of the letters (I have the 5 other vols, including a slipcase edition of the first volume).

Many people have a “JFK” moment: I have a PKD moment, I remember where I was and what I was doing when I heard he had died. I was an undergraduate student and was waiting with my friends to go into my prehistoric archeology class here, and was reading Ansible, the Dave Langford newsletter (still going!) which carried the PKD death notice:

Stop Press: Philip Dick died on 2/3 March in California, aged 53. RIP.

(Ansible March 1982).

Going back now and seeing those few simple words it’s so surprising how that moment can remain with me 28 years later.

Update 7/27/2010.

I’ve now receive the book and can confirm that it exists (well you never know with things Dickian). There’s a slip of paper in it (it doesn’t say “soft drink stand”) noting that only 1350 copies were printed and that the dust jacket was done 10 years ago and is out of date. Also they’ve cut the price tag off the jacket (wrong wrong wrong, will badly affect value–not that I plan to sell this after waiting so long to get it). The other books came out in 1991 so this is now 19 years late.

However, the contents are as moving and interesting as ever. Perhaps more so now that PKD has some distance from his ever-popular topic of 2-3-74 (Feb-March 1974). He still obsesses over it, but this is the time when he’s written Valis and is working on Valis Regained and Timothy Archer. He also buys his own “conapt” and gives his own varying interpretations of Valis. He has a long correspondence with Patricia Warrick about it so you know it’s all still there for him. And this is the time when he was getting interviewed a lot and generally things are happening with the movies.

Highly recommend but act quick before they sell out–don’t wait for the promised paperbacks!

Arthur Robinson Personnel File

Arthur Robinson Personnel File

In 2008 the federal government released the personnel files of people who worked for and with the OSS, the WWII intelligence service.

Shown here is the cover of the file for Arthur H. Robinson, who later became a (or some say, the) leading American cartographer in the post-war years. Robinson’s time with the OSS has never before been examined.

Useful Soldier links on Urth listserv

Here are some useful links to posts on the Gene Wolfe mailing list (Urth) that provide useful infos on Soldier of the Mist:

Place names (Wolfe-English)

List of gods/goddesses and whose side they might be on

General background

The above three were posted by Alice Turner (alga) in 1997.

List of names, 2000 (Wolfe-English). Slightly longer list with some interpretation, not always correct.

I’ve read dozens of other posts but these seem the most useful. If there are others you like, please let me know.

Mapping migration: DeKalb as staging post to the west?

Check this out. Is DeKalb County (includes parts of Atlanta and city of Decatur where I live) a staging post for people moving west?

From Forbes Magazine.

Gene Wolfe’s Soldier of the Mist Decoded: House of the Sun/Apollo

The “Apollino” (little Apollo) in the Uffizi

Part VI of a series begun here.

Here are some explanations of the places, people and events as we find them in the opening chapters of the book. Where Wolfe has provided explanation in the Glossary this is indicated in red. Text from the novel is indicated in blue.

[No Glossary entry]

Men with many rings came and said I must go to the House of the Sun, and when the black man said we would not, said the Sun is the healer and called upon some soldiers of Hill to help them.

Then we were taken into one of the finest buildings, with columns and many wide steps, where I was made to kneel before the prophetess, who sat upon a bronze tripod.

…my eyes were on a golden man, larger than any man should be, who had stepped silently from an alcove.

…”Here Leto’s son, who strikes the lyre
Makes clear our days with golden fire,
Heals all wounds, gives hope divine,
To those who kneel at his shrine.”

Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology

Apollo (Ἀπόλλων).

One of the great divinities of the Greeks, was, according to Homer (Hom. Il. 1.21, 36), the son of Zeus and Leto.

Commentary

Apollo[n] is one of the more major gods, and a twin with Artemis the huntress, born on the island of Delos (hence “the Delian” etc.). God of sun and light, prophecy , Φοῖβος pheobos (light, radiant) λυκηγενής lykegenes (either wolf, light or Lycia-born, according to different authorities), and of healing. Apollo is “the wolf-borngod, famed for his bow” (Homer, Il. 4.101) (light and wolf are very similar words, and could be confused). He is young, always well-formed. His instrument is the lyre. He is “the ideal ephebe” (OCD3, p. 122). In the Homeric Hymn to Apollon, he is “far-shooting,” his bow is “splendid.” Often contrasted as being the rational, compared to Dionysus, the wild. His animal is the dolphin (Gr. delphis, hence Delphi, Homeric Hymn, lines 494-6).

His centers are Delos and Delphi where he ousted the older goddess Gaea, Γῆς (Paus. 10.5.6), or slew the dragon there. GW likes the idea of a matriarchal shrine being replaced by a patriarchal one.  Like the sun, he is hard to look at. You sacrificed hecatombs (100 oxen) to him, and there was a month, Hekatombaion, in which his festival took place.

Wolfe’s verse above is likely drawn from many similar lines in the Homeric Hymn to Apollon. Leto was a Titaness, daughter of Phoibe and Koios.