#how do i go about having a half danish half russian made man in a mafia

[thexwayward]

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[peaceisadirtyword]

Neon Lights I (Modern!Ivar/Reader)

A/N: Hello!💕 I hope you’re all okay and safe. I’m sorry I didn’t post anything these days, I'm just a bit nervous and maybe worried about the situation and it’s hard to concentrate on writing... Besides, I'm now working from home and it’s even more exhausting than going out to go to the office😅 But it’s okay, we’ll be fine💜 meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this. It’s maybe a bit boring, it’s like an introduction chapter, but I hope it entertains you a bit😘 Thank you for reading and take care!

Btw, before reading this, I recommend you read the author’s note on the prologue (if you haven’t yet), the link is below!💞

Warnings: mentions of sex, sexism, alcohol and nakedness.

Words: 3002

Prologue

gif belongs to @lol-haha-joke​

Ivar was uncomfortable. 

Maybe he shouldn't have drank that much that night and he would have ended up there. If he had kept his mouth shut and stopped bragging about his status... 

At first, he thought that the men that bargained into his hotel room were Björn's men. He was nearly ready to die, what was left for him anyway? He was all alone, his brothers and his own wife betrayed him. But then he realized Björn hadn't sent anyone to look for him so far from home, he probably thought he was dead already. 

Always underestimating him. 

They killed the few men Ivar had left, but spared his life. Apparently someone had heard about him and wanted to meet him. Ivar expected to find someone trying to impress him, maybe a young boy anxious to prove how powerful he was. 

He didn't expect to find Oleg. An actually powerful man that knew who he was. Ivar thought he'd kill him when he found out he had no power now, that his brothers took everything from him and now he was only running away. But he didn't. 

Instead he offered his help, to help him take his home back, to get revenge from his family. 

Of course, Ivar said yes. 

The club looked like a normal nightclub. It was clean, the security guards were professional and serious. If he hadn't seen the platform with the poles and the girls dancing, he would have thought it was a bar. 

He didn't pay attention to the girls dancing. He had no interest on looking at girls dancing half naked on a pole, and he found it awkward and uncomfortable. He couldn't look at any woman since... 

Oleg laughed and drank next to him. He didn't pay attention to the girls either, he was used to it. He chatted with some of the men sitting around him, and sometimes with Ivar.  

Ivar felt a bit out of place. He was completely alone, forced to trust Oleg when he felt like he couldn't even trust his own family. He stayed quiet, watching everyone carefully while sipping on his beer. 

Until he saw you. 

He blinked a couple of times, mesmerized by your movements and your beauty. You were already watching him, your eyes widened and your lovely lips slightly parted. He wondered why you looked at him like that. It wasn't the look he had seen other girls giving to the clients, trying to seduce them so they would increase their tips, this look was innocent, you seemed to be stunned to see him there. Why would you look at him like that if he hadn't shown any interest on any of the girls?

He leaned into Oleg then, touching his arm softly to catch his attention. 

"Who is she?"

Oleg's eyes fixed on you, and he smirked, shaking his head. 

"She is Y/N" he muttered "She's one of my favorite girls, isn't she amazing?" he chuckled. 

"Y/N?" Ivar muttered your name. It sounded different with Oleg's accent. 

"Do you like her?" his host seemed amused. 

Ivar frowned. 

"No, I was just... Intrigued" 

"Y/N is definitely intriguing" Oleg nodded "You can have some private time with her... No touching, though, but you wouldn't regret it, she is very requested by our most important clients"

Ivar shook his head. Even if your dancing was hypnotizing and he would love to see it in private, he didn't want to meet you in that way. 

It scared him, because he hadn't felt that since Freydis. 

__________________________________

Oleg gave you the day off. It allowed you to relax at the small apartment you had upstairs the club. Read some books, have a relaxing shower and sleep, resting after four nights in a row. Until Olivia came to your room at eleven, with a beautiful red dress and a pair of black heels, interrupting your plans of drifting off to sleep while watching a very bad movie on  TV. 

"Oleg asked for you" she smiled softly at you as you pouted "He gave me this dress, and I added the heels. I know you hate those black heels you have, these are more comfortable" she put everything on your bed, and you stared at it.

"I thought I had the night free" you sighed "He told me"

"Yes" Olivia sighed. She was Russian, like Oleg, with blonde hair, blue eyes and pale skin, and she was his most trusted girl. She was the one who taught you to survive in that place, helping you to learn how to dance, how to behave and how to be quiet to avoid getting in trouble. She had a soft spot for you, which made Oleg develop another soft spot for you. You were alive thanks to Olivia "But he only wants you downstairs, next to him. He probably wants to make business with someone, and he needs one of us to distract him... Men don't think straight when they have a beautiful woman in front of them" she chuckled. 

"Unless they don't like women" you shrugged "Anyway, I'm going to do my makeup, can you please help me with my hair?" 

She nodded and you got out of bed. The small apartment Oleg gave to you had only a room with your bed, a TV and a table and a small kitchen and the end of the room. The bathroom was even smaller; a shower, a toilet and a sink with a dirty mirror, and you and Olivia could barely stand in front of it as she combed your hair softly and you put on some concealer and foundation. 

"He has a new guest" she said casually "A Danish man, I can't remember his name, but he's hot"

You nearly dropped the concealer. 

"I... Have you seen him?" 

"Yes, he was with Oleg last night, I sat down with him and his guests after you went to the private rooms with that man, he's handsome, Y/N, you should have seen his eyes, God" she bit her lip "He's injured, I think, he had to walk with a crutch... He didn't speak much, he seemed a bit bored" she shrugged. 

You hummed, even if your hands trembled a bit. You couldn't stop thinking about that man you saw the night before, his eyes, his face... How he had looked at you. 

He had to be Oleg's new guest. 

The dress fit perfectly. It was expensive, probably from a famous brand you couldn't even think about. Oleg had that habit of buying his girls -and some of his boys- expensive clothes and makeup, making you feel like a princess so he could show you off, as if you were a painting ready to be sold off by a famous artist. He gave you a place to live and food to eat, you only had to let him show you off and seduce some of his clients. 

"You look beautiful as always" Olivia smiled as she looked at you "Oleg will be happy, now go downstairs before he gets inpatient... I'll go too, later" she promised before kissing your cheek lovingly. You nodded and left the room behind her, closing the door. 

The hallway was full of doors, that lead into apartments like yours. Oleg preferred to have all of his workers in there, safe and under his own roof. There was a guard next to the stairs, who smiled at you when you walked next to him. At the end of the stairs, there was a door, guarded by other two men. And then there was the club. 

Some of the girls danced as a group of men howled with eyes full of lust. You pressed your lips in disgust, but ignored them as you approached the guard in front of the entrance to Oleg's VIP room. The one he used when he had important people over, that had a private bar and access to all the dancing rooms. 

He lifted the rope. You thanked him with a polite smile, trying to hide how nervous you were. And Oleg came immediately, with a big smile on his lips. 

"Y/N" he cupped your cheeks "You look absolutely beautiful" his eyes fixed on yours and you tried to smile back "I knew this was your color" 

"Thank you, Oleg" you nodded respectfully.

"Come, I want you to meet someone" his hand grabbed your waist, and you walked next to him to the couches at the end of the room. 

There was a huge group of people there, everyone was already drunk, smoking and laughing loudly. You knew some of them, and they eyed you up and down when you walked past them. It was disgusting, like a steak placed in front of a hungry dog. But Oleg was there, and they wouldn't dare to try and touch you. 

Not in front of him, at least. 

You were so distracted by everyone in the room that you didn't realize he was in there too. Oleg made you stop next to a beautiful velvet couch, and when he raised his head and looked at you, you froze. 

He was even more beautiful than you remembered. His eyes were the most beautiful thing you had ever seen, and you bit your lip nervously. 

"Ivar" Oleg smirked "Let me introduce you to Y/N, one of my most precious girls" he chuckled "Y/N, my dear, this is Ivar, he comes from Denmark, I remember you told me you'd love to visit Scandinavia"

You cleared your throat, nodding with a polite smile. You had to treat him like you treated all of Oleg's guests. 

"It's really nice to meet you, Ivar" you liked how his name sounded on your lips.

Ivar was looking at you with widened eyes and parted lips, and blinked a couple of times before nodding, smiling in a way that made your knees weak. 

"It's nice to meet you too, Y/N" oh, but your name sounded even better on his lips "Forgive me for not standing to greet you properly" he patted his leg, and you saw the crutch leaned into the arm of the couch next to him.

Oleg pushed you softly to the couch, making you sit down next to Ivar. 

"Do you want a drink, my dear?" he caressed your cheek with a smirk on his lips.

Your mouth was dry, but you didn't want to drink any alcohol, so you just shook your head. He nodded. 

"I have to go now, I have business to attend" he smiled again, that smile that gave you chills "I hope Y/N can entertain you while I'm busy, Ivar" 

You didn't reply, but Ivar shot him a smile with his lips closed as he walked away. The smirk never left his lips. 

You were nervous. Fiddling with the hem of your dress, you looked everywhere but to Ivar. He seemed to be uncomfortable too, with his jaw clenched and his eyes fixed on his lap. 

"You can leave if you want to" he said softly, startling you. You frowned a bit and finally looked at him, tilting your head "I don't want you to feel like you're obliged to sit next to me and... How did he call it? Entertain me"

"It's fine" you smiled "I prefer to entertain you than to entertain his other guests" you raised an eyebrow.

He hummed, smiling back at you. 

"And why is that?" He asked. His voice was addicting, your new favorite sound. 

"They often want another form of entertainment" you giggled "One I'm afraid I don't offer"

"Oh" he raised an eyebrow "I see"

Oleg's guest usually looked disappointed when you made clear you wouldn't fuck them. He didn't even look surprised. 

"What brought you to Kiev, Ivar?" 

He sighed, taking a sip of his drink. He was drinking vodka, but he didn't even flinch. 

"I was running away" he muttered "Oleg heard about me and thought I'd be useful"

"Oleg finds everyone useful" you smiled "In one way or another"

"I find him useful too" his blue eyes fixed on yours and you held his gaze "What brought you to Kiev?"

"Long story" you chuckled "Similar to yours"

He nodded, taking another sip.

"Oleg said you'd love to visit Scandinavia"

"Yes" you sighed "Is it as beautiful as everyone says?" 

"I suppose so" he frowned a bit "I grew up there, for me it's just... Home" 

It must be nice to have a home, you thought. 

"I always wanted to see the fjords" you muttered "And the northern lights"

"I think Norway would be the best place for you" he hummed softly "In Denmark you can see some northern lights, maybe from the Faroe Islands, but our fjords aren't as impressive as the ones in Norway, I'm afraid" 

"But Denmark has beautiful places too" you smiled softly "I don't know, I wish I could travel to all of them" 

"Then why don't you?" He frowned a bit "Oleg seems to adore you, I'm sure he'd let you go for a couple of days"

You smiled at him, shaking your head.

"I'm afraid I'm stuck here, Ivar" you sighed "For a long time" 

He couldn't possibly understand that, and you didn't expect him to. Men often thought you were there because you liked to dance half naked to get them horny. Some of them even believed that was your dream job. They thought they were doing you a favor, flattering you, when they said how beautiful you were, all the things they wanted to do to you. 

When, honestly, you just wanted to be in your bed. 

Ivar opened his mouth, but then closed it again, shaking his head and blushing. You giggled, he was cute. 

"Are you nervous, Ivar?" you tilted your head with a smile on your lips. Your eyes looked right into his and Ivar smiled softly. 

"Any man would be nervous around a woman like you" 

"I don't think you are like any man" 

"I never said I was" 

You bit your lip and your smile widened. 

"You definitely aren't" 

_______________________________________

You still had that stupid smile on your lips when you entered your small bathroom to take your makeup off. You stared at yourself in the mirror, you didn't remember when was the last time you smiled like that.

Oleg had interrupted the two of you, just when Ivar was telling you about the colorful buildings in Copenhagen. He needed you, to show you off in front of his more powerful guests. The way he spoke to Ivar sounded like he thought he was being too generous with him for letting him talk to you. 

You spent the rest of the night being Oleg's little pet, like always. He caressed your cheek and your waist as he laughed at the bad jokes his guests made, and smirked every time he caught them staring at your legs or your chest. Ivar sat down with all of you, but his eyes never left your face. 

He was the only one that wished you good night, with a soft smile on his lips as you excused yourself. Olivia didn't come down, and you had knocked on her door before going to your bedroom, but she was already asleep. You just hoped Oleg wasn't bothered by her absence. 

When you were already changed into your pajamas, after hanging the dress on the wardrobe and cleaning a bit the heels to gave them back the next day, someone knocked on your door. 

Sighing you opened the door, knowing who you'd find at the other side. 

"My beautiful Y/N" Oleg smiled softly at the sight of you "Did I wake you up?" 

"No, sir, I was still awake" you muttered, curving your lips in a shy smile. 

"Oh, nice" he entered your room, looking around briefly before sitting on your unmade bed "I needed to talk to you, but I couldn't do it earlier with so many people around" 

You nodded, closing the door before sitting on the bed next to him. 

"Yes?"

"What do you think about Ivar?" He seemed genuinely interested, which surprised you. Usually, he couldn't care less about what you thought of his guests, and that could only mean that Ivar was special.

"I like him" you tried your best to avoid blushing when talking about him "He's... Different" 

"Yes he is" Oleg raised an eyebrow "He seemed captivated by you too, and that's a good thing, Y/N, because he's a very important man" 

You frowned. You didn't like his tone.

"But what does that have to do with me?" 

"Ivar is the heir of a really important business in Scandinavia, Y/N, I would say he's the most important man in Northern Europe, even if he has nothing now, he's everything" 

"I still don't understand..."

"I want you to keep him happy, Y/N" he interrupted you, pushing your hair behind your ear "We need him to trust us, so be nice to him, be the good little girl I know you are and make Ivar the happiest man in the world... Of course, you don't have to do anything you don't want to, I'm sure he'd understand..." He chuckled, but it wasn't funny to you. 

"Okay" you cleared your throat "I... I understand"

"I knew I could count on you" Oleg kissed your forehead "That's why you're one of my favorites, Y/N" 

You forced a smile, nodding. 

"By the way, my brother Askold will come in a couple of days" he sighed as he stood up "Igor will come with him"

This time, your smile was genuine. You loved Igor with all your heart, but couldn't see him as often as you'd like. 

"I knew you'd be happy to hear that" he smirked "Now, go to sleep little one, you must rest for tomorrow" 

"Okay" you nodded as he opened the door "Good night, Oleg"

"Good night beautiful" he winked at you "See you tomorrow" 

_____________________________________________________

Tags: @mblaqgi​ @alicedopey​ @lol-haha-joke​ @hallowed-heathen​ @naaladareia​ @tephi101​ @captstefanbrandt​ @love-hate-love​ @titty-teetee​ @readsalot73​ @moondustmemories​ @thevikingsheaux​ @therealcalicali​ @chimera4plums​ @blushingskywalker​ @awkwardfangirl02​ @gruffle1​ @justacripple​ @love-dria​ @heartbeats-wildly​ @letsrunawaytotomorrow​ @inforapound​ @sallydelys​ @hellogabysblog​ @trashcanx @winchesterwife27​ @hecohansen31​ @youbloodymadgenius​ @xinyourdreamsx​ @funmadnessandbadassvikings​ @eteramfools​ @tgrrose​ @flokidottirsstuff​ @lovessce​ @tootie-fruity​ @heavenly1927​ @wonderlandofsu​ @didiintheblog​ @alexhandersenx​

I hope I didn’t forget anyone💜 Thank you for reading!😘

[skullrock]

the partners | Steve x Reader

chapter one: please, please, please, let me get what I want 

series summary: you and Steve are police apprentices at Hawkins Police Station in the fall of 1986. you get along famously, but there’s something Steve is hiding, and there is an unknown evil lurking in Hawkins. [friends to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, fluff]

chapter summary: Steve finally agrees to hang out outside of work. 

warnings: swearing, 80s music 

word count: 2.4k

a/n: this chapter is mainly a ton of exposition, but it’s gonna get better I PROMISE. huge thank ya to @wolfish-willow​ who gave me some beautiful ideas (milky coffee + danish loving Steve) that helped this fic come to fruition <3 enjoy!

--

You pull into Hawkin’s Police Department at 7:30, a half hour before your shift. There are two coffees in the cup holders of your car, and a paper bag filled with two pastries on the passenger seat. You pull in beside your partner’s car and he hops out, a smile plastered on his face. He crawls into your passenger side and grabs the bag.

“This one’s yours,” you say, pointing to the coffee cup marked milk w/ dash of coffee. He laughs, pulling out his blueberry danish and handing you your strawberry donut. He bites into his pastry and lets out a sinful moan, making you smack his arm.

“It’s too early for you to be gross,” you say, but he looks victorious.

“I’m sorry you don’t like my happiness,” he quips, and you roll your eyes.

It was tradition that every Monday that you both worked, you’d get coffee and pastries from the local bakery and shoot the shit in your car until your shift started.

“So, I had a dream last night where I was dating Mia Sara,” he says.

“Wish that were me,” you reply, taking a sip of coffee. “Did it work out for you guys?”

“Nah, she left me for Harrison Ford.”

“Tragic.”

He pauses, listening to the music softly coming from your radio. He scoffs upon realizing what was playing.

“Stop listening to this sad shit,” he says, turning the dial, making you shout.

“It’s the Smiths!” You try to bat his hand away, but he manages to change the channel to a Queen song. Typical.

You and Steve had become good friends after securing your positions, despite your perception of him in high school. After the fire at Starcourt and the death of Jim Hopper, the federal government had given the Hawkins Police a grant to let aspiring cops train directly in the field. It would fast-track getting certified, eliminating the need for expensive schooling. It was like a paid internship. A paid internship where you basically get paid to bullshit with your best friend all day.

A third car pulls in. It’s Veronica, the secretary. She takes over on days that Flo wants off – she’s worked hard enough for it. Veronica was a bit obsessed with Steve, so he groaned when he saw her get out and wave.

“What do you think she’s going to say to you today?” you giggle, and Steve rolls his eyes.

“Probably, like… that she had a dream about us last night, or something.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “God, please don’t let her talk to me.”

Women were throwing themselves at Steve the minute he put the uniform on, but he claimed he wasn’t interested in dating. You weren’t really sure why, given his history, but he never answered any questions. He just said he wanted to focus on work and having fun, so you let him.

Steve was kind of a mystery to you. You were incredibly close at the station, but you’d been working with him for a few months and you never saw each other outside of work. There were talks of maybe going to a movie, but they never went anywhere. It was bizarre, considering how fond you both were of each other. But you didn’t want to push it, unsure if you were making him uncomfortable.

In reality, Steve was just nervous of letting people in. Not just because of his history with girls and friends, but because he also had Russians and demons to worry about. He felt that if he let anyone new into his life, he would be putting them in mortal danger. This viewpoint is also the reason why he applied for the apprenticeship in the first place.

When the position popped up, Steve had no second thoughts. He had looked up to Hopper greatly since the time Will was possessed. He knew without a doubt that he wanted to follow in Hop’s footsteps. But he also felt an obligation now that Hopper was dead. Joyce had left, taking Will and Eleven with her. The three people who had the best grip on the strange events that had occurred the past three years were gone, and the man who devised most of the plans (and executed them) was gone, too. Steve couldn’t sleep at night for months. He needed to constantly call the kids and Robin to make sure they were safe. Being part of the Hawkins Police seemed like a no-brainer; it was a way to ensure everyone was safe and be on the frontlines to protect them.

Not that he ever let this on; usually he would just say that he’s always wanted to be a cop, and he kept it at that.

You’d decided to do the apprenticeship after college didn’t work out. You went to one in Indianapolis after high school, but you weren’t really into it. Your parents decided to retire and travel for a few years, offering to let you have the house while they’re gone. You gratefully took them up on it, and you’d been living there since the spring. You’d enjoyed a few months off, but decided it was time to find something new to do. You’d always had a fantasy of being a hero. Maybe not a hero cop, but a hero. You wanted to save lives, make an impact. Being a police officer seemed like a good start. You knew it wouldn’t be like the movies, but the strange events that happened the last few years excited you. Maybe you’d get the chance to be someone you’ve always wanted to be.

“Why don’t you just give Veronica a chance?” you ask. “She’s pretty and she’s nice and she’s smart.”

“She literally told me she wanted a lock of my hair,” he says.

You choke on your coffee. “I forgot about that.”

“Yeah? I didn’t.”

Steve’s watch beeps, signaling that it’s 5 minutes until 8.

“Please keep talking to me when we go in,” he begs as you both climb out of the car.

“What’s in it for me?” you inquire.

“I will give you all of the lunches my mom brings me for two weeks.”

You pause. “Even the Fruit Roll-Ups?”

He sighs. “I’ll throw them in if you do a good job.”

You successfully make it past the reception desk without incident, waving hi to Callahan and Powell. You knock on the Chief’s door to signify your arrival, and you and Steve make your way back to the annex you worked in. Your desks faced each other, making it easier to talk through your 8-hour shifts. They were usually pretty boring. You and Steve were only cleared to respond to calls about petty things, like noise disturbances. But it’s not like much ever happened anymore in Hawkins, and the town had almost made it a full year without any weird occurrences.

A few hours go by, and boredom runs rampant. You hated Mondays: things hardly ever happened. Steve gets up around 10:30 and puts a mixtape into the boombox in the annex. Don’t You (Forget About Me) comes on, and Steve mutters, “aw, hell yeah,” under his breath. You know he’s going to start dancing, but it doesn’t stop the surprised smile on your face as he starts to swing and spin and sing. It’s magic, watching Steve dance. It makes no sense, it’s clumsy, it’s so white that it hurts; but it’s also hilarious and never fails to pick you up. Sometimes you’d join him. Other times, you’d call him an idiot. And sometimes you’d just watch as the magic unfolds.

This was one of those times.

--

The door to the annex opens around 1, approximately 5 hours into your shift. You and Steve are begging for something to do, because throwing M&Ms at each other isn’t fun by the second hour. You’d just thrown one at Steve when the door swings open, and you and Steve look at the intruder with wide eyes. It’s the Chief.

The new Chief was okay, you guessed. He was also brought in by the feds. He was a kind older man, with deep set blue eyes and wispy white hair. He could have come straight out of a storybook. You thought the Chief delegated nicely, and you’d shared a few good laughs. Something always felt off, though – but you and Steve chalked that up to the fact that you both were extremely biased against anyone who wasn’t Hop.

“Noise disturbance call,” Chief Edwards says. “Some kids out on Maple Street are causing mayhem.”

Steve groans and throws his head back. “Please tell me it’s not 30 Maple Street.”

The Chief blinks. “It is.”

“God dammit,” Steve says under his breath. It’s Mike’s house.

You and Steve get into a patrol car and set off.

“Do you know these kids?” you ask.

“Yeah, they’re kind of… my kids?”  He scrunches his nose. “I keep them out of trouble.”

You pause, confused. “So, you babysit them?”

“No, no,” Steve says. His face grows slightly red. “They’re my friends.”

Steve pulls into the driveway of the house, blaring the siren once to scare the kids that were on the lawn. Their faces quickly went from scared to excited as they saw it was Steve in the car.

You both get out of the car, and Steve takes the lead. He puts his hands on his hips and faces the kids. There were 4 boys and 2 girls, no older than 16, if you could guess. One of them with dark hair is holding a hose, and the others are wet.

“What are you shitheads doing?” Steve asks sternly. A couple of the kids giggle.

“What seems to be the problem, officer?” the red headed girl asks.

“I told you we were being too loud,” a kid you recognize as Will Byers says. He is smart, sitting on the porch and just watching, amused.

“Right,” says Steve, pointing at Will in recognition. “Way too loud. Mike, where’s your parents?”

There’s a beat, and then the girl standing next to the red head quietly says, “Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler aren’t home.”

Steve sighs. “Alright, well, you could always act like idiots inside the house, you know.” He looks at the dark-haired boy holding the hose. “Mike, what are you doing with that?”

The boy’s face breaks out into a devilish grin, and you can predict what’s about to happen. He points the hose at Steve and a curly haired boy turns the handle to let the water spray out, missing Steve by a hair. He jumps back.

“HEY!” he shouts. “Not cool dude, not in my uniform!”

“Wimp,” you laugh, and push him forward, allowing him to get splashed. The kids cheer, and then Steve’s hands are on your arms, and he swings you around to get hit, too. You gasp at the freezing feeling on the back of your legs, but burst into laughter, trying to wrestle Steve back into the flow. This goes on for entirely too long before you suddenly realize that it probably isn’t a good look to be out here responding to a call and then partaking in the offense.

“Steve,” you say, and that’s all it takes for him to snap back into reality.

“This is fun and all,” he says, letting you go. “But we came to bust you, not join in.”

The curly haired boy turns the water off and Mike sets the hose down. Steve has a way with kids. He’s able to level with them and call them out at the same time. It’s pretty great to watch and it’s certainly something you admired him for.

“Who’s this?” the curly haired kid asks, grinning widely.

“Oh,” Steve says. “This is my partner, Y/N.”

“Do you get to carry a gun?”

“Lucas!”

“Sorry!”

“You hang out with Steve? That must suck,” the dark-haired boy, Mike, says.

“Every single day,” you say solemnly. “It’s the worst.”

“Hey,” Steve says quietly.

“I’m kidding, bud.” You punch his arm lightly. “You’re the best.”

You look back at the kids and they’re all staring at you with wide eyes. It makes you uncomfortable, so you clear your throat and say, “Well, uh – shift is almost over. We should be going.”

After an awkward farewell and another “please be quiet or I’ll kick your ass” from Steve, you both get in the patrol car. Steve sees Dustin gesture to call him, and he rolls his eyes, pulling out of the driveway.

“Why did they look at me like that?” you ask. “Because I said you’re the best?” You pause. “Do they hate you?”

He’s quiet for a while. Finally, he says, “I think it’s because we are really buddy-buddy but… I don’t really… I haven’t ever really… talked about you.”

You turn in your seat to face him. “Do you hate me?”

“Of course I don’t hate you.” His cheeks are red – he’s flustered. “You’re one of my best friends –“

“Then why don’t you ever talk about me? Or hang out with me?”

“It’s complicated,” he sighs. “It’s really complicated. I just – I don’t like … I get nervous about having new friends.”

You nod slowly. “Tommy H. and Carol.”

“Yeah.” It’s not really why he’s nervous, but it’s a good excuse. “I don’t want to get dicked over again.”

“Man,” you say, turning back to face the road. “I buy you a blueberry danish every single Monday. And a coffee. And I let you sing Queen at the top of your lungs, and I let you dance, and sometimes I even let you do it at 5 in the morning. I think if I didn’t want to be your friend, you would know by now.”

He’s quiet, thinking. You look at him, trying to read him.

“I guess I owe you the pleasure of hanging out with me,” he says after a while, a smile forming. “So maybe we can hang out Friday night.”

You gasp and throw your arm out, hitting him on the shoulder, making the car swerve slightly.

“Jesus –”

“Do you mean it?” you shout, smiling widely. “We can hang out?”

“I said maybe,” he teases. “It’s board game night with the kids – maybe you can come?”

You start chanting his name – “Steve Steve Steve Steve Steve! Really? Are you for real?”

“Yes!” He laughs and rolls his eyes again. “I’ll pick you up. It starts at 7.”

You smile so hard that your cheeks hurt.

Steve silently hopes he doesn’t regret this.

----

taglist (message if you want to join!): @harrington-ofhawkins​ @wolfish-willow​ @gothackedalready​

[universe-in-the-void-in-the-cube]

I challenge you to write the other half of this fic!

I blame you for this @happyflappymoscowbirbpleyyn! You put up that song and this popped in my head. So the rules are simple. You write Mikkel’s side of the story where the other woman starts flirting with him and Regina walks up to them and gives Mikkel an out till Regina gets back to him after the fight she has with the woman. And you must have Italy try to get Mikkel not to come out and see what the noise is about.

She knew what was going on as soon as she saw them. The expression on Mikkel’s face of nervousness and total wave of being uncomfortable with the woman that was talking to him to the way this woman was talking and carrying on with Mikkel. Oh boy did Regina knew what was going on and she wasn’t going to have it. No two kroner floosy was going to try to seduce and steal her husband away from her. Not now, not ever. But she wanted to make this as delicate and diplomatic as possible for Mikkel’s case.

Walking up to them Regina smiled. “Oh hello, I hate to interrupt you and your new friend Mikkel but Gilbert and Mathias need to talk to you about some Prussian and Danish treaty stuff. So, if you don’t mind, I can keep your friend company till you come back.”

Mikkel blinked as Regina acted as she was oblivious to what was going on, but was still kind of her to give him and out to this uncomfortable situation. “Oh… ah… yeah. Sure… right on it. Talk to you two in a bit. Please excuse me.” Mikkel said in a nervous tone as he said his goodbyes to them and walked to where the 1P Prussian and 1P Dane were.

As the two women saw him leave, the other woman spoke. “He is quite a charmer, sexy too. He said he has a wife but she isn’t around so what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. He deserves to have a little fling.”

This irritated Regina to no end.

“So, tell me, are you his sectary or associate to him?” The woman asked as both of them saw Mikkel shut the door behind him.

When the cost was clear, Regina’s sweet and charming angle like demeaner did a 180 as she gave the bitch a strong slap across her face causing the other woman stumble back a bit.

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT FOR???” the bitch asked.

Regina glared at her coldly as the woman bull rushed her making Regina fall on the floor.

As the fight escalated a small crowd of fellow humans and personifications started to form around the women in the hall. Various humans were cheering the bitch on. Clearly associates, friends and coworkers of the cunt. While various nations looked on in shock.

The first to appear were Spain, 2P China, Hong Kong, 2P Germany and Belarus.

“Kick her ass Regina! You can do it girl!!!” Belarus cheered her on as various other nations followed suit.

The bitch looked at Regina who was slowly trying to get up off the floor, as the other woman was kicking her. “What is your problem bitch? Jealous? As ugly a cunt as you are, he wouldn’t even think about cheating on his wife with you. He is better off with a real woman like me!”

The bitch was enjoying humiliating Regina and then a huge surprised happened. 2P Germany was the first to spot that look on Regina’s face, then the others. Clearly this was officially an unfair fight. And the other nations who knew Regina personally knew it. Especially Gilbert, Sylvia, Feliks, Toris, Natasha, Ivan, and Ludwig.

All the abuse, the manipulation, control from various military and government powers who controlled her country, her people and her finally boiled to the top and let loose. When she stood up the bitch tried to punch her; emphasis on tried. Since Regina’s reflexes and senses were heightened as she grabbed the other woman’s fist before the first punch was made on Regina’s face. As Regina slapped the first away as she just looked coldly at the woman.

The woman had to back up a bit as she started to shake in fear. “Your eyes! Your damn eyes!”

“What about them?” Regina asked the cunt as she just stared coldly at her.

“You have the eyes of a vet who has seen front line combat. But you are not older than me? How?” the woman asked in a shaking voice.

“How?” Regina retorted quietly as she frowned. “I have seen more war and experienced front line combat more times over than a 100 of your life time you arrogant, husband stealing cunt!”

The woman was confused by the answer Regina gave as the Prussian woman attacked her. Regina was being nice as she fought the woman. Using various hand-to-hand combat maneuvers that were known only by various nations from the past 1000 years. Russian, German, Lithuanian, Prussian. Some of the tactics seen were only known to either Gilbert, Ludwig or Ivan. And the scary thing was it wasn’t the physical movies that these nations saw her do, it was the manipulation and mind games that Regina was using against this woman.

“Italy.” Ludwig said to the Northern Italian.

“What is it Germany?”

Sighing heavily, “Do me a favor and keep Mikkel away from this fight. I forbid him sing his wife using old interrogation techniques from the second world war and the cold war. Do you hear me?”

“Ye… yes. Yes Germany.” Italy said as he ran to where Mikkel was talking to Mathias and the other Nordics who weren’t watching the fight.

“She is just toying with that woman!” Toris said to Gilbert.

Gilbert was trying not to cry. This was clearly breaking his heart. “I am aware of its Lithuania.”

Ivan, oddly was tearing up as a bit of gilt hit his heart as well. “Regina is not even laying a figure on her and when she does it is only in defense. I never thought she would ever act like this again.”

“I agree.” Ludwig said as the other woman fell to her knees crying.

“Get out of my head, you bitch! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!!!” The woman who was now exhausted from fighting and dealing with the various things Regina said to her as she was throwing punches and kicks that Regina avoided.

“No, I won’t. You tried to make my husband cheat on me with a slut like you. It is women like you that make me sick. You think you are better than everyone else and that your shit doesn’t stink. But I hate to tell you, a real woman will fight for the man she loves, especially when the man still loves her back and wants nothing to do with the woman who wants to sleep with him.” Regina said calmly, but extremely coldly.

The woman looked at Regina and glared, “You are nothing but a sick communist Nazi you know that!”

“I am neither of those bitch, thank god. But sadly, it was both the Nazi party and the Soviets that made me who I am. In fact, they both trained me in interrogation, so if I were you, stay away from Mikkel or you will be hunted down and you will get the full experience of my specialty of work. Understood?”

The other woman just nodded her head as she started crying more, shaking in total fear.

“Now, if you can excuse me. I want to snuggle and love on my beloved husband Mikkel.” Regina said as she turned and walked past the other nations and to the room Mikkel was in. Everyone watched as Regina and then the other woman and the others left, leaving only Ivan, Gilbert and Ludwig in the hall.

“It is our fault.” Ivan said as he wiped his eyes.

“Ja… I know.” Gilbert said taking a deep breath and exhaling out of frustration.

“It is our fault alright…” Ludwig said with a guilty expression on his face, “… we help made a monster.”

[letterboxd]

Found Family.

Riders of Justice writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen opens up to Aaron Yap about grimly funny fairy-tales, woke teenagers and creating an accidental Christmas movie with hunky muse, Mads Mikkelsen.

“Genres, that’s just a sales tool really. That’s to give people, show people, ‘are we having sushi or are we having Italian?’ Sometimes I like it when you don’t know what you’re getting.” —Anders Thomas Jensen

It’s stupidly easy to sell writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen’s new film Riders of Justice on its thirsty pulp appeal alone. Who can resist the promise of Danish acting force Mads Mikkelsen finally getting a decent John Wick-ish vehicle of his own, stoically meting out anguished, bloody vengeance to a cadre of underworld thugs? Certainly not, among many Letterboxd members, Harlequinade, who was moved to write this ode:

“MikkelGod sporting a bushy beard MikkelGod wearing a military uniform MikkelGod wearing a suit MikkelGod having this whole silverfox daddy thing going on MikkelGod killing a man with his big beautiful bare hands MIKKELGOD 🤗🙏🏻😍”

But to dismiss Riders of Justice as another entry in the seemingly endless slew of action-revenge pics would also be to undersell its other layers. Much more than Wick, your average Liam Neeson thriller-of-the-month, or even the recent avenging-dad flick, Nobody, Riders positions itself in a more emotionally and psychologically rewarding space, one perhaps closer to its tonally fluid South Korean counterparts. “What lingers,” Douglas Davidson writes, “are the questions Anders presents and the strange hopefulness that flickers upon the credits roll, burning like the embers of a dying fire in the darkness of night.”

It’s of a piece with all of Jensen’s directorial work thus far. A prolific screenwriter who’s penned everything from soulful early Susanne Bier heartbreakers to the recently misfiring The Dark Tower adaptation, Jensen, as a director, has found a sharply honed groove in the form of grimly funny, genre-defying modern fairy-tales populated by oddball characters forced to contend with the chaos of the inscrutable cosmos around them.

Causality plays an even more pronounced role in Riders. The film’s unlikely heroes���hard-bitten special forces soldier Markus Hensen (Mikkelsen) and a trio of bumbling data wizards (Lars Brygmann and Jensen regulars Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro)—are drawn together to take down a vicious biker gang, but also preoccupied with processing the hows and whys of grief and trauma, and of course, the value of revenge.

Amid the terse blasts of gunfire, the film foregrounds scenes of connection and healing between its characters, an assortment of progressive teens and bumbling middle-aged men whose unusual found-family dynamic recalls Jensen’s previous dark, offbeat comedies like Adam’s Apples and Men and Chicken. As More_Baddass writes, the film gifts us some “Christmastime therapy of an unorthodox family”.

Over Zoom, we spoke about whether it’s possible to make Mikkelsen less handsome, why Denmark won’t be getting a sci-fi blockbuster anytime soon, and the time that Jensen and a friend tried to break the Guinness World Record for movie-watching.

‘Riders of Justice’ cast members Lars Brygmann, Andrea Heick Gadeberg, Mads Mikkelsen, Nikolaj Lie Kaas and Nicolas Bro.

Riders of Justice is one of your more action-packed films. Did you watch any other action flicks, or were there any specific movies that inspired you while you were designing and creating the action in this film? Anders Thomas Jensen: It’s funny, because it’s always subconscious. I never look for inspiration directly because for me, that would be weird to do because then you’re just copying. Definitely in the back of my mind, there’s a lot of action movies and a lot of revenge movies that I’ve seen in the past that will work their way in there. The process for me is very, how do you say, unconscious? What’s it called?

Intuitive? Intuitive, that’s the word. Thank you. First of all, a revenge movie is not easy, but it always has a strong lead and it has a strong will, which is obviously really good if you want to do a script that moves forward. Hamlet is a revenge story, right? I love Once Upon a Time in the West. I love that. The Searchers. The Sting, I guess, is also a revenge movie. Also, there’s so much identification in people who are wronged.

Wish fulfilment. Yeah that too. It’s one of the obviously basic human feelings. Revenge, love. There are these emotions that you’ll do dramas based on long after we were here.

I understand that you took a break from directing for a while and you were spending time raising your family. I’ve noticed, with Men & Chicken and Riders of Justice there’s a lot of attention paid to parenthood, and the role of the parent. Was that intentionally woven into these narratives and something you were thinking of? Yeah. I don’t do it on purpose, but I can definitely see that every movie I ever made I’m very much a part of it. So the whole father story is part of my life in this movie. I have a teenage daughter who I sometimes feel like … I don’t at all have the emotional tools that she and her friends have. This new woke generation that I’m aware of; every single feeling and the environment and everything. I was brought up in a different way. So that’s quite personal in the story, the whole ‘father who has to learn how to communicate through feelings when he’s not very good at it’.

Mads Mikkelsen and Andrea Heick Gadeberg in a scene from ‘Riders of Justice’.

Would you consider Riders of Justice a Christmas movie? Well, it’s so funny because I didn’t see it at all before one of my editors said. No, I wouldn’t because I didn’t pay attention to it at all. The only reason it ends on Christmas is because that’s the perfect coming together of a family. I needed it in the end, but it could have been Easter, but it wasn’t. Perhaps it is a Christmas movie now because it does have Christmas in it.

What was the first film that made you want to be a filmmaker? There are several, but I think the first time I had was Lawrence of Arabia. I saw that when I was very little, when I perhaps shouldn’t have seen it. But when I was around ten, I got a bootleg copy of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. VCRs were a brand new thing and we got a VCR. I saw that film every day for half a year and I still know every line in it. It’s not getting out of my head. I love that film and I think from there on, I knew that I wanted to do films.

As a screenwriter, do you have any other screenwriters that you respect and admire? I have many. Billy Wilder is one of my favorites. Also, Ingmar Bergman, the Coen Brothers, Robert Towne, but many others also. There are a lot of good screenwriters.

I can see elements of those writers coming through your work, especially the first three. You’re really good at blending elements from different genres and putting strange characters together. Are there any other genres you want to explore that you haven’t yet? Well, it’s funny because every time I open up a new streaming service, I look for sci-fi movies first. I’m part of the Academy and when I get the screeners, I’m always checking for sci-fi. I have a love for sci-fi, but unfortunately I’m born in a country where doing a sci-fi film would just be insane. It’s never been done. If you have a really big budget, you have five to six million here. So it’s just something that won’t happen. But of course, you could get ambitious and write a sci-fi movie and hope you could do it somewhere else. I hope one day [to] do a good sci-fi movie, or at least something within that genre because it is a favorite.

But I also have to say, basically, I love all genres. Perhaps not rom-com that much, but I really like Westerns. I like war movies, revenge movies, dramas. I love to mix genres. Every time I do a movie, I get this from the distributors: “What are we going to call it?” Because it is this mix of genres. Genres, that’s just a sales tool really. That’s to give people, show people, “are we having sushi or are we having Italian?” So people don’t get confused. But I think sometimes I like it when you don’t know what you’re getting. That’s also what I love about the Coen Brothers and other directors that play with genres, is that I never know where it’s going.

‘Riders of Justice’ writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen.

Let’s talk a little about Danish cinema. You have your Lars von Trier, you have your Vinterberg and Susanne Bier. Is there an older Danish film that you would recommend that people should see? I actually thought about it and it’s going to sound arrogant, but I couldn’t find one. Not when I compare to what else is out there of American, French, Italian, British, German, Russian and Asian. No, there isn’t. Of course there’s Carl Dreyer. He’s an icon in early, early cinema. That’s the obvious thing to say, but no. For me, Danish cinema starts in the ’90s. Also, I haven’t watched many Danish movies before that, because there aren’t that many. Some people will hate me for saying this, but that’s how I feel.

Are there any recent Danish films or filmmakers that you can recommend? This year I saw a film called Shorta, which was great. It was made by two directors with no budget, about two cops venturing into this Muslim part of Copenhagen where there’s a riot. That was really a promising debut. Also, I really like the idea they had. They made a lot of great stuff visually and for almost no money.

What are your movie-watching habits? You said when you turn on a streaming service, you look out for sci-fi movies. Do you have any other weird behaviors? It’s crazy, but if I really like a movie, I see it many times. I also see it many times where I do not look at it. I hear it. I will just lie with my back to it and just hear the movie. Actually, if the movie is really good, it also works without the picture.

I think that’s [as] weird as it gets, otherwise I’m pretty much normal. I used to binge-watch. Actually, I tried to get into a Guinness Book of Record with a friend when I was fifteen, where, for five days continuously, we watched movies. I can’t remember if it was 107 movies. We watched movies and we had a video store sponsor us. We were lying in an all-night video store, and just saw films until we collapsed. That’s the craziest thing I’ve done, but we never got into the book because there are people that are better at not sleeping, so somebody else beat the record by far.

Do you have a list, or a record of what you watched? No, but there was a journalist that asked us what number afterwards. He asked me, “What film was the film number? 47, 46?” I remember him being very impressed that I could differentiate them.

It would have made a great Letterboxd list. Preserve it for eternity. The funny thing is years after I would actually see a film, and I would get an hour into it and I would go, “Oh, I’ve seen this one.” It was because when I saw the last 30 films, I was unconscious.

I need to ask about Mads Mikkelsen because he’s massive with our community. You’ve worked with him for quite a long time now, so you’ve got a pretty solid working relationship. Having just watched a number of your films in a short period of time, it was impressive that you found that range in him that maybe other filmmakers haven’t tapped into. Is there a type of role that you want to see him in that he hasn’t had a chance to play yet? Yes. There are many roles, but I don’t know. I could put a job description or a feeling on it, but it’s much more complicated with Mads, I think. We have this common thing that we love exploring people who lie to themselves, whether it’s comedy or drama. People who are not being honest with themselves and people who have this screwed up self-image, which in all the films we’ve done together, his character has. There are many other characters I would love to explore with Mads.

His looks are quite specific in each film. He just looks like a different person each time, which is great. You just want to see how he is going to look in the next one. His wife is like that too. She’s always excited and she was so happy this time because he wasn’t ugly. Normally he doesn’t look very well, like in The Green Butchers. Because he’s so handsome, so I try to do him not so handsome.

Riders is the hunkiest he’s been in your films, I guess. Definitely. The competition isn’t tough, though. You’re up against a guy who masturbates and a guy with a bad receding hairline. But it is by far his most hunky.

Related content

Softspacedad’s annotated rundown of 46 Mads Mikkelsen films, and ‘Mads Mikkelsen movies ranked based on how good of a father he is’

‘Mads Mikkelsen is filled with rage and has only one eye’, a list by King

Onebear’s lists of all Danish movies released within each cinematic year since 2009

Anders’ list of films by Danish directors or in the Danish language

Leyner’s list of Danish films nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Film

Mikkel’s list of Danish Christmas films

Follow Aaron on Letterboxd

‘Riders of Justice’ is screening now in select US theaters and available on demand. Images courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

[benevolentbirdgal]

13 Rules for Shopping at the Bakery

Now that I've regaled you with how to stay safe shopping, I think it's time that I start sharing some tips on surviving finding food. For my first list on how to stay safe at eateries, I'm thrilled to tell you how to survive the bakery - this excitement is probably because my shoddy-teenage--first-job in the early 2010s was as a Bakery Wench. I basically did everything but baking - sales, customer service, schmearing bagels, wrapping cookies- cashier is probably the nicer term.

Bakeries, just like the delights they sell, come in many shapes, sizes, and specialties. Some are old and some are new, some have specialties for dietary restrictions. Pretty much all of them have supernatural occurrences - it's just something about the nature of the beast. Maybe it's the combination of youth and heavy machinery. Maybe it's the inherent freakiness of some of the cakes. Maybe it's because many bakeries are in the older parts of town. Maybe it isn't one single thing, it's just how it is.

In any case, here's my invaluable insight on how to stay safe when you go to the bakery.

Sometimes cakes burst. Cakes cracking is actually fairly common, particularly among inexperienced bakers. It shouldn't be dramatic. If you are in a bakery, with experienced bakers, and your cake dramatically bursts and gets stuff everywhere, leave. Shower as soon as possible with the hottest water you can. 

Baked goods bake from the outside-in, not the other way around. If the outside is soft and the inside is hard and burnt, there is something deeply wrong. 

Don't try to bargain about the baked goods, especially the little ones. The 17-year old making $8 an hour under the table is not authorized to change the prices for you. It's petty to argue about a cupcake is $1.25 instead of $1 anyway, but you just might be unlucky and the demon-man-who-looks-27 might take you up on your bargain. 3a. Expensive cakes and wholesale orders you can try bargaining, that's fine. I'm talking about the way that arguing over a $1 donut will inspire rage in any nearby Chupacabras. 

Related: don't ask for a refund on a half-eaten baked good. Moldy/dry/gross? Yeah, get your $2.50 back. Sure. Probably not worth your time-federal minimum wage is $7.25/hour and you'll probably spend twenty minutes driving each way (or $4.83 plus gas)-but if it's the principle of the thing, go off I guess. If you buy an expensive-ass cake and it's wrong, yes, speak up. Get your refund. But if you bought a $5 Danish and ate 2/3rds of it over the course of three days and then claim it's "dry" I will not be held responsible for the reaction of the representatives of Hestia or if Andhrímnir takes it poorly. 

The walk-in freezer is a scary place for so many reasons. I can't think of a legit reason a customer would be back there. Don't go in one, it's a trap. 

No, the kosher bakery does not have a baking Golem. Even if we did, because a creature that is made of dried clay that follows instructions really well with surprising delicacy when the instructions are specific enough would be mad useful in a bakery having to adhere to dietary restrictions, we don't. Same goes for helpful Koloboks in Russian bakeries. Totally not there. And the Nordic bakery definitely doesn't have helper elves. These cryptids aren't there. Don't go looking. You won't like the version you find. 

The bread slicer is for staff only. Do you really want to join the other customers haunting it? 

Don't be greedy with the samples, or the bakery ghosts might sample you. 

"Is it fresh" is a dumb question. 9a. It's against the best financial interests of the college kid selling you the cookie to answers in the negative regardless of the truth, and more relevantly, they don't live there - it's statistically unlikely the 16-year-old selling you the cupcake was there when it came out of the oven.  9b. You don't what to meet what does live there and never leaves.  9c. In any case, "What is fresh" is a much more productive inquiry. 

A real bakery has bizarre hours - really early opening, really early closing. Don't go out of hours. You don't want to see what's there after hours.

I actually don't have any gory rules about errant, nosy customers becoming part of the baked goods. I will, however, caution against seriously agitating the inhabitants of the bakery. Before picking a fight with a who-knows-what or particularly gritty manager, consider their access to a no-customers-allowed walk-in freezer, a variety of chopping things and the ability to clean them, and the overwhelming smell of innocent baked goods. 

Little old ladies buying you a donut is sweet. Little old blue ladies with funny speech patterns is a sign. 

Lots of children seem to derive great joy from placing their grubby little hands and faces on the display cases, as if the contained croissants are some sort of long-suffering creature in an aquarium touch tank. To the dismay of the people trying to keep the display clean, this is normal. Children slipping through the glass without shattering it, in part or in whole, is definitely not normal. As a matter of fact, it's your cue to leave.

[bountyofbeads]

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/21/trump-state-visit-cancellation-over-greenland-shocks-danes?CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium=&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true

Donald J. Trump is the world's WORST negotiator. No wonder he has gone BANKRUPT 6Xs.

Greenland highlights Trump’s willingness to offend close US allies

By cancelling his state visit to Denmark, the US president has again showed his thin skin

By Simon Tisdall | Published:07:51 Wed August 21, 2019 | Guardian | Posted August 21, 2019 100:00 AM ET |

Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to cancel his state visit to Denmark after it rejected his unsolicited offer to buy Greenland at a knockdown price took most people by surprise, not least his own ambassador.

“Denmark is ready … Partner, ally, friend”, tweeted Carla Sands, the neophyte US envoy to Copenhagen who was previously an actor and chiropractor. Hours later, it was off.

The embarrassment of Sands, a loyal Trump campaign fundraiser best known until now for her starring role in the 1988 film Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, elicited scant sympathy from Danes apparently relieved the US president was not coming.

“Hahaha, well maybe your boss should update you about what is going on in his mind. This proves how crazy this administration is,” one Twitter user wrote. Some American respondents apologised for their president’s behaviour.

Greenland’s unsought role in this new Nordic saga, wacky even by Trump’s eccentric standards, has again raised questions about his mental state and a chaotic decision-making process in Washington that often leaves partners and allies out in the cold.

Trump recently secretly ordered military strikes on Iran, then called them off with 10 minutes to go. He caused more Scandinavian amazement and amusement last month when he sent a hostage negotiator to Sweden after the American rapper A$AP Rocky was arrested for common assault.

Anthony Scaramucci, a former communications director for Trump, told the BBC the much-pummelled president was like a punch-drunk boxer still standing in the 12th round with no real idea what he was doing. His handlers should throw in the towel, Scaramucci suggested.

That may be an overly kind explanation. The Greenland episode has also highlighted Trump’s personal rudeness and undiplomatic willingness to offend close US allies. The visit next month was at the invitation of Queen Margrethe II, who, unlike Prince Hamlet, was apparently prepared to tolerate something rotten in the state of Denmark, at least for a couple of days. She will not be amused.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, was glacially cool towards the idea of selling Greenland to Trump. She described the US, which maintains a military base in Qaanaaq, also known as Thule, in north-west Greenland, as a valued strategic and Nato partner. But she poured cold water on the purchase, suggesting it smacked of disrespectful neocolonial attitudes.

“Thankfully, the time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over. Let’s leave it there,” Frederiksen said during a trip to Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory. The attempt to buy it was “absurd”. It is this blunt response that seems to have provoked the thin-skinned Trump to put his trip on ice.

The idea of such deals is not new, though dated. An expansionist US, pursing what was once called its “manifest destiny”, often bought or seized territory in the past. In 1803, it paid Napoleon $15m for a huge area of land ranging from what is now Canada to the south-eastern US, a deal known as the Louisiana purchase.

In 1848, the US relieved Mexico of about half its national territory, including most of what is now California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming. In 1867, it bought Alaska from the Russians. In 1898, it took possession of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico after fighting a war with Spain. The US once harboured designs on Cuba and Panama.

But Greenland residents plainly do not want to follow the US Virgin Islands, sold by Denmark in 1917. They have reportedly dismissed Trump’s offer, calling it patronising and unwelcome. Yet the fact the idea was even raised may serve to reinforce longstanding resentment, mostly directed at Copenhagen, that Greenlanders are treated as second-class citizens.

Political tensions have fuelled calls for independence among residents of the vast, sparsely populated island where about 57,000 people occupy 836,000 sq miles. Despite its largely untapped mineral wealth, which is what is said to most interest Trump, it is heavily dependent on more than £400m in annual subsidies from Denmark.

In common with other Arctic territories, Greenland has a recent history of social problems, including high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide among the indigenous Inuit people. Increased tourism has proved a mixed blessing.

Greenland is also disproportionately affected by the climate crisis and global heating.

According to a CNN report from Kulusuk this week, scientists say 12.5bn tonnes of ice melted on one day this month – the biggest single-day loss ever recorded. That’s no joke – and it is a problem Trump stubbornly refuses to address.

‘A narcissistic fool’: Danes hit out at Trump over cancelled visit

US president faces criticism for calling off Denmark trip after he is told Greenland not for sale

Shaun Walker | Published Wed 21 Aug 2019 08.59 EDT | Guardian | Posted August 21, 2019 9:48 AM ET |

The Danish prime minister has said she is surprised and disappointed that Donald Trump has called off his planned visit to the country over Copenhagen’s refusal to sell Greenland to the US.

Mette Frederiksen said the US president’s decision would not affect strategic, military or commercial cooperation between their two countries. She had previously said his Greenland proposal was absurd.

Politicians from across the spectrum were united in their condemnation. “There are already many good reasons to think that the man is a fool, and now he has given another good reason,” Eva Flyvholm, the foreign policy chair for Denmark’s Red-Green Alliance, told Danish media.

The former prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt tweeted: (See Website or Twitter)

Villy Søvndal, a former foreign minister, said the decision “confirms that Donald Trump is a narcissistic fool”.

The US president had been due to visit Denmark in early September but announced on Twitter late on Tuesday night that there was no longer any point in the visit. “Based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time,” Trump wrote. The White House later confirmed the visit had been called off.

Søvndal told the Danish newspaper Berlingske that Trump’s decision showed he was unaware of the basic rules of diplomacy. “If he had been a clown in a circus, you could probably say that there is considerable entertainment value. The problem is that he is the president of the most powerful nation in the world,” he said.

The awkwardness was compounded by the fact that the US ambassador to Denmark had tweeted her excitement about the upcoming visit a few hours before Trump made his announcement. “Denmark is ready for the POTUS visit! Partner, ally, friend,” she wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Danish royal household, which had formally invited Trump, said she was surprised by the cancellation.

Greenland, a vast island bordering the Arctic Ocean that is 85% covered in ice, was a Danish colony until 1953. It gained autonomous territory status in 1979, but the island’s economy depends heavily on Danish subsidies. It has 55,000 inhabitants, many of whom favour full independence from Denmark.

Many in Denmark had initially assumed the story of Trump’s desire to buy the large, sparsely populated island was either meant in jest or as a distraction tactic. Trump even tweeted a photograph of a small Greenland village with a large Trump tower photoshopped in, but he appears to have been serious about the proposal, or at least offended by the firm rebuff it received.

Why might Donald Trump want to buy Greenland?

Greenland harbours some of the largest deposits of rare-earth metals, including neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium, along with uranium and the byproducts of zinc.

US corporations once thought of China as a benign supplier of rare-earth metals for mobile phones, computers and more recently electric cars. And the US government was relaxed when Chinese companies began hoovering up mines across central and southern Africa to secure an even greater dominance of the global market.

But the arrival of Xi Jinping as China’s leader, and his more aggressive foreign policy stance, has spooked many US policymakers. Among Trump’s advisers, the need for greater economic independence has raced up the agenda.

A potential target for the US is Greenland Minerals, an Australian company that has generated a good deal of excitement since it started operating on Greenland’s south-west peninsula in 2007 to develop the Kvanefjeld mine, which is home to many rare-earth metals.

More than 100m tonnes of ore are believed to be sitting below the surface and the project is expected to become one of the largest global producers outside China.

[a-writing-bear]

[PruCan] Chapter 11: Soft-Spoken Calling, They Want Their Shyness Back

Ao3 Link:

https://archiveofourown.org/works/11159997/chapters/48552656

This Has been cross-posted onto FF & Ao3 under Aliases: BearBooper

You can read this Fic on Tumblr under ‘Keep Reading’ - Ao3 version is formatted, tumblr version is not. Ao3 is recommended.

Previous Chapter   Next Chapter

Fandom: Hetalia Axis Powers

Main Pairing: Gilbert Beilschmidt & Matthew Williams (Prussia & Canada)

AU:  College AU - Art Student Matthew and Media/Film Student Gilbert

Age Rating/Mature:  Teen And Up Audiences (12+ due to mentions of mature themes as well as swearing)

Trigger Warnings: Recreational Drugs & minor connotations of anxiety (Future addiction to mention themes such as addiction, rape etc.) WITHIN THIS CHAPTER - Mentions a lot of Weed. Unwanted touching (just mentions but slightly uncomfortable) 

10 pm was a good time to arrive at a party, they decided. Vanilla milkshakes always made Matthew feel better- however maybe it wasn’t a good idea to have one after that coffee from earlier, and especially considering he was about to jacked up. Oh well. That’s something I'll deal with tomorrow. The Dutchman and himself had been on their way to Matthias & Lukas’ house, music-making his head pound already and feeling antsy over the prospect of more socialising. They had made very little conversation as the Mattie drove- only vaguely keeping attention to Tim’s random commentary and occasional directions. The Nordic couple had been renting out some house in the suburbs with 3 other students- very obviously avoiding living anywhere near the student dorms or the student housing as they liked to prevent interaction with the rest of Himaruya Academy; when you were hosting smoke outs and various amounts of overzealous drinkers and gambling, you tend to want to avoid the loud crowds. These events were closed doors, invite-only per se. Nothing like Alfred’s big bash parties that turned the university dorms into the likes of open summer festivals. They had only just touched the gravel of the house pavement when Matthew was hit with the familiar whistle of a certain Cuban man who had recognised their red car.

“EYYY LUKAS, TIM AND MATTIE ARE HERE.” the Cuban accent used to make Matthew shiver but was meaningless once he learnt Carlos was very straight, and if evidence needed planting then Carlos already on the porch with some girls he didn’t recognise and was flagged to go in after a friendly wave as he was too busy flirting to give Matt and actual hello. Tim had followed behind, loosening his tie as they sauntered up the door, only to have it ripped open by an unimpressed looking face of the shorter man known by Lukas.

The Norwegian seemed to raise his eyebrows to see that they both arrived together, usually, it would always be Tim first before Matthew came coming in. “Hej. Earlier than usual. Matthias is already down in the den with Jack.”

Tim had disappeared into the kitchen, making haste to avoid the heavy drinkers that surrounded the living room and especially avoid that Russian dude that seems to be pouring what looked like half a bottle of vodka into his cup. Meanwhile, Lukas had offered to stash away Matthew’s precious hoodie in the closet as he made their way down to the basement. The hypnotising dragging voice of Tame Impala's Kevin Parker grew louder as Matthew's sneakers hit the staircase floorboards down into the dreary but comfortable den. Jack must have picked the music, but I can dig it. Already he could smell the stink of imported kush, the haziness of what seemed like a spiked stream flowing around- only placated and diluted due to the small basement hopper window that let the smoke out. Matthew kicked off his sneakers at the bottom, already enjoying the vibe- or perhaps already being affected by secondhand smoke. Matthias had opened the basement bathroom to double steam the first few sessions of weed but it proved worthless as there seems to be a continuous stream of smokers mingling in and out of the den. Matthias was a tall blonde mess, a big optimist who wore long shirts under brightly coloured tees- a stark contrast to the bland wardrobe that Lukas wore (Opposites do attract I suppose) and the Danish guy was laying belly up on some very tacky shag carpet, at the feet of Jack who was lazed around on some beanbag, bong in his lap haphazardly.

“Oi Mate- bout time you showed up, I was getting bored. Where’s Timtam?” Matthew shrugged and sat cross-legged right near the dazed Dane’s face.

“Don’t call him that, he’ll throw a fit. What’s this? Yours or Tim’s?”

Jack snickered, the Australian clearly buzzed on something, “Buddy if this was Tim’s hooch I wouldn’t be sharing with goldie over here” he pointed and laughed as he listened to Matthias whine in offence. To be fair, the guy did go through more weed than Jack and Matthew combined so it was a fair enough statement. Matthew leant back, arms behind him as he dug his hands into the soft and a bit scruffy faux fur of the carpet- Matthias was giggling high about something and had pushed his head into Matthew’s lap.

“Hold kæft! I’m not that shit! Fuck Mattttt where’s Tim?”

“Upstairs I think- please pass the bong Jack” Matthew carefully stroked the hair that weaselled its way into his lap, he didn’t mind touchy stoners, he was the same whenever he got a hit- he just wished the big couch wasn’t full of clothes so he wouldn't have to sit on the floor. Just as he had the glass bulb in his hand Tim had marched in from upstairs, throwing a bag of chips and lots of biscuits into the beanbag next to Jack. Matthew tutted as Matthias apologised about not having those maple cookies he liked, whereas the Australian was more pleased to see some recognisable red liquorice. The green-eyed man had pulled out a pipe and dragged the spare beanbag to be behind Matthew, and it was not long before all four of the boys had taken a few hits and became a bunch of giggling messes.

“So whattya been up to mate?”

“Maybe he finally went back to Canada or something right Mattttt?

“Ahaha yea seen any geese or something mate?? Shit, we should have gone- BC bud hol-y” the conversation seemed disjointed and Matthew was already too far gone to think about going back to Canada. He notes that yeah, it’s been a bit since he’d come for a smoke out, and he didn't answer as he was too preoccupied with the stem of his bong and the noise of shouting celebrations of poker players upstairs.

“Schatje has a new uh...gig” Tim snorted, he, however, was definitely less jacked than the 3 who seemed to light up at the sentence.

“Oooooooo who be it?? Who is it, Mattie?” Matthew let out a wail of disapproval at the conversation, Tim was supposed to be his friend yet he’s pushed him into a corner of answers.

“Some dude..guy...fucking cute- uh Gil..red eyes oof real red...shiny eyes.” his mind wandered as he let himself lean on the edge of Tim’s beanbag, Matthias had already stumbled off the floor, excited and eager to hear like some high school girl. Jack had his eyebrows raised and the singlet wearing man moved closer from his position to meet Matthew’s rosy expression.

“Wow, Matties got the giggles for someone huh? Hah Timtam good luck mate.” Tim avoided any eye contact and instead focused on his pipe and refilled it with some mary jane from the communal bag nearby. An indignant noise came out of Tim as he growled at the stupid nickname.

“Wait- Gil? Gilbert? The band shirt guy? Isn’t he the one who got wasted at Francis’ big blowout last time” Matthias mentioned, arms waving and dismissed as he continued to squirm along the floor.

“Oh Gilllly boy, mates with uh Antonio or something, that bitch?”

“Fuck I don’t know...he listens to uh...mom jeans too ya know- fuck me.” the two laughed at Matthew’s comment but didn’t push for more- it’s been too long since Matthew had shown interest in someone, who were they to question. Especially not while they were all getting smoked. Tim looked disinterested in the topic anyway and was more concerned with tangling his fingers in Matthew’s strawberry blonde hair as the Canadian had sat between his legs. God fuck cuddles were nice. Matthew's voice broke out into more wailing as he sung along to Snowy Dunes. The music was soothing. He hoped there was more.

The music melted out into something he didn't quite recognise: “Who the FUCK put Queens of stone age on the queue?” Jack complained. ah fuck. he agreed over the change in the artist. shame, he quite liked Snowy Dunes more than Queens of Stone age At some point, Lukas had dragged his very giggly boyfriend upstairs and Jack had been huddled in a corner snacking by himself. Matthew didn’t know what time it was but he’d wiggled his way from his scarf-wearing friend and clambered up the staircase, laughing at the terrible decor on the walls- he could paint better graffiti than the shitty art pieces the house owners had displayed. He didn’t realise how he’d find himself on the couch near Ivan and some other foreign sounding students. Ivan was cool. Weird. Haha, I V A N. fuck ‘ee van.’ who names their kid Ivan anyway? Doesn't get more Russian than that. Shit ice hockey. Russian players are always so grabby. Man, I’d kill for some Cheetos right now.  

There were about 10 people in the room- and some Matthew only recognised by name. Everyone here barely attempted to talk outside of this safe house. What happened on Saturday nights never got passed the lawn, it was an unspoken law. Matthew always wondered was that because of the copious amount of shagging that happened? The excessive card games or maybe the fact that all these people were just kids who can’t bear to go to the bigger parties. Matthew couldn’t decide. He couldn’t even figure out why he was here. Why was anyone here? Why are we still here? Just to suffer? He laughed at his inner joke.

The teen’s mind wandered in circles and had been offered a drink by some Finnish kid he recognised as Lukas’ housemate. The music up here was incessantly blasting rock- something that he’d love if it wasn’t so dizzy. He melted further into the couch, barely turning to watch the poker match of some guys a few meters away. Matthew liked this house. Even with people here, it wasn’t suffocating. He could feel someone touching his hair again. Hosers. Why always my hair. The fingers started roaming his shoulders...and his thigh. Suddenly Matthew felt more sobered as he shuffled away and tried to find a pillow to hide behind. He felt woozy and extremely giddy despite his anxiousness to escape anymore touching. He stood up throwing the pillow outside and went hunting for some water. He didn’t want to feel this light anymore. Not now. Matthew couldn’t remember feeling this light and heavy all at the same time. And suddenly, he just couldn’t remember a lot of things. There was a lot of loud singing. He laughed.

---

Alfred had been dropped off at his dorm building at around 9:20 pm, and by 9:30 he’d launched his discord chat and set up his microphone so that he could huddle on his bed without having to jostle his laptop so much later. The blue-eyed American had only one reason to not be out partying like he usually did with his cousin Francis, only one other reason why he was studying with his brother and one other reason why he hadn’t been chasing up local girls and guys

“Hey, Keeks!”

His voice rattled with poorly disguised joy as his Japanese friend had picked up. Alfred and Kiku had hit it off foundation year, and while it was upsetting that eventually, the black-haired beauty had to transfer back to the other campus, Alfred had made it his job to stay in contact. Kiku was a genius. On par if not smarter than Alfred and that was considered high praise. The two shared stories, For the Asian man it was only just the start of the day so Alfred accompanied him through his breakfast as they shared concepts for different additions to each other’s current project. Robotics has always intrigued Alfred but there was no secret that his wonder had not been merely just been present because of the technological prowess that his crush displayed.

“Alfred-kun. I thought you said you had something with your Brother tonight.” Kiku’s soft voice filtered through the screen, he knew all about Alfred’s personal life and was under the impression the call was cancelled for some family bonding.

“Nah, dude. He’s out with his not-boyfriend. I don’t know what he’s up to. Probably exchanging spit or reading together again.” Alfred Sighed. Knowing his boring brother, he was just watching some movie with Tim again. He’s probably just sleeping.

[csykora]

hey i've been meaning to ask this, but would you mind explaining to me in general terms (or specific, if you're so inclined, i like detailed explanations but I don't want to give the impression that I expect them), like, What Happened With Alex Semin That Makes Everyone So Weird About Him? I know you've referenced a complicated legacy that makes caps fans weird about him, and maybe some way that caps fans/ western hockey culture/the nhl wronged him, but wikipedia was not very helpful (1/?)

3/3) None of that as presented seems, like, worthy of the level of weirdness/erasure that you've mentioned/hinted at, so I'm assuming there's a lot more complexity and detail involved here, which I would love to understand.

First, I need to say this, you are an utter doll. You’re out there reading and questioning and investigating further and it’s all so great.

And you’re right, on dry paper the whole thing is pretty weird.

There isn’t a smoking gun, here. I’m not going to point at a particular coach or GM and tell you, “They made a poor or a prejudiced decision, and the rest of us are fine.” A staggering number of things happened to happen to Semin. Each one of them didn’t mean so much by themselves. But I think the fact that they happened, and kept happening, and were expected to happen, all to him says a lot about us.

What there is is a context, and then there’s a story here. I think what a lot of us missed at the time, and are still missing, is how they fit together.

So I’m gonna drag us all through both. Congratulations: you get two posts.

I’m traveling through Montréal, so I come down to grab coffee in just a jersey and my little pink running shorts.  I’m not surprised when a man stops me. He asks what’s up, am I Russian, am I a Caps fan. “Oh, yeah,” I say.

“Yeah, yeah. They’re a great team every year,” he says, for the benefit of the man next to him. “No luck in the postseason though!”

The second man is Danish, and nervous, stuck between us. “You have a big rivalry?” he asks.

I have a personal rivalry with Les Habitants. “Oh, no,” I say.

I negotiate. If I admit I grew up watching the Canadiens as my hometown team, the first man will quiz me. So it’s friendly overture #2, angling towards him to show him the back of my sweater. The first man isn’t looking. “My favorite guy, Alexander Syomin, he played up here for a bit.”

I pronounce it that way, Сёмин, not an Anglicized eh. We can come back to that.

He admires my sweater. “Good player?” he tries.

“Oh, yeah, real skilled player,” the first man says, checking back in. And then, like he’s watching Semin backcheck right now, like the insight just struck him, “Lazy, though.”

“Oh, no,” I say, reassuring the Dane. “That’s just he plays Russian hockey, it just looks different than Canadian style, so some people think it looks like that.”

First man says, “Ovechkin doesn’t play like that.”

Of course he says that.

“Oh,” I say, laugh, cut him off. “Nobody plays like Ovechkin.”

(The Dane is looking between us like he’s about to ask how these people died.)

Something percolates through the first man’s mind. “Who’s your favorite player?”

And I turn around and walk away. He says, “Oh,” reading my shoulders. He hadn’t heard a word except the opening to tell me what he already Knew.

Listen, I don’t like feeling rude. But I was about to be late to interview for a graduate research position in hockey biomechanics, and I already knew I needed to go put on pants and fold Semin’s name back into a suitcase if I wanted them to respect me.

I’m not being dramatic so much as I’m trying to show the odd way that we all know things.  That man knew I wasn’t an expert, because I don’t look like one. We all know my favorite player isn’t a good player because he doesn’t look like one.

(And I don’t mean the ethnocentrism and neurotypical judgements we paint all over his face, although that’ll come back into it.)

G, you might be saying, that guy was a stock character of a misogynist hockey fan. Of course he only saw what he expected to. Well, here’s one thing: we all kind of think like that. Of course we don’t know when we aren’t seeing things that conflict with our view. Just keep that in mind when we talk about Russia.

And when we watch hockey, a good amount of the time, our eyes are telling us real persuasive narratives. There are certain visual cues in the game that we think mean good, make someone valuable. They signal to us that the player is playing ‘well’, and once we’re hooked on them that reading is hard to shake. Experienced analysts like Steve Dangle will talk about this: after decades watching hockey, they still get caught up in all the great-looking things a player is doing and miss underlying weakness, or get stuck on what a player doesn’t do and miss what they contribute overall.

(This is why statistics are valuable and controversial: they can be used to reveal patterns, like how a player who scores plenty of pretty goals is also on the ice for a suspicious number of goals against, and sometimes that conflicts with what seems obvious to the eye-test.)

Ethnicity comes back into it because what we think looks valuable depends where we’re from.

Later, I’m laughing over it to my buddy. She’s an older fan than me, and I admire her so much, because she listens to me, and she says, “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you—I don’t know what you mean when you keep saying Russian hockey.”

Context: Soviet and Russian Hockey

Any moment that I have the puck and you do not seems like it should be good for me.

But if you’re allowed to just come up and smash me, and I just hang out holding it, you’re going to try to take it away. Some of the time you’ll manage and then you’ll have it and you can score goals with it. So maybe I want to risk trying to score goals with it before you do.

That’s good old North American.

Oh, I’m sorry, did you want this? Did you want to try to score some goals with it? Sure, I suppose you can borrow it for a bit.  

Catch me first.

That’s Soviet.

This is a difference of philosophy; it’s a preference in coaching and play-making. There are some kids who weren’t considered particularly naturally talented who would be in Russia, and the other way around. But people also train to meet those standards, so by the time you’re in your teens or early twenties, you’re caught somewhere between the abilities and inclinations you were born with and the values you shaped yourself to try to fulfill.

Imagine a benchful of Evgeny Kuznetsovs.

Soviet hockey players were skaters first. At age 4 or 5, they would be learning skating fundamentals for an hour two or three days a week. Then an hour and half. At 10, they would skate every day. At 12, two practices a day.

“We put kids on skates at a very young age. Much earlier than in the U.S. and Canada. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. On one hand early development may influence game thinking, on the other skating may become a burden and be detrimental for the health.”—Sergei Gimaev (USSR champion)

I’m quoting Sergei because that’s my stance: on the one hand, and on the other. There’s a lot to say about the Soviet hockey schools. Athleticism was patriotism in the Soviet Union, as it is in many states, and the treatment of athletes was frequently disturbing—but it’s always more complex than a dystopia.

Their eerily effortless technical skating contributed to the outside image of the “Red Machine”, a North American narrative than Soviet skaters were only trained to be interchangeable pieces without any fun or independence or Canadian grit, but the Soviet style also valued a child-like intellectual creativity.

“Kids were always allowed to improvise on the ice,” according to Dmitri Efimov. “We surprised our opponents with the fact that we were difficult to ‘read,’ our actions couldn’t be anticipated.”  

This play, from hockey-graphs.com, is a great example.Vladimir Krutov, Igor Larionov, and Sergei Makarov skate so tightly they seem about to combine into a single giant mecha, luring in the Canadians, and then fly past them.

All that skill and creative energy fed into the endless, eternal, interminable passing. Each player on the line swung around each other, dragging the opposition into position until one of them found a chance to shoot. The goal of Soviet hockey wasn’t to score goals: holding possession and winding the clock down was pretty much an end in and of itself.

“For me, I would love to have empty net at end of season, then (have someone else) score a goal you know? For me, that’s how my father teach me and how my whole coaches when I grown up teach me. You better to give your partner empty netter than you score it. It’s in my heart.”

So, Evgeny Evgenyevich…if you’re always giving the goal to your teammates, who’s taking the shots?

Ovechkin isn’t like that

Kristi St. Allain of St. Thomas University wrote a dissertation on why people say this. It was adapted and accepted for publication by the Sociology of Sport Journal in 2016, it’s 43 pages, and it’s worth a read.  

There’s a more technical take, which I think is also interesting: yes, he is like that.

Ovechkin is a monster. He’ll be once in the world, not once in a lifetime. Comparing any Russian player to him is pretty pointless, but comparing him to them is actually useful, because we can see that Ovechkin plays a specific role in Russian hockey.

Hockey was at its lowest low in Russia in the ‘90s, after the dissolution of the Soviet national team. Everyone had gotten used to Soviet hockey, and that was over. The new nation was wondering what the new Russian hockey was going to be, and it mostly seemed like it sucked.

And then they got...these two.

The Aleksandrs revolutionized Russian hockey by building a new role for themselves: the specialized sharpshooter.

I’m not saying there weren’t skilled shooters before them in the Soviet system, but those teams made plays in a more balanced way, effective divvying up shot attempts between three fairly equal forwards.

Two years older than Ovechkin, Semin was the first player to prove what that shot could do. In 2008 he led Russia to the first World Championship gold since 1993, against Canada in Quebec City, ending over a decade of low self-esteem in a moment of transcendently wicked awesomeness to a generation who grew up after but still very much under the weight of the Soviet Union.

Arguably, he’s the one who told us all what Russian hockey was going to be. 

Sasha and Sasha both stood out from their teammates for their spectacular aim and strength. Semin’s wrist-shot was described “arguably the most powerful in the game” during his years in the NHL. (And that’s from SB Nation, not just me and Kuznetsov.)

Instead of skating and passing until they happened to be in position for a particular shot, both Semin and Ovechkin would deliberately take up a shooting position, and their linemates  would pass between themselves, dragging the opposition around until they could send the puck to the Sasha for a shot.

Taking those shots isn’t selfish: it’s a new way of using their unique skill to play for their teammates. 

At this point in his career, we often get to see Ovi skate straight to his office and crouch there in active waiting. He’ll slide a little up and down in search of openings as the other team chase his center and right winger: “he’s the best in the world at adjusting to passes.”

Semin would circle. He hovered over the blue line like some large and carnivorous bird, allowing him to either swoop in for a shot, or swing and pass back and forth with his center to set up his opposite winger. He could essentially shoot like a second Ovechkin or partner with Nick Backstrom to hold possession.

We can succeed

There’s something heart-wrenching to me about that quote from Kuznetsov. Because many Russian players don’t succeed in the NHL; they don’t fit in the spaces allowed for them in the Canadian conception of hockey. That should hardly count as a failing: like Kuznetsov said, Canadians don’t know how to play Soviet or Russian hockey. And they aren’t asked to.

Do you know how many Russian players are in the NHL right now?

It’s 39.

(Less if we set aside the goalies, which arguably we should here).  That’s barely more than one per franchise, and that shakes out to mean something pretty profound for players who have it in their hearts to try to match what their teammates are doing, but who by their late teens and twenties simply can’t reshape the entire way they play the game.

Semin is a spectacular player in context. So is Ovechkin. For most of his career Ovi’s context was Semin, and Ovi is quite honest about that.

Semin was the best possession player on the Washington Capitals in 2012, while also seeing the highest percentage of scoring chances. He was a 40+ goal scorer while being someone else’s main man for assists. 

I’m going to come back and to talk through his actual story in order, but this is the first thing to keep in mind: 

All that circling didn’t look good. When he looked for passes, waited for scoring chances, played high-scoring but still play-making Russian hockey, he looked lazy.

[linkbumble796]

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[chrysaliseuro2018]

BOSS OF THE BUS

As we were making our way down the west coast on our 5 day trip, Genevieve was investigating trips from Side to Capadocia in the centre of Turkey. Correspondence went back and forth about a €40-50 (about $75-80) 3 day trip. Comparing what we were paying for our 5 days this was so cheap I feared we would be camping. But no this was the price. Of course the sting came a bit later.

So we were up for it and the 4 of us booked to start the tour on 12th June with pick up time 6.45am. Antique Side is closed to cars other than those of residents so the tour bus couldn’t come down the hill to collect all our luggage. Booking ‘agents’ advised the town electric cart would collect us but alas no. Meanwhile Chris was in negotiations with the police manning the gate but it was a firm No. With minutes ticking by Doug quickly got Penny’s car, luggage was loaded into that and driven to the bus.

Now about 30 minutes had elapsed so understandably got some stink-eye from the passengers who’d been kept waiting.

The bus was designed for 12 passengers but fitted out for 17 so it was a close and intimate affair. In the front 2 seats were Doug and Gene who it has to be said got lucky with some extra leg room. Behind them 2 elderly Danes who grabbed a bottle of wine and or beers at every possible opportunity. Behind the Danes were 10 year old Russian lad with his mousy mute mother. Then Chris and me wedged in (Russian lad had his seat reclined the entire 2 days), and behind us the very friendly and chatty Aunty Margaret and Tina from Essex. Along the back were sweet young newly weds Soyah & Maurice from Holland, a spare seat, then Holly, Tina’s stepsister who judging by her size would have been grateful for the spare seat. Could have knocked us over with a feather when she told us she had been to the 7 continents by age 24, had emigrated to Melbourne several years ago (lives in Chelsea)and works as a sound engineer. You just wouldn’t have picked it!

Then heading back along the bus in single seats was a surly young lad who turned out to be part of the tour operation, a woman of unknown origins who disappeared after day 1, then Mr Russia who seemed to have supplanted both his wife’s and his son’s ego into his own.

Bus driver slipped under the radar but the same can’t be said for the guide Nahjo. In fact it was a battle of egos between Nahjo and Mr Russia. He didn’t just like the sound of his own voice. He was addicted to it! Along the way amongst other chit chat and information we got his life story, some group marriage guidance, how small lies can be forgiven and how this works in a religious context too. Every monologue went for a minimum of 10 minutes and woe betide you should you chat amongst yourselves during one of his diatribes. In the gaps the gregarious, party-loving-club-going-40-something Tina would try to share with me her life history. Nahjo seemed to get wind of it and standing facing the back of the bus would either clear his throat or announce it was his turn. Chris and I were left thinking our polite and humble Gallipoli guide must have been absent for the Tour Guide Arrogance 101 unit of the qualification.

So we were off and despite the late get away we stopped not 20 minutes down the road for a tea/ coffee break, followed by a breakfast stop 40 minutes later at a petrol station/ roadside stop. (It has to be noted that Cappadocia is some 470 kilometres from Side so it was going to be long day if the stops came so frequently). Breakfast option 1 was a vast modern complex selling everything you don’t want to eat. Gene who has an eye for local food spotted hidden in a corner behind some trees an outfit selling gözleme so we headed there. Great decision. Shoes off and into the tent where the local lady sat crossed leg with her dough, tubs of filling and the black dome for cooking the gözleme. Spinach and cheese one was a bit dry but the potato one was outstanding.

All wedged ourselves back in the bus which climbed up the mountains through some magical scenery. Unfortunately Nahjo kept reassuring us on the wrong side of the bus that we would see it ‘on the back journey’. However our arrangements meant we weren’t doing ‘the back journey’ so at one particular stop he was a little annoyed when we headed off 200 metres down the road to photograph the nomads herding their goats. I suggested it would be better for all if the bus pulled over so we could all see anything of interest on the way to Cappadocia. Suggestion was not welcomed.

Another stop for coffee and the sting of the extra €’s. It had to happen of course. You can’t run a tour for €50 per person providing transport, 2 nights accommodation no matter how basic, 2 dinners and two breakfasts. So lunch which we though was fend for oneself turned out to be a set payment (we only paid for one and opted to take our chances on day 2), and extra for Whirling dervishes, museums (charge €25/ $39.20 versus ticket face value less than $9) etc totalling an extra €120 between us. Even taking that into consideration €220/$350 for both of us was pretty cheap and the overcharging on extras balanced the undercharging on initial outlay.

Next stop, lost count if it was 4 or 5, was at the Mevlâna museum Konya, the birth place of the Sufi religion and Dervishes. The site is a holy place for Muslims with over 1.5 million visiting it yearly. The Mosque contains the tomb of Rumi (unfortunately hidden due to renovations) later known as Mevlâna who devised the idea of whirling and the tombs of other eminent dervishes. Also on display were Mervlana’s coat, a box apparently containing his beard and any number of exquisitely decorated Qurans, one so tiny that the author went blind writing it.

Alongside the Mosque was a complex giving information about the dervish culture. Included was a lodge displaying mannequins dressed as they would have been in Mevlâna’s day and the dervish cells displaying various items. I for one would have enjoyed more than our tightly scheduled allotted time there. But we were rounded up like errant school children and headed back for the bus. Chris managed to ruffle Nahjo’s feathers by needing a toilet stop when we were warned the next section of the drive would be 2.5 hours. By this stage as it was 1pm we were wondering about the elusive lunch if the drive was for 2.5 hours. There was some grumbling from Tina and Aunty Margaret and it wasn’t from their stomachs.

Eventually we rolled into another vile modern roadside stop - our lunch venue. Behind the counter were some aggrieved (probably because of the lateness of the hour) gorillas of men slopping out an assortment of runny casseroles, reluctant to identify any ingredients. It tasted as bad as it looked. We were immediately pleased with the earlier decision not to commit to day two lunch.

A short drive and then time for another stop. This time it was to visit a preserved home dug under ground, a primitive more simple Coober Pedy affair. Apparently tunnel complexes formed entire cities but this was a small example taking only 10 minutes for everyone to get through. I opted out and instead waited near the entrance/ exit where a dozen or so middle aged women had set up a market. Trouble was they were all selling the same little local cloth dolls so competition to get any one walking by was frenetic. Females in particular were the target for the spruiking with a good natured but frantic cacophony of calls of “Mother, Mother”. The closer anyone ventured to the stall the louder the screeching got. I hope everyone managed to sell something but with another 5 weeks on the road, it wasn’t something I could buy.

Everyone back on the bus and off to Dervish show scheduled to start at 6pm. Clearly we were up against it as the previously cautious bus drive planted his foot. Arrived shortly after 6pm with another bus arriving after us. Having been so enchanted with the beautiful ceremony we saw at Hodjapasha in Istanbul Chris and I we were looking forward to a similar experience. Dougal and Gene had never seen them and had their expectations built up by us.

Oh dear!!! The pipe/flute player struggled to find a note, the dervishes all looked like novices (part time uni job perhaps), they wore slippers that made a noise that was distracting, one was losing his pants, also very distracting. There was a non dancing head honcho roaming around amongst them dressed in black once again distracting, they didn’t vary their speed and were for the best part out of sync. Yes they could spin but it lacked all the beauty, rhythm and charm of our previous experience. We left feeling glad to have seen a more authentic experience and Doug and Gene left feeling they were yet to see one.

Short drive to our delightfully self rated ‘Special Class’ hotel in Göreme, rooms allocated and orders that we had 15 minutes to get to dinner. Dinner a simple affair with lentil soup, the not-so-traditional-Turkish chicken schnitzel and melon. Danish couple of course knocked off another bottle of wine.

Gene, Chris and I headed for a stroll to town wandering through the streets. Highlight was at a hotel where I poked my head in and elderly Mehmet the owner insisted we come and look at his accommodation. Beautiful rooms that were huge with the bathrooms built into the rock giving a sense of a modern and upmarket Flinstone bathroom. With Mehmet’s limited English we spent a special half hour in the hotel’s courtyard trying and making a reasonable hash of having a meaningful conversation.

A long day and time for to return to our ‘Special Class’ Hotel Karl for bed, especially for Gene with a 4.30 am start for her hot air balloon flight over Cappadocia.

[grimelords]

My august playlist is finished and I would like to extend my sincerest apologies for writing 3000 words about it. It’s mostly for my own amusement so please feel free to scroll right past this. There’s a lot in here, from Grateful Dead covers to Sunn 0))) and everything in between so please enjoy.

The New Stone Age - Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark: This is the perfect album opener because almost every other song on this album is Orchestral Maneouvers In The Dark’s normal fare of great downbeat synthpop but this song is like a nightmare come to life and it really sets the rest of the album in a different light. The otherreason I love this song is that ‘oh my god what have I done this time’ is a constant thought so it’s nice to sing along to. Buffalo Stance (12" Version) - Neneh Cherry: This song is an absolute masterpiece, the production is amazing, the synth riff is magic and this extended version is even better than the original because it has a lot more 80s scratching and also a bit in the middle where she says 'WOT IS 'E LIKE??’ Wakin On A Pretty Day - Kurt Vile: This is a great example of why Kurt Vile is good because this song goes for 9 minutes and you don’t even notice. It just keeps cruising on and on and you don’t mind a bit Turn Out The Stars - The Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra & Jim McNeely: This is another ABC Jazz find, its a very beautiful piece of music but what I like most is the ending where it stretches out a long long note into a big mysterious chord for no discernable reason. Downtown - Destroyer: I have yet to look up a picture of what Destroyer looks like but I from his music I imagine him to be a sort of mineral deficient vampire type of man who has just been wandering around New York for a hundred years. I had a big moment with this album this month, it’s really just perfect start to finish. Wow I just looked up a picture of him and I’m not far off. Song For America - Destroyer: I caught myself singing the part of this song where it goes 'winter spring summer and fall, animals crawl, towards death’s embrace’ while I was walking around town a couple of weeks ago which was good. Hoping For - Bad//Dreems: Bad//Dreems are maybe the best Australian band around right now. This is the first song I ever heard from them a couple of years ago and I listened to it probably 20 times in a row while I rode my bike around the school I used to live next too one afternoon until a cleaning guy yelled at me. Mirrors - Justin Timberlake: My girlfriend called me a '20/20 Experience apologist’ once and I’ve never gotten over it. It’s a good album! And Mirrors is the best song on it! It does the classic Timberlake/Timbaland thing of finishing up a perfectly servicable pop song after 4ish minutes and then starting up on some bullshit for another 4 and I love it the whole time. Speaking In Tongues - Eagles Of Death Metal: The guitar sound in this sounds like someone in honking the horn of their car in the studio. Eagles Of Death Metal are a wildly patchy band but their first album is a classic front to back and this song especially is a standout. Pain - The War On Drugs: I cannot get over how straight up beautiful this album is. I’ve listened to it more than anything else this month and I think every time I have a new favourite song. It turns out I love this one a lot though because as I was putting together this post I realised it was on here twice. Simulation - Tkay Maidza: This album was kind of unfocused and I really hope Tkay figures it out for her next album because when she’s on she absolutely kills it and this song is a great example of that. Countdown - Beyonce: I’m not a huge Beyonce fan (don’t @ me) but Countdown is easily her best song (don’t @ me). It’s just so dense and agile and busy in every aspect it’s absolutely hypercolour. New Dorp, New York (feat. Ezra Koenig) - SBTRKT: This is still such a flooring song, it doesn’t sound like anything else and it’s so left-field while still being incredibly cool the while time. Also about a year after this song came out I found out that New Dorp is a real place in New York further confirming my theory that America is a cartoon. Three Mantras Of Bon - Phurpa: Sorry, sorry, I’m trying to remove it. I accidentally had a big moment with a few different drone things this month and I fell asleep listening to Phurpa for about a week which I don’t recommend because it is literally just Russian men groaning at you fifteen minutes at a time and it feels like death has come to take your bones away. This song is good because they stop groaning halfway in and start making interminable vuvuzela noises instead. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) - Arcade Fire: When @grumsal came to visit us this month he was quite drunk one night and explaining to me that Neon Bible is Arcade Fire’s most underrated album and Sprawl II is their best song, opinions that I’m quickly warming to. Boys - Britney Spears: This song made me burst out laughing while I was alone because the bass in it sounds so funny. It’s like a straight up standard MIDI bass sound in this professional pop song and it sounds so, so dumb. This song alse features in the Beyonce film, Austin Powers: Goldmember so that’s how you know it’s good. Notwo - Autechre: I wish Autechre has more straight up ambient songs like this because they’re very very good at it. This and Outh9X which comes after it make a good pair because Quaristice is almost exhausting by the time you get to the end of it so it’s nice to have 15 minutes of wind-down that you can still get into like this. Hundred Syllable Mantra - Phurpa: Sorry, sorry, they are back and they have more groaning to do. I got deeply into this song this month and even now listening back to it I just want to lay on the floor and fucking die because of it. That’s how you know it’s a good song: it wants to kill you and you want to let it. Melody 5 - Tera Melos: Tera Melos’ Untitled album is a masterpiece. It’s just pure creative energy, before they figured out you can sing on a song without itjust being yelling in the background. This song especially ecapsulates the spirit of the whole thing because it twists and turns forever without ever feeling forced or boring, it just goes on and on and on with new idea after new idea but still feels like a complete work as well. The sample at the end where she says “lucas[?] you are as beautiful as [?] and [?] [???]” makes me very emotional even though I have no idea what’s going on. Good song. Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah - House And Land: I found out about this duo because I’m a huge fan of the guitarist Sarah Louise but I didn’t even know she was a singer as well. This is great appalachian folk music without the watered down bullshit and WITH the sensibilities of modern composition. The calustophobically close vocal harmonies in this are just shocking. The Day Is Past And Gone - House And Land: I saw someone on their bandcamp page saying they’d never fully appreciated the function of the drone in this sort of folk music before they heard this album and they’re absolutely right. Everything pivots around the guitar drone in this song for the first half, then when the guitar takes over the violin steps in and everything weaves around it. Intro/Keep It Healthy - Warpaint: This is a great song but the intro especially made me think a lot about recording and the identity of albums and as inconsequential as it sounds I think the drummer fucking up and apologising at the very start benefits this album hugely because it immediately puts a very human face on music that could easily be quite aloof and distant to the point of alienation without it. Vaseline Machine Gun (Live) - Leo Kottke: I love Leo Kottke so much and this is maybe the first song I ever heard of his and it absolutely blew my mind but this live version is very funny. This is solo acoustic guitar music, american primitivism from the bluegrass tradition, it’s not cool guy music by any stretch but Leo Kottke has somehow packed out an auditorium full of folks who are absolutely hanging on his every note and when the central slide melody of this song starts you can hear one guy in the crowd just absolutely losing his mind over it in a couple of long, distant “woooooooo"s and I like to imagine that that man is me. Cavity - Hundred Waters: This song is so beautiful and so considered in every aspect. The frailty of her voice makes it feel like it could break at any second and the whole thing could collapse, the oscillating two note refrain that ties it together is so strong when it comes back and the percussion is so detailed in a way you wouldn’t expect from any other band but Hundred waters. Metastaseis - Iannis Xenakis: Thankyou to @thoughtportrait for introducing me to the nightmare music of true oddball Iannis Xanakis, I was reading about him for a few hours while I listened through his music and Metasaseis is a good example of a piece of music that has a lot of context around it, and the concept of the composition being individually scored for every single player in the orchestra is interesting and innovative and everything like that but it’s not essential knowledge to understand this: you just listen to it and get overwhelmed. For Organ And Brass - Ellen Arkbro: I am obsessed with this piece of music. It is absolutely transcedental but the first time I listened to it I heard a train horn honk in the distance outside our flat and thought it was part of the music, so it’s also that kind of music. It is twenty minutes of long, loud, organ and brass notes and I cannot get enough of it. Bogan Pride - Bad//Dreems: "big muscles pumping in my sweatshirt/ big muscles pumping in my dreams”. Almost every Bad//Dreems song is about The Boys and either being one of the boys or how much you fucking hate the boys or how much you fucking hate that you are one of the boys and it’s so good. Alice - Sunn 0))): The last part of my Drone Month was listening to this song a lot. This is my favourite from Monoliths And Dimensions because without any vocals or the choir of the others it feels very stripped back, the guitar moves in big waves and the brass follows. Also, I used this song to diagnose exactly which part of my car door was rattling when I played particularly bassy music this month, so it’s functional too. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) - Budddy Rich: I can’t believe I only found out this was a Beatles song this month when I was searching for this Buddy Rich version on Spotify. How embarrassing. I’ve listened to this album for years and this song is so melodically rich I wish it went for three times longer. Obedear - Purity Ring: I watched Search Party this month and aside from being an absolutely amazing show that somehow balances incredible characters, violence and mystery while still being hilarious it reminded me how good of a song Obedear is. I wish it had a proper opening credits sequence because this song never goes for long enough in the show. Out Of Line - Gesaffelstein: This song starts menacing and just gets more menacing the whole time. “a bitter sunken love in a bleach blonde submarine” is such a great line, and the voices barking on the offbeat near the end is so propulsive it makes me wish this song was longer. Every Time The Sun Comes Up - Sharon Van Etten: This song gets stuck in my head whenever I wake up and have a news alert about whatever the newest calamity is, but it also makes me smile because having a line like 'I washed your dishes but I shitted in your bathroom’ in such a downbeat and serious song is so funny. “I shitted.” Atomic Number - case/lang/veirs: This song feels like a folk song from another dimension where everyone worships the atom and the overlapping vocals in the verse are so nice. This whole album is just full of beautiful layered songs like this I really recommend it. Black Gold Blues - Laura Veirs: the case/lang/veirs album reminded me how much I like Laura Veirs and how much of a moment this sort of Kaki King/Tegan And Sara genre was for a while. The karate noises in the background of this song really make it. Golden Brown - The Stranglers: Will a song about heroin in alternating 6/8 and 7/8 featuring a harpsichord ever again be such a bop? Unlikely. Aquarian - Grizzly Bear: I’m still working out how I feel about the new Grizzly Bear album. It’s so dense and it always takes me a while to work through their albums but I like it so far and this song has really stood out to me so far. The drums especially make it, in the second half the dragged snare becomes the centrepiece that the rest centres around. Leak -Truth, yesnotesnotes- - Boris: If you’re still reading reply to this post and tell me whether you think of Heavy Rocks meaning Heavy as a concept Rocks like it’s good, or Heavy Rocks like big boulders. Because I’ve always thought of it as the former and I don’t know why. Speak In Rounds - Grizzly Bear: Here’s an easier Grizzly Bear song. I had it stuck in my head intermittently all month and would just sing it to myself constantly, to the point where I looked up the lyrics and it’s literally about drawing a picture upside down to distract yourself from tinnitus. The Obvious Child - Paul Simon: It’s crazy that Paul Simon put out the Rhythm Of The Saints right after Graceland because it’s like the expanded weirdo version of an already out-there album. Like a sequel from a different universe. Acetate - Metz: I was listening to Death From Above 1979 and then I realised I should stop fucking around and just listen to Metz instead. I love the loping rhythm of the bass that drives everything in this song and how absolutely noisy every single part of it is, it’s pure frustrated energy. Talkin’ World War III Blues - Bob Dylan: I’ve been reading a book about the Cuban Missile Crisis called One Minute To Midnight by Michael Dobbs and it reminded me how much of a bullshitter Bob Dylan is cause he said he wrote A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall about the Cuban Missle Crisis but there’s recorded evidence of him playing it like a year beforehand. Anyway this is a far better song and the best kind of Dylan song where he just rambles on about a bunch of bullshit that happened in a dream for 6 minutes. If I Had A Heart - Fever Ray: I’ve always sort of preferred Fever Ray over any of The Knife’s albums and as far as album openers go there really isn’t a better tone setter than this song and the huge throbbing synth that just sits there manacingly throughout while the organ builds walls over it. Dust Bowl Children - Alison Krauss & Union Station: A few weeks ago we saw a double feature of Hail, Cesar and O Brother Where Art Thou at The Astor and I learned that Hail, Cesar is  masterpiece that I didn’t fully appreciate when I first saw it and I remembered how much I love Dan Tyminski’s voice. Incredibly good song from a huge voice about my personal passion: soil erosion and how we are all going to die because we haven’t learned from the sins of agriculture past. Give The Mule What He Wants - Queens Of The Stone Age: I’ve listened to the new Queens Of The Stone age maybe 5 times through and it’s just not doing it for me, which is pretty disapointing. There is a bright side, however, and it’s that their first album has been re-added to spotify after disappearing for about a year. This is a song I regularly get obsessed with and have to listen to over and over and over but I can’t pin down what it is that I love about it. A huge part of it is definitely the propulsive groove of the verses and the way the drums and bass just roll forwards so heavily. Thinking Of A Place - The War On Drugs: I’m so glad this song made it onto the album because when it was initially released I thought it was just going to be a Record Store Day exclusive single but it works so perfectly as a centrepiece to this album. It’s expansive and beautiful and it makes me so emotional! Two Trucks - Lemon Demon: Two pickup trucks making love. American made, built Ford tough. Atomic Bomb - William Onyeabor: This was another song that kept getting stuck in my head reading the Cuban Missile Crisis book, and also because of the news over the last month but probably mostly just because it’s a great song. There’s something about the vocal phrasing and the drum groove that makes this song feel really structurally strong for the jam that it is and I really can’t get enough of it. The Scene Between - The Go! Team: The Go! Team are the most underrated band in the world and I’m dedicating my life to getting them the respect they deserve. For some reason their newest album has been removed from Spotify except for this single which I’m thankful for because it’s a great song. The Werewolf - Paul Simon: Paul Simon is fucking 75 years old and he put out one of the best songs of his career last year! Who’s gonna stop him! Tilt Shift - Mosca: “I never lost a fight [to camera: I have lost a few fights] but I will fucking shoot you bruv” Tilt Shift (Julio Bashmore Remix) - Mosca: Tilt Shift is an incredible song and somehow I only found out that Julio Bashmore had done a remix of it last month. It’s a great remix because it sort of sounds like he’s just done a mashup of Tilt Shift and the Wii Shop Channel Theme, which is fine by me. Spit You Out - Metz: The riff in this feels like Queens Of The Stone Age’s first album if they were incredibly upset. I love how long this song is, they really wring every last drop out of it. The Deadly Rhythm - Refused: It’s been years and the drums in this song still kick my ass. It’s crazy that an album whose first lyrics are 'I’ve got a bone to pick with capitalism, and a few to break!’ can be so legitimately cool. Over Everything - Kurt Vile & Courtney Barnett: I am so excited for this album. The two most relaxed songwriters alive finally collaborating to be incredible relaxed together. I wasn’t a hundred percent on this song when I first heard it because Kurt sounds like he almost can’t keep up with the song, but after listening to it a lot I’ve decided that makes it even better. Also a good 60% of this song is just them jamming out and I really hope the album follows the same formula. The City - The Drones: There’s a great part in this song where the tape runs out during the recording and there’s a long break while they change it which as far as accidents go is an incredibly musically effective one. Drive - Ainslie Wills: This song should have been a huge hit, I’ve been obsessed with it for two years now and it’s still incredible every time. Somebody sponsor Ainslie Wills and force her to make a new album already. Me And My Uncle - The Lone Bellow: It’s truly crazy how much time I spent listening to a 5.5 hour Grateful Dead tribute album last year but it’s just that good. Please set aside half a day to listen to Day Of The Dead in full and have a massive Grateful Dead phase for six months after like I did.

listen here

[45news]

Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, Mr. Nordlinger has a piece about Thae Yong-ho. The below is a larger treatment.People who manage to leave North Korea are often known as “defectors” -- even when they are ordinary citizens, rather than government officials or military personnel. That’s because, when you are born in North Korea, you are deemed to belong to the state. If you leave, you have defected, and you are a traitor.Thae Yong-ho is a defector in a more widely understood sense. He was North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he went over to the South Koreans in 2016. He is one of the highest-ranking North Korean officials ever to defect. He is something rare in the world: a messenger from a closed and isolated society, a “hermit kingdom,” as North Korea is called.• I have met him at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the annual human-rights gathering here in Norway’s capital. Thae speaks good English with a slight British accent. He is elegant, knowledgeable, and self-assured -- a man you can imagine in diplomatic work.• He was born in 1962, and he grew up a true believer. There is little choice in North Korea. You are commanded to worship the Kims as gods. You know hardly anything about the outside world (although this is less true now than it was when Thae was growing up). He read books about Communist liberators who sacrificed their lives for the equality of man. Thae wanted to dedicate his life to that end too.I learn something from him that I have never heard before: North Korea has a version of the Ten Commandments -- with the ruling Kim, whoever he is (there have been three since the founding of the state), in place of God.Thae attended the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. He joined the WPK, the Workers’ Party of Korea, i.e., the ruling party. He entered the foreign ministry in 1988. And, in 1996, he had his first foreign posting -- to Denmark.• That was a revelation. He expected beggars in the street and the ruthless exploitation of workers. Instead, he found a happy, peaceful, healthy society, with ample social welfare. This pricked at the young diplomat’s brain.He also started to see North Korea, and its ruling Kims, as outsiders saw them. In the mid 1990s, there was a terrible famine in North Korea. Thae understood that this was the result of natural disasters, and that the leader, Kim Jong-il, was doing everything possible to relieve the problem.All North Korean diplomats, wherever they were posted, were instructed to get food aid from their host governments. Thae went to the Danish foreign ministry. They were happy to oblige. But they had questions: Why was Kim Jong-il investing millions in nuclear weapons when people were starving? Why was he spending millions on a mausoleum for Kim Il-sung (his father and predecessor) when people were starving? These were hard questions to answer.Thae came face to face with the hypocrisy of the regime he was serving, and had been taught to revere. North Korean delegates arrived in Denmark to buy cows, for the special use of the Kim family. This would keep the Kims in dairy products and beef. Other delegates arrived to buy beer for the North Korean elites. These things were a far cry from the equality of man.Thae began to experience “doublethink,” in Orwell’s immortal and useful coinage. Part of him held on to the true faith, the North Korean Communist faith; another part of him had plain doubts.• He was later posted to Britain. One of his duties was to speak to Communist and socialist groups -- people who loved North Korea. He duly sang the praises of his country to them. But he knew, already, that it was a false song. He felt sorry for these deluded Brits. He also felt sorry to deceive them, or to keep them in their delusions -- but he had no choice: It was his job.• Then there was the matter of his boys, his two sons. In an atmosphere of freedom -- namely, Britain’s -- they, too, were experiencing doublethink. And they had some hard questions for their father at the dinner table.“Why is there no Internet in North Korea? YouTube helps you with your homework. You can go there and learn how to figure out a math problem. Our government is supposed to be for education. They say that they are doing everything possible for education. So why don’t they allow the Internet?”Thae Yong-ho found he had to tell them the truth: If North Koreans had the Internet, they would learn things about the Kims, which would lead them to challenge the Kims’ rule. This, the Kims could not have.The two boys were teased at school, by their British classmates. You know how schoolkids are. “You’re from North Korea? You ate your dogs, right?” “Hey, you have long hair! That’s not allowed in your country. I’m going to call Chairman Kim, and he will send someone to bring you back!” Etc.• Periodically, the family would indeed go home to North Korea. And naturally, the boys’ friends there were curious -- curious about life in Britain, curious about a world outside North Korea. The Thae boys could not tell them the truth. It would be dangerous to speak of the wonders of freedom -- the Internet, an abundance of food, and all that.They asked their father what they should do. He suggested that they re-read Oliver Twist -- and give their friends some stories out of that book. About the misery and exploitation of Britain.Yes, you can read Dickens in North Korea. A few months ago, I talked with Vladimir Bukovsky, the Russian dissident. He spent twelve years in the Soviet Gulag. He told me that, in prison libraries, you could read Dickens (and Dreiser).• Thae Yong-ho pondered his fate, and his family’s, and North Korea’s. Maybe he could wait the Kim regime out. Maybe it would collapse before too long -- certainly in his lifetime. Then, in 2009, Kim Jong-il announced that his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, would succeed him. This dispirited Thae. The end of the regime was not in sight.• A tidbit: Thae would have an encounter with Kim Jong-un’s older brother, Kim Jong-chul, in London. Kim Jong-chul is a big fan of Eric Clapton, the British rocker. In 2015, Thae accompanied Kim Jong-chul to hear Clapton in the Royal Albert Hall. (I write about this family, among others, in my book Children of Monsters.)• Slowly, inevitably, defection crept into Thae’s mind. He would not consider it while his family was separated. Diplomats could not have all of their children with them abroad -- someone had to be left hostage, back in North Korea. So, Thae and his wife would have one son or the other with them in Britain. But in 2014, Kim Jong-un changed the policy. Now they had both of their sons with them -- which changed the equation.But what about other relatives back home? The Kim regime is a firm believer in guilt by association. If one person steps out of line, his family and even his friends and colleagues pay for it. This keeps North Koreans in line.• There came a time when Thae Yong-ho was recalled from London to Pyongyang. Why was a mystery. Maybe they were going to punish him, for some infraction unknown to him. This happens to North Koreans routinely. They don’t know they have done something wrong until they are being imprisoned, tortured, or killed.In 2013, many of Thae’s diplomatic colleagues around the world were recalled and then -- who knows what happened to them? Apparently, they had some kind of association with Jang Song-thaek, the dictator’s uncle, whom the dictator turned against (and, of course, killed).• Thae thought about his sons. What kind of future would they have in North Korea? Could he really consign them to that kind of life, when they had already enjoyed a free life? And what about their children, and their children? Thae decided he would “cut off slavery at my generation,” as he puts it. This far and no farther. No matter what, his sons and grandchildren and so on would not be slaves. He made a break for it.The North Korean government called him “human scum” and, for good measure, accused him of child rape. (This accusation is a specialty of Communist governments, and of some post-Communist ones too, such as Putin’s.)A delicate, awful question: What happened to Thae Yong-ho’s brothers, sisters, and other relatives in North Korea? Sitting here in Oslo, I don’t ask him. But previous interviewers have. He assumes his relatives are in camps. It weighs very, very heavily on him. Unspeakably so. Knowing this already, I don’t need to ask.• I do ask him about his personal security. Does he have worries? “I have a lot of worries,” he says, “but I am heavily protected when I am in South Korea. The South Korean government knows that I am No. 1 on the assassination list.” And “I know this will go on till the last day of the Kim regime.”• Let me pause, now, to relate something that happened in the days after Thae Yong-ho and I talked. Do you know about the recent fad of “milkshaking”? Protesters throw milkshakes on public figures they dislike. This happened to Thae as he was entering the Grand Hotel here in Oslo. The attacker, or “milkshaker,” was a Norwegian leftist, apparently.In the Free World, hard as it may be to believe, some people despise North Korean defectors as traitors, liars, and defamers. They take essentially the same view as the Kim regime itself.When Thae was “milkshaked,” his guards quickly subdued the attacker, and the man was soon arrested. Online, his comrades celebrated him. One of them said, “He got arrested for ruining a rich defector’s coat and deserves a lot of support and love right now.”It was just a milkshake, true -- nothing serious. But Thae didn’t know that at first. He thought of Kim Jong-nam, the dictator’s half-brother, who was killed when two women smeared him with a foreign substance in the Kuala Lumpur airport.• Back, now, to our conversation, and another question: How do South Koreans, his brother Koreans, treat Thae? It depends, he says. South Korea is polarized on the issue of North Korea. People on the left treat him with scorn. I remark that they might try living in North Korea, if they think it’s so great -- which makes Thae smile.Around the world, people view the Korean War (1950–53) as a war between the North and the South. In South Korea, says Thae, many people view it, instead, as a war between Left and Right. And there is deep sympathy for the Left.Think of it: Left and Right did not fight merely theoretically. They did not fight merely with words. They fought with arms. East Germany and West Germany never fought a war against each other. The Koreas did. And this war reverberates, says Thae, even now.In South Korea, he meets people on the left who struggled for democracy and human rights in their country, when it was under dictatorship. Yet many of these same people are reluctant to talk about democracy and human rights for North Koreans. They want to change the subject.I remark to Thae that it must be bewildering to him to meet apologists for dictatorships -- especially North Korea’s, the worst -- in free countries. Yes.• What does he think about the unusual relationship between the American president, Trump, and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un? Thae says that he understands the need to discuss nuclear issues -- but does not understand why Trump depicts Kim as a “nice guy” or even a “normal person.” “Kim Jong-un is a tyrant, a dictator, and a criminal.”• Jeane Kirkpatrick used to describe North Korea as “a psychotic state,” something of which the world had very little experience. Thae Yong-ho often describes life inside North Korea as “unimaginable.” He is trying to get people to imagine it. He wrote a memoir, Cryptography from the Third-Floor Secretariat. He started a blog.• His goal, or dream, is nothing less than the end of the regime. He would like to see the Korean Peninsula reunited on democratic terms. Does he have a strategy? Yes. First and foremost, he wants to encourage North Korean elites to recognize what they surely know or suspect already, in their doublethinking: The Kim regime is corrupt, nasty, and lying.He knows what it’s like to be a North Korean elite. He was one. Eventually, this doublethinking will tip over into a more resolute thinking: Yes, the North Korean regime is wrong. It smashes everything that a human being has a right to have.Thae does not think that this regime will fall tomorrow, oh no. But he thinks it will fall, as the people of North Korea learn more about themselves and others, and, in disgust at having been misled and oppressed, rise up.• Before he and I part, I ask Thae, “Do your former colleagues and other North Korean elites admire you, secretly?” “Yes,” he says. “Do you know this for sure?” I ask. “Of course,” he answers. They know, better than anyone else, the sheer guts of what Thae Yong-ho has done.

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Editor’s Note: In the current issue of National Review, Mr. Nordlinger has a piece about Thae Yong-ho. The below is a larger treatment.People who manage to leave North Korea are often known as “defectors” -- even when they are ordinary citizens, rather than government officials or military personnel. That’s because, when you are born in North Korea, you are deemed to belong to the state. If you leave, you have defected, and you are a traitor.Thae Yong-ho is a defector in a more widely understood sense. He was North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom when he went over to the South Koreans in 2016. He is one of the highest-ranking North Korean officials ever to defect. He is something rare in the world: a messenger from a closed and isolated society, a “hermit kingdom,” as North Korea is called.• I have met him at the Oslo Freedom Forum, the annual human-rights gathering here in Norway’s capital. Thae speaks good English with a slight British accent. He is elegant, knowledgeable, and self-assured -- a man you can imagine in diplomatic work.• He was born in 1962, and he grew up a true believer. There is little choice in North Korea. You are commanded to worship the Kims as gods. You know hardly anything about the outside world (although this is less true now than it was when Thae was growing up). He read books about Communist liberators who sacrificed their lives for the equality of man. Thae wanted to dedicate his life to that end too.I learn something from him that I have never heard before: North Korea has a version of the Ten Commandments -- with the ruling Kim, whoever he is (there have been three since the founding of the state), in place of God.Thae attended the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. He joined the WPK, the Workers’ Party of Korea, i.e., the ruling party. He entered the foreign ministry in 1988. And, in 1996, he had his first foreign posting -- to Denmark.• That was a revelation. He expected beggars in the street and the ruthless exploitation of workers. Instead, he found a happy, peaceful, healthy society, with ample social welfare. This pricked at the young diplomat’s brain.He also started to see North Korea, and its ruling Kims, as outsiders saw them. In the mid 1990s, there was a terrible famine in North Korea. Thae understood that this was the result of natural disasters, and that the leader, Kim Jong-il, was doing everything possible to relieve the problem.All North Korean diplomats, wherever they were posted, were instructed to get food aid from their host governments. Thae went to the Danish foreign ministry. They were happy to oblige. But they had questions: Why was Kim Jong-il investing millions in nuclear weapons when people were starving? Why was he spending millions on a mausoleum for Kim Il-sung (his father and predecessor) when people were starving? These were hard questions to answer.Thae came face to face with the hypocrisy of the regime he was serving, and had been taught to revere. North Korean delegates arrived in Denmark to buy cows, for the special use of the Kim family. This would keep the Kims in dairy products and beef. Other delegates arrived to buy beer for the North Korean elites. These things were a far cry from the equality of man.Thae began to experience “doublethink,” in Orwell’s immortal and useful coinage. Part of him held on to the true faith, the North Korean Communist faith; another part of him had plain doubts.• He was later posted to Britain. One of his duties was to speak to Communist and socialist groups -- people who loved North Korea. He duly sang the praises of his country to them. But he knew, already, that it was a false song. He felt sorry for these deluded Brits. He also felt sorry to deceive them, or to keep them in their delusions -- but he had no choice: It was his job.• Then there was the matter of his boys, his two sons. In an atmosphere of freedom -- namely, Britain’s -- they, too, were experiencing doublethink. And they had some hard questions for their father at the dinner table.“Why is there no Internet in North Korea? YouTube helps you with your homework. You can go there and learn how to figure out a math problem. Our government is supposed to be for education. They say that they are doing everything possible for education. So why don’t they allow the Internet?”Thae Yong-ho found he had to tell them the truth: If North Koreans had the Internet, they would learn things about the Kims, which would lead them to challenge the Kims’ rule. This, the Kims could not have.The two boys were teased at school, by their British classmates. You know how schoolkids are. “You’re from North Korea? You ate your dogs, right?” “Hey, you have long hair! That’s not allowed in your country. I’m going to call Chairman Kim, and he will send someone to bring you back!” Etc.• Periodically, the family would indeed go home to North Korea. And naturally, the boys’ friends there were curious -- curious about life in Britain, curious about a world outside North Korea. The Thae boys could not tell them the truth. It would be dangerous to speak of the wonders of freedom -- the Internet, an abundance of food, and all that.They asked their father what they should do. He suggested that they re-read Oliver Twist -- and give their friends some stories out of that book. About the misery and exploitation of Britain.Yes, you can read Dickens in North Korea. A few months ago, I talked with Vladimir Bukovsky, the Russian dissident. He spent twelve years in the Soviet Gulag. He told me that, in prison libraries, you could read Dickens (and Dreiser).• Thae Yong-ho pondered his fate, and his family’s, and North Korea’s. Maybe he could wait the Kim regime out. Maybe it would collapse before too long -- certainly in his lifetime. Then, in 2009, Kim Jong-il announced that his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, would succeed him. This dispirited Thae. The end of the regime was not in sight.• A tidbit: Thae would have an encounter with Kim Jong-un’s older brother, Kim Jong-chul, in London. Kim Jong-chul is a big fan of Eric Clapton, the British rocker. In 2015, Thae accompanied Kim Jong-chul to hear Clapton in the Royal Albert Hall. (I write about this family, among others, in my book Children of Monsters.)• Slowly, inevitably, defection crept into Thae’s mind. He would not consider it while his family was separated. Diplomats could not have all of their children with them abroad -- someone had to be left hostage, back in North Korea. So, Thae and his wife would have one son or the other with them in Britain. But in 2014, Kim Jong-un changed the policy. Now they had both of their sons with them -- which changed the equation.But what about other relatives back home? The Kim regime is a firm believer in guilt by association. If one person steps out of line, his family and even his friends and colleagues pay for it. This keeps North Koreans in line.• There came a time when Thae Yong-ho was recalled from London to Pyongyang. Why was a mystery. Maybe they were going to punish him, for some infraction unknown to him. This happens to North Koreans routinely. They don’t know they have done something wrong until they are being imprisoned, tortured, or killed.In 2013, many of Thae’s diplomatic colleagues around the world were recalled and then -- who knows what happened to them? Apparently, they had some kind of association with Jang Song-thaek, the dictator’s uncle, whom the dictator turned against (and, of course, killed).• Thae thought about his sons. What kind of future would they have in North Korea? Could he really consign them to that kind of life, when they had already enjoyed a free life? And what about their children, and their children? Thae decided he would “cut off slavery at my generation,” as he puts it. This far and no farther. No matter what, his sons and grandchildren and so on would not be slaves. He made a break for it.The North Korean government called him “human scum” and, for good measure, accused him of child rape. (This accusation is a specialty of Communist governments, and of some post-Communist ones too, such as Putin’s.)A delicate, awful question: What happened to Thae Yong-ho’s brothers, sisters, and other relatives in North Korea? Sitting here in Oslo, I don’t ask him. But previous interviewers have. He assumes his relatives are in camps. It weighs very, very heavily on him. Unspeakably so. Knowing this already, I don’t need to ask.• I do ask him about his personal security. Does he have worries? “I have a lot of worries,” he says, “but I am heavily protected when I am in South Korea. The South Korean government knows that I am No. 1 on the assassination list.” And “I know this will go on till the last day of the Kim regime.”• Let me pause, now, to relate something that happened in the days after Thae Yong-ho and I talked. Do you know about the recent fad of “milkshaking”? Protesters throw milkshakes on public figures they dislike. This happened to Thae as he was entering the Grand Hotel here in Oslo. The attacker, or “milkshaker,” was a Norwegian leftist, apparently.In the Free World, hard as it may be to believe, some people despise North Korean defectors as traitors, liars, and defamers. They take essentially the same view as the Kim regime itself.When Thae was “milkshaked,” his guards quickly subdued the attacker, and the man was soon arrested. Online, his comrades celebrated him. One of them said, “He got arrested for ruining a rich defector’s coat and deserves a lot of support and love right now.”It was just a milkshake, true -- nothing serious. But Thae didn’t know that at first. He thought of Kim Jong-nam, the dictator’s half-brother, who was killed when two women smeared him with a foreign substance in the Kuala Lumpur airport.• Back, now, to our conversation, and another question: How do South Koreans, his brother Koreans, treat Thae? It depends, he says. South Korea is polarized on the issue of North Korea. People on the left treat him with scorn. I remark that they might try living in North Korea, if they think it’s so great -- which makes Thae smile.Around the world, people view the Korean War (1950–53) as a war between the North and the South. In South Korea, says Thae, many people view it, instead, as a war between Left and Right. And there is deep sympathy for the Left.Think of it: Left and Right did not fight merely theoretically. They did not fight merely with words. They fought with arms. East Germany and West Germany never fought a war against each other. The Koreas did. And this war reverberates, says Thae, even now.In South Korea, he meets people on the left who struggled for democracy and human rights in their country, when it was under dictatorship. Yet many of these same people are reluctant to talk about democracy and human rights for North Koreans. They want to change the subject.I remark to Thae that it must be bewildering to him to meet apologists for dictatorships -- especially North Korea’s, the worst -- in free countries. Yes.• What does he think about the unusual relationship between the American president, Trump, and the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-un? Thae says that he understands the need to discuss nuclear issues -- but does not understand why Trump depicts Kim as a “nice guy” or even a “normal person.” “Kim Jong-un is a tyrant, a dictator, and a criminal.”• Jeane Kirkpatrick used to describe North Korea as “a psychotic state,” something of which the world had very little experience. Thae Yong-ho often describes life inside North Korea as “unimaginable.” He is trying to get people to imagine it. He wrote a memoir, Cryptography from the Third-Floor Secretariat. He started a blog.• His goal, or dream, is nothing less than the end of the regime. He would like to see the Korean Peninsula reunited on democratic terms. Does he have a strategy? Yes. First and foremost, he wants to encourage North Korean elites to recognize what they surely know or suspect already, in their doublethinking: The Kim regime is corrupt, nasty, and lying.He knows what it’s like to be a North Korean elite. He was one. Eventually, this doublethinking will tip over into a more resolute thinking: Yes, the North Korean regime is wrong. It smashes everything that a human being has a right to have.Thae does not think that this regime will fall tomorrow, oh no. But he thinks it will fall, as the people of North Korea learn more about themselves and others, and, in disgust at having been misled and oppressed, rise up.• Before he and I part, I ask Thae, “Do your former colleagues and other North Korean elites admire you, secretly?” “Yes,” he says. “Do you know this for sure?” I ask. “Of course,” he answers. They know, better than anyone else, the sheer guts of what Thae Yong-ho has done.

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English is weird

John McWhorter, The Week, December 20, 2015

English speakers know that their language is odd. So do nonspeakers saddled with learning it. The oddity that we all perceive most readily is its spelling, which is indeed a nightmare. In countries where English isn’t spoken, there is no such thing as a spelling bee. For a normal language, spelling at least pretends a basic correspondence to the way people pronounce the words. But English is not normal.

Even in its spoken form, English is weird. It’s weird in ways that are easy to miss, especially since Anglophones in the United States and Britain are not exactly rabid to learn other languages. Our monolingual tendency leaves us like the proverbial fish not knowing that it is wet. Our language feels “normal” only until you get a sense of what normal really is.

There is no other language, for example, that is close enough to English that we can get about half of what people are saying without training and the rest with only modest effort. German and Dutch are like that, as are Spanish and Portuguese, or Thai and Lao. The closest an Anglophone can get is with the obscure Northern European language called Frisian. If you know that tsiis is cheese and Frysk is Frisian, then it isn’t hard to figure out what this means: Brea, bûter, en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk. But that sentence is a cooked one, and overall, we tend to find Frisian more like German, which it is.

We think it’s a nuisance that so many European languages assign gender to nouns for no reason, with French having female moons and male boats and such. But actually, it’s we who are odd: Almost all European languages belong to one family–Indo-European–and of all of them, English is the only one that doesn’t assign genders.

More weirdness? OK. There is exactly one language on Earth whose present tense requires a special ending only in the third-person singular. I’m writing in it. I talk, you talk, he/she talks–why? The present-tense verbs of a normal language have either no endings or a bunch of different ones (Spanish: hablo, hablas, habla). And try naming another language where you have to slip do into sentences to negate or question something. Do you find that difficult?

Why is our language so eccentric? Just what is this thing we’re speaking, and what happened to make it this way?

English started out as, essentially, a kind of German. Old English is so unlike the modern version that it’s a stretch to think of them as the same language. Hwæt, we gardena in geardagum þeodcyninga þrym gefrunon–does that really mean “So, we Spear-Danes have heard of the tribe-kings’ glory in days of yore”? Icelanders can still read similar stories written in the Old Norse ancestor of their language 1,000 years ago, and yet, to the untrained English-speaker’s eye, Beowulf might as well be in Turkish.

The first thing that got us from there to here was the fact that when the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (and also Frisians) brought Germanic speech to England, the island was already inhabited by people who spoke Celtic languages–today represented by Welsh and Irish, and Breton across the Channel in France. The Celts were subjugated but survived, and since there were only about 250,000 Germanic invaders, very quickly most of the people speaking Old English were Celts.

Crucially, their own Celtic was quite unlike English. For one thing, the verb came first (came first the verb). Also, they had an odd construction with the verb do: They used it to form a question, to make a sentence negative, and even just as a kind of seasoning before any verb. Do you walk? I do not walk. I do walk. That looks familiar now because the Celts started doing it in their rendition of English. But before that, such sentences would have seemed bizarre to an English speaker–as they would today in just about any language other than our own and the surviving Celtic ones.

At this date there is no documented language on Earth beyond Celtic and English that uses do in just this way. Thus English’s weirdness began with its transformation in the mouths of people more at home with vastly different tongues. We’re still talking like them, and in ways we’d never think of. When saying “eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” have you ever felt like you were kind of counting? Well, you are–in Celtic numbers, chewed up over time but recognizably descended from the ones rural Britishers used when counting animals and playing games. “Hickory, dickory, dock”–what in the world do those words mean? Well, here’s a clue: hovera, dovera, dick were eight, nine, and ten in that same Celtic counting list.

The second thing that happened was that yet more Germanic-speakers came across the sea meaning business. This wave began in the 9th century, and this time the invaders were speaking another Germanic offshoot, Old Norse. But they didn’t impose their language. Instead, they married local women and switched to English. However, they were adults and, as a rule, adults don’t pick up new languages easily, especially not in oral societies. There was no such thing as school, and no media. Learning a new language meant listening hard and trying your best.

As long as the invaders got their meaning across, that was fine. But you can do that with a highly approximate rendition of a language–the legibility of the Frisian sentence you just read proves as much. So the Scandinavians did more or less what we would expect: They spoke bad Old English. Their kids heard as much of that as they did real Old English. Life went on, and pretty soon their bad Old English was real English, and here we are today: The Norse made English easier.

I should make a qualification here. In linguistics circles it’s risky to call one language easier than another one. But some languages plainly jangle with more bells and whistles than others. If someone were told he had a year to get as good at either Russian or Hebrew as possible, and would lose a fingernail for every mistake he made during a three-minute test of his competence, only the masochist would choose Russian–unless he already happened to speak a language related to it. In that sense, English is “easier” than other Germanic languages, and it’s because of those Vikings.

Old English had the crazy genders we would expect of a good European language–but the Scandinavians didn’t bother with those, and so now we have none. What’s more, the Vikings mastered only that one shred of a once lovely conjugation system: Hence the lonely third-person singular -s, hanging on like a dead bug on a windshield. Here and in other ways, they smoothed out the hard stuff.

They also left their mark on English grammar. Blissfully, it is becoming rare to be taught that it is wrong to say Which town do you come from?–ending with the preposition instead of laboriously squeezing it before the wh-word to make From which town do you come? In English, sentences with “dangling prepositions” are perfectly natural and clear and harm no one. Yet there is a wet-fish issue with them, too: Normal languages don’t dangle prepositions in this way. Every now and then a language allows it: an indigenous one in Mexico, another in Liberia. But that’s it. Overall, it’s an oddity. Yet, wouldn’t you know, it’s a construction that Old Norse also happened to permit (and that modern Danish retains).

We can display all these bizarre Norse influences in a single sentence. Say That’s the man you walk in with, and it’s odd because (1) the has no specifically masculine form to match man, (2) there’s no ending on walk, and (3) you don’t say in with whom you walk. All that strangeness is because of what Scandinavian Vikings did to good old English back in the day.

Finally, as if all this weren’t enough, English got hit by a fire-hose spray of words from yet more languages. After the Norse came the French. The Normans–descended from the same Vikings, as it happens–conquered England and ruled for several centuries, and before long, English had picked up 10,000 new words. Then, starting in the 16th century, educated Anglophones began to develop English as a vehicle for sophisticated writing, and it became fashionable to cherry-pick words from Latin to lend the language a more elevated tone.

It was thanks to this influx from French and Latin (it’s often hard to tell which was the original source of a given word) that English acquired the likes of crucified, fundamental, definition, and conclusion. These words feel sufficiently English to us today, but when they were new, many persons of letters in the 1500s (and beyond) considered them irritatingly pretentious and intrusive, as indeed they would have found the phrase “irritatingly pretentious and intrusive.” There were even writerly sorts who proposed native English replacements for those lofty Latinates, and it’s hard not to yearn for some of these: In place of crucified, fundamental, definition, and conclusion, how about crossed, groundwrought, saywhat, and endsay?

But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. Help is English, aid is French, assist is Latin. Or, kingly is English, royal is French, regal is Latin–note how one imagines posture improving with each level: Kingly sounds almost mocking, regal is straight-backed like a throne, royal is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

Then there are doublets, less dramatic than triplets but fun nevertheless, such as the English/French pairs begin/commence and want/desire. Especially noteworthy here are the culinary transformations: We kill a cow or a pig (English) to yield beef or pork (French). Why? Well, generally in Norman England, English-speaking laborers did the slaughtering for moneyed French speakers at the table. The different ways of referring to meat depended on one’s place in the scheme of things, and those class distinctions have carried down to us in discreet form today.

The multiple influxes of foreign vocabulary partly explain the striking fact that English words can trace to so many different sources–often several within the same sentence. The very idea of etymology being a polyglot smorgasbord, each word a fascinating story of migration and exchange, seems everyday to us. But the roots of a great many languages are much duller. The typical word comes from, well, an earlier version of that same word and there it is. The study of etymology holds little interest for, say, Arabic speakers.

To be fair, mongrel vocabularies are hardly uncommon worldwide, but English’s hybridity is high on the scale compared with most European languages. The previous sentence, for example, is a riot of words from Old English, Old Norse, French, and Latin. Greek is another element: In an alternate universe, we would call photographs “lightwriting.”

Because of this fire-hose spray, we English speakers also have to contend with two different ways of accenting words. Clip on a suffix to the word wonder, and you get wonderful. But–clip an ending to the word modern and the ending pulls the accent along with it: MO-dern, but mo-DERN-ity, not MO-dern-ity. That doesn’t happen with WON-der and WON-der-ful, or CHEER-y and CHEER-i-ly. But it does happen with PER-sonal, person-AL-ity.

What’s the difference? It’s that -ful and -ly are Germanic endings, while -ity came in with French. French and Latin endings pull the accent closer–TEM-pest, tem-PEST-uous–while Germanic ones leave the accent alone. One never notices such a thing, but it’s one way this “simple” language is actually not so.

Thus English is indeed an odd language, and its spelling is only the beginning of it. What English does have on other tongues is that it is deeply peculiar in the structural sense. And it became peculiar because of the slings and arrows–as well as caprices–of outrageous history.

[ultrasfcb-blog]

World Cup 2018: The incredible sacrifices of Peru

World Cup 2018: The incredible sacrifices of Peru

World Cup 2018: The incredible sacrifices of Peru

Some Peru fans have sold cars and given up their jobs to get to the World cup in Russia

2018 Fifa World Cup: France v Peru Venue: Central Stadium Date: Thursday, 21 June Time: 16:00 BST Live: Listen on BBC Radio 5 live; text commentary on the BBC Sport website

The incredible Peru fans. Some have given up their jobs, sold their cars, or borrowed money from the bank to follow their team all the way to Russia.

Whole families are here – elderly supporters have made epic journeys alongside their grandchildren to share a first appearance at a World Cup since 1982 with them.

It has been impossible to resist their colour, warmth and humour.

For me, it all started in their opening game against Denmark in Saransk on Saturday.

As Christian Cueva ran up to take their first-half penalty, one man wearing a pair of giant plastic ears leaned over railings by the side of the pitch, as far as he could to be that little bit closer. A moment 36 years in the making was surely about to arrive.

Cueva fired over the bar. The man’s arms stretched forward, wide and low in a gesture of great pain. The plastic ears almost slipped off the front of his head.

“He needed a cool mind in a hot situation,” Peru fan Edgar told me the next day, grabbing my arm and planting his feet hard into the ground as if to emphasise his point.

“It was the moment – but no matter, we’ve got two matches left and we’re going to win.”

Cueva fires over the bar after Peru awarded penalty by VAR

Edgar is with Manuelito, who is 80 years old and arrived in Saransk via three flights and a 10-hour night train.

Having practically lost his voice, he says softly: “The journey was brutal for me but how could I miss this?

“We have waited so long, I have waited so long, to sing our songs in another country once again.”

Manuelito (third left) and friends relax in the shade, the day after Peru’s defeat by Denmark

Peru lost their opening game 1-0 of course, the result cruel on a team whose fans have already made such an impact in Russia. So many have sacrificed so much to be here that it would be even more cruel to suffer an early exit. They play France next, on Thursday (16:00 BST kick-off).

Pedro, aka Perrito, left his job in Panama to come here and share the experience with his friend Alexis – confusingly also known as Perrito – taking all the money he had and stretching it over a two-month journey following the cheapest option every time.

The flight to Madrid was the biggest chunk, and since then he has been sleeping on sofas, sharing cars, blagging his way onto boats in Finland, doing everything he can to be here. He thinks it could take him another two months getting back. He just can’t afford the flight.

Alexis tells me about one guy he met in Saransk who had cycled from Italy. “It’s love,” Pedro says. He will have found a way to Yekaterinburg for Thursday – somehow.

There are entire families stretching across three generations here. Some can afford it, others cannot. There are stories of people who have sold their cars, remortgaged their homes or taken out bank loans to cover the cost. Edgar tells me about his friend in Los Angeles who couldn’t get time off work so quit and will now be moving back home to Lima.

People are changing their whole lives for this and the Russians – like so many others – have been blown away by the Peruvian spirit and generosity.

Pedro (left) and Alexis (right) at the Denmark game. The ears are in homage to winger Edison Flores

Manuelito is sitting in the shade wearing his Peru cap and dark sunglasses as local mothers launch their teenage daughters into group photos with the men and women around him. They have all travelled halfway around the world and have brought so much with them – songs, smiles, dances.

Everyone you ask about the Peru fans says the same thing, but one local volunteer in Saranask said it best.

“They’ve been wonderful. So happy,” Nina says. “After the match they were sad. It was really bitter for them what happened, but all the same there is such energy and warmth all the time. This is something very special. For me, it’s simply extraordinary.”

While we are talking, Pedro comes over and pins a red-and-white fabric badge on another volunteer’s sash and she wheels away in glee. “A small gesture that doesn’t cost a lot but is worth so much,” he says.

Even Toni and his wife Tiffany, both Denmark fans, have nothing but good things to say. Toni bemoans how few Danish people have decided to come. “The Peruvians have shown what football is really about,” he says.

A security guard tells me: “Not a single problem.”

World Cup 2018: Peru 0-1 Denmark highlights

As for those back home, reaction to the penalty decision triggered a seismic activity alert in the Lima area. The same thing had happened in November when Peru beat New Zealand in a play-off to qualify.

Perhaps the occasion got to the players in their opening game. Cueva was in tears after hitting his spot-kick over the bar – he had to be lifted to his feet and helped off the pitch at half-time.

But they still have a chance – a decent one at that. France were not exactly convincing in their opening game, a narrow 2-1 victory over Australia.

And this World Cup has already thrown up a few shock results. On Tuesday, there were huge cheers from the Peru fans watching Mexico beat world champions Germany against the odds – finally a goal to celebrate.

They, and so many of their new friends, will be hoping it won’t be the only one.

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