The Writing on the Wall

“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.”

Simon and Garfunkel

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Since I have not ridden the New York City subway system since the start of the coronavirus epidemic, I can’t comment on what wisdom is on offer there these days. I have had to resort to long-distance televisual viewing to satisfy my wallreading desires.

I previously reported on some rather zen-like scrawls on the walls of the stadia during the recent Qatar-based World Cup.* Today I offer some more reporting on sporting arena walls.

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When I see an advertisement for a company I never encountered before, I always Google them. Who are they? What product or service do they offer? Here are several that I found on the side boards of hockey rinks that I have had to search out:

Loffler

Brandt

Govcio

Jabil

Leidos

TCL

The on-line statements of these companies fall into clichéd categories. 

(1) There is the Loffler/Brandt/Govcio “solutions” claim:

“Loffler listens, learns, creates and implements a solution to help your business.”

“For more than 70 years BRANDT has provided trusted advice, innovative solutions and unparalleled service for growers, producers and farmers around the world.”

Govcio: “We look at your products and services holistically to shape a clear path forward and deliver feasible solutions that generate sustained value.”

(2) Jabil and Leidos claim their technical “breadth and depth” (Jabil) and “technical core capabilities” (Leidos) will help other companies achieve “success” (Jabil) for their “important missions” (Leidos).

(3) Then there’s TCL, who “delivers meaningful experiences through thoughtful design and the latest technology, helping you enjoy more of the things you love.”

Now I admit that I spent my entire working life in an ivory tower and have never met a payroll, but somehow I can’t imagine big business suit types sitting around saying, “Let’s hire a company that will deliver us meaningful experiences or one that will holistically shape a clear path for us.”

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The advertising on the walls of English football fields offers multiple delightfully upbeat slogans that float free of anything specific about a particular product:

“Designed to Evolve. Built to Empower”

“Designed for Connection”

“Creating a World that Works Better”

Not all of the wall writings are available to a native English speaker, being in Chinese, Japanese, and other (not readily-identifiable by me) Asian languages. In English, though, we learn that a certain doctor is the best hair transplanter in Turkey. 

My favorite advertisement, seen at Wembley Stadium during the Carabao Cup final, proclaimed that the sponsoring energy drink was now “Available in Yemen.” 

That information stopped me in my tracks. There’s a nasty civil war going on in that Middle Eastern country. Were the participants defying the bullets and bombs in order to watch a foreign football match on TV? And would they be so persuaded by the message of the company that they would seek out bottles of the drink in order to gain more energy to pursue their military goals?   

One can only wonder. 

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* https://drnormalvision.blogspot.com/2023/01/language-follies-2.html 

Masks and Faces

I first saw Dr. T in January of last year. Last Thursday I had my latest appointment with him. When I entered his office I was quite surprised at how old he suddenly looked. Had he contracted some disease in the few months since I had seen him last?

It wasn’t until I was in my car on my way home that I realized the truth: that was the first time I had ever seen him without a face mask, and, therefore, I had never before seen more of his face than his forehead and his eyes. The drawn flesh around the cheek bones and the lines around the mouth were not signs of a recent deterioration of his health, but were his normal aged appearance. 

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This episode made me remember that my surprise at an unmasking was something that had happened to me before—several times before. Throughout the Covid period, seeing less than half a face of someone I had never met before the pandemic, I automatically conjured up in my mind’s eye a completion of the other person’s visage. There was Courtni, for example, a receptionist at my physical therapy facility. I filled in what I imagined was south of her forehead and eyeglasses: the rest of a very pretty face, which the glasses accented. 

When I did see her without a mask, it was a nice enough face—if not as pretty as I had pictured. 

A surprise then, but it shouldn't be a surprise now. Thinking back, I realize that throughout the Covid period I was imagining all masked women—at the supermarket, for example—as being good looking under the face covering. Now with the mask requirement lifted, I find that there are fewer good looking women in the aisles than I believed before.

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I am, it has just occurred to me, an idealist. My mind’s eye beautifies the unknown. Underneath the rock is not a snake. Behind the mask beauty is hidden. 

And I am a fool who is doomed to be disappointed by reality. I must accept that at face value.

  

The Lord of Misrule

I have produced below an edited and revised version of a book review by Andrew Rawnsley. The book in question is an analysis of the term in office of a modern politician. Can you guess whose reign is being discussed?

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If the reign looked dreadful from the outside, it was even more diabolical viewed from the inside. We did not really have a government during his trashy reign. It was an anarchy presided over by a fervently frivolous, frantically floundering and deeply decadent lord of misrule.

Never in modern times has the office been occupied by someone so fundamentally unfit to hold the office. He was an utterly incapable leader. 

“I am meant to be in control. I am the führer. I’m the king who takes the decisions.” The would-be great dictator was never in control because he was incapable of performing even some of the most basic functions of a leader.

He had no clue how to be an effective leader and no idea what he wanted to do with the role other than satisfy his lust for its status and perks. One of his cabinet members said: “He loved the prestige and the trappings. He reveled in it… His philosophy on the way up had been to do, pledge, say anything to get over the line because I’m the best, I deserve it. Now I’m here without any core beliefs, I can do and say whatever I need to remain here.”

He was as woeful at applying himself to official papers as he was hopeless at assembling a stable and productive team. He was almost pathologically incapable of making and sticking to decisions, especially when confronted with choices that were in any way difficult. Most of the time, he was just making stuff up as he went along. “Wow, where the hell did that come from?” was the reaction from his staff when he suddenly announced that he had a plan to fix social care. No such plan existed. “Put down in 3,000 words what you think my foreign policy should be,” he told startled officials. He did not form a serious relationship with any of his international peer group. 

He deliberately stuffed his cabinets with mediocrities who knew they were expected to be “nodding dogs” and whom he disdained as “the stooges.”

The authors explore whether he believed in anything except the satisfaction of his own appetites and come back from their search for a philosophy as empty-handed as all the other people who have pursued this vain quest. This mirthless farce had tragic real-world consequences. Utterly unsuited to handling a crisis as grave as the pandemic, his endless prevarications and about-turns cost lives. “He wildly oscillated in what he thought,” observes one official. “In one day he would have three meetings in which he would say three completely different things depending on who was present, and then deny that he had changed his position.” His personal brush with Covid encouraged some to think it might prompt a reform of his behavior. They were disappointed. Even coming near to death couldn’t remedy character flaws that were so deeply ingrained.

Everyone he dealt with sooner or later found him dissembling, because he was only ever willing to commit to a position if he thought there was some immediate personal advantage or because his hand had been forced. One of his officials says he lied “morning, noon and night.” He lied not just to the public, but also and often to his closest associates.

Battles for the ear of this shallow and capricious monarch turned his court into the scene of constant internecine struggle between the ever-shifting factions within the building. We hear him whingeing about his inability to find the personnel or the structures to make his government functional, but several inside accounts suggest that he relished being at the centre of the tornado of chaos.

Rather than take any responsibility upon himself, he would deflect blame for decisions he feared might be unpopular – and did not hesitate to use even his wife for that pathetic purpose. In the words of one courtier: “He would tell us that she was impossible to deal with and he couldn’t control her and she would do whatever she wanted. Then he’d go upstairs and tell her that we were impossible and he couldn’t control us. He liked to pour gasoline on both sides and see what happened to the fire.”

To the bitter end, he blamed everyone but himself for the implosion of his reign. He was dethroned because he was and always had been utterly unfit to wear the crown.

Guess now, before the reveal.

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The book review was published in The Observer. The book is Johnson at 10 by Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell, the subject being Boris Johnson, who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2019 to 2022.

Did you think it was Donald Trump? Everything said about Johnson could equally serve as a summation of Trump’s disastrous reign (which is what led me to produce this blog post).

It is amazing that at the same time two of the countries that should be beacons of light for the world were ruled by similar disturbed personages. Let us hope that it never happens again.

Original review at:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/30/johnson-at-10-anthony-seldon-raymond-newell-review-ducking-and-diving-with-the-pm-who-would-be-king-boris-johnson