Fortune favors the brave and sometimes, having that extra dose of courage makes all the difference … congratulations Jens Lehmann … You’re the MAN!!!

— II —

I watched the Germany-Argentina game last night (1030pm to 2 am) at Gweilo’s (at Eastwood). I can’t recall a more nerve-wracking experience than that… I’m still tired from all the tension-release  (and cheering — including my lousy attempt at German) … so I’ll wait for better days to write and complete this blog.

Hat’s off to the German National Team for keeping their nerves and standing their ground.

Too bad, I smell of cigarettes, which surprisingly came from ladies smoking nearby…. We can’t get everything. 

"At the ordered end we have constancy and a complete lack of surprise. One step up from that is periodic behavior in which the same sequence repeats itself over and over again — as in the structure of a crystal. At the disordered end of the spectrum is full randomness. One notch down from full randomness is the zone of the gnarl … "

by Rudy Rucker from "ARTIFICIAL LIFE LAB"

—– II —–       

One flew over the crossbar

He lines up to take the kick that could possibly take the game into extra-time. The goalkeeper shouts at his defense telling them to mark out any goal-poachers in the event of a mad scramble for the ball. The five-man wall steps sideways in an attempt to limit the balls effectivity. At 35 yards, it’s gonna take every bit of luck to put it past the wall and into the back of the net. The keeper can follow the trajectory especially if it comes from such a distance…

Can he curl it?

There are only a few players in the world who are able to impart such devastating effects on the flight of the ball. To be in the same league as them, you would have to improve on the "bannana-kick" or the "boomerang" technique, as it is called. When properly executed, it wrongfoots any keeper allowing little time for recovery and little hope of palming the ball over the bar.

Assuming of course, you strike it just off-center, your foot’s follow-through must be executed precisely to ensure that the ball "dips" at a proper time, when the ball’s spin, also allows it to bend over the wall — and into the net, beyond the despairing dive of the keeper or any other player intent on keeping the ball out.

At this point, you’d hope that those long hours in the training ground pays off because nothing is more gut-wrenching than a wasted opportunity. This time, it wasn’t the technique that’’s bothering him. It was the pressure from 60,0000 plus fans watching inside the stadium hoping you’d never let them down — and beyond, perhaps millions more.

The whistle blows and it comes like a jolt in the back.

His captain releases the ball with his first touch, just enough to take it across the path of your run. Four giant strides to the strike … three … but something was wrong. At that rate, his other leg won’t make it properly to the side of the ball it will whistle past the wall and end up the in the crowd.

Two … One … *crack*

He hears the muffled sound of his boot hitting the ball and for a brief moment he felt his ankle slightly twist under him. After the powerful swing of his right leg, he falls to his knees in pain.

The ball was already in full flight. It bends floats over the wall and bends at the edge of the penalty box…

He can only grimace in pain as we watched the ball overcome the first hurdle. But it was going wide of the mark each second.

Past the wall, the ball dips for the final trajectory….

"It’s going out. We’re going out", he thought of the four year wait for his next chance. That time fortune will no longer favor him. Age will finally catch up and there would be many young talents fighting for a place in the team.

As the ball, and indeed, the hopes of the nation, was heading into the far post, the man nobody marked leaped to engage it in the air. It hits him square on his forehead and the ball is deflected.

It brushed against the inside of the post before crossing the line. The keeper tried to clear it but only succeeded in pushing it further into his own net.

The crowd rises to its feet! On the radio, in countries far and away, the commentator screams "WHAT A TIME FOR IT! A FANTASTIC EQUALISER!". At the corner of his eye, the keeper, furious at the complacency of his defenders, picks up the ball and threw it over the bar and into the screaming fans. The referee cautions him, flashes a yellow card. The talismanic keeper will miss the next game as he gets his name in the book.

Everything happened so fast as he was busy nursing a twisted ankle. He had given the team an extra lease of life but he would have to sit out on the final stages of the match.

—– The End For Now —–       

—– I —–

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day, the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age"

———– From The Call of Cthulhu, by HP Lovecraft

—– II —–

While writing those ominous lines above, I suddenly remembered scenes in Ingmar Bergman’s film Det sjunde inseglet (The Seventh Seal) where the protagonist (a war-weary knight returning from the crusades) is consumed by emptiness and doubt. Life seems to be without meaning. God or the devil does not exist. They are perspectives (and/or projections) in a time badly in need of hope (or, in the case of the devil, a scapegoat). In a land ravaged by plague, belief in supreme beings did little to improve the lot of the desperate. As if those weren’t enough problems for our knight, Death has come for him and he is living on borrowed time.

—– III —–

Is there life after death?

Does the cold and vast emptiness of space reinforce the notion that earth is the only planet blessed/cursed by sentience?

—– IV —–

If our destiny is neither in heaven nor in hell, but to disappear completely from this time line, persisting only in the memories of those left behind (but eventually diminishing as time passes), as if we never were, is it right to feel sad? — or worse, happy?

—– V —–

It is a brief moment that we have in this universe when measured against the lifetime of stars. Even on the scale of a second, some 2 billion…. it is extremely brief.

The universe is estimated to be "13.7 billion years old, with an uncertainty of 200 million years" (according to wikipedia).

Even with the means to communicate our existence (through various technologies), it’s like kicking up a lot noise and no one is bothered. Or flashes of lightning in total darkness.

—– VI —–

In the Alpha Centauri computer game, one of the faction leaders, emphasized that the greater conundrum asks why a Perfect God bothered to create the universe at all.

—– VII —–

A colleague once wrote (during his undergraduate years) that there must be a God because without him all those blasted Physics equations don’t mean squat.

—– VIII —–

….. The end of summer is just around the corner. I’m still stuck in this computer, tied to this chair, typing away at the keyboard to forget the fact that it has been a long semester and I’m due for a complete shutdown.