My December 2015 Running Report

In December, I ran for a cumulative total of 178 miles and on 26 of the 31 days.  Most of the days had me spacing my running out on several different shorter runs...my longest single run of the month was for 6.5 miles when, on December 5th, I ran the Lumber Around the Levee race, held at Barr Hammock Preserve between Micanopy and Paynes Prairie.  I've tried different strategies of training in December without any one seeming to give me much progress.  It's also been difficult here in north-central Florida with its unseasonably record hot temperatures and chronically high humidity...not conducive at all to road running.  The other day it got up to 86 degrees...in the winter!  I keep hearing talk about it eventually cooling around here...it sure would make my running more enjoyable...

Next month, on the 17th, will be the Ocala Half-Marathon...a race that I am already familiar with, having run this course in 2011 and 2013.  Whether or not I'll be ready for it this time around remains to be seen...but I'm inclined to go ahead and enter it anyway and just cover the distance even if I have to walk for stretches at a time...

My Favorite Songs of 2015

As we're closing in on the end of 2015, it's time once again for me to review my favorite songs of the year.  Since I tend to focus my music listening to independent/alternative rock, it should be no surprise that my list consists completely of that genre.  2015 was a good year, musically speaking, with many songs out that I liked to listen to.  My sources for listening were either new albums of favorite musical acts that I acquired or my local alt-rock radio station, 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz".  Among the albums I enjoyed in 2015 were Kasabian's 48:13 (the title based on how long the album is), Sufjan Stevens's Carrie and Lowell (largely about his late parents), and Spoon's latest, They Want My Soul.  The best of the lot, in my opinion, is the emotionally gut-wrenching Carrie and Lowell, which, as I have said before, merits a Grammy.  Kasabian is a British band that recalls the brashness and musical talent of older groups like The Who and the Rolling Stones. Spoon is a great Texas-based alternative rock band...you may be familiar with their first hit from many years ago: I Turn My Camera On.  That song Dreams by Beck...I like it a lot (it's a single released in advance of his upcoming new album), but it sounds an awful lot like MGMT's 2008 song Electric Feel in some places. And Awolnation and the Cold War Kids are two bands I'm going to be keeping my eye on next year.   Well, without further ado, here's the list of my favorite songs of 2015, with the artist mentioned after each title...

1 TREAT...Kasabian
2 Hollow Moon...Awolnation
3 First...Cold War Kids
4 I Should Have Known Better...Sufjan Stevens
5 Death With Dignity...Sufjan Stevens
6 Rainy Taxi...Spoon
7 Dreams...Beck
8 Fourth of July...Sufjan Stevens
9 Blue Bucket of Gold...Sufjan Stevens
10 Agora...Bear Hands
11 Renegades...X Ambassadors
12 Cigarette Daydreams...Cage the Elephant
13 Mess is Mine...Vance Joy
14 Forgot My Broken Heart...Chris Cornell
15 Ex's and Oh's...Elle King
16 My Type...Saint Motel

1972 Miami Dolphins Can Finally Break Out the Champagne

It took a while longer than most years, but with today's 20-13 loss to Atlanta, the Carolina Panthers finally lost a game for this 2015 season, depriving the National Football League once again of a team with a perfect record.  The 1972 Miami Dolphins have been the only ones to accomplish this feat, but I was beginning to worry with Carolina's run this year. Just a couple of weeks ago against the same team, the Panthers destroyed the Falcons 38-0...so I didn't harbor any real hopes of an upset with their rematch earlier this afternoon.  This just goes to show the unpredictability of this game.  Now I can start to root for Carolina...and the old '72 Dolphins who are still around can break out the champagne and celebrate!

These old Miami alumni perform this ritual annually when the last remaining undefeated NFL team finally loses.  I don't happen to have any of the bubbly drink around, but I am raising my imaginary glass with my imaginary drink in a toast to those Dolphin greats of the past and their unduplicated accomplishment...may only a future Miami team repeat it.  But with the Dolphins' troubles in recent years, I'm not holding my breath in anticipation...

Just Finished Reading The Last Theorem by Arthur C. Clarke and Frederick Pohl

Arthur C. Clarke, and Frederick Pohl to a lesser extent, are considered two of the twentieth century's most renown and respected science fiction writers.  Both made it to this century as well before succumbing to ailments well into their eighties.  The Last Theorem, published in 2008, is Clarke's final work, and his physical and mental conditions forced him to hand over its completion to Pohl.  The novel's release coincided with the death of Clarke, known mostly to the general public for his 2001: A Space Odyssey...

The Space Odyssey series bears a similarity to The Last Theorem in that both involve advanced alien civilizations discovering humanity's emergence into space and use of nuclear weapons and judging the fate of our species based on the level of threat they believe we present.  But the setting of The Last Theorem, which I just finished reading, is entirely different: Sri Lanka, an island nation just off the southern peninsula of India (and where Clarke lived), a few years (but not many) into the future.  The chief protagonist, Ranjit Subramanian, is a young mathematician from there who is struggling to write an elegant proof for Fermat's Last Theorem...a problem that had baffled mathematicians for centuries until, in the 1990s, a very cumbersome computer-aided solution was provided.  Ranjit's compelling personal story eventually intertwines with the book's other main subplot, namely the invasion of Earth and planned annihilation of humanity.  Along the way, the authors take predictably political potshots at nationalism, militarism, and war...focusing chiefly against the policies of the United States and often referring to their invasion and occupation of Iraq.  I get it...but I felt that, at times, I was being preached to instead of being told a story.  Also, toward the end of the book the characters became less and less believable...especially the "Space Olympics" role of Ranjit's daughter...

But all things considered, this is but a story and they all break down on one level or another.  After all, weren't Scott in Ivanhoe, Hugo in Les Miserables, and Tolstoy in War and Peace all deeply engaged in barely disguised political commentary?  And to make a character memorable, he or she can't be completely ordinary and has to stand out from the crowd in some way.  So yes, I enjoyed The Last Theorem for its story of Ranjit, as well as the many speculations about the possibilities and opportunities for us humans on Earth in the future...that is, if we can ever stop trying to destroy each other...

The Republican Presidential Candidates, Part 2: Jeb Bush

And so I continue on with my own personal take on the Republican presidential candidates for 2016.  Today I consider Jeb Bush...

At the start of this presidential campaign season, I expected Jeb Bush to coast to his party's nomination, much in the same way that Hillary Clinton is currently reasonably ahead in her Democratic race over chief opponent Bernie Sanders.  I reasoned that, as in 2000 when Jeb's brother George W. faced off a single potentially formidable challenger in John McCain (while Democrat Al Gore was contending with Bill Bradley), Jeb would have some kind of offbeat populist GOP opponent like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul and then take over from there.  While this type of scenario seems to have happened with Clinton and Sanders, Jeb Bush has found himself sliding further and further back in the polls...to the point where now he has only 3-5 % support nationwide among Republican voters.  What happened?

Jeb Bush was already in trouble, even before his nemesis Donald Trump entered the race later than most of the other opponents. Bush was ostracized by the Tea Party faction of the party as being too "establishment", plus he had to contend with fellow Floridian polician, Senator Marco Rubio, upstaging him even in his home state.  But the way I look at it, Jeb Bush didn't do himself any favors with his own words...

I have expressed in this blog that I thought that Jeb Bush was a pretty decent governor and that he seemed to be the only candidate in the Republican field that I felt I might support for president in 2016...not that I liked everything he did while he was leading my home state...not by a long shot.  Unfortunately, throughout this campaign I have heard very little from this individual that expresses the more inclusionary vision he had as governor for eight years, his lucid and compelling speech and arguments from that era, or his sense of confidence he once had in abundance.  Instead, he's been saying a lot of weird stuff and seems to have a delusional opinion of the candidacy of the current GOP leader, Donald Trump.  One of the first weird things I heard from him in this campaign was that he was proud of being called "Jeb"...and that he had earned this privilege. Well, he's obviously a better man than me, for no one's ever called ME "Jeb"!  As for Trump, in an interview right after a nationwide poll gave the real estate tycoon 36% Republican support...in contrast to Bush's meager 3%...Jeb flatly stated that there was no need to worry about whether he would support Trump if he were nominated.  The reason, according to Jeb Bush, is that, in his opinion, Donald Trump is only an entertainer and not a serious candidate...

These types of comments reveal to me that Jeb Bush has sunk deeply into delusion and, as such, no longer merits my former high opinion of him as a politician with a good sense of discernment.  He probably just needs quietly make his exit from the scene, something that fellow Republican Lindsey Graham has shown the good sense and wisdom to do.  He'd probably do quite well for himself in the future as a high-paid lobbyist for some foreign country...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "W" is for Wasted

Mystery novelist Sue Grafton is winding down her current Kinsey Millhone series with the titles based on letters from the alphabet and just the "Y" and "Z" books left to be published.  As for myself, I've almost caught up with her writing, having just finished reading "W" is for Wasted.  It may well be the longest book in this series so far...still, it is relatively short compared to some of the other books I've been plowing through of late...

It's still 1988 and Kinsey Millhone, a single (twice divorced) late-thirties private detective based in the mythical California coastal city of Santa Teresa (about where Santa Barbara would be) finds out about the recent deaths of two men: one is a shady private eye whose path she has crossed in earlier cases and the other is a completely unknown homeless man who left on his person a piece of paper with her name and office address and number on it.  After being notified of this connection, she then is shocked to find that she had been appointed by him to be the executor of his estate...consisting of more than half a million dollars...to be distributed among those named in his will: Kinsey and Kinsey alone! This is enough to draw her into an increasingly complex mystery, one that somehow involves trial runs of medications, designed to treat alcoholism, given to homeless human guinea pigs. Grafton highlights the lives and plight of the homeless in this book, as well as making the point that there is as much diversity among them regarding their motivations, histories, and mental states as among the general population...

Kinsey also discovers a distant family relationship between herself and the deceased homeless man, which introduces her to her father's side of the family, something that had been hidden from her since she was left orphaned when both of her parents died in a car accident while she was still a young girl.  Also, a new character, Ed the Cat, gets his introduction late in the series (better late than never)...and eventually plays an important role in the story's outcome.  I thought "W" is for Wasted was one of Sue Grafton's better books, although once again I felt that she should have presented the narrative completely from Kinsey's perspective instead of jumping around to other characters as she has been doing for the last few books... 

Weather Finally Looking Like December

As I sit here, the temperatures are plummeting after unseasonably hot and muggy weather...it's about time!  The high today should only reach the mid-60s (after ridiculously climbing up into the 80s recently) while tonight it will be dipping into the 30s...this should go on for the next three days or so.  It will be pleasant while it lasts...but I expect things to warm up within the week again here in north central Florida.  Not only has it been much warmer than usual, but it has rained considerably as well.  I'm starting to wonder whether we'll ever have a cold, dry winter again.  It's been a few years since I can remember going through one...

The Most Painful Soccer Match I've Ever Watched

Last Sunday night, Mexico's Liga MX, its premier professional soccer league, held the final match in its 2015 Apertura championship playoffs.  The two teams left vying for the title were university-based pro teams UNAM of Mexico City and UANL of Monterrey, usually respectively known simply by their feline nicknames Pumas and Tigres.  The final round, as did the earlier ones, consisted of two games, with the contestants taking turns hosting them.  The first leg of this series had been held last week at Monterrey, with Tigres...the team I have been supporting...winning convincingly, 3-0.  Now the championship is based on the two-game aggregate goal total, so with Sunday's match in Mexico City my Tigres had quite a substantial lead.  Very few thought that Pumas could stage a comeback from that much behind.  So I sat down in front of my TV set at 9:30, comfortably and complacently expecting Tigres to easily just coast on to the championship.  I should have known better...

For almost all of the first half (45 minutes) of the Pumas-Tigres finale, Tigres put up a strong defense...as they are know for...and shut out their opponent while maintaining control of the ball most of the time.  As action was winding down, I thought that keeping that 3-0 advantage with only one half to go was a great success on the part of Tigres.  But then, suddenly, with only seconds to go in the half, Pumas somehow managed to slip in a goal.  Now the sum total was 3-1 Tigres.  Not to worry, though...my team still had the big advantage.  That advantage diminished further early in the second half when Pumas came up with another score, making the lead now only 3-2.  For the next 30-35 minutes, it was all about Pumas attacking the goal over and over again, just missing scoring on a number of occassions.  It was painful enough for me to watch this, especially after I originally had though I would have an easy game.  But it did look as if Tigres would hold off Pumas...that is, until once again as THIS half was closing and Pumas scored again, tying it all up 3-3...

Now regulation time had ended and the two teams would have to play two 15-minute overtime periods to determine the winner.  The TV announcers (on UniMas Channel), who all seemed to be on the side of Pumas, were so giddy with excitement that I had to turn down the sound to be able to withstand it all.  Amazingly, Tigres were able to score a goal near the end of the first overtime period, giving them a 4-3 lead.  And they held it well, all the way up to the end of the second overtime period...when they, for a third time, gave up a late goal to Pumas.  That made it 4-4 and the contest was headed to a penalty kick shootout...

By this time I was so frustrated at the way this game had gone that I was convinced that Pumas would eventually win.  But the first Pumas penalty kicker failed while the Tigres players were excellent in the shootout...Tigres prevailed on penalty kicks 4-2 and somehow managed to hold on and win the championship.  But it sure wasn't very fun to watch...

Starting to Root for My Old Nemesis, the New England Patriots

Yesterday I found myself awkwardly rooting for my old National Football League nemesis, New England, as they faced the Houston Texans.  Normally the Patriots are my least favorite of all the teams...mainly due to the fact that they have been consistently successful winning the same division in which "my" Miami Dolphins reside.  But now that they have finally lost at least once this season (an undefeated Pat season had started to become a scary possibility) and have already clinched their AFC East Division (in which the Dolphins are still struggling just to get out of the cellar), I found myself in a situation where I was pulling for them to win a game.  For the Texans, at 6-6, were barely leading their AFC South Division over 6-7 Indianapolis and 5-8 Jacksonville (after the Jags ran up the score on the Colts in an earlier afternoon game, 51-16).  Since Jax now has a shot at winning this weak division, I wanted Houston to also go to 6-7 to close the gap between them to just one game.  So yes, yesterday I was cheering on ol' Tom Brady, the Gronk, and that pesky Patriot secondary. Happily, they won and the Jaguars are still thick in the playoff hunt.  This might not be the last time I root for New England in a game this season, though...

The Carolina Panthers, a team I generally like...in no small part because of their quarterback Cam Newton...are currently 13-0 and on track to enter the playoffs with an unblemished record.  Should they reach the Super Bowl, the most likely team they'll be facing is...those same New England Patriots.  And here is where another factor comes into play for me: the 1972 Miami Dolphins are the only team in NFL history to run the table and go undefeated in both the regular season and the playoffs.  In subsequent years, there have been some teams, like the 1985 Chicago Bears and the 2007 Patriots, who have come perilously close to duplicating this feat that I...as well as those from that '72 Dolphins team...want to remain exclusively the property of Miami.  So as unlikely as it might have seemed just three weeks ago, I might just find myself holding my nose and rooting in the upcoming Super Bowl for the one team that I really, really dislike...

The Republican Presidential Candidates, Part 1: Donald Trump

As a Democrat certain that I will support that party's eventual nominee, it might not seem very fair of me to describe, compare, and contrast the still high number of aspirants to the Republican presidential nomination in 2016...but you might be interested in how someone on the "other side" sees them.  So here goes, with today's focus on Donald Trump...

The GOP front-runner employs a lot of blustery, overgeneralized speech in concert with a tendency to react in a most personal manner to any criticism he picks up from other candidates, celebrities, or journalists.  In this way he has emulated the childish reality show figures now so popular on TV (like on Jersey Shore, Housewives of Wherever, Kardashians, etc.). This, along with the fact that he discusses the issues with the same finesse as some blue-collar worker informally sitting around on his lunch break talking politics with some of his pals (no disparagement intended here...I'm blue collar, too) gives Trump resonance with a large segment of the population and sets up a clear distinction between himself and the other candidates...in spite of the fact that as a multi-billionaire he is by far the most economically elite of the bunch.  Also, apparently, a lot of folks out there want a strongman ruler whom they can blindly entrust to fix all the problems and make the bad people disappear, a ruler like the Godfather...or the Donald (just leave it all to me, I take care of everything, I make them an offer they can't refuse...and they'll like it).  I don't however, go along with the extreme criticism that he is getting from others who call him a "hater", "racist", or "fascist".  I don't think most of the Republican candidates running against Trump are that much different than he is on the immigration issue, whether discussing that of Mexicans or Syrian/Iraqi refugees.  But the others have learned to carefully couch their words in more ideologically and politically correct ways while Trump is more like a bull in a china shop...

More than anything, Donald Trump is a salesman.  Now, besides marketing real estate or his own television show, he is marketing his candidacy for the U.S. Presidency.  That's just the way he is and does not, as floundering opponent Jeb Bush maintains, in any way mean that he is only an entertainer and not a serious candidate...

More to come on the various GOP candidates, right here on this blog off and on during the next few weeks.  I'll probably also eventually get to the Democrats as well...

Just Finished Reading Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

In my mind, I had already put fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson on something like a pedestal after reading his Mistborn series, not to mention the incredible way he managed to finish the late Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series.  So when I heard that he had begun a new, long fantasy series I jumped right on into it, in spite of being a little burned out on the genre from having read so much of it recently.  Sanderson's current project is The Stormlight Archive, and he has only written two books in it so far.  A while back I read Book # 1, titled The Way of Kings.  And now I've just finished the second one, a monstrously long book (1088 pages) called Words of Radiance...

Like many other writers in the fantasy and science fiction genres, Brandon Sanderson has created his own special universe in which special rules and sciences apply.  In Mistborn, the characters who were "allomancers" could burn within themselves various metals that they had ingested, giving them special powers in the process.  In the universe of Words of Radiance, gemstones, light emanating from conscious superstorms (hence "stormlight" in the series title), and cognitive entities called "spren" impart to the heroes (and their foes) enhanced abilities.  Aside from the "science", Sanderson also depicts the societies with their own norms, taboos, and prejudices...very allegorical to what we have in our own real world.  For example, people with light-colored eyes are treated as a "higher" order than those with dark eyes, clearly an analog to how folks have been judged by their skin color here.  And with women, one of their hands is designated as the "safe hand", which must always be concealed in the presence of others...what rules of modesty do we practice in our world that might seem irrational to another brought up in a different culture?  Also, in Sanderson's world, reading, writing, and scholarship are reserved almost exclusively for women...men are continually having to look for women to read to them since they are mostly illiterate...

The three main protagonists through which the narrative is usually told are still Kaladin, Shallan, and Dalinar...as they were in the first book.  The narrative builds up throughout Words of Radiance to a showdown in the Broken Plains between the forces of humanity, led by Dalinar, and the Parshendi, humanoids who possess the ability to transform themselves into different forms...with the latest manifestation being of a very sinister nature.  Some of the human characters are also finding themselves transforming into something new...yet old as well: the Knights Radiant, who in millenia past had defended the world against the Void-Bringers, agents of darkness which the Parshendi increasingly seem to be...

This series contains a lot of prophecy and history, often cryptically written or spoken, as is usually the case in this genre.  Dreams and their interpretations figure into the story, another standard feature.  In spite of all of the innovative features of his new series, above everything I like the way Brandon Sanderson deeply developed his characters to show their personalities, histories, and ongoing struggles.  I'm looking forward to the next book, set to come out next year...

Running Woes More Mental Than Physical

I have noticed recently that if I run while listening to my favorite music...usually from my MP3 player... then the time passes more pleasantly and I am not as aware of the psychological toll that the stress of covering long distances takes.  The same can be said for running while listening to audio books...also from my MP3 player.  The fact that my evaluation of how difficult or easy a particular run was depends so much on a distraction like music or a story tells me that most of my impediments in running right now are mental and not physical in nature.  That's a hopeful conclusion, and I also believe that with the generally cooler temperatures this time of year, along with the realization that I need to re-accustom myself to road running, my future looks promising.  I don't think I'll be venturing into marathon races anytime soon, but next month's Ocala Half-Marathon is looking more and more like a certainty and less and less like just a remote possibility...

I've also come to the conclusion that, concerning running, less can be better...especially regarding my old habit of running on consecutive days.  I'm giving that a change, now running on alternate days and giving my body a chance to recover, heal, and grow.  Also, I will be resuming an old strategy, picked up from marathon great Jeff Galloway, by inserting regular walking breaks within my long training runs...

Watching Some Sports Difficult if Not Impossible

I am a soccer fan, something you doubtless already know if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time.  I can watch the English Premier League Saturdays and Sundays on TV by tuning in to NBC Sports (Gainesville's Cox Channel 33), NBC (Channel 9), or USA (Channel 29).  When I want to watch the Mexican Liga MX matches, I depend on Univision (Channel 40).  For games in Germany's Bundesliga, three Fox Sports channels (62,70, and 267) carry them.  And the MLS season, just completed, had games shown on ESPN and Fox Sports.  I've gotten into the habit of checking my television schedule guide to search for games shown on these different channels.  Much to my dismay, though, I have often been "shut out" of soccer action while sports such as auto racing, boxing, UFC (a combination of boxing, kick-fighting, and wrestling), and poker (called a sport...REALLY?) are featured.  And then I considered that, on the whole, I have little to complain about as I usually get to watch a lot of soccer, anyway.  But then it occurred to me: where is the tennis coverage?

I can follow a sport like tennis, where the ball is visible and the action is at a pace I can follow...unlike ice hockey, which I've tried on numerous occasions to watch while never quite knowing where the puck actually is at any given moment (an affliction with which the camera operator also seems to chronically suffer).  Not only is the flow in hockey too fast and the puck so small that it is usually concealed among the players, but a whole section of the playing rink is blocked from view by the near wall.  This sport, along with auto racing, fighting in its various manifestations, and poker are either too painful, boring, or impossible for me to follow, but they dominate the programming on many sports channels...

Every time I see a network like ESPN showing hours of poker programming, I wonder about all of the legitimate sports that they could have been showing instead.  Sports like tennis, rugby, Australian rules football, and cricket, to name a few of the more entertaining to watch.  And even if some of these seem too exotic to show on ESPN, they can do better than poker.  I know, I know, the networks will say that they just show what people like to watch.  But if they showed more women's sports, like pro basketball and pro soccer, I think viewers would flock to this as well.  And maybe women's deserved pay for excelling in their professional leagues would finally begin to climb to a respectable level instead of the pittance that it is right now...

Ran the 6.5 Mile "Lumber Around the Levee" Race in Micanopy Today

Alachua County recently acquired some wetland areas lying between the town of Micanopy and Paynes Prairie.  At Barr Hammock Preserve, just off Wacahoota Road on the west side of I-75, Off-the-Grid Racing just held a 6.5-mile trail run on a looping levee...hence its name "Lumber Around the Levee".  The raised, mostly grassy trail cuts through low-lying marshlands and prairies, and we were warned about possibly encountering alligators and snakes during this morning's race.  There were only about thirty runners, making this easily the lowest-attended race I've ever run.  I say "race" tongue-in-cheek, though, because my goal here was just to cover the distance without trying to set any personal records or beat anyone.  That's good, because I did just that...I finished in 1:03:12, just a little faster than a 10 minutes per mile pace...and the great majority of the runners were much faster.  Even with that, though, at about the 5-mile mark and on to the end, I had some difficulty with the high 85% humidity...although the temperature was a pleasant 61.  It was overcast the entire time, which eliminated any glare.  I didn't see any 'gators, but there was one big, nasty-looking snake on the trail about a half-mile past the starting line...

My one mishap during the race came at about 2.2 miles, where I tripped over a tree root and went sprawling forward onto the ground.  My falling instincts must be pretty good for I came out of it none the worse except for some scrapes around my left knee...it was more embarrassing then anything else. I'm glad I got to run this event after missing two other local races last month.  Still, I'm going to need to do better if I want to be successful in either of the local area's two half-marathons coming up in January and February...

Here is the website for the race at Off-the-Grid Racing.  One of the attendants at the end of the race told me that they would be posting the race results on it as soon as they could...

Terrorists Want Suspicion Cast Upon All Muslims

With Wednesday's attack by a couple against a special needs care center in San Bernardino, California that resulted, at present count, in 14 deaths and 21 injuries, I feel that I am beginning to understand something fundamental about the aims of radical Islam, rooted in the Wahhabi sect of the Arabian peninsula (started in the 1700s, more than 1,000 years after the start of Islam, ostensibly to return to the "fundamental" roots of the religion), as expressed in terrorist acts concocted by ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and their followers...

The man in the attack was a five-year employee of the company who angrily left a Christmas party they were holding for the staff, of which he was a part.  That this may have just been an act was shown by evidence that he and his wife, whom he had met while visiting Saudi Arabia two years earlier, had already been planning something for some time.  They were suited up for combat and had 2 automatic rifles, 2 handguns, and at their apartment were 12 bombs and 1600+ rounds of ammunition, factors that express premeditation and extensive preparation for their murderous acts. The initial scenario of a worker disgruntled with his colleagues turned out to just be a smoke-screen for the terrorists' true intentions: the man (whose name does not deserve mention) "attended" the party only to scout it out and determine the strategy that he and his accomplice would employ.  Leaving angrily only covered up his true intentions...

ISIS, which Islamic leaders have been disavowing as not being a part of their faith, pejoratively calling it "DAESH", wants their brand of ideology to be seen by the world as being synonymous with Islam. They want to co-opt the entire religion for their own peculiar ideology, and having Muslims everywhere viewed with suspicion of possibly sharing their violent and murderous take on society is an integral part of this strategy...as demonstrated by the nature of these many "isolated" attacks that have recently been perpetrated in disparate locations, with those performing them regularly and openly identifying with Islam and acknowledging ISIS as their authority.  My recommendation is to combat this by engaging the Muslim community, not isolating it, and exchange information with each other regarding our positions and perspectives.  Sure, be secure...but also engage...

Freedom: Two Different Interpretations

When I was a kid in elementary school in the 1960s, I caught on quickly to the stark difference, repeatedly ground into us, between living in communist countries like China or the Soviet Union (almost always then simply called "Russia").  We were free and they weren't, period.  So, to us in our immaturity, freedom meant being able to do or say whatever we wanted without suffering any negative consequences therefrom.  After all, it's a free country, isn't it?  Later on, some of us learned (while some didn't) that the "freedom" we enjoyed here in America was that the GOVERNMENT could not restrict our speech, movements, and associations and that, apart from the state not coming down on us (as long as we didn't break any laws, that is), our behavior did carry the potential for negative consequences.  That's called "growing up" and becoming a mature member of adult society.  Nevertheless, as a kid I never considered my "freedom" as a right in the way that many in the current "Millenial" and "Generation X" generations see it, for the term has two disparate meanings...

Freedom can mean the ability to make one's own choices in life...that's the way I've understood it and lived it out in my life, for better or for worse.  But freedom can also be interpreted as freedom "from" things that people don't like...like hate speech and writing, or even anything that violates whatever the current political correctness codes happen to be. Comedian Chris Rock has stated that he won't perform his often politically incorrect act, full of biting satire as it is, on college campuses anymore because of the self-righteous mindset of the students, so many of whom regarding anything that pokes fun at a segment of the population as bigoted, racist, or even hateful.  After some isolated incidents of racism at the University of Missouri recently, one of the students, who happened to African-American, was interviewed on TV.  She expressed that she felt she was being discriminated against...the culmination of the interview revealed that this feeling was because some bigoted white moron had written something racist publicly somewhere and that the University's president hadn't reacted vehemently enough against this provocation.  I'm sorry, but this country has had enough racism in its history (and, sadly, in the real news of today: look at the police killings of unarmed blacks, over and over again...even when they are already in custody) for people to act as if they have some kind of inalienable right to be "free" of others offending them.  If you are offended, then say so...but it is not yet a crime to be offensive.  If and when offensive speech does become illegal, we will become like those totalitarian nations of my youth that we used to be so dead-set against...

My Preferences for the 2015 College Football Playoffs

Up until last Saturday night's debacle against cross-state rivals Florida State, I was closely following the late-season college football games affecting top-ranked teams.  My goal in this was to "will" the schools that were ranked higher than the University of Florida in the polls to lose, giving the Gators a better chance at making the four-team championship playoffs.  This all, of course, hinged on Florida somehow winning both against FSU and in next Saturday's Southeastern Conference championship game.  But recently my Gators have essentially been "half-gators", with only the defensive half of the team playing at championship level.  That was sadly also the case in the contest with the Seminoles, with the Tallahassee team winning 27-2.  But now that any hope of Florida contending for the national championship, with their 10-2 record (and #18 ranking), has ended, I have now been freed to root for the rest of the top teams based on my preferences instead of calculating which ones threatened the Gators' chances the most.  So now...

So now I'm looking at the rankings and I see some teams I like...and some I traditionally loathe.  Right now, in ranking order, it's Clemson, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Iowa going to the playoffs were the season to end right now.  But since we have one more weekend, loaded with conference championship playoffs (including severe underdog Florida against Alabama in the SEC), that picture is likely to change.  North Carolina could upset Clemson in the ACC and Iowa will probably (at least I hope) lose to Michigan State in the Big Ten.  Oklahoma won the Big 12 title in a conference without a playoff...chances are they already have a playoff spot reserved for themselves...unfortunately...since they're one of the teams I usually vehemently root against.  And further on the outside in the rankings are Ohio State, and Stanford.  Ohio State won't play next weekend either, since they were eliminated in the regular season for the Big Ten title by Michigan State.  But all this aside, what are my preferences among the possible teams still in the playoff hunt? Here are MY rankings by preference:

1 Michigan State
2 Clemson
3 North Carolina (assuming beating Clemson gives them a spot...a stretch)
4 Iowa
5 Stanford (very unlikely to make the playoffs)
6 Ohio State
7 Oklahoma
8 (easily my least favorite) Alabama

My November 2015 Running Report

In November I found myself getting sick a couple of times...nothing serious...but they both happened when I thought I might participate in local running races.  So my running this month was strictly on my own, a solitary venture as the nature of this activity inevitably is, anyway.  Still, I do have a desire to get out in public among other runners and test my endurance in a more social setting.  December should present several opportunities for me to do this...

My November totals: Total mileage was 228.  My longest accumulated distance during a day was 14 miles, spread over the day with several shorter runs.  My longest single run during the month was 4.6 miles.  In spite of feeling under the weather for a few days in November (not to mention my right knee hurting for a time in the middle of the month), I managed to run on every day...even if it was for a negligible amount for some of them...

The weather is turning cooler, albeit very grudgingly.  I'd still like to be able to run the Ocala and Gainesville (Five Points) half-marathon events next January and February, respectively.  I'm in pretty good shape to accomplish this, but I'd like to get through a December race...a shorter one...to give me some more confidence in getting back on the road...

Gator Football Fans Jolted Back to Reality with Tough Loss

The 2015 University of Florida football team under first-year head coach Jim McElwain had modest expectations, with much of the team left over from the previous coach's mediocre efforts.  They were known to have a strong returning defense, but the offense...mainly due to a historically weak offensive line...had been erratic at best and embarrassing at worst.  With redshirt freshman quarterback Will Grier set to start this season, prospects were hopeful.  Still, one early season poll had them ranked #40 and no one picked them to win the Southeastern Conference's Eastern Division.  But instead...and I believe this had a lot to do with Coach McElwain putting discipline and teamwork as high priorities...they overachieved and won that divisional title, the first one for the Gators since 2009 during the Urban Meyer era.  Some of their wins were exciting, some ugly...and some, like the ones over Mississippi, Missouri, and Georgia, impressive.  But after that Mississippi victory, Grier tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs and was immediately suspended for a year...bringing in second-stringer Treon Harris to step up as starter.  Harris, who has a proven big-play capability, nevertheless tends to panic when pursued out of the pocket and sometimes has difficulty making needed quick decisions when standing in the pocket on passing plays.  Grier had more of a quick release, which was needed with a deficient line that could not hold back a normal defensive rush, much less safety blitzes.  What little UF had on their offensive line got worse when they suffered multiple injuries to their starters. Still, until last night's game against Florida State, Florida was 10-1 and could have made the national championship playoffs had they won that game and the following one, the SEC championship game.  But after stumbling through three tough games against markedly inferior opponents, the Gators could not get by a better Seminole team and lost 27-2.

I feel a little sorry for Coach McElwain in that he originally saw this season as one of rebuilding and putting his imprint on the team.  When Florida kept winning and winning, this put them into a championship run and correspondingly may have unfairly raised their fans' expectations of them.  So, with this loss, as deflating as it may have been, McElwain can now just focus on preparing his team to play their best against heavily-favored Alabama in the SEC title game without the unrealistic pressure to win.  I am happy with his performance this season and what he did with what was available.  Ultimately, of course, Jim McElwain will be judged not only by how well he did this first year, but also how well (or poorly) he and his staff do in the next couple of years as they compete against other colleges for top recruits (especially with regard to rebuilding that tattered offensive line)...and of course how well he develops the talent of the players once they are on the team. Oh, and a halfway-decent placekicker would do nicely, too, thank you...

This Blog's Search Engine and Labels

One of the interesting features about writing a blog using Google's Blogger is that you or I can search past articles for any references I have used in any of them by entering the information into the search engine box on the upper left corner of the blog.  With this search, only the contents of my blog will be combed over, giving me a way to go back to any time in my seven and a half years-worth of 2,700+ articles and find a topic or reference that I know I had written about before but can't pinpoint the exact time I did it...

Another way of gathering together similarly-themed blog articles is to look at the bottom of any article where you can find labels identifying areas that pertain to the particular article.  For example, at the end of yesterday's article, which I titled "Soccer and Football Contrasted", I inserted the labels SOCIETY, SPORTS, and TELEVISION...sports as a label was obvious, but in the context of watching them on TV...and I made a social commentary at the end. If I click on any of these labels, I will then get a series of blog articles also featuring that word as a label.  This article I'm writing today naturally uses BLOG as a label.  So labels can also function as way to create a more coherent picture of my blog topics...which on a day-to-day basis can be quite disparate...although in a more general way than if I were to use its search engine...

Keep in mind, though, that the search engine and labels are only available on the web version of Blogger...if you use the mobile app, then you would need to change to the appropriate format by clicking on "web version" at the bottom of the article to use these helpful searching and organizing devices...

Soccer and Football Contrasted

Yesterday I was going back and forth on my TV between soccer and football games.  The action in soccer was continuous, with only small pauses in the case of injury or a foul.  No official replays, no commercial breaks other than at halftime.  With the football contest, on the other hand, the great majority of the time was spent between plays, with many of those plays painfully scrutinized for prolonged periods of time by officials.  Time-outs abounded, and with each change of possession came an added opportunity to squeeze in another commercial or two...at times it seemed that I was watching more commercials than football.  But even without all the timeouts, official replays, and commercial breaks, for most of the time in the football game nothing was happening.  This gave me plenty of time to go to the kitchen and get more food or to take bathroom breaks at my convenience.  That was not possible during the soccer match, for just a few seconds away from the television carried the risk of missing a crucial play...even a goal (this has happened to me a number of times).  Soccer requires riveted, sustained attention, while (American) football can be on the boob tube and ignored half the time without missing anything substantial.  I wonder if this difference reveals anything significant about the way we tend to think in our culture, with our ever-shorter attention spans and ever-increasing distractions.  You can watch a sport like football and dally in other activities at the same time...

Happy Thanksgiving, At Home With Family

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!  The family's all together here and we're about to feast on a wonderful meal that Melissa created.  I'm off from work today...which turns out well in more than one way: I'm recovering from a cold that was pretty severe late last night.  I had been planning to run this morning in a 10K race here in Gainesville, called the Turkey Trot...I ran it last year and in 2012...but I decided a lot of sleep would be a better strategy.  And I do feel much better right now, although I recognize that I'm still going to need some more rest later on...

There are a lot of soccer matches being shown on TV today, with Europa League games on the Fox Sports channels and Mexican Liga MX playoff games on one or more of the Spanish-language stations.  Not that I plan to just sit there the whole time watching soccer...but the one on FS1 (Channel 62 in Gainesville on Cox Cable) between Qarabag of Azerbaijan and England's Tottenham is turning out to be a really good contest...

Mexican Premier Liga MX Soccer Regular Season Ends, Playoffs to Start

The Mexican premier league in professional soccer, called Liga MX, has completed its Fall 2015 regular season, which they call "Apertura".  Now it's time for the playoffs, which involve the top eight finishers out of the eighteen teams.  This past 2015 Spring, or "Clausura",  champions Santos Laguna narrowly avoided finishing in last place with a win in their final regular season game and won't be participating.  The top finisher was UNAM, a university-based team based in Mexico City and more commonly known as "Pumas".  The other Mexico City team and by far the more popular...like the Yankees over here in baseball...is Club America and, as usual, once again made the playoffs.  As did UANL Tigres of Monterrey, my favorite in this league.  Toluca had an unusually good season, and Puebla, Leon, Chiapas "Jaguares", and Vera Cruz round out the playoff picture.  Puebla's achievement is noteworthy in that, at the close of the 2015 Clausura regular season, they barely avoided relegation (aka demotion) to the next lower league (called Ascenso)...

Here is the schedule for the opening matches in the first round.  Each round consists of two games between the contending teams, with the team winning the aggregate total of goals advancing to the next round...

Wednesday, November 25
Leon @ Club America
Chiapas @ Tigres

Thursday, November 26
Toluca @ Puebla
Pumas @ Vera Cruz

I'm not sure if any English-language TV channels will be showing any of the games...probably not.  And I'll have to wait until later to see how the Spanish-language channels cover them...I'm hoping that I'll get to watch at least some of them...

JFK Assassinated 52 Years Ago This Date

On this date 52 years ago, our 35th President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was assassinated while on an early Friday afternoon motorcade down the streets of downtown Dallas, Texas as crowds of well-wishers welcomed and cheered him and his beautiful wife Jackie.  The event forever changed the politics and history of this country...and condemned to death more than 58,000 Americans in the ensuing Vietnamese "police action"...many of them draftees forced by the government to serve in the succeeding Commander-in-Chief Lyndon Johnson's war...a war that he knew in advance he couldn't win, as his own recorded words attest...Nixon then dragged it out four more years after he was elected.  As ill-advised as I believe George W. Bush's 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq was, it pales in terms of the callousness and dishonesty of Johnson's actions.  This hindsight alone is enough to make me grieve Kennedy's death, but back then in November, 1963 people in general just knew that they had lost a good man and a leader whom they respected, admired, and liked.  I myself at the time didn't even know that: I had just turned seven and was in the second grade...

On that fateful day in 1963, I was a student at West Hollywood, Florida's Boulevard Heights Elementary School, in Miss Etling's second grade class, which included future Nova High classmates James Azar and Clint Morris.  In subsequent days, we would all have to go sit in the back of the cafeteria/auditorium while she would, as the director, rehearse the school's upcoming Christmas program ad nauseam.  But this day, we had just eaten our lunch there and returned to our room when a kid from a classroom across the hall came over to tell our teacher the horrible news:  President Kennedy had just been shot.  No one knew at that point if he was still alive, and a debate started floating among us as to whether he had been shot in the back or the eye.  It wasn't until after school, when I got home, that I received the full news of his death: my mother had the TV tuned continually in to Channel 4, which then was the CBS affiliate in Miami.

At the time of John Kennedy's death, I remember recognizing that our president was a man named Kennedy...but I had known nothing more about him.  Nevertheless, in my personal memory this is the earliest ongoing news story about which, as a little kid, I was aware.  Many years later, though, I recalled an event from a year earlier, while I was in the first grade.  As a class, we'd had fire drills before, but one day we were all lined up and exited the classroom and made to walk down the interior hall of the building.  The teacher then had each of us get on our knees next to the wall...and then put our hands over our bowed-down heads.  Having established that we knew the procedure should the real need to do this happened, we were marched back into the classroom...with no explanation ever given.  This certainly was no fire drill.  It was only much later, looking back, that I realized that this must have occurred in October of 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis when a real danger existed of a nuclear attack against the U.S., especially on South Florida.  The tough, but ultimately peaceful way that President Kennedy had managed this crisis is another reason to grieve his untimely passing...  

Just Finished Reading Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train

Usually, each Sunday morning while I'm perusing the "Life" section of my Gainesville Sun newspaper in search of the Sunday Jumble puzzle, I browse through the weekly New York Times bestseller list. For several months ongoing, Paula Hawkins has had her novel The Girl on the Train on it...it occurred to me that this would be a book worth looking into.  So I checked it out from the library and just finished reading it: I'm glad I did...

The Girl on the Train is a mystery "whodunit" set in the present time in London.  Rachel, an embittered divorcee whose ex-husband Tom had left her for another woman, Anna, is heavily dependent on alcohol as she makes her daily train rides from her apartment to and from downtown London.  Along the way at a special point in the route, she can look out the train window and see the street where she and Tom used to live.  Four doors down the street from her old home, there is another couple that she becomes accustomed to observing...she dubs them "Jason" and "Jesse" and imagines that they have an idyllic, perfect marriage.  The story takes off into a suspenseful mystery when she discovers their true identities, Scott and Megan...as well as their troubled lives...

If you ever saw the old early 1950s Alfred Hitchcock movie Rear Window starring Jimmy Stewart and Grace Kelly, you might get a feel for this novel.  The protagonist in each case is something of a vicarious voyeur, peering into the lives of others who are...at least initially...unaware that they are being watched.  And in each story, there is a disappearance, with the hero/heroine struggling to convince others that there is something wrong going on.  I assure you that the ending of The Girl on the Train, like Rear Window, is very exciting and climactic...

Reading The Girl on the Train, because of its setting in England and its depiction of life there, reminds me of another book I've recently undertaken: Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's venture into more "adult" literature, titled The Casual Vacancy.  But whereas Rowling, in my opinion, muddled up her story by introducing too many characters early on, Hawkins kept the numbers of players in her drama to a minimum...very smart.  Instead, she examined the events through the eyes of three people: Rachel, Megan, and Anna.  By doing this, the author was able to probe more deeply into their feelings and motivations, making The Girl on the Train a good psychological mystery...

The word is out that filming is underway for a film adaptation to The Girl on the Train and that it is scheduled for release some time late in 2016.  But I would recommend reading the book first: because of the extensive introspection of the main characters, I suspect that a lot may be lost in the translation of this interesting story to the screen...

My Blog Writing Sparse of Late

I haven't felt like writing on this blog for the past few days...I think it's due to a number of reasons.  For one, I don't have a regular time and place set aside for reflection and writing.  I've never written very much at home: sitting out in public has served the function of adding just enough stress for me, a reclusive introvert by nature, to rivet my thoughts to the task at hand...much of my blog writing has come out of this kind of setting.  I wonder whether going out after my work shift ends at midnight and sitting in a cafe or coffee shop might provide a venue for writing, but most places have closed by then.  There's a Starbucks here in Gainesville on Archer Road that doesn't close until 1 AM, and it's conveniently close enough to my workplace to at least give it a try.  Unfortunately, though, in the past I've gone there and it was too packed with customers taking up all of the seating.  Maybe after midnight, however, it might lighten up a bit...

Another reason for me not having written recently is that the news I've been hearing of late has been depressing, to say the least.  People I know are getting sick and dying around me...and one of them was an apparently healthy young man, a freshman at the University of Florida, who collapsed on the track and died.  And then there are the numerous terrorist attacks around the world...all committed by people claiming to be Muslim but whom other Muslims disavow as not acting in the name of Islam...although the perpetrators are clearly making the opposite claim.  What can I say about all of this, except that people need to get their heads on straight and begin to see things for what they really are...

And possibly the greatest reason for my recent absence from the blogosphere is that I feel a sense of disconnect between my writings and those reading them.  I like the open, public access nature of this blog, but at the same time often feel that I could accomplish the same thing for myself by just writing everything and saving it all to a file without ever posting.  In a world and time when so many of us are despairing of a lack of privacy, I wonder whether an opposite kind of despair is also rising: the creeping feeling of our own transitory lives and that what most of us have to say carries little value to others, many of whom openly express interest in our lives and welfare but are disinterested in taking even just a couple of minutes to discover our own opinions and feelings...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "V" is for Vengeance

Sue Grafton has completed through the letter "X" in her Kinsey Millhone alphabet mystery series (with a letter in each title)...going through this series in alphabetical order, I just finished reading "V" is for Vengeance, published in 2011 but set back in 1988.  The time compression for this series, begun in 1982, is due to the fact that the books are published a few years apart but the stories are spaced only a few months apart.  In this last one I just read, California private eye Kinsey gets herself involved uncovering an organized retail theft ring, complete with the genre's angles of a "noble" mob boss type with his own set of "values",  a violent, out-of-control figure in the crime family, a possibly corrupt cop, a mystery informant, an overaggressive, annoying news reporter, and a good dose of romantic intrigue between the key players in this drama.  And yes, there is a murder to solve...actually, more than one...and Kinsey once again has to contend with a client who first hires her as a private investigator but then continually meddles and undermines her work with his own ongoing theories, criticisms, and attacks on her personality and motives...

As stories go, "V" is for Vengeance ranks right up there with Sue Grafton's better efforts.  Still, I don't exactly care for her recent trend in taking the story's narrative and perspective out of Kinsey Millhone's hands and sometimes showing things from the viewpoint of other characters.  As far as I am concerned, the chief attraction for me with this series is Kinsey's personality and way of handling things...especially the numerous difficulties that crop up in her investigations, as well as in her personal life: she should always be the originating point in the narrative.  That having been said, "V" is for Vengeance is a worthwhile venture, and I recommend it...

Missed Lack of League Soccer Action This Past Weekend

As many of my readers would agree, much of the initial footage of Friday's Muslim-extremist terrorist attacks in Paris centered around an exhibition (or "Friendly") soccer match going on between the French and German national teams.  Now, for most of the time, national teams aren't playing each other, as the various leagues are in the middle of their regular seasons.  I had been looking forward to watching more league play this past weekend, wanting to see "my" English Premier favorites Arsenal and Leicester City play their games, along with some German Bundesliga and Mexican Liga MX action.  But when I saw that a France-Germany game was going on Friday... well, besides the horrendous nature of the news of the terrorism...I sadly realized that the leagues would all be taking a break until the following weekend.  So instead of finding a lot of soccer on TV as I am accustomed (especially on Saturday morning and early afternoon), I instead ended up watching more (American) football then usual.  I did see a soccer match between Hungary and Norway, but I much prefer the league play.

North America's Major League Soccer, the premier league here, is in the middle of their playoffs, currently at the conference championship stage.  Round Two of the series between Dallas and Portland in the West, and Columbus and the New York Red Bulls in the East, are upcoming...either this coming weekend or the next.  I've found the playoffs this year in MLS to be very exciting.  I'm pulling for Portland to win it all, but I admit they're probably not the strongest team left...

A Rarity: All Three NFL Florida Teams Win Today

If you're a Floridian who supports your National Football Team based on where you live, today has to be something special: all three in-state teams won their games today.  Tampa Bay beat Dallas 10-6, Jacksonville beat Baltimore 22-20, and Miami beat Philadelphia 20-19.  Not exactly blowouts, any of them...but I'll take the victories these days any way I can.  Consider the last five seasons...

Including this ongoing 2015 regular season, here are the regular season win-loss records for the three Florida NFL teams:

TAMPA BAY
2011  4-12
2012  7-9
2013  4-12
2014  2-14
2015  4-5
TOTAL:  21-52

JACKSONVILLE
2011  5-11
2012  2-14
2013  4-12
2014  3-13
2015  3-6
TOTAL:  17-56

MIAMI
2011  6-10
2012  7-9
2013  8-8
2014  8-8
2015  4-5
TOTAL:  33-40

Note from the above that, in the last five years, NONE of the Florida teams have enjoyed a winning season.  Sure, the Dolphins finished at .500 in 2013 and 2014, but they choked at the end of each season when they were in a good position to make the playoffs.  Will any of them have a winning season this year?  I rather doubt it.  But it was still sweet to see them all manage to win today...

Thoughts on Health, Paris, Football, Reading

As I sit here in my living room, enjoying the fragrance of one of the autumn-scented candles that Melissa picked up the other day at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, along with the open-windowed cool breeze finally blessing us on this mid-November Saturday afternoon, I realize that it's been a while since I wrote on my blog.  Ever since the 11th, I have been feeling out of sorts physically, as if some sort of general inflammation has been affecting my entire body, causing headaches, localized pains, and a feeling of "blah".  Whatever the cause, the problem seems to have packed up and left...possibly aided by my having slept a good deal last night...

The big news story is the ISIS terrorist attack on Paris, France yesterday.  After the coordinated attacks by at least eight thugs on civilian targets like a roadside cafe and a music concert, more than 120 people have been killed...and there is concern that more trouble may be upcoming.  I find this focus on France, and recently even Russia with that Egyptian airplane bombing, extremely ironic since it was these two countries back in early 2003 that were in the forefront of international opposition to the U.S. invading Sunni-governed Iraq...the sect of Islam that ISIS claims to follow.  But this terror organization appears to be ultimately founded on hate, evil, and bloodlust...they just clothe themselves with their outward signs of religion to disguise their base nature.  And despite yesterday's attack in France, their biggest victims by far have been peaceful members of the Muslim faith that they pretend to follow...

On a lighter note, today is college football Saturday and the Gators are right now playing South Carolina in Columbia.  Steve Spurrier's no longer their coach, having walked off the team in mid-season because they weren't having a good year...that just doesn't sound right to me.  If Florida wins today against the Gamecocks, they'll still be in the hunt for one of those four post-season national championship playoff spots...but their recently-sputtering offense had better pick up if they want to have any chance of reaching that level of football glory this 2015 season...

I did manage to finish reading a book recently: The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman, the final book in the His Dark Materials fantasy/science fiction trilogy.  I had read it before a few years ago and had then come to the conclusion that the author had left room for further spin-off novels from this series.  Having just reread it, I have to revise that opinion: Pullman sealed things up quite well with this final volume...

On Again, Off Again Classical Music Radio Station Back On Again

Back in June, I reported that WUFT-FM was planning to begin broadcasting its classical music station, formerly only available on HD radio and the Internet, on the FM band.  Then, last month I heard it on the radio, on 102.7.  After noting this on my October 8th blog entry, the station then promptly went off the air...making me wonder whether it wasn't just a mistake on their part.  But this afternoon it was once again back on the air...

Sometimes when I'm driving, I like to hear classical music as a soothing background sound...the "new" station is a blessing.  This time around, I'm hoping that it will remain on the air...

Asimov Misses Kindle's Advent by Some 26,000 Years

Sometimes I am amazed at how on-target science fiction writers from the past have been able to predict future developments in technology...and sometimes I'm just as amazed when they are terribly far off-the-mark.  Take, for example, the late Isaac Asimov's 1982 novel Foundation's Edge.  It is set some 26 thousand years into the future, when faster-than-light space travel (through "hyperspace") has been available for humanity for almost all of that time...and nuclear technology has developed on a "micro" scale.  The story's main characters of councilman Golan Trevize and historian Janov Pelorat are about to embark in space on a ship that is mentally driven, with their quest being the rediscovery of the planet Earth.  Pelorat is a rather stuffy old academician, and he wants to take his materials with him on the trip.  In italics, I have provided a short excerpt from the book at this point:

Golan Trevize asked Professor Pelorat, "Are you ready?"

"With this I am", Pelorat said and held up a square wafer about twenty centimeters to the side and encased in a jacket of silvery plastic.  Trevize was suddenly aware that Pelorat had been holding it since they had left his home, shifting it from hand to hand and never putting it down, even when they had stopped for a quick breakfast.

"What's that, Professor?"

"My library.  It's indexed by subject matter and origin and I've gotten it all into one wafer.  If you think this ship is a marvel, how about this wafer?  A whole library!  Everything I have collected!  Wonderful!  Wonderful!"

The "wafer"? I don't know how you would call it, but to me it's nothing less than a Kindle, which came out in 2007...only 25 years after the publication of Foundation's Edge.  Yet the good professor compares its level of technology favorable to the hyperspace-capable spaceship...something that in our own present minds has to be thought of as next-to-impossible.  I don't think that Isaac Asimov, not to mention other science fiction futurist writers of his era, understood the upcoming information technology revolution and how quickly and pervasively it would affect the world.  On the other hand, almost all of them had humankind traveling widely in space by our time and establishing settlements on the moon and other planets...

Rooting Against the Unbeatens in College and NFL Football

It's at about the midpoint in the 2015 National Football League regular season...and about three fourths of the way through the NCAA college football season.  At this point, depending on how my "main" teams, the NFL's Miami Dolphins and the NCAA's University of Florida Gators, are doing, my emphasis on the various games I watch changes.  In both the professional and college leagues, I have my favorites besides the Dolphins and Gators.  But if either team is doing well in a particular year and could use a "boost" by another team losing...even one I usually support...then my loyalties can change.  This year the Miami Dolphins are suffering a mediocre season (so... what's new), destined to go nowhere except home at the end of the regular season.  But the Florida Gators, having clinched the Eastern Division of their Southeastern Conference for the first time since the Urban Meyer/Tim Tebow team of 2009, have a real shot at making the four-team national championship playoffs.  Just winning the rest of the regular season games and the SEC playoff game might accomplish this outright, but there are still some undefeated teams left out there...and I have been rooting for them to lose in order to enhance Florida's prospects for selection.  Even to the point of going against Michigan State, which I have supported over the last few years...so I was delighted to see them upset yesterday 39-38 to Nebraska and becoming a one-loss team (which I can once again support).  I wanted Florida State, a one-loss team and future Gator opponent, to defeat unbeaten and top-ranked Clemson (a school I usually like)...but to no avail.  And the game played between two undefeated teams in the Big 12, TCU and Oklahoma State, was a win for me regardless of the result...but I leaned toward the lower-ranked Cowboys (who prevailed 49-29).  I remember taking an interest in seeing teams ranked ahead of the Gators losing in late-season games back in 2006 and 2008, years that they eventually won the national championship.  It's happening again this year.  But Florida has got to keep on winning, too...that last performance against Vanderbilt had better not be repeated against South Carolina or Florida State, much less the eventual winner (probably Alabama) of the SEC Western Division...

Since Miami doesn't seem interested in making the NFL playoffs this year, regardless who they put in as their head coach, I have a different emphasis affecting the teams I root for late in the season.  Besides supporting secondary teams I like (that seem to have a shot at the playoffs) such as the New York Giants, Seattle, and Green Bay, I am also pulling against any remaining undefeated teams...until they lose at least one game, that is.  This is because I remember the perfect 1972 Miami Dolphins season, a feat that hasn't been matched since (although New England very nearly pulled it off in 2007)...and I don't want any other team to match their accomplishment.  At this writing, Carolina is the only undefeated team left in the National Conference, while three others are without a loss in the American: Denver, Cincinnati, and New England.  Ultimately, at worst we could end up with just one perfect season, but I want everybody to have stumbled at least once.  But should any of the teams manage this near-impossible feat, I'm pulling for Cam Newton's Panthers to do it.  And once again, I'm hoping against hope that the Giants might be able to pull it all together at the end of the year and advance in the playoffs: they seem to be the only ones not intimidated by the Patriots.  Let's see...2007: Giants barely make the playoffs but beat favored Patriots in Super Bowl...2011: Giants barely make the playoffs but beat favored Patriots in Super Bowl...2015: will this be a continuation of the four-year cycle?

Books I'm Currently Reading

I am currently rereading Philip Pullman's fantasy series His Dark Materials.  The first book, The Golden Compass, I read again just recently.  I just finished book number two, titled The Subtle Knife, and am now a little more than halfway through the final one, The Amber Spyglass.  I find Pullman's writing style and presentation a joy to read, and wish others would write stories the way he does.  I am also nearing the end of Sue Grafton's series of short novels based on letters of the alphabet.  My next book, which I'm about to start, is "V" is for Vengeance.  After that, it's "W" and "X"...and then my reading will have caught up with Grafton's writing.  I am also planning to take on a popular 2015 novel: Paula Hawkins' The Girl on the Train, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list for months...

That's the positive side of my reading right now.  On the negative side, I seem to be stuck in a number of books, a couple of them not so good...and a couple of them worthy classics.  The books are Disclosure by Michael Crichton, The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling, Moby Dick by Herman Melville, and Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.  The problem with Disclosure is that I am not only completely out of touch with its main character, with whose developing plight I'm expected to sympathize, but the cutting edge sci-fi aspect to it is outdated...by twenty years.  With The Casual Vacancy, Rowling introduced way too many characters at the very beginning and she hops around in a confusing manner from one of the many subplots to another.  Les Miserables is a good book as I see it, but it is very, very long...and I already know some things that happen to the main characters, not a good inducement to read further.  Melvilles' Moby Dick seems to be the most promising of the lot...I just need to take the time to read it...

Just Finished Reading Sue Grafton's "U" is for Undertow

"U" is for Undertow is novelist Sue Grafton's 21st book (out of presumably 26) in her "alphabet mystery" series, set in the late 1980s in southern California and featuring Kinsey Millhone, a private eye in her late thirties.  I enjoyed the previous "T" book and was looking forward to reading this one.  I wasn't disappointed.  Grafton seems to be fully back into her writing, and this story of a little girl's disappearance back in 1967 from a fenced-in back yard of an upscale neighborhood...and how Kinsey solves it...provides the necessary elements in terms of character development and suspense as to what happened.  This story, unlike many of the others, has Kinsey pretty much staying in her hometown of Santa Teresa; the fact that she recognizes some of the players in her investigation from her old high school years is important.  Along with the mystery of the missing girl, Kinsey uncovers some old mysteries from her childhood past...and discovers a new perspective on her estranged, domineering grandmother...

In "U" is for Undertow, as well as in many of her other books in this series, Sue Grafton seems to take great pleasure in exposing the decadence and feeling of privilege of many people living affluent lifestyles...many if not most of them enjoying the fruits of other people's ideas and labor.  In the hoity-toity Horton Ravine subdivision, where the story is focused, alcoholism, negligence, drug peddling and abuse, and burglary among its residents are presented as almost normal aspects of life...while they take great pains to make themselves look better than everyone else.  I like that about Grafton and have felt, from my childhood school days around snobbish, self-important classmates with rich parents, that many in the "upper" classes are nothing better than leeches on the hard work of others...

Record High Temperatures in Gainesville Today

Saturday afternoon I went outside here in Gainesville to run a little...it was 83 degrees with 53% humidity.  Not all that pleasant and a little hot and muggy for this time of year, but I could take it. Then on Sunday I repeated my run...it was also 83, but the humidity had climbed to 68%. Ugh.  Yesterday I went out to run and the temperature had climbed to 86, with the humidity still in those unpleasant-but-tolerable sixties.  Today I stood outside and was astounded at the heat.  I check my weather app on my phone and discovered that it was 91.  Then I checked that against the record high for Gainesville, Florida on November 3: 88 degrees in 1972!  The average high for this date is only 78!

I had been looking forward to a cooler, dryer November after this past extended hot and wet summer...but it looks as if I'm going to be looking forward a little longer...

K.C. Beats Mets to Win World Series as Harvey Falters in Ninth

I was realistic while watching last night's fifth game in this year's World Series, with Kansas City leading the New York Mets three games to one, with just one more victory needed to capture the 2015 title.  It would be nice for "my" Mets to win at least this game, but I felt that the Royals would eventually win out in the long run.  New York had their ace pitcher Matt Harvey and he was in top form, throwing a four-hit (all singles) shutout through eight innings with just one base-on-balls. With a 2-0 lead to protect, Mets manager Terry Collins had decided to let their closing reliever Jeurys Familia cover the top of the ninth to finish the home win and extend the series to a sixth game in Kansas City.  But upon hearing that he wouldn't be finishing the game, Harvey pitched a minor fit in the dugout and pushed Collins to change his mind.  Collins relented and let Harvey pitch...and disaster ensued. First, he walked the lead-off hitter and then gave up a double, which drove in a run to make it 2-1.  Then, with the damage already done, Collins brought in Familia to protect a one-run lead with no outs and a runner on second.  The second run scored on a throwing error at the plate by the Mets first baseman Duda, and it was 2-2...destined for extra innings.  The Royals went on to score five runs in the twelfth inning and took the World Series, four games to one.

A lot of people are criticizing Collins' decision to let Harvey pitch, but I beg to differ.  His pitch count per inning had remained consistent throughout the game and he had demonstrated continuing control over his placement.  Had Collins put in Familia, who had not exactly been consistent on the mound of late, that might have backfired as well and folks would be saying that he erred in not keeping Harvey in there for the ninth.  It was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't type of situation, and I sympathize with the Mets manager.  Besides, I think that the Kansas City batters had more than a little bit to do with the outcome, regardless which pitcher the Mets ended up using...

Just Finished Reading Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale

From time to time I read the New York Times fiction books bestseller list in my Sunday newspaper, looking for good reading prospects.  I filter out those books that look like parts of series and focus on self-contained stories...as well as books that remain on the list for several weeks.  Until just recently, Kristin Hannah's The Nightingale has been on the bestsellers list for many weeks, and I decided it was time to give it a look.  Besides, by doing it this way before, I got another "bird" book, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, and that one turned out to be a winner as well...

The Nightingale, the title referring to a nickname given to one of the characters, is a historical fiction drama set in France during its Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1945.  The protagonists, from whose perspectives the author presents the story's narrative, alternating one with the other, are sisters Isabelle and Vianne.  Isabelle is bold and lives her life on the edge, by her emotions...while Vianne is cautious and deliberative.  They are conflicted with each other by their actions, as well as by mutual grievances from the past.  But war has come to France, despite all guarantees to the contrary, and the two sisters must deal with the German occupation, each in her own way...

That's about as far as I can go about the story itself without giving away too much, but I can say that Kristin Hannah did a remarkable job with the intensity and depth of her characters, as well as demonstrating that, in times of conflict like war, moral decisions are often not only difficult to make...in some circumstances, they are nearly impossible.  This book was so good that it did something books rarely do...it made me cry.  And that's about all I need to recommend The Nightingale for anyone interested in a good story with memorable characters...and you'll also learn quite a bit about history in the process...

My October 2015 Running Report

The month of October featured me running on a cushioned surface to protect my feet as I recovered from plantar fasciitis in my right foot.  I have also been doing foot stretching exercises to alleviate the problem.  Today I ran a short distance on asphalt, on the road around my block, about .7 mile...and feel no foot pain.  I ran on every day of the month, and amassed 260 miles...

Next month I will step up my outdoor running, which should be more pleasant with the expected cooler fall season temperatures and dryer weather.  There is a half-marathon in Gainesville in the middle of the month, and the Turkey Trot, a 10K race, will be held around Thanksgiving.  Whether or not I run in either of these depends on how well my transition to road running goes in the next couple of weeks...

I Rank The Doors' Songs From Top to Bottom

One of the best rock music acts in the late sixties and early seventies was The Doors, with singer/songwriter Jim Morrison, lead guitarist/songwriter Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, and drummer John Densmore.  They made six studio albums from 1967 to 1971 and generated more than their fair share of controversy before Morrison died in 1971.  When I was growing up at the time, I was only familiar with their singles releases.  My favorite songs of theirs at that time were Touch Me and Love Her Madly.  Now, since I have all albums and have listened to each a number of times, I have my own list of favorites...and not-so-favorites.  Here are all of their songs from the six albums as I personally rank them according to my liking.  After each song, the album it's on is indicated by the following code: The Doors [D], Strange Days [SD], Waiting for the Sun [WS], The Soft Parade [SP], Morrison Hotel [MH], and L.A. Woman [LA].  What are your favorite Doors songs?

1 THE WASP (Texas Radio & the Big Beat) [LA]
2 Peace Frog [MH]
3 Touch Me [SP]
4 Roadhouse Blues [MH]
5 Love Her Madly [LA]
6 Shaman's Blues [SP]
7 Alabama Song [D]
8 Riders on the Storm [LA]
9 Hello I Love You [WS]
10 Runnin' Blue [SP]
11 L.A. Woman [LA]
12 Light My Fire [D]
13 Hyacinth House [LA]
14 Yes the River Knows [WS]
15 Do It [SP]
16 The End [D]
17 Not to Touch the Earth [WS]
18 The Changeling [LA]
19 L'America [LA]
20 Break on Through [D]
21 When the Music's Over [SD]
22 People are Strange [SD]
23 Ship of Fools [MH]
24 I Looked at You [D]
25 Soul Kitchen [D]
26 Five To One [WS]
27 Tell All the People [SP]
28 Take It as It Comes [D]
29 End of the Line [D]
30 Easy Ride [SP]
31 Land Ho! [MH]
32 Queen of the Highway [MH]
33 Strange Days [SD]
34 Moonlight Drive [SD]
35 Summer's Almost Gone [WS]
36 Blue Sunday [MH]
37 Indian Summer [MH]
38 The Spy [MH]
39 My Eyes Have Seen You [SD]
40 The Soft Parade [SP]
41 Cars Hiss By My Window [LA]
42 Waiting for the Sun [MH]
43 Spanish Caravan [WS]
44 Been Down So Long [LA]
45 Twentieth Century Fox[D]
46 You Make Me Real [MH]
47 Love Me Two Times [SD]
48 The Unknown Soldier [WS]
49 Wishful Sinful [SP]
50 Crystal Ship [D]
51 Maggie Mcgill [MH]
52 We Could Be So Good Together [WS]
53 My Wintertime Love [WS]
54 Crawling King Snake [LA]
55 Wild Child [SP]
56 Back Door Man [D]
57 My Wild Love [WS]
58 Unhappy Girl [SD]
59 You're Lost Little Girl [SD]
60 Love Street [WS]
61 I Can't See Your Face in My Mind [SD]
62 Horse Latitudes [SD]

Went to Friends of the Library Book Sale Last Sunday

From last Saturday through yesterday (Oct. 24-28), Gainesville had its twice-a-year Friends of the Library book sale, which always attracts a big crowd.  Back in April, I went there with my son Will on Saturday morning when the sale began...the people at the North Main Street warehouse where it is held were so densely packed that it was nearly impossible to do any effective browsing.  This time around, Will repeated the Saturday morning visit there while I slept in.  Instead, I drove around on Sunday afternoon, found a parking space close to the site, and, although there were still many people there, I found that I could maneuver around the facility.  I needn't have bothered, though: I chose the three books I wanted to buy (for the grand sum of one dollar) at the first table I reached, marked "Science Fiction and Fantasy".  These books were Disclosure by Michael Crichton, The Winds of Altair by Ben Bova, and Expanded Universe by Robert Heinlein.  Disclosure doesn't exactly fit into the sci-fi genre of fiction, but since the author had other works in that area (like Andromeda Strain, Prey, and Jurassic Park), that's where it was stocked.  Ben Bova is an author that I've heard good things about but haven't yet read.  And Expanded Universe is a collection of short science fiction stories and essays by Robert Heinlein, one of the greatest science fiction writers of all time.  I've begun reading Disclosure, published in 1993, and already I can see that it is seriously outdated.  The novel deals with the development of computer software technology and the vision of using CD-ROMs to store massive amounts of data. On the other hand, the idea of virtual reality technology, which seems for some reason to be lagging behind in its development and marketing in our "real" world, is being pushed in the story (back in 1993) as something about to explode upon the scene...

The books should be fun reading, and I'm looking forward to reading some of the views of Heinlein on various issues...

Just Finished Reading Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

When, after more than fifty intervening years before author Harper Lee published Go Set a Watchman, the sequel to her famous To Kill a Mockingbird, I became aware of just how embedded within the American psyche the original story had become, I finally got around to reading it for myself, never having seen the movie adaptation starring Gregory Peck.  Worthy of an almost universal reading assignment in high school English classes, somehow I had avoided such an assignment during my tenure as a student in the early 1970s...

To Kill a Mockingbird is told in the first person by the character of Jean-Louise "Scout" Finch, a young girl who lives with her widowed attorney father Atticus and her older brother Jem in Maycomb, Alabama, a small town distant from any big city.  It is the mid-1930s and Scout is entering a most memorable period in her life.  After all, she's just started the first grade!  But upon encountering her teacher for the first time, she discovers that practically everything she says is frowned upon in the classroom...even the fact that at six years of age she can already read quite well...thanks to the teaching of Calpurnia, the family's long-time cook.  In the meantime, her friend Dill, who keeps getting passed off from one family to another, often finds himself living with his Aunt Rachel in Maycomb.  Together with Jem, the three go on dares to the forbidden house in town where the reclusive Arthur "Boo" Radley lives in complete seclusion.  Who is this mysterious figure and how important is he in determining the outcome of the story?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out...

While the childhood dramas and adventures of Scout's life are going on, she discovers that her father Atticus (whom the children always address by his first name) is weighted down by a case he is working on.  Atticus has been appointed to defend Tom Robinson, a young black man accused of raping a white woman.  To Atticus, the accusation is false, but he realizes that in defending Tom, he is fighting an uphill battle against the prejudiced hearts of the adult white population...especially those of the all-white jury that will determine the verdict.  Also, the anger at Atticus for defending a black man spills over into the lives of his own children, who are taunted with racial epithets by other kids...and even adults who should have known better...

To Kill a Mockingbird is a story told on different levels.  On one level, it is something of an adventure story of a spunky little girl in a small southern town of the thirties.  On another, it is story of that child's awakening to the complex and often ugly world of adult society, complete with its bigotry and injustice...as well as the fact that pigeonholing people by race or family obscures and diminishes their value and significance as individuals.  And on still another level, in a more general sense, it is a lesson on how anyone, no matter how "good" of a life they lead, can have areas in their heart full of darkness, ignorance, and hate... 

As for the book's title, yes, Harper Lee does get around to explaining its meaning...

Baseball World Series & NBA Regular Season Starts Tonight

I don't understand why Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association pick the middle of the week to launch their championship series and regular season, respectively...unless it's due to the fact that football so dominates the spectator sports culture in this country at this time of year that other major sports would suffer in comparison were these games to take place on the weekend.  That's too bad for me, since I'll be at work when the Kansas City Royals host the New York Mets and Lebron James' Cleveland Cavaliers face off against injury-prone Derrick Rose's Chicago Bulls.  Fox (Gainesville's Cox Channel 13) will show the baseball game while TNT (Ch. 45) will show the hoops contest (and after that one, the opener between New Orleans and Golden State)...

As a side note, Major League Soccer's playoff schedule also begins in the middle of the week, as UniMas (Ch.90) will show the DC United-New England and Seattle-LA Galaxy matches Wednesday evening and the Montreal-Toronto and Portland-Kansas City matches on Thursday.  Again, I'll be at work and miss all of them.  Sigh...

My Top Ten South Park Episodes

South Park is one of those long-running television series that you either have come to like...or hate.  One problem that some folks have with it is the lack of respect it shows for the taboo subjects in our society...in other words, it's an equal opportunity iconoclastic satire show, destined to challenge your cherished notions if you watch it for any length of time.  I'm not too keen on the extensive profanity, and some of the shows that focus either on private body functions or religion don't seem very amusing to me.  But from time to time, South Park strikes a chord and comes out with a memorable episode.  It's an animated series set in the small city of South Park, Colorado.  The main characters are late-elementary school buddies Stan, Kyle, Cartman, Kenny...and occasionally Butters. Stan's father Randy, along with some of the school staff, figures in several of the stories. To date, this series, begun in 1997, has 260 episodes.  However, I haven't seen most of the more recent ones, and if I peruse the TV schedule, I usually pass up on most of the episodes featured...I'm interested in only about fifty of them.  For those who have seen this show and like at least some of the episodes, here is my personal top ten list of favorite episodes...

1-THE LOSING EDGE--Stan's South Park little league baseball team is glad to finally be finishing their boring season...the kids are now looking forward to getting back to what they really want to do all summer: play video games.  But they find out that because they're such winners, then they'll have to keep playing other statewide teams for the championship.  They desperately try to throw games, but discover that their opponents are also desperate to lose to them!  What makes this episode the best is the role that Stan's dad takes as the "fighting father" who always end up arrested for fighting an opposing father. The ending is classic.

2-PINEWOOD DERBY--Stan's entry in the annual Pinewood Derby is illegally altered by his dad Randy, who has inserted a supermagnet after breaking into the Hadron Collider in Europe.  The model car goes shooting out into space...only to be picked up by an alien ship on the lookout for planets developing space travel with warp speed.  Randy takes over from here...

3-TWO DAYS BEFORE THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW--Stan and Cartman drive a boat into a beaver damn and cause a neighboring community to be flooded.  The adults determine the flooding's cause to be global warming...and the panic ensues...

4-SMUG ALERT--Kyle's dad has a new hybrid Prius and he nags the rest of the town about how they are ruining the environment with their gas guzzlers. When they object, he moves Kyle and his family to San Francisco where he can live among like-minded people.  Stan writes and performs a song to change South Park residents' minds about hybrids...with unintended consequences.  Meanwhile, Cartman, without Kyle to torment, desperately schemes up a mission to San Francisco to rescue him and bring him back...

5-SOMETHING WALL-MART THIS WAY COMES--When a new Wal-Mart comes to South Park, its residences find themselves irresistibly drawn to its doors.  Meanwhile, other businesses in town close down and the boys find themselves walking through a squalid ghost town...that's what's left of South Park.  To rid themselves of Wal-Mart, they travel to company headquarters to air their grievances...while Cartman fights their efforts...

6-RAISINS--Partially a parody of Goth culture and partially a parody of the Hooters type of restaurant chain, Stan, after his girlfriend dumps him, is depressed.  His friends take him to Raisins, where they hope the pretty girls working there will cheer him up.  Instead, Stan feels worse and decides to join up with the morose and cynical Goth kids at school.  Meanwhile, naive Butters falls in love with a Raisins girl who leads him on for tips...

7-UP THE DOWN STEROID--Crippled Jimmy is determined to win the Special Olympics and finds himself hooked on steroids.  Meanwhile, Cartman, upon hearing that the winner receives a big money prize, decides to enter as being mentally-challenged...

8-THE BIGGEST DOUCHE IN THE UNIVERSE--The highlight of this episode, in which Kenny's soul is trapped inside Cartman's body, is the conflict between rationalist skeptic Stan and John Edwards, the Sci Fi Channel charlatan who claimed to be able to talk to dead people.  In frustration, Stan nominates  Edwards for (the episode's title)...leading to one of the funniest endings in the series...

9-MANBEARPIG--This episode is all about Al Gore and his fascination with...himself. Gore is on a mission to educate the public about the extreme danger of "Manbearpig", which he sees signs of everywhere he looks.  Never a fan of Al Gore, I think he nevertheless would have been a better choice for president in 2000 than Dubya.  Still the guy IS a bit of a head case, isn't he?

10-THE UNGROUNDABLE--Butters becomes part of the "vampire" movement at school so he can avoid obeying his parents.  Meanwhile, the Goth kids take offense at the vampire kids' similar appearance...