Quote of the Week...from Opie's Brother

 But first, the tranya!                         Balok in Star Trek's The Corbomite Maneuver episode

Clint Howard is Ron Howard's lesser-known brother, who has played bit parts on television and in movies for decades.  My two favorite roles of his happened in the sixties.  On The Andy Griffith Show, he played Leon, a little boy who was always going around holding up his half-eaten peanut butter sandwich to share with others. And on the Star Trek original series, in one of its very first episodes, he played the mysterious reclusive childlike alien Balok, who in the Corbomite Maneuver classic episode, puts the USS Enterprise and its crew through a grueling test to ascertain their intentions.  After he decides to accept them, Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Lt. Dave Bailey stoop down low to transport into the low alien ship's quarters.  Balok, with his adult voice dubbed in, treats the guests to a special drink of his, tranya, and then sits back in frustration when they distrustfully hesitate.  So, "Opie's brother" takes the first step and drinks his fill and the others follow suit...it's delicious!  I first saw this wonderful episode only at its tail end since we had only one TV set in the house and my parents, ardent Bewitched! fans, insisted on watching that half hour comedy series on Thursday evenings on ABC when it ran opposite Star Trek on NBC...I learned the endings of a few of those first-year Star Trek episodes long before I saw their beginnings.  Were I in Kirk's position, having gone through such a perilous ordeal with my ship nearly torn apart just for a "test", I don't think I would have displayed the amount of grace and good will that he was able to muster up.  But he reminded his colleagues of their mission to encounter new life out there in space and they were able to progress.  I recently had the experience of reading a local nonprofit's mission statement and mused how they, without even the danger of a Balok threatening their existence, have strayed from it.  Sometimes I think a little adverse pressure can bring people back to their stated priorities...

Hey, Where's the 2024 Presidential Campaign (and Do I Care?)

With the two major political parties virtually already nominating their candidates for president, this 2024 presidential campaign has been on the back burner in the news...thankfully, although to be perfectly truthful (as former House Speaker Tip O'Neill used to say) I haven't exactly been paying much attention anyway.  This 2024 election between an authoritarian fascist and a seriously declining incumbent should be a big, big deal to me, and I plan to march drive right out there to my precinct first Tuesday in November and vote.  To further complicate matters, a vaccine conspiracy theorist with an impressive political name has thrown his hat into the ring by declaring his independent candidacy...doesn't change anything with me, though.  I will vote for the doddering decent dude over the fascist and the nutcase, and then let the chips fall where they will as I already recognize that I am on a runaway train and the easily manipulated American public is at the controls...democracy in action!  So the Florida primary is next month...I think I'll vote in it anyway despite the preordained outcome...my polling place is the nearby Senior Recreation Center and I'd like to see what they've done there in the years since I've been there last.  So yes, I'm cynical about politics, but to quote former president Barack Obama, "And may God bless the United States of America"...  

Weekly Short Stories: 1995 Science Fiction, Part 5

Below are my reactions to two more 1995 stories as they appeared in the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection.  In 1995 my musical interests...all of it rock...was divided between exploring old classic albums for hidden treasures in their deep tracks and listening to rock radio.  With the latter my focus was on grunge, specifically the group Soundgarden and their 1994 album Superunknown.  I came to be interested in it because an obscure Gainesville radio station on 1390 kHz was playing all six Doors studio albums from beginning to end, and I was happily listening to all of it.  But suddenly they began to play the Soundgarden album...I was miffed but then realized that this was pretty cool, too.  I liked all the tracks on it, a rarity for me, and my "song of the year" for '95 was track #2, My Wave, still a personal favorite.  But back to those stories...

THE DEATH OF CAPTAIN FUTURE by Allen Steele

The embracing of one's childhood fictional idol is taken to extreme here with the recounting of the narrator, a space worker trying to get to a better world, as he experiences his frustrations dealing with an incompetent spaceship captain obsessed with the hero figure Captain Future, to the point where he insists on being addressed as such by everyone.  A life-and-death crisis threatens the ship, and how does "Captain Future" (and the narrator) handle it?  A funny...and ultimately sad...tale...

THE LINCOLN TRAIN by Maureen F. McHugh

In this alternative history story, what if, instead of President Abraham Lincoln being assassinated at the close of the American Civil War in April 1865, he had only been seriously wounded to the point that, while alive, he was virtually a vegetable, unable to carry out his presidential duties?  Lincoln wanted reconciliation toward the defeated South, and his vice-president Andrew Johnson, a compromise Democrat on the 1964 election ticket who in our reality would succeed Lincoln upon his death, constitutionally (at the time) had no legal claim to the presidency (since in this universe Lincoln still lived).  Instead, Secretary of State William Seward, a staunch Radical Republican, takes the reins of power and former slave-owners are brutally herded off onto trains, uprooted from their homes and sent off to Oklahoma to starve.  A young woman from a slave-holding family is caught up in it all and receives coldness and ostracism from all, even those trying to help her survive her ordeal...

Next week: more from 1995...

A Good Foreign Language Resource on YouTube

I don't discuss it very much on this blog, but I am a student of languages, having begun over a span of decades to study many different ones...only to usually get discouraged and lay aside my progress to do something else.  But I've come to appreciate the joy in the passive aspects of languages, that is listening and reading, and don't burden myself too much with the idea of speaking or writing in them.  This meshes well with the treasure of resources available on the Internet, and in particular, YouTube.  There is a series of channels on it, Easy Languages, and you can select from many languages to find the "Easy" channel you're interested in.  On it, you see several short programs that consist of native speakers in their own countries, often interviewed on the street...it's a lot of fun and as they speak you see the transcription at the bottom along with the ongoing translation.  I enjoy the different topics and it's quite apparent that folks really are quite similar all over the world as they go about their lives.  My languages of focus at the moment are Spanish and Russian, and their channels are excellent.  Try them yourself...click on Easy Spanish or Easy Russian to see and hear for yourself...

Adopting One of Frank Poole's Exercising Strategies

Dr. Frank Poole isn't an authority on health or exercise...actually, the dude doesn't even exist!  Yet many of us know of him through the Stanley Kubrick/Arthur C. Clarke classic 1968 science fiction movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Shown about halfway through the story, his mission...along with that of co-astronaut David Bowman, several others in suspended animation, and a wayward computer named HAL...is to travel to Jupiter on the spaceship Discovery One to solve a deep mystery found on the Moon and seek out alien contact.  Its design mimics gravity through centripetal force, and Poole is introduced jogging on its circular inner perimeter while shadow boxing.  Well, I'm not planning to go out in space anytime soon, but I do a bit of running.  What I'm adding to my exercise routine in emulation of Dr. Poole is working out my upper body by mimicking various weight lifting routines and swimming strokes in the air. No extra weights are involved here...and I think the good doctor wouldn't mind if I avoided his boxing moves, for which I have no training.  I think more people would probably do this as well if their routines took place in the privacy of their own homes...it might look a little weird in public moving your arms around all willy-nilly while running!  Working out my upper body and limbs is something I need to add to my running and walking...although to be perfectly honest I already do plenty of rigorous lifting and carrying at my current job.  Still, this new addition to my workout seems to be helping...

Back to Doing Jigsaw Puzzles

 

I've been working on a couple of jigsaw puzzles I received as Christmas gifts from my family, having just completed them.  They're quite different, one being a trio of cute kittens looking outward from a basket of knitting and yarn, the other being a library of popular VHS and DVD movies from the recent span of decades.  The strategy for putting them together was also quite different...that's one thing I like about doing these puzzles: each one requires a different approach.  Now I guess it's time to get out another one...I think I have one left over from a few months ago that I never got around to starting...

Volunteered at Gainesville's Depot Parkrun This Morning

This morning I volunteered at my local Depot Parkrun, held each Saturday morning at Gainesville's Depot Park, just south of downtown.  My role was to be the Tail Walker, which is the person who follows everyone else in the race/run/walk and makes sure that all have either finished or dropped out.  It was a pleasant 3.1 miles...four laps around the park...with temperatures in the low-to-mid forties and many birds, chiefly red-winged blackbirds, grackles and mourning doves, contributing their songs. When you're a Tail Walker you still get credit for a race...so tally up my 34th Parkrun for myself: click HERE for today's results.  It's also my 4th volunteer gig...Melissa was signed up and wanted to go but was recovering from a bad cold.  With the good folks running the show, I...may I be a little blunt...got mixed signals.  On the surface, they seemed so altruistic and goody-goody for leading at this event, but anytime I wanted to reach out and engage one of them in conversation, or, more to the point, ask a pertinent question, they were pretty damned dismissive.  For an introvert with misanthropic leanings, I find it more than a little disconcerting to be confronted with "good" people who see me as little more than a distraction or annoyance to be flicked away.  In any event, I'm really not offended but rather just file it all away with my other experiences.  As the recent Depeche Mode song People Are Good goes...

Keep reminding myself

That people are good

And when they do bad things 

They're just hurting inside

Keep fooling myself

That everyone cares

And they're all full of love

It's just their patience gets tried

Heaven help me, heaven help me

Heaven help us, heaven help us

Quote of the Week...from the Movie Groundhog Day

Phil Connors: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?

Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

This to me was the funniest line from a very funny movie, 1993's Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a vain Pittsburgh TV weatherman on an unpleasant assignment to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.  Only things suddenly get much worse when he wakes up the morning after February 2nd...and discovers to his horror that it's Groundhog Day all over again, with the same people saying and doing the same things and himself exactly the same as if he had never already lived through the day...the same, that is, except for his complete memory of what is happening to him.  After a few experiences of repeatedly waking up to the same day, he goes out drinking with some local blue-collar dudes, the above-mentioned Ralph being one, and poses the quoted question.  Of course, Phil means something quite literal as he asks about what if nothing you did mattered...and promptly comes up with the answer: no consequences...leading to another hilarious scene.  As Phil's affliction keeps going on from same day to same day, the movie does change in tone to that of desperation and ultimately acceptance and a deeper appreciation of life and what should be one's priorities in it.  But Ralph's answer so poignantly expresses so many people's viewpoints without needing to undergo any supernatural time-bending experience. Time does tend to march on from day to day in a cyclic, repetitive pattern.  Part of this is how we're constructed as biological beings tied in to the solar cycle, part is society's way to organize itself to prevent chaos, establish some order and effectively function...and part is each individual's aggregation of habits...some of them more recently acquired and others lifelong...that resist spontaneity and change.  There's not so much to be done with the first two reasons, but that last one is within each person's power to control and steer into a more interesting and meaningful direction... 

My January 2024 Running and Walking Report

My running and walking went well for January...Melissa's walking did as well.  I ran my fastest 5K (27:38) in several years on New Years Day and two weeks later, on the 14th, ran my fastest half-marathon (2:07:40)...likewise in quite a while.  I was going to run a local 15K race on the 27th, but had come down with a bad cold...not Covid, fortunately...and spent the rest of the month recovering and exercising lightly.  My stable treadmill walking pace (zero inclination) is now maxed at 5.0 (mph) while on the running side it is 7.0...these are the settings I use at the gym...any future intensification will involve raising the inclination instead of the speed.  For the month total, I ran every day and amassed around 270 miles of running.  I also walked with Melissa on the Depot Parkrun and plan to do this in the future, from time to time, interspersed with regular runs, speed walks and volunteering.  In February there's a 10-mile race on the 10th in Micanopy organized by the Florida Track Club...if life cooperates, I plan to run in it. And LifeSouth is continuing their annual Five Points of Life running event on the 24th, albeit only a 5K race...I think it would be cool to first run the Depot Parkrun 5K earlier that morning and then walk a few blocks north and tackle the LifeSouth event! Other than that, I see this new month as an opportunity for me to continue regularly practicing my running and walking, while also working on my swimming technique and incorporating upper body resistance training... 

Weekly Short Stories: 1995 Science Fiction, Part 4

Today I continue my look at short sci-fi from the year 1995 as it appeared in Gardner Dozois' anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirteenth Annual Collection.  In my not-so-pleasant memories, 1995...at least the first half...I was stuck at my job with some toxic, manipulative and (I believe) emotionally disturbed coworkers who rendered the most extreme reality TV shows tame by comparison with their dramatics and false narratives: it was a relief to change shifts to a more peaceful and professional work environment later in the year. But enough about me and my world, how about those stories...

FOR WHITE HILL by Joe Haldeman

This has to be one of the most somber, bleak science fiction stories I've ever read...and that's saying something since there are quite a few of them out there. The narrator, an artist in the distant future, relates his experiences with another artist, a woman named White Hill, on a war-destroyed Earth.  Humanity has settled nearby star systems but tragically also acquired a lethal enemy who has engaged against them in a centuries-long war of survival, with Earth being one of the casualties.  It's a beautifully written tale of what was, what is, and at the end, what seems unavoidably destined to be: a classic...

SOME LIKE IT COLD by John Kessel

Take the premise of the 2009 resurrected Star Trek movie starring Chris Pine as Captain Kirk where an embittered Romulan takes his ship back in time to retroactively change history and you have what's going on here with time travel.  Except that it's the greedy entertainment industry, not vengeful Romulans, here digging into the past, extracting notable people from it and spotlighting them for mass profit in their ongoing shows. The author demonstrates that sometimes what at first seems altruistic is merely a cynical exercise in self-enrichment...

Next week: More from 1995...

Another Turn Toward Southern Stars in March

Melissa and I have planned a western Caribbean cruise for the beginning of March, in a few weeks.  Since we are going to be going back to more southern latitudes, I thought it might be a good idea to study my star maps and reacquaint myself with the constellations that I normally wouldn't be able to view at my 30 degree north latitude.  You might have noticed that I had dropped my "constellation of the month" feature on this blog...most of the rest of them appear in the southern sky, out of my range.  This might be an opportunity for me to, at least temporarily, revive that feature.  I think the southern constellations I'm most looking forward to seeing revolve around the super-constellation Argo, now officially broken up into Vela, Puppis, and Carina...along with ancillary smaller constellations in and around them...looking forward to seeing what I can see...

Skipping Running Races I've Signed Up For

Last Saturday morning's Newnan's Lake 15K, which I skipped after signing up for it, hasn't been the only running race I've passed by.  As a matter of fact, within the past year it's the third such time.  Back in February 2023 I skipped the Florida Track Club's Micanopy Ten-Miler that I had run the previous year.  And then in April I skipped the Run Your Buns Off (yes, that's its name) half-marathon.  All three times I had different reasons for not running them and it's always a possibility.  Yet although I'm disappointed I didn't run these races...and a few others including the 2012 Ocala Half-Marathon...there's always something on the horizon to look forward to and there are more important things in life than running races.  I can say the same thing about reading books...I wonder how many books I've checked out from the library or even bought that I never read.  The latest one I checked out, Dutch novelist/poet/journalist Cees Nooteboom's 553 Days, is in fact destined to be one of them...

Chiefs and 49ers Shine in NFL Conference Playoffs

I watched most of the NFL conference championship playoffs today, the winners going on to the Super Bowl, to be played on Sunday February 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada.  The first game was the American Conference championship game between defending Super Bowl champs Kansas City Chiefs and the favored home team Baltimore Ravens, while the nightcap was the San Francisco 49ers hosting the upstart Detroit Lions for the National Conference title.  Kansas City and San Fran prevailed 17-10 and 34-31, respectively...I felt the losers played strong but made too many mistakes.  In particular, that Detroit coach has a problem with settling for field goals on stalled drives.  So the Super Bowl is set and I'm pulling for KC with its State Farm Insurance and Head & Shoulders Shampoo connections.  I will say one more thing: I'm sick and tired of watching the reactions of Taylor Swift, girlfriend of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and who attends his games.  I actually tried to like her music and never could see what the big deal was...she seems more of a professional celebrity than a true artist, basking in idol worship from her adoring fans.  And that Detroit coach...whew, I don't think I could root for this hyper-aggressive dude even if I lived in Motown...

Skipped 15K Race This Morning

This Saturday morning I woke up feeling a little under the weather, but I had already signed up to run a 15K race east of town.  On top of this it was forecast to be unseasonably hot and humid...and it was!  I decided to give my poor old body a break and skip the race...at 9:45 when I would have been in its closing stages, I checked the temperature and humidity: 72 degrees, 81%...ugh.  I plan to run some throughout the year and the summer months here in northern Florida can be much, much worse than this morning was, but for today at least I'm passing on the long-distance running races.  I still plan to run some today, but at a more relaxed level and in the more amenable environment of my home. Turn on the YouTube, I'll be virtually running to the NYC Marathon again.....

Quote of the Week...from Charles Herman

So what's your story? You the poor kid who never got to go to Exeter or Andover?     ---Charles Herman from the movie A Beautiful Mind

Maybe when you saw who said today's quote, you scratched your head...maybe not, if you saw the movie A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe as troubled mathematical genius John Nash and featuring Paul Bettany portraying his college roommate Charles Herman.  His above quote happens after their initial meeting, in which Nash rudely dismisses Herman for interfering with his studies.  Charles, in response, suggests that the two go "break the ice" with his flask of liquor.  So, on the rooftop, the conversation begins with the invitation for Nash to tell his own story...which warms him up considerably to his new (and rare) friend.  Never mind who Charles Herman really turns out to be, just consider two points in this brief sequence.  People tend to get dismissive of others who they think are crossing the line into their own territory or are unduly intruding or distracting them.  Conversely, those so dismissed often take offense as they feel themselves disrespected...I've been on both sides of this.  Yet Charles takes the high road and gives his roommate what he wanted all along: a chance to tell his own story to someone interested in hearing it...the diametric opposite of being dismissive.  I wonder how many enduring friendships have begun with that open invitation to tell one's story, and how many grudges and resentments have festered with memories of how someone was basically told to get lost?  Food for thought... 

Just Finished Reading Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia

I recently read Dr. Peter Attia's book Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity, in which the Canadian physician presents a comprehensive vision of the priorities people should take with their old age in mind, and at a much earlier age that many others in his profession feel.  In that sense, I think that this book was primarily aimed at young-to-middle-aged adults rather than a budding 67-year-old senior citizen as myself. For example, Attia is a strong advocate that younger adults lift heavy weights in order to build the bone density necessary in later years to enable them to withstand falls that, for too many, carry with them devastating results for both future quality of life and lifespan. He is very adamant that, with the natural loss of muscle mass through aging, people work hard to maintain that muscle mass through conscious resistance training as well as ensuring a daily intake of protein levels that are a bit beyond the generally recommended amounts.  He has views, expressed in different chapters of the book, about a wide range of health topics.  I was very impressed by his medical expertise and understanding of how the body works through different stages of life, although for some very good reasons I won't be taking him up on his advice about lifting heavy weights as an exercise regimen.  I plan to devote some time discussing Dr. Attia's ideas on this blog...this is only the first article in that regard.  Sometimes I check out a book from my library and am so impressed with it that I go out and buy it...Outlive is one of them...

Weekly Short Story: 1995 Science Fiction Short Stories, Part 3

Today I look at yet another "long" short story, a novella-length tale that editor Gardner Dozois seemed to love including in his anthologies, this volume covering 1995: The Year's Best Science Fiction, Thirteenth Annual Collection.  1995 was special to me in the world of passive spectator sports.  The Florida Gators football team went undefeated in the regular season and won yet again the Southeastern Conference championship...only to get thoroughly crushed by Nebraska in the national championship game.  And the Atlanta Braves, which I had been following since 1979, finally pulled off a World Series title, this one against the Cleveland Indians.  But back to that story...

DEATH IN THE PROMISED LAND by Pat Cadigan

Virtual gaming, something that seems to be finally catching on, is taken to its logical extreme as a detective investigates the murder of a young man whose throat was physically...and virtually...slashed while playing an extremely popular and violent game.  To solve the puzzle, she enters the game itself under his identity...and the fall down the rabbit hole begins.  This story came out a year before Tad Williams' brilliant four-volume series Otherland began about the same subject.  In both scenarios, players become addicted to the virtual environment, essentially abandoning the real world and placing their hopes and dreams on virtual success and adventure.  In this sense it isn't that much different from what happens to humanity in the late Clifford Simak's wonderful novel City, written way back in the mid-twentieth century...

Next week, I'll see if I can't review more than one story...a little cooperation, please, Gardner!

Recent Inclination for Reading Nonfiction

If you've been reading this blog lately, you might have noticed that, while I'm still doing my weekly science fiction short story reviews, just about all of the rest of my reading has been non-fiction, specifically oriented toward self-improvement, fitness and health.  Although I'm not yet prepared to deliver a more detailed review of the book I've just finished reading, Outlive by Dr. Peter Attia, it, along with much of the material I've recently consumed, has made a deep impression on how I view fitness and health...especially at my age of 67.  Much of what I read only affirmed a lot of what I had already been doing, which on the physical level was self-empowering instead of self-enfeebling following a medical diagnosis I had lived with after late 2011, culminating in corrective open-heart surgery in 2021.  The famous Christmas Story movie line "You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" comes to mind as I resisted the impulse to take it easy and not take any chances exerting myself...yet my own thoracic surgeon assented to my choice to stay active (within certain limits), which I did for more than a decade before undergoing the procedure. Yes, I feel vindicated through my recent readings, but also challenged as there are other measures I could have been taking but haven't.  A lot of this will come out in my review article on Attia's book: I should write it in the next week or so...

Checking Out Some More Recent Music Albums

Last November, seeing that I hadn't paid very much attention to the ongoing music scene in 2023, I decided to check out some of that year's album releases, focusing on artists I already liked.  The best albums, far and away, were Cracker Island by Gorillaz and Memento Mori by Depeche Mode.  Well, it's January of 2024 and I'm looking for some new material to listen to.  To that effect, I've dug back a bit into the previous year and am checking out some new albums as well.  In the next few days I'll be listening (on YouTube) to: I/O by Peter Gabriel, Danse Macabre by Duran Duran, Hackney Diamonds by the Rolling Stones, Rewind Forward by Ringo Starr, and...to be released on 1/26...Wall of Eyes by the Smile.  Should be yet another fun listening adventure...

Enjoyed the Weekend

It's been an enjoyable weekend for me and my family.  Melissa and I enjoyed a weekly 5K walk on frigid cold Saturday morning and enjoyed church on frigid cold Sunday morning.  Another factor contributing to that enjoyment is the fact that while I thought it was fun to follow the ongoing National Football League playoffs, I didn't just sit there through whole games, instead catching bits and pieces of the four contests while doing other things as well.  As for the teams that advanced, two games (Baltimore over Houston and Kansas City over Buffalo) went my way and two (San Francisco over Green Bay and Detroit over Tampa Bay) didn't.  The main highlight was the Chiefs' close victory over the Bills.  Now among the final four teams left to play in the conference championships, I'll pull for KC and Detroit...but if the other guys win, that's okay, too.  When family members ask me each year what I want for Christmas, I always make sure to include jigsaw puzzles in my responses.  I've enjoyed finishing one thousand-piece puzzle this weekend and starting another one right afterwards.  And we got ourselves a walking treadmill for our home use...works great so far, but you do have to be careful to stay focused and not slip up and get thrown off!  Finally, I thoroughly enjoyed deliberately avoiding the political BS going on this election year...I pity those addicted to politically biased cable channels and talk shows that drive their ratings and profits by ratcheting up fear, anger and hate among their audience.  And I intend to stay the course and pay attention to only stuff and people that merit my attention: screw the rest...