Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 8

It's time once again to examine more short stories (or novellas) appearing in the anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction, edited by the late Gardner Dozois...this volume, Sixteenth Annual Collection, covers material published in 1998.  Although at times I can be pretty critical about various aspects of the digital revolution...particularly the Internet...I think it's wonderful that I can purchase and read at my leisure thick volume after thick volume of such an anthology series, all available by just reading off my cell phone on Kindle.  Amazing to a baby boomer like myself.  But back to those stories...

STORY OF YOUR LIFE by Ted Chiang

A protagonist/narrator here is a linguist who is telling two concurrent tales.  In one she is talking to her recently deceased daughter, recounting different revealing times in their lives.  In the other she is assigned to learn the extremely difficult language used by a visiting advanced alien species.  Aside from a lot of linguistic material here, there is a rather deep examination of two different ways of seeing the world: the causal perspective seen by humans, and the teleological, holistic one perceived by the aliens.  A very complex and interesting story...

VOIVODOI by Liz Williams

Genetic research has gone out of control in this near-future story set in Krakow, Poland, as a girl's brother is sick and infected with a disease, and with it comes ostracism.  But where it all ends up poses the question: what exactly is pathological, if the "sick" have their own unique adaptation that allows them to survive...and even thrive?

SADDLEPOINT: ROUGHNECK by Stephen Baxter

This novella (the above two were short stories) is one of those old-fashioned space colonization tales.  It throws together excessive nationalism (Japanese on the Moon, others nationalities on other Solar System worlds), a sinister, interfering alien presence (the Prion), the Earth as a nearly dead iceball..and a wily, entrepreneurial American bent on turning Lunar drilling and development into a tidy profit.  And then there is a biophysics spin: is there life that perceives reality with time going backward?  Baxter clearly knows a lot of science, and you're bound to learn a lot from this story of rockets, comets, Moon plants, misplaced nationalism...and so much more...

Next week I continue looking at the year 1998 in short science fiction...

Struggling to Keep Up with Current Alternative/Indie Hit Songs

I've probably written similar opinions on earlier posts, but I have to reiterate that the popular music scene for me has drastically deteriorated over the past few years.  It used to be that I could turn on my radio and current, ongoing hit songs in different genres would be in the regular playing rotation.  Now the only way I see to get that would be to subscribe to a paid online service...broadcast radio as far as I can see only rotates current hits in country & western and the insipid "Hot 100" songs that I generally cannot tolerate.  Hard rock and alternative music are only available on stations promoting a "classic rock" format...focusing on bygone music...and the one station, WHHZ/100.5, that I've enjoyed (at times) listening to over the past twenty-plus years, has reverted to earlier hard rock hits...nothing in the present to look forward to.  So I'm still exploring ways to generate a rotation of ongoing alternative/indie song hits, so far to little avail...then again, I could delve further into my Amazon Music app...yeah, that's probably the way to go.  My "top songs" of 2024 are a tiny group of three...I'll present them a few days from now... 

Still Working Out Parameters for Study, Reading and Writing

Following up on last Thursday's article about studying in coffee shops as my retirement is now in its second week, I'm still looking for "The Place" to set up my studying.  Still, so far I've managed to cover my daily goals, mixing reading, studying foreign languages and, of course, writing for this blog.  I'm finding myself usually spreading it all out over the course of the day at home, although here my attention span isn't quite as strong and I'm more likely to be distracted as opposed to be sitting somewhere in a public place.  I've been diligent with the language study, continuing as I earlier stated with taking a few sentences from a specified article and writing each of them down, taking turns in Spanish, German, Russian and Chinese according to the Google translations.  Since unfamiliar Chinese characters can be problematic since their pronunciation isn't readily apparent, I have begun using ChapGPT to provide transliteration of my articles into the Pinyin Romanization writing system, which I print out and use.  Since I am at intermediate "Level B" stages in all four languages, I still have quite a task in front of me with thousands of words in each to internalize before I can more comfortably understand them...and with listening comprehension consistently lagging behind the reading (I also daily listen to radio/podcasts in each of the four).  But more than anything I enjoy the process of learning: it's fun!

Following College Football Playoffs Despite Lack of Experience Playing the Game

American-style tackle football...complete with helmets and shoulder-pads...is a sport I've never played (or wanted to).  Yet in high school physical education class I played my share of flag football games, generally not enjoying the experience.  I think that's due in large part to the fact that the coach's pet students tended to be picked as the team captains who almost invariably assigned me on offense to block, even though I was a very scrawny kid who happened to run faster than everyone else and never dropped a pass when it was rarely thrown to me (or when I could make an interception),  On defense I had more latitude, free to run around and anticipate the other side's plays...I pulled off many a Velcro flag in my old "glory days".  Still the rules between tackle and flag football are essentially the same, for the most part, and I have always enjoyed sitting down in front of the TV to watch a good contest.  Yesterday the major college conference championship games were in the spotlight, and it was a pleasure to see Georgia "upset" Texas in overtime, as well as bits of the Penn State/Oregon and Clemson/SMU contests.  And with the blowout that Arizona State put on Iowa State making the outcome apparent early on, I was impressed with their tenacity, especially of their running back.  So today, for the first time the twelve-team format for the championship playoffs has just been revealed with the selected teams, seeds and pairings.  I had wanted Miami and Alabama to make the playoffs, but the way things went both got shut out.  I'm looking forward to following the action, which begins with the first round on December 20-21...

Ran Gainesville's Season of Hope 15K This Morning

I like traditions in running races and get a little sad when I see one end.  One tradition that is still continuing is the Season of Hope 15K/5K race in early December...I've run the 15K (9.3 miles) race now four times.  Organized to benefit Tyler's Hope, a non-profit organization for research into the movement disorder called dystonia and help for those so afflicted, it takes place on the Hawthorne Trail in southeastern Gainesville, starting and finishing where the trail passes by Boulware Springs Park (off SE 15th Street).  I ran speed-walked an extended version of the same course last month with the Florida Track Club's Tom Walker Half-marathon, so I'm familiar with all the slopes and hilliness it provides.  The temperature here at sunrise had spiked downward to freezing but had risen by 9:00 race time to the low forties...by the race's end it had gotten into the low fifties...all with low humidity.  On the way to the race my car horn got stuck under the frozen conditions and I had to pull off the road to try to turn it off.  Eventually it shut itself up and I made it to Boulware Springs Park, only to discover that it was already packed because of another race using its facilities at the same time: Girls on the Run 5K.  The organization Girls on the Run is very positive and uplifting for school-age girls, and one thing they do regularly is hold a 5K run...only today it competed head-on with the Seasons of Hope event I had signed up for.  Once I parked, though, I eased my way through the unexpected crowd of humanity there and did my race without any problem.  Although my left Achilles tendon...which had seemed a little sore a few days ago...seemed to ache early on, I kept with my plan to alternate nine-minutes of running with one minute of speed-walking while also speed-walking up the steepest up-slopes.  This worked to perfection, and being able to listen to my favorite songs on my Amazon Music service helped as well.  I kept to my racing strategy until after about six miles when I decided to just run out the remainder of the race, hills and all.  I finished at 1 hour 29 minutes 19 seconds...some four minutes faster than last year's time and my fastest 15K finish since 2015.  Click HERE to see the race results. As with the marathon I did a couple of weeks ago, I had no problem with running low on energy...the low temperature again helped as well.  As for that Girls on the Run organization, I thought it was sweet how they staged volunteers up and down the course to cheer on their runners...they cheered for us "Season of Hope" runners as well!  I hope the Tyler's Hope organization continues this fine racing tradition and I wish Girls on the Run great success in the future...I just wish they can align their event scheduling better next time around...

Quote of the Week...from John F. Kennedy

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

                                             John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy was our 35th president and the last one to die in office...his assassination in broad daylight on a motorcade in Dallas was a national trauma and marked my turn of attention for the first time, at the tender age of seven, toward politics.  He was widely regarded as a bold leader whose tragic early exit from life has spawned much speculation over the years about what might have happened had he remained alive.  But this is the reality we're passing through and we have to deal with what's before us.  His above quote appealed to me because...and I'm writing from personal experience...I tend to stay in my passive comfort zone too much and must intentionally make myself get out and do stuff.  The fear...and it is a misplaced fear...is that others will note whatever flawed efforts I'm making and criticize or even ridicule them.  But I cannot learn and make progress unless I DO: not doing gets me nowhere except obscurity and weakness...  

Coffee Shop Visits as a Study Routine

As I progress through my first week of retirement, I think I'm starting some good habits to replace those which going to a forty-hours-per-week job automatically imposed on me. Maybe in future articles I'll spell out some of these, but right now I'll discuss one of them.  In my November 19th article a little more than a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about more consistently resuming the old habit I had of going regularly to a coffee shop (or someplace similar) and studying there.  There's something about a public setting that focuses my attention better on my tasks while not placing demands on my attention.  Mental drifting and external distractions not only interrupt my efforts, but they also dilute them when I'm devoting a bigger part of my mental efforts resisting them, and this place helps with that.  I'm writing this article on my old AlphaSmart word processor, completely disconnected from the Internet and which I later loaded onto my blog site. I take Google translations of past articles I've written, and print them out to take with me here.  Then I go phrase-by-phrase with each of them, temporarily memorizing it in each target language and then writing it down.  I cover a small amount of material daily this way but am training myself better to think in the languages I'm studying.  Now on to other activities I do here: reading, speculating and planning...

Weekly Short Stories: 1998 Science Fiction, Part 7

After skipping a week with this Wednesday blog feature whereby I post my reactions to short stories (and novellas) I've just read, here I am again with another installment.  I'm currently in the middle of reading the Gardner Dozois-edited anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction.  This particular volume covers stories published in the year 1998 and is subtitled Sixteenth Annual Collection.  So without further ado, let's discuss the next two stories I read from it...

THE HALFWAY HOUSE AT THE HEART OF DARKNESS by William Browning Spencer

This story came out in 1998, comfortably after video games and the Internet had been established as features of our culture.  But this tale about rehab from virtual reality addiction seems sadly to be right on track with its timeline set in the immediate future.  A mega-corporation selling the virtual product...like a dope pusher...is trying to kidnap a recovering virtual addict, and only her counselor bravely stands in her way as he tries to lead her to safety and recovery.  In a way, this is a hopeful story but you have to read it to find out how...

THE VERY PULSE OF THE MACHINE by Michael Swanwick

This story is about the extraordinarily seismologically active volcanic Io, one of Jupiter's major moons.  We're a few decades into the future when humans travel to the outer planets.  Martha, the survivor of a crash on Io that killed her companion Julie and put herself on a survival trek on the dangerous surface to safety, begins to pick up her deceased partner's voice on the radio.  Where is it coming from?  This is an exploration about the nature of consciousness and whether it is limited to functioning, living brains...or maybe instead encompasses a much wider range of reality...

Next week: more stories from 1998...

Significant Medical Procedure Coming in Two Weeks

This morning I went to receive my presurgical consultation at the hospital.  Oh, that's right, I never got into specifics about my ongoing health/medical issue, but now seems to be as good a time to start as any.  Being a male in my late sixties, as often happens to some of us, I experienced (from routine blood testing) an elevated PSA score, which is used as a possible indicator of prostate issues, including cancer in that organ.  I recently underwent an MRI to better picture the situation and am scheduled two weeks from now to have a prostate MRI-targeted biopsy to analyze whether it is cancerous or benign...and if the former, how so specifically and to what extent.  I'm personally at peace with the entire process, except that the different procedures and consults seem to be so spaced apart in time.  Melissa has been my steadfast advocate the whole way.  I'm looking forward to a continuing healthy and active life for many years to come and this situation hasn't changed anything in that regard.  Sure, I don't want to hear bad news but I'm a big boy... 

The College Football Flag-Planting Nonsense This Past Saturday

This past weekend the seemingly harmless act of a victorious road football team planting their school's flag in the middle of their host's field right after the game has blown up into violence when a number of contests across the country ended up in violent melees between opposing teams long after the final whistle had been blown.  I don't claim to know much about this practice of flag-planting, which seems to only be done with rivalries and is part of an ongoing year-by-year kind of oneupmanship that, at least to me, seems to be a completely legitimate form of expression.  Yet this year during "rivalry weekend", the losing schools seem to have decided that their "safe space" was being unfairly violated by those mean old winners and fought back.  Ohio State reacted to Michigan, the two state North Carolina schools went at it, and Florida State took umbrage at "my" Florida Gators for planting their flag on their sacred football field in Tallahassee.  My first impulse in writing about this was to chide the flag-planters for poor sportsmanship...you're supposed to be gracious in victory, right?  But the thin-skinned nature of the losers is also poor sportsmanship.  Florida Gators coach Billy Napier went out on the field to meet and greet his counterpart on the FSU side Mike Norvell...the latter refused to shake Napier's extended hand and instead went on a bitchy rant in his face about the flag-planting: that's got to be more humiliating to Seminole fans than the actual so-called "offense".  People, sports is entertainment...please keep it all in context, okay?

Balancing Competitiveness and Perspective in Running

When I was attending high school and went out for the track team (11th grade, winter/spring of 1973), my conception of sports...and in particular running...was almost exclusively based on beating other athletes.  This was due in large part to the fact that everyone else...including my teachers and coaches...saw it all in the same way, making clear distinctions between the amount of regard and respect they demonstrated to their "star" performers and the rest of the less talented rabble (like me).  So I didn't "letter" that one time I went out for sports in school...yet the experience was transformative in that it opened up the aerobic athletic lifestyle that I maintained...either through running, walking or bicycle riding...pretty much for the past fifty years.  When I was a little kid I was one of the fastest sprinters around...I see this a lot when I'm at Depot Park on Saturday morning and get passed by a little boy or girl who only knows how to run all-out...almost always they quickly tire and I'm soon easily passing them in turn.  I don't run races to beat others, but rather to cover the distance and do it in a reasonable, hopefully progressively faster, time.  Sure, I check age group categories for the races that divide up finishers, but even with these as often as not the trinket awards they say they are going to hand out never get handed out (like with the recent marathon race). And besides, there's only just so much room in my house for "stuff".  No, not only do I not run against others, but it actually irritates me when I'm approaching the finish line and another runner is just ahead of me.  I would rather finish just behind him or her, and I feel it's kind of tacky-looking to pass them right at the very end...yet I would have to actually slow down in order to avoid that...yes, annoying.  A friend has suggested we get together for pickle ball, which sounds good.  Yet while it means virtually nothing to win a pickle ball match (a sport I've never played), competition is also an innate part of it all.  Sometimes it's hard to find a proper balance...

My November 2024 Running, Walking and Swimming Report

November was a pretty active month with running and walking...and maybe not so much with swimming.  At least, though, with swimming, there was a breakthrough as we rejoined our nearby YMCA, complete with their outdoor pool.  I've been there a couple of times, although I'm very far behind with my swimming form and endurance.  I think there's a large potential for great growth in this area, although we're also entering a season of coldness...even here in northern Florida.  I think I'll see if I can't get myself into a daily habit of getting out there for incremental swimming and pool time...well, almost daily since the YMCA is closed on Sunday.  As for the running and walking...

We had some good racing opportunities this past month, and since I was generally healthy and in good shape, I was able to participate in five events...three of them the 5K Depot Parkrun, along with a couple of long-distance races.  The first of these was the Tom Walker Half-Marathon on the western end of the Hawthorne Trail in southeast Gainesville...I speed-walked it all in 2:54:40.  The other event was on the eastern end of the same paved trail: the Mega Cupcake Marathon a week ago: I covered the 26.2 mile distance in 5:07:49 employing the Galloway run/walk method throughout that race.  I feel hopeful about possible future marathons after this one.  Yet I also know that I have a medical issue that needs to be looked into further and resolved...and it's more important in the long run than running races.  So in the month to come, I'll balance the two areas while staying mindful of the big picture...

Quote of the Week...from Fred "Mister" Rogers

Often when you think you're at the end of something, you're at the beginning of something else.       

---Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers (1928-2003) was perhaps better known as the Mister Rogers of the classic, beloved children's TV series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.  Although the series spanned 31 seasons, I was a little too old to be in its target audience of little children when I began watching it in the early 1970's...yet I was drawn to the sweet spirit and attitude permeating the show, clearly transmitted and demonstrated by its host Fred Rogers.  I was digging around for a quote like the one above because today is my final one at work...I've been at the United States Postal Service for 37 years, all of them at the Gainesville processing plant.  And tomorrow I will be a retiree.  I'm happy to leave, but I'm also happy to have worked there: what a blessing!  And Mister Rogers' above quote speaks volumes with just a few words: it's definitely the beginning of something else in my life with the closing of this other chapter...looking forward to the new adventures!

Ran Today's Special Thanksgiving Day Edition of Gainesville's Depot Parkrun 5K

This morning the Depot Parkrun organization scheduled a special Thanksgiving Day 5K at that park a few blocks south of downtown Gainesville...and I ran it.  The temperature at 7:30 race time was 61 with a 100% humidity, warmer and muggier by far than last Sunday's marathon.  At first I was leaning toward speed-walking the event, knowing that another Parkrun would be held just two days later on Saturday the 30th.  I was also dealing with some pain in my left foot and a blister on a toe on the right foot, but at the last minute decided to run it instead...albeit not with any aim of achieving a personal best.  Starting out relatively slowly, I nonetheless caught up with and passed numerous runners who had started out too fast.  In the end I finished with a time of 28:25...almost two minutes off my personal Parkrun best of just two weeks ago but still, for me, a respectable result.  Although the humidity was a bit weighty this morning, I did appreciate the cloud cover and lack of glare...something to be thankful for!  Click HERE to see the results for today's event...

Kicking the Short Story Review Can Down the Road to Next Wednesday

Normally Wednesday is the day on this blog when I review the latest short stories I've been reading, but this week I fell behind on it...oh, well. I think that things would be better served by passing on it this time around.  I'm still reading the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction, Sixteenth Annual Collection, featuring Gardner Dozois' selections from the year 1998.  Let's see if I can't come up with something by the time Wednesday rolls around again...

Some More About Last Sunday's Marathon

Since I wrote a couple of days ago about my second "official" running marathon experience, I realized there were a few extra items I thought merited mention.  One is the relatively involved amount of preparation during the days preceding the event.  This includes tapering down of running mileage and intensity, along with a stepped-up consumption of carbohydrates.  The latter is supposed to fill up the body's glycogen stores that normally would be depleted long before the end of this grueling 26.2 mile race.  So I did just that, easing up a bit on my training and stuffing myself with high-carb food.  I also conformed to the advice that I drink a lot of water, prehydrating myself for the expected race-day loss of such.  As it turned out I probably didn't need to prehydrate so much since I hardly even perspired the entire five-plus hours and actually had to take four different porta-potty breaks in the middle of the race.  But I should have ingested more electrolytes and stretch my legs more and better.  That may have largely contributed to my leg cramping issues during the final three miles, as well as during the first two hours following the marathon's completion.  I look forward to correcting these oversights for any possible future races...

During the run...four repeated out-and-backs on a 3.27 mile stretched of paved trail in the woods...I  imagined NYC marathon locations at different mileages on this largely undifferentiated run.  Also, I watched an old YouTube video that someone made going up and down the Hawthorne Trail and picked out a few landmarks to look for on the race course.  The Winnepeg YouTube running brothers, on their NYC Marathon video, scorned anyone they saw walking, because they seemed to entertain the misconception that this wasn't an acceptable option.  I, on the other hand, am an enthusiastic advocate and practitioner of the Jeff Galloway method of tackling long distances by alternating a set number of running minutes with one of walking.  Then again, I thought those two dudes were a little bit two much on the "alpha-male" dominance/pecking order side of the human psyche, reminding me a bit of some old overly competitive high school classmates that were totally into themselves and how superior they were to others (and me).  Still, they did give some good advice in parts of their video...

Right after I finished this marathon, I thought that this is too crazy...I'll never do another marathon again.  But the next day I was already figuring how I could tweak things to achieve a better outcome, both in terms of a faster time and in how I can withstand the stresses that this length of race...especially its ending...puts on my body.  But in the next two months I will be undergoing medical tests and, most likely, procedures that could well put an end to my running this season...or maybe not, I just don't know.  But there's other stuff I can do in the meantime if that happens...

Media Manipulation and Sensationalism: Turn It Off

We're definitely living in an age of media manipulation and sensationalism.  Although I tend to avoid news and opinion channels, the few times I drop in on any of them are loaded with messages of outrage and doom, regardless which "side" is expressing them.  The default position seems to be that the world is falling apart and it's those bad guys over there who keep saying and doing bad things, and we're so good because we vehemently react to them.  Whether it's mass media or a social media site like Facebook or YouTube, the lead into the featured story, is often (if not usually) captioned by some enticement at the viewer's emotions instead of a reasonable representation of what's to come if they keep watching or decide to click on the post or video.  I don't think this is going to get any better in the future.  I do think that when someone around me starts to rant and rave about something political or in the news, my first response...regardless whether I agree or not with their opinions...is to question where they receive their information from and how was it presented.  In the meantime, for people's general mental health I recommend a drastic tapering down of news and opinion input from mass and social media...regardless of the source...and to focus more on what good they can, in their individual daily living and decisions, do for the betterment of themselves, their loved ones, and community.  When it's time to vote, sure, inform yourself and do your civic duty...but you can't live on this crap 24/7...

Ran 26.2 Mile Marathon This Morning in Hawthorne

It has been a long time since I finished a marathon race.  As a matter of fact, I had only run one of them, the Ocala Marathon in 2011.  In that one I was doing well until an IT band injury forced me to walk (slowly) the last seven miles, finishing in a little over six hours. I'm glad I took a race volunteer's advice at the time and stuck it out to the end instead of just quitting it, but it has always bothered me that I never had a marathon race that I knew I could run.  Today I ran the Mega Cupcake Marathon held at the eastern end of the Hawthorne Trail, starting and ending in the town bearing that name just a few miles southeast of Gainesville.  The temperature at 7:30 race time was 39 with a 100% humidity, but it heated up by the time I finished it at 70 degrees and 40% humidity.  I had considered bundling up at the cold start of the race but, heeding the words of a couple of Canadian YouTube distance runners, I just wore the regular shorts and short-sleeve running shirt (and definitely stood out in the crowd).  The only problem I had with the cold was with my aching hands...should have worn gloves, dang it.  I also took some other YouTube advice with this race.  One, every 35-40 minutes (and before the race) I consumed an energy gel.  And two, I treated the first 20+ miles as a light jog, studiously avoiding going out too fast, a fatal mistake for many with this many miles to cover.  I also employed some Galloway Method walking, alternating some 1:30 of speed walking with 3:30 light running.  Thanks to Amazon Music, I was also able to listen to a long playlist of some of my favorite songs...that was cool.  Unfortunately, the gel packs got a little too gooey and got on my phone...have to better separate them next time.  This marathon course was pretty flat and was basically a 3.27-mile section of paved wooded trail, there-and-back for four laps.  I was doing fine until I was coming back on the final 3.27-mile stretch and my lower legs began to ache and ball up...I was hobbling at the finish line.  I believe I had negative splits for the race, which according to my watch should have given me a chip finishing time of 5 hours 7 minutes 49 seconds.  Click HERE to see the posted race results, courtesy of MYLAPS Speedhive. This race is essentially the same thing as the April race held at the same place...that one they call "Run Your Buns Off".  It's all very low-key and small-town...I dug the vibes and the nice volunteers, plus it was fun to wave and cheer on the other runners as we passed each other.  This morning they also held 5K, 10K and half-marathon races. Now let's just see how I recover from this punishing race... 

Congratulations to Florida Gator Football Team

The University of Florida football team has been through a lot of ups and downs this 2024 season with head coach Billy Napier on the "hot seat" in this, his third season in charge.  They played poorly against Miami and Texas (or maybe those two teams played extraordinarily well against the Gators), but have also been very competitive in the other contests.  And in the last two weeks they have beaten favored ranked conference opponents LSU and (today) Mississippi...I'm sure being at home helped a little.  The defense has improved immeasurably and they seem to have found a star quarterback in freshman D.J. Lagway.  So Florida is now 6-5 overall and finished their Southeastern Conference schedule at an even 4-4...they're qualified for a post-season bowl game this year even if they flub up against a clearly struggling Florida State team in their final regular season game.  Go Gators!

Quote of the Week...from Sheryl Crow

Hello, it's me, I'm not at home.  If you'd like to reach me, leave me alone!           ---Sheryl Crow

And so goes talented rock musician Sheryl Crow's wonderful late 90's song A Change Would Do You Good, maybe my favorite one of hers.  Of course, here she's mimicking a telephone answering machine...remember those?  And the message sounds a bit paradoxical, doesn't it?  I mean, how can you convey an intended message without actively engaging with the one who you'd want to receive it?  But that's not really what Sheryl was singing about, I think.  No, it's a blunt statement about someone being overrun by others' unwelcome intrusions on her time and life, no matter how well-intentioned they might be.  Or maybe I'm just imposing my own meaning on these lyrics...yeah, that's probably true.  I truly don't dig being completely immersed in complex social settings where all kinds of subtleties, intrigues and nuanced meanings are being communicated back and forth among various players, some of whom may or may not be trying to involve me in some way with their agendas.  No, give me a one-on-one setting where it's simple, mutually-respectful conversation and I can handle that pretty well.  Otherwise...well, read that above quote again...