As My Stomach Turns - World Political Turmoil and Us

As My Stomach Turns - World Political Turmoil and Us. And Me.

    Things are not perfect in the world. They rarely are. Many of us are not too affected by higher prices, higher fuel costs and food, or awful credit or mortgage rates that are untenable...

    No perfections found, really. As would-be economists we need to manuever the dismal sciences of efficiencies and demands. Let's make do.

    Figure things out individually, collectively. Let the best minds decide and make choices. For the better. The betterment of all.

        Where to start? Where it ends in the Bible? In the Holy Land? Israel and Palestine. The never ending battles, debates, human rights abuses and hatreds. Unending.

    How to end it? We need a smart, dedicated, confident group of acerbic Americans or other leaders and people of sound judgment to settle the awful siituations there.

    C'mon, world.

    1. Russia versus Ukraine.

    2. Iran versus the world. To include confederate Shia proxies in Iraq, Yemen.

    3. Fighting in Congo, Rwanda, Burundi. Many people fighting over some rotten apples. (Perhaps not accurate or too simplistic.

    4. Somalia. Terrorism. Al-Shabab.

    5. Nigeria. Boko Haram.

    6. Ethiopia. Tigray tensions.

    7. What have I forgot? There are other bad issues roiling places of the world.

    8. Eco-terrorists? People who fight to save the planet, one tree or climate change prevention at a time.

    9. Fossil fuel fights. Space development and exploration.

    10. Artificial Intelligence battles.

    11. Cyber shenanigans.

    12. Electronic warfare? Not sure of the overlaps.

    13. China mapping out over Taiwan and the western Pacific.

    14. Drug cartels. 

    15. Over nationalistic causes in the sub-continent.

    16. The ice areas melting. Temperatures rising. See eco-terrorists. The cost of being greener.

    17. Did my dumb, faulty computer erase my last ones?

    18. North Korea.

    19. Mad economic schemes.

    20. Inflation and exhorbitant prices.

    21. Not replacing population.

    22. Cutting off medicine and the proliferation of HIV and malaria.

    23. Poverty.

    24. High priced education.

    25. Increased marijuana THC levels, inducing psychosis and violence.

    26. Pollution.

    27. Cheaper, greener energy. Wind, solar, geothermal. What else? Hydroelectric.

    28. Drying up of aquifers and rivers. Ice melting. Seas rise, islands and coasts inundated.

    29. Religious competition, persecuion.

    30. Radical movements. Violent or persecutory ideologies.

    31. Pornagraphy and sexual exploitation.

    32. Greed.

    33. Mental illnesses.

    34. Traffic safety and death.

    35. Cancer and other deadly and impairing diseases.

    36. Ivy league elite smugness.

    37. Pride.

    38. Unfaithfulness.

    39. Apathy.

    Ok, who cares about forty things. 

    You? Me. We should.

    Blog it.

 Who is Left Undefeated? Not many. Georgia Screwed Up. Texas Has Lost Twice!

    My Cougars are left, as is UCLA. We eliminated Notre Dame in Provo, as Miami stayed unscathed in the rain against a pesky Florida State who could not do enough in double overtime to stamp out the Canes.

    Who is left?

    Miami, BYU, UCLA. Texas Tech? Anyone else? Buehler? BUEHLER? (That means crickets. That means silence. That means nothing. No one. No one else with not blemishes in the loss column...

    Am I right?

    Four teams?

    Mine is one? Of four? Only four?

    Can this be? Third weekend of October?

    Scanning the map... 

    Many really good teams have two losses. Hmmmm... Ole Miss. Has lost. All of them.

    And then there were four.

    Perfection is not easy.

    Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting Utah.

    FIVE. 

    This season will continue to remain interesting.

    Play on.

    Blog on.

    Blog it.

    Or, does anyone truly care about college football at the national Division 1 level?

    There is one more team undefeated, less heralded. There has to be. Lemme check.

    Oh, yes. James Madison. 7-0. Number 29 but moving up. Who else do they have left?

    I can check my magazines...

    There six lossless left.

    Amazing. Meanwhile, I have accrued personal losses in increasing volumes...

Four Point Games! October 17, 2026. Historic College Football Games

    What a day, what a Saturday. Both my schools, undefeated, played two other top-ranked schools.

    College football, packed houses in my home town of Bloomington, and the other home of Provo. I lived a total of 22 years in one and five in the other. Been back to both numerous times since.

    Indiana had the killer Buckeyes, that we had not beat in 30 regular season games! Yikes. At least the national champion Hoosiers beat them last year in the Big Ten championship.

    I came into the game reticent, hesitant, not sure. About the greatness of IU. Indiana had a last play to miraculously win it, but Nick Marsh used the wrong foot, was out, and we lost.

    By four. It's okay. Indiana still has the whole season ahead of it, and can make the CFP. Playoffs. We just need to roll Michigan and play right. It should be good under Cignetti, I say.

    The boys will be all right. Becker was great. The defense was good enough. Radocic, the kicker, may have cost IU. Because, his missed field goal let Ohio State off the hook for an easier final score.

    Right?

    Am I mixing up the BYU game now?

    Four points.

    Late night Cougars downed the Irish!

    It was a thing of mostly beauty the first half. Cougars 21, Notre Dame 10. But the second half got too tight. A bad call, in my and others' opinion, on an offensive interference call on Kasper stopped a big go ahead touch down. Would have been a lead of 18. But, drive negated, the Cougs started to self destruct.

    DeVries muffed a punt, Irish got 3 from a field goal. 21-13. BYU muffed a punt, Notre Dame pulled to 21-16. Defense was stout for BYU. But then number two played like number 2 in the nation. They scored a touchdown, going ahead.

    Then BYU played like #2, as they hope to be this week.

    And finally, the defense held on to stop AJ Carr, the very good QB, in the BYU endzone.

    Cougs by four.

    Celebrations in or at Lavell Edwards Field. Including family. My daughter got in!

    BYU should be #2 in the land. Utah is good, but likely not as good as Notre Dame.

    Things are all right for Indiana and Brigham Young.

    Both top ten, heading for the College Football Playoffs in December.

    For now.

    Love it.

    

    

 Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, Marijuana

   A sixteen-year old shoots 3 minors and a teacher to death. Bend, Oregon.

My first question: how much did the teen smoke marijuana?

Mental illness has no easy fix.

Guns and proliferation of them can be very wrong, problematic.

THC levels in cannabis consumed exacerbates all of the above.

People are slow to learn and understand.

God bless us to be wise, stay safe.

 The Planet of Souls

    My favorite singer Sting sings songs from his album "The Soul Cages". He sings about the "Island of Souls". About people, us, earthlings, humans. Men, women, a few kids, perhaps a few cats, dogs, and turtles.

    Nah. About just us humans as primates. We are human, even though many animals and some plants exhibit intelligent behavior and instincts, reasoning or crazy acts.

    We are between the best and the worst. We are found in the middle.

    Us souls in the middle. We do things routinely, but some things we do randomly. 

    Many of us mow lawns. In the United States the lawns that we mow, or cut with tractors and all those machines that chop down and hew the grass. The grasses of the United States, that most of us see everywhere, adds up to the size of Iowa. We collectively mow the territory of Iowa, some of us weekly. I try to push it to 9, 10, 11 days. No one pays me do provide this service. I only did the backyard, which has some steep slopage.

    I used some old sneakers, which maybe I bought in California, if so, over two decades ago. I had used those sneakers here in Virginia, and I liked them. But the souls of the sneakers were loose and coming off, and sure enough as I mowed as the sun was setting and it got darker on this hot, 90 degree day of mid-October. Post southern hurricane Isaias.

    Cuece and cose are different verbs in Spanish, despite what my co-worker said that the campesinos mispeak, los "no educativos". Maybe she did not say it that way, but she was saying that the uneducated rubes in El Salvador get it wrong.

    Con lo mismo que se cuece. Las habanas, etcetera.

    The souls of my shoes, the souls inhabiting the planet. We all intermix and mow the grass, sometimes falling off and being left by the wayside.

    But we find ourselves, and we collect our souls, and we maybe tape them up, and perhaps we will use them for another day.

    Another mow. Another lawn cut. Other grasses sheaved or torn, cut and collected.

    Iowa, Iowa, Iowa.

    Calling all Iowans. Like Sam, with whom I worked a few months this year.

    Calling all souls. On the feet, the ones that we wear that support us. The souls of the dead, or the unborn, or the ones that we all posssess here and throughout the universe.

    Soul music, soul food; it's not all just a black thing, Black thing.

    Our souls all come together and we mow, cut, collect, sweat, breathe, observing the light fade out.

    Fade out. Like some of the souls of today, slide into the netherworlds of the past.

    And off our world, away from the planet. Perhaps the molecules of the dead are planted under grasses in cementeries, or the ashes of the cremated, and they convert into dirt and other things... Compounds or elements of helium, hydrogen, carbon and all those miniscule particles.

    But, the soul remains. The soul cages. The soul rages. Our souls: we prevail.

    Like Israel. Like God. Like goodness. Like all the similes of all existence.

    Prose and poetry, you have it all here and there.

    Poetry elides into prose.

    Words and sounds and thoughts and ideas.

    Ideals and precepts, marching onward forever.

    You, me, and God makes three.

    But there are more, however. However, there is more than just us, but.

    You know. You cut the grass with me, and saw the sneakers fall apart.

    My souls fell to the wayside; they were collected, gathered, recovered, restored.

    From sea to shining sea.

    Like my daughter's future celebrations.

Started the Day with Negative Thoughts... It's Okay

    I woke up wondering, and things got weirder for me. It set me off thinking about some negative stuff.

    Things got better throughout the day. I was able to work, do some good things, to include good interactions with other people, including my wife.

    I came home and I took a relatively deep nap. By my son. That was good.

    We mowed the lawn. She front, me back.

    We talked, we hugged, or kissed a little.

    Things were better and okay for me.

    Perhaps I am fragile by day, but things have to be talked down to me.

    And all other things. Art at the store, conversations, game of fishy at work, perfumes, cologne...

    It was not a bad Wednesday.

    We will go again tomorrow.

    We pray.

    

Boycotting the NHL, Hating Killers and those that Support Them

    I decided back in the 1980s as a teenager that I could not like or watch hockey that much. I realized I loved some sports so much that I could not afford to like this sport too much.

    I have watched it, here and there. I enjoyed the Washington Capitals back in 2018, or whenever they won the Cup. I have enjoyed some Olympic hockey play. And some World Cup play a few times.

    Right now? Nah. Last year I watched, or observed from afar, sort of, when Alex Ovechkin surpassed the Great One Gretsky as all time leading goal scorer. I thought that was cool.

    But now Alex supports his dictator president Vladimir Putin.

    A killer. A baby killer. A country invader and a terrible despot.

    Sorry, Alex. Not a fan, nor can I stomach your league.

    Some day you may see how wrong you are.

    Good riddance, NHL.