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First of all, I want to apologize to my readers for the recent lack of posts. I have had no time to work on this lately for a mix of personal and work-related reasons. I work in politics, and this is prime time for us. It’s like working as a tax preparer the week leading up to April 15. You probably will not see posts in earnest as before until after this Tuesday.

This is a blog, not a diary, but I just wanted to say a few things. In today’s world, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. I know because I feel overwhelmed much of the time. We’re less than a week from an election that people on both sides seem to feel is of dire importance. I would say that the tension level of the average person is as high as I’ve seen it. We hear every day about people killing each other somewhere in the world, sometimes in our own cities. No matter if you’re candidate’s ten points up or ten points down, sometimes things can just seem hopeless. I received an e-mail today, in 2008, going on at length about how all of our problems in America are caused by “negroes” and arguing that we should send them back to Africa. It urged me to “pass this on to everyone you know!” And, to top it all off, tomorrow’s Halloween, and everyone I know is so busy preparing for the election on Tuesday that I have no plans. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a Halloween costume this year. So all in all, things seem pretty depressing.

What’s difficult to remember in all this is that we are here, on a planet full of dazzling love and beauty. Today when I walked to the bus stop, it was bitingly cold and the grass had all turned white overnight. The sky in the East was laced with lines of pink, a tone poem of color. And, as I walked, I watched flock after flock of birds fly out of the sunrise and over my head. They were huge, dense masses, with hundreds of birds packed tightly together. I’m not sure what species they were… they were very small, and beat their wings hard. And the last flock was the biggest. It stretched all the way across the sky from north to south. I watched it with my mouth open and my neck craned upward, until a car honked at me and I realized that the light had changed and I could cross the street.

And the greatest thing is, you never know when moments like that are going to come. I’ve found that when things look bleakest, the rays of sunshine stand out even more. Pleasant conversations with total strangers that you think about for hours afterward. An engrossing chapter of a book. A compliment from a friend. I think that there’s something in all this. I’m not a messiah or a great philosopher, and couldn’t tell you what, but we have to hold onto that something through everything else.

And, hey, if you’re a Phillies fan, and I know a few, you don’t need any of this. It can be easy to be jealous of someone else’s happiness, but sometimes it’s also good to get swept up in pure jubilation, whatever the source. A grown man running in from left field, jumping for joy like a little boy at accomplishing the dream of his life. We are here in a world where that happens every day, somewhere.

As a dying Rowena Allister might sternly order, “You… flowers.” “Watchers” fans will get that… I think they’re most of our readership, anyway. Anyway, I’ll see you all soon. Happy Halloween!

Breaking Sports News: World Series Is Set

The Tampa Bay Rays, who as recently as last year might have won a poll for lowliest franchise in Major League Baseball, advanced to their first World Series last night after a great tension-filled ALCS Game 7 that ended in a 3-1 Rays victory over the defending champion Boston Red Sox. The Rays set a record for most home runs in a playoff series with sixteen, and excelled in pretty much every aspect of the game. Still, it took everything they had to overcome the vaunted Red Sox, who going into last night had won their last nine ALCS elimination games.

So the World Series will start in, where else, St. Petersburg, Florida on Wednesday night. It will pit the Rays against the Philadelphia Phillies, who breezed through the National League side of the playoffs relatively quietly against some good teams. The Phillies (favorite team of several official Walrus File relatives), have won exactly one world series in their history, in 1980, though they were in the playoffs last year and were among the favorites to open the year. While baseball traditionally doesn't see too much turnover at the top (especially compared to, say, football), there are a few recent series that invite comparison, including 1997's epic clash between the Indians (who hadn't won a championship since 1948) and the Marlins (in their first Series), as well as 2005's sweep by the White Sox (who won their first title since 1917) over the Astros (in their first Series).

FOX is apparently fearful of possible low ratings due to neither of these teams being among the game's traditional elite, but hardcore baseball fans seem to be eagerly anticipating the match-up. The Rays emerged this year with young talent at nearly every position, led by everyone's Rookie of the Year, third baseman Evan Longoria, who homered in four straight games of the ALCS, as well as exciting center fielder B.J. Upton., slugger Carlos Pena, all-star catcher Dioner Navarro, speedy left fielder Carl Crawford, and others. The pitching staff went from being historically bad last year to one of the league's best this year, with starters Scott Kazmir, Scott Shields, and unlikely ALCS MVP Matt Garza, as well as a bullpen that can comfortably go seven men deep and may herald the beginning of the post-closer era in baseball.

The Phillies, meanwhile, are led by a handful of superstars bigger than anybody on the Tampa Bay roster. Ryan Howard, a gentle giant of a first baseman, led the Majors in homers this year. Jimmy Rollins provides as big a spark as anyone in the game in the lead-off spot and is the team's unchallenged leader. He won last season's MVP award after the Phillies' furious comeback caught the collapsing New York Mets for the NL East title on the last day of the season. Their pitching staff is led by ace Cole Hamels, who won the NLCS MVP award and has been unhittable in the playoffs so far, and closer Brad Lidge, who went an unbelievable 41 for 41 in save opportunities this year. It should be an interesting contrast in styles between the two teams, and I doubt we'll see a short series.

In any case, it should be great viewing. If you're only a casual baseball fan who hasn't been paying the closest attention, now is a great chance to see some great games between two teams you may not have heard as much about in a season where the Yankees (who missed the playoffs for the first time since 1993), Red Sox, Mets, Cubs, Dodgers, and even the Milwaukee Brewers dominated the headlines for much of the year. ESPN has wasted no time in comparing this season's Rays club to the 1969 Amazin' Mets, who similarly came out of nowhere to establish their franchise on the national scene with a Championship. Can they seal the deal?

Bits: Everything Sucks Edition

-The bailout approved by Congress last week appears to have done little in the short term to stop the current worldwide financial spiral, though expecting it to have done so may have been unreasonable. Stock markets around the world went sharply downhill Monday. In the US, the Dow Jones dropped below 10000 for the first time in years. In Iceland, the currency was down 7% and the economy appears to be on the verge of collapse. The Frankfurt markets hit the skids after the German government had to perform its own bailout of real estate firms. Russian stock indexes lost over 15% of their value. And so on.

-Here you can find an easy step-by-step process to construct your own "Egg of Time." "Look into its time vortex, and see all that was, and all that will be." Yes.

-Time has a list of words the dictionary is trying to get rid of to make room for 2,000 new words. I am a word geek, and had not heard of any of these.

-New polls from various sources have shown Sen. Barack Obama up in pretty much every swing state, including Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, and New Mexico. However, it's still a month until the election, and we have discussed the accuracy of polls on here before.

-Meanwhile, Cracked.com has come up with a list of 5 presidential elections that were dumber than this one (somehow). It's actually a really good read. I particularly like the caption under the pic of John Quincy Adams: "I'll kill your wife. I don't even care."

-In response to what it says is widespread piracy, Warner Bros. is trying a new tack in Korea... it's going to start releasing its movies online before they hit DVD. How that will help, I'm not totally sure, but it makes sense in other ways.

-The Tampa Bay Rays are in baseball's final four. Hell has told us that it will take more than this for it to freeze over. Hell is just stubborn that way. In other sports news, the Ferocious Walruses fantasy football team remains undefeated. Because I know you've been hanging on every play.

Vice Presidential Smackdown: Vice Harder

Some quick thoughts on the Vice Presidential debate that just finished. I personally was bothered by Sarah Palin, but I don't think a lot of Americans will be. This is where I have a fundamental difference with a lot of my countrymen and women. I don't think it's too much to ask the Vice President to put gs on the end of words when they go there, or to use words the way they were actually meant to be used. And yet afterwards on CNN the commentators, on either side, universally praised how "folksy" Palin was. Just because people seem to like it doesn't mean it's actually a good thing. Is she going to be in the room with Putin, as the current cliche goes, saying "I'm hopin' and wishin' we can find some positive impacts for our folks back home"?

Okay, rant over. I'm going to try not to do that too often. In terms of actual analysis, I think that Biden did a fairly good job of calling Palin on any outright lies she made without seeming petty (he didn't call her on calling Gen. McKiernan "General McClellan," for example). Palin tried her darndest to do the same, but I don't think she made many of her points with the same specificity. She also said a few things that may come back to bite her. She said she agreed with Vice President Cheney on the subject of expanding the powers of the Vice Presidency. She said she is not convinced humans are responsible for global warming. These are positions that I'm not sure are in tune with what people are looking for.

I think it was a decent strategy on Palin's part to try to link Obama and Biden to "looking backward" when Biden tried to link McCain to the failed policies of the Bush administration. It worked rhetorically to shape the debate the way she wanted it. Biden, however, did not let that effect his own strategy, which was to do just that. In my opinion, "looking backward" or not, every time McCain/Palin talks about changing something from the status quo, Obama/Biden should come back with "Republicans have had the Presidency 20 of the last 28 years. Republicans have controlled the Congress 10 of the last 12 years. Why hasn't any of this happened before now?"

It was sometimes frustrating how much Biden insisted on sticking to the "3rd Bush term" idea, at the expense of offering more coherent versions of his own ideas. It may come off as overly negative. However, I don't think that will be an issue in the long run in a campaign where Democrats seem to often say good things about John McCain but Republicans resolutely refuse to say anything positive about Barack Obama. The "attack dog" role is a traditional one for a Vice President candidate, so the Presidential candidate doesn't have to get their hands dirty.

The usual question after these things is "well, who won?" That is of course completely subjective. I think Gov. Palin gave Sen. Biden the openings he needed to really ram home any advantage he may have had, and I'm not sure he followed through on those. I think he may have performed better overall, but I recognize that many reasonable people may disagree. Many people thought Palin's performance here would hurt the McCain campaign, and I don't think it really did. However, McCain's been steadily losing ground lately in several key states, and I doubt Palin did anything here that would change that.

In other news... wow, the Cubs are in trouble. You'd think I would have seen that coming, but I definitely didn't.

Updates: As the Bailout Turns

-The Senate voted for a version of the bailout today, 74 to 25. Both Barack Obama and John McCain voted in favor of the bill. The current version is very similar to the one the House rejected earlier this week, except for "sweeteners" (and yes, that's apparently the official term) that were added, especially tax cuts. Said cuts are apparently intended to lure Republicans. If I was a Republican, I would feel insulted by that. "They'll vote for anything with tax cuts, it doesn't matter how much they hate the rest of it." And of course, that makes it even less likely that we actually have the $700 Billion dollars to use for this.

-Scientists now say the AIDS virus jumped to people as early as 1884, much earlier than previously thought. I'm not sure what the implications of that are, but it's interesting stuff.

-Sarah Silverman, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jonah Hill are among an all-star cast that doesn't want you to vote. That reverse psychology won't work on me! http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1832128

-The Baseball playoffs are underway here in the States. Early victories for the Phillies, Dodgers, and Red Sox.

-Comic books too... booky for you? Ever thought "this is great, but I wish it was more computerized?" Comic book stories animated through machinima, now on the intertubes. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=DF54DE54A3BAA597

-Real life blind people have apparently decided that the upcoming film "Blindness" is offensive in its depiction of blind people. Shocking!