RandomFailure

I can’t f-ing believe this: Duke freshman Luol Deng has declared himself eligible for the upcoming NBA draft. (See story.) The only good thing is that he has not yet hired an agent, so he may regain his sanity and return to school. And yes, this is a greedy point of view.

If you have a strong desire for overstimulation and have not had the opportunity to attend an AFL game, I suggest you do. I went to see the Philadelphia Soul game this past Saturday (had great third row seats – thanks Brian!). I was surprised at the fact that there was always something going on, even during the game breaks. This is definitely male-focused entertainment; see the Soulmates as proof (and there are others besides those shown in the picture). Oh, excuse me, the Borgata Soulmates. It seems that everything in the AFL has a sponsor. I guess it’s the only way the league could survive.

The game was entertaining too, with the Soul winning on a 52 yard field goal as time expired. That’s just in case you thought I wasn’t paying any attention to the game. The one thing that was difficult was the “Let’s Go Soul” cheer, since most people (or at least, the drunk dumb-ass in front of us) were trying to make “Soul” into a two syllable word so it fit the ingrained rhythm of the cheer. Hey folks, you can alter the cheer to fit the monosyllabic team name. See? I learned something in four years at Duke.

As for the overstimulation part, the game ended about 10:40 PM or so and I was so wired (even with no beer and a little bit of caffeine) that I couldn’t fall asleep until after 12:30 AM.

“Wah! I don’t want to play football in San Diego. Wah! I’m gonna pout while being the #1 draft pick in the NFL. Wah! I’m only getting a few million dollars! Wah, wah, wah.”

Doesn’t look too happy does he? Apparently, he gets happier when he gets traded. Wonder what his expression will be if he sucks?

Now, far be it from me to be any kind of peace protester (I hate how those morons want to disrupt the lives of ordinary people to prove their point, but that’s another topic for another day), but I have been reading about Mordechai Vanunu, and it makes me nauseous.

For those who don’t know, Vanunu exposed some Israeli nuclear secrets back in 1986. He was abducted by the Mossad from Rome, given a secret trial, imprisoned for 18 years, and released a few days ago. But that’s not the bad part (as if that weren’t bad enough). Vanunu can’t leave Israel, is confined to one town, and can have almost no interaction with foreigners (apparently only letters are OK, and I imagine those will be read before delivery).

Went from bad to worse, from last Saturday through Friday. The only thing stopping it was that the work was finally done. But, I did manage to end it properly, with the best run I’ve had in months, averaging sub-7:00 for about 8.5 miles. Not too shabby for a training run! That makes me feel much better, both after the week, and looking ahead to the Broad Street Run in a few weeks.

Shocking as it is to me, it has been seven long years (as of April 3) since I moved back to the East Coast from Denver. I believe this partly explains the crummy luck I’ve been having the past few days, mostly driving related. No accidents or other hilarity, just too many people not knowing how the <bleep> to drive.

As for the random luck portion, the last seven years have included a little bit of good luck (actually, very little), a few massive chunks of bad luck, and mostly no luck. It all does leads into the story behind my selecting “randomfailure” as the name of this site, but that’s a story for another day, especially since I only finished working about 30 minutes ago.