Are you a seeder?

Whenever I'm sitting around, watching TV, or looking at the internet, I have to be doing something with my hands because I feel uncomfortable in my own skin - this is when I miss cigarettes the most, and when seeds come in most handy.  The seed mongers are wise to this phenomenon, and seem to be seeking to exploit the emotionally vulnerable recovering-smoker-demographic:

Actual ad copy on the back of the bag:  "Seeders are unique.  They're cool, confident, independent, active, and hard working.  They know that eating David Sunflower Seeds makes what they do more enjoyable.  Things are better with David because they're a snack and an activity.  Experience snacktivity."

Actual ad copy:  "One of a kind. While others follow maps, he follows his instincts. And he never goes wrong. He smokes for pleasure and satisfaction. He gets both from the blend of Turkish and Domestic tobaccos in Camel Filters. Do you?"

If selling was a song, David would owe Big Tobacco royalties.

Eff for Effort

Dwight Howard is nearly a perfect physical specimen - a more athletic,7-foot version of Adonis.  His teammate, Vince Carter, was the most explosive athlete to come into the league in the past 20 years, and in his youth, he was the greatest dunker of all time.  Their team, the Orlando Magic, made the finals last year; this year, they had the second best record in the league, and are the only team to have swept through the first round of the Playoffs.   Despite all this, very few consider them a serious threat to win the title; in a way, this is because these two were born with such immense natural gifts.

There was a highly-publicized study a while back about the effects of praise on the performance of children.  The study's results suggested that kids who were praised for their effort came to value hard work and self-improvement, while kids who were praised for intelligence shied away from tasks they weren't good at:  "those told they were intelligent tended to choose assignments they knew they would do well on, while the second group chose tasks they thought they might learn something from."  Vince Carter and Dwight Howard have both been praised to the rafters for their innate physical talents, and thus far, both have shied away from developing the habits needed to win a Championship.

Howard was a number one draft pick straight out of high school, and he's been an awesome rebounder and defender since he came into the league, much of that owing to his size and athleticism, but he's always been an unskilled offensive player and a terrible free throw shooter.  Rather than focus on improving these weaknesses, he seems to have shifted all of his effort to making marginal gains at the things he was already good at:  "despite his continued struggles at the foul line and developing some big-time post moves in his sixth NBA season, he actually improved at the defensive end", NYdailynews.

At least showcasing his defensive prowess helps the team win, unfortunately he also likes to show off his strength and athleticism.  Bill Simmons often talks about how, when Dwight blocks a shot, he tries to block it into the 10th row, which shows people what a dominant athlete he is, but also gives the ball back to the other team.  A smart player, like Bill Russell, tips the ball to himself.  In round one of the playoffs, Dwight kept getting into foul trouble.  Charles Barkley said this was because Dwight's constantly trying to prove he's "the strongest guy in the room"; every time someone grabs Dwight's arm, he feels the need to throw the guy to the ground, like he's some sort of ogre in a cartoon.

 Dwight Howard doing his Superman dunk; Superman received his gifts as an infant.  The other guy who calls himself Superman is Shaq, a great player, but one who never gave anywhere near the effort you'd expect from a player of his caliber.

Here's how Simmons describes Vince Carter in The Book of Basketball:  "Vince got an enormous amount of respect from other players, not for what he delivered but for his gifts themselves.  Of anyone in the league over the past fifteen years, his peers felt like Vince Carter was the one who could do anything.  Well, except give a shit on a consistent basis."   Maybe if he hadn't gotten so much respect for his talent, he'd have more respect for the game.

Contrast these guys with the creation myth of Michael Jordan.  Sure, some people called him Superman too, but Jordan himself never took to the name, because unlike Superman, the Jordan-myth doesn't center around in-born physical gifts - how could it when he was cut from his own high school team.  Michael Jordan has been praised mostly for his competitive fire and his will to continually improve.

Those Who Ain't Get It Ain't Supposed To

In this NYTimes article, Patricia Cohen discusses "epistemic closure", the meaning of which is impossible to know unless you're actually willing to learn - which is probably the whole point.  The phrase is used to describe anti-intellectual closed-mindedness, and its an old philosophy term, recently appropriated by right-wing think tanker Julian Sanchez to describe the now-prevailing mind-state among conservatives.  Sanchez and other conservative intellectuals are becoming increasingly concerned about this pro-ignorance way of thinking, as its finally becoming a losing position.

The people who are most closed-minded are the precise people who'd hear the words "epistemic closure" and immediately tune out, probably while muttering something about "pansy-ass academics, their $50-words, and their egg-head theories".  These ignoramuses think they already have all the answers, and that anything they haven't heard of before, or don't already understand (like global warming), must be bullshit.  They take it as a personal insult anytime someone exposes them to a new idea because it makes them feel inferior.

The obscurity of the term "epistemic closure" acts as a gatekeeper to exclude these idiots from the discussion, allowing Sanchez to talk shit about them without their realizing it.  Ultimately, he'll need to reach these morons, to change their ways, but right now, they aren't ready to have that discussion.  In the mean-time, him and his think-tank cohorts can huddle up and strategize behind the closed doors of academic jargon; that's always been their modus operandi, to ruminate in private, then repackage those thoughts into a format consummable by the gullible public (re: propaganda).

This privacy was necessary so that the rubes wouldn't find out they've been voting against their own self-interest.  The conservative public has been spoon-fed anti-intellectual junk-food for so long, that they're no longer receptive to ideas that have value.  These think-tank assholes are going to have to have their work cut out for them.

"Those who ain't get it ain't supposed to." - MF DOOM

The Tyranny of Freedom

In last Saturday's WEC Featherweight Championship fight, Jose Aldo dismantled Urijah Faber almost entirely with leg kicks, methodically administered over the course of five rounds.  These kicks are some of the least exciting moves in Mixed Martial Arts; its just one guy kicking another in the the leg, which is the same move my little brother would use against me when we were kids.  But in the last few months, two UFC-sponsored title fights have been totally dictated by this move.

Shogun Rua picked Lyoto Machida apart using the leg kick, and although he lost a controversial decision, nearly all fight fans thought he dominated the fight, as Machida could barely stand by the end of Round 5.

MMA is a young sport, still in its early-adolescence, so it would be foolish to assume that its reached a strategic equilibrium, where the fighters all have a good understanding of which techniques should predominate.  As strategies evolve, exploitation of the front leg kick might emerge as the new dominant tactic, especially in title fights, where they can wear opponents down over five rounds (as opposed to the typical three rounds used in non-title fights).   Because the kick is so unspectacular, it could make the sport much less entertaining, turning explosive multidisciplinary fights into one-dimensional contests of attrition.

If you were in middle-school, and two kids "fought", but all that happened was one guy kicking the other in the leg, you'd say it "wasn't a real right".  This is probably why fans were booing at the end of Aldo-Faber, even though, tactically speaking, Aldo's performance was masterful.

In the evolution of most sports, a recurring pattern plays out:  a new strategy comes to dominate, its exploitation makes the sport less entertaining, then a new rule is created to weaken the strategy, making the sport fun to watch once again.

In the early 1950s, basketball teams who were ahead would hold the ball, refusing to shoot until they ran out the clock.  In one game, the Pistons beat the Lakers 19-18.  The shot clock was invented 1954 to force teams to actually play.

In hockey, during the early 2000s, teams began to abuse the neutral zone trap, which lowered scoring and fan interest in the sport.  The NHL instituted several rule changes in 2005, and scoring increased from 5.02 goals per game in '03-'04 to 5.53 in '09-'10.

The thing about MMA is that it prides itself on its lack of rules, and sells itself as the purest form of competition; a new rule to address the leg kick would undermine this whole concept.  Without any means to regulate strategy, a sport that's supposed to be an exciting anarchic brawl where "anything-goes" could end up in a tedious equilibrium ruled by a single tactic.

This is much like a state of anarchy, viewed by some as the purest form of society, but where the ultimate equilibrium is inevitably one in which power is aggregated in the hands of a single overlord.  This autocratic asshole, be it a gangster or a monopolistic corporation, ends up controlling everything in the same manner as a government-sanctioned dictator.

Performance Anxiety

I just watched a DVD of the Upright Citizens Brigade's Asssscat improv show; as is usually the case, the live audience was laughing a lot harder than seemed warranted.  People often ascribe this phenomena to the "communal experience", where the crowd feeds off itself through the empathetic response.  Another explanation is that the audience paid good money to have a good time, and goddammit that's what they're going to do.

But in the case of Assssscat, which was performed in the tiny, 92-seat UCB Theatre, it seems like the laughter-threshold of the audience was lowered by a subconscious politeness-mechanism, where the audience unwittingly feels like it would be assholish to not laugh at the somewhat clever antics of the comedy brigade.  The setting is so intimate that the actors can see the faces of every member of the audience, and each of these audience members may feel that they themselves are putting on a reciprocal performance for the sake of the actors.

Asssscat, all up in my grill.

This is like when you're meeting someone for the first time, where you feel like you're each assessing each other, and the pressure to accept and be accepted causes you to laugh at each other's shitty jokes.  Of course, that only applies when the two people actually care what the other person thinks; with comedy, if the audience doesn't respect you, they won't bother with polite laughter.

The social pressure is not just in the audience's mind, on Comedy and Everything Else, stand-ups Todd Glass and Jimmy Dore discuss taking it personally whenever there's some fucker in the audience who's not laughing.  They also say that anytime someone gets up and leaves during a show, they'll neurotically assume it was because the person hated their act, not because the babysitter just called with an emergency.

Doug Benson likes to talk about how, ever since he established himself as the preeminent stoner-comic, some hardcore drug-dealer types will come to his show, and sit in the front row with thuggish expressions on their faces the whole time.  This consumes Doug throughout his set, he's worried they want to kick his ass because of how shitty his material is, but after the show, they'll come up to him and give him daps, telling him how much they loved it.  These gangsters don't have the polite-laughter mechanism ingrained in them, and that makes them stand out among Doug's crowd.

The phenomenon doesn't transfer to large venues.  Many comedians have talked about much harder it is to control a big audience of several thousand people. This is because, in a large crowd, the people don't feel the need to kiss your ass.  Its like being on the streets of New York, people won't even acknowledge your existence; meanwhile, if you're in Middleton, Wisconsin, you're considered a jerk if you don't greet every passerby with a nod and a smile.

But even if the chuckles at these comedy shows are born out of anxiety rather than humor, that doesn't mean they're invalid.  People go to haunted houses to feel scared, and on rollercoasters to feel nauseous, why shouldn't there be some way to induce awkward laughter?

Unrealistic Expectations

Every once in a while, Joachim Noah takes the rubberband out of his hair so he can fuss around with his locks and rearrange his ponytail.  It's fucking disgusting.

As with all feelings, one can only speculate as to their real cause, but in this case it seems like what's happening is this:  I'm so used to seeing these primping motions performed by a female that I subconsciously expect him to be a woman.  He's a reasonably good-looking guy, but utterly repulsive as a chick.

 Joachim in his normal context.

I Shouldn't Be Alive

You've probably become aware of a show on the Discovery Channel called I Shouldn't Be Alive.

Take a look at these hands...

Up until now, it's focused on tales of survival by real-life outdoorsmen, guys are only alive because of their ability to react and their steely resolve. 

We're still waiting for the tale of woe by the depressive shut-in, a guy who's only alive because of his failure to act and his lack of resolve. 

Ghost-stache

Have you noticed how many of these NBA players have mustaches?  I hadn't, not for a while anyway.

 Chris Paul and mustache.

These black guys have been growing these things right under their noses, without us even realizing it; they're so subtle and tasteful as to be almost subliminal.

 Carmelo Anthony's mustache is like a woman's eye liner, where the aesthetic effect is greatest when  understated. 

Meanwhile, when a white guy does it, its so obvious and unsightly that he has to make a joke out of it, or he risks making a joke of himself.  The coolest white guy in the world is probably Brad Pitt, a guy who could probably sell his body odor to a mass market, but even he couldn't pull off the mustache. 

At least he can say he grew this thing to play a cartoon character.

I guess you can add this to the list of dancing, dunking, and wearing (non-baseball) hats; these are all things that black guys can do with style, but when a white guy tries, it just looks ridiculous.

Innocent Til Proven Not Guilty

Goldman Sachs is being tried in civil court for defrauding its clients by selling them "securities" that were deliberately designed to blow up in the clients' faces; they've already admitted what they did, but they refuse to admit what they did was wrong.

Goldman acknowledged that they assembled these time-bombs in conspiracy with a hedge fund called Paulson & Co.  The hedge fund cherrypicked the worst possible mortgages, then had Goldman package them together in a CDO to sell them to the chump clients.  Selling the mortgages as a CDO allowed Paulson & Co.  to make a huge side-bet that the sabotaged CDO would fail; lo and behold, they ended up winning big, netting $1 billion, while the gullible clients lost the same amount.

Again, Goldman admits that this was the plan from the start, that they sold the time-bombs knowing they were designed by someone who wanted them to self-destruct; their defense is to claim they have every legal right to sell these deathtraps, and no legal responsibility to disclose that they're sure-fire bets to end in disaster.

It would be hard to have a greedier, more Jewish-sounding name without getting sued by the Anti-Defamation League. 

If Goldman gets off the hook using this defense, it'll be a text-book illustration that that there's a distinction between the defense winning and them actually being innocent.   In fact, if Goldman is exonerated, you can easily argue that, in the public eye, they'll be viewed with far more suspicion than if they'd been found culpable, because it'll establish a precedent in the United States that its perfectly legal to commit this type of fraud.

Conservatives claim that regulating the banking sector is bad for business, that the market will find a way to police itself.  In a way, they're right, the market will correct for these sheisters, but the way it'll do so is by shifting capital to banking sectors in other countries, where laws might might actually protect investors from these con-men. 

If you lived along the Mexican border, and you wanted to buy a sack of gold, would you do it in Tijuana or in San Diego.  Obviously you aren't going to buy it in Mexico because what little law they have there is corrupted by sheisters.

Goldman erected this monstrosity in New Jersey; they were having a hard time standing out among all the other dicks on Wall Street.

Peg, It Will Come Back To You

On an old episode of Jordan Jesse Go, Jordan says that he's attracted to the redheaded woman in the Progressive ads.  He must have an extraordinary ability to apply real-world standards to people on TV, because on TV, this bitch looks like Ronald McDonald.

If you try really hard, you can imagine her being borderline-doable, but not the type of doable where you'd admit what you'd done.  Jordan, you surprise me.

I did a little more research, and it turns out that "Flo" is not her real name, she's actually a stand-up comedian/actress named Stephanie Courtney, and she's actually pretty good-looking, you can barely tell its the same person. 

That clown make-up cleans-off nice.

That's one good thing about having such an over-the-top costume when playing an obnoxious character:  once she takes off the disguise, she's no longer recognizable as that worthless person.

Meanwhile, there are these Clairol commercials where Angela Kinsey, the woman who plays Angela from The Office, is selling some sort of woman's product.  She's acting and dressing much more normal, and objectively speaking, you can tell she's an attractive person, but all I can see is the hideous shrew she plays so well on The Office.

Ta-Da! Sorry, still revolting.

This is the classic Ned Beatty phenomenon, where you get your foot in the door by giving an indelible performance, then spend the rest of your career trying to make people forget it.  Congratulations Ned, you're famous...for squealing like a pig while getting raped by a hick.

 Is this selling-out, or is it the opposite?  Did he suffer for his art or pay for his sins? 

Confession

British politician of no importance to you or I.

On the latest doublexx podcast, they were talking about the Americanization of the British general election, and the US Weekly-type roles being played by the candidates' wives.  Apparently these women are dishing out little tidbits about how their husbands are bad about clearing dishes and putting socks in hampers.  The doublexx'ers think these tidbits are a way for the campaigns to humanize the candidates, to make them appear less perfect.

But the public always presumes politicians to be deeply human and deeply imperfect, so what the campaigns are actually doing is copping a plea to a lesser crime to escape suspicion of something more sinister.  When Obama was running for President, the guy seemed too good to be true, which didn't mean we viewed him as a superhuman demigod, it meant we knew there had to be some sort of dark secret.  For all we knew, maybe Obama was secretly sharing Marion Barry's crackpipe. 

Maybe he was secretly born in Kenya, and upon his birth, his parents had the foresight to know he was going to run for President 47 years later, so they planted a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser.

But then the truth came out during one of the debates, that Obama loses pieces of paper and that he needs to clean his desk more often.

RUSSERT: You said each of you have strengths and weaknesses. I want to ask each of you quickly, your greatest strength, your greatest weakness.
OBAMA: ...As I indicated before, my greatest weakness, I think, is when it comes to — I’ll give you a very good example.  I ask my staff member to hand me paper until two seconds before I need it because I will lose it. You know, the —- you know…
(LAUGHTER)
And my desk and my office doesn’t look good. I’ve got to have somebody around me who is keeping track of that stuff.

This was a savvy move by Obama, it eased some of the other suspicions because he confessed to an actual crime, however small it may have been.  This is much better than using the classic "my only flaw is that I'm too good" move, or variations such as:  "I'm too much of a perfectionist, I'm too humble, I undersell myself, I appear less amazing than I actually am".  There's also the non-confession used by George Bush, when he said his biggest regret was the way people perceived him.  In other words, "I'm sorry I let you stupid assholes get the wrong idea about me."

During that '08 debate, Hilary confessed to the sin of being a pushy bitch, which was a smart move because it partially absolved her for a crime she'd already been convicted of.

CLINTON: I get impatient. I get, you know, really frustrated when people don’t seem to understand that we can do so much more to help each other. Sometimes I come across that way. I admit that. I get very concerned about, you know, pushing further and faster than perhaps people are ready to go.

Hilary did use the "the way I'm perceived" cop-out when she said the words "sometimes I come across that way", and she did blame the victims for their failure "to understand", but I still give her credit for acknowledging that people don't like her.  Meanwhile, John Edwards' confession was a goddamn joke.

EDWARDS:  I think weakness, I sometimes have a very powerful emotional response to pain that I see around me, when I see a man like Donnie Ingram, who I met a few months ago in South Carolina, who worked for 33 years in the mill, reminded me very much of the kind of people that I grew up with, who’s about to lose his job, has no idea where he’s going to go, what he’s going to do.

I mean, his dignity and self-respect is at issue. And I feel that in a really personal way and in a very emotional way. And I think sometimes that can undermine what you need to do.

This is the "my greatest weakness is actually a strength" move, which is the most egregious of all non-confessions.  By failing to own up to even the slightest sin, Edwards essentially proclaimed that he must have been guilty of something serious, beyond simply his manifest narcissism and his obvious belief that we're all a bunch of fools.  We shouldn't have been surprised that this guy, who proclaimed his greatest flaw was his "powerful emotional response to pain" and his compassion for people who fear losing their "dignity and self-respect", was secretly cheating on his cancer-stricken wife.

John Edwards is my greatest weakness.

Finding Your Audience

In the absence of any responsible authority, Conservatives have ceded control of their party to a free-market solution, granting their political leadership by default to the personalities that have been most successful in the realm of media, people like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.

This has worked out well for them in terms of getting attention and making noise, but politically, the long-term effects might be disastrous to their party; the business model of the media is completely different from that of a political party.  Media personalities gain publicity by saying outrageous things, but politicians often avoid saying anything substantive at all; media personalities can succeed by appealing strongly to a small minority, but political parties can succeed only by winning the favor of the majority. 
 
To be a successful politician, you want approval ratings above 50%; to get the job of President, you need at least 60 million votes, or about 1 in 5 Americans.

To be a successful cable TV host like Glenn Beck, you need Nielsen ratings of fewer than 2 million viewers, or about 1 in 150 Americans. 

To be a successful author like Sarah Palin, you need to sell books to about 1 million people, or about 1 in 300 Americans. 

Palin near her Alaska home, seeing Russia in the distance, as Putin rears his head.

Beck made $2 million off his TV show last year, and leveraged that exposure to make an additional $30 million dollars through other outlets.  Palin made $7 million off her book, Going Rogue, and has made $12 million total since leaving office last July.  Beck and Palin have been hugely successful as media personalities, but it's a mistake for the GOP to take its cues from them:  they've succeeded by targeting what the media calls a niche; in politics, it's called the fringe. 

There aren't very many political movements where the business model is similar to that of a media figure, where the goal is to have strong appeal to a narrow audience.  The one exception is a terrorist organization; they don't need broad popular support for their cause, they just need to win over a few zealots, who'll bully the rest of society to cave into their demands.  

By ceding control of their movement to the media business model, the conservative movement has ended up using the same business model used by terrorist organizations.  This has coincided with the rise of the Tea Party, a media-driven performance-group that's grown rapidly by courting the fringe and pulling publicity stunts.  Its relevant to note that, from a strictly tactical standpoint, the Boston Tea Party was a terrorist act; morally it was justifiable, but their methods involved a small group using violence to draw attention and coerce political change.

Last month, a Tea Party organizer tried to post the address of Democratic Representative Thomas Perriello and urged Tea Party members to "drop by".  One of the Tea Party-people ended up going to the house and cutting the gas line, even though the house actually belonged to Perriello's brother.  Fortunately no one died.

There were also the brick throwing incidents, where a conservative blogger goaded people across the country into smashing the windows of Democratic party offices:  "We can break their windows.  Break them NOW. And if we do a proper job, if we break the windows of hundreds, thousands, of Democrat party headquarters across this country, we might just wake up enough of them to make defending ourselves at the muzzle of a rifle unnecessary.”  Of course, like any good terrorist, he was quick to claim responsibility after his followers carried out his orders; this probably got his blog a ton of extra traffic.

This is the actual brick that broke the window of the Monroe County Democratic Committee Office.  You can tell its authentic because the spelling is wrong. 

Everyone knows that politicians are relentless self-promoters, but the burden of needing a majority to win office has usually kept them from being too reckless and sensational.  But now, the most prominent Conservative voices are no longer politicians, instead they're media personalities like Palin or media-driven performance-groups like the Tea Party.  They're not trying to get elected, they're just trying to get attention, so they can sell their books or their blogs to a fringe audience. 

Michelle Bachmann might currently hold office, but the way she conducts herself, it seems more like she's lining up a tv show or a book deal, as she says herself, "When I came to Congress, I didn’t come here to stay here as a fixture for ever and ever."

Last week, Bill Clinton gave a speech to commemorate Oklahoma City, in it he said that one of the lessons of that bombing was that political leaders need to be careful about the words they use, to avoid inciting their unstable followers to violence.   He said, "one of the things that the conservatives have always brought to the table in America is a reminder that no law can replace personal responsibility. And the more power you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility you have." 

That's precisely the problem: due to the current leadership void, the Conservatives who have all the influence are no longer being held accountable by the need to win a majority; their only pressure is create a strong appeal to a small group of extremists.  Glen Beck and Sarah Palin have done a great job as de facto leaders, inciting passions among their followers, but I doubt we'll see them claim responsibility if something tragic happens.

This happened in the Midwest, not the Middle East.

I Believe We've Already Met

On this week's episode of Hang Up and Listen, the dudes mention the fact that there's much less fighting in the NHL playoffs than there is during the regular season.  This surprises the dudes in part because, in the playoffs, the refs call fewer penalties, meaning there should be more occasion for the players to self-police/get revenge.

This is what's known as a "teachable moment".

I don't know shit about hockey, but my ignorance has never kept me from piping up, and I've never been punished for popping off, so here's my theory:  the fighting during the regular season is used to send a message, that your team is not to be fucked with; its like shanking a guy on the first day of prison, which establishes your bonafides as a bad-ass, so that the other inmates won't mess with you.  By the time the playoffs roll around, your reputation should already be known, so you shouldn't have to show and prove; further, there are fewer games remaining, so adding to your rep will only pay dividends for a very short while, making it a poor investment.  In a way, fighting in the playoffs is like shanking a guy on the last day of prison, its just not worth it, unless the guy's really got it coming.

SNAFU

During yesterday's Bobcats-Magic game, the Marines Teamwork Play of The Game was when Gerald Wallace accidentally dove into the leg of his teammate Stephen Jackson, causing a hyperextended knee injury.  

What the fuck were they thinking when they chose this play?  After the fact, they seemed to have realized the error of their choice, so they changed it to say that they meant the training staff did the play of the game, what a half-assed cover-up.  Maybe they should call it the Pat Tillman award, but I guess he was an Army Ranger, not a Marine.

Consider The Source

There was a White Power march in Los Angeles yesterday, which brings a smile to my face.  Even ignoring their racism, this is a group of people so trashy that, every single time they appear publicly and open their mouths, they immediately set their movement back a thousand pegs.  If I owned Coca-Cola, I would hire them to promote Pepsi.

This guy is so dumb he thinks the reason he can't get a job is the Mexicans.

Admit You Have a Problem

Bill Simmons keeps talking about how Kevin Garnett has aged a decade in the past two years, and how "The Kid" won't admit it to himself.  Similarly, a lot of people say Michael Jordan tarnished his legacy by coming back; even though he was still good enough to be an All Star, they nonetheless think he was delusional.

The aging athlete who can't call it quits is such a common trope that its become a cliche, but if the guy can still earn a spot on the roster, why should he be forced to retire?  Maybe the problem isn't that the old jock is in denial, maybe its that the public wants to be shielded from the truth that everyone gets old. 
 
These washed-up NBA players should have the option to officially declare themselves old.  They'd go down to the league office and sign a document to register themselves; they wouldn't have to sacrifice any rights or legal standing, but they'd be admitting to the public (and themselves) that they're not the same as they used to be, proving they're not in denial.  By formally letting go of their pride, they could regain some dignity.

This is sort of like the whole celebrity rehab thing, where all they have to do is admit they have a problem, and then everyone forgives them.  Its a really advanced form of apology, where you acknowledge guilt while simultaneously painting yourself as a victim.  You accept the blame, but assign it all to a tiny little part of yourself (known as the addiction).  You then go into hiding for awhile, and when you emerge, you claim that the addiction has been excised, and your public image has magically been rehabilitated. 

 

In Japan, the Yakuza have to actually remove part of their pinky; in the US, taking eight weeks off at a luxury spa is considered an adequate penance.  The important thing, though, is acknowledging the problem.

If the athletes were allowed to formally accept that they have an aging problem, the public (out of the celebrity rehab social convention) would be forced to accept the athlete and therefore their own mortality.  The jocks would serve as positive role models for these middle-aged children, to show them that putting your head under the covers doesn't make the spectre of death disappear.

Fine Dining, Good Eatin'

A proper formal table setting typically calls for three forks, three spoons, and two knives, each intended for its specific course.

I don't really know which fork is for what, I usually just try to turn whatever I'm served into a sandwich.

Start Being Real

Unless you've been out of circulation for the past couple years, you probably noticed this a while ago:  there are about a million prison-themed documentary shows on TV, shows such as Lockup, Lockup: Raw, Lockdown, and Locked Up Abroad.

The slew isn't all that surprising, after all, prison is fascinating (for example, Prison: Where You're Free to be Gay).  What's more surprising is that there aren't also more fiction shows and movies based around incarceration.

Maybe part of the reason for the disparity is that, when people are looking for a show about prison, they're looking for authenticity, and no made-up shit is going to cut it (for example, on OZ, Evan Seinfeld (a Jew) played a Skinhead; then again, maybe a lot of Jews actually do end up having to "blend in" with the Aryan Nation).

 Of all the dicks Tera Patrick has been with, this is the only one she get's criticized for.

But prison is just about the most authentic place in the world, where people stop being polite, and start getting real.  That slogan always sounded fake on The Real World, and not just because a bunch of white people co-opted the usage of "real" from prison (by way of hip-hop).  It was also because, even in its early days, everyone knew that "Reality TV" was utterly fake, not because the situations were so artificial, but because the people were all such goddamn poseurs. 

In prison, if you're fake, you get shanked.

Prison is full of rule-breakers, people who don't understand the number one rule in society:  pretend you like the people around you.  In a society of phonies, these prison documentaries are the only option for true reality programming.

Ecosystem of Golf

Jim Nantz was on The BS Report, which was surprising because Simmons has been talking a lot of shit about him, making a lot of jokes about the golf announcer's sexual attraction to both Fred Couples and the Augusta National course.  Of course, Simmons himself has a bit of a boner for both Larry Bird and the Boston Red Sox, so these two are kindred spirits; rather than covering their subjects with journalistic indifference, they actually give a shit to an unhealthy degree, much to the amusement of the reading and viewing public.

There are probably worse religions than following the Red Sox.

During the podcast, they brought up the topic of Tiger Woods swearing during last weekend's Masters. After a bad shot off the tee, he said "Tiger Woods, you SUCK! God dammit!"  If you haven't seen it, you should check out the video here, its a revealing glimpse into what a gay nerd this guy really is.

Nantz was not pleased about Tiger desecrating the sacred game of golf, and on The BS Report, he went on a mini-tirade, with some real passion in his voice:  "I just don't need language that to me is unacceptable...and people say 'ah, you guys and golf, you don't get it man, have you ever been to a basketball or a football game?' Well of course I have!...but that's just not part of the decorum of the game (of golf)."

As an outside observer, I'm usually opposed to this type of media Puritanism, but Nantz expresses his indignation with such zeal that I have to give him a free pass.  He has such a vested emotional interest that he has actually become part of the game itself; in a way, he's part of the ecosystem of golf, and a viewer can appreciate both the existence and defilement of the rigid institutions of the game at the same time.

Without uptight people like Nantz, there can be no "you suck, goddammit" controversy.  Without the Augusta country club's racist history, there can be no black-man-who-overcomes narrative.  The traditions are golf's sacred ungulates, and Tiger is the beast that preys on the herd, feeding off it while keeping it from suffocating itself with its own stuffiness; if you don't have both, you can't have a Circle of Life, and we'd all miss out on a niece piece of entertainment.

 Look at Scar, what an aloof asshole, but still, without him there would be no Lion King.

Where you get into trouble is when you have outsiders coming in and interfering with the ecosystem, throwing everything out of balance.  In pioneer days, the white man came in and killed all the the buffalo, taking their hides and leaving the meat to rot; they didn't care about the ecosystem of the plains, they just wanted to make a quick buck.  In the sports world, the outsiders are guys like Skip Bayless, guys who don't actually give a shit, but who pretend to care just so they can get some quick ratings. 

Pile of buffalo skulls, 1870.  This is an Around The Horn level of overkill.

If you're a journalist, you need to either stay neutral and make your observations from a distance, or you need to go native like Simmons and Nantz, where any impact you might have is out of a personal investment in the sport.  Don't be like Bayless and stick your face in, just to advance your own self interest.

Similasan Sadness Relief

Want fast relief?  Simalasan Sadness Relief: the antidepressant nose spray.  Got a big presentation?  Simalasan Sadness Relief:  so they can't tell you've just been crying.  Need to turn a first-date into a lasting love?  Simalasan Sadness Relief:  sniff your true self away, for a little while.

Get It Straight

If the military abolishes Don't Ask Don't Tell, straight soldiers are going to have to find a new way to get the message across, to let these homos know that it ain't gonna happen, not even if I get really drunk and I'm really really horny.

The soldiers won't be able to use the traditional method of bandying about the word "faggot" (or using other homophobic displays), since that'll probably be discouraged for the sake of gay-friendly unit cohesion.  Instead they'll have to learn subtler, more gentle ways to head-off any unwanted advances, and they'll have to learn from experts, those with years of experience rejecting, in other words: women.

  Thumbs up.

Beyond the basic step of simply declaring your heterosexuality, the following measures might prove helpful:

• Don't return his phone calls.
• Don't laugh at his jokes.
• Fold your arms across your chest, covering your breasts whenever he's talking to you. 
• Roll your eyes whenever he says something, even if he's making an intelligent or helpful point in group situations.
• Avoid making eye contact, but make sure you don't check out his package either, even if its just to compare.
• If you're at a party, and he's talking to you, mention that you have a cold.
  
• Make a big show of flirting with other men.
• Loudly mention that you're already in a relationship.  (Make it clear that you don't believe in cheating.)
• Loudly proclaim that you're so busy these days, you wouldn't have "time" for a relationship, even if you wanted one.  (Make it clear that you're not into casual sex.) 
• Loudly declare that your "type" is the polar opposite of whatever his type might be.  (If he's a bulky brunette man, talk about how much you like short, thin, blonde "spinners".)
• If you become close to the homosexual, tell him that you think of him like a brother.  (Make it clear to him that you're not into incest.)
• Tell everyone you have AIDS.
• Spread rumors about you having a small penis.

 Tom Cruise worries that he might have to do more to convince people.

In some special cases, for whatever reason, extra precautions might be necessary:

• Make a big, public display out of trying to sleep with the female instructor, perhaps sing her a love song in a crowded bar.
• Go on a nationally syndicated talk show and jump up and down on a couch while declaring your love for a woman. 
• Avoid referring to your girlfriend as your "beard".
• Try to convince people that your meticulous grooming habits and preoccupation with self-presentation are attributable to narcissism, not homosexuality.
• Quit spending so much time showing off for other men.
• Avoid playing shirtless volleyball with other men.

 How could he possibly be gay?

Puritanical Outrage Pornography

Last Friday, The Chicago Tribune saw fit to publish 892  words of Puritanical Outrage Porn, and I am disgusted!

Sports columnist John Kass devoted an entire column to this smut, telling a story about a father and his six-year-old son going to the bathroom at a White Sox game.  Supposedly a pair of "quivering" legs were sticking out of one of the stalls. 

"'It was bizarre. It caught the attention of a lot of people. I tried to turn my boy's attention away from it, then I thought, ‘Is someone having a seizure?'

'So I kicked the door, just to get a reaction. I just wanted to make sure nobody was dying in there. That's when I heard a woman's voice yell, ‘HEY, STOP!' Something was going on and I had interrupted.'

Moments later, the stall door opened, and a tall, thin, blond man exited. The tall man held his arms up in triumph.

'His arms were straight up, like in victory,' Nemeth said. 'Everybody was hooting and hollering and giving high-fives.'

Then a second person left the stall, someone Nemeth described as apparently female, "scurrying" out of the restroom with a shirt or coat over her head.'

This is some pretty titillating stuff to print in a family newspaper, so of course that means the erotica has to be couched in a frame narrative.  That's the literary device used in the movie The Princess Bride, where the story starts and ends with Columbo reading the book version of "The Princess Bride" to Kevin Arnold.  This allows Grandpa to use the story to do some moralizing.

The year...was nineteen hundred and thirty two.  The bride...was a princess.

As you know, in Puritanical Outrage Porn, the pornographic narrative is framed by the pornographer issuing moral condemnations against all the sexy stuff the audience came for.  This allows a hack writer (or a concerned father) to get a ton of extra attention, all while he and his audience pretend to be morally superior.  Here's how Kass ends the story:

"'This guy will talk about this experience for the rest of his life,' said Nemeth, sarcastically. 'How he did it in the bathroom at a Sox game. What a man.'

Not really.

The guy in the stall isn't a man. He's protoplasm in a T-shirt, smelling of beer.

And I doubt that he's a dad."

What about the kids indeed.  You might remember that classic move from when they used it on Tiger Woods and Bill Clinton.  The Puritans condemn the fornicators for exposing children to acts of immorality, but by issuing these condemnations, the media actually exposes more children to the acts of immorality.

One of the worst Puritanical Outrage Pornographers of all time is D.A. David McDade, who distributed 35 copies of a sex tape to reporters, lawmakers, and members of the public.  The video is of High School football star Genarlow Wilson, "then 17, receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old girl and having intercourse with another 17-year-old girl."  They prosecuted Wilson for statutory rape, but maybe they should have prosecuted the DA for child pornography.

In another case, two High School sophomore girls took  pictures of themselves licking phallus-shaped lollipops.  They posted the photos to their private MySpace account, so only their friends could see, but apparently one of these "friends" forwarded the pictures to the High School Principal.  The Principal distributed the pictures to the all-male athletic board then forced the girls to apologize to the men in person for degrading the school.  Hey, whatever floats your boat.

If these Puritans would stop prying into these acts, fewer people would be defiled by the knowledge, but then they wouldn't have an excuse to distribute all this smut, and I wouldn't have something to talk about in my blog.

Unbelievable Offer!

On the roadside near my house, there were a couple of handmade, spraypainted signs saying:

Free Massage

5 Minutes

This is a really shitty version of a Veblen good, where demand actually decreases as the price goes down.  Just out of curiosity, I was tempted to find out who was offering this deal; the sign didn't say who it belonged to, but the nearby area has the following establishments:

• A hair salon
• An autoshop
• A tailor
• Some weird place with indecipherable Greek writing on the window
• A butcher shop

The big mystery is whether this is just some garden variety pervert, or if its a raping-and-murdering variety pervert.

The Search For Meaning

I feel like I'm finally starting to figure out what life's all about.  Unfortunately, I think I might be using a combination of trial and error and process of elimination.

Cross another one off the list.

Behind The Front

After the financial collapse, the new conventional wisdom became that investment banks, stockbrokers, and mutual funds are reliably shady, that you can count on them to screw you over.  The one exception is presumed to be Vanguard, an investment firm that presents itself as a public service.  Their whole sales pitch is that the best stockbroker is no stockbroker at all; they try to minimize transactions by running broad index funds that mirror the gains/losses of the stock market as a whole.

Fewer transactions means less money is spent on douchebag fund managers and their bullshit research costs - these big shots almost always fail to beat the market anyway, even before you deduct their exorbitant expenses (and the additional downside of added risk).  With most mutual funds, its like paying someone to babysit, but instead of watching over your kids, they put them in more dangerous situations, then spend your money on expensive scotch and Cuban cigars.

"Sometimes smaller is better."

As you can see in the publicity still shown above, Vanguard says they offer the funds "at cost", which sounds almost too good to be true...here's how they could be fucking you:

When you place an order to buy/sell shares of one of their funds, there's a lag time between when the order is placed and when the order actually gets executed.  If Vanguard lies to you about when the order was executed, they could use that discrepancy to cheat you out of some of your money.  Here's how it would go down:

Let's say you want to invest a $1,000,000 in the Vangaurd 500 Index, which tracks the S&P 500.  Lets say at the instant you place the order (10:00 am), the S&P is at 1,200.  Almost right after you "Buy" the fund, Vanguard is able to execute the order and use your money to buy the stocks that mirror the S&P.  But Vanguard doesn't tell you that they've already bought the stocks, instead they wait to see if the market goes up at any point over the next couple hours.  If the market goes up 0.83%, to 1,210 at 11:00 am, Vanguard will tell you they bought the stock at 11:00 am. 

Essentially, they'd be using this time discrepancy to lie and say the shares cost more than they actually did.  This means they can give you fewer shares than you deserve, and pocket the difference for themselves.  Its the same thing as if you gave some guy $350 to buy you an ounce of weed, then he came back a few hours later and said "it took me a long time to get over there, and by then, the guy only had 7/8ths left and he charged me the whole $350."  Obviously, this shithead bought an ounce and pocketed an eighth for himself.  He could have just told you up front that he was charging a premium, but instead he wants to pretend to be a good guy and give it to you "at cost", sort of like Vanguard.

Hey man, whats the deal with all this math, it's like "when are we actually going to use this stuff?"

The market tends to fluctuate up and down a few tenths of a percent every couple hours, so with a vast majority of transactions, they would have some opportunity to overcharge you.  If on the odd chance the market only goes down, Vanguard can just tell you they bought the stock at 10:00 am (which is when they actually bought it), meaning they break even.  From what I've seen, they don't even tell you what time they "bought" the shares, they just tell you what day, so they could potentially use an 8 hour window to fuck you over.

Vanguard has $1.2 trillion in funds under management, so if they pulled this scam every time a share was bought or sold, they could rake in billions of dollars, in other words, thousands of hookers and millions of blow.  And now, to be clear, I'm not saying they're actually doing this, I'm just saying they should sue me so the blog gets more traffic.

Celebrity Sperm Bank

If you were forced to raise the illegitimate son of some male celebrity, and the guy was going to be totally out of the picture, what celebrity's kid would you want to raise?

 Women love this guy, but its possible that men like him even more.  He's handsome, cool, and has good taste. 

James Blake might be a good choice, he's a professional tennis player, he went to Harvard, he's handsome (although I'm not partial to him), and he seems like an all-around decent guy. 

Then there's Larry David, he's un-athletic, unattractive, and sort of an asshole, but I'd probably choose his kid over anyone else's.  What does that say about my values?  Maybe it just means his kid would be one of the few I'd actually feel superior to, like a father's supposed to. 

Hype as a Product

Word on the street is, advertisers are paying a huge premium for iPad-specific ad spots.

It's here!

This idea is probably already in circulation, but I bet these advertisers are thinking that the iPad's early adopters are the type of people who "believe the hype", precisely the type of people who fall for advertising.

This phenomenon also explains why guys like 50 Cent get paid so much for their endorsements.  As a rapper, he's never been as good as his hype, not because he's all that terrible, but because, circa 2002, his hype bordered on the messianic.  The fact that his art falls short of his billing might actually make him more appealing to advertisers, because it means he attracts a target demographic of "undiscerning dullards who buy into marketing".

50 was given part ownership in Glaceau when he agreed to create and endorse the "Formula 50" flavor of Vitamin Water.  When the company sold to Coca Cola in 2007, he pocketed over $100 million.  As 50 himself said on the song "I Get Money":

"I took quarter water, sold it in bottles for 2 bucks
And Coca-Cola came and bought it for billions, what the fuck?"

Not exactly Shakespearean, but the song made the top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100, and he probably moved a few units of Vitamin Water by telling people its a sham - the perks of having a stupid audience.  As they say, its not the product, its the packaging; where 50 cent failed as a rapper, he excelled as a wrapper.

Maybe if I drink this I'll become black.

The iPad and 50 Cent have been able to sell their hype as a product in and of itself; to advertisers - those great purveyors of bullshit, something insubstantial (and in the case of 50, unsubstantiated) can be a great commodity.  Artists who's talents outstrip their hype can't pull off stunts like this, in part because their discerning audiences will identify it as derivative of Warhol, and shun it as unoriginal.

Low Standards

There's a Hampton Inn commercial where they brag about how they wash the sheets for each new guest.  Holy shit, all this time I'd been taking that for granted, now I'm wondering if I don't have (as yet asymptomatic (benign?)) crabs from a Quality Inn...I can almost feel them crawling on my nutsack.  Either this is a very ill-conceived commercial or I have to reconsider the whole concept of hotels.  It would be like if Denny's said they don't reuse food, of if a guy came on to girl by saying he showers on occasion. 

That slogan seems oddly sexual.  Hampton, I just wanted a place to crash, I didn't want to sleep with you, so please fuck off.

Share the Love

The logo invokes a pair of tits - two spherical orbs, between which lies a caring heart.  A savvy marketing strategy...my only criticism is that, by associating the tits with caring, it infantilizes the breast fetish.

Opening Day

It seems like they should change the idiom from "inside baseball" to just "baseball".

Then change the name of the show "Baseball Tonight" to "Baseball?  Not tonight..."

Reading People

Addressing the Conservative political arguments of Adam Carolla is sort of like kicking the shit out of a straw man, after all, the guy brags about how he "doesn't read" and how he "barely graduated High School";  intellectually speaking, there's no way he's representative of real Conservative thinkers.  Oh wait, George Bush "doesn't read" either, and he also almost flunked out of school, the same is true of Sara Palin, so maybe the Aceman is a perfect representative of Conservative America, in fact, he just might be the smartest one among them - at least he's coherent.

The courtship of the Conservative male:  1) Firm handshake.  2) Exchange business credentials.  3) Complain about taxes/government regulations.  4) Discuss national security.  5) Complain that you "can't say anything anymore without being called a racist." 6) If all goes well, consummate the relationship by using the n-word.

Carolla recently did a podcast with screenwriter-turned-conservative Roger Simon, a former liberal who took a hard right turn after 9-11.  Carolla lept at the chance to rant about the usefulness of waterboarding, and how stupid these Hollywood liberals are to oppose it:

"Hollywood people...you assholes don't know shit, you're actors, you barely know how to do that, just shut the fuck up when it comes to what's going on in Guantanamo Bay.  You don't know shit, let the professionals handle it, and that's the way I feel." - Adam Carolla.

Whoa, wait a minute, that's the way you feel Carolla, but you're just an actor, so shut the fuck up and let the professionals handle it.  Who exactly are the professionals?  Interestingly enough, probably not the people who were doing the waterboarding; in fact the CIA "interrogators" who implemented the practice had no prior experience doing interrogations:

"It's easy to forget that when the U.S. began interrogating al-Qaeda operatives in 2002, the CIA had no idea what it was doing. The last time the agency had been charged with conducting hostile interrogations was during the Vietnam era, and most of those officers were long retired."  - Robert Baer, Time Magazine

Robert Baer would know a thing or two about the Agency, he's an ex-CIA who, according to Seymour Hersh, "was considered perhaps the best on-the-ground field officer in the Middle East."  Baer goes on to say:

"When the CIA was asked to resume hostile interrogations after Sept. 11, some agency leaders were dead set against it, arguing that the military was better equipped for the task. But Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted the job belonged to the CIA."

Classic Bush-era pro-ignorance decision-making.  But hey, the CIA got the job, and doesn't that automatically make them professionals? 

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month. His interrogator, a former CIA colleague of mine, admits he had almost no training in the technique and knew nothing about how the cumulative effect of waterboarding might affect the quality of the information he was trying to extract."

Its too bad Baer's buddy didn't do a little research into the history of waterboarding, he might have found that:

"Waterboarding...was also acknowledged to have originated in "Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions from Air Force Prisoners of War," a 1957 article written for the Air Force about abusive Chinese interrogations of U.S. troops during the Korean War. Anyone who wanted to could find it via Google for years."

That's right, waterboarding was invented by Communists to elicit false information.  Not only is it inhumane, not only does alienate us from the civilized world, it also gives us bad intelligence.  But then again, the Conservatives like Bush and Carolla have never cared if their information is accurate, just so long as they have something glib to say when its their turn to talk. 

Which reminds me, why am I wasting my time writing this, its not like I'm changing people minds.  If this blog is actually being read by anyone, its not by the illiterate ilk of Carolla and Palin; if you're reading this, there's a good chance you already knew everything I said, because people who actually bother to read shit, they tend to already know stuff.

Its an exercise in futility, trying to combat Conservative ignorance through the written word.