Adam's Important Show

There and back again.

2011-07-19T01:39:00.010-06:00

That's a pretty pretentious title for this post. It won't live up to it.

Amy and I broke up almost 6 months to the day after we started officially dating. A couple weeks ago. I truly did not expect it to happen. While we were dating, I remember wondering to myself if there were anything that could possibly drive us apart. I never for a moment believed that we were in some kind of pre-reality relationship euphoria and still don't. I always felt like we skipped over that part completely. Or, at least, I did. I felt that way because I never thought Amy was perfect. That sounds odd, but I can explain. At the beginning of our relationship I had to reassure myself that she was who I wanted to be with, that I wasn't making a wrong choice. And I wasn't. But it took me getting over my desire to have something crazy and exciting, something that makes your heart race. Most everyone desires that, especially the older they get (it should be the opposite, shouldn't it?). But I realized that each and every time I've felt those particular emotions toward a girl, it's been a disaster. And I realized that I had very likely, all along, been inducing those emotions in myself for other girls simply because they didn't give me what Amy gave me.

Which was what? Amy didn't play games with me. She wasn't coy. She didn't force me to chase her. She was up front and honest about her feelings for me. So I missed the thrill of the hunt. But that wears off. It always does. Once I realized that I was only feeling reluctance to be with Amy because I wasn't feeling that thrill (that thrill that had, so far, gotten me absolutely nowhere), I didn't care. I brushed it aside. I made the deliberate decision to be with someone who had all of the qualities missing in the girls from before, someone who simply appreciated me, who was grateful to spend any time at all with me, who didn't make demands of me, implicit or explicit, who instead simply trusted me to treat her wonderfully and deserve her and earn her devotion.

And so it was. Everything was great. It really was. Except, it wasn't perfect. Not that either of us expected it to be, but there were mistakes and warning signs, the gravity of which I am only just beginning to understand, and at this point I'm fairly certain our eventual breakup was unavoidable. Ironic, considering that while we were dating I couldn't think of any reason we'd ever break up. I was so sure...

And why wouldn't I be? She was an unbelievably awesome girlfriend. For all the reasons I've mentioned and probably a hundred more. The more time we spent together (which was a lot), the more drawn I was to her. The more I appreciated the small nuances in her personality. The more I enjoyed her. The more at home I felt with her. The more I loved her. She became my best friend. Bryan Cranston's character on Malcolm in the Middle (the dad) said something about love, about his wife, that's stuck with me since I heard it. He said that being in love with someone means that no experience is complete until you share it with them. Amy became that for me, and me for her (I'm fairly sure, anyway). It was great. I loved it. We got engaged and planned to be married in late September, about nine months after we'd started dating.

But our actions have consequences, good and bad, and you can't erase bad behavior with good intentions. I won't explain the details. While I have discussed some of them with people I trust, I'm not interested in making a permanent record of mistakes that can and, hopefully, will be put away and forgotten. It's not fair to myself, and it's certainly not fair to Amy. I love her too much.

That was part of the problem, in the end. I loved her too much to not be absolutely sure that we were ready to be married, and over a relatively short amount of time I became convinced that we were not ready. After some very intense soul-searching, prayer and counsel from loved ones, I came to the conclusion that the only possible way to save our relationship would be to end it. We couldn't keep dating anymore. Our time together was up. There were too many things to address, and we could only effectively address them in isolation from each other--apart, confronted with the real possibility of never getting back together. Is there a chance we get back together? Yes, absolutely. Is it likely? I don't know. People don't often change enough. I know I can change and I know I will. But I am only half of this equation. Meanwhile, we must seek opportunities to get to know other people, to learn and grow and improve our relationships with others and with God and do it all for ourselves, to make it part of who we are and not something we prop up on the struts of a comfortable romance.

For now, I will miss her. In fact, I think I'll always miss her. It's been said to me by well-meaning friends and family that if Amy and I don't get back together, we will both surely find others who will make us happy. While I appreciate the sentiment, it's always hard to even consider eventually replacing someone whom you loved for so many reasons, reasons which you know cannot and will not be duplicated in any other person. I was told by a close friend that, while it sounds extremely unromantic, love is common and love happens all the time. I think that's true, but the point he misses is that while "love" is hardly unique, the combination of two people that fall in love always is, and that makes aspects of every love unique and inimitable, and I already feel grief and loss at the prospect of losing all the wonderful uniqueness of my relationship with Amy and of her herself. I miss her adorable chipmunk cheeks, beautiful teeth, exquisite lips and big, pretty eyes. I miss the way she greeted me enthusiastically on the phone, the way she laughed at my jokes, her own sense of humor that cracked me up all the time, her kindness, her desire to reach out to others and make them feel like they were included, that she was thinking of them, that they were her friends. I miss how she would go out of her way to make me feel good, make me feel supported and cherished and appreciated. I miss the way she smells. I miss the way her hair feels against my cheek. I miss the way she slept on her stomach and how she would grunt softly and sweetly when I'd touch her or kiss her while she slept. I loved kissing her. I loved hearing her talk about her art and hurt for her when she expressed her artistic dreams that she was not yet able to follow. I loved the way her eyes lit up when she saw me. I always loved being around her. I've never adored anyone more. She was my favorite. I hope that this is not the end of us, but if it is, I trust that it is for the best and the only moments I will regret from our relationship are the ones that contributed to its end. I love you, Amy. I will always think about you and I will always love you.

I'll end this with one of my favorite photos of my pretty Amy, stolen shamelessly from her Facebook page.

My favorite.

2011-04-15T11:03:00.001-06:00

It has been brought to my attention that I have not updated my blog in several months. That is true. I pretend like this blog is a journal of sorts but that notion falls apart rapidly when I don't actually post on it. So it seems like at this point I should post the story of the most significant thing that's happened to me during my hiatus. For some reason, I don't feel like doing that. Instead of writing the STORY of the thing, I'd just rather write about the thing. The thing's name is Amy. We met about a little over three months ago and started dating not soon after. I don't think we've been apart a day since then.

Amy is wonderfully kind, sweet and good. She is strong but never overbearing. She is rational but never harsh. She is artistic but never unintelligible. She is happy but never annoying. She is pleasing but never cloying. She is intelligent but never arrogant. She is ambitious but never unreachable. She is funny but never hides herself. She is open but not all at once, loyal but not naive, and beautiful but never satisfied. She loves people not because she's afraid if she doesn't no one will love her, but because she desires for people to feel loved and takes responsibility for what she desires and I'm so glad she found me.

Blackbird.

2010-09-13T10:34:00.007-06:00

The US national basketball team won the FIBA world championship last night, proving yet again that black people are way better at basketball than anyone else. Particularly Kevin Durant. The guy is a complete freak. And he's not a freak the way LeBron is a freak. LeBron uses once-in-a-generation athleticism and strength to overpower and overwhelm his opponents. Kevin Durant is something else entirely. Kevin Durant is skill personified. He's more like Larry Bird than LeBron James, and I know that sounds ridiculous but think about it. Larry Bird was one of the whitest guys to ever play professional basketball (Chris Mullin was #1 of course) and I mean that in the best way possible. Larry Bird made his physical shortcomings absolutely irrelevant. It didn't matter that at 6'9" he could barely dunk the ball. It didn't matter that he was about as quick as the Tin Man. It didn't even matter that for years he sported the worst mustache Western society had seen in a century.

Bird's intelligence, court vision, skill and hand-eye coordination were off the charts. Sure, he was extremely talented but he never relied entirely on his natural abilities. He was a student and scholar of the game. His fundamentals were airtight. He saw everything before anyone else. Every night he played he was the smartest and savviest player on the floor. He had ice water in his veins. He was comparable and intimidated by absolutely nobody. He smiled while he torched you. He was the one player of whom the also-incomparable Magic Johnson said "Of all the people I play against, the only one I truly fear is Larry Bird." He had supreme self-confidence and could take over a game from the tip-off but loved nothing more than making his teammates better. And he had the sweetest jump shot the NBA had ever seen before, or since. Kevin Durant is becoming that kind of player, and he already has a jump shot that would have placated Mark Whalberg during his racist phase. Kevin Durant is not big, nor is he particularly strong, but he doesn't need to be. He finds the space, the gaps and if he can't, he'll rise up in your face and shoot the purest shot you'll ever have the privilege of not blocking. His teammates love him. His fans love him. If his passing, handling and defense catch up with his scoring ability, he'll likely be the best player in the NBA and he'll be that player for years and years.

I don't want to say KD carried Team USA during this past tournament, but he was the primary scorer almost every night and, most amazingly, I don't think he had a single off night. In nine straight games. He went off for 38 points at 56% shooting against the Lithuania Jean Claude Van Dammes. And he did that all with teammates he hasn't played with before extensively and with FIBA rules instead of NBA rules (and believe me, subtle rule changes can really mess with your game). He was more than impressive. And yes, he was also playing with the "B" team, since the team consisted of very few of the NBA's very top players at each position so that gave him more room to perform, but it doesn't matter. He showed signs of being the force to reckon with for the next ten plus years. He's talented, humble and a team player. I really wish he didn't have to play in Oklahoma City.

This is the MWTOTY.

2010-09-07T20:14:00.017-06:00

I love this time of year. The weather cools off, the leaves change and everyone starts getting ready to hibernate for the winter. The real reason this is the best time of year is because of sports. The rest of it isn't so great. I'm not huge into skiing and I don't sled because I'm not twelve years old. I no longer feel obligated to spend time outdoors if I don't want to, and that's because just about everyone can get behind cold-weather excuses for apathy and laziness. Don't feel like going hiking? Who would? It's freaking miserable outside. Nobody wants to walk around in snowy weather. Stepping in a slushy puddle would make Nelson Mandela kick Lou Ferrigno in the balls. Don't want to go to a movie? Neither does anyone else, just get Netflix and wait out the chill. But I can't stand those people who brag about all the winter stuff they do and make you feel like a worthless turd because you spent the last seven days pretending to hate watching Fear Factor reruns. "Oh yes last week I skiied, then I snowboarded for thirty hours straight. The powder was un-be-liev-a-ble. Two days ago I went snowmobiling. O M G it was so beautiful, so amazing. So what have you done lately?" Hey screw you. Screw you right in the pants.

You're not obligated to do anything outside of work and the holidays once it starts getting cold. This means I get a roughly 4 month break from my mother asking me why I don't have a girlfriend. It's too cold for a girlfriend, Mom.

Anyway, back to the sports part. We have college football, the NBA, the NFL and even the MLS, and for a few magical weeks in November, they all four overlap. (But not baseball. Baseball can suck hobo toes.) College football is the crown jewel. It's like a rare and beautiful animal. A mammal, of course, warm-blooded but full of cold rage and cheerleaders. College football is perhaps only tainted by the aristocracy of the BCS, but the magic is still ineffable and permeates the institution from the stadiums to the TV broadcasts and floats down upon the fans like a pre-warmed blanket that smells of Jessica Biel's neck and forearms. If college football were a woman I would have long ago taken wise Beyoncé's advice and put a ring on it. What it is, girl.

Ah, the spectacle, the intrigue. Will Boise State crash the NC game? When will BYU's QB situation be settled? When will Frank Beamer cut off his goiter and raise it as his son? Will Mark Mangino be fat? Yes, yes he will.

He was actually fired after last season, but I suspect his fat will remain employed. On his body.

The NFL is interesting and I follow a few teams with players I like, but doesn't capture me like college football. No, the next best thing is the NBA, which I follow pretty obsessively. It has its flaws, but it's a wonder of skill, talent and athleticism that is not duplicated in any other sport or league in the world. Then, of course, there's the MLS. The MLS is like women's basketball, only way way better and with men playing soccer. People like to dump on it because it's a second rate league and doesn't compare to the EPL or Superliga or whatever. That is so stupid. We have smaller fan base, far less history and tradition, more popular sports to compete with and salary caps. It's like your buddy shared a band with you that he has loved for years, you start to like them and then his other friends get mad at you because you're just discovering this band. And then they all pee on you. It doesn't make sense.

Praying for the wave to come now. (Australia pt. 3)

2010-09-01T23:12:00.025-06:00

Thursday dawned warm and sunny. The previous days had been sunny but a little cooler. Now, one of my many flaws is that I occasionally lock my siblings out on the porch when they annoy me. Another one of my flaws is that I don't plan ahead well, and I'll often forget important things that I need. Crucial things. And I don't mean important like I forgot and left my bagel in the freezer. I mean important like survival, like the time earlier this year I forgot to bring the food with me on a camping/fishing trip and my brother, brother-in-law and I were forced to eat the fish we caught there. We were lucky my brother caught the two fish he did or we probably would have eaten each other or bugs.

So one thing you think of when you go to Australia, particularly Sydney, is the beach. Specifically Bondi beach. Even if you don't know the name of it, you've seen it. Every postcard of Sydney is either the Opera House with the Harbour Bridge, or Bondi beach.

Well, Thursday was beach and cliff walk day. The plan was to head a bit east of Sydney (which is located in a large inlet so the water is north of downtown) and walk, starting a bit south of Bronte beach and heading all the way up north to the inlet of the inlet, as it were. There's a bunch of stuff to see along the way. You'd think that, headed to the beaches on the very day the weather turns unbelievably nice, one of us would have thought to bring a swimming suit. But nope. We didn't. Already I'd been hauling my backpack around everywhere. I had to. We had stuff we needed in it. And Sean had brought his own bag along every day except the first. So it's not like we didn't have where to put extra stuff. It was really kind of tragic. A once in a lifetime opportunity to swim at one of the most beautiful, famous beaches in the world and we couldn't be intelligent enough to bring something to swim in. I blame myself. And Sean.

The day ultimately involved just a lot of walking. We started at Waverley Cemetery and went north. I don't really have any photos of this day, but Sean does and I'll post them here soon. You can follow our route from that link: Waverley Cemetery, Bronte, Bondi, up through all the reserves and parks to the lighthouses, then to Signal Hill, The Gap, cut to Camp Cove, up to Lady Bay, around the lighthouse at the tip and then took a ferry from Watson's Bay back to Circular Quay. The walk took virtually all day:

At Waverley Cemetery, I upset the dead by chasing lizards around the graves. At Bondi, we saw a couple topless women just chilling out by the beach. We tried to get a closer look but.. wait, nevermind. We ate lunch at a little place a ways inland from Bondi and instead of going back to the beach and then north, went sort of northeast expecting to hit the coast again without realizing the cliffs rise up rapidly just past Bondi and there are neighborhoods and houses built right up against the cliffs. We wandered around, lost, for around an hour and somehow, by sheer luck, we took a guess at a side street and ended up exactly where we were trying to get to (if you're looking at the map, check the corner of Raleigh Street and Lola Road). That place was an open area along the cliffs that we could walk. There Sean stepped on dog poop while warning me not to step on dog poop ("Adam, watch out f--DAMMIT") and spent about 10 minutes then and intermittent periods throughout much of the rest of the day trying to clean it off his shoe. Every time I turned around he was pawing at the ground like a bull. With OCD. At The Gap Park, Sean took a photo of a spider. At Lady Bay Beach (and, I admit, at my urging) he tried to take a photo of some nude men. Yeah, it was a tiny nude beach, called Lady Bay Beach, and the only people on it were like three middle aged dudes. Nice, right? At the lighthouse north of that, Sean chased a bird around and almost fell off a cliff. Those last two events didn't happen in sequence, but it's funnier that way.

After that we went to this bar that we had heard was having all you can eat pizzas for like $21. We came to discover, however, that the pizzas were of sufficient size that three of them ($7 each) was more than we wanted to eat anyway, so we just bought two. The bartender looked like a younger, prettier Drew Barrymore. I may or may not have mentioned it to her.

This is the past that's mine. (Australia pt. 2)

2010-08-27T23:52:00.002-06:00

The next day, we set off west to the Blue Mountains near the town of Katoomba. We'd read about the area online and it seemed like most people weren't terribly impressed, but we went anyway. Listening to people on the internet is a stupid idea. It was awesome. Katoomba is a park town along the lines of Jackson Hole or Park City, with that nice outdoorsy atmosphere and shops and restaurants leading up to the park.

STOLEN.

The park itself (Kanangra-Boyd) is beautiful and there are some amazing trails that run through the place. At the top of the valley, overlooking the dense forest, it's dry and temperate. At the bottom it's like a cold rainforest, kind of like you'd see in southern Alaska (no pine trees, though), dense and green and wildlife everywhere. It's really cool.

Above the valley.

We went down the Giant Staircase, which is a 900-step, super steep stone (and metal) staircase literally cut out of a vertical cliff, into Jamison Valley. It's tough enough just getting down, my legs were shaky and unstable by the end, we weren't about to try it going up (and from the looks of things, not many other people did either). At the bottom, we happily marched along the foot of the cliff for an hour or two to Katoomba falls, and then up we went.

It wasn't the Giant Staircase, but it was a tough climb up, especially after the descent and hike along the bottom. The climb back up took us at least an hour, at which point we found ourselves about a mile or so--across a deep chasm cut by the falls--from the road back to town. So we paid about $9 for a tram that took us over the falls--something like a 6 second fall to the bottom of the valley.

I ate the second half of my lunch on the tram. This excursion may very well have been the thing I loved the most about the entire trip. It was scenic, fun and exhausting. I'd do it again in an instant. Next time I think I'd like to take a crack at going up the Staircase.

The next day, Wednesday, was Darling Harbour day. We got on a ferry that took us from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour and then hit every place we could. We first went to this wildlife place. I can't remember what it's called--it's like an aquarium but for bugs and lizards and stuff. They also had some bigger animals there, various marsupials (kangaroos, koalas, etc), birds and a huge crocodile. Nice place, I liked it. I got to pet a stag beetle.

Ha! Who sleeps in a tree, am I right?

Then we went to the aquarium. That was pretty neat. Lots of fish.

And this turtle, who appeared to have fatally collided with the floor.

After the aquarium we went to what I think was the biggest IMAX screen in the world and watched a movie about the Hubble telescope. I really liked it. Very educational, and also: space.

By that time it was late afternoon. We'd wanted to go to two more places but both were closing at 5 pm, so we did a quick half-hour tour of the Maritime Museum and decided to save the Powerhouse Museum for another day. So there we were enjoying ourselves in the Maritime Museum with about 10 minutes left before it closed and some guy in a jumpsuit starts following us around like some kind of a jerk. He was trying to herd us out of the museum, like we were freakin' sheep or something. And I was like, no way I'm leaving an instant before I see the South Pole exhibit. So there we were leaving without seeing the South Pole exhibit, passing the gift shop. We considered buying some souvenirs but screw those guys. We left and headed around the harbor, looking at the menus of the restaurants along the way. Expensive, but not prohibitively. We went to McDonald's, though. Usually I love McD's but this time it was crap. It was this piddly little three-sided joint with an army of aggressive gulls and pigeons squawking at you, trying to steal your food and poop on your table. And the food was pretty terrible. The best part was when some kookaburra swooped in and landed on a lamp above this family and squawked so loudly that all the other birds flew away in a panic and the poor family thought surely Armageddon had begun.

From there we headed off to the "golden bucket" tower to see the city from above at dark. I forget the exact name of the place, but the views were beautiful. They would have been better if we could have gone outside ($50 extra to do so), but we made do with the inside.

Then we ate some ice cream and that was that.

Sleep for a while and speak no words. (Australia pt. 1)

2010-08-26T21:55:00.001-06:00

At about 1 am Monday morning I got off a plane from LAX to SLC. As I got off the plane, I struck up a conversation with a beautiful Latina girl who looked just like Eva Mendes. It was a nice ending to my trip. We'd arrived in Sydney, Australia just over a week before. At 6 am local time. The first thing we did after we got off the plane was take a train to Sydney's Central rail station. From there, we walked out onto the street with all our stuff. The weather was nice for 6 am in spring. We guessed a reasonable route to our hotel and set off. We got to the hotel about 30 minutes later (only got a little lost). We couldn't check in yet, so we used the lobby and lobby bathroom as a hotel room, changing and trying to wash off the fancy smell of 24 hours on planes and in airports. At about 10 am we left our stuff with the desk and went to church. Before we left for Australia, Sean had located a singles ward right down the road from where we were staying. It was mighty convenient and we didn't have anything else planned, so off we went. It was fun. Besides a few missionaries and a small family of other American tourists, there were no white people there. White people don't seem to like church very much these days. Anyway, it was fun, we met a bunch of people and made friends with a couple local girls who gave us their numbers/emails so we could get in contact with them later in the week if we wanted.

After church, we shot off down the streets at random trajectories. We finally came across a restaurant that was recommended in one of our two travel books. It was a Korean place, and we were feeling adventurous so we were trying to decide between eel and octopus. Fortunately the menu had photos of the food and I saw that the eel came with what appeared to be three different kinds of mushrooms and nothing else. So we ordered octopus. It was crunchy. We found our way back to the hotel, checked in and fell asleep for 16 straight hours. We woke up the next morning ready to go. We'd decided to roughly follow some of the recommended itineraries in one of our books. Seemed like a decent outline for a plan. We took a train to Circular Quay ("key") and started looking for our first stop, Customs House. We wandered around for like 40 minutes before someone showed us where it was, right where we'd been wandering but not well-marked. As we came back out, we noticed a free city tour starting up and as they started to walk away we were right behind them and the guide asked us if we would be joining them. There were a couple cute girls in the group, so we said yes. The tour lasted about 3-4 hours. It was actually a really nice way to spend our first full day, getting to know the city itself. The tour was free because they were also trying to sell pay-for pub tours and drinky ferry tours. That was sort of a common theme in Australia. Everything was about drinking. The whole social scene was about drinking. Being that my travel companion is married and that neither of us drink, it made it a little tough to meet girls. Had we been so inclined. And I'm not saying we were. Truthfully, we didn't see very many cute girls at all. I talked to the cutest girl in the tour group and she wasn't even Australian, she was German. It was a sad moment for me.

This is the tour group. Jumping. That's me in the back. I wasn't real excited about the jumping part. Or the photo part. This is also the only photo we have with both me and Sean in it.

After the tour ended, we used the bathroom for number ones at the Sydney Opera House and went to the Harbour Bridge. We walked across it, walked around Luna Park and then ate at a restaurant called Ripples, right on the water. We were starving. We got fish and chips, but they gave us a TON of food and we couldn't eat it all. Oh well.

This is the exact meal. Ours seemed bigger, though. I stole this from another blog since I refuse to photograph food.

This is the view from Ripples. I also stole this image.

Our waitress was very nice and had a beautiful accent. She gave us a newspaper. Then we caught a train back across the bridge and went back to the hotel.

My generation.

2010-07-30T08:30:00.002-06:00

When I was a kid I thought I was Generation X. I didn't really understand what it meant, I just knew it sounded cool and my cool uncle, eight years older than me, was Gen X so naturally, I was too. It wasn't until I actually mentioned our supposed mutual membership to my uncle in a moment of comradeship that I became aware of my misperception.

I'm not really sure even today what I am. Gen Y? Is there a Gen Z? What will they call my kids' generation? Will they just wrap around and go to Gen AA? These are questions I'd like answered before I procreate.

Whatever generation I am, what I really don't understand is the type of people I'm supposed to be identifying with at my age. I feel like they're 90% liberal. Which isn't really a problem for me, except when they get all militant about it--and many do--and act like anyone who doesn't vote Democrat has an IQ of 12 and webbed feet. I hate that. And like half of them, at least, are atheists. I can respect atheism in principle. What I can't respect is treating non-atheists like crap for not agreeing with your point of view. Or acting like someone believing in something you can't see is reason to recommend their abstinence for the sake of the children. People believe in things they can't see all the time. And yes, I understand that the difference is consistency in the predicted results of the consequences and behavior of experiments blah blah, doesn't matter. Have some respect for people you don't agree with. Practically nothing bothers me more than undeserved disrespect.

My generation also voted almost exclusively for Obama. That's fine, but now that all their misguided messianic hopes and dreams are crumbling before their eyes, they still have the nerve to pass the blame onto everyone but Obama. Nothing is his fault. He inherited every problem. He's a victim. Geez I get sick of hearing that. Own up, take some responsibility and for heaven's sake, force your president to take some responsibility.

This post wasn't to get into politics. That's actually entirely beside the point. The point is I feel like my generation is a bunch of self-congratulatory, smug jackasses who've been spoiled into thinking the world "should be" a certain way without examining how or why they came to such a conclusion or what it really means. And a little rational self-examination goes a long way. And I hate hipsters. F-ing hipsters, man.

I want to fly and run till it hurts.

2010-07-21T01:12:00.019-06:00

It's as good a time as any.

There's a cat that lives at my apartment complex. It doesn't belong to anyone, it just hangs around outside. Even during the winter, it apparently refuses to take refuge in the homes of would-be caretakers. I respect its independence and give it a wide berth. In recent months, I would see neighbor girls trying to feed it or coax it through their doors, and I wondered why they wouldn't just leave it be. It was clearly doing just fine on its own. It sat under the overhang of the apartment stair façade, occasionally scratching on the screen of the window of my bedroom in my basement apartment. It did, but now that it's warmer I don't see it, or hear it.

The other day I was contemplating, as I sometimes do, the extent to which I have not done certain things that I want or intend to do. For example, sometimes I wonder why, at 28 and being Mormon, I find myself insistently single. Why, my mother wants to know, haven't I gotten married? Other times I wonder why I haven't written a book yet. I know a lot of words, and I'm pretty good at putting them together in small groups when talking. Why no book? I wonder why, after ten years of playing, I'm not as good at the guitar as Eric Clapton. Okay well, that one's easy, he made a deal with the ghost of Robert Johnson.

I'm sitting there thinking, and I asked myself why I've never been to Australia. It's a normal question, one which every guy asks himself at one time or another. I tried to figure out what was stopping me. Clearly not familial responsibilities, as I mentioned I'm not married and all my illegitimate children can fly and don't need my help. Not money, not really. I mean, it costs money, but I did some math and figured out that I have more money than it would cost. Not time. I have enough time off saved up. Just. So I decided there was no reason not to go, and lack of obstacles is always a good enough reason to do something. I told my folks I was going to Australia. With who? I dunno. By yourself? Sure. Is that safe? It might be. When? Tomorrow, if I can. (I couldn't).

The next day I informed my co-workers I would be going to Australia within the next couple months, since flights were cheap because the weather sucks. I also told my cousin about it. I lamented the fact that he was married with two children and couldn't accompany me on my spontaneous vagrancy. He was likewise appropriately mournful. So appropriately, in fact, that that night he mentioned it to his wife. The timing couldn't have been better, as his wife was in a very wonderful mood. I imagine she asked a question like, if he weren't married, what would he do? Well, he'd go to Australia with Adam (that's me, I'm Adam). And that was that, and the two of us bought tickets and go in about three weeks.

And suddenly I realized two things: that it's a lot easier not to be married, and that I should get married for precisely that reason. But it's not that I'm hiding from it because it's difficult, no, that's not me. I'm terrified of the prospect of choosing the wrong person. That fear is legitimate because I've dated several of the wrong people and I've seen how quickly emotion twists from exhilaration to disgust and disdain and it's so, so ugly, and I have nightmares of spending eternity with a shapeless, shrieking harridan. That makes the decision difficult, because people can and do change, and often not for the better. Sometimes they don't change at all, they just reveal who they were all along. I'm not phobic about commitment. The thought of being tied down is frightening, sure, but if someone makes you happy then you're not sacrificing anything by doing what's necessary to make them happy and to be with them. And I realize that going to Australia is a poor substitute for the happiness that, I assume, you can feel in sharing yourself completely with someone you love.

But I'm still going.

Of distracted everything.

2010-05-10T22:04:00.000-06:00

We want everything to be about us. I mean, we like to say we don't, and a lot of us actually truly believe it, but in the end, we want everything to be about us. We're flattered when people we're not interested in are clearly interested in us. We might complain that "it's so hard" to let them down easy or avoid spending awkward time with them, but underneath it you'd rather be flattered and have to reject someone than them not be interested in you at all. That twinge of pride, that a-ha moment when you know you have that power over another human being, that in some way they're interested in you, we can't get enough of that. It's empowering and even addictive.

A while back, I was reading a blog and the author was talking about the psychology of pornography, but his comments apply universally. He was making a generalization about any attention-seeking behavior, any "about me" type of behavior, or behavior which forces closeness without base. We're all guilty of it. He said "attention is not attraction which is not intimacy which is not love." I think this is incredibly perceptive. Even when the attention you receive is out of attraction, it is not intimacy and it is not love. The point is perfect. We seek attention, we want things to be about us because we crave intimacy and we crave love. I'm voraciously independent but I crave those things like crazy. Unfortunately, it's misguided. Receiving attention from people who don't actually care about us is meaningless. It's hollow. It creates false perceptions, implants false ideals. We do it because we're not getting what we need from the places we should be getting it, for whatever reason. That's why the happiest people are the ones who have found a source for what they need, or have figured out how to manage their appetites. Most people are missing something. Like a vitamin deficiency. And we often look to satisfy our cravings in the wrong places or in the wrong ways.

Perhaps this is why porn stars and the Kardashians have dead eyes and no souls.

Disabuse the misuse.

2010-02-19T17:02:00.002-07:00

People are always misusing expressions. And it's really only a matter of observation. People say "I could care less" when they really mean "I couldn't care less." I discovered this distinction when I was about ten. The reason they say it is because they aren't actually paying attention to what they're saying. They're just copying what they heard someone else say in a similar situation. It's the same with "PIN number" and "VIN number." Ugh. I must hear someone say "PIN number" at least eighty thousand times a month and it makes me shudder every time. And then there are some expressions that make no sense to me. Like when someone says "she was saggy in all the wrong places." Can you be saggy in the right places? Hey ladies, I'm saggy in all the right places. Shit!

Don't get me started on "literally." If the word "literally" were human and female, it would have taken out a mortgage at a battered women's shelter. It's obscene how abused this word is. People use it to mean everything from "seriously" to "nearly" and everything in between. "She literally jumped down his throat." No, she didn't. He would be dead with an exploded neck and she would be awaiting trial on charges of gymnastic manslaughter. Something else that secretly bothers me is "impact." It has no figurative meaning as a verb. Same with contact. What am I even arguing about? As a linguistics major I once argued that usage determines standard. I give up. I move we start using the word mustache as a verb. I'm going to mustache my face! Then you'll be sorry!

Lament of the future cat man.

2010-02-18T18:40:00.009-07:00

I hate that conversation that starts with "I've been really getting into ... lately." It drives me nuts. It's someone's way of telling you how interesting they think they are and that they'd like it if you could both talk about them for a while. There's no more self-serving thing to say. And I hate it when you're talking to someone and you can tell they're barely listening and just waiting for you to finish so they can say something. I'm such a giant hypocrite because I do this all the time. I'll be happily jabbering away with someone and then I'll get something in my head that I want to say really badly, but inevitably the other person has just launched into explaining the peculiar reproductive habits of the Italian frog swan and I'll sit there trying to half listen so if they ask me a question I can respond intelligently but also trying to hang onto the brilliant thought I've just had. It's almost always a lose-lose situation, though. Half the time, by the time they're done you've forgotten what you wanted to say and you're sitting there with your mouth hanging open with nothing further to contribute. Or they've craftily changed the subject entirely somewhere along the line and when you start talking they see right through you. And they get that look on their face like "This selfish jackass was clearly just waiting for me to stop talking so he could say that." Then they never want to converse with you again, because you're clearly a selfish jackass.

And it's the worst when you're in class or something, and someone is droning away and suddenly something amazing or funny occurs to you and you're like OH I MUST SHARE THIS WITH THE WORLD, and you secretly hope the one cute girl in the class will pay attention and she'll think to herself, "My, what an astute yet humorous observation from this fine gentleman, and now that I look he is rather handsome in his way" and after class she'll come by and tell you she appreciated your comments and you'll sense that she wishes ice cream upon her belly and you will banter the night through and end it with your mouth on her mouth and you will marry and have three bright children all named for New Yorker columnists and wearing tiny white sweaters around their necks like their debonair father. And you're sitting there with your hand in the air for the next three minutes. And those three minutes are a freaking eternity because you start thinking of how best to share your thoughts, what would be most meaningful, or funniest, and then you realize you're trapped! Either you won't ever be called on and you have to lower your hand with the taste of shame in your mouth while everyone around feels sorry for you, or you will be called on but by now you've overthought it so much that you start talking too quickly and start laughing at your own comments before you've actually reached the funny part. And the cute girl wakes up five minutes later and goes home to her charmingly oafish boyfriend.

The point I'm trying to make is: don't talk to people.

Grocery shopping is hard.

2010-01-04T17:45:00.006-07:00

I hate it. I go to the grocery store and the only thing I want to do is leave immediately. I wander the aisles and think about how much work it's going to take to prepare and cook the food I see. The first week out of my parents' house, I bought virtually nothing but Oreos, candy bars and mac and cheese. Speaking of which, am I the only person who thinks that the theme-shaped Kraft Macaroni & Cheese tastes way better than the normal kind? I've always thought this. I used to insist on grocery shopping with my mother when I was younger (16) just so that I could ensure she bought the "wheels" kind. That and butterscotch chips, like for cookies. I'd just eat them out of the bag. I should have weighed 400 lbs. That first day doing my own shopping I scoured the shelf for my beloved wheels but found nothing, and I returned to my apartment sadly with a box of Spongebob Macaroni & Cheese. Fortunately for me, Spongebob noodles are a savory cheesy delight. I returned the next week for more Spongebob and of course they were out, so I left the store with a Spiderman box. Also good. This led me to decide I would rank the most delicious kinds of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese:

1. Wheels
2. Spongebob
3. ??? (I know there was a kind I had as a kid, not as good as Spongebob but better than Spiderman)
4. Spiderman
6. Regular

I put regular at number 6 because it's mostly gross and not worthy of 5th. Does this imply I would eat nothing before I would eat regular? No, it does not. I would just be angry and stir the noodles very hard.

Oreos were easier. There's never any shortage of them. Even now that I've cut back on copious sugary treats on my shopping visits, I always like to have a package of Oreos on hand. I used to dip them in the milk, and I'd sit there and wait until the part around my fingers started to dissolve before slopping them into my mouth. I spilled everywhere, and sometimes I'd wait a second too long and the Oreo would disintegrate into my milk. I always panicked, cause disintegrated Oreos float right to the bottom and soggy things are disgusting. So I usually drank the whole thing right there quickly and got more milk. This became such a problem that now I put the Oreo in my mouth and drink some milk and let the whole thing melt right there on my tongue. It's delicious and in no way conducive to tooth decay. Some people prefer Double Stuf Oreos, though I'm not sure I understand why. I mean, you get more of the white stuff, but the entire Oreo concept is predicated on the balance of white stuff to black stuff, and Double Stuf just completely upends this balance. It's madness. And I've seen those green-fringed "diet" Oreos lurking in the shadows. Horrifying. I bet they taste like fish.

Anyway, now I'm on a budget. I found out that my monthly food costs for myself was as much as my cousin's, which includes him, his wife and two small children. I'm eating for four people! I'm the reason the Arabs hate America! And now that I'm facing some very hefty upcoming expenses, I've got to cut my food costs by at least half. That means rice and beans. That's right, I'm going full third world. I've done it before, I swear I can do it again. But I'm still going to buy Spongebob and Oreos.

Football and love songs.

2009-12-23T23:49:00.005-07:00

Oh, hey, BYU won the MAACO BOWL LAS VEGAS. Kicked the snot out of the Oregon State. Of course, it was only because the Beavers weren't motivated and didn't care. Their season ended with their loss in the Civil War a few weeks ago. Nevermind putting up a good show against a "lesser" opponent or going out on a high note or notching another win for the sake of pride and history. Game doesn't count, guys! Bowl games, apart from the National Championship mean nothing, everyone! I'm sure that will be an easy stance to stick to consistently. Whatever.

Utah beat Cal earlier tonight. Cal definitely looked listless, but that's their own damn fault. Get up for the game or get out. I'm seriously tired of the excuses. You're an 8-5 team and you lost to Oregon by 39 points who lost to Stanford who beat USC (and who, incidentally, lost to Oregon State). Find some motivation or don't even bother showing up. Or, you know, do, and keep getting waxed by the WAC and MWC.

I was thinking today that there's about a 20 year dead zone between when new technology can be referenced in love songs without sounding silly. I don't really have anything to back that up, but take "answering machine" or "answer phone," for instance. I mean, I can only think of two songs off the top of my head that use it--Nice Dream (Radiohead) and a Joseph Arthur song I think I know the name of but can't be sure and I don't want to be wrong or look it up, sorry--but think about it. When answering machines were first invented, it probably would have been weird to hear someone mention them in a song, but not anymore. When's the last time you heard a love song that seriously referenced new technology like, "Hey baby/I texted you and you weren't on Facebook/why don't you poke me back." Yes, I know back and book don't rhyme. But really, songs like that would sound kind of stupid. When VCRs first game out, I don't think you had like Linda Carpenter or Paul Simon throwing a lot of "I saw your face on my tape-recorder" type lyrics. But now it's not all that weird, is it? So maybe in 20 years we'll have Miley Cyrus telling us about her Twitter love affair and no one will boo her off the stage. Well, I mean, I still would, but..

5 Gifts For The 27 Year Old Bachelor

2009-12-21T15:08:00.006-07:00

If you get the 27 year old bachelor in your life any or all of these gifts for Christmas, he will love you forever, until next year.

1. NBA basketball -- I don't mean an NBA size basketball, or an NBA brand basketball, I mean an actual NBA game ball. They're like $100. TF-1000s are great, don't misunderstand, but this is the real thing. What better way to show off to your friends than to show up at a pickup game with an actual NBA ball? And then of course proceed to play expertly, proving beyond a doubt that you belong in the NBA.

2. A pig -- Every guy wants a pig. While most guys love dogs and plan to own about 16 of them as soon as they can, pigs are that one pet that will make everyone understand just precisely how awesome you really are. Look at me, I am eclectic, I have a Piano Magic b-side and swine in my house. Pigs are smart and adorable. And they're pretty easy to care for. Just don't feed them dog food. They go feral and chew your face off.

3. A new Xbox 360 -- They break all the time, so chances are that while your 27 year old bachelor already has a 360, it's probably broken and the warranty has expired. This is an important gift because 27 year old bachelors need to unwind after a long day of not having any responsibilities. Video games are a fantastic way of doing this.

4. A guitar -- Every guy wants to play the guitar. Even if a guy already knows how to play the guitar, a new one is always wonderful. Martin acoustic guitars are fantastic for the price. A set each of light/medium and heavy gauge phosphor bronze steel strings are necessary, electric input not. Your 27 year old bachelor needs a new guitar to impress a lady, marry her and please his folks.

5. Camping things -- He may need any or all of these items: a backpack, stove, sleeping bag, tent, hiking boots. You never know when he may want to take a sudden trip to, say, Greenland.

A lot of guys would also want books, but the problem with 27 year old bachelors is that they often buy books on impulse, which results in them having more books than they've read and being well-stocked for at least a year in advance. Adding more books to his collection will just confuse and possibly upset him.

Down with capitalism/TV execs.

2009-12-19T13:18:00.009-07:00

On Thursday, I spent my day at work looking forward to the Colts vs. Jaguars game. I naturally assumed a mid-week NFL game with an undefeated team in week 17 of the season with 0 realistic ratings competition would be on network TV. Well I got home to find out that the NFL Network had snatched the game at some point and my basic Comcast package doesn't get the NFL Network. Sigh. Right now my cable bill is around $32 a month, and my roommate and I would have to pay around double that to get the NFL Network (along with a buttload of other channels I'll never watch). So weak, you guys.

So I had to settle with following the score online while I watched Mythbusters and I became increasingly disappointed that I was missing the game with each touchdown. It was a shootout, with Manning, Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne essentially castrating the entire Jaguar defense for 3 quarters.

That's what makes Peyton great. He surgically removes the opponent's will or ability to fight by being maddeningly consistent and precise. Quarterbacks in the NFL are basically like hedge fund managers--they play statistics and odds from ground zero. NFL QBs have to manage the game, looking not necessarily just for points on every drive, but to maximize the optimum position for each move made--putting their defense in a position to get the ball back, running the clock, confusing the opponent's defense, etc etc. In order to do this they have to be in two places at once: present in the moment, on the field, making the plays, as well as constantly assessing the meta-game by understanding the odds. Knowing where each receiver is supposed to be on each play, knowing when to get rid of the ball and when not to, and also knowing the probabilities of certain outcomes, if we get here and punt from this position, what are the chances we get the ball back in how long at what position and so on. Tough job. And Peyton is great at it, possibly the best ever.

Bill Simmons talks sometimes about how amazing it is to see certain players who really, really get it retire and then go into coaching/managing and fail spectacularly. It's curious. You would think guys like Isaiah Thomas or Kevin McHale or Michael Jordan (for crap's sake), all guys who really understood team dynamics and how to manage games, would be ideal coaches or general managers. But they often aren't. It's like once they're removed from the game itself, they have a difficult time understanding how players on a team interact and work together. In Isaiah's case, he made one boneheaded move after another spending money on players who had numbers, but he never created a team, miring the Knicks in 10+ years of mediocrity. Makes me wonder what kind of coach Peyton Manning would make.

I'm going to Greenland.

2009-12-18T07:38:00.001-07:00

Okay not really. The other day after work I spent about 6 hours looking at Greenland on Google Earth. Now I want to quit my job and go wander the frozen wilderness for a year. I started in Nuuk, which looks like a decent place but somehow stuck between trying to be a normal Danish town and a suburb of a city run by clowns. It's the biggest city in Greenland, but apparently the airport there is useless, so all major air traffic comes in through Kangerlussuaq, which is a tiny little place far to the northeast of Nuuk with a population of 500. I would guess approximately 490 of them are boat drivers (to Nuuk), 9 of them are cooks or hotel owners and 1 of them is a bum. That's the worldwide ratio of normal people to bums, right? 499 to 1?

I found Kangerlussuaq by accident--in fact, all of my Greenland discoveries were accidents which I happened across by mindlessly clicking my way north for several hours--and when I found it I was delighted to discover that even in Greenland tourists are under the impression that they are the first and only people to discover a touristy gimmick. As far as I can tell, there's only one touristy gimmick in all of Greenland and Google Earth has about nine thousand photos of it. So if you've penciled in time on your schedule to click through photos of Kangerlussuaq, be warned that as you search for more interesting photos of what is essentially the only viable commerical airport which also happens to be a town on the world's only subcontinent with an icesheet the size of Mexico, you're going to see a lot of one thing. Here, I'll save you the trouble:

Every other photo anyone has taken of Kangerlussuaq is either that signpost or some part of a red plane with white polka-dots (Air Greenland, go figure).

As I made my way north along the western coast up to the icesheet, I had to keep zooming in and out because certain photo icons won't appear if you're not close enough to the surface, but being close to the surface means you move slower, so it was this tug of war between wanting to see as many photos as possible while also not wanting to spend the remainder of the year squinting at blurry, green-brown satellite imagery. After I tired of Kangerlkajsdlka, I began viewing photos people had taken of the surrounding area. They were absolutely gorgeous. I picked up the trail of some guy called "marcus_weidler" who was headed west with a companion or two, along what looked like a general route some other people also take (give or take 50 miles of latitude), and some of the pictures blew me away. This is virtually untouched, untapped wilderness for hundreds of miles with vast canyons and huge mountains and beautiful, clear blue lakes. Truly epic. Going there right now might be a mistake since it's -600 degrees, but I'd love to someday.

About the clown comment, I found that virtually every settlement in the country was full of brightly colored houses, red, blue, green, etc. I decided they painted them those colors because when you live in the freaking Arctic, bull crap if you're gonna let anyone tell you you can't paint your house a garish shade of yellow simply because you freaking feel like it. When it's cold enough outside to freeze piss every day of the year, you're gonna paint your house any damn color you want, and if we're being honest, deep down everyone wants to live in a yellow house. I know I do.

(marcus_weidler's awesome photos, my favorites around pages 15-17)

Tiger commits adultery, moves to Sweden.

2009-12-14T18:43:00.022-07:00

I watch golf on TV sometimes. It's certainly not any more boring than baseball. I watch it because I appreciate the madness-inducing difficulty of hitting a little ball with a lopsided club into a small hole a few hundred yards away, and I appreciate that difficulty because I am awful at golf. Golf is completely immune to any natural sports aptitude I have. I've tried playing for years. I've never been good at it. It's a whole other game from anything else. Personally I blame genes or sorcery.

I make fun of my brother sometimes cause he watches golf usually only if Tiger is playing. Recently he watched like ten hours of the Tour Championship just to watch Tiger lose at the very end to Phickelson. He was all upset about it, as though his ten hours of watching golf were suddenly a waste because Tiger lost. While one could (and did) argue that watching ten hours of golf was a waste regardless, I think it's odd that people follow an entire sport for one guy. It seems to me that in a way it devalues the sport itself. I also get fussy when people follow an entire team for one guy (coughLakers fans), so while I've always had a bit of a man crush on Peyton Manning as well as some respect for the organization (and its previous coach), I didn't feel I could legitimately favor the Colts until Austin Collie (former BYU receiver) joined Indianapolis this year as a rookie. I get a little annoyed when hundreds of Mexicans invade Rio Tinto stadium every time Chicago plays RSL just so they can scream out their love for no-neck Cuauhtémoc. They wouldn't be there if he weren't there, and the whole notion of it cheapens his team, because the moment he retires (which he will soon, because he's older than France), Chicago loses a bunch of fans. I think there should be loyalty toward the team, not just an individual. (Then again, if you can draw people in with an individual--David Beckham, for example--with enough continued exposure some of them might just become actual fans).

And by that logic, I've somewhat vindicated my brother and a billion Tiger fans who follow golf only when he's on TV, since golf is an individual game.

Anyhow, it took the revelation that Tiger had a harem to turn my mostly sports-averse mother into a Tiger follower. The other day she said to me, "Do you think he has a sex addiction?" (Sex addiction is the new thing male celebrities say they have to excuse an appalling lack of self-control). No, mom, it's not a sex addiction. It's just about access. It is my opinion that men are wired to want sex from any available source. That doesn't mean they have to linger on every little fantasy, let alone act on one. Many don't. Many do. But the truth is that when a man sees or interacts with an attractive woman, some part of him desires her. At that point the overarching question is, morality aside, one of self-control. If he's married, the question often takes the form of loyalty and respect toward his wife and his marriage as well as access. If he's not married, the question is largely one of just access. For the happily, loyally married man, the thought may not even register consciously. He has no reason to consider such infidelity. For a different type of married man, one like Tiger, there is apparently nothing to hold him back morally, and he seems to have little, if any, respect or loyalty for his marriage or his wife--so at that point it's just a question of access, and Tiger has no restrictions there. He's rich, he's famous, and he has a gaggle of people waiting to do anything for him. Tiger's not addicted, he's just utterly uninhibited.

It's not all that simple, obviously, but I think it's a big part of why he did what he did.

It's a shame, too. You'd think a beautiful wife, two kids and more money than he could possibly spend would be enough, but it often seems the opposite is true. The more someone's potential to buy their way into gratification increases, the more their desire--and sense of entitlement--to be gratified increases. As Joe Thiesmann said about his own infidelity, "God wants Joe Theismann to be happy."

And now golf ratings will be in the toilet. And Tiger will be the punchline to every sports-related sex joke for the next ten years. Wonder if it was worth it.

Correction.

2009-12-07T22:35:00.004-07:00

TCU will play Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl instead of what I said before. This is actually worse than what I said. Instead of at least one "mid-major" team having an opportunity to prove itself against an "elite" program, two undefeated mid-majors will play each other. Proving... well, nothing of consequence. Whee. I don't know to what extent--if any--the BCS itself engineered this matchup (the Fiesta Bowl has some power over who ends up in its game), but to me the whole thing stinks. Like crap.

It makes sense to pit the two together for big-6 conference and BCS execs. An elite program playing a non-elite is a lose-lose for the elite program. For example, if Texas plays TCU and wins, they feel they haven't gained anything besides maintaining the status-quo--they're expected to win, they're Texas. If Texas plays TCU and loses, well now, that's just downright embarrassing, isn't it? And the same thing works in reverse in TCU's favor. So it's no wonder rising programs like Boise State can't get any big-name programs to schedule any games with them--meanwhile a lack of "quality" wins over big-name programs is referred to whenever teams like Boise State or TCU ask for a little fairness in rankings, respect, bowl matchups or what have you.

That is what we call a Catch-22, and it's no accident.

Championship Saturday

2009-12-06T02:08:00.013-07:00

Really couldn't have gone much worse than it did, assuming you agree the BCS makes about as much sense as an animated movie starring Megan Fox.

Cincinnati beat Pitt, meaning the BCS have reason to place them ahead of TCU under any scenario. However, I'm not one of those guys who thinks it's funny to call it the Big Least instead of the Big East, so let's examine the facts. Cincinnati started the season off by beating Rutgers 45-15 and if we.. oh screw it, the Big East sucks. Come on!

Then Alabama beat Florida. Wait, "beat" isn't the right word. The right word is "pantsed." Since they were ranked 2 and 1 respectively, whatever outcome really wasn't going to throw a wrench into the BCS's diabolical schemes. I guess I wanted Florida to win because Alabama disrespected Utah last year before and after the Utes beat them, and like many people, I happen to be fond of Tim Tebow, because shut up, he's a good guy. It takes a big man to cry on live national television with scripture written under your eyes. Or a crazy man.

Nailbiter between Texas and Nebraska. REALLY wanted Nebraska to pull this one out, since it'd make room for TCU to move into the number 2 spot for the championship against Alabama. This would have been very entertaining because it's a win-win. Either the BCS caves and allows a "non-elite" school into the biggest party of all, or they scramble and find a way of shutting TCU out, further fanning the ever-growing flames of opposition to their lucrative, immoral little racket. Nebraska had it all but sealed up after a field goal with about 2 minutes left, until their placekicker thought it would be amusing to belt the ensuing kickoff out of bounds. Seriously, dude. You just watched your other kicker kick the ball between two goalposts 19 feet apart from like 50 yards away. You have 160 feet to work with and YOU don't have 11 savage monsters running at you when you do it. How hard can it be to keep the kick in bounds?

Soooo Texas gets the ball at their 40. Then they complete a pass and Nebraska's tackler got in on what must have been a shared joke between him and the placekicker by horse-collaring Texas' receiver and giving them another 15 yards added on to the end of the catch. So approximately -5 seconds after Nebraska kicks a go-ahead field goal, the Longhorns are themselves in field goal range. Kicker comes out, puts it up, game over.

So it'll be Texas and Alabama in the national championship game. Texas will get crushed. TCU will be given a consolation prize in a BCS bowl against an inferior opponent, and an undefeated Boise State will be conveniently dismissed to a mediocre, anonymous bowl against a mediocre, anonymous opponent. But hey, what do we care about actually finding out who the best team in college football is? There's money to be made here.

And poor Greg Oden. His body is clearly not built for basketball at the professional level. Misses his entire 2007 rookie year to an injury, comes back and performs adequately though never wonderfully the next year missing 1/4th of the season due to nagging health issues, comes back this year, starts out nicely and then freaking Aaron Brooks* blasts him in the kneecap and breaks it 21 games into the season. That just SUCKS. That photo of him laying on the court with a crushed knee is just totally depressing.

So RIP Greg Oden's NBA career. There's a reason you don't take a risk on an injury prone big man. Not at a number one overall pick. You most certainly do NOT leave someone like Kevin Durant on the board while you're at it. You take the sure thing and build yourself into a team that can attract and accomodate a proven, durable big man. Maybe not one with as much upside, but at least one that can give you at least 70 solid games a year for 5-10 years. Not that I'm complaining. It is Portland we're talking about, after all. They can shoot themselves in the face for all I care. Every one of them. Except Greg Oden, poor guy.

* I would like to add that Aaron Brooks looks like Chris Rock. If Chris Rock mated with a Chihuahua. A Chihuahua that itself was the product of an alien... and Chris Rock. What I'm trying to say is that he's a small, funny-looking black man.

BYU vs. Utah (fans)

2009-12-03T13:48:00.019-07:00

I went to the University of Utah but grew up a BYU fan. My dad's dad started taking me to games in Provo before I could reliably maintain clean underpants, so I guess you could say in a way I imprinted and really had no other choice. I actually don't even like Provo. I lived in an apartment down the street from Lavell Edwards Stadium for 6 months on a yearlong lease. That's as long as I could stand it there. Nothing personal against anyone who lives in Utah Valley, but you all seriously freak me out. Not that Salt Lake is much better, what with the overcompensating for the southern crazy. But at least from about Lehi north I can rent Saving Private Ryan and not get a lecture from a friend's girlfriend about how I should start heeding the word of the Lord because, like, seriously, I should know better.

Lifelong BYU fan. I get crap for it--"You graduated from the U but you're a BYU fan? What's wrong with you?!" Nothing is wrong with me. Okay, that's not true. Several things are wrong with me but I just looked at the list and that's not on it. But really, what are you suggesting? That everyone become a fan of whatever university they attended over the university they cheered for for their entire life? That seems unfair. That's kind of like me moving to New Jersey and becoming a Nets fan over the Jazz. Ouch. Isn't it enough that I'm moving to New Jersey?

So BYU beat Utah, and being that I'm one of those who can be legitimately both a Ute fan and a BYU fan at the same time (except when they play each other), I can see this thing from both sides. The rivalry got kind of ugly around this year's game. Five thoughts:

1. Max Hall is a mediocre quarterback. He excels against crap teams and folds against good teams. He made one excellent pass during the game last Saturday which essentially saved his career from being summarized forever as "how did THAT guy break Detmer's records?" accompanied by a dismayed shake of the head and that sound people make when they're disgusted or just voted a turd sandwich into the presidency.

2. Max Hall needs to think before he speaks. I'm not going to sit here and pretend that fans on both sides don't say awful, mean, ugly things about each other all the time. They do. Everyone does, except me. And we're going to demonize him for doing what everyone does? I don't think he lied; I'm sure Ute fans did some crappy stuff to his family. He may have exaggerated, but you can't honestly believe he made the whole thing up. The problem was that he vented about it a year after it happened, during an interview. He's allowed to vent and it's obvious he doesn't LITERALLY hate half the state since it's been scientifically proven that you can only hate 150 people at a time, but to do it when and where he did it was dumb.

3. Ute fans are paranoid*. Right now a bunch of them going ballistic about something that happened in the stands immediately after the game. Apparently a BYU fan was using his phone to take pictures of despondent, sobbing Ute fans and a certain Ute fan (rumors say Coach Whit's son) grabbed the phone and wouldn't return it. So people got punchy and Whit's wife got involved and ended up with a fat lip. So of course Ute fans get whipped up into a frenzy and start claiming that Whit's wife was viciously attacked and Ute fans were spit on and dogs were forced to fight each other and fair maidens were raped and so on. And then the same people that complained endlessly about Max Hall's comments take this incident to mean the entire BYU organization and its fans and Mormons are bullies and defilers of decency. But really, we don't have the facts. We don't know what actually happened. It looks like just an unfortunate incident with a few people losing their tempers and being stupid, and I'm fairly sure hardly anyone got raped. So maybe let's calm down. I'm just saying.

4. Ute fans are insecure*. Another group of Ute fans who can't stomach the loss are pretending that the loss was meaningless because BYU had a senior QB in Max Hall and a healthy backfield meanwhile Utah had a freshman QB and were missing their "star" RB Matt Asiata. So clearly if Utah had a senior QB and Asiata wasn't hurt, they would have won. Right? No. That's just idiotic. That's not how anything in the history of the world has ever worked, ever.

5. Ute fans are irritating*. Discontent that BYU fans don't come out of the womb with a degree of self-loathing that would bother Kurt Cobain, we're going to hear for the next year all about how BYU is going to get demolished next November because all the pieces will be in place. Fine. Talk about it when it happens. For now, shhhhhhhhhhhh. We're trying to enjoy our 3 out of the last 4 and a PG movie.

* Not all of them, just the ones who do or are these things. Sadly, BYU fans are the same when they lose. And in Max Hall's case, when they win.

Utah is great.

2009-11-09T16:51:00.009-07:00

i used to despise my state. back in high school, it was cool to hate Utah. i guess because it was full of white people? that's what people always say when they make fun of Utah. it's full of white people. just once i want someone to make fun of Alabama and justify their position with "because it's full of black people." obviously they'd have to immediately apply for the FWPP but still, that would take balls and they'd have something interesting to write about in their journal.

also, it's full of mormons. i never really got the white people thing, but the mormon thing i think is part of the reason i used to be a hater. which is odd because i'm a mormon. but i thought of myself as a "cool" mormon. the kind who didn't judge you and didn't gossip if you wanted to live with your girlfriend or adopt little asian babies with your life partner or drink yourself into a puddle four nights a week. stories i heard detailed sordid encounters with jerk mormons who drove well-meaning (but sinful!) neighbors and co-workers right out into the cold night of ostracization (new word). mormons i knew myself were guilty of this as well. that always bothered me, and other things bothered me, like certain aspects of mormon culture i couldn't wrap my head around. so, you know, hating on other mormons and the state was logically sound. i was one of them, but not one of THEM. like, heaven forbid i marry a girl with a tattoo, you know?

after living in a 3rd world country and visiting other countries and hearing the experiences of others as they have traveled the world, the gears in my mind churned a bit and i have drawn some new conclusions about the rest of the world as it relates to Utah. and mostly, those conclusions are that it sucks. it began to seem absurd to have such meaningless complaints about somethings that barely mattered. i mean, yeah, judging people and making them feel bad for their choices is a pretty douchey thing to do but in time i've come to the conclusion that i prefer accept everyone rather than piss on the judges for pissing on the judgees. seek to understand and learn and help and all that.

which brings me to the present day, in which i still have brief moments of weakness when it comes to not judging. i was reading an article online a little while back and some people had made some comments about the article, and somehow or other someone brought up Utah and some guy says something to the effect of "Utah sounds like a great place, except.. it's Utah." and there were some other various comments to that end by others. now, i'm not a betting man (mormon, remember?), but i'd take 10 to 1 not a single one of them has ever been to Utah or knows anything about it that doesn't have to do with a preponderance of mormons, white people and/or swirling rumors of lingering polygamy. i became incensed. i'd read comments like this before elsewhere many times, but i felt like i'd had enough of the cheap shots from clueless internet tough guys. i wanted to find each one of them and subject them to a verbal and psychological beat down that would render them completely incapable of ever again spewing nonsense of things which they know nothing. and having children. a tirade so virile their genitals shrivel into useless raisins. unfortunately, i do not possess such awesome powers of elocution, so i must make my point the only way i know how--raging impotently on the same internet. so there. and now i'm over it.

and, you know, hey..

Enemy of many, friend to all.

2009-08-24T11:55:00.010-06:00

i finished reading ayn rand's The Fountainhead a couple months ago. this came some months on the heels of finishing Atlas Shrugged. i don't remember what i read in between. probably an assortment of CS textbooks and news articles on how barack obama will simultaneously be the next messiah (JL!) and the anti-Christ.

i love ayn rand. she's completely insane and i love her for it. her ideas are both brilliant and ridiculous. she believes so totally in her world that a willing mind can't help but be sucked in completely, left to wander the vast halls of her intellect, listening as voices boom and then furtively whisper from all sides, examining the reliefs carved in the walls of places where people compete to cooperate and destroy their loved ones and the treasures of their souls in order to save them.

i borrowed The Fountainhead from a friend who had read it, but had not read Atlas Shrugged yet. it only made sense that we exchange the books and share our thoughts. my friend read Atlas in about two weeks. less even. i don't know how. i was floored. such an accomplishment is on par with running a four-minute mile barefoot on broken glass while a band of unruly mexicans throws frozen bananas at you. it took me, i think, four months to read Atlas. i don't remember how long it took me to finally finish the Fountainhead, but it was way longer than two weeks, and the Fountainhead is about 400 pages shorter than Atlas.

and it turns out that i loved the Fountainhead more than Atlas. it's strange because the two main characters of Atlas are my favorites of ayn's, but the content and presentation and story of the Fountainhead are more appealing. i half-jokingly like to pretend that i am a shadow of Hank Rearden, one of the protagonists of Atlas. there are some similarities, both in physical description and in the way i see the world. i don't know what it says about me that i identify more strongly with Hank instead of Howard Roark (the equivalent protagonist of the Fountainhead), since at the end of Atlas (spoilers) Hank ends up losing the the woman he loves to that pompous savior John Galt, whereas Howard gets the girl at the end of the Fountainhead. perhaps i am destined to look for my own Dagny Taggart forever, coming close but never succeeding. or, more likely, it means nothing and says nothing about me. quem sabe.

my friend who has now read both books along with me does not seem to share my enthusiasm for all of the same things i love about ayn rand. ayn has a very peculiar attitude when it comes to certain kinds of people and certain kinds of professions, and she has a noted bias against those she perceives as weak of mind or heart. compassion for those unable or unwilling to help themselves is therefore a waste of time and effort, time and effort better spent on creation, innovation, on bettering the state of the world through universally mutual self-interest. this is very different than the attitude a compassionate, generous, person is supposed to take. it's not a very Christian attitude and ayn was decidedly nonreligious. this makes it difficult to reconcile things you know to be true with other things you believe should be true. you know you should help those in need. this is a fundamental tenet of my religion and our society at large. but why do you help them? what is your motivation? this touches on a basic question of human motivation. how do you define a selfless act? if you're helping someone in need, are you doing it because they need help or because it will make you feel good? probably some combination of both, right? which would mean your actions are not entirely selfless, which means your motivations are tied up in your own self-interest. if you can accept that you're motivated by self-interest, why is it such a leap to accept that there are certain actions you can take that are entirely motivated by self-interest that still benefit humanity as a whole? ayn advocates a rational, objective notion of self-interest. there is a mutual exchange or allocation between rational parties, legal and, assuming these, resulting in a pareto-improvement (an exchange that makes at least one party better off without making any other party worse off). if we can accept this as a worthwhile goal, then where does that leave those who cannot or refuse to help themselves, who time and time again fall into self-destructive patterns, who harm themselves and others through bad behavior? would a bright, intelligent, mature person's time not be better spent improving the state of the world for those who are willing or able to help themselves? where do we draw the line?

all questions i don't have the answers for. i respect ayn's point of view, one of hard-line competition between rationally self-interested parties without room for weakness, but at the same time i recognize its faults. ideally, everyone would be rational and able to understand how to overcome their weaknesses and would be willing to do it, but that's simply not reality and we can't dismiss a large swath of humanity with legitimate disadvantages and legitimate problems simply because we don't have time for them. ignoring them or marginalizing them in order to further improve the part of the world and the part of our society gilded with the light of our understanding and capacity is not only impossible, it's immoral and self-defeating. my friend is a social-worker who understands this better than anyone. the fact that she was independently willing to not only read ayn rand's writing but openly discuss its merits and ideas says a lot about her strength of character. it's easy for me, removed from much of the sheer ugliness of the world to pontificate on "the way things should be" and the "the way people should be," but it's much more difficult for someone, like my friend, to see how truly awful things are on a daily basis and not only not succumb to the pervasive sense of despair and ubiquitous unhappiness and hopelessness of such people and places, but to also explore the possibilities of something better through ideas and concepts presented in such a cold, unfeeling manner. would that i were similarly capable of such a thing.

New year, same as the old year.

2009-01-06T19:04:00.006-07:00

So far. Maybe I should give it more time.

The video card I bought in November, I remember I had some concerns about my power supply being adequate. I inherited my current computer and was unable to conveniently figure out the wattage of the power supply, so I decided I'd just install the vid card and see what happened. Well, it worked all right, for two or three weeks. Then I started getting odd errors (HD cache write errors or something) and random locking up and restarting. Finally the computer wouldn't turn on at all, so I backed up my HD, unhooked it and borrowed another computer over the holidays and finally got my computer fixed just the other day. I figured it was the power supply and sure enough, it was. My power supply was outputting 500 watts, it turns out. Not nearly enough. Anyway I looked online and found some decent 750W+ power supplies for around $150 and up, but I figured I'd make use of my computer's free service warranty and just take it down to its vendor and have them install a new one right then and there. I expected the price to be around the same, maybe $30 or $40 more than the $150-ish I'd found online. Nope, try $100 more. I thought about it, and decided having it installed by guys who do that for a living (like I used to, haha) and having it done right then instead of waiting a week or so more was worth $100, so I paid up. Never thought I'd pay $250 for a power supply. Cost like $80 more than the video card did. Fascinating story.

My school, the University of Utah, just went to the Sugar Bowl, busting the BCS for the 2nd time in 4 years. Maybe 5. Whatever. Either way, I predicted a major loss, and instead they kicked the crap out of the mighty SEC's runner up, Alabama. It was gorgeous. Now, I say that, but I'm actually not a native fan of the team. I grew up on another, nearby, in-state team and my loyalties to that team will never die, but I am extremely proud of what Utah accomplished and have nothing but well-wishings for the program. However, I still want my team to beat them next year.

My Jazz are doing about as well as can be expected, considering the ridiculous amount of injuries they've been dealing with. Deron is looking more and more like his old self. 25 and 15 last night in 36 minutes, started 8-8. Crazy man. Boozer will be back in the lineup approximately never, and when never comes, he'll suck for 2 months while getting back into playing form and then IF the Jazz get into the playoffs he'll accidentally not play defense as usual en route to another disappointing 2nd round exit courtesy of the Lakers, or the Spurs. Meanwhile contract years for two more of the Jazz's biggest other players spell all around messiness in keeping this team together. This was supposed to be the year, man. Boozer and his elusiveness/duplicity is beginning to bother me, and if he manages to sabatoge my team during his quest to "get a raise" I will finally join the ranks of moron Jazz fans who unconditionally boo every former player regardless of the way they left/were booted from the team. At least when he's in town.

Drought.

2008-12-13T10:32:00.003-07:00

Due to busy-ness in real life as well as my lack of money and their lack of appeal, I haven't played a game at all in the last few weeks, almost to the day of the last post on Nov. 23

I did try out Dead Space, which is a pretty awesome game. Beat it over the weekend of my last post, I think. It's fun. I thought about playing through it again, since it lets you "continue" with all the weapons and upgrades you got on the previous playthrough, but it doesn't allow you to "continue" on the next hardest difficulty level--only the same one--so it doesn't found that fun to play through it again, only much more quickly and easily. It wasn't even that hard the first time through. Weird design choice there, if you ask me. I did jump in my seat a few times. There were definitely some great, surreal moments where you really felt like you were in a horror movie like Event Horizon or Alien or something. Actually being in control of the character during those moments is an amazing feeling. Solid A- on that one, and the minus only because of a few minor gameplay frustrations and the lack of replay.

Acquired The Dark Knight on Blu-ray. Several different flavors of awesome. I only wish they had included some kind of commentary. I'm not normally big on commentary in my movies but this is one I'd happily sit through and listen. I also wondered if there ever been a Batman game where you have to choose what equipment ("wonderful toys") you're going to pack with you before each mission. Nothing comes to mind.

I'm tired of NBA commentators drooling over Chris Paul. He's good. He's not the freaking Messiah. I was watching some game a week or two ago and Paul casually dribbles uncontested into the lane, laterally, and does this little "around the leg" move where he's dribbling with his left hand and sort of puts the ball around his left leg and picks the ball back up again with his left hand. Anyone who knows anything about the game will tell you this is a very simple move to execute. You rarely see anyone doing it because it is not useful. It doesn't fake anyone out. It must be done too quickly for you to really move your body in any other direction to give it any real utility. In fact, my brother and I used to make fun of this WNBA commercial where a WNBA player does the exact same move, accomplishes nothing with it, and lays the ball up. So Chris Paul does this useless little trick move in the lane and then shoots a quick jumper moving away from the basket, and bricks the shot. The commentator (ESPN guy, can't recall his name at the moment) absolutely explodes. "This guy is a wizard with the basketball!" blah blah blah, he can't stop talking about it for what seemed like five minutes. They showed like eight replays of it from 45 different angles.

Seriously, guys? His little move did nothing. No one was faked out by it. Then he took a bad shot and missed it, and we're going to gush over him for it? This is another one of those cases where people believe what they're told. Everyone's so high on Chris Paul that everything he does is amazing, unless it isn't amazing and then it's someone else's fault. I can't stand that. He's good, but he's also flawed. He's a so-so leader, his shot selection is often suspect, he's disrespectful of his coach, and he talks like a ninny girl. Get over him, people.

I need a linear simulation.

2008-11-04T08:01:00.005-07:00

Of the outcome of the election and what's going to happen during the next 8 years. Not that it would do me any good. I don't know if I'll vote, though. I know who I'll probably vote for if I do vote, but voting, period, is against my better judgment this time around.

I ordered a new video card, a 9800 GTX+ from eVGA. Amazon delivering I think through TigerDirect or some such thing. I haven't put significant computer parts together in about 7 years, and my ability to figure out if my power supply is adequate beforehand has vanished. I didn't even bother looking into it. PCI-E slot, check, 9 inches(!) of clearance, check. If the power supply can't juice it, then I'll have to get a new one of those as well. As for the 9 inches, well, I just hope it really will fit. I just found a hacksaw in the garage if not.

I don't play a lot of games on my PC anymore. PC time is homework time. The games I do actually play are MMOGs mostly, and those one at a time. Mostly I just got tired of having to tone down the graphics settings of any new game/demo I tried out. It's an inadequacy thing, you see. I wanted to try out Far Cry 2, so that was the catalyst. I couldn't resist the open world, or the setting. I love movies like Blood Diamond and I'm enamored of Africa seeing as I've lived there and seen some of the worst it has to offer. My 7600 GS is simply not good enough. I may need a CPU upgrade before the month is out, so I'm not bottlenecking the video card. I'm not Benchmark Guy, but by golly I'm going to get my money's worth.

I don't have enough time to play two games at once, so as soon as my focus leaves Fallout 3, it'll likely be on Far Cry 2. I may then try out LittleBigPlanet. Of course by then Left 4 Dead will be out and trying that is just a given. Co-op zombie-shooting survival? Sold.

Takers vs. Leavers

2008-06-04T14:18:00.003-06:00

There's a debate going on about whether or not supposed "uncontacted" tribes discovered in the Amazonian basin should be contacted. This reminds me of the Prime Directive, although there are some obvious critical differences. A policy of noninterference is important because it allows people to make their own mistakes and they are forced to take responsibility for them. Letting them in on the "secret" of a greater, more advanced society means that those of that society must shoulder some of the burden that comes from the inevitably bumpy transition that must be made by that smaller, isolated people.

Anthropology will tell you that people in less-advanced societies work fewer hours and are generally happier than we are, in our big, globally-connected civilization. But then the question must be asked, why do primitive societies often opt to join our society? And when they discover not everything is fun and games, why are they unable to back out? I think it's for the same reason we ourselves adopt new technologies that do absolutely nothing for our overall personal happiness (cell phones, computers, etc)--because we can. Why pass up progress and innovation? We thrive on competition, and competition with everything around us drives us to find supposedly better ways to do things, when in reality all we're doing is forcing ourselves to work harder. So often, people who wish to retain the "old ways" of their people are painted as backwards and ignorant, but we're again forced to ask questions like exactly what our progress has afforded us. Are we happier, as a society? It's debatable, but probably not. Regressing, however, is simply not an option. It will never happen, at least not voluntarily. The more progress we make, culturally and technologically, the more we find that these things do not make us any happier or better, but paradoxically, in knowing that there exists what innovations we have made, we can't handle the thought of "going back" to the way things were. Why is that?

Should we tell the isolated Amazonian people that we exist? I don't know. If we don't, they live on for as long as possible just as they are, oblivious to us and what we've accomplished and their lives are certainly no less valid than ours. If we do, it's obvious they'll be unable to enjoy most of the truly revolutionary aspects of our culture for at least a generation or two, if not more, and I'm sure they won't be any happier for it in the end. If we do tell them, like Cain killing Abel, the farmer society will destroy the hunter/herder society like it has since the beginning of human civilization, and are we in some way guilty?

Nuggets need not apply.

2008-05-30T00:05:00.002-06:00

Jason Whitlock thinks that one of the reasons the NBA is enjoying significantly higher ratings this year over last year is in part because the current participants of the playoffs (now down to Lakers, Celtics, Pistons) don't all look like "prison-ready brutes," and he refers specifically to the excessive tattooing undergone by a large number of NBA players. I have to agree, but only to a point. Last year's Finals teams didn't look like brutes, but ratings were in the toilet because the matchup was regarded as boring. Which, honestly, it was.

But the problem David Stern has is not just with "boring" teams. The Spurs are regarded as boring because they aren't young, fast, and don't run a lot. But the perception of teams who run a lot of half-court sets, picks-and-rolls and other basketball fundamentals is largely a product of who the NBA and media outlets market. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. These organizations market the teams and players they think and assume people want to see, and as a result they condition people to expect that, and then when people turn on the TV and don't see Kobe waltzing into the lane to dunk over some 7-foot center every 30 seconds, they decide it's boring and they change the channel.

Jordan's gone, guys. Stop marketing individuals, stop marketing dunks and buzzer-beater treys. Start marketing the game for what it is 95% of the time. If people can't accept basketball for what it actually is (that is, not a bunch of highlights of breakaway dunks strung together), then at this point you're only delaying the inevitable and the league is going under. But we all know that won't happen. We all know basketball is here to stay. So start educating people on the game. Help them to understand how the game works on a deeper level, and help them to appreciate fundamental offense and good, solid defense. Why do people around the world love soccer? There's a reason. People still watch baseball in droves, and that's one of the slowest sports on earth. And guess what, hockey is a very fast-paced game and how many people are watching that these days?

No, David Stern's problem is not because of teams like the Spurs, Jazz and Pistons. It's because he doesn't know how to properly promote his league, and while he and his colleagues run around trying to push the "new" MJs on us, fans drop by the wayside one by one. Couple that with the inconsistent reffing and the image problem Whitlock refers to, an image problem reflected in numerous polls conducted pitting the league against other major sports, and he's going to have a real problem on his hands real soon.

Vlade is just glad he got out early.

2008-05-29T14:24:00.001-06:00

Apparently the NBA is going to start imposing fines on players who clearly flop. The fines will be assessed after games, following a review by some committee of "observers." The details are all a little fuzzy right now. All I can say is that while I'm glad something is being done to cut down on the serious flopping going on in the NBA these days, I don't know if it'll be enough. These men make enough money that a $10,000 fine is pocket change to them. Even to players making "only" around a million a year. Especially if they risk a flop, get the call, and their team wins a game as a result. A little fine isn't going to stop that, is it?

This'll only work if the fines are significant and repeat offenders are punished harshly. The main problem with this is that I doubt it'll be strictly enforced. What we'll see is a lot of flip-flopping (no pun intended) by the league and this committee of observers as to whether or not there was a flop. Most of the chronic floppers are not obvious about it, which is why they do it--because they can and because oftentimes they get the call. A repeat viewing is not necessarily going to make this and open-shut issue. They'll continue to do it, and a review of the action after the game is going to end up as a "we can't tell if it was a flop or not" kind of verdict and life will go on. The only flops that will be regularly fined are the really, really obvious ones while the more irritating, subversive ones that go on all the time will continue.

MLS has been doing better this year in no-calling or yellow-carding a player who obviously flops. In my opinion, flop-calling needs to be a foul-like judgment call by the ref as it happens, and while that may put more of a burden on the refs to make a subjective game even more subjective, it may in the end cut down on flopping because players would be less willing to risk it if it's a heat-of-the-moment call rather than an after-the-fact call. We'll see.

Followup

2008-05-28T21:11:00.000-06:00

The NBA acknowledged the no-call on Fisher, saying it should've been a 2-shot foul. Which most people would agree with. Lakers fans are now going back and arguing about previous plays--travels on Duncan, Manu, the bogus shot-clock violation on the previous play, etc. Unfortunately those arguments are largely invalid because you have to draw the line somewhere or you can simply keep going further and further back, and it'll never end. I think the best thing to do is to draw the line at the last play, and if you can, on the play that the game clock runs out on... which in this case was the foul on Fisher.

Now, the Spurs were outplayed and didn't really deserve the win, but you have to concede that had the call been made, the outcome may have changed. The fact is that the no-call disallowed any chance of the Spurs to pull out a win. If you go further back than that, who knows what may have happened when there was still enough time left to reasonably make a play? If the Lakers retained possession on the play prior, maybe the Spurs force a turnover before they foul. Maybe Kobe misses a free throw or two. Who knows? The difference between the last play and the plays previous to that are that there is no way to predict the game's outcome based off the previous plays, but there is only one game outcome based on the final play--the one that happened.

But the fact is, there was another no-call on the same final play before Fish fouled Barry. Barry lifted his pivot foot before putting the ball on the floor and that is by definition a travel. So two no-calls, one for each team. So the refs blew two calls, and the outcome ended up being what it was, and that's the way things go.

Sadly...

2008-05-28T12:40:00.001-06:00

... the Lakers beat the Spurs last night, giving LA a commanding lead over the defending champs. I'm not a Spurs fan, but I do not want to see the Lakers in the Finals, and that's for several reasons. I do not believe there is some kind of conspiracy going on to get a Lakers-Celtics Finals, but I do have a real problem with the way the Lakers are treated like royalty by the NBA, and one thing I can't stand is the air of entitlement given off by the entire franchise, most notably Phil Jackson and one Kobe Bryant. Those two are too haughty and arrogant for their own good, and all they do is harm the league and the game when they treat other players, teammates, fans and the press like crap. Which they do regularly...

One example: in the series against the Jazz, following a game the Lakers lost, Jackson was asked at a post-game interview something to the effect of how the loss would affect the team's mentality going forth into the next game, and Jackson took this condescending tone and said "all it means is the series is going 6 games," and then he stood up and walked out. Who does that? How old is this man?

Last night, after a tough no-call that cost the Spurs a chance to at least tie the game, Kobe was asked what he thought about it and in typical playground-jerk fashion, he got that "I'm so great" amused smile and said "no foul." Hey Kobe, at least be gracious about it. At least acknowledge the fact that Fisher jumped into Barry and if you'd been in Barry's place and the no-call had cost you the game (or a chance to change a loss), you'd be furious. You make several million dollars a year playing a GAME and you act like you just got out of the sixth grade.

Lakers fans, stop wondering why it seems like everyone hates you and pay attention to the behavior of the two most prominent members of your club.