Bad Ref? Bet On It

So one NBA referee has been caught betting on games and giving "confidential information" (what, like Tim Duncan's jock size?) to other gamblers. David Stern, commissioner of the NBA, is shocked. Shocked, I tells ya.

Recall that I have long maintained that NBA games are fixed--at the league level. This referee, in my opinion, didn't just decide that betting on games was a smart move; he can plausibly fit into the league-wide pattern of predetermined outcomes. Essentially, the fix is an open secret. Announcers will often declare a winner before opening tipoff. Exceptions do occur, but rarely. Now, a referee who likes to gamble--and who knows some of the NBA's master script--can benefit from both that information and the delusional fans and sportswriters who keep trying to convince themselves that pro basketball is legit despite evidence to the contrary.

Call the 9/11 conspiracy guys.

History Matters

Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. The act, and the ludicrous contention of conservatives that it was the better part of "healing" the nation after Watergate, made George W. Bush's actions possible thirty years on.

The claims of executive privilege--a right, incidentally, not found in the Constitution--and the bald actions of an executive branch that holds itself above the law make clear that Ford paved the way for tyranny in this country. Nixon was not held accountable--he was let off the hook in a gentleman's agreement, "for our own good." Bush has never been called to account, either, and his entire life is one excusing gentleman's agreement after another. He fully expects, one can be sure, to either be left alone or to receive full pardon when he leaves office. By which time, our sad little nation may be beyond repair.

Rot in hell, President Ford.

Chuck D is like the Bible

...you can go to him again and again and find new wisdom each visit. I, like Chuck, never could follow a man with a bottle; he's a baby with a beard and not a real role model. Flash back to the post where my captive attention to real estate reality shows was revealed and hear this: the backlash against feminism is still in full swing and it now manifests itself in the allocation of rooms in a hetersexual home.

When people go looking for houses, it is now run-of-the-mill for the male to demand a space in the new home that can become his "man room," where he can keep his big TV, his keg-erator, and where his buddies can congregate and study their pickup lines. Often the man room is the basement or a second bedroom. It is exclusively the male's domain, too; the woman in the equation often either removes herself from all discussion of the space (as in, "what do you think, honey, can this be your man room?") or else willingly supports the ridiculous notion that grown men need their own space.

I find the very term "man room" to be grating and offensive. It's barely even English: "man room." Me man. Room for me...call it "man room." No girl. No girl. Only boobies! Penis BIG!!

Do the women who allow this kind of assholishness think they're making up for taking away men's space by marrying them? Do they feel bad, like they've pressured their mates into doing something they didn't want to? Is living with a woman such a chore? If it is, then you fucked up! You don't need a room--you need counseling, or better yet, a divorce.

Do the men involved in this crap think that "The Man Show" was a primer on how to act? Do they think they should have special rights and special places, that men ought to be able to demand private space apart from the needs of the family, that they should be able to remove themselves from the family when they choose? "The Man Show," and other such dreck, took the fantasies of men and created a place where the fantasies were the norm. And you know what? It's now the longest-running show in the history of cable TV.

Oh, actually, it was canceled. Years ago. Because fantasies are great in moderation--precisely because they are very different from the ordinary, and definitely different from what one person can do alone. The point of a man's courting years is to find another person who will join in those special fantasies, at special times, and make you a complete sexual and social person. If you isolate yourself from other people, then you made some bad choices and you are a fucking loser (minus the good fucking).

Is this apparent fad an excuse for people who don't really like each other to ignore their problems? Is this a way to never have the "pick up after yourself, dickhead!" discussion? Or the "can I have the remote now, honey?" talk?

And where is the "woman room" in these houses? Here's a hint: there isn't one. What would these selfish men say if you asked them? Is the kitchen "her" domain? The bedroom? Yeah, nothing men like ever happens in either of those places. Are men so pathetic and insecure that they consider the entire house to "belong" to their female Others?

I propose changing the name from "man room" to "big baby nursery." Women need to call it what it is: it's living in mom's basement and having only to show your face at dinner and bedtime. In that sense, these men aren't men at all; they're dependent children and need to be treated as such.

That's the POINT, Asshole!

Buster Olney supposedly knows baseball. Hell, ESPN employs him to write and talk about same. And yet, he is on the warpath for Barry Bonds. Well, it might be more accurate to say that "Buster" (not his real name, which he hides from the public in a schticky, hack sort of "I've got a secret" way) has a hard-on for Bonds' record and so now, among other things, Olney wants to protect it (the record, itself) from defamation.

The issue seems to be that commissioner of baseball, who as much as any owner or player is responsible for the steroid-fueled monstrosity that is Barry Bonds, with his swollen head and growing feet; Bud Selig is being coy about whether he will attend games until Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's homerun record.

On the one hand, I love this hard-to-get stuff from Selig, because there's nothing less endearing or cute than a 60-year-old, not particularly bright man, with the personality of a desk set, being coy. It's one more nail in Selig's coffin, as far as posterity is concerned.

But, to Buster Olney, this is the crucial moment in the history of baseball. When Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's record, with 61 HR in 1961, commissioner Ford Frick stuck an asterisk on the record because it was done in a 162-game season, whereas Ruth had had only 154 games a year. Apparently, the fact that he had a qualification appended to his feat, that he had to share a record with fucking Babe Ruth (that chump), deeply offended Roger Maris for the rest of his life and made him a cagey, bitter, blood drinking werewolf. Or something. I see it as a Poltergeist-type moment: Goddamn you, Ford Frick!!! You gave him the record, but you never removed the asterisk!! Why?! WHY??!!

Similarly, Olney is concerned that, if Selig doesn't attend Bonds' record-breaking games, then he will somehow diminish Bonds and the record.

Now, Hank Aaron ain't gonna be there. He said months ago that he has no interest. And Buster Olney is on record saying he respects that. So, Hammerin' Hank can piss on Barry Bonds (I love Aaron even more, now), but nobody else can, I guess.

But Olney--never the clearest of thinkers--seems to have a stew of points he only half finished, and they are: Selig must be there; Maris' feelings were hurt by a punctuation mark; steroids aren't important; the record, itself, cannot be treated this way; this is the most important thing to ever happen in baseball. He doesn't make the one argument I would actually grant him: Bud Selig owns the steroid era because he encouraged it and covered it up for over a decade. The common argument is that it "saved" baseball by making homeruns more common than journeyman middle relievers, but I reject that. Baseball was never in any real danger of disappearing, and other facets of the game continue to draw new fans in ways that the tired HR(like the dunk in the NBA) just can't match. 1998's HR binge likely had more to do with an influx of young, bad pitchers into the league, steroids, and the fact that NL umpires had strike zones almost as big as they were inconsistent.

But I digress. What makes Olney's contentions so frustrating, aside from the fact that they are really very crude and yet are coming from ESPN's top baseball writer, is that they are based on an alternate reality that only Buster Olney can see. In this parallel dimension, Barry Bonds would be insulted by Selig's absence. In fact, according to Olney, such a slight would haunt Bonds, as it did Maris, for the rest of his life.

Read my words and feel my scorn: boo. fucking. hoo. The whole point, as far as most baseball fans are concerned, is that somebody ought to heap disdain and scorn upon Barry Bonds. (Incidentally, now that he's close to the mark, Bonds apparently is only going to play home games until he gets it. That's the mark of a real baseball guy: can't play in front of hostile fans. Ty Cobb never played on the road, you know.)

Barry Bonds is a despicable person and a complete asshole. He should be shunned by decent people, and he should live in tortured isolation for the rest of his life; he's a cheater, a liar, and a bad human being. He's going to have sleepless nights because Bud Selig didn't come to his sham party? How about, he's going to be up all night because he's got a swollen cranium, growing feet, a shriveled liver and kidneys, and his body is due to start breaking down in ways medical science never anticipated right about...now? His body is thrumming with steroids, but it's the jab at his delicate pride that'll have him living in pain after retirement? Riiiiight.

Olney's other alternate-reality assertion is that Bonds' record, itself, will be offended by Selig's absence. I'd like to give this a serious hearing, but, um, it's a made-up category of achievement, Buster. It has no meaning outside of the sport and those who created it and believe it means something. 755 is not a person--if numbers were people, you'd be "2," because you write like shit. The homerun record is not mocked, because it can't be. Finish the thought.

This, naturally, is all moot. Alex Rodriguez is at 500 homeruns and he has at least 10 more years in front of him (he's 31). At the pace he's on (44 skronks a year), A-Rod will break Bonds' shady "record" (***!) in about 6 years.

When that happens, I imagine Buster Olney, who will hopefully be unemployed and begging for change outside the new Cyber-Fenway Park, will probably be raving about how good it is for baseball that we can finally forget about Barry Bonds. And, Olney will be royally pissed that Selig's cryogenically frozen head and gonads will be in attendance. And Barry Bonds will be dead. From steroids. Like Chris Benoit and Lyle Alzado.

To sum up:
Barry Bonds: Despicable Roid Fiend
Bud Selig: Despicable Culprit
Buster Olney: Despicable Twit
A-Rod: Completely Awesome

You Don't Care That Your Children Hate You

Remember the V-chip? In the 1990s there was oh-so-much hand-wringing resulting from a shifting view of children from well-behaved, polite, innocents to dark, conniving, little fuckbots who would huff paint or gasoline as soon as kill grandma.

At the time, it seemed like every generation of parents' revisionism reinvented for the mod nineties. The internet laid waste to whatever sense of control parents thought they had over their children (just as, it should be pointed out, the locomotive, the telephone, the automobile, the speakeasy, the dance hall, integration, and multiculturalism had for previous generations). Though, truth be told, most American parents don't actually exert, or show much interest in exerting, real influence on their children, anyway.

From the idea that children are little grownups--thanks, Puritans!--some Americans still apparently believe in reasoning with children, equalizing the power dynamic so as to not "exploit" or "coerce" the little fuckers (of course, they haven't considered the ethics of coercing children into doing what they ought). Other parents take the opposite approach: they're children, for God's sake: let's let them run wild! We bumbled through all right (except, not so much--look at your terrible kids!), so they'll be fine, too. Molested, fucked-up sociopaths, addicted to instant gratification, but ready for that white-collar job college will buy them.

I truly believe most people like children in idea form; they just don't have any interest in actually being around them in real life. Add in that most people are hopelessly self-absorbed and emotionally numb, and it sums up as utter indifference to one's offspring.

Odd little pop-culture reminder of that (to reintegrate the technology thread): the local cable company is running ads to promote its new digital content. Once again, the tech worm has turned, and now subscriber X can press one button and access tons of free content due to the miracle of stretched-glass cable bundling (or, fiber optics, as the nerds are calling it). Due to the excessive amount of information now available to the viewer, and the advanced recording, search, and sorting functions of digital cable, the cable company wants you, purportedly-responsible parent, to know that it thinks you are doing a bad job raising your kids.

The ads all start the same way: some schlumpy hausfrau/meister is looking at the camera, talking about a favorite show and saying something like, "hey, that last episode was awesome--dramatic tension and great plotlines, etc. whatever, blah." and then the camera pans to some character you'd instantly identify as an archetype from any number of shit cable dramas (contradicting, I guess, the original assertion that the viewer just saw a great episode of one of them--I mean, they all use the same fucking characters!): the junkie, the mobster, the chainsaw massacre-er. Then the viewer/parent, says something I would never have expected. After heaping praise upon the cast of the viewer's favorite show, he/she then says (sternly!), "But, you're too _____ for the kids...so I'm going to have to block you. Sorry!" and then the "adult" goes about its merry way, having fulfilled its duties as a parent.

Except, of course, that it hasn't. The "parent" in this scenario has just allowed the cable company to raise its kids; and worse, the "adult" has changed its behavior and in fact denied itself the pleasure of watching its favorite show because the kids might see it. And how, pray tell, would they see it? I'm guessing because either A: this parent is a shithead who lets the kids have TVs in their rooms; B: the parent doesn't know how to tell the kids to piss off when adult programming comes on; C: the parent archetype, scariest of all, just really doesn't give a flying fuck what the kids are into, as long as the parent has plausible deniability ("I blocked the violent/sexy show...what more could I do?").

The bottom line in this case: fuck anybody who uses a remote control as a substitute for parenting. And they said punk rockers were just angry wankers--this is an instance where parents are being encouraged to almost literally "phone it in"!

The other example also comes from TV--yes, dad, I watch a lot of TV. It's like it's my job, as a very unfamous but funny person once said in his senior thesis. Anyway, the idea that parents have removed themselves from the position of responsibility that is, well, parenting, is reinforced for me whenever Mrs. Me watches one of those godawful real estate shows (for example, House Hunters, wherein some schmoe looks at three houses and picks one to buy. It's just as thrilling as I just made it sound).

(One gloss: it seems that gays and single people use dogs as child-substitutes, and this is extreme wishful thinking. Who started the abortive thought-fart that dogs are like children and if you can raise one you can have the other? Was it Meg Ryan? In the aforementioned real estate shows, the first sign of trouble is that adults with dogs always pick the house with the best features for the dog instead of what they, the humans, actually need. It's as though they can't imagine not being a slave to what they project their animal to want. Kind of like when parents bend over backwards for their children even though the kids didn't ask them to (and even if they did ask, it's the parent's job to determine how things shake out. The word is "no," and it works if you put heat behind it.) Also, can I point out that dogs live about 1/8 as long as humans?)

The case in mind, however, has no dogs. No, in fact, it is about two really fat people and their children. The couple buys a house (on another, anonymous TV show) and proceeds to have a crew of real workers (who look suspiciously like Latino immigrants) tear it apart, inside and out.

(One unrelated query: why, on these shows, is there always somebody using a large sledgehammer to knock out a sheetrock wall? I've never seen that happen on a real site; it's the worst possible tool for taking down a wall that's still got sheetrock on it; it looks stupid, probably because it IS stupid. That's all.)

Forget about the inside, but the house had a deck and a pool in the backyard and the new owners tore them out. But they have kids? What the fuck? Wouldn't every kid in America love to have a pool in his backyard? Well, yes. But--and this is far, far from the first time this has happened on this type of show--the parents' sole and determining thought about the pool was, "we don't want our kids to accidentally fall in. It's too dangerous."

Ahem. And, while your precious little angels are drowning in the back yard, where the fuck will you be?!

There are only two ways the objection to having a pool can be understood: either these parents (and the scores I have heard make this same argument) never instilled the fear of God (in the form of "Mom" and "Dad") in their kids--which would make it sufficient merely to say, "don't go near the pool," and voila! problem solved--or else they don't watch their children. So which is it: are they big pussies whose words have no weight (their own fault), or are they terrible parents who don't care enough about the kids to watch them (also their own fault)?

Maybe it's time to forbid these assholes from having children. Perhaps America could vote on couples' right to conceive, using our digital remotes.

la rueda chillona consigue la grasa

Well, that's a literal way of saying "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." I don't think there is such a phrase in Spanish, but c'est la vie.

Chicago has a large Latino population, with several essentially off-limits enclaves throughout the city (off-limits to honkys, that is). Hell, most of West Chicago qualifies as such.

But the largest part of that not-white-not-black group, Mexicans, is relatively voiceless. According to the IFF report "Opportunities and Challenges: A Community Perspective on Nonprofit Services for Latinos and Community Need" (a rather ungainly title, it must be said), Mexicans comprised over 73% of the Latino population of Chicago in 2000. The second-largest group was Puerto Ricans, at 9.9%.

However, at Western Avenue and Division Street, just past Wicker Park-Bucktown-Ukrainian Village, there is an enormous steel sculpture of the Puerto Rican flag that spans the street and dominates the visual field. Every summer, the entire area (Humboldt Park--still not white-friendly after dark) is shut down for a week for the Puerto Rican Festival.

There is no "Mexican Festival" in Chicago. There are no giant Mexican flags looming over any part of the city. I find this interesting.

Dean Baker Stole My Thoughts

I've been trying to make a list of concrete examples of the right's obsession with calling its own tactics "free market," when in fact they are nothing but interventionist. As this blog and other ineteractive online comment-repositories have made clear in the past, Republicans don't understand their own arguments regarding the constitution of a free market. They seem to think that tax breaks = free market, and other sorts of nonsense. In short, conservatives who use the free market line either don't believe a word of it, or else they are just that stupid.

Anyway, Dean Baker beat me to it. Fuckwad.

The Top Ten Conservative Idiots

Listmania

It would be one thing, I suppose, if lists were a fad, and mainstream organs cranked out lists of the "Top Ten" something or other in a short span, such that it flared up and died with the same sugary intensity as a science lab experiment: once to be seen, never to be replicated--like the Spice Girls.

But goddamn; everybody has a motherfucking list these days. AFI (Ass Fuckers' Institute? Really, what does "AFI" stand for?) has multiple lists of the "best 100 films" (memo to them: you are stupid). Some irrelevant concern, whose acronym, or initialism, or name has escaped me has a list of the best books; innumerable, miserable organizations rank ridiculous trivia into levels of meaninglessness that only CNN could love enough to broadcast to middle America.

Anyway, this is all to say that I'm going to rank my ten least favorite books of all-time. Mark the calendar. Something wicked this way comes.

#1: Your Name is Dahlia

Something named "Dahlia Lithwick" (why does that sound like an anagram?) writes at Slate.com (another utterly useless gathering place for virtual minds that are virtually empty), that the judicial legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor has been rapidly diminished because there are too many ideologues on the Court. The absence of a swing-voter like herself to replace herself means that all rulings come down to philosophy. As you no doubt have noticed, I prefer practical experience, but hey--it's just all our lives and liberties in the balance!

Duh-lia cites Antonin Scalia and Charles Krauthammer as evidence that O'Connor was not a deep thinker (who's shallow now, Dumh-lia?), and implies that liberal justices are just as much to blame as conservatives for their unwillingness to be pragmatic. Sorry, but the liberal "ideology" just happens to mirror majority opinion--not to mention, experience--in this country, so it ought to be more flexible causawhazzanow?

Writing of ideologues in hushed tones, as though ideology is a defense for poor decisions, is the same free pass Bush received and still receives from the press. Scalia has gotten the same cushion for the last few years, and now it appears the journalistic practice of legitimizing voodoo reasoning will continue indefinitely. Belief, it seems, is truly the last refuge of the scoundrel--and the last subject mined by hack journalists.

And a word about Chuck Krauthammer: would he be employed, by anyone, if he were Teutonic and had the last name "Kikesmacker"? Or if he were from Chicago's south side and was named "Coonlyncher"? But apparently a zionist can pick any name, short of "Charles Israelispy," and run with it. Krauthammer's success can, I think, only be attributed to his ridiculous name--it certainly hasn't been the product of his reasoning or writing.

You, Literally, Don't Have the Balls

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he'd had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston's wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

Article (from useless Salon).

GOP Senator likes whores. Good headline.

Maybe a little digging around would turn up more of this sort of thing. Nah. Go back to sleep, press.

What's My Line?

Petraeus says it will take "decades" to fight the Iraq insurgency. So, sit back and strap in--you've got a lifetime of the same shit to hear about.

Or, it could be time for a change--a complete change from all we've let go before. This is the time for American citizens to speak up and say "No--fuck YOU, General Petraeus. Fuck YOU, George Bush. And double-fuck YOU, Dick Cheney. This shit is over."

We're past the "support the troops (by allowing them to be killed)" rhetoric point; we're into "wait, they're serious?" territory, and there is no time like now to stop this shit. I don't believe any Democrats in government have the stones to do it, so what say you and me get a jump on it? Tell everyone you know: this ain't funny, it ain't cute, and it's wearing my last nerve. And, make it clear you'll fuck up anybody who thinks permanent occupation is acceptable.

"Decades."

Fuck you.

"Bush Denies Congress' Request for Aides' Testimony"

Uh, what?

No, really: what?!

I...m...p...e...a...c...h...how does the rest of that go?

What an Asshole

It seems the president is also a one-man appelate court. The United States executive branch: it's not part of the government at all; it is reality, in its entirety, and nothing exists but that which happens in the presidential quarters. The nation's political representatives, judiciary, and even the populace itself ought to consider themselves negated and superfluous.