The Tao's Head

MISCELLANEOUS: An interesting link to my blog

2012-01-27T08:08:00.003-06:00

A message board for the Opie and Anthony Show linked to Heart of Beijing. That is interesting for any number of reasons, but mostly because I'm a fan of Opie and Anthony, since they're fans of The Wire and friends with Louis CK.

That is all.

MOVIES: After watching Rise of the Planet of the Apes

2012-01-05T11:22:00.002-06:00

The society of apes on Earth will be no better than that of humans. That's the message I take from Rise of the Planet of the Apes after a curious creative choice by the screenwriters/director (or whoever the hell was responsible for this). Rogers, the dude from Genesys, was not saved. The simian society began not with an act of mercy, but one of callousness, motivated by revenge. Since the moviemakers were going to kill off all the humans anyway, I wonder about the decision to choose against mercy in that scene. It's a reflection of the modern audience's lust for revenge, is it not?

Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. I think it's more "realistic." (The quotes are because, well, the movie was about a primate revolution set in San Francisco.) Humanity is brutal, why shouldn't primates be the same?

Anyway, we're spared from a bit of moralizing. Though speaking of that: in the original Planet of the Apes, we're to believe the apes on planet Earth simply evolved (notice the astronaut whose cryogenic chamber fails and we see he has grown a mane of hair, much like apes; there's also a scene where a simian scientist basically says the reason apes evolved so well was because of something to do with thumbs or appendages or something). In this new movie, evolution is out of the picture; the apes became the dominant species because of something that was created.

I'm assuming the moviemakers didn't intend this to be a thing. Art and literature can be dissected, its meanings bantered -- in short, art is supposed to be talked about. This? Rise of the Planet of the Apes? It's 21st century Hollywood: all too predictable, not too controversial. And with that, I will stop saying any more.

PERSONAL: On this Christmas Day, we're all busy people...

2011-12-25T09:18:00.006-06:00

...you never really have enough time, so just do yourself a favor and do some things once. Inquire on a beggar of his or her health. Get a cat to purr. Help a man or woman carrying a suitcase. Read a book of contemporary poetry -- check here for suggestions. Accidentally overpay. Look up at a skyscraper. Breathe in an open field of sky, blue as the blue you imagine. Write your own list.

There's not much else but memory to keep you in the clouds, and others' memories of you to root you on this earth. Because when all things are done, the worldly tithes paid, what do we have but sappy moments, this embarrassing prose, our honest confessions? And perhaps the words Has your life been well?, which everyone should try to say at least once.

SPORTS: Football vs. soccer

2011-12-22T22:42:00.001-06:00

A readable article in the Wall Street Journal by Gerard Baker compares the NFL with soccer. Of especial note is this comment by Robert Bennett:

Football isn't command and control because the first casualty in any battle is the plan, and every play is a battle. The plan can put players out of position with disastrous results. But regardless of where any given player starts a play or what he's supposed to do in a play, he has to adjust to the battle as it rapidly unfolds.

I've played European and American football both. In European football, I was a left back. My job was to prevent fast advance on the wing, prevent passes into the middle from the wing, and protect the left post when the ball was in the penalty box. Not a lot to have to know, really. The best trick the offense could throw at me was to send the winger dribbling toward the middle and send a midfielder in behind me along the sideline. Seen it once, and it never works again. Yawn ... lots of running, not much thinking, and the best defender on the field - the sideline - was always nearby. No ESP required.

In American football, I was a defensive end. It's one of the easiest positions to learn but much more complicated than any in European football. I had to know 8 different defensive sets, including the Nickel, when I dropped back to outside linebacker - a whole new position. In each set, I had different responsibilities. Regardless, I had to read the play as it developed, and there was much subterfuge. For example, If I'm in a 4-3 set and get sucked inside on a trap fake with a pitch outside to a sweeping back to the strong side, then I just failed my team miserably. It's no excuse that I've got less than half a second to recognize the fake by keeping the pulling guard in the corner of my eye while fighting like heck to keep my feet so I won't get flattened. If the guard continues to sweep rather than dive, then I've got to disengage the tight end, fight my way through the guard, then the fullback, and then guess correctly whether to pursue the quarterback or take the pitch away by driving down on the wingback. Guess wrong, and I risk the quarterback cutting up behind me for big gain, but I can't look behind me to see if my teammates have pursuit because there's no time. This is just one of hundreds of different situations that many years of study, practice and battle experience throw at a defensive end.

See the difference? So how about this, then? My ball technique in European football stunk, but I was a fearsome left back because I was bigger and faster and more physical than anyone else on the field, and all that I had to do to cover for my defects was to never touch the ball more than three times in a row. Not so in American football, where I was undersized and had to rely on footwork, handwork (akin to Jujitsu), lightning quick reads and a ferocious will to prevail just to do my job adequately. I played both games at the same level of competition, but American football was by far the most challenging mentally and physically, required the most knowledge, skill and experience, was far more physically taxing and injurious, and therefore far more ecstatic to play. And to watch because I know what goes into both.

Gerard is spot on.

PERSONAL: In praise of Futurama

2011-11-07T12:57:00.003-06:00

The reason I never planted myself in front of the TV every Sunday when Futurama was on Fox was because I was afraid of liking the show. It seems silly to say now, but I did not want to become one of those devouts who sing the praises of a work that I know will never gain the popularity it should. The show was always too smart, too conscientious, too playful, and too wise for its own good -- in other words, doomed in primetime TV. What it always needed to be -- what it was all along, really -- was animation-as-literature, combining classic elements of storytelling (the characters are especially unforgettable) with satire, comedy, and just the right touch of what we could call "heart" (you'll recognize it when you see it because it's what the early seasons of The Simpson's was chock full of; Matt Groening, of course, is a genius). What it needed was to be a movie franchise.

If you have not already, you should go watch these four movies in succession:

1. Bender's Big Score
2. The Beast with a Billion Backs
3. Bender's Game
4. Into the Wild Green Yonder

Bender's Big Score marks an incredibly strong start and is probably the finest film in the series. But Bender's Game is a hilarious satire with ample wit, and Into the Wild Green Yonder marks a fitting end to what should be hailed as a truly great show of our times. I'm really a little sad that this franchise truly has -- it seems, this time -- run its course. It went out on a very high, hopeful note.

I'm halfway glad, though, that Futurama won't be meeting the same fate as The Simpson's -- strapped to a cash cow and milked to the detriment of everyone who knew it from an earlier, better time. (We can talk about how bad The Simpson's has become some other day.) Let us honor Futurama, quite simply, by pausing to give it praise.

***
Two scenes:

From Bender's Game:

Professor: ...instead of science, we believe in hokus pokus. It's like Kansas.
Leila: God help us all!

From Into the Wild Green Yonder

Leila: It's like a textbook on evolution!
Fry: Except in Kansas.

Dear Kansas School Board Administrators,

You schmucks really are as stupid as everyone says you are.

Signed,
Former Kansas Public School Student

p.s. (that's me)

MISCELLANEOUS: Osama is trending everywhere

2011-05-04T02:53:00.000-05:00

PERSONAL: Jayhawks postmortem, part two

2011-03-27T15:43:00.003-05:00

I did this last year, so here goes again.

Nothing really seemed right from the beginning. The turnovers. The three-pointers dropping everywhere for the opponent. The six straight missed free throws within the first eight minutes.

Turnovers, three-pointers, free throws: lose the battle of three of these, you lose the game; lose all three, and, well, you lose by 10.

There are many reasons why Kansas lost this game. I'll do this in no particular order, and with no particular animus directed at anyone...

Markieff Morris had six turnovers in the first half and, when KU was down just two in the second half, somehow stepped on the end line before throwing the ball to Josh Selby. Did I mention six turnovers? I don't know how you can not be shaving points and still turn the ball over six times in less than 20 minutes of play. When he picked up his third foul -- a bad call by the ref, by the way -- I considered it a blessing in disguise.

There was Mario Little, whose one possession in the first half resulted in him stepping out of bounds. Here's how it happened. He dribbled up to the baseline ... and stepped on it.

There was Tyrel Reed, who played about 20 minutes more than he should have. I said at about the 17 minute mark of the first half -- that is, 17 minutes to go -- that he should be removed from the game. This is true, I said that. With about five minutes to go in the game, I asked rhetorically, "What does he do for you?" What does he do that Elijah Johnson or Josh Selby doesn't. Oh, get good grades. That's right, he will be graduating this year. I get that. Still. Still... and this is the harsh sports commentator speaking here, but... still.

There was Brady Morningstar, who did absolutely nothing. But I'm being harsh. Absolutely nothing is better than some of his teammates.

And then there was Bill Self. Oh was there ever Bill Self, potentially the worst big-game coach I've ever seen, and that's saying something because I survived Roy Williams. This isn't post-game trauma speaking: I've known for the last seven or eight years, silently suffering with this realization, that Bill Self was not a good strategist. That he can teach man-to-man defense and recruit with the best of them, but as for in-game management can give you the mind-numbingly simplistic high-low and the elementary-school-level weave and that's about it. When was the last time Kansas played full-court press for 10 minutes? Or half-court trap more than a few times a game? Or switched into a zone against a team that couldn't shoot? If Bill Self wants to learn how to win games, he should take a lesson or two from the coach that beat him. I'm not going to get into it at the moment, but there's a column or two here for some enterprising KC Star writer should he want the challenge.

For about the final six or seven minutes, I screamed at my computer (I was streaming the game, and by the way, fuck you you Applebee's cunt, I am watching on my little screen) for Self to put in his subs. Put in Selby! I said. Take out Reed! Go small! Why have a deep bench if you don't use it! But he insisted on his "starters." He insisted on sitting his first-round NBA draft pick (Selby, of course, the guy who actually hit rim on his three-pointers, unlike Reed and Morningstar) while inferior players logged minutes while tired as hell. At about the two-minute mark, though the game was within six, hope was lost. KU was tired. The five starters had given all they had. And meanwhile, on the bench...

Oh, the bench. That prized bench of five-star recruits like Elijah Johnson and supposed game-changers like Thomas Robinson (who, by the way, rebounded better than Markieff all game) and guys like Travis Releford, who actually got a few seconds of playing time (I would've been happy to see him get more)). In one word, the bench was wasted.

Where was the game lost? Was it lost when Tyrel Reed missed the free throw on the technical foul, sapping much-needed and hard-earned momentum? Was it lost when Markieff stepped gingerly and possibly deliberately out of bounds instead of passing the ball that would have led to a fast break and KU tying the game? Was it lost when Self stopped playing his bench because he had a massive brain fart, or earlier, when he failed to substitute properly after his team scored 14 straight points?

It doesn't matter. The better team won tonight. Won by 10. In the Elite Eight, that's a veritable blowout. I suppose I shouldn't be all that upset.

Here's to seeing you on the All-American team next year, Tyshawn. Please cancel your Facebook account though, only bad things come of it.

MISCELLANEOUS: "We are waiting for you and so are the fishs"

2011-03-20T01:06:00.000-05:00

A picture from an anti-American Libyan. It's a small world. [From NY Times.]

PERSONAL: Website of the week: Comixed

2011-03-17T02:46:00.001-05:00

Click to enlarge, or go here.

DREAMLOGUE: Ultimate, Daily Northwestern and Mr. Murray

2011-03-15T23:05:00.000-05:00

Mr. Murray, chemistry teacher, was one of my favorite teachers in high school, but for some reason he appeared in my dream as a math professor. And was strict. And I wanted to do well.

But post-calculus math wasn't for me, so I struggled to make sense of his words.

I took trips via bus through a great expansive dirt field -- journeys that remind me of my hour-long treks to Brooklyn for pickup Frisbee -- to play Ultimate. I had a dream about Jeju. I was on the same pickup team as Gareth in another instance.

I got 88 on one of my tests. I was surprised I did that well. The test was just an essay to see if you understood the principles -- exactly like my sophomore chemistry exams.

I sat at a rectangular table along with five others, sort of like in art class. i flipped over the test sheet of a fellow student -- probably one of the Guptas -- and saw she got 100. Damn! I did it for another test sheet … again, I got 88, the other person got 100.

Around this time I began deliberating whether the next year I wanted to take a quarter and dedicate it to working at the Daily Northwestern again. Perhaps cover the basketball team. Or baseball? Nah, I thought -- too time-consuming: exactly my thoughts in real life when I was at Northwestern.

I got a test score back and went up to Mr. Murray and said, "Is this snark? I was up until 5 am last night because [here I wanted to say the Daily Northwestern servers had crashed, but I realized if that had actually happened, I would have been REALLY frustrated, and I wanted to spare my dream-self from having gone through that] and you give me SNARK?" I wasn't happy, but my anger was righteous and I felt better after telling off the professor in front of the class.

DREAMLOGUE: Afternoon nap, when the saints go marching

2011-02-14T03:21:00.002-06:00

Jimmy McNulty's two kids are in the gate of Camden Yards in Baltimore and just informed they need to go into the bleachers to sit with their daddy. They say something juvenile, so that you know they have not been raised with the best of discipline.

In Harry Potter land, a black basketball player dunks, Shaquille O'Neal in Blue Chips style, to the amazement of everyone. The game is over. The good guys have won.

In a dark room, the black player walks out. Players in teal hoodies, from a competing House, say something along the lines of, "You better be able to dunk." The good guys say, "We've already imported someone who can." The hoodied players stand there, shocked and worried. The good guys will win unless they can think up a ruse.

A choir in velvet purple and black, like the one in Sister Act, begins to sing, "Oh no he didn't ... oh no he didn't ... oh no he didn't, when the saints go marching in..."

MISCELLANEOUS: Tao Beach

2011-02-07T04:31:00.000-06:00

Heh heh...

From here.

PERSONAL: The places one's blog turns up

2011-01-27T01:55:00.004-06:00

One of the things I like about Sitemeter is it allows you to track where your traffic comes from. For instance, I found that someone visited my Beijing Ultimate blog from a Google search of the words "mw1.qooqle.com sexy." This is how they found me (the Ellen is Sexy shirt).

Interesting, right? Okay. So I click on this, which is a video of a cat that looks almost exactly like Ziggy. And I go to this site...

...where there is a picture of a hot girl:

Awesome!

MISCELLANEOUS: "Mr. Obama is president of the United States."

2011-01-18T06:28:00.000-06:00

Not sure why, but I found this interesting.

PESRONAL: Sometimes you just have to give your props

2011-01-05T06:23:00.003-06:00

Smush Parker's girlfriend in China, Ai Lisha:

Source: Sports.cn

PERSONAL: Random

2010-12-29T12:59:00.000-06:00

I swear I'm only posting this here as an excuse to divulge the greatest turn of phrase I've ever encountered in poetry ... read on.

"Sometimes we treat sex lightly, but sex doesn’t always treat us lightly in return. In biological terms, the female orgasm releases a burst of oxytocin, also known as the cuddle hormone. Oxytocin helps facilitate a sense of attachment. But if there's nothing to attach to, if there's no deeper emotional content or meaningfulness, orgasm could become a regretful reminder of the hollowness of the sex that preceded it. Some sexolgists call this phenomenon post-orgasm regret, and it typically manifests itself in the form of sadness or anger."

The above is from http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/09/sex-should-women-be-more-like-men/

"Postcoital triste," from A.A. Armon's "Garbage."

PERSONAL: Cats update

2010-12-26T11:37:00.004-06:00

Prelude: I fully realize how ridiculous this post will read in about two days. Whatever. Fucking Christmas, everybody.

Today: Alicia and I got our cats neutered today, after some hesitancy. We read extensively on the procedure and solicited opinion from various people before coming to the decision that, bottom line, there were no drawbacks to neutering our two boys. I expressed doubt because I reasoned there was nothing wrong with Ovid and Ziggy, who were barely six months old, and wouldn't it be better to wait and see whether the two actually got aggressive with each other, or sprayed, instead of rushing ahead with a permanent, life-changing procedure? But the more research I did, the more I was able to let myself be convinced that neutering cats doesn't actually change them, and so the decision was made.

The vet seemed experienced and trustworthy enough. We actually took the cats to him on Saturday, but Ovid had thrown up earlier that day so he advised we bring them back another day. I suspected he just didn't want to work on Friday, or something, but we agreed to postpone. So we were back today and I put my name to a release form and paid the 70 dollars for each cat and watched as they sedated them -- Ovid first, his eyes going blank, his head dropping like dead weight off to the side -- and brought them from the other room after the 10-minute procedure -- again, Ovid first, his body limp, eyes glued shut by special eyedrop fluid -- and advised us that they might be disoriented after waking, and that we can feed them after six to eight hours. Apparently Ziggy was going to wake up first -- as if that detail mattered.

Here's the thing the vet should have told us, which is what you need to know if you own a cat and deliberating whether to get him neutered: be ready for your heretofore adorable, lively, all-too-trusting pet to hate your guts for eight hours and show its hatred of you by alternately threatening you with a combination of hisses and chill-inducing growls and threatening to do itself bodily harm by wedging into awkward nooks and refusing to eat or drink. It's absolutely gut-wrenching and demoralizing and all kinds of soul-crushing. Rarely have I been so deflated.

"You know the Chinese say 'xin teng,'" Alicia g-chatted me just now. "Like the heart hurts?

"I feel that for our cats."

When we got home, we decided to move the cats out of their carriers. That was our first -- but not last -- mistake. Immediately, they both woke and struggled to get their senses about them. To see such graceful creatures forget how to stand, and bang their heads against the ground and radiator, and crawl like they're missing legs, is panic-inducing. Eventually Ziggy found his way into the drawer and Ovid hid under the futon in the litter-box room.

An hour or two later, Alicia went to check on Ziggy and said she smelled blood. Ziggy had been bleeding earlier, so hearing this sent needles through my body. We opened the wardrobe and Alicia was trying to take Ziggy out to check on him -- she asked me to hold a flashlight -- when he slipped through her arms. PANIC. He scurried away so fast that the two of us were left dumbfounded, heartbeats all out of whack, thinking, Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Next thing we know, Ovid is making the worst sound anyone can possibly hear. Apparently neutering cats piques their territorial instincts, and Ziggy had just displaced Ovid from underneath the futon, which upset something primordial in him. So as we approach the room, we hear a sound that can only be approximately described as the murder of an orgasming sperm whale. It was so loud and piercing and unlike anything that could come from a carbon-based life-form that I wondered, seriously, if the neighbor would call the cops on us. I heard it before I saw him and so I asked Alicia who was making that ungodly noise. Ovid, she said. I tiptoed up to the door like a protagonist in a horror movie approaching the scene of a bloodbath.

Ovid stood there in the middle of the room, spine curled, hair raised, lips unmoving, making that devastating sound over and over. My heart sank a few leagues. I melted onto the floor, sliding with my back against our front door. What was happening?

Eventually I had to usher him into the kitchen, as Alicia needed to catch a plane to Shenzhen and, at the moment, every single move -- like her zipping up her jacket -- was a source of great agitation to Ovid, so I could only imagine (with horror) what the commotion of her lugging a suitcase past him would cause. After Alicia snuck out, I watched as Ovid deliberated whether to leave the kitchen. I was frozen in place, back against the front door once again, just watching as he took tiny steps on his tippy-toes -- a few steps forward, a few back; forward, then back.

After giving Ovid some wet food, of which he took a couple nibbles, I tried to entice Ziggy with some good-smelling Whiskas. He wouldn't budge. I feared the consequences of forcing him out by moving the futon (I gave a half-hearted effort), so I decided to leave the food be. But Ovid, that Ovid -- he wanted his spot back. He made that godforsaken noise again, and that's when I realized I had to shut the door to that room to separate the two. I figured Ovid would not need the litter box anytime soon.

An hour later, I opened the door a crack -- the food inside was untouched, Ziggy still staring intently from his hiding place.

An hour after that, Ziggy was gone.

I searched the wardrobe. I went into the bathroom. I saw Ovid hiding behind a metal latticework, wedged between that and a window (which was cold, I should add). Then, in the living room, I looked up. There he was, up high on a bookshelf, one of the highest spots in the house. The vet had warned us to keep the cats from mounting high places, but this seemed somewhat better than under a bed. At least he was physically strong enough to jump up there (from the back of a sofa).

But the look on Ziggy's face nearly killed me. His pupils were dilated so that it nearly filled his entire eyes, cartoon-like. This is how you would draw a sad cat if you had a Sunday comic strip. His whiskers drooped. His nose, it was apparent, was wet -- half an inch of it was the color of wetness -- as if he had been sniffling. I put my hand on him and he wrinkled his nose and hissed gingerly. I told him it was okay, but possibly I just thought it because there was a lump in my throat.

He would not take food, would not take water. I put a turkey leg next to him, which he sniffed, but he didn't eat.

I took dinner in the living room, Ovid to my right, jammed between a cold window and metal bars, and Ziggy to my left, eyes locked on my every movement as if distrustful to the extreme. I sipped on soup and munched on rice, and everything seemed flavorless.

About an hour after this, I checked on Ziggy again and he was, thankfully, stirring. He wasn't eating, but at least he was interested. And then I was sitting in the bedroom when I heard a plop. By the time I went to check what happened, Ziggy and Ovid were reunited, somewhat -- Ziggy was also between the lattice and the window, except he was high up, on the ledge of the window... and Ovid was hissing at him to get away.

Positioned as such, I was able to reach down and scoop Ziggy up. He didn't like it, but I cradled him as I have so many times before and perhaps it stirred some distant memory for him of being safe. He was confused, and it looked like he wanted to struggle, but would that be a good idea, seeing as how high he was and how comfortable? He fit in my arms perfectly, his tail tucked in, and before he could decide to make a dash for it I was in the other room setting him down in the wardrobe.

And now I turned my attention to Ovid. I had put two t-shirts next to him in an attempt to insulate him somewhat from the cold, but now I knew that he had to be moved. I did not want him catching a cold -- he had already been through so much, including exposure to the winter air while anesthetized. I tried moving him but he would not budge. Every time I got close or laid my hand on him he hissed, and while I knew he'd never bite me, every hiss jabbed me at every tender spot.

I decided to lure him out with food. I placed a packet of freshly opened crab-and-chicken wet food under his nose, and he, amazingly, licked it. An opening! I put some in his bowl and set it just out of his reach. Seeing that he had no intention of going to the bowl while I was there, I had him sniff it again before placing it just out of reach and then vacating the area. I thought to myself, "Animals are easily tricked." But what about humans?

When I next went to the living room, Ovid had both feet outside the lattice. He was approaching. I watched him, making sure he knew that I was watching and not up to anything devious. He didn't mind me watching... this was progress, I knew it.

He came out and ate. And then I put more in his bowl and he ate that as well. Encouraged, I put food in the other bowl and delivered it to Ziggy, who was still in the wardrobe. The tip of his tongue lolled outside his lips, scaring me momentarily. What was wrong? I put the bowl under his nose and he licked the meat. Amazing. And he ate, for the first time in close to 20 hours.

As I type, it is 2:03 am and Ziggy is nowhere to be found. This is a good thing. I can only assume he's safe somewhere, and content, and warm.

Ovid is sleeping an arm's length away from me in his favorite spot, a cloth box. He was shivering before, but now he seems at peace. He's a bit sensitive to my movements and sounds, but getting less so. It is obvious that he is in discomfort, possibly even pain, but he looks like he's slowly returning to normal. Now he is licking himself... his arms, mostly, and wiping his face, which was sticky (I dabbed it with a wet paper towel before, which he seemed to like). I feel oddly optimistic.

Ziggy and his sad face

Ovid and the cold window

Ovid, right now

MUSIC: The new Rihanna

2010-12-22T10:10:00.002-06:00

Four years ago, I wrote about Rihanna on this very site: "With 'Unfaithful,' could Rihanna be showing us that a pop star can be popular and classy? That they can have depth and range? That the intelligent ones don't have to be afraid to show it, even at the expense of fans who just won't 'get' it? ... With a few more artists like Rihanna, maybe people will finally realize that a bit of unpredictability can go a long way towards attracting new fans."

Well, a lot has changed since then, namely the double-platinum mega-hit Umbrella, followed by a string of incredibly wise career moves that led to her winning a Grammy with Jay-Z and then setting clubs on fire with Disturbia and a series of collaborations with can't-miss stars like Kanye West and Eminem. Someone get Rihanna's agent a raise.

But this video, well, it marks the official death of that old Rihanna, the one I thought was so fresh and original and made me wonder, aloud, whether she might have written her own songs (obviously not). Rude Boy was the beginning of the end, but this... this is the coup de grace:

Quoting:

Want you to make me feel like I'm the only girl in the world
Like I'm the only one that you'll ever love
Like I'm the only one who knows your heart
Only girl in the world...
Like I'm the only one that's in command
Cuz I'm the only one who understands how to make you feel like a man, yeah

Please don't misunderstand: I'm not saying I don't like the new Rihanna. I could listen to Please Don't Stop the Music every day. And I get it: people evolve. People grow up... I wish I could put a "but" in here, but I don't think I can.

PERSONAL: To the KC Star: I do what I do only because I have such high expectations of you

2010-12-15T00:18:00.006-06:00

I started reading the KC Star sports section when it was a top-10 sports section in the country, with voices like Posnanski and Whitlock and reporters who were really at the top of their game, like Bob Dutton and Jason King (I actually started before King took over the KU beat, to give you an idea). The section was consistently good, and I was young and naive, and the newspaper was big. It was a long time ago.

Needless to say, the section has fallen a ways.

Yesterday I tried injecting some humor into a comments section that is normally overly serious, filled with trollers and people who, generally speaking, need to do something other than post comments at the end of KC Star stories (people in need of spell-check, I should add). I commented at the end of this story:

-->“I signed the contract, and then I didn’t come through for the people I’m supposed to come through for. It was embarrassing. I didn’t do (well) enough.”

Did Jamaal Charles say "good" instead of "well" in the above quote? (Expletive) you, KC Star, for northeastern Caucasianizing a perfectly fine quote, and employing the parentheses usually reserved for expletives and clarification. FOR SHAME.

I don't really see anything worth censoring in the above, especially considering what normally slips through for public consumption, but, well, the comment got the axe. Censored again.

Maybe Charles said something other than "good." Who knows. An explanation would've been nice.

But now you've annoyed me yet again, KC Star, so I'm going to vent a little bit. Look at the photo here that ran with your article and the accompanying caption:

The Chiefs entered Sunday’s game against the Chargers as the NFL’s top rushing team, but Jamaal Charles (right) and his teammates found no running room in Kansas City’s 31-0 loss in San Diego.

You really had to identify Charles as the guy on the "right"? High school editors do better than this! Are you pulling interns from the UMKC Music Conservatory to do your online editing?

And then, Jesus fucking Christ, this:

Freshman Josh Selby will finally get a chance to play for KU on Saturday.

That caption is word-for-word what you printed.

Look at the picture. Look at the caption. Mind explaining why the No. 1 freshman as ranked by Rivals, who will play this Saturday in his first collegiate game, is wearing a FUCKING CAST????

If it's a stock picture, fucking say so. Don't be lazy.

PERSONAL: A visit to my old campus

2010-10-19T10:21:00.010-05:00

Backdated on 11/2/10

Yesterday I had a seven-hour layover in Chicago (Kansas City to Beijing), giving me enough time to visit my alma mater, Northwestern. I hadn't set foot on campus in about two and a half years, so I'd forgotten how incredibly beautiful the place is, especially during autumn. Take note, prospective students:

I also visited my junior year place of residence, the Frisbee house:

And finally, there was a stroll along Crazy Mike's disc golf course, which led me to the shore of Lake Michigan at the Lakefill (where there's now an outdoor turf field for women's lacrosse... I remember the days when that field was still au naturel, truly a place deserving of the -fill suffix).

Along the shore are big rocks, on which students paint inspirational messages, team or club logos and proposals for marriage. Here are some examples:

The picture in the bottom right gets at the real purpose of this post. During my senior year -- my second- or third-to-last day officially on campus, actually -- a group of Frisbee players and I painted a rock to call our own. We did this at about 5 a.m., which means I almost missed it -- wouldn't have gotten up, in fact, if not for a phone call from Kira Kleaveland. It was worth it though to have created something for all posterity:

(Kira recently uploaded a photo of the rock, by phone, here; I got the idea to seek out the rock from another girl, one Lien Hoffman, who took this picture).

Here's me, via my new iPhone:

POETRY: Tony Hoagland

2010-10-13T18:12:00.003-05:00

I came across this poem in Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty, Tony Hoagland's most recent collection of poems, and folded the page:

"Field Guide"

Once, in the cool blue middle of a lake,
up to my neck in that most precious element of all,

I found a pale-gray, curled-upwards pigeon feather
floating on the tension of the water

at the very instant when a dragonfly,
like a blue-green iridescent bobby pin,

hovered over it, then lit, and rested.
That’s all.

I mention this in the same way
that I fold the corner of a page

in certain library books,
so that the next reader will know

where to look for the good parts.

Then I thought better of it and unfolded it (crease is only barely visible). It's better for people to discover things organically, for themselves.

Below, one of my favorite Hoagland poems, from What Narcissism Means to Me, his third and (I think) best full-length poetry collection:

"Phone Call"

Maybe I overdid it
when I called my father an enemy of humanity.
That might have been a little strongly put,
a slight overexaggeration,

an immoderate description of the person
who at that moment, two thousand miles away,
holding the telephone receiver six inches from his ear,
must have regretted paying for my therapy.

What I meant was that my father
was an enemy of my humanity
and what I meant behind that
was that my father was split
into two people, one of them

living deep inside of me
like a bad king or an incurable disease –
blighting my crops,
striking down my herds,
poisoning my wells – the other
standing in another time zone,
in a kitchen in Wyoming,
with bad knees and white hair sprouting from his ears.

I don’t want to scream forever,
I don’t want to live without proportion
like some kind of infection from the past,

so I have to remember the second father,
the one whose TV dinner is getting cold
while he holds the phone in his left hand
and stares blankly out the window

where just now the sun is going down
and the last fingertips of sunlight
are withdrawing from the hills
they once touched like a child.

PERSONAL: At the Kansas City Symphony last night

2010-10-10T16:30:00.004-05:00

Soloist Hilary Hahn

The above were taken last night at the premiere of Kansas City Symphony's classical season, which both the executive and musical directors pointed out was the final premiere at Lyric Theater.

The opener was the midwest premiere of Jonathan Leshnoff's "Starburst." It was followed by Grammy-winning Hilary Hahn playing Sibelius's Concerto in D Minor, op. 47. After intermission the orchestra returned with Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales and Stravinky's Firebird.

PERSONAL: Introducing Ovid and Ziggy

2010-10-05T14:56:00.009-05:00

Like Pi, who came to me by shoebox, Ovid and Ziggy were handed over by one who could not raise them. Ting, an acquaintance of Shen, owned two adult cats that gave birth to two boys and a girl. Someone else claimed the girl, leaving the brothers to Alicia and I. The kittens were about a month old, still too young for adventures, so they shivered in our hands when they were handed over in a car on the evening of August 27, with Ziggy -- as yet unnamed -- the more frightened of the two. Ovid was the slightly older brother, and he tried his best playing the part of the braver sibling, though he too seemed feeble against my chest.

The cats darted into the darkest nook they could find inside the apartment to take stock of their strange new surroundings.

In the first full day the cats were in our presence, Ziggy would not let Ovid leave his side. He meowed often and loudly whenever his older brother -- who was showing the sort of curiosity natural to most cats -- drifted out of sight. And Ovid, being the dutiful protective brother, would wander back to find and reassure his other half.

After the second day, reluctantly, the cats began showing themselves to us. Ovid, not surprisingly, took the lead, walking up to his human owners and even sniffing Alicia's feet. He her pet him while he ate. Hunger -- and that instinct to alleviate it, which overpowers even fear -- drove Ziggy out of hiding as well, though he remained cautious and conservative for much of the first week. Still, he followed Alicia into the bathroom -- for no particular reason, except he and Ovid were both fascinated by the shower drain -- and took to scratching the floor around his food bowl to mark his territory.

Ovid was the elder, that was certain. On more than one occasion, he muscled Ziggy out of the way with his paws while Zigs was eating. Ziggy offered no resistance, choosing to wait until after his brother was done before sticking his head back into the bowl.

The two largely kept to themselves, though they came alive at night, dashing from one room to the next like youthful sprinters. On the third or fourth night, they bounded up and down the bed and tackled one another and rolled about with arms locked. As they familiarized themselves with the furniture, the litter box, the silk/polyester curtains (which they tried to climb), suitcases and -- most endearingly -- their toys, particularly the mice, they grew progressively bolder, more like cats who would try to steal food off your plate and less like terrified children. On the fourth or fifth day, Ziggy purred. Ovid learned to do the same soon after.

Here they are in the first week:

Alicia, with Ovid

Ziggy on the left

Ovid, pictured, has longer, softer hair, while Ziggy's is short and coarser.

By the second week, the kittens had learned to trust its owners. (Alicia, around this time, took to calling the cats "kids.") And they grew fast:

And they took to sleeping on the bed, and let us photograph them:

Around mid-September, Ziggy allowed his personality to shine. He would do things that would stop us in our tracks and do double takes, as when he was found on top of a bookcase (pictures above). How did he get there? He would jump down and land with such a thud that we'd think he broke his ankle, except the next moment he would be right back up there, surveying the scene from higher than any of us had been. Perhaps he was climbing to get away from his brother, who was sometimes a bully? Perhaps he was daring Ovid to follow?

He eyed a vase on top of a bookshelf and more than once crouched down to jump. He'd position himself on top of a sofa and scrunch back on his hind legs like a spring that's coiling and coiling. And he'd shuffle backwards, quickly, his feet going pitter-patter, and he'd dash forward, intending to jump, but he'd balk at the last moment and restart the process, shuffling backwards in the way that springs do, exploding forward, stopping just at the edge, retreating again...

Ziggy was the athlete. He was also shy and introspective, more likely to watch us from hidden places until we realized he was watching, at which point he'd proceed as if nothing unusual -- certainly not a cat spying on its owners -- was happening. While Ovid was outwardly friendly, even nosy and, sometimes, mean (as when he intentionally knocked a glass of water onto Alicia's new Macbook), Ziggy was reserved, observant, sly. It was likely that he had a dark, sophisticated sense of humor, while Ovid was the kind who would be the life of every party. With Ovid, what you saw was what you got, while Ziggy needed a bit more unraveling. We appreciated that he was mysterious and complicated.

The cats fought, oh did they ever. Ovid would instigate fights, and Ziggy would retreat around a corner, just to ambush his older brother when he appeared. And the two would chase one another. They'd wrestle and bite and one would run and the other would chase, and then the other would chase and chase until the two could only plop on their sides and pant and pant, until one began the game anew.

There was jealousy and envy, too. In late September, Ziggy took to jumping on my lap while I worked at the table and he would sit there and purr. Ovid, seeing this from the bed, would put his paws up on my leg or swipe at Ziggy's tail. He'd mess with Ziggy, in other words, until Ziggy jumped down, abandoning his spot for Ovid to take. Ziggy, watching from the floor, would lick himself a couple times and retreat.

But in the end, the two would lie together and rest. And they would lie next to one another like the brothers they are, two kids exhausted after a day of exploration, happy for the next day's adventures that were but a whisker away.

Ziggy eventually made his way to the top of the bookshelf; Ovid did too.

DREAMLOGUE: Reality TV star in Beijing

2010-09-05T23:14:00.005-05:00

The dreaming mind really does have an amazing ability to simultaneously create worlds and experience them at the same time.

And it's amazing how, if you wake from the middle of a dream, it takes a lot longer for you to collect your bearings -- you can literally feel the hormones and particles draining from your head -- than if you woke at the end of such a cycle. (It was such for me, when I woke at 10 am and again at noon).

The dream:

Early on, my roommate scathingly talks about a reality TV guy who does "this thing with three olives," and did I see it? It was ridiculous, in a Jersey Shore kind of way.

I dream of playing Mario Kart and winning.

I catch a glimpse of a different reality series, some sort of Friday Night Lights meets Jersey Shore. I'm struck by how awful a person the main guy in the show really is.

We are on a plane to Shanghai. I take a picture of a building floating on the river, like how buildings can float StarCraft.

Baby Girl, another of my roommates, and I are now walking toward a bar that resembles Smugglers. We go in and sit down, and when we get back up I kick the middle leg of a table, which makes a loud noise. A guy looks up at me and I recognize him. I apologize.

At the bar, I'm looking at the menu when that same guy comes up to me and says, "Trying to decide which line to go in?" I nod, for no reason. "Yeah, me too," he says, and adds, "Hey, buy a drink, will ya?"

I have no idea why but I think myself obliged. Maybe it was his star power. His confidence? Or I felt guilty about kicking the table. However, I decide not to buy anything, partly because suddenly I'm distracted by my big black friend (former ESPN colleague? projection of Baby Girl?) going over to a table of girls and harassing them because one of them is the sister of a guy -- someone else on that reality TV football team -- who has been annoying him.

As the girls look around at each other, exasperated, I go over to him and whisper, "Leave the sister alone." He seems to understand, thankfully, because for a moment I was afraid we would get into a fight. Truly afraid.

At this point, Baby Girl and someone else (that black guy?) leave for the next bar. They're heading for Fubar. I follow for a few paces before spinning back around, thinking that there's a story here and I'd like to write it -- think about the photos I could send, like the one with the building floating on the Pudong with the Shanghai skyline behind it. (Reality check here: the skyline really more resembled Chongqing's, a place I just visited; the building, we've established, was from StarCraft, a game I just played last night; and the clouds were from one time when I took photos of the Velodrome and the cloud cover was just perfect*... I took several pictures, each one less zoomed in than the next; thus it was with the series of pictures that went through my mind in the dream, each one zoomed out just a bit more.)

At the bar I was just at, the party has mainly moved to the other room, and the door is closed. There is only a little sound coming out from behind the door.

I spot a table of three dudes and I take a seat, excuse myself, and ask if that other guy was from reality TV. (I wanted to say "reality TV football" but couldn't get the final word out.)

"Yeah," they say. They know exactly who I'm talking about.

"Hey, sorry about him earlier," one of them said. "He's had a long day. Three different groups of people recognized him. One of them saw the three olives on his t-shirt..."

We give each other knowing looks, though I'm not really sure what he's talking about.

I tell him that I'm a writer for Deadspin and sometimes ESPN and that I'd be interested in following the guy around for a little bit to write a candid story about his time in China. Except I don't SAY all that, I only think it. I only have time to think it. Mid-sentence, I'm woken up.

*

PERSONAL: For no particular reason

2010-08-26T07:53:00.001-05:00

Not sure why this amuses me, but it does. From this:

DREAMLOGUE: A phone call

2010-08-08T01:31:00.002-05:00

Was in a museum going past exhibitions for animals like exotic monkeys (7 kuai) and such, towards a main attraction that I now can't remember, when I received a call from a "Mr. Jameson." I thought about the whiskey before realizing this was a former boss (from Youngstown) named "Mr. Jamison." I circled back to a stairwell and paced a bit as I have a habit of doing when I'm on an important phone call. He asked what I was up to and I said I was in China currently before rambling some more. I asked him what he's been up to and he said he was being sued for writing a story about some kind of plastic, or something.

PERSONAL: What was ... is ... that?

2010-07-15T14:22:00.005-05:00

Weird shit happens past the hour of 0300. Weird noises from places you can't see. Like just now.

With only a fan disturbing my peace, I understand perfectly that something abnormal is occurring right now. A woman is emitting very short, loud screams, successively, and I can't understand why. It is NOT because of sex, because neither human nor beast would express either pleasure or horrible displeasure in such a fashion.

I will confer with my roommates tomorrow. More likely, however, this is the last words I'll write on this topic.

DREAMLOGUE: Arguing with Southwest Airlines

2010-05-30T22:09:00.002-05:00

A very satisfying night of dreams for me. (I should preface this by saying last night was a night in two parts; the first part was sleeping from 9 to 11 pm, fitfully -- I woke in order to jot down a dream that involved a library and a protagonist who kept thinking, "I need to wake up in order to write this down," and me dreaming that I did wake up -- twice -- and did write it down; the second part was from 4 am to 11 am).

It started with me boarding an airplane and checking in two bags. I'm not sure where I went or what happened at that place. When I got back and was checking out -- there's a checkout line now, for some reason, on which I got someone to sign a card for me (again, for some reason), who signed it in poetry-style... up until 30 minutes ago, the name was fresh in my mind -- a man at a counter asked for 80 or 90 kuai (I dream in Chinese currency now) for my bags. I was about to pay but, while asking questions about it, the man rubbed me the wrong way.

"You know what, I'm not going to pay," I said.

The line of people behind me may have grumbled, but I didn't know.

"You don't have any signs here telling people about this. If you did, I wouldn't have checked in my bags." I said something along the lines of "this is outrageous." I was growing more fiery with every word, and gaining confidence.

At some point I got up and noticed the line of people -- six deep or so -- and said to the guy, "I don't want to take up their time, but let me talk to the manager."

He seemed fine with that. I knew I was going to win. A blond girl with chubby arms said, "Yes, please do, girls love it when people take control."

I was furious as I waited. And it was at this point in the dream that something in me decided the airline I had been on was Southwest, and that I would tell them I've been a customer for eight years, and that they were really close to losing me forever. I thought that would be my bargaining chip.

In a little bit, the man began rearranging the table.

"Am I meeting with more than one person?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "You may be meeting with five or six."

I had calmed down by then and decided I'd politely go over the situation with these managers. I did, and they quickly -- very quickly -- waived the baggage fee and said they would put up signs. I said this was the act of good corporate responsibility that I'd come to expect from a company such as theirs, but that only slightly offsets the fact that the baggage fee and what happened previously was the sort of behavior I completely did not expect out of them.

PERSONAL: Site meter bump thanks to Du Feng and Charles Gaines

2010-04-28T03:33:00.006-05:00

This post... site visit bump No. 1 thanks to Deadspin; No. 2 thanks to Shanghaiist, which completely edited its post a few hours after it went up, due to "certain phrasing" (they did more than change certain phrasing). Also see: City Weekend.

PERSONAL: The last Catan win I'll post for a while

2010-04-27T03:39:00.003-05:00

25 points is about as good as it gets...

...only to be topped by 26 points!

PERSONAL: Superhero quiz - which are you?

2010-04-14T23:40:00.000-05:00

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		65%
Iron Man		55%
The Flash		55%
Green Lantern		55%
Hulk		50%
Supergirl		45%
Wonder Woman		40%
Superman		40%
Robin		35%
Catwoman		30%
Batman		25%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

PERSONAL: Dream log 1

2010-04-13T21:49:00.002-05:00

Something I may do off and on...

Watching a private of some sort lose his company in a field and wander into someone else's. He is taken into an office in a desolate prairie. He explains his situation, only to get made fun of in crude ways by a guy who resembles John C. Reilly. Am I the screenwriter or am I being screenwritten? I write a line for an idea for a novel: "6-year-old girl" ... no... "8-year-old girl finds herself after getting lost and achieves a separate peace." As I'm writing the last three words -- rather, just before I do -- I think to myself -- my character, a perfect avatar of myself in reality, in the dream thinks to himself -- Wow, you can't even come up with an original line in a for an idea of a novel.

Woke at 10ish to sound of phone ringing.

PERSONAL: It's been a month already since that Deadspin article?

2010-04-09T15:53:00.001-05:00

Apparently...

Heart of Beijing stat-counter

PERSONAL: Catan domination-ation

2010-04-08T08:20:00.001-05:00

This is a good one.

MISCELLANEOUS: Not the greatest moment for the New York Times editors

2010-04-06T08:18:00.003-05:00

They misspelled "article."

Though this is a great read.

MISCELLANEOUS: Wikipedia of the Day: Yang Rui

2010-03-29T05:25:00.000-05:00

HT: Joel Rosen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Rui: Yang Rui was born in Heilongjiang Province in China. He started his career as a journalist with China National Radio. Currently he is the host of Dialogue, an English language discussion programme, and enjoys a finger in his bum while making love.

PERSONAL: Did you know...

2010-03-22T13:16:00.001-05:00

...that typing in "beijing pussy video" in the search engine http://verden.abcsok.no/index.html will get you to my other site, Heart of Beijing? This post, specifically. Yeah, I know...

PERSONAL: Response to Sam Mellinger's column about the BCS

2010-03-20T20:29:00.000-05:00

Sam Mellinger of the KC Star tries for a bit of satire in a column this morning that reads, "If the BCS is so great, why not use it for college hoops?" He begins:

Scientific fact: This whole March Madness thing is a fraud. You know it’s true. Buzzer-beater this, Cinderella that, it’s such a mistake to determine a champion this way.
Why should the players decide who wins? Where are the computers?

I'm sorry... it IS a fraud. It is, and you'd have to be incredibly dense to not see that.

Why should the players decide who wins... let's see, or how about this: let a committee decide who plays who, and let fate decide whose one good day and whose one bad day = THE FUCKING SEASON.

Why even keep track of standings in the first five months? The NCAA Tournament has, without a doubt, destroyed the integrity of college basketball's regular season. As sports fans and good fucking socialists, we all love an upset and all, but at least be honest with yourself: if college basketball REALLY wanted to determine a champion -- like the NBA -- they'd go with a best-of-three format with fewer teams. I mean, if they were really committed to determining a champion, which we know they aren't.

They're about cashing in on a month's worth of drama. Period. And that they disguise their ploy -- disguise very thinly, mind you -- as fair-minded egalitarianism -- and worse, that intelligent people like Mellinger would BUY into it -- is appalling. It's a disgrace to sensibilities.

The inherent flaw with the BCS is not that at the end of the season, every team doesn't get a shot at the national championship (every team doesn't deserve it). The flaw is that at the BEGINNING of the season, not every team has a shot at the national championship, a flaw that can be easily fixed by eliminating preseason (or even pre-conference season) polls.

In college basketball, every team DOES get a shot at the national championship over the course of the season. And over the course of the season, some teams play their way out of that title hunt.

The NCAA, however, still lets too many teams in.

The problem with the NCAA Tournament -- and this is in no way as inherent a problem as in college football, since basketball teams play 30 fucking games, which you would think is enough to determine who deserves to play in the postseason and who doesn't -- is it's too big. I've said this before and I'll say it again: why does a team that plays 30 times and has proven over and and over again to be INFERIOR to another team that's played 30 times get its chance to KNOCK OFF that superior team in a one-off setting? In what universe does this seem just?

One run by TV ad revenue, for one.

The regular season is meaningless. Doesn't that seem odd to you? That a sport would CHOOSE to render 85 percent of its competition schedule absolutely meaningless?

The NCAA Tournament is just another subjective bullshit concoction that exists for the same reason bowl games exist: ad revenue, profit.

Mellinger continues:

“Bowls are popular, ratings up,” says the official BCS Twitter feed.
There. That should settle this. You go ahead and enjoy your single-elimination tournament, where schools like Old Dominion have a chance against schools like Notre Dame, or where Ishmael Smith’s buzzer-beater means Wake Forest gets a shot at Kentucky.

Old Dominion has no right to be playing for the national championship. Wake Forest gets a shot at Kentucky? THAT is actually a statement of SUPPORT for the NCAA Tournament?

The column goes on and rehashes the same old arguments we're heard over and over. Then, in a move of journalistic brilliance, Mellinger goes around asking basketball players whether the BCS might not work for college basketball, a question that really seems to miss the point.

Of course these teams want a tournament. With March Madness, they still have a chance at a title. In a bowl system, they’d be playing one of those inconsequential games that exist in large part for the extra practice time and corporate sponsorship.

Someone want to send Mellinger a link to the Ivan Brothers?

Here's the "kill shot" of the column:

“We’d be in the championship and that’d be cool,” says Marcus Morris, “but I wouldn’t like that at all. Other teams wouldn’t have a chance, and that’s not good at all.”
And Morris with the kill shot.

PERSONAL: Jayhawks postmortem

2010-03-20T19:40:00.005-05:00

OK, I love KU basketball of course, and I like Sherron Collins as much as the next guy, but the KC Star has really, really gotta stop feeding us this propaganda http://www.kansascity.com/2010/03/17/1819992_collins-four-years-at-ku-have.html - “He can change the weather with his attitude,” says Barry Hinson, the program’s director of external affairs. “When the weather gets stormy or when the game gets stormy, our guys drift to Sherron..."

--my gchat status message, March 18

Well, there really isn't much to say. I shouted angrily at the computer. Afterwards I curled up into a ball for a long while.

Now that I've let a half-hour pass, I'm finally able to string together a few thoughts:

1. I find it disturbing that Bill Self would call Sherron Collins the best guard he's ever had at Kansas. I'm sorry, but a point guard as prone to mistakes with as inconsistent a shooting touch as Collins should never be given as much leeway as Collins has been. Of course, he's a great leader and yadda yadda, but come on -- at some point, someone needs to point out a negative here or there, like how many times he gets his shots rejected, or layups he misses. Allen Iverson he is not.

2. Anyone want to tell me what KU was doing for 35 minutes? If they had played like they did for the last five, they would've won by 15.

3. Two years ago, vs. Davidson, the Jayhawks almost killed me. My roommate came out of his room and had to ask me why my every-other-word included some variation of "mother" and "fucker." I thought that game's pace was way too slow, which didn't favor KU. I blamed Self.

This time, I have no one to blame but the players. The game was at a pace they could handle, but they just, well, sucked.

I want to preempt any potential commenters out there by saying

4. Cole Aldrich has regressed. At first we thought it was due to off-court issues. It's not. He's not the player he was as a sophomore, for whatever reason. Sure, he blocks shots, but I remember a time when he dunked every other touch. What happened?

5. If Jason Whitlock says "I told you so" or, worse, says, "I don't want to say I told you so," by God, help me...

6. I apologize to anyone who heard me screaming swear words over the course of 90 minutes. That doesn't usually happen.

7. Nice game, Northern Iowa, you pansy lucky fucking sons of bitches.

Hmm. Guess the anger hasn't completely subsided.

The most heartbreaking loss of my life as a fan remains the 1997 loss to Arizona, but I was on a plane and didn't (and won't) watch that game. This one I sat through, and I'm finding it hard to adequately express myself.

Here's to seeing what you can do next year, Elijah Johnson.

MISCELLANEOUS: Site of the day

2010-03-18T03:00:00.003-05:00

Lamebook. [HT: Alicia]

PERSONAL: When is enough enough?

2010-03-02T05:43:00.004-06:00

And then, a couple hours later, I did this:

PERSONAL: Catan. I can't help it

2010-03-01T23:49:00.000-06:00

This blog is quickly devolving.

MEDIA: CNN, The Daily Show and Fox News rolled into one

2010-03-01T23:06:00.003-06:00

Check out the styles and fonts of the logos on the corners of this Blue Ocean Network screenshot:

The girl on the bottom right, by the way, is my roommate, Candice. Neat! Full report here.

MISCELLANEOUS: I can't believe Tiger Woods subjected America to that

2010-02-19T11:32:00.006-06:00

This is the only thing I could do:

PERSONAL: The difference a Deadspin makes

2010-02-05T02:40:00.004-06:00

This story gave me quite the bump:

Related, it appears people are finding my blog from Netherlands Google:

And from searches for "self-immolation."

UPDATE, 3/2/10:

PERSONAL: Centsports win percentage creeping towards 50

2010-01-31T02:51:00.000-06:00

PERSONAL: Why playing Catan vs. CPU is no fun

2010-01-27T23:56:00.000-06:00

Too easy.

PERSONAL: The development card strategy works again

2010-01-24T22:24:00.002-06:00

I would've had no chance without my robbers, which took away countless cards from my opponents by being on the 5-gold mine.

I won on my turn when I rolled a 6, collected flocks of sheep, then traded four for a wheat in which to build a city.

PERSONAL: Cheers for my betting prowess

2010-01-21T00:28:00.000-06:00

PERSONAL: More Kiddy love

2010-01-11T12:46:00.002-06:00

MISCELLANEOUS: Should we be concerned?

2010-01-10T14:43:00.002-06:00

From an EPA news release:

The companies have committed to end production, importation, and sales of decaBDE for most uses in the United States by December 31, 2012, and to end all uses by the end of 2013. The company commitment letters and annual progress reports will be posted to this website.

...

“Though DecaBDE has been used as a flame retardant for years, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has long been concerned about its impact on human health and the environment. Studies have shown that decaBDE persists in the environment, potentially causes cancer and may impact brain function. DecaBDE also can degrade to more toxic chemicals that are frequently found in the environment and are hazardous to wildlife."

My suspicion is that "potentially causes cancer" is strongly worded and probably an exaggeration -- after all, what mightn't cause cancer? -- but if it were true, it puts a darkly humorous twist to the above paragraph.

To summarize: this product, which is omnipresent, may cause cancer -- but we'll risk it for four more years!

MISCELLANEOUS: A Vonnegut moment

2010-01-09T23:28:00.002-06:00

From Cat's Cradle:

"It said a lot of things," she said, "because I was very upset about how Americans couldn't imagine what it was like to be something else, to be something else and proud of it."

"I see."

"But there was one sentence they kept coming back to again and again in the loyalty hearing," sighed Minton. "'Americans,'" he said, quoting his wife's letter to the Times, "'are forever searching for love in forms it never takes, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.'"

PERSONAL: My new camera, part 2

2010-01-08T16:17:00.006-06:00

How many ways can you look at snow? With an SLR and the program Digital Photo Professional, the answer is: an unlimited number of ways. Here's four:

PERSONAL: My new camera

2010-01-07T18:48:00.005-06:00

I just got a Canon EOS Digital Rebel T1i 15.1-megapixel SLR camera, and I'm ridiculously satisfied. I haven't even begun playing with the full HD movie feature yet, but the pictures so far have been amazing. See Kiddy:

Not as young as he used to be.

SPORTS: Beating a dead horse: athletes are overpaid

2010-01-07T11:49:00.003-06:00

Upon discovering that Gilbert Arenas loses $150,000 per game due to his recent suspension, I've finally come to terms with how grossly overpaid American athletes are. Granted, Arenas is a superstar in a league that treats its superstars well, but nonetheless, $150,000 per game is unfathomable to me. I mean, really, do the Washington Wizards really give the people of Washington D.C. so much joy and distraction from their apparently miserable everyday existence to justify the players' salaries?

But so it is in a supply-and-demand culture where average Joes are happy to shell out fifty bucks to watch grown men play a game. You think: if this economy got worse, would owners agree to lower ticket prices -- by, say, half -- and would players be willing to take a collective pay cut? They should. Because in times like these, I just can't understand why multimillion-dollar athletes are necessary for our well-being. I'm happier watching college athletes, who make no money and, by and large, don't bring guns to public places.

MISCELLANEOUS: Pomeroy playing on New Year's at Kansas City Live!

2010-01-01T11:43:00.001-06:00

From last night:

MISCELLANEOUS: Where's our flying cars???? Goddamnit!

2010-01-01T03:06:00.003-06:00

I'm so over 2010. Can we have 2009 back? When's the countdown to 2011 begin?

Here's how I celebrated tonight at Kansas City Live! in downtown KC, MO, the Power and Light District:

The countdown.

COMEDY: My favorite Kim Jong Il joke

2009-12-31T13:55:00.002-06:00

President George W. Bush asks Kim Jong Il, "How often do you have elections?"
Kim Jon Il replies, "Every day!"

From The Dear Leader via China Law Blog

MISCELLANEOUS: You know your career is in need of revitalization...

2009-12-27T22:25:00.004-06:00

...when the best thing someone has to say about you is the leading actress of Pearl Harbor.

Global Times recently pointed out AskMen.com's list of 99 women Americans most want, and at No. 10, this woman:

The entire list is pretty screwed up, but, hey, that's just one man's opinion.

MISCELLANEOUS: Centsports

2009-12-27T13:39:00.001-06:00

That's a steep drop-off. Bad luck.

www.centsports.com

COMEDY: The Westboro Baptist Church's protest poster against Lady Gaga

2009-12-26T19:39:00.003-06:00

This is funnier because it's real:

Here's what I had to say about Phelps's church on a separate occasion.

PERSONAL: Get on my horse!

2009-12-09T22:10:00.001-06:00

On Halloween I mentioned that a couple friends and I were going as the characters from the incredibly awesome and hilarious flash video Get On My Horse. By way of reminder, here's me in character:

Well, videos of that night have surfaced. The first is us -- myself, Kevin, Therese and Alicia (who is the body half of the horse) -- at a restaurant on Guijie, performing in front of friends, and the second is at Nanluoguxiang. We were going to do this in the subway, but rain dampened our spirits, and then ruined the night. Sad.

Full lyrics:

Look at my horse, my horse is amazing
Give it a lick, Mmm it tastes just like raisins
Stroke on it’s mane it turns into a plane
And then it turns back again when you tug on it’s winky
Eww that’s dirty!
Do you think so? Well I better not show you where the lemonade is made
Sweet Lemonade, Mmm Sweet lemonade
Sweet lemonade, yeah sweet lemonade
(Synth Solo)
Get on my horse, I’ll take you round the Universe and all the other places too
I think you’ll find that the Universe pretty much covers everything
Shut up woman, get on my horse

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T06:00:00.001-06:00

Even in China, tonight's somewhat warmer.

MISCELLANEOUS: Wikipedia of the day: Mr. Hands

2009-11-19T06:04:00.001-06:00

Haven't done this in a while. Today's entry: Mr. Hands, aka Kenneth Pinyan.

Kenneth Pinyan (June 22, 1960 - July 2, 2005) was a Boeing engineer residing in Gig Harbor,^[1] Washington who engaged in receptive anal sex with full-size stallions at a farm near the city of Enumclaw. He videotaped those sex acts and distributed them informally under the name Mr. Hands.

During a July 2005 sex act, videotaped by a friend, he suffered a perforated colon and later died of his injuries. The story was reported in the The Seattle Times and was one of that paper's most read stories of 2005.^[2] It was informally referred to as the "Enumclaw horse sex case".^[3]

PERSONAL: Boracay

2009-11-17T01:16:00.005-06:00

Just got back today, and as my pictures are uploading I literally have my head in my hands, agape, muttering, Oh... my... goodness. Every single picture is so ridiculously gorgeous that I'm at a complete loss for words. Holy crap Boracay was awesome.

A tiny sampling (10 more pics here):

More pictures to come in a Facebook album, soon.

SPORTS: All hail the No. 1 team in the land

2009-11-13T23:34:00.003-06:00

ESPN The Magazine

PERSONAL: My best win in Catan yet

2009-10-27T01:53:00.006-05:00

I think what I enjoy most about Settlers of Catan is the multiple ways to win. In games to 15, it's crucial to give yourself options, which is why it's important to buy development cards. Case in point below:

I was trailing most of the game, as always, until I played two point cards to pull into second place, at 12-9-8. Earlier I'd played a soldier card to rob the one person who had an ore, which is exactly what I needed to build a city. This gave me the flexibility to drop my fifth city on a 3-1 port, which, more importantly, was close to an island, building on which would yield a bonus point.

Fast forward a bit. I've played my third soldier card and am now trailing 13-11 (Kjulli, in third place, has fallen out of the picture). I drop my fifth settlement on said port, then build a ship. Next turn I hold these cards:

5 sheep, 1 ore, 1 wood, 2 brick.

I trade three sheep for a wheat, build a ship so that I'm right next to the island (the 10-wheat) and get a development. It's a soldier. I've played three already, so this doesn't seem to help much. But then something incredible happens...

With the score 14-12-11, it comes back to me. These are my cards:

3 ore, 4 wheat (I have a wheat port), 1 brick. A 7 would KILL me. I roll a 4, which yields 1 wheat. I build a city and now have 13 points and, more importantly, the chance to build one more settlement. My resources:

3 wheat, 2 brick

And that's when I see that Chef2441 has a 4-wood. Knowing a 4 was just rolled, I play my sixth development card, a robber, and pull a wood from his hand. I trade 2 wheat for a sheep and build a settlement on the new island, giving me two points and the 15-14-11 win.

How important are soldier cards? Look closely at the map above. I put a pirate next to blue player's ship in the early-going, when he was one step away from the island I ended up colonizing. He NEVER moved the pirate, which is partially why he overextended his road and scored only 11 points, good for last place.

POSTSCRIPT: Proof that a good starting location doesn't always equate to a win (one of my most frustrating games of Catan ever):

I lost despite having by far the best resources and numbers. Bad luck.

POLITICS: Taibbi on Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-23T04:22:00.001-05:00

From a commenter on a Matt Taibbi article:

Though i loved Taibbi’s articles about the crooks on Wall Street and think Obama should be impeached for giving them trillions of dollars no questions asked, this essay(one of seemingly millions from all over America) on how undeserving Obama is of a Nobel Peace Prize is the maraschino cherry of solipsism on top of the media’s enormous cake of green envy that’s iced with white blinding ignorance.

Read.

SPORTS: Soccer fans, take note

2009-10-21T23:55:00.006-05:00

Why do Americans dislike soccer? It's not because we don't "get" the game. Honestly, it's not that difficult a game to get, especially for people of a country that can tell you the difference between a post route and a deep slant, a fade and a fly, explain why zone defenses are not allowed in the NBA, how underdogs win in college basketball and what BABIP stands for, with stats to boot.

This, succinctly explained by a commenter to a blog post on Lean Left about why the offsides call in soccer makes no sense (which is what I was telling my girlfriend last night while we watched the Man U game), is why soccer will not latch on in the States:

Ted:
OK, so I tried to watch some soccer this weekend. I was reminded of two other reasons why I dislike the game as it is now played. I hate the way the players take dives when there is the slightest contact (and yes, I hate it when NBA players try to draw a charge doing the same thing, but the NBA officials seem to be better at sorting out acting from real contact.)

And I also hate how every time there is a tackle, the tackled player acts like he has be mortally wounded for about five seconds, then gets over it and plays on showing no ill effect. Maybe these guys should wear dresses when they play…

About flopping: it makes me angry. Very, very angry. Dresses? No, they should be castrated. In fact, I think that's a fair penalty, as opposed to yellow cards: castration by kicks to the nuts. The reason it's so horrid, much more so than flopping in basketball, is because it often could mean the difference between a win or a draw (draws -- GAH!). Forget Latin America, flopping is by far a worser epidemic in Asia, where referees seem to go out of the way to reward flopping. It is incomprehensible, and I am getting angrier and angrier as I type. Profanities may ensue.

Not to say I don't appreciate what soccer players do -- they, in fact, play a brutal, brutal game, and for that they have my admiration. Another thing I mentioned to Alicia was how incredible it is that goalies still do what they do despite suffering so many broken noses.

But the flopping and the offsides rule have to go. Until then, the sport really isn't what it can be, and that's a shame.

PERSONAL: Catan mastery

2009-10-20T00:22:00.001-05:00

I just played a game of Catan where I was in last place the entire game, and then, down 13-10-7, I scored EIGHT points on my last turn to win (in a game to 15). During my turn, I rolled a 4, collected two woods, built a ship to get longest road (up to 9 points), built on an island (up to 11), played soldier card (up to 13, with largest army), then played two point cards, a chapel and a parliament. Bingo!

MISCELLANEOUS: Points for Mark Ames

2009-09-23T02:57:00.003-05:00

I WENT TO the matinee for Mean Girls earlier this week largely because I wanted to try to understand what really went on at Abu Ghraib.

Thus begins his review to the movie Mean Girls in New York Press.

Ames, however, is best while impaling Chuck Klosterman:

And they're buying it. The book's near the top of the New York Times bestseller list. That's why it's really hard for me to feel sad. Klosterman is a reflection of the most grotesque, ill-thought-out urges in America, urges that manifest themselves in different masks with each generation, but always with the same result: a nation of hopeless fools. I like to imagine a Chinese future, because I like to think that blaring stupidity gets punished, and patient, quiet prudence pays off. But the sad truth is that this country will continue to be slowly, incrementally Klosterchucked, and it won't really matter, because the kind of people who get worked up about this sort of thing are just trying to be cool and anti-. Sort of like all those antiIraq War people. Can't they find something else to do with their time? Like, you know, sorting out their 80s CD collection. That should be worth a one-liner at the next boot-shopping spree with Lenore and Diane, dontcha think?

Also see: The Flip-Flop King:

Klosterman is, quite simply and almost literally, an ass. His soft, saggy face bears a disturbing resemblance to a 50-year-old man’s failing, hairless back end. His tiny, red mouth is a sphincter twisting to a pained close 40 seconds after taking a brutal pounding from Peter North. To round it out, he has a mop of ironically uncombed, dyed-yellow hair and thick-rimmed glasses that look like they were placed on the ass as a frat prank, like a wig and sunglasses thrown on an old jack-o-lantern.

And this:

So here is my public challenge to Ann Coulter: I propose that you and I spend a night together in a four-star hotel. We will wine together, we will dine together, we will harden each other's nipples with erotic pillow talk about Sen. Joe McCarthy, and yes, Ann, we will fuck. Ann, here's the dare: I am betting that no matter how much you try, no matter what prostate-massaging tricks a John Birch Prom Queen like you possesses, you, Ann Coulter, cannot make me come.

SPORTS: Deadspin's KC "Chefs" preview: so sadly, hilariously true

2009-09-10T08:12:00.002-05:00

Especially this part:

I used to think he was an exception to Chiefs fandom, but I was wrong. I quickly found out that the KC Chiefs turn even the most reserved person into rabid hillbillies who willingly spout racial and sexual epithets at whoever is playing against their team. They'll also tell you that the Chiefs are a superior sports team no matter the sport, never mind the fact that they can't win a game against a Special Olympics track team.

That describes me perfectly.

But I blame the NFL.

There's never been a Chiefs quarterback who made you sit up and say, HOLY SHIT!

I guess Montana doesn't count because he was upstairs masterbating?

Bravo to you, Dany Heatley.

MEDIA: Deadspin's hilarity

2009-09-10T07:57:00.004-05:00

Commenters are much funnier than the writers. Witness the comments to "Byron Hout Got What He Deserved" (Is LeGarrette Blount a crazy hothead who deserves to be suspended? Absolutely. But isn't part of you a little bit pleased that he wiped that fucking smirk off Byron Hout's face?):

Disco Choo:

Looks like somebody should have Ducked...

/male genitalia witticism

thetaxman:

Got it. By this logic half the NBA should have gone Braveheart on Gary Payton's ass back in the day. Makes eminent sense.

Steve U:

Hey, at least he didn't garrotte him.

JohnnyDakotaStateU:

That was a LeClassless act. You've got to have more LeMaturity in that situation. It's a LeShame and a LeDisgrace to the whole Ducks program. That was not LeQuacktastic.

Also see: A Pirates Fan Looks at 17

PERSONAL: A letter to the administrators of online Catan

2009-09-05T08:26:00.001-05:00

Hello,

As you may or may not know, those in China -- as I am -- live constantly with the specter of Internet censorship. This past year, with 60th-anniversary celebrations looming, the Great Firewall of China has been more active than usual, blocking, among other things, YouTube, Blogger, Twitter and Facebook.

There are ways around these encroachments, namely a virtual private network (I use Hotspot Anchor Shield), but an unfortunate side effect is spotty and unreliable Internet access. The worst was after the typhoon hit Taiwan and knocked out one of the ports through which info from abroad enter the country. (Check out James Fallows's reporting about this: www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/chinese-firewall ... fascinating insight into why China only has like two ports for all international data.) For about two and a half days, access to foreign servers was, if not impossible, impossibly slow.

You will notice that around this time, I was dropped no fewer than three times from ranking games.

I promise you I have never willingly quit a game before its conclusion. All my drops have been due to Internet problems, which relate directly with where I live. Recently, I was in a coffeeshop when I was dropped from a game with friends. I successfully logged back in and finished the game, only to be informed -- hours later when I tried joining the ranking lobby -- that I had a "quitting case."

Again, I must emphasize that I have NEVER willing exited a game. In the future I will be more mindful about joining ranking games from places with unreliable Internet, but I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd restore my account so I can play ranking (I would rather not wait until 9/14, as I've been told I need to).

Thank you for operating this website.

Best,
Anthony

COMEDY: Penis on fire

2009-09-05T02:14:00.003-05:00

The tag is misleading. There is nothing funny about this, really.

On the other hand, this video, one of the greatest short animations ever created (in my humble opinion), is hilarious.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY, MY ANUS IS BLEEDING!

PERSONAL: Levels of Catan domination

2009-09-04T06:13:00.004-05:00

There are many different ways to dominate in the game Settlers of Catan, which you can play online for free here.

The most common way is through superior positioning at the beginning so that you maximize both your numbers and your resources, as demonstrated here:

Or you can stock up on cities by building on the ore and wheat resources:

Starting with a port isn't always a great strategy because it's usually better to maximize your numbers, but sometimes it works out:

Game concluded just now

And sometimes, there's that rare game where it all comes together: resources, numbers, luck.

In the above picture, that's 21 points in a game to 15.

POSTSCRIPT: This is why I sometimes hate playing with strangers. Check out the comments on the upper right:

They read:

hurry up
pick on blue!
pick on orange
plz
im just 10

POLITICS: I'll post and get out of the way...

2009-09-03T00:06:00.001-05:00

Andrew Sullivan, writing on his The Atlantic blog:

When future historians ask how the United States came not only to practice torture but to celebrate it and treat torturers as heroes, a special place in hell among the journalists who embraced and justified it should be reserved for Chris Wallace.

Here.

PERSONAL: Successful people

2009-09-02T10:12:00.004-05:00

My cousin, Zhang Mingyu, recently gave me a CD he recorded. He's about to begin college in Nanjing and is training to be a classical opera singer -- they call them "tenors," right?

Mike Kinsella, college friend, recently posted a status message that showed his cousin was named National Player of the Week by College Volleyball Update.

Both, however, pale in performance to what my former New York roommates did. As Jeremy Sklarsky puts it:

After a year of recording, I recently completed production on "Weathervanes," the debut album from Freelance Whales. For those of you that don't know, Freelance Whales is the brainchild of my hyper-talented roommate Judah Dadone. Judah wrote this album start to finish while putting together a band that is both talented and dedicated.

This year has already been incredibly successful for a brand new band. Songs from the album have already been placed in independent films, will be featured in the new HBO series "Bored to Death," and have received an overwhelmingly positive response from local music writers and bloggers. In fact, the band is currently in the lead in The Deli's Band of the Month poll. (You can vote - once - if you like at http://thedelimagazine.com/nyc/index-new.php). The record release party at Piano's last week was sold out - the club had to turn people away at the door.

Here's what one recent review had to say about the band (from: http://earfarm.com/crop-rotation/5501)

"It’s not often that you encounter a band that has a singular musical identity, both on record and on stage. It’s even less frequently that this happens with a band that is no more than 6 months old… And that such a band steps away from the norm of the guitar/bass/drums setup and utilizes a wide array of instruments in the small stages and unreliable sound-systems of the Brooklyn club world makes the fact even more remarkable. Freelance Whales is such a band.

Freelance Whales combine magisterial banjo phrases with unhinged group vocals. Their songs twist and turn, avoiding common structures and keeping the listener’s attention peaked. Some songs, such as album opener “Generator ^ First Floor” take a single musical idea and continually add and subtract layers to create a constantly flowing transformation. The group also has a way of taking what would be a simple synth pop song in the hands of less ambitious musicians and turning it into something that transcends genre labels."

You probably couldn't have bought a better review.

Here's the band's MySpace page, where you can sample tracks.

UPDATE: Julia Smith, former teammate on Smartwhores, is a co-founder of the Young Invincibles campaign. If you haven't heard about it yet, you will. Go here. Then you can tell your friends you knew about Y.I. before the national media.

PERSONAL: I wish I could dance

2009-08-25T07:02:00.001-05:00

This boy would own me.

Little boy dancing...too funny and good dancer @ Yahoo! Video

PERSONAL: My newest addiction

2009-08-24T11:48:00.004-05:00

I wouldn't call this an addiction, per se, but Settlers of Catan is a damn fine game.

The post from Beijing Ultimate and the post from Kevin Reitz.

PERSONAL: What I have been doing this past week

2009-08-17T00:10:00.016-05:00

Monday: Singapore to Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu (Sabah, Malaysia)

Tuesday: Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo

Wednesday: Mt. Kinabalu, D'villa Hostel

Thursday: Mt. Kinabalu

Friday: Mt. Kinabalu, Low's Peak, 4,095.2 meters above sea level

Saturday: Manukan and Mamutik islands off the west coast of Sabah

PERSONAL: Videos from Borneo

2009-08-17T00:06:00.003-05:00

The first two I took from Mt. Kinabalu, the last two from Manukan Island off the coast of Sabah, Malaysian Borneo.

MISCELLANEOUS: Check out who sponsors the Oakland Raiders...

2009-08-16T09:52:00.004-05:00

My Air Asia flight from Kuala Lumpur to Tianjin must have looked like a flying turd or a wobbling spiral.

It says "commitment to excellence" on the side. Anyone want to tell Air Asia the Raiders suck?

PERSONAL: Bunny Buns

2009-08-04T23:21:00.002-05:00

The newest Facebook sensation just friended me...

MISCELLANEOUS: Wikipedia of the day: learned helplessness

2009-07-23T23:49:00.002-05:00

Learned helplessness:

Learned helplessness as a technical term in animal psychology and related human psychology means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation (Seligman, 1975).

Martin Seligman's foundational experiments and theory of learned helplessness began at University of Pennsylvania in 1967, as an extension of his interest in depression. Quite by accident, Seligman and colleagues discovered that the conditioning of dogs led to outcomes that opposed the predictions of B.F. Skinner's behaviorism, then a leading psychological theory (Seligman & Maier, 1967; Overmier & Seligman, 1967).
In part one of Seligman and Steve Maier's experiment, three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Group One dogs were simply put in the harnesses for a period of time and later released. Groups Two and Three consisted of "yoked pairs." A dog in Group 2 would be intentionally subjected to pain by being given electric shocks, which the dog could end by pressing a lever. A Group 3 dog was wired in parallel with a Group 2 dog, receiving shocks of identical intensity and duration, but his lever didn't stop the electric shocks. To a dog in Group 3, it seemed that the shock ended at random, because it was his paired dog in Group 2 that was causing it to stop. For Group 3 dogs, the shock was apparently "inescapable." Group 1 and Group 2 dogs quickly recovered from the experience, but Group 3 dogs learned to be helpless, and exhibited symptoms similar to chronic clinical depression.
...
However, not all of the dogs in Seligman's experiments became helpless. Of the roughly 150 dogs in experiments in the latter half of the 1960s, about one-third did not become helpless, but instead managed to find a way out of the unpleasant situation despite their past experience with it. The corresponding characteristic in humans has been found to correlate highly with optimism; however, not a naïve Polyannaish optimism, but an explanatory style that views the situation as other than personal, pervasive, or permanent. This distinction between people who adapt and those who break down under long-term psychological pressure was also studied in the 1950s in the context of brainwashing.

PERSONAL: The fondest memories of being very, very cold I will ever have

2009-07-21T23:11:00.010-05:00

Reminiscing...

On March 8-9, 2008, my co-ed team in New York -- the Smartwhores, which is an anagram of Swarthmore (all their Frisbee team names are anagrams, like War Mothers and Earthworms) -- went to East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania for a Frisbee tournament called Funky Mountain III. We went undefeated -- partially because only lunatics would go to a tournament in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania in what was essentially still dead of winter, and lunatics aren't usually very good at Frisbee -- and got drunk and did the kind of stuff people usually do at Frisbee tournaments, all the while trying to stave off the desolation (I've mentioned we were in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania?) and cold.

Here's the trophy we won, as shown hanging from my bed in New York's Upper West Side:

A video of our coronation:

It was cold and cold and really cold. On Saturday a steady drizzle made sure we would never warm up. Then came bigger rains. Then we played and I laid out into a puddle of water, nearly freezing to death afterwards.

Overnight the water froze and, as we walked the icy fields on Sunday, wondered if we could play. We did. In the finals we played Big Red Machine, a team that actually journeyed up from D.C. We took half 8-7 and didn't let them score again (if my memory serves), winning 15-7.

We survived, the small group of us. And I'd like to think we're stronger because of it.

Sunday, first game

So, in retrospect, Funky Mountain III was actually one of the best tournaments I've ever been to, though it sure as hell had nothing to do with the town, or the weather... or, to think of it, that trophy still in my possession.

I'll never forget Flower Cottage Motel

POSTSCRIPT: Also see: White boy does the pop and lock, What is happiness but a splash? and Regionals 2007 (painful memories).

POSTSCRIPT 2: A while after Funky Mountain III -- a week or month or year, I can't remember -- in the comfort of warmth, I learned that Jon, one of the tournament's organizers, was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.

SPORTS: Epic knockout

2009-07-19T23:50:00.005-05:00

"Epic" is how UFC described Dan Henderson's knockout of Michael Bisping at UFC 100, but it didn't happen this quickly:

More information via Heart of Beijing and my post for the Beijinger.

POSTSCRIPT: From the "for no reason at all" file: bathtub goblin.

MISCELLANEOUS: Google mail: so simple it's not?

2009-07-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

Nah... Google is still pretty awesome.

# Add "(EOM)" to the subject of one-liner messages.

If you ever want to send a quick note where the subject is the entire message (like "Want to grab lunch at 12:30?"), but are annoyed when Gmail prompts you to add body text, just type "EOM" or "(EOM)" at the end of the subject line (short for End Of Message), and Gmail will politely send the message without the extra prompt.

From the "Become a Gmail Ninja" handbook.

MISCELLANEOUS: Chocolate Town

2009-07-02T11:50:00.003-05:00

Some people shouldn't tweet just because they're too perfect for that medium. Kevin Collier is one of those people.

Look what he tweeted a few days ago:

Someone stops him before... before it's too late!

MISCELLANEOUS: I, too, enjoy this aspect of American Apparel

2009-06-25T23:13:00.005-05:00

From Coed Magazine:

...the hottest AA girls ever.

PERSONAL: The greatest Lexulous seven-game-series ever

2009-06-06T01:13:00.007-05:00

Kevin and I are competing in a best-of-7 Scrabble (Lexulous) series to determine who buys the other a chuar (Chinese kabobs) and beer meal, and it has been, if I may deem, nothing short of epic.

Why are you blogging about Scrabble? you ask. Would I blog about it if it weren't actually epic?

He won Game 1 rather handily, 489-340, on the strength of two bingos and four 40+-point plays: QUITS (41), RANCHES (86), ZED (45) and UPsHIFT (124).

I eked out a victory in Game 2, 388-386, and when I say eked, I mean LeBron-hitting-three-pointer-while-down-two-with-one-tick-on-clock eked. I started with SPEILed (58) and QUAYS (40) and never trailed, though my lead was never entirely safe because Kevin, after swapping tiles in the opening turn, played PLANTERS (63) immediately after my bingo.

At 280-204 I felt confident of my victory, then positively assured after my 31-point JOTA to make it 372-326, with GHIIO left on the rack. But then, in a move he would later describe as a mistake, because "I should have saved it... though, honestly, I didn't think Lexulous would let me play it," Kevin threw down UNLIVE to pull within six.

Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem, except a quick scan of the board made me realize exactly what was in his hand: the Z and only the Z. As this is Lexulous and not Scrabulous (or Scrabble), the Z is worth 12, and he had two places to put it. My dilemma: I needed to finish out or lose. That's what I thought, anyway.

I thought I'd lost. I fretted. I actually fretted. I cursed myself for playing conservatively with the big lead. I cursed the fates.

I actually did that.

And then, after shuffling my five letters and scanning the board for the upteenth time, I found HOG, with the G forming GAG and the O on a double-letter, next to a D (od: a hypothetical power once thought to pervade nature and account for various phenomena, such as magnetism). That got me 18 points, which was jeft enough to withstand Kevin's FEZ (18).

Series tied 1-1.

Behind a bunch of power tiles, Kevin won Game 3 392-328, setting up a must-win Game 4 for me.

It did not begin well. Here were the first seven plays of the game:

Kevin: POUT (16)
Me: CREEP (12)
Kevin: WAVE (22)
Me: AT (3)
Kevin LOX (35)
Me: LI (2)
Kevin: BO (20)

At this point it was 93-17 and Kevin was thinking I'd thrown in the towel, pissed off about something or other. He kept saying, "dude?"

After the next play, I would be leading by 86.

Can you figure out how?

I had SQUEEZIA in my rack (Lexulous has eight-tile racks) when I played AT, hoping to set up QI with the Q on the double-letter and forming QAT, for 52 points. Instead, Kevin took that space, and after I played the I in LI I happened to draw an E.

The two double-word spots is the equivalent of a quadruple-word score, which, on top of the 50-point bonus for bingos, made SQUEEZE a 162-point play.

Undaunted, Kevin came back with a 100-point play, using all eight of his tiles and a triple-word, to regain the lead at 193-179.

And then we exchanged 42-point plays before, a few moves later, I swapped tiles and let Kevin pad his lead to 322-271.

Kevin played YETI (35) to go ahead 390-336, the biggest gulf since 93-17, but drew four Os. Of course, he didn't think that'd matter, except that's when I found HeADINGS for 60 points to regain the advantage.

Those Os sure sucked now.

Kevin countered with BOO (14) and I dropped YINCE (19), a word neither I nor Dictionary.com know the meaning of. He played VOID for 18, giving him a seven-point lead with two tiles remaining. I had an I and figured I needed at least three points, getting it with IT with the I on a triple-letter.

422-420.

Here's the final board:

We're playing Games 5 and 6 as we speak.

PERSONAL: An ode to Bodington's

2009-05-25T05:11:00.000-05:00

From King's Bar in Beijing, after Ultimate Frisbee spring league hat tourney.

Satisfied.

PERSONAL: Back at it with ESPN The Mag's website

2009-05-20T22:32:00.000-05:00

Story about the adidas Nations basketball camp in Beijing.

PERSONAL: I'm now on Twitter

2009-05-18T08:29:00.000-05:00

A sentence I honestly never thought I'd write, except I was reading Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback when he referenced yet another athlete using his full name as Twitter and it got me thinking: I better sign up for this craze before www.twitter.com/anthonytao gets taken and I'm forced to be www.twitter.com/anthonytao13 or something like that.

So: I'm on Twitter as www.twitter.com/anthonytao. And as long as China keeps Blogger blocked -- who knows how long it'll be -- I'll be posting there for a while with links, status updates (for those of you on my Gchat list, you know how much I love those status updates) and other fun stuff. We'll see how long I keep it up.

MISCELLANEOUS: Who you callin' swine?

2009-05-01T10:24:00.002-05:00

I have a Chinese friend who's taken to insulting us by calling us "swin-ney." You swinney!

Meanwhile, as swine flu hits Hong Kong...

The World Health Organization said the current alert level would remain one step below full pandemic and that it would no longer refer to the H1N1 virus as "swine flu" to appease outraged meat producers. But WHO did not offer another name to distinguish the new virus from other H1N1 strains.

Outraged!

MISCELLANEOUS: Yes!

2009-04-29T10:44:00.002-05:00

An atheist organization's open letter to the Kansas Board of Education, which is -- this I know, as a survivor of the system -- populated by numbnuts.

Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe...

Thank you, New York Times. Though I am deeply disturbed Americans feel atheism is a trait (trait? belief? ...CAUSE?) for which one needs to "come out of the closet" for.

PERSONAL: AGH

2009-04-29T10:29:00.002-05:00

The cankersore on the side of my tongue makes me want to grab a six-inch syringe and stick it into the open wound, bearing that pain so as to numb my tongue for five days. Because the pain I'm under now is excruciating.

MISCELLANEOUS: Comment threads that amuse me

2009-04-28T01:48:00.002-05:00

If you must know, I'm writing this from work, 12 minutes prior to the company's mandatory group exercise session (where we do jumping jacks in front of a TV...).

From Time's China blog:

# conscienceinchina Says:
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 5:00 am

Oh!
What a harmonized scene!
What an affecting picture!
The two great leaders of the two great counties,
Holding their revolutionary hands,
Staring at each other with excited eyes,
Spoke out loudly in chorus:
Let's act solidaryly,
Move in step,
Vow to insert the Chinese characteristic great flag,
On everywhere all over the world!
# laohong Says:
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 7:30 am

To conscienceinchina

--"The two great leaders...holding their revolutionary hands, staring at each other with excited eyes"?
I thought you revolutionary and Johnsmith redneck could make a much hornier pair, lol!
But I have to admit your kids song is written not bad, considering you being a primary pupil, from peasant family, of remote mountain area, and beside a pigsty.

SPORTS: Tony Gonzalez, you idiot

2009-04-24T23:01:00.004-05:00

I'll gladly eat my words if this turns out incorrect, but Tony Gonzalez has no idea he could have won now -- his wish, as he stated on Friday, "I'm here for one reason, and that's to win the Super Bowl. I haven't won a playoff game in my whole career. I want to come here, go to the playoffs and win playoff games. I want to go to the Super Bowl and win the Super Bowl" -- if he would have stayed with the Chiefs. Only idiots don't know by now that the NFL is a rigged game where only the worst franchises suffer in non-playoffs purgatory for more than two years. Look at the Miami Dolphins, who went from 1-15 to the playoffs. Anyway, Gonzalez, one of my absolute favorite players and personalities in sports -- he'll remain that way -- was a dunderhead for lacking patience here. I understand his decision. It doesn't mean it was (or will prove to be) right.

In other news: KU just got the Henry brothers. From Martin Manley:

It is fairly safe to say that Kansas has never had this many highly ranked players on the same team at the same time. I will be doing a story on that subject and that will be the secondary headline for it. KU is beyond loaded. It’s almost a violation of some obscure NCAA rule for unfair play - like maybe the "Mercy Rule" should apply. How any coach could manage to convince this many players that they will contribute is tantamount to selling the Brooklyn Bridge to get over Indian Creek.

SPORTS: Your 2010 college basketball national champs...

2009-04-15T05:28:00.002-05:00

Rock Chalk, FUCK YES.

Collins, a junior guard, was a third-team Associated Press All-American last season. Aldrich, a sophomore center, was honorable mention. Both players would have been drafted in this year’s draft had they come out, and Aldrich could have been a lottery pick. Millions of dollars were on the table, their dreams within reach. Yet ...

[KC Star]