2012 Webster's Dictionary Errata

This started as a "phrases that don't make sense to me" list; and then it morphed into a collection of updated definitions for words and phrases, and other cynical observations I made while being really bored at work.  Now, it's just some randomly organized list of evidence that I'm probably not focused enough at what I'm being paid to do; but you know what?  I'm okay with it.  Let's get to it!

• Dastardly: what is a dastard?  Doesn't exist right?  So how can someone or something be or do something in the manner of one, when it doesn't exist?  I move that, rather than strike "dastardly" from our lexicon, we instead add "Dastard" to it immediately.  

      Side note: shouldn't "bastardly" be added to the lexicon as well?  Answer: yes!

• "It is what it is": Of course it "is what it is," how could it ever be what it isn't?  Well, I mean, unless its just a lying dastard. 

                  (See?  It works!  Use it!)

• "Can I be completely honest with you?": why, are you generally not?  Also, why would you feel like you had to ask me first, do you assume that I prefer being lied to?
• Misappropriation: sounds like a beauty pageant for accountants. 
• "I Love Glee": Does not compute; how can you love something that is the opposite of entertaining?
• Disneyworld: ..."Hi Mr. Eisner?  This is Astronomy.  Turns out a 'world' is larger than a few square blocks in Orlando.  By a lot, actually."
• "I love _____ to death": always seems to precede a reason why you hate said person/thing.  Also...doesn't this phrase imply a disturbing correlation between loving something and wanting to kill it?
• "Like a Boss": based on my experience with bosses, if you use this phrase you are calling yourself a stupid, petty, arrogant bag of douche whose sole qualifications for the position seems to be that he/she has spent too much time here to be valuable anywhere else, and now he/she is stuck.
• "I don't mean to be rude": I do; I just want you to think that I don't.
• "It doesn't matter to me/Either one is fine", etc: this is a ticking time bomb.  I have a strongly held preference but I expect you to know already which one it is and make the correct choice; and if you choose wrong, I get to hate you forever.
• The Real Canadian Superstore: (Seriously, this exists.  Here, look.)

           I've tried, but have yet to find the Fake Canadian Superstore to which it compares itself.

• "I had a friend once who...": I'm about to tell you a very embarrassing personal anecdote.        
• "A funny thing happened to me...": I'm about to tell you a boring personal anecdote.
• "Let's just be friends": I have no interest in or attraction to you, but I want to keep the door open in case nothing better comes along in the next few weeks and I get lonely or bored.
• "I had a good time" (post-date): thanks for the free meal, suckah!
• Coldplay: U2 Jr.
• U2: Irish rock band that is about to break Aerosmith's record for longest, most successful career in which you couldn't compile a single, complete listenable album from their entire catalog.
• "I love the 80's": I was born in 1993 and have been told by MTV and Ryan Seacrest that the 80's were cool.
• People Person: describes someone that is desperate for everyone else's attention.
• Politician: a profession marked by a disturbing compulsion to interfere in other peoples' business and then lie about it.
• Motivational posters/speakers/phrases: they don't actually ever motivate me; they just make me sad for the people that find them motivating.

            Side note: what's with all of the pre-final battle motivational speeches in war movies?  I mean, take Gibson's speech in Braveheart.  It was a great speech, right?  Too bad he was saying it to an army of about five thousand people in the middle of an open field on a windy day and only the fifty guys closest to him ever really heard it.  The rest of the army was standing in the back thinking, "What's happening, did we cancel the battle?  Why are we still just standing here, let's go home; I'm starting to get hungry. ...I want some mutton."  

• Relationship: describes a process whereby you will spend a lot of money and enormous amounts of time on creating a new enemy.
• "I just bought a new hat": (if female) - I'm bad with money.

                                                      (if male)   - I'm bad with people.
     (Exceptions are granted for team sports caps.  I never hate on someone supporting their team.  Unless...)

• "I'm a Yankees/Lakers fan" (outside of NY or LA): I know nothing about sports.

           (The only acceptable exceptions are for those who have spent at least 3 years living in NY or LA).

• "Inception is the best movie I've ever seen": I've never seen the Godfather Part II.

           (Just to be clear, I'm not hating on Inception...I'm just ...loving (?) on the Godfather)

• "Back in high school, I...": I'm about to tell you an outrageous lie.
• "_____________ is better/as good as Michael Jordan": I know nothing about basketball.
• "I don't like the Beatles": I hate awesome music.
• "I'm a cat person": I plan on spending the majority of my life alone.
• Cognitive thinking: ...thinking thinking?  That seems redundant.
• Under/over-whelming: you can't over- or under- something that doesn't exist; except I guess in Europe.
• Understand: you can't over-stand something, can you?  ...Can you possibly over-understand?  
• Mis-estimate: describes the process of under/over estimating something.  Why doesn't this word exist?  It's a ton of fun to say; go on, try it!
• Star Wars: I don't care what the titles say, when I say the first Star Wars, it never refers to the Phantom Menace;  and the same holds true for the sequels and their respective prequels.  If you want to celebrate a fat old man's pathetic descent into mediocrity, go listen to a Bruce Springsteen album; leave me out of it.
• Memo: every single one should read, "Insert immediately into the trash can."  ...Cause that's where they end up. 
• Invoice: is your response an outvoice?
• Common Sense: in my experience, it seems to be more exclusive than the term would imply.
• Nonconformist: highly conformist to less-popular trends, and more judgmental about it.
• "I'm not religious, I'm spiritual": translation - I'm really high right now.
• Classic Nicknames (Robert/Bob, William/Bill, John/Jack, James/Jim, etc.): I'm no genius, but...aren't those just different names?  Especially Jack.  I don't know; if it was me, none of these would sound like nicknames, I would kind of feel like you just forgot my name.

            Side note: I miss the nicknames from 1900 - 1950, when you could just take someone's most prominent physical characteristic or dominant personality trait and that would be their nickname forever.  Gone are such gems as: Horse Face, Suitcase, Twitch, Fats, Skinny, Slick, Red, _______ the Nose/Head/Whale/Shark/Hat, etc; and of course, the always popular Incontinence Joe...okay, I made that last one up.

• "___________ the crap out of ___________": I really hope that isn't literal.

Chesty La Rue, Jack Baur, and the Complexities of Elementary School Popularity (Part 2)

Lastly was my sixth grade experience; new school, new city, new state.  I knew absolutely no one, but I managed to make some friends.  There was one friend, however, that I never really got to make; that of course being a certain girl in class that for some reason caught my eye...the poor dastard.  In order to become more acquainted, I in my infantile reasoning concluded that, "I need to become popular; then I'll have the acceptance I need to be friends with "Sarah."  Again, I don't really remember her name; is that bad of me?  Probably.  Let's just move on.  "What," I thought, "is the best way to show that I belong at the top of the mountain with all of these Paragons of Yale Elementary's 6th Grade class?  Beat someone up, of course!  Plus, then that girl will notice me."  Ugh; yeah, I was an idiot, I know. 

In my class was a kid named "Kevin;" and yeah, I forgot his name too.  Kevin was not popular; he was actually the opposite of it.  I was stuck in the middle of the spectrum, but he at least had an identity: he was the kid with epilepsy (I see you seeing where this is going and judging me already; I don't blame you).  So one day I decide to pick a fight with Kevin; I honestly don't know why I chose him, but I started following him around the playground insulting him, his family, his hygiene, his mother.  Basically anything I could think of to get him to throw a punch at me, because as my Dad always said, he didn't care as long as we didn't throw the first punch.  By the way, this was the only time I tried to take him up on that offer.  So eventually Kevin's resolve to just ignore me and walk away dissipated, and he turned and threw a weak, poorly aimed fist at the center of my forehead; which, if you've ever been hit there you know is mostly bone and precious few nerves to feel any pain.  I punched back immediately, with two quick hits to the stomach, and before you knew it...the teachers stopped the fight immediately and dragged us both away into time-out.  Again, I find the inner monologue of my brain while I slammed my fist into his stomach amusing; no joke, I thought : "Ah!  My moment has come!  I will beat this kid up, and finally be accepted into the upper echelon's of yet another new school's tight, societal infrastructure."  Okay, I didn't think of it precisely like that because I was eleven and didn't have a great vocabulary; I probably thought something like, "Yeah I'm going to be popular now!..........I wonder what girls are smuggling in their shirts underneath all of that cotton, and why does it interest me so much?" 

And the next day I thought that my moment had come; one of the kids that I thought was one of the popular kids turned to me at lunch and said, "So I heard you beat up Kevin yesterday."  I would hardly have said that I beat him up, only getting in two punches; but far be it from me to disagree with someone who's inflating my ego.  I responded simply, "Yep."

"That's pretty cool...of course we all have; I did last year.  But that's okay, you're finally starting to fit in."
He might not have said exactly that, but it was something pretty similar.  And I don't know what it was, but...I had the immediate impression that I was ashamed of myself for picking on this poor kid who didn't deserve it (again!), and that I didn't give a d**n what the supposedly cool kids thought of me.  I made a decision right then that I was never going to to let the fear of someone else's opinions make my decisions for me.  I decided that I really didn't care about being popular, about being "cool," about being anything beyond what I wanted to be.  And I think it has served me well even to this day.

But where that epiphany as an 11 year old really helped me well was in high school; I find that a lot of people are most often caught up in the concepts of acceptance and popularity in high school, probably because of puberty and hormones causing one to feel at once like a little kid and an adult at the same time.  Also, Hollywood's depictions of high school don't help.  Every film and TV show on the subject would have you believe that there are kids who are popular because they are the cool kids, and that they look down on everyone else below them that isn't.  Being strangely detached from this world, though, allowed me to make what was to me a profound realization: the most popular kids in school weren't popular by any god-given grant; they were popular because they had the most friends.  They were comfortable in any social situation, they could converse with any "type" of student from whatever "clique" or "group" they may be associated with; in short, they had the most friends, because they were generally the friendliest.  They moved seamlessly from one circle to the next.  I figured this out when I was a junior or a senior; and by then I was too lazy to care about giving it a shot myself, so I stuck to my guns and carried out my initial plan of attack on L.V. Berkner High School's societal underpinnings: to get in and out with as little recognition as possible; to be, as far as I could manage it, invisible.  If anyone remembered me at the ten year reunion, I would have to deem my experiment a failure. 

The reunion was last year; I didn't attend most of it, beyond the first half of the "Reunion Football Game."  But even then, wouldn't you know it?  I still failed...

Chesty La Rue, Jack Baur, and the Complexities of Elementary School Popularity (Part 1)

One of my favorite moments from one of my favorite television series, the Simpsons, actually came when the show had just begun its downward spiral into mediocrity.  Gone were the glory days of Mr. Plow, Night Boat, Cape Feare, head bags full of heady goodness, etc; instead we were "treated" to a steady stream of missed jokes and winks to the audience, as if to say "remember this episode from years ago, back when we actually had writers that were funny?"  But even then there were still small nuggets to be gleaned.  Take the "Homer to the Max" episode, where he decides to change his name and in doing so creates a brand new persona that, ultimately doesn't live up to his expectations.  My favorite moment is at the very end, just before the credits, when he's convincing Marge that she should change her name to be more suggestive of her apparently ample chest-size.  He even provides her with three options: Chesty La Rue, Busty St. Clair, and what I always thought was Hooter McBoobity; but which Wikipedia assures me was actually Hootie McBoob.  ...I like mine better. 

Anyway, the point of this episode is something that I had hammered home to me at a very early age:a lot of times we think that all it takes for us to be a brand new person is a "fresh start;" a new name, a new school, new city, new apartment, new bookie, whatever.  We as a society tend to suffer from the "grass is always greener" psychosis.  My family moved around a lot when I was in elementary school; I attended four different schools while in Oregon - between kindergarten and fifth grade - and then a fifth school when my family moved to Texas and I, instead of attending a new, plush Middle School in Tualatin with my best friend, was forced to go to one more year of Elementary school in Richardson, Texas.  I thought at first of just staying in the Portland area, but realized that my family probably needed me to survive; so I decided to join them.  It turned out to be awesome; another year of recess?  Crap, I wish I could get recesses in college...it would certainly have made my attendance record better, at any rate.  But my point is, I moved around a lot; and thus, had plenty of opportunities at a "fresh start."  You know what I found?  All of those "fresh starts" are really just an opportunity for us to continue to never change unless absolutely compelled to do so, and to remain wedded to the same cults of personality that led us to be who we are anyway.  It turns out that we really only ever get a "New Beginning" if we develop a substance abuse problem and need an expensive, expansive 24/7 support group. 

[Speaking of 24, did you know they're trying to develop a movie based on the TV show 24?  I don't really see how that can work in the framework of a 2 hour cinematic experience; I mean, with only 1/12 of the regularly allotted run-time, how on earth will they fit in all the necessary plot points common to every single season of the show: inner-office romance compromising the safety of the nation, Jack butting heads with every single person alive and still maintaining the moral high ground, the serendipitous proclivity of any and every police officer, FBI agent, security guard, or random do-gooder that decides to join Jack in his crusade to be dead by the end of the episode, and of course my personal favorite, the "twist" near the end when Jack is forced to switch sides and act like a bad guy in order to continue being the good guy.  Also, you may notice I've refrained from making the obvious joke in regards to this TV show-turned-movie and its potential title...hold it in, you can do this...just a couple of more - 24?  SHOULDN'T THEY BE CALLING IT 2 AND A HALF?  Crap, I almost made it.  Oh well; all of that aside, I really did enjoy the first 4 seasons of the show; after that I lost interest.  But for my money - or distinct lack thereof - there are few TV moments better than the very first scene of Season 2's opening episode.  Check it out.  I tried to find a clip of it on You Tube, but "Jack Baur saws off head" wasn't pulling anything up.  But isn't that sentence alone enough to make you want to go and find it?]

Back to my main point, though; with all of those moves I was hard pressed to find a lot of really good friends as a young lad; not because I wasn't good at making any, but because I would make some and then we would move and I would have to start all over.  Frankly, it got exhausting.  I still remember my best friends from each town though; and I'm sure they don't really care whether I do or not.  But there was always one thought in the back of my head at the beginning of every "new school" experience: popularity.  I had never really been popular, but then, what is popularity to 7-year-olds: the kid with the coolest Mickey Mouse sweater, which usually happens to also be the rich kid whose parents can afford to take him to Disneyland.  And not being that kid, we - that is, me and the other poor kids - chose to hate him.  I do remember though in fourth grade, I finally had a chance at being what I thought was popular (I think it's important to note that my notion of popularity stemmed from all the movies about how its okay not to be popular; the very fact that someone actually was made it enticing, whether or not it mattered if I succeeded).  I had started to become friends with the "cool" kids; and I use the quotes simply to suggest that I thought that they were that specific clique.  It turns out that they were actually pretty cool, so I certainly don't mean it ironically.  Pretty fun guys overall, but then again what standards does a nine year old really have?  As these friendships developed, I thought that there was one roadblock to my future success: my friend "Brian."  I don't remember his name, so I'll call him Brian.  He was the whipping boy in the class, the one kid that for some reason drew all of the ire.  Maybe he was a little weird, maybe his family couldn't afford new clothes or shoes or toys; I honestly don't really remember.  I just remember that 1) he was my first real friend in that class; and 2) I turned my back on him when the chance to have "more important" friends came along (now see, those quotes were meant ironically).

 I didn't do it because my new friends made me, or even because they hinted any sort of disapproval to our friendship.  I chose to dump Brian as a friend because I was afraid it would hurt my standing with my other friends.  Pretty cowardly, petty, lame; whatever other pejoratives you want.  I know, I'm with you.  I was a huge dick to that kid.  I remember one day taking him aside and saying, "Look Brian; we can still be friends, we just can't let anyone else know that we're friends.  So I might make fun of you around these other guys, but I don't really mean it."  The most messed up part to me wasn't that I said all of this to him; it was that I was completely sincere in thinking that he would take this as a compliment; that he would be so touched by my boundless generosity at condescending to be his friend that he would be struck instantly dumb.  So about a month later, after completely ignoring him except to ridicule and belittle him, Brian fought back.  One day at recess he threw a punch at me.  He couldn't have known that my father had been taking my brothers and me to boxing lessons at some ratty old down-town boxing gym; I hadn't told anyone, so far as I remember, least of all my "secret friend."  So I did what anyone trained in the pugilistic arts would do: I punched back repeatedly, and proceeded to pummel this poor kid until the recess police carted me away (quick side note: they, the Recess Police as I called them, hated the crap out of me that year; I was in fights and causing trouble and stuff nonstop.  Sometimes I did it just to spite them; okay, most of the time I did it just to spite them.  And to this day...I don't regret a single part of it; well, except for this current story about Brian).  But that's not the worst part of the story.  The worst part is, while I was punching this kid who never really did anything to me but want to be my friend and bear patiently the indignities I, in my immature search for juvenile acceptance, heaped upon his undeserving person; while I exercised my knuckles roundly about his person, I literally thought in my head, "how dare you attack me like this?  I'm the only friend you ever had; I offered to continue being friends with you so long as it doesn't hurt my standing with the cool kids in class, and this is how you repay me?  You deserve this pain, you little dastard!"  (By the way, that's my favorite fake word in the English language; I mean, we have the adjective/adverb of "dastardly," which is evocative of...what?  I mean, we know what it "means" but according to the rules of grammar it doesn't mean anything, because you can't do anything in the manner of a dastard if there is no such thing as a dastard; then you're just being a jerk, and you're illiterate.  So yeah, I make a special point to say this faux noun at every opportunity.  Deal with it).  And what's even more messed up?  The kids I had been trying to impress were obviously completely disinterested in my battle.  They really didn't care whether I was friends with Brian or not, because as it turns out they were actually pretty decent guys, but I thought I had to beat up the "nerd" for their acceptance.  So who was really the nerd?  That's right, me. 

Part 2 comes tomorrow; and no, the experience with Brian didn't teach me anything at the time. 

Table for One

I need to make a confession.  I eat out and go to movies all the time...alone.  And you know what?  I freaking love it.  I mean, potentially awesome food and a potentially equally awesome movie, without having to put up with a lot of vapid conversation?  Sign me up every time, man.  Which is not to say that I'm against going to do stuff with people, just...I guess every once in a while I prefer to be alone; and it turns out that I'm never really opposed to being alone at any while (side note: if you can say once in a while, why can't you specify other "whiles"?  Seems kind of unnecessarily discriminatory to non-specific periods of time).

Here's a story to illustrate my solitary point: a few years ago I was kicked out of the apartment I was renting; I won't get into it too much, cause it's actually a long story and I don't want to type that much about something that angers me.  (That's your cue to say, "Isn't that sort of every topic you've written about so far, and are most likely to continue writing about, in this useless blog of yours?"  To which I would respond: "...Shut up").  Basically, my car broke down on the move there, I spent all of my money repairing it and didn't have any for rent.  The manager was okay with it for a while, but then rather randomly kicked me out, despite the fact that I was keeping up with the payment schedule that he came up with; ;turns out his son wanted my room, and he never brought the contract over for me to sign.  So..I was basically up a certain creek full of excrement without the necessary equipment to propel my water-craft.  I had yet to find a job, so I had no money for a down payment/security deposit/first and last months' rent/food.  I was, however, lucky enough to have a friend - who was also the drummer in our band - that had just built a bunch of powered, climate-controlled practice spaces that he rented out to other bands.  And as luck would have, one of them was (perpetually) empty; he let me crash there for free until I could get back on my feet.  That's basically what happened; now for the interesting part.  Well, okay none of it is actually going to be interesting to anyone but me, but whatever.

I lived in that tiny, windowless, carpeted room sleeping on the floor, selling plasma for food, and being asleep for about fifteen hours a day.  My point is, is rarely saw the sun and never really saw another person more than once a week.  And you know what?  I mostly loved it.  I mean, sure the whole "not having money, a job, food that didn't come from a can, or heat in the middle of a frozen Utah winter"  sucked (turns out the AC worked, but not the heat.  That's okay, I just wore like twenty layers of clothes...and was still pretty cold.  Whatever); and eventually I realized I had become sort of depressed (I guess; I'm not really qualified to diagnose it.  I might have just been malnourished; I mean, two months of cheeze-its, flaming hot cheetohs, Nalley chili and rice can be lethal to your wellness.  By the way, I hate that word; "wellness?"  I can't stand the fact that it's become acceptable in the English language to just add "-ness" to the end of a word.  Its absolute crapness.  Actually, scratch that; I kind of like it.  But my point was/is, as far as the whole "not interacting with anyone" was concerned (aside from the occasional band practice...which happened to be in another room of the same practice unit/building/thing), I was actually rather enjoying it.  Actually, the worst part was not having anywhere to shower on a daily basis.  I mean, I would try to wash off what I could in the sink, but just like there was no heat there was also no hot water, so...anyways, I showered at friends places when I could, but I still felt a lot like what Brad Pitt's in between-films hobo beard looks like. 

All of this is to set up something that happened yesterday: half of my roommates were out of town, and the other half were going to move out in the afternoon; and since no one was coming back until afternoon of the next day, I was going to be completely alone for almost an entire day.  No one popping in at 4 in the afternoon and wanting to chat while I'm watching old Michael Jordan basketball games, no one doing the dishes while I'm trying to watch Community, no roommate going to sleep at 9 pm when I don't usually sleep until 5 am - which of course means no access to any of my stuff for about 8 hours.  Basically, I could be entirely...utterly...totally...other words to express a measure of complete-itude that I haven't used yet...alone.  And after four straight months of uninterrupted human contact, this rather solitary dude was looking forward to not having to see anyone if he didn't really want to; and you were going to wager on it, I'd take the under on "want to".  But then 5 pm rolled around, and my last roommate had yet to leave; and I started getting a little irritated.  I mean, I had already found a new place, he was required to have moved out by...two hours earlier; and he had already moved most of his stuff out.  All he had left was his food, he'd already transferred his bedding...so from what I could tell, he had about ten minutes of work before I was all alone.  My first cause for concern was when he started baking a cake.  Who goes back to their old place and bakes a cake when they don't have to?  Then he came back after delivering the cake, cleaned some dishes, went to eat some food, came back again...and suddenly it was ten o'clock - an hour past his usual bed time - and he was moving his bedding back in, 'cause he was staying for the night.  I was absolutely irate.  Then I found out that he hadn't gotten into the new place and had no where else to go (don't worry he found a new place this morning; but by then everyone else had come back).  So I wasn't nearly as mad, but I was still really disappointed to have lost that day of awesome loneliness.  Oh well, some things are more important i guess...but I mean, I was homeless for a while so he could have managed, right?  Whatever.  I guess the point of this is...just...leave me alone?  I don't know, go ahead and find something else to waste your companies expensive time with.

Russel Westbrook: The World's Worst Girlfriend

I don't intend for this to be a basketball blog; but I happen to love the game, especially NBA basketball.  So I anticipate that as the season starts up in a couple of months, there will be more basketball related posts.  I also anticipate writing a follow up to this post sometime in December, entitled "Rodrigue Beaubois and the Discovery of Pass-to-Dirk-aphobia."  So be on the lookout for that one.  I know you'll sit huddled in your room refreshing your web browser every ten seconds until it arrives...So anyway, on to the point.  You know those girls who just look absolutely gorgeous, regardless of the medium - in person, photos, on the phone, beautiful voice, basically the whole package - and you find yourself intrigued.  Then you strike up a conversation with her, and you realize immediately why she was willing to let you strike up that conversation: she is an idiot.  Just, you know, like the absolute dumbest person you've ever met in your life. 

That is Russel Westbrook.  I hate him; not personally, you understand.  I don't know him, I've never met him, and I don't expect that we'll ever be in the same room, so I'm not qualified to make any judgement as to his personality or characteristics or intelligence.  But as far as running an NBA basketball team on the floor as a point guard, well...Let's put it this way: he's got a fantastic highlight reel, honestly jaw-dropping skill and athleticism.  He has all of the tools to be one of the deadliest players in the league, but not unlike the Tick his mind has always been his Achilles heel.  Seriously, he makes some of the worst decisions I've ever seen anyone make on the court and still get the kind of minutes that he gets.  Which is not to say that he shouldn't get those minutes; just take the ball out of his hands, let Harden run point and only pass it to Russ when you want him to shoot it.  Cause he refuses to play the point guard position, but Scott Brooks still lets him run the plays. 

I don't think it's because he's stupid; I think it's because he always thinks he's the best player out on the court...which, when you're on the same team with Kevin Durant might seem a little South of the Intelligence Equator-Line-of-Demarcation-and-Whatever-Other-Type-of-Boundary-You-Choose-To-Use-As-a-Metaphor, but I've had the same delusion in regards to myself on occasion when just playing pick-up ball so I understand how it happens.  I'm not burning him for that, he just...look, it got so bad in the 2011 playoffs that, as a Mavs fan in the 4th quarter of those close games, I would cheer every time Westbrook touched the ball.  I'm not joking about that, not even a little bit; there is no exaggeration or hyperbole happening in that sentence.  I wanted him to have the ball.  (By the way, anytime the fans of the opposing team are rooting for you to have the ball in your hands, it's probably a bad sign).  Why?  Because I knew that he was going to drive the ball right into 3 defenders and force up a shot over a seven footer who would win the Defensive Player of the Year Award the next season - should have won it in 2011 too, but everyone slept on the Mavs until they beat the Lakers in the second round; sorry, swept the Lakers in the second round.  It bore mentioning.  If not the 1 on 3 fastbreak, the only other I ever saw Westbrook take was a pull up jumper from the free throw line; which I've seen him hit a lot...in the first three quarters.  Never really seen one drop in the fourth.  Not cause he's got the yips, but because in a close 4th quarter the defense gets better.  His shot selection was always made worse by the fact that he's so freaking fast, he's the only guy on his team that's past half court yet, and only 3 seconds have run off the shot clock.  So you throw up a contested shot with 20 seconds left on the clock in a situation when every second counts, no chance for an offensive rebound and without even pretending to look for a pass...not the best guard-ery.  Speaking of Tyson Chandler, though I didn't mention him by name earlier...why did everyone sleep on that guy for so long?  I mean, he goes to the Hornets and they immediately became a playoff team, and one of the best defensive teams in the league; so he gets traded to Charlotte.  The Bobcats then suddenly have one of the best defensive teams in the league and, you guessed it, make their first playoff appearance.  So what happens?  He gets traded to the Mavs for Erica Dampier - the oddest combination of gigantic shoulders, tiny hands, chicken legs, and morose disposition I have ever seen.  And you know what?  The Mavs, who have for years had one of the best offenses in the league but consistently lacked any sort of defensive presence in the paint, suddenly become one of the best defensive teams in the league.  I remarked this to anyone I met that would listen to me all throughout the Mavs 2011 season, regular season and playoffs: they are a different team.  They have confidence, swagger, defensive intensity; they would play a team on a huge winning streak at shut them down - on the road, at home, didn't matter.  It happened at least three times before Christmas.  At the end of close games, when they had historically collapsed, they were now getting stops and stretching leads...I loved that team.  They were invincible.  And combine Tyson Chandler with Shawn Marion, one of the league's best perimeter defenders, and, well...you get the Mavs' 2011 playoff run.  I will never understand why Mark Cuban let that man walk out of their organization; what do you need Dwight Howard for?  You already have the second best defensive player in the entire league, pay him whatever you have to pay him to keep him in a Dallas uniform.  (I am still, as you might be able to tell, bitter.  Let Deshawn go, J.J, Caron; who cares.  But Chandler?  You broke my heart Cuban...you broke my heart.  Also, way to go and no-show the one do-or-die meeting to convince Deron Williams to take less money and come to Dallas, effectively eliminating your team's chances of signing him).

This next sentence does have a bit of exaggeration in it, but very little: he was the Mavs' MVP in that 2011 series; you know, the one that the Mavericks won?  I mean yeah, Dirk was obviously the MVP, so I guess Westbrook was just runner up.  Reread that first sentance; he was not the Thunder's runner-up MVP, he was the Mavericks; the opposing team.  And his decision making hasn't gotten any better over the last year and a half, he's just gotten more skilled as a player; so his ppg average has and will continue to go up, and even his assists; but I watch him try to run a half-court offense and cringe.  Just watch: when Spain and USA go to their respective benches in the gold medal game tomorrow, the part of the game where we should rip the game wide open because of USA's spectacular depth, Westbrook will make at least 2 terrible plays that will kill our momentum and allow Spain to keep it close.  He'll also make some spectacular plays to keep us in the lead; but that's my point: he's feast or famine.  You either have to accept the good with the bad and hope that Durant will learn to demand the ball in key situations, or (what I think they should do) trade him to another team while his stock is still high for a real PG and another guy that can just knock down threes.  I can't think of anyone available that fits the description though; so they're pretty much stuck.  But mark my words: the Thunder's ceiling is not dependent on Kevin Durant; they can only go as high as Westbrook will allow them to go, because he's the one with the ball in his hands 75% of the time, and 60% of those times he makes a poor decision...every time.  Look, I'm not a statistician, so if those numbers don't make sense to you well, they don't to me either so let's just move on. 

Basically, with Westbrook I feel the same way I feel about watching soccer: just show me the highlights - which do tend to be pretty spectacular - because I can't think of much worse than having to sit through the entire game.  Seriously, watching him play infuriates me; I mean, how many times is he going to run the ball up to the free throw line and shoot a contested jump shot in the 4th quarter of a close game?  You realize you have a team, right; not to mention the most lethal offensive weapon in the league as part of that team?  Apparently not.

Having said all of that, would I still take him on the Mavericks this year instead of Nick Collision and Rodrigue Beaubois (if you don't know who he is, he's the Mavs' young back-up point guard with the same problems as Westbrook with virtually none of the upside except for his long arms and huge hands)?  In a heartbeat.  Because when it all comes down to it, I guess I'm the shallow guy that will not only start and continue a conversation with a vapid, clueless beauty; I'll go ahead and get into a mind-numbingly painful relationship with her and keep it going for quite a long time.  Cause, you know...I mean, she's really hot...

My Worst Nightmare

So...I've never read a blog, as far as I know; and generally I hope to keep it that way.  Hypocritical yes, but am I doing it anyway?  ...Also, yes.  So when I decided to actually write this I was confronted with the immediate problem that, so far as I can tell, I never have had nor ever will have anything to say that anyone other than myself cares to hear; possibly my parents, but lets not get ahead of ourselves...myself...whatever, lets just move on.  I suppose in the absence of something of worth to proclaim to the world, I'll just share a little anecdote intended to allow whoever makes the mistake of reading this with some personal information about myself, hopefully without boring them into a near stupor - I'm actually hoping for a full-on, catatonic stupor.  Seriously, who wouldn't want to visit a website that shuts off all of their motor functions for a couple of hours?  Especially at work; I swear I've been nearly catatonic in every job I've ever had anyway, and no one ever seemed to notice.
Which actually brings me to the topic of my anecdote that I mentioned earlier; that's right, no teasers here: I said I was going to give you an anecdote, and here I am now to produce it.  You're welcome, by the way.  This is an excerpt from my personal memoirs, which don't actually exist and which I will never write because I'm not egotistical enough to burden the world with that monstrous waste of its collective time.  Well okay, I am just egotistical enough to write one, but I don't ever anticipate the world will recognize my genius soon enough for it to be monetarily beneficial to me, so what's the point right?  In the immortal words of Lucky Day, "No dough, no show."  And if you don't know that reference, shame on you; but I'm willing to forgive you, provided you go out immediately and rent Three Amigos.  You can thank me later.  Though it occurs to me that I am most likely the only person reading this, so "you" I guess would be me...in which case I get the reference because I've seen the movie many times and derive great enjoyment and satisfaction from its hilarity, so what do I have to forgive; nothing, right?  Right.

I have the exact resume you would expect from someone who just wrote the above paragraphs: lots of varied work experiences, more than adequate skills for just about anything, and I also happen to be fluent in Mandarin Chinese; so I should be pretty much a shoe-in for any job I apply for...except that I still don't have any sort of degree, so the only jobs I can apply for are entry level anyway.  Which means the pay pretty much sucks.  It also means, if you are a student of human nature or prescribe to Holmes-ian deductive reasoning theories, that the longest I've held down a single job is about five and a half months; I just round up to six on applications or when anyone asks because somehow I feel that those extra two weeks will be more impressive.  "Wait, you only worked there five and a half months?  Couldn't gut it out to six like an actual, respectable member of a functioning society, eh?"  Well yeah, obviously not.  Just don't ask to see my attendance record for that particular job...cause it looks pretty much like my attendance record for any other job I've "held down:" spotty at best, basically. 
Which brings me to my worst nightmare, which I have found reared its ugly head in every instance of my barely-gainful employment.  I keep having this vision of myself waking up one morning and discovering that I'm 45 years old and still employed at a company that basically amounts to Initech in Office Space: the superfluous, insufferable superiors; the vapid, content co-workers who apparently want nothing more out of their lives; the freaking cubicles and birthday cakes that you never really get.  Basically, just imagine the most soul-crushing environment possible.  Got it?  Good.  Cause I keep envisioning myself in that environment, then realizing that even though I want out of there as much as your neighbor whose parents sent him to the chubby-kid concentration camp spent the entire summer weeping for a chocodile, I am tied to it by three kids, a mortgage, two car payments, and a failed "business venture" I made back in college with my buddy Tony; because who expects a guy named Tony to know absolutely nothing about extortion and money laundering?  I didn't, at any rate.  The knowledge that I am trapped in this hell that I have dug for myself soon gives way to a sweet thought of release: I do, after all, own a hand gun; in the nightmare, not in real life.  What would I do with a handgun?  So eventually I give in to the release, and as I'm dying I have a flash of insight - courtesy of Collin Farrell and In Bruges: what if this is all death really is?  An entire eternity stuck in this freaking place, with the same freaking people, the same desk with the stupid Dilbert Cartoons that I don't really think are funny but feel obligated to put up anyway so my co-workers think I'm funny, the same inane pseudo motivational speeches by some other mid-lifer who is trying desperately to pretend he has something useful to say.  And I really hoped I wouldn't die...I really hoped I wouldn't die...

Wow, that's a pretty dark way to end my first blog-post-thing, right?  ...Hang on, I'm deciding on whether or not I want to try rewriting the ending.  ...No, I'm okay it.