Spades are Spades

I was watching basketball with my friends last night - my first game of the season - and, finding myself irritated at how "fouls" prolong games, the following occurred to me:

If they called "fouls" what they are, namely cheating, there wouldn't be nearly so many of them. Rules exist in a game for a reason. When cheating has become a part of the game to the extent that it has in basketball, then it becomes obvious that, somewhere along the line, the players and coaches and organization and referees have lost sight of what basketball was supposed to be, and are instead trying to make it into something else - something that lasts twice as long as it should and thrives on dishonesty (another name for "fouling").

R.I.P.

Basketball

January 20, 1892 - April 30, 2003

I [heart] T-shirts, number four

I [heart] T-shirts, number three

I [heart] T-shirts, number two

I [heart] T-shirts, number one

Post-elusive

Every once in a while I (like most of us, I'm sure) find a flier underneath the windshield wiper of my car. I never, ever notice it until I'm in my car and about to drive away. Thus begins the awkward process of rolling down the window, turning the windshield wipers on, and hoping that they will push the flyer close enough to my outstretched hand that I can grab it. If I have to get out of the car to get the flier my day - and sometimes my entire week - is officially ruined.

How these fliers get onto my car I have never been able to ascertain. Someone - or something - is responsible, but remains elusive.

- Or, anyway, remained elusive.

On Thursday (the same day I returned to the record store to sort out the Kanye Debacle) I was walking to my car and I saw her.

The Flier Girl.

I saw her; and she was hot.

Case closed.

Like a Fall

I am not a huge hip hop fan, generally speaking; however, the other day, I decided that I needed to buy Mr. West's newest effort. I went to the record store, bought Graduation, and, as I busily jotted down notes for the next day's test in the infamous Physics of the Human Body, gave it a listen. I was enjoying it to a degree, but something was missing. Gradually it dawned on me: I was not hearing nearly enough expletives.

I checked the cover of the album and, sure enough, it proudly displayed a Parental Advisory for Explicit Content; nevertheless, the record was clearly "clean." It was like listening to Hendrix with the guitars cut out. The discrepancy between the catalogue numbers on the disc and the packaging suggested some kind of mix-up.

The next day I returned to the record store and placed the defective product on the counter.

"What's the big idea?" I asked the girl in righteous fury. "There is no profanity on this album and there should be."

"That's weird," she said. "You can go get another one."

"Deal," I said, pleased as punch, and after a moment returned with another copy.

I opened it and saw that, once again, the catalogue number on the CD was not the number on the package.

I pointed this out.

"Let me grab a CD player and we'll listen to it."

A minute later we stood around a small CD player with her manager (an ugly, ugly woman) listening to "The Glory," waiting for the following lines:

Can I talk my _____ again?
Even if I don't hit again
Dog are you _____ kidding?

"This is unacceptable," I said, irritated and proud.

The manager and I went back to the rack. Her plan was to grab the oldest looking copy they had and, finding a good one (she placed great stock and comfort in the fact that the "CPU [was] slightly yellowed"), took it back to my friend behind the counter.

By this time, there was a line of people waiting to check out as well as another employee who had decided that his aid would be indispensable to the task of listening to filthy language (evidently we were "kickin' it, listenin' to Kanye" - this dude was even whiter than I am) congregating around the counter.

I was no longer feeling righteous, furious, irritated, or proud. I was actually beginning to feel ashamed. It was something akin to what I imagine it would be like to take back a pornographic magazine because there were missing pictures in it or something. It was embarrassing, and there was the nicest looking mom (she had to be a mom) that I had ever seen waiting first-in-line and, I imagined, looking a little disappointed (in me).

We opened the new copy and the girl put it in and pushed play. It seemed so loud.

Can I talk my shit again?
Even if I don't hit again
Dog are you fucking kidding?

I was so confused: I was relieved and anxious at the same time. The manager was saying something about how this situation was so much more preferable than the reverse: an angry mother yelling at her because the "clean" copy of an album she had bought for her son wasn't "clean" after all. I nervously glanced at the nice-looking mother in line. She was holding her items close, the third season of The Cosby Show most prominent among them.

I thanked the employees for their trouble and quickly walked toward the door.

Something had just happened there, and it felt like a fall.

A Picture of Wind

Today, as I was walking to class (James Joyce is so choice) the wind blew all of the snow off of the soccer field and into my right ear.

Wow!

http://www.bigear.org/Wow30th/wow30th.htm

Not an Autobiographical Post

A thought about surprise parties: when a friend of yours who doesn't know anybody else plans a surprise party, you plan a surprise party.

Thursday's Child

I was walking to my car yesterday when I overheard a brief exchange between a guy and a girl passing one another near me on the sidewalk.

"How was your weekend?" said the guy to the girl.

How was your weekend? It's Thursday. Thursday. Maybe I'm the crazy one, but it seems to me that if you haven't figured out how someone's weekend was before Thursday, you forfeit that information. Tuesday is pushing it; Wednesday is a little sad. Thursday is just wrong.

I struck up a conversation with this girl (who happened to be walking my way) and asked her how she felt about the situation. (Of course she was hot.) The fact that she was obviously more excited to talk to a stranger (me) about the statute of limitations on the How-was-your-weekend? question than she was to talk to the guy that knew her and probably had a legitimate reason to ask about her weekend was all the answer I needed.

The moral of this story: when you have a great conversation with a beautiful stranger about the social short-comings of others, get her fucking phone number.

I'm still right about the Thursday thing, though.

The Ladies' Room

Confession: Every time I use a public restroom I am convinced that I am in the Ladies' Room until I can locate a urinal. If they ever start putting urinals in the Ladies' Room, I don't know what I'm going to do. (I don't know what the ladies will do either, come to think of it.)

VI. Marlene

Looking back, the only real difference between the two groups of women was whether or not they were attractive. There was one woman, Marlene, who, if it could be said that anyone owned interior design in Utah, owned interior design in Utah. She was also the one designer who persisted in being perceived as attractive and mysterious by the entire design community; though, ironically, the allure came only from how much everyone (thought they) knew about her—effectively destroying any real sense of mystery—more than any intrinsic beauty (of which there seemed to be none). Everyone had a different story about Marlene’s travels in search of the perfect rug. Everyone had a different account of her different affairs with different drugs. Indian and Arabian nights were peppered with erotic encounters with the exotic locals. I was lead to believe (and have no real reason to doubt) that the woman had not slept in the company of less than one person since 1966. Her gigantic, black sunglasses seemed to hide entire lives’ worth of debauchery and sin (not to mention more than a few wrinkles that were gradually becoming veritable folds) and she was never seen without them.

V. Designers

We only sold rugs to interior designers: glamorous, ugly women (and the occasional gay man) with too much time on their hands. For most of them it was a hobby—something to do to kill the hours of the long, affluent day. They were forever wandering in and out, flirting and talking and carrying on as if they did not live in Salt Lake City, Utah, but were instead cavorting with the gurus of New York or Paris. Did I mention they were ugly? None of them were even the least bit attractive. On occasion they would bring their clients (who were often very attractive) to the showroom to look at the rugs that hung from gigantic metal frames swinging on hidden hinges, creating the illusion of eighteen-feet-tall books with fifteen-thousand dollar pages made of silk and wool. Clueless, the designers’ clients were typically lonely housewives whose husbands’ financial successes fueled their own, masturbatory, financial excesses.

Forever 22

Like millions of other people with better things to do today, I watched the Superbowl instead of doing them. I just want to go on record saying that I never gave up hope that the Cowboys would come back to win it. Led by Emmitt Smith.

Our Last Dance

I was on the Sugarloaf lift up at Alta today when it occured to me that there are only two kinds of people in this world: those who love Bowie and those who do not. There's a lesson in that.

Two Purposes

The thing about shoes is that they exist for two purposes: footwear, and irony.