Comments on the Excerpt Below

This is a blurb I read on ESPN, and I wanted to share it because it really crystallized how I think about sports, which, admittedly embarrassing, does in fact get a moderate share of my thoughts.

This is the story of a special game. It's between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets, and it happens right after the two teams have made a trade. Because of this, the game really becomes an evaluation of that trade, and thus of the two teams' organizational department. Because while this hinges on the play of the sportsmen, yes, it is also assumed that the players had an objective "playing ability," and that it is possible, if skilled, to propose swaps that bring more "playing ability," if not plain more players, to the team.

The game doesn't matter anymore. The implications of the nature of sports organizations, and their distinct presence in our society, amount to total slavery. Think about starting a basketball team, and especially try to think about what it would be like if basketball were a big part of your life, too. These are your best friends, maybe. Neighborhood kids, who you can trust. To not take advantage of (for show), and to assist you when you find yourself overextended. "Teammate" is only a sports term now, but it has different origins.

From dictionary.com:

"Origin:
bef. 900; ME teme (n.), OE tēam child-bearing, brood, offspring, set of draft beasts; c. D toom bridle, reins, G Zaum, ON taumr"

First of all, to think that we learn the words of a small group of white men in Britain is mind-blowing to me. We all learn it, why? Because it's beautiful? Becsuse it gives us a sense of pride? Or because it's the easiest to talk to authority figures with?

A team was an adjective for a woman. "team woman" meant one who was childbearing. And 'team' was also a noun, meaning a set of children, or animals. The word 'team,' then, stands for things which were important to men's lives when they were created, pets and women. Fellow creatures. Maybe this term is patriarchal, but our history is our history.

Later on a variation of the word appears in German, 'Zaum." T-Z and ea-au have other occurances in in english and german words: the english 'two' is equivalent to the german "zwei," and the german "traum" corresponds to the english "dream." Seriously. D-T-Z is big shit in linguistics. And that german word means "bridle." Now the earlier situation, where both a sense of detachment and communication of feelings were generated by having a word for one's companions, is changed to a term charged with authority, with the ability to hold a bridle and thus steer whatever was bridled.

Sports teams no longer choose with whom they play. Only the very successful ones, like Lebron James or Kobe Bryant, are able to use their position also to craft their own identity; the vast majority of players remaining important mostly as imperfect machines. Producers of statistics. It's all so scienced up now that you know it's nothing like a family- the players don't have the ability to represent themselves anymore, except through flashiness, the courting of your attention.

2. Ex-Knicks Hill and Jeffries Come Up Big

By Chris Sheridan
ESPN.com

NEW YORK -- For the first 12 minutes, Tracy McGrady was back in superstar form. But the rest of the afternoon, McGrady's alumni game against his former team was impacted more by the two players the New York Knicks sent to the Houston Rockets in order to acquire McGrady and his mammoth expiring contract.

Jordan Hill, labeled a "bad rookie" by Knicks coach Mike D'Antoni is a particularly harsh pre-game comment, played the final 16:04 and scored 13 of the Rockets' 52 bench points as Houston stayed on the cusp of the Western Conference playoff race by rallying past New York 116-112 Sunday.

Jared Jeffries played all but five seconds of the fourth quarter, drawing three charges and blocking two shots in the final period as coach Rick Adelman went with his subs for most of the final quarter. Houston, ninth in the West, won for the fifth time in six games to move within five games of Portland and 5 1/2 games of seventh-place San Antonio pending the outcome of the Spurs' and Blazers' games later Sunday.

Hill claimed to feel no heightened sense of redemption in helping defeat the team that drafted him No. 8 overall last June, but his feelings might have been different if he were aware what his former coach had said about him 90 minutes before tipoff.

"I don't like to play bad rookies. I like to play good rookies," D'Antoni said, explaining that Hill was not showing enough in practice to warrant playing time ahead of the Knicks' more established frontcourt players. "I do like Jordan. I think he'll be a nice player in the league, but that's as far as it goes."

That comment was relayed afterward to Hill, who was rendered momentarily speechless.

"Didn't hear that, but what can I say? That's him," Hill said. "He's entitled to his own opinion, so if that's the way he feels, that's how he feels. I'm not trying to make a point. I'm just trying to play basketball. I just want to go out there and have fun and play my game."

We're so past all this.

We're postmodern, postgender, postfeminist, postrace,
postcolonialism, postrealism, postidealism, posthaste.
postrock, poststructuralism, postproduction, post-war,
postmortem, postapocalyptic, postpartum, posthardcore.

We are past what our ancestors were, now not just quantitatively, but qualitatively.

But, we have history. And if the knowledge of something exists, that thing exists, and so our
ancestors haunt us with their great struggles and successes. They pass into the realm of myth and imaginary.

But, of course, every generation is past the one that came before. You can't step through the same river twice, and nor can a culture truly stagnate. But it's that sense that we have to do things the way our parents did that really messes up our society, I think.

Perhaps the biggest -ism in our society is ageism.

We are all Cain and Abel.

You have been authorized to read this post.

What does that mean?

Author. Author-ity. Author-ize. We see these words are connected. I was thinking about this connection and had some interesting thoughts.

Authority and power go together. At least, if you have power, you get to pretend that you are an authority. But if you're an authority, you don't always have power. If you are sticking a gun in my face, I'll say that yes, you're right, 2+2=5. But just because you know more than I do about something doesn't mean I'll listen to you, and there's no way you can make me. Dig?

So what's this authority thing all about? Well, I think it's about creation. It's a little known fact that we all create our own worlds. Not interpret objective reality differently, because there is no such thing as objective reality, but create reality through our perception. "there are no facts, only interpretations." But sometimes, people have different interpretations! What happens then? Well, the one with more "authority" imposes their interpretation on the other. What's happening here is that a world is being destroyed (The world the nonauthority used to live in), and a person is being forcibly moved into the world of the authority. Another hallmark of authority is that it doesn't strive to create more authorities, but wants to keep its own. So soldiers are sent to Iraq, but not consulted on strategy or whether they should stop fighting. Or, I am told things by my professors, but I'm not allowed to stray too far away from what they say, or I will fail.

Authorities are therefore authors. They write us into stories. What kind of story doesn't matter, and this is the secret of authority. Authority, and reactions to it, are what get remembered, and transcribed as relationships of power, by the authors, the authorities, of history. Of course they'll write themselves as having "power," and being in control, since the whole charm of authority is seeming authoritarian. In actual fact the entirety of authority lies in the writing of history, since history contextualizes the present, and influences our actions. Those who tell us of America's great history want us to connect our current country to its past, which no longer exists, or perhaps only ever existed as words on a page. So authorites get credit/blame for things that happen. Hitler is to blame for 16 Million deaths (ludicrous), and Ronald Reagan is given credit for deregulation.

Authority is tautological because it defies logic because it doesn't exist. I have made a little phrase: "Authority is what seems like authority."

[X] is what seems like [X]

X = pornography, racism, homosexuality, a tree.

What must be grasped is that none of these concepts apply to reality. They are only part of a so-far useful construction, called language, that allows us to link thoughts to words. Language took a loong fucking time to develop, I bet. We say our ancestors were all dumb and shit but can you imagine being one of the first people to speak a language, or someone who helped? And they did all of this by accident. The most important things are never expressions of anyone's will, and this is what the illusion of authority tries to hide.

Situations. Authorities write situations. By this I mean that they supply the setting, plot, and characters for a play-like thing that they unfold before the audience/ actors. The secret of authority is that although authorities seem to get s to follow them, they are actually also following us. We go in circles around a field. Authority is a simulation of agency through situation construction.

Happiness is finding a situation you are in to be aesthetically pleasing.

Authorities are the descendants of Cain. They create his sign and have it placed on them. They are the one's asserting themselves destructively, through the destruction of worlds, in an unbalanced world. And Abel, the one who gets killed but is thought fondly of for being virtuous, that is who we are. Of course, there is no authority, and we are everything and nothing as well.
I had an interested German class today.

First of all, I was high. And then, I borrowed a pencil from someone I didn't know, and then my teacher told us about how Germany is kinder to "Others" these days because they legally forbid "hateful"/ offensive speech. Isn't this kinda like abortion? If you make it illegal, it only becomes more dangerous. I didn't understand his point. And then, I learned that "Alles" is a simple noun, with an article "das." It's like saying, "the everything." Except it sounds a lot better. There's also "das All," which I think is something like universe, but I'm not sure.

Then I found out we have to write a love story in German for Monday. Professor Huff said "You can make it about whatever you want. A frog that falls in love with a pig. Entertain me." So I'm going to write an essay about a professor named Stephen Huff who reads a paper by Adam Wadley and falls in love with it and gives it an A+. And then I'm going to see what he gives me! Making life part of my art. I like this idea alot.

I realized how big the world is today! There's so much empty space that things feel unnaturally close. But try looking at the world like you're in a 3D video game! It's sick.
so i set myself a task:
learn how not to ask

about the way authority
imposed itself onto me
was an 'I'
am now a "We"
gone is my humanity.

teacher says, it's alright dear,
your thoughts, you see, are just too queer,
"What's that, dear?"
can only fear
as we blink away a single tear.

I found myself getting biled up at finding myself.
We found ourselves getting riled up at finding ourselves.

Poetry sandbox:

aloft, askew:
see-through.

adorned, forlorn:
the warned.

polyglots, who plot:
robots.




"This is a phrase" said the sayer, saying, "This is a phrase."



Perhaps the gaps between our minds are not incontrovertible;
If not, however, I believe they do remain subvertable.




Gals galore, a free rapport,
with the hostess and her better half,
have a laugh
and talk it over:
they just might teach you not to bore.
now i sit
and i can't commit
to a single interpretation of time,

a single definition of "interpretation of time":
i can't commit to
"now i sit."

Jefferson Poem

This is a repost of a poem I wrote a year ago. It was inspired by Bob dylan's "talking blues songs," like Talkin' World War Three Blues," "John Birch Society Paranoid Schizophrenic Blues," and "Talkin' New York." All of these are great songs and I recommend them. (Youtube them!)


Thomas Jefferson visited me in a poem:
I almost didn't know'm.
He asked me how things were these days,
But I couldn't think of the right words to say,
So I decided to just show'm.
After all, since we're in a poem,
Travels are just turns of phrase.

We walked down a road, and saw a vet'ran
Finding a meal in a garbage bin.

We traveled to the once great plains
And to the Mississippi's now dark veins.

We flew high above our greatest cities
And inside tumors, itty-bitty,
And they looked the fucking same.

We sat on my couch and watched TV
After a while he said to me
You know, in my day, I fucked some slaves
But nothing then was this depraved.

I asked if he'd like to see a show,
And he checked his sun dial said, you know
It's really time for me to go.
So he clicked his heels and off he flew
Saying you know, I pity you.

"We hold these truths to be self evident..."
I sit and wonder where those words went.
I'm going to comment on a piece I read on ESPN.com now.

Q: What are some of the issues you see facing the Redskins' transition from a 4-3 to a 3-4, and how do you feel about Jim Haslett? It seems like it could be a hard transition because the Redskins have run a 4-3 for so long. What do you think?

Zach in Frederickburg, Va.

A: Haslett is a good defensive coach, and he brings a lot of the zone-blitzing schemes to Washington that he learned when he was with the Steelers. The biggest transition is involving Albert Haynesworth. He loves being a defensive tackle in a 4-3. He might not take to being a nose tackle or a defensive end who is forced to two-gap. Haslett's biggest challenge is having Haynesworth buy into the scheme and using him effectively. With the Redskins last season and with the Titans the rest of his career, Haynesworth was double-teamed, but he was allowed to worry about only one gap. There will be an adjustment at cornerback too, because there will be more zone defensive plays. In a perfect world, the Redskins would find a veteran nose tackle to handle the dirty work and let Haynesworth destroy things from the defensive end position.

- John Clayton "mailbag" column.


This is a great descriptor of sports, I think. The players are paid to be slaves: to the system, to the coach, to the point that they don't choose who they play with, where they play, or what the rules of the game are. It's like a five person rock band that gives over its group membership, location selection (and are forced to live wherever their "home arena" is!), and the tunings on the instruments they play. At the same time, "stars" in sports get special rules, from foul and travel calls and noncalls to steroids in baseball to the Tom Brady rule.

Also, if you don't know what I'm referencing:
- In the NBA, star players are players who score a lot of points. This is the flashiest part of basketball. The dunks, the 3-Pointers, the contested shots. The showmanship aspect of basketball is well rewarded: players perceived as better are treated more leniently by the referees; more fouls are called on players guarding them (allowing them to shoot two free shots, further boosting their scoring totals. (the logical extreme of this type of player is Dwayne Wade, who in the 2008-2009 season made, on average, 10.8 of his total 30.2 points per game from free throws, over 33%)).

Additionally, good dunkers are allowed to violate the league's traveling rule, which states that a player may take no more steps after he has stopped dribbling. A player is only allowed to "pivot," that is, stay planted on one foot while moving the other. However, dunks look better when the player picks up his ball before he leaps up, when still in motion. Actually, the rule was forgotten as the NBA progressed, written in the original rulebook, for some reason, and then applied regressively over the league's early history.


- Steroids are big in the baseball world. Or, rather, sterroids scandals are big in the baseball world. Finally, maybe it is best put this way: steroid nonscandals are a big deal in the baseball world.

In 1994 the league had a strike, and a season was cut off halfway. There was no World Series. As a generational theater, this was a bad move. The public went away from baseball and on to football and basketball, catapulting the standing of those leagues in the lives of the people of America. What could solve this problem? (Since the league can follow only its own interests)

Steroids! Here comes Mark MacGwire, I hear he hit a ball 500 feet! No, wait, here's Sammy Sosa, I hear he cleans his yard with a baseball bat! (Aw shit that's racist) No wait, here's Barry Bonds, he's our black version of a mythical white figure! (that's Babe Ruth, the founding celebrity of mediated baseball)

And then baseball went nuts. It became totally cutthroat, or perhaps only more openly so: the potential revenues skyrocketed as some of the population became very rich, and luxury boxes began to appear in stadiums. Nowadays, stadiums derive much more revenue from the more expensive seats than they did before. Instead of having first-to-come-first-served, democratic seating system, sports arenas have boxes, like old-timey theaters, for privileged patrons to watch from (and lose the humanity of the experience).

So the "baseball fans" were really just strung along by this group of money bastards who saw the whole thing as an enterprise, a system of investment and recouperation (and what recouperation! stadiums are often subsidized by local taxpayers!).


- Some rules stuff: in football, a player called the quarterback at one point steps back into an open field that some of his teammates, in a line, are defending from the opposing team's "rushers." He is looking for another one of his own teammates to throw the ball to, and his team will gain the amount of distance to where the second ball carrier can carry the ball. If one of the opposing "rushers" breaks through his team's "line," and tackles the quarterback when the quarterback has the ball, after which the quarterback drops the ball, one of two things could happen, and they are dictated by this rule:

NFL Rule 3, Section 21, Article 2, Note 2. When [an offensive] player is holding the ball to pass it forward, any intentional forward movement of his arm starts a forward pass, even if the player loses possession of the ball as he is attempting to tuck it back toward his body. Also, if the player has tucked the ball into his body and then loses possession, it is a fumble.[4]


So, if the Quarterback has already pulled his arm back, and has begun the forward motion of a pass, then the ball will not be recoverable by the opposing team, since an "incomplete pass" is not recoverable by the opposing team once it has hit the ground.

On the other hand, the last line of the rule says that if the Quarterback has tucked the ball before getting hit, then it will count as fumbled if dropped and that therefore the opposing team can recover the ball.

Now, the favortism:

In one of the plays in the 2002 AFC Divisional Playoff game, Tom Brady was hit in the pocket by Charles Woodson. He dropped the ball. Raiders player Greg Biekert jumped on it to recover it, and the ball was ruled fumbled, and recovered by the Raiders. At this point in the game there were less than two minutes left to play, and the Raiders led 13-10. If they had recovered the ball, they would have won. Now let me hit you with this: Charles Woodson is black, and Tom Brady is white.

Some people respond to that by saying that Quarterbacks are just predominantly white and linebackers are usually black.

To which I respond: exactly!

So here's what happened next: the call went up for "official review." In the NFL, calls (evaluations of rule infractions) can be challenged by the coaches. [they have to throw red flags on the field, it's hilarious] This was not such a situation. The "officials" of the game decided that the call needed to be inspected more closely.

It is not normal in sports to have someone reviewing a video recording of a play to analyze minute movements in the action, especially to decide such a thing as the SuperBowl. These "officials" are probably porxies for the owners of the teams and the league. The money in sports came after sports. Sports are like a shell for their hermit crabs of owners. The owner is no longer associated with the franchise, and the team is kind of autonomous, a collection of people (players, coaches, staff, maintenance workers, fans) all trying to do something together who need a lot of money to give it a purpose.
The Western concept of love is contradictory and needs to be replaced, since it has no meaning.

This is how I see love presented: sometimes you love people, sometimes you don't. it just happens, you don't try or get better at making it happen, except in very superficial ways (he's just not that into you, miss congeniality). Love is an outside force, present only sometimes.

This doesn't make any sense. Way create a concept we can never understand?

If some acts are loving and some things are not loving, who decided what was and was not love? Why can radically other configurations not be possible? In the Bible, God monopolizes love. Satan hates love. How can we say some people are incapable, or do not feel love? Having a narrow definition of such a central concept in the understanding of human life makes a part of humanity exclusive. Agreeing love sometimes happens means thinking that some, or all people, do not know how to love, or what love is. And if they do it, they do it by accident. Only some lovers are agents. Really?

I propose, in opposition, that both everything and nothing is love. And everything in between, too. Love is its own existence, as a concept, phenomenon, experience, field of study, topic of poetry, songs, theater, movies, paintings, sculptures, drawings, pornography, religion, and endless other things; the smallest gestures can be love, perhaps all gestures. At the same time, this pleasure exists only because it is agreed upon. Like any other aspect of society, it is negotiated and not a simple "active/passive" dichotomy.

"I love you" is really a terrible expression, since it implies that there is a subject and object of love. I propose in contra that love creates a higher creature, the living thing that is the relationship. Animal Magnetism. We have no way of expressing the idea I'm trying to, so use your imagination. Something is brought into existence that doesn't exist, the thoughts of the other person when they're not around, the polymerization of perspectives that occurs, similarly but differently in each person. This adds up to a much more mysterious conception of love, one which is like a ghost which haunts us, always present but only visible sometimes, when it sends a shiver up our spine.
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