Bill Simmons also thinks Andrei for Marion is a good idea.
Really, the only logical move for the Suns is Kirilenko. He solves their chemistry issues, replaces Marion's rebounding/shot-blocking/defense and gives them a ton of flexibility with lineups.
I'm willing to bet that more than half of the students here are liberal, which is fine. But even in Constitutional Law, when talking about abortion and freedom of speech, the only ones speaking out are conservatives (one in particular really, but he knows his stuff and isn't an idiot). I would have expected a burning at the stake if anyone mentioned that talking about abortion should be controlled...
Westbrook scores on a 25-yd touchdown run on the Eagles' first drive. I went with my gut and it has already paid off.
[update: he just scored another touchdown!]
[update2: another TD for Westbrook]
I have almost no confidence in my fantasy team this week. I have 3 minutes to decide if I want to start Maroney over Westbrook, this would be easy if Westbrook was 100% and had a full week of practice. I also benched Cotchery at the last minute because of his shoulder and because Pennington is playing hurt. And just for good measure, LJ is playing against the Minnesota defense and he hasn't done jack squat this year.
Decisions, decisions...
Dear Andrei Kirilenko:
As a Salt Lake native and die-hard Jazz fan, let me first tell you that I have really enjoyed watching you play over the last 4 seasons. I realize you've been in the league for 5 seasons, but your injuries and your disappearance last year make it seem like it's only been 4. You have an incredible knack for finding the ball and making big defensive plays. You also have a knack for taking ill-advised shots, letting players beat you off the dribble with the hopes of blocking the shot from the backside, dribbling too much, driving into traffic with nowhere to go, and just generally disrupting the team's offense.
You were "the man" on the '03-'04 squad that managed to win 42 games and you thought that you deserved Pau Gasol type money. Larry Miller eventually agreed and you got a max contract, so what happened next season? You only played in half the games and the Jazz struggled to 26 wins. The next season, despite playing 5 more minutes per game, your shooting percentage went down, followed by your free throw percentage, blocks, and points while your turnovers went up. That squad won 41 games while you sat out 13 games.
Which brings us to this last season. Your minutes fell from 38 to 29, a significant but not life-altering amount. The Jazz finally got to realize their investment in Carlos Boozer and discovered that he was much more reliable as an offensive player, which cost you shots (falling from 10 to 6). How did you react? You withdrew and played with lackluster effort. Quite a change from "the man" we saw on the 2004 team.
This all culminated with your infamous crying episode during the Houston series, which was an embarrassing series for a player with your skill (5 ppg, 3 rpg, and 57% ft). You seemed to regain much of your form during the series against Golden State, and all of us thought we had our man back. Of course it was too little too late as your roller-coaster off season ended in a trough. In 17 playoff games you averaged 9.6 ppg and 5.2 rpg, not any better than Matt Harpring (9.3 and 4.8) who played 6 less minutes per game than you.
My point is this: if anyone should be complaining, it is us, the fans. You negotiated a max contract and you have not lived up to the expectations of such a hefty salary. Blaming your performance on minutes played is a loser's argument, if your play was worthy of your contract you would have had more minutes to play. If this frustration hadn't gotten the best of you, you might have taken fewer bad shots or not driven wildly to the hoop in search of a foul. The millions that the Jazz have spent on you over the last 2 seasons could have gone towards players who weren't concerned about their minutes.
I will cherish many memories of you in the Delta Center, especially the first 4 games of the '04-'05 season when you averaged 17.5 points and 6.5 blocks, I was at 2 of those games and I won't forget them. I wish you well in your future basketball endeavors (except against the Jazz) and I hope that you don't carry the same sense of entitlement wherever you go and won't shrug your shoulders when people ask what's happened to your game. It vanished when you started caring more about your role than your team.
sincerely,
Me
After today, I don't know if I ever want to get married. I have seen WAY too many people's marriages fall apart after only a couple years, including some family members. We all have this idealistic view of the perfect spouse and the perfect life, but that is a giant pile of shit. The truth is that you'll probably only get married because you want to feel loved and you'll be worried that this is your best chance of a happy life. You'll resent your spouse because they aren't the perfect person you want them to be, they'll resent you for not understanding/not loving them/not being perfect yourself. You'll trudge through years of marriage, and probably some kids, then after 4 or 5 years you'll realize it was a huge mistake and you'll want out.
"It all seems so perfect. You've dated for months or even years. You've shared both the good times and the bad times. You've endured commitment. You love each other unconditionally. Marriage seems like the only logical next step right? After all, it was meant to be...The next thing you know, you're a bitter, romantically deprived, sexless, emotional disaster. That ring on your finger feels like a garrote around your neck. You feel as though you've been herded into mental slavery. You think back to your wedding day and that walk down the isle doesn't seem so pristine anymore. In fact, it feels as though that walk was like that of a deathrow inmate on his way down the prison corridor for the last time. That's right. Your married and half the time you're wishing you were dead , the other half wishing it was your spouse. What happened to all the rhetoric about the everlasting bond and life-long joy of married life?
The greatest myth ever to deceive humanity is the myth of marriage. We've all been duped into believing that marriage is the end-all remedy to our loneliness; that tying the knot is a mandatory function we all must seek during our brief tenure on earth. Wake up people! It's time to face the chilling reality. Marriage isn't a cure for our want of companionship, it's the disease of imprisonment. You'll be pleading to be euthanized in no time at all as millions upon millions have already found out. Look at the marriage world around you. Divorce is at an all-time high and while the "experts" toil over the tedious statistics, trying to psycho-analyze and negotiate a solution to the crisis, those of us who've been to hell and back are frantically trying to warn the oh-so-envied singles of the impending doom that awaits them if they elect to tie the noose...er, the knot." (link)
"Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel."
Leonardo Di Vinci
Does anyone else think 34% is way too high? He's coming to NY to speak to the UN, I am immediately reminded of a West Wing episode, Posse Comitatus.
I was debating whether or not to start Chris Brown in my fantasy league yesterday. There are 2 slots and Westbrook was an easy choice, but the second slot had Larry Johnson in it. About 10 minutes before the Titans/Colts kickoff, ESPN informed me that 2 starting linebackers were out for Indy, add that to the stellar performance by Brown last week (175 yards) and the fact that Johnson was facing the Bears defense, and I HAD to start Brown. What did he give me? 4.6 points. For those of you who don't speak fantasy language, this is really, really bad. Like, pathetic. Like, I should apologize to all the other team owners in my league for giving fantasy owners a bad name.
[Johnson would have given me 11.7 in a fairly craptacular performance, and 2:09 into the second quarter tonight, Westbrook has given me 7.8]
[update: Westbrook pulled through for me and scored just enough points to send me to victory in week 2. I won by one point.]
...bug the crap out of me:
NY Times Co. v United States 403 U.S. 713 (1971).
My brain has officially shut off. I'm in Con Law and we're discussing freedom of speech, but all I can think about is how comfortable my socks are.
One night, a trader gets home from work, late as usual. As he’s getting undressed in the bedroom, for some reason he is overcome by curiosity and decides to go snooping in his wife’s dresser. In the very first drawer he opens, he discovers something truly strange: $12 in cash and three loose kernels of corn.
Downstairs, he admits to his wife that he went snooping.
“Oh, so you found it,” she says.
“Yes,” he says, “but what is it?”
The husband and wife have not been close for years, and now the wife admits that she has had affairs, and that in remembrance of each affair, she stashed a kernel of corn in her drawer. The husband is taken aback, but also relieved. He, too, has had affairs — and so he says, quite slickly: “Well, look, I’m willing to forget about all this if you are.” After all, he has had far more than three lovers on the side.
“Fine,” she says.
There is an awkward silence. Then he asks: “But what about the $12 in the drawer along with the corn?”
“Oh, that,” she says. “When corn hit $4 a bushel a month ago, I decided to cash in.”
Yoda, from Star Wars Episode I:
Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering.
Fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate; that hate menaces stable government.
The NFL has been running a commercial featuring Shawne Merriman running around hitting guys and generally being destructive. Why is this hypocritical? Merriman was suspended for 4 games last year for...wait for it...violating the league's steroids and related substances policy. I understand that he's "done his time," so to speak, but this guy shouldn't be promoted as a role model. I think he's awesome as a football player, but why couldn't the NFL promote someone who HASN'T been busted for 'roids? Like, maybe, Zach Thomas or DeMeco Ryans?
[Update: I've seen this commercial about 5 more times since Sunday and the first half (the half with Shawne) is missing, it's only the second half with Stephen Jackson running around and through people]
Now that I've had a good night's sleep and talked with the roomie, let me follow up to yesterday's post:
Roomie feels almost exactly the same way about parties like that and about the forced and contrived conversations. He gets through it, though, by getting drunk and using the social lubricant to feel comfortable. I can't do this when there's only beer around; I find beer to be mostly repulsive, except in small amounts and only right out of the bottle.
It feels better that Roomie feels the same way about those people, that they aren't really relied upon in social situations as friends, but acquaintances who we see often. And I don't want anyone to get the impression that I think less of these people, I'm sure a lot of them were raised (so to speak) on that kind of partying, so I don't hold that against them.
All in all, it appears to have been a one-night "cool kids" rejection thing that I am 97% over at this point.
I don't know if it's because I got into the game too late or if it's fallout from the really awesome rumor that my ex started about me after we broke up, but for some reason the "cool" kids still can't seem to accept me. I figure this is for 1 of several reasons, or a combination:
For some strange reason tonight, after doing my Constitutional Law reading, I felt inspired to watch a particular episode of The West Wing. This episode, "The Supremes," deals with the appointment of Supreme Court justices. In order for the White House to nominate who they really want they have to agree to also nominate who the Republicans want, as there are 2 seats open. Obviously these 2 candidates are as far apart politically as 2 people can get, one is a liberal woman who has actually had an abortion and the other is a conservative man who basically calls liberalism "the new socialism." Yet they get along like 2 fans of opposing teams, chiding each other and "arguing" as if debating who to draft with the 7th pick in a fantasy football league. Here's why I am blogging this at midnight: as they were discussing, I was understanding. They talked about the Commerce Clause, Lopez, Casey, suspect classes, substantive due process, the 14th Amendment, affirmative action, and DOMA. As often as I joke about blocking out the last year to save my sanity, one would think that I am not learning much. Clearly that is inaccurate.
