I grew up in the era of the great rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics. I suffered through Final after Final of Boston trouncing the Lakers, and I reveled in the Lakers first triumph which led to their dynastic ascendancy and the fading into obscurity and (deserved) shame of the Celtics. Thus, it is with great shock and heavy heart that I say…

Go, Boston!!!!

 
I can’t believe I said that. I hope all my friends still back in L.A. don’t disown me for it. But I have reasons. Yes, I do.

I hate Kobe Bryant. I don’t want the punk to ever get another championship ring, but especially not with the Lakers. For all the talk of how much he has “changed” this year and become a team player, he is still a petulant, self-important brat who thinks the team he plays for is the L.A. Kobes. I will never understand why the team owner and management thought him so important they shuddered at his every threat and kowtowed to his every whim. Sure, he is a fine individual player, but this ain’t tiddly-winks!

Since dumping Shaq by Bryant royal decree, the Lakers have been nowhere near the championship. That’s the way it should be. I hate that they’ve gotten this far. I hate they are close enough for Kobe to be out getting his ring finger sized. (When he walked into the jewelry store, the owner said, “Oooo, another affair, Mr. Bryant?”) I hate that they ended up playing Boston. And for all the myriad reasons I hate Kobe Bryant I think the most damning and egregious of all is that the bastard made me root for the Boston Celtics.

First I move from Los Angeles. Then I cheer on the Celtics to defeat the Lakers. What’s next, buying a skybox at Yankee Stadium?

Damn you, Kobe. Damn you and the spineless corporate honchos you rode in on.

Tags: Basketball, Boston Celtics, Kobe Bryant, Los Angeles Lakers, NBA, NBA Finals, Sports
Comments: none

My first article after moving this blog from JoeUser to here proclaimed, “Welcome to the new blog, same as the old blog,” but it’s not the same blog, is it? The articles are shorter, more facetious, less often updated, and (almost counter-intuitively) far less personal.

I believe it all comes down to the difference between being out here on my own versus the community atmosphere of the hosted blog. As part of the community, I knew whatever I wrote would be read and commented on. While intellectually I know I get more page views here on my website, it lacks that feel and knowing. Here, I’m more likely to blog something shorter, which I’d have felt self-conscious about over there. By the same token, perhaps I put more effort into creating longer form works, expecting greater scrutiny over there.

The same goes for updating. A blog community almost guarantees a level of readership. Knowing absolutely that a readership was regularly looking in, compelled me to update more often, to put mental energy into looking for and creating article topics to keep up the flow that sustained the readership. Without that tangible feel of a dedicated readership, the pressure to maintain my performance is missing.

I call the less personal nature of this version of my blog counter-intuitive because I’d imagine that having a sense of being adrift, being out here alone, without people looking at me, would cause me to loosen up and say things I might not if I knew certain people were watching. That hasn’t been the case. I think perhaps the community gives a false feeling that you know who is looking, as if that blog weren’t as open to the whole world as this one is. You focus down onto the group you see and forget the greater mass that you don’t. Here, there is no-one to focus on, so the greater unknown surges to the forefront of perception and consequently brings inhibition. “Hmmm, I wonder just who might read this?” In the small community, you get the false sense you know who will be reading.

Along with the community inspired delusion you know who will be reading comes the delusion you know what they will be thinking. If you know your friends (and nemeses), you have a pretty good idea how they will react to certain things. You can fool yourself into mentally gauging their reactions, thinking you know how far you can go and when to pull back. With having a stand-alone blog, with absolutely no idea who your readers are or how they might react, comes the realization you don’t know what is out of line, no idea when someone might become hurt or outraged by what you write, no imagining you know how far is just far enough or way over the line.

What it all amounts to is, no, this isn’t the same blog. In some ways it is like starting from scratch. I have to feel my way around, and master this beastie all over again.

Tags: Blogging, blogs, Gene Nash
Comments: 4

This from unNEWSual.com (which I happen to own):

One Israeli tourist in New Zealand, however, was fed up with the constant attention from male Kiwis, so when a rowdy band of road workers started wolf whistling she decided to put them in their place — by taking off her clothes!

Reuters quotes one Police Sergeant Peter Masters as saying, “She said she had thought, ‘Bugger them, I’ll show them what I’ve got.’”

Read the rest of the story at this link.

Tags: strange, weird
Comments: 2

This today from TMZ (by way of MomLogic.com) regarding Hillary Clinton and coconuts:

Apparently Chelsea wanted to try a coconut when she was 4-years-old, and Hill tried to grant her daughter’s wish. The Senator managed to find a coconut in Arkansas, but couldn’t crack it when she finally got it home. Even hubby Bill, a Rhodes Scholar, was at a loss. With 50 years of education between her and the former prez, Hillary confessed neither one of them could figure out how to break open that nut.

Note to Hill and Bill: It’s called a hammer. *

Let’s hope that 3 A.M. call won’t be about an imminent monkey attack. Hey, I’ve seen Planet of the Apes, thank you very much!

 
*You might want to hammer a nail into the coconut first to make a couple small holes and drain the milk before going all Lizzie Borden on its fuzzy hide.

Tags: Bill Clinton, coconut, Hillary Clinton
Comments: 3

“The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” — Jesus (John 10:11)

What kind of “shepherd” is the wrong Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.? Does going all over television this past weekend, “defending” himself and further spouting his bigoted lunacy at the expense of his good friend and congregant (i.e “sheep”) senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama (whom Wright dismissed as acting like a politician), qualify as “laying down his life for the sheep?” Resoundingly, no! Wright showed absolutely no concern for anyone but himself.

He didn’t come off like a man defending himself, but a shameless huckster with a personal agenda to push. In fact, he single handedly negated all the prior defenses of him, most especially that we’d only seen a handful of cherry-picked, out of context snippets which didn’t truly represent the man and his beliefs. Wright himself proved that those “out of context snippets” are exactly who the man is and what he believes. Wright’s major accomplishment this weekend was getting Obama to finally denounce him and run the other way as fast as he could.

Wright not only didn’t “lay down his life for the sheep,” he saw a wolf coming (that evil ol’ “MSM”), picked up the sheep (Obama), and threw it to the wolf to save his own hide. Then he drove into town and signed a deal for his new book, How I Fought Down The Evil, Bigoted Wolf!

What did Jesus have to say about that?

“The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.” (John 10:12-13 NIV)

Cares nothing for the sheep. Wright is the definition of an hireling. He’s an embarrassment to every community to which he belongs. He’s an embarrassment to Christians, he’s an embarrassment to his former congregation (especially the Obamas), and he’s an embarrassment to African-Americans (unless y’all think that talk about whitey giving you AIDS is helping you out). I hear Local 825 of the Union of Pompous Windbags is even considering revoking his membership.

For now, Hireling Wright is riding his 15 minutes of fame for all they’re worth. You can’t get rid of the guy, he keeps popping up like a bloated corpse in the Hudson River. And I’ll bet right about now that’s exactly what Obama wishes Wright was.

Tags: Barack Obama, Christianity, Current Affairs, Current Events, Jeremiah A Wright, Jeremiah Wright, Religion
Comments: 1