Larry Bird is Awesome

So here we have an interesting little article about the fact that some random man voluntarily extended his jail-sentencing in order to match Bird's number. I would say that this shows a complete reversal of priorities, but, obviously, someone who's going to jail for thirty years already has a wacked-out view of what the hierarchy of value in his life should be. Three years of freedom? Nah, not at all...I'll definitely trade that for some inconsequential numerical forced-coincidence between the number of years I'm in prison and the number on the back of the best White-Guy Basketball player ever. See, the absurd thing about this is, that it's really not all That absurd. It's simply human. If you were to dissect the choices and practical value-systems of most human beings (including myself...and I say 'practical value systems' denoting how people's actions define their priorities, as opposed to what they say they are...which is usually really just a wish-list that comes from a certain, oft-defeated portion of the brain) you would find similar - if not so obvious or eggregious - upturnings of logic reason soul heart faith dogtongues etc.etc. It happens all the time, but it usually just happens in ways that we are accustommed to, so we don't notice it. But when we read an article like this, it's easy to say 'that's weird, that's strange, that's perverse, that's Other, that's not me, I'm different than that.' But, actually, part of the reason it's intriguing is because it's a mirror. God knew a lot about this when he spent a lot of time talking to the cats who wrote the Bible about not putting too much stock in weird statues and numerology and whatnot.

You know that song by Bright Eyes on that album (I've not heard the whole thing) where he ends it with some faux-radio interview put over some 'ethereal music'? I hate that frikkin' thing. First of all, the man's singing voice can sometimes get annoying, but its stutter and slowness makes the standard 4/4 timing of the songs interesting in a strange way. When he's talking, it's simply annoying and pretentious and whiney-sounding, especially when he's Saying Such pretentious BS about 'well, you know, fevers symbolize this and mirrors symbolize that and...' take a lesson from Bob, don't explain your frikkin' songs, especially not easily and symbolically, and don't hide your tunes behind this miasmal mist of 'deep' pseudo-impromptu poesy interview shmaltz Arrrrrr it's bad. I don't even know if the songs on that album are good or not, because every time he opens his speaking mouth and says something uninteresting and arrogant I want to kill someone, usually him, and usually with a medieval mace or a spork or something (always falling back upon the spork for 'interesting randomness.' Still doing it after all these years, when I attempted to woo the wacky redhead with my melancholic sweet strangeness. Didn't work, but I've since moved on to higher ground, though I am now in the valley, where the pellets of poison are flooding my waters. Good thing, though, that beer and blogs act as antidotes to the pellets. Good thing.

You know, I mostly love my Mac, but sometimes, and I don't know how, I press a certain button or graze that touch-pad, and all of a sudden the cursor moves to some godforsaken place on the page or even opens a different program and all of a sudden I'm typing the word 'the' in the middle of 'Bright' so that it becomes Brtheight, and I have to delete it and then move back down to start where I had left off but some unforeseen unnatural force had moved my cursor backwards, forcing me to interact with old words that I'd already written and was through with, and, in doing so, perverting the meaning and structure of those words.

This is a metaphor for memory.

Another intriguing thing that we have to fess up to about Larry Bird is that a lot of people like him (including myself, in some ways) more than they should because he's white and in the 80s he was on the Celtics, which was by far the whiter of the two dominant teams, in the cold civiliized Irishly-related Northeast, instead of in the hot horny horrible sinful West Coast of LA where a lot of people are black and get AIDS. It's like when I was sitting next to my grandma watching a college track meet that my brother was in, and she was rooting for the white guy in a race that had nothing to do with my brother's school, not in a horrible racist way, but as if that meant we were segregated by teams. The Celtics were that way for a lot of white folk...They were their team because they were mostly white like them. And there is a great history of racism in Boston. At least that's what I remember from some short plug for a TV show and it mentioned how the Red Sox were the last team to get a black player because of racist reasons.

Goin' to Office Max, gonna buy me some white folders. Goin' to Office Max, gonna buy me some white folders.