On the other hand, I am somewhat mollified by her assurance that she has done the best possible job of any conceivable theoretical candidate.

While I realize that they got Pujols under the auspices of handing him some fakey award, I still feel like accepting it and preaching the gospel to the Tea Party could very well be worse than taking steroids.

I realize that professional athletes aren’t usually known for their political savvy, but I also have every reason to believe that Pujols and La Russa think Glenn Beck is a swell guy and a heck of a future political player for the Corporatist Party. It’s really sickening. I don’t know whether to blame the city of St. Louis, the entity of Major League Baseball, or Fox News for reaching its heinous tentacles towards my beloved baseball.

Either way, this event is an object lesson on being a well-rounded person. When you spend 23 and a half hours a day thinking about how to hit a curveball, you don’t have time to assess the epic buffonery and fakiness that comprise Fox New’s Corporate Spokesperson of the Year.

According to the (possibly apocryphal) tale, Lydians survived a famine by alternating days of playing dice games with days of feasting, to preserve resources. This allowed them to live for 18 years through a resource shortage, before playing one final game of chance to decide the civilization’s terms of exodus.

Herotodus’s chronicle could not be a more relevant historical anecdote today. There are literally millions of teenagers and 20-somethings who are either un or underemployed, who use gaming as a money-saving means of entertainment, not to mention an effective mental respite from their increasingly intolerable real lives.

While online communities such as World of Warcraft or Second Life were originally conceived of as modes entertainment, they also serve the role of facilitating survival. When food is sparse and work is elusive, there are fewer more efficient (and enjoyable) ways of spending a day than gaming while remotely connecting to a network of peers often in similar situations. And all of this is available for a meager monthly subscription fee that offers unlimited access to these worlds.

While McGongall’s lecture attempts to sell an optimistic vision of this trend, somehow hoping for a future in which we harness gamers’ collective intelligence to solve world problems, the near future seems a more likely forum for using gaming as economic hibernation.

Of course this theme isn’t new to the cyberpunk genre. While The Matrix contains the most obvious reference to gamers in hibernation, James Cameron’s Strange Days also included virtual reality as a sanctuary from a distopian future. Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash told tales of impoverished pizza delivery boys living in glorified storage pods with little more than a ‘metaverse’ jack on the wall for entertainment.

This is becoming present day reality at a very alarming rate. While it’s very noble for the rosy McGongall to seek out a way for humanity to utilize these lives cast away to the Internets, perhaps we should begin to wonder how we’ve allowed our society to deteriorate to the point that a mass hibernation is a rational reaction to it.

Originally posted on Technorati.

For those of you that don’t know, I spend the majority of my days VJ’ing for Frequency, an internet video show akin to radio’s Pandora.

While most of my work consists of combing the internet for various gems, I also occasionally get to create custom playlists to show off the site’s toolset for assembling video collections. Here are two recent ones I’ve compiled:

This one sort of defies description. It was assembled out of the most manic, random, and dangerously catchy of videos I’ve come across:

Videos that cause Psychoses

This other one is an uber-geeky collection of World of Warcraft themed clips…

The WoW Show.

Peruse, view, and let me know what you think. Bonus points to any custom collections of your own that you’d like to share.

I know that, as a WWF vessel, Space Chimp is supposed to instill a feeling of environmental stewardship in the viewer. Instead, I imaged a lifetime floating through the void, and thought how small my Earth-bound life would seem. How trivial is our day to day existence compared with the vastness of space? Going to the bank, making toast, chit-chatting with a co-worker — it’s hard to thing of these as anything other than Vonnegut’s analogy of a race of “wiggling tubes,” eating, dancing, dying, and giving birth to smaller tubes.

Is this all just a 3AM nihilistic ramble? Perhaps. But I think there’s also something to the fact that many, if not all of us have lost the meaning that should be afforded to our existence. We’ve lost it in the trivialities of modern life, in the day-to-day. Without a bold and/or transcendent adventure on the horizon, what’s the point of carrying on?

His fiddling rendition of the national anthem on July 4, at a Washington Nationals game, gives me the chills. It sounds like something out of a Ken Burns’ Civil War documentary.

In an effort to distract you, here’s a dazzling video entitled ‘Internet Warrior’ by Oh No Ono.

“-Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself.”

By the way, if you’re wondering why the coach has cerebral paulsey, check out the story of Zach Anner and his near-hosting of Oprah’s new show.

And so, the ravenous sports media culture finds itself T +24 hours past their biggest scoop of the summer.

The anointed one, the most finely tuned athlete/behemoth ever to come out of Ohio has left his hometown team. Instead of staying put and playing basketball martyr, LeBron James has decided to join two of his closest athlete/behemoth friends to form a mini-Harlem Globetrotter team in South Beach.

So, for fear of having to return to baseball, the World Cup, and other summer sports fare, the sports media has turned its attention to the jilted Cleveland fanbase.

And surely, there is suffering in Cleveland. This is a city whose last championship of any kind came via the NFL’s Browns 46 years ago. The Cavs, themselves, have never gone further than LeBron has taken them, as they have never won a title of their own.

If we’re to believe the media reports, every Cavs fan is now throwing an extended tantrum. They’re burning LeBron jerseys, screaming obscenities at the basketball Gods, and planning LeBron heckling parties at basketball arenas all over the country.

Now, what I’m about to say may hurt a little, Cleveland, but it’s for your own good. Acting like a scorned teenage girl who just found out that her Twilight Team Jacob friends have switched over to Team Edward doesn’t cast you in a very good light. It’s not likely to make you a preferred destination for future superstar players. And frankly, it’s not fair, given the circumstances.

You had seven years of one of the most prodigious talents in professional sports history. He took a team of stiffs, of cast-offs, and made them into a first-class basketball team. He played injured. He didn’t rest.

Do you realize that the man has averaged over 40 minutes a game played over his entire career? Only three players in history have averaged more: Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Oscar Robertson. Jordan averaged 38 minutes played a game. Kobe averages about 37. LeBron killed himself to put your team on his shoulders. He knew that leaving the floor would mean leaving a team unfit to compete out there, so on the floor he stayed.

At some point, the Cleveland ownership has to take responsibility for this. Here you have this transcendent talent, and you surround him with second-rate nobodies. This is supposed to secure your investment? The best player that the man has ever gotten to play with, in Cleveland, was the empty, aged husk of Shaquille O’Neal or an Antwan Jamison rent-a-forward.

The man never had a real point guard to play with, so he had to be the point guard. He never had a dominant post-player, so he had to do that too. He never had a go-to shooter, so he made himself the go-to shooter. Wouldn’t this tire you out? Can you imagine being an adult on a little-league baseball team for seven years? Wouldn’t the novelty wear off after a while? Wouldn’t you want to play in the adult league if given the chance?

This is, in many ways, like the end of a relationship. LeBron is like the girl that got away. You knew, in your heart of hearts that she was out of your league. You were a devoted boyfriend. You bought flowers and chocolate. You listened to her problems. You even spent three weeks at her parents house for Christmas instead of taking a needed vacation. But ultimately, she was a little bit too smart for you. She was probably way too good looking for you. You could only jealously snap and rage at the other potential suitors (especially when Bron went to play for Team USA) for so long before one of them stole her heart. It was a sick inevitability eating away at the pit of your stomach, but an inevitability nonetheless.

Now that it’s over, have a little class. She didn’t have to stay for seven years. She obviously loved you, despite your faults. To paraphrase Forgetting Sarah Marshall, “She tried to make it work. You have no idea how hard she tried. She took relationship classes, she talked to her mother, she went to therapy. She tried everything. You were just too stupid to notice.”

First posted on Technorati.

And now, a mostly unrelated hip hop video entitled “First World Problems,” which should make all of you feel terrible about yourselves — or at least about your griping.

There is actually a smattering of evidence that this will work to cool the surrounding areas, as lighter colors reflect more light than the mountain’s natural hue. Whether this project will make any actual appreciable difference in ice formations, however, remains to be seen.

While I offer the Peruvians kudos for their outside the box thinking, it’s hard to see this endeavor as anything other than the last desperate flailings of a civilization that jumped the enviro-shark a long, long time ago. We exceed at destroying living things in our surroundings. More often than not, our species makes up for this shortcoming by crafting ersatz yet glittering replicas of the life we snuffed out.

In taking a cue from the Peruvians, why don’t we dump a few million tons of Blue Dye Number One Food Coloring into the Gulf of Mexico, and paint BP’s dead sea turtles Crayola Screamin’ Green. Plush toy dolphins and manatees will suffice as a teaching tool to our grandchildren who will probably lack the funds to access Baton Rouge Sea World, home of the last seven living Gulf Coast sea creatures.

After all, wildlife is usually prohibitively expensive to maintain. It’s much more efficient to mass produce useless chotchkies.

Originally posted on Technorati.

This battle hymn against the corporatists was composed by MOTU and performed at the Beach Barrier Blues Festival in Long Beach, NY.

The Greatest American Five Fingers, The Teabag Doesn’t Fall Far From the Tree for Rand Paul, We Like Ice Cream Because It’s ICE CREAM!, What if We Just Lightly Sear Them?, Lakers Fail at Immigration, Invading Arizona for Fun, Profit, and Golf Courses, Greg Roots For the Insurance Company to Win the Bet, and the BuddhaFather.

Download Mep Report #121

It is now halftime in Game 7 of the “most anticipated” NBA Finals in years. The score is 40-34. Boston is winning, but that doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the Lakers and Celtics, the two most decorated teams in the history of the sport, have laid a stale, constipated turd on the heads of American basketball fans for the past week and a half.

Let me preface with a disclosure. I am a New York Knicks fan. This gives me an instant predilection for loathing both franchises in the finals. I would rather the series be canceled due to smallpox outbreak than watch either team celebrate another championship. That being said, I remain a huge fan of the sport, and as a Knick fan (and hence, an NBA orphan) I always look forward to good basketball, even without a strong rooting interest.

This series has provided nothing in the way of entertainment. There has not been a single noteworthy (forget memorable) finish. There has not been a single transcendent performance by a single player. Ray Allen nearly gave us something to be excited about with a record-setting 3-point performance in game 2, only to follow that up by shooting his next 25 3-pointers like a man with frozen steak fries for fingers.

I suppose it doesn’t help that Celtics point guard can’t shoot, dribble, or pass and the Lakers simply don’t have a point guard on their roster. Rajon Rondo, the newly crowned “best young point guard in the league” turns the ball over like it activates a bonus in his contract.

Kobe Bryant, the man who I’ve been told 64,785 times really really wants another championship, is roughly 2-62 shooting the basketball. The formerly great Kevin Garnett apparently used up all of his historically great passion to will the growth of a goatee.

Boston coach Doc Rivers calls timeouts every 29 seconds to remind his team to try harder. And, in fact, that has been the single superlative that any announcer can come up with to describe the action in this series. “They play with passion.” Unfortunately, the same can be said for the participants in leper colony intramurals.

I just stopped typing to watch the following series of events… Rondo falls down and turns the ball over… Kobe falls down and turns the ball over… Rasheed Wallace shoots an airball… Odom falls down and turns the ball over. The NBA, this is where AMAZING happens!

Thank God for Jeff Van Gundy. With 2:00 to go in the 3rd quarter, he realizes, “…This is one of the most poorly played games you’ll ever see.” I wonder if the NBA will order his ritual execution before the fourth quarter.

Apparently in response to Van Gundy’s criticism, Doc Rivers has inserted Brian Scalabrene into the game. I’m just spitballing here, but perhaps Rivers believes that if you increase the awkwardness factor of a game past its critical mass, an Awkward Vortex will tear a hole in the space/time continuum, allowing us to go back to a time before this abomination of a series ever was a twinkle in Phil Jackson’s eye.

While we’re talking about the past, let’s not dwell on the fact that the rise of these two franchises was caused directly by nepotistic, collusion-heavy deals that delivered these two teams their star players. Never mind the fact that Kevin Mchale a loyal Celtic alum (as GM of the Timberwolves) traded Garnett to the Celtics for peanuts, followed by Jerry West, a loyal Laker alum (as GM of the Grizzlies) traded Pao Gasol to the Lakers for peanuts. Let’s not go there.

This NBA Finals has given me nothing to cheer for. In fact, it has drained future cheers out of my body. It has been a black hole for skill, talent, and alluring play. In the words of Billy Madison, we are all dumber for having seen it. I award the NBA Finals no points, and may God have mercy on its soul. Regardless of who ultimately ends up with the most points tonight, there are no winners in this series. Boo, I say. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

By the way, I recognized the on-screen lecturer as Richard Muller, professor of physics at University of California, Berkley. I actually took his class “Physics for Future Presidents” via a free podcast available on the intrawebs. I highly recommend you check it out, if you’re a science buff.

Russ has way more footage that’s unprocessed, but here’s a little taste of what that looks like:

To root along with me, here’s Denmark’s schedule:

June 14 (7:30 AM Eastern) vs. Netherlands
June 19 (2:30 PM Eastern) vs. Cameroon
June 24 (2:30 PM Eastern) vs. Japan

Our first treasure in the NSFW archive is called “Vacuus Numb.” Its characters’ paralysis induced by the nearby flickering box, is probably some kind of media consumption critique. As it stands, I mostly see Irresistible French Existentialist Artsy Weirdness.