Psychopolitik 2.0

Somewhere, Freud is grinning:

Tiger Woods finally looked like the No. 1 player in the world.In his first tournament since his divorce, Woods played his best round of the year Thursday at The Barclays by missing only one fairway, putting for birdie on all but two holes and shooting a 6-under 65 for his lowest score all season.

“It feels good to be able to control my ball all day like this,” Woods said. (emphasis mine)

Yeah, turns out I lied.  Sue me, I chuckled.

Some images just beg for re-captioning…

Saw this on Facebook, found it funny.

No, Facebook, I would not like to share every single page I go to online.  If I want to share something, I will tell you myself.

Edit: while you’re at it, tell those damn pop-out “share this!” boxes that, unless I float directly over the words “share this!”, not only do I not want to share anything, I don’t even want to see the box for doing so.  Oh yeah, and let Twitter know that it’s not a good idea to, when that stupid box pops out when I’m trying to click on something else, submit something as “shared” without verifying whether or not I have a Twitter account (as far as I know, I do not.  I established one & used it exactly once, to submit a deliberately provocative question to CNN, then said “this is dumb” & deleted it.  If it’s archived instead of truly deleted I don’t even remember the name I used for it).  As you may be able to tell by my site, I don’t like limiting myself to 140 words.  Or letters.  Whatever.

A few things about “The Decision”:

-Strategically, if winning is what matters to Lebron as he said, this was the best choice he could make.  I’ve been saying the past few years that he needs to be paired with a scorer effective enough to not be able to be left alone to go double James, and he’s gone waaay beyond that.  He went from being on a team whose next most effective scorer chewed up valuable paint space to get 12 freakin’ points per, to a team where the question for the opposition won’t be “who do we leave to double Lebron?” but “How much do we have to bribe the refs to let us play 5-on-8?”.

-As for whether he could’ve handled it better: no duh.  If it were my call, Wade & Bosh would’ve pretended to still agonize over their decisions, and instead of the stupid ESPN special Lebron would’ve just said “Miami.  You’ll see why…”.  The next moment, AP wire breaks the other two’s signings.  That way, the news would’ve largely been about the shock of the three of them, rather than about Lebron.

-Doesn’t this kinda fly in the face of the whole stereotypical “all they care about is money” grumbling?  The three of them agreed to take less money just so they could play together!  Besides, there’s two parties to a contract, and in sports the other is a billionaire, usually a reclusive old white one.  While I don’t think of it primarily in such terms, if the modern pro sports culture results in rags-to-riches stories for minorities it can’t be all bad.

-Dan Gilbert is a joke, btw.  If you thought he was a quitter then why’d you even want him back?

-The dolchstoss narrative roared forth with more force than even I expected.  Jersey burnings, people crying, and, well…check out what Cleveland.com had to post on their articles:

Note for commenters
We understand your anger, but please show that Cleveland has class: no racism, no vulgarity, and leave James’ family out of it.

Anyone else find it puzzling that racists would be able to watch basketball without bursting into flames?

Soccer doesn’t suck as bad as I previously thought.  Why do I say that?  Simple:

^^^^that, as so gloriously captured by Reuters, happened at the World Cup.  I have as a rule that nothing can consist of Pure Suck that has the chance of people being kicked in the face. So, congrats, soccer, you’ve moved past Golf.

It’s been too damn hot to think about much lately.  Did spot something I had a bit to say about: That chick that’s supposedly a Russian spy…does she remind anyone else of Erica Campbell* in that first pic?

(* – If you haven’t heard of her, the Google image search results will be NSFW.  Just warning you.)

This:

I’ve gotten a bunch of inquiries as to why I haven’t written about the NBA Finals. The reason is pretty simple—I find the Lakers-Celtics matchup depressing.  I’m an NBA fan. But I resent the NBA aristocracy, the tendency of just a tiny handful of teams to monopolize all the championships.

Another reason why I’ve been avoiding even watching the games.  Plus, I hate Kobe Bryant and think any team with him on it deserves to lose, and I’m sick of the narrative about the Celtics — “the Big 3″, age catching up with them, blahblahblah.  It was nice to see those guys finally win one a few years back, but enough already, if Phoenix had made it I’d be rooting for the Suns.

I see the speculation of the moment is Lebron James ending up in Chicago.  Two reasons why this is not going to happen:

1) Money.  The Cavs can pay Lebron the best if that’s what he’s concerned about, fact.  As for any sign&trade, the demand for players in return the Cavs would make basically nullifies the chances: they’d ask for the moon, and it’d defeat the purpose of making any deal since the receiving team would just be consigning themselves to a future as Lebron plus Some Random Schlubs We Picked From The Stands.  Add in that Chicago plays in the same division, and…no.

2) Think through the implications: The hopes of the city of Cleveland when the Cavs signed Lebron were that he’d make up for the eternal butthurt from the years of having a decent team only to get regularly scheduled beatings at the hands of Michael Jordan & the Bulls.  Lebron has been compared to Jordan, even at the moment wears #23.  For the Cavs to get so close, only for Lebron to bolt for their eternal enemy is not only too convenient as a narrative to bet on (much like the Kobe vs Lebron NBA Finals that never happens would’ve been), but would imply an overriding disillusionment with Cleveland on his part that has no real proof to back it up.  Him going to the Bulls wouldn’t be a mere business decision, it’d be a deafening roar of “FUCK YOU!!” towards Cleveland itself, beyond the team that resides there, a deliberate choice to have the rest of his career read as a knife in the back of a city that he damn near grew up in.  There’d be hangings of Lebron in effigy outside every Cavs game from that point on, even games that didn’t involve the Bulls, and it’d be another piece of the whole this-city-is-cursed griping that lives on in the drunken sob stories of local superfans.

I don’t get a sense that Lebron is that much of an asshole.  If any Cavs fans out there suspect he is, I wonder why they would support someone they think that of in the first place…

Crap, I missed that one:

A U.S. Muslim group has issued a dire Internet “warning” to creators of the satirical animated TV show “South Park” over a depiction of the Prophet Muhammad in a bear outfit.

“We have to warn Matt (Stone) and Trey (Parker) that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show,” said a posting on website RevolutionMuslim.com.

Remember what happened last time people got mad over images of Muhammad on South Park?  They stuck him in the opening theme.

The head of Revolution Muslim, Younus Abdullah Muhammad, 30, defended the posting.  “How is that a threat?,” he told Reuters. “Showing a case study right there of what happened to another individual who conducted himself in a very similar manner? It’s just evidence.”

This threat-not-threat stuff would make great fodder for a future episode…