Eleven Stories Spent, One Still in the Hole

Please insert hilarious penis joke here.

Normally, I can't stand Skip Bayless

In this case, he's the lesser of two evils--the other being Milton Bradley, of course.

Good luck in Seattle, Milton. Without it, you're destined for an early retirement.

The Home Stretch: finishing that which you've started

Let’s say something was riding on you making a single layup—your sanity, for instance. You make it, you stay sane; you miss and you’re fucked. No one would stand in your way, either. You’d have a clear lane to the iron. What are the odds you’d make the bucket?

Let’s make it easier: the rim of the basketball hoop is only three feet off the ground and you’re six-one. You could stand over the cylinder, this orange mouth, holding the ball with two hands. All you have to do is let it fall. Nothing but net, right? How certain would you be in your ability to make the point-blank shot? Would your limbs shake? After all, your sanity’s at stake, here.

Perhaps, while taking a deep breath, the weight of anxiety would become too great and the ball would slip through your sweat-slick palms. Maybe you panic and try to catch the ball before it falls, accidentally batting it away. Nowhere close. Maybe you let go early and because you were in the middle of a deep breath, you’re no longer lined up with the cylinder, and the ball skips around the rim. The hollow sound of iron echoing within the sphere of inflated leather, laughing at your misfortune with each bounce—have you lost your mind, yet?

Or worse, maybe your focus remains intact. You stay calm, collected: you don’t even break a sweat. Confidence level is at an all-time high. You let go, but it’s an air ball. It’s not that you’ve missed the rim. No. The ball never drops. It hangs, waist-high, suspended between your open hands and the mouth of madness.

If you go insane, how aware would you be of your mental condition? There’s a good chance you wouldn’t remember having missed the shot. Wouldn’t it be worse to have made it and remember the moment you almost drove yourself mad? Wouldn’t you replay that scene over and over again? Wouldn’t your inability to get that memory out of your head drive you insane?

Here's a question for you:

When taking a digital picture, how do you get the neon lights in the background to smear across the foreground of the photo? Do you know what I mean? Have you ever seen those pictures that look like the camera person got the shakes right before clicking the fucking button, though the people in the photo remain in focus? Wow, that turned out to be more than just ah question. But you've seen these pictures, I'm sure. Most likely on FacialBook, too.

I want to know how these pictures can be taken. The reason being: I don't ever want to accidentally take a picture that turns out that way. It takes away from the focus of/people in the picture. If the subject of the photograph isn't interesting enough on its own, then it's probably not worth taking a picture of it in the first place. Those types of effects act as a photo dressing, some flitzy accessory to distract you from realizing that whatever you did the night those pictures were taken was really fucking boring. You want lights zipping past your face like that, get some glow sticks and go to a rave.

oup-ta, oup-ta, oup-ta, oup-ta, oup-ta

Seriously?

Some of the remaining '85 Bears are remaking "The Super Bowl Shuffle."

For a Boost Mobile Commercial.

Lame.

Fuck you, winter funk. Fuck you.

Talk Dirty to Me

Late night commercials and informercials are my favorite. They're hilarious, ridiculous, and horribly produced/constructed. One that I have trouble with, though, is the phone sex commercial for LiveLinks. There's a line in the spot that says something to the effect of "It's a proven fact: talking is more stimulating than typing."

I guess the phone sex industry, like almost every other business, has been negatively affected by this internet thing, or whatever the kids are calling it these days. But instead of focusing solely on the positive aspects of the service it provides, LiveLinks decides to setup a compare and contrast between itself and its main competitor--the internet. Stu-pid. Have you ever searched for anything on the internet? It doesn't matter what you type, something sick, twisted, sexual, or a combination of the three will come up in the results. No amount of talking can compare to that.

Also, the "Typing vs. Talking" argument the commercial poses makes me wonder if LiveLinks is comparing cyber sex to phone sex. Isn't cyber sex an antiquated practice? I don't know. Maybe it isn't. I've heard things about kids today having the sexting on their phones, so it stands to reason that it can still happen online. LiveLinks should really present some stats. How many people still use chat rooms? Which areas of the brain are triggered by talking/hearing as opposed to typing/reading? Does it depend on the person? I know I've read some pretty stimulating literature (in chat rooms, too). And even if LiveLinks was able to prove that talking is more stimulating than typing, its forgetting one key factor: the other people in the chat room with whom you're communicating can't hear you cry when it's over.