ANYWAYS I'm pretty sure I mentioned Mark "The Shark" Titus (I don't think I refered to Mark as "The Shark" last time..so sorry for that, Mark.) back at the beginning of this show but for the forgetters and the underinformed this guy's a senior at Ohio State and he runs a blog called Club Trillion, where he discusses the life of a walk on Division I basketball player. I find it hilarious. He's gained a little recognition recently because his page passed the 2,000,000 hit mark. He uses blogger, too, and we started our blogs within a week of each other (Club Trillion went up October 24, The 'Pad on or around October 30..). So unless his blog got 1,990,500 hits in its first week then we really haven't been on the same path...damn. But I'm not mad at him. Hell, I can't do any of this:
Not the lay ups. Definitely not the bike shots. Wait, I drink Gatorade...I guess Mark and I aren't that different, after all... Had I be a rising senior playing college basketball while having a loyal blog following, maybe I, too, could have entered the NBA draft only to have the NBA ask me to remove my name...twice.
The conversation I had with the DOBO [Director of Basketball Operations at Ohio State] ...basically featured him telling me that the NBA had called the Ohio State basketball office and requested that I take my name out of the draft because they feared that I was making a mockery of the process. He claimed that it wasn’t all that serious, but as a precaution I should not talk about the draft on my blog any more. I kindly obliged.A funny summation from a third party that has a catchy title can also be read by clicking the following link:
Today, (no this isn’t an FML) Dobo again approached me, only this time his face suggested that either the situation with the NBA had escalated or he found out that I was the one who spread peanut butter underneath his car handle door. Unluckily for me, it was the former, but luckily for me, he still doesn’t know that I was responsible for the peanut butter so keep that hush if you don’t mind. The NBA had called back and this time they demanded I pull my name out "or else."
...I’m not really all that upset about them treating me differently. In fact, I’m somewhat excited. I could very well be the first person in the history of the NBA to basically be told to go away. I’m aware that the NBA has kicked guys out before, but I’ve never heard of anyone who meets all the requirements being told that they can’t even be in the draft. Think about all the people who came before me who apparently were not enough of a train wreck to be told to stay out. People like Shawn Kemp, Dennis Rodman, and Zach Randolph were allowed a chance to play in the NBA, yet my blog and I aren’t. Ladies and gentlemen, please keep your kids away from me. I’m a loose cannon who simply cannot be trusted.
I don't really have a problem with this move. Savvy on his part; love it. But I'd kind of expect this from any professional sports organization. I guess I'm more surprised to find out that you can just "enter" the NBA draft. I expected the NBA to charge $50large or something to get your name "entered." I don't really have a good reason for this thought...it just seemed like something I thought the NBA would do to make a buck and also keep folks they don't think belong out of the way. Most all of this "charge" could be picked up conditionally by the agent a player is signed with, and upon being drafted the player would then pay the fee back to the agent along with their rip of salary. See, it makes sense. I guess you learn something new every day..
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As I'm looking into Mac products I couldn't help but laugh at the rant I found on Apple "product development." I've had this bookmarked for awhile just like many other things I haven't found a good way to tie it in to anything interesting. This isn't a perfect application but it's certainly random enough to fit with this particular blog...here we go (size changes added for my own amusement. And for a little em-PHA-sis)!
Okay, here’s what’s chapping my dickskin lately: Apple. Steve Jobs is, make no mistake, a genius. I know, that’s hardly a revolutionary statement, but people ignore his most amazing invention and focus on the small stuff. People point to the ipod and go nuts about how this little gizmo revitalized a whole industry, destroyed another industry or two and you know, changed the world. And fuck, they’re right. It did. And the iphone is pretty great too, just in terms of pushing the envelope of how we think about phones, and the computers are cool, but man, none of that shit is as important as his greatest and most overlooked innovation. Disposable technology. Man. This dude found out that it’s not enough to keep offering technological upgrades, you have to make shit break after a while too. See, people are, first and foremost, creatures of habit. Once shit gets to a level of ease, only a few types of folks will seek out the next level of techie advances, because really, the energy it’s gonna take to learn the new way of doing everything is gonna outweigh the amount easier it becomes, at least at first. That’s why no one bought Laser Discs…well, and they were stupidly huge…but you get the idea. That’s why people don’t really give a fuck about blu ray, or watching the whole movie on Qmov. It’s not worth the extra effort and money to make something already easy just that tiny bit better. That’s why shit has to be poorly crafted.The guy's got a point, right? So now, as I sit here, looking at new MacBooks claiming innovation with an "advanced, built-in battery," I find myself more skeptical than I usually am. Did these cock knockers just upgrade from ripping people off every two years on iPods batteries crapping out to now ripping people off every two years for a FUCKING LAPTOP? I mean, the idea of needing to buy new battery for a laptop sucks but at least there's the concept of, well, BEING ABLE TO REPLACE THE BATTERY AND NOT THE WHOLE DAMNED COMPUTER. No more of that, Apple? Sneaky...very sneaky.
Think about it. Apple really nailed this one. There’s an apple store here in Chicago, and I remember going in there only 2 years after the first ipods came out and there was a bin for ‘recycling your ipod’ right there in the store. There was a sign above it that said something like “it’s been good to you, now recycle it”. Dude? Are you fucking kidding me? Those things cost like 300 bucks! I hate to sound like a fucking grandpa, but back in my day shit that cost three hundred bucks wasn’t supposed to fucking die EVER. I mean, what kind of brass iBalls does this company have that they can sell this shit for so much money and then when you bring it in because it’s broken, they can smile smugly and say “hey, it’s not supposed to last much more than 2 years. It’s been good to you, right? Now recycle it and get another one.” Fuck. You. (and yeah, I’ll take another one…snivel)
...It’s not that the technology doesn’t EXIST to make these fucking things last…it’s that they actively have a business model that encourages the manufacture of shoddy products in order to keep everyone in lines at the apple store waiting to talk to dumb hacker nerds with pimples and bad breath and condescending attitudes and stupid ringer tees on and have them point out that the product line is perfect, but it’s quickly evolving and as such, this one piece of gear that you have that actually still works is outmoded, sorry. Can’t replace those speakers that totally suck and broke after six months, because we use new ports now.
ARGH! Fuck, man. You’re so fucking….smart. Jesus. It’s so smart it burns me up inside. I think that Steve Jobs seriously (seriously) applied the principles of the drug trade to the “white market economy” (get it? Because macs are to white people what uh…oooh, jeez, I dunno…this analogy is teetering dangerously close to uh, racist…nevermind). It’s like, they get you hooked, then you get some gear, then it suddenly runs out, then you need more shit to keep the shit you already have going and then you’re so deep into the fucking cult that learning to use a dell would be like drinking coffee instead of sniffing glue while you shoot heroin into your dickhole, and you’re on the fucking horse, or you’ve got a monkey on your back or you’re chasing the dragon or something….I dunno. Smart guy. That’s all I’m saying. You get it, dontcha?
I don't know if this is true...it just sounds shady. But, hell, who was I kidding...like I was going to drop bank on a Mac without a free iPod with the purchase of a Mac promotion going on. I'm no sucker...
That's all I've got. Sorry for the conspiracy theories. Cheers (And Sam's gone back and dropped some more knowledge about The U, so I guess make him feel special and check that out. For the record: Najeh's nickname is not "The Dump Truck." But I guess when you're pretty big time and you shit in some girl's laundry basket when you're in college other people can call you pretty much whatever they want on the "internet " later on down the line. Also for the record: I'd like to say if you, Sam, were every to run into Mr. Davenport that I'd pay you $1000 to call him "The Dump Truck" to his face, but that nickname is probably just clever enough for him not to pick up on it. Well played..).
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