I'm Kinda Buzzed and Its All Because, This is How We Do Butt

If you are telling me you believed a week ago that after two games the Pistons would be looking to go up 2-1 on the Lakers beating them by 20 in game 3 then you are a liar. Nostro-dobs-mas, despite his often amazing intuitive properties, couldn't have believed it. If the Lakers manage to pull this series off it will be a travesty, a sham, and a mockery, it will be a traveshamockery. I have been asksing a number of people this question and so far no one can remember anyone else ever using this strategy: Play Shaq like you would play someone else. Don't treat him like someone through a 7 foot 2 400 pound sack of dynamite on the court, just gaurd him, play against him, and let it roll. Seriously, since this dude has been in his prime you either double teamed or denied him the ball or ran a weird zone or the hack-a-shaq or whatever, has anyone ever just played against the dude. Somehow, Larry Brown and the Pistons seem to have found a way to let Shaq get his 30-20 and still win. At some level it makes sense, maybe the Lakers just haven't responded yet, and technically this game isn't over, but its fucking incredible to me at this point, blowing my fucking mind.

I've had the chance to talk to our delightful friend Mr. Andy Kemp fairly frequently over the past couple weeks. I have been on my regular communicative schedule with Sanjay, not the occassional droughts where I go a month without hearing from him. I figure its either jail, 40s on sale near his house, or he got lost in Portland, either way there isn't much I can do, so I lay low and wait for his call. If Andy goes missing for that long you have to wonder if got really drunk and took of to Venezuala with a 52 year old bar hag who he decided is "just totally real and like so fucking with it, she like sees the reality of the soul of truthful loving realness" or is in the ICU after pissing on someone whose friend was packing more than the urge to hit on Nikki and a drunken Minnesota attitude. Regardless, I have been talking to Sanjay 1-2 times a week and Andy about once every 6-8 days. We talk about random things, sports, wedding shit, good times etc. I have recently noticed what seems to be the opening fumes to an Andy-Sanjay feud based on what Andy perceives to be his friends hating on his potential to do get shit done. We have always given Andy shit about his ability to do his shit since high school and even if he really does have it entirely together now, he may never be able to live down that rep with people who knew him in the hosue days. Anyway, everyime Andy talks to me he asks me if I was telling Sanjay that he is not going to get his thesis done, and that Sanjay was making fun of him and that I was apparently involved. I don't remember even really discussing it, but I'm sure someone made a joke or something at some point. Its a very "Why are Mommy and Daddy fighting" situation which I can imagine being repeatedly rehashed in several drunken incidents over the coming month.

My other conversation of note with Andy was on Tuesday night, when some comment entirely unrelated to structuralism and post-structuralism was transformed into a fairly thorough discussion of structuralism and poststructrualism. I don't know why this happened, but I also don't know why someone who is so unfamiliar with the tenets of post-structuralism would so vivaciously defend it. I'm not even intending to insult anyone at this particular juncture, neither Andy nor real post-structuralists, though I will regularly insult them both on most occassions. I'm merely saying that everything Andy was defending, though in disagreement with structuralism, was not post-structuralist, at least not based on any reasonable articulation of what consists of post-structuralism known to me. I'm also not being egotistical and attempting to assert that I should know this, but only that in this particular conversation nothing being said was connected to any post-structrualist authors or texts. I know thats not necessary, but its certainly helpful when what is being argued sounds alot more like Plato than Derrida. We have also reached the point in the argument where Andy takes every sentence that you use and simply emphasizes different words in an attempt to make your words an analogy for his argument. This occurs even when you briefly speak on a topic unrelated to the discussion, like "Hold on, Katie's on the other line." Which, if you follow the emphasis, Andy repeats as "HOLD ON, Katie is ON the o-th-er LINE" and then firmly believes this in some way demonstrates the complete arbitrariness of language and thus the chaotic nature of human existence. There are times when people, despite how intelligent they may be in other circumstances, firmly refuse to get something. They fight violently against attempting to actually understand what is going to understand. To prove that I don't mean this offensively against Andy, I will give the best example, which involves Moody, a man who I still think is hella smart. My junior year in high school, after spending way too much time with Mark Molle, who was a really cool kritik guy from Bronx Science who assisted in my lab at Kentucky, I got really into the Normativity argument. I mean, we didn't run it all the time, but I was really into it. Moody, who adamantly refused to accept that Normativity was not a criticism of normalcy, would constantly intervene in our discussions of the debate to jump onto tables and throw apples and scream "No link: I'm not normal!" I am sure Moody could figure out that he was mumbling nonsense here, but he refused to understand. I feel that Andy is in the process of doing this about structuralism, but we will see how long it can last, or if his newfound devotion to study results in his doing some boning up research.

I may even try to call that cat later tonight. Though it is already fairly late. Finally, I should mention that I saw the pug dogs next door outside today. There is a fawn one and a black one and they are both fucking cute as hell. I really want those dogs. Maybe I will get one for my birthday. Maybe Katie will get one for her birthday. Then we could have two and they could play with the two from next door. Or we could just get two more for Christmas and then we wouldn't even need the pug dogs from next door, we would take the shit into our own hands. Hell yizzza.

Peace,

MB-K