NCAA is Moronic

Weird how a few hours after I posted my Weiner post he came out and admitted everything. He must of read my post.

Anyway, immediately following the outing of the Weiner, I learned that USC had been stripped of its 2004 BCS National Championship

I don't get the point of this. Stripping a school of it's title after 7 years. What difference does it really make if Reggie Bush got privileges that not everyone else got? It's also - we only know what Reggie Bush got, but you better believe other players received benefits. It ultimately does not affect their playing, so it shouldn't affect the outcome. It's not steroids. A car isn't the same.

In the early 2000s I loved USC. I still do (sometimes I wish I went there). But that team from that 5-6 year stretch was truly dominant. I had the benefit of seeing them live at Notre Dame (the infamous "push" game). I don't think we'll ever see a player like Reggie Bush. The way he made a highlight reel out of seemingly every run was fantastic. He was never going to be able to do that in the NFL because the league is bigger/stronger/faster.

By NCAA taking away the title, it makes the league look like a fraud. What's the point of playing these games if they're not going to honor the games? After every year we all complain about the BCS and weather it was legitimate or not and how at least 1 team got snubbed from the National Championship game. But now we can't go back to 2004 and see if the number 3 could of beat 2 (Auburn vs. Oklahoma)

This really does no good. In my mind, that USC team was the best we may ever see from an all-encompassing perspective. Taking it away doesn't change anything in public opinion. In 100 years (pending 2012/rapture) it will be talked about. Reggie Bush lost the Heisman from that year, but you cannot argue that there was truly a better player that year (or in the past couple years that were as dominate as him really)

I hope if the NCAA plans on coming down on this now, they do a FULL investigation of all teams. I truly believe every big time program is "corrupt". I have no proof, but we're hearing more and more of it. I put corrupt in quotations because I believe these students are being exploited for financial gain by the NCAA and the schools. They bring in the money, they old men benefit from it. Seems like total bullshit. Truth is : if the NCAA does investigate, then everyone is losing their title. So I would leave it alone. This is so irrelevant and makes the NCAA look like a joke. Just keep enjoying taking advantage of poor teenagers.

Weiner Massacre

I'm a little late on this post. I don't care. It's my blog and I'll do what I want.

Last week was really Weiner-mania. I never heard of this putz until last week, because I hate politics. You should too. This is absurd. This guy wants to be mayor of NYC? Good luck bro. I'm still voting for The Rent Is Too Damn High guy. Because I'm tired of paying my rent. Sucker eats half my salary. Anyway.

Someone somehow put a picture up of him naked on Twitter and sent it to some random girl. It was deleted. Twitter accidents happen. I made them for my clients. (Albeit mine were tweets about Star Wars, but..) So you delete it and move on. However this one didn't end. All last week Weiner was giving interviews to talk about it. The best line from all of it? "I can't confirm if that is a picture of me or not."

mmmmm, what?

Basically, he's confirming he has (or someone might) have pictures of Weiner's Weiner. Queue the Weiner's Weiner jokes. NY tabloids must of been having a field day.

What does this really say? Unfortunately, while technology is bringing out all these great new advances in knowledge and communication, it also allows our human nature (read: libido) to do whatever sounds good at the time. Alcohol usually helps influence these decisions. And that usually involves taking pictures and sending them out to people. Or making tapes.

Look at all the celebrities that have done it. Blake Lively the most recent idiot. Greg Oden's a personal favorite as a joke. Kardashian. Paris Hilton. Chris Brown. Brett Favre. Rihanna. I'm sure there are several more I'm not even aware of. I'm also sure that these are some of the few to "get caught." And then there are the "normal" everyday people. Who send it to whoever. And you hear about the 14 year old girl who commits suicide because pictures of her spread across the school (can't find the link, but a story very similar happened). Human nature has no control. Technology has more problems than solutions sometimes.

Me personally? I'm not participating in any of it. I'm not just saying that either because I'm blogging about it. I have good reasons (I wouldn't want to look at a picture of myself, why would someone girl?). It's not like I'm "too smart" for it. My life just doesn't go down that road. And I'm totally fine with it. Although it would be cool to be a celebrity and have tons of money, I'm over it. Life is good.

As far as the rest of these idiots, I don't expect it to stop anytime soon. And until there's pictures of January Jones or the T-Mobile girl? I'm just going to keep laughing at these stupid stories and these lame attempts to cover it up and act as though it's a fake.

Time Is Running Out

Time is an interesting thing. It's also interesting how humans react to it.

The best analogy I can use is sports. When you see sports games, one team is up on the other. Nobody panics in the first quarter/period/half. But when you get down to under 5 minutes, people freak out. Time is running out. We have to get the goal/point/touchdown. But it wasn't a problem in the first half to get that score.

I've been watching almost every basketball game in these playoffs (and yes I am quite sleep deprived. Thank you David Stern for having games that start at 9 and don't end until after 1AM.) The one thing hate about basketball is the end of the game when the team who is losing fouls to get the ball back and then they take a time out. It happens in every close game. And it happens multiple times in every close game. It's frustrating. Yet if they were playing with that same intensity throughout the whole game, it would be a different story.

You see so much time wasted in sports (games with clocks, not baseball). In football when they spend 40 seconds to get the play off. Hockey when they just stand with the puck behind the net. Basketball feels like every possession is a waste. (I don't know why I say that. I really like basketball, but watching the Heat last night annoyed me. Terrible half court offense.) That time is irrelevant in the beginning of the game. But then near the end there is a mad scramble to save as much time as possible. It's the natural human instinct "oh we still have 12 minutes left, who cares" vs "crap we have 12 seconds left and we're down by 3."

Another example is work. You spend your 8-9 hours at work every day. But probably around 4-5 you start to scramble to make sure you get your work done for the day so you can get out on time. You spent plenty of time screwing off at 11 though, browsing the web, talking to co-workers, doing whatever. But at 4 you buckle down to make sure it all gets done in time so you can get the hell out of there on time.

There's no real solution here, you can't change the human psyche, but it's just an interesting thing to point out about how we operate. Time is running out, and we freak out.

Weekends / In Favor of the Four Day Work Week

Now that I'm in the "real world," I'm starting to live for weekends. When you're in school, everyday that you don't have class is a weekend. So for me I had like 4 day weekends every weekend. Needless to say, only having two days when I had four is an adjustment. Considering I also had 6 some months of unemployment where I had 6 straight months of weekend, it's another adjustment.

I personally am struggling with the change. I'm exhausted by the end of the work day (even though I work virtually - that post to come later) and just want to veg out and relax. Maybe I'm just lazy. Personally I was never the kid that enjoyed going from work to dinner to someones apartment and then be home around 10 or 11. I like to have time to myself. Just to watch TV or go to the gym or do whatever. Not enough hours in the work day to do everything I want.

A popular thing to do is travel. Especially now that I'm out of school, go travel to see my school friends who aren't in NY. Yet I hate that weekends are so short. If I wanted to go to anywhere but Philly, I will not get in until at least 11 PM that Friday night. And that's being generous. Good luck getting out of New York City on a Friday night on time. It's a massacre. So if I get in at 11 or midnight, that night is pretty much done.

So you have all day Saturday, and then really half of Sunday because you have to get back home. All that traveling for a day and a half? That's brutal. Weekends are way to short to begin with, but it's even shorter when you spend 10 of the 50 some hours traveling.

I've been having this discussion a lot with my buddies lately - who the hell decided it should be a five day work week? If you work the normal weekday, you're working roughly 250 days a year, while you get off for 115. I don't understand why there's that imbalance. When I was job hunting, a lot of places talked about a Life/Work balance. I don't know what they're talking about, because there is no balance here. If we changed to a four day week, it would be more of a balance - still favored towards the work side of it, but less so. I think everyone would be less stressed. You have more time to do the things you want to do, as opposed to not having the time (or having to take time off from work) to do much of anything.

I think me and my friends are just in the rebellious phase. It's our first year out in the world and it's not the same as school. It's a drag for the 5 days a week and only 2 days to ourselves. And this is "how it is" unfortunately. It makes no sense. I don't know why anyone set it up like this. I don't like it at all, but I am nowhere near enough to change society or the way we live. I'm just a kid on my small digital soapbox.

Now, back to work!

Tony Soprano Died

As my craziest high school teacher would say (almost every day) - I'm going to eat crow.

I wrote a few months ago that I didn't think Tony Soprano died. Then I read this. And, not only is it the most comprehensive post I've ever read regarding a 3-5 minute scene, it all makes sense. I agree with everything.

So after reading it (found courtesy of Bill Simmons the Sports Guy. If I ever write as well as he does [and somehow have a job like his] I will consider my life a better-than-expected success) I decided I need to watch season 6 again. All of it. Knowing what I knew previously from watching it a few months ago, I think he died. It had to have happened. All of the signs and things they talk about point that it has to have had happened.

Why did I not think so before? Because I was trying to be positive? (which, if you know me, that's rarer than the Dodo) I'm not sure. Maybe it was just my naiveté. I'd bet it's because I knew how it ended, but I didn't really know how it ended (if you missed it, I accentuated the second how there. I'm not that dumb to write the same thing twice. Well, wait.)

It makes sense that he died. Everyone else had died. It was a changing of the guard. The new young people wanted their turn. And that, as they say, is that.