I recently had to return a movie that I received two copies of for Christmas, and I chose to return the one that had come from Barnes & Noble because I knew their movies (and CD’s) are all over-priced and that I could get a more valuable store credit from there than wherever the other copy came from. Also I wasn’t planning on exchanging one over-priced movie for another; rather, I was going to buy two or three books with the store credit.

My frustration with Barnes & Noble (and, when you think about it, all brick-and-mortar bookstores) reached a peak when I couldn’t find a single one of the first 12 books I looked for. Going on memory and the Amazon wish list on my phone’s Amazon app, I walked back and forth and all around the fiction & literature section looking for all of these titles, none of which was carried by this particular Barnes & Noble:

A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
Riddle-Master by Patricia McKillip
Smilla’s Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg
The History of Danish Dreams by Peter Høeg
Bridge of Birds: A Novel of Ancient China That Never Was by Barry Hughart
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares (I looked under both Bi- and Ca-)
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Alternate Realities by C.J. Cherryh
The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Blindsight by Peter Watts

(I looked only in the English-language fiction & literature section because I only care about translations of the foreign-language novels, which is obviously why I listed their English titles.)

Every single one of those books has over a dozen to hundreds of reviews at Amazon.com, and I only ever heard about them because they were recommended by others over the internet as fascinating, memorable, unique, must-read, or even life-changing books. In other words, these aren’t just run-of-the-mill novels that I might kind of like to read someday.

They also didn’t carry Bryan Garner’s Modern American Usage or the Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage in the reference section, although they did carry other usage guides (Chicago and MLA, for example), so up the total number of absent books in a row to 14.

I did eventually find five that I was looking for. Three I didn’t buy: The Brothers K by David James Duncan for $3 or $4 more than Amazon sells it for, Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny for a hell of a lot more than the $5 Amazon is currently selling it for, and A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge for either $3 or $5 more than Amazon is selling it for. I don’t mind Barnes & Noble charging a little more for a book than Amazon, but for a standard mass-market paperback, I think more than a $3 difference is quite high. The two I ended up buying were The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon and Spin by Robert Charles Wilson.

In all fairness to Barnes & Noble, if I had really gone into the store with a pre-planned list of books to look for in the order that I wanted them, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union would almost certainly have been number 1, perhaps behind only The Invention of Morel, which Octavio Paz has described as “without exaggeration…a perfect novel”, an extolment many others agree with. It seems to me that any respectable bookstore would carry the English version of this novel.

I probably would only have ended up with two novels in the end anyway, so I’m glad I found the two that I did. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was in the main literature section, although I’ve heard it described as science fiction, so both of these science-fiction novels should be very interesting to read in the near future.

The first and most important thing to remark on about our trip was the nearly ideal whether. On the way down, it was drizzling and extremely foggy in Michigan and Ohio, but that’s a hell of a lot better than snow or ice and didn’t impede our travel in any way. Between Atlanta and Tampa both ways was dry and warm. The final leg of our trip, from Atlanta to Ann Arbor, was completely dry and not the least bit dangerous. We were very lucky in this regard, I think. That was Dec. 31, and on New Year’s Day it rained a little and created ice on the ground (which I felt as I was bringing groceries in from the car), and on Jan. 2 it snowed an inch or two. We missed dangerous or at least slow-driving weather by a day, or two at most.

The most important observation I can make or thing I learned from the trip is that Ohio totally sucks. I already knew that from having lived near it for 6 years and having driven through it on our summer road trip to Atlanta and New Orleans, but, man, what a shitty state. On our way down south, we saw either four or five (let’s call it four to give them the benefit of the doubt) speed traps along I-75, compared to a total of zero in Kentucky and Tennessee. There was one that we saw in Georgia. There was nothing close to a speed trap on I-75 in Florida going north or south, as everybody there drives 85–90 mph and I was being passed going 85 in the middle lane. That was the only positive point that has ever made Florida a slightly less odious state to me, not that I’ve changed my tune from never wanting to live there. On the way back north, I’m not sure if there was any speed trap in Georgia, but there were a total of zero in Tennessee and Kentucky, compared to six—yes, six—in Ohio alone. Combine this with the lower speed limit of 65 throughout the state, and you get an entire state-wide heap of shittiness and pettiness. Luckily, we have not been pulled over on any of our road trips, but I saw two people get pulled over behind us after we passed the cops, one in Georgia and one in Ohio.

The absurdity of Ohio’s 65-mph speed limit and its numerous speed traps also emphasizes the fact that speed limits on interstates generally do nothing to increase safety. If they did, then German autobahns would have the highest death rate in the world, but instead they have a remarkably low death rate. Michigan and Ohio routinely have similar traffic fatality rates on interstates; for instance, in 2006, Michigan’s interstate highway death rate was lower than Ohio’s. When we crossed the border into Michigan that night, I didn’t feel the least bit more endangered when we increased our speed from about 68 to about 78. This is because it wasn’t more dangerous. I’ve never felt safer going the other direction, either. I could understand a city, county, and state wanting to increase its police presence on the roads on New Year’s Eve, but at midnight and after, when people are actually drunk and are actually driving home, not at 9:00 when people are going to the places of imbibement. My god, six speed traps on a 3-hour stretch of interstate? I know Jersey Shore has really increased in prominence throughout American culture in the last few years, but you don’t have to try quite so hard to edge out New Jersey for the Shittiest State in the Union award, guys.

On the way down south in the rain and fog, we noticed one additional advantage to those cool-white LED headlights in addition to their looking cooler: they stand out in precipitation far more than traditional headlights do. A lot of them are annoying and probably even unsafe because of how bright they are in your rear-view mirror, and I hope automakers fix that in the near future, but their superiority in fog and rain and their cool, futuristic, science-fictiony look make me really, really want them in my next car. Obviously there are many different kinds of LED headlights, and I want a kind that is not overly bright and not very blue. I like the cool-white look, which is very pure white with probably a hint of blueness in them, but the ones that look blue are just retarded.

On our way home on I-75 north in Florida, we saw a Georgia fan with four Georgia Bulldogs window flags driving down south, presumably to go to the Outback Bowl.

Also on I-75 north just north of Tampa, we saw a billboard for Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland…which is in Michigan. No, there’s not another branch in Florida; the billboard said “Frankenmuth, Michigan”. No, it wasn’t just an advertisement for their website for all those retirees to order piles of tacky Christmas decorations, although the website was listed on there. Just a normal billboard for a store that is over 1,000 miles away. Weird!

Finally, I recently found this new blag You are a bad driver and I hate you, which I will read regularly and eagerly. Dean, sir, you are a gentleman and a scholar.

I had known Kristen Bell played Veronica Mars for several years, from seeing commercials for it on UPN back in 2004 and 2005 (though never watching it) and from adding the three seasons of it to my Amazon wish list, where its description was always “Kristen Bell et al.” However, despite being intrigued by Veronica Mars when it originally aired (though apparently not enough to tune in) and obviously planning on purchasing it, I ended up watching Party Down (all 20 episodes of it) first because it was streaming on Netflix and I had heard great things about it. I had no idea there was any connection between the two shows.

After I watched Party Down this summer on Netflix, I happened to buy all three seasons of Veronica Mars on DVD because they were all finally cheap enough for my standards. Somehow, after seeing all two episodes of Party Down in which Bell guest-starred as the cut-throat, competing caterer Uda Bengt, I never noticed her name in the closing credits. In that show in particular, I always read the closing credits attentively to see who played the guest characters and to see if there were any names I’d recognize. I can’t understand how I missed Kristen Bell. I had seen her name underneath the show title on those Veronica Mars DVD’s while scrolling through my Amazon wish list dozens of times. It’s understandable that I wouldn’t recognize Bell herself in the episodes because I had never seen her in anything else, but I can’t understand how I missed her name.

Because I watched both shows in such close succession, you’d think I would have recognized that the same actress who played Veronica also played Uda, instead of the other way around, but I never did. I have little doubt that I would have recognized Uda as Kristen Bell if I had watched a lot of Veronica Mars and then watched Party Down, especially because of all the other Veronica Mars alums who have large and small roles in Party Down, but that’s not the way it happened. After learning she was Uda and thinking back to that character and those episodes (including a GIS and this short preview clip), I was really amazed that I hadn’t put 2 and 2 together. This revelation really shook the foundation of my entertainment world for a few minutes. It was like when I found out my NIH friend Jessica Dolle pronounced her name “Dolly” and not “Dole” after knowing her for about 10 months.

Kristen Bell herself looks about the same in both shows, as they were only filmed a few years apart, but the way she acts, speaks, carries herself, and presents herself as Uda Bengt (including the work of the wardrobe and hair people) make her seem like a completely different person from the young, sarcastically bubbly, determinedly spunky Veronica Mars. (I’m given to understand that this is called acting.) Uda is robotic, serious, humorless, all business, no fun, and ruthlessly efficient as the Valhalla catering team leader. She is always barking orders, threats, or insults into her Bluetooth earpiece intermixed with her face-to-face conversations, to much comedic effect (all of which would be lost on Uda). Her hair is just pulled straight back into a boring, non–time-consuming ponytail. She wears all black as her work uniform. She asks a man out on a date the way she would schedule a business lunch. She knows with passionless certainty that she and her team are leagues better than the Party Down catering team, but she spares no hurtfulness or nastiness when she hurls insults at Ron Donald and the losers who work for him. Uda’s jaw is different somehow—more prominent, clenched, impatient, intolerant, ready to bite any slacker’s head off. Perhaps her odd, foreign name added another element of differentness to this Kristen Bell character that prevented me from recognizing her mere weeks later when I started watching Veronica Mars.

The reason I’m writing about this is that Kristen Bell’s performance as Uda Bengt provides a great life lesson for all of us. We can project the image of ourselves that we want others to see, and we can influence how people think of us by how we dress, speak, stand, walk, and style our hair. When motivational speakers or guidance counselors or whoever advise us to start actively embodying the change we want to see in our lives or start acting the way people in our desired station/position in life act, this really is some of the best advice you can heed, especially at a young age. There are probably better examples of this than a pair of an actress’s characters, but it prompted this realization in me, and hopefully it can impact more people’s lives than mine in a positive way. If you want to succeed in a field of study or a career, start behaving, talking, interacting, and even dressing the way people who are successful in those areas do. If you want people to see you as more confident, smart, outgoing, interesting, older, younger—then make the change in yourself first to make others see you that way. In many cases such superficial changes are only the precursor to the more important step of thinking like and being a new and improved person, but no one does anything in a vacuum, so changing the impression you give others is often necessary to become a successful employee, boss, leader, colleague, student, friend, or loved one. Become the character that you want to become.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After that press conference, the Red Sox ended up facing the Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. That series is one of the most famous postseason baseball series because the Red Sox came back from a deficit of 3 games to none to win the series, 4-3. That’s the only time in MLB history that a team has won a series after being down 3-0. I never thought I’d see it happen. (It happened twice in the NHL and still hasn’t happened in the NBA). It was also famous for the two appearances Pedro made in Yankee Stadium, in which the Yankees’ organ player and 50,000 fans combined to rouse Pedro with their famous “Who’s Your Daddy?” chant. It started in game 2 when Pedro started and lost, and it continued in game 7, also at Yankee Stadium, when Pedro came in for two innings of relief with his Red Sox up 8-1. He didn’t pitch very well in that outing, either, giving up two runs before settling down and keeping his team up by a comfortable margin.

I tried as hard as I could to find a video of one of those two outings so you could hear the chant resonating through Yankee Stadium, but thanks to the idiots at Fox, it is surely unavailable to the human race forever. But if you’re not familiar with it, imagine what a chant of “Let’s go, Yankees!” would sound like, with the organ going, “Dun dun da-da-dun,” in between the chants, going up an octave each time, but the fans were shouting, “Who’s your daddy!” instead. It sounds just like the “OVER-RATED” chant.

I did manage to find a fan’s video of the “Who’s your daddy!” chant at Yankee Stadium this past Thursday when Pedro pitched for the Phillies in game 2 of the 2009 World Series. I’m sure this video doesn’t do it justice. It must have been louder than that, coming from every corner of the stadium. I couldn’t hear an organ, either, which gave it a nice, old-fashioned baseball touch in 2004.

I didn’t hear the chant on TV myself because I went downtown to watch the game at Bar Louie with five of my friends. It was a lot of fun watching it with them and all of us cheering for the Phillies. Pedro pitched well in Yankee Stadium for the first time since at least 2004, but he still lost because A.J. Burnett pitched better.

I wore my new red Detroit Red Wings hat because I wanted to wear a reddish hat that was close to the dark red of the Phillies to show my support for them that night. That sounds kind of lame because they aren’t even close to the same team, and Philadelphia fans, in fact, hate the Red Wings, but it’s the gesture that counts. (My red Georgia hat feels too tall and awkward on me, so I don’t wear it anymore, and it’s a brighter red than the flimsy, pre-faded, worn-out-looking Red Wings hat that I bought anyway.) However, my Red Wings hat came in handy in a very unexpected way. Near the end of our night there, after we had finished our meals and most people had finished their drinks, the waitress came over and said the bartender wanted to give us a free round of shots because I was wearing a Red Wings hat! Ha! We obviously laughed in disbelief about that. But not in front of the waitress. I’m not even a good Red Wings fan. I’ve never been to a game, I only watch them occasionally, and I only know their famous players. I jumped on their bandwagon and bought a hat so I could wear it to softball next year and because I couldn’t find a new copy of my flimsy, worn-out-looking Braves hat (which is smelly and dirty from wearing during softball). The shots were the bartender’s own creation, the first time he’d ever made it. I forgot what he called it, but I think it had triple sec and some kind of blueberry syrup in the bottom. We all agreed it was good.

They were really hard, to me. There were four such puzzles that we passed around, and I tried my hand at two of them over the course of a few hours. The other five guests, who had never seen them before, each solved two or more of them, eventually, and I didn’t solve a single one. One of them is demonstrated in this video, where the guy makes it look a million time easier than it really is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsXBLyiPzQo

The other one was even easier. It kind of resembled this, but wasn’t the same:

It consisted of six wooden rectangular planks each with a peg sticking out perpendicularly, either from the middle or near one end, and each wooden rectangle had two or three holes for other pegs to go into, and you had to put them together into a cube-like block with no pegs sticking out or visible anywhere. I tried that damn thing forever and came close so many times, but could never change my strategy enough to solve it.

I have never solved a Rubik’s Cube, either. I never owned one myself, so that could have helped, but I doubt I would have had the patience or the ability to figure it out. It would have taken years of diligent attempts, probably. I did own a similar puzzle called Square One, which is like a super Rubik’s Cube because its pieces are not all cubes; as you can see from the Wikipedia image, it contained mostly irregular-shaped pieces. Obviously I never came close to solving it, either.

I’m not sure if my problem is that I don’t have a good enough imagination or don’t have good enough spatial reasoning skills, but it’s probably both. Remember those standardized test questions, or IQ test questions, where you were supposed to imagine folding a piece of paper up a certain way and cutting it with scissors in a certain way, and then discern what the paper would look like after it was unfolded? Yeah, I was always kind of bad at those. I’m sure I could figure most of them out eventually, but they didn’t come easily. These 3D puzzles that I could hold in my own hands and fiddle with in any way I wanted and look at in real life and try and try again proved impossible for me. Everyone else had a pretty hard time with them, but like I said, they all eventually got a couple of them.

It just really depressed me. That is all.

My favorite game or segment on all the radio shows I’ve listened to is homeless karaoke on the Regular Guys show, based out of Atlanta. I listen to them at RegularGuys.com. They are now the Rock 100.5 morning show, but I knew them as the 96 Rock morning guys in college. Back then, their producer and whipping boy, Southside Steve, would go around to the homeless people on the streets of Atlanta and get them to sing songs on his portable karaoke machine in exchange for a warm, home-cooked meal. Now Steve is one of the Regular Guys and so they get their new lackey/producer/audio getter, Sebastian, to record the homeless karaoke segments. The way the game works is that Sebastian will play the voice track of the homeless person without the music, and Larry, Eric, Steve, and Tim try to guess the song based on his/her aimless mumbling and humming. They are surprisingly good at it. It is so hard to make anything of the homeless person’s attempt at singing, but eventually something gets through that gives one or more of them a clue. Sometimes I guess right first, and once I even knew it from the very beginning and was yelling at my computer that they should have gotten it long ago (Blondie, “Heart of Glass”). Here is the most recent example of homeless karaoke, but it is definitely not the best one. (I wish I had downloaded one or two of the really good recent ones, but they disappear after one week.) I don’t know what makes one segment better than another—difficulty, coolness of the songs, multiple songs where multiple people all guess at about the same time, songs I would do well on if I were competing, I don’t know—but it’s still entertaining.

Interestingly enough, their segment recorder, Sebastian, or “Sebas”, is homeless. He lives out of his car and the radio station. His mail and his driver’s license have the radio station’s address on them. He sleeps in his car, in the station, at friends’ houses, in a ditch once or twice, and on random strangers’ front porches a few times. Larry and Eric bring this up occasionally and, justifiably, give him a good ribbing for it. Larry is convinced that Sebas wears his homelessness as a badge of honor, a kind of rugged, urban, free-living, anti-yuppie, street cred–earning lifestyle. Sebas says he accumulated a lot of student loans and credit card debt during his four years at Georgia Tech, so he is being responsible and working and paying off his bills before he goes wasting money on rent. Well…I guess that’s one philosophy…but, like Eric, I think that’s not the best way to get your life together.

Speaking of homeless people, the street beggars in Ann Arbor are very nice and polite. It doesn’t engender a lot of pity. There’s this one guy I pass on Main Street occasionally who speaks very good English (not at all like the homeless karaoke participants) and says, “Excuse me, sir, can you spare a few cents for a hungry homeless man?” or something similar. I shake my head or look down and mouth, “No, sorry,” and he says very politely, almost cheerfully, “God bless you.”

When my dad visited San Francisco for conferences a couple of times, he said he loved the city and that even the homeless, of which there were many, had a lot of personality. He encountered one kind of unbalanced lady who would hold out her cup or her hand and say, “That’ll be 25 cents, please,” or, “That’ll be 50 cents, please.” I feel even worse for the crazy ones. It makes you think very little that happened to them is their fault.

Now, this list is totally lame because it’s irrelevant and uninteresting. I clicked on that link expecting to find some things that were actually worth publishing an article about and that are actually unexpected to women. Yes, I know men find women sexy at those times, but it’s been written a hundred times before and therefore no one, especially women, (should) find it surprising or need to read an article about it.

But the advice to not look like a bag of antlers is pertinent. Women should listen to this advice and its corollary: a love of good food and a tendency to enjoy your meal when out on a date is usually a turn-on, or at least not a turn-off.

When I lived in Maryland, I was out for dinner with a group of scientist friends and their friends, and one of the guys, whom I had never met before and probably never saw after that dinner, gave his perspective on taking a girl out to dinner for a date. Especially a first or second date. He said, “It’s a huge turn-off when a girl doesn’t eat much and kind of picks at her food and acts really self-conscious about calorie consumption or something. Enjoying your meal, enjoying food, is a sign of enjoying life—it’s a sign that you are into your date, into your meal, into your life, and are actually living it and enjoying it, regardless of whether you fell in love at first sight with the guy or the restaurant wasn’t your first choice for a dinner date. Not being interested in your food indicates you aren’t interested in the date or in having a good time in general.” I had never thought of it that way before, but now I realize I mostly agree with him. Yes, I know counting calories helps you look sexy, and there’s nothing wrong with it, but, as with most things in life, there is a happy medium between depriving yourself of immediate enjoyment in order to benefit in the long run and enjoying your life while you’re still young. When in doubt, enjoy your meal!

One Sarah Wexler validates this position in her article Eating to score a second date. Money quote:

Men don’t like picky eaters. Dining out, like sex, should be a sensual, indulgent experience. Get too fussy at the table (dressing on the side) and they think you’re high-maintenance in the bedroom. It’s no wonder, then, that when men get a glimpse of my extensive food rule book—nothing spicy, no condiments, no red meat or seafood, no mixing of sauces—they flee.

If you want to find out your 10k day, go here. Sorry if yours has already passed (Kelly).

Last Fourth of July weekend was one of my favorite weekends I can remember. July 4 was a Friday, so it was a three-day weekend, and I didn’t have to go in to lab a single time. My girlfriend and roommate were both gone for the whole weekend, so I had no obligations and no disturbances. I ran a pretty good time in the 5k, and then came home and veged out in my bedroom and living room for three days. I remember watching about 10 or 15 episodes of season 1 of the X-Files. That doesn’t seem like the most summer-holiday-ish type of thing to watch, but I had gotten the first two seasons for Christmas and birthday and decided I might as well go ahead and put them to their intended use, so I thoroughly enjoyed those episodes all weekend. It was just glorious all around.

But sometimes I’ll read an essay online at a blag or a magazine that strikes me as very professional, very analytical but accessible, very thorough but easy to get through, and formal without being pretentious. The individual sentences and paragraphs are phrased well and the entire article is organized and flows well. They make their point convincingly without seeming biased or like they had to try overly hard to make it. I say, “I want to write like that. That’s professional writing by a well-trained and -practiced person who doesn’t let their love of their own writing get in the way of the content.”

The two main aspects of people’s writing that I see often on the internet that highlight their lack of writing talent are: bad grammar and punctuation (obviously), and over-use of florid language and fancy words. Being bombastic. I can spot a mediocre writer who’s trying to impress people with his/her allegedly fancy writing skillz from a mile away. Writing well rarely means using complex sentences or SAT words, and when those are involved they are few and far between. Everyone should take Louisa May Alcott’s motto to heart: Never use a large word when a small one will do just as well. No, this doesn’t mean you have to write like Hemingway, but Hemingway is better than Faulkner.

Sandra Tsing Loh is a perfect example of this type type of writing fallacy. Contrast the aforementioned professional writers who impress me and make me want to write like them to this self-absorbed, pretentious douchebagette who writes for The Atlantic. (I italicized that not only because it’s the title of the publication but also for emphasis: this pompous hack who is in no way, shape, or form a better writer, a better social critic, or a better person than you or me writes for the fucking ATLANTIC monthly. If she can do it, I sure as hell could.)

I first heard of this Sandra Tsing Loh character from Fark.com, where a recent article of hers made the main page and was commented on extensively. First, read the article and then read the comments from Farkers. At least some of them. Go on, do it.

Okay, now that you agree with me and them, I can quote a couple Farkers who hit the nail on the head in the discussion thread:

“Oh my LORD that woman is in love with herself and her vocabulary. I love big words and intelligent writing but I wanted to punch her in her martini-swilling face.”

“Ughh. I honestly tried to read that, but it was like eating five pounds of potatoes. The first paragraph or two were okay, but halfway through I felt nauseated and bloated and I couldn’t continue.”

“I got about 1/3 down the page before my brain just couldn’t parse anymore.

That essay is an abuse of language that should be punishable by waterboarding.

You torture us, we torture you. Now put down the Thesaurus and get back in your cave.

/Oh yeah, and the essay contents weren’t any better”

Yeah, the comments on the substance of Loh’s article were more insightful and important, in the grand scheme of things, than the comments about the writing style, but I’m writing about writing right now, all right? Lastly: this Fark.com thread does some good to dispel my impression of Farkers as bitter, hateful, spiteful, religion-hating, government-loving zealots who would scarcely be more pleasant in real life than they are in anonymous discussion threads. They still wouldn’t recognize a property right if it smacked them in the face, but they sure can hit the nail on the head about some relationship/sexual/social issues.

And look at the name of the NBA’s championship: the NBA Finals. Every single other sport has an actual name for its championship. The World Series. The Stanley Cup. The Super Bowl. But basketball is so retarded that the best name they could come up with was Finals.

Have you ever heard any statistics about the number of fouls called on home teams vs. away teams in a basketball game? In college and professional basketball, home teams average a lot more free throws per game than visiting teams. I have heard more conspiracy theories about NBA basketball than every other sport combined in my entire life, at any and all levels. This isn’t because there is necessarily a conspiracy to favor certain teams or certain superstars; it’s because the sport sucks and its “fans” can’t hold on to anything else interesting about it, so they are left to invent and ponder idiotic conspiracy theories that might be tainting a sport no one in their right mind cares about.

Basketball is far too high-scoring. No sport that could end in a 120-110 score could possibly be worth watching. Like monetary inflation, the more points there are, the less the points matter. I don’t particularly prefer watching extremely low-scoring games like soccer, but, again, anything is better than basketball. A sport that has a stronger defensive component is worth more to me. A basketball fan might say, “Of course defense is incredibly important in basketball; as in any sport, offense sells tickets but defense wins championships.” Oh, yeah? Then why are there regularly over 200 points scored in NBA games? Your position is disproved by simply looking at the scores. The point is that too much scoring is an objectively bad thing, and basketball has too much scoring. A game with a low but tolerable score like baseball or hockey is much more interesting.

I think these and other problems with basketball aren’t NBA-specific—they don’t (necessarily) originate in the commissioner’s office—but stem from the fact that basketball is an inherently inferior sport.

When you just think about the nature of basketball compared to most other sports, it’s obvious. Basketball sucks. Admit it. The NBA is the worst North American sport there is, nobody should care about the outcome of its championship, and in fact it’s quite offensive to me that I even care enough about its suckiness to write an entire post about it.