www.leefur.com

Quote from a CNN article on this hurricane shit:

"I'm not doing too good right now ... the water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live."

That is some dramatic shit right there.

On a related note, I don't want to ever hear any noise about living on the west coast being dumb/dangerous because of the threat of earthquakes.

So I actually had some free time today, and I loaded up ESPN. It turns out that there's some shit going down with Jeff Kent, a variably All-Star caliber second basement currently playing for the LA Dodgers. Seems that Jeff, ol' boy, has a problem with the blacks, in what is being described as a pattern of behaviors over his career.

In response, black ESPN writer Scoop Jackson (is that a really prognostic name? or a nickname...) wrote this tongue-in-cheek piece advising Kent on how to deal with black people ("The first thing you gotta understand is that sometimes we be trippin'"). In it, one of his main points is that by saying that a black athlete doesn't hustle, a white person is intonating that they don't have to try as hard to be successful in the sport as a white dude might; that blacks are naturally gifted, and therefore can afford to be lazy, and so are.

Now here comes the part that'll piss everyone off.

I pose this merely as a topic of conversation. We're all anonymous strangers here, or at least we can be if we just put "anonymous" or "klansman" or whatever in the "Name:" field. But - isn't it actually quite possible (likely, I'd say), that the average black person is more naturally gifted in athletics, or anything involving physical strength? I mean this only in the most rigid, rational thought that shithead white folks as recently as 140 years ago (sooner?) looked at blacks as inhuman, and bred them like we breed dogs now (huh, and I bet it's nearly all white people doing that too...). So they wanted the best product (think of the selection process in Gladiator), and bred the stronger men with the stronger women. Or, worse, killed off - through abuse, neglect, or direct action - the weaker.

It is odd to me that anyone would take offense to this. In fact, it seems that the only ones who should take offense to it are racist, redneck, feeble-minded fucks that actually still think like these asshole slavemasters of days past, and are therefore identified as shitheels like their forefathers. Current white people shouldn't be offended - we're only tangentially involved in this story anyway, and with no direct, causal relation. Black people are actually quite exonerated by this story, in my mind, because it again is by no direct actions on their part. They are only the victims - the 'output', if you will - of this heinous shit. And it seems to say nothing bad about yall as people anyway.

It's all-too-politically-correct to scoff this sort of thinking off as racist, but I think it's quite the opposite. It would be racist if it drew illogical or irrational conclusions, based solely on the color of someone's skin, not thinking through any deeper causes or effects.

Now, for the life of me, I can't find any statistics on the racial composition of any of the major sports. But I did find a US Census document (pdf) stating that 13% of the American population is black. Baseball is known as the most diverse (read: least black) of the main three sports, and 'less than 9%' of baseball players are black (source). I'd have to imagine that the NFL is at least 40% black and the NBA is at least 60% black. If there isn't some evolved proclivity at work here, I'd still like to hear a more convincing explanation than "there's nothing better to do in the ghetto." Now that shit sounds racist to me.

Now Hispanics, on the other hand ...

The chairman of the World Anti-Doping Agency, involved in all kinds of sports doping cases, is named Dick Pound. Ferreal.

< Dick Pound

Are you bored and alone? Looking for ways to pass the time? Check out this fantastic list of things you can do when you have nothing but yourself:

• Push your eyes for interesting light show
• See how long you can hold your breath
• Try to not think about polar bears
• Scratch yourself
• Hurt yourself
• Look at something for awhile, shut eyes, study after image
• Get yourself as nauseated as possible

Can't make it through a whole day at the office without your porn fix? Worried Mr. Slate will come peep your browsings? Check out these photoshop mocks of porn images, kept relatively "safe for work". Quite hilarious. (Thanks Jesse)

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That "George Carlin" piece, Bad American, isn't actually by George Carlin. (Thanks Jesse, you private dick, you) Ahem.

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If you need to get something off your chest, and you aren't a good, guilt-ridden Catholic, look into PostSecret, where people post anonymous confessions for public display. A pretty moving read, and - I think - an example of how the internets can be a positive force. (Thanks Spider)

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