Who Taught You Octagon?

This title is from a Chris Rock skit. You've probably seen it. If not, check for it on his most recent DVD. It's become a recurring joke at my job for over a year now. It's even funnier to me b/c my daughter Nia, who's going on 3, knows her shapes, including the infamous octagon. She has this toy that teaches colors, letters, numbers, and shapes, and one of the things to identify is an octagon, in the form of a bright red stop sign. Ask her what it is, and she's quick to tell you - "oct-o-gon."

It's amazing to me to watch her learn. At this age, it's mostly repitition and pattern-matching, so she doesn't have a deep understanding of the words and meanings. So for her, saying "octagon" doesn't bring up any connection to an 8-sided figure, the latin (it is latin, right?) root "octo," the "gon" ending in shapes (pentagon, hexagon, etc), or stuff like that. She just knows that the stop sign is called octagon. This took me on one of my occasionally deep mental trips, thinking about the many words that we use daily, with a similar lack of understanding, history, and context. For many of us, even our very names are just a combination of letters without a personal meaning. We taught a very basic etymology class in Saturday School the past 2 years, and it's always amazing to me to discover where words come from, what they mean, what language they're derived, and what other words they're connected to. Maybe this is the kind of thing that only a writer can really get into... and honestly, I don't have nearly the time it would take to explore it too deep. But words themselves have a story, and perhaps understanding those stories can better help us understand more about the way the wor(l)d works.

B's Wide World of Sports - May '05 Edition

ENJOY YOURSELF, JIM
My homie 2-way'ed me earlier in the week to holla that Jim O'Brien got fired and Mo Cheeks was on the way. He was excited to see Jim go. I was just caught off guard. Dude made the playoffs and improved the record... and so did Rick Carlisle before Larry Brown came to Motown. And that's just the thing, while I like Mo Cheeks (they used to call me Mo at the courts as a youngin' cuz I passed first, played good D, and got a lot of phone numbers... but I digress), he's no Larry Brown (the man who had Tyrone Hill, Jumaine Jones, and Raja Bell playing for rings). From my view, what the team really needs is a starting 3 and some better backups, cuz Webber's knee won't let him play 82 and Dalembert commits too many silly fouls. But, the inside word is that the players weren't feeling Jim (though, I must say, the few times that they were on in his sytem, they looked pretty damn good), so maybe a change was in order. In any event, Jim gets 4 million the next 2 years for his 1 year of work. When the rest of us get fired, we don't even get to take the office chair home.

INTERNAL INJURIES (READ: HEAD INJURY)
More classic material from Kellen Winslow, Junior... "In hindsight it was unwise to attempt to learn to ride a motorcycle without a professional instructor in a controlled environment." Son, your contract says NO MOTORCYCLES. PERIOD. There's no, "if you want to disobey the previous clause, make sure you have a professional instructor." The only good thing in this is that he didn't kill himself or his career. But seriously, this dude needs a media coach (and a motorcyle instructor cuz I bet his dumb ass will try it again as soon as he's all healed up).

IRK NOWITZKI
This guy gets no D in his name cuz he plays none. If I'm Irk, and the MVP of the best three-point shooting team in the league is dribbling down the court right at me with the series on the line, I'm not counting on Jason Terry to get in his jersey. I'm gonna step over the screen and use my 7 foot body to create some kind of distraction. Instead, Irk watches the ball drop through the bottom of the net. Another ringless year in Allas.

PREDICTIONS
I don't have any right now. I'm glad Miami got the split cuz it could have gotten really ugly. Overall Motown and the Spurs are playing the best ball. The Spurs are very impressive. The literally have 4 clutch guys (Parker, Ginobli, Duncan, and Horry). Yes, I said Robert Horry. We need to give this man the post-season respect he deserves. From Houston, to LA (he single-handedly killed the Sixers in the 4th quarter of damn near each of their wins), to San Antonio, he saves the best for last. The other day, he two-handed down the lane off a set play. Ain't he 40? Wasn't he playing with Barkley and the Jet, who are now doing commentary? The Spurs are so tight, they've got Ray Allen's old sidekick, Glenn Robinson, just sitting there in case they're getting blown and need some points. Detroit vs. San Antonio would be tough to call. But I think it's too soon to pencil that in, because Phoenix can take 2 on the road in a heartbeat. Tune in next week.

PS
Amare's a beast.

Too Much?

I like this new blog. It's so convenient. There's no way I would have gone to the old web journal, ftp'ed the file, typed in my thoughts, adjusted the fonts, the uploaded the new file. It may have only taken like and extra 3 minutes, but still, it just seems like a tedious task, and beginning now, I'm out to rid as many of those from my life as possible. They really do add up after a while.

Anyway, there is a slight problem w/ the blog. I realized it as I was in my "thinking chamber" (read: the crapper) (hey, it's a natural human function, and you've gotta admit, it's a nice and quiet space). There's way too much information in the world now, and my blog is only adding to the problem. Seriously, if I actually read through all of the stuff I'd like to each day -- and this doesn't even include books -- I wouldn't get anything else done. Sometimes it feels really great to come across something new, like a hookup for a product, an interesting website, or some other useful information. But then it's like, "why didn't I find out about this sooner." Why? Because there's too much other stuff already out there.

Now, I'm not advocating that Big Brother only give us The People's Unified News Service, and eliminate other free thoughts, but it sure would be easier to know what the hell I need to know. Google can't really help with that. It's a much bigger issue than simply cataloging all of the info. In fact, it's really too big of an issue for me to give anymore time to, especially when I have 4 other things to do in the next 90 minutes.

Back to work...

PS - Does this blog have a spell check? Maybe I'll check tomorrow.

Time For Some Action

I haven't updated my Chance22 Views page in a while. Figured maybe it had something to do with the HTML, uploading, etc. (Really, I'm just a lazy bastard, but if the excuse works, roll w/ it). So I decided to hop aboard the blog wagon. I didn't realize blogs were FREE. I should have known, since everyone has one. I just wasn't paying attention. Seems like everything computer-related either starts out dumb expensive or free. I don't understand the economics of it all, but I'm not the CEO of the internet, so I'll leave the numbers up to someone else. For now, let me just commit to blogging.

Guess this means I need to update Chance22.com at some point, and link to the new blog. Hopefully I get to this sooner than later, cuz its overdue.