Test Tube

The Strange Case of Damon Bailey

About a month ago I was watching the IU v. UK game from 1990 on the Big Ten Network and Damon Bailey's position in the hierarchy of Indiana Basketball greats came up in conversation. It's a strange thing, Damon Bailey, because when I think of him the first thought that comes to mind is that he was a middle of the road player. He wasn't bad, but he was not one of the greats.

Upon further review and investigation, it must be said that I am wrong about that. While it is true that he was never the best player on his team, those honors go to Calbert Chaeney and Alan Henderson, he was a GREAT basketball player. My gut reaction to his place in history is largely colored by two factors. 1.) No national championship, though that is not his fault. Those teams were great and should have won two titles, but shit happens. 2.) He was supposed to be the second coming of, if not Christ, then Alford. Anything less than being the best player on the planet and his career would have been a disappointment. Fair? No. But true nonetheless. Our perception of people and events is largely based on what we expected.

As another example of this I will tell this tale. When I was an undergrad, I was an RA. Every week we had meetings in our supervisors living room. On here desk, every week, was a jar of peanut M&M's. It was common practice to reach in, grab a handful, pop them in your mouth and enjoy chocolate and candy covered nuts goodness. One week, right around Christmas the jar was filled with Red and Green Peanut M&M's. I reached in grabbed my standard handful and popped them in my mouth expecting the reward salty-sweet crunchy joy of Peanut M&M's.

They were mints.

My shock and revulsion knew no equal. They could have been the best mints in the world, but since i expected M&M's they were disgusting. Expectations color reactions.

Which brings me to last night in New Hampshire. One week ago no one would have been surpised by the outcome of the Democratic Primary. It was a close race between Clinton and Obama that could have gone either way. But on Monday every "news" outlet in America was reporting Obama with a 9-11 point advantage over Clinton.

Well, now the Clinton campaign is in HUGE trouble. She goes on TV and almost cried about her campaign. Obama wisely tells his supporters to chillax a bit and remember to vote because the worst reaction to this news for him would be for his supporters to say, "Oh, cool, we got this on lock down. I guess it's no big deal if I skip the primary tomorrow."

In the end Clinton pulled it out by some 8,000 votes and roughly 4 percentage points. The reaction this was shock. No one could believe that Clinton was winning. They were willing to predict her win at any point during the evening. This is going to be seen as a huge win for her and a disappointing loss for him. All because of the polls results from Monday setting up our expectations for this event.

In reality, this has been and continues to be a close race. One that I'm sure won't even have much separation until February 5th. In fact I expect it to get more muddled before it clears up. Edwards will do very well in South Carolina and it may result in 3 primaries, three different winners. All it means is that "THEY ARE WHO WE THOUGHT THEY WERE!" No more, no less. Let's ride this thing out and see where we end up before we attach too much significance to any one outcome.

The Democrats should just give up now

Barak Obama won the Iowa Caucus tonight for the Democratic Party. This makes me pretty happy. But all the news is not this good.

Mike Huckabee won for the Republicans. Right now, he's giving his speech on CNN right now, and standing behind him is Chuck Norris.

With Chuck Norris in his corner how can anyone hope to beat him.

Maslow thinks Jay Leno is stupid

I got this message for the second time in a few weeks today and it drives me nuts. It's supposedly from Jay Leno and it's all about how ungrateful Americans are. I'm not going to say that Americans aren't ungrateful and spoiled, because there's some truth there, but I have two problems with this e-mail.

First, it wasn't written by Jay Leno, so I guess I'll have to go back to not liking him because he's not funny. (For the sake of ease, I'm still gonna blame Leno for this for the duration of this e-mail)

Second, it is a very selfish point of view, and also very simplistic. Leno's basic point is this; In America we have an embarrassment of riches. We have homes, food, jobs, firemen, and police. What are we whining about?

We do have all of these things, I know I do personally, but is that all there is in life? Should I not be concerned about larger social issues like the environment or civil rights, or the war, or any of the other issues out there that deserve demand our attention.

When I was in high school I learned about Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of need. The basics are that humans have basic, fundamental needs that all humans seek out in order to feel fulfilled as people. It begins with physiological needs, like food and hunger. Until we have access to food and water we can't spend time thinking about what's on the next step of the pyramid. Which is safety and security; a place to live, and protection. Until you have food and water, and feel safe you can't spend time thinking about the next step. Which is a sense of belonging and love, and the next step above that is self-esteem and recognition, followed by the top of the pyramid, self-actualization.

Jay Leno thinks all of our needs are met by the bottom two, most basic needs. We have those needs met, so personally we can go about the business of finding love and friendship, recognition in our work, and self-actualization. In society, it means we can focus on other things.

If we stopped striving to make the world better once each of us had food and shelter what a horrible world this would be. I'd prefer to work my way up the pyramid to try and achieve more in this life than four walls and a sandwich. And I'd prefer it if we, as a society demanded more of ourselves and each other. It's just not enough to have grocery stores, fast food, homes, and police.

We have the luxury of being able to focus on the other issues in the world, and quite frankly, we have the responsibility.

P.S. The only part of that Jay Leno wrote was the last line. As part of his monologue. And it wasn't even a funny joke. Peter Griffin was right.

"If you find Jay Leno funny, there's a good chance I don't care for you as a human being."

I've got a suggestion

Hillary is letting people vote on what her campaign song should be. Here's the list.

This wasn't on the list, but who can honestly say it shouldn't be.

Clarksville = Baghdad

When I was younger the license plates in Indian said "Wander Indiana." I remember this because these stupid frakking license plates made me the get the word "wonder" wrong on a 4th grade spelling test. You have no idea how mad I was about this, but Mrs. Bemiss was hearing none of my objections.

I don't know what the motto was a month ago, as I live in Illinois. My guess is "Now with Daylight Savings Time!" but don't quote me on that. But as of April, and Congressman Mike Pence's visit to Iraq. After visiting a Baghdad marketplace under heavy (and by heavy I mean the rough equivalent of what an elephant would weight under the increased gravity of the Red Kryptonian sun) military protection he compared it to "a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Pence is from Columbus and went to Hanover. I've been to both of those places. I've not been to Iraq. Either I have a very different image of Iraq in my head than what is actually there (not frakking likely) or Mike Pence had a traumatic childhood and in his warped, broken mind the famous (at least to locals) architecture of Columbus and the rolling green hills of Madison look very much like the desert and the constant suicide bombings and gun fire remind him of the sound of speed boats on the river. It seems the latter is far more likely.

All of this has lead to the worst state motto since the Texas State Motto "No Presidential Assassinations in Over 40 years" *

"Indiana, just like Baghdad."

Though in fairness it's also considered a sin to draw pictures of Indiana's state prophet, Dick Lugar.

JT



* credit to Al Franken

Cautious Optimism

This morning I did something that, let's say seven years ago, I would have been very excited to do. I tuned in, for the first time, to the Dennis Miller radio show. I did this with one eye closed, the other squinting and my head turned away from the computer. I was more apprehensive than Gerry Fleck at his Dancing with the Stars audition.

The problem with Dennis is that somewhere around 9/12/01 he moved from being a pragmatic centrist with a razor sharp wit and more pop culture references than Sanjaya has mock votes to a reactionary right wing apologist who sadly, lost the funny.

Before this transformation I would have been really excited to get to hear him every day on the radio, riffing on the headlines of the day. Now, when it comes to Dennis Miller, I'm pretty much like any Mike Tyson fan. I remember fondly when he was the best in the game, and even though he hasn't shown anything near that ability in a looooong time I still tune it, with the hope that he'll deliver the one punch that will bring him back to prominence. I don't really expect it to happen, but in the part of my brain where memories and hope combine to make a Panglosian reality, I think I'm gonna get what I really want.

I tuned in this morning and, while he didn't throw any knock-out punches, he didn't sit there in the corner as the bell rang to start the round, looking broken and defeated either.

I'm not really on board with his politics any more, but as long as he finds the funny again, we cool.

As an example of finding the funny. Today, while talking about drilling in Alaska, he compared it to the fridge in the garage. It's cold, it's out of the way and it's full of goodies. It's time for us to go there and grab some Gino's Pizza rolls, cause the game is on.

Not a big fan of the idea, but I like the analogy.

Anyway, here's hoping, cha cha.

Who's that little old man?

I was just reading Sen. Joe Biden's comments about Barrack Obama. This whole thing has been completely blown out  of proportion. He was clearly just comparing Obama to Paul's grandfather.

Of course this implies that Obama is  "A King Mixer" and "Hates Group Unity." I also hear he's been forging  Senators signatures on their photos to sell on e-bay, pointing out to Joe Leiberman that Ted Kennedy's always being taller than him just to spite him, and pretending he's Evan Bayh and taking his invitation to the gambling club.

Still, he's very clean.

JT