Grief

The Missouri Tigers are a basketball team.

They won a lot of games this year.

Not this one though.

It made me feel sad.

At least there's a cure. A cheap, glorious, esophagus-burning cure.

Habits

I get into these moods, especially when writing, where I listen to just one song on repeat until I can't stand the thought of it anymore. Don't ask why, because I don't know. Get lost in music, get lost in words. It helps. You may understand. You probably don't.

It was easy getting lost in this tonight. A Bob Dylan soundalike that writes creepy love songs. Shit that's at once beautiful and dark and eery and romantic and ridiculously good. Got damn.

Only way The Tallest Man On Earth could be more impressive is if he were actually the tallest man on earth. 

Hello There

IT'S BEEN WAY TOO LONG, loyal readers, so here's some happy thoughts for your day.

• The Rams- they made a trade over the weekend! It was a great fucking trade! Rams GM Les Snead basically buttfucked the talentless corpse that is the Redskins roster before dousing it in gasoline and accidentally lighting a match nearby. Two additional first rounders and one additional second rounder just to move up four spots. Just to put the mind-boggling RGIII in Mike Shanahan's bland offense. Just to offset all the points opponents put up on Jim Haslett's sieve of a defense. Yeah, I think I'd take that deal- and the Rams' front office did brilliant work suckering the 'Skins into this haul. Maybe there's hope in St. Louis after all.
• Sleigh Bells- they're coming to the District of Chillumbia! The best metal/cheerleader duo of all time! My mom was like, you hate Christmas music, why are you going to see this? And why is this show in April? (And then I told her to listen to this, which horrified her, but finally made her understand.) It may be hard, but I will convince some sorry and hopeless hipster to go see this shit with me. Can't wait.
• The University of Illinois- as we predicted, they need a new basketball coach! Will it be Brad Stevens? Will it be Shaka Smart? Will it be the electric tandem of Todd Strong and Kalen Wagoner? We hope for any of the above, but believe in the end the man will be Wichita State coach Gregg Marshall. It's too bad, in my opinion, because there's nothing special about the guy. He has the sort of good-but-not-too-good-to-demand-an-actual-salary resume favored by the cash-strapped Illinois athletic department, in addition to the gruff-but-largely-inoffensive persona of most Big Ten coaches. Marshall is a safe choice; I don't think he's the best choice. (He also spells Gregg with two G's at the end, and those guys are usually assholes.)
• Saint Louis University- they made the NCAA Tournament! I would tell some "Rick Majerus is so fat..." jokes, but SLU will get drilled by Memphis anyway, so I will refrain from piling on. Maybe I will finish off this post with some Your Mom jokes for some LOLZ instead.
• In the meantime, I have other things I really should be doing. NEWS! CROSS-CULTURAL JOURNALISM! GLAMOROUS WORK! I shall return soon, and hopefully with more frequency.

UNTIL THEN, peace, love, and basketball, motherfuckers.

Should You ♥ You?

"The importance of Liking Yourself is a notion that fell heavily out of favor during the coptic, anti-ego frenzy of the Acid Era- but nobody guessed, back then, that the experiment might churn up this kind of hangover: a whole subculture of frightened illiterates with no faith in anything."

--Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

We're a long way from the Acid Era, but that hangover hurts worse than ever. Except today the frightened illiterates aren't a subculture- they are the culture. They are all of us.

Not that Liking Yourself is bad or that self-loathing is somehow noble. Of course not. Of course not. But now it seems like everyone doesn't just suspect himself of the cardinal virtues; we're also sure that nobody else possesses them. The Self must always be Right and Righteous. The man that disagrees is a European socialist intent on destroying the meager scraps left of the American Dream. The haters just can't handle your phenomenal swag.

But this is total and utter horseshit. Sometimes we are Wrong about things. And sometimes we are also unhappy or unenthused or (gasp) alone. That's fine. If there's anything wrong with being Wrong or Sad or Alone, then a) there's something wrong with being Human; and b) there's something wrong with Truth. That's terrifying.

(And then there's the more complicated issue of wanting Other People to Like Us so we can confirm that we are worthy of being Liked by Ourselves. It's the goal of every advertiser pimping consumerism as the Way to Happiness, of every passive-aggressive bitch posting man-hating Facebook statuses in search of self-affirming comments, of every no-good two-bit snake-oil salesman that wants your son to play basketball at the University of Kentucky. It's very complicated, very paranoid, very Nixonian- and damn dangerous. Paradoxically, it also seems to make ourselves less likely to Like Ourselves.)

The takeaway- it's OK to be wrong. Being pissed-off, not knowing what to do or where to go or whether to laugh or cry or both, is totally natural. Liking Yourself is natural too. What isn't OK is cheating yourself. Don't dismiss other people and points of view just because they're different. Don't think your shit smells that much rosier than the other humans you share 99% of your genome with. Take others and their strengths and faults and quirks as they are and find ways to like them, and then do the same with yourself.

Have faith, not fear. And most of all, be real.

(I don't even fully get what I'm saying, so now I will shamelessly ask for y'all to comment and argue with me below. This would affirm that this post was Worth Something, and by extension that I, the writer of this post, am Worth Something, so that in turn I may Like Myself. Plus, I'm always up for a good circlejerk!)

Let Us Now Praise Mormon Men

You have to admire Mitt Romney. That a man with absolutely no ability to connect with fellow human beings can succeed in modern American politics gives all of us socially awkward individuals hope. Of course, most of us don't have Super PACs to shell out millions of dollars of ads to convince people we're not really that bad or (more frequently) that at least we're better than Newt Gingrich. Most of us reading this blog are also shooting to win friends and influence people from a decidedly more sophisticated crowd than Glenn Beck's 9/12 marchers. Nonetheless, in his own uniquely perverse way, the man gives us hope through succeeding in his hopelessness.

Nobody thinks saying the shit Mitt says is a good idea. There aren't many words, besides total douchebag, to describe a man that ingratiates himself to the good people of Michigan by discussing his wife's car-buying habits (she drives Cadillacs, plural) and praising the trees there because "they're the right height." You gotta question the taste, as well as the potentially racist motives, of a man that starts quoting Baha Men before taking a picture with a group of black people. Do you really want a leader who claims, without provocation, that ExxonMobil is a person? That he isn't concerned about the very poor? That he's against his wife wearing hot pants, for Brigham Young's sake?

(And that's just the tip of the iceberg. The sin that really disqualifies him from the presidency is his love of the Twilight series.)

Basically, Mitt Romney is fake as fuck. We can ponder this certainty with further questions- is he actually inauthentically authentic? Authentically inauthentic? Maybe even inauthentically inauthentic? (Is that even possible?)

The Hollywood Jews can pointlessly ponder what particular definition of authenticity fits Willard, because we at Highland Liberation Army are solutions-oriented strategic communicators. We got one goal- gettin' that funny-lookin' foreign fucker out of the White House. To do that, we need to solve Mitt's problem- and we have the perfect idea.

Mitt Romney, you see, has a plan. It's the greatest plan, not just of the current candidates but of all-time, to solve the illegal immigration issue- self-deportation. This strategy basically calls for the U.S. government to make the lives of illegal immigrants so shitty they willingly return to Mexico. It's pretty ambitious policy- after all, Mexico is a pretty shitty place, the only reason any of them came to god-forsaken America in the first place- but The Robotic Mr. Romney should be just inhuman enough to git 'er done.

Sadly, some people don't see the brilliance of this plan; after all, it's never been done before. The Romney campaign must not be afraid, though. The PR specialists here at HLA have created a brilliant strategy to kill two birds with one stone*, proving his authenticity beyond doubt while quelling objections to self-deportation amongst America-hating liberals, ultimately assuring Romney even more than just the presidency of our United States of America.

It's obvious, really.

Mitt Romney should self-deport to Kolob.

Disbelieving douchebags got you down? Finding earthly campaigning too taxing? Tired of shaking hands and kissing babies from the crowds of smelly 99-percenters? KOLOB IS THE PLACE FOR YOU! This vacation destination boasts amenities and attractions only dreamed of on Earth, including florid fjords, verdant gardens with trees exactly 27.3 feet tall, seven convenient locations of Fred's Cheapo Depot**, and nightly under-the-stars concerts from Grammy winner Shaggy. Located two exits north of the Center of the Galaxy, Kolob is to planets what Joseph Smith is to prophets: stunningly beautiful, perfectly peerless, and, like, totally AWESOME.

Why would Mitt Romney not self-deport? Kolob is to the United States what the United States is to Mexico. A trip to this beautiful star at the center of our existence would not only show those Latinos how a self-deportation is done; it also shows people that this Mormon shit is fo' shizz. Nobody will trifle Mitt once they realize he's just the earthly surrogate channeling the will of All-Powerful Crazy-Ass Mormon God. And really- what's more authentic than going to fucking heaven, just because you want to? 

Today, Mitt Romney may be the out-of-touch symbol of the 1%. Tomorrow, he won't just be in the 1%; he will be The One. He will be bigger than Jesus, so big they'll re-title the musical Mitt Romney, Superstar. Nativity scenes won't feature Joseph and Mary, but Mitt and Ann and five creepy sons in the den of their New Hampshire lake house. People will even start answering the door when the missionaries knock- because you don't fuck with God, and you don't fuck with Mitt.

America has already met its Mormon Maker. Soon, they'll finally realize his identity- and our lives will never be so wretched again.***

*Considering the man we're dealing with, the more apt idiom might be "murder the two annoying wives with one bloody axe" or "baptize two million dead Holocaust victims with one perverted priestly order." We seek not to offend Mormons, though, and put this as a footnote because we all know cult members are too dumb to know what footnotes are.
**All your vices at cheaper prices!
***Of course, there's only one problem with this whole plan- Mormonism is a batshit-cray cult and Kolob does not exist. Woops! Mitt can still pull this shit off, though- even more incredible events have been faked before.

I Wish You Way More Than Luck

"Here's something that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship- be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness - awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences now."

--David Foster Wallace*

David Foster Wallace turned 50 today.

There was, of course, no celebration for the man. He hanged himself three and a half years ago. His words- in speeches, novels, essays, articles, interviews, the monstrous thing they call Infinite Jest that I haven't yet worked up the courage to read- those genius words are the David Foster Wallace that lives on.

People given extraordinary personal freedom are ultimately then overwhelmingly and painfully alone. It is a trade-off we must confront, a double bind we must accept, a battle we must fight more today than ever. And nobody laid out a better path to consciousness and humanity and, dare we say it, happiness in the tragicomic clusterfuck that is life in modern middle-class America.

David Foster Wallace lost his long bout with these modern demons. Doesn't mean we mortals are fucked, just that life is hard, really hard, and doesn't get easier. We can avoid our own demise by staying conscious of one last paradox- the message of the man who couldn't follow his own advice.

Thank god words live on.

Au Revoir, Bruce: An Early Search for Illinois' Next Basketball Coach

If there was any doubt, it's gone now. Illinois needs a new basketball coach.

No matter how much he screams at the oven, Bruce Weber's proverbial turkey refuses to cook, leaving the Fighting Illini with five straight losses and a 16-11 overall record (5-9 in the B1G). Saturday's 23-point loss to visiting Nebraska* featured a 36-4 Cornhusker run that will serve as the signature moment of a shitty season. Much like Ron Zook's horrendous home loss to Purdon't, it also marked the end of a mediocre era.

(*This is fuckin' NEBRASKA, man. The Huskers haven't made the NCAA tournament since 1998, and have never won a game in six March Madness appearances. They proudly display memories of scintillating NIT berths on their website. For the flagship basketball program of a state that contains the ridiculously rich recruiting base of Chicago, any kind of home defeat to Nebraska should be considered a fireable offense. Seriously. Fuckin' NEBRASKA.)

Things started swell for Coach Weber in Champaign. His first team won the Big Ten regular season title and appeared in the Sweet Sixteen. His second team rattled off 29 wins to start the year (something no team may ever accomplish again) and reached the national championship game, falling just short against North Carolina in St. Louis.

And after that? Well, all the good players left. It's OK to have only two offensive plays ("motion" and "move") when your starting backcourt features Deron Williams and Dee Brown and Luther Head. Do the same with DJ Richardson and Brandon Paul and Sam Maniscalco and the results may not look so good. In seven seasons following the Final Four run, the Fighting Illini have just two NCAA tournament wins. The metaphorical lasagna that was so yummy now tastes like shitty Olive Garden takeout.

The majority of this blog's readers currently attend the University of Illinois. I tell you today- be mad as hell. Illini basketball should never settle. It should not be considered a "once-proud" program.

Hundreds of NBA players have grown up just two hours north of Champaign. If Illinois can get one of the top three players out of Chicago every year, the team should never win less than 20 games again. For some reason, though, Bruce Weber doesn't think he can get Derrick Rose or Anthony Davis or Evan Turner. There's nothing wrong with looking for under-the-radar players, but when your recruiting class has less top 150 players than Harvard, well, you might wanna hit the trail a little harder.

Obviously, Bruce Weber isn't a bad basketball coach. A total idiot doesn't win 68% of his games and get to a national championship on accident. He is, however, quite limited, both in recruiting and in strategy. His is a formula that works with Bill Self's players, not Bruce Weber's. His tenure has not been bad, but lately it hasn't been good either. Looking at this season and this blowout loss, it is almost certainly time for a change.

In this spirit, we look forward to a better future. We look for a leader that can capitalize on fertile recruiting territory. We look for a coach with a more varied and adaptable approach. We look for a personality to reinvigorate a stagnant team. We look at the men briefly profiled below.

***

ONLY IN YOUR DREAMS- It won't happen, but it'd be awesome if it would.

• Brad Stevens, Butler- Clearly the best coach in college basketball today. Took Butler to the national championship game twice. However, he's signed with the Bulldogs through 2021 and has turned down other jobs (though none as big as Illinois) in the past. It's also unlikely, even if he's willing to leave Butler, that the cash-strapped Illini can pony up the salary he would demand. If both sides are interested, though, Illinois has to make it happen.

THE REALISTIC LIST- Moderately exciting coaches due for promotion.

• Shaka Smart, VCU- The best of the realistic candidates, Smart led 11th seeded VCU to last year's Final Four. Young and coaches an up-tempo brand of basketball. Smart dude. Doesn't make that much money. Former Billy Donovan assistant (pretty much a golden ticket to promotion in the college coaching ranks). Doesn't have a huge track record, but his enthusiasm would get fans and recruits to notice Illinois again.
• Anthony Grant, Alabama- He was Shaka Smart before Shaka Smart, parlaying his assistant gig under Donovan at Florida into the VCU job, where his team upset Duke in the tournament. Though everyone loves him, his Alabama teams have been mediocre. Would have a better base to build from in Champaign. Good candidate, not great, but you could certainly do worse.

THE LONG SHOTS- Retreads, assistants, and other unlikely candidates.

• Robert Smith, Simeon High School- This vaguely reputable article says Derrick Rose's high school coach could be a serious candidate. Simeon may be one of the top high school programs in the nation, but the jump to a major Big Ten job is still massive. Would likely recruit brilliantly, but the Illini job will attract too much interest from proven coaches to warrant taking a chance on someone with absolutely no college experience.
• Chris Mack, Xavier- A fairly good coach that only gets mention here due to his striking resemblance to Highland High School principal Derek Hacke. This makes him HLA's official third-favorite candidate. 
• Some assistant coach somewhere- If this were football, I'd have the names of a shit ton of coordinators ready to go. Alas, HLA understands football way better than basketball, and you readers will have to deal with that. Hiring an assistant is always a possibility, but AD Mike Thomas allegedly likes candidates with head coaching experience (as he proved in hiring Toledo's Tim Beckman in football). Unlikely, but never say never.
• Some fired coach somewhere- Hiring another school's sloppy seconds doesn't look good, but this is the school that hired Ron Zook two weeks after he was done fucking Florida over. Ben Howland, who took UCLA to two Final Fours, could get his walking papers; Jeff Capel, Blake Griffin's old coach, is another fired commodity on the open market. These wouldn't be exciting choices, but then neither was Frank Haith- and look a how that's worked out for Mizzou.

IF THE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR GOES ON A COCAINE BINGE, SEES A UFO, FOLLOWS IT TO HIGHLAND, IL, AND ONLY INTERVIEWS CANDIDATES IN THAT PODUNK SHITHOLE TOWN- These men have what it takes, but for whatever reason their brilliance continues unrecognized by the greater sporting community.

• Todd Strong- Highland High School's head basketball coach rubs some the wrong way for reasons unknown to this blogger. A fiery and brilliant leader of men, he is also a leading expert in social psychology. While recruiting would be difficult for the one-eyed Strong (as he cannot legally drive at night), vaunted assistants Sam Weber and Caleb Houchins would do much of the dirty work for him. Could use notoriety of the Illini job as a springboard to run for Senate on a post-Tea-Party platform that is really just a bunch of batshit conspiracy theories about Blacks, Asians, Latinos, Pacific Islanders, Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, and their massive left-wing conspiracy to raise the world's oil prices. (His solution? NUKE THE FUCK OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST.) With his potential to solve the problems of the world as well as those of Illinois basketball, Todd Strong is the socially conscious man's choice to lead the Illini in 2012.
• Kalen Wagoner- The greatest coach NCAA Basketball 06 for the Playstation 2 has ever known, I promise to bring my unique brand of phenomenal swag from Columbia to the Chambana area. My unparalleled knowledge and love of everything R. Kelly has ever done ensures that I will relate to the African-American inner-city youth that tend to be blessed with basketball playin' genes. I will employ my many genius friends already at U of I as the collective Jonah Hill to my Brad Pitt, ensuring our on-court efficiency with sound off-court computer engineering. We will only shoot three pointers on offense and only use an aggressive full-court trap on defense. Though I have little coaching experience, my brilliance is so obvious that I cannot be rejected for both the football and basketball jobs at UIUC. After my hiring, Illinois basketball, you're gonna like the way you look- I guarantee it.

***

It is time for change Illinois basketball can believe in. It is time for bold decisions. It is not a time to settle. It is not a time for conventionality. The leader of the program must pursue excellence with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind. We at HLA are fans of the University of Illinois and would be honored to serve if called upon. We believe Illinois basketball will be great again, and we will cheer them on along the way.

(But don't expect too much. You will never be the best because you will never be Mizzou.)

Lisztomania

1. You, my three to five readers, are not getting the content you demand and deserve. Remember that while liberating Highland, IL is still my main goal in life, things in Columbia, MO demand more attention right now. For the dearth of intelligent posts I apologize.

2. Did you know Mizzou beat Kansas in basketball? It was fun. Even though it's old news, I will talk about it more soon!

3. Or not. It will take a while to write, because I like thousand word posts, which take time from actual life. And I have to cover zoning board meetings. (Journalism is for rockstars).

4. #FaithInHaith #FaithInHaith #FaithInHaith

5. Frank Haith IS an asshole, though, for sequestering his players in a hotel after the game. Mike Dixon was ready to fuck every living soul in the Tri Delt house, and possible some inanimate objects in there as well. To deprive him of this opportunity is at best mean and at worst an international human rights violation.

6. American TV? Fuck no I don't watch it. Special1TV, a discontinued British satire of the English Premier League featuring notable futbol managers in puppet form hosting their own call-in show? Seen almost every episode.

7. Speaking of the Special One, Jose Mourinho coming to Tottenham Hotspur? This possibility excites millions of my fellow American Spurs fans. It will never happen, though.

8. Barcelona should really go buy Gareth Bale and put him at left back and be the best fucking team ever. It worked wonders for me in FIFA 11, it will work wonders for Pep Guardiola in Actual Soccer 2012.

9. I have decided to produce a series of posts to help Ricky play FIFA better. His problem, of course, is that he can't score. Real life problems = video game problems.

10. In our last gratuitous thought on futbol: Zambia won the African Cup of Nations yesterday. It was kind of a beautiful miracle that featured kind of a heartbreaking backstory and kind of a dramatic penalty shootout. It makes you wonder if sometimes history really is written in the stars.

11. Is there something in Asian genes that predestines them to obtain all teaching assistantships? Some geneticist must research this.

12. Not that there's anything wrong with Asians or Asian TA's. I just find it a little ironic that someone that can't speak English is allowed to teach communications classes. Obviously this is way too much to ask.

13. "You should be getting into journalism if you have faith in the role of a journalist and believe in what we can do for society- not just because you want to go to basketball games every Friday night." -my professor, just now

14. Well then I'm fucked. Change basketball to football, and that describes me perfectly.

15. This means I need to find something else to do. Right now, that plan is "strategic communications" (read- become a slimy PR hack and/or modern day Don Draper). Not sure if this will lead to fulfillment and happiness, but then nothing in life ever ultimately does.

16. Now the professor says NPR is in its heyday? Hipsters really have inherited the Earth.

17. The title of this post is just another shameless excuse to link to some song I love/vaguely care about/have heard once or twice before. I will not stop doing this until I run through my whole iTunes library. It may take a while to get through 1268 songs.

18. I will never link to Adele though. This I promise.

19. Next year, MGMT wins all the Grammys that Adele got last night.

20. That is all. Now go look at some bitches in yoga pants.

M-I-Z - D-G-B

One week ago, a certain wide receiver announced his intention to play college football at the University of Missouri. Succumbing to the alcoholic charm of head coach Gary Pinkel and an irrefusable offer of part-ownership in offensive coordinator David Yost's booming haircare product line, Dorial Green-Beckham chose the Tigers over a bunch of lesser schools.

The positives of this move are obvious for both sides. Mizzou gets the number one recruit in the nation, a 6'6", 220-pound wide receiver that can run 40 yards in 4.3 seconds and catch any ball thrown in the 10-foot radius around him. DGB arguably becomes one of the biggest icons in school history just by committing here, proving the program's relevance after a disappointing 8-5 season in the face of a much-scrutinized move to the rugged (read: shitty offense goes up against awesome, physical defense) SEC. Condensed: there ain't anything wrong with getting good players. Ever.

(He also avoids the putrid state of Arkansas and legendary "happiness succubus" Bobby Petrino, as one would know had they followed the signing day Twitter conversation of crazy Joaquin Phoenix and fatass Spiderman).

It gets tricky when you consider the second-worst human invention of all time (behind relationships, of course): expectations. I'm not quite sure either party knows quite what they're getting into.

Many Mizzou fans expect DGB to step on the field and become not only the best player on the field, or in school history, but in all of college football. Obviously, anybody with DGB's skill set will succeed to some extent no matter who he's going up against, but the jump from Class 5 high school football in Missouri to the SEC is a daunting one. We have to realize that DGB probably won't catch 100 balls for 1800 yards right away. He will disappear in games due to double and triple-coverage and the consistently questionable strategy of Gary Pinkel and the decidedly mediocre pocket passing of James Franklin. He won't win the Heisman because his team won't be good enough.

It's not to say he's not the second coming of Randy Moss or Calvin Johnson (those two, after all, are gods). He could become the greatest player in school history. He may break every school receiving record halfway through his junior season. He may win every individual award and break every NFL Combine record and lead the Rams to six Super Bowls and get elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, but he is still a single solitary human playing the ultimate team game. He will not lead Mizzou to a national championship.

If the fans expect superhuman performances from DGB right away (as I think many do), a certain segment on the lunatic fringe will turn on him. They'll say he doesn't try hard enough, that he relies on his prodigious talent, that he's a bust. They are exactly the same people that relentlessly chanted his name for two straight hours two Saturdays ago at Mizzou Arena. When you receive the kind of fierce adoration DGB got before even committing (much less playing) here, even the most grounded, realistic people would expect an everlasting honeymoon, and eighteen-year old kids (I was one just three weeks ago) aren't that grounded and realistic.

In the end, there's little we know about DGB's college career right now. We can guess with some certainty that he has a healthy ego (or at least enough to hashtag his own nickname in a tweet). Don't begrudge him that, as anybody that can do the things he does deserves to feel pretty damn good about his life.

We can also guess what he'll expect from Mizzou fans - hell, he's already told us:

"I kind of like that they didn't get too fired up. They weren't trying to distract me from what I had to do in the game. Wherever they came from, whether it was Columbia or St. Louis or back home, I thought they did pretty good. That gives me comfort in knowing, ‘OK, they're cool. They're not going to bother me while I'm in a game, trying make me float out mentally from what I should be doing to pay attention to what they're doing.'"

The entire state of Alabama would scoff at the intensity of even the most unhinged Missouri football fans. DGB needs to realize, though, that Columbia ain't always Chillumbia; people give a shit about Mizzou more than SEC partisans currently give them credit for. I know basketball is a foreign sport in the South, but the intensity at that Kansas game? Palpable, to say the least. Faurot Field will never be Bryant-Denny or Jordan-Hare, but Mizzou has good fans that expect good efforts and good results.

Ultimately, the size of DGB's ego must remain proportional to his stats on the football field. If he lives up to the staggering expectations, he could have all the understatement and humility of Kim Jong Il and we will still love him unconditionally. If he does not - and there will be times when he simply cannot meet the bar, no matter how high his vertical leap - he must realize how bright the spotlight is. He cannot react to adversity with petulance and expectations of acceptance from fans. He cannot coast through his college career as a brief pitstop in the race for NFL millions. He cannot let DGB, the mythical supercreature, replace Dorial Green-Beckham, the tough-luck teen that just happened to hit the genetic lottery.

At some point, DGB will disappoint. Mizzou fans have not conditioned him for the criticism he will inevitably receive. It doesn't mean he can't take it. It doesn't mean this whole thing won't end real, real well.

Well, Shit

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.” 

-Charles Bukowski

I've got no idea what the fuck to do.

Not now. Not in ten minutes. Not in ten years. Not ever.

No enthusiasm. No joy. No fun. Even the most basic conversation a struggle. Always tired but can't ever sleep.

No time to do too much and too much time to do nothing.

No idea what to write. Can't put words together. Once you think you can write good and pretty, writer's block really kills the ego. Makes you feel like less of a man.

Mitt Romney is about to become president. (Though he certainly doesn't remind anybody of themselves, the man he's running against is black. Gasp! Is he also Muslim? Is he socialist for a welfare state? Does he give a slight shit about poor people? The horror!)

Football season is almost over.

Got damn. Life sucks.

It isn't that bad, I know I know. Just average first world pains combined with a mild strain of seasonal depression. The aimless and absurd ups and downs of middle-class American youth. One huge glut of insecurities to swallow and digest and shit out and swallow again. Nothing that hasn't passed before and won't pass again.

Shit, man. There really ain't anything to do but wake up and eat and try and make friends particularly girls and usually fail and feel bad and get happy and sleep and rinse and repeat and get ready to fuck the world all over again because life doesn't wait and there are mountains beyond mountains to climb.

Blogging Rule #437: Always end a shitty, pretentious post with an equally pretentious song vaguely related to the point you were vaguely trying to make but vaguely failed to articulate. The song will do all your 'splaining much better.