It's a Beautiful D(eer Antler Spr)ay

I wrote a piece but it's too weird to post at The Gothic Ginobili so I'm posting it here. Heh. -Alex

Mavericks-Blazers Recap, January 29, 2013:

Last night, I sprayed some deer antler spray into my eyes and sat down to watch the Portland game. This is my usual Tuesday-night custom, but today I think I might have held the spray on a half-second too long because the famous "5-on-5" Blazers logo at center court got up and turned into players. Then the logo-spawned players changed color: the red turned to white and the white turned to blue as the logo remembered it was a home game and by now I was futilely washing the spray out of my eyes to no avail. At some point I decided simply to ride the waves of excessive deer antler essence with class and dignity. My eyes widened, and with a sudden feeling of compassion for all sentient beings, I paid attention to the world around me. Only problem is I couldn't move, and I couldn't blink (strange side-effect, but at least I had some eye drops that I couldn't use because I couldn't move). Anyway, what I'm saying is that my performance as a viewer was enhanced, and the blue-shifted logo went back to the center of the Rose Garden floor and then the arms of the logo circled around and around, creating a hurricane-eye through which I could see at a glance every possible iteration of the game and analyze a high-dimensional distribution of possible games. The distribution, shaped ironically like a deer, let me see every possible outcome of every possible move, and it galloped as things unfolded in the game.

But it was kind of an ordinary game, honestly. The distributional deer just kept walkin' along, chillin' out. It seemed pretty mellow and I was pretty cool. I just kind of watched it. It was more interesting than watching Wesley Matthews bobble the ball out of bounds. See, even in a hallucinogenic, omniscient state, I still thought Sasha Pavlovic and J.J. Hickson and Wes Matthews were pretty boring players. So for 45 minutes I sort of hummed along with the uncollapsed wave-function centered on reality and the present moment. And then something happened.

Darren Collison hit a miraculous banker (not soft enough to be a "glasser" Zach) from 27 feet to beat the shot clock with 3 minutes left. Usually when a huge uncertainty like a shot attempt gets resolved into a make or a miss, we calm denizens of probability feel placid and consummated: Our distributions collapse into certainties, our Bayesian needles shift the percentages smoothly to the new, more certain reality, and we settle in to our new, more comfortable chair that is reality, adjusted for the soothing music of fresh, breath-mint-flavored evidence. Our sample sizes increase, our normal distributions get a little more tail. We are happy. But this is just the lulling intro that makes that harsh, jangly synthesizer loudness so jarring. See, some certainties beget further uncertainty by their nature. When Darren Collison is hitting a freakish banker from 27 feet to beat the shot clock, something isn't right in the world. We have shifted to a new, less consistent, high-variance world. We have moved into the Twilight Zone. The deer-shaped distribution at the center of the Rose Garden began laughing uncontrollably in the eye of the hurricane-force spiral, its laugh rather akin to a staggered, polyrhythmic ululating on the note "High C" and the approximate pronunciation of the letter "M". And then the distributional deer exploded. The light was blinding and instincts took over and I blinked and reality disappeared for a few minutes.

When I woke up, instead of the distributional deer, I saw a familiar red-and-white logo and above it a spirited walk. I immediately knew that reality had returned. LaMarcus Aldridge was returning to his bench to acclaim by teammates. He had hit an improbable corner three! The deer antler spray must have worn off at this point because I could see reality not in a haze of distributional data but as it was. Now everything was clear to me. At first I was happy for the clarity of perception, but then I started to look around at the world, in clear and opened mind. And what I'd once considered to be a stable hold reality was absolutely, mind-shatteringly insane, far more so than when I was on that deer antler spray. Ordinary things like the economy and politics suddenly made no sense to me. What do you mean, government spending can actually help the economy now? How do you escape the broken-window fallacy in these economic projections? How can you possibly project with such certainty the state of the economy in 10 years when we don't even know if we'll be living in huts or microchips then? And while we're at it, why can't we just learn to love one another, and reach out with confidence, knowing that yes, sometimes we'll get hurt, but ultimately we are nearly always better for the experience if we take it in good faith? What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding? And why is everything so bleak? What is this desert of the real before me?

And that's when it hit me. I had woken up too far. Damn you, Darren Collison. That was too unsettling an improbability. So I wanted the haze back, if only slightly, but I was nearly out of antler spray and a news ticker helpfully reminded me that I would not be able to purchase any of that anytime soon. So I'm here, I'm terrified, and I'm watching the Aldridge three on replay again and again, not sure what to believe anymore. Having to face reality, I rewound back to the Collison three and found nothing but chaos ever sense. I saw Dirk hit a pull-up three from above the break and, just before that, Nic Batum hit an above-the-break three. Four threes. This was too much. I did not want to live in such a world.

So in desperation, I put the final drops of deer antler spray into my eye with a delicate brush. I went live on the game again just as the final possession was starting. With a second and change left, Portland got the ball to LaMarcus Aldridge and I knew that for whatever would be resolved by the result of his turnaround jumper, something else, something bigger would be displaced. I braced in anticipation of the Lovecraftian horrors I might be subjecting myself to as I watched that high-arcing Rose Garden shot.

But it was not to be. The shot simply went in, in a straightforward way. The sight of the tickled twine and the buzzer's definite sound had apparently exhausted chaos for a merciful moment, and it was just a perfunctory game-winner.

Comedy In One Act - Dewey at 30

Author's Note: I suppose there is some semi-autobiographical detail to the piece below but mostly this piece is fictional, satire, and meant primarily as bleak comedy. I don't know if that makes it more or less discouraging to read that I find this piece absolutely hilarious. In any case, shout-out to Louis C.K. and Anton Chekhov for inspiring this. Mad props, bros. Heh.

Dewey at 30

It's the 20th of January and I have only regrets.

Oh, perhaps it shouldn't be this way, though. Facing 30, I have reached yet another admirable plateau in all my endeavors. My drawings, whose mediocrity so long constituted humor for all my acquaintances, now at least pass their muster in general. My music has finally started to materialize into something that they might even call brilliant in their ignorance (truthfully the music is not brilliant, merely exceedingly well-composed and well-executed). My understanding of minor seventh chords whose root falls on the second scale degree is so transcendent that I've been commissioned to write operatic arias on that transcendent understanding alone. Ah, but none of these things means anything to me! For my craftsmanship, musicality, and fastidiousness in these things is far exceeded in my prose. You see, my gift for writing is peerless in heaven and Earth. The nether world fights a chance, but what I've felt of sin has been inarticulate and hazy, and so when it comes to writing talent, I doubt the devil even has anything to offer me. My every word and sentence gently licks the contours of its every reader's soul, so artfully and precisely have I constructed it. The knife cabinet of my vocabulary has infinite dimensions and is continuous in each dimension. No one can cut a situation down to sixteen words more properly or efficiently. You can hear every rhythm of an act in the corresponding rhythm of my sentences. The clarity of my sentiments is unsurpassed; unsurpassed, that is, except by the beauty of my sentiments. No semantic stone is unturned except those stones that ought to remain unturned for reasons of propriety, taste, or simply because some answers to the problems of life are not yet held by even the finest and fluent of communicators (among which I am the crown jewel). Of course, even for the queue of these unanswered insights still awaiting proper articulation, I am the first, best, and most selective clerk. Let me take your order.

But enough of this pleasant drum circle. I would say more, but I think I've made my point. Let us then come to the wail of regrets atop the center of the circle of percussion.

Aside: The superintendent of my rented building once explained to me how certain varieties of sink faucets can leak imperceptibly because they aren't sealed properly. Every time you turn the unsealed faucet on, a small proportion of the water doesn't quite materialize in the faucet head, instead leaking through the sides and from there into the bowels of the wooden cabinet beneath the sink, slowly wearing that wood away, causing mold and eventually floods. Even as I write this, I must pause now and again to bear a slight well of tears in my eyes that never quite materializes, rotting away my heart and soul and viscera besides..

It seems like such a basic question, but what do we do everyday? I mean, sure, there's an obvious answer: we grind out work or we hazily let our leisure slip by, and ideally we live in a well-mixed concoction of the two that leaves us satisfied and grounded and well-spoken and spent. We first learn and then we mature and then we thrive in a constant pulse of action and then we age and slow and grow wise. Or so we hope. It's a simple process, it just comes about in such an irreducibly complex manner called the present moment and the instantaneous-future-becoming. The tapestry of life's unfolding has such a simple design, but try sussing it out with the eye and the head of a needle and see how simple it seems.

Ever in mind I've kept this vital fabric. But as I begin to age I realize I've lost the thread. It took years of idiotic introspection nurtured by benevolent delusion, but I watch everyone around me thrive (or at least, survive and grow and change), and I start to wonder why in God's name I took direct experience for granted to such an extent.

The Apotheosis of Richard Jefferson

Savvy, canny veteran Richard Jefferson saved the Warriors with a clutch, diving steal from Andre Miller with less than ten seconds remaining in regulation. The Warriors eventually beat the Nuggets in double overtime. This is in keeping with Richard Jefferson's nature as a high-leverage player rather in the mold of Sam Jones or sixth men like Manu and James Harden.

 Brought in for defensive purposes at key instances, Richard Jefferson (known as "RJ" in the small circle he keeps) hustled for a charge in the first overtime and played solid man defense. As they say, this RJ can guard any position, guarding everyone in the final frames from oversized point Andre Miler to tweener Danilo Gallinari. Jefferson hasn't been drawing too many charges recently. Since his role has shifted from man defender ("I make love to pressure" is the famous quote) to primary rim defender and defensive specialist with the Warriors, the overtime charge actually the first charge Jefferson has drawn this entire season. By contrast, according to HoopData, Jefferson drew 13 charges in 2009, 2010, and 2012 (none in 2011 [fluke]).

Jefferson's teammates were not doing him any favors - completely ignoring the fouls-to-give situation, the Warriors essentially let Gallinari drive to the basket unimpeded with 2.1 seconds left in the first OT, despite having Warriors lining his path, with a foul to give. This needlessly extended the game. The Warriors, throughout crunch time, cobbled together a classic Golden State offense from successive heat checks that grew worse and worse as the players tired and tired, taking contested shots early in the shot clock no matter what the clock situation was. News flash: The oven isn't on, guys (Or, if it is, even so, the universe is essentially random without the stabilizing power of consciousness and negative feedback loops and luck essentially evens out. Instead of giving your happiness over to a total series of coinflips, you should probably have focused on using your knowledge of this game and intelligence to assert some degree of stochastic control over the outcome by generating high-percentage shots and opportunities to shift the balance of luck towards yourself and away from your opponents, which is the true essence of competition)!

Tim Duncan Can Dream, but Direct Experience is Smarter

Tim Dream-Can

Tim Duncan dreams in an unbroken series of competitions, sometimes ending decisively, in win and loss conditions. The loss conditions form the terrible ends of nightmares; the win conditions are more pleasant than life itself. Sometimes Tim will dream of an uncontested corner three that his guard has allowed to happen. That dream usually jars him awake and he has to hope he can get back to contested midrange jumpers and kick-outs from double-teams on Tim. Those are more like sheep, or rings. Tim counts these win conditions, jumping over the fence of time. No one can sleep more peacefully than Tim in these moments.

Tonight though, Tim Duncan has had a nightmare and violently wakes to remember where he is; much like the famous General Patton, Tim feels a solidarity with all competitors on all grand stages. For someone that dreams of competition so often, Tim feels Tim's dreams have slowly worn away nearly all his surprise in actual competitions. Tim seems to always be thinking that "I have been on this epic court in some prior life, if only in my dreams. "

As he walked up and down stairs in the bleary-eyed fluorescent light of a hotel's stairwell, Tim mentally prepared himself for a high-leverage, competitive day.Tim and his Wake Forest team were now in the ACC tournament, in Tim's junior year at Wake. His teammate Randolph Childress has been having an uncharacteristically transcendent tournament. Nothing about that is new to Tim, however, having seen relay races as a child swimming, having watched the Olympics, having read endless treatises of wars, having read vast tracts on the sport of basketball. "Sometimes your teammate just can't miss. That's just a thing that happens." Tim had dreams and nightmares and daymares that served as pleasant meditations on all of these things. "Unsurprising."