How to Excrete Excellence: Sports Edition

So there I am, minding my business and checking my e-mail, when I saw this headline:

Unapologetic Coach of 100-0 Win Fired By School

The story, if you're too lazy to click on the link, is this girl's high school basketball team from Dallas beat another team so badly (100-0, as the title suggests) that the girls from the winning team apologized for it. In my head, the apology went a little something like this:

To the team that is still trying to pick up the pieces,

We're terribly sorry we owned you at basketball. Seriously, we didn't mean to take 3-point shot after 3-point shot, especially after it was painfully clear you didn't have a shot in hell at winning. Additionally, we apologize for pulling your pants down, licking the palm of our hands and spanking you over and over again in front of your family, friends and school mates while tears of shame streamed down your (face) cheeks. Our bad.

I get why an apology was necessary. It's high school basketball, not the (W)NBA. The coach refused to apologize though. He said, "Aw hell nah! There's no way I'm apologizing for teaching my players to be awesome, albeit kinda cocky assholes." But to be fired over refusing to apologize? To get shit canned from your job because you taught your players, oh, I don't know, to win? That seems a bit much. Granted, I don't really know much about basketball except for basic Phoenix Suns knowledge all Arizonans are required to know, but I think this might be a little much.



Raja Bell is my favorite because his name is that of my favorite Disney tiger from my favorite, racially stereotypical Disney Movie "Aladdin". Rawr!

Could the coach have told his players to scale it down a bit and stop showing off? Probably. Should he have told his players to at least pretend to be having a hard time for a while and show a little grace? Sure. But that's not how athletics work in the good ol' US of A. Sure, athletes here have talent. Bigger than talent, though, they all have gigantic mouths that run at a million miles an hour so everyone will know how awesome they are.

Here's a breakdown as far as I've been able to tell when it comes to sports in America.

1. Discover a sport your good at.
2. Make playing it your #1 priority. School? Fuck school. You're all about putting a ball through a hoop/putting a ball in another person's hands/messing around with balls in general.
3. Make money off of your ball handling abilities.
4. Become unbelievably cocky about numbers 2 and 3.
5. Film commercials for anything. Literally, anything that will pay you. Ben-gay and Wheaties sponsorships only go so far. Mercedes-Benz and Roy's Auto Body sponsorships last a lifetime.
6. Waste all your money on stupid things, like a football shaped pool or strippers.
7. Fall on hard times.
8. With no education to fall back on (see #2), re-discover love for your sport.
9. Don't call it a comeback (psst- it's a comeback!)
10. Raise children to repeat.

All in all, these girls did what they were coached to do: eat losers for breakfast. The fact that the losers they happened to be munching on were 8 girls from a school that specializes in "learning disorders", well, that's just sports in the USA baby. Is that Nike and Gatorade knocking at the door? I think it is.

If I only had a brain

Today at work, someone called and asked for directions on how to get to our building. I'll admit it; our building is kind of difficult to find if you're not from Tucson. The freeway is a mess of orange tape and rubble and hasn't been open in years. It's like the apocalypse happened only on this little strech of freeway. If you're coming from Phoenix and looking for our building, it's not going to be an easy quest. Many people don't survive the journey. But you know what's interesting about people: most of them can take directions. If I say, "Head east down Broadway towards the grey building" most folks will know what that means. Most folks, but not the dumb girl who inspired today's post.

Dumb Girl called a bunch of times looking for our building. I said head east down Broadway and she heard "find a hotel parking lot". I said turn around and head south towards the Art Museum and she heard "find a Baggins". She's dumb and passive aggressive.

"There's no grey buildings. You said you were in a grey building," she says.

Lady, we're the only grey building. Downtown looks like it was painted by a six-year-old on a sugar high with a new box of Crayolas. We're the drab looking one on the left. The only building left uncolored in a sea of bright pinks, beighes, magentas, blues and, fuck, every color except grey.

"Wait, is it the one with windows?" she asks.

Yep. We're the only building in the entire city to have windows. It's a recent development, something the rest of the city hasn't caught onto yet.

God, Dumb Girl really gives a new meaning to dumb. Finally she gets here and looks exactly how I imagined her. She's wearing a shirt that doesn't fit right and is way too low cut for an office environment. And not that I looked (note: I totally looked), but her chest blossoms were nothing to write home about. If you're going to pull out the girls to give yourself an extra advantage, then at least have something to show. It was a lot of hype for nothing, much like college and my first kiss (zing!).

Her skirt also was revealing a bit too much, like say, glitter body lotion. How on earth is glitter body lotion appropriate for a sales pitch or job interview or whatever the fuck she's here for? That means that wherever she sits, there's going to be a greasy, glittery residue left behind. Which means that whoever sits in the chair after her is going to be covered in second-hand glitter and the cycle will just continue until we're all covered in stripper glitter. I don't want to be covered in stripper glitter. Not again.

I hate Dumb Girl with every fiber of my being for no other reason than she's a moron. I might be a bitch, but at least I know how to dress appropriately for my job and follow directions. Which reminds me, she even printed something from Google maps to find out how to get here. Google maps knows everything. I could type in "my purpose in life" and then click the "get directions" button and Google would direct me to my purpose in life using clear, concise language and a map for easy viewing. Come to think of it, that might be easier than actually doing all this soul searching.

I've compiled a list of things Dumb Girl could get directions to on Google maps:

- A brain
- A properly fitting shirt
- Victoria's Secret (if you're going to be a slut, at least own a good push-up bra)
- A shower
- On-coming traffic
- A better handshake. Pussy!
- Conversational skills. I can hear the meeting and she's bombing. I don't mean that in the sense that she's awesome, I mean that in the sense that she's dropping out of the sky like a destroyed fighter plane. War analogies are always appropriate. You don't know.

Backup Plan

Today I feel like this:



Which sucks for two reasons. The first of which being that feeling like I resemble a 50 foot tall dinosaur doesn't quite give me the self-esteem boost I'm looking for. The second reason being that if I were going to be any monster, I want to be a zombie. That's right. I want to be a rotted, green, eyeball missing, people eating zombie.

I'd make a good zombie because it'd be the easiest profession* ever. Their only goal in life, er, un-life, is to eat. Granted, what they eat is human flesh, but that's just a small price to pay to be a member of the everlasting un-dead party. All my worries about school, work, social standing and self-esteem would be gone because I'd be dead and wouldn't care. The only thing Zombie Karina would care about is eating and trying not to trip over my decomposing peers. My estimation of what a day would be like in the life of a zombie would go a little something like this:

7 a.m.- Wander around looking for food.
8 a.m.- Wander around looking for food.
9 a.m.- Wander around looking for food.
10 a.m. -Wander around looking for food.
11 a.m.-3 p.m. - Groan.
4 p.m.- Wander around looking for food.
5 p.m.- Wander around looking for food.
6 p.m. - Stare at something off in the distance; wonder to myself if it's food.

I think you get the idea. If my plans to be a professional, well educated and well adjusted adult doesn't work out, I plan on becoming a zombie. So if in the distant future you see me wandering around, dead with half my arm missing, you'll know that behind my cold, lifeless eyes I'm smiling. But, uh, you probably don't want to get too close.


*This is of course assuming that being a zombie is on scale with having a full time job. You would have to have qualifications like, "Can eat up to 10 pounds of brain" and "Has 2+ years experience in being un-dead" and "willing to work holidays, weekends and dark, foggy nights".

Slowly turning into Macho Man Savage (on the inside)

I can't decide if I'm having a good day or not. I think I am, maybe, kinda, a little, sort of having an alright, not terrible, eh, fine day. I can't settle on adjectives that I like! I feel like I'm split into two folks: Happy Karina and Turning into The Hulk Inside Karina.

Here are some things that are making Happy Karina so damn chipper:

Friends
I'm just going to put this out there: my friends are bomb. They're amazing, hilarious, fun, ridiculous and all around mother effing awesome. But most of all, they all seem to have this sense where whenever I feel like blarg they happen to show up or call just to see what's goin' on. It also just goes to show that I don't keep crappy, lame, silly or redonk people around in my life. Homie don't play that, which leads me to my next point:

Silly Phrases
I think I get it from my cousin Stephanie, but I will occasionally latch on to a word and say it until I have taken all meaning and coolness out of it. For example, I'm trying to make the word "woof" catch on. I've been trying for a while. Let me set the mood for you. Say you're at the mall/store/eatery and you see a girl dressed something disgusting. It's terrible. She's wearing something horrible like moccasin boots, cutoffs and a bedazzled sweater with feathers. And not only is her hair stringy, but she's wearing sunglasses inside. And her sunglasses are smudged. You have to squint to look at her because if you opened your eyes at full capacity, your brain would laugh in your face and then quit. You turn to your friend to point out the walking atrocity and the only word you can muster to describe it is, "Woof." It's a powerful word. Go ahead and try it out.

Halloween
There's something about dressing up as someone you're not that's wonderfully comforting.


And since I said it's a 50/50 sort of day, here are some things that are making me die a little inside, even as I write this. True story. I'm 1% more dead than I was a second ago.


The word "excellent"
This word has become dangerous to me. I started using it as part of the words I'm trying to bring into my vocabulary, but it has since gotten horribly out of control. I can't stop saying it. And try as I might, I can't say it without sounding like a.) a surfer from 1991, b.) stoned or c.) feeling like I should be in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. I am officially looking for a new word to bring into rotation that hasn't been popular since the late 80s.

My contacts and my eyeballs
Yesterday I went to put my contacts in and found that one of them was ripped. Ripped! Granted, I've been using these monthly contacts for 6 months now, but what the hell? There's nothing that will make me fly into an unsubstantiated rage quicker than having to break out my glasses. I feel like a huge geek and for some reason there's hair spray residue all over them, even though I haven't used hair spray since I was 14 and rocking the chola bangs. But I tried to make peace with it. Tons of people wear glasses, what's one more? Then today at work this happened:

Co-worker: Hey, I really like your glasses!
Me: Oh, thanks. (feeling less mutant like)
Co-worker: Where'd you get them? I'm trying to find some like that because I'm going to be Sarah Palin for Halloween.
Me: *sigh*

Sound effects eaters
Alright, this is a serious topic that needs to be discussed. I absolutely cannot stand people who make moaning, groaning or otherwise questionable pleasure noises whilst eating. Hey, I get it, that pear is delicious. It's so tasty it might even make you let out an involuntary moan or two. But I don't want to have to hear your sex noises because you're so smitten with your fruit. It's gross and kind of baffling. How is it possible to groan and swallow food at the same time? Any scientists in the house who can explain this to me? Mostly, it's just weird and makes me feel a little uncomfortable. In fact, sound effects eaters have just joined my own personal Axis of Evil.

Boys
Every last one of them are confusing and stupid. I remember thinking this when I was in fifth grade and a boy tripped me with a jump rope because he liked me. I remember thinking this when I was in 8th grade and had my first boyfriend. And I remember thinking it after every bad date, every bad argument, and every bad everything in between. Boys are silly and there is no point in trying to figure them all out.

Now that I think about it, tonight is Dollar Tuesday night at the local theatres, so perhaps my day is more 70/30 in favor of Happy Karina. Good thing my love for cheap movies far outweighs any gripes I have with life at the moment. You win, Dollar Tuesday. You always do.