You will suffer for this.

If it was not clear before, it is crystal now: David Stern, NBA commissioner, is a fuckface who is determined to deprive us all of great playoff basketball so that he can maintain the racist marketing code of the NBA. In fact, he has managed to shortchange his own league for the sake of abiding by his own demented credo.

What are the terms of this code? The NBA is the site in which some of the greatest African-American athletes on the planet are permitted to showcase their skills-- but only on the condition of absolute obedience to arbitrary and at times absurd rules. The most absurd of these is the one related to "altercations"-- that players who are on the bench must somehow magically not leave the bench area to help their own teammates if a fight breaks out.

Nevermind that in other sports such fights are merely part of that sports' appeal, among them hockey, football, and baseball. In these other sports that include more white players, the fact that we can occasionally see our physical role models scrapping with one another is gravy on top of their displays of skill.

But in pro basketball, this is not allowed to be the case. No, in pro basketball, a fight is indicative of national degeneration, moral bankruptcy.

Why? Because the NBA is a black league, and always has been. And thus the job of a fuckface white commissioner like David Stern is to SHOWCASE his control over his players. It's not some minor dimension of what he does-- it's his ROLE. It's part of the market share of the NBA-- you get to see blacks demonstrate their physical superiority, and then they are forced to obey bizarre bullshit rules, to show that no matter how great they are, they still have to cowtow to a higher authority.

I am of course not arguing here for an essentialism in which African-Americans are physically superior to whites. I am merely pointing out the ideological coding of NBA marketing; this is part of what is being sold.

Mainstream hip-hop, sometimes mis-termed "gangsta rap," is like the NBA without the control aspect. Thus it is a representation of power without authoritative check-- or, more accurately, the white authority, the label and management, is deliberately obfuscated to promote the image of total autonomy.

So, David Stern. Fuck you.

Diss-er-fucking-tation

Writing a dissertation places oneself at war-- with oneself. Almost the entire time, it feels like no one else cares about what you're doing. Only you. And maybe only half of you. Procrastination is your own fear of failure trumping your dedication to the project. It's a fucking pain in the ass.