All a man's got is the integrity of his work

After my last, lengthy post, I am going to have a links only day, although I cannot promise to be light-hearted.

Black People Love Us! - A nice ironic parody website.

Caddy Hacks - Golf, the Ultimate Symbol of Republican Corruption - This is an interesting Slate article about the corrupting role of golf in today's Washington, particularly among the GOP. There is an interesting section about how Democrats are vilified for not loving NASCAR and hunting, which points out that most Republicans are the same, but are even more likely to succumb to countryclub elitism. (I like not being neutral.)

Not Just an Angry Black Man - This is a belated link, but an important one for me. On June 13, 2004, Ralph Wiley died at the age of 52. You probably didn't know who he was, and I can't say that I knew him personally, but he did touch my life each week. He was a writer for ESPN, covering several sports, but primarily basketball. Ironically, he died during the NBA finals. While Bill Simmons was always considered the posterboy for ESPN columnists, Ralph had his own niche. He usually wrote single topic articles that are argued a point, most often a point about the role of race in sports culture, but on many other topics as well. He wasn't as controversial as Hunter S. Thompson, also a writer for ESPN and also recently deceased, but to me he could always stir more emotions. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that he wrote human interest stories, it was that he found the conflict in any situation, and he argued his side. I probably agreed with him barely over half the time, but I always read him. By the end of his life, out of all of the columnists from ESPN, I only bothered to read his and Bill's. The link leads to one of the better pieces written about Ralph in the week after his death. Someday, I hope to read Ralph's most successful book, "Why Black People Tend to Shout." (And for all of you Berkeley people, Ralph Wiley was close friends with Dr. Harry Edwards. Not having him as a professor is one of my biggest regrets from my days in school.) While he has done excellent work about Barry Bonds and others, if you read only one of Ralph's articles, read this one, White Magic in the NBA, his last column. In it he discusses the differences between Larry Brown and Phil Jackson, ultimately deciding that Larry Brown is the better coach of the two. I may never have been more angry with a column of his before, but I read it and paid attention, even if I disagree with nearly every element of his argument. You may also recognize the first sentence, "All a man's got is the integrity of his work." I have the phrase posted in my office and on this blog, and I have lived my life with it in mind ever since his death.

Comic Covers - This is just a simple link with comic book covers.

The First Post: Nihilism and Übermensch

I have struggled for some time with whether or not to start a blog, or to go back to having a website. It has been about eight years since I created my website, and I have never really gotten around to creating another.

For the past year, I have felt more and more compelled to action, but I have to confess: mere compulsion does not prompt me to take action. My catalyst for this was a search, a simple search like I have performed dozens of times in the past. I wanted to find my friends again...

I like to think that friendship, true friendship, never really dies. You may not talk as much, you may lose contact, but you always remain open in some way that you wouldn't be towards a complete stranger. That is why I never gave up on getting back in touch with Heather, and why I still haven't given up on e-lor. Does anyone call her that anymore? Anyone that she talks to?

So, on my searches on Friday I find nothing about Naeem, just as usual. I found some interesting articles quoting Nisala, and a photo from 2002 at his dojo. I didn't look for Bill, I wonder if his cell number still works. I have been emailing Jill lately. I still haven't search for Kelly or Dan or David from when we were kids. I don't know if I would search for Matt. But, I did find a link on someone else's webpage that took me to the blog of Zack.

It took verification through various landmarks mentioned in the blog and the pictures on Lydia's webpage, but it is Zack. I haven't contacted him yet. It made me think. I was a bit envious that he had had a blog for a year now, but it wasn't/isn't that I am really jealous. I just feel that I have been missing something. Don't get me wrong, as you will hopefully learn, I have the most wonderful wife in the world, she has a hard time seeing it sometimes. I also have a nice house that feels like a home. We have a cute little kitten named Elway. I have a job that I sometimes actually enjoy. I have more video games, CDs and DVDs than I ever would have thought. But I am still missing something.

I miss friends and I miss having a creative outlet. I was envious because there was no reason that I should have waited this long to start. I have plans for this space, but it is all about babysteps, and the first is the biggest. If you are reading this, thank you. Please comment if you are here, even if you are just stopping by. And if you are a friend, and you have somehow found me, let me know.

Okay, so you may wonder why if I am living for the moment, I would wait from Friday all the way until Tuesday to actually take action, so here is the day by day breakdown: Friday afternoon, I find the link and think that it is probably Zack; Friday evening and Saturday, I spend quite a bit of time verifying that it is actually Zack; Saturday, I encourage Carolyn to start a blog at the same time as me so that we have something to share; Sunday, I go to create my blog but the name I want, kingofmyworld, is already taken, so we create Carolyn's blog instead; Sunday and Monday, I come up with 100 names for Carolyn and I to evaluate as possible blog titles; Monday, we narrow down the titles to three (that story will be told later) and eventually settle on kingofallcosmos, the character from Katamari Damacy; Monday night, I create the blog, but am too tired to make a post; Tuesday night, I force myself to post.

(Zack, if you are reading this, I want to thank you. Whether or not you choose to keep in touch, thank you for providing a catalyst.)

So, I do check out the internet quite a bit, and for my first link, I figured what better way to remind people of me than with a review of Chuck Palahniuk's latest work. In Chuck Palahniuk - The Macho Novelist makes a Leap of Faith, the author criticizes Palahniuk for abandoning the soundbite-worthy nihilism of his earlier work for shock horror. A good article, but as is often the case with Slate, the Fray (the Slate forums) is where the best action is. In the letter at the bottom of the page, W_H_Sleeman says:

Horror, at it's most existential sense, is the flip side to Palahniuk's sort of nihilism; having discovered the emptiness at the heart of existence, one discovers that there is no grand freedom to recraft oneself. The devastating truth is that those "Übermensch" attributes one had hoped to personify belong not to the individual but to the universe itself, whose indifference mocks us and our petty transgressions.

I can definitely see the point here, particularly in reference to Fight Club. The men of fight club see the emptiness of their existence, and then tear it down to reveal a higher truth. Perhaps later we will discuss the levels of Nietzsche, and how they relate to the idea of the superman, but for now I will start with the assertion that only the unconscious Tyler Durden could really be considered a superman, if even he could, whereas the others could only hope to be the "god is dead" archetype that Nietzsche himself falls under. Anyway, the nihilism of horror is configured differently. When you strip the emptiness of existence, the mindless consumerism, the millions of petty things that we think about and do for no real reason, the horror of it all is that there is no life-affirming strength to be had in reaching beyond. There is a void, a horrible void. Bad things happen for no reason, good things happen to those who don't deserve them because there is a true and utter indifference in the universe. It is not a matter of balance or karma or being good or saying your prayers; it doesn't matter, and that is the horror.

Around this time of year I think about Lance Armstrong. Please note, if you did not already know, I love sports, just not participation. I love football, basketball, professional wrestling, and nearly every Olympic sport. I watch golf on occasion, I still try to follow tennis, I watch random sports on ESPN2, and I love the Tour de France. What fascinates me most about Lance is that he has the entire sport trying to make him fail, and he still comes through. It is sad, because when he retires, there will be people who still claim that riders like Eddy Merckx were better. Lance Armstrong, like Wilt Chamberlain, has seen his sport try to destroy him, and he still comes out on top. Imagine being Lance, in a country where you are booed everywhere, accused of doping with no real evidence, and more importantly, having the governing bodies try to reduce the importance of your most dominant stages each year. He is trying for seven this year, but he already has more than anyone else, including the five that Eddy had. Lance does not do the smaller races, and it will affect his legacy, but I just don't think it is right.

The horror and Lance Armstrong: Lance Armstrong was a Tour veteran before his testicular cancer, and he was already a rising star. They gave him a one in three or a one if four chance to beat it, but realistically, if you feel you have something to live for, your odds are much greater. Without the cancer, would he have had the motivation to win a tour? I think personally that the cancer was the major motivation and difference maker between Lance and Jan Ullrich, the winner of the 1997 Tour and the man who has come second to Lance on four occasions. I still have an article from Boy's Life talking about a young Lance Armstrong, pre-cancer. I think about that article, and I think about Lance completing a full recovery from cancer, and then dying one day when a car hits his bike while he is training. Would we have any what if's about Lance today? We still discuss some athletes, Len Bias dying the night that he was drafted by the Celtics, Shawn Kemp putting on the pounds, other athletes with drug problems or tragic injuries, like those suffered by both Terrell Davis and Bo Jackson that will probably ensure that they never enter the hall of fame. Would we discuss an athlete in a sport like cycling? That is where you can find the horror, not that it happened, but if it did happen, we wouldn't know. Someone dies a tragic death, and it is remembered by family and friends, but what of their unfinished work? And if what they were doing never got done, what does that say about what they did do, or what anyone has done. It is random that the particular gametes fused at that time to form you or me or anyone else. Were someone missing, the vacuum of their absense would be filled by someone else. The horror is that without you, the world goes on. Here is one more blog to fill the vacuum left by someone else's inaction/inexistence. Whether you exist or not, I am happy to greet you. The universe may not miss you, but I do.