Other Things David Stern Should Veto

The most hated white man in the league since Toni Kukoc

When sports journalists heard about the NBA Commissioner’s probably ill-advised decision to veto a trade that would’ve sent New Orleans point guard Chris Paul to the Lakers, they practically pooped themselves with rage, railing about the end of the NBA with an apocalyptic despair that would’ve made Harold Camping proud. When I heard about the NBA’s decision, all I could think about was the goodness that could be accomplished by extending David Stern’s veto power, trigger-happy finger, and ‘screw it, I don’t care if I ruin the seasons of three teams’ attitude into other walks of life. Here are the fruits of that aforementioned thinking:

1. Rick Perry’s Presidential Campaign
Here at Sherman Ave we love Rick Perry. Oh wait, no we fucking don’t. No one in their right minds could ever stand to be in the same room, much less vote for, that intolerable shitmuffin. It now seems utterly ridiculous that people as intelligent as Mike Murphy actually thought that Perry could win the Republican nomination. Well, they were about as wrong as Custer’s last words. If only David Stern had stepped forward in August to stop this embarrassing shitshow of a campaign from ever launching.

His dreams were crushed by David Stern. M. Night Shyamalan's should be, too.

2. M. Night Shyamalan’s ability to make movies
So The Sixth Sense was maybe kind of okay. But I dare anyone to make it through The Happening without puking in a biological attempt to reject the atrocity from staying with you. Shyamalan made only one or two movies that could ever be considered ‘good,’ and everything since then has been so unbearably atrocious that Shaymalan should be prevented from ever tainting our eyes with such heinousness again. Unfortunately, the good people at Disney (and by “good people” I of course mean “stupid fucktards”) just keep signing off on his movies. Let’s get Stern in there to crush them the way he crushed Chris Paul’s dreams.

3. No Shave November
I’ll be honest, this year I tried doing No Shave November for the entire month, to see once and for all if I could really grow a beard. I can’t. And I’ve got news for everyone else who has tried it: you can’t either. You do look like an atrocious hobo, though. Congrats. Scumbag Steve would be horrified by your hygiene. Now let’s please agree to never do No Shave November again.

4. New Rebecca Black songs

Rosa Parks' personal hero

Katy Perry has no regrets — only love — about going all the way tonight. I have the same feelings about Rebecca Black’s “Friday.” Yes, it’s horrible, and yes, it probably shouldn’t exist, and yes, it speaks to some very heinous problems at the base of our modern society, but god damn is it funny. I’m glad it exists, and those two weeks where everyone in America absolutely refused to talk about anything else were just awesome. I feel bad for the hypothetical children I may or may not give birth to in the future because they will never have the experience of waiting at midnight for the release of Harry Potter books or movies, and I feel bad for them because they will never have the experience of going to school on March 18, 2011 (the Friday after the song came out) when everyone everywhere was singing “It’s Friday, Friday, GOTTA GET DOWN ON FRIDAY.” For two weeks it was fun to laugh, at the insipid songwriting, at the random rap verse that doesn’t make sense, at the problems with modern celebrity culture, but then those two weeks were over and we all moved on. DIDN’T WE?????

Apparently not. Apparently the ARK Music Factory thought that when 268,000 people disliked the “Friday” video, that meant “we love this, give us more please.” I hate to be the one to break this to you, Patrice Wilson, but when 268,000 people disliked the “Friday” video, it means they didn’t like it. At first, Rebecca Black was sad and kind of funny. Now she’s just sad.

5. Bill O’Reilly’s book about Lincoln
The only thing more ridiculous than the sentence “Bill O’Reilly wrote a book about the Lincoln assassination” is the sentence “Bill O’Reilly wrote a book about the Lincoln assassination that wasn’t true.” Yes. We live in a fucked up world. And while I think we have all accustomed ourselves to Fox News’s ridiculous excuse for news coverage, we don’t need them fucking up history as well. That’s Ross Packingham’s favorite subject!

6. “Ultimatum” by Jeph Loeb
If you’re a normal person, then it probably doesn’t mean anything to you when I say that Jeph Loeb fucked up the Ultimate Universe, but he did, and it is an intolerable atrocity.

Something doesn't seem right...

Quick nut graf: shortly after the dawn of the new millennium, Marvel Comics attempted to reinvigorate interest in their brand by creating an offshoot label, dubbed the Ultimate Universe, where they relaunched characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men as if their 40 year history didn’t exist, and the characters had been created in the year 2000. It worked. The stories were great, and their modern reworking of occasionally anachronistic Sixties concepts had a huge influence on Marvel’s later movie adaptations.

But in the year 2008, Marvel executives handed the creative reins of the Ultimate Universe to Jeph Loeb. It seemed like a sensible decision, as Loeb had won acclaim writing Batman at DC Comics. But whereas Loeb had done well on Batman with a strategy of utilizing Batman’s colorful cast and intriguing antihero sensibility, his plan for Ultimate Marvel was a little more like “destroy everything and kill every character.” His miniseries “Ultimatum” was basically a giant shit all over the Ultimate Universe, whose comics had helped spike my interest in the medium and which I still give to people who mention an interest in comic books, and I can no more forgive him for that than Eddie Murphy can forgive SNL for making one joke about him once.

And most importantly…

My First Quarter Grades
More important than any of the other things combined. I must admit, I got so caught up in college heinousness this quarter that I didn’t exactly get Will Hunting grades. Sure, it’s not like I stayed up past 2 am sequestered in the library every night of reading week preparing for my Ancient Philosophy final, but if Stern could have some words with Morty re: my grades, that would be dandier than Sebastian Flyte.

If that isn’t a convincing reason for giving David Stern a time machine and being done with it, I don’t know what is.

Hate a Random Country: São Tomé and Príncipe

NASCAR hasn't quite caught on here yet

It is widely understood that island nations are the gingers of the international community. Under that model, the pitiful African state known as São Tomé and Príncipe is the global equivalent of Molly Weasley. Boasting a population slightly smaller than that of Boise, São Tomé and Príncipe, (henceforth to be referred to as STP, so I don’t have to type all of those goddamn accents) is a volcanic island chain off the coast of the prosperous, stable nation of Gabon. The country is technically a “Democratic Republic,” but it’s safe to presume that whoever told them they were a democratic republic is the same person who told Dr. Dre he was a doctor. However, since the atrophied remainder of my moral fiber prevents me from scrutinizing a country for its legitimate poverty and instability, I’ll just stick with my tried-and-true routine of scrutinizing a country for its culture and heritage.

Even a high James Franco could design a better flag than this.

We’ll start with the national flag. The predominant colors on the flag are yellow, green, and red; a ground-breakingly creative move on the part of STP. The only other West African countries with those colors are Ghana, Togo, Benin, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Senegal, Cameroon, and Burkina Faso. And you thought those nights of drunken Sporcle wouldn’t amount to anything. To add to the cliché color scheme of the flag, note that the flag displays a whopping two stars. First of all, since everyone’s thinking it: by default, the United States is 25 times better than this lamentable excuse for a country. Really, though, two stars? In the context of constellations, two stars can get you the left half of a belt or about one-third of a fucking spoon. In the context of kindergarten, the kids who wound up twenty years later with meth labs in their basement had no trouble getting a pair of stars on a spelling test. Even the hardly-picturesque Chicago night sky shines with more than two stars. Skeptics may conjure up horseshit excuses like “They represent the two islands that make up the nation,” but at the end of the day, the two stars are about as pathetic as Oprah Winfrey standing next to Pippa Middleton.

It's kind of tough when your soccer pitch is a fucking sandlot

As if the national banner didn’t shed enough light on the nation’s inherent rancidness, a little Wikipedia page called “São Tomé and Príncipe national football team”offers some more material. One fascinating table on this page revealed STP’s World Cup record; the words “Did Not Qualify” appeared so many times, you’d think Rosie O’Donnell was trying to run in the Boston Marathon. On several occasions, they even failed to qualify for the African Nations’ Cup – essentially, they got a rejection letter from a community college. Even more laughable are STP’s record games; in 1976, STP suffered an 11-0 loss at the hands of The Congo. That’s almost as bad as losing a night game to Purdue. On the bright side, there are two games tied for STP’s biggest win: the 2-0 decimation of Equatorial Guinea in 1999 and the 2-0 rout of Sierra Leone in 2000. However, after the magnificent 1999-2000 season, the glory days of two goals in one game became nothing but a fond memory amidst a sea of pimp-slaps from various Western African republics. STP’s next match is against the Republic of the Congo (yet another rival yellow-green-red flagged country) in November 2011 – who knows? Perhaps they’ll break a national record and win by more than 2 goals. But more likely, they’ll be curb-stomped into submission by the country that inspired “Heart of Darkness.”

This country is almost as disappointing as The Matrix Revolutions

It goes without saying that STP is a steaming cocksicle of a nation. Yes, it’s tropical and shit, but so is Brazil, and we all know how atrocious that place is. Any nation that prides itself on the number of stars that Ebert and Roeper would instinctively give a movie with Keanu Reeves, has never won a soccer game by three or more goals, and is located on a fucking island can count of being devoid of my adoration. So join the ranks, São Tomé and Príncipe – Uruguay, New Zealand, and dozens of other horrendous countries will welcome your unabashed taintitude with open arms.

Hate a Random Country: Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan: a geographical AND linguistic bitch

You’ve all experienced it. It’s 3:30am on a Saturday, you’re more plastered than an ex-convict uncle at an open-bar wedding reception, and you’re staring with insurmountable anguish at Sporcle’s “Countries of the World” quiz as the clock ticks down to 00:00 with all but one country entered. The moment of despair strikes when the missing country flashes on the page: Kyrgyzstan.

“MOTHERFUCKING SON OF A SHITCLOWN IN MY ASSHOLE!”

It’s a sad day for our society when hundreds of dollars in furniture damage can be attributed to the unreasonable spelling of one measly fucking nation. Not even a nation –- a “stan.” Indeed, the word “Kyrgyzstan” can only have been produced by a bowl of alphabet soup special-ordered by Helen Keller. And if that isn’t atrocious enough, the only redeeming value in Kyrgyzstan’s name –- the disgustingly high Scrabble score it would yield –- is canceled out by Scrabble’s unthinkably heinous “no proper noun” rule (I’m still bitter about that time I could have played “Kiribati”…fuckers). Kyrgyzstan is a haven for all things contemptible; the life-ruining spelling of the country is only the tip of the iceberg.

Nothing compares to the bitter Kappa Delta-Kyrgyzstan rivalry, not even the infamous Tri Delt-Pakistan decade-long feud

Kyrgyzstan’s sports culture, or lack thereof, is just as horrendous as the country’s use of 8 consecutive letters without a true vowel. Let’s start with the 2010 Olympics –- Kyrgyzstan sent a whopping TWO competitors (one for each letter in the country’s name worth 5 or more points in Scrabble) competing in three events. Of those three events, there was a “Did Not Qualify,” a “Did Not Finish,” and a “76th place.” Kyrgyzstan, for fuck’s sake, are you serious? Your athletic abilities are being scrutinized by a Northwestern student right now; that’s about as rough as it gets. If by some stroke of confused magic, the Kyrgyzstani National Soccer team was lined up against, I don’t know, let’s say the Kappa Delta Intramural Soccer team, the Kyrgyzstanis would certainly be the underdog. To add to the sad stature of their sporting lifestyle, it should be noted that one of the most popular up-and-coming sports in Kyrgyzstan is a game called “Bandy” –- a game which, judging from its half-assed Wikipedia page, appears to be some mixture of soccer, ice hockey, and sexually frustrated middle-aged men. Don’t get me wrong, though; to Kyrgyzstan’s credit, they did win two medals (not gold, of course) in 2008 in Greco-Roman Wrestling. So if you’re ever in a situation where you’re wrestling with someone but not allowed to attack the legs, know that if your opponent is Kyrgyzstani, your chances of winning the fight are very slightly diminished.

The hottest woman in Kyrgyzstan

Let’s turn this conversation to a lighter topic: Sex crimes. One very prevalent issue in Kyrgyzstan is “bride kidnapping,” in which a man abducts the woman whom he would like to marry. Studies show that approximately half of all marriages in Kyrgyzstan are a byproduct of bride kidnapping, or ala kachuu (which literally translates to “to take and to flee”). This clearly stems from a misunderstanding; what we call “bride kidnapping” is what Kyrgyzstanis call “chivalry.” Kyrgyzstani men merely want to save their future spouse the stress of one of those notoriously gaudy Kyrgyzstani weddings.

While we’re on the topic of customs and celebrations in this steaming shitwaffle of a nation, we might as well talk about the primary Kyrgyzstani holiday: Nowruz. Recognized on the spring equinox, the holiday centers around a game called Buzkashi, in which grown men literally ride around a field on horses trying to pick up a goat carcass off the ground. Essentially, it’s Central Asian Quidditch. However, don’t get Buzkashi confused with Kokpar, another regional sport that involves riding on horses and carrying around goat carcasses.

Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with Kyrgyzstan?