And this, too, shall pass away...

Okay, so I'm still a little upset at the Mavericks' loss, and perhaps I still will remember for years to come the phantom foul from game 5 and the game-6 elbow that D-Wade threw at Dirk's chest that somehow got whistled against Dirk. Perhaps I still believe that the Mavericks would have won the NBA championship had the officiating not been so one-sided at critical times (I understand bad calls go both ways, and that was somewhat true throughout the majority of the middle of games, although Wade still shot an obscene number of free throws). However, I'm struggling to see how this should really be affecting my life. What does it say about the priorities of someone who is so affected by a game played by a bunch of grown men whom he has never met that he would let his thought life be affected for more than a day at the outcome? I'm not sure why people care so much about professional sports. Maybe it stems from some subconscious, "my daddy can beat up your daddy" syndrome, but at least there the vicarious pride involves a close relative.

I watched the game in a bar a Chili's sitting around four other people whose collective IQs probably just eclipsed triple digits. They kept screaming things like "YEAH! F--- SHAQ!" and then laughing drunkenly. When they'd shout things like, "You *bleep*-ing idiots! Why don't you just foul Shaq?!" I would calmly explain that 1) Shaq is on the bench and 2) if you intentionally foul away from the ball within 2 minutes of the end of the half/game, then the fouled team gets two shots and the ball, but then they'd resort to more drunken laughing and comments like the first one I mentioned or, "Well foul him anyway." I've also spent some time this morning reading comments on Mark Cuban's blog, half of which were written by people who could barely string together a coherent sentence but tried to write in such a way as to sound like they were profoundly revealing the single truth of the mysteries of basketball. I think all these events have really put things in perspective.

Life's more than girls. Life is more than money, or careers, or cars. Life is definitely more than basketball. Go learn a foreign language. Read a book (a meaningful one, not "The Devil Wears Prada" -- not that I haven't heard good things about it). Study science or mathematics or philosophy. Consider the meaning of life. Go feed a homeless person. Help someone who is sick or suffering. Do something unselfish. Consider God and your own mortality. America scares me sometimes. Oh well, there's always next season.