Big Dion

An Open Letter to Emmett Burns About Grammar

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:29:00 -0300

September 10, 2012

Mr. Emmett C. Burns, Jr.

District Office

3600 Oak Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland 21207

Dear Mr. Burns:

Have you, sir, no, comprehension, understanding or respect for the English language? How dare you write a letter so laden with such blatant grammatical errors, sir? How dare you?

At this point in our history here in the United States of America we are in a grammatical desert where elementary rules governing syntax, spelling and basic punctuation are being callously ignored and tossed out like so much garbage by many in our citizenry who really ought to know better. Basic knowledge of the difference between “there” “their” and “they’re” or the correct way to spell definitely or the difference between effect and affect has all but disappeared. But I expected better from you, sir. You are, after all, an elected representative of the great state of Maryland, an educated man and a man who is so demanding of others. I ask again, sir, how dare you?

Your errors would be obvious to even the most plebian grammarian, had you bothered even a cursory proofread by a third party (or even a second party). They begin at the opening of your letter and continue in gross fashion throughout it. Why would you think the word delegate needed to be capitalized? A delegate is not a proper noun nor is it an official title, the name of a city, state or country. Are you unaware of this or do you simply not care?

You then continue your reckless disregard for grammar on the very next line when you write, “Baltimore Ravens Football fan.” Why would you capitalize “football”? Is the team known as the Baltimore Ravens Football? No. It’s known as the Baltimore Ravens and you are a football fan or a fan of their football team. Either way, capitalization is not necessary and is simply incorrect.

You then go on to write “Same-Sex marriage.” What on earth would lead you to believe that “same-sex” would necessitate capitalization? Were you under the impression that same-sex was a brand name or trademark belonging to a company? Simply being a political issue does not make a term deserving of capitalization. This is a basic tenet of the English language and one of which you should be well aware.

Your grammatical errors continue throughout the letter. You capitalize “Football Team,” refer to Mr. Bisciotti as a “National Football Franchise Owner” and misuse the word “inhibit.” All of these errors were made in a two-paragraph letter that you explicitly (and incorrectly) label as being meant for the media with a “c.c. media” note at the bottom. Shame on you, sir.

Our children and the good people of Maryland deserve better command of the English language from their elected representatives. If you do not have such command of the language yourself, I ask you to please seek out a member of your staff to oversee future communication you make in written form.

Your poor grammar is both profane and injurious, significantly more so than the actions of Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo. My eyes bled and my heart wept as I read it for all the people your lack of tact and reverence for our dear language will hurt. You are a despicable man and ought to be impeached from office for this chicanery.

As I am not one of your constituents, I will not demand your resignation or a personal apology. I ask only that you respectfully self fornicate, you retromingent carpous scallywag. The United States of America deserves better.

Sincerely,

Big M.F. Dion

Big Dion on How Love Is

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 16:53:02 -0300

I tried to watch “Rachel Getting Married” the other day on HBO. It’s that Anne Hathaway vehicle about a girl who gets out of rehab and then wrecks her sister’s wedding.

It looked like it had promise because Anne’s sister is getting married to a black guy, which was new and exciting, but then it quickly dove into that “everyday story of a family” bullshit that indie filmmakers love to make. You know, the quintessential movie about a week or a month in the life of a modern family that somehow represents all of our families in some way and isn’t really about anything and at the end of the movie nothing really happens. (Think “Little Miss Sunshine” or “The Kids Aren’t Alright,” those movies that people who are really into movies love because they “take chances” and don’t fall into the typical movie clichés, except it seems like without falling into typical movie clichés, movies are apparently two-hour vignettes about screwed up people who don’t do much but argue over esoteric nonsense that only those blessed few with a highbrow taste and intellect are able to appreciate.)

Then I watched the series finale of “The Newsroom,” and after I finished throwing up all over my house, I came to some conclusions about life, love and relationships.

SIDE NOTE: I’ve never been an Aaron Sorkin fan, but it’s mostly because I haven’t seen much that he’s done. I’ve never watched “The West Wing” or “Sports Night;” I saw one episode of Studio 60 and thought it was a little too into how clever it was. I thought “The Social Network” was good, but wildly overrated (SIDE SIDE NOTE: Can you put a semicolon inside quotation marks? Obviously the punctuation marks go inside the quotes, but I’ve never seen a semicolon used.) I digress.

My big problem with “The Newsroom” is the characters, and more specifically the romances between the characters. First, there’s the ugly blond who is Will’s intern and somehow magically gets bumped up to an associate producer on the first episode all while maintaining a romance with the show’s former senior producer. Then a new senior producer comes in and magically he falls in love with her too. It’s all part of this new “nerds win” philosophy or the Apatow version of the world where the hot girl goes for the nerd because he’s smart and has substance (and really the hot girl has substance too, she’s just been dating dicks all her life because she’s the victim of society’s mores and nerds are too scared to ask her out).

So this odd looking girl with eyes that are way too fucking close together and dirty, stringy hair has not one, but two senior producers vying for her affection, and of course she sticks with the better looking guy, the one who isn’t right for her because, you know, Jim and Pam can’t get together until season four.

Then there are the two black people on the show who have this terribly cliché back and forth, mostly about Obama. But they mind their place in the background and stay out of conversations between the important white people whose love lives we are rapt in and only show up to bicker in a clever way that shows they’re intelligent and not stereotypically black, but can still manage to keep it real.

Then there’s the Mackenzie-Will relationship at the center of it all, which could not be any more of a pathetic TV show anachronism. They’re former lovers who are brought back together by the magic of News Night 2.0 and by delivering quality, groundbreaking journalism in this age of fluff and frivolousness. First Mackenzie will have to date a couple of losers and Will will have to date some floozies and some girls who (on paper) are better than Mackenzie, but ultimately they’ll wind up together, sharing a kiss in some season finale down the road leaving viewers breathless and wondering if these two crazy kids can really make it work.

TV relationships always annoy me because they seem so completely ungrounded in reality. It’s so stupid and insipid and predictable and more importantly not real. TV relationships in the 21st century seem to all be hollow homages to the demigod of perfunctory infatuation masked as true love.

Last year, in New York when I met with my friend Ems, is when I first realized this. She introduced me to the man who is now her husband, and at first I didn’t get it. Ems is one of those girls who’s pretty in a way that even if she tried really, really hard not to be, she would still be. Think young Sinead O’Connor with long blond hair. Her new husband is not pretty. He’s kind of short, if memory serves, and is Eurasian (from Belarus) and kind of has no personality. I didn’t get it. And then I watched them together.

They work because he balances her. That whole “you complete me” bullshit from Jerry McGuire is real. It’s real in the sense that the person we belong with isn’t the person that’s most like us or the person who laughs at the same stupid shit we do or shares our idiosyncratic interests, but the person who completes us. It’s not the person who completes us in terms of who we are and what we want, but in terms of what we’re missing, which is something that oftentimes we don’t even realize.

Ems’ husband is just what she needs. He’s attentive and giving and understanding. She needs those things from a partner, but I would bet that if you asked her two days before they started dating, “What do you look for in a guy?” she would have said none of those things.

That’s the main thing I’ve noticed in the successful couples I know: the thing that makes them work is something they don’t entirely realize themselves. I’m sure if you asked her now, “What is it that makes your relationship with your husband work?” she wouldn’t say, “He pays attention to me when I need it and is understanding and loves me enough that he doesn’t make me explain myself.” But I’m pretty confident that’s what it is.

While I was in Denver a couple weeks back I went to my friend Kyle’s wedding. I was a late addition as a groomsman, I think because he figured I was the only person he knew capable of throwing a suitable bachelor party. There were four of us – one is religious and averse to strip clubs, another is married and lives in Wisconsin, one has a vagina and the other is me.

SIDE NOTE: He called the bachelor party I planned for him, “the best party ever.”

Kyle is a lot like me in the sense that he thinks it’s funny to question and contradict societal norms and he doesn’t really give a fuck what you think of him. He lives by the idea that those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind. We’re also very different – he’s conservative, white, loves guns and really, really, really likes to follow the rules.

He also is wholly unmotivated by emotion or insecurity, which makes it hard to relate to people. I think it’s why we both have so many platonic female friends, as counter-intuitive as that sounds.

Also like me, on a surface level he doesn’t seem like much of a catch. He’s boorish and constantly makes misogynistic jokes that he’s only half kidding about; he’s far from loaded; he’s not flashy; his job isn’t impressive; and he’s not particularly motivated to become anything more than who he is.

But what Kyle needed was someone who could look past all of his wacky antics and outfits and his lack of giving a fuck and see who he is inside. Inside he’s a very traditional guy and has to be one of the most deeply decent people I know. He cares about others, he’s honest, he’s earnest, he has integrity and he’s the kind of person who will give you the shirt off his back. But you wouldn’t know this when you met him. You’d just think he was some goofy weirdo who made inappropriate jokes and had no brain-to-mouth filter.

I’ve known his wife for a couple years and what makes them work is that she appreciates him for being who he is and he appreciates her for appreciating him. Their love is quiet and intimate and there’s no show or ostentatious display, just this calm energy you feel when you’re around the two of them together.

For me, that, more than anything else, is the determinant of successful coupledom – does your partner put you in a better place? Not because you were anxious about where they were or what they were doing or because you missed holding them or vice versa, but does their mere presence make you a different, better and more whole you?

In life, I believe in four things: love, death, gravity and myself. That’s it. I believe in love because I’ve seen love. More importantly, I’ve felt love. It’s this amazing feeling of happiness and wholeness and uncertainty and immutable forgiveness and compassion that makes you do things that you swore you never would. It makes you rethink everything in your life you were sure of and have epiphanies that you aren’t entirely sure are real, but that you just go with because you can’t imagine going against them.

It’s really a lot like heroin. At first it gets you high and you feel euphoric and it changes the way you act and the way you feel and the way you behave. It changes who your friends are, how you dress and how you feel about yourself. And then at some point you just lose the ability to live without it. It becomes part of your ability to feel normal and without it you’re literally sick.

Also like heroin, you know the real shit when you have it. An addict can always tell when they’re being ripped off with some low-grade bullshit and they know when they’ve got the real McCoy. Love, like heroin, doesn’t make you better, it makes you worse. What makes you better is having the one you love and having them love you back.

That’s why relationships are so important. Love by itself isn’t enough, because it isn’t self sustaining. Love has to be maintained and taken care of and if two people aren’t hopelessly dependent on each other in ways they don’t and can’t fully appreciate, it doesn’t work.

My grandfather and my step grandmother have been married for more than 30 years. He’s black, she’s white and he was raising four black children from a previous marriage when they met, not to mention another he had from a relationship before that. And they got married in the 1970s.

Aside from the obvious issues that such a relationship would bring about, I don’t ever think I’ve heard him tell her he loves her or vice versa and I literally don’t ever think I’ve seen them kiss. He’s in his 80s and she’s in her 70s and the thought of them having sex is repugnant, but even if it wasn’t I can’t imagine they’ve done it in a decade. Despite a complete absence of everything we’re taught to believe about what makes couples and love and relationships work, they make it work and they’ve made it work for all these years through a mountain of bullshit I won’t even begin to divulge.

They’re in love. But more than love they have a relationship.

I think back in the day when people got married there was a real understanding that this thing was for life and the public shame, scorn and humiliation that went along with divorce was enough to get most people to put up with the bullshit and wade through it.

Today, that shame, scorn and humiliation are gone and marriage doesn’t really mean what it used to. Even though people are waiting longer to get married, the marriage itself means less. Marriage today isn’t about a lifelong pledge of devotion, it’s about proving to yourself and the people around you that the love you have is real and making sure they all know it. Everyone seems more focused on the love than the commitment.

But seeing Kyle’s wedding and seeing his wife’s sisters and her family completely accept him and see him the way she sees him made me believe that maybe it’s not all dress-up at this point.

Recently when I found out that Aaron Sorkin, creator and writer of The Newsroom, was dating Kristin Davis a.k.a. Charlotte York Goldenblatt. This is important for a number of reasons, but most importantly because I have never been as in love with any television character as I was/am in love with Charlotte York Goldenblatt. I love Charlotte York because she always, always believed in love. She wore her heart on her sleeve and never for a second doubted her worth or her conviction that everything would turn out alright if you just kept believing.

Sure, Charlotte is a blue blood from Connecticut whose parents would shudder at the thought of her bringing home a brotha from the streets. But if she could marry Harry Goldenblatt, convert to Judaism and adopt a little Asian baby, I don’t think shacking up with a black man with tattoos from the hood who is 20 years her junior is that much more of a crazy stretch.

So naturally, I lost all respect for Newsroom when they went after “Sex & the City” in the season finale. In that episode, ugly blonde AP gets splashed by a “Sex & the City” tour bus as she’s walking out of a restaurant while the “Sex & the City” theme song plays. After getting splashed, she goes on this rant about how things in real life don’t end up perfect like on “Sex & the City.”

But here’s the thing about “Sex & the City,” it never mythologized relationships or love. Relationships on “Sex & the City” were flawed, they were messy and most of the time they didn’t work. It was never a show about how love conquered all or about how things always came together in the end. Whether it was career or location or maturity or an ex, most of the time things fell apart. At the end of the day the moral of Sex & the City wasn’t, “love will always find a way,” it was, “falling love is hard, make sure you have good friends to catch you.”

Love is complicated, love is hard but most of all love is real. I hope it works out for Kyle and his new bride forever and ever. But even if it doesn’t, it was nice to spend a few hours at a wedding with two people who get it.

My all-Olympic SheCouldGetIt Team

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 14:22:18 -0300

The explosion and preponderance of hot female Olympians has been one of our favorite things about this year’s games. More than just ogling pretty girls, having attractive female Olympians speaks to the new normal of female athletics. Women who competed in sports used to all be homely lesbians, but now pretty sorority girls compete and they win. It’s exciting to watch.

That said, putting together our all-Olympic team was tough this year. As much Olympic coverage as we watched (way more than you), we’re still not sure we found all the talent out there.

Since handball and beach volleyball were our two surprise favorites of the games, we’ve decided to make the all-Olympics SheCouldGetIt team a handball team (because handball has seven players and seven subs, which allows me more flexibility than beach volleyball, which has two players and zero subs).

SIDE NOTE: After watching women’s handball, it seemed like the men’s version would be better. It’s like a glorious mix of basketball and lacrosse so naturally we assumed that bigger, faster, more coordinated men would be more exciting to watch. That’s not the case. Women’s handball is way more fun to watch and not just because there are some cute girls on most teams (none go beyond, though). The women are smaller so their game flows more smoothly. The men are too big and bulky and it slows things down and makes the movements awkward. I digress.

We’re very proud of our all-Olympic SheCouldGetItTeam. The starters are two tennis players and two beach volleyball players, along with a runner, a basketball player and a girl who throws things. The US is well represented (because we have the hottest women), but Europe, South America and Asia also make the list.

We would like it noted that these are all Olympians we spotted while watching the games, not girls we picked off of some “Hottest Olympians” list online. Also, full disclosure, we may be going through a blond phase right now. Anyway, without further ado, here are the starters:

Sabine Lasicki (Germany, tennis) Hot, thick, blond and German. You’ve got to wonder what kind of guys she’s into. Are German men intimidated by her thickness? Can they handle it?

Angelique Kerber (Germany, tennis) –Also hot, thick, blond and German. She’s Lasicki’s doubles partner on the German tennis team. Their chemistry really gives the team a kick.

Lolo Jones (United States, track and field) – She’s taken a lot of heat for getting a bunch of endorsements and then sucking in the actual Olympics. Those mean reporters even made her cry. But here’s the thing, it’s not her fault she’s hot and it’s not her fault that people want to give her money. To be great at anything, especially individual athletics, you have to have an irrational belief that you are the best. If you’re on that short list of demonstrable greatness, and fourth place in the fucking Olympics puts you in that echelon, you have every right to accept money and advertising from companies who want you to be the face of their brand representing Olympic greatness. That is to say that of course Lolo Jones thought she was going to win gold. Track and field reporters and enthusiasts knew she wasn’t going to win gold, but to be great you have to ignore all those people. People should really lighten up on the poor girl. And she’s funny.

Leryn Franco (Paraguay, track and field) – This is our team’s go-to player and MVP. She’s also a model, so she’s professionally good looking. Unfortunately, she’s not really very good at her actual sport. She didn’t even make the finals and ultimately finished 34 th at the javelin this year.

Marketa Slukova (Czech Republic, beach volleyball) – A friend once referenced a girl and said, “That’s how all women should look.” Beach volleyball players are how all women should look. They’re tall, toned and actually vary in shape quite a bit. Some are skinny like Kerri Walsh and others are round (not thick or fat, but round) like Marta Menegatti (who is also on our list), but they’re all really fun to look at when they play. That’s probably why this list has more beach volleyball players than any other sport.

Candace Parker (US, basketball) –Candace is the Beyonce of female athletes. She’s so unquestionably hot that sometimes you forget how hot she is. And also she’s married to Sheldon Williams, which no one really understands. It’d be like if Beyonce was married to Ja Rule or something.

Xue Chen (China, beach volleyball) –Who would have thought that China would produce one of the hottest beach volleyball players in this year’s Olympics? Beach volleyball players have to be tall and athletic and female, three things the Chinese are not really known to be.

Bench:

Catalina Ponor (Romania, gymnastics) – The only gymnast on the team and our 8-man off the bench (like a sixth man in the NBA). She’s pretty much the only gymnast of age outside from that old lady from the Ukraine who is like 40. It was nice to have a gymnast to crush on now that most Olympians are 14-year-old girls with tiny legs and impossibly huge shoulders.

Alex Morgan (US, soccer) – Don’t understand all the Hope Solo hype. Just don’t. Alex Morgan is so much hotter.

Liu Hong (China, race walking) – She makes race walking watchable.

Kim Glass (US, volleyball) – We weren’t actually fans until this photo shoot.

Alyson Felix (US, track and field) –Alyson looks like a really sweet girl. There was so much talent in this year’s Olympics her teammate Sandra Richards-Ross didn’t make the cut. She’s hot too.

Stephanie Rice (Australia, swimming) – This photo got her on the list. The fact that she put it on Twitter merited her starter contention.

Louise Hazel (Britain, track and field) –Louise and Stephanie Rice illustrate an ideal that we never thought was possible, that excessively muscular women can be sexy. It’s the new normal. Somehow despite a rippling six-pack, she’s still got a feminine body. She’s also gorgeous.

Honorable mention:
Becky Hammon (Russia, basketball) Christina Vukicevic (Norway, track and field) Jessica Ennis (Britain, track and field) Beatriz Fernandez (Spain, handball) Marta Menegatti (Italy, beach volleyball)
Ida Alstad (Norway, handball)
Jaque (Brazil, volleyball)

With apologies to my love, the now deceased Nora Ephron

Wed, 27 Jun 2012 13:32:00 -0300

To this day I’ve never seen “Sleepless in Seattle” or “When Harry Met Sally” or any of Nora Ephron’s other films, save for “You’ve Got Mail,” which was unforgivably terrible and made me want to spew green bile everywhere. But I will always love Nora Ephron for an essay I read my senior year of college. The essay was “A Few Words About Breasts.”

I loved it and after I found out she died last night, I read it again and I loved it even more. I loved it for the same reason that readers of “Esquire,” an unrepentant MEN’s magazine, loved it. It was so completely honest and vulnerable and (without being sexist, patriarchal or patronizing) adorable.

I fell in love with Nora. I fell in love with her insecurity, her brazeness (which isn’t a word, but should be), her wit and her intelligence. There’s something special about writing that allows you to see into someone’s soul and into their head that no other art form has and Nora was a master of it. I’ve been a fan since the moment I finished reading the essay for the second time and my heart sort of sank last night hearing that she died.

Of all the women I’ve loved and never met (Angela Davis, Gloria Steinem, Nina Persson, Nora Ephron, that’s it) I may have loved Nora best.

If you haven’t ever read it, take a moment to read “A Few Words About Breasts.” It will be, without question, the best thing you do today. After I read the piece, in college, I wrote my own response for my Personal Essay course. It got an ‘A’. It’s not nearly as good as hers and it’s actually kind of dumb, but it’s all I have to offer in the way of an elegy.

“With Apologies to Nora Ephron”

I truly detest the word boobs. It’s probably one of – if not my least – favorite words. I can’t stand it. It’s just such an ugly word.

I mean if you can think of an uglier word then by all means tell me, but I certainly can’t. The word repugnant is probably uglier than boobs, but repugnant is a spectacular word because it means repugnant. There is probably not a more prima fascia repugnant word in the universe than repugnant, which is exactly what makes it so extraordinary.

But the word boobs is an extraordinarily ugly word for a beautiful thing. I love breasts. The word breasts is kind of a funny word when said aloud (honestly, say it out loud, breasts) but that’s just because of the location of the esses, and any word with esses separated by a single consonant sounds strange (chests, vests, crests..etc. ad nauseam). The word boobs, however, is just ugly.

It’s ugly no matter how you look it at. On its face: boobs. Anyone that can honestly look at that word for its calligraphy value and not say it’s horrendously ugly should have their head examined. It’s ugly to say and it’s ugly to hear. Anytime I hear some girl talk about boobs, or even more disturbingly her singular boob, it’s like someone hit me in the genitals with a baseball bat. Even the word genitals is more appealing than boobs.

I’ve hated the word for a long time. I think it was truly ruined for me when a friend of my tenth grade girlfriend repeated it over and over again until I really got to thinking about it. Boobs. It’s just so very unattractive. It’s unattractive to hear, unattractive to say, unattractive to write and unattractive to read. Boobs.

I love women’s breasts. I’ve been an aficionado since I was 12 and my friend Michael scored us a copy of Juggs magazine, but I’ve always hated hearing people call them boobs. Tits, knockers, fun bags, melons, honkers, hooters, bazongas, chi chis, anything is better than saying boobs. You can’t truly appreciate a nice set of boobs. Boobs sounds like something you wipe off your shoe when you’ve been out in the rain too long, or something gunky you find underneath your bed when you haven’t cleaned you room in a long time.

Boobs don’t sound like the beautiful things that they are. Boobs don’t sound like the parts of the body that give sustenance to a newborn infant or the best accessories to that new dress you just bought. Boobs? Boobs can’t make a woman or change a man’s heart. Boobs?

Where did this word come from? I’ve been hoping and praying in vain for ages that someday people will realize how absolutely profane the word is, but so far to no avail. I mean, really, boobs? Have you ever heard anything quite so stupid?

The Atlanta Diaries: TFKs (Terrible Fucking Kissers)

Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:40:00 -0300

(photo above is Minka Kelly, Leighton Meester and someone named Jessica Szohr. Courtesy of fuckyeahhotactress.tumblr.com)

I went out last night and got back into my old (bad) habit of making out with girls in public. It’s something I try not to do anymore because it’s so very freshman year of college, but I suppose we all have our vices. Some people smoke, some people eat a tub of ice cream, some people bite their nails, I make out with slutty girls in clubs. It could be worse.

This all happened at a club called MJQ. It’s a really cool place that sometimes sucks, but the concept is quite novel. You’d probably miss the place if you drove by it because the club is literally underground. The actual structure is just this shack-looking edifice and it’s only real purpose, I guess, is so that people who have never been there know where to go inside. So you pay your $5 to the guy sitting outside and walk down a hallway corridor that leads you to the actual club part.

SIDE NOTE: Normally I am unequivocally opposed to paying cover, but it’s the only way I’ve found to party with black people in Atlanta. I still haven’t been able to find a bar or otherwise free establishment that’s frequented by black folks where I can feel confident about not getting shot. Plus my tour guide for this place is of similar mindset and I live around white people and I work from home and I’m still not quite comfortable with putting up a Craigslist ad looking for black friends. So here we are paying cover.

I digress. The club itself is almost like a really decked-out basement with a bar in the middle and a tiny dance floor and an even smaller stage adjacent to it. Around 1 a.m. it gets packed. If you go on Wednesdays they play this crazy, unpredictably outré mix of music that can only be described as whatever the fuck the DJ feels like playing that night. Last night I swear I heard Slick Rick, the Cranberries, Wu-Tang, whoever sings 99 Luftballoons, The Go-Gos, I think there was even a Cardigans hearing (like a sighting…I don’t know if this works, but I’m gonna stick with it).

So I’m inside and I’m dancing with girls and I meet this one kind of cute, nerdy-looking girl who says her name is Katie. Katie was super excited to dance with me, like really, super fucking excited. Like I said, she was nerdy, but she wasn’t ugly. She kept telling me how good looking I was and how lucky she was to be dancing with me. Apparently she’s from Colorado, but she’s one of the Hill people that’s from the mountains and has no real social skills. She was in town visiting a friend or something like that. I asked her to be my date for a wedding I’m going to in August. She melted. We made out a little bit. She left.

Katie’s actual kissing technique wasn’t particularly objectionable, but her lips were. Her bottom lip was cracked and chapped to the point that I was seriously taken aback. First of all, you shouldn’t leave the house with chapped-up lips and even if you do, have the common courtesy to lick them before you kiss someone. Does she not realize her lips are chapped? I mean, I know she’s a Hill person, but they’re your lips, how do you not feel them being cracked? I could feel the dead skin, and it was just weird and nasty. Needless to say, I will not be bringing Katie the Hill person to the wedding.

This happened once before with a French girl I met in LA who didn’t speak English. I made out with her at this bar on karaoke night and her lips were so dry that I actually had to tell her to lick them. That’s when I realized she didn’t speak English. So I mimed it for her, she licked her lips, we went back to kissing, they got dry again, we stopped kissing, I mimed again, we went back to kissing, something happened, we stopped kissing, her friends took her away, I never saw her again. It’s always been a goal of mine to take home a girl who spoke no English, and this was the closest I’ve ever come.

Back to last night, though. After I left Katie, I went back to talking to these 21-year-old girls at the bar. Eventually one of them ended up giving me a faux lap dance and we started making out. Her problem was too much tongue. A note to women everywhere: kissing is not a tongue contest. You don’t win anything for sticking as much of your tongue in my mouth as possible. In fact, you lose.

I’ve had a pretty good run of kissers in the last 5-10 years. In fact, since I’ve been 21 there haven’t been too many terrible experiences, so last night was extra unpleasant. But I’m not even done yet.

Then there was some girl named Jackie who did the fish-out-of-water thing to me. I haven’t experienced this in years and its return was anything but welcome. The fish-out-of-water technique is when a girl opens and closes her mouth as many times as she possibly can while kissing you, like a fish when you pull it out of the water and it’s struggling for air. I will never understand why girls think this is cute or sexy or enjoyable. It’s not.

I think the problem is that no one has been able to sit these girls down – for a number of reasons – and explain to them what they’re doing wrong. (These girls also may have just been really inebriated. I’ve kissed some girls drunk and then kissed them sober and noticed a world of difference. That said, I get really inebriated and I still don’t kiss like a fish, so I’m going to err on the side of this being an overall, not just a drunken, problem.) So I would like to take a moment to tell all the women out there a few things about kissing. I’ve kissed a lot of women in my time – young and old, black and white, foreign and domestic – so you can trust that I know a thing or two about this.

1. Kissing is like dancing and like with dancing someone has to lead. That someone is the man. The man leads. Don’t try to lead. Like with dancing, if you try to lead shit gets fucked up and nobody wins. I don’t know about other dudes, but I’m not following, so we just end up in a situation where two people are trying to lead and then people’s feet get stepped on and heads get bumped and everybody’s a loser.

2. Following the same line of thought, you need to follow. You can’t just do your own thing. Again, kissing is like dancing. If I’m doing the waltz you need to be doing the waltz. You can’t do the mambo. I don’t care how much you like doing the mambo, we’re waltzing now. Get with the program.

3. Most people would rather have too little tongue than too much. I personally am a fan of French kissing, but I would rather have a completely tongue-less kiss than tongue everywhere. That’s just unpleasant. If you suspect, even a little bit, that you may use too much tongue, tone it down.

4. Eyes closed. The whole time.

5. Sometimes biting is sexy, but don’t overdo it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been bitten by a girl in a way that was not pleasant. A note to biters (and this is coming from a guy who likes biting): you can’t just bite, there has to be some kissing in there too. Once I literally took a girl aside and had to explain this to her. I coached her step-by-step until she finally got it. Biting is not kissing. It can be a part of kissing, but not the only part. That’s just biting. I don’t want to just be bitten by you; I don’t care how hot you are. Also, try to keep the biting light. I want to feel it, but it shouldn’t hurt in the morning.

That new Chris Breezy video is fire! Which reminds me, we should talk about domestic abuse

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 15:30:00 -0300

I love Chris Brown’s new video. Breezy’s verse was cool, I loved the cameos from Snoop, Red and Meth, I love the way it was shot, I love the shout out to ‘90s fashion (whether it was ironic or not I’m not sure because everyone’s dressing like the ‘90s these days) and most of all I love seeing my girlfriend, the city of Los Angeles, in the background. I love this video.

Fortunately or unfortunately any positive mention of Chris Brown these days seems to necessitate a defense for supporting him despite his well-documented forays into domestic abuse. It’s always interesting how someone becomes the face of something. Like how Diddy’s son became a poster boy for privileged kids being given full scholarships to college yesterday, despite the fact that thousands of other rich, famous people’s kids have been given full scholarships to college for various reasons through the years.

Chris Brown’s poster boy status makes more sense. We all saw what he did to Rihanna, thanks to TMZ, and it was shocking. Then we saw his behavior afterward and then there was this and this. But it seems like in our culture it’s not the crime that counts, but how you react afterward. Note Casey Anthony and Dharun Ravi for great examples of people who were vilified more for their post-crime behavior than for what actually happened.

People like to pretend that they hate Anthony because she killed her daughter, but the real reason they hate her is because she was in a wet t-shirt contest days after Caylee died. People don’t hate Ravi because he shamed his roommate into killing himself, they hate him because he didn’t look sad enough in the court room after it happened.

(SIDE NOTE: $500,000 has been donated for George Zimmerman’s defense. That’s not directly related to any of this, but I felt like it was worth mentioning.)

The same is true for Brown. It wasn’t that he beat Rihanna up or that we saw how bad he’d beaten her, it’s that he wasn’t contrite and forlorn enough for all of us after it happened.

But more to the point, the whole Chris Brown-Rihanna incident could have led to a really adult and mature conversation about domestic abuse and why it happens, how it affects people and what factors cause men to be abusive and women to stay in abusive relationships. Instead there was some stupid war between #TeamBreezy and #TeamChrisBrownisaTerribleHumanBeingandShouldNotBeAllowedToLive (the second one is not an actual hastag). It’s all fine and good to support Chris Brown without defending what he did to Rihanna, although a lot of people seem to feel the need to do that (“she deserved it,” “she was attacking him,” “he was defending himself,” “that crazy bitch had it coming”), but I think it’s more important to look at his behavior and what it says about him and American culture at large.

Here’s the thing about men who abuse women: they aren’t normal people. Most men who abuse women are actually unstable and/or psychopathic. To wit, research suggests that about 80 percent of “both court-referred and self-referred men in domestic violence studies exhibited diagnosable psychopathology, typically personality disorders.

“The estimate of personality disorders in the general population would be more in the 15–20 percent range…As violence becomes more severe and chronic in the relationship, the likelihood of psychopathology in these men approaches 100 percent,” according to a report by Donald Dutton titled, “Patriachcy and Wife Assault: The Ecological Fallacy” (that I admittedly found on Wikipedia).

To put it simply, Chris Brown is crazy. I think his behavior following the incident and everything he’s done since then sort of corroborates that idea. It was particularly visible in his violent outburst at “Good Morning America” after Robin Roberts had the temerity (the TEMERITY) to even broach the subject.

There’s also a school of thought that suggests stress is what causes men to lash out violently at their domestic partner. More than the stress, though, it’s the fact that men who abuse women don’t know how to deal with the stress. They simply inculcate the stress and unleash it unexpectedly on an innocent victim.

“Our study suggests that violent behavior is a likely response among people with particular methods of evaluating and coping with stress,” said Kristi Williams, an assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State University. Her study found that abusive men were likely to view stressful circumstances as personally threatening, while trying to avoid the situation or repress emotional responses.

Domestic abuse is also a learned behavior. Studies have found that nearly one half of abusive men grew up in homes where their father or step father was an abuser. The real problem is that no one knows what to do about it. There are programs for men who have been abusive, but what about programs for men before they become abusive?

This comes back to our societal ideal of what makes a man a “real man.” There’s this idea that a real man is stoic and that anger rather than sadness is the appropriate reaction to trying times and situations. There’s an entire school of thought and research devoted to how men respond to sadness with anger while women respond to anger with sadness. If (as a man) you’ve ever been so sad you punched a wall or broke something or (as a woman) have been so angry you started crying, you’ve experienced this phenomenon first hand.

So it’s society’s fault? Not exactly. To bring it back to Young Mr. Breezy, like most great artists he seems to be navigating a delicate balance of brilliance and insanity. A lot of that has led to the rapping and the tattoos and the increasingly erratic behavior. The disparity between the blind adoration and blind enmity that seems to be directed toward Brown seems to come from those who realize that he’s not of sound mind and those who don’t. I think that’s why so many people (and a particularly high number of women) are so passionately supportive of Chris Brown no matter what he does. People who are abnormal and outré and different see bits of themselves in him.

It’s easy to dismiss what he did as, “the kid made a mistake” and just as easy to vilify him for life as, “a monster.” But really, like all of us, he’s a complicated individual who has issues. We won’t ever understand his issues because we don’t know him.

But I suppose I’m talking to myself, because no one really wants to talk about domestic abuse unless we’re all agreeing that it’s bad. So let’s just listen to Chris Brown’s music. Cuz I can’t lie, Breezy’s got that hotness.

If you are actually interested, check out http://www.emergedv.com/

and http://www.mchenrycountyturningpoint.org/causes.html

I’ve only been to Brooklyn once and I didn’t care...

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:41:09 -0300

I’ve only been to Brooklyn once and I didn’t care much for it. I’ve spent most of my time in NYC in Manhattan, for better or worse. This David Banner video makes me reconsider my opinion. I love this video, love the song, love the mixtape. I’m a big fan of everything Banner’s doing these days.

I’ve been a Chester French fan for a long time and this...

Thu, 31 May 2012 18:37:43 -0300

I’ve been a Chester French fan for a long time and this video for “Black Girls” just made me dig them even harder. I like this song a lot too, mostly because I feel the exact same way about white girls. Also (and maybe it’s just because I’m a fan of gratuitous female semi-nudity disguised as art) I think this video is absolutely gorgeous.

Can’t wait for the new Chester French album to drop.

No, Diddy's Son Shouldn't Have to Return His Scholarship, You Idiots

Thu, 31 May 2012 13:53:58 -0300

Well, it looks like Participation Trophy Generation Syndrome (PTGS) has struck again. People think that just because Justin Combs should have to give back his scholarship to UCLA just because hisDiddydaddy is a multimillionaire and because, what, he has a restaurant named after him?

It saddens me more and more every day that these pathetic people and their massively warped sense of entitlement continue to dominate discussions. The kid earned an athletic scholarship to a Division-I FBS university and he should have to give it back because his dad makes more money than yours? That’s the stupidest thing ever. Why does Justin Combs get a scholarship and you don’t? Because Justin Combs is way, way, way, way better at football than you are. In fact, he’s way better at football than you are at anything in your entire stupid life.

Scholarships aren’t just about the money. They’re about the achievement of being one of the best players in the country. It means something to be a scholarship athlete. UCLA doesn’t just give them out to anyone. People complaining about this have no idea how hard it is to be given this opportunity. But just to give you a sense of the odds, only 1.4 percent of high school football players are offered scholarships to play at the college level. One-point-four percent. That’s lower than the acceptance rate at Julliard, Oxford or Ringling Bros. Clown College.

While Combs isn’t exactly a beast at 5’9”, 170 lbs, he obviously did enough to merit national attention. He’s rated a two-star player by Rivals.com and he had offers from UVa., Illinois, Iowa, UAB, Wyoming and a few smaller schools.

Also, why doesn’t anyone complain when former NBA or NFL players’ kids are offered scholarships? Austin Rivers obviously could’ve afforded to pay to go to Duke. Howie Long’s son Jake could certainly have afforded to pay tuition at the University of Virginia. What about Bill Walton’s son Luke or Dell Curry’s son Stephen, should they have had to pay their way through college because their dads made millions?

Here’s the single stupidest part of the whole equation. Apparently “tax payers” don’t think their money should be going to fund this kid’s scholarship because he’s rich, but athletic scholarships don’t come from tax payer money. Athletic departments make millions of dollars from the slave labor of their so-called student athletes. They use that money to pay for scholarships.

The second stupidest part is that no one seems to understand Combs chose UCLA for a reason and the free education was a big part of that reason. If they withdrew the scholarship offer or told him he’d have to pay, odds are he’d take an offer from one of the other eight programs who have been recruiting him and would gladly pay his way.

I’d seriously love to meet someone who thinks this is unfair just to hear the reasoning behind this nonsense. When you work your ass off your work should be rewarded no matter who you father is.

A few thoughts about this video. First, love the shout out to my...

Sun, 20 May 2012 13:26:00 -0300

A few thoughts about this video.

First, love the shout out to my man Freddie Gibbs from Jeezy. Dude has been one of the best MCs in the game for about five years now.

Love the line by TI, “I don’t do this usually, but I’m too fresh to fight. Someone go and find security.”

Is Diddy still paying rappers to say they like Ciroc or is it just a force of habit now?

Future is so terrible at rapping. To quote my man Jon Connor, “We got rappers out now who suck at rapping.”

An Explanation of Facebook's IPO for People Who Know Nothing About the Stock Market

Fri, 18 May 2012 17:16:00 -0300

I’d like to provide a little background info for people who aren’t exactly market savvy. We’ll start with the basics. An IPO is short for Initial Public Offering, meaning that it’s Facebook’s first offering of shares of its formerly private company to the general public. This means that Facebook (FB on the Nasdaq, in case you were curious) is now a publicly traded company. That really just means three things.

First, if you’re wondering why all these people are now millionaires and billionaires because of the IPO it’s because they got free stock when they started working with the company and now they can sell each share for the stock market price (or they can hold onto it in hopes that it will be worth more later). It’s like someone gave you a bunch of Michael Jordan rookie cards for free back in 1984 and now it’s 1999 and those cards are worth $500 each. You can cash in and become a million/billionaire depending on how many you got.

Second, Facebook is now required to disclose and make public all of its business information, meaning how many customers it has, how much money it made, who is on its board of directors, etc., etc. These documents can be viewed by anyone who cares to find them and are required to be sent to every shareholder the company has.

I’ve been a shareholder in a number of companies for some time and honestly this information really isn’t worth reading. Plus, most of this information about Facebook has been readily available for those who were interested in reading about it for quite a while. The nerdosphere has kept pretty good track of Facebook ever since the company became a monolith rivaling many large countries, in terms of revenue and membership ($16 billion and 900 million users respectively).

Third, anyone can now buy stock in Facebook and own a piece of the company. I’m personally of the belief that Facebook has gotten as popular as it’s going to get and until it starts actually selling something (other than users private information to large companies) $38 a share is pretty close to the company’s ceiling. But then I’m the same guy who scoffed at buying Apple shares at $200 a pop (they’re now selling around $530/share).

Their model is genius, but $38 a share and a $16 billion IPO already reflects that genius. I see the company adding more users and certainly growing to include more than 1 billion users within the next five years, but with all the internet watchdogs out there (and the fact that the company is now public) I don’t see how they dramatically increase the value of their company and/or their stock. At least not in the near future.

If you are a novice investor and considering investing in Facebook there are a few things about their stock price you should know.

1. The price of $38 isn’t cheap for a stock. It’s considerably less overpriced than Groupon (down almost 50 percent this year and currently selling at around $11) and Linkedin (up more than 50 percent this year, selling at over $100/share) as far as IPOs go. Those companies got prices that, in my humble opinion, were a bit bloated. Linkedin particularly, considering they don’t really sell anything is a bit of a mystery profit wise.

2. Buying a small amount of stock is basically negligible. Anything under 100 shares, especially with a price of nearly $40, isn’t really worth your money. Buying 10 shares of Facebook is basically like putting $380 in the bank and hoping it turns into $400 (still better than a savings account, but a savings account won’t turn into $300 because of a weak economic forecast from Nasdaq or $100 because Mark Zuckerberg gets caught with Thai whores in his basement). If you don’t have thousands of dollars at your disposal right now, wait until you do or don’t bother. Or buy it as a gift and frame the shares or something.

3. We could actually be looking at the next IBM or Apple here, so don’t hold out on buying it because I said so. I don’t actually know what I’m talking about.

My Night at the Highlight Factory (and how it totally explains Atlanta sports fans)

Wed, 09 May 2012 14:20:12 -0300

To be fair, I’ve only been to two other arenas to watch professional basketball in my life – Staples Center and the Pepsi Center (I once went to Madison Square Garden, but that was for a St. John’s game, so it doesn’t really count). Having said that, the Highlight Factory, also known as Philips Arena, is quite a unique animal.

First, no one shows up until half an hour into the game. In my previous experience, the arena was usually 80-90 percent full by player introductions during the playoffs. Philips was about 55 percent full and about half of that number were Celtics fans. The Celtics fans ended up being probably 25-35 percent of the total fans present at the arena, which made for an interesting dynamic.

The game was tight, back and forth the whole way and that made the presence of all the Celtics fans that much more noticeable. Normally in the playoffs seeing an arena filled with that many fans of the opposing team would seem completely unnatural, but it made complete sense as the night continued.

Atlanta, as a sports city, is like a woman in her 30s who keeps dating guys and finding faults with them and refusing settle down. Everyone around her keeps wondering why she won’t just stop her nitpicking and commit herself to one of these guys. The thing about this girl is the guys she’s been dating, while they’re not bad, are really not worth committing to.

Atlanta has a long history of not putting a great product on the floor (field, diamond, ice) for its fans. A lot of people bashed the city for not supporting the Braves during their run of 14 NL East championships during the ‘90s - 00s, but that was because during that 14-year run they only won one World Series. Imagine if that had been the Yankees or the Lakers or the Canadiens (the Canadiens are a respected hockey team, right?), their respective fan bases would’ve gone crazy and demanded the owners blow the team up and start over five years in…maybe they’d get to seven, but 14? No chance. Yeah, they consistently won their division and made the playoffs, but those 14 division crowns came with a host of first-round exits and consistent disappointment. They were always just good enough, never great.

As a sports fan, there’s nothing worse than mediocrity. It’s like sports purgatory. You’re never going to win a title because you just don’t have the talent and you can’t get the talent because you don’t have the draft picks or the cash to go get free agents. So you’re just stuck. You wait it out, constantly watching your team do just enough until the stars get old and are bypassed by the next generation of younger, better players. It’s where the Dallas Cowboys are right now; unfortunately most Dallas fans haven’t figured that out yet.

Atlanta fans aren’t yellers, though. They don’t get angry and steadfastly demand that ownership make changes or just boycott games en masse. Instead, half of them hold firm to their loyalty to the team and keep buying season tickets and the other half just don’t show up and don’t say anything. So the owners are making enough to get by and nothing changes.

This is what’s happening with the Hawks right now. They have the highest paid player in basketball (technically Kobe is the highest-paid player in basketball, but that’s only because he got the Michael Jordan extension given to players who have carried a franchise for so long that they’re entitled to be massively overpaid and no one is allowed to complain about it) and he’s averaging less than 20 points a game. Also his name is Joe Johnson. Also, all but two teams in the playoffs right now have a starter who averages more points per game than him. Also, five teams have two players who average more points per game than him. Also, he’s locked into a contract that no one would dream of taking for another five years.

They’ve also got a mercurial power forward named Josh Smith who is one of the most athletic and talented players at his position in the world when he’s playing his game. But instead of playing his game, he tries to play Kobe Bryant’s game. And he’s not very good at playing Kobe Bryant’s game.

They need a new coach, a new star and a dependable sixth man. Their ownership shows no signs of doing any of these things, which is especially conspicuous because they’ve needed all of those things, except the six man who they had and then gave away for nothing before the start of the season, for the past three years.

All of this is part of the psyche of the Atlanta sports fan. Sports radio in the city is blindly optimistic beyond reason and rationality. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it optimism. It’s more like denial. It’s what I imagine has to happen in the mind of a woman in an abusive relationship – constantly explaining away the behavior, justifying the terrible decisions and somehow convincing herself that the future is going to be different.

So at game five of the 2012 NBA Playoffs these Atlanta sports fans are constantly ready to be let down. Tuesday night’s game started off horribly for the Hawks. They turned the ball over again and again and could barely make a shot. They were down 21-15 at the end of the first quarter and the general consensus seemed to be that the Hawks were going to lose this one in embarrassing fashion.

But then the Hawks went on a run in the second quarter that changed everything. The crowd got on their feet, the rally towels started waving and the Highlight Factory came to life. The Boston fans were getting heckled (as they should) and the arena shifted from a split crowd to a decisive home advantage for the Hawks.

It was like they wanted to believe the whole time and were just waiting for a reason.

The Hawks closed out the game by failing at inbounding the ball to give away their final offensive possession of the game. Then they came right back with a superb defensive effort in which they didn’t even let the Celtics, a veteran team with three no-question hall of fame players and one very likely entrant, get a shot off before the buzzer.

It was cringe-inducing, it was defeating and then it was amazing. Most importantly it was just enough to win and send the series back to Boston where they’ll probably lose and be eliminated from the playoffs in the first round. Again.

Watching Goodie Mob’s new song play over and over on the...

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:49:48 -0300

Watching Goodie Mob’s new song play over and over on the NBA Playoffs has made me think about how much I miss Goodie Mob and the Dungeon Family. I don’t care what anybody says, the Dungeon Family were/are the greatest musical collective ever.

I’ve been listening to this super group out of LA called Black Hippy made up of Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar, Ab-Soul and Schoolboy Q. They’ve got a cool thing going on, but nothing nearly as ostentatiously out there as the Dungeon Family. This video just illustrates how inventive and creative and flat-out different they were.

The track is amazing. It’s very much vintage Goodie Mob/Outkast in its rhyme pattern. Both groups would drop knowledge on you in a way that you didn’t quite get unless you really listened to (or looked up) the lyrics. Not to mention there are eight different verses on the track before you ever get to a hook, then the hook gets repeated like six times.

They did it on Cool Breeze’s album because the track was so uncommercial that I don’t think the labels would have allowed Goodie Mob or Outkast to put it on their own albums. This also led to the thoroughly disappointing Dungeon Family album, “Even in Darkness.”

'Girls' is the worst show on television (and if you like it please kill yourself so it can be canceled sooner)

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:44:00 -0300

This article is now also posted on LotharioMagazine.com

A quick note about the racial objections that have been made about “Girls”: shut up. If you want to have a dialogue about the increasing trend of self segregation in Brooklyn, NY, or anywhere else in these United States and use the show as a jumping off point, that’s great. Let’s talk about it. But to attack Lena Dunham or any of the other writers on Girls for creating a show that reflects the reality of that self segregation is just stupid and whiny. Not everyone has a black friend.

Hell, let’s even attack HBO for greenlighting and producing another lily white pilot with a story centered around a world that is inherently devoid of blackness. Isn’t that the real problem? Why is it Lena Dunham’s fault that she inhabits the same world ensconced in the comfort and familiarity of her own race that most of us inhabit? (Oh and the homeless dude…there are black homeless people in NYC. I’m just glad black actors are getting work; the rappers are taking all the jobs.)

I was open to the criticism when I thought there was a depiction of New York City as this great white metropolis, but given how insular and myopic the show is (it centers around four characters, with an occasional appearance from a boss, a co-worker, a homeless guy, and the protagonist’s parents) one can hardly expect to see a full spectrum of ethnicities represented. I read a great response to the criticism from Demetria L. Lewis of Clutch Magazine who made the astute observation, “I don’t mind ‘Girls’; all my friends are black.” So let’s just chill the fuck out.

Having said that, I cannot believe this show is on television. It is the single worst piece of shit I’ve seen since that God-awful Vh1 male hate polemic “Single Ladies.” Wait, that show is still on TV? I’ll move forward.

I hate everything about this show. I hate the premise, I hate the characters, I hate the actresses playing the characters, I hate the message, I hate the tone and I hate idea that we’re supposed to accept that this is life. I get that television is supposed to tell stories and great artists tells stories about our world through individuals who represent a particular swath of Americana, and even though they may not immediately reflect us as a whole, they show a part of us.

I understand that this show is not lifting these girls up and saying that they are the model of 20something behavior, only that they’re a representation of it. But why is it on television? Yes, parents, this is what your children are like – they suck up all your money working go-nowhere internships while dressing like street urchins, getting high on opium tea and having sex with ugly douchebags – but why would you want to watch their pathetic lives reenacted on HBO?

Yeah, 20something white girls are awkward. And yeah, it’s a result of helicopter parents and the participation trophy generation syndrome (trademarked) blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but the fact that most people of a growing ilk aren’t interesting or funny these days doesn’t mean that we need to make a show that is uninteresting and unfunny.

The previews for the show looked bad, but I decided since there was all this hubbub, maybe there was actually something worth watching. There was not.

If you haven’t seen “Girls” it centers around a 24-year-old girl named Hanna who lives in New York City. She’s fat and ugly, and like most fat and ugly girls of her generation she constantly points that out to her friends who are always there to tell her how not fat and not ugly she is. She has a sex pal (I’m trying to come up with a better term for this situation than “fuck buddy” and sex pal is the best I can do right now), which is obligatory for any female protagonist in any form of media who is under 30 because, you know, girls don’t have boyfriends anymore. (Well, they do, but only the really good-looking, skinny ones who have everything going for them, like a good job and flawless skin and perfect hair who seem completely together on the surface but deep-down are really hopelessly insecure because they’re afraid no one really likes them for who they are and are still good people on the inside.)

Hanna’s parents cut her off in the first episode and she’s forced to try to turn her internship (which she’s had for a year) into a real job. Of course, she is told that the company has plenty of people who would love to work for free and is summarily fired. We then see Hanna interacting with her friends, doing what over-privileged white girls living in New York on daddy’s dime do – having lame dinner parties, walking aimlessly, pondering…pondering and getting high.

There’s the British one who seems so glamorous and together, but is apparently pregnant. SIDE NOTE: Interesting that writing a black character, or any woman of color, was too much of a stretch, but a person from an entirely different continent who just happens to have the same skin color is doable. I digress. There’s also the best friend with the perfect life and the boyfriend (who she secretly doesn’t really like, but can’t bring herself to dump) described above. Then there’s the neurotic one who just can’t seem to shut the fuck up.

It’s not that these characters are unrelatable, they’re just unwatchable. I know these girls. I know all of them. I went to college with them, I lived near them, I meet them at parties and I have friends who are friends with them. I just don’t know why anyone in their right mind would watch a television show about them. Their ubiquitous awkwardness isn’t funny or endearing it’s just awkward.

Admittedly I only watched the pilot, but that’s really all I could stomach. You don’t have to spend a week in the sewage tank to know you’re swimming in shit.

This seems to be the second attempt to recreate “Sex and the City” and it’s whiffed as wildly as the other show, “Single Ladies,” which I’m not even going to discuss. Yes, the characters on “Sex and the City” were all tragically flawed, but they were FUNNY. And they were witty and smart and ambitious and FUNNY.

Is that the point of “Girls,” that women of this generation aren’t any of those things? I always thought the motif of “Sex and the City” was that these really great women were doing their best to try to navigate the single life in their 30s (and 40s and 50s as there seems to be no end in sight for the franchise), and that if the brilliant and talented Carrie Bradshaw and her band of lovable sidekicks couldn’t find a man, maybe the problem wasn’t actually them, but that the process of modern dating itself that was to blame.

“Single Ladies” took the approach that their women are single because men are all terrible shit heads and there’s not a single one worth dating. “Girls,” on the other hand, seems to be of the opinion that euphoric domestic coupledom is impossible to achieve simply because everyone sucks. I think that’s my biggest problem with the show. It’s all a part of this “Dove campaign for real women, because real women are ugly” bullshit.

I’ve decided I’m gonna create a show. It’s gonna be centered around a good-looking, successful and ambitious male in his 20s who’s humble and polite and funny and not even slightly pretentious or insecure. It’ll be about him and his band of merry men who stay out late drinking on weeknights, have sex with tons of attractive women and have great relationships with their mothers. Each of their ascents to success has been fueled by hard work, determination and a sincere desire to give back to those less fortunate. I’ll call it “Guys.” It will take place in LA.

What do you think of facebook? Do you think it's a good way to keep in touch since "you have so many friends in different places"?

Thu, 03 May 2012 15:15:00 -0300

I love facebook. In addition to being a great way to keep in touch, it’s also a great way to stay on top of what’s going on in the world and what people are talking about (which are not the same thing).

Perfect example - Kony 2012. I’ve been abreast of the Invisible Children campaign and Kony since early 2006, I always wondered why Darfur got so much more attention when it seemed like what was happening in Uganda was so much more atrocious and abhorrent. So when it blew up on facebook I understood exactly why it was happening then.

It’s also so much more valuable and fun than going to a high school reunion or asking other people what other people are doing. I can just look on facebook and see for myself.

I think the ads are obtrusive and the fact that they sell your information to companies is appalling, so I just enable adblockerplus and don’t post any information on my facebook profile that would be worth selling. I also log off before I click on any new websites, play music or buy anything online. This makes me pretty useless to facebook. It’s sort of like having a credit card with free perks that you payoff in full each month. The company gets nothing and you get free shit. #winning!

The NFL is Socialism

Thu, 03 May 2012 14:56:00 -0300

Now that Jonathan Vilma of the New Orleans Saints has taken the logical step of attempting to sue NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s pants off, I thought it an apt time to present thoughts on the structure of the National Football League and what has allowed it to become such a beacon of profit. It also made sense to explain why exactly Goodell thought he could get away with something as flagrantly dictatorial as suspending a man for an entire year without pay without so much as the chance to defend himself.

If we live in America, a land where you’re presumed innocent until proven guilty and every man and woman is entitled to a fair trial, how is it one man can suspend players for a violation without even consulting them about their involvement in said violation or allowing them to defend themselves? Quite simply, because the NFL is socialism and in socialism you can do shit like that.

You might say that the NFL is a privately run business and therefore doesn’t need to operate within the confines of traditionally accepted American values and characteristics, e.g., allowing a fair trial before conviction. And this is true. However, even private businesses are subject to American laws about who can be fired, suspended, hired and why. There’s an entire wing of the government devoted to this (the department of labor). That also misses the point.

The NFL isn’t actually a business, it’s a nonprofit organization that just happens to make a shit ton of profit. Look it up. The NFL is also the single most socialist organization within these United States and the commissioner, Comrade Goodell, is simply exerting the power he’s accumulated to punish who he sees fit in the way he sees fit.

This socialism thing isn’t new. At what other company are you told where you’ll work, when you’ll work and for whom? You don’t have a choice in the matter. (I’m not actually sure if it would be possible for a draft pick to declare himself ineligible for the draft and then join the team of his choosing, but I have to imagine that’s in the rules somewhere.)

The draft itself is the incarnation of the phrase “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The team that did the best picks last and the team that did the worst picks first. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

What other company (or nonprofit organization) within this capitalist nation of ours is built on the model of profit sharing and dispensing equal revenue to each arm of its corporate entity? This enables teams in teeny, tiny towns like Green Bay, Wisc., to have the same chance to compete (and given their success rate, a better chance) with a metropolis like New York City. The second largest market in the US doesn’t even have a team and the NFL is the single most profitable sports league in the country.

The revenue sharing doesn’t just include television money, it also includes jersey sales, ticket sales and just about every penny a team makes. Every team in the league is guaranteed a certain amount of money no matter how poorly they perform. Teams are entitled to keep a portion of what they make above and beyond that amount, but even a portion of that is devoted to charitable endeavors. New teams that enter the league are even given the opportunity to choose players from opposing teams and are given preferred draft status to welcome them to the organization.

There’s also a powerful union that ensures that the players’ (workers’) rights are being upheld. This union negotiates via collective bargaining and each team has a representative in it. Additionally employees have the option to strike, there’s a blackout rule wherein the commissioner can refuse to show a game on television if a team’s stadium isn’t full (cajoling fans to either pay for admission or risk missing the game entirely), and fans are encouraged to be loyal not to the best team, but to the team that represents them via geographical area.

Even the punishment for misappropriation or indiscretion by employees has a socialist solution. When employees violate one of the league’s rules, whether it be the league-sanctioned dress code, the league-sanctioned schedule, or league-sanctioned rules on-field competition, a player is forced to pay a fine that is donated to a charitable organization.

This spirit of radical socialism is what has allowed the NFL to prosper over the supposed former “American pastime” that is the free-market bastion of capitalism, Major League Baseball (even though baseball itself participates in a socialist draft).

Marx couldn’t have written a more appropriate model for economic success himself.

Big Dion's Playoff Predictions/Gambling Odds

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:06:28 -0300

Best playoffs ever. Seriously, best playoffs ever. I feel like a little kid the day before a two-month Christmas. I can barely contain myself.

Before I get to my predictions here are the supposed Vegas odds as of Friday morning (from a less-than-trustworthy source):

Eastern Conference

No. 1 Chicago Bulls (-1000) vs. No. 8 Philadelphia 76ers
No. 2 Miami Heat (-1100) vs. No. 7 New York Knicks
No. 3 Indiana Pacers (-240) vs. No. 6 Orlando Magic
No. 5 Atlanta Hawks vs. No. 4 Boston Celtics - PICK

Western Conference

No. 1 San Antonio Spurs (-1500) vs. No. 8 Utah Jazz
No. 2 Oklahoma City Thunder (-650) vs. No. 7 Dallas Mavericks
No. 3 Los Angeles Lakers (-400) vs. No. 6 Denver Nuggets
No. 4 Memphis Grizzlies vs. No. 5 Los Angeles Clippers - PICK

Here’s a look at the odds to win the 2012 NBA Championship.

Miami Heat 2/1
Oklahoma City Thunder 3/1
Chicago Bulls 4/1
San Antonio Spurs 7/1
Los Angeles Lakers 14/1
Boston Celtics 20/1
Los Angeles Clippers 25/1
Memphis Grizzlies 25/1
Dallas Mavericks 35/1
New York Knicks 40/1
Indiana Pacers 55/1
Orlando Magic 60/1
Atlanta Hawks 100/1
Philadelphia 76ers 100/1
Denver Nuggets 125/1
Houston Rockets 150/1
Utah Jazz 250/1

Looking at those odds as a gambler (which I am not, but if I were) I would love a few of those lines. The Miami line is pretty impressive, given what favorites the Heat are to win it all. I also love the Celtics odds at 20/1. If I weren’t in such deep, deep hate with Boston right now I’d consider dropping a cool $100 on the Celtics. But fuck Boston. Seriously.

SIDE NOTE: If you didn’t click on the link, it’s a blog with a collection of the racist – and racist is putting it mildly, fucked up is more accurate – tweets sent out after the Washington Capitals’ Joel Ward scored the goal to eliminate the Boston Bruins from the playoffs. Let me be clear, I’m not saying racism is exclusive to Boston. In fact, this seemingly incalculable increase of racism on the internet has almost nothing to do with Boston. It’s a countrywide phenomenon that is really fucking scary. If you don’t believe me go to Youtube, find a video by a black person and read the comments. I will say that if it had been a different team that was eliminated, I don’t think we’d have seen nearly this volume of blatantly racist outpouring.

I digress. Playoff predictions. I’ll start with the East, because the first round there is slightly less exciting. But still ridiculously fucking exciting.

No. 1 Chicago Bulls (-1000) vs. No. 8 Philadelphia 76ers

Obviously I like the Bulls. The 76ers haven’t been able to win anything since March and it’s a real shame, because they were such a fun team to watch. Bulls in 5.

No. 2 Miami Heat (-1100) vs. No. 7 New York Knicks

Carmelo owns LeBron. He just does. He has since they came in the league. LeBron’s won the last two, which has brought the career record to 9-6 in favor of Carmelo, but given what the Knicks were going through in the past two meetings it’s understandable. There’s also the fact that Madison Square Garden, the critically-proclaimed basketball Mecca, will be more electric than it’s been in decades. I cannot even fathom how hard that collective arena will come out to boo LeBron, Wade and co. I hope it’s like JJ Reddick’s senior year. I’d love to go upset here, but I can’t. Heat in 7. I don’t think they can win in MSG.

No. 3 Indiana Pacers (-240) vs. No. 6 Orlando Magic

No Howard = no chance. I love this matchup as the Pacers coming out party. The Magic will have no answer for X Man Jr. or Hibbert and I can’t wait to see who Danny Granger is when the lights are on him. (I changed that sentence three times to not have it end in a preposition.) Pacers in 6.

No. 5 Atlanta Hawks vs. No. 4 Boston Celtics - PICK

Atlanta without the great Al Horford is like Chicago without Joakim Noah or the Warriors without the electric David Lee or Miami without Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller. You can’t win without these great players. Boston in 6, as painful as it is for me to say it.

Moving on to the West, I actually predict some (one) upsets.

No. 1 San Antonio Spurs (-1500) vs. No. 8 Utah Jazz

Utah matches up really well with San Antonio. The Jazz are what I think New York was trying to be with Amar’e, Melo and Chandler – a front-line driven team that abuses you in the paint. The Spurs don’t really have an answer for that. Duncan’s old, Blair is short and I don’t remember the last time Steven Jackson played defense. The Spurs have a huge advantage in the backcourt with Ginobli and Parker and I think that will win it for them, but I think it will be closer than most people expect. I also can’t imagine Popovich allowing his team to lose in the first round two years in a row. San Antonio in 6.

No. 2 Oklahoma City Thunder (-650) vs. No. 7 Dallas Mavericks

This one will be more interesting than people expect, but I can’t see OKC losing this one. Durant and Westbrook look ready. OKC in 5.

No. 3 Los Angeles Lakers (-400) vs. No. 6 Denver Nuggets

Upset! I’m taking the Nuggets. Now before you call me a quixotic homer, I have a legitimate case. It’s all about the matchups. I would never have made this prediction if the Artest formerly known as Ron hadn’t gotten himself suspended for the playoffs, but with no World Peace, the Lakers won’t be able to transcend (you see what I did there?). Kobe is going to have to guard Afflalo because of his size (6’6) and how good he’s been this past month (18.7 ppg in April). That means the defensively challenged Ramon Sessions will have to defend the Nuggets best scorer, Ty Lawson, and Devin Ebanks or Matt Barnes will have to defend DANILO GALLLINARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIII. You either use your best bench player to stop Gallo (that’s right, Barnes is LA’s best bench player) or you let him go off on you. I could see Kobe punching Ebanks in the face during this series.

The Nuggets also have the size to defend Bynum and Gasol. No one else in the league can say that. They’ve got Javale McGee, Kosta Koufos, Timofey Mozgov and Chris “Birdman” Anderson at the center AND Al Harrington and the MANIMAL Kenneth Fareid at power forward (Faried is going to put his nuts on Pau’s forehead in the playoffs, mark my words). The Nuggs could go big with Koufos at the 5, McGee at the 4 and Faried at the 3. Even if the Nuggets centers are nowhere near as skilled as Bynum they have six fouls each to throw at him (24 fouls) and there’s no one to keep him from going off, punching Birdman in the face and getting suspended for the series. Nuggets in 7. Put it on the board.

No. 4 Memphis Grizzlies vs. No. 5 Los Angeles Clippers - PICK

Memphis in 6. Hopefully this series is what puts Blake “B Jesus” Griffin on the road to greatness. Memphis is just too hot right now. Possible admonition if Chris Paul plays as well in this series as he did against LA last year in the playoffs.

Finals matchup:

OKC vs. Miami

I will say this, even though everybody and their mother is predicting this matchup I think getting there is going to be so much fun. The matchups couldn’t have shaken out any better. I like the Lakers, but I don’t think they can beat Denver AND OKC. I think San Antonio is the only team that can beat OKC, but I don’t think they can beat Memphis. I could see the Clippers winning it all, but I don’t think they can beat Memphis either. And I don’t think Memphis can beat OKC. The first round is really going to determine anything. I am SO fucking excited.

ING's Sharebuilder Terms of Service Agreement is HILARIOUS!

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:11:02 -0300

I have not edited or doctored these terms of service at all. I recently signed up for an account with Sharebuilder and I actually read the Terms of Service. Obviously when these were written they knew no one would actually read them and hired the funniest lawyer ever and gave him carte blanche on it. Seriously, read this thing. It’s like 11 pages, so you probably won’t read the entire thing (I sure didn’t), but just the beginning is funny.

This is a serious company that deals with millions of dollars of stock transactions every day and this is what they put in their terms of service. There’s nothing particularly unsettling or bad, it’s just…funny.

Actual quotes from the agreement:

“If 15 calendar days pass by like a warm breeze, you agree that you’ll be deemed to have accepted those changes to the Agreement.”

“However (you knew there was a well-placed however coming), any changes to this Agreement that we’re required to enact by law become effective immediately.”

” If you’d like to call us and complete a telephone order, like in the 1980s, we still provide this service, for an additional fee.”

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** IMPORTANT TO READ **
1) Acknowledgements and Representations.
First things first: When you see “ShareBuilder,” we’re talking about the brokerage services and website offered and operated by ING DIRECT Investing, Inc. When your eyes see the words “our”, “us”, “we” or ING DIRECT Investing, we’re referring to ING DIRECT Investing, Inc.
By opening an account with us, you’re agreeing that you’ve read and completely understood our exciting Terms and Conditions, and our separate, but equally riveting Privacy Policy.
•
When you click on “I Agree” this indicates to us that the laws in your home state recognize you as being old enough to open an account and be upheld and bound by our Agreement.
•
When you click on “I Agree”, you’re also agreeing to all of the rules and terms in this Agreement and our Privacy Policy.
•
Even better, when you click on “I Agree”, this is the same as signing this Agreement. And by signing it electronically, we’re all saving trees, which is nice.
Sometimes we make changes to the Agreement you’re currently reading. We’ll let you know when this happens either through email or an account alert. When this Agreement is modified, we’ll give you 15 calendar days to let us know you don’t agree with these changes, and that you’d like to close your account.
•
If 15 calendar days pass by like a warm breeze, you agree that you’ll be deemed to have accepted those changes to the Agreement.
•
However (you knew there was a well-placed however coming), any changes to this Agreement that we’re required to enact by law become effective immediately.
Keep in mind, ShareBuilder is a service for self-directed investors. That means you pick all your own investments and assume all responsibility for your investments – even the ones that turn out to be less than extraordinary. Market values can and do change quite frequently.
•
Also, as a service geared toward self-directed investors, we won’t provide any type of financial advice on buys and sells or recommendations on any of your trades. You kindly agree to be responsible for determining the suitability of your own investment choices and investment strategies.
•
You agree to complete all transactions in your ShareBuilder Account through the ShareBuilder website. If you’d like to call us and complete a telephone order, like in the 1980s, we still provide this service, for an additional fee.
•
You also acknowledge that all orders are unsolicited.
•
Also, you agree that we’re not in the business of providing legal or tax advice of any kind.
General Terms and Conditions
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You also agree to receive all communications from us via the World Wide Web or email. Such communications
include, but aren’t necessarily limited to:
• confirmations of transactions;
• account statements;
• tax documents;
• financial statements and reports of portfolio holdings;
• reorganization notices;
• proxy materials; if you’ve been reading this out loud, take a deep breath and continue;
• notices of modifications to ING DIRECT Investing’s Privacy Policy or Terms and Conditions;
• annual and semiannual audited and unaudited reports for ING DIRECT Investing and other basic
communications.
If you saw a ShareBuilder or ING DIRECT Investing advertisement on a bank or credit union website, and are
opening a ShareBuilder Account because of this well-placed advertising, you agree to acknowledge that:
• When you choose to invest through ING DIRECT Investing, your investments aren’t guaranteed, aren’t
FDIC or NCUA insured, and may lose value. This means investments made through ING DIRECT
Investing are subject to investment risks, so there is the possibility of losing all of the monies you’ve
invested.
At ING DIRECT Investing, we treat you and the rest of our customers with honesty and fairness and we ask for
the same in return — thanks in advance.
Most people have good intentions, but a select few choose not to play by the rules. If you’re one of those few,
and we find out that you intentionally lied or entered false information at the time of your account application, or
thereafter, we will close your account and we will also take legal action if appropriate.
2) Definitions: ShareBuilder®
We offer the ShareBuilder Service, or “ShareBuilder,” which allows you to build your portfolio through periodic
purchases of selected securities. Take a look at these page-turning details:
Automatic Investment Plans:
Through ShareBuilder’s Automatic Investing Plan (“AIP”), you have the ability to invest specific dollar amounts
in stocks, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). These dollar-based investments are aggregated with the
purchases of other ShareBuilder customers and entered by us as market orders. Aggregation of AIP orders for the
same stocks helps us keep execution and processing costs to a minimum. The aggregated orders are then allocated
to individual customer accounts based on their proportional participation in the entire transaction.
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The Automatic Investment Plan is on a transaction cycle. You have the ability to choose the frequency of your
Automatic Investment Plan. The choices are one-time, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. Thus, once you’ve chosen a
security and an investment day, you’ll have your own Automatic Investment Plan.
The week(s) you choose to invest each month is up to you, and is usually done at a time that is convenient for you
to fund your brokerage account through an electronic funds transfer or other means.
Trade Now:
Trades through “Trade Now” are standard brokerage transactions. Through ShareBuilder, you can make sharebased
buys and sells of most publicly traded securities.
Trades are executed in a manner and time appropriate to your specific instructions:
• market orders are executed immediately;
• limit orders are executed when your limit price is reached;
• sales of fractional shares (no whole shares) are priced at the next market close after the order is received.
Trade Now trades cost more than Automatic Investment Plan transactions.
ING DIRECT Investing, Inc., Stocks and ETFs:
We offer a broad range of securities covering approximately 90% of the US equity markets. Only stocks on our
ShareBuilder Stocks list may be purchased through us. The ShareBuilder Stocks list is revised regularly at our sole
discretion. Certain stocks that you purchase may be removed from the ShareBuilder Stocks list. If this occurs, you
understand and agree these stocks won’t be available to purchase through us any longer. If you’ve bought a stock
through ING DIRECT Investing, Inc., and it’s subsequently removed from the ShareBuilder Stocks list, you can
still sell your shares.
Only stocks on the ShareBuilder Stocks list that are listed on a National Securities Exchange (NYSE, AMEX
or NASDAQ) may be transferred into ING DIRECT Investing. We will return and/or reject certificates sent or
electronically transferred to us not meeting this requirement and you agree to hold us harmless for doing so.
Trailing Stops Terms of Service:
ING DIRECT Investing will do its best to ensure best execution, but at the end of the day trailing stops invariably
involve certain unique risks. If you are not willing to accept these risks, you must use a conventional order type
such as a market, stop or limit order.
ING DIRECT Investing’s trailing stop service is provided “as is” and there may be delays, omissions or inaccuracies
in the service. ING DIRECT Investing is not responsible for trailing stop orders affected by system failures
nor for trailing stop orders affected by quote data issues. Trailing stop orders face risk from data transmission errors,
including errors involving quote data. In the event of misquotes (e.g. a bad tick) or failure to receive a quote,
orders may be erroneously delivered, or may fail to be delivered to the market center. On occasion, rapid quote
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movements or out of range quotes may trigger your stop condition. In an effort to avoid some of the market data
risks, we exclude trades that:
• Are outside regular trading hours, such as pre-market or extended hours trading;
• We receive that include certain indicators, such as late report or out of sequence;
• Are outside the then existing best bid and offer in the market unless it is the third trade outside the best bid
and offer (three trade filter).
Trailing stop orders face risk from mechanical malfunction, system disruptions, some types of corporate actions
(e.g. cash dividends), and bad ticks, among other factors. You are responsible for reviewing and maintaining your
trailing stop orders in order to avoid conflict or duplication of orders. ING DIRECT Investing does not guarantee
that conflicting orders will be prevented, and resolution of conflicting or erroneous trailing stop orders will be at
your risk and expense. ING DIRECT Investing, its agents, and information providers, cannot, and do not, guarantee
the accuracy, sequence, completeness, timeliness, merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose of this
service.
Neither ING DIRECT Investing nor any of its agents and information providers, shall be liable to you or to anyone
else for any loss caused in whole or in part by its negligence or omission in entering or not entering orders or
interpreting, reporting, or delivering any information or data through this service. This includes your waiver for
any consequential, special or similar damages, including but not limited to lost profits, trading losses, damages
resulting from inconvenience, or loss of use of the service. This service may be discontinued or limited at any time
and without prior notice.
Trailing stop orders have unique risks, and by continuing to utilize this service you acknowledge that you have
read, understood and will abide by the above disclosures, terms and conditions as they are modified and posted on
the applicable software, website or other electronic medium through which you access this feature. A trailing stop
order is subject to automatic cancellation pursuant to the open order cancellation schedule.
The Trade Date:
The Trade Date is the market day a buy or sell is executed within your ShareBuilder Account. The Settlement
Date is the Trade Date plus three (3) business days for stocks and one (1) business day for mutual funds and
options.
Mutual Funds:
Mutual Funds may also be bought or sold through ShareBuilder.
Mutual funds aren’t FDIC insured, aren’t guaranteed by a bank, and may lose value.
You should read and carefully consider information contained in the prospectus, including, but not limited to:
• investment objectives, risks, charges, and expense.
• the prospectus may be found in several locations throughout the ShareBuilder website, including the
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Research and Trading sections. See Section 26 regarding ING DIRECT Investing’s relationship to the ING
family of funds (“ING Funds”).
3) Services and Charges
This section is a bit of a mixed bag. So, it may jump around a bit, but it’s all important.
When you buy or sell securities, ING DIRECT Investing acts as your broker.
When you enter a buy or sell order, you agree to take full responsibility for this decision and to not hold us or any
of our employees liable for your investment decisions.
We reserve the right to refuse any account and to decline or change any order at our sole discretion (deep breath,
okay, let’s keep reading).
You agree to pay the applicable transaction costs, charges (including any extraordinary surcharges passed to us by
certain exchanges), and taxes that may apply at the time services are rendered to your account.
If you’d like to see a schedule of standard transaction costs or charges related to your ShareBuilder Account, please
refer to the “Pricing” area of the website.
Important head’s up for Automatic Investing Plan enthusiasts: Transaction costs will come out of the specific dollar
amount you invest for Automatic Investment Plan investments.
When you make a Trade Now trade, transaction costs are added to the actual cost of the shares, while transaction
costs are deducted from the proceeds for sell orders.
All other charges may be deducted from your account balance, or covered by electronic funds transfer or separate
payment.
See “Pricing Programs - Basic and Advantage” regarding credit card payment option for subscription costs.
Some charges are out of our hands, so it may look like we’re the bad guy in some cases, but in reality that’s not the
case. If an agent for a corporate action imposes a charge for a security you hold, we reserve the right to pass this
cost on to you.
ING DIRECT Investing further reserves the right to change its Pricing & Rates — at anytime. We’ll do this by posting
a modified Pricing & Rates schedule on the ShareBuilder website.
A request to cancel a Trade is only a request and, as such, cancellation of any given trade is not guaranteed. We’ll
try our best to get your cancel request in, but markets move quickly. We process cancel order requests on a best
efforts basis. If we’re unable to cancel your order, you agree to be bound to it. As a general rule, market orders are
subject to immediate execution and cannot be canceled during market hours.
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To close out this section – some important final details:
Price quotes shown for stocks and ETFs reflect the most recent price reported for that security in the market. Such
quotes in no way guarantee that your trade for the same security will execute at or near the quoted price.
Share prices can change rapidly during the trading day, especially prices for low-priced and/or thinly traded shares,
and quotes shown after the markets are closed often bear no relation to the price a stock or ETF might start trading
at the next trading day. To protect yourself from unexpected price swings, you should consider using Limit Orders
instead of Market Orders. If you place a Market Order and the trade executes in the market at a cost more than the
estimated cost based on the displayed quote, you must pay the entire cost of the trade by Settlement Date, even if
that amount exceeds the cash available in your ShareBuilder Account.
4) Pricing Programs - Basic and Advantage
Subscription Costs:
Once you’ve paid a monthly subscription cost for the Advantage pricing program, it isn’t refundable. Also, your
free automatic investments that aren’t used in the current month aren’t rolled forward to future months.
When you sign up for the Advantage pricing program, the subscription starts immediately. The subscription cost
is not pro-rated based on number of days or weeks remaining in the month. In other words, the Advantage pricing
program has a flat rate regardless of the day of the month you begin your subscription.
When the method you’ve chosen to pay the subscription cost either reverses or fails, we reserve the right to collect
the subscription cost from your account’s cash balance. This is done to make sure the Advantage pricing
program you’ve selected continues. However, if the monies aren’t available in your cash balance at that time, your
Advantage pricing program will change to Basic.
If your method of payment either reverses or fails, we reserve the right to appropriately re-calculate and/or assess
transaction costs applicable under the Basic pricing program. Thus, moving you back to the Basic pricing program
is only done if the subscription cost for Advantage cannot be collected from your account’s cash balance.
Pricing Program Order Cancellations:
A subscriber of the Advantage pricing program who cancels automatic investments on the fourth (or fifth) Monday
or Tuesday of any given month, should be aware this may result in the loss of one or more free automatic investments
for that month.
And, depending on your number of scheduled investments, this might result in transaction costs on one or more
automatic investments that should have been free under your pricing program. This may occur if, on the fourth
Monday or Tuesday of a month, you cancel one or more automatic investments scheduled to occur that Tuesday,
and those canceled orders have already been “written” by ING DIRECT Investing as one of your free automatic
investments for that month.
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If this occurs and you’re charged for transactions that should have been free, you will automatically receive a corresponding
number of free automatic investment credits, which can be used in the following month.
If you don’t receive your automatic investment credits, please contact ShareBuilder Customer Service (check out
Section 29 for contact information).
Pricing Program: Changing and/or Unsubscribing
In the event you change from the Basic pricing program to Advantage at any time during the month, you’ll want to
re-enter any pending trades (including limit orders) in order to receive the lowered transaction costs available for
Advantage pricing program subscribers.
When you change pricing programs, transaction costs on all trades that we’ve already processed aren’t refunded.
However, automatic investments occurring prior to a change of pricing programs are included in the number of
free automatic investments under the new pricing program for that month.
When you unsubscribe from the Advantage pricing program in the middle of the month, this doesn’t result in any
rebate of the Advantage subscription cost for that month. And, this move to the Basic pricing program becomes
effective the beginning of the following month.
During the remainder of the month for which you’ve already paid an Advantage subscription cost, you continue to
receive lowered investment transaction pricing and all other benefits of that particular pricing program.
5) Abandoned Account Handling Charge
State laws (called “escheatment” laws) require us to transfer your assets to the state if you appear to have abandoned
them (which means there’s no customer activity in your account(s) within a time period specified by your
state’s laws, and you haven’t contacted us for a certain period of time). The bottom line is we’d like for you to keep
your assets — and not have them handed over to the state on a silver platter. Let’s look at a couple ways to avoid
the transfer of your assets to the state:
• Sign In to your ShareBuilder Account at least once per year (or)
• Call us at least once per year (that sounds like a breeze, so please place a date on your calendar).
Also, let’s say you’ve gone missing in action (or is that M.F.I., missing from investing?), here’s the rundown:
Except where prohibited, ShareBuilder will charge an abandoned account handling charge equal to the lesser of:
(i) $25, (ii) the value of all cash and securities in the account, or (iii) the amount permitted under applicable state
law, against any account “abandoned” for more than 24 months. ShareBuilder assesses this charge against accounts
whose owners have not signed in or completed a transaction in at least 24 months, and then each 12 months
thereafter until the account is no longer “abandoned” or until its assets are sent the appropriate state.
This charge helps cover our costs associated with our efforts to contact you, as your account enters abandoned sta8
tus. Seriously, using things like phone calls, emails, letters, and third party services, such as the US postal service
to get your most recent contact information costs big bucks. So, once the abandoned account charge is assessed, it
cannot be refunded.
6) Governing Laws and Jurisdiction
By opening one or more accounts with ING DIRECT Investing and by agreeing to these Terms and Conditions,
• You acknowledge and agree that you, and anyone else you authorize to use your account(s), are doing business
in King County, State of Washington.
• These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State
of Washington, as they apply to agreements made and solely performed in Washington, excluding conflict
of law provisions.
• Without limiting your right to file arbitration claims against ING DIRECT Investing under FINRA Rule
12200 or its affiliates or successors, you consent to the personal jurisdiction and venue of the federal and
state courts in King County, Washington for any court action or proceeding relating to your ShareBuilder
brokerage account and you agree that all such claims by you against ING DIRECT Investing or its affiliates
or successors will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction and venue of the federal and state courts in King
County, State of Washington.
• Your brokerage account will be subject to the rules, regulations, customs and practices of the exchanges,
markets, clearing corporations, self-regulatory organizations, and applicable state and federal laws.
7) Service Not Available Outside the United States or to Non-Resident Aliens
One of the best compliments we get is when someone outside the 50 U.S. states wants to use ING DIRECT
Investing’s products and services.
However, if you reside outside the 50 U.S. states, we’ll have to just admire each other from afar. Our products, services
and website aren’t generally offered or available to anyone located outside the 50 U.S. states. This includes
U.S. citizens residing or working abroad.
Also, at this time, we don’t accept accounts for non-resident aliens who require a Form W-8 for tax-withholding.
We make no representation or guarantee regarding our compliance with local laws in foreign jurisdictions, or
regarding the appropriateness of our website’s content or its compliance with such local laws.
You understand that our website is the only means of accessing your ShareBuilder Account and completing your
ING DIRECT Investing brokerage transactions. Your inability to access the ShareBuilder website in certain foreign
countries could result in your inability to access your brokerage account or to complete transactions.
You agree that we shall not be liable for any losses or damages you incur as a result of the unavailability of the
ShareBuilder website from foreign countries.
8) Accuracy and Notification
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You represent and warrant that the information you supplied on your Account Application is accurate, and you
agree to notify us in writing or by electronic communication of any changes in information. You also agree to
notify us by the same means if you are or become: a) employed or affiliated with a stock brokerage firm, bank,
trust company, insurance company or securities exchange; b) an officer, director, affiliate or 10% shareholder of a
publicly traded company. You agree to indemnify and hold ING DIRECT Investing and its successors and affiliates
harmless from and against any and all damage, cost, judgment, liability, loss, award, settlement, tax, penalty,
action, expense or fee (including reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs of collection) of any nature, and claims
therefore (collectively, “Losses”) arising out of or relating to your failure to provide accurate information on your
Account Application or to update that information as required. You further represent that no other person has an
interest in your account except those persons you have disclosed in the Account Application.
9) Joint Accounts
Any joint holder may individually, without notice to other joint holders, authorize ING DIRECT Investing to buy,
sell, tender, or exchange securities in the account and to receive any monies or securities into the account. However,
separate written instructions, manually signed by all holders, are required to disperse or transfer any assets out of the
account in a form or to an account not bearing registration identical to the subject ShareBuilder Account. Any notice,
verbal, or written, we give to one account holder will be considered given to all account holders. Upon the death of
any account holder, the surviving account holder(s) must give reasonably prompt notice to ING DIRECT Investing.
The surviving account holder(s) will be the owner(s) of the account and continue to be subject to the terms of this
Agreement. Each account holder is jointly and severally liable to us for any obligation or liabilities arising in connection
with the account. We may use reasonable discretion in making any disbursements or transfers in the name
of the account holders shown on the accounts. If we become aware of a dispute between or among account holders,
we reserve the right, but are not obligated, to place restrictions on the subject Account and/or related Accounts and
to maintain such restrictions until we are satisfied in our own discretion that the dispute has been resolved following
receipt of satisfactory documentation or a notarized instruction signed by all account holders. We may also, at the expense
of the account holders, commence or defend any action for or in the nature of interpleader to have the dispute
resolved judicially. If a suit or proceeding for or in the nature of interpleader is brought by or against ING DIRECT
Investing, we may deliver the account into the registry of the court, at which time we will be deemed to be and will
be released and discharged from all further obligations and responsibilities under this Agreement.
10) Obligations of Fiduciaries
ING DIRECT Investing does not review any action or inaction of a Fiduciary with respect to any ShareBuilder
Account and disclaims responsibility for determining whether a Fiduciary’s conduct satisfies applicable standards
of care, as well as for determining the validity of a person’s or entity’s status or capacity to serve as a Fiduciary.
Any Fiduciary using the ShareBuilder Service agrees to indemnify and hold ING DIRECT Investing, its successors
and its affiliates harmless from and against any Losses arising out of or relating to any act, error or omission
of the Fiduciary. A custodian of a UTMA, UGMA or Education Savings Account is responsible for all activity
in the account and all transactions in the account will be deemed to be the result of actions of the Custodian. The
custodian agrees to indemnify and hold ING DIRECT Investing, its successors and its affiliates harmless from and
against any losses arising out of or relating to any act, error or omission of the custodian or the minor.
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11) Account Approval/Termination and Authorization to Obtain Consumer Report
This Agreement will be effective only upon our approval of your Account Application. As part of its account opening
procedures, and under other circumstances it reasonably deems appropriate, ING DIRECT Investing reserves
the right to obtain one or more consumer reports on all potential and existing account holders. Consumer reports
may contain information bearing on your creditworthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general
reputation, personal characteristics or mode of living. You hereby consent and authorize ING DIRECT Investing or
its authorized agents or successors to: obtain from a consumer reporting agency one or more consumer reports on
you to be used in evaluating whether to open and approve a new account for you or on your behalf, or to maintain
any such account(s); and (ii) to provide to such consumer reporting agency any information you have provided to
us in your Account Application. On written request, ING DIRECT Investing will advise you whether it obtained
credit reports, and, if so, will provide the name and address of the reporting agency that furnished the reports.
You further authorize ING DIRECT Investing to share such credit bureau information with its parent corporation,
ShareBuilder Corporation. ShareBuilder reserves the right to report to consumer and securities credit reporting
agencies any debit balance or negative credit information pertaining to any ShareBuilder Account. ING DIRECT
Investing further reserves the right to reject an Account Application for any reason.
We may terminate any or all services rendered under this Agreement at any time and for any reason. The account
holder may close his or her account at any time by giving notice to us in accordance with the instructions published
in the “Customer Service” area on the ShareBuilder website. Upon termination, you will remain liable for any
deficiencies or debit balances in the account. You agree to reimburse us for any collection costs relating to any
unsecured debit balance in your account, including attorney’s fees, court costs, and interest. This agreement to
reimburse ING DIRECT Investing for any collection costs does not apply to any claims submitted to arbitration
under FINRA Rule 12200 or its successor.
12) Right of Offset and Liquidation
All assets held in any account, now or in the future, shall be subject to a general lien for discharge of any indebtedness
you have to us. These assets shall be held by ING DIRECT Investing as security for payment of any liability
you may have with the company. In the event you do not fully meet a settlement obligation, we may, without
further notice, take action, including but not limited to: liquidating or canceling the transaction; transferring securities
or money from any other of your ShareBuilder Accounts; liquidating securities from any such ShareBuilder
Accounts and applying the proceeds from such sales to your debt or liability to ShareBuilder; purchasing or borrowing
securities to make delivery. You are responsible for commissions and all costs and losses arising from
these actions.
13) Settlement
All transactions are on a “cash only” basis. You agree that prior to placing a purchase order for securities, you will
provide a valid and sufficient authorization to us for electronic funds transfers from an account at another financial
institution(s) over which you have valid signatory authority and/or you will otherwise deposit sufficient funds with
us on or before trade date. You also agree that prior to placing a sell order, you will present securities in “good
delivery form” for deposit with us as necessary.
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14) Non-Sufficient Funds Policies
We reserve the right to cancel or cover any transaction which is the subject of a returned check or electronic
funds transfer reclamation. A service fee will be charged for such instances. Securities held in an account at ING
DIRECT Investing, Inc. may be liquidated to cover any indebtedness to ShareBuilder. We also reserve the right to
restrict your ability to withdraw funds until such time as we are reasonably assured that all deposits or other items
in your account have cleared.
15) Fraud
In cases of fraud or theft by you, acting alone or in concert with others, involving, among other things, use of
counterfeit checks, checks drawn on closed or non-existent accounts, checks stolen from third parties, unauthorized
electronic funds transfers from bank accounts belonging to others, attempted electronic transfers from nonexistent
accounts or similar illegal or improper conduct involving account funding or withdrawals, and including
situations in which you have allowed third parties to use your account in any such manner, ING DIRECT Investing
shall assess against you, in addition to all other fees, damages and penalties to which it may be entitled, a $500 fee
per forged, faked, fictitious, stolen or otherwise unauthorized item or transfer. This fee shall constitute liquidated
damages to compensate ING DIRECT Investing for the time and effort of its employees in rectifying said conduct.
16) Priority of Balance
If you’re using the Automatic Investing Plan, buy orders will only happen if your ShareBuilder Account contains
the exact cash balance needed to cover all specified purchases. In fact, the exact cash balance needed to cover all of
your buys has to be available on the morning of your scheduled transactions.
For example, if you’ve created a plan to buy three different securities, but you only have enough funds to cover
two purchases — then zero transactions will take place.
Requests for withdrawal of funds, or an order to buy a security via a standard trade have priority over scheduled
Automatic Investment Plan transactions. This is provided the withdrawal request or the trade order is received
sufficiently in advance of a scheduled Automatic Investment Plan Transaction.
If a limit purchase order is set-up, this unexecuted trade ties up funds in your cash balance, as it‘s deemed to have
been executed for the purpose of calculating your available balance.
Let’s say you have a debit balance in an account. We may, at our option and without further notice, switch-off a
standing instruction to reinvest cash dividends in the account or any of your ShareBuilder Accounts in order to
cover the debit balance. So, investor take heed: It is your responsibility to ensure that the reinvest dividend instruction
is reset for all affected accounts after the debit is covered.
17) Cash/Credit Balances
All credit balances in ShareBuilder customer accounts, including cash dividends or interest, monies received prior
to any purchase settlement date, and net proceeds from liquidations, are automatically transferred to a consolidated
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“sweep account.” Also, sufficient monies to cover securities purchases in ShareBuilder customer accounts are
automatically “swept” out of the appropriate sweep account on settlement date.
You may choose at any time between an independently managed money market fund sweep account (“Money
Market Cash Balance”) or an FDIC insured bank deposit sweep account with ING Bank, fsb (“FDIC Insured Cash
Balance”). Rates can and will change without notice to you. It is your sole responsibility to monitor at all
times which sweep option is best for you based on yield, applicable FDIC insurance coverage and other
considerations, and to make timely and appropriate elections.
Review and, if appropriate, change your current sweep account election by going to the Profile and Settings tab
under Accounts, Overview. Changes to your sweep account election made before Noon Pacific Time on a regular
business day are generally effective that day for purposes of starting or stopping FDIC coverage; changes at other
times are generally effective the next business day for purposes of FDIC coverage.
The sweep accounts are held in the name of ING DIRECT Investing. Those accounts hold monies in aggregate for
the exclusive benefit of its customers.
In order to protect ourselves and our customers from fraudulent activity, we reserve the right to temporarily hold
credit balances and to delay requested disbursements, regardless of whether the credit resulted from a cash deposit
or a selling transaction. Disbursements may also be re-directed to a bank account previously used by the customer
if we suspect fraud or money-laundering in connection with a more recently linked bank account. At our discretion,
any disbursement holding period will generally be the customary time required to verify clearance of the
originating deposit, depending upon the nature of the funds’ transmittal (e.g. check, electronic transfer, wire, etc.).
As circumstances dictate, we may also extend such hold in order to confirm the identity of the requestor or to take
other steps we deem reasonable to prevent fraudulent activity.
Money Market Cash Balance
The Money Market Cash Balance option for uninvested cash is invested in the RBB Money Market Portfolio
(BDMXX). The current 7-day yield on the Money Market Cash Balance can be found by entering the symbol
BDMXX in the “Get Quote” box found on the ShareBuilder Home Page or under the ShareBuilder Research tab.
The current 7-day yield is also displayed on your ShareBuilder Account Balances page.
The money market fund is managed by a registered investment adviser. We reserve the right to change the money
market fund(s) it uses for this purpose or, in its discretion, to terminate this service. A complete prospectus for
the money market fund can be found by entering “money market prospectus” in the ShareBuilder site search box
found in the upper right corner of the website. Please consider all investment objectives, risks and charges before
investing.
Dividends paid by the money market fund are calculated daily and posted to individual ShareBuilder accounts
monthly. Proportionate customer balances in the sweep account selected by the customer are reported in individual
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ShareBuilder account balances and statements.
Customers approved for margin or who have applied for margin and are awaiting approval will only have
the opportunity to participate in the Money Market Cash Balance, unless they choose to remove margin
approval from their account.
Any amounts held in the Money Market Cash Balance are considered investments and, although the fund seeks to
preserve its value, market fluctuations can occur and the fund may lose value. The Money Market Cash Balance is
not insured by the FDIC, not bank guaranteed, and may lose value. The Money Market Cash Balance is, however,
covered by SIPC insurance. To learn more about SIPC account protection, enter “account protection and SIPC” in
the ShareBuilder site search box found in the upper right corner of the website.
Joint accounts are deemed to be owned 50/50 and are FDIC-insured up to $250,000 for each individual on the
account, equaling $500,000 in total.
Account Holder
Jane
Jane
Jane
Deposit Type
Orange Savings Account
Electric Orange
FDIC Insured Cash Balance - ShareBuilder Account
Total Deposits
Amount Insured
Amount Uninsured
Account Balance
$110,000
$65,000
$100,000
$275,000
$250,000
$25,000
Account Holder
Jane & John
Jane
Jane
Deposit Type
Orange Savings Account
Electric Orange
FDIC Insured Cash Balance - ShareBuilder Account
Total Deposits
Amount Insured
Account Balance
$190,000
$115,000
$135,000
$440,000
$440,000
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The FDIC Insured Cash Balance
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an independent agency of the United States government
created to protect depositors in the event a bank fails and cannot refund depositors’ money. The FDIC Insured
Cash Balance option for uninvested cash is available to all account holders except those approved for margin or
who have applied for margin. The current interest rate for the FDIC Insured Cash Balance is displayed on your
ShareBuilder Account Balances page.
The FDIC Insured Cash Balance is currently held at ING Bank, fsb, member FDIC. ING DIRECT Investing is a
wholly-owned subsidiary of ING Bank, fsb. ING Bank, fsb pays ING DIRECT Investing administrative fees on
a quarterly basis based on the total number of ShareBuilder accounts eligible for the FDIC Insured Cash Balance
sweep option.
Interest will be accrued on the daily cash balance and will be posted for review. Rates may vary and ING Bank, fsb
has the right to make changes to those rates at any time. Interest Rates may be lower than rates for other deposit
programs available through ING Bank, fsb. Be sure to consider all cash management options. Interest accruals
and postings will be available for view on the Account Balances page. Interest postings will also be shown on
monthly and yearly statements.
As of July 15, 2011, FDIC Insured Cash Balances are eligible for FDIC insurance up to $250,000 (including interest
and principal) per individual depositor and up to $500,000 per joint depositors, subject to the limitation that
such amounts are aggregated against all other similarly held deposits at ING Bank, fsb for purposes of calculating
FDIC insurance limits. It is the responsibility of the account holder to monitor their deposits at ING DIRECT
Investing and ING Bank, fsb to determine if they exceed the limits of available FIDC insurance. Additionally,
FDIC coverage amounts may change at any time at the discretion of the FDIC and ING DIRECT Investing makes
no warranty against the possibility of such changes, the timing thereof, or the amount of advance notice thereof.
Below is a summary of FDIC coverage limitations as of July 15, 2011.
An individual with multiple accounts can be insured up to a total of $500,000. So for example, if you have a single
account as well as a joint account, you’ll be insured up to $250,000 for the single account and up to $250,000 per
depositor on the joint account.
If a bank for any reason is unable to reimburse depositors, the FDIC steps in and does it for the bank – up to
$250,000 per ownership type (single or joint).
Although funds are held at ING Bank, fsb, the only way to access those funds in your FDIC Insured Cash Balance
is through your ShareBuilder Account. Any questions about your ShareBuilder account or balances should be
addressed to ShareBuilder’s customer service team.
We reserve the right to change or terminate the FDIC Insured Cash Balance option at any time.
For additional information regarding FDIC coverage amounts you may contact FDIC, Deposit Insurance Outreach,
at (877) 275-3342 (or 1-800-925-4618 [TDD]), or by visiting the FDIC website at http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/
deposits/.
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18) Selling Securities
Non-mutual fund shares acquired through the ShareBuilder Service may be sold through ShareBuilder via a Trade
Now trade only. Such sales will be subject to our base commission charge.
Sell orders for fractional shares (no whole shares) are subject to the same commission as Trade Now market orders
and are priced at the next market close after the order is received.
Sell orders are accepted only for shares actually owned by customers and in ING DIRECT Investing’s possession
and control. “Short sales” are not permitted.
See Section 25 below regarding sales (redemptions) of mutual fund shares.
19) Standing Instructions for Balance and Positions
Shares acquired through or deposited to ING DIRECT Investing will be held in “street name” only. Shares will
not be registered or transferred unless specifically requested by the customer. We may charge a separate fee to
register and or deliver securities. Participants understand that we cannot transfer or deliver fractional shares of any
security. Regular cash dividends paid by any individual company will be reinvested automatically, unless directed
otherwise, which will increase the customer’s share position in that company. Cash balances held at ING DIRECT
Investing whether resulting from a deposit, bank transfer, dividend or securities sale, will be held by ING DIRECT
Investing unless specifically requested by the customer.
20) Restricted Securities
If you’re keeping score at home, these pertain to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules regarding
restricted securities.
• ING DIRECT Investing will not handle the sale of restricted securities.
• You agree not to enter sell orders with ING DIRECT Investing for securities that are subject to Rule 144 or
145(d) promulgated under the Securities Act of 1933.
• You agree to pay for any loss ING DIRECT Investing may incur in closing-out any and all such intentional
or unintentional sale(s).
21) Order Flow Payment
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires that we disclose to you any arrangement for receiving
payment for directing order flow. ING DIRECT Investing currently has no such arrangement and does not receive
compensation for securities transactions executed through designated exchanges, market makers, dealers or market
centers.
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22) Market Data, News and Other Information
You agree that the market data, news, and other information available to you through the ShareBuilder website are
for your personal use, not for professional usage, and that you will not retransmit or republish this information in any
form. You acknowledge that the information provided to you is obtained from sources believed to be reliable and is
presented solely on a best efforts basis, and that no accuracy or completeness of the information is guaranteed. You
waive any claims against ING DIRECT Investing relating to such third party information and also acknowledge that
the provision of such information does not constitute a recommendation by ING DIRECT Investing to purchase or
sell any security. Quotes, including Real-time quotes, are provided by Wallstreet on Demand and are believed to be
reliable but are presented solely on a best efforts basis with no guarantee of accuracy, timeliness, or completeness.
You waive any claims against ING DIRECT Investing and against Wallstreet on Demand relating to such information.
By executing this agreement, you agree
a. That you have read and agreed to be bound by the OTC Markets Subscriber Agreement.
b. That ING DIRECT Investing, Inc. is not an agent of OTC Markets Group and is not authorized to add or
to delete from the OTC Markets Subscriber Agreement and is not authorized to modify any provision of
the OTC Markets Subscriber Agreement.
23) Extraordinary Events
You agree that ING DIRECT Investing will not be liable to you or to third parties for losses incurred directly or
indirectly by causes reasonably beyond its control, including but not limited to, government restrictions, natural
disasters, severe weather conditions, wars, strikes, terrorist attacks, exchange or market rulings, interruptions of
data processing services or communications, disruptions in orderly trading on any market or exchange, unauthorized
access or operator errors.
24) Access to Services and Market Volatility
Access to ING DIRECT Investing’s electronic services, and hence, your ShareBuilder brokerage Account, may
be limited or unavailable during periods of market volatility, peak demand, systems upgrades, maintenance or for
other reasons. You agree that ING DIRECT Investing will not be liable to you for any losses or damages incurred
by you (including lost profits, trading losses and similar damages) resulting from such access limitations or
unavailability.
Additionally, with the exception of telephone orders, for which a higher fee is charged, you understand that the
ShareBuilder website is the primary means of processing your ShareBuilder brokerage transactions and that, in
the event of an interruption of communications systems or other hardware or software malfunction, access to view
and to transact in your brokerage account could be delayed. In the event of a significant outage, ING DIRECT
Investing would undertake best efforts to process all transactions over the telephone through its Customer Service
team, but would not be liable for any losses or damages you might suffer as a result of such delays or inability to
access your account or effect transactions.
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You understand that when you place a market order, you will receive the price at which your order is executed in
the marketplace. During periods of high volume, illiquidity, fast movement or volatility in the stock markets, the
execution price received may differ from the quote provided on entry of an order, and you may receive partial executions
of any order at different prices. You also understand that orders for larger numbers of shares are relatively
more likely to receive executions at prices that vary from a given quote. You agree to pay or receive the prevailing
market price at the time your market order is executed. You understand that limit orders may not be executed at
any particular time, or at all, if there is not sufficient trading at or better than the limit price you specify
25) Mutual Fund Transactions
In the event that you purchase or hold a mutual fund, you agree to read and understand the terms of its prospectus.
You understand that certain mutual funds reserve the right to change their purchase, exchange or redemption procedures
and/or suspend or postpone redemptions under certain market conditions. You further understand that any
mutual fund order entered with ING DIRECT Investing is placed by ING DIRECT Investing on a best efforts basis
as prescribed and recognized by the individual fund, and that ING DIRECT Investing is not responsible for unexecuted
orders due to the failure of any communication system. You agree to be fully responsible for understanding
the information contained within the mutual fund prospectus and to hold ING DIRECT Investing harmless for
any deficiencies contained therein. You authorize ING DIRECT Investing to act as your agent in the purchase and
redemption of fund shares.
By making a mutual fund or mutual fund family available to you, however, ING DIRECT Investing does not
guarantee the appropriateness, fitness, or suitability of any mutual fund and ING DIRECT Investing makes no
recommendation of any kind.
Make sure you read the mutual fund prospectus carefully before investing or sending money. You will find in it
important details about your investment, including expenses and sales charges. Sales charges come in various
forms; please make certain you understand any sales charges and fees you may pay and when you may pay them.
See the ShareBuilder Pricing and Rates for a list of any transaction fees that may apply in addition to those fees or
charges described in the mutual fund prospectus.
Mutual funds’ past results are not a guarantee of future performance. The yield and total return on these securities
reflect past performance and should not be considered an indication or guarantee of future performance.
You may invest in no-load, no transaction fee (NTF) funds through ShareBuilder without paying a sales load or
transaction fee. You acknowledge that ING DIRECT Investing reserves the right to change the funds available
through the NTF program and to prospectively reinstate the transaction fees on any funds. See the Mutual Funds
Research pages for a current list of NTF funds.
Investment minimums, exchange requirements, and the timing of fund distributions in a ShareBuilder Account
may differ from those applicable to positions held directly with a mutual fund. ING DIRECT Investing pays distributions
when it receives distributions. In particular, customers who liquidate positions in funds that accrue daily
dividends may not receive the accrued dividend until the scheduled monthly payable date for the fund.
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Mutual fund shares acquired through the ShareBuilder Service may be sold through ShareBuilder via a Mutual
Fund Sell order only. Except as to ‘no transaction fee’ funds, such sales will be subject to ING DIRECT
Investing’s base commission charge applicable to mutual funds. In addition, I understand that mutual fund shares
cannot be sold until the business day after the purchase settles.
Excessive, short-term or market timing trading practices may disrupt portfolio management strategies and harm
fund performance. To minimize harm to a fund and its shareholders, mutual fund companies may reserve the right
to reject any purchase order (including exchanges) from any investor whom they believe has a history of excessive
trading or whose trading may be disruptive to the fund. You should consult your fund’s prospectus for its
specific short-term trading policy. ING DIRECT Investing may restrict account owners or accounts that engage in
excessive or disruptive trading from making mutual fund purchases. The purchase restriction may be temporary or
permanent, and may apply only to certain mutual funds or all mutual funds. The decision to impose a purchase restriction
may originate with a mutual fund company or may be made by ING DIRECT Investing, if ING DIRECT
Investing believes such a block is warranted. You should consult your fund’s prospectus for its specific definition
of excessive trading. See the ShareBuilder Pricing and Rates for charges relating to no transaction fee mutual fund
shares sold within 90 days of their purchase.
The standard cut-off time for mutual fund orders is 3:30 PM Eastern Time, but some funds may have earlier cut-off
times as stated in their prospectus. The market may close earlier on holidays or for unforeseen circumstances. You
understand that mutual fund purchase orders received by ING DIRECT Investing and entered into ING DIRECT
Investing’s systems before the cut-off time will receive the share price calculated that Business Day. Orders received
by ING DIRECT Investing after the cut-off time will receive the share price calculated on the next Business
Day. Communication or data processing delays may cause orders submitted too close to the applicable fund’s
cut-off time to be processed on a next Business Day basis.
26) Mutual Fund Disclosure
ING DIRECT Investing receives revenue sharing payments from mutual fund families and their distributor, based
on the amount of these funds sold by ING DIRECT Investing and/or held through ING DIRECT Investing by
its customers. These revenue sharing payments are in addition to the sales charges, 12b-1 fees and other fees and
expenses paid by customers or the funds and disclosed in the fund’s prospectus fee table. Revenue sharing payments
give ING DIRECT Investing a financial incentive to sell certain mutual funds, and therefore create a conflict
of interest that you should consider in making your investment decisions regarding such funds.
Additionally, Pershing may receive servicing fees from funds that participate in its no-transaction fee mutual fund
program, in lieu of clearing transaction charges assessed to ING DIRECT Investing. ING DIRECT Investing
shares with Pershing in such fees for providing shareholder services. These fees may be considered revenue
sharing and are a significant source of revenue for Pershing and ING DIRECT Investing. These fees are paid in
accordance with an asset-based formula.
You understand that ING DIRECT Investing is an indirect subsidiary of ING DIRECT and affiliate of ING Funds.
You understand that, as to all of the shares of funds offered by ING DIRECT Investing from ING Funds, ING
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DIRECT Investing receives compensation for the services they provide to ING Funds, which compensation, in
part, is based on the size of the assets in the ING mutual fund. Other affiliates of ING DIRECT Investing may be
compensated for providing services to ING Funds.
You understand that ING DIRECT Investing receives compensation for sales of ING Funds mutual funds. The
amount of compensation that ING DIRECT Investing receives varies depending on the mutual fund purchased and
the particular share class purchased, as mutual funds (and share classes) are priced differently. For additional information
and potential conflicts of interest arising from such activities and other activities of ING DIRECT Investing
affiliates, see the fund prospectus and corresponding statement of additional information for each fund. You should
carefully review these materials and consult with your financial advisor if you have any questions.
27) Automatic Investment Plan
If you set up a ShareBuilder Automatic Investment Plan, you are authorizing ING DIRECT Investing to purchase
shares in the securities, in the dollar amount(s) and on the date(s) selected by you. ShareBuilder will implement
those instructions by initiating fixed debits periodically from your ShareBuilder balance, from your linked bank
account or from some other source as may be selected by you and permitted by ING DIRECT Investing. You
understand that in order to establish an Automatic Investment Plan that is linked to a bank account, you must first
set up a link to that bank account. Such bank links are governed by applicable Automated Clearing House rules.
You also authorize ING DIRECT Investing to honor all debit entries initiated by you or on your behalf from time
to time through your available cash balance. All such debits are subject to sufficient collected funds in your designated
account to pay the debit when presented.
If there is insufficient cash from your cash balance or linked bank account to purchase shares for an Automatic
Investment Plan, you understand that the automatic investment scheduled for that period may not take place. You
understand and acknowledge that any change in ownership or cancellation of your Brokerage Account, or any
transaction returned for any reason, including but not limited to insufficient funds, may result in the cancellation of
your Automatic Investment Plan without prior notice to you. You understand and acknowledge that ING DIRECT
Investments reserves the right to modify or terminate your Automatic Investment Plan at any time and for any
reason upon notification to you.
You understand and acknowledge that, in order to terminate your Automatic Investment Plan, you must enter
appropriate instructions through the ShareBuilder website. You will remain liable for all items that have not been
settled at the time of termination of any plan.
ING DIRECT Investing will undertake to make transfers or purchases as instructed by you in order to affect your
Automatic Investment Plan. You agree that ING DIRECT Investing will not be liable for any loss incurred by you
in connection with transfers from or to your ShareBuilder account or other implementation of your Automatic
Investment Plan unless it is grossly negligent in fulfilling its responsibilities in regards to your Automatic
Investment Plan. In no event will ING DIRECT Investing be liable for consequential, special or indirect damages
or losses. We may, at our discretion, require periodic oral or written reaffirmation of your instructions regarding
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employees, agents, successors, and assigns against any and all claims or liabilities by virtue of ING DIRECT
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Investing acting on your automatic investments instructions. This indemnity is unlimited and shall be binding upon
your heirs, successors, and assigns. ING DIRECT Investing shall have no liability for its costs or damages resulting
from inaccuracy of information which you provide to ING DIRECT Investing, or from your failure to update
any information which you have provided.
28) Communications Between ShareBuilder and the Customer
By opening an account with us, and by agreeing to these Terms and Conditions, you agree to receive all communications
from us via the World Wide Web or email. This includes, but is not necessarily limited to:
confirmations of transactions;
• account statements;
• financial statements;
• reports of portfolio holdings;
• reorganization notices; proxy materials;
• tax documents;
• notices of modifications to ING DIRECT Investing’s, Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions;
• annual and semiannual audited and unaudited reports for ING DIRECT Investing and other basic
communications.
Communications sent to your email address or provided through our website must be retrieved and read promptly.
In fact, all the communications we’ve sent to you by any means will be deemed to have been received by you.
You agree to advise us promptly of any changes to your email and/or mailing address.
You also agree to advise us promptly of any errors or omissions in any transaction or in the handling of your
account. Failure to provide prompt notice of any errors is deemed to constitute acceptance of the accuracy of all
information sent to you.
Further, you acknowledge that you have access to a printer in order to facilitate our document-delivery obligations
and your record-keeping needs. You understand that we will not send trade confirmations, account statements and
certain other reports/materials in hardcopy form.
29) Complaints
Our Customer Service Team is here to help, so if you have an issue to discuss regarding your account, these
upstanding individuals will help work toward a solution with you.
You may get in touch with us in a few ways:
• Phone: 1-800-747-2537 (Monday - Friday, 8 AM - 9 PM ET)
• Email: customerservice@sharebuilder.com
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• Or, written complaints can be sent to ING DIRECT Investing Attn: Customer Service, 83 South King
Street, Suite 700, Seattle, WA 98104
30) Recording
We want to make sure you’re getting the best service possible. That’s why we reserve the right to record telephone
calls to monitor the quality of service you receive; or, for other purposes we deem appropriate for our protection or
for the protection of our customers.
31) Security and Confidentiality
We go to great lengths to keep your personal information and your brokerage account secure. We kindly ask that
you do the same on your end, so here are the details:
• You agree that you will be fully responsible for the confidentiality of your user name and password. This
means not sharing your user name or password with others, properly protecting your computer from
intrusion and being careful not to log into your account from non-secure computers or networks at cafes,
libraries and other public places.
• You agree that you will use robust passwords and change your password periodically.
• You further agree that you will be fully and solely responsible for all activities, including brokerage transactions
that arise from the use of your user name and password.
• You agree to immediately notify us in writing or by email of any loss, theft or unauthorized use of your
user name, password and/or account number(s).
32) Contributions to Qualified-Type Accounts
You are personally responsible for all tax consequences of any contribution to a qualified account (i.e. individual
IRAs, Roth IRAs and Education Savings Accounts as well as employer-sponsored Retirement Accounts), including
a contribution in excess of any respective limit under governing law (an “over-contribution”). You understand
ING DIRECT Investing’s business rule for posting a contribution as of the date of receipt into an account, regardless
of the source of the funds for the deposit or the date/timing of any instruction or action which caused the
deposit. You further understand that, in the absence of a specific instruction, the date of receipt at ING DIRECT
Investing designates the “tax year” for a particular contribution.
You recognize that the foregoing policy also applies to a cash deposit which is the result of a promotional award to
you by ING DIRECT Investing, or on your behalf by entitled third-parties such as your financial institution, to a
qualified-type ShareBuilder Account; and that it is your responsibility to monitor related amounts and their timing.
(Note: it can take as long as 4 to 6 weeks for such deposits to post to your account after being awarded.)
33) Unique Reorganization Distributions
In situations where the reorganization of a company results in the distribution of a security type or denomination
which cannot be processed by ING DIRECT Investing, we reserve the right to liquidate or to decline to hold the
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resulting security. Examples of such unique distributions could include bonds, units and securities with unusual tax
consequences.
34) Severability
Look who’s back after taking a break for a few Sections – it’s your friendly Terms and Conditions tour guide.
Without further ado, here we go with more legal speak.
• These Terms and Conditions cover the entire agreement with respect to your access to and use of our
website.
• If any provision of these Terms and Conditions is unlawful, void or unenforceable, then that provision shall
be deemed severable from the remaining provisions and shall not affect their validity and enforceability.
35) Successors
This Agreement will pass to the benefit of our successors, assigns and agents.
We may assign our rights and duties under this Agreement to any of our successors, subsidiaries or affiliates
without giving notice or to any other entity on prior written notice to you.
In addition, you agree that this Agreement and all terms hereof, will be binding on your heirs, executors, administrators
and personal representatives and any assigns permitted by ING DIRECT Investing.
36) Power of Attorney
You kindly agree and hereby irrevocably appoint ING DIRECT Investing with full power as your true and lawful
attorney-in-fact, to the full extent permitted by law, for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of this
Agreement and taking any action and executing any instrument that we deem necessary or advisable to accomplish
the purposes of this Agreement.
37) Limitations of Liability and Indemnification
To the extent permitted by law, ING DIRECT Investing shall not be liable for any expenses, losses, damages,
liabilities, demands, charges and claims of any kind or nature whatsoever (including without limitation any
legal expenses and costs and expenses relating to investigating or defending any demands, charges and claims)
(“Losses”) by or with respect to the Account, except to the extent that such Losses are actual Losses proven with
reasonable certainty, are not speculative, are proven to have been fairly within the contemplation of the parties as
of the date hereof, and are determined by a court of competent jurisdiction or an arbitration panel in a final nonappealable
judgment or order to have resulted solely from ING DIRECT Investing’s gross negligence or willful
misconduct and without limiting the generality of the foregoing, ING DIRECT Investing will not be liable for any
indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages or other losses (regardless of whether such damages or other
losses were reasonably foreseeable).
ING DIRECT Investing shall have no liability for and you agree to reimburse, indemnify and hold ING DIRECT
Investing, its affiliates and their partners, directors, officers and employees and any person controlled by or controlling
ING DIRECT Investing harmless from all expenses (including legal expenses and reasonable attorney’s fees),

A Tale of Two Players - My Feelings on the Broncos and Peyton Manning

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:11:00 -0300

I want to share a little story with you. Let’s pretend there are two college football players. Both players are four-year starters at schools that consistently compete for conference and national championships. They play during the same era, in fact they go to rival schools that play each other every single year.

Let’s say they have stats like this:

Player A:

Year 1 – 58.2 completion percentage 2230 yards 22 TD 10 INT

Year 2 – 62.3 completion percentage 1754 yards 18 TD 9 INT

Year 3 – 64.6 completion percentage 3266 yards 35 TD 10 INT

Year 4 – 57.5 completion percentage 3625 yards 39 TD 13 INT

Player B:

Year 1 – 61.8 completion percentage 1141 yards 11 TD 6 INT (only started half the year)

Year 2 – 64.2 completion percentage 2954 yards 22 TD 4 INT

Year 3 – 63.9 completion percentage 3287 yards 20 TD 12 INT

Year 4 – 60.4 completion percentage 3819 yards 37 TD 11 INT

Looking at those stats, depending on what variables you value in a quarterback, you could probably go either way. If you value yards and touchdowns, it’s Player A. If you prefer fewer interceptions and a higher completion percentage, it’s Player B.

Now what if I told you that Player A absolutely dominated Player B in their head-to-head matchups? What if I told you he dominated him to the tune of a 3-0 record against him and a 4-0 record against his school? Not only does Player A own Player B head-to-head, he wins every possible award over Player B during the years both players are eligible. Player A is first team all-conference, first team all-American, wins the Heisman his junior year, wins the conference championship over Player B every season he starts, wins a national championship in his junior season and plays for a second as a senior. During this time Player B does none of those things. In fact, he doesn’t beat out Player A for a single award that both are eligible for.

Imagine also that Player A is a model student, devoted man of faith and is so charitable that an annual award for community service, citizenship and student scholarship is named after him. Let’s say Player B is a notoriously pampered and pompous rich kid about whom no one on his team has anything positive to say, who rode into town on his daddy’s coattails and never won so much as his division in college.

Let’s also imagine that Player B’s rich daddy helped him get out of and completely avoid (without missing a minute of game time) a sexual harassment scandal. And despite the fact that the accuser never recanted her statement and eventually lost her job and was transferred out of the school where Player B allegedly sexually assaulted her, no one ever brings this little incident up. Let’s also say the university Player B attends pays her off to the tune of, I don’t know, $300,000 after the incident. Still, not only does no one bring it up, but Player B then goes on to blatantly lie about said incident in a book he writes four years later with his aforementioned rich daddy. Let’s also say he was then sued for defamation for said lie, and (of course) he and his rich daddy settled out of court.

Now, let’s say you know all of these things. Let’s say you’re a fervent and (admittedly) somewhat fanatical supporter of Player A’s school and Player A is your childhood hero. Let’s say Player A is the reason you started cheering for his school and that the night he won your team the national championship remains one of your best and most treasured childhood memories. Let’s say you see all of these things and despite Player A’s obvious superiority as a football player and as a human being, all you hear from national media and everyone you know is what a great player and a great person Player B is.

Let’s say you watch Player A’s career go nowhere in the NFL and you watch his single greatest accomplishment become being named the MVP of the WorldBowl for the Rhein Fire. Let’s say that while your favorite player – the one who got you into college football, the one you’ve adored and idolized as much as any other athlete or human being on the planet – is fading into obscurity, you watch that spoiled rich kid, Player B, becoming the biggest name in the NFL. All the while he retains that same smug, condescending, I’m-better-than-everyone-else attitude that you always hated about him. And still, no one calls him on it.

Let’s say that after years of failure in the playoffs, and a sub-.500 playoff record that he still has to this day, Player B finally wins a Super Bowl and, because it happened to be over a quarterback who played at the school that dominated him for all four years of his college career, reporters pretend that he got some kind of vengeance over that team and Player A. Let’s say that after the Super Bowl some reporter even asks him that question, straight up, and he doesn’t exactly deny it.

Let’s say that a couple years later, Player B loses a Super Bowl game and shows his true colors (again) and rather than take the blame for the loss (even though he threw the game-clinching interception) he blames the loss on “protection issues” and his offensive line. Let’s say that after that same game he walked off the field without so much as acknowledging any players on the other team.

Imagine this guy also has a reputation around the league for putting the team first and being so “Aww shucks, gee whiz” humble, yet he refuses to let his team’s backup quarterbacks get any reps in practice and holds his team hostage by insisting that they never draft or pursue anyone who could even be a decent backup for him. Let’s say this contributed significantly to that team having the worst record in the league during the one year he got hurt. Let’s say everyone on his team knows this but the media has been drinking his Kool-Aid so hard that they not only ignore that part of the story, but they can’t imagine why he wouldn’t be able to coexist with the potential number one overall draft pick the next season.

While all this is happening all of a sudden the school that Player A made you fall in love with has recruited a new phenom, let’s call him Player C. Player C returns the school to greatness, wins a Heisman trophy, two national championships and becomes, arguably, the greatest quarterback in the history of college football. Let’s say this player is also a once-in-a-generation talent who exemplifies everything that athletes should be. Let’s say Player C miraculously gets drafted by your hometown team. Let’s say he leads that team (after going 2-14 and having the number two overall pick in the draft the year before) to a division title and one of the most exciting playoff wins in years.

Let’s say that Player B is still playing in the NFL all these years later and he gets cut by his former team. For some reason he decides to play for your hometown team, displacing Player C, who you’ve now come to love, as your hometown team’s quarterback. Let’s say the ownership and management of that hometown team has consistently and flagrantly disrespected Player C publicly and privately and is now unceremoniously kicking him to the curb, as if nothing in the previous paragraph ever happened, in favor of Player B who may or not may actually make it through an entire NFL season.

How would you feel?

So no, I’m not excited that Peyton Manning will be playing for the Broncos next season. Not even a little bit. I’ve been watching his career for 20 years and he’s proven himself over and over and over again to be a self-serving, self-aggrandizing, me-first asshole who exemplifies everything that’s wrong with not just professional athletes, but with shitty people around the world. His inhuman ability to be unforgivably selfish and be called selfless, to be unapologetically puerile and be considered magnanimous, to be a liar and a miserable whiner and never once be taken to task for it will always amaze me. In a world of T.O.s, LeBrons and other assorted assholes in sport he will always be my least favorite athlete. Always.

I am convinced Peyton Manning would sell out everyone he claims to love for a sack of money if his PR team convinced him they could spin the story or bury it. He stands for nothing but himself and the almighty dollar and he’s been nothing but a spoiled, sullen, ego maniac his entire career and everyone – EVERYONE – gives him a pass.

Fuck Peyton Manning. Fuck the Denver Broncos. And if you wanna be down with Peyton Manning, fuck you too.

And if you’d like to read more about what a great human being Peyton Manning is, there’s this - http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/nfl/colts/2003-11-04-manning-suit_x.htm

An elegy for Whitney

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 16:35:19 -0300

I think Whitney Houston was the best singer ever. I once compared her to Lawrence Taylor (easy comparison, two unbelievable, once-in-a-lifetime talents who succumbed to crack), but now I think I want to revise my comparison, basically only for one reason.

I’ve argued for years and will continue to argue (despite the fact that it completely invalidates the thesis of this paper) that Michael Jordan is not the greatest player to ever play the game. It goes Magic Johnson, Oscar Robertson then Michael Jordan.

SIDE NOTE: I could go on for days about the fact that Magic was only in his 12^th season when he contracted HIV and could easily have played another four or five seasons, demonstrated by the fact that he came back and played half a season while still sick with HIV in 1996 and still averaged 15 points and 7 assists and that had Oscar ever had a competent teammate he could have challenged Russell for at least five titles during his career, demonstrated by the fact that when he finally got a competent teammate, a young man named Lew Alcindor, he won a championship. All the while Jordan played with one of the 50 best players of all-time and the greatest rebounder ever. But whatever. Ignore all that.

Whitney Houston is the Michael Jordan of singing. She was the greatest ever and we will never see another Whitney ever. People love to compare things – mostly because old people need to bring up the fact that they’re old and have seen things that young people haven’t – and a lot of names get thrown around. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard a competent and credible person ever compare any singer since Whitney to Whitney.

Listen to this isolated vocal track from “How Will I Know.” Do it. Listen to it now. You don’t even have to stop reading this blog, you can read it while you listen. It’s mind blowing. It’s the most incredible vocal performance I’ve ever heard.

I think two things will always detract from Whitney’s legacy and will somehow engender people to even have a debate about who the greatest singer of all time was.

The first is obvious – crack. (I’m also tying the relationship with Bobby Brown in with crack, because while they are separate issues that will allow the aforementioned conversation, I think crack and Bobby Brown will forever be linked in the history of Whitney.)

The second is the fact that there was never any question of how unbelievably talented Whitney was. We all recognized it from day one and it was never up for debate. Because we all knew how amazing and talented she was, when she blew us away with something amazing like the “And I…” sequence from “I Will Always Love You” it didn’t really blow us away. We sort of expected it. It seems crazy to think you could expect something that spectacular, but that’s what we did. We expected Whitney to come with that (note: I’m fully aware of my effusive use of synonyms for the word great and I plan on stopping soon).

That’s how it was with MJ in the mid-90s. We all just sort of expected him to do the amazing things he did, to the point that when he did them we were somehow unimpressed. When you go back and watch old Michael Jordan tapes and compare him to David Robinson, Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olijuwon and others of his ilk who robbed him of the MVP Award (actually Karl Malone is the only other one) it makes you a little queasy.

Watching the NBA, people keep looking for the “next Jordan,” but the thing is there will never be another Jordan. No one could ever replicate what he did. No one will ever be that talented, that driven, that focused and that determined. And there will never be another Whitney. Never. Not never, ever, ever. I don’t mean that we will never see anyone who can recreate her unique stylings and particular commercial pop, R&B appeal. In that sense – in the we’re-all-special-snowflakes sense – we’ll never see another Mariah Carey or another Liz Phair or Joni Mitchell. What I mean is we will never see anyone who sings that God damn good ever again.

Whitney is gone and we will never see another singer as supremely talented as long as we live.