Carolina

So Wednesday night I stayed up until 4am to watch all of Carolina's game at Clemson. It was the first game I have watched live all season, and the first since the national title game in Detroit last April. Despite following the young team through articles and blogs, it was an entirely different matter to actually witness these kids throw the ball away every 10 seconds. Yes, I know they're young (really young actually, with 9 of the 12 players being either Freshmen or Sophomores) but 17 turnovers in the first half is entirely inexcusable outside of Middle School rec league ball during the lockout year when the kids on the travel team weren't allowed to play. It wasn't even the rookies, however, who were making the most brutal of mistakes. The Waer twins were reasonably solid and Leslie McDatonald at least seemed like he had played the game before.

Meanwhile, Marcus Ginyard, who has been on this team since 2005, was about as confused and vulnerable as the stray dogs around here must be just before they're shot in the face as a method of population control. Also, where the hell were Deion Thompson and Will Graves? I would say that Graves must have snuck in a formerly traditional pre-game blunt, but no feasibly consumable amount of weed could cause such a veteran stoner/basketball player to shoot less than 20% from the field. With less than three minutes left, Carolina had more TOs than field goals. Read that stat again and try to keep your hand from creeping towards the nearest sharp object. Needless to say, listening to Jay Bilas emphatically enumerate the miscues did not help the situation.

I honestly cannot remember the last time I shouted "slow the fuck down" at a any Carolina team, and yet here I was, waking up my sitemate and her English-speaking neighbors with desperate pleas for Larry Drew II (R2D2) to hang on to the freakin ball. I mean this is Clemson we're talking about. Clemson. The same team that has started out 15-0 every year since the Truman administration, only to completely implode the second ACC play begins. This is supposed to be their cue to remember mediocrity and fullfil their destiny of dissapointment. As Clemson made three after three, I actually found myself indignant and insulted by their overall lack of failure. We were being completely outclassed and outrun, but even worse, they were tougher than us.

When the game finaly ended, the only bright spot in the whole evening seemed to be the emergence of Frosh Dexter Strickland as a legitimate warrior. Watch out for this kid. So as the orange clad hillbillies of South Carolina rushed the court against a 4-loss team less than 10 days removed from a downfall to College of Charleston (wow thats depressing to type), I was somewhat consoled by the fact that this isn't football, and that any team helmed by Roy Williams has a fighting chance in the big dance come March. That is as long as it doesn't continually break its own record for turnovers. Just please hang on to the ball, ok?



I wrote all of that before Saturday's loss at home to Georgia Tech. Now, after the second consecutive defeat (sixth of the season) it is abundantly clear that Carolina lacks a true and consistent on-the-court leader. In Clemson, Strickland showed some real poise; but Saturday came and he simply disappeared, failing to record either a field goal or an assist in scant minutes. Will Graves definitely stepped up against the Yellow Jackets, but only after a pathetic display on Wednesday. What ever happened to Marcus Ginyard anyway? After the victory in Detroit last April, I distinctly remember having the same conversation about his return approximately 20-30 times before the semester finished in early May. His medical red-shirt was a blessing in disguise, the logic went, because now he could return as a battle tested veteran just in time to teach the flock of talented rookies the same principles of dedication and passion he had acquired during his four years under Coach Williams. So much for that.

I am not saying the newbies are doomed to remain ignorant of these values just because Ginyard seems to be phoning it in right now, as this would be a serious insult to Roy who has clearly proven his abilities as a motivator countless times. I am also not blaming the many ills of this team solely on the 5th year guard. It does seem clear to me, however, that such a raw team would be remarkably better off if Marcus could rediscover the intensity he used to radiate before his injury last off-season. These 18 and 19 year old kids don't just need a swift kick in the ass, they need confidence. It's time for remaining members of last year's team to start acting like the defending champions that they are. The ACC is the roughest conference there is and if these tenderfoots can get their shit together for a legit run, they can build a base of cohesion for this Spring and for next Fall, when three more highly touted recruits will become Tar Heels.
Like I said before: it's a long season, and champions are made in March (and April technically), not in January. Go heels.

Les Mis

So a month ago, as a testament to the completely ridiculous amount of free time PCVs tend to enjoy, I decided to pick up and actually read Victor Hugo's beast of a novel, Les Miserables. At 1463 pages and nearly a kilo in mass, this copy boasted the honor of being the "only completely unabridged paperback ever published." As I would soon find out, there was probably a legitimate reason why Signet Classics was the only publisher willing to unleash this thing as originally written. My guess is they were really desperate for some superlative to put on the cover.

Never in my life did I think I would read 500 pages of any book, only to realize there were nearly another 1000 yet unread.

As it turns out, when faced with such an absurd truth the first sentence that came to mind was" wtf?" Once I found myself cheering on as the 1 year- old who lives upstairs, thinking the illustration of Cosette on the cover was an evil spirit, repeatedly beat the thing with his fist. At least a few times, while in the midst of a 60 page tangent, I thought to myself "Am I one of the miserable?" Yes, yes I am. Since there cannot be more than 15-20 people alive today who have read this thing cover to cover, I have surely gained the credentials to join one of those bands of sufferers who wander the seas in a tanker, chain-smoking and pounding whiskey, detailing the miseries of their lives and asking aloud "Why the hell did I do that?" Or is that just a Simpsons episode?"

Anyway, I did some research into the matter and discovered that, despite its total lack of pictures, maps, bar graphs or hardcore sex scenes, Hugo's work is widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 19th century. Instead of employing these wonderful devices, Hugo prefers to "describe" the setting, gratuitously using words where a simple diagram could save the reader a good half an hour. In my humble opinion, Hugo could have at least included a quick zombie invasion to test Enjolras' men before facing off against the Royal Army. Seriously though, zombies fix everything. I guarantee more people would read this book if instead of throwing himself into the river, Javert were to be killed off by a brain-hungry mob of the un-dead moments after they burst through the wall of his apartment...and then threw the body in the river. At the very least it would spice up the on-stage musical version.

Despite these faults, and the fact that it probably took a whole tree to produce this single copy, Hugo manages to rip off some pretty stellar insults, all of which were highly appreciated by this reader. On page 136 Hugo lets a good one fly through the minor character Tholomyes who barbs at the even more minor Zephine, "Yours is like a beautiful face, upon which someone has sat down by mistake." Boom roasted. Over two hundred pages later, on 378, Hugo describes the Thenardiess with the following sentence: "Apart from the novels she had read, which at times produced odd glimpses of the affected lady under the ogress, it would never have occurred to anyone to say: That's a woman." Burn! Hugo lays into this bitch dozens more times throughout the book, but this is easily my favorite as it essentially calls her a monstrous humanoid creature who still reads shitty chick books. Picture Ms. Tucker reading the Sisterhood of Traveling Pants series.

Check this next quote out (966), "he had made great improvements in the business of the lead strippers who plunder roofing and skin eave gutters by the process called 'the double fat.'" Now I have no idea whats going on in this sentence but it sounds completely fucking disgusting and totally worthy of a thorough analysis on urban dictionary. Just like this one (1090), "There is one reality alone: to drink. Whatever may be your opinion, whether you're for the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or for the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it hardly matters, drink." Just plain filthy. And I don't want to hear about any alternate meanings for the word "cock." What I learned from this passage is that Swiss people like to get hammered and chug beef in a very liberal and open environment where one is not judged by the whatever the girth of choice might be. That, ladies and gentlemen, is true freedom.

love, peace and chicken grease.

Writings

So a local man recently cleared up a myth for me. Barack Obama cannot be the first black president because Abe Lincoln, who took office right after George Washington, beat him to the punch years ago.

Once, this same dude was telling me how Morocco needs to build as many nuclear power plants as possible to create cheaper electricity for the rural areas, when I casually mentioned the issue of toxic waste. After convincing him that yes, nuclear reactions give off useless, hazardous waste he simply said "Well so what? That's why we have Mauritania." Touché.

I was riding in a cab last week with a seatbelt on when the driver suddenly noticed something which drove (yep, it's a pun. deal.) him to laughter... I was wearing a seatbelt. By the time he had calmed down he had also secretly unbuckled it for me.

So a few of us went to Marrakesh in order to celebrate new years with other people who were aware of its existence. I mean, Halloween without booze, however absurd, is one thing, but New Years sans brew is completely inexcusable. While there I was once again overwhelmed by the amount of hot chicks dressed in attire that revealed elbows, hair, neck and all sorts of other riské shit. For those of you who understand this (it is fairly straightforward), the hottie alarm was going off left and right. Anyway, the whole time we were there I was unsure of how the lot of us fit into the whole scheme of the city. We aren't really tourists or locals; we get quoted the prices with the additional white people tax, but can generally argue it down to something reasonable; we are looked down on by random tourists who think we are morons for coming to kesh solely to drink, be loud and speak English. Who comes to a Muslim city to get hammered? People who live in rural Muslim towns.

I had sheep at my host family house recently. It continues