(link: http://i28.tinypic.com/1zxmj53.gif. Supposedly created by a Jazz fan.)

If you don't love this game, you don't love life.

About a year ago I made several vows, which went something like this:

• No more coding jobs.
• No moving back home for longer than a few months.
• No more fantasy basketball.

And so this now represents a pretty damning case against my personal integrity, or at least my ability to avoid talking grandiose shit when I ought to be more humble. Anyway I joined a fantasy basketball league again today.

It doesn't officially begin until October 22, when the draft occurs, but I already know how things are going to unfold: three or four days before the draft I'll start spending at least an hour a day shuffling through NBA player statistics on online databases. I'll have the constant itch, the slightly distracted and stultified and annoyed look in my eye when you're trying to tell me something really important. I'll manage to slip some basketball-related comment into every conversation I have. When the season actually starts it'll be through-going statistical monomania, and for all intents and purposes the end of any constructive activity whatsoever. There will be this perverse drooling over box scores updated every 30 seconds for games I will never see, all in anticipation of 2nd-string shooting guards getting one more rebound.

It's bar-none the worst conceivable way to enjoy the game. The irrelevance of it might be something like watching The Godfather for the quality of the child-acting, or reading Shakespeare for the fine nutty odor of the binding. At best I'll come up with some sort of bent rubric for what it is I want out of the game, e.g., my home team ought to win, but my guy on the visitor's squad should at least score 20 points, and only then will it have been a successful and satisfying sporting experience. At worst I won't even care about who wins or who loses a game, so long as Paul Pierce can drop 22/8/4. All the drama and the physical beauty and the brutality and the humor will be completely lost on me. To a guy with his mind on his fantasy team, highlight-reel dunks mean nothing more than two sure-fire points. The pull-up jumper from 4 feet behind the line to tie it at the buzzer is just another trey in the bucket, and the slight, indignant regret over the fact that your guy would even chance such a risky maneuver and threaten his overall shot percentage. There's just no sympathy for a guy that goes down with an ankle injury, only the immediate cold-hearted strategizing of how to replace his production with a cheaply-acquired substitute.

Even if you think that's okay, there's still the out-and-out covetousness that gets stirred up. I mean this kind of Gollumnescent fetishism in which you spend thirty seconds staring at the same box score line and maybe clicking on the numbers and highlighting them and unclicking them and then highlighting them again. The surrender of your emotions to what's basically a lottery in a gymnasium is pretty much complete. When Marcus Camby turns in 8 blocks in a single game your shitty day becomes the highlight of the month.

Let's not even get started on what a collossal time-waster all this happens to incidentally be. Suffice it to say that I have less than a month remaining of what passes for my social life, and then after that I will school the whole lot of you chumps, suckas, and fools in Yahoo Fantasy Basketball. You stand no chance.

Bonzi Wells looks like Kif from Futurama:

While not as good a comparison as in the much-publicized Sheldon William/Chewbacca meme, the resemblance is definitely there and deserves more attention. Next time you go to a Kings game, bring a poster with "KIF MVP #42!!!" on it. We need to get something started.

I have just recovered from a coughing spell that forced me to leave the staff room and stand outside while I hacked in vain to empty out the contents of my throat. I would take in a breath, only to be interrupted a cold itch behind my sternum. Then I would start coughing uncontrollably.

That's what I get for five minutes of lunchtime basketball on the outdoor court. I'd specially brought my Chucks today so I could play with the kids, but my 4th period spilled into the lunch hour and I ended up not having very much time to play. This turned out to be a good thing. Junior high basketball isn't easy, because the kids have a lot of energy and are reasonably skilled for playing everday and maybe even twice a day. The game is pretty low to the ground, with a ton of steals and uncalled fouling, and since the kids are so fast it's hard to stop them or drive on them. I thought I could play a full court game, so on offense I'd crowd under the basket, and on a change of possession I'd sprint back on D. That went back and forth maybe five times when the bell rang, and then my lungs started to crash. I've had this cold for almost a week now and it's safe to say that I ought to leave the sprinting aside for the time being.

I didn't have anything on the kids. I'm not even taller than a lot of them. There's some kind of undisciplined, wild coordination at their age--they are really still kids--that allows them to make diving steals and ridiculous, unarcing, unbalanced shots at high frequency. I always fancied myself of the agile, hustling school when it comes to sports, and while I could never do anything requiring precision dexterity, like shooting, passing, hitting, or scoring, I was pretty quick and my balance was good. Those kids were running rings around me and I was slipping every which way in the loose dirt. I don't really feel like an old man or anything, but I need to start producing some domination on the court or else they'll stop enjoying having me on their team. I get picked up on pure novelty right now. Maybe I just have to play my age and get some cunning and treachery in there to counter their youth and talent. I'm talking elbows and landing on feet and maybe some of this shit:

Or maybe some of this:

They're never gonna see it coming.

As eventful a time as November was I seem to have done a pretty good job neglecting this blog. It always happens that I have lots of things to say, but as writing a reasonably complete entry gets more and more difficult, I avoid it and let more time pass. It's a cycle I'm sure a lot of people with blogs are familiar with. The irony of this is that when you finally sit down this long-awaited epic, it ends up being the same random, sputtery drivel you write any other time. With that fact in mind, I've been toying with the idea of posting faithfully one a day for the month of December, just to if I actually am able to come up with something worth reading on a daily basis.

On Wednesday I'm supposed to go to the prefectural capital to discuss the re-contracting process with local JET authorities. This will be a classically useless procedural meeting in which I will be taught how to fill out certain particular forms and warned sternly not to violate various rules and the good faith between myself and my contracting organization. If this fulfills any meaningful purpose, it is in reminding me to think seriously about what to do after next July. I resolved that I would not re-contract for another year simply because I have nothing better to do. I've told myself that I'd need some legitimate ties to work and life in Japan to stay any longer, and if I didn't have those, then I owed it to myself to look for something better to do.

I started a post two weeks ago in which I was to engage in a profanity-laden exploration of my job and its difficulties, but I got distracted and subsequently my rage subsided to the point where I no longer wanted to write about it. What inspired me initially was seeing my least favorite teaching partner don a blue sweatshirt prominently featuring the words "IMAGINATIVE FACULTY" in silver serifed text. I am 99.9% sure he had no idea what that meant, but I found myself perversely amused by the thought that he might be compensating for what he so obviously lacks. Then I thought, Jesus Fucking Christ! The whole program, hell everything that's fucked in this country, is just that sweatshirt writ large! Everything is exactly as advertised except in actual fucking substance!

Well, I had more to say than just that, but I think now it would have just been a thourough re-hashing of everything I've complained about before, and it would have seemed all a little too trifling to be upset about. My job really isn't that difficult and the positives are many, but somehow I allow it to stress me out anyway. I'm well-compensated and no matter how ill-spent my hours at work will be, I get plenty of free time. I suppose what does bother me is the lingering sense that I have no real role, that my work isn't really well-understood and thus not taken seriously, that irrational and incompetent things happen, and that I can't really do shit about them and even defend them in my head in the name of cultural sensitivity.

Couple with such discomforting thoughts was the first real professional tiff I'd gotten myself into, which had to do with my wanting to go to India in the spring. In past accounts I'd accused my supervisors at the Board of Education getting into matters that were not their own, but then laughed it off as miscommunication. After a bit of brouhaha (it was all actually very polite) it turns out that they honestly didn't want me to go to India, for reasons that I feel are based on ignorance and institutional intransigence. I didn't actually want to go to India that badly and I realized that I'd been insisting on getting my way just because I felt I was being forced to swallow a lot of bullshit. It really wasn't worth trampling on hitherto healthy and respectful relations that existed between myself and the Board, so I said I wouldn't go to India. I still feel as if I've conceded to some unfair treatment, and I'm not really sure if I hold a grudge for that. When at last I told them I wasn't going, I actually felt very relieved to be done with the matter. I suppose I am now a little wary that a precedent has been set, and they will tell me I can't go to China or Taiwan or whereever because they don't trust me to handle myself.

The point of all this is that in sum, my job definitely isn't going to keep me in Japan.

On the social side, I've had some gradual improvements. I've had some good times with some of the local folk, not anything consistent or carefree, but a lot better than nothing. I've also been getting to know other people in the JET community. Tremendously helpful in that regard has been the band I've been trying to organize. I was by some miracle able to get five or six of us from all over the prefecture to meet once a week and play music. However, with me and starting bands, it seems there is no end to the challenges that could potentially break it all up at any minute. For the first month (well that's about all we got so far) I was just happy to have everyone motivated and willing to sacrifice the time and money to get together regularly and I thought nothing about the acutal music. Now by some miracle we need to get some kind of musical chemistry going. When you are recruiting from a population of English teachers in a middling-sized prefecture in Japan, you are going to get some pretty divergent tastes and attitudes. I have made a private vow to have a set ready for Valentine's Day, but even that might be a little optimistic. I need to write some goddamn songs.

As if this blog needed to get any more pathetic: I also need to meet some frickin' girls. I almost miss having crushes on people--it's probably been a full year since I've felt anything a heartbeat stronger than "She's cute, I guess. When's the game on?" Anyhow I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about. It's tough to meet the right person. We'll leave it with that.

I'd basically stay in Japan if I had one of the following:

1. A girlfriend.
2. A band on the up. (Right now it's on the world's lowest altitude plateau)
3. A consistent weekend crew.
4. A renewed zeal for learning the Japanese language.

If I left Japan, I'd either go back to Taiwan or to China, or maybe join my friend's band in Virginia while moonlighting in the IT department at DuPont. God knows how badly I need to get back into the IT industry. I'd say graduate school is there in the mix somewhere, but I'm really not feeling an intense desire to leap back into academia at the moment. So Japan or not, it looks like more career-burnin', time-wastin', money-eatin' life experiences for me.

At first I was turned off to the idea of returning home for Christmas, but I haven't looked back since I booked the tickets back to LA. I'm looking forward to playing basketball everyday on a real paved court (look out kids, I'm like 10-20% from beyond the arc now) and eating stridently-flavored, in-your-face greasy food. I'd also like to go see a Clippers game live and throw a New Year's party with my friends and play lots of bass and piano and have real Chinese food for a change. Mark your calendars: December 21 to January 5.

I will end this on a note of greed. Here's this year's Christmas list:

• This, which necessitates this.
• Johann's Digitech Whammy, or one like it.
• Of course I need a fresh pair of these.
• Good times with good people.

I was gonna load up a suitcase full of locally-brewed sake for you all, but let me know what you want. I have a special talent for finding high-quality action figures and toy robots, in case you were wondering.