I don’t actually care about basketball that much. When I watch, I root for the Suns, so I don’t like Robert Horry. And the Spurs still hurt a little because of the year they knocked out the Suns (and the controversy surrounding it).

That’s not what I’m here to talk about though. I’m here to talk about why the Spurs are more boring than a coworker’s dogs medical history. This was very difficult to come up with, but here are five things that are as boring as the Spurs.

1. When someone is telling a story and they say “hoary” and you think they mean “whore-y” but no, they meant “hoary.” Temporary dose of excitement GONE.
2. The variety of commercials whenever you watch something online (like ESPN3 or TNT basketball).
3. The stuff you read through when you google “really boring things.” One of which was a video of Martha Stewart talking about boring things. Oh, internet.
4. This list.
5. Manu Ginobili’s bald spot. (Rumor has it his bald spot isn’t even real. Gregg Popovich asked him to shave it into his head to, “add some excitement to the team.”)

In reality, I way over-explained my actual opinion on why the Spurs are “boring” to Juicebox. I explained way past the point of his caring, but I thought it was accurate and a good explanation, so here it is again.

The Spurs are boring to MOST people watching the NBA finals. Why? Because most people watching aren’t big NBA fans. I really like, and know, football. Baseball is second. If I go to a baseball game and it’s a great pitcher’s duel – only four hits all game and the game ends 1-0 … that’s probably boring to most people. But you know what? Because I know the sport, I appreciate the talent that led to that happening.

The Spurs are very methodical, smart, organized, and they execute well. As someone who doesn’t care about the NBA, this is incredibly boring. I want stupid antics, over-the-top personalities, and nonsense. I don’t want to have to admit these things, because that means I’m into DRAMA … but you know what? That’s what people are hoping to see. Lebron causes conversations, Tim Duncan causes naps.

Face it folks, we want the drama. If we didn’t, the Spurs wouldn’t be BORING, they’d be amazing.

But, in the future, his books will come out and shake the world. People will read and fall in love with him. They’ll have this desire to know more and more.

Somewhere, some publishing house will think, “well, why not give them more? We’ve got books that are the letters of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos, why not him?”

Below is a sampling of the types of notes this book would contain.

The Facebook Love Letters of (so and so), 2011 – 2014

Note 1:

Hey what’s up. Last night was a ton of fun. We should get drunk and make out again. Just kidding. Well, about the getting drunk part. Unless you have to get drunk to make out with me … which I’m sadly very ok with.

Note 2:

Man, it’s crazy. I don’t just want to physically bone you, I also want to emotionally bone you. That’s never happened before. You should come over so we can physically bone, then emotionally bone, then physically bone again. Then take a nap. Then get some burgers and do some more emotional boning. That’d be awesome.

Note 3:

I didn’t know holding hands could make me so happy.

I miss you.

Note 4:

That halloween party was so much fun with you! You looked super hot as a sexy criminal defense attorney. I’d commit crimes just to be with you. What? Yeah, I’d break the law for you.

Note 5:

Every time I kiss you, it just makes me want to kiss you ten times more.

Which reminds me, could you pick up some chapstick for me next time you go to the grocery store?

I do notice them though, and judge them from a distance.

Missing: Father, Found: Dog

Julia knew she wasn’t ready for a dog, but not being ready for something big in her life hadn’t stopped her before … and that turned out to be the most beautiful decision of her life, Lucy. With such love, why are Julia and Lucy fighting so much? Missing: Father, Found: Dog is the beautiful coming of age story of Lucy, who has to deal with high school, boys, her mom’s overbearing self, and the fact that her dog just pooped on the sidewalk.

Will puppy love restore lost mother-daughter bonds, or will the new pooch rip holes in their relationship, like she did in the curtains.

It’s a heartfelt roller coaster that’ll have you reaching for tissues, and hugs. I’d see it again, but only after I stop by the SPCA.

Miss Wynter

“Four years. Four years.” That’s Miss Wynter’s mantra. It’s four years until she can retire from teaching those bratty, smelly, germ-infested punks other people refer to as fifth graders.

She hadn’t always been this way, as Miss Wynter puts it, “I used to be young, and stupid. Now I’m old, and it’s 3:22 so I’m going home.”

In this dark comedy watch as Miss Wynter takes care of her lawn, and neglects the kids. It’s fun for the family! Assuming you hate your kids.

Medical Gloves

Apples, bananas, cereal, oatmeal, pasta, pasta sauce, orange juice, toothpaste. Hank’s grocery list read like anyone else’s. Although he always left off one item. He left it off because he knew he was going to buy it.

Latex gloves. Medical gloves. Those “powder free” blue ones. “Natural” Latex gloves. Each store had a different take on them, and he knew them all. He was smart. He never bought from the same store twice in a row. It might raise questions.

Hank didn’t like questions.

When Hank’s neighbor walked by and gave a questioning glance at Hank cleaning his car with a pair of his gloves, Hank didn’t like that. He thought the neighbor might start asking questions.

Hank decided to be proactive this time. He preferred it when he was being proactive.

Hank will do … anything … to stop questions.

(Seriously one of my neighbors cleans his car, his crappy old car, with latex gloves. It’s very off-putting. Also, he drives really slowly. This doesn’t mean anything, it’s just annoying if we’re leaving the apartment complex at the same time.)

Airplanes – Watching Oprah (“Aw, I miss her” she said to me) and eating soup.

Juicebox – Playing soccer. Go Juicebox!!

Rainbow Speak – Watching Parks and Rec, with plans to read some Plato a little later.

Myself – Watching ‘Whitest Kids U Know” and eating fast food.

It was the difference between Airplanes and I that really made me laugh. When I texted Rainbow Speak I was really hoping he’d be up to something completely different as well, but his and I plans were pretty similar. My hope was his text was a lie, and that he’s actually building a paper-mache unicorn farm right now.

In case you were curious, this may very well be my most boring post ever. You’re welcome.

That’s how I picture hills going …

Now for day two predictions for what I’ll be thinking at various mile-markers …

Mile 1 – Oh gosh I am in pain. My sad, sad tushy.

Mile 2- Maybe I should’ve listened to those people who told me I should buy butt cream … but could I ever really buy that?

Mile 7 – Ok. Feeling better. A bit warmed up.

Mile 13 (for this I’ll assume Rainbow Speak and I will be stupid and do the hillier, more challenging ride) – AHHHHHHH!

Mile 14 – Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Mile 14.2 – AHHHHHHHHHH!

Mile 14.3 – Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.

Mile 20 – What’s the perfect song to play when all you want to do is lay down, curl up in a ball, cry a little … oh and eat ice cream.

Mile 21 – Oh, duh, THIS SONG.

Mile 30 – I’ve biked over 100 miles! Holy cow! That’s … well … I don’t know what that is. Weird, I guess.

Mile 37 – Could I be any whiter? My name is Brad. I am biking a crapton of miles. I’m wearing a brightly colored jersey and I’ve said “neat!” at least ten times today.

Mile 44 – About thirty miles to go … come onnnnnnn.

Mile 51 – Oh man I am going to sleep so well on the bus ride home.

Mile 52 – Huh. Maybe I should’ve bought a nicer bike.

Mile 59 – Wait how did that child just pass me! That is upsetting. You’re two feet tall! You should be home playing video games you little jerk.

Mile 67 – Hi everyone, this is your captain speaking … on your left you can see some stupid trees and on your right some more hated trees. Oh and have I mentioned I’m SICK OF THIS.

Mile 71 – Is that some of downtown Austin or did a really cool shaped bug just die on my shades?

Mile 75 – Ooh that chick is hot.

Mile 77 – Well well well … I did it … Now someone please just take me to my couch.

Yup, it’s game time. Day one of the BPMS150.

I have been training for this for a while … but the longest bike ride I’ve done is a 2 hour one. One weekend I did a two hour ride on Saturday, and then another on Sunday. Both were maybe 25 miles.

That’s not quite 150 miles.

My friend and I are starting from the easiest starting gate (at the recommendation of the instructors from our class). That means it’s 76 miles the first day.

Here is what the first day looks like in terms of miles …

Now for what I predict my thoughts will be …

Mile 0 – Holy crap holy crap what WHAT WHAT?! There are so many people! So many stupidly bright jerseys!! Good GOD why am I HERE!

Mile 1 – GAHHHHH I HATE PEOPLE! SO … MANY … PEOPLE!

Mile 5 – Ok … this isn’t too bad. I think I can do this.

Mile 10 – Daaaaang I’m already at 10 miles! Nice! Not bad at all! I actually enjoy biking!

Mile 11 – Ok what the hell was I thinking I still have like 140 miles to go. This is terrible.

Mile 15 – I already want to take a nap. I can’t be the first one to ask for a break though … I wonder how tired Rainbow Speak is … maybe I should accidentally punch him in the leg.

Mile 24 – Which part of my body doesn’t feel uncomfortable right now? Oh right. None of them.

Mile 27 (if I’m reading that right) – Sweet! Lunch time!

Mile 28 – Ooooof why am I incapable of not shoveling food in my pie hole? It’s gonna be slowwww going.

Mile 40 – I’ve done 40 miles and I’m still not even 1/3rd done. This is impressively upsetting.

Mile 47 – Oh crap I didn’t put on sunblock. I am going to have the dumbest sunburn ever.

Mile 58 – MY GAMS IS KILLIN’ ME!

Mile 59 – Haha … gams …

Mile 66 – (Singing this song in my head) …

Mile 72 – Oh frick I just swallowed another bug.

Mile 76 – Ok … first day done … I made it … OH YEAH FREE BEER!

(Seriously, there’s free beer at the end of day one!)

First of all, UAVs. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. They have become prominent recently with war, and now they may be coming to your home … if you have some time, read this.

Don’t want to read that? Fine. Here’s my quick takeaway: UAVs in the civilian world CAN be really cool, but they could be bad, and they can be slippery.

Cool:

• Delivering tacos to you
• Road signs saying “missing elderly, Ford truck, etc etc” … these bad boys can help look for the missing elderly
• Traffic reporting (as mentioned in the article)

Bad:

• Invasion of privacy (peeping tom, 2.0)
• Hogging bandwidth

Slippery:

• REPLACING HUMANS WITH ROBOTS

Seriously … this is a verrrry interesting thing to me.

A few years ago I was driving with a girl to visit the acquarium in Monterey Bay, California. While driving there we passed by some farms. There was someone out driving some farming machinery through the fields and I talked to the girl about how that job could be automated.

You have the dimensions of the field, you know where crop X is, where crop Y is (in case they need different machines). All you have to do is input this information into a central database (or directly into the machines), and whala, you’ve got yourself some automated farm hands.

With these UAVs it mentions shipping yards that could use drones. Imagine a drone crew lifting debris from the demolition of a building.

Here’s an interesting/bad part – the girl’s dad had a skilled manual labor job. It had slipped my mind at the time, but she was adamently against automation of certain jobs. Unfortunately, her stubborn resistance only made me want to list more jobs where people could be replaced.

You’ve probably been to a grocery store where there are self-checkouts. You’ve probably seen ATMs where you can deposit checks through them (or you can do this through your phone now). There are TONS of jobs people do that can be replaced by robots.

Think about how complex a football game is, and yet we have AI that figures out what to do with that in video games. VIDEO GAMES! I think any consistent motion, or set of motions, no matter how complex, can be automated.

That is both cool and scary.

Other slippery slope things … The article mentions the idea of police UAVs with some ‘crowd control’ non-lethal weapons. Oh, what tangled webs we have.

What do you think about all this? Scary? Cool? Have some brilliant business idea based on UAVs? If so, you should probably keep it to yourself.

This should either delight or concern you. In hindsight, for me, it does both.

I went with Rainbow Speak, Airplanes, E$ and a desire to drink. Airplanes and E$ decided not to drink that day, so Rainbow Speak and I drank for four.

We got there at 1030 or so and started drinking pretty early. Maybe around 11. When we went up to get our drinks we realized we could each take two cups. This was delightful news. Later, when I went up for more rounds and I realized they would not be cutting me off, this was scary news. I counted on the venue to be cheapskates and say “sorry dude, no more” but instead the opposite happened. At one point Rainbow Speak and I went up and the bartender thought RS had said “water.” She responded, pretty disgruntled, “WATER!??”

There was a lot to see and do that day, so I sobered up through the course of the day. Around 8 pm that night, at Frank (where we saw Fallulah and Charlene Soraia), I heard some stories about myself.

I was pretty surprised by what I didn’t remember.

This guy (seen here with anonymous tall girl) was apparently having himself a ball.

Story 1

I got a text from my mom. She asked how we were doing. I took a picture of the other three and began texting her back. Ruh roh. “Oh God, I’m already drunk.” Bad news. It was 12:25 pm.

Story 2  (as told by Airplanes to me)

At some point, while walking through the crowd, I got in to the habit of tapping random people on their far shoulder. I know I loved doing this in fourth grade … and apparently I still love it.

Story 3

Last time I got posters (as I talked about here). At some point E$ suggested we go look at their posters to get a picture to see who all was playing. They are big posters.

Instead I ripped two off the wall. Realizing I took two, I handed one to E$. Then I ran away.

When I got up to Airplanes she asked where E$ was, I happily stated I’d ditched her. When E$ found her way back to us she informed us that a number of people made her stand and hold the poster out so they could take a picture of all the artists. Sucker.

Story 4

Like I said before, all the bands but one were good.

The one bad one was Rachel Ray’s husband’s band (sorry, Rach). It makes sense. He wanted to play music, she’s famous so she made it happen.

Apparently, this upset me? I don’t know. After their set ended I yelled out, “RACHEL RAY YOU’RE AN ASS HOLE!” I giggled a little after this, then realized that what I had done was wrong, and looked down.

Strangers around us stared at me some. Probably jealous at the amount of confidence I had in my opinion.

What was funnier about this was how funny E$ found this. Occasionally, through the rest of the day, she’d laugh and quote me.

Story 5

In the Johnny on the Spots there was a lot of graffiti. One of the bits of graffiti said something along the lines of,

“(So and so), the lead singer of Keane, has such a small d**k that he could f**k a cheerio”

I must have found this funny, because I came back and told everyone. I had even come up with a clever hand motion involving my pointer finger, and two other fingers forming an o.

My phrase of the day, which may have started around then, was, “Because I’m a GENTLEMAN!” I also liked to say, “A gentleman to the last!”

And now a picture of the two stages we saw awesome music on all afternoon.

• Egilsstaðir – 2,226 (E)
• Eskifjörður – 1,095 (E)
• Garður – 1,545 (SW)
• Grindavík – 2,836 (SW)
• Höfn – 2,122 (SE)
• Hveragerði – 2,300 (SW)
• Ísafjörður – 3,941 (NW)
• Mosfellsbær – 8,147 (SW)
• Neskaupstaður – 1,432 (E)
• Njarðvík – 4,400 (SW)
• Ólafsvík – 1,003 (W)
• Reyðarfjörður – 1,529 (E)
• Sandgerði – 1,757 (SW)
• Sauðárkrókur – 2,700 (N)
• Selfoss – 6,253 (SW)
• Seltjarnarnes – 4,445 (SW)
• Siglufjörður – 1,307 (N)
• Stykkishólmur – 1,103 (W)
• Vestmannaeyjar – 4,040 (SW)
• Þorlákshöfn – 1,541 (SW)

Thanks wiki page on Iceland.