I’m not generally a person who gets off on someone else’s failure, I like to see people succeed, and in sports, I prefer for the battle to be hard fought, for everyone to leave everything on the floor, and the eventual winner win because of perseverance and heart. I usually have a lot of respect for both the losing and winning teams for making it to the highest stage and giving it their all to be the champion in front of millions of fans in one of the highest pressure situations that a human being can find themselves.

Sometimes however, a public figure conducts themselves in such a way that we have almost no choice but to root for them to fail. Most often this phenomenon presents itself with some off the court drama, someone cheated on their wife, got caught drunk driving or with drugs, or accidentally shot themselves in the ass. I have never before seen one man systematically try to convince America that he is a class A fucktard within the context of his own sport.

LeBron James began this whole thing by ripping out Cleveland’s fans hearts on national television, and not even letting his team know what was going on so they could plan some moves for when he was gone. Just a totally selfish, shitty move. Then the heat basically hold a championship party before the season starts to celebrate the “Big 3″ they have put together, and spend the regular season whining about losses, gloating about minor victories, and wondering why people don’t seem to like them.

This level of unabashed hubris demands punishment of biblical levels, and the fact that they lost the 2011 NBA finals on their own court almost makes me feel better about George Bush winning in 2000. Perhaps you can buy/steal the American presidency, but you can’t buy/steal the NBA trophy, and if you act like a bunch of spoiled twat monkeys, this is the kind of stuff the press will say about you:

I have very few rules in life, but this is one of them: Any time a team chokes away the NBA Finals 11 months after throwing a “Welcome Party” for itself, and it happens on the same night that Matt Stone and Trey Parker win 35 Tony Awards, I have to wake up at 5 a.m. the next morning and write a retro diary to figure out what in God’s name happened.

-Bill Simmons

Then James has this to say to all us NBA fans:

“All the people that were rooting me on to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life they had before,” James said. “They have the same personal problems they had to today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want with me and my family and be happy with that.”

And another writer’s response:

…there’s nothing wrong with rooting for LeBron James to fail. It says nothing bad about you as a person to wish ill upon someone who is monstrously talented yet at the same time is also a world-class dipshit. LeBron James has never been arrested or caught with naughty drugs or done anything explicitly “immoral,” I suppose. But that doesn’t matter, because he’s still a piece of shit anyway.

There’s no such thing as going overboard when it comes to enjoying LeBron’s failure. Now, if he were the kind of person to sit at the podium after losing a game and say, “I really thought we were the better team, but we lost and we’re gonna have to go back and work on it until we get it right, and I wish I hadn’t been such a dipshit before,” all that fun would instantly go away, because LeBron would be behaving like a normal human being. It’s not fun to keep poking fun at someone once they learn to take the heat. But LeBron possesses a certain social retardation that forbids him from coming to such obvious conclusions about himself.

-Drew Magary

So I’m going to enjoy the idea that there are consequences for being an arrogant douchebag, and every team that LeBron strung along during the 2010 free agency nonsense can all be happy they didn’t waste money on a guy who has never won anything yet still calls himself King.

[update] LeBron discusses his future plans after the loss to Dallas.

Is the unemployment situation in this country so bad that we pay people to stand around in stores and not do anything? I don’t want a random stranger saying hi to me in a store anymore than I want that in the street, or during a boating accident.

And seriously, where did u fuck up in life if you’re the pen guy at the exit of Home Depot? What do you tell people you do for a living? What’s that job interview like?

“Did you complete the second grade?”

“Uh, yes sir.”

“So you can draw a circle then?”

“Um, sure?”

“You’re hired!”

Well done.

Coke (the soda, never tried the powder) never put a smile on me, although I’ve had it with plenty of hamburgers.

McDonalds never made me smile either, made me a bit queasy though.

I’ve never been in good hands with Allstate.

I never saved 15% on my car insurance with Geico.

What’s KFC’s slogan? Whatever it is my penis didn’t get any bigger, and that’s always a disappointment when I eat chicken.

But goddamn I actually love New York, who woulda thought?

Anyfuckingway, even if you go with basic function, just keeping the machine running, no frills, no optimization, and you’re still talking about an ass bogglingly large amount of time. The amount of sleep we require alone is obscene, and dispenses with a third of our day in one stroke. Meeting our financial needs in this crazy world we’ve created for ourselves dispenses with another third. If you include the average commute, you have to add at least another hour to the mix, so now we have 7 hours left.

Now we get to the nitty gritty, and here’s where it gets ugly, and gritty. Let’s start with food. Given an average of three meals a day plus snacks, we probably spend about an hour a day eating and at least another 30 minutes procuring/preparing food. Another hour gets wasted eliminating said food and drink. Clearly these are conservative estimates, especially if you like to cook or spend extended time on your personal throne.

It is, of course impossible to embark on all this eating and pooping without soiling yourself, and your environment. You are then taxed to clean both your body and your domicile. If you add general grooming, cleaning, laundry, toothcare, doing the dishes, etc., well we’ve just lost another hour.

We have just wasted 20.5 hours on basic mandatory functions to keep this wonderful, beautiful machine we call the body up and running smoothly. Oh wait did you want it beautiful? Well then you’d better spend at least 30 minutes a day exercising. With the 3 hours left at your disposal (assuming you don’t have a longer commute, get stuck working overtime, or have irritable bowel syndrome) you can spend that time in doctor’s offices, at the DMV or post office, visiting relatives going to the vet or otherwise taking care of any putative pets, learning new stuff for work, posting on facebook, and even having sex if you have the time and opportunity.

And God help you if you have children . . .

You carry the  “Assess-O-Tron” which is a small ipod like device, somewhere on your person. When you first receive this device you will be asked to do the assessment. It is vitally important that you are as honest as possible, because the nature of your answers will directly tie into the rewards you will receive, and even protect you from some of its dangers. You will be asked basic questions, such as “Are you single,” ‘Where do you work?, What do you like the most? What are your dislikes,” etc. These questions will get very specific and delve into some multiple choice answers some people might find to be bizarre or invasive, but the more honest you are, the better the device can work for you.

An example of the device in action is as follows. There is a couple in a happy relationship named Jim and Melissa, who live together. The couple in question are both using the device and it is perfectly calibrated to their likes and dislikes. At this moment, Jim has been particularly attentive to Melissa lately and she is quite pleased with him. Their Assess-O-Trons are synced, and if this keeps up, Jim will soon be eligible for a level 3 reward. Right now on Jim’s list of level 3 options are: Sex all day followed by pizza, followed by more sex, then a movie in bed, then finishing the cold pizza. Additional options are having Melissa cook him his favorite dinner in the world, while wearing a saran wrap mini skirt, or a new big screen tv.

He arrived at level 3 by bypassing some of his level 2 options which included going out for a night with the guys, or taking Melissa to a ball game. If he bypasses his level 3 options he can shoot for the level 4 reward of oral sex while he’s playing video games, or perhaps even the level 5 reward of bringing Melissa’s naughty friend Shelly over for a weekend of debauchery.

It is very tricky to get to any level above 3 since to do so you have to continue generous and loving behavior in the exact manner that resonates with your partner. When she feels the joy of the garbage being taken out without having to be asked, a foot massage late at night, or getting her flowers for no reason at all, that joy will be communicated to your device as it registers on her device, and increases your rating slightly. However when you do things that are mean or selfish, your rating will decrease. This can be somewhat mitigated by a sincere, heartfelt apology, but the rule stands true, it is difficult to get a very high rating. For this reason the rewards escalate as the levels progress. While it is possible to get a level 1 reward every week with enough attention, getting up to level 3 usually takes at least a month. Level 4 would take about 3 months and level 5, might happen twice a year if someone was very dedicated. Results will vary as some people will either be particularly good at reading their partner’s needs, and abysmally poor.

Once a reward is indicated it needs to be delivered as soon as possible and with as much enthusiasm as possible. Lack of enthusiasm will result in the unenthusiastic person losing status in their own device, thus postponing their own rewards. Men should be wary of women who allow their meters to go over the level 5 setting, as marriage is an option on level 7. Remember to offer to go to those level 3 baby showers, and level 2 all day shopping trips, fellas!

The obesity epidemic in America means that women with tight, fit bodies are fewer and further in between, and so they are getting unwarranted attention from men who find their options dwindling if they like that sort of thing. It used to be a choice between beauty and brains, and there would be those rare few who had both. Now you’ve average looking girls walking around like the own the joint cause they watch what they eat and spend a few hours on a treadmill.

ANYONE can be fit if they put their minds to it, or use the right combination of drugs/surgical procedures. Being fit is a lifestyle choice, being hot really isn’t, unless you have an awesome plastic surgeon, and even then you’ll never be as hot as someone who was genetically gifted with beauty. So here’s my call to arms: all you pretty girls need to band together and put these skinny bitches in their place! It’s your birthright to make these women feel insecure, not the other way around! Don’t let McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, TV, and the internet rob you of your greatest asset in this ridiculous, superficial country.

I don’t want some girl acting like I need to give her a diamond ring to get her attention when I wouldn’t even give her a pearl necklace. Get on your game ladies!

I’ll finish this post in a bit.

Everywhere I go someone wants to fuck me, and I’m tired of it. I live in NYC, and you can’t go anywhere in this city anymore without being ripped off. The weather is getting better, and I might want to stop at an outdoor cafe and have a glass of wine, but oh look, it’s fucking 9 dollars! What’s that? I know that brand, I bought a bottle of it last week for 7 dollars. Now I have to tip the uptight, disinterested bitch who brought me the glass of wine like I owe her a favor while she tries to shuffle me out so she can not earn her next tip from the suckers who will sit down and feel too guilty to not give her 16%. So me and a friend have 2 glasses each, and the total is 45 dollars. We didn’t even get any fucking food! Had we ordered an appetizer or 2 the cost would swell towards 70.

Seriously? I have to pay you 70 gosh darn dollars for a couple glasses of cheap wine and some fried cheese and mini burgers? I’m not talking about a Zagat rated restaurant here, just some random cafe where the food is mediocre, the drinks are typical and the abuse is free of charge.

This is not a phenomenon restricted to the NYC dining experience. It seems like everywhere you go there’s a company expecting us to pay out the ass for crappy products and no service. I go see a knicks game (which at this point is the ultimate crappy product) and a pretzel and beer will run me $15, throw in a hot dog and another beer and we’re up to $30. I paid $74 for the ticket already, do they really have to fuck me this hard on top of that?

Time warner is now adding internet usage quotas, charging customers a dollar per gigabyte if they go over their quota. I swear my utility companies are just making shit up now, last summer they raised the cost of electricity “in response to demand.” What on earth does that mean? “We urge you to lower your rate of consumption, and while you’re sweating your balls off in thie 95 degree heat, here’s a giant, throbbing bill so you can’t afford to go out and spend 9 dollars on a shitty glass of wine, or 7 dollars on a Corona. Soon I might be reduced to standing around in supermarkets pretending to shop for frozen peas to keep cool in the summer, while hitting on housewives so they’ll buy me a snickers bar for $1.29.

Oh, by the way, If you’re noticing the first 2 major posts on this both have ass in them as a major theme, well you’d better just get used to that.