Yea, much to your general dismay, the scourge of the Internet is back. Just finished my complex analysis take-home final to complete a hellish 19 credit, 3 job spring semester. Thus, it’s time to start talking sports again… smack me if I accidentally drop in any references to Mobius transformations or analyticity in the complex plane…

- Let’s talk basketball. Well, let’s talk Shaquille O’Neal. Let me say here and now that Shaquille O’Neal is one of the worst basketball players in the history of the NBA. Don’t get me wrong, Shaq is one of the best all-time low post players. But if Micah Owings can take Dave Borkowski yard… to the opposite field… then I don’t think that it’s out of line to expect Shaq to hit more than half his free throws in the playoffs. Any rugby fans out there? This guy is the Johah Lomu of basketball. And yes, that means that I think that Johan is also a horrendous all-around rugby player.

[Now that I’ve pissed of basketball fans and 92% of the southern hemisphere, let’s move on.]

- Back in December, The Big Lead ripped me (and got my site’s name wrong… and rejected my attempts to comment on the site and correct the mistake…) for saying that the A’s looked like they would ultimately be the winners of the Haren trade. Well? Preliminary results are in, and yes, the D-Backs are on top of the baseball world. But how ’bout them A’s, huh? While Haren has chipped in 5 quality starts for the D-Backs, Dana Eveland and Greg Smith, who weren’t even the headliners in the deal, have quietly put up 6 QS for the division-leading Athletics.

Anyone who followed the A’s last year knows just how desperately they needed depth in the rotation. Well, guess what? They got that, and more. Carlos Gonzalez, the 25th ranked prospect according to Project Prospect, still hasn’t even been given a chance to chip in. All I’m saying is give this deal a chance to work itself out, and I’m sure that unless the D-Backs win the World Series, Beane is going to come out smelling like roses.

- That was seriously the weirdet NFL draft I’ve ever seen. Maybe it was just me, but I think the only way anyone could have followed exactly what was going on is if they had imbibed copious amounts of cough syrup.

- Okay, so it’s May and no team can use Barry Bonds. Seriously? I’ve been one of his biggest critics and think he is a complete douchebag… but a douchebag that can flat out mash. Considering how much money MLB owners milked out of that walking bag of hormones, it’s complete garbage that now no one wants to sign him… especially the Giants. That entire organization has slowly turned to crap, and the only reason why no one noticed (and bought tickets) was because of Barry. So love him or hate him, it’s total hypocracy that he is not on a major league roster right now.

[At this point, this post has turned into the airing of grievances… but I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!]

- So Will Leitch of Deadspin got thrown under the bus by Buzz Bissinger… and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. It doesn’t help that three times I’ve sent in stories of mine to the Deadspin staff only to see them cover the story days later and no mention or link to my pathetic little site. I guess that’s what happens when you go big time. But I’m getting off track.

To me, Deadspin is no longer a blog… I think that being a blogger is somewhat in line with being punk-rock: once you got big, you lose the label. So it was unfair that they got trashed for all blogs, but not unfair that they got ripped. To me, it’s an abuse of power to have the readership they do and not venture into more serious sports jounalism; dick and fart jokes are what keep sites like this afloat… I don’t think Deaspin needs them anymore. That’s just me though… and I’m sure I’ll hear about it, but I’d like to see them do more.

I guess it’s like seeing your team lose in the first round of the playoffs every year; you know they are capable of more, and you’d like to see their best effort…

- I’m going to be the 1,000,000th person to say this, but the Central Washington softball team deserves all of our applause, admiration, and support. If you haven’t seen this yet, take a look, because it reminds us all about why we love sports, and really makes me proud to be a part of sports and sports fan: