MORE TRUE TALES OF THE OFFICE:
All administrations have their own styles, and I've been through quite
a few of them in the past seven years. Some of them work through pure
intimidation, and are loathed and feared by all the office's staff.
Some do benevolent neglect: if you have a problem, go see them and
they'll do something maybe, otherwise it's five o'clock and I gotta go
home. The current administration operates by encouraging the formation
of cliques, where the members of the clique have a favored position
within the department and those outside do not. This is good for those
within the clique, but those unwilling or unable to join have little
influence. This is an interesting way to manage, as it is adversarial
but it is Team Adversarial, not simple the top versus everyone else.

For all you future MBAs out there: benevolent neglect is your best
choice if you value a happy office. Because, really, all is vanity, so
just do your job and don't worry about making friends or enemies. Plus
it says here the finest Roman emperors were masters of benevolent
neglect.

Maybe because I just read The Illuminatus Trilogy, but now I'm thinking
the Earth X saga is the Illuminatus Trilogy of the Marvel Universe. For
one, the human race is manipulated by secret masters with their own
purposes in both books. For another, all of Krueger's retro-continuity
could be seen as a collection of conspiracy theories (like, every
important event in the Marvel universe has some underlying purpose that
is only being revealed in the Earth X saga, just like every important
event in the Illuminatus universe has secret purpose behind it that
only few understand.) And sometimes both books collapse under their own
weight, as secret after secret after secret is exposed. Both sets
characters never quite escape their own manipulation either, though
they do their darn best.

Plus they're both trilogies. And there's so few trilogies out there these days.

The former Blow Hard is now fictionblogging. It's good stuff and you should read it.

So Kenyon is now a Nugget. (Isn't calling somebody a Nugget basically
an insult?) The Nets are dismantling themselves so they can be really
stinky when they move to an arena in Brooklyn whose construction will
involve the dismantling of homes where people live right now with no
economic benefits for Brooklyn at all. That one brief period where the
Nets were really really good was....really really brief. And sort of
hollow in the end there, going down easy against the Lakers and Spurs.
At least they left us with that great great least-likely-de
facto-NBA-championship ever 7-game Pistons-Nets series. They went out
fighting. On the other side, Kenyon has become one of my favorite
players and the Nuggets are going to be quite good next year. Say, what
will that division look like next year? They're in the geographically
inaccurate Northwest division. Well, they should've called in the North-West division, because the
teams are either north of something or west of something. Anyway:

Denver Nuggets: Added one of the fiercest players in the game. Will be a league pass favorite.
Minnesota Timberwolves: Will win a lot of games. No longer intriguing.
Portland Trail Blazers: I don't think they're making it to the playoffs again.
Seattle SuperSonics: And I know they're not. The actual Northwest is falling on hard times basketball-wise.
Utah Jazz: Another League Pass favorite. Makes the sixth playoff spot. BOLD PREDICTION!

I know the East is on the comeback trail, but the West is still a good
argument for having the best 16 teams league-wide make the playoffs,
not 8 and 8.

Well, that's it.