Dallas Threaders present: Title Talk

The recent NBA championship coming home to Dallas, TX stirred up a lot of feelings and emotions for a city desperately seeking a team to call champion for the first time in 12 years. This particular victory is that much sweeter because it is our basketball team’s inaugural title. We as fans have spent the last decade defending our team, sulking at our failures, and always re-energizing for the upcoming season. I gathered my fellow Dallas threaders (realist23, facecurtinista, chadstanton, and slimshady817) to share their thoughts with the world on their relationship with our beloved Mavericks over the last 2 decades.

 

[KL:Consideration]: Reciprocity: The Foundation of Our Happiness

The King’s Law on Consideration

I - To consider or not to consider, that is the “?”
II - Let’s be honest about honesty…
III - Honesty’s Gray Area
IV - Egocentrism and Honesty
V – The Consideration of Time
VI – The Consideration of Self
VII – Consideration Accounting 101
VIII - Reciprocity: The Foundation of Our Happiness

The trade of consideration is scarce these days…. so how do we make good decisions about who to trust with our most coveted asset, our consideration? And furthermore, how can we ensure that the return of our consideration will continue to make/keep us happy? (YOU CAN SCROLL DOWN TO THE “SKIP” MARKER IF YOU ARE A LAZY READER…)
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These two questions were asked last time… and I must now be honest with you all… these are technically “trick questions”… there is no single resolute answer, but you knew that.

 

Vitriol of the Vaunted and Vicariously Victorious

The 2011 NBA Champion - Dallas Mavericks

I want to start this article by saying congratulations to the Dallas Mavericks. I was one critic who stated that the franchise would NEVER achieve a ring with Dirk as their leader. Not only did he prove me and other critics wrong, but the Mavericks have shed their “soft” persona while playing amazingly tough lock-down defense on three of the leagues most prolific scorers (Kobe, Durant, LBJ) throughout the playoffs. The path of this franchise and their season dictates that they truly deserved a shot at proving they were the best team in the league, and they did just that.

What is sad is that most “fans of the game” will not see this; only the fans of Dallas can appreciate how well Dallas played as opposed to how far “King James” fell short of his predicted outcome… even though LBJ has never scored more than 24 points on the Mavericks in ANY contest.

 

How Much is Your Life Worth? Apparently, $1,500.

So I’m back working in retail after being out of it and into the unemployment game for a year and a half. It feels nice to not only have a job, but a job you enjoy. Well at this new job, there has been some serious messiness that has just taken place and I figured…why not share it with all you guys? So I’ve got this coworker who helped us out for our store inventory a few weeks ago. We’ll call him…Steve. Now, Steve seemed like a cool enough dude. He works as the assistant manager of our north store. Well, our Tampa (not really) location needed someone to fill in as a temporary manager while one was molded to take over for them. Steve was asked to take that filler role for the temporary period. So the company flew him out there and he got settled and everything seemed well and good. Then last week happened….

We had 3 deposits sitting around last week because banks aren’t open on Sundays and weren’t open because of the holiday on Monday. The story goes that Steve went to go let the UPS guy in to deliver packages on Tuesday and it was at this moment that 2 masked men entered the store and told Steve to give them the deposits. Steve did as he was told and was promptly nailed in the back of the head with a pipe. Steve got a concussion and when he woke up called the police and was taken to the hospital to get checked up on. Story seems over, right? WRONG! A few days pass and the police call Steve back in to finish questioning him and to start working on the case. It would be during this interview that Steve would confess to actually being the guy who orchestrated the whole robbery. That’s right folks, it was an inside job. So Steve filed a fraudulent police report and then there’s the little thing of the flubbed robbery! Needless to say, Steve is no longer working with the company and is currently awaiting his charges. So…you might’ve caught on by now to how much he would’ve gotten away with… That’s right Thread peeps, Mr. Steve has absolutely fucked up his life for (drum roll) $1,500 bucks. Not $15,000. $1,500.

So looking back at the story as told to me by my manager, the first question I had was what exactly happened in that 2nd interview that cracked this guy? Another question was…well, what the hell happened to the UPS guy? No answer to that one. The obvious part of the story that Steve couldn’t get around was the fact that unless you work retail, would you have known that there would be that many deposits in the first place. The other thing was is that every morning, when we open, we’re supposed to go to the bank first and foremost and that’s before the UPS guy could even get there so there were definitely a few holes in the story. Let’s get back to this amount. Really though, $1,500? WTF can you do with that? That barely pays most people’s rent for 2 months. I told MichaelYoungHistory that this isn’t the 1800′s, that amount of money can get you down the street at best. I’m not going to do life/freedom ending dumb shit for anything less than $100,000. That’s my starting price, and even that is too low. So kids, I close with this…. If anyone ever asks you how much your life is possibly worth, you simply respond, about $1,500 dollars.

-TheBigSocrates

 

Review – Amanda Diva’s Madame Monochrome EP

“Real recognize real, so if you see me in the streets, stop and say ‘Hello!’…”

If you have a twitter account, ideally, you’ve been following one of the most distinctive voices on these internets – Amanda Diva. Affectionately referred to by many of her fans as “Deev,” Amanda Diva is best known for being briefly associated with former R&B duo Floetry and, before that, TV appearances on Russell Simmons’ Def Poetry Jam and the short-lived Nickelodeon show My Brother and Me. Diva’s been hustling since then, managing two creative, entertaining webseries – “Diva Diva Y’all” and “Technicolor Lover” – and showcasing her sheer artistry through Diva’s Works of Art.

One of the best qualities about Amanda Diva is her knowledge and passion for things hip and hip-hop. However, her 2009 EP, Spandex, Rhymes,& Soul (SRS), certainly didn’t sound like hip-hop (or at least, not contemporary hip-hop). It’s hard to pigeonhole the project’s sound – and that was probably Deev’s intention – but if you had to choose a word, SRS was definitely different (my iTunes listed it as “Hiptronicsoul”). In the midst of the mixtape game experiencing a takeover of mostly marijuana-motivated artists and songs, and the female presence in (mainstream) hip-hop lacking save for an up-and-comer nicknamed after Mr. Clinton’s intern, SRS was refreshing. Its tracks ranged from finger-snapping, head-bobbing smooth cuts – “Neon” – to old-school flavored joints with a new-school twist (“It Ain’t Real”). Those who stumbled upon it got their ears blessed, and Spandex, Rhymes, & Soul made me as big a fan of Diva the musician, as I was of Diva the tweeter.

So when I heard back in April that she had a new EP on the way, I got overhype.