Last week I tried to give everyone advice as how they should deal with the college basketball offseason. Hopefully you listened. Sans, you know, the part about pitting your children against each other in a fistfight for lukewarm milk. You could probably have done without that. Still, the season has been over for what seems like forever now. Have you adjusted properly? Did you, or did you not, kill anyone because you are really struggling to find ways to entertain yourself? I know. It is tough. We should keep trying to get through this together. At least we have the rest of the (much saner than I) Rush the Court staff to keep us informed of all the offseason maneuvers.

Some of Us at Moe’s Are Already in Sleep Mode (credit: Simpsons/FOX)

There is something new to talk about this week, though. It continues on our path of dealing with the offseason blues. For me, at least, it is something I probably think about far too often as it is, but figured I’d incorporate you little Johnny McPoopsticks in on the conversation. I want to know if you people are all real. Like, as in actual real human beings, or if you have been put on this planet solely for my amusement. Maybe I should explain a wee bit further.

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Have you guys ever seen that Simpsons episode where Homer leaves Moe’s and Moe tells the other two customers that “He’s gone. Time to shut off.” and they all go in some sleep-like state? Yeah. About that. I think that is how all of you are. For real life. I don’t think every single person that reads this is actually a real person. Think about it for a second. Do you think I am a real entity? That every Wednesday I type on my laptop for you to read A Column of Enchantment on Thursdays? Or, more likely, I am just some digital code or work of (your) God put here to entertain you. I mean, you have never met me. You have no idea what I do when I am not typing on my laptop for your pleasure. For all you know, as soon as you read this I go into hibernation until the following week or fly back to my home planet of 0923498234 (We are advanced. We use numbers because math is the universal language).

More so: There is no way all you people can exist. Seriously. There are billions upon billions of people supposedly living on our planet. I have met, maybe, like a few thousand of you. Even a large portion of those people are just bodies walking by me. They might have empty craniums, possibly robot-like, and are only there for my eyeballs to see in an attempt to trick me into thinking there are other fully functioning members of society. And I don’t buy it for a single second.

Basically, someone put all of you around me, on the Internet, on my picture-box, etc., just to keep me going from day to day. Which kind of stinks. If all you guys have been put here for me, then why isn’t my life better? As selfish as it may sound, because it is, you would think a world designed solely for me to inhabit would make me a sexier looking fella with tons of loot at my disposal. Listen, relax. Calm down. I can tell you are panicking. No worries. Your spouse or lover or whoever might actually be a real person. I’m not totally sold that mine is. Heck, I am nearly 99 percent sure that my kids are the spawn of a creator that is certainly not me. For one: They are far too good-looking to actually be mine. Two: They don’t have souls. No way they do.

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Yes, this does have some correlation to the basketball. Here is a question I am posing to you: How do all these players, coaches, and other people involved in the sport have so much time to do what they do? I see the reports on the mean streets of Twitter. Player X has committed or transferred to School Y after Coach Q took time to visit him. There is no way in Sam Cassell, Jr. that you can convince me these are things that happen. I find it far more likely that the designer of my world had his bots tweet out that info for me to accept as fact, rather than Chris Mullin actually going out of his way to recruit some tippy-top (patent still pending. Seriously, WTF) recruit.

And There’s the St. John’s Reference (USA Today Images)

How do these guys become coaches anyway? I’m not saying Oliver Purnell was magically placed at DePaul to help ruin that program before they decided to retread an old coach. No, sir. That would just be crazy. What I am saying is that the designer of my world programmed Purnell to be the way he was — so that way he would eventually land at DePaul and ruin it more than it already was. Some form of complex codes were probably put in his skin-suit at some point, likely before birth, for it all to happen — and the scariest part is that Purnell probably has no idea he isn’t a real person. Even scarier… neither do you!

That’s right. You probably don’t believe me. But that’s only because you have been programmed that way. You are not real. I am real. Or, just as likely, I am not real — but was programmed to think I was — and you are. Maybe I am just a figment of your imagination or an actual tangible object designed by your creator to (barely) amuse you. Talk about Inception and Leo or whatever.

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So what does it all mean? I am not entirely sure. Heck if I even want to know the real dilly yo. Could you imagine how many people (or not real people) would jump off their local bridges if they found out they weren’t real things? Probably like, um, a lot of them. More than two… that is for sure. Plus, to continue to prove my point: Unless you are a doctor or some other person who looks at other people’s insides (serial killers qualify), you don’t truly know what is inside another person. For all I know, Ralph O’Wallywomps, you have no heart or liver. Instead you are filled with popcorn. PROVE. ME. OTHERWISE. By proving me otherwise I totally mean DO NOT attempt to open up a person.

Even those doctors and serial killers can be duped. They can think they are seeing a person’s heart, but is it actually a heart in the way we think of it? Who decided to call it a heart anyway? Just in the same way some jerk decided the sky was blue, maybe it isn’t actually a heart at all but a lollipop. F-it. The sky is orange and no one will ever tell me otherwise.

Eh, I digress. Basketball — kind of.

Joseph Nardone (22 Posts)

Joseph has covered college basketball both (barely) professionally and otherwise for over five years. A Column of Enchantment for Rush The Court on Thursdays and other basketball stuff for The Student Section on other days.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2015 at 10:01 am by Joseph Nardone and is filed under column of enchantment, Regular Features. Tagged: chris mullin, feature, offseason, oliver purnell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.