Balls or Lolz

see here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2703355.stm

Recently my roommate Tony got a cat under unusual circumstances. While staying at his girlfriend's duplex they were forced to listen to a cat trapped on the third story balcony crying for multiple days. The cries became increasingly pathetic over the weekend and in an act of desperation the cat finally jumped from the balcony. Like Agent Jack Bower of It's Always Sunny in Philadephia, he came out of the ordeal unharmed.  Tony and his girlfriend took the cat in and contacted the owner whose response to their berating him for mistreating the animal was, "uhhh just like, keep it for yourself then...bitch."

So they did.

A similar thing happened to my friend Allison recently. A cat mysteriously appeared in her house one day. Being casual pet lovers, they let the cat stay for over a week, not sure where it came from. One day someone showed up at their house and asked, "Hey uhhh, that's my roommates cat or something. Has he been hanging out here or whatever?" "Yes, for a week." "Oh uhhh, my roommate like isn't really that into him and doesn't feed him and stuff. He said you can have the cat I guess."

During a lull in the conversation at the bar last night I was thinking about these two stories and they reminded me of something from an Economics class called the Coase Theorem.

The Coase theorem is used in Economics of Law in determining how to assign property rights. For example: Person A really wants to play loud music until 4AM, wrestle around on the floor a bunch, and argue aggressively over whether or not Trotsky was a big pussy for not killing Stalin. Person B lives below person A, is pregnant, needs to work in the morning and would prefer not to hear all those things happening. If this difference of opinion was brought to court who should the judge assign the right to? Meaning, should the judge assign the right to person A and allow him to behave in that way, or should the judge give person B the right and tell A to go be insane somewhere else?

The Coase theorem shows that it doesn't matter who the judge assigns the right to, because in the end the behavior that is most valued will occur. Let's say that person A gets 100 lolz out of his behavior and person B correspondingly gets -30 lolz (30 balls). If Person B is given the right the two should be able to negotiate and Person A will pay some amount greater than or equal to 30 lolz to person B to make them indifferent to whether or not a derelict is vomiting outside in the snow within ear shot of their newborn child.

If person A is given ownership then there isn't any transaction because they value their lolz behavior more than person B is willing to pay to make them stop. No matter what the values are or who is originally given ownership, ownership eventually travels to its highest valued use.

I think the same analysis could be applied to cat ownership in college environments. Lots of college students impulsively buy a cat and some of them get bored of taking care of it after the super awesome kitten attack phase and the following Lolcat phase.

No matter how lame the original cat owner is, the cats will escape and naturally move towards houses where they are valued higher. I.E: places where they will be fed and not die alone.

This all rests on the assumption of low transaction costs. If the neighbors can't negotiate with each other or the cat gets attacked or run over, efficient movement of resources or cats probably won't happen.

Welcome to the first ever BoL TV review. Today I review "Shaq Vs.," in which Shaquille O'Neal takes on famous athletes in their own sports. The show has one major problem: for some reason, it's an hour long. More unscripted farce than reality show, with an abundance of network TV lameness, not even the Big Cuyahoga can salvage this sprawling wreck. The idea is major lolz, but Shaq should have harnessed his web 2.0 skills and put it on Youtube.

Verdict:

     Well it looks like my high minded goal for today of practicing logic problems for the LSAT in order to get into law school and make benefit glorious career of Graham Bowman has been blown out of the water by discovering this...

 

http://twitter.com/lingerdog

       His name is James Lingerfelt, tweets by Lingerdog. Self described as "kind of pervy weird."  We are first introduced to this pervert yeti as he laments missing his child lose his first tooth due to his "cheating ass wife." The story continues back in time Momento style, steeped in dramatic irony as post after furious cuckold post devolve into mere suspicions and then into innocuous ponderings of swimming (during which it can be assumed for lolz purposes that the alleged infidelities are occurring). The story climaxes with the beginning of the twitter account in which the author links to a picture of the wife, who it turns out is actually that kid from elementary school who sweated more than you did.

I couldn't quite place it, but I knew this post, "King Kong Ate My Balls," seemed familiar.  I finally remembered: "_____ ate my balls" was one of the first internet memes!  See, for example, this huge and hilariously 90s list.  Balls or Lolz owes much to this early example of ball-related internet humor.  My favorite example is John Glenn Ate My Balls.  It's even hosted by Geocities, using the classic "neighborhood / address" URL system.  I wonder how many more hits Balls or Lolz would have if it had an easy to remember address like "Soho 4187."  Anyway, I thought I would test the limits of memetic evolution by attemping to resurrect this meme for the modern era.  Balls or Lolz presents... Sarah Palin Ate My Balls!

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Due to incompetence, I was forced to get a new identification card(drinking license) from the city of Washington, DC.

I wanted to be sure that I had all the right forms in order to get my new id, so I went to the DC government web site to find out what the word was, ya'll, about having all the right papers.

And I found this really helpful chart about what services the Georgetown DMV branch offered:

Ugh, it is taking forever to find this stupid thing

Ok here it is:


This was my first impression of the DC DMV system, so I was expecting a maze of randomly shaped doors leading to blinding light, total darkness and meaningless sounds and words. But it all worked out in the end.

As a recent transplant to California, I've had to jump through some of the hoops associated with living in the worst state to do business in.  Today I attempted to update my driver's license and license plates.  After dutifully obtaining a $60 "smog check" on my 30mpg 4-cylinder car, I arrived at the one DMV office in the city of San Diego (the ninth largest city in the U.S.) to complete another state mandated task which apparently escaped Governor Schwarzenegger's giant budget knife. 

Most states allow a new resident to simply transfer their out of state driver's license by filling out some paperwork.  This makes sense, as roads and cars are pretty much the same from state to state.  In California, however, a new resident must take a written test - regardless of how long they have already been driving.  In addition to having several dedicated workers employed at the DMV to grade the tests (by hand!), California provides test-takers with a helpful study guide.  Here is some of its wisdom:

On the psyche of the visually impaired:

In Soviet Russia, I'm pretty sure that every day was balls.  Even when you tried to have lolz, you would have probably needed to start by downing a whole lot of vodka.  Here is an interesting slide show of the horrible video games they had, including the one on this page which you will find to be aptly named:

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/multimedia/2007/06/gallery_soviet_games?slide=10&slideView=1

This video is making me question at most my sanity and at least just my taste in music because I am finding this surprisingly really enjoyable and am watching it for the third time as I make this post:

Oh my god. Oh my god. Mega Shark VS. Giant Octopus?? My imagination is running wild with visions of massive tidal waves wiping out Laguna Beach residences as Giant Octopus grabs onto Mega Shark and slams him into the water again and again until Mega Shark bites off one of his disposable tentacles. DId you see Mega Shark bite down that airliner? Holy shit!

It's hard to say which one will win. My gut tells me it will be Giant Octopus, hes simply too versatile with his eight tentacles and blinding ink action. Although Mega Shark can probably do a lot of damage if not defended against properly 

However, we all know who the real winner will be. As always with giant monster movies it will be the indomitable human spirit with a side pot loss for our callous lack of reverence for the power of nature.