Nanker, who works for Tri-State Caster Supply, is the only person in America who never wastes a minute of work time, our investigation has found. Except on one day of the year, the day before the NCAA Tournament starts, when Nanker, not a college basketball fan, surfs the Web for most of the afternoon seeking information to help him fill out his bracket for the Tri-State office pool.
Hang on. Let me do a little Google thing here: ncaa tournament bracket strategy win office pool.
Nanker! I know you're reading this! Get back to work immediately! At this rate of inflation, you're going to be costing the American economy more than $5.4 trillion in lost productivity a year by 2011. That's trillion with a T!
The rest of you, you're off the hook. Now, I've got my eye on Pacific over Boston College, how about you?
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Underachieving Americans [PERMALINK]
Tell me if this sounds familiar.
A team of U.S. All-Stars in a quintessentially American sport goes to an international competition and, despite its enormous, multimillion-dollar talent, turns in a lackluster showing.
But there seems to be a big difference between the men's Olympic basketball team that bricked its way to a bronze medal in 2004 and the baseball team that has gone 3-2 and will be eliminated from the World Baseball Classic Wednesday night if Japan beats Korea and either gives up fewer than seven runs or scores more than seven.
Where is the outrage? Where are the talk radio hosts jabbering endlessly about the Americans' lack of fundamentals, bad attitudes, laziness, preoccupation with bling?
Americans are about to get bounced from an international tournament in their own sport -- and worse, at home -- and I haven't heard one word about the team's moral shortcomings. The basketball team's losses were proof of a breakdown in society. In baseball, hey, anything can happen in a short series.
There is that. And what other striking difference is there in the makeup of the USA's 2004 basketball team and 2006 baseball team? Does anything jump out at you when you look at the team photos?
Yeah. Me neither. Then again, I'm colorblind.
Previous column: Women's brackets announced, WBC
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About the writer
King Kaufman is a senior writer for Salon. Visit his column archive. You can e-mail him at king at salon dot com.
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