http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11739532

Foreign policy and the race to be American president

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Organized Prayer

The tears of TEAM HUMANS fans at the sight of Alex Dukalskis limping through the halls of the Deçemko Resort have been responsible for the flooding of at least 8 major cities today.

For those HUMANS out there who want to show their solidarity, which I assume means the entire population of earth (except probably Pasqual), there will be an organized prayer time tonight for Alex's knee, proceeding the tournament. No matter where you are at 16:30 GMT (that's 6:30 p.m. here in Turkey), drop what you are doing and give a personal prayer to Alex's knee. The hot older lady nurse can only do so much.

Until next time, Unite.

TEAM HUMANS Dominates Early Rounds

Moments before the IDEA World Basketball Championship began, it looked like team Balkins/Baltics was getting cold feet. Why weren't they at the court? Presumably because they had the first match-up against TEAM HUMANS.

Approximately 47 seconds later, TEAM HUMANS was 1-0, having thrown down a decisive 11-4 victory. AD's penetration and dishes, NT's off-ball screens, and JT's inside passing showed that TEAM HUMANS is the well-oiled machine that it's motor oil-only diet suggests. Gotta say, though, those Balkins/Baltics are a class act. Good luck in the rest of the tournament.

Alex drives past the opposition for the first victory.

After being told we couldn't just win continuously all night, TEAM HUMANS went to the sidelines to wait for its next game.

Our game-two match-up was against Bel-Az, another class act. Though Maxim may be one of the strongest people ever, TEAM HUMANS picked up a quick 11-1 victory, featuring probably the last pass anybody will ever attempt.

The status of Jesse's pass.

After some contention on court two, away from which TEAM HUMANS stayed, our third game began. Game 3 provided some tough competition. Tournament Organizer Kent Fielding, who plays like Kevin Garnett and probably has a better knowledge of Malaysian politics, led his team with six, absolutely sick turnaround J's. Gorjan and Ravshan also put up a good fight, but TEAM HUMANS led from the first play and in the end secured an 11-8 victory. In other notes from the game, Alex heroically fought through a dead knee, finishing with the game winning basket, and TEAM HUMANS got the alley-oops going, culminating with a couple of MONSTER JAMs.

The hoop after NT's big slam.

In case anybody was wondering. TEAM HUMANS will remain undefeated tonight.


In some other notes on the tournament:

• Congratulations to the Bor-Meats for their alcoholic victory yesterday.
• After Kahlin Whatley's admirable taking it of my last blog post and his sick-ass move on the court yesterday, I'm at this point ready to once again grant him respekt.

Until next time, ceep it kool.

TEAM HUMANS BANNED IN CHINA

It's been all over the blogosphere, so we might as well confirm it: After receiving only 30 million hits yesterday, we realized that something was amiss. A quick check of our numerous devoted fan sites turned up thousands of complaints from Chinese fans. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com has been banned by the Chinese government. Many have suggested this is due to our recent rejection of Yao Ming. Others theorize that, with a sleeper cell in Seoul and a declared mission in Malaysia, TEAM HUMANS is attempting a pan-Asian power grab. While we can neither confirm nor deny that we will be taking over the entirety of Asia, we can confirm that there is no "F" "L" or "Y" in "China." At least not anymore.

Meanwhile, the Chinese delegation at the Dikili institute have set up a secret blog network in order to get TEAM HUMANS news to their desperate families back home. Chinese citizens still in the mainland have shown their solidarity by sending us hand-written letters, boxes of fine teas, little red envelopes full of money, pictures of their families, and new nets (as we tend to burn up one net per shot, even when we use chain nets). As usual, we regret that it is literally impossible for us to respond to each fan individually, so we offer this message to our Chinese fans:

Thanks for all your support. We can only hope that someday everyone around the world will enjoy the basic HUMAN right to watch awesome basketball teams tear up the court.

On an unrelated note, I would like to clarify an issue raised in Jesse "White Jesus" Towsen's previous post. He stated that I missed a shot and all five of Mitt Romney's son's blogged about it. While, strictly speaking, this is true, the event occurred during a practice, and I only missed the shot to demonstrate to Alex "The Man With The One Hand Jam" Dukalkis what a "missed shot" was, as the concept was foreign to him.


Now that I've cleared that up, I may be too busy signing autographs to blog again before the tournament tonight. So I ought to warn you: No one knows exactly what will happen as TEAM HUMANS takes the court tonight. If there's anyone you've been meaning to apologize to, now would be the time to do it.


-Nat "Four-Foot Forearms" Towsen

Tell your girl you love her. Tell your man he's swell.

Nobody knows what will happen when TEAM HUMANS takes the court for the tournament tonight.

It Sure Ain't Respekt

Hey all you TEAM HUMANS fans, I wanna start by apologizing to the time-space continuum for that total mindfuck of a post earlier today. A lot of theories about the post (titled "krepset) have been circulating the blogosphere. The CIA has formulated two or three theories, one involving the Soviet Union and another that involves all four Little Women eating papayas with Kevin Bacon's PR agent. But I'm gonna drop the knowledge right here and right on the now.

Yesterday TEAM HUMANS members JT and AD were ballin' with some bitch emcees. This is of course a practice that we are used to, but the level of bitch was appalling from one Kahlin Whatley. Apparently in Philadelphia, if you want to win at basketball, you have to do a lot more moaning and whining than actual putting the ball in the hoop. I was so disappointed with Mr. Whatley's style that I have been forced into the conclusions that Philadelphia has completely missed the concept of respekt. Perhaps they have some alternate way of life called krepset that involves back-stabbing your fellow HUMANS and/or listening to Oasis. For this reason I am sad to say that I have lost the respekt of all of those Philadelphians previous listed.

It's a shame, it's a shame.


Before signing off, I do want to clear up a few unrelated rumors:

Rumor: Nat Towsen invented fire.
Truth: It was more of a discovery, really. Alex stole a pass, dished to Jesse, who lobbed full court for the alley-oop. Nat's MONSTER JAM lit the hoop on fire. We proceeded to cook our defeated oponents.

Rumor: A TEAM HUMANS scandal was mentioned on Rudy Guiliani's facebook group wall.
Truth: I don't know how that rumor started, but it was way off. What actually happened is that I missed a jump shot and all five of Mitt Romney's sons wrote about it on their respective blogs.

Rumor: TEAM HUMANS was started by Caesar Augustus.
Truth: TEAM HUMANS was started by Adam and Eve.

Until next time, tell the Truth.

krepset

• Jeremiah Wright
  
• Allen Iverson
• Bill Cosby
• Louisa May Alcott
• Noam Chomsky
• Benjamin Franklin
  
• Robert Crumb
• John Coltrane
• Jimmy Rollins
  
• Kevin Bacon
  
• Edmund Bacon
• Louis Kahn
• ?uestlove
  
• William Penn
  
• John Barrymore
• Chuck Barris
• RJD2
  
• Richard Brooks
• Billie Holiday
  
• Adam Carolla
• Dick Clark
• Philly Joe Jones
• Marvin Harrison
  
• Ed Bradley
• Sun Ra
• Ed Rendell
  
• W.C. Fields
• The Fresh Prince
• Sylvester Stallone
• Eddie George
  
• Thomas Paine
• Stan Getz
• Fernando Wood
• Donovan McNabb
• AMERICA
  

TEAM HUMAN Rejects

Obviously, thousands attended the recent tryouts to be bench players for TEAM HUMANS. Although we knew that nobody else stood a chance to make the team, we thought it would be hilarious to watch people try. Comedic moments ensued, like when some of the attendees thought that members of TEAM HUMANS took breaks or needed to drink water. One or two even thought that we slept at night instead of dunking on 12 foot rims just for the hell of it. Ridiculous, you might say, but we even had a few applications to fill our purposely vacant coaching positions. Us? Coaches? Why would we need some guy in a suit to try and tame the perfection out of us? You don't add brush strokes to a Picasso painting or notes to a Mozart piece and you do NOT coach TEAM HUMANS. Some players who thought they were deserving of playing with us instead of being demoralized by us:

Yao Ming
Credentials: 7'6"; best player in a country of 1.3 billion people
Reason for not making team: Could not match Nat's ferocity on the boards.

Bill Russell
Credentials: NBA Hall of Fame; 11 championships; 5 NBA MVP awards; Captain of the 1956 US Gold Medal Olympic Team; widely considered the best defensive player in NBA history.
Reason for not making team: Did not demonstrate a sufficient record of winning.

Kevin Garnett
Credentials: NBA Defensive Player of the Year; NBA Champion; 7'2" and can dribble and shoot
Reason for not making team: Weak knowledge of Malaysian politics.

The 1992 US Olympic Team - the "Dream Team"
Credentials: The 2nd best basketball team ever assembled.
Reason for not making team: Lost to TEAM HUMANS every single time they foolishly attempted to challenge us - even in 1992 when Alex was 10, Nat was 7, and Jesse was 2.

CAMPAIGN TEAM HUMANS

Okay all you fans. What with your avid participation on the TEAM HUMANS blog, and your never-ending (though, let's face it, inevitable) support for TEAM HUMANS and everything we represent, we thought it was time to make a big announcement.

We were originally going to wait until after our flawless victory on Monday in the tournament, but it's time to face the truth: the time is right.

TEAM HUMANS is going political. Now of course we already proved our ability on the courts, but that leaves legislative and executive branches for us conquer (completely). We believe our executive future is slightly farther down the line, but now we would like to make an announcement so big Jay-Z will release a single about it tomorrow:

TEAM HUMANS WILL BE RUNNING FOR MALAYSIAN PARLIAMENT.

TEAM HUMANS WILL BE RUNNING FOR MALAYSIAN PARLIAMENT.

TEAM HUMANS WILL BE RUNNING FOR MALAYSIAN PARLIAMENT.

Yes that's right. You read it right the first three times, TEAM HUMANS will indeed be running for Malaysian Parliament. TEAM HUMANS point guard Alex DukILLskis has discovered that recent trends in Malaysian electoral politics show that Malaysian political leaders win elections by repping their skillz on the blog-o-sphere. Now since we know the TEAM HUMANS blog is the only blog that matters, it therefore follows that TEAM HUMANS will sweep the next parliamentary elections in Malaysia (date to be wikipedia'd).

As of now, we are uncertain of whether TEAM HUMANS will run one campaign, or if we will run as a party hoping to post 4 MP slots for the next Malaysian Parliament. All we know is that in (a hopefully small amount of time, once again, we will take a lookapedia), TEAM HUMANS will all up on the scene sipping Malaysian iced tea and writing legislation (to be determined).


Until next time, Get Skillz.

Are you ready for Monday's tournament?

No, you're not.

Yo Celebrate

Y'all check it out. NT's latest post on the TEAM HUMANS blog has set the all-time, internet record for most-read blog post in the first 30 minutes after posting. We'd like to thank the Academy, Biggie, Tribe, Bugs Bunny (Ya Buggin'!), MJ, Dr. J, Dr. James Naismith, Not-Dr. Marjan Stojnev for gettin' all humiliated like that, and of course--we shouldn't really have to mention him, no we shouldn't, it should be a given, but--BIG L.

Anyway, we over at TEAM HUMANS are modest, so we won't gloat too much about our recent achievement. I will answer another question, however, that has been showing up both in the fan mail and the hate mail:
Question: "Why does your blog look so old and lame."
Truth: Yo bitch MC's, you don't know what lame is. New shit is lame, plastic shit, you know how it is. We're like the Freshness Eternal over here. Fresh from the beginning of time. You know your grandma? The one in the wheelchair? I broke her ankles two centuries ago. To prove the eternal freshness of TEAM HUMANS, I'll end with a quote from Thomas Jefferson:
All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression; this then leaves the eternal dilemma of divine arbitration between the many and the few, and in this perpetual dilemma the only governing body with the divine right to choose for the one or either for the other is, of course, the eminent TEAM HUMANS, whose divinity is clearly and beautifully manifest in its members apparent freshness and recorded domination of the scene.


Until next time, Get Ill.

Can't jack our moves, don't know why you'd even try

First of all, what up all you TEAM HUMANS fans out there. We've been getting too much fan mail to respond to it all lately, so if you didn't get a personal response here's one for all y'all: Thanks for the support. We are all Humans. As for all you haters, we ain't got the time or the care to respond to all your whiny emails either, so until they invent a way to break ankles over the internet, check the blog. Anyway: Someone found out when and where we been having our practices, and now biters everywhere been showing up to watch, and trying to jack our moves. I'll say this one more time: Mad people have tried to jack our moves over the years and failed. Scientists have run year-long studies on us, and are still baffled by our freshness. There are currently at least four documentaries about my crossover in theatres around the world. In a recent special report on ballhandling, The Economist wrote "There are essentially two categories in modern street ball: TEAM HUMANS and everyone else. The that conundrum now remains is not how opponents of TEAM HUMANS can attempt victory, but why they would bother to plunge themselves into such deep humiliation." And the popular moving companies, UHaul and 123Movers, have filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, stating "We'll never have as many moves as TEAM HUMANS. There is simply no way that we can remain competitive." I think that covers it. If y'all remain unconvinced, feel free to try to study our moves some more. In fact, I'll give you a hint. We'll be rocking the Jimmy Dolan Special, which you can see in this film: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109067/ peace out, you SUCKAS! -Nat, TH

Respekt

Hey all you TEAM HUMANS fans. We've gotten some buzz from those of your who are more skeptical of our supreme rule over the blogosphere. "Sure," you say, "you are the most-read blog on the web, but does anybody actually care what you have to say?"

In response, we would like to post a new list of top blogs. We now bring you the Top 10 Most Respected Blogs on the web:

1. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
2. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
3. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
4. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
5. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
6. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
7. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
8. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
9. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com
10. TEAMHUMANS.blogspot.com

That should clear things up. Until next time, stay fresh.

FRESH