Gilbert updated his blog today and as you would probably expect, the primary focus of his latest entry is his newest tattoo.  Here’s what he had to say:

Since the tattoo message was all about change, it was a miracle when I went in to get it done. Instead of it hurting, it actually felt good like the needle was giving me a hand massage … I’m lying, it kind of hurt a lot.

I got the tattoo done on the Friday after the election down in Orlando because I always get my tattoos done down in Orlando.

But as we all know, when Gilbert does something he does it big, so you had to know that he couldn’t just stop with a tattoo:

At my house in the garage I had a mural of me airbrushed on the wall as the black president. After Obama won the Democratic ticket about a month and a half ago, I had him airbrushed on there next to me. When he won, I had the mural painted over and I’m going to have a new one airbrushed on there with the presidential shield and the whole Obama family.

If you haven’t seen the original mural, it’s the picture at the bottom of this legendary post from Dan Steinberg about Gilbert’s pool.  It should be interesting to see how the new version turns out.  Since the main focus of his new entry was on politics, he also cleared up where he stands on the voting process:

At first I was trying to be funny, but obviously when you’re talking about politics you can’t be funny. When I said, “My vote doesn’t actually count anyway,” that was because I’m a resident of Florida and I still have the memories of how Bush cheated us a couple years back so I was joking that at the end of the day my vote doesn’t really count anyway, but I’m not sure everybody got the joke.

To set the record straight, I ended up voting, and it was worth it for all of the excitement.

After talking about one of his recent commercials, Gilbert gave his thoughts on the new FreeDarko book:

I read my parts of the book, FreeDarko Presents: The Macrophenomenal Pro Basketball Almanac, and that’s some entertaining material. I kick it off with a foreword, talking about my man Penny Hardaway and then the FreeDarko boys take over for the rest. I want everybody to go out and purchase it. There’s a stat in there that the further I get from the basket, the higher my shooting percentage goes up. It’s true, but it’s one of those stats where I don’t take a lot of shots from that far (I think they say I’m 20-for-46 from wayyyy downtown for my career or something) so it’s not like I’ve taken 100 shots from there.

(Without getting too far off-topic, I think Gilbert is selling himself short on his long-long-long distance shooting, but there’ll be more on that later.  Anywho…)   Once he finished his book plug, Gilbert talked about what he’s seen with the team so far in the season:

I spoke after the Milwaukee game, and that was the first time I really interacted in a meeting this year. I just said what I see out there. It had nothing to do with basketball, it had everything to do with off the court stuff.

The best teams are the teams that hang around each other, that love being around each other off the floor. Those are the best teams that go on to do good things in this league. When you start separating yourselves off the floor, you start separating during the game. You don’t know how to talk to each other when things get rough.

But we’re getting closer now. We’re getting back to where we were when we were playing well. If you’re getting along off the floor, it’s going to eventually carry onto the floor.

After giving his thoughts on the team, Gilbert goes on to give an update on his rehab and when he think he’ll be back:

I get anxious being on the sideline when they’re struggling. I started playing Nick Young one-on-one (I beat him 9-1, he was so embarrassed) but the trainer said he’s not going to let me go any earlier than mid-December to January.

So even though I’m playing one-on-one against Nick, my trainer said that no matter what’s going on with the team or how I think I feel, he’s not releasing me until mid December.

So there you have it.  I think if he can make it back by December 25th, that it would probably be the best gift that anyone could ask for.

There’s plenty more in his latest entry including his thoughts on the Iverson-Billups trade and his take on  Chris Paul’s tremendous start.  But don’t take my word for it.