wow!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/sports/othersports/29wrestler.html?_r=1&ref=sports&oref=login

flat eric - private i

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNORzubif6Q

Oil hits $102 for the first time

$4 a gallon...

coming to you this summer...and when it does, remember that the rest of the industrialised world already pays way more.

2 oil shocks and still the united states didn't learn. europe taxes the fuck out of petrol, and cars with large engines. that's why driving enthusiasts already have a choice of small, fast, interesting cars...

if you really want to complain about gas prices, take a drive across europe.

hillary clinton

i'm sick & tired of hearing about all your fucking experience.

unless i'm mistaken, didn't you vote for the iraq war? and the guy with no experience, the who'll need a book on "day one" on how to do foreign policy... didn't?

...and you don't even have the humanity to apologise for it.

(not just to the american people, hillary. we've only lost 4,000. i'm talking about the iraqis and the hundreds of thousands dead because of this disastrous invasion and occupation).

the worst foreign policy decision of the last decade.

one would have thought that with all that experience, "sorry" would be an obvious place to start.

things you just didn't know...

if you were to somehow stand on the planet mercury (daytime surface temperature 662 degrees F...) watching a sunset occurring at perihelion (when it's closest to the sun), the sun would not simply set. it would dip below the western horizon and then come back up, only to set a second time, a day or two later.

a day on mercury is about 3 months long for us on earth.

update: oops! i meant two months. it takes 58 days to spin on its axis (you'd think i'd check this...) a year on mercury is about 3 months (88 days to go around the sun).

nighttime temperature is a cozy -274 degrees F... also lasting 3 months.

in praise of the ford motor company...

yes, this is not a typo.

the 2008 ford escape hybrid suv gets 30mpg, which might not not sound like it's saving the planet, but is in the top 10% of all cars manufactured in this country.

so instead of me beating up on ford, i'm going to do the opposite and actually say well done, because the more vehicles detroit sells that get better mileage, the better off we'll all be, and american car manufacturers can turn a page toward a brighter, more responsible future.

...now if only they could make a ford GT that does 30mpg...

the blame game...

you've got to have a laugh...

to listen to the democrats, you'd think that the mess we're in right now was all bush's fault.

well last time i checked, a president had to be voted into office. that means that everyone shares in the responsibility. it's just that he's the one that doesn't have any excuses.

all those "good, hard working, american people" that i'm sick to death of hearing about right now... presumably the same ones that voted for bush (twice! can you believe that?) have only themselves to congratulate (sorry, fucking BLAME).

what else did you greedy, short-sighted so & so's expect from an oilman promising tax cuts and deregulation of industry. well? he was gonna make you, rich?

see all those foreclosure signs popping up in your neighborhood? you helped do that when you voted bush. the republicans want to dismantle government safeguards (and they've been very successful) remember that in november. this is what government is for, to help protect the people, in case you'd conveniently forgotten. and how is all that money doing that bush has given you in his tax cuts?

in november, everyone gets to have another chance. anyone voting for war and tax cuts this time around cannot possibly have ever physically spoken to a homeless person, have a moral conscience, earn under $50,000 a year, or live in a major metropolitan area, or not be a raging religious freak, who strangely sees the value of the unborn life, yet is utterly silent when it comes to the issue of poverty amongst children and adults in this country we call america.

supposedly the "greatest nation on earth"...

not by any international standards of health and education.

missed last nights total lunar eclipse?

there'll be another as they are nowhere near as rare as total solar eclipses, but the next one isn't until 2010 for north america.

for anyone that did see last night's eclipse, did you see the two stars, one each side of the moon? one of them was the planet saturn. the other was regulus, the brightest star in the constellation, leo.

Tonight's Total Eclipse of the Moon

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/home/15357796.html

Earth’s shadow will totally engulf the Moon from 10:00 to 10:52 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

...enjoy the show in d.c. if the skies clear up, that is.

nutty & daisy's valentine's day

last year, daisy and I got married in juneau, alaska – on july 7^th as it happens. not that we picked that particular date, it just happened to be the date of the humpback whale-watching boat trip we wanted to get married on.

fast forward to valentine’s day. a very cheesy affair. normally best avoided. restaurants double-booked. kitchens & staff worked off their arses and everyone stressed, so it’s not really very romantic for those working behind the scenes…but i realized that this would be 7 months and 7 days for us since doing the deed on the 7^th of the 7^th last year. we had to do something, so I came up with the idea of going up in a hot-air balloon.

we drove to strasburg (not the one in germany) but the much more glamourous and exotic one in virginia... and stayed at the very victorian hotel Strasburg with its terrible american victorian décor. we were very worried when we read that the chef’s culinary talents matched the décor…because the place was straight out of ‘the shining’.

never mind. we dropped our gear off and after daisy ripped the window blind opening it… we went to meet don (no, not don logan from ‘sexy beast) our balloonist. rebecca tells me that the meeting point is at 4:15pm at the burger king parking lot off the exit for woodstock. we arrive just after 4pm & we can’t see a burger king, so i call don. he says it’s at what i think is arby’s (er, very similar to burger king…). we go to arby’s. no sign of don. “hardee’s or arby’s?” there’s every fast-food restaurant around us, except hardee’s, just in case it’s hardee’s. it’s 4:20pm. my phone rings. it’s don. just as we see the sign for hardee’s a little bit up the road. two minutes later, we pull in to the parking lot and get out to meet don – senior, who is sporting a nice black toupee and a baseball cap, and his son, don, who reassuringly is actually a real pilot (as in flies aircraft as well as balloons).

we meet another couple who will be with us on our trip. luckily they are a happy duo. she has been in a ballon once, some 10 years ago, and this will be his first time, like us, and on top of that, he is terrified of heights… but has agreed to give it a go. pretty brave of him, i reckon. don (without hairpiece) sends a small party balloon up to test the wind speed and direction. we watch for a few minutes and we head off - to a church…and launch another balloon and fill out a disclaimer along with a no requirement for insurance. don doesn’t like the direction from this launch site so we set off for another, this time from a small grass airstrip. he does the same test again and this time perfect. in minutes the trailer is being unloaded and the balloon is being inflated. luckily, this guy knows exactly what he is doing…

if you ever want to go up in a hot-air balloon, i can definitely recommend these guys.

http://www.valleyballooning.com/

within minutes, we are up and away. brilliant. the husband isn’t looking too good and is clearly distressed, but is doing a good job of keeping a lid on it, and within a few minutes, he calms down a bit and is actually enjoying the flight.

we see a herd of deer below us moving through the trees and what a great way to see the landscape as the sun sets. because the wind speed was pretty slow, don was having a few problems finding easy landing locations (you are totally at the mercy of the wind), and after a couple of attempts and with rapidly fading light we set down in a field.

don senior is in radio contact in the chase vehicle (sounds exciting, doesn’t it?) there’s just one small problem – the gate to the property’s entrance road is locked and don can’t get the vehicle close to the balloon, so we have to get out of the ballon and very carefully ‘carry’ it, with don inside, slowy lifting-flying it over a fence, and maneuvering about a quarter mile or so, as far as we can get it down a dirt track on this guy’s farm for the next 20-30 mins. where we meet don walking up the other way. by now it is almost completely dark, save for the half moon giving us some much need light so we can pack up the ballon in the bag. there is nothing more we can do but to simply leave the balloon and the basket where it is and they will come back tomorrow and pick it up. we clamber over a fence avoiding cow pats in the dark and are thankful to get back in the vehicle and return to our cars. we celebrate with come apple cider and exchange e-mails so i can send some photos and daisy and i head back to hotel strasburg.

just as I was saying how memorable that all was, i look up at the very clear night sky, and i see a textbook perfect moon ring. this phenomenon, though not extremely rare, is caused by ice crystals in the upper atmosphere which refract the moon’s light into a ring, much like a rainbow.

it lasts for some five minutes i guess, but i don’t get a chance to get a photo since we’re on the highway. it disappears by the time we get back to strasburg. just as we arrive at the hotel, a black cat runs across the road in front of us…we need all the luck we can get. the chef’s culinary magic awaits.

we have an hour to kill, so we hit the bar after having a jacuzzi. that's right, a jacuzzi. it's a bit of a shock to walk in and find everybody smoking in a bar after being in d.c. but after a few whiskeys to warm us up, it's not too bad... we talk to a guy who has been all over colorado, camping, had ridden horseback in the mountains and was genuinely enthusiastic about living. time for us to eat and so we went to the restaurant and sat down. terrible decor. ugly giant paintings everywhere, a particularly nasty example was right beside our table.except upon closer inspection, i discovered that not all was as it seemed. take a good long look at this figure. notice anything unusual?

like his massive,
erect dong, for instance?

Obama speaks to more than 15,000 in College Park

daisy & i were there.

amazingly inspiring. you actually felt 'good' about politics.

here are a few pics:

vote tomorrow!

this is your chance to choose who gets the job of repairing some of the damage done by bush.

the zorn identity...Zorn Is Named Redskins Head Coach

Former players under Zorn consider him to be a patient teacher who handles high-pressure situations well. They say he shares some similarities with Joe Gibbs, who stepped down as Redskins coach and team president on Jan. 8, including being devoutly religious.

god works in mysterious ways.

like the baby found alive after the devasting tornadoes that struck tennessee.

President Bush, who said he called the governors of the affected states to offer support, plans to come to Tennessee on Friday. "Prayers can help and so can the government," Bush said.

..."and so can the government"! - sooner this worst president in history idiot is gone the better.

how is that lower 9th ward in new orleans looking, george? you know the one, in new orleans, the city that you promised to rebuild "like the world has never seen"...

The twisters killed at least 32 people in Tennessee, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and five in Alabama, emergency officials said. It was one of the 15 worst tornado death tolls since 1950, and the nation's deadliest barrage of tornadoes since 76 people were killed in Pennsylvania and Ohio on May 31, 1985.

The baby's mother, 24-year-old Kerri Stowell, was one of six people killed in the small community, said Sumner County Sheriff Bob Barker.

The Republicans

what a bunch of completely mad, blind, boring, idealogical abstainers!

here' my position: if you vote for a republican, you're basically saying "cunt", and that you would be very happy living in kansas.

GO OBAMA!

...& return some sanity to the united states.

super tuesday! vote for obama.

because if you vote for hillary, you are putting granny knickers back into the whitehouse!

granny knickers: what can be done?

the images above show the amazonian rain forest and some pairs of granny knickers

climate change, global warming, terrorist threats & war. we live in a world full of fear, sorrow, and uncomfortable uncertainty about tomorrow. you can’t read a newspaper or watch a tv program without hearing about any of these issues, yet there is one major threat to man’s happiness that goes unnoticed. I am, of course referring to granny knickers.

who among us hasn’t been deeply appalled at the sight of an otherwise reasonably attractive female sporting a pair of giant, very unattractive knickers, the thick seams clearly visible beneath a pair of jeans, dress, or a skirt? are they aware of the high levels of distress this is causing to randy blokes, checking out their rear? It’s not as if we can’t look. it’s in our DNA.

forget for one moment the horrible visual realization to that I am referring to. no. there is a much greater cause for alarm and concern as to this terrible practice. these girls and women are unwittingly contributing to the destruction of the planet as we know it.

take a normal pair of sexy panties or thongs for instance. very reasonable one might add. not only are girls’ derrieres looking as they should (sexily enhanced) but the minimal material used limits the impact to fragile ecosystems. all in all, everyone surely has to agree that a hot girl wearing sexy underwear is a win-win situation. she’s happy, blokes are even happier, and the planet nods away in approval.

now compare granny knickers. these gigantic, ill-fitting ugly bloomers, cause immense visual distress, leading to traumatic head shaking among men. we are left to speculate upon the reasons why any female would choose such contraptions. is it to deter men? who knows the true answer, but the wearing of granny knickers is without doubt, one huge turn-off.

if it were only that! no. much more insidious is the terrible damage being wrought upon mother earth. the massive amounts of material used in the manufacturing process are causing huge swathes of the amazonian rain forest to be cleared. this deforestation has been primarily caused by the increased demand by boring women who wish to cover their rears in as much thick fabric as possible. yes, granny knickers are contributing to global warming. CO2 levels are rising and the destruction of the rain forest due to granny knickers cannot be ignored anymore.

what can happen to these disturbing products over the course of their use is best not entertained, except that fish stocks in the world’s oceans are being depleted as innocent fish get entangled in the massive fabric, as numerous granny knickers get washed out to sea just because a few reckless females decide to go skinny-dipping. it is now known for instance that fisherman are replacing their old fishing nets with dozens of pairs of granny knickers sewn together, and just trawl away. the results on fragile ecosystems are devastating. these knickers ensnare any and everything in their path. a 300lb tuna is no match for thickly-sewn gussets.

the raw materials, massive energy and manpower required to manufacture these vulgar items is completely out of step in today’s modern world. these companies must be stopped, and it is time for government intervention. it’s time for the appointment of a minister for attractive underwear. locally policed, fines could be issued, tax credits could be implemented, and collection agencies would rid our cities. who knows, within just a few short years, blokes might never again have to look at a girl wearing a pair of granny knickers.