for all the ladies...

who get a little frightened by the sawx/yankees chatter



Yuhui, a young orangutan, practises weightlifting in ChongQing Safari Park in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality, September 26, 2005. The park is to organize a contest nationwide with animals to show their performance in sports, which will be held from October 1 to 7, local media reported. CHINA OUT REUTERS/China Newsphoto

nice work by these guys...

Defying the conventional logic that a band will do infinitely better if it has a record deal, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah are proving that a truly independent artist can gain a major following. Clap -- based in Brooklyn and Philadelphia -- have already sold nearly 17,000 copies of their self-released debut, all thanks to word of mouth. And while major-label artists make only about a buck a record, the Clap guys are making a whopping eight dollars per disc -- putting their take so far at more than $130,000. Not too shabby for an album recorded for less than ten grand and distributed by the band itself via countless trips to the post office.

thanks to a-dub for this one....

love the yiddish....

Yiddish is the language par excellence of complaint. How could it be otherwise? It took root among Jews scattered across Western Europe during the Middle Ages and evolved over centuries of persecution and transience. It is, Mr. Wex writes, "the national language of nowhere," the medium of expression for a people without a home. "Judaism is defined by exile, and exile without complaint is tourism," as Mr. Wex neatly puts it.

To be Jewish, in other words, is to kvetch. If the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" had been translated into Yiddish, Mr. Wex writes, "it would have been called '(I Love to Keep Telling You That I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You That I'm Not Satisfied Is All That Can Satisfy Me).' "

terrible...

An actor playing Chewbacca throws out the ceremonial first pitch prior to a game between the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays Fenway Park in Boston, Wednesday Sept. 28, 2005. Chewbacca and an actress playing Princess Leia were promoting the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

happy 75th birthday...

great story...

Ohio's Athletic Association has said an official was wrong for kicking a Dayton high school football player, who has no legs, out of a game.

Bobby Martin was born without legs, but he's never stopped moving forward. He has been playing football and wrestling since middle school, and has played in five games this year. That is until last week. That's when an official in Cincinnati told his coach Bobby couldn't play. Bobby said it's the first time he's ever felt disabled.

"That's the first time in 17 years. That's a landmark," he told 2News.

Bobby was kicked out of the game for having no shoes or kneepads.

"Bobby was in tears about that. The whole team was mad. The coach was in tears. I thought it was an insult, honestly, to Bobby and the whole team," said Greg McLendon, a friend and teammate.

Now that ejection, and rejection, has Bobby Martin in the national spotlight, with calls from CNN, ESPN, and Sports Illustrated.

Around Colonel White High School, Bobby is already in the spotlight, and always on the move. A 17-year-old senior, Bobby rolls through school on a board, and plays defense on the football team. Friends and fellow students say he's a kid with a great smile and a great attitude.

first place yankees....

buried treasure and crime solving robots...

A long quest for booty from the Spanish colonial era appears to be culminating in Chile with the announcement by a group of adventurers that they have found an estimated 600 barrels of gold coins and Incan jewels on the remote Pacific island.

"The biggest treasure in history has been located," said Fernando Uribe-Etxeverria, a lawyer for Wagner, the Chilean company leading the search. Mr Uribe-Etxeverria estimated the value of the buried treasure at US$10bn (£5.6bn).

The archipelago is named after Robinson Crusoe, but perhaps it should have been called Treasure Island.

A long quest for booty from the Spanish colonial era appears to be culminating in Chile with the announcement by a group of adventurers that they have found an estimated 600 barrels of gold coins and Incan jewels on the remote Pacific island.

"The biggest treasure in history has been located," said Fernando Uribe-Etxeverria, a lawyer for Wagner, the Chilean company leading the search. Mr Uribe-Etxeverria estimated the value of the buried treasure at US$10bn (£5.6bn)

The hoard is supposedly buried 15 metres (50ft) deep on Robinson Crusoe island, also known as the Juan Fernández island, home to Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, the adventurer immortalised by Daniel Defoe as Robinson Crusoe. Selkirk was dumped on the island and lived alone for four years before being rescued. His exploits brought worldwide attention to the islands.

For centuries treasure hunters have scoured the island in search of booty which was reportedly buried there in 1715 by Spanish sailor Juan Esteban Ubilla y Echeverria. Using everything from old Spanish ship manifests to teams of islanders with shovels and picks, foreigners have made so many claims of discovering the lost treasure that islanders are usually sceptical of the proclamations.

This most recent announcement, however, deserves greater credence because of the equipment used by the treasure hunters: a mini robot that can scan 50 metres deep into the earth. The robot, dubbed "Arturito", was invented by Chileans and over the past year has grabbed headlines by breaking some of the country's biggest criminal mysteries.

First, the robot detected the buried arsenal of a rightwing sect known as Colonia Dignidad. The guns and rocket launchers were buried at some 10 metres and while the authorities had searched for years, the robot found the buried weapons almost instantly. Then, in the case of missing businessman Jose Yuraszeck, Arturito was able to analyse the soil and identify the molecular composition of human bones, allowing investigators to dig straight to the body of the murder victim.

i’ve always loved those leathery little snappy faces...

if you like arrested development this is the site for you. they've got it all.



G.O.B.: My God, what is this feeling?

Michael: Well, you know the-the feeling that you’re... that you’re feeling is-is what many of us call “a feeling.”

G.O.B.: But it’s not like envy, or even hungry.

Michael: Could it be love?

G.O.B.: I know what an erection feels like, Michael. No, it’s the opposite. It’s... it’s like my heart is getting hard. Maybe I am ready to be a father.

the internets are awesome...

if a story has sucker pads and mashed shrimp odor lures i will certainly share it with you..

For decades, scientists and sea explorers have mounted costly expeditions to hunt down and photograph the giant squid, a legendary monster with eyes the size of dinner plates and a nightmarish tangle of tentacles lined with long rows of sucker pads.

The goal has been to learn more about a bizarre creature of no little fame - Jules Verne's attacked a submarine and Peter Benchley's ate children - that in real life has stubbornly refused to give up its secrets.

While giant squid have been snagged in fishing nets and dead or dying ones have washed ashore, expeditions have repeatedly failed to photograph a live one in its natural habitat, the inky depths of the sea. But today two Japanese scientists, Tsunemi Kubodera and Kyoichi Mori, report in a leading British biological journal that they have made the world's first observations of a giant squid in the wild.

Working about 600 miles south of Tokyo off the Bonin Islands, known in Japan as the Ogasawara Islands, they photographed the creature with a robotic camera at a depth of 3,000 feet. During a struggle lasting more than four hours, the animal, about 26 feet long, took the proffered bait and eventually broke free, leaving behind an 18-foot length of tentacle.

The giant squid, the researchers conclude, "appears to be a much more active predator than previously suspected, using its elongate feeding tentacles to strike and tangle prey." The tentacles could apparently coil into a ball, much as a python envelops its victims.

A bag of mashed shrimps acted as an odor lure.

this is great for so many reasons...

ROME - Pope John Paul II's enduring charisma found unlikely expression here one recent afternoon. At the end of a day's filming of a new television movie about his life, Italian and Latin American extras rushed to be photographed beside the gray-haired man in papal gowns. That he happened to be Jon Voight seemed secondary. For the extras, this was as close as they would ever get to John Paul.

Mr. Voight, who at 66 persuasively evokes the older John Paul, is growing used to such reactions. After he spoke a few words about "the dignity of man" in Spanish while re-enacting John Paul's first visit to Mexico, the extras burst into spontaneous applause. And on the previous day, when the 1981 attempt on the pope's life was filmed, some of the extras burst into tears at the sight of the "wounded" pontiff.

what a debacle...

f al leiter, scott proctor and wayne franklin. franklin gets most of my wrath for not being able to throw a strike. at least schilling gagged all over himself and is embroiled in a really lame controversy with an "unnamed teammate". any of you bean eaters know who it is? i'm going to lose my mind this week.



Stung by recent criticism attributed to an anonymous teammate, Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling has responded with disappointment and disgust, saying the harsh remarks came from "somebody who's not wired right."

Schilling didn't offer a suggestion as to which of his teammates was responsible for the quote. But he expressed disappointment that words like those would come out of the Red Sox clubhouse just months after the team and Boston celebrated the end to decades of frustration with a World Series championship.

''Somebody on this team wants me to get booed to make them feel better, and that really bothers me a lot," Schilling said in Tuesday's editions of the Boston Globe. ''Those are the kinds of things that really make me look at this game and understand that when I'm done in the game, I'll be done with the game."

In an article that appeared last week in the Boston Herald, an anonymous Red Sox player was critical of the "free pass" Schilling has received from fans despite his disappointing performance on the mound this season.

''When he comes into the game," the player said, "people cheer him like he's the Pope? You think they'd let Pedro (Martinez) get away with this? Why does he get a free pass?"

Schilling didn't offer a suggestion as to which of his teammates was responsible for the quote. But he expressed disappointment that words like those would come out of the Red Sox clubhouse just months after the team and Boston celebrated the end to decades of frustration with a World Series championship.

''As much time as we spend together, you think you know someone," Schilling said. ''But more times than not you find you really don't."

respect to barry for dominating on the course this weekend. it was a brutal six-hour affair, but we had a lot of laughs and earl made friends with the group in front of us. also played yesterday in jersey. i was playing with a buddy from work and a "heavy machine operator" from linden named ed, who had called in sick to play golf. the highlight? after getting on the green in five (brutal) i hit about a 30-foot putt to save double bogey. ed said my putt was like putting whipped cream on shit. good line by ed.

glad to see willis on the blizzy...

and i hope the tribe can find a way to prick the sawx and not the yanks.

czech statues are the coolest...

The idea is disarmingly simple. Two bronze sculptures pee into their oddly-shaped enclosure.

While they are peeing, the two figures move realistically. An electric mechanism driven by a couple of microproccesors swivels the upper part of the body, while the penis goes up and down. The stream of water writes quotes from famous Prague residents.

Visitor can interupt them by sending SMS message from mobile phone to a number, displayed next to the sculptures. The living statue then ‘writes’ the text of the message, before carrying on as before.

wonder how andre's holding up...

thanks to little birdie for the photos...

until i actually see a monkey riding a dog in person, this photo is the greatest thing ever. the fact that this photo was taken in jersey makes it that much better.

brooklyn's finest...

fredeeky loves leon williams (from lincoln high school in brooklyn) and even if his td doesn't count it was still a highlight. i came off the golf course after a six-hour round with earl, andre and barry to find four drunken messages from mimai spice who was at the game. nice job by him and nice job by the canes.



MIAMI (AP)- Kyle Wright threw for 264 yards and a touchdown, plus ran for another, and No. 12 Miami's defense frustrated Colorado all afternoon in the Hurricanes' 23-3 win Saturday.

Only Mason Crosby's 58-yard field goal - the second longest of his career - with 11:57 left kept the Buffaloes (2-1) from being shut out for the first time in nearly two decades.

someone needs to get one of these...

THE PIROLETTE ISN'T A PHOTOGRAPH OR MEMORY. IT'S A SOLID ARTIFACT OF A SPACE WE FORGET TO LOOK AT. TOM'S INSPIRATION WAS HIS DAUGHTERS AND NOW HE WOULD LIKE TO SHARE THAT WITH YOU.

only incredible...

The island of Manhattan was formed over the course of more than 500 million years, shaped by metamorphic pressure, erosion, continental drift, glacial deposits and rampant real estate development.

The island of Robert Smithson was formed over about a week, in a ragged-looking barge yard on Staten Island, shaped by a public art group, a landscape architect, a contractor, an engineer, a project manager and various other dedicated conceptual art workers using a 30-by-90-foot flat-decked barge, 10 trees, 3 huge rocks, a bunch of shrubs, rolls of sod, a whole lot of dirt and even more ingenuity.

The result, which will begin daily travels tomorrow along Manhattan's shores, is much more than just a week's work. It is the culmination of more than 30 years of sporadic efforts to build the ambitious floating artwork that Mr. Smithson sketched out in a rough drawing three years before he died in a plane crash in 1973, an image that showed a tiny, forested, man-made island being towed by tugboat with the city's skyline in the distance.

Mr. Smithson tried to find backers to build the project, which he called "Floating Island," during his lifetime but had no luck. In the years after his death, other admirers and artists also tried unsuccessfully to get the project going.

But last fall, as the Whitney Museum of American Art was preparing for the arrival of a traveling Smithson retrospective, the museum, along with the public arts organization Minetta Brook and Smithson's estate, began serious discussions about finally making the island a reality. The artist Nancy Holt, Smithson's widow, became involved. The James Cohan Gallery, which represents the estate, contributed money and helped round up donors when the project threatened to stall. And by the spring the planners, money in hand, set to work to try to answer the question the project had always asked implicitly: How do you build an island from scratch?

thanks to jimmy page for this one...

we put it up a while ago, but i love the website and now it's a book so it's probably worth another look. of course fredeeky loves f bombs more than anyone, so that helps as well.

good luck to phil and the rest of the squad...

Sixty years after allied troops conquered Berlin at the end of World War II, Beard Team USA hopes to fly the stars and stripes over the Brandenburg Gate once again, this time at the 2005 World Beard and Moustache Championships, set to take place in the German capital on October 1.

Realistically, the Americans have little chance of taking home top honors at this bi-annual event. After all, the Germans are hosting the contest, make the rules, choose and pay the judges, and define the categories. With 31 contestants traveling to Germany, Team USA hopes to establish itself at this year’s worlds as a force to be reckoned with in international facial-hair competitions.

This is a momentum-building year. The team is looking ahead to London 2007. Some day Team USA will be the team to beat.

it's almost basketball season again...

Turner Network Television (TNT) unveiled its latest on-air NBA promotional campaign today, utilizing comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in his popular HBO-persona “Ali G,” star of HBO’s Emmy-award nominated ‘Da Ali G Show,’ to build on the network’s highly successful Let The Truth Be Told NBA platform from the past two seasons. In the spots, directed once again by Spike Lee, Ali G interviews some of the NBA’s brightest stars, clearly unaware of common NBA terms and the origins of his guests.

The campaign, produced by Spike DDB, features NBA All-Stars Shaquille O’Neal (Miami Heat), Dwyane Wade (Miami Heat), Kobe Bryant (LA Lakers), Ben Wallace (Detroit Pistons), Amare Stoudemire (Phoenix Suns), Steve Nash (Phoenix Suns) and rising star and 2004 US Olympian Richard Jefferson (NJ Nets). The spots also include TNT’s Emmy-award winning studio team of Ernie Johnson, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith, along with TNT’s newest analyst Reggie Miller.

it's banned book week this week...

for serious. here's a few of the "100 most banned" to enjoy.

imagine if american athletes could do this...

India coach Greg Chappell and captain Sourav Ganguly will appear before a cricket board committee on Tuesday after their public spat.

Chappell said in a leaked email he thought Ganguly should be sacked because he was not physically fit and undermined team unity.

But Ganguly, who has recently returned to the team after a ban, said he would defend himself.

He is India's most successful captain but his current form is of concern.

The row has split the players and has been headline news in India with opinion polls running in newspapers and on television.

Now a six-strong committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India will convene in Mumbai, formerly Bombay, on Tuesday to discuss the matter.

Several current India cricketers and former stars are backing Chappell, who was appointed in July, saying he is more important to the team than the 32-year-old batsman.

Whereas Ganguly, who originally revealed Chappell had asked him to stand down during the tour of Zimbabwe, has his supporters too.

Officially the team has been banned from speaking about the matter.

Former BCCI president Raj Singh Dungarpur told the BBC, Chappell was correct to make his views known to the board.

He said: "Greg will not do anything that will hurt the Indian cricket, but at the same time he will not give into the bullies. When he says he will not compromise on fitness and fielding he means it and he is sincere about it."

things are changing...

me and reggie were at an art opening
in l.i.c. last week and had a little talk
about the great reggie roby, may he
rest in peace. out of respect for the
hang time and in order to pay tribute
to the digital watch, we decided that
reggie roby is now player/coach
reggie "reg" dunlop.

observe and respect.

also just a note to say that fredeeky loved the art and is in the process of comissioning some custom art. no big deal. just so you know.

while i'm at it...

so i was googling miami hurricane photos for loyal reader miami spice a.k.a. mac fu. while i misspelled "miami" for "mimai" and imagine my suprise at what came up (careful at work). i guess mimai (pictured demurely above) is one of the sluttiest girls in the japanamation porn pantheon. turns out she also pees all over the place. so for the rest of the day miami spice is now mimai spice. (don't worry mac fu, it's not for serious and i will give the canes some respect in just a few.)

the guy with the padres jers in the background only makes this more interesting...

'Guinness', one of the 256 chihuahua dog entries in a race to determine America's fastest chihuaha, is seen dressed in his Spiderman outfit at Petco Park in San Diego, California September 18, 2005. Regional finalists who outran one thousand Chihuahuas from across the United States competed on Sunday to win the honor of 'America's Fastest Chihuahua'.

percolating...

andre what is madden doing to your jets...

9/16 Madden 06 roster update taken down because it made Michael King of the NY Jets 7 inches tall.

that's him in the foreground.

hilarious...

Receive 3 FREE iTunes music downloads when you
sign up to be contacted by the Army National Guard!

while i'm nerding it up...

here are some incredible photos from space

replacement tongues are so hot right now...

thanks to a-game for this one...

A gross creature which gobbles up a fish's tongue and then replaces it with its own body has been found in Britain for the first time.

The bug - which has the scientific name cymothoa exigua - was discovered inside the mouth of a red snapper bought from a London fishmonger.

The 3.5cm creature had grabbed onto the fish's tongue and slowly ate away at it until only a stub was left. It then latched onto the stub and became the fish's "replacement tongue".

cause barry and reggie are tweaking over the president's cup...

of course i root for the americans, but tiger's a real arsehole about this one.



LEAVE it to Peter Lonard, that plain-speaking sage from south-west Sydney, to dissect the cultural dichotomies between the International team and the US at the Presidents Cup.

"The main difference is that we don't get our knickers in a twist if someone calls us arseholes," Lonard said yesterday.

As if to illustrate his point, an hour later on a steamy afternoon at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, Tiger Woods was asked about the hat emblazoned with the words "Tiger Who?" that Vijay Singh's caddie Paul Tesori wore when the two played in the singles here five years ago.

Suddenly, what had been a light-hearted mood, filled with talk of detente and friendly competition, grew solemn.

"I certainly didn't appreciate it," Woods said.

"I thought it wasn't real respectful. I know he tried to do it in fun, but I didn't take it that way.

"I went out there and beat him 2&1, so that's my response to it."

it's not just barry...

World-class professional surfer Percy "Neco" Padaratz Jr. has been stripped of his 2005 points and banned from competition for the rest of the year after testing positive for steroids, a surfing official said Wednesday.

Padaratz, 29, tested positive for three types of steroids, according to the official. He failed a random drug test conducted last fall at a competition in France, results of which became available in July.

Padaratz acknowledged that he had been using the drugs without a doctor's supervision to help a back injury, said Robert Gerard of Newport Beach, the rules and discipline judge for the Association of Surfing Professionals.

great news...

September 22, 2005 -- The New York Times was hit with more bad news yesterday when Standard & Poor's Rating Services put the company's long term debt on "credit watch with negative implications" after the company lowered its earnings estimates once again.
The news follows by one day the company's announcement that it will slash 500 jobs over the next six to nine months, including 45 newsroom jobs at flagship The New York Times and 35 in the newsroom at the Times-owned Boston Globe.

i've put it up here before...

but this site is still incredible and delightfully creepy...

can this be real....

is "the mighty goldberg" actually the wrestling and football star goldberg, or is it someone impersonating? hope it's for reals.

a-game needs one of these...

it's the game man.