For Serious Feces Flingers Only...

I guess it's three years old, but I just stumbled across this odd picture...


She's a true champion!

Spellcheck

I'm stealing a link from Totalfark. Spellcheck does not equal proofreading, as you can see here. Astronaut Spicy Noggin? "During one of three planned spacewalks, Japanese astronaut Spicy Noggin and his US counterpart Stephen Robinson will test repair techniques adopted in the wake of the Columbia disaster."

The astronauts name is Soichi Noguchi. Oops.

And in a Darwin moment sure to scar you for life, a man died while having sex with a horse in Washington state, where, by the way, it is apparently NOT illegal. It also appears to have been ummm.... consensual. Sort of...
/shudder

The story book ending

No one could have written a better ending for Lance Armstrong. After leading for much of his last Tour de France, he still had yet to win a solo stage this year. Today was stage 20, the penultimate stage and the last and longest time trial at 55 km. It's the trial Lance has owned all but one of his soon to be seven Tour victories. With a 2:46 gap on Basso, he didn't necessarily need a stage win today, but he clearly wanted it. The Boss proved once again that in Le Tour he gets what he wants, beating the superb time trialist Jan Ullrich by 23 seconds and the rest of the field by 1:16 (Vino) or more. It was a dominate performance to end a dominate career. He beat Basso, who finished fifth, by nearly two minutes, increasing his overall lead over 2nd place to 4:42.

Tomorrow's ride into Paris will be uncontested for the yellow jersey. The champagne will be passed around as they ride along the Champs Elysees and when they cross the line the seventh Tour victory will be official.

3 stages left in Le Tour

Armstrong is still up by 2:46 in the Tour de France after 18 stages. I'm kind of disappointed that in this race, his last, he hasn't dominated the stage wins like he did last year when he won five solo stages plus the team time trial. This year his only stage win is the team trial. On the other hand he's consistently the strongest rider, day in and day out, among the top contenders, and that's why he's in the yellow jersey.

Today's stage again saw a breakaway of non-contenders that the peleton allowed to stay away. The top ten just don't seem to care too much about the stage wins. They want to put time into each other and improve their final ranking. Ivan Basso once again attacked Lance on the final climb today, dropping some of the best riders, but again failing to gain any time at all on Lance. Time is running out for Basso, a great rider in his own right, and that 2:46 gap hasn't budged. He'll go very hard in the time trial and Lance will do the same, giving one of them a shot at the stage win. Based on past time trial performances, the edge has to go to Lance.

When asked recently, Armstrong picked Jan Ullrich as the favorite to win next year's Tour de France. Ullrich remains a superb rider who's still winning races, but based on their performances the last two years, I've got to go with Ivan Basso. He's looked very strong in the mountains both years, with only Lance able to best him there and only barely. He's proved himself capable of attacking and dropping everyone else. He's also improved his time trial abilities, where Ullrich probably still holds a slight edge. I just checked and was reminded that Ullrich finished 2nd in his very first Tour de France and won his second. That's absolutely phenomenal. Even the very best riders usually need a few years of experience at the Tour before they can even hope to compete for the overall win. Yet over his career, that incredible early promise hasn't quite panned out for Ullrich, and Basso looks stronger now. Basso is also just 27 years old, giving him about six or even seven more Tours where he may compete for the overall title. I wouldn't be surprised if he wins more than once. With a strong team and some good breaks, he could dominate.

Treating women like crap is okay if that's your culture

According to the Ottawa Police Service, we can't claim there's a problem with the way some cultures treat women because it implies our culture is superior (first story). Mind boggling. Hey morons, enough with the politically correct BS and call it like it is. If a culture thinks it's okay to treat women as inferior, to treat them as property, to deny them equal educational opportunities, a right to vote, and in extreme cases to even carry out honor killings against them, guess what? That culture has problems! They do not have an "equally valid culture". They have an oppressive culture that subjugates half their population. They are way behind on the times and need to at least get with the 20th century if the 21st is too much to ask. To quote the article, A police spokeswoman said the idea that in some countries disrespect of women is acceptable "does not reflect the views of the Ottawa Police Service."

Fact: in some countries disrespect of women is acceptable. Apparently the truth does not reflect the views of the Ottawa Police Service. Call oppression and abuse for what it is, regardless of what culture it's found in or what the political correctness idiots say.

The Bat Tour

Couple quick comments...

I saw Batman Begins tonight and was fairly impressed. They got it right. This fifth installment in the Batman movie series, not counting the old Adam West film, ranks up with the first one as one of the best. They've done a nice job of reviving a series that was killed by the horrible cheesiness of the fourth film. Fans want a Dark Knight, a troubled hero, not the campy crap that Joel Schumacher brought us in "Batman and Robin". Christian Bale fits the role well, not that being a better fit than the previous Batman, George Clooney, was hard. Bale is good though. I'm interested to see where they take the series from here. Small spoiler: the ending sets up a premise for how all sorts of nuts are loose on the streets of Gotham. It also sets up a possible sequel with Batman archnemesis, The Joker. That surprised me because I didn't expect the next Batman film to reuse the villain that Jack Nicholson played so well in 1989's "Batman".

As for the Tour de France, Sunday was the toughest stage of the tour. Lance's loyal teammate George Hincapie won the stage and Lance put even more time into all of his opponents except Ivan Basso, who finished with Lance and remains 2:46 behind. Armstrong isn't as dominate this year as he was last year, when he won an amazing six Tour stages. His only stage win so far this year is the team time trial. Yet among the overall contenders, he's been at the front every time. For each attack, he answers, and his rivals end up hurting each other while Armstrong stays with whoever of them is in front. Disaster could still strike, but barring a crash, it looks like Lance will win his seventh straight Tour de France and retire a champion.

Bored, bored, bored, bored.... meh.

It's always hard coming back from a vacation to normal life, especially the active vacations I prefer, and especially one with a busload of crazy people involved. For over two weeks there were exciting things to do and new things to see every day. Then it was back to reality. Yawwwwwwn. I needed a break for a couple days to catch up on my sleep after Spain, but once I'd recovered, I was ready to go again. I've been doing my best to find things to do around here. Obviously it's not nearly as exciting though. Plus there are of course some days where there just isn't much of anything to do. Since Sunday I've had something going with friends every day but Tuesday, and it's still not enough. I'm stir crazy. Now here it is Friday night and I have no plans. Bleh. Guess I could go to a movie tonight. There are at least a couple I want to see at the theater, but that just sounds dull right now.

Penis gourd!
Err... sorry, random Fark cliche there...

It's classic Armstrong at Le Tour today

A little sports writing today as I'm an avid Lance Armstrong fan... the following is summarized from the offical Tour de France website report on stage 10. You can find it here.

Lance Armstrong's Discovery team looked weak in stage 8, somewhat stronger in stage 9, and absolutely dominate in stage 10 today. It was a classic Lance Armstrong mountain stage. The boss is definitely in the peleton. Seven Discovery team riders led the peleton inside the 20km mark at a blistering pace, dropping some very good riders off the back. Then Lance, Hincapie, and whoever could keep up broke away. It was down to about 15 riders with under 15km to go. By the 10km mark they'd caught long time breakaway rider Jaksche and the lead group had dwindled to 7 riders. Hincapie had dropped back after a great pacesetting effort for Lance. He was completely spent and would finish over 10 minutes behind, but his job was done.
A few minutes later Lance's teammate Popovych also dropped back, leaving Lance on his own to finish the stage.

Top Tour contenders Ullrich and Vinokourov had both been dropped. Lance took over the pacesetting. A couple km later Lance's brutal pace dropped another big rival, Ivan Basso. Just 4 riders remained in the lead group. With about 1km left, Lance showed he was still strong and attacked yet again. Only Valverde could match him and they dropped the other 2 leaders.

Valverde won the final sprint to take the stage, but Lance is back in the yellow jersey and has put serious time on all of his main rivals. Basso faded near the end and lost a minute. Leipheimer lost 1:15. Ullrich, Kloden, and Landis lost 2:14. Botero lost 2:50. Powerful climber Vinokourov lost a surprising 5:18.

This performance is how Lance Armstrong has won 6 straight at the Tour de France. Hit a big mountain stage, the kind of stage that shreds the peleton, leaving small groups of riders all over the mountain, and he just keeps grinding forward at a seemingly impossible pace until all of his rivals have cracked. The only way it could have been better is if he'd gotten the stage win.

I would like to know who Rasmussen is. I haven't heard him mentioned as a top contender for the yellow jersey, but after a tough mountain stage he's only 38 seconds behind Lance overall.

Insane, disgusting terrorists strike London

by now most have probably heard that a double decker bus and three London subway trains were bombed this morning. Some militant Islamist terrorists have already claimed responsibility for this disgusting attack on innocent people.

Have people figured out yet that we can't reason with these farking piece of shiat terrorist assholes yet? They are not reasonable people. They're bat shiat crazy. It would be great if we could "peacefully" reason with the extremists, but it's not going to happen. They're the sickest, most despicable, depraved beings on the planet. Deliberate attacks designed to do maximum carnage to innocent civilians. Sick motherfarkers. Kill them. The only debate is how to best accomplish it.

Those already well indoctrinated into this horrific terrorism must die. But besides that, there are other things we have to do. Stop handling Saudi Arabia with kid's gloves. Let them know that their support of the Wahabi sect in their own country is unacceptable. Let Saudi and Pakistan know that the fucked up madrassahs (sp?) where the only education kids get is in militant Islam are unacceptable. Be prepared to deal harshly with these governments if they won't crack down on the breeding grounds for terrorism. No, that doesn't mean launch a war against Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Don't be stupid. But it means taking action beyond meaningless words.

Again, the only debate should be how to best kill these motherfuckers, not whether or not we should do it. Do you launch full scale wars? Probably not. What we're still sorely missing is the intelligence and infiltration capabilities to get into these groups and then send in special forces to carry out surgical strike and assassination missions. It's hard to find Arabs who will help in these matters though. Interesting isn't it, since we're supposed to believe that the vast majority of Muslims strongly oppose this violence?

Then how come all we normally see from Muslims in opposition is the occasional statement condemning violence? Where's the massive mobilization against these terrorists who are hijacking Islam? Where? I believe that if the name of Christianity was being used to carry out such horrific actions in the US, UK, etc. that the airwaves and press would be absolutely flooded with Christian groups condemning it, that we'd see moderate Christians protesting far and wide and helping catch the bastards responsible.

The thing is that it's far more than a small sect of Islam that at least has sympathies with these sick fucks.

p.s. I recognize the Piccadilly line near King's Crossing, where one of the subway trains was bombed. It was one of my stops when I was in London two years ago.

Madrid

The cold that´s been passed around to about half the people on my tour caught up with me yesterday. Bleh. I had a bit of a scratchy throat for a couple days, but the late nights and illness finally hit me harder and made it tough to do as much. Plus once again I only got 4 or 5 hours of sleep. I got up at 7:30 to go to the Valley of the Fallen, which is pretty amazing, by the way.

The ruthless Spanish dictator Franco decided to build a monument to those who died in the Spanish civil war when he came to power. I wonder if he remembered the many thousands of innocents slaughtered in Guernica just so the Nazis could test some weapons? Or the many more thousands of civilians that he had executed for disagreeing with him? Hmm... didn´t think so... the monument is for soldiers. Anyway, about 100,000 of them are buried there next to the cathedral. This isn´t a normal cathedral though. It´s basically the inside of a big hill that was hollowed out up in the mountains outside Madrid. It was so big that to avoid offending the Vatican by making a cathedral larger than St Peter´s, they had to move the doors further inside to make the worship area a bit smaller. Everything in there is just huge and there´s a nearly 500 foot tall carved stone base and stone cross on top. Everything just looks like each time the architects submitted a plan, it was sent back with the words, ¨NO! BIGGER!¨ on it.

With the illness catching up to me and the fact that I want to go out late tonight if I can manage it, I´m going to go take a long nap now. Tomorrow the tour ends and everyone leaves. I´ve got one extra night, or rather part of a night. I have to be at the airport around 4:30am the next day. Ack!

Ibiza, Valencia, back to Madrid

Well, the tour is almost over. We have 2 nights in Madrid and then bid farewell on the 4th of July. I´ll be staying in Madrid for one more night beyond that because my flight was much cheaper on the 5th. Well, it´s sort of 1 more night. I have to get to the airport around 4:30 or 5am to leave. Blech.

The last day in Ibiza was pretty good. Got up at 2 or 3pm, whiled away the afternoon and early evening, headed for San Antonio later, and then from there went to Cream at Amnesia for the night. I was torn between that and the Salvacion night at El Divino, a club I´d not been to yet that I heard was cool, but I followed everyone else to Amnesia. It was good, lots of hard progressive trance, but I´m not convinced it was worth the 38 euro cover charge and 12 euro drinks. We were a weak early for Cream. Starting next week, every Thursday at Cream it will be either Paul van Dyk or Tiesto playing the main room clear through September.

Anyway, after a couple hours of sleep, I had to get up and board the ferry back to the mainland. We went to Valencia, which from what little I saw of it is a beautiful city. We had so little time there though. I´d love to have had a full day to explore. Then today we boarded the bus for the final drive back to Madrid. We´ll go out tonight and have all day tomorrow to wander around.

I´m tired and have the sore throat that´s plaguing about half the people on the bus now. I guess we like to share the Spanish germs. It´s just a couple more days though. I can rest when I get home.