to make sure that.... Alaska, mothafucka? what is the reality in Alaska?

http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/27375774.html

watch, laugh and agree. with P. Diddy, no less.

Word.

kids, try this at home!

religion

Man reciting gospel on a train: And you, sir, have you accepted Jesus into your life?
Passenger: A long time ago, baby. Now fuck off.

--1 Train

good advice.

bathroom signs in frankfurt. one word: disturbed.

pet humor

Karl Lagerfeld: Chameleon, Photographer, But No Snob

Karl Lagerfeld makes his age hard to pin down, much less his personality. Even his publicist will admit there are "many Karls" in a new Sunday Times profile: "Karl is like a chameleon. Always changing." Whether what he says is believable or not, one thing is true: The man never ceases to be interesting. He'll make you wait three hours for an interview, but not because he's better than you.“Karl is not a snob,” [his publicist] tells me, as we wait. “Karl has time for everyone, he is very generous, you will see.”

He is, however, better than smelly journalists.
“I have no problem with journalists – many are friends. Only if they are really stupid, or if they’ve got bad breath, or if they smell. Yesterday [after the Chanel couture show] I had a problem. I said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve got to tell this woman that she needs to be taken away. Her smell is not possible.’ ”

And he'll still make ridiculous requests — just because he can.
“They sent a private jet. I said, ‘It’s too small. I need a bigger plane.’ It’s fun, no?”

Maybe it's because his shoes are too tight?
“I buy my shoes a size too small. I like the way it feels.”

He now devotes half his time to photography — because he's just that good.
"I don’t need meetings. I’m only interested in my own opinion anyway. If I have a project, like this,” he says, pointing to an advertising campaign he recently shot for Dom Pérignon, “you like, or you don’t like. There is no second opinion. If you’re not 100% sure about what I want to do, you ask someone else.”

Why wouldn't you hire him? He's better than other, much-lauded photographers anyway.
“I don’t always like Helmut Newton’s subjects, but I like his technique, his eye, his attitude, and as a person he was really fine.”
“. . . When Annie Leibovitz photographed me for Vanity Fair . . . I didn’t know her very well then, and she said, ‘I have to spend three days with you to see what’s behind.’ And I said, ‘Annie, you’re wasting your time. Look at what you see.’ ” He casts his hand theatrically over his face. “There is nothing else.”
---------------------------------------------------
hahaha.

i'm happy.

Michelle, at DNC, keeps things down to earth

Well, probably not. But Michelle Obama, Barack’s wife, gave an awfully good speech at the Democratic National Convention here Monday night. While Barack can sometimes soar off into the clouds, Michelle tends to keep things down to earth.

“The Barack Obama I know today is the same man I fell in love with 19 years ago,” she said. “He’s the same man who drove me and our new baby daughter home from the hospital 10 years ago this summer, inching along at a snail’s pace, peering anxiously at us in the rearview mirror, feeling the whole weight of her future in his hands.”

She was describing a simple moment, a real moment, an emotional moment and one that made only one point: Barack Obama is a human being just like you. He is not an “other,” he is not a “celebrity.” He is a father, a husband, a person.

Michelle went on: “And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night, I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own. And one day, they — and your sons and daughters — will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time, we listened to our hopes instead of our fears. How this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.”

Which is not bad for a surrogate.

And then something followed that is virtually unheard of at a political convention: an unscripted moment. In a live video hookup with Barack, who was in Kansas City, the two Obama daughters — Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, who had joined their mother on stage — simply talked to their father. He asked them how they thought their mother had done in her speech.

“I think she did good,” Sasha said.

“I think so, too,” Malia said.

And then Malia said, “We love you, Daddy.”

And Sasha said, “We love you, Daddy. Bye.”

True, that moment and Michelle’s speech could not outreach the most emotional moment of the evening: Ted Kennedy’s address, his “Lion in Winter” appearance that literally brought tears to the eyes. (To my eyes, anyway.)

But the Obama campaign did not want it to. It merely wanted to show an American family, an appealing American family, an ordinary American family — or as ordinary a family can be in which one member is running for president.

True, Michelle Obama’s speeches on behalf of her husband for the last 19 months have not been without controversy. In February, to a crowd in Milwaukee, she said: “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country, and not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.”

Cindy McCain, wife of John McCain, quickly pounced, saying: “I just wanted to make the statement that I have and always will be proud of my country.”

So Michelle had to explain that she has always been proud of her country, too. “What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud in how Americans are engaging in the political process,” she said.

And with that it was stipulated that all the spouses of all the candidates had been proud of their country since birth, if not before.

Monday night, Michelle did hit the campaign’s talking points, carefully praising Hillary Clinton, “who put those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, so that our daughters — and our sons — can dream a little bigger and aim a little higher.“

And also Joe Biden, “who’s never forgotten where he came from, and never stopped fighting for folks who work long hours and face long odds and need someone on their side again.”

But she made the speech hers, and she made it a good one.

Her husband will have to top it, of course, and he almost certainly will. He is not too shabby at this speech business.

Before his last convention speech, however — his keynote speech to the Democratic National Convention four years ago — Barack was getting a little nervous, and Michelle went up to him and hugged him.

“Just don’t screw it up, buddy!'' she said.

Which is always good advice.

--------------------------------------------------

i like the part when she said it's time we listened to our hopes instead of our fears. more often than not, we choose who to vote on the basis of the lesser evils. i think that's what happened with the last U.S. presidential elections, when that video of Osama (? or Saddam?) came out right before, turning the tide against Kerry. Sometimes its valid, like choosing between GMA and FPJ. But we don't always have to keep doubting the people we vote. Sometimes, it may be a little impractical, but we just have to pick the person we hope will do what we hope for.

christ, i'm sleepy

oops.

Somalia’s runners provide inspiration

BEIJING – Samia Yusuf Omar headed back to Somalia Sunday, returning to the small two-room house in Mogadishu shared by seven family members. Her mother lives there, selling fruits and vegetables. Her father is buried there, the victim of a wayward artillery shell that hit their home and also killed Samia’s aunt and uncle.

This is the Olympic story we never heard.

It’s about a girl whose Beijing moment lasted a mere 32 seconds – the slowest 200-meter dash time out of the 46 women who competed in the event. Thirty-two seconds that almost nobody saw but that she carries home with her, swelled with joy and wonderment. Back to a decades-long civil war that has flattened much of her city. Back to an Olympic program with few Olympians and no facilities. Back to meals of flat bread, wheat porridge and tap water.

“I have my pride,” she said through a translator before leaving China. “This is the highest thing any athlete can hope for. It has been a very happy experience for me. I am proud to bring the Somali flag to fly with all of these countries, and to stand with the best athletes in the world.”
There are many life stories that collide in each Olympics – many intriguing tales of glory and tragedy. Beijing delivered the electricity of Usain Bolt and the determination of Michael Phelps. It left hearts heavy with the disappointment of Liu Xiang and the heartache of Hugh McCutcheon.

But it also gave us Samia Yusuf Omar – one small girl from one chaotic country – and a story that might have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for a roaring half-empty stadium.
***
It was Aug. 19, and the tiny girl had crossed over seven lanes to find her starting block in her 200-meter heat. She walked past Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown – the eventual gold medalist in the event. Samia had read about Campbell-Brown in track and field magazines and once watched her in wonderment on television. As a cameraman panned down the starting blocks, it settled on lane No. 2, on a 17-year old girl with the frame of a Kenyan distance runner. Samia’s biography in the Olympic media system contained almost no information, other than her 5-foot-4, 119-pound frame. There was no mention of her personal best times and nothing on previous track meets. Somalia, it was later explained, has a hard time organizing the records of its athletes.

She looked so odd and out of place among her competitors, with her white headband and a baggy, untucked T-shirt. The legs on her wiry frame were thin and spindly, and her arms poked out of her sleeves like the twigs of a sapling. She tugged at the bottom of her shirt and shot an occasional nervous glance at the other runners in her heat. Each had muscles bulging from beneath their skin-tight track suits. Many outweighed Samia by nearly 40 pounds.
After introductions, she knelt into her starting block.
***

The country of Somalia sent two athletes to the Beijing Games – Samia and distance runner Abdi Said Ibrahim, who competed in the men’s 5,000-meter event. Like Samia, Abdi finished last in his event, overmatched by competitors who were groomed for their Olympic moment. Somalia has only loose-knit programs supporting its Olympians, few coaches, and few facilities. With a civil war tearing the city apart since the Somali government’s collapse in 1991, Mogadishu Stadium has become one of the bloodiest pieces of real estate in the city – housing U.N. forces in the early 1990s and now a military compound for insurgents.

That has left the country’s track athletes to train in Coni Stadium, an artillery-pocked structure built in 1958 which has no track, endless divots, and has been overtaken by weeds and plants.

“Sports are not a priority for Somalia,” said Duran Farah, vice president of the Somali Olympic Committee. “There is no money for facilities or training. The war, the security, the difficulties with food and everything – there are just many other internal difficulties to deal with.”
That leaves athletes such as Samia and 18-year old Abdi without the normal comforts and structure enjoyed by almost every other athlete in the Olympic Games. They don’t receive consistent coaching, don’t compete in meets on a regular basis and struggle to find safety in something as simple as going out for a daily run.

When Samia cannot make it to the stadium, she runs in the streets, where she runs into roadblocks of burning tires and refuse set out by insurgents. She is often bullied and threatened by militia or locals who believe that Muslim women should not take part in sports. In hopes of lessening the abuse, she runs in the oppressive heat wearing long sleeves, sweat pants and a head scarf. Even then, she is told her place should be in the home – not participating in sports.
“For some men, nothing is good enough,” Farah said.

Even Abdi faces constant difficulties, passing through military checkpoints where he is shaken down for money. And when he has competed in sanctioned track events, gun-toting insurgents have threatened his life for what they viewed as compliance with the interim government.
“Once, the insurgents were very unhappy,” he said. “When we went back home, my friends and I were rounded up and we were told if we did it again, we would get killed. Some of my friends stopped being in sports. I had many phone calls threatening me, that if I didn’t stop running, I would get killed. Lately, I do not have these problems. I think probably they realized we just wanted to be athletes and were not involved with the government.”

But the interim government has not been able to offer support, instead spending its cash and energy arming Ethiopian allies for the fight against insurgents. Other than organizing a meet to compete for Olympic selection – in which the Somali Olympic federation chose whom it believed to be its two best performers – there has been little lavished on athletes. While other countries pour millions into the training and perfecting of their Olympic stars, Somalia offers little guidance and no doctors, not even a stipend for food.

“The food is not something that is measured and given to us every day,” Samia said. “We eat whatever we can get.”

On the best days, that means getting protein from a small portion of fish, camel or goat meat, and carbohydrates from bananas or citrus fruits growing in local trees. On the worst days – and there are long stretches of those – it means surviving on water and Angera, a flat bread made from a mixture of wheat and barley.

“There is no grocery store,” Abdi said. “We can’t go shopping for whatever we want.”
He laughs at this thought, with a smile that is missing a front tooth.
***

When the gun went off in Samia’s 200-meter heat, seven women blasted from their starting blocks, registering as little as 16 one-hundredths of a second of reaction time. Samia’s start was slow enough that the computer didn’t read it, leaving her reaction time blank on the heat’s statistical printout.

Within seconds, seven competitors were thundering around the curve in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest, struggling to separate themselves from one another. Samia was just entering the curve when her opponents were nearing the finish line. A local television feed had lost her entirely by the time Veronica Campbell-Brown crossed the finish line in a trotting 23.04 seconds.

As the athletes came to a halt and knelt, stretching and sucking deep breaths, a camera moved to ground level. In the background of the picture, a white dot wearing a headband could be seen coming down the stretch.
***

Until this month, Samia had been to two countries outside of her own – Djibouti and Ethiopia. Asked how she will describe Beijing, her eyes get big and she snickers from under a blue and white Olympic baseball cap.

“The stadiums, I never thought something like this existed in the world,” she said. “The buildings in the city, it was all very surprising. It will probably take days to finish all the stories we have to tell.”

Asked about Beijing’s otherworldly Water Cube, she lets out a sigh: “Ahhhhhhh.”

Before she can answer, Abdi cuts her off.

“I didn’t know what it was when I saw it,” he said. “Is it plastic? Is it magic?”

Few buildings are beyond two or three stories tall in Mogadishu, and those still standing are mostly in tatters. Only pictures will be able to describe some of Beijing’s structures, from the ancient architecture of the Forbidden City to the modernity of the Water Cube and the Bird’s Nest.

“The Olympic fire in the stadium, everywhere I am, it is always up there,” Samia said. “It’s like the moon. I look up wherever I go, it is there.”

These are the stories they will relish when they return to Somalia, which they believe has, for one brief moment, united the country’s warring tribes. Farah said he had received calls from countrymen all over the world, asking how their two athletes were doing and what they had experienced in China. On the morning of Samia’s race, it was just after 5 a.m., and locals from her neighborhood were scrambling to find a television with a broadcast.

“People stayed awake to see it,” Farah said. “The good thing, sports is the one thing which unites all of Somalia.”

That is one of the common threads they share with every athlete at the Games. Just being an Olympian and carrying the country’s flag brings an immense sense of pride to families and neighborhoods which typically know only despair.

A pride that Samia will share with her mother, three brothers and three sisters. A pride that Abdi will carry home to his father, two brothers and two sisters. Like Samia’s father two years ago, Abdi’s mother was killed in the civil war, by a mortar shell that hit the family’s home in 1993.

“We are very proud,” Samia said. “Because of us, the Somali flag is raised among all the other nations’ flags. You can’t imagine how proud we were when we were marching in the Opening Ceremonies with the flag.

“Despite the difficulties and everything we’ve had with our country, we feel great pride in our accomplishment.”
***

As Samia came down the stretch in her 200-meter heat, she realized that the Somalian Olympic federation had chosen to place her in the wrong event. The 200 wasn’t nearly the best event for a middle distance runner. But the federation believed the dash would serve as a “good experience” for her. Now she was coming down the stretch alone, pumping her arms and tilting her head to the side with a look of despair.

Suddenly, the half-empty stadium realized there was still a runner on the track, still pushing to get across the finish line almost eight seconds behind the seven women who had already completed the race. In the last 50 meters, much of the stadium rose to its feet, flooding the track below with cheers of encouragement. A few competitors who had left Samia behind turned and watched it unfold.

As Samia crossed the line in 32.16 seconds, the crowd roared in applause. Bahamian runner Sheniqua Ferguson, the next smallest woman on the track at 5-foot-7 and 130 pounds, looked at the girl crossing the finish and thought to herself, “Wow, she’s tiny.”
“She must love running,” Ferguson said later.
***

Several days later, Samia waved off her Olympic moment as being inspirational. While she was still filled with joy over her chance to compete, and though she knew she had done all she could, part of her seemed embarrassed that the crowd had risen to its feet to help push her across the finish line.

“I was happy the people were cheering and encouraging me,” she said. “But I would have liked to be cheered because I won, not because I needed encouragement. It is something I will work on. I will try my best not to be the last person next time. It was very nice for people to give me that encouragement, but I would prefer the winning cheer.

She shrugged and smiled.

“I knew it was an uphill task.”

And there it was. While the Olympics are often promoted for the fastest and strongest and most agile champions, there is something to be said for the ones who finish out of the limelight. The ones who finish last and leave with their pride.

At their best, the Olympics still signify competition and purity, a love for sport. What represents that better than two athletes who carry their country’s flag into the Games despite their country’s inability to carry them before that moment? What better way to find the best of the Olympic spirit than by looking at those who endure so much that would break it?

“We know that we are different from the other athletes,” Samia said. “But we don’t want to show it. We try our best to look like all the rest. We understand we are not anywhere near the level of the other competitors here. We understand that very, very well. But more than anything else, we would like to show the dignity of ourselves and our country.”

She smiles when she says this, sitting a stone’s throw from a Somalian flag that she and her countryman Abdi brought to these Games. They came and went from Beijing largely unnoticed, but may have been the most dignified example these Olympics could offer.
-----------------------------------------------------------

stuff like this makes me cry.

naked cyclists butt heads with Canadian police

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - Naked cyclists converged on Vancouver's main police station Saturday after a man was arrested with his 3-year-old son during a nude ride earlier in the day.

Naked Bike Ride spokesman Conrad Schmidt said six squad cars and a paddy wagon showed up as the group of about 75 naked cyclists arrived at the station.

Vancouver Police Constable Jana McGuinness told The Canadian Press that several people called police, concerned about the child's well-being. Police arrived and got the man to agree that he and his child would wear underwear during the ride.

But as he left to join his fellow naked cyclists, the man stripped and took off his son's clothes. Police then charged him with violating public nudity laws.

Schmidt said the toddler was in tears as police took father and son away. The arrest prompted the group to cycle through downtown Vancouver to the police station.

Not all the cyclists supported the protest.

"The leaders of this event do not support what the guy did," once cyclist who declined to give her name told The Canadian Press. "I think that's wrong. The kid's a minor."

McGuinness said it appeared the man later regretted his actions.

"When they were leaving (the scene) it was under the understanding that perhaps he hadn't shown the best judgment; there were a number of people that took offense to the child being naked in the group and subjected to people's scrutiny," she said.

"It sounds like it's been a good lesson all around."

--------------------------------------------------------------

the question is why??? why do you have to cycle naked? if you're a girl, it's just unhygienic and slightly painful. if you're a boy, your balls would be the opposite of supersized.

not to mention naked with your child.

why??????????

spot the difference

"It's Hanson 2008, with Disney behind them . . . How do you compete with that?
– Staind frontman Aaron Lewis, on the Jonas Brothers standing between his band's album, Illusions of Progress, and the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart, to MTV

darth vader is takin' it to the streets, yo

another way to look at love

"Love generally but do not commit yourself to a particular love. You will become known as sympathetic friend and faithful lover because you never really permit these roles to seize your heart, you can practice and perfect them. But the heart is guarded, kept free and untarnished by any simple human affiliation so that it will reflect in glorious accuracy all the charts of the stars which the clouds one day will part to reveal. The important thing is not to approach anyone too close because tomorrow you may have become pure light."

-Leonard Cohen

i miss playin super mario brudders

Achtung Baby!

I love this blog for its pictures, photos, music and quotes. damn smart! check it out:

http://luna.typepad.com/weblog/mp3/index.html

p.s.: i got a ton of nice stuff to put in my blog from here so i give credit. :P

how can you live if you can't live with yourself?

i love x-files but godDAMN, the last movie kinda sucked!

except scully is beautiful!

damn redheads.

chin up. good advice.

The worst thing that happens to you can be the best thing for you, if you don't let it get the best of you.

- Will Rogers

Bolt joins track pantheon

Jamaica's Usain Bolt poses…

BEIJING – Usain Bolt spotted the TV cameraman, darted over and raised his index finger for millions of viewers to see.

“I am No. 1,” he said. “I am No. 1.”

His boast qualifies as an understatement.

Wednesday night, when Bolt cemented his status as the world’s No. 1 sprinter, he also emerged as track’s Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky and Michael Jordan. Anyone who disputes that the Jamaican star belongs in that transcendent class better brush up on track history and prepare to lose the argument.

In a space of four days here, Bolt became the first man to break the world record in the 100- and 200-meter sprints in the same Olympics since the Games resumed in 1896. It’s worth noting who doubted it would happen, too.

Michael Johnson, who set the world record in the 200 when he ran it in 19.32 seconds at the 1996 Olympics, spoke to reporters before the finals Wednesday and explained why he thought Bolt was not yet ready to break his record.

“To run a 19.3, he’s going to have to run the curve a lot better, he’s going to have to hold that speed for a very, very long time,” Johnson said. “That’s not the most easy thing to do, even for him.”

Chances are, Johnson was spot-on with his assessment – even though Bolt went out hours later and broke Johnson’s record when he covered 200 meters in 19.30 seconds. Bolt can improve his speed on the curve, which will only fuel his astonishing progression.

Already, Bolt has broken three world records in less than three months.

In May, he lowered the 100 record to 9.72 seconds from 9.74 seconds – less than six months after he started running the event as a professional. He then broke that record in Sunday’s final, winning in 9.69 seconds despite coasting for the final 20 meters. Up against the world’s top sprinters, Bolt looked like he was competing against schoolchildren.

“It was the most impressive athletic performance I’ve ever seen in my life,” Johnson said.

During the 200 final, there was no early celebration. This was Bolt at top speed from start to finish. This was Bolt competing less against the seven helpless other sprinters entered in the race than against Johnson’s 12-year-old record.

With no one within five meters of Bolt down the stretch, there he was, arms still pumping, legs still driving, straining to sustain his speed. He leaned as he reached the finish line, glanced at the clock on his left and thrust his arms in the air.

The record was Bolt’s, one day before his 22nd birthday. With that, he became the first man to simultaneously hold the world records in the 100 and 200 since Don Quarrie held both in 1979, and he became the first man to win the gold in the 100 and 200 at the same Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984.

“Michael Johnson is a great athlete and he revolutionized the sport,” Bolt said after the 200 final. “I just changed it a little bit.”

Despite all of his showboating, Bolt’s assessment fails to capture what he has done – and can do – for sprinting.

At 6-foot-5, Bolt has defied conventional wisdom that he was too tall for the 100. He has learned to burst out of the starting blocks as fast as the smaller and more compact sprinters, and his long stride gives him a sizable advantage. He needs only 40 to 41 strides to cover 100 meters whereas most 100-meter sprinters need 46 to 47 strides.

Bolt’s turnover – the speed with which his feet hit the ground – is as fast as smaller sprinters, meaning he’s virtually impossible to catch.

“He’s been able to take the long stride he has and been able to coordinate that and achieve a very long stride,” Johnson said before the 200 final. “That combination is deadly, as the people in (the 100 final) found out.”

Is Usain Bolt the best sprinter ever? As the Games approach a close, let the debate begin. But one thing is beyond debate: You can feel comfortable mentioning his name in the same breath as Gretzky, Jordan and Woods.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

wuh-oh!

jonathan rhys meyers in an irish accent is tops, too!

dance song of the moment

This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion
It’s not what, I’m used to
Just wanna try you on
I’m curious for you
Caught my attention

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don’t mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don’t mean I’m in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it
I liked it

No, I don’t even know your name
It doesn’t matter
You're my experimental game
Just human nature
It’s not what, good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets so confused
Hard to obey

Us girls we are so magical
Soft skin, red lips, so kissable
Hard to resist so touchable
Too good to deny it

Ain’t no big deal, it’s innocent

Katy Perry "I kissed a girl"

jonathan rhys meyers in an italian accent?

two words: yuuuuu-uuuuummmmmmm.

to balance all the crap and weird stuff i put in this blog... here's a little

perfection.

okay, maybe a little metro. but i wouldn't say no to

CHACE CRAWFORD.

sigh.

clever!

Jamaica’s Bolt breaks 200 mark, gets sprint double

BEIJING (AP)—Usain Bolt of Jamaica broke the world record by winning the 200 meters in 19.30 seconds Wednesday night, becoming the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984 to sweep the 100 and 200 gold medals at an Olympics.

Bolt is the first man ever to break the world marks in both sprints at an Olympics. Not even Lewis or Jesse Owens managed that.

Showing what he can do when he runs at full speed all the way through the finish—something he hadn’t done yet in the Beijing Games—Bolt eclipsed the old record of 19.32 seconds set by Michael Johnson in Atlanta in 1996.

The performance marked Bolt as one of the breakthrough stars of these Summer Games, coming on the heels of his victory in the 100 Saturday night. He bettered his own world record in that race by winning in 9.69 seconds—despite slowing down over the final 20 meters to showboat.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
how do they get faster everytime? seriously!

diega. mongol mo.

what do we know about new zealand:

1. the place where they shot the lord of the rings.
2. sheep?
3. flight of the conchords (so funny. you should watch it)
4. more sheep?
5. isn't that australia?
6. even more sheep?
7. running out of things to say
8. more sheep than people
9. lots of grass
10. great ads
    

lolo jones, us favorite to win gold for 100 m hurdles

lolo jones was the us favorite to win gold in the 100 m hurdles. she used to be poor and used her athleticism to do something about it. she won first in the semifinals and was favored to win gold. it went to another teammate after she stumbled in one of the last hurdles.

i was a swimmer so i can understand how horrible the moment after feels.

bathroom signs in home slice pizza (austin)

so which one is male and which one is female?

another bonus to remember when you're down in the dumps...

someone out there actually made a dump.

but i really admire this guy. kudos!

crushes

that's why they call 'em crushes. if they were easy, they'd call 'em something else.

- the dad in sixteen candles

can't leave it in bush's hands

figures paraguay would have hot javelin olympic throwers

Double take: Same score, 2 different medals

BEIJING (AP)—For the first few minutes, Nastia Liukin didn’t even know the score, unable to see anything beyond the “2” in front of her name.

When she finally did look, she figured she had to be seeing double.

“I turned to my dad and said, ‘Dad, we got the same score.’ He looked up and said, ‘Oh yeah.’ We started getting a little confused,” she said.

They weren’t the only ones.

The Olympic all-around champion finished with the same score as China’s He Kexin in Monday night’s uneven bars final, but He got the gold medal and Liukin went home with a silver thanks to gymnastics’ convoluted tie-break system that sent everyone scrambling for the rulebook. Reading hieroglyphics might be easier than explaining why He won.

He’s teammate, Yang Yilin, won the bronze.

“It’s not correct. I believe it’s correct to have two gold medals,” International Gymnastics Federation president Bruno Grandi said. “But this is my modest opinion. The IOC is different.”

Gymnastics used to give out duplicate medals at the Olympics. In a bit of irony, Liukin’s father, Valeri, got one of his gold medals at the 1988 Olympics after tying teammate Vladimir Artemov on high bar. But the International Olympic Committee told the FIG to stop sharing medals after the Atlanta Games, and a tie-break system was implemented in 1997.

It’s a complicated formula that is based on deductions from the execution mark and involves more math than the SAT. Even Liukin wasn’t quite sure how the tie was broken—and that was after someone explained it to her.

“I’m not sure if anybody understands what the hell is going on,” her father said.

The short answer is that He Kexin had .033 less in deductions when you apply the second tie-break formula.

For the long answer, grab a pencil and some scratch paper.

He and Liukin both finished with 16.725. They had identical 7.7 start values (the measure of a routine’s difficulty) and they each had a 9.025 for execution after the highest and lowest of the six judges’ marks were tossed out. The execution mark is based on the perfect 10 scale, and the first tie-break takes the average of the four deductions that counted. He and Liukin were still tied after that.

For the second tie-break, the three lowest deductions that counted are averaged. When that was done, He had .933 in deductions and Liukin had .966.

Got that?

“I’m a little disappointed I tied,” Liukin said. “It wasn’t like I got second by three-tenths or five-tenths. I had the same score. That’s what makes it a little harder to take.”

Not that Liukin will raise a fuss about it.

“Scoring is scoring, that’s our sport,” she said. “In other sports, like track and field, it’s all timed and it doesn’t have anything to do with judging. You do your routine and you turn it over to the judges. That’s what we’ve been going through our entire lives and we’ve come to accept it.”

Then there’s the age thing. He, Yang and China’s Jiang Yuyuan have all been dogged by questions about their ages, with several online documents and reports suggesting they could be as young as 14. A gymnast has to be 16 in an Olympic year to be eligible. He was asked about it again Monday night, and again said she was 16. Younger gymnasts have more flexibility and less fear—that’s what would give them an advantage.

But Liukin wasn’t about to be drawn into that controversy.

“She’s an excellent athlete, no matter how old she is,” Liukin said. “She’s done her hard work and her preparation. She definitely deserved her gold medal.”

He’s routine certainly was spectacular.

She’s so tiny that she flits and floats between the bars with the quickness and ease of a hummingbird. In one move, she flips herself above the top bar and catches it again with her hands crossed, twisting her body like a contortionist.

She had a slight hop on her landing, but it was a minor flaw.

Liukin’s routine was equally impressive. She, too, appears to float between the bars, and her pirouettes on the high bar are so gorgeous dancers should take note. She also did her dismount perfectly—quite an accomplishment considering it’s been a problem all year. But like He, she also had a small error, on one of her flips.

“I play by the rules. So in my opinion, I have to say yes,” Liukin said when someone asked if the result was fair. “Judges have their own opinion and once you land your dismount, there’s nothing else you can do.”

Besides, Liukin has the medal that REALLY matters.

And with four medals, she’s pulled even with her father in the race for family bragging rights.

Valeri Liukin won four medals in 1988, two gold and two silver.

“I have the most important medal and it’s the all-around gold,” she said. “I have four medals now and I’m tied with my dad. One gold, two silvers and a bronze, and I have one more chance to get one gold that I feel like I missed out on today.”

The Chinese men aren’t missing out on any golds, with Chen Yibing making them 5-for-5 with a win on still rings. They were generous enough to allow someone from another country to get the vault gold, Poland’s Leszek Blanik. Of course, they didn’t have anyone in the competition, either.
Chen’s victory was hardly a surprise. He’s a two-time world champion on rings, and his routines are masterful. When his feet slammed into the mat with a thud heard ‘round the arena, he closed his eyes and pumped his fist. He didn’t have gold quite yet—there was one other gymnast left to compete, and Chen held up a finger to the crowd to shush them—but there was no question he was the winner.

When he was introduced as the gold medalist, he threw his head back and tears filled his eyes. He and teammate Yang Wei, the silver medalist, bumped fists on the podium, and Chen sang every word of China’s anthem.

“This is the highest individual honor for me,” he said, “and I waited a long time.”

So did Blanik, the bronze medalist on vault in Sydney. It took a tie-break to decide his medal, too, with Blanik getting the edge over France’s Thomas Bouhail because he had the highest score of the gymnasts’ four attempts.

If only it was that simple for Liukin and He.

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seriously, i'm not a gymnast but even i think that the new scoring system is a fuck-up. bring back the perfect 10!

hungover.

that is my state of mind.

I don’t like it when men i don’t know start eyeballin’ me it make my agent orange start ackin’ up

— MAJOR PAYNE

i think there's something very sad about me...

that i'm crushing on a 19year old Disney kid who is too styled for his own good. the irony of it all!

seriously, joe jonas. just say the word. i'm totally regretting not accepting your fake invite on facebook (even if i knew it was by some random boy who used your name to get with girls).

home school is old school

jedi love letter

so you know which bed to shop for

me, too

fart

destined for love

a little paper art

whoa, nelly!

nelly as p. diddy's new underwear model.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

my favorite McDonald's ad

live action

medieval facebook with a modern twist

Michael Phelps eats 12,000 calories per day

After he retires from swimming, Michael Phelps might want to try his hand at competitive eating. The Olympic star recently said he consumes 12,000 calories per day, or 9,500 more than the FDA recommends for an active, young male.

Phelps has to keep his intake up in order to compensate for all the calories he burns during the 30-hours per week he spends in training. He told NBC that an average day might have the following menu:

Breakfast: 3 fried egg sandwiches, 2 cups coffee, 5-egg omlette, bowl of grits, 3 pieces of french toast, 3 chocolate chip pancakes
Lunch: 1 pound pasta, 2 ham and cheese sandwiches, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
Dinner: 1 pound pasta, 1 large pizza, energy drink (1,000 calorie)
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i want to be michael phelps! fried egg sandwiches galoreness.

redneck graffiti