Thursday, June 01, 2006

drugs, football and other items

Buy your own modern day medieval castle in Southern Portugal. Reminds me of the sign in Virginia "antique tables made everyday".

The WasPost will be doing a year long series on the condition of the black man in America.
On the same edition Robin Givhan goes ballistic on that perennial summer staple, flip-flops, and head towels for men. Every year the same story pops up. Flip-flops are not adequate, flip-flops make a mockery of formality. Perhaps so, but they also make a mockery of the ridiculous Manolo Blanick $500 shoes popularized by Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City fame. Is it because flip-flops are cheap and an affront to the fashion industry that would have women spending every last cent of their income to keep up with its impossible and oppressive standarts?
Charles Krauthammer in his friday op-ed in the Post amazingly defends the unorthodox, even illegal use of substances in the professional and art worlds and sports arenas. Questioning public outcry over baseball's Barry Bond's alleged use of steroids to break a record held by Babe Ruth, he mentions signs held up by fans claiming that Ruth made on beer, not a drug, one would think, just a refreshing baseball ritual. He mentions that doctors use ritalin to stay awake, performers and surgeons use beta blockers, and I could add that models use coke to stay professionally thin, rock musicians use opiates to overcome the sheer boredom of playing the same songs night after night, cancer patients use marijuana to beat the pain and nausea..etc. So if it's ok for Mr. Bonds to use drugs to enhance his performance in Mr. Krauthammer's perspective it should also be o.k. for other substance use. In other words, he is defending the use of illegal drugs or their use in a non prescribed context. That's pretty good for a neo-con!

A description of a new video game from the apocalyptic Left Behind series: Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces - a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Of course it all takes place in the new Sodom and Gomorrah, New Yor city.

Portugal's parliament has decided to make June 23th a holiday. On the day Portugal faces Mexico in the World cup and either gets eliminated or goes on to the next phase. I say that Portugal will win. By the way, Ukraine followed suit and did the same thing. Ah! Futebol fever!!! Here's a link to the blog dedicated to the portuguese team.

A scientist has claimed that he has reproduced Mona Lisa's voice with 90% accuracy. I would have to go back to my phonetics classes' appointments, but I seem to recall that it takes more than the shape of the mouth and surrounding bone structure to make the peculiar sound atributable to every person. The size of the chest cavity, another resonance box, and the length and strength of the vocal cords will also influence the sound emanating from someone. Hell, even the tilt of the head influences the way our voice sounds. Probably someone riding the DaVici code fest.

Paintings by a blind man, name Esref Armagan . Pretty amazing, especially the portrait of Clinton. WOW!

Fabulously funny commercial (via Swissmiss)

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

RE: Krauthammer

Read it again. I think you missed his meaning. He poses interesting questions about performance enhancers in other arenas. He nevertheless condemns Bonds.

5:48 PM  

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