Tuesday, July 25, 2006
(07-25) 15:01 PDT BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) --
A U.N. observer post was hit by an Israeli airstrike in south Lebanon Tuesday, killing four peacekeepers, U.N. officials said.
A bomb directly hit the building and shelter of an Indian patrol base from the observer force in the town of Khiyam near the eastern end of the border with Israel, said Milos Struger, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon known as UNIFIL.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said in New York that the Security Council was informed that four officers with UNIFIL were killed, but he had no other information.
"We're obviously very sorry," Boltin said. "We're attempting to get information where we can to confirm the nature of the incident."
Struger also said there were 14 other incidents of firing close to this position from the Israeli side Tuesday afternoon. "The firing continued even during the rescue operation," he said.
Since Israel launched a massive military offensive against Lebanon and Hezbollah guerrillas July 12, an international civilian employee working with UNIFIL and his wife have been killed in the crossfire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah guerrillas in the southern port city of Tyre.
Five UNIFIL soldiers and one military observer have also been wounded, Struger said.
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/07/25/international/i150154D50.DTL
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Saturday, July 15, 2006
Soft Ballet & Buck-Tick
Sound & vision quality is sucky but it's FN Sakurai Atsushi & Ryoichi Endo!!
BUCK-TICK with SOFT BALLET - ICONOCLASM [LIVE] [1993]
Buck-Tick - Diabolo (2005)
Atsushi Sakurai - SACRIFICE (2004)
Buck-Tick - Buster (live 2002)
Buck-Tick - Jupiter - Live Devil & Freud 2004
BUCK-TICK - IN HEAVEN [TV] [1988]
Buck-Tick - Romance (2005)
Soft Ballet - Merchendiver
Schwein- You'r My Disease
Saturday, June 10, 2006
World's oldest condom
The oldest surviving condom in the world has gone on display in an Austrian museum.
The reusable condom dates back to 1640 and is completely intact, as is its orginal users' manual, written in Latin.
The manual suggests that users immerse the condom in warm milk prior to its use to avoid diseases.
The antique, found in Lund in Sweden, is made of pig intestine and is one of 250 ancient objects related to sex on display at the Tirolean County Museum in Austria this summer. Sorry Can't find the Museums web site.
Friday, June 09, 2006
Which Way To The Apocalypse? When all the fanatical Christians disappear, will traffic finally improve?
Wait, did I miss it?
Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta?
I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were they suddenly whisked off into the humming glorious divine ether in one big orgiastic load of divine redemption, leaving us heathens and pagans and Wiccans and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and journalists to fight it out over the last scraps of artisan Gruyère and fine Pinot Noir and gorgeous new Porsche Caymans? I simply cannot be sure.
Because if so, I am sitting here feeling a little gypped. I am sitting here not at all on fire, not at all reeling in unrelenting pain, not at all staring into the hot face of vile eternal doom without a single oscillating fan to cool my aching bones. Yet another portentous day has passed and the Rapture Index is almost off the charts with seething Armageddon certainty, and yet I'm still getting perfectly good cell reception. What gives?
After all, the time is now. The pump of doom is perfectly primed. The elements are all in place: massive BushCo abuse and vicious war and increasingly violent storms and armies of the ignorant and the righteous broadcasting their hate and their abominable fashion sense across the land. Do you not feel it? Man, we are so ready.
And yet still we wait.
I do not exactly know how the Christian right envisions Armageddon (though their new "Left Behind" video game is a happily blood-drenched indicator), but here is how I've always pictured it:
Hordes of the ultra-pious, decked out in "I (Heart) Jimmy Swaggart's Flop Sweat" T-shirts and black socks with sandals, rise to the heavens in giant peach-colored Ford Aerostars to gather in enormous hugging throngs where they are met by a wary and bleary-eyed St. Peter who offers them processed cold cuts and Kraft Singles and lukewarm Diet Dr. Pepper.
There are rusty swing sets with exposed bolts. There are inflatable pools. There is watery decaf coffee. There are large fleets of beige 1997 Honda Civics with cassette players locked down and preloaded with only Mariah Carey and Yanni. Everyone is slowly but surely driven giddily insane by the incessant harp music and the unmistakable scent of angel droppings. All thought ceases.
Yes, Jesus is there, smiling and rocking back and forth and looking just weirdly happy, and the minions gather 'round him in swooning, narcotized glee, everyone feeling more than a little justified for all their nasty deeds while on Earth, all the abortion clinic firebombings and all the protests of "The Da Vinci Code" and that morally nauseating thing with Terri Schiavo back in '05.
Finally, finally they have arrived at a place where no one is having sex and no one wants to marry someone from their same gender and all experience has been filed down to a dull nub of vague, tasteless sensation as liquid Prozac is misted into the air via a giant Glade Plug-In the size of Florida.
Except something is a little off. Something is not quite right. Let us look closer. Why, that's not Jesus at all -- it's actually a big blow-up doll of Jesus, a giant swaying latex toy, a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man painted to look like Jesus, bobbing back and forth like a car salesman on meth. Hmm.
But the minions, of course, do not notice. They are all swaying and waving in equally ecstatic response. It is one hell of a spectacle. It is vaguely cultish. It is also, eerily, exactly like a Celine Dion concert. Hmm.
And where's the real Jesus? Why, the true Christ is back on Earth, once and for all and finally, teaching everyone an incredible new dance, preparing the open minded and the nondogmatic for cosmic leapfrog. Turns out that only when the fanatics and the zealots and the demagogues were finally airlifted to the great padded Romper Room in the sky that the real Great Work could finally continue. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that fabulous? Isn't that exactly what you suspected all along?
What a fanciful dream. Indeed, you may think this talk of the Second Coming is just silly. You may think talk of Armageddon is just best left to plasticky televangelists and anti-everything fanatics like James Dobson and people who organize their gun collections by phallicentricity. And you would be very much mostly correct.
But be reminded: As reported here previously, the "Left Behind" series of Apocalypse-porn books has sold upward of 65 million copies worldwide. Many, many in high positions of power in the U.S. government (Hi, Senator Santorum!) see the accelerated deterioration of the Earth as a very good thing indeed, as there is no deed more worthy, no abuse more justified than that which helps hasten the Second Coming. SUVs? War? Oil gluttony? Ozone depletion? Condi Rice? All good, baby. All quickening the imminent Apocalypse.
Of course, there is a divine kicker. There is an entirely different scenario, similar but also completely different. Since ancient, pre-Christian times, the mystics and wise ones have their version of Armageddon, too, though theirs involves far less screaming and much less hellfire and far fewer interminable reruns of "7th Heaven" on local cable.
It does not, furthermore, involve leaving billions behind to fester and kill and drink pig's blood and remain wallowing in hell. It is merely a time when those whose hearts are luminous and whose perspectives are clear and whose minds are open and whose spirits are unpummeled by dogma and monotheistic self-righteousness, well, they will merely slip over to another plane. As for the rest, they will merely be resigned to experiencing this life all over again, and again, and again, until they get it right. It's just like the Christian Rapture, except flipped over and inverted and made transcendent and well lubricated and naked.
It is a time, maybe even just six years from now (2012, according to a very prescient Mayan calendar), when a Great Awakening will occur. It is when those who are ready, spiritually and energetically speaking, to evolve, to take the Next Step, will take a great trampoline backflip into deeper awareness.
You want a sign? You want something to signal you when it's about to happen? Easy enough. You can't miss it: Just look for the sudden, global, collective s---eating grin.
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him - mmorford@sfgate.com
Did it happen three days ago, on 6-6-06, a.k.a. Tea Time with the Beast, a.k.a. the Great Day of Reckoning, a.k.a. the National Day of Slayer, all the world crashing down in a heap of hissing steam and belching smoke and balmy gusty breezes sometime around noon just after lunch but not before rush hour and hitting right around siesta?
I might have been napping. Did the Apocalypse finally hit? Did the deep wish of roughly a half-billion zealous believers come to pass and were they suddenly whisked off into the humming glorious divine ether in one big orgiastic load of divine redemption, leaving us heathens and pagans and Wiccans and Jews and Muslims and Buddhists and journalists to fight it out over the last scraps of artisan Gruyère and fine Pinot Noir and gorgeous new Porsche Caymans? I simply cannot be sure.
Because if so, I am sitting here feeling a little gypped. I am sitting here not at all on fire, not at all reeling in unrelenting pain, not at all staring into the hot face of vile eternal doom without a single oscillating fan to cool my aching bones. Yet another portentous day has passed and the Rapture Index is almost off the charts with seething Armageddon certainty, and yet I'm still getting perfectly good cell reception. What gives?
After all, the time is now. The pump of doom is perfectly primed. The elements are all in place: massive BushCo abuse and vicious war and increasingly violent storms and armies of the ignorant and the righteous broadcasting their hate and their abominable fashion sense across the land. Do you not feel it? Man, we are so ready.
And yet still we wait.
I do not exactly know how the Christian right envisions Armageddon (though their new "Left Behind" video game is a happily blood-drenched indicator), but here is how I've always pictured it:
Hordes of the ultra-pious, decked out in "I (Heart) Jimmy Swaggart's Flop Sweat" T-shirts and black socks with sandals, rise to the heavens in giant peach-colored Ford Aerostars to gather in enormous hugging throngs where they are met by a wary and bleary-eyed St. Peter who offers them processed cold cuts and Kraft Singles and lukewarm Diet Dr. Pepper.
There are rusty swing sets with exposed bolts. There are inflatable pools. There is watery decaf coffee. There are large fleets of beige 1997 Honda Civics with cassette players locked down and preloaded with only Mariah Carey and Yanni. Everyone is slowly but surely driven giddily insane by the incessant harp music and the unmistakable scent of angel droppings. All thought ceases.
Yes, Jesus is there, smiling and rocking back and forth and looking just weirdly happy, and the minions gather 'round him in swooning, narcotized glee, everyone feeling more than a little justified for all their nasty deeds while on Earth, all the abortion clinic firebombings and all the protests of "The Da Vinci Code" and that morally nauseating thing with Terri Schiavo back in '05.
Finally, finally they have arrived at a place where no one is having sex and no one wants to marry someone from their same gender and all experience has been filed down to a dull nub of vague, tasteless sensation as liquid Prozac is misted into the air via a giant Glade Plug-In the size of Florida.
Except something is a little off. Something is not quite right. Let us look closer. Why, that's not Jesus at all -- it's actually a big blow-up doll of Jesus, a giant swaying latex toy, a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man painted to look like Jesus, bobbing back and forth like a car salesman on meth. Hmm.
But the minions, of course, do not notice. They are all swaying and waving in equally ecstatic response. It is one hell of a spectacle. It is vaguely cultish. It is also, eerily, exactly like a Celine Dion concert. Hmm.
And where's the real Jesus? Why, the true Christ is back on Earth, once and for all and finally, teaching everyone an incredible new dance, preparing the open minded and the nondogmatic for cosmic leapfrog. Turns out that only when the fanatics and the zealots and the demagogues were finally airlifted to the great padded Romper Room in the sky that the real Great Work could finally continue. Isn't that ironic? Isn't that fabulous? Isn't that exactly what you suspected all along?
What a fanciful dream. Indeed, you may think this talk of the Second Coming is just silly. You may think talk of Armageddon is just best left to plasticky televangelists and anti-everything fanatics like James Dobson and people who organize their gun collections by phallicentricity. And you would be very much mostly correct.
But be reminded: As reported here previously, the "Left Behind" series of Apocalypse-porn books has sold upward of 65 million copies worldwide. Many, many in high positions of power in the U.S. government (Hi, Senator Santorum!) see the accelerated deterioration of the Earth as a very good thing indeed, as there is no deed more worthy, no abuse more justified than that which helps hasten the Second Coming. SUVs? War? Oil gluttony? Ozone depletion? Condi Rice? All good, baby. All quickening the imminent Apocalypse.
Of course, there is a divine kicker. There is an entirely different scenario, similar but also completely different. Since ancient, pre-Christian times, the mystics and wise ones have their version of Armageddon, too, though theirs involves far less screaming and much less hellfire and far fewer interminable reruns of "7th Heaven" on local cable.
It does not, furthermore, involve leaving billions behind to fester and kill and drink pig's blood and remain wallowing in hell. It is merely a time when those whose hearts are luminous and whose perspectives are clear and whose minds are open and whose spirits are unpummeled by dogma and monotheistic self-righteousness, well, they will merely slip over to another plane. As for the rest, they will merely be resigned to experiencing this life all over again, and again, and again, until they get it right. It's just like the Christian Rapture, except flipped over and inverted and made transcendent and well lubricated and naked.
It is a time, maybe even just six years from now (2012, according to a very prescient Mayan calendar), when a Great Awakening will occur. It is when those who are ready, spiritually and energetically speaking, to evolve, to take the Next Step, will take a great trampoline backflip into deeper awareness.
You want a sign? You want something to signal you when it's about to happen? Easy enough. You can't miss it: Just look for the sudden, global, collective s---eating grin.
Thoughts for the author? E-mail him - mmorford@sfgate.com
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Anyone seen the beast? Today's date supposedly a wicked number, but the Vatican doesn't seem too worried
There are those worthless souls who ignore the power of 666, who believe today -- June 6, 2006 -- is nothing more than another ordinary mark on the ordinary calendar. They will go about their lives, blind to the bloodcurdling evil all around.
Soon, the streets will fill with death and decay.
Soon, the anti-Christ will rise to render the Earth a mosh pit of despair -- an empty, rotted stink hole of evil mayhem brought about by all things satanic. Doom will reign! Faces will melt! The world will explode! Die! Die! Die!
Or maybe not.
Yes, the date is June 6, 2006. And yes, there is a movie remake, "The Omen," that premieres today and focuses on the idea that 6/6/06 marks the rise of the anti-Christ. And yes, a couple of people even believe it. (According to a report by Tony Allen-Mills of Britain's Sunday Times, a pregnant Englishwoman recently urged her doctor to do everything within his power to push up her June 6 due date.)
"But I think I can assure you we're safe," says Fred Berardi, a monsignor with Holy Family Church in New Rochelle, N.Y. "Nobody needs to hide under their furniture."
Indeed, few within the Vatican appear to be losing much sleep.
There have been no public warnings, no cries from Pope Benedict XVI to load up on canned goods.
And yet, a legitimate biblical tie between 666 and bad stuff seems to exist. As reads Revelation 13:16-18: "He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666."
By "the beast," is the Bible referring to a three-headed, red-eyed ogre? Unlikely. Instead, most scholars interpret 666 to be the numerical code for Nero, the fifth Roman Emperor (A.D. 54-68) of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians.
"The legend of the anti-Christ is that of an agent of Satan empowered to pave the way for the end of times," says Phil Stevens, a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and an expert on religious symbolism. "The myth of the anti-Christ has been passed down through the generations. But to start with, it appeared to be simply a very disliked man."
For the record, we've gone through this before.
The concept of a heinous 666 received a nice jolt in the year 1666, when the Great Fire of London killed thousands and left more than 100,000 people without homes. Unfortunately for panic's sake, there's little else to work with.
Page A - 2
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/06/MNGP7J94SK1.DTL
Soon, the streets will fill with death and decay.
Soon, the anti-Christ will rise to render the Earth a mosh pit of despair -- an empty, rotted stink hole of evil mayhem brought about by all things satanic. Doom will reign! Faces will melt! The world will explode! Die! Die! Die!
Or maybe not.
Yes, the date is June 6, 2006. And yes, there is a movie remake, "The Omen," that premieres today and focuses on the idea that 6/6/06 marks the rise of the anti-Christ. And yes, a couple of people even believe it. (According to a report by Tony Allen-Mills of Britain's Sunday Times, a pregnant Englishwoman recently urged her doctor to do everything within his power to push up her June 6 due date.)
"But I think I can assure you we're safe," says Fred Berardi, a monsignor with Holy Family Church in New Rochelle, N.Y. "Nobody needs to hide under their furniture."
Indeed, few within the Vatican appear to be losing much sleep.
There have been no public warnings, no cries from Pope Benedict XVI to load up on canned goods.
And yet, a legitimate biblical tie between 666 and bad stuff seems to exist. As reads Revelation 13:16-18: "He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name. This calls for wisdom. If anyone has insight, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is man's number. His number is 666."
By "the beast," is the Bible referring to a three-headed, red-eyed ogre? Unlikely. Instead, most scholars interpret 666 to be the numerical code for Nero, the fifth Roman Emperor (A.D. 54-68) of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, who ruthlessly persecuted Christians.
"The legend of the anti-Christ is that of an agent of Satan empowered to pave the way for the end of times," says Phil Stevens, a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York at Buffalo and an expert on religious symbolism. "The myth of the anti-Christ has been passed down through the generations. But to start with, it appeared to be simply a very disliked man."
For the record, we've gone through this before.
The concept of a heinous 666 received a nice jolt in the year 1666, when the Great Fire of London killed thousands and left more than 100,000 people without homes. Unfortunately for panic's sake, there's little else to work with.
Page A - 2
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/06/MNGP7J94SK1.DTL
Monday, June 05, 2006
12 Reasons Gay Marriage Will Ruin Society
1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control are not natural.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.
10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people cannot get legally married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously gay parents will raise gay children because straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful, since Britney Spears's 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and it hasn't changed at all: women are property, Blacks can't marry Whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by the people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are always imposed on the entire country. That's why we only have one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people makes you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage license.
10. Children can never succeed without both male and female role models at home. That's why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven't adapted to cars or longer lifespans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a "separate but equal" institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages will for gays & lesbians.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Robertson Says He Leg-Pressed 2,000 Pounds
(05-26) 18:29 PDT Virginia Beach, Va. (AP) --
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he has leg-pressed 2,000 pounds, but some say he'd be in a pretty tough spot if he tried.
The "700 Club" host's feat of strength is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network, in a posting headlined "How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds."
According to the CBN Web site, Robertson worked his way up to lifting a ton with the help of his physician, who is not named. The posting does not say when the lift occurred, but a CBN spokeswoman released photos to The Associated Press that she said showed Robertson lifting 2,000 pounds in 2003, when Robertson was 73. He is now 76.
The Web posting said two men loaded the leg-press machine with 2,000 pounds "and then let it down on Mr. Robertson, who pushed it up one rep and let it go back down again." The Web site said several people witnessed the event, and shows video of Robertson leg-pressing what appears to be 1,000 pounds.
Clay Travis of CBS SportsLine.com called the 2,000-pound assertion impossible in a column this week, writing that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less.
"Where in the world did Robertson even find a machine that could hold 2,000 pounds at one time?" Travis asked.
Andy Zucker, a strength-training coach at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, said leg presses of more than 1,000 pounds represent "a Herculean effort, and 2,000 pounds is a whole other story."
"If he was able to lift that much weight, I take my hat off to him, but the numbers suggest that people who lift that much weight are few and far between," Zucker said. "One would have to see what type of leg press it was on and under what parameters it was done."
CBN spokeswoman Angell Vasko said Friday that Robertson was not available for comment because he was "out of pocket" for the long holiday weekend.
Vasko said she has not seen Robertson leg-press 2,000 pounds but that it's not "a huge shocker" that he could.
"Pat is so healthy," she said. "This is something he trained for over an extended period of time. He lives a very healthy, regimented life."
One of the photos Vasko released had a digital date stamp of 1994, although she said Robertson performed the leg press in 2003. Vasko said that perhaps the date was not set properly on the camera.
The CBN Web site attributes Robertson's energy in part to "his age-defying protein shake." The site offers a recipe for the shake, which contains ingredients such as soy protein isolate, whey protein isolate, flaxseed oil and apple cider vinegar.
___
On the Net:
CBN Web site:
www.cbn.com/communitypublic/shake.asp
Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he has leg-pressed 2,000 pounds, but some say he'd be in a pretty tough spot if he tried.
The "700 Club" host's feat of strength is recounted on the Web site of his Christian Broadcasting Network, in a posting headlined "How Pat Robertson Leg Pressed 2,000 Pounds."
According to the CBN Web site, Robertson worked his way up to lifting a ton with the help of his physician, who is not named. The posting does not say when the lift occurred, but a CBN spokeswoman released photos to The Associated Press that she said showed Robertson lifting 2,000 pounds in 2003, when Robertson was 73. He is now 76.
The Web posting said two men loaded the leg-press machine with 2,000 pounds "and then let it down on Mr. Robertson, who pushed it up one rep and let it go back down again." The Web site said several people witnessed the event, and shows video of Robertson leg-pressing what appears to be 1,000 pounds.
Clay Travis of CBS SportsLine.com called the 2,000-pound assertion impossible in a column this week, writing that the leg-press record for football players at Florida State University is 665 pounds less.
"Where in the world did Robertson even find a machine that could hold 2,000 pounds at one time?" Travis asked.
Andy Zucker, a strength-training coach at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, said leg presses of more than 1,000 pounds represent "a Herculean effort, and 2,000 pounds is a whole other story."
"If he was able to lift that much weight, I take my hat off to him, but the numbers suggest that people who lift that much weight are few and far between," Zucker said. "One would have to see what type of leg press it was on and under what parameters it was done."
CBN spokeswoman Angell Vasko said Friday that Robertson was not available for comment because he was "out of pocket" for the long holiday weekend.
Vasko said she has not seen Robertson leg-press 2,000 pounds but that it's not "a huge shocker" that he could.
"Pat is so healthy," she said. "This is something he trained for over an extended period of time. He lives a very healthy, regimented life."
One of the photos Vasko released had a digital date stamp of 1994, although she said Robertson performed the leg press in 2003. Vasko said that perhaps the date was not set properly on the camera.
The CBN Web site attributes Robertson's energy in part to "his age-defying protein shake." The site offers a recipe for the shake, which contains ingredients such as soy protein isolate, whey protein isolate, flaxseed oil and apple cider vinegar.
___
On the Net:
CBN Web site:
www.cbn.com/communitypublic/shake.asp
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Friday, May 19, 2006
Last chance to save LA's South Central Farm
The following is From BoingBoing.net
The South Central Farm, which is believed to be the largest urban community garden in the United States, will disappear shortly unless members of the public lend a helping hand. Created by the City of Los Angeles after the 1992 Rodney King uprising, the 14-acre farm in South Central Los Angeles, offers plots of land that 350 low-income families use to grow their own food. The City of Los Angeles sold the land it to a developer in a backroom deal.
The farmers held off bulldozers by legal action, but the developer recently received approval from the court to evict them. The Trust for Public Land, a national, nonprofit, land conservation organization that is working to save the farm, has until Monday, May 22, 2006, to raise approximately $10 million to purchase the land. They are part of the way there, but need several million more.
THE LOS ANGELES SOUTH CENTRAL FARM
The South Central Farm, which is believed to be the largest urban community garden in the United States, will disappear shortly unless members of the public lend a helping hand. Created by the City of Los Angeles after the 1992 Rodney King uprising, the 14-acre farm in South Central Los Angeles, offers plots of land that 350 low-income families use to grow their own food. The City of Los Angeles sold the land it to a developer in a backroom deal.
The farmers held off bulldozers by legal action, but the developer recently received approval from the court to evict them. The Trust for Public Land, a national, nonprofit, land conservation organization that is working to save the farm, has until Monday, May 22, 2006, to raise approximately $10 million to purchase the land. They are part of the way there, but need several million more.
THE LOS ANGELES SOUTH CENTRAL FARM
Saturday, May 13, 2006
Christian Virgins Are Overrated
Christian Virgins Are Overrated
Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls"
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 12, 2006
There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country.
Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys, but rather fancy creepy dress-up rituals taking place in towns like Colorado Springs and Tucson and Zoloft Jesusville, in which Christian dads rent a bad tux while their daughters, mostly teenagers but many as young as 6 or 7, get all dolled up in gowns from JCPenny and they all drive out to the airport Marriott and prepare to, well, lose their minds.
It begins. At some point the daughter stands up, her pale arms wrapped around her daddy, and reads aloud a formal pledge that she will remain forever pure and virginal and sex-free until she is handed over, by her dad (who is actually called the "high priest" of the home), like some sort of sad hymenic gift, to her husband, who will receive her like the sanitized and overprotected and libidinously inept servant she so very much is. Praise!
Would that I were making this up.
The dad -- er, high priest -- in turn, stands up and reads his pledge, one stating that he will work to protect his daughter's virginal purity that he has so carefully and wickedly drilled into her since birth, since she was knee-high to a disturbing dogma, that he will protect her chastity and oversee it and help enforce its boundaries, which might or might not involve great amounts of rage and confusion and secret stashes of cheap scotch, although his pledge claims it's with honor and integrity and lots of bewildering Godspeak. Which, in many households, is essentially the same thing.
It's true. Purity Balls are happening, right now. And yes, you have heard this all before. Particularly from the conservative Right, especially from America's rigid and pale fundamentalist "core."
Premarital sex is evil. Female sexuality must be, as ever, contained, repressed, shoved deep down lest it tempt men to sin like gleeful pagans licking ice cream from the pierced nipples of the devil. Girls do not know how to handle their own genitalia and therefore must be taught -- by their fathers, no less -- how to dilute their sexual power in order to attract a sexually unqualified, God-fearing husband. You know, same as it ever was.
Very well. Let us now trace the path of imminent cultural destruction: Virgin girl has zero experience with the joys of her own body, with orgasm, with men, with sex toys or shower heads or good gynecological gizmongery. She then marries a man who will very likely have not the slightest clue (as he has had the same dreadful sexual miseducation as our fair virgin) as to what to do with a woman's body, who will, by most all accounts, be unable to tell an erogenous zone from an elbow, a clitoris from a belly button.
Voilà, the standard recipe for emotional, physical and spiritual catastrophe, for roughly 17 years of vague marital misery capped off by divorce and much therapy and four unhappy children and the profound and aching need located somewhere deep beneath the pelvic bone to try something, anything new and different and sexually liberating.
Let's just say it outright: The superiority of virginity myth, it is a massive, underreported disaster. It is a ridiculous and exhausting misconception that must be eradicated like a cancer. Perhaps French philosopher Voltaire said it best, nearly 300 years ago: "It is one of the great superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue." So true.
Which is another way of asking, Don't we have it exactly backward? Shouldn't one's overall happiness -- physical, marital or otherwise -- be directly equated with exceptional amounts of sexual training and education and awareness? Is such positively libidinous education not a recipe for health and well-being and long-term marital satisfaction? You already know the answer.
Look, the plague of sexual incompetence plagues our land like a plague. It infects our schools, our popular culture, our presidential administration. The right endorses wanton sexual stupidity (and all ensuing miseries, drug addictions, divorces, stresses, gun fetishes, online porn obsessions) through failed abstinence programs, STD misinformation, refusal to support quality birth control and the relentless repetition of lies about sin and depravity and a shocking ignorance of the transformative spiritual power of sex. Purity Balls? Nothing but a sad celebration of that exact ignorance.
No wonder over half of all teens who take any sort of virginity pledge end up breaking the ridiculous vow within a year (says a new Harvard study), and fully 88 percent end up having sex before marriage anyway. What's more, such silly pledges only result in more oral and anal sex among teens who try, vainly, to adhere. They also marry younger, have fewer sexual partners (read: less skill) and yet have exactly the same rate of STDs as kids who are smart enough to avoid such pointless pledges in the first place.
Would that we had a new agenda, a sexually informed education system that truly empowered teens, that taught open-minded respect for bodies and flesh, pleasure and joy and physical/spiritual awareness. Sure, include STDs and appropriate birth-control information, but not as a deterrent, not as some sort of nasty weapon of fear. Rather, arm your virgin daughters and inept sons with slick and giddy reverence for the joys of the flesh, for its potential to transform and ease tension and make you realize all is not so wrong and sinful and hateful with the world.
Would we not be utterly transformed? Would we not finally be free of the sneering, churlish mentality that somehow thinks virgins are dumb, immaculate prizes to be won? Let's just say it: There is no sacredness in the virgin. There is only the fear, were she to be educated and empowered and really let loose, of what she could become.
Think sex and drugs destroy America? Try naive chastity. Oh, and "Purity Balls"
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, May 12, 2006
There are these things. These unholy events called "Purity Balls" and you should probably fall to your knees right this minute and thank a merciful and lubricious and happily polyamorous God that you do not know what they are and that you have access right this minute to vast quantities of wine to deflect their nasty karmic arrows because, you know, oh my God. But hey, free country.
Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys, but rather fancy creepy dress-up rituals taking place in towns like Colorado Springs and Tucson and Zoloft Jesusville, in which Christian dads rent a bad tux while their daughters, mostly teenagers but many as young as 6 or 7, get all dolled up in gowns from JCPenny and they all drive out to the airport Marriott and prepare to, well, lose their minds.
It begins. At some point the daughter stands up, her pale arms wrapped around her daddy, and reads aloud a formal pledge that she will remain forever pure and virginal and sex-free until she is handed over, by her dad (who is actually called the "high priest" of the home), like some sort of sad hymenic gift, to her husband, who will receive her like the sanitized and overprotected and libidinously inept servant she so very much is. Praise!
Would that I were making this up.
The dad -- er, high priest -- in turn, stands up and reads his pledge, one stating that he will work to protect his daughter's virginal purity that he has so carefully and wickedly drilled into her since birth, since she was knee-high to a disturbing dogma, that he will protect her chastity and oversee it and help enforce its boundaries, which might or might not involve great amounts of rage and confusion and secret stashes of cheap scotch, although his pledge claims it's with honor and integrity and lots of bewildering Godspeak. Which, in many households, is essentially the same thing.
It's true. Purity Balls are happening, right now. And yes, you have heard this all before. Particularly from the conservative Right, especially from America's rigid and pale fundamentalist "core."
Premarital sex is evil. Female sexuality must be, as ever, contained, repressed, shoved deep down lest it tempt men to sin like gleeful pagans licking ice cream from the pierced nipples of the devil. Girls do not know how to handle their own genitalia and therefore must be taught -- by their fathers, no less -- how to dilute their sexual power in order to attract a sexually unqualified, God-fearing husband. You know, same as it ever was.
Very well. Let us now trace the path of imminent cultural destruction: Virgin girl has zero experience with the joys of her own body, with orgasm, with men, with sex toys or shower heads or good gynecological gizmongery. She then marries a man who will very likely have not the slightest clue (as he has had the same dreadful sexual miseducation as our fair virgin) as to what to do with a woman's body, who will, by most all accounts, be unable to tell an erogenous zone from an elbow, a clitoris from a belly button.
Voilà, the standard recipe for emotional, physical and spiritual catastrophe, for roughly 17 years of vague marital misery capped off by divorce and much therapy and four unhappy children and the profound and aching need located somewhere deep beneath the pelvic bone to try something, anything new and different and sexually liberating.
Let's just say it outright: The superiority of virginity myth, it is a massive, underreported disaster. It is a ridiculous and exhausting misconception that must be eradicated like a cancer. Perhaps French philosopher Voltaire said it best, nearly 300 years ago: "It is one of the great superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity could be a virtue." So true.
Which is another way of asking, Don't we have it exactly backward? Shouldn't one's overall happiness -- physical, marital or otherwise -- be directly equated with exceptional amounts of sexual training and education and awareness? Is such positively libidinous education not a recipe for health and well-being and long-term marital satisfaction? You already know the answer.
Look, the plague of sexual incompetence plagues our land like a plague. It infects our schools, our popular culture, our presidential administration. The right endorses wanton sexual stupidity (and all ensuing miseries, drug addictions, divorces, stresses, gun fetishes, online porn obsessions) through failed abstinence programs, STD misinformation, refusal to support quality birth control and the relentless repetition of lies about sin and depravity and a shocking ignorance of the transformative spiritual power of sex. Purity Balls? Nothing but a sad celebration of that exact ignorance.
No wonder over half of all teens who take any sort of virginity pledge end up breaking the ridiculous vow within a year (says a new Harvard study), and fully 88 percent end up having sex before marriage anyway. What's more, such silly pledges only result in more oral and anal sex among teens who try, vainly, to adhere. They also marry younger, have fewer sexual partners (read: less skill) and yet have exactly the same rate of STDs as kids who are smart enough to avoid such pointless pledges in the first place.
Would that we had a new agenda, a sexually informed education system that truly empowered teens, that taught open-minded respect for bodies and flesh, pleasure and joy and physical/spiritual awareness. Sure, include STDs and appropriate birth-control information, but not as a deterrent, not as some sort of nasty weapon of fear. Rather, arm your virgin daughters and inept sons with slick and giddy reverence for the joys of the flesh, for its potential to transform and ease tension and make you realize all is not so wrong and sinful and hateful with the world.
Would we not be utterly transformed? Would we not finally be free of the sneering, churlish mentality that somehow thinks virgins are dumb, immaculate prizes to be won? Let's just say it: There is no sacredness in the virgin. There is only the fear, were she to be educated and empowered and really let loose, of what she could become.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Go play!!
Taphophilia (dot) Com
Bookworm game
Russian Jrock Community
Fishbone interviewed on a 1987 Japanese television show #1
Fishbone interviewed on a 1987 Japanese television show #2
ROSSO - DIAMOND DUST SPECIAL -Monster Bash 2005
FAKE? - Tour of Losing Touch Part One of Two
FAKE? - Tour of Losing Touch Part Two of Two
Bookworm game
Russian Jrock Community
Fishbone interviewed on a 1987 Japanese television show #1
Fishbone interviewed on a 1987 Japanese television show #2
ROSSO - DIAMOND DUST SPECIAL -Monster Bash 2005
FAKE? - Tour of Losing Touch Part One of Two
FAKE? - Tour of Losing Touch Part Two of Two
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Asian girls who ROCK!
Thug Murder: Double Fist
hang on the box: di di di
Shorty Cat: With the punk
Lolita No. 18 - Kuroru
Bleach - Hadaka no joou (pv)
Youjeen - Hey Jerks PV
Spin Aqua - unchained
Nakanomori BAND - Whatever
ZELDA - Electric Sweetie(R&R BAND STAND87-88)
Mayumi Chiwaki - Aurora girl
Noodles - sweeper
Female Fronted J-Rock Live
Franchicks - I'm down
PLASTICS - COPY
Lolita No. 18 - Hardcore Retsuden
softball: revive
shonen knife - RIDING ON THE ROCKET
Petty Booka - Mercedes Benz
hang on the box: di di di
Shorty Cat: With the punk
Lolita No. 18 - Kuroru
Bleach - Hadaka no joou (pv)
Youjeen - Hey Jerks PV
Spin Aqua - unchained
Nakanomori BAND - Whatever
ZELDA - Electric Sweetie(R&R BAND STAND87-88)
Mayumi Chiwaki - Aurora girl
Noodles - sweeper
Female Fronted J-Rock Live
Franchicks - I'm down
PLASTICS - COPY
Lolita No. 18 - Hardcore Retsuden
softball: revive
shonen knife - RIDING ON THE ROCKET
Petty Booka - Mercedes Benz
Monday, May 01, 2006
Some Spiffy Music
"Attack of The indie's" Documentary Video (NHK Japan 1985)
The Avengers: The American in Me
Patti Smith: Because The Night
Lulu: To Sir With Love
Marlene Dietrich~ Screen test for The Blue Angel
bob marley - war
Rancid- The Harder They Come
eek-a-mouse - safari
Buck-Tick - Romance
dancehall live from jamrock 70's
The Stalin - live clip
The Avengers: The American in Me
Patti Smith: Because The Night
Lulu: To Sir With Love
Marlene Dietrich~ Screen test for The Blue Angel
bob marley - war
Rancid- The Harder They Come
eek-a-mouse - safari
Buck-Tick - Romance
dancehall live from jamrock 70's
The Stalin - live clip
Sunday, April 30, 2006
A JUNKIE'S A JUNKIE!!
HEY KIDS!! Now you know how to get around the law!! But only if you are Rich, White, Male & a Total Freakin' HYROCRITE!!!
US radio pundit on drugs charge
Limbaugh, Prosecutors Can Declare Victory
Davis Sweet: Free Rush Limbaugh!
Maia Szalavitz: Feeling Rush's Pain?
US radio pundit on drugs charge
Limbaugh, Prosecutors Can Declare Victory
Davis Sweet: Free Rush Limbaugh!
Maia Szalavitz: Feeling Rush's Pain?
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Friday, April 28, 2006
25 TOP BAY AREA SONGS -- THE DEBATE IS ON
25 TOP BAY AREA SONGS -- THE DEBATE IS ON
THE CHRONICLE'S LIST
COMPILED BY AIDIN VAZIRI AND JOEL SELVIN
1. I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER -- Sly and the Family Stone -- The Woodstock anthem from the psychedelic soul rockers
2. DARK STAR -- Grateful Dead -- Space is their place
3. SLOW DEATH -- Flamin' Groovies -- Every English punk band knew this one
4. MASTER OF PUPPETS -- Metallica -- Don't have to be online to be on our list
5. BALLAD OF YOU AND ME AND POONEIL -- Jefferson Airplane -- Like the band itself, awful and fabulous at the same time
6. CALIFORNIA ÜBER ALLES -- Dead Kennedys -- San Francisco punk from the Jerry Brown era
7. YOU MAKE ME FEEL (MIGHTY REAL) -- Sylvester -- Cross-dressing disco straight out of pre-AIDS Castro
8. Born On the Bayou -- Creedence Clearwater Revival -- El Cerrito swamp rock heard 'round the world
9. Dear Mama -- Tupac Shakur -- Marin City's finest; West Coast hip-hop got soul
10. Omaha -- Moby Grape -- Being underrated goes to the heart of being from San Francisco
11. American Idiot -- Green Day -- Duh
12. Black Magic Woman -- Santana -- Gypsy Queen -- The sounds of the Mission District from a band that once mattered
13. SATISFACTION -- The Residents -- Smarty-pants rock deconstructionists, willfully weird, intentionally obscure
14. Down to the Nightclub -- Tower of Power -- Keystone Berkeley lives and the lead singer's a killer
15. Roadrunner -- Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers -- The hipster's handbook from a faux-naif
16. White Punks On Dope -- The Tubes -- San Francisco in the '70s
17. We Care a Lot -- Faith No More -- "about the food that Live Aid bought"
18. Never Say Never -- Romeo Void -- Weird, wonderful, unexpectedly sexy
19. Midnight In A Perfect World -- DJ Shadow -- A dream built around samples and scratches
20. Freedom -- Sons of Champlin -- The real hippies
21. Wicked Game -- Chris Isaak -- Sex on the beach
22. John the Fisherman -- Primus -- Primus sucks
23. Living In the U.S.A. -- Steve Miller Band -- Somebody get me a cheeseburger
24. Loan me a Dime -- Boz Scaggs -- THE San Francisco blues
25. Ball and Chain -- Big Brother and the Holding Company -- What made Janis Joplin a star
THE ITUNES SONG LIST
1. TRUCKIN’ - Grateful Dead
2. SOMEBODY TO LOVE - Jefferson Airplane
3. PIECE OF MY HEART - Big Brother and the Holding Company
4. THANK YOU (FALETTINME BE MICE ELF AGIN) - Sly and the Family Stone
5. FORTUNATE SON - Creedence Clearwater Revival
6. OYE COMO VA - Santana
7. LONGVIEW Green Day
8. WE SHALL OVERCOME - Joan Baez
9. BLACK WATER - Doobie Brothers
10. LIGHTS Journey
11. WHAT IS HIP - Tower of Power
12. CALIFORNIA ÜBER ALLES Dead Kennedys
13. WICKED GAME - Chris Isaak
14. U CAN’T TOUCH THIS - MC Hammer
15. ROCKIN’ IN THE FREE WORLD - Neil Young
16. SUMMERTIME BLUES - Blue Cheer
17. WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE - Kingston Trio
18. WORKING FOR A LIVING - Huey Lewis and the News
19. SYMPHONY OF DESTRUCTION - Megadeth
20. EPIC - Faith No More
21. MR. JONES - Counting Crows
22. PRIDE OF MAN - Quicksilver Messenger Service
23. MIDNIGHT IN A PERFECT WORLD - DJ Shadow
24. LOWDOWN - Boz Scaggs
25. CAN YOU HANDLE THAT? - Graham Central Station
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