This could be the smartest thing McCain has ever done.

McCain announced his running mate (tee hee hee), Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin, and SHE'S AN ABSOLUTE BABE. I want to be mauled by this cougar. Issu-what? Platfo-what? Gimme eye candy in the oval office!

Is this why Obama didn't choose Clinton as his running mate? Did he know about McCain's choice ahead of time, and didn't want unfavorable comparrisons?

If McCain is elected, I want him to abdicate all TV air time to his VP. I will watch every state of the union address she gives. Repeatedly.

Cleveland may have become my new favorite Family Guy character.

Whoever does the voice of Cleveland cracks me up. When I saw this a few nights ago, I nearly soiled myself. I know Wander catches this show religiously, but if the rest of you aren't put the kids to bed, tune out your wife, and watch it.

Natalie Raps

I can't remember if this was posted before... but it's worth watching again and again.

Spies among us...

Just to make sure Firecracker George didn't think I was dogging him about being a dork and taking pictures of hand dryers in the bathroom, here's a picture I took of a trash bin in the bathroom from a place called The London Tea Room back in St. Louis. Hey, when you see something cool, might as well share:

Dyson Phan

During my 36 hour stay at Logan airport two week ago (I want to start taking trains), I had one highlight in that I got to geek out with the hand dryers in the restrooms. Dyson, the vacuum manufacturer now makes hand dryers that actually work - well. I think it was called the airblade. Whatever it was called, I actually re-wet my hands a few times just to test it out.

Phelps Phan...

Given the topic of my posts recently, I guess you can probably tell that, like a large number of Americans and other sports fans in the world, I've been caught up in Olympic fever this week (or more specifically, Phelps fever).  As if the 4x100m freestyle relay wasn't exciting enough, the 100m butterfly final last night will probably played be over and over again on any highlight reel for these 2008 Beijing Games, as Michael Phelps tied Mark Spitz's record for most gold medals in one Olympic Games by beating out Milorad Cavic by 0.01 seconds.  Conspiracy theories will probably abound for quite some time as to whether the Omega touch sensors were rigged given the fact that Michael Phelps is partially sponsored by the time-keeping company, but it's great to see that the Internet has already been hard at work to debunk such theories.  Sports Illustrated has a frame by frame review of the finish, which is pretty incredible to see just how behind Phelps (on the left of the picture) seemed to be at the end:

Frame by frame review of the broadcasted video from NBC further shows just how close the race was.  Amazing!

Slightly better form than Eric the Eel...

OK, so Equitorial Guinea won't be an Olympic swimming powerhouse for awhile. Here's the underwater view of the epic 4x100 freestyle relay this past week, though, to show why the United States will continue to be a dominant player in pool for a long time to come.

The greatest swimmer ever...

Sure, Michael Phelps is getting all the Olympic glory this week in Beijing with all his gold medals and world records as he attempts to become the greatest Olympian of all time. But let's not forget the Olympic heroes in the pool of games past. Previous American swimmers like Mark Spitz and Matt Biondi, the great Ian "Thorpedo" Thorpe from Down Under--incredible athletes indeed. They don't hold a candle, though, to the amazing swimming prowess of Equitorial Guinea and "Eric the Eel." From Wikipedia:

Eric Moussambani, nicknamed "Eric The Eel" by the media after the name first appeared in an article by Craig Lord in The Times newspaper in London,[1] won brief international fame at the 2000 Summer Olympics when he swam his heat of the 100m freestyle in 1:52.72 and won, because the two other competitors Karim Bare and Farkhod Oripov were disqualified for taking a false start. His time was more than twice that of his faster competitors, and outside even the 200m world record. However he had set a new personal best and national record.

At first I thought ...

That I must have been living in a hole as I was reading the news today. I watched Amazon's stock make a strong advance and didn't know why. The news made it clear though. The company doubled its sales of the Kindle. Hmmm?!?

If you are like me, your thought is probably along the lines of, "What the hell is a Kindle?" So I did a little exploring and found out. I am sure that my tech savvy friends like Swany learned about this ages ago on some site like Gizmodo or something, but it was news to me. The easiest way I have heard it explained is that the Kindle is to books like the iPod is to music. It really is a pretty cool device, but a little steep in terms of cost.

Wishing I could live in the Pacific Northwest...

In response to Wild Willie's post below, I had heard about Voodoo Doughnuts when it was featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations as he went through the Pacific Northwest last year. It's a pretty entertaining show and much more interesting than most of the glorified ads they broadcast on the Travel Channel. If you like to travel, I highly recommend watching.

The Magic is in the Hole!

I know the Gang will salivate over this. We have some friends in town who have roots in Portland, OR, and she told me about Voodoo Doughnuts. Not only do they make doughnuts, but they are also open 24 hours a day and can perform weddings. Before getting married there, your bachelorette party could have cock and balls at it.


What I think the gang will really like though is one of the crowd favorites. How can you beat a bacon maple bar!

Funny how just a slight lack of guardrail changes your perspective...

I've only been to the top of Pikes Peak once in my life, and I rode the cogwheel train to get there. My dad wasn't confident enough in his own driving skills to get up the mountain on the Pikes Peak Highway without plunging the entire family to their death, and after watching this video, I'm not sure I would either. I swear it looks like this guy is going to drift right off the mountain at least a dozen times: