'Five rubles says I can hit Mir from here'

Spacewalkers to go golfing outside station today
- Spaceflight Now

At this exact moment, somewhere above the Earth's mesosphere, there is a 3-gram golf ball hurtling through space around the earth. All I have to say is ABOUT FUCKING TIME.

Leave it to the Russians to actually make something worthwhile out of space travel. This totally makes up for the rabid squirrel thing. I mean who cares about science experiments that can better mankind when you can take the second greatest game on earth into space?

Huzzah for Mikhail Tyurin, I have a new role model to tack up on the wall in my garage. Until someone grows the balls to kill Jim Nantz that is. This 'Golden Tee' douchebag drones on and on in the article making it painfully obvious that finding a 'celebrity' angle was left until 45 minutes before the deadline.

I guess some kudos have to go to Element 21 Golf Co. too. I would love to know how much they actually paid to put on this stunt and then compare that with their increase in sales over the next year. Aside from never before hearing about their clubs, my initial take of their website was: daaaaaaamn. If you're not on dial-up, check it out. The amount of flash they use left me teetering on the edge of an epileptic seizure. They even have a promo video for the shot that looks like it was animated by Pixar. I wonder how well their clubs perform in a environment where gravity, wind and the obligatory pre-tee off, 4-beer-buzz factor into the equation.

One last thing - the ad guy that dreamed this whole thing up has pretty much established bragging rights for all time with this idea. This is one hell of a precedent for future advertisers to look to and, with the Russians and Richard Branson pushing the envelope for the commercialization of space, new opportunities will soon abound. I'm counting the years until I can go outside at night, look up at the moon and see a big ol' Nike swoosh right through the middle. It can't be long off now.

Oh, Canada?

Top of Grey Cup breaks off shortly after B.C. Lions are presented with trophy
- CBC.ca

What a wonderful metaphor for Canada's ailing 'professional' football league. After a mind- and body-numbing sub-zero degree evening game in Winnipeg's uncovered stadium, Earl Grey's cup was broken cleanly in two by an overzealous guard who probably moonlights as a coal miner in some prairie town of 200 people.

The trophy snapped at the base of the 'cup' separating the original trophy from the rings engraved with 97 years of winners; effectively severing the history of the game from what it has become - a low-budget advertising opportunity for Canadian insurance brokers. And rather than a heartfelt apology from the goon that did it, we get the following tidbit of intelligence: "they'll put it back together and we'll go get drunk out of it." Great... thanks Bates, what's next? Are you going to go streaking through the quad?

The CFL and I have had a falling out over the last decade. Gone are the weekend trips to Ivor Wynne Stadium with friends, the coveted tickets for the first Argo/Ti-Cat game of the season and the threadbare jersey worn to countless bars well into the winter months. It has been replaced with a kind of pity for a piece of Canadian history that is now nearing extinction.

What sporting institutions are we left with? Hockey is slowly migrating south along with our fresh water and lumber and all we get in return is Everybody Loves Raymond and semi-automatic weapons. We invented basketball but can't keep even 2 teams within our borders, Lacrosse never really caught on and our Olympic snowboarders almost get stripped of their medals for performance-enhancing marijuana.

I'm giving up sports and devoting the rest of my energy to prolonging the remnants of Canadian cultural independence: back bacon, the 'ou', democracy, dog sleds and the igloos in which we all live.

How many lbs of flesh could a woodchuck chuck...

Russian squirrel pack 'kills dog'
- BBC News (Trust is the foundation of the BBC: we are independent, impartial and honest)

According to a report picked up from the esteemed and redoubtable Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, there is apparently a new kind of killer lurking the streets of Lazo, Russia.

In addition to widespread poverty, rampant organized crime and an overall dearth of decent Quizno's outlets, Russians must now contend with rogue squirrel and chipmunk gangs that collectively attack, kill and EAT carnivorous household pets larger than a human toddler.

They say in the article that a shortage of pine cones is likely to blame for the squirrels shift in eating habits from vegetation to living animals. I'm no rocket surgeon, but I'm going to go ahead and say there may be a few gaping holes in that theory. Wouldn't the logical choice for a squirrel faced with no pine cones be to try some other form of plant life first? No, what we're dealing with here is ramped-up evolution.

Squirrels have, for centuries, been subject to man's superior intelligence, population growth and rate of urban expansion. They have been forced out of their homes, stripped of their food and they've finally had enough. They're going to do what the Native Americans couldn't and take the m'n f'n power BACK in the form of organized death squads.

Can you imagine what would happen if this problem spread to Canada? Our country is mostly made up of wooded areas and I'm pretty sure our squirrel population is exponentially larger than our human population. Forget our growing homicide rate; forget drunk drivers; forget AIDS. You want to stay alive? Stay the hell away from the neighbourhood park.

I figure it's only a matter of time now before these beasts get enough kid meat (rife with growth hormones) to put on some serious body mass and start taking out full sized adults. Soon they'll be sporting gang tattoos, wearing bandannas and packing heat. We're looking at an invasion here that even the most sophisticated space weapon can't tackle.

In the learned words of Bill Paxton's Pvt. Hudson: "That's it man, game over man, game over!"

Karma ('kär-m&), Noun. 1:

Sniper Attacks Adding to Peril of U.S. Troops
- NY Times

I'm sorry... the town of what? KARMA? Really? Did Iraqi insurgents rename this town for this story specifically?

I'm going to preface this whole diatribe by saying that I don't support either side in this conflict... and that I think we should all just give peace a chance... and that green Gatorade really is the best tasting flavour. But despite my best hopes, wishes and beliefs people are still going to buy the purple stuff and I, in turn, will complain about it.

That said, the U.S. Armed Forces have developed a very special style of war that it has worked hard to perfect. It started somewhere around Vietnam and involves bombing the shit out of "enemy territory" from a few miles up and then sending in an elite team of corn-fed commandos to clean up what's still breathing.

On paper, this idea works harder than an emigrated Iraqi surgeon driving a New York cab. They can minimize casualties early on while dealing a crushing blow to a technologically-retarded ground force. In practice however, well who am I to say it's failing miserably but it's certainly taking a hell of a lot longer than it should or was planned to.

So what have Iraqi insurgents done to fight back against a better trained and better equipped foe? They've decided to fight with what they have... a membership to blockbuster. It's clear to me that some high-ranking insurgent rented a copy of the 1994 movie Sniper (and it's red-headed stepchild of a sequel) and has now gleaned every piece of information Tom Berenger has to offer. How else could they possibly know to shoot at a vital organ?

"They have also developed cunning methods of mobility and concealment, including firing from shooting platforms and hidden ports within cars." Hidden ports in cars you say? I wonder where they learned how to do something as dastardly as that? Maybe if the US tails every white van in the Washington area they'll get to the bottom of it.

In any event, it seems to me that this article (despite being extremely lengthy in typical NYT style) seems to gloss over the fact that the US has been using snipers for the same type of killing since WW2. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they invented it in the first place. Maybe if everyone went back to the "don't shoot till you see the whites of his eyes" style of fighting, there would be a higher value put on the lives they're spending so much money trying to end. At the very least, they'd save some cash on cluster bombs and white phosphorus.

Dear Mr. Darwin,

Poor Reading Skills Raise Teen Suicide Risk
- MedicineNet.com

deer famlee and luvd wons,

I hev been ecstreemlee dipresed fer most of my yong lif. Skool just izent werkin fer me, I kant konzentrate and I hev no ideeia wut de dam teecher is riting on de bord. I wuz redy to jus giv up on skool and trow in de towl but non of yew wud let me. Now I hav nevr ben mor unhapie in my lif.

I wuz dispret to be assepted in de skool comewnitie and evan agreet to pertisipaat in a stody on peephole dat dont reed gud. Evryting wuz gud fer a wile but deese peephole hev ben folowin me fer more dan 3 YEERS! Its a constint reemyndor of my sortcumngs and maiks me sthand owt evan mor dan evr. Now dey evan tink I mite hav a sikeehatrick dishordor.

I em faced wif de reelisachun that I may nevor be hapee agen and so I hav desydud to jus keel myselv. Pleez dont trie to stop me az it is alredee to lait. If onlee somwon akshuly tryd to hewp me enstad of juss folowing me awrond and studing my beehavyor.

Goodbuy crewl werld,
Lil Billy No-read