The Summer '04 batch is out! Five--yes, that’s right, five--new Philosophical Powers figures have just been released. The toys represent significant expansions of the popular "Merciless" Medievals and "Antagonistic" Analytic Philosophers lines. Look for fresh, new faces and lame, old jokes. Be the first on your block to look at all the hilarious webpages!
The 2004 Summer Olympics. Sigh. The TV coverage tries so hard to get us excited about sports they know we don't care about. I actually think that if you’re going to show unpopular sports, I want to see the really unpopular sports. I will never understand why people like to watch gymnastics so much. And don’t say "because it’s pretty." It's not pretty. Japanese lanterns are pretty. Jenny Finch is pretty. Fall colors are pretty. Musclebound children waving their arms around and pointing their toes in random directions between backflips isn't pretty. The flips are amazing athletic achievements. But all the froo-froo stuff they fill their routines out with is as painful to watch as Arnold Schwarzenegger trying to be funny (on purpose). So forget gymnastics. Show me judo, where people really do what we watch people pretend to do in movies all the time, and they do it with skill and grace. Show me badminton and table tennis, games so fast you can't even see what's happening until it's over. Show me weightlifting. One person, lifting the heaviest weight he or she can. That’s a fascinating challenge. That's not pretty, it's beautiful.
British archaeologist Shimon Gibson thinks he's found a cave where John the Baptist baptized many of his followers. He gave a tour of the site to the Associated Press earlier this week. When asked how he knew it was the cave of John the Baptist, Gibson replied, "Well, we found a lot of plates with bug parts on them, like the legs and stuff you wouldn't want to eat. And we found a bunch of those little plastic bears that squeeze honey out of their heads, which were all completely empty. Also, there were some animal skins on hangers in the closet, and there was a lot of hair in the drain of the bathtub. But what really clinched it was a faded and worn credit card with what appears to be the name JOHN T. BAPTIST on it. Assuming that 'T' stands for 'the,' I think it's safe to say we’ve found our cave."