A. Early Primates Despite some basic signs of culture, these simple beasts roamed the earth grunting, beating their chests, eating the flesh of their young and picking the parasites from one another.
B. Early Man Man had started to show signs of advanced communication and various forms of primitive art. C. Man's Golden Age Men shared advanced thought and ideas in philosophy, literature, biology and all that other jazz. And if they didn't do any of that other stuff at least they had the decency to dress themselves properly in public. D. The Decline - (** - track pants) Man's glory days of the 'no shirt no service' days were over. Man's ability to adequately dress himself had waned to the point where it was quite common for men to walk the streets, quite proudly no less, in track pants. Man had concluded there was nothing to be gained from any sort of decent social interaction and had thus forgone the usual social nicety of dressing to a basic standard. Man's capitulation. Social decay. THE DECLINE.
The doyen of MS Paint (much better than this guy) is now a part of UpShake. He offers a new, generally smuttier, perspective on life in general and should complement things nicely. In unrelated news, staff increased by 100% last week, and existing employees are rumoured to be taking a paycut.
Look forward to an exciting new article whenever he gets around to it. There's paperwork to be filled out, sheesh, give him a break.
Tell me this: Which sport lasts for 15 days yet the winning competitor's entire effort can be watched in a mere 10 minutes? Which sport has traditions greater than those of Wimbledon, yet generates more interesting characters than in Celebrity Poker? Which sport has more nudity (and larger breasts) than WWE, but is an official competition? Finally, for which sport will the obesity epidemic actually improve standards to new levels in the coming years?
The answer to all these questions and more is of course: SUMO!
If the most experience you've had of the sport is watching some people get into those plastic sumo suits and plastic sumo suits go at each other, then watch the video below first. It is footage of the 2006 Nagoya Basho, the 14th day, and the most important bout of the tournament. Winner of 17 Emperor's Cups, Mongolian Yokozuna (grand champion) Asashoryu had an unbeaten record of 13-0 going into the second-last day. His closest competitor (Hakuho, another Mongolian) was at 11-2, so a victory would give Asa the title a day before the end of the basho. His opponent was Chiyotaikai, a rikishi (wrestler) at sumo's 2nd highest rank of Ozeki (champion) and winner of 3 Emperor's cups, but none since 2003.
So well done to Asashoryu, he must have been doing his exercises. But strangely enough, that awesome minute of thrusting, pushing, posturing and mawashi-tugging is not the only reason why Sumo is so fantastic. The best part is the characters that play-out this super-sized drama. Here's a run-down of a few of them:
Asashoryu (Ussa-shore-ryu) - Complete dominator of the past few years of competition, Asa is known as the "Genghis Khan of Sumo". He has 17 titles, but has won them during a span of just 23 tournaments. In 2005 he completed a supreme double- clean sweep of all tournaments, which gave him 7 tournament victories in a row, both were feats never before achieved. Despite his dominance, he is not well-liked among Japanese, essentially because he is a foreigner. The Japanese make up excuses for reasons such as "He shows too much emotion".
Kotooshu (Cotto-ore-shoe) - The "David Beckham of Sumo", Bulgarian Kotooshu is loved in Japan for his 'good looks', 'resembling' the british footballer. He is in many ways more popular than Asashoryu despite his inferior record, and appears on TV shows- see "King of Chicken". He became the first European rikishi to reach sumo's 2nd-highest rank of Ozeki last year. At 203cm, Kotooshu is not as overweight as most other top sumo athletes, and uses his superior wingspan and wrestling background to flip opponents more often than not.
"King of Chicken" - a competition among celebrities to keep their heart-rates below a certain 'Bikkuri' (scared) threshold. Sick Japanese humour at its best.
Baruto (Ba-roo-toh) - The second of the new breed of rikishi from Europe, Baruto's real name is Kaido Hoovelson, and he hails from Estonia. He is a giant of the game, weighing 172kg. This makes it more amusing when you find his nickname is the "Leonardo DiCaprio of Sumo". Told to come to Japan at a young age as he would just need to eat, sleep and occasionally wrestle, Baruto was surprised at the dedication required to reach the top division. Nevertheless, he reached the division in the second tournament of 2006 and has a winning record in all tournaments thus far.
Tochiazuma (Toh-chee-ah-zoo-ma) - The only Japanese-born rikishi to have a chance at becoming a Yokozuna at the moment, he has so far crumbled under the public pressure, as well as injury.
Hakuho (hah-koo-hoh) - Another Mongolian, Hakuho has 1 title this year, and come close to winning two others, yet has been denied the promotion to Yokozuna. Some say this is because the Japanese organisers don't want another foreign-born grand champion. With continued pressure he will force them to promote him, and expect this to occur next tournament if he can finish in the top 2.
This video demonstrates Takamisakari's psyche-out on Asashoryu back in 2003. It is one of two occasions he has defeated a Yokozuna in his career. Notice the cushions being thrown onto the ring by the crowd. This is only done on rare occasions when something exciting has happened- like an upset or a championship win.
Instructions for this story were: 1. Get heaps of 'experts', but only take a sentence from each, because they might take it in a different direction if they get longer than that. 2. Don't take the lord's name in vain- it is easter- saying 'gosh' is ok though. 3. Permission for urban myths as fact- "there was this one child" is an acceptable start to a sentence. 4. Keep it as short as possible- people interested in acronyms want everything shortened, including a story about acronyms. 5. Use scary graphics to reveal each acronym's "true" meaning in a manner not unlike 'Bert's Family Feud'. 6. Explain clearly that it is fine if your daughter is chatting to a 65 year old man, as long as she doesn't talk to him using acronyms.
We surveyed 100 people about this CBS news report, can you guess their answers? Is POS on the board, Bert? ....Yeees, Piece Of Shit, cooooongratulations that's the top answer!
'The Coolest Guy' is a quest I have to trawl the web for the coolest people in the world. Many people would think Hollywood is a good location to start looking, or our sports stars, and that is fair enough. However, here at LeBlogMac, we believe that it is those unsung heroes who deserve recognition. People who believe they are cool but haven't achieved appropriate prestige.
Nominee 2: This is aimed at a lot of myspace websites, but particularly this guy. Name: BigSmooth0187
Why is he cool? 1. It says so on his myspace site 2. He's cooler than BigSmooths 0000->0186 3. List of people he'd like to meet: Jesus, Meatloaf, Nancy Regan, Uncle Jesse from Fullhouse, Gumby...
I'd like to be at that dinner table: Jesus: "So, Jesse, want to own up to abusing those twins on Full House?" Gumby: "Don't eat me, Meatloaf. And no, I am not apple-flavoured."
----end Coolest Guy Segment----
----begin myspace rant----------
Have you been to myspace? For those of you who haven't, it is essentially the website equivalent of a Balinese beach-seller crossed with a dating site, then add the cream of the crop of our society to choose the media they show (and force upon you) and what they write.
When you enter a myspace site, it usually has a popup window, coupled with a song and or a video playing at the same time. The background is usually some "heaps cool" image the retard/retardo author has chosen- don't be surprised if it means you can't read a lot of the text and just be thankful it saves you the pain of reading the crap.
Try the 5-step Myspace Challenge!!! 1) Open 5 myspace windows at once 2) Listen to the many songs that automatically play at the same time 3) Record it and email it back to them 4) Forward it back to them again (Use Gmail or something that doesn't require multiple uploading) 5) And again... So Anyway..... If you made it this far... Got any other questions that might be thrown back and forth across the BigSmooth0187 dinner table? Comment.
lest we forget camdensblogv1, it is amazing how so many of these are still relevant in the present day. Camdensblogv1 was certainly ahead of its time.
Revised Tourism Advertising Campaign 23 Feb 2006 by phatcam
"Where the bloody hell are ya", is the phrase in a new tourism advertising campaign causing a brouhaha. Used by a hot girl so that they can claim that it's not only massive bogans that use this kind of talk. ...
After Inner Enlightenment? 22 Feb 2006 by phatcam
The path to inner enlightenment almost certainly involves frequent hard drug use. The chance to have God talk back to you during prayer is a fairly large draw card for a religion and if the beatles happen to make an appearance in their ...
22 Feb 2006 by phatcam
just read a bio with a guy described as a elegant degenerate. I have a new title to aim for.
ru486 or are you against it? 9 Feb 2006 by phatcam
(Oh mercy. now that's a quality head line) Hey ladies. late? Red baron missing in action? or just knorked up with another illegitimate child? well, before you head off to down a few ru486s with a few vodka chasers consider some of the ...
ok so the blog wasn't kicking there for a while... 6 Feb 2006 by phatcam
........but nick's travel blog has inspired me to document my movements from the fridge to the toilet to the tv (and then back) once again. i've tinkered with a few settings and whatnot. we also have a brand spanking new look at 'the ...
speaking of wangs............. 28 Aug 2005 by phatcam
for those who were watching the football on saturday- was i the only one who saw a bit more or mark ricciuto than they ever thought they would? in the pants kind of area. well, what should have been in the pants. ...
Sounds like the contents of a SPAM email crossed with a David Attenborough documentary you say? Wrong... maybe the next image will explain it all: Still not sure what it is about? It is a serious attempt by the Official Grand Sumo Federation to improve people's health. It is no surprise then that this guy is thought of by the same people as "The leonardo DiCaprio of Sumo", and this guy is the "David Beckham of Sumo". Maybe the Australian obesity epidemic could be improved by following these exercises. This is a standard Japanese thing to do: have an 8-step instruction set for waving your arms. I'm not quite sure how this can be applied to everyday life however. I'm not sure how often in the future I will have the need to "express the wrestler's promise to fight fairly and cleanly". I guess I could talk to the other members of my basketball team and organise that we do this together before a game- our version of the New Zealand All-Blacks' Haka maybe. Of course Standing on one leg improves balance....IF YOU WEIGH 150kgs!
I could continue commenting for hours on this, but that's where I'll leave it.
Don't work out too long or hard, we don't want you to lose that sumo figure.
'The Coolest Guy' is a quest I have to trawl the web for the coolest people in the world. Many people would think Hollywood is a good location to start looking, or our sports stars, and that is fair enough. However, here at LeBlogMac, we believe that it is those unsung heroes who deserve recognition. People who believe they are cool but haven't achieved appropriate prestige.
He wins the first nomination for several reasons. 1. The photo would have been enough to get him in, I especially like the addition of sunglasses to the outfit- I had never realised that the 'Dark Side' was so named because they wore sunnies indoors. 2. His wonderful combination of Old Country music with Techno makes him a hit with the ladies.... =cool. 3. I am not religious by any means, but as far as I know, Jesus Christ always was, as he put it "pro-light" i.e. a big supporter of the light-saber making industry. So dedicating the business to Christ makes so much sense that he must be our first nomination for The Coolest Guy.
MASTER PARKS
Master Parks AKA: Jeffrey A. Parks
Favorite Music
Nat'l Public Radio, Blues, Old Country, Techno
Goal
To be the best Lightsaber Designer in the world.
Faith
Jesus Christ is my professed Lord and Savior. Through God's love, Christ's sacrafice, and the power of the Holy Spirit, I have been redeemed.
"Because of God's love and power, I dedicate the efforts of this business toward the glorification of Christ."
Those who know Nick Parkin are aware of his knack of getting sick frequently and in more interesting, exciting ways. You know that he has been overseas and every week obtained a new disease that was previously only found in hamsters (you do the math). You have heard his many stories that begin with "So I decided to eat this dirty curry...". And those who didn't know, now do.
The next step is to download the latest version of the widget (link fixed) I made to make the process of knowing how sick he is at any point in time that little bit easier. All you need to do is download the yahoo widget engine and install it. The widget will do the rest- update you every 30mins with an artist's impression of his latest sickness status, and a description of what he is feeling.
There will be more updates to come- it is a bit ugly at the moment but the engine behind it is working pretty well.
Athanasius Kircher first described the cat piano in his landmark 1650 work Musurgia Universalis.
In order to raise the spirits of an Italian prince burdened by the cares of his position, a musician created for him a cat piano. The musician selected cats whose natural voices were at different pitches and arranged them in cages side by side, so that when a key on the piano was depressed, a mechanism drove a sharp spike into the appropriate cat’s tail. The result was a melody of meows that became more vigorous as the cats became more desperate. Who could not help but laugh at such music? Thus was the prince raised from his melancholy.
I reckon this sort of piano would be the best possible medium for The Blue Danube Waltz (lalalalala...lala...lala if you don't know it- It is in 2001: space odyssey or for the more sophisticated of you, on the simpsons when homer's in space eating chips). I can just imagine it now, meow meow meow meow meow.....meow meow.....meow reeeeaaaaaaoooowww (have an extra long spike on one of them... or maybe just an extra crazy cat). Also anything by the Pussy Cat dolls would be nice.
Any other suggestions of music the cat piano should play?
This website is experiencing heavy traffic due to digg.com users, so I'll just add some of the images here. Man, I wish I was cool enough to have a nintendo, my parents wouldn't buy one for me. So I didn't have the device itself, let alone all the accessories- this stuff is awesome!
