POST SCRIPTUM: Ringrazio l’amico Cossaro, vero esperto di elettronica, per il suggerimento di correzione di un termine fondamentale nelle mie conclusioni. Come già sapete, non sono ne un ingegnere ne un fisico. Sono solo un appassionato che cerca di imparare qualcosa e che tenta di spiegare alcuni concetti con parole, spero, semplici. Spero vogliate perdonare i miei errori, sono commessi in buonissima fede e sono sempre disponibile a chiedere scusa per averli commessi. Ciò che scrivo qui non avrà mai la pretesa di essere “scientifico” nel senso più corretto. Non ne ho ne ne avrò mai le competenze. Ciò che tento di fare (ripeto…tento) è puramente “DIVULGATIVO”. Spero solo che possa essere gradito a chi mi legge… e confido sempre nella vostra indulgenza per i miei, ahimè inevitabili, errori.

Con gratitudine,

Bodhi3

Oggi vorrei spendere due parole sul perchè le frequenze più alte (nel caso del DFX i 15KHz) dovrebbero essere preferite quando si tenta di rilevare oggetti sottili (oggetti sottili in argento, catenine d’oro per esempio… )

A prescindere dai discorsi già fatti in questo blog relativi a discriminazione, frequenze e materiali indagati e sto alludendo al fatto che con le alte frequenze si riesce a discriminare meglio tra alluminio e oro, come molti di voi sanno già, l’uso del 15KHz si dimostra più “sensibile” agli oggetti minuscoli rispetto ai 3KHz.

Oggi vorrei anche TENTARE di spiegare il perchè (con parole spero semplici) da un punto di vista tecnico… Spero solo che gli ingegneri e i fisici che leggeranno queste righe

Come molti già sanno, il nostro metal detector, tramite il passaggio di corrente alternata nella sua bobina “trasmittente”, produce un campo magnetico che si propaga sia sopra che sotto la piastra.

Tralasciando la forma di questo campo magnetico e il suo legame con il tipo di piastra, ciò che ci interessa osservare è cosa accade quando questo campo magnetico, attraversando il terreno, incontra un oggetto metallico.

Quando ciò accade, grazie alla legge di induzione di Faraday, all’interno dell’oggetto metallico si genera una corrente elettrica appunto INDOTTA dal campo magnetico. Questa corrente ha un strano e particolare andamento… Ruota in circolo…come in un gorgo d’acqua…

Questa particolare corrente viene appunto chiamata CORRENTE EDDY (dalla parola inglese “eddy” che significa “vortice”.

Una breve citazione da Wikipedia non farà male… ehehehe

“Le correnti parassite o correnti di Foucault o correnti di eddy (dall’inglese eddy: vortice) sono delle correnti indotte in masse metalliche conduttrici che si trovano immerse in un campo magnetico variabile o che, muovendosi, attraversano un campo magnetico costante o variabile. In ogni caso la variazione del flusso magnetico genera queste correnti.
Il fenomeno fu scoperto dal fisico francese Jean Bernard Léon Foucault nel 1851.

Il termine “eddy current” (letteralmente: correnti di vortice) deriva dal comportamento del remo quando lo si immerge nell’acqua e crea piccoli vortici mentre la barca avanza.”

Ora, se la frequenza che utilizziamo sarà 3KHz, le correnti eddy indotte nell’oggetto di metallo dovranno, dato che si tratta di correnti alternate, cambiare direzione di percorrenza esattamente 3.000 volte al secondo. Se utilizziamo i 15KHz, ovviamente, questo “gira di qua-fermati-vai nell’altra direzione-riparti” e così via accadrà 15.000 volte in un secondo.

Questi “STOP, GIRATI & GO!” continuativi sono i responsabili di un altro interessante effetto fisico descritto dal fisico russo Heinrich Lenz nella sua famosa legge. Questa legge (chi vuole può approfondire su internet o su un buon testo di fisica elettronica) ci dice che, nelle condizioni di alternanza di corrente eddy, si viene a creare un effetto elettrico di “auto-repulsione” che, in parole povere, spinge le correnti verso la superficie dell’oggetto metallico.

Questo fenomeno prende il nome di SKIN EFFECT (Effetto “Pelle”). Secondo la Legge di Lenz, questo effetto è tanto maggiore quanto più alta è la frequenza e tanto più sottile l’oggetto.

In altre parole, le correnti eddy di un oggetto sottile attraversato da un campo magnetico generato da una frequenza ALTA (15KHz), sono “PIU’ SUPERFICIALI” (Qui avevo scritto “PIU’ ALTE” e, giustamente, l’amico Cossaro mi ha suggerito il termine più corretto) rispetto a quelle di un oggetto sottile ma attraversato da un campo magnetico generato da una frequenza BASSA (3KHz).

Se guardiamo questi dati sperimentali ci renderemo immediatamente di cosa significhi.

In questa  tabella si è esaminato un pezzo di rame investito da campo magnetico generato a varie frequenze e si è calcolata la Profondità dell’Effetto Pelle. Essa rappresenta la profondità in Micrometri in cui la corrente si “muove”. Minore è la profondità (o lo “spessore della pelle”), maggiore sarà la resistenza al passaggio di corrente e, di conseguenza (per quello che ci interessa) l’identificabilità del nostro oggetto.

Guardate tra 10 KHz e 100KHz come lo spessore si sia ridotto di oltre 2/3!

Concludendo, come avrete già intuito è proprio questa legge della fisica che ci permette di usare le frequenze alte (nel caso del DFX – i 15KHz) con maggiore profitto nella ricerca di oggetti molto piccoli.

Happy Skin Hunting!

Bodhi3

Muitos anos atrás…

Alguns anos a menos atrás…



She started crying.  Most of them have cried, but at least they cried for legitimate reasons:  Father abused me, mother didn’t love me, brother got all of the attention.  This girl had a reason, but her reason wasn’t legitimate.

“I love him so much,” she said, referring to an absent fiancé.   While she said this, she placed her hand on my crotch.

“I know you do,” I said.  I looked at this girl, who was all kinds of gorgeous and all kinds of disheveled, and I felt an emotion that approximated sadness.

“I want you to understand that I wouldn’t cheat on him,” she continued.  She had uttered this refrain throughout the evening.  Although I could never understand, I was not about to say that while her hand remained in its present position.

“I think that relationships are complicated,” I told her.  I had said this to her many times before, when we were just friends and weren’t whatever we are now.

She unzipped my fly.  “He’s a wonderful provider.  He cares about me.  He has a good heart.”

I concentrated my attention on her small, unappealing breasts.  By doing this, I managed to avoid eye contact.  “You’ve said that already.”

Uninspired outercourse followed this vague statement.  Her sobs grew louder, distracting me from my pursuit of climax.  She gave up her halfhearted efforts and flung herself into my arms.  “I’m a good person.  I wouldn’t cheat on him for a thousand dollars.  Not for a million dollars.  That’s not what I do.’

I wasn’t comfortable with this arrangement.  Outside of the sex act, I don’t like physical contact.  I had decided to swap our casual friendship for a casual orgasm, but I hadn’t bargained for this kind of intimacy.  “I’m older than you are, and I still haven’t figured it out,” I said.

“You’re a great guy.  I don’t know why some girl hasn’t snatched you up,” she said.

I shrugged because shrugging afforded me the opportunity to pull away from her.  “I don’t really care.  I’ve resigned myself to this sort of life.”

“My boyfriend is a great guy, too.  He’s just so jealous, and he never wants to have sex with me.”

Every girl has one of these stories.  Some tell them to me.  Because I have nothing better to do, I listen with rapt attention.  “Then he’s definitely the guy for you,” I said in a sarcastic tone.

“I mean, you have to compromise on some things, right?”

“Do you?” I asked.

“That’s how life goes, you know.”

I ran a finger through her coarse hair, performing this operation—one of the many behaviors demanded during intimacy—without tenderness or interest.  “God works in mysterious ways.”  Here was another bromide-as-fallback.  I said things because I felt they needed to be said, not because they needed to be heard or because I wanted to say them.

Her makeup streaked her cheeks in an especially unflattering manner.  “I don’t know about all that.  I love him, and when something’s right, it’s right.  I would never cheat on him.”

Saying that God worked in mysterious ways was as preposterous as it was trite, but I did believe in God and did believe that he worked in mysterious ways.  Mortal sin remained an oppressive reality for me, a bridle that no priestly absolution could remove.  I went to sin with this woman because I hated myself, and I hated myself because I was a sinner.  It didn’t make any sense, and it never would.   “It’s hard to say,” I said, because it was.

She placed a hand on my shoulder.  “You’re a great guy, and he’s a great guy.  This world is hard on great guys.  I’m so glad I found one, though.  I’m so lucky.”

“You’re still crying,” I said.

She turned away from me.  “You need to leave.”

Sooner or later, we all have to leave.  We invent narratives that elide the most difficult parts of these departures.  Now it was time for me to go.  “Bye,” I said.  “Good luck with all of that.”

Her tears were enough.  I didn’t want to imagine the rest.

Fette Weiber. Ich hasse fette Weiber. Kaum ist der Aufenthalt am Düsseldorfer Hauptbahnhof länger als zwanzig Sekunden, wird man von diesen miesen Schweinegesichtern überrollt. Ihr wisst schon, die, die ihre fettigen Haare als Pferdeschwanz (hihi, ich habe Pferdeschwanz gesagt) tragen, ihre abrasierten Augenbrauen als dünne Linien nachziehen, um ihre vom Fett zu kleinen Schlitzen geformten Augen zu betonen und ihre monströsen Mengen Fleisch in enge Jeans und Tubetops pressen.

Vor ungefähr einer Woche begegnete ich einem solchen Giganten. Ich stand ausserhalb des Hauptgebäudes des Bahnhofes, um auf einen Kameraden zu warten, um mit ihm gemeinsam das nächste Kik niederzubrennen, als es geschah. Die Tauben flohen, die Strassenbahnen blieben stehen und jedes Gesicht im Umkreis von 5 Kilometern setze einen verwirrten Blick auf. Die Erde begann zu beben. Ich sah förmlich, wie alle Luft in ein riesiges, nach Knoblauch und Alkopops stinkendes Maul gesogen wurde, um anschließend in einen Satz gewandelt zu werden, der der Bestie all ihre Kraft entziehen würde.

Mal ernsthaft, das fette Ding rollte ihren “hippen” “Freundinnen”, die mindestens zwei Meter Vorsprung hatten, einen einzigen Satz hinterher: “Wann hast du eigentlich deinen Termin gemacht?” Schon bei “eigentlich”, oder, wie es klang, “äighenthlisch”, hörte ich schon, wie das Walross schnauben und nach Luft ringen musste. Dann stampfte es mit einem Döner unter dem Arm und ihrem schäbigen Nokia-Handy in der Hand davon.

Eigentlich hätte ich dem Ding einen gewaltigen Tritt ins Gesicht gegeben, aber ich hatte Angst, dass mein Bein dann mit ein paar Kartoffeln als ihr Vormittagssnack geendet hätte. Ausserdem sah ich in diesem Moment eine Olle mit lächerlich gewaltigen Melonen.

Ja, Sätze kann man neuerdings Leuten hinterherrollen.

“Hey, I’m this one guy you met.”

“Hi, good to see you. I’m E. Twiggs.”

“Hi E. Twiggs.  Are you ready for our date?”

“Are you calling this a date?  Is that what this is?”

“I guess so.”

“I’m not comfortable with the term ‘date.’  That puts a lot of pressure on me.”

“Me too.  Let’s call it hanging out.”

“No, I don’t like that, either.  Let’s just call it nothing.”

“Okay, E. Twiggs, then it’s nothing.  We’re doing nothing.”

“I like that.  I like doing nothing with you.”

“I guess it beats doing something.”

“Does it?  I like staying active.  You know, getting out and doing stuff.”

“So do I.  I’m a big fan of doing stuff, especially when I get out.”

“Well, there are also times when it’s good to stay in.”

“Most nights, I’d just like to curl up in my pajamas while staying in.  It’s a jungle out there and so forth.”

“I hope you’re not one of those guys who just wants me to come over and stay at his dirty rathole of a place.  I want a guy who comes up with interesting ideas for dates.”

“But I thought you weren’t comfortable calling this a date.”

“This? No way—definitely not a date, definitely not with you.  What I mean is when I’m on a date with a guy I’m in a relationship with who isn’t you.”

“I see.  So what do you want from a relationship?”

“Relationships?  Ugh, those are so twentieth century.  I just want something casual.”

“I’m all for that.  Casual is best.”

“I don’t agree with that.  See, I want you to want to have a relationship with me, but I don’t want to have a relationship with you.”

“What?  That’s confusing!”

“No, I need attention from you.  But I’m definitely not going to reciprocate.  Not your attention, anyway.  I’m going to reciprocate someone else’s attention, except that’ll be a one-way street, too.  What I want, I guess, is at least two one-way streets:  One where you’re needing me and one where I’m needing some other, better guy.”

“If you need a better guy, why are we hanging out?”

“Hanging out?  I thought we were doing nothing.”

“Excuse me, why are we doing nothing?”

“You asked me out, right?”

“Huh?  You sent me an e-mail asking me if I wanted to have coffee with you, E. Twiggs.”

“I didn’t mean it.  I think you totally misinterpreted that.”

“Did I?”

“When a girl says or writes that she wants to have coffee with you, she’s trying to tell you that she doesn’t want to have coffee with you.  I was being nice.”

“But I didn’t want to have coffee with you.  However, I did want to have coffee after you asked me, because I thought you were interested in me…”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“You wrote that you were interested in me and wanted to have coffee!”

“I wasn’t, though.  That’s just what I wrote.  You’re so silly.”

“Okay.  Let me see if I understand: Right now we’re doing nothing, and this isn’t a date, and you didn’t want to go on it, even though you asked me to go.”

“Exactly.  How hard is it to understand that?”

“What about this other, better guy?  Why don’t you have coffee with him?”

“If I had coffee with him, he might learn that I liked him.  I want to have a relationship with him, but I don’t want him to know that.  Besides, I have a fear of relationships.  Also a fear of dates.”

“But not a fear of doing nothing.”

“No, doing nothing is okay.  Anyway, you’re harmless.  I can say anything to you.”

“Yeah, I’m glad you can, E. Twiggs.  Lucky for you, I’m a total doormat.  I don’t have any feelings.  I’m the perfect guy to do nothing with, and I certainly won’t challenge you in any way.”

“Just don’t pressure me.  I don’t like being pressured.”

“Have I pressured you, E. Twiggs?”

“I can’t shake the feeling that you’re trying to turn this nothing into something.  This nothing will never be something, guy I met.“

“I don’t expect it to be.  In fact, I have no expectations at all.  You matter, but I don’t.  I’m just going to sit here and listen to you ramble about your doubts, hopes, and dreams.  I won’t even point out how contradictory they are.”

“Great!  So I can tell you how I want a guy who will love me with all of his heart, except he’ll ignore me most of the time.  Money won’t matter, but he’ll be very rich and will buy me lots of expensive crap.  He’ll be handsome but not really, not enough that he’ll ever make me feel insecure about my looks, and I’ll always be able to outsmart him, even though he’s a genius.  We’ll have kids, and I’ll care about them so much that I’ll never see them because I’m always on vacation or getting my nails done or getting my highlights retouched or whatever.”

“That sounds so wonderful, E. Twiggs.  It sure does.  My life is of no consequence, and I’ll die alone and forgotten, but I’m happy that you have it figured out.”

“I don’t respect your opinion, but I’m glad you’re listening to me.  You should be, too.”

As requested, here are the three contest winners entries:

3rd place (Tails):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cN0syNSi-I

2nd place (Josee):

The Overnight Pet Adventure

I was working late at the pet shop one evening, doing the regular sweeping up and everything. My boss told me to finish up, and then lock up. You see, as a precaution, whenever he left me to finish cleaning, he would always lock the door behind him. The pet store was in a rougher neighborhood, and there were some recent break-ins, so even if there was an employee in the store, the door would always be locked.

So, he said goodbye, and left, locking the door behind him. I finished sweeping up, as well as doing the other regular chores, like making sure the animals had enough water and food for the night. When I was done, I hung up my apron and went to grab my keys so I could unlock the door, get out, and then relock the door. Only problem was…
The keys weren’t there!
My heart skipped a beat, and I started to panic a little. It was okay, I told myself. They probably just fell off the hook or something. I’d find them!
—
Three hours later of searching, I still hadn’t found them, and I had turned the shop upside down. There was nothing I could do but try and spend the night.
—
I was starving! I hadn’t eated since lunch, which was 4 or 5 hours ago and I had no food with me. Looking in the stock room, the only thing I found was dog treats, cat treats, bird treats, and general animal food. I knew it was gross but… I was SO hungry! So, I opened up some of the specility bacon dog treats and… well, chowed down. To tell you the truth, they weren’t that bad tasting, but still… ew!
—
Looking at the clock, I saw it was ten p.m. There was nothing else to do, so, I grabbed some of the biggest, softest dog beds I could and made a fort like bed. I fell asleep to the sounds of birds tweeting and little puppies snoring.
—
At eight in the morning , I woke up to the sound of the door unlocking, and my boss coming in. When he saw me, he said, “What the heck? What are you doing here?”

BOY did I have a story to tell him!

1st place (Eddy):

BUSTED

It was a dark evening.
There were six of us gathered outside the school door. Well, it used to be a school.
In recent years, it had been closed by the local school district. Since then, it had been a dumping ground for miscellaneous school related debris – desks, old computers, chalkboards, chairs. It stayed in this state of disrepair for quite some time, until the building was finally deemed unsafe.
Natalie and Preston came back from the other side of the school.
“They boarded up the window… we’d have to bust through that to get in.”
“There’s a hole on the roof,” exclaimed Marcus from up above. “We could go down through there and let you in.”
So Keith and Marcus clambered up onto the roof and jumped down through the hole.
It was silent. A car was driving by on the road, but slowed down as it approached the school. It then took off again, into the night.
Before we thought much of it, the door popped open.
“Come on in!” Marcus whispered.
We waved goodbye to Josh and Julia, sitting in the car on the other side of the street, and ducked into the darkness.

———————

An overwhelmingly musty stench permeated the building. Our miniscule flashlight darted around the rooms (we forgot to bring a real one), and cell phone sceens provided an unnatural glow to the place. There was stuff everywhere. In the hall where we had entered, there were rows of filing cabinets stacked against one wall, and whiteboards upon the other.
We migrated into the power room, and Preston started flipping heavy old switches, trying to get the lights on.
Many heavy clunks later, we gave up with the switches and instead continued to explore in the dark. Desks were everywhere, collecting dust and mildew. A mattress was there, along with an old ratty sleeping bag. In one room, we found some old audio/video equipment, including a nifty camcorder… probably from the 70’s or early 80’s.
The next room over was filled with old computers. A sea of iMacs loomed over the center of the room while tiny box islands filled with keyboards and other peripherals dotted the rest of the room, accompanied by more desks.
Then we get a text message from Josh.
A cop car has pulled in behind the school.
It got very, very quiet.
We all huddled down very low in the backroom, next to the back door. With our lights off, it was pitch black. You could barely even hear us breathing.
Dan looked under the crack of the door. Another car pulled in, along with another text message confirming that it was more cops.
We waited.

———————–

Thirty minutes passed. The cops were out of their cars, poking around the building with flashlights. A light flickered past the door we were next to, a momentary panic. It leaves.

————————

We’ve started discussing what we should do when they find us. Should we give up? Or should we run for it into the neighborhood?

————————-

It seems like we are all still holding our breath.
Then we get another text message.
The cops have left.
We waited about ten minutes, and then, two by two, we wandered out to the cars, which had moved a ways down the road into another parking lot.
We made it.
And the best part is, I didn’t make a single part of this up.

It’s officially TIME. TIME FOR THE PRIZES. (Yeah, sorry it took so long)

The winner of third prize (one of my favorite books and a box of Pocky) is…

TaiLsMeDiA (Aaron)! With his video about the time his dad and him rented segways and went on an epic adventure! Congratulations!
I’ll be contacting you about contact information (address to send it to and such).

The second prize winner (Amazon gift card and a box of pocky) is…
Josee! With the story about the time you got locked up in a petshop over night! Congratulations!
I’ll be contacting you about contact information (address to send it to and such).

AND THE FIRST PRIZE WINNER (winner of an ipod nano and a box of pocky) is…

Eddygazilion (Eddy)! With your story about breaking into an abandoned school, almost getting caught by the police, and making it out alive! Congratulations!
I’ll be contacting you about contact information (address to send it to and such).

So, congrats again to all the winners. I’ll be emailing you all shipping addresses and such shortly. Thanks for participating!

Hello everyone,

DIPC Reviews will no longer be posting anything else on here but you can go to www.workathomecareers.com and www.workathomenoscams.com for great and LEGIT work at home opportunities. I am sorry for not informing you all on this earlier but family issues has come up.

….unless you’re caught in the fallout.

So yesterday I left work early.  Not terribly exciting or out of the ordinary, but I did.  Did I get home early?  No, no I did not.  Did I get home, buoyed by the happy satisfaction attained by leaving work early?  No, I arrived home seething.  If the cat lived downstairs I’d have kicked him.  It’s a good job the dogs have him living, Anne Frank style, upstairs.  (As far as I know, he’s not keeping a diary).

Dropped onto the M90, which was no busier than normal, until I’d just gotten past the last chance to exit the thing before the Forth Road Bridge, where the queue started.  Soon the crawl became a stop.  Turns out some attention seeking miserabilist had driven onto the bridge, stopped his car at the mid point, gotten out, climbed over three barriers and was now standing on the outside of the bridge, holding onto the rail and making the wholly empty threat of jumping.

Two hours the bridge was closed for, TWO HOURS!!!  All so four police offers could coo at this whiner in an attempt to get him to come back over.  It’s time we stopped kid gloving these time wasters.  If he were really determined on jumping, he’d have done it as soon as he got to his launch pad.  But, no, he just wanted a cuddle.  Mummy didn’t give him enough teat or something.  I hope everyone who was forced to go 40 miles out of their way in a diversion sues him to recoup the extra fuel he cost them.

In future the police should just offer a push.  Or get a marksman out to pick these wasters off sniper style.  Instead of mollycoddling, give them an ultimatum.  “You’ve got 10 minutes, either piss or get off the pot.  If you don’t we’re getting you off your perch one-way or the other.”  If they need someone to do the pushing, I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of volunteers in the traffic queue.

———————–

Just how bad is children’s TV these days?  Just how low can it go?  If recent experience is any guide, the possibilities would appear infinite.

Due to the recent half term break, I’ve had the chance to “enjoy” rather more kid’s TV than I’d like.  There appears to be a cornucopia of choice out there in the area of the digibox between the Haji channels and the munters bouncing on a mattress with a mobile in their hands.  Closer inspection reveals a far more hideous truth.  It’s all the same!!!  Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, Jetix et al all appear to show the same programs in some sort of incestuous love in.  Worse, they are obviously sending out some sort of signal that prevents children from remembering what they’ve seen as they’ll watch it again a few hours later oblivious to the fact they’ve seen it all before.

The modern cartoons seem to all be incredibly badly drawn (Ed, Edd & Eddy springs to mind) and thoroughly mindless with all the subtlety of a Trident missile.  The “live action” shows seem to be populated by a procession of identikit “stars”, all of them horribly, smugly precocious or actually 15 years older than their characters but unable to get any other job.  If these shows weren’t American they’d be slated for being so horribly middle class and aspirational.  Designed purely to sell merchandise, they are soulless and despite laugh tracks to the contrary, thoroughly unfunny, I defy anyone to crack even a scintilla of a smile at any point in the entire run of “The Suite Life of Zak and Cody” or it’s even more painful sequel, “Suite Life on Deck”.  Quite how you can take a character designed to send up Paris Hilton and end up with something that makes the real life caricature infinitely more rounded and interesting is almost a work of genius.

The BBC offerings aren’t much better, caught as they are between the ‘lashings of ginger beer’ of Enid Blyton and a cloying need to educate.  Where’s Rentaghost?  The Pink Windmill?  Chorlton and the Wheelies??  Murphy’s Mob?   OK, two of those shows are not like the others, but the point stands.  There is nothing out there at the moment that will be reminisced quite as much as the shows from the 70’s and early 80’s.  No icons of childrens entertainment are being created at the moment, no seminal moments in shows that will be remembered forever.  Every child of the 80’s could tell you who Joey Deacon was.

Maybe I’m just an old fart these days, but surely John Noakes slipping in elephant piss is a better role model than Miley bloody Cyrus.  Once again quantity has replaced quality.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to my bunker with Ms Popov.

Ayer murió Franck Vandenbroucke. Hace varias semanas escribía un reportaje sobre su vida, que con posterioridad colgué aquí. Sobre como parecía haberse rehabilitado. Sobre como parecía haber encontrado cierta estabilidad. Mientras lo redactaba, nada me hizo pensar que esto podía pasar. Que moriría de lo que parece ser una embolia pulmonar. Mucho desgaste, Frankie. Algunos lo presagiaron, de todas maneras. Y cierto es que todo aquello que pasó desde 1999 pudo ser demasiado. Un exceso tras otro. Por que la vida -la mala- de VDB no fue la de aquel ciclista que se dopa. Es la de aquel genio que no aguanta su talento, y toma el mal camino.

Su cabeza nunca pudo aguantar la presión que le pusieron sus piernas. Desde que empezara a destacar, allá por 1996, hasta que explotó en ese excepcional 1999, la presión que él mismo se puso fue demasiada. Infinidad de capítulos dignos de un genio con una personalidad complicada, inestable y muy frágil.

Los más particulares que tuvo fueron los del perro culturista y Francesco del Ponte. El del perro culturista de Frankie es un asunto delicado. Una vez pillado por una autopista belga junto con el famoso doctor Bernard Sainz, Frankie explicó a la policía judicial belga que todos los productos que se encontraban en el maletero, eran para su perro. Nada más ni nada menos. Por otra lado, su amor y pasión por la bici le hicieron falsear una licencia amateur para correr una carrera en el norte de Italia. Para ello italianizó su nombre, escribiendo así el nombre de Francesco del Ponte. No contento con ello, puso una foto de Tom Boonen, el mejor ciclista belga y campeón del mundo en aquel momento, en vez de la suya. Cosas de genio.

Fuera de toda duda, y de todas formas, su mejor capítulo en la historia. Su legado. Es este vídeo. Algunos quizás no lleguéis a comprender qué significa lo que hizo ese día. O, mejor, ese año. Pero confiad cuando os digo que es domingo de abril, el último de aquel 1999, aquello que hizo fue una de las mayores exhibiciones de talento y clase en la historia del ciclismo y, por ende, del deporte.

Ya nunca más tendrá que aguantarse a sí mismo. Ya nunca más tendrá que sentirse presionado. Ahora pedalea libre y sin peso. Para siempre. Eterno ha quedado en el recuerdo de los aficionados del ciclismo. Un mito que nunca quiso serlo, y que, ahora, ya es leyenda. La leyenda del mayor talento, posiblemente, del ciclismo desde Eddy Merckx. Un hombre al cual la vida le dio varias oportunidades que nunca acerto a aprovechar. Pero esta vez sí que parecía merecerse otra más. Esta vez sí demostró querer vivir y ser feliz.

DEP, Frankie.

ja nu har han blivit firad så det heter duga.

Det började med att han fyllde 2 i fredags. Eftersom jag började 6:30 så blev det inget firande på morgonen.

Tog  en sväng över stan när jag åkte hem å köpte med en tårta, å några presenter.

Så när jag kom hem blev det pressent öppnande. Han fick en trumma, plattor till duplot,   järnväg å tåg,

gosetigern snodde han ju åt sig på en gång när vi köpte den, så den blev aldrig nån pressent. Sen smaskade vi oss lite tårta me.

Patrik å jag ´´firade´´ ju att v i stått ut med varandra i 4 år

I går vatr Patrik på övning på em. Så jag å Eddy fick sköta kalasandet själva då. Victor, Kim å Nettan var här, samt Elin å Tina från Örebro.

Av Victor fick Eddy en lastbil, å av Elin å Tina en bok om kossor,

I dag har vi då åter kalasat. Mormor å Stephan kom först, av dem fick Eddy, fleasställ, vinter kängor, en bok med 100 olika fordon;) vantar, en rolig ´´gubbe´´ man kan kram på med handen, typ som en stressboll, hmm glömde jag nått?? jo några fina tröjer me

Sen kom farmor å farfar med en bilmatta, gammelfarmor med pengar,  Tyra och Ann-Marie med en legobil, å ett puzzel med massa olika fordon, och slutligenMaria med ett nalle puh puzzel.Han fick även pengar av gammelmormor å gammel morfar.

Efter varje paket han öppnat jublade han Så tror han blev nöjd med allt han fick

Ne nu ska jag ta mig en macka, å sen kolla på Singel Mammorna

Skönt å slappa lite efter en helg med fullt ös

Photographed by ecstaticist

Sparkles on the ocean.

Have a great Saturday everyone!

– License

I was driving around in a magical hovercar with a sasquatch as our driver. We were all singing Christmas carols in New York when the sasquatch decided to get all angry and drive us through an underground tunnel that lead to Canada. I took one of the mini-cars from the storage and drove to the Ice House only to remember [when I got there] that I had forgotten my skates. Shit. Well, I then proceeded to take the car to a neighbourhood and I parked at this house that I seemed to know. I walked straight inside and down the stairs to a carpeted basement with a bedroom to the left. In the bedroom, a TV was on with Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, a mattress was laid out on the floor, there was a female backpack next to the bed as well as some heels, and there was a notebook. Inside the notebook there was writing and a bit of drawing so I took the notebook out of the room and into the bigger part of the basement where another TV was on with the same show. I sat down and watched TV and drew on 4 pages of the notebook. I looked up at the basement window to find two children looking in and I immediately stopped drawing, ripped out the pages I had draw on [as well as halves of other pages accidentally] and headed for the door upstairs. Halfway up the stairs, I was met by Eddy who was in a 3-piece suit and in his hands, he held out two pairs of shoes – male dress shoes and female dress shoes. We just looked at each other and I ran upstairs and out the door. I looked behind me and he was looking all sorrowful in my direction. He had changed into what looked like an exact replica of my tie-dye shirt.

I continued to hastily walk down the neighbourhood sidewalks. The sky was changing to a dark blue colour and I stumbled upon Cup [one of Eddy's friends]. He was drawing a bottom heavy bird on the sidewalk with names of workers from RT& names of my other friends written in different coloured chalk. He had written some names multiple times. The chalk drawing stretched into the grass at his house. He was about to tell me something but looked over my shoulder instead and gave a grim look. Behind me was Eddy shaking his head and walking in his door.

I walked past Cup’s house and further into this unfamiliar part of the neighbourhood. I walked into a street called “Sprinkles St.” and Sami lived there so I decided to visit her. All of a sudden, the sun came up and we went outside and the yard was covered in flowers. We got guitars out and began to play and sing. Her dad joined us as well and we were making up songs like we used to and they were teaching me how to play the guitar.

p/s : instead of doing model photoshoot, we end up camwhoring! lol

Today is Friday and here are five things I love.

1. Moe’s Southwest Grill. My absolute fav is their Funk Miester taco and it comes with super yummy chips and salsa. I will honestly admit I eat at Moe’s once a week. At least!

2. Suave Double Dutch Apple Detangler Spray…it takes me back to my younger years and it smell sooo yummy! Lately my hair has been super tangly..not sure why, but I love this stuff!

3. These awesome twitter backgrounds. I so need to make one now.

4. Phil Wickham’s new cd… so glad I splurged to get it early! Plus it came with an acoustic version and I am a sucker for anything acoustic.

5. My cat, eddy. I used to think cats were super creepy until I got one.

]]> http://baresz.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/eddy-grant-gimme-hope-joanna/ Fri, 25 Sep 2009 09:29:30 +0000 baresz http://baresz.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/eddy-grant-gimme-hope-joanna/

Gimme hope Jo’anna before the morning come…

Here’s a story about two people.  The first one is a successful assistant coach at a major D-1 college football program.  The second one is the writer of the story.

Watch Marcus Wilson, the assistant coach, and you’ll understand.  He paces the sidelines with his neatly-pressed university polo tucked into his neatly-pressed khakis.  He carries a clipboard.  He doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t miss a play.  He’s the best offensive coordinator in the Southeastern Conference and a lock to take over when his school’s current head coach retires.  When that happens, he’ll become the first minority head coach in the school’s history.  His life is perfect.

The other one, Oscar Berkman, is a bit more difficult.  He’s lazy.  What is he doing with himself, huh?  His parents ask and he doesn’t answer.  He shaves once in a while, eats once in a while, smiles once in a while.  Those are his luxuries.  He’s a teacher at a university and nobody cares. His life is perfect.

So here you have two perfect lives.  Wilson’s life includes a six-figure salary and the keys to a football kingdom.  Berkman’s life includes a modest five-figure salary and the keys to an efficiency apartment.  Yet their stories are the same:  the same as one another’s and the same as everybody else’s.

Wilson goes home to his gorgeous wife and three darling children.  He kisses his wife and checks his children’s homework.  He prepares dinner.  He watches the local news.  He reads the paper.

Berkman goes home to his futon.  He reads a book for work.  He reads a book recommended by one of his friends.  He performs some light calisthenics.  He stares at the ceiling until he falls asleep.

Wilson seems like the luckier of the two, right?  He has his act together.  Berkman is sitting and rotting; Wilson is on the rise.  But that isn’t the truth and it never will be.

Wilson’s life is hell.  Every night after that gorgeous wife and those darling children go to bed, he signs on to the internet.  He navigates to a personals website.  He enters his username (bigmommashouse) and his password (uafootball1) and the world starts to get a little crazy.

Oh stop this.  What was this story going to be about?  It was going to be about two people and I was going to write it using this really awkward parallel structure.   But I don’t want to write that story anymore, nossir.

What I want to write about is sincerity.  Now Marcus Wilson (the “hero” or “protagonist” or whatever of the story) wasn’t very sincere.  He was living a lie.  He would go online and pretend to be a chubby Arab chick (a big beautiful woman or “BBW”) and use this persona (created through his writing, which was secretly quite good because Wilson had been a frustrated journalism major) to seduce real women (whom he distinguished from “fake” women (like himself) using a variety of checks, protocols, tests, etc.).  When they started to love him (i.e., when they started to love this persona), Wilson would block them on his instant messenger and never talk to them again.

Okay, so what about Oscar Berkman?  Now Oscar Berkman was always very sincere (note that parallel structure, fo’ sho’!).  He didn’t live a lie because he felt that’s what his parents had done and so he wanted to be forthright or on the level or “straight up” with the women he dated.  When they said they loved him, he would shelve them in that dusty Royal Library of Alexandria mind of his and proceed to forget about them.  Plus, he wouldn’t call it dating, because really, who dates nowadays?  Do you go on dates?  Don’t lie to me.  I know you don’t, you big liar.  You sit at home and rub your joystick or finger your slit or buzz your button or some such thing.  I’ve seen the advertisements; I’ve seen the truth.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make was how both of these methods—Wilson’s lie and Berkman’s truth—were equally unsavory.  Wilson was unhappy and Berkman was unhappy.

Yet there’s an even more important point here, and that’s why I’ve decided to truncate this narrative (a précis is as good as a disquisition to an ignorant reader in the same way that a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse).  The more important point is that there is no distinction between sincerity and insincerity.

Let’s take the simple sentence “I love you.”  If you tell me this and it’s true, so what.  If you tell me this and it’s false, also so what.  Does it matter less if you don’t mean it?  Of course it doesn’t.

People (i.e., “smart people” or “people in the know”) say that this is the age of irony, by which they mean that this is the age that has lost its grip on sincerity.  Although this is a strange and incorrect juxtaposition, it’s no better or worse than saying that modernism gave way to post-modernism or some other gibberish.

Everything amounts to gibberish:  Everything including that “I love you” and everything including this sorry excuse for a story.  Marcus Wilson typed that he was a woman, he typed that in his online conversations, and yes he was a woman.  His insincerity was their truth.  And it was his truth too, even if he’s not real and they’re not real and none of this happened.  Inside he was a woman, when he wrote from the heart of that phony persona he was a woman, and you have to get this.

I’m not making a complicated philosophical argument here.  Because I don’t have the training, I couldn’t do that (i.e., make said complicated philosophical argument) even if I tried (and I won’t try because I’m too lazy).  What I’m saying is that every single communication that we primates share with one another is true, because if you look at intention, well, the intention of primates is to reproduce and that’s always and everywhere the same (and that goes for of all of god’s creatures, “natch”).  How we get there—how some of us get there—is the real trick.  Some of us, having too much awareness for our own good, get there the long way; and some of us, having too little spirit and too much flesh, don’t get there the wrong way.

Poor Marcus Wilson.  He had it figured out.  Don’t most people have it figured out, so much of the time?  No, reader, you just think that they do.  And you’re a dumber son of a gun than I am because you think so.

After dating a string of decent guys, the loudmouthed girl started dating a loser.  Most of her friends thought that the loser was ridiculous, a few of them thought that he was repulsive, and all of them hated his guts.  But that was how it went with the loudmouthed girl:  You couldn’t figure her out, and you had no interest in trying.

The loser wasn’t a bad fellow.  Maybe he was even a good fellow.  Let’s stop the analysis here, though, for who among us wants to cast that first stone?  At any rate, the loser knew one of the decent guys the loudmouthed girl had dated; that decent guy had introduced her to him.  The decent guy didn’t like the girl that much, and he didn’t like the loser that much.  Together he liked them even less, but their affair wasn’t his business.

Except one night the loudmouthed girl decided to make it the decent guy’s business.  She called him.  He hadn’t been expecting her call, but he knew she was unpredictable.  What did she want from him?

The decent guy wasn’t that great, but he was better than nothing.  Being better than nothing was all that decency, which had lowered its expectations after the Great War, demanded of people.  Perhaps the decent guy could find out what the loudmouthed girl wanted; perhaps he could wrest an answer from her; perhaps he could salvage his better than nothingness and move on with his life.  He convinced himself that if he met with her, everything would work out for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

They met at his office and then went to a bar, whereupon the loudmouthed girl began drinking beer.  The decent guy also drank some beer, but it didn’t work on him the same way that it worked on her.  She talked rapidly, and he struggled to follow what she was saying.  What she was saying didn’t make much sense.

“I don’t know what I’m doing with him,” she said.

He didn’t know what she was doing with the loser, but he didn’t care, either.  “It is what it is,” he said.  He said things like that when he didn’t care.  Of course, his not caring meant that somewhere in what remained of his better-than-nothing soul, he cared.  Life is crazy like that.

“He’s got all these things about him that I don’t like, and I shouldn’t want to change him,” she continued.  “But I do want to change him, and I know that’s wrong.”

The decent guy nodded, but he wasn’t listening.  Should he be listening to her, he wondered?  In his mind, which visited places he would never go and beheld vistas he would never see, he clung fast to his certitudes: faith, grace, hope, charity.  He refused to share these with others.  “You can’t change people,” he told her.

“He’s wrong for me,” she said.

Everyone is wrong for everyone else, he thought.  “What do you want me to say?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”  Her question didn’t sound sincere.  In fact, it didn’t even sound like a question.

“Right now, what do you want me to say?”  He knew she didn’t want him to say anything—that most people didn’t want their friends to say things to them, that they just wanted their friends to listen.  She wasn’t his friend, though.

“I guess I wanted to talk to you about him.  You won’t tell him I said any of this, will you?”

“Nah,” the decent guy said. He didn’t know the loser well enough to feel comfortable saying anything to him.  “My lips are sealed.  Your secret dissatisfaction is safe with me.”

A dozen beers later, she begged him to drive her home.  He drove her back to her apartment in her car, then supported her while they walked to her doorstep.  “Can you get up those steps?” he asked.

“I’m not going to have sex with you, if that’s what’s on your mind,” she said.

The decent guy didn’t want to have sex with her.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to have sex with anyone.  Gandhi didn’t have sex with anyone, he recalled, and Gandhi was more than decent.  “I don’t think I gave any indication that I wanted to sleep with you.  Besides, you and I were finished a long time ago.  You’re with somebody else now.  You don’t like him, but I know you didn’t like me.”

“You’re beautiful,” she told him.

He wasn’t sure if she meant it.  Maybe she was trying to assuage his hurt ego; maybe she said it because he had paid for their beers.  His own assessment of her attractiveness was moot.  He wouldn’t have told her she was attractive even if she was.  He didn’t say things like that.  What would have been the point?  “Yeah, whatever.  True or not, it does me no good.”  It did Gandhi no good, either, but at least Gandhi did good.

The loudmouthed girl turned away from him.  As she did, an SUV filled with drunken youths drove past.  “Got yourself a real porker!” one of the youths shouted at the decent guy, who made no reply.

“What did they say?  I didn’t hear them,” she said.

The decent guy chuckled.  “’Got yourself a real porker.’”  The loudmouthed girl was far from obese, but that didn’t stop him from repeating the insult.  He doubted that she could take it, but he knew that she would act as if she could.

“Screw them.  I’m voluptuous.  Don’t you think so?” she asked.

“Oh you know,” he said.  “Oh you know” was another one of those things he said when he meant to say everything he ever wanted to say but found himself unable to utter one true word.   “If it bothers you, you should start going to the gym.”

“Fuck you,” she said.  “You should’ve defended my honor.”

“I couldn’t,” he said.

They parted like that.  She stumbled up the stairs and he walked back to his apartment.  As he passed through the quiet residential neighborhood that separated her place from his, he kept thinking about his last words to her.  He couldn’t, could he?  God knew he couldn’t.  High above the decent guy, the stars limned an infinite space.

Und jetzt noch ein Bad Taste Bear, der einem unter Umständen genau wie „AMY“ bekannt vorkommen könnte, hierbei handelt es sich um ”EDDY“ aus dem „Bad Taste Bears“-Movie Bear-Sortiment, diesen und viele weitere Artikel findet man zu äußerst günstigen Preisen im NILUKA Shop unter www.niluka-shop.de.

Wir freuen uns über jeden Besuch ;-) * Schnelle Lieferung, * Bezahlung per Vorkasse (Überweisung), mit Paypal oder per Nachnahme.

Cllr Richard Eddy, Bristol's Tory leader

Last night I attended the full council meeting of the Bristol City Council. There was a lobby calling for the removal Richard Eddy, as leader of the Conservative Group, following his press comment that a lottery grant to a charity which supports youngsters subject to homophobic bullying was “outrageous”.

Cllr Eddy is well known for his rather old fashioned views. When deputy leader of the Conservatives in Bristol he adopted his Gollywog as the group mascot (for a couple of days until the rest of his group found out).

The extraordinary event was Cllr Eddy, clearly confused and distracted rose to give a standing ovation to the statement by Darren Lewis (Bristol West Labour Party Secretary) calling for his resignation. Unfortunately he did not follow this up by actually resigning.

There is a related facebook group for this topic at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123781553250&ref=ts

The Bristol Evening Post has run some articles:

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/homepage/Lottery-grant-Bristol-gay-teens-group-outrageous/article-1284291-detail/article.html

http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/homepage/Protest-Bristol-Tory-leader/article-1341566-detail/article.html

 You can watch the meeting online at: http://www.bristol.public-i.tv/site/player/pl_compact.php?a=29296&t=0&m=wm&l=en_GB

And bristol 24/7 reports the meeting:

http://www.bristol247.com/2009/09/16/standing-ovation-after-call-for-tory-leader-to-quit/

Nobody remembers the breast milk craze.  It has been less than a decade, but already breast milk has passed out of the national consciousness.  We Americans used to drink breast milk the way we screwed around with Rubik’s Cubes, Simon Says handheld games, and Teddy Ruxpins.  But no one drinks breast milk anymore, not even the babies.

It all started with world-class coach and athlete “Herc” Broadsides.  After Broadsides’ Cleveland Spartans won the Ultimate Bowl over the hapless Allentown Ionians, “Herc” seized the opportunity to extol the virtues of breast milk.  “Me and my Soda House Gang owe it all to breast milk!” he barked in his trademark gravelly tone.  “Rain or shine, I drink five liters of this gunk a day.”

Sports Drinks Incorporated (hereafter “SDI”), which had been casting about for a new useless health supplement ever since its best-selling Androgenizing Maxidron 5000 PlusRIPPED! had been banned by an act of Government, noticed the media coverage that breast milk was receiving and decided to corner the market.

“We’ve been in talks with various important athletes to endorse breast milk,” SDI’s then-CEO Rogers Rackenby told FLEX magazine.  “Our studies show that breast milk has significant glutaminic agent interactions, which in turn release prototestosterone precursors.  The effects of breast milk are similar to the effects of powerful steroids like Deca-Durabolin, but without the estrogenic, reifieric, and atrotonic consequences.”

The bodybuilding community, a curious subculture composed of rockheads and morons who are willing to shorten their life expectancies in exchange for killer quads and rad lats, fell for Rackenby’s scientific-sounding sales pitch.  Sales of breast milk skyrocketed.  For several months, demand outpaced supply.  A thriving black market in breast milk developed around the so-called “hardgainer” gyms of Southern California, with cash-strapped weightlifters milking lactating wives and girlfriends out of the backseats of their Pontiac Firebirds and Geo Trackers.

SDI expanded its breast milk operation, partnering with agribusiness giant Fake Foods International (“”FFI”) to run huge milking farms in Belarus, Latvia, and the Ukraine.  Millions of cash-strapped Slavic women auditioned for a few thousand milking slots; only the heartiest among them were chosen.  Rackenby’s unofficial hiring criterion was “If you don’t have 46Ds, you’re not working for me.”  SDI’s breast milk, distributed in glass bottles with rubber nipple caps, became a worldwide phenomenon on a par with Starbucks Coffee, Nalgene water bottles, and “Live Strong” bracelets.

Other suppliers soon joined the race to the bottom.  Owing to various African dictators’ willingness to ignore human rights and trade conventions, breast milk became as cheap and available as cow’s milk.  Celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Dana Delany attributed their extraordinary weight loss to consumption of breast milk.  Diet books—most notably Rich “Fit” Fitler’s platinum-selling The Nine-Week Breast Milk Plan For Better Living, Better Health, Better Credit, Better Orgasms, and Better Erections (for Ladies Only!)—filled the shelves of the chain booksellers.

The breast milk movement began to lose steam when news of breast milk’s deleterious effects leaked to the public.  The backlash started with a story on Rosie O’Donnell Investigates! in which a prominent dietitian claimed that over-consumption of the dairy beverage would cause kidney stones.  The Harvard Medical Journal followed with a lengthy report on the negative side effects of breast milk, among them elephantiasis, Wichita Lineman’s disease, and wharf toe.

Pressured by consumer groups, the United States banned the importation of breast milk from the African continent.  “We can no longer countenance the possibility that our children and our children’s children will be exposed to contaminated breast milk,” said the bill’s sponsor, Senator Robert Byrd, who had months earlier attributed his extraordinary longevity to the anti-aging properties of breast milk.

SDI, still the North American leader in breast milk sales, changed its marketing and production strategies.  “Our farms produce breast milk that meets organic standards,” explained CEO Rackenby at a 199X press conference.  “Our sows aren’t penned up in tiny cells and milked to the point of exhaustion by unsafe milking machines.  Instead, we allow them to roam free across green pastures and have our technicians milk them the old fashioned way, with their hands.  Hands, I should add, that have been softened with the use of expensive lotions provided by Bath & Body Works.”

But SDI’s attempts to clean up its flagship supplement’s image proved unavailing.  The world market became glutted with breast milk.  Although the gallon price of breast milk dropped below the gallon price of water, subsequent attempts to exhort consumers to save water by bathing in breast milk failed to generate much interest.

In 199X, SDI filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  Rackenby stepped down as CEO, leaving behind several billion dollars of debt as his legacy.  In his memoir Nursing My Wounds, he condemned the public’s fleeting attention span and sought to justify his own managerial misfeasance:

“Twenty years ago, you could count on consumers to use an ineffective product for a long time.  How else can you explain the success of mouthwash?  Mouthwash does nothing for the mouth.  Well, I suppose that it does tingle a little when you gargle with it, and it can be used in a pinch when you’re out of whiskey.  But that’s the extent of it.

Anyway, I thought breast milk could be the new mouthwash.  I staked the SDI’s fortunes on this belief.  For a little while, we were as successful as Jim Plunkett’s Oakland Raiders or Fritz Von Erich’s World Class Championship Wrestling.  But our success was not to last.  From niche product to forgotten fad, such is the life cycle of the market for a worthless good.

Nevertheless, I take considerable comfort in the fact that breast milk’s placebo effect helped many amateur athletes reach their competitive peaks.  I am also proud to say that SDI employed thousands of women.  We paid these women well.  They were able to send their kids to college.

Do I feel guilty?  Sure.  But only for the embezzlement, and I think the four years that I served at New Castle Prison were sufficient atonement for my crime.  I do not, however, feel guilty for marketing breast milk.

Thomas Lennon refused to say he was sorry for writing Herbie:  Fully Loaded.  Ted McGinley never begged forgiveness for playing Jefferson D’Arcy on Married with Children.  Rob Lowe may or may not have apologized for his infamous sex tape; I can’t remember how that one turned out.  Anyway, breast milk was one of the great ideas of our age.  Each living woman has two breasts that, when pumped to capacity, can contribute to feeding the entire world.

It is not my fault that breast milk was found to be unsafe. SDI did not know.  No one knew.  The space shuttle Challenger wasn’t safe, but NASA still shot that roman candle into the atmosphere.  Like NASA, SDI just wanted to make the world a better place.  And for a while, we did—one gallon at a time.”

The internet website www.breastmilk.com constitutes the most comprehensive tribute to this ignored era in world history.  Maintained by “Specs” Lucdonald, breastmilk.com receives thousands of hits per month and counts ALF funnyman Max Wright and the legendary “Herc” Broadsides among its regular readers.

“I know what ‘they’ say, whoever they are,” Lucdonald writes on the site’s Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQ”) page.  “But I believe in my heart of hearts that breast milk won that World Bowl for ‘Herc’ and his Soda House Gang.  And it’s the belief that matters, not whether the breast milk actually helps you run a 9.69 in the 100 meter dash. The breast milk craze gripped this nation in a religious fervor—a fervor the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Charles Grandison Finney led his revivals in antebellum America.  We cannot forget, my dear friends, we cannot ever forget.”

Davey “Brick” Shiddaus, the most perfectly developed man in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, surveyed the floor of MuscleJocks Power and Fitness with an art critic’s eye for detail.  Surveying five thousand square feet of barbells, dumbbells, smith machines, and medicine balls, he espied five or six powerfully built males whom he immediately took for rivals.  Shiddaus fixed each rival in turn with his glittering eye, an eye that owed its curious glitter to the copious amounts of Deca-Durabolin, Anadrol 50, and swine testosterone that he consumed before each workout.  Christ, he thought to himself as he barked out the number of his bench press repetitions in the guttural call of the wild that now passed for his voice, these little pussies think that they can suck a real man’s dick. Well, I’ll show them.

As Shiddaus approached his thirty-first repetition, his phone began to ring.  Almost at once, his heart, which had grown to at least twice its original size during a decade of pharmaceutically-charged “hardgaining,” suffered one of its periodic spasms.  He barely had time to rack the bar before he collapsed to the floor, clutching at the renegade chest that had betrayed him in his hour of greatest need.

“Oh god, don’t let it end like this,” he whimpered to himself.  “I still have three more reps…”

Fortunately for “Brick,” Chayne “Link” Hughes, Raleigh, North Carolina’s most perfectly developed man and Shiddaus’ erstwhile spotter, rushed over and jammed a horse needle filled with adrenaline into Shiddaus’ pectoral muscle.  Shiddaus convulsed a few more times, then rested stiffly on the floor.  His phone continued to ring.

“Could you hand me my celly?” Shiddaus asked Hughes in a weak voice.

“Christ, ‘Brick,’ your eyes are bulging out of your head like a pair of golf balls.  Are you sure that’s not a papilledema?  That shit you’ve been taking could give you a brain tumor,” Hughes said.

“Just give me my fucking celly!” Shiddaus hissed. Hughes obliged, then hurried to complete his workout.  “Who the fuck is this?”

“Oscar Berkman,” the voice from the receiver said.

“Christ, Ohvuh, you coulda killed me.  You can’t just go ringing phones like that, you know?”

“Shut up, ‘Brick,’” Oscar said.  “I’ve got some big news from you, straight from the science lab here at State University.”

“What?  What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the supplement discovery of the century, ‘Brick.’  The stuff that the pro teams are using now.  Just the other day, Coach ‘Herc’ Broadsides himself attributed the Cleveland Spartans’ thrilling Ultimate Bowl victory to this miracle drug.”

“You gotta tell me, Omar, you gotta tell me,” ‘Brick,’ who was already envisioning the possibility of using this drug in conjunction with a dozen others to achieve his dream of bench pressing 1,400 pounds and thus cowing all of his rivals into submission, begged into the receiver.

“It’s breast milk, ‘Brick,’” Oscar said.

“Brick” was dumfounded.  “You mean from a tit?  A boob?”

“Yes, from a tit, a boob, a knocker, whatever you want to call it.  If you drink breast milk, it’ll help you do all sorts of things, such as winning the Ultimate Bowl.”

“No shit,” “Brick” said.  “And to think I’ve always thought that suckin’ on one of those big fat things was kinda nasty.  Maybe that’s why I’ve hit the wall in my training.”

“I’m sure it is, ‘Brick.’  But we can’t waste any time.  You’ve got to tell all of the other meatheads at that gym about this.  If we play our cards right, we’ll have them eating out of our hands…and sucking milk out of some breasts, too.”

“You can count on me, Otter,” “Brick” said.  And, despite his disdain for Berkman’s middling max repetition figures and haughty bearing, he meant it.  This could be his ticket to the big time, the opportunity for him to move out of his mother’s conversion van and onto the performance stage of the Drug Test-Free Powerlifting Nationals.

After this breast milk-fueled victory, he could love himself.  He really could.  Really.

Glen, der Pianist von Elvis, trat am 5.9.2009 zusammen mit King Eddy und der Vegas Connection in Wuppertal in der Börse auf. Ein gelungener Abend: