Ladies and Gentlemen...

Please cover your ears for our national anthem. Any time a singer has to promise "I'll make it up to you", you know you're in for a bad ride.











If you want patriotism, stick with Cheryl's blog. I only publish the a**hole stuff.

Still runnin'

Not that anyone's been reading my blog this long, but remember these people?

Yep, they're still running. Humans, and the things we do, continue to amaze me. Some of us can run around the planet, others can't make it down a runway in high heels.

The annual running of the imbeciles

Next time you lose your car keys or exit an elevator on the wrong floor, console yourself---you're not dumb. This is dumb.

Score for the bulls this year: 2 gorings, 7 crushes. And one photographer scored the picture of a lifetime.

I used to think the people of Pamplona were an isolated group of crazies before I met a guy from Spain in one of my classes. He lived in a small town (I don't remember the name) where they had the same ritual of trying to get themselves trampled or stuck while running the local streets. To prove it, he had a scar on his upper arm from a goring. He was incredibly modest about his idiocy, saying that their bulls were just "little ones". From the look of his scar they were damned well big enough to skewer his bicep.

God Bless America

I love the American spirit. We're unique. What other nation celebrates Independence with such a wide array of opportunities to injure or kill yourself? On July 4th we gather in drunken groups to blow fingers off with fireworks or set fire to ourselves via grills.

In Atlanta, the hurting starts early with the Peachtree Road Race. 55,000 official entrants, plus an unknown number of unofficial "stringers" run, walk, and crawl 6.2 miles down Peachtree in the Summer heat. If you have never seen the Peachtree, it's quite a spectacle. The logistical arrangement is fascinating. Getting 55,000 people to run together is clearly an accomplishment close to putting a man on the moon.

The runners don't all start at the same time, they're divided into time groups. The elite runners start first, and every few minutes thereafter another wave moves up to the start line and begins at their own time. Since runners are by definition anxious to get moving, the time groups are seperated with the clarity of Indian castes. They're herded into enormous enclosures I call "holding pens". Volunteers direct runners by bib number (for example, runners with numbers starting with 7 are in that time group) to where to wait for the start of the race. You can drop back and start in a later time group if you want to run with a friend or get a few extra minutes of sleep. Trying to sneak into a higher time group is about as easy as infiltrating Al Queda.

Each holding pen (composed of chain link fences and orange netting) is self-contained, with it's own water station, porta-potties, and volunteer cadre. For about two hours, it's like a little mini-city of 5,000 along Peachtree street. To move runners to the starting line, the volunteers remove the netting from the front of the pen. Several of them take up positions at the front with signs marked on the front with "WALK" and "STOP" on the back. By flipping these signs back and forth, they can control the movement of the group without the dreaded "pileup" effect, when the back of a large group keeps moving when the front has stopped. All in all, it's a very organized and well-run process. It helps that many of the volunteer groups are composed of the same people who work the same station each year, so they have preassigned jobs that are old hat.

The pain of the Peachtree road race can be measured in numbers. According to the Atlanta Track club runners will collectively burn 34 million calories. 120,000 gallons of water is used in a futile attempt to keep runners cool during the race. It's distributed in 65,00 bottles and 500,000 paper cups for drinking, and for cooling by spray hoses. Even Jesus tries to keep everyone from stroking out on the race course.

Of course, only 54, 950 runners are really hurting. About 50 world class African runners drop in and leave Americans in the dust. They collect their T-shirts and depart Hartsfield International before time group 9 even gets to the starting line.

They're off!

I rarely think about having access to fresh, clean water. It's only a few steps away, all I have to do is go to the sink and turn a tap. Even with our drought here in Georgia the biggest consequence on most people's mind is their landscaping. We take it for granted. About a billion people can't. They have to drink what they can find, where they can find it. If it's contaminated with sewage, microorganisms, or whatever, they just have to hope it doesn't kill them or their family.

To draw attention to the problem, beginning today, a team from the Blue Planet Foundation will be runninga kind of relay around the clock for 15,200 miles. They've been running for about two hours so far, and they plan to be running nonstop for the next 2278. The team only consists of 20 people, all of them in much better shape than I am.