why so angry?

[this is the toughest red panda / firefox I have ever seen. he is going to cuddle with you, but he has to kick your ass first. grrrrrrr!!]

There are all kinds of weird, self-righteous people out there. And there are idiots. And there is some overlap between the two groups. Which is good for me when I need a laugh.

Take Gerard Talbot, for example. I happened across some of Gerards comments on the mozilla website that had a cute picture of a sad little firefox (must be the cousin of the asskicker pictured here). Gerard was so incensed about the sad picture that he LAID DOWN THE LAW.
Here's my favorite excerpt from his (long) comment:

3- “Please don’t hurt the web, use open standards”
should not be referring to mistreated animal, animal cruelty, wildlife animal trembling in fear, anxiety, stress, fearing for his life, etc.. I totally and unequivocally disagree with the use of that image: it sends a wrong message. It misuses the image of animal cruelty to convey badly battered markup code, hacks of all sorts in webpages, etc.. There is a huge difference between the 2.

Gerard, I think I speak for many when I say: Chill out, man. It's a t-shirt. For an internet browser. Also: you're giving me anxiety, and I think your badly battered code (on your website) is cruel to look at. for f's sake.

if you ain't cheatin, you ain't tryin'

ahh, the magic of sport. On the one hand, you've got guys like Barry Bonds. He probably took steroids. I don't much care. It wasn't against the rules when he did it, and there's a long and inglorious history of cheating in baseball. You can say Aaron didn't use illegal drugs, but you have to admit that he may have been popping greenies like tic tacs. So what?

And then there's cycling. lordy lordy lordy. Cyclists are the East German swim team from 1976. I have a friend in France (oui!) that rides with some amateur cyclists on the weekends. He told me a couple years ago that even the amateur riders, the weekend warriors riding for club teams, have to deal with doping at every competition. He says it's just the done thing; if you're not enhancing w/ drugs, you're not going to even compete. I confess that I doubted him then, but not now.

The rider in the photo above (from Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; please don't send me litigious correspondence) was the race leader until he got booted for skipping scheduled drug tests before the race started. How did he get through almost the whole race without someone noticing that he had been booted from his own national team for suspicion of using drugs? That's the kind of oversight you only expect from the federal government.

The countdown is on: 9 days to Beckham

The arrival of David Beckham in the US is a Big Deal. There are ad campaigns, and then there are ad campaigns cleverly disguised as magazine covers.

You can read all about what I think of Beckham and his impact on MLS here and also here. Short version: he won't have much impact on the crummy quality of play in MLS, and who cares if you "raise awareness" for a shitty product? It's still shit.

My latest point of interest is the storyboard from the advertising agency that is creating another ad campaign to announce His arrival. (See full storyboard on Slate.) They are contrasting how sad Madrid is (the Real half, not the Atletico half) about Beckham leaving, and how ABSOLUTELY PUMPED the Galaxy fans are.

They show an empty and "lifeless" Bernabeu stadium, and an "energetic and lively" Home Depot Center. That's funny because the Bernabeu averages 72,000 screaming, singing crazies during home games. The Galaxy averages a league-leading 22,500. I've never been to the Bernabeu, but I'm guessing that it was fairly engergetic and lively when they were winning the league for the 26th(?) time this year. Guessing. The Galaxy stadium is really nice, but let's make sure we compare apples to apples. Not that you care.

ps. A google for "posh spice media whore" turned up only 95,500 hits. She needs to work a lot harder.