Choosing the Perfect Gift - Lifehacker

Choosing the Perfect Gift - Lifehacker:

"...Don’t be afraid to ask what he or she wants. “A good surprise lasts five seconds. A good gift will be remembered forever....”"

It's funny because it's true! [See, because Rush Limbaugh is a bombastic, hypocritical addict. In case that wasn't obvious.]

Daily Kos: Cheers and Jeers: Tuesday:

"[Al Franken] ...Moral values: From what I understand, if you cut out all the passages in the Bible where Jesus talks about the poor, about helping out the least among us, you'd have the perfect container to smuggle Rush Limbaugh's drugs in..."

It's true.

I'm not nearly as clever as I think I am.

The Dilbert Blog:

"The only reason I dare writing this blog is because I have absolutely no sense of embarrassment. Most people would be horrified at the prospect of proving their ignorance to thousands of readers... just enjoy the blog as if it were an e-mail from your friend who thinks he’s clever but isn’t as clever as he thinks."

See Kev, you aspire to be a redneck, this is how you'll end up. Fair Warning.

Dilbert.com - DNRC:

"My Kentuckian sister-in-law's young daughter recently married a Mexican immigrant. They promptly had their first child. Sometime after the birth, a doctor walked into the recovering mom's hospital room and mentioned that the baby's white blood cell count was high. My sister-in-law asked, 'Does that mean she will be more white than Mexican?' This is a true story."

"I prefer to feel that everything can be expanded to Magick."

LVX23:

"Magick & Science - Two Ways of Looking

Here's a great thread on Barbelith trying to explain the value of magickal thinking to a rationalist. Some people like to think that everything can be reducible to science. I prefer to feel that everything can be expanded to Magick."

Funny...

BAMM!!!

New haircut.

For Sandy

Vincent Cheung's Blog:

"How to wake up and feel better.

...I use a very simple system that can be done by even the most frugal of people. I can't remember when I first started doing this, but it's been at least 7 years. Here's what you do:


* Set an alarm to go off before you want to wake up.

* Make the alarm really quiet radio or music.

* Set a second alarm to go off at the latest time you want to wake up.

* Make the alarm the usual loudness.


The whole point is that the first alarm should be so quiet that it will only wake you up if you're in "light" sleep. Waking up in "light" sleep should leave you feeling more refreshed than waking up in "deep" sleep. The second alarm is the back up to make sure that you wake up in time :)..."

The Catholic Church, leading the charge into the 14th century...

Boing Boing: Principal says students can't keep blogs or MySpace profiles:

"Principal says students can't keep blogs or MySpace profiles
A blog isn't just fun, says a Catholic school principal in New Jersey --

It's an open invitation to predators and an activity that Pope John XIII Regional High School in Sparta will no longer tolerate, the Rev. Kieran McHugh told a packed assembly of 900 high school students two weeks ago.

(Because if there's one thing Catholic Church officials know about first-hand, it's the behavior patterns of sexual predators.)

Effective immediately, and over student complaints, the teens were told to dismantle their Myspace.com accounts or similar sites with personal profiles and blogs. Defy the order and face suspension, students were told. While public and private schools routinely block access to noneducational Web sites on school computers, Pope John's order reaches into students' homes..."

ACLU Reports 21 Homicides in U.S. Custody - Yahoo! News

ACLU Reports 21 Homicides in U.S. Custody - Yahoo! News:

"At least 21 detainees who died while being held in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan were killed, many during or after interrogations, according to an analysis of Defense Department data by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The analysis, released Monday, looked at 44 deaths described in records obtained by the ACLU. Of those, the group characterized 21 as homicides, and said at least eight resulted from abusive techniques by military or intelligence officers, such as strangulation or "blunt force injuries," as noted in the autopsy reports.

The 44 deaths represent a partial group of the total number of prisoners who have died in U.S. custody overseas; more than 100 have died of natural and violent causes.

In one case, the report said, a detainee died after being smothered during interrogation by military intelligence officers in November 2003. In another case cited by the report, a prisoner died of asphyxiation and blunt force injuries after he was left standing, shackled to the top of a door frame, with a gag in his mouth..."

Distractions

Followup/Distraction (Ftrain.com):

"I don't want more information, more feeds, more sources. When I write, when I think, the Internet is just too much for me to fathom. It's a wonderful tool for research, a good way to kill a few hours...

I figure there are two different kinds of distractions: the wide kind and the narrow kind. The Internet is the widest possible distraction because it lets you wander so far afield that getting work done if you are, like me, the distractable sort of person--getting work done is almost impossible. I'm not the sort of person who can read a book with footnotes and ignore the footnotes. I have to read every footnote. I often prefer the footnotes because they point in so many directions. But when wide distractions are available I avoid the narrow distractions, and those are the useful distractions. Let's say you're thinking hard about a concept--say, kittens. Kittens are young cats. They have paws and they are sometimes friendly. Your stepmother, you remember, didn't let you have a kitten. Why was that? Was she allergic, or did she really just hate you? Now, that's something worth thinking about. A concept worth exploring. That's a narrow distraction, a good distraction.

But with a wide distraction you think about kittens and all of a sudden your email pops up and you're thinking about Viagra, and about how horrible the world is and how it's filled with rapacious greedy spammers. You're not able to think about kittens any more so you check out the news to find out that China has a manned space program. Click. And that peak oil is a real problem and we might be living in an age where electricity becomes prohibitively expensive. Click. And that Apple just released a new iPod again, and everyone is all aflutter. There's really no way to bring all of that back to kittens. You've been broadly distracted. You might as well play some solitaire and go to bed.

Distraction is necessary. Minds need to wander to get anything done. But the Internet is sort of the mental equivalent of the snack aisle at a convenience store, filled with satisfying fatty chips and tasty cream-filled cakes. God knows I've spent enough time with both the Internet and cream-filled cakes to see the similarities."

Guest post: More on distractions, from Paul Ford | 43 Folders:

"Because sometimes a broad distraction–like, say, getting drunk and watching the movie Red Dawn–is exactly what you need.

....My mind can’t wander, because, with anything that interests me, I can look it up on Wikipedia to gain some context. Before I know it I’ve got thirty tabs open at once in Firefox. Then new email comes in.

...I’m very paranoid about any metric of productivity. One person’s wasted time is another person’s productivity. For most of my life people saw me doing the things I liked to do and said, “you have too much free time on your hands.” I’ve decided that when you hear that, it means you’re doing something right."

Kung Fu Monkey: Daily Dingo

Brilliant:

Kung Fu Monkey: Daily Dingo:

"...She just smiled as she placed three items on the bed between my legs, one by one:

1) a saddle

2) a melon baller

3) and a fucking ferret...."

Hunter S Thompson's widow on a lonely legacy

Guardian Unlimited Books: Hunter S Thompson's widow on a lonely legacy:

"His motto was: it's wrong when it stops being fun."

Overheard in the Office

Site cracks me up...

Overheard in the Office: The Voice of the Cubicle :

"12PM Sensitivity Retraining

Co-worker #1: How was the event today?
Co-worker #2: Oh, it was good. The audience was mostly colored, but there were a few white people.
Co-worker #1: ...

444 Park Avenue
New York, NY

1PM Lunch

Tech: I am a guacamole of knowledge into which you may dip the nacho of need.

105 Madison Avenue
New York, NY

2PM Send Off Tuition Check

Admissions clerk: Can I help you?
Student: I didn't get credit for a class I took this summer.
Admissions clerk: Did you go to class?
Student: Sometimes.
Admissions clerk: Did you pay for the class or do you have a student loan?
Student: No.

120 White Bridge Road
Nashville, Tennessee
Overheard by: Susan Fanning"

Bush

No Touch Monkey!:

"There is no way Bush started drinking again.

To start drinking 'again' would require that he stopped drinking at some point...."

The Poor Man Institute » Would it be irresponsible to speculate about Bush’s relapse into alcoholism?:

"Would it be irresponsible to speculate about Bush’s relapse into alcoholism?
Posted by The Editors under Uncategorized

Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again, The National Enquirer can reveal.

A few things:

1. The National Enquirer. Yeah, I know they get stuff right sometimes, and they’ve beaten libel suits and all that, but still: The National Enquirer. Noted.

2. On the other hand, the guy falls down alot. I don’t know what a normal amount of falling down is, an I imagine that some people have lifestyles that involve a higher risk of falling down than mine, and so that needs to be taken into account. That said, he fell off a Segway. That’s like … I don’t know what that’s like, like water flowing uphill or something. I’m not sure how you would go about doing that, falling off a state-of-the-art self-balancing transport, but I think there are instructions inside bottles of cheap Scotch.

...4. But it’s not just the falling down. The guy’s just weird sometimes - I’m not just talking about all the weird shit he says, or the way he’s always smiling like he just made some great joke after saying something utterly devoid of humor, or any of the other stuff. He’s just a weird duck. Maybe it’s just that you only ever see him in very artificial circumstances, but there’s just this sense I get that he’s not really there. Like if you were to open up his head and look inside you’d see these circus bears riding unicycles around and around in there. And sometimes he’ll give one of his ’significant’ glances, and I swear to God I can hear the theme to “The Twilight Zone”. I’m not really explaining myself well, I know, and I hesitate to even bring it up, but I’ve never liked him, never wanted to “have a beer” with him, and have always just felt on a gut level like something’s not quite where it’s supposed to be. I’m definitely not explaining myself. Try this: remember Clinton, how he always seemed completely unselfconscious and comfortable in his own skin? Like that, time minus fifty. Throw in some drinkies and a few blinding hangovers, though, and it starts making more sense to me.

5. But here’s the thing. Let’s say he is drinking. Let’s say he is. Bush is a self-diagnosed alcoholic. Bush is a self-diagnosed alcoholic who woke up one day and cured himself (assist: Jesus). That is the story, yes? I’m not missing anything? Now, I don’t doubt that there is a legitimate medical diagnosis of alcoholism, and I’m not trying to make light of it in any way, but the lay definition of “alcoholic” is pretty close to the Dylan Thomas definition: “anyone who drinks more than me...”

Indoc 101

Salivate, Citizen by Mike Rogers:

"...Hate to break this to you, but you are brainwashed; or, at the very least, have been subjected to brainwashing all your life. It’s unfortunate, and you can deny it all you want, but you have. So have your parents, your grand-parents, and their parents, and their parents before that. So have your wife and your children. So will your children’s children and their children too. Your entire family and everyone you know have been subjected to brainwashing; some have been consumed by it; some will never get over it. It is most unfortunate that there’s not a thing you can do or say that will make things any different. The people who will get the most angry and defensive about this; the people who will argue with this the most incessantly are the most brainwashed of all.

From the day a child gets old enough to understand, the brainwashing commences... And it doesn’t matter when or whether that child was born and raised in the Soviet Union, China, Japan, Nazi Germany, or the United States; if the home and area they are raised in has any sort of government or even one iota of jingoism or patriotism, you can bet that that child will grow up with a biased view on the world. You can be sure that the brainwashing has distorted that child’s thinking. You can also be sure that the child probably will grow up with an unwavering belief that his country is the best – and will get angry or defensive if challenged about it...

It is most unfortunate that many Americans, for the most part, will get all riled up and huffy about what I have written here but, from what I’ve seen, Americans are probably the most brainwashed basketcases in the world today. It’s really a shame that a people who believe that they are the number one and the world’s only superpower, are in fact probably the most brainwashed people on the face of the earth today.

...Why do Americans care when two of their soldiers are killed in a foreign country – in a foreign country? But when tens of thousands of innocents – in their own homes – in their own country – are bombed and murdered by us, it is not even reported in American news? Why do the brainwashed cry when one or two soldiers are killed fighting in a country – a country that they had no business being in the first place – but don’t care for the innocent children murdered by those soldiers at the same time? Why do people care about someone whose only relationship to them actually is a government issued passport? Why don’t people shed a tear for 10,000 dead in an earthquake in that foreign land? Could it really be because of a passport? Is it really just because of brainwashing and indoctrination we have all received since the day we were born?..."

If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong

Great rant.

Of course, keep in mind this disclaimer, via Metafilter:

MetaFilter:

"As an agnostic, I don't really have an opinion either way on the big questions. But it sounds like the author is really angry at the side effects of organized religion, not the existence of religion itself. "

The Blog | Cenk Uygur: If You're a Christian, Muslim or Jew - You are Wrong | The Huffington Post:

"We live in a twisted world, where right is wrong and wrong reigns supreme. It is a chilling fact that most of the world's leaders believe in nonsensical fairytales about the nature of reality. They believe in Gods that do not exist, and religions that could not possibly be true. We are driven to war after war, violence on top of violence to appease madmen who believe in gory mythologies.

These men are called Christians, Muslims and Jews.

Osama bin Laden is insane. He believes God whispered in the ear of Mohammed 1,400 years ago about how he should conquer Arabia...

He said God told him to have sex with as many of the women he met as possible. I'm sorry, I meant to say "take them as wives." God told him to kill all other tribes that stood in his way or that would not placate him with assurances of loyalty or bribes. God told him, conveniently, that everyone should follow him and never question a word he said.

He sold this bag of goods to the blithering idiots who lived in the Arabian Peninsula at the time. If that weren't shockingly stupid enough, over a billion people continue to believe the convenient lies that Mohammed told all that time ago -- to this very day.

We live in a world full of insane people. Sanity is an island battered in an ocean of frothing delusion. The people who believe in science are the minority. The people who believe in bloody fairytales are the overwhelming majority.

George W. Bush is the most powerful man alive. He is a class A imbecile. He is far less intelligent than the average Christian. But like most of the others, he believes Jesus died for his sins. That idea is so perverse and devoid of logic it should shock the conscience. Instead, it gets him elected, and earns him the reverence of a great percentage of America. America! The most advanced country in the world -- run by a bunch of villagers who still believe Santa Claus is going to save them.

There is no damn Easter Bunny. There is no Jesus waiting to return... These were all convenient lies from the men of those times to gain power. Their actions were rational -- they wanted to deceive their brethren so that they could amass power. I get their motivations. But I cannot, for the life of me, understand our motivations, thousands of years later, still following the conmen of yesteryear into our gory, bloody, violent end.

Jesus is said to have said on the cross, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Because Jesus was insane and the God he thought would rescue him did not exist. And he died on that cross like a fool. He fancied himself the son of God and he could barely convince twelve men to follow him at a time when the world was full of superstition.

...Rational human beings shouldn't believe this kind of nonsense. Yet most of the world does.

If a man today killed his only son to show how much he loved other people, he would be considered a madman, locked in jail and earn society's contempt. Yet we think this is some sort of noble act by our Father in Heaven.

...I know most of you don't actually read your religious texts, and when you do, you assiduously try to avoid the parts that make no sense whatsoever or hide underneath the comforting grasp of your religious leaders who have concocted a bunch of circular logic (a crime to even use that word in regards to Christianity, Islam or Judaism) to shield you from the obvious folly of the written text.

So, I'm not calling you stupid if you haven't really read the material. And I know how powerful brainwashing is. We all received it when we were young and it is exceedingly difficult to break its grasp. But people dance around the issue out of politeness because they don't want to call you what you are -- ignorant.

There are a lot of people I love dearly and respect wholeheartedly who believe in religion. I hate to do this to them. But we have killed far too many people, wasted far too much time on this nonsense for us to keep going in this direction for fear of offense.

Jesus was a lunatic. God is not coming to your rescue. He hasn't come to anyone's rescue in thousands of years, including Jesus. Mohammed was a power hungry, scam artist and ruthless conqueror. Moses and Abraham were figments of the imagination of some long dead rabbi. He would probably laugh his ass off at all of you who still believe the fairytales he made up thousands of years ago. He probably wouldn't even believe it if you told him.

Did I mention Judaism? The chosen people? Come on, get off it. People walk around in clothes from 18th century Russia, thinking they have been chosen by God when they look like a bunch of jackasses. I'm tired of all the deaths because we did not want to give offense. Orthodox Jews are wrong and ridiculous.

As are the orthodox and fundamentalists of all of the religions. It says in the Bible that it is an abomination to wear clothes made of two different cloths or to eat shellfish. If you think God will hate you because you mixed wool and linen or because you ate some shrimp, you are insane.

How long are we going to dance around the 800-pound gorilla in the room? The world is run by madmen. It's not just Bush and bin Laden. It is the leader of all of the countries in the Middle East, almost all of the Americas and most of the rest of the world.

Have I offended you? That's too bad. Stop killing each other in the name of false and ridiculous Gods and I will stop ridiculing you. Trust me, your offense is much worse than mine.

Right now as you read this, there are ignorant, hateful Muslims teaching other ignorant Muslims how to put on a suicide belt. There are orthodox Jews telling other Jews how they must never leave their "holy land" no matter what the consequences are to other human beings. They assure their followers -- remember, they are not the chose ones, we are. If we crush and oppress them, don't worry, God will excuse it, and even desires it, because He is on our side.

There are maniacal Christians who are praying for the end of time. Who are hoping that most of the world's population is wiped off the face of the Earth by their vengeful and murderous God. Whom they believe is, ironically, a loving God. Unless, of course, you make the fatal mistake of not kissing his ass and appeasing him, in which case he will slaughter you and condemn you to eternal torture. What kind of sick people believe this?

The kind who live next to you. The kind who voted for George Bush. The kind who send their religious leaders to the White House to argue against even-handedness in the Middle East because it would prevent their sick prophecy. The kind who have undue influence over how we use the greatest and most lethal army ever built by man.

If you don't want to be called ignorant or misinformed, then get informed. Learn the real nature of our universe and put aside old wives tales about resurrected Gods, omniscient prophets and a guy who could split the Red Sea but couldn't find where he's going in the desert for forty years.

It's the year 2005. Let's start acting like it."

And a Catholic accountant shall lead them...

Ben Mack, kicking all kinds of lucidity and insight...

Propaganda Is The Opiate Of The Masses:

"...Marketing affects behavior or it’s not good marketing. Behaviors are changed by altering perceptions. When we see things differently we act differently. Beliefs, attitudes and constructions of categories are the primary levers of shifting perception. Marketing manipulates the meaning of symbols, images and associations. Marketing is applied semantics.

...Propaganda is marketing. Many Americans are waking up from a propaganda induced coma yelling, “They lied!” Great. Many of these same folks then rant about the evils of propaganda. I respect their anger. But, bashing propaganda strengthens the control of the world’s greatest oppressor, our present form of world government, Corporatocracy.

My comments on this subject are regularly dismissed as “merely semantic.” This perspective is blind. In business semantic analysis is often called consumer research, a $100,000,000,000/year business. That figure does not include the trillions of dollars required to leverage the insights garnered through consumer research.

Distinguishing propaganda from marketing is like holding a distinction between drugs and alcohol, it’s a semantic distinction. There are billions of dollars to be lost if alcohol is lumped in with drugs, and there are trillions of dollars to be lost if Corporatocracy is held accountable for crimes against humanity.

Semantics is the heart of marketing. While semantics is the analyses of change in meaning, marketing is about controlling the change.

Meaning is not limited to words, but words are a common way we discuss meaning. Wittgenstein asserts he can only know things for which he has a word:

“The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosopher (1889 – 1951)

But, it works the other way, too. Having two words can blind people from seeing that separate labels represent the same idea. Distinguishing drugs and alcohol is an obvious example...

“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.” Philip K. Dick, Novelist (1928-1982)

This is a war for reality. Consensus reality is held in place by the masses. The commonly used words and their common meanings have great impact. Monitoring these meanings and affect changing is the key to Lippman’s phrase, “manufacturing consent.”

Words change. A trunk is now a place on my car where I store stuff. The word trunk came from wooden box. There is some similarity in meaning, but the word trunk has a very different meaning today. The trunk word evolved. It does help us to understand its origins to see the distinction while using the same sound, the same word, but the two different meanings suggest we currently have two distinct memes.

Words evolving on their own is very different from engineering the misuse of a word. I’m not talking about the misues of the word incredible which no longer means not-credible, but extraordinary. I’m talking, or writing, about words like dividend. Ever get a dividend from your insurance company when you weren’t an owner of their stock? I’ve met scores of people that have and they were thrilled that their company would profit-share. Dividend can mean profits to share holders, but in insurance it means it also means a refund because the insurance company charged a customer more than they were legally allowed. I was paid to interview these consumers. I’m a professional consumer researcher.

...The Catholic Church coined the word ‘propaganda’ so I don’t think limiting propaganda to governments is correct. Even if we granted The Church as a form of government, this was a term created as a means of saving money. In 1622, Pope Gregory XV commissioned the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide. One of Pope Gregory’s accountants came to the conclusion that it was more cost effective to teach Catholicism than to invade and force conversion. The accountant had the insight to recognize that a territory could be acquired by converting people’s minds. If you convert the minds, the bodies will follow. And, converting minds is less expensive than physically enforcing new sovereignty.

...The nature of propaganda is magic. Magic is the act of facilitating an immersive experience, perhaps best encapsulated by the word phantasmagorical. Something is phantasmagorical when an audience transcends their skepticism and accepts a world where the laws of nature don’t have such a firm grasp on reality. In advertising, copy can become phantasmagorical when it is stoking the passions of a diehard fan, helping them envision driving a golf ball 300 yards or bringing them into a moment of sports history that they can recollect with vivid details.

Magic can be a scary word. Last week, I was moderating a focus group among nurses of a children’s hospital and the word “magic” came up and a participant asked that we not use the word magic because it made her uncomfortable. To many, the word magic evokes a threat of eternal damnation. To these people, a magician is a spiritual terrorist, striking out to infect the unsuspecting.

I paid my way through college as a magician. There are many people who hold magic as evil. Occasionally, some audience member would want to talk to me and get me to repent and save my soul. I can’t quantify how many of these folks there are, what the incidence is, but the October 11, 2005 USA Today reported that 53% of Americans believe “God created human beings in their present form exactly as described in the Bible”. If you figure half of these folks see the word magic as demonic, that’s approximately ¼ of all Americans. So the word magic should be used with discretion. Shakespeare reminds us: the better half of valor is discretion.

So why discuss magic? There is real power in magic. Moreover, magic was the terrorism of the 17th Century. Early scholars of magic and perception were persecuted and killed. If I had used the word executed there, it would have depicted a government sanctioned killing. If I had used the word murder, there would be an illicit connotation. Word choice effects how we process information.

Word choice is a form of magic. Words create our immersive realities.

...Projection is a powerful force. We not only see what we expect to see, but often our expectations create our reality. The doctor mentioned earlier was explaining this dynamic, that a doctor’s expectation of results had a higher correlation to a patient’s success than any other element tested. I would tell your readers what Grant Morrison recommended, Fake it till you make it.

...Marketing has emerged as a legitimate face of perception study and the study of effectiveness, a socially acceptable way to understand magic theory. These techniques and discussions would have had us all murdered 200 years ago. The Puritans who founded America didn’t suffer well the presence of alternative perceptions and realities. Their righteous perceptions forbade them from considering what they didn’t already know to be true.

Righteousness induces prides which facilitates denial. The more righteous a person, the more they will unreasonable defend their perspective. Saying propaganda is inherently wrong is a damned perspective, a perspective that things are inherently good or evil. This perspective reinforces the nature of propaganda. Propaganda was created as a cost-effective tool to spread righteousness.

Propaganda is a weapon in the war for reality.

Propaganda is a tool. Holding propaganda as inherently evil is like saying that TNT is evil. They are both strong forces. They can be used constructive or destructively. The good/evil perspective is more static than how I see the universe. And, I’m also not sure that dangerous things are always bad. I’m glad propaganda was employed to defeat Hitler. Marketing has emerged as a legitimate face of perception study and the study of effectiveness, a socially acceptable way to understand magic theory. These techniques and discussions would have had us all murdered 200 years ago. The Puritans who founded America didn’t suffer well the presence of alternative perceptions and realities..."

Sak beats Shamrock

Via Sherdog.com... Sak pulls the "W".

Competitive Bouts, Early Stoppages Mark Pride 30:

"...Two legends faced for the first time as Kazushi Sakuraba squared off against Ken Shamrock. Both of these fighters were coming off tough losses and were in desperate need of a victory.

The bout started cautiously, with both fighters moving around the ring. Sakuraba often feigned the shot, but Shamrock seemed ready for it. After a few brief exchanges on their feet, the Japanese grappler came charging in out of nowhere with a left hand that caught the American veteran square on the chin. Shamrock staggered back and fell towards the ropes, turning his back to his opponent.

Sakuraba followed Shamrock down, continuing to throw punches to the head from behind. The referee charged in to stop the fight and Shamrock, who quickly regained his feet, couldn’t believe the call. He complained to the referee that he was still in the fight but to no avail.

This one looked like a case of a flash knockout: Sakuraba caught Shamrock cleanly with the left, rocking him and sending him to the mat, but the Lion’s Den fighter seemed to recover just as Sakuraba was throwing punches at him from behind. Unfortunately, Shamrock turned his back to the Japanese legend as he fell into the ropes, which may have made him seem defenseless in the referee’s view.

Shamrock was clearly upset with this call. After his fight he did not come to the backstage interview area and speak with the media. This is definitely a tough, unlucky loss for such a great pioneer this sport..."

Now it pretty much feels like home...

Got a kotatsu table and a decent set of curtains... pretty much the last big stuff we needed to pick up in order to settle in.

Still missing some little stuff. Maybe a poster or a print to cover up that huge bare wall in the living room. And still waiting on boxes of books to get here from the states.

But otherwise, yep, feels like home.