Yesterday, I encountered a junkie behind my building who I thought was ODing. So I called 911. It became a drawn out process as I had to convince first my building manager, then 911, and finally myself that I was making good use of provincial resources. In the end, all I did was get this junkie arrested. You can read the long version of my story here on the Sk8 Jesus forum >>.

The first one is a bit hard to take. It comes from an article about an annual killing of hundreds of dolphins by Japanese fishers that literally turns the waters blood red. The second is a view from space of California smoking with multiple canyon fires. The third is a NASA photograph of a solar storm on the surface of our Sun. The fourth is a picture of two road signs in Simi Valley that have been melted because of the California fires.

Click on the images to see larger versions.

Is that my goodies budget is severely constrained. I'm okay financially but my incentive for getting into a new job is to disciplined in my buying. 99% of everything goes to groceries, rent or job hunting, basically. That said, I find myself drooling a bit at the DVDs coming up this season. Box sets and much-anticipated releases come around this time in the ramp up to Christmas. My picks: 28 Days Later, City of God (released next week), the Indiana Jones Trilogy, and coming right after that the Two Towers Extended edition. Of interest to filmmakers is the Directors Label DVDs from Michel Gondry, Spike Jonez and Chris Cunningham. Look all these up on Amazon if you're interested.

I through together a rough cut of the Merritt rally footage. You can tell how little footage I had to work with by the number of times I mixed the same shot over and over again. :) TECH NOTE: this appears to be crashing halfway in the browser, so please download it by right clicking and downloading to your hard drive. Right click and download here >> (12.6mb .mov)

The International Federation of Competitive Eating has uncovered another hero, a tiny woman from Virginia who they have dubbed "The One Eater" for eating a huge load of eggs, chicken, tacos, burgers and pulled pork and still maintaining an alleged 105 lbs. Take a look at her >>

This page has information gained from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) on the so-called Obesity Epidemic in the United States. The pages include maps showing the spread of obesity as a proportion of the population state by state from 1985-2001. If you have the bandwidth I recommend downloading the animated .mov of the maps. It's like a horror movie showing the spread of deadly insects.