I removed a picture of someone i referred to as my adopted daughter because I saw them a lot. Apparently it offended some people, so it's gone. Sorry if it offended you.

Well, by now this is slightly old news, but Dec. 6th, 2008, Oscar de la Hoya will, instead of re-facing widely recognized numero uno pound for pound boxer in the world Floyd Mayweather in an anticipated rematch, square off against Mayweather's largely agreeable replacement at the top of the sport. Enter Manny "Pacman" Pacquiao.

Many people, including myself, thought De La Hoya won by a slight margin over Floyd Mayweather in their first encounter, albeit maybe only by one or two points. But the disdain of the audience rang clear as Mayweather was announced victorious. The sound of rematch rang clear.

But no, we're not going to see the rematch we expected. At least not yet. Pacqiuo is comparable to Mayweather in speed, but a relentless aggressor. With the whole prospect of Floyd Mayweather retiring after the scheduling of rematch with Oscar de la Hoya, the entire surrounding air smells foul like rotten eggs and outhouses. And money.

My opinion is that this is probably a last ditch effort to market the hell out of Mayweather-De La Hoya 2. Everyone's eyes are off Mayweather because he's announced his retirement, but they want to see more of him. If Hoya outboxes Pacman, imagine the hype for a rematch with Mayweather.  I think that's what they're trying to do here.

If Pacquiao beats Oscar, then we could potentially have Mayweather coming out of retirement to face another huge money opportunity with his replacement as the 1 fighter pound for pound.  This is an amazing opportunity for them to generate money. They're trying to milk it for all it's worth (Mayweather and Oscar), because they want to retire.

What better way for Mayweather to retire and actually have some claim as one of the greatest boxers historically than have a trilogy with Oscar de la Hoya? It would solidify them both.  Look at all the great boxers in history. Many, many of them had historical trilogies, and their first fight was close enough to warrant a rematch.

If it goes the other way, we could see something exciting in Mayweather vs Pacquiao also. Perhaps a trilogy unfolding there too, depending on how Pacquiao performs with the extra weight. What better way for Mayweather to retire than beating his replacement as the number one fighter in the world in any weight class?

Floyd isn't going to stay retired. There's too much money around right now. And all these opportunities between opponents who could beat each other.  Maybe I'm wrong and Mayweather would rather retire undefeated - I'll respect him less if he doesn't solidfy the Hoya win.. Pacquiao is just icing on the cake.  But I love a lot of icing.

So, I'm a few days late with this because I really had other things on my mind, but August 27th my brother and his girlfriend had their baby, Victoria.

After a few rough days in the hospital dealing with toxicema, preclampsia (or something), and labor induction, they are now doing well, and the mom is being released tonight. 

Victoria is still in the hospital due to inconsistent eating patterns, but has improved greatly.  I'll have cute baby pictures soon! So everyone stay tuned!! hehe.

This is nothing new, but as I watch the olympic games here on television from the comfort of my home, without going to Beijing... I've been realizing something here. Almost all of these fights are scored wrong.  These guys are getting screwed.   I just saw an Australian guy win every round against a cuban guy.. The cuban guy wins 17-4 or something outrageous like that....

The problem starts here. 5 judges count effective punches landed,  hitting an electronic keypad when they see a scoring blow. A computer keeps track of this, and if 3 out of 5 judges hit the keypad within one second, a point is awarded. The scores are tallied, and obviously the person with a higher score wins the contest. 

This may sound fair, but consider the fact that each judge has a keypad for both fighters.. and they have to keep track of each fighter, even in violent exchanges of combination punching.  A human cannot possibly handle the load of this when experienced athletes are involved. 

When the two boxers get into heated exchanges, where both are landing combination punches at the same time, the judges seem to ignore them altogether. No points given at all.  I've seen several knockdowns which were caused by punches that didn't even score.  Even worse, I think I've seen about 2 or 3 guys in total who even deserved to win.

I propose a new scoring system which involves 10 judges, acting the same way.  Only in the Robbins scoring system, 5 judges will score the athlete in the red corner. The other 5 will score the blue corner. This would even the system and make the results better..

So far, the scoring here is totally senseless.  I don't know what kind of fools they have scoring the olympic boxing, but my god is it embarassing to the sport right now.  Favoritisim seems to run high. The one chinese guy who advanced was getting knocked all over the ring and ended up winning 3-1 in a totally incomprehensible decision victory.

Please consider fixing this in the next olympics. It's disgraceful. And it doesn't promote the advancement of a future generation of star athletes in the sport. It's promoting the athletes we hate seeing, who jump around and pot-shot and avoid exchanges - but the shots they land, the judges see. I haven't even seen one bout yet scored sensibly... set aside the fact it's scored for the right person or not.

Terrible. Disgusting. Unthinkable.

Someone told me recently they weren't going to read my blog anymore because it wasn't very cheery lately. Well, she's not into boxing, but this is back to normalcy more.

A few hours from now, one of those match-ups in boxing that everyone hopes will someday happen is set to finally take stage in front of a  packed MGM Grand Garden Arena at Las Vegas, Nevada.  A fight I've actually waited a few years for also.

The undefeated rising Puerto Rican star, Miguel Angel Cotto (32-0 26KO) will enter the ring to defend his WBA world welterweight championship against Tijuana's bad-boy Antonio "Tony" Margarito (36-5 26KO and 1 no-contest).  These two are top notch  professional athletes and I expect nothing short of a war.

Margarito may have 5 losses, but he has never been knocked out, and currently holds the all-time compubox record for most punches thrown during a fight - for any weight class (1675 = 140/round) against Joshua Clottey. His two performances against the previously unbeaten Kermit Cintron were nothing short of impressive.

But tonight he is fighting Miguel Cotto.  An undefeated knockout specialist with a very compelling string of victories, and a body punch  that would make any mortal man urinate blood for days.  By that, I mean he likes to throw it borderline kidney-shot style.  It may not be pretty. It may be questionably legal in the sport - but it works for him.

Looking at Cotto's last 6 wins (TKO6 Alfonso Gomez, UD12 Shane Mosley, TKO11 Zab Judah, TKO11 Oktay Urkal, TKO5 over previously unbeaten Carlos Quintana), and watching Margarito's last several performances - I can't make any other predictions for this fight. 

I'm going with a brutal Miguel Cotto body shot to end the fight in about four or five rounds.

By the way, anyone else who reads these and may be into the sport - feel free to comment and leave predictions as well.

I wont get around to posting this on time, because as I write this, I've been sitting disconnected for about 3 days while Comcast figures out what's wrong with my internet connection.

On July 10th, I went to open my Orange Baboon Tarantula's web to resume it's normal feeding routine, because I noticed after we got home vacationing the 4th of July weekend, along with my house being plundered; that Sheila had moulted. Anyway, I opened the web and found her first to be non-responsive to my entry; which is usually followed by some sort of attack on my tweezers.

Then I noticed she was not only unresponsive, she was dead :(, and obviously had bled out somewhere around her fangs which leads me to believe she bit at something before the new skin was fully hardened, and damaged herself.  The people who robbed my house had to at least bump (or move) the tank around to get into some drawers around the table it sat on. which were laying out on the floor.

Anyone who knows tarantulas knows that you should not disturb them as they're moulting, AT ALL.

Aside that, Sheila was in perfect heatlh before I left for vacation, beside the fact that she hadn't been eating. This is normal around moulting times. These people left narcotic paraphanalia in my room, and who knows what could have transpired; blowing crack smoke or squirting heroin on a tarantula usually isn't a good idea. It quite likely snapped at something  (or perhaps bit someone; I REALLY hope it did - That will leave more trails since it would have probably resulted in an emergency room visit). 

I believe these people killed one of the most beautiful tarantulas I've ever seen, and not only that; It was one friend I know would never screw me around. It may have bitten me defending itself, but that is the nature of the species. I babied it for years and watched it through several moultings. I bought a hygrometer to monitor it's humidity and temperature, and regulated it's entire environment to the slightly higher than ordinary demands it had. My pet is now dead.

This is more than personal now. Justice will be had. And I will make sure you are captured. Mark my words. I stole this line; But I 'm going to make my name taste like ass when you speak it. You're nothing special, although you pretend to be from what I know of you. 
 
** R.I.P. Sheila :( **

No doubt, all of us boxing fans who tuned in Saturday night were watching to see the great Manny Pacquiao move in up in weight to challenge Lightweight title holder David Diaz (formely 34-1-1) for his fourth world championship belt in as many weight divisions.  We were treated to that and more, as Pacquiao put on a bedazzling, master-class performance.

The phrase "incomparable ring violence", and the words "tsunami, tornado, and hurricane" were all used to describe Pacquiao's 9th round annihilation of David Diaz in what was a very entertaining, very one-sided fight. It was a level of boxing excitement and brutality we've come to expect when seeing "Pac-Man" get it on. 

In the words of Diaz, "Fucker was fast", "I could handle the power, but I just couldn't handle the speed."  That is the "tsunami" that is Manny Pacquiao, the Filipino sensation that has risen from obscurity to recently become the number one athlete in the sport by pundits, after the retirement of Floyd Mayweather Jr. on June 9th.

It is now increasingly clear that Manny Pacquiao is a force to be reckoned with.

But perhaps the most stomach churning event in recent boxing history unfolded during the co-feature bout which pitted top ranked interim title holder Humberto Soto (now 44-7-2)   against Francisco Lorenzo (now 33-4).  In the 4th round, Soto unloaded, shattering Lorenzo's nose and knocking him down twice, leaving Lorenzo on the canvas leaking blood all over, producing a sickening rain shower looking effect on the canvas. 

But on the second knockdown, as Lorenzo was falling, one of Soto's punches already in midswing, glanced the back of his head,  and referee Joe Cortez quickly called time.. The result was a 10 or 15 minute charade of deliberation which ended in Humberto Soto being disqualified for what appeared to be a glancing unintentional blow that was ruled intentional.

Even worse, Lorenzo was in obvious need of medical attention (from the overall battering he received), and none was immediately given despite the ruling of a concussive intentional blow to the back of the head substantial enough to render Lorenzo unable to continue; but apparently not enough to warrant the need for medical  attention.  Get your act together, people.

This sort of shoddy bullshit pisses me off to no end, and I don't think a single person watching Saturday night could agree with the ridiculous decision that referee Joe Cortez produced, disgracing our sport with his saying "I'm fair, but I'm firm".  Joe, you may be firm, but fair is a far stretch.  Thanks for putting another gruesome dent in our sport, jerk-off.

In another bizarre twist, the WBC decided to not award Francisco Lorenzo the interim championship because of the nature of his victory. That's wonderful, let's cover up one fuck up with another.  So the guy wins a title fight (despite being one of the worst referee decisions I've seen), but he does not win the title. What happens next? A belt for losing? (Oh wait, that just sorta happened!)

Well, as some of you know. I have a lot of weird pets, and many have commented to me about how cool Tut the Afghanistanian Veiled Chameleon was.

Last night, I noticed him lying on the floor of his enclosure. He normally gets very agitated if I'm near the tank and he did nothing. I was eating dinner with  my family when I saw it (it's enclosure is by the dinner table) and really didn't want to point it out to my sisters, but I was pretty sure it was dead. 

Anyway, after dinner finished and my sisters had left, I  unzipped the side of his mesh enclosure and figured out he was still alive.  We were without air conditioning for about 10 days very recently, during a pretty nice humidity/heat wave here in Michigan.  Suffice to say, the house was unbearable and I figured maybe Tut was dehydrated.

Tut also had injured his tongue when he was younger, getting it caught on something in the enclosure while snapping  at a cricket, and I was informed at the time that sometimes these type of injuries disable the animal from eating and they have to be force fed.  He kept eating, only with limited range of motion with his tongue, and seemed very healthy, growing to probably over 2 feet in length including the tail in a little more than a year.

The possibility also went through my mind that maybe his condition had worsened and he couldn't eat anymore, becoming weak from that. So for a few days, I've been babying my mom's chameleon and handfeeding it crickets because I would do anything to make my mom happy. 

It was a weird bonding experience, because the chameleon would have never let me hand feed it  before, and was graciously accepting, and not showing it's "war paint" as I had become accustomed to seeing from him.. (They turn all blotchy and get super colorful when they're mad).

We took Tut to a veteranary hospital this afternoon and they determined that his kidneys were failing. We had the clinic put him out of his misery instead of letting him suffer, and he died this afternoon.  Rest in peace Tut. One of the most interesting pets I've ever owned.

So most people that know me any, realize I keep weird pets. For about a year and a half, I've been taking care of a wolf spider I caught in my yard named "Marge".

I gave Marge this name because I took a digital picture of her and when I zoomed in on the picture, it looked as if there was a woman on her carapace.  The abdomen had markings which lined up to the "head markings" and looked like Marge Simpson hair topping it off.

I don't get weird and emotional over pets like this, but Marge was cool, and I'm going to miss her annihilating pinhead crickets and the constant  annoyance of her water dish drying out and being used as a makeshift burrow, and having to clean it out.

Marge died this morning, most likely of old age, considering I had her quite awhile. No funeral is planned, and a short toilet-side service was given in the privacy of my locked bathroom. 

Rest in peace, Marge!

Okay, so for quite possibly several years now I've made it my undying devotion to infringe on random copyrights at least once a week in my blog. I find the obsessive need to do this overwhelming and blogging just isn't the same without it.  Just kidding... But even if I'm not; this is sort of funny:

About a fucking year ago or more, I decided to upload some boxing related video of myself shadowboxing and myspace's automated system told me I was infringing copyrights. I said "ok", and changed the filename and title of the video to "Not infringing copyrights" or something of that nature.  No problem. 

But this didn't work either, And I very quickly forgot about the entire problem since I didn't really give a shit anyway. Just a few minutes ago, I go to the "My videos" section on myspace, and I get this awesome surprise . . .

. . .  My "infringed" videos now show up a year later! And I can neither play nor delete them! But I can tell I've infringed copyrights by uploading footage of myself somehow! That's pretty cool. They need to make a system where I can sue myself by siphoning payment from my Paypal account too.

I wonder if the RIAA knows about this yet?