no wonder every one from Ipanema is happy

Try one of these bad boys and you will understand why Brazilians always seem happy. I bought a bag full of limes over the weekend and plan to hit the cachaca hard tonite!

Ate too much on Turkey Day?

Darts

I went to the local pub yesterday, drained a few Guinness's, and played darts on one of those electronic dart boards. Despite my brother thrashing me several games in a row, I enjoyed the competition and today I spent a few moments googling on "pub darts". 2,050,000 hits. Does Google provide 2M hits on every obscure topic? Who wrote that code anyway?

After I had finished reviewing all 2M URLs (not much to do today until the college football games start), I did find a few interesting ones.

Online games were common. The parkinson-esque movement of this one is most reminiscent of my own shaky throws.

Need to find a pub with darts? This site helps you locate one. Its for the UK but what the hell, listing one Chicago pub won't hurt them any. Especially since I used my brother's email for the contact. Spam anyone?

Worried about the status of the sport? Major angst in the UK about the gradual decline of darts. Apparently the younger crowd has moved onto those snazzy rollerball golf video games.

Want to win a few bucks? MacGowan's has a nice little tournament, and hey, who knew Compuserve was still running?

I'd like a nifty sign like this for my basement.

The eHow site tells you how to set up a dartboard (??) and how to win while blindfolded. Hey I only have one eye now, maybe I should enucleate the other to improve my game?

Lastly, I did the now-obligatory porn search, googling on "pub darts porn". Hits? Sure, 64,100 hits. Including information on chico1972 who likes drinking, mountain biking, darts, and of course porn. Pre-teen nudes? Yes, somehow they are involved with darts. And of course, a hit that references the Temple Bar on Calle Alvear in Buenos Aires, where the wait staff apparently downloads porn in between serving Guinness and playing darts and snooker.

Good-bye Talisker

I guzzled the last of my Talisker and have moved on to a bottle of Laphroaig. No, I can't pronounce that, can you? According to Wikipedia, its pronounced "la-FROW-yg". It has a reputation for having a strong, distinctive peaty taste. Check back in a week or two to see if I liked it.

Finis

And so the Big Ten season ends with a whimper not a bang, as the Wildcats looked flat and outclassed as they lost to the Illini, 41-22. NU's multi-year win streak over the Illini was broken and the Tomahawk returns to Champaign.

Iowa played itself out of bowl contention by losing a shocker to Western Michigan, and Purdue left itself on the bubble by losing to in-state rival Indiana. Indiana will go to its first bowl game in many years, living up to the Gipper hype after the tragic death of Coach Hoeppner.

While the Big Ten season is over, thankfully action continues in the other conferences. The best game for Turkey day will be watching the Sun Devils pummel Southern Cal. For Saturday, be sure to tune in to watch the resurgent Irish try to beat Jim Harbaugh's Cardinal. As you may be aware, the admission standards at Notre Dame are not up to Stanford's snuff.

Bowl chances

Click here for the running tab on NU's odds of a bowl visit. With yesterday's big losses by OSU (and corresponding win by Illinois) and Michigan, the Big Ten race has become somewhat scrambled. Best case, the Big Ten will have only one BCS participant, with the Rose selecting OSU. But OSU faces Michigan in their traditional finale to the season; if Michigan beats OSU, all bets are off.

Other games next week are equally crucial. Northwestern squares off against Illinois, and its a must win game for the Cats. A win would move the Cats to 7-5 overall, 4-4 in conference, and give them a shot at one of the lesser Big Ten bowls. Losses by Wiscy, Penn State, Purdue, and Iowa would increase the Cats chances.

Go Cats! Beat the Illini!

Un-tidy bowl

The Wildcats snuck by Indiana 31-28 to become bowl-eligible. As usual, the cardiac crew made every effort to maximize the pulmonary pressure, scoring the go-ahead TD with only 44 ticks on the clock, but at the same time leaving Indiana 44 ticks to come back. The game was finally decided when the Cats forced a Hoosiers fumble with 12 seconds to go, but an official review then elongated the suspense by several minutes. The Wildcats football games are eerily similar to professional basketball - show up with 2 minutes to go and you will see everything of interest.

Highlights of the game (not counting the thrilling finish):

Indiana coach calling a pass play for the scrub QB who was in for one play. Result: Horrible toss, interception, Cats touchdown. Oops, maybe you should have called a run.
The running game. Tyrell had 141 rushing yards on 33 (count 'em!) attempts and 213 total yards. The re-appearance of the running game is very timely.
Heineken mini-kegs. These things are the bomb.
My oldest daughter attending the tail-gate and game. After many years of tailgating, she was the first family member to make it to a game!

So the Cats are now 6-5 (3-4 conference) and technically bow-eligible. The Fish Head is too mentally challenged to fully decipher the bowl scramble, but its likely that 6-5 (especially with other Big Ten events this weekend) will not get the Cats a bowl. Oh, to have that Duke game back. Or, that Michigan game. Or, that Purdue game. The Cats maddening inconsistency and inability to close out every game has placed them in this precarious bowl position, where the Illini game on 11/17 is a must-win.

StatCounter-ing the sick pukes

Everyone knows this country is full of sick, demented freakazoids these days. But how full is full, exactly? Are there more freaks now than say, 30 years ago? I can't answer those questions, but I can provide a very small, and very bizarre little numerical tidbit.

Shortly after establishing this blog, my bloated ego insisted that I be able to monitor the size of my undoubtedly massive readership. So I installed a free utility called Stat Counter, which tracks usage statistics on your site. At first I found it fascinating to see how many (lol rarely out of the single digits) hits the site got, what countries the visitors were from, etc. But the novelty soon wore off, and my weekly usage emails from Stat Counter went unread.

For whatever reason, I read today's usage report, and was astounded to see heavy volume on my site, from of all places, Canada. What might our friends from the frosty north find of interest on Fish Head? Oh, the sickness of it all is astounding. When I drilled into the Stat Counter logs to see what the Canuckers were up to, I discovered these sleazoids were Googling for "Fish Head Porno", which grotesquely enough yields over 2M results with result #1 being Fish Head On a Stick!

Now you need to ask yourself two questions. First, what in the world would prompt some demented Canadians to combine the words "fish head" and "porno"? I don't know what your life experience has been, but mine has not included anything that would lead me to think of that combination. Second, why oh why is that combination of words so commonly juxtaposed as to yield over 2M hits?

Google it yourself, if you dare.

Calendar of the Year

There's bikinis. Playboy. Hooters.

But here's the best of all.

Looks like a Cats 4Q replay

Cheerleader Run Over By Football Team - Watch more free videos

Cats are supposed to eat Hawks

The Cats choked one away to the Hawkeyes, losing 28-17 on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. After starting 14-0 and completely dominating the first quarter, the Cats offense went into a coma, with second half drives ending with 4 punts, 3 interceptions, and yes 1 field goal. Overall the game looked eerily reminiscent of the Purdue and Michigan games.

While Iowa moved to within 1 game of bowl eligibility (who woulda thunk that a few weeks ago), the Cats remained in bowl stasis, and now face enormous pressure to win out the next two weeks with key games against Indiana (home) and Illinois (Champaign).