LOS ANGELES, California (AP) — George Takei, who as “Star Trek’s” Sulu was part of the Starship Enterprise crew through three television seasons and six movies, has come out as a homosexual in the current issue of Frontiers, a biweekly Los Angeles magazine covering the gay and lesbian community.

Takei told The Associated Press on Thursday that his new onstage role as psychologist Martin Dysart in “Equus,” helped inspire him to publicly discuss his sexuality.

Takei described the character as a “very contained but turbulently frustrated man.” The play opened Wednesday at the David Henry Hwang Theater in Los Angeles, the same day that Frontiers magazine featured a story on Takei’s coming out.

The current social and political climate also motivated Takei’s disclosure, he said.

“The world has changed from when I was a young teen feeling ashamed for being gay,” he said. “The issue of gay marriage is now a political issue. That would have been unthinkable when I was young.”

The 68-year-old actor said he and his partner, Brad Altman, have been together for 18 years.

Takei, a Japanese-American who lived in a U.S. internment camp from age 4 to 8, said he grew up feeling ashamed of his ethnicity and sexuality. He likened prejudice against gays to racial segregation.

“It’s against basic decency and what American values stand for,” he said.

Takei joined the “Star Trek” cast in 1966 as Hikaru Sulu, a character he played for three seasons on television and in six subsequent films. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1986.

A community activist, Takei ran for the Los Angeles City Council in 1973. He serves on the advisory committee of the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program and is chairman of East West Players, the theater company producing “Equus.”

1. Money isn’t made out of paper, it’s made out of cotton.

2. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

3. The dot over the letter i is called a “tittle”

4. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

5. Susan Lucci is the daughter of Phyllis Diller.

6. 40% of McDonald’s profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.

7. 315 entries in Webster’s 1996 Dictionary were misspelled.

8. The ’spot’ on 7UP comes from its inventor, who had red eyes. He was albino.

9. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents, daily.

10. Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister.

11. Chocolate affects a dog’s heart and nervous system; a few ounces will kill a small sized dog.

12. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark’s stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.

13. Most lipstick contains fish scales (ewwww).

14. Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn’t wear pants.

15. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.

16. Upper and lower case letters are named ‘upper’ and ‘lower’ because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the ‘upper case’ letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the smaller, ‘lower case’ letters.

17. Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time … hence, multi-tasking was invented.

18. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

19. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.

20. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan; there was never a recorded Wendy before!

21. There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with: orange, purple, and silver!

22. Leonardo Da Vinci invented scissors. Also, it took him 10 years to paint Mona Lisa’s lips.

23. A tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion will make it instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

24. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original “Halloween” was a Captain Kirk mask painted white.

25. If you have three quarters, four dimes, and four pennies, you have $1.19. You also have the largest amount of money in coins without being able to make change for a dollar (good to know.)

26. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you can’t sink in quicksand (and you thought this list was completely useless.)

27. The phrase “rule of thumb” is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

28. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

29. Celery has negative calories! It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.. It’s the same with apples!

30. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying!

31. The glue on Israeli postage stamps is certified kosher. Oye!

32. Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

33. Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a space suit damages it.

The Coca-Cola Company has had many catchy slogans over the years that they used in their advertising campaigns. Here are just a sample of them. These slogans were used on signs, trays, calendars on other forms of promotion of their product.

* 1886 “Coca-Cola-Delicious, Refreshing, Exhilarating”
* 1886 “Drink Coca-Cola”
* 1904 “Delicious and Refreshing”
* 1905 “Coca-Cola Revives and Sustains”
* 1906 “Great National Temperence Beverage”
* 1908 “Good To The Last Drop”
* 1917 “Three Million a Day”
* 1920 “Drink Coca-Cola With Soda, The hit That Saves The Day”
* 1922 “Thirst Knows No Season”
* 1923 “Refresh Yourself, There’s Nothing Like It When You’re Thirsty”
* 1924 “Pause and Refresh Yourself”
* 1925 “Pause and Refresh Yourself”
* 1926 “Stop At The Red Sign”
* 1927 “Around The Corner From Anywhere, At The Little Red Sign”
* 1928 “A Pure Drink Of Natural Flavors”
* 1929 “The Pause That Refreshes”
* 1930 “Meet Me At The Soda Fountain”
* 1932 “Ice Cold Sunshine”/”The Drink That Makes Pause Refreshing”
* 1933 “Don’t Wear A Tired, Thirsty Face”
* 1934 “When It’s Hard To Get Started, Start With A Coca-Cola”
* 1935 “All Trails Lead To Ice-Cold Coca-Cola”
* 1936 “Get The Feel Of Wholesome Refreshment”
* 1936 “It’s The Refreshing Thing To Do”
* 1937 “Stop For A Pause…Go Refreshed”
* 1938 “The Best Friend Thirst Ever Had”/”Anytime Is The Right Time To Pause and Refresh, Pure As Sunlight”
* 1939 “Thirst Stops Here. Makes Travel More Pleasant”
* 1939 “Coca-Cola Goes Along”
* 1939 “Wherever You Are, Whatever You Do, Wherever You May Be, When You Think Of Refreshment, Think Of Ice Cold Coca-Cola”
* 1940 “The Package That Gets A Welcome At Home”
* 1941 “A Stop That Belongs On Your Daily Timetable”
* 1942 “The Only Thing Like Coca-Cola Is Coca-Cola Itself”
* 1943 “A Taste All It’s Own”
* 1944 “High Sign Of Friendship”
* 1945 “Coke Means Coca-Cola”
* 1947 “Relax With The Pause That Refreshes”
* 1948 “Where There’s A Coke, There’s Hospitality”
* 1948 “It’s The Real Thing” (Used first this year)
* 1949 “Along The Highway To Anywhere”
* 1950 “Help Yourself To Refreshment”
* 1951 “Good Food And Coca-Cola Just Naturally Go Together”
* 1952 “Coke Follows Thirst Everythere”
* 1952 “What You Want Is A Coke”
* 1953 “Dependable As Sunshine”
* 1954 “For People On The Go”
* 1954 “There’s This About Coke”
* 1955 “Americans Prefer Taste”
* 1956 “Feel The Difference, Makes Good Things Taste Better”
* 1957 “Sign of Good Taste”
* 1957 “There’s Nothing Like A Coke”
* 1958 “Refreshment The Whole World Prefers”
* 1959 “Be Really Refreshed”
* 1959 “Make It The Real Meal”
* 1960 “Relax With A Coke, Revive With A Coke”
* 1961 “Coke And Food”
* 1962 “Enjoy That Refreshing New Feeling”
* 1963 “Things Go Better With Coke”
* 1964 “You’ll Go Better Refreshed”
* 1965 “Something More Than A Soft Drink”
* 1966 “Coke…After Coke…After Coke”
* 1970 “It’s The Real Thing” (Used with, “Everyone Welcomes Coca-Cola”)
* 1971 “I’d Like To Buy The World A Coke”
* 1975 “Look Up America”
* 1976 “Coke Adds Life”
* 1979 “Have a Coke and a Smile”
* 1982 “Coke Is It”
* 1985 “We’ve Got A Taste For You”
* 1986 “Catch the Wave-Red, White and You”
* 1989 “Can’t Beat The Feeling”
* 1990 “Can’t Beat The Real Thing”
* 1992 “You Can’t Beat the Real Thing”
* 1993 “Always Coca-Cola”

Other unconfirmed Slogans:

* 1925 “Six Million A Day”
* 1944 “Global High Sign”
* 1958 “The Cold, Crisp Taste Of Coke”

Read article…

ALWAYS REMEMBER - Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Volkswagen’s latest product probably won’t be very good on gas and it has a rather high price tag. But that hasn’t stopped a handful of people from putting down payments on the car before production started earlier this month.

Each Bugatti Veyron 16.4 will cost an estimated $1.24 million, according to media reports. For that, buyers will get an all-wheel-drive two-seat sports car with a lightweight carbon-fiber body and 16-cylinder engine capable of producing 1,001 horsepower.

VW purchased the Bugatti name in 1998, according to a report in the industry newspaper Automotive News Europe, and introduced a concept version of the Veyron at the Tokyo auto show the following year.

It has taken the intervening six years to perfect the car, according to the Automotive News report and others, and there had been doubts that the car would ever actually be sold. In a 2003 public debut at Laguna Seca Raceway, a prototype Veyron spun out of control.

In 2003, according to Automotive News, the car still suffered from two major problems: The enormous engine tended to overheat and the car, capable of top a speed of well in excess of 200 miles per hour, was unstable at high speeds. Several reports have placed the car’s top speed at about 250 miles per hour.

Hey all,

I like to buy wild and wacky tees from time to time, and get people asking where I found them. Here’s a list of the sites I source my wacky humor wrapped up in cotton linen from.

WARNING: The last 5 sites do include offensive material so suck it up!

- 80’s Tees
- Busted Tees
- Choice Shirts
- Defunker
- Funny-Shirts
- Toxic Tees
- T-Shirts.com
- DeezTeez
- Sick Idiots
- Sinful Shirts
- T-Shirt Insanity
- T-Shirt Hell

Enjoy!

Jug

Just a week into September — historically the most active month for tropical activity — the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season has already seen 15 named storms, six of which reached hurricane strength with winds of at least 74 mph. Four of those became major hurricanes, with sustained winds of at least 111 mph.

According to the National Hurricane Center, the historical averages for a hurricane season are 10 named storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes. Those numbers have already been met or exceeded this season, which doesn’t end until Nov. 30.

The largest number of named storms ever recorded was 21 in 1933, a record that will be broken if just seven more storms develop in the next 12 weeks. And if that happens, the hurricane center will run out of names for the first time since it adopted the system of assigning names to storms in 1953.

The letters Q, U, X, Y and Z aren’t used, because few names begin with those letters, so the 21st and last name on this year’s hurricane list is Wilma. After that, Greek letters will be used to designate storms, beginning with Alpha.

The largest number of hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic was 12 back in 1969, according to the hurricane center, and the largest number of major hurricanes was eight in 1950.

“Our minds can shape the way a thing will be if we act according to our expectations.”

Thought this was a good quote I came across today…

“The goal of changing should be achieving improvement, without change there can never be improvement.”

Hope everyone had a great long weekend!