I dunno how to put Photos into the Post but click the link to see the Angler & the astounding Anglee :) pictured with the article:

Illinois man boats 124-pound, 5-foot (well, rounded off :) Blue Catfish in the Mississippi.

ALTON, Ill. (AP) — It sounds like the sort of tale Mark Twain might have cooked up: A man fishing in the Mississippi River hauls in a blue catfish roughly the size of a sixth-grader.

But this is no fish story. Early Sunday, Tim Pruitt caught a 124-pound blue catfish.

To get a sense of just how big that is, the state record holder was a mere 85 pounds and the world record holder tipped the scales at 121 pounds, 8 ounces.

Now, Pruitt, whose fish has already been weighed in the presence of a conservation police officer and measured by a biologist for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, is expected to submit documentation to the International Game Fish Association so that it can be certified a world record holder.

…The fish has been kept alive and will be on display in a tank at the Cabela’s Outfitter store in Kansas City, Kan., according to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Now that is a big Catfish. I am Blue with envy. :> I may have to make Pilgrimage to Kansas City, to pay homage to the be-barbeled monster. :) / Notoriously persnickety about such matters, the IGFA will probably want to ascertain that Mister Whiskers’ weight hasn’t been unnaturally skewed, like by the ingestion of an Anchor or something, before Certifying the record. / The story should have stated what Pruitt was using for Bait. My guess: rancid chicken livers. The slimyskinned scaleless scavengers Love ‘em. The rottener the better. (In this case, maybe a whole damn decayed Chicken. :)

Read the Rest of it.

Police in West Haven, Connecticut say a 6-year-old girl was abducted from her school bus today. Apparently her mother was involved; sounds like a custody dispute or something. Police believe they’re heading to Florida.

UPDATE: An Amber alert has been issued. It was her mom and her aunt who kidnapped her. (The mom does not have custody, obviously.)

[ UPDATE 2 by Joe Loy (the above Link, now updated, has it): thank God, the girl has been found and is OK & back with her father. The aunt, plus her Friend in the Switched-up getaway car, are Somewhere in Custody. Speaking of which, parental custody of the girl is apparently in Dispute. / On the local TV News tonight the father said he blames the School & the Schoolbus company. What about the Aunt? Wotta Mess.]

In other Connecticut news, a major traffic accident shut down I-84 this afternoon.

[ Again with the Joe Loy Update ~ Yes and no Sooner do They reopen I-84 in CT than a crashed Driver, as a Prelude to the customary Flight on Foot, assaults the pursuing State Cop before further Investigation discloses the presence ~ apparently predating the accident ~ of a Deceased Individual in the disabled Vehicle. (I’m always against the Rush to Judgement but it sounds like a Whack to me. / “Leave the gun. Take the cannolis.” ~ Clemenza :) ]

This article has it all: Red Sox, publicity for a burgeoning organization, and the following phrase:

The Greater Manchester Sports Council, made up of civic leaders and executives of some local sports teams, is still working on the date and location.

Yup, that’s right folks. Kristy LaPlante is a “civic leader.” Never thought we’d see the day. :)

ps-When the Manchester Sports Council’s webpage goes live, I’ll post a link.

Has anybody else using Firefox on Mac OS X experienced the problem whereby pop-up (or pop-under) ads appear even though “Block Popup Windows” is selected in Preferences? It’s driving me crazy! It seems to happen particularly with Drudge’s infernal pop-unders. (I’m using Firefox 1.0.4 with OS 10.4.1, but I had the same problem with earlier versions of Firefox, and with OS 10.3.x.) I love Firefox, but ARRRRGH!!!

On the bright side, wiping my hard drive and upgrading to Tiger seems to have helped with my biggest Firefox bugaboo, namely, the ridiculous lag that would happen whenever I’d start a download (even for a small JPG file) and the download window would open or come to the front. The download window seems to be much more snappy now.

P.S. I love Tiger. :)

P.P.S. I think I might be going a little overboard with Dashboard, though:

Heh.

P.P.P.S. On the other hand, I don’t love how Tiger renders text darker than Panther did. Regular text looks almost bold, and bold text looks ridiculously dark. But I suppose I’ll get used it.

The House today passed a bill in support of increased federal funding in stem cell research, despite Bush’s threats to veto. Despite my good-natured, “Choose Life” Catholic upbringing, I have to say I’m ecstatic that the reps at least made an attempt to support this kind of research… especially since polls have suggested that the majority of Americans support this legislation (some reported the number of supporters was as high as 80%, though I don’t know how they arrived at such a lofty figure).

What I dislike most is the White House’s publicity campagin against embryonic research is that, with photo ops like this…

…it’s difficult to say no. How do research supporters counter that? By bringing in all of those individuals whose lives were saved, extended, or otherwise made better by stem cell research? We can’t do that until it happens.

I say, keep fighting the good fight. Stem cell research — its approval and its implementation — will certainly not come easy. But as the old saying goes, what’s easy isn’t always right, and what’s right isn’t always easy.

(Photo taken from the NYTimes online, who in turn ripped it from the AP.)

I just watched Bo and Carrie’s final performances on American Idol, and I have to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed. Both of them were okay, but neither was great. The judges seemed to like their performances more than I did — maybe they sounded better live?

Some people are comparing the Bo vs. Carrie showdown to Clay vs. Ruben, saying the vote margin may be even closer than in Ruben’s razor-thin victory. But in terms of the performances, thinking back to the finale two years ago, there’s absolutely no comparison. That show was amazing; both singers were great, with each performance better than the last. This show was just… eh.

I thought Bo was slightly better than Carrie tonight, but I am rooting for Carrie because Becky and I predicted from the very beginning (i.e., the auditions) that she would win, and I like to be right. :) Plus, she’s hot. :) I won’t be voting, though. I just don’t feel strongly enough about it to spend the time waiting through the endless busy signals.

In other news, Becky is convinced Paula Abdul was drunk during the show, and I think she might be right.

Did you know that Jay Leno once walked smack into my sister? Well, I suppose some might say that she walked smack into him. She didn’t notice it was Leno until a friend pointed it out to her. LOL!

Anyway, Leno was called to the stand for Michael Jackson’s defense. Jackson’s men in black attempted to use Leno’s testimony to demonstrate a clear pattern of money grubbing behavior on behalf of the alleged victim’s family.

Unfortunately, Leno wasn’t the star the suits were hoping for. Duh! The comedy giant has said for weeks on his show that he does not support Jackson and in no way feels like a spokesperson for the defense. And he wasn’t.

Which makes me think, if this is the best Jacko’s guys can do, that’s really pathetic.

Woohoo! I got my baby back! :)

Hey Jen — I’m not fat, I’m just big-boned! Now where did I put those cheesy poofs? :) P.S. Note the t-shirt… hat tip to sportscrack.com, also the maker of those "Get Nasty, Go Irish" shirts. (I bought two. :)

I’m en route to Chicago to pick up my newly Tiger-ized PowerBook. WOOHOO! :) And if all goes as planned, I should be back in time to watch Bo vs. Carrie on American Idol.

After much toil and trouble, I’ve finally got the FishCams working!

The live Java version is tunneling through a VPN to an IP address in California (don’t ask), so it takes several seconds to load, and the frame rate is pretty slow, alas. But it’s still pretty cool!

If you can’t get the live (Java) version to work on your browser, you can view the almost-but-not-quite-live FTP version instead.

Unfortuately, because our saltwater aquarium is having a severe microalgae problem at the moment, producing an impenetrable green fog throughout the tank, our creatures are only visible when they happen to pass right near the cam, as a clownfish and a turbo snail briefly did last night:

At other times, you can enjoy the lovely view of that piece of live rock with a strand of hair algae growing off of it. :)

That’s FishCam 2. In light of the microalgae problem, I have FishCam 1 (the iSight) trained on the tiny freshwater aquarium housing Becky’s betta fish, Patriot, so that something interesting is always visible. You can see Patriot almost all the time, unless he’s hiding behind his fake plant. :)

Anyway, enjoy!

The good ole townsfolk of New Hampshire are bringing the Supreme Court its first abortion case in 5 years. (Go Granite!) The appeal addresses the unfair burden placed on girls who need emergency abortions for their health’s sake, and cannot physically afford to wait out the 2-day parental notification period. Obviously there is a lot more to it than that, and I think the decision made will have a pretty significant outcome on a lot of levels. It will be especially interesting to see the outcome of the case in the fall, depending on who is appointed to the court….

An unknown number of children are feared dead in a school bus crash in County Meath, Ireland.

UPDATE: The death toll is five, all of them schoolgirls between the ages of 13 and 16.

Sorry for the blog-silence… I’ve been obsessively working on getting my “new” G3 tower working, and setting up the FishCams. (It’s still a work in progress.)