Top Ten European Cities We'd Like Visit: No When in Rome Cliches, please..........

Since Zappa the Family Cat is running loose like a runaway tiger from the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. (not that there is a runaway tiger from the National Zoo or anywhere right now, perhaps, maybe the Phoenix Zoo......just kidding!), we will get right to our list:

1) Rome, Italy (Top image is of A.S. Roma, one of Italy's top soccer teams)

2) Stockholm, Sweden (the home country of Peter, Bjorn and John; Swedish flag pictured middle)

3) Barcelona, Spain (pictured bottom)

4) Berlin, Germany

5) Bergen, Norway

6) Lisbon, Portugal

7) Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom

8) Athens, Greece

9) Rotterdam, Netherlands

10)  Riga, Latvia

http://www.visititaly.com/

http://www.visitsweden.com/sweden-us/

http://www.spain.info/

Comic Strips Survey from the Roanoke Times: Will Anyone in Portugal Read This

Yes, we are wondering if anyone in Portugal or Romania for that matter reads our Sunday comics strips, but if you are checking us out from Lisbon or Bucharest, we hope the weather is nice in your respective nations today.

We are featuring photos of a random exotic fish, a Siamese cat, and Cong. Morgan Griffith (R-Va), because each of them pertains to the top three comic strips in "The Roanoke Times." (I suppose the next time we choose a photo of a House of Representatives members we will go with Cong. David Price, D-NC, to show we are nonpartisan, even though we make no secret of our center-left politics here).

"Speed Bump" by Dave Coverly was this week's winner as his strip showed a fish who had combed his hair just for his date, who was also a fish. Second place went to "Get Fuzzy" which depicts a mad Siamese cat named Satchel. Finally, the bronze medal goes to "Pearls Before Swine" which ventured into new territory by making fun of how corporate donations to members of Congress taint the political system. "Pearls" is usually an apolitical strip!

"Blondie" edged out "Dilbert" for tenth place. The two comic strips seem radically different, but unusually enough they are the two comic strips which seem to focus most on the workplace, except we never actually see Mrs. Dilbert (if there is one) in Scott Adams' strip.

Here is our top ten:

1) Speed Bump

2) Get Fuzzy

3) Pearls Before Swine

4) Doonesbury

5) Non-Sequitir

6)Funky Winkerbean

7) Garfield

8) Zits

9)  Agnes

10) Blondie

To see our Washington Post comics survey, go to our sister blog: http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

http://www.roanoke.com

http://www.gocomics.com/speedbump

Top Ten Comic Strips from the Sunday Washington Post (May 25th edition)

Greetings to our blog readers in South Africa, Iceland and Portugal; domestically, we want to give a shout-out to our blog readers in Raleigh, NC, Atlanta and Seattle...........if we can ever get to the Northwest and see the Space Needle.........

Since Discovery Channel's Shark Week is nearing, it is only appropriate that "Sherman's Lagoon," a comic strip about a shark finishes in our top ten.

The above images are all in conjunction with three strips from the May 25th Sunday edition of "The Washington Post" (the Aug. 3rd comics pages disappeared like Harry Houdini). The living opossums eludes to "Brewster Rockit: Space Guy! which feauted possum obits! The laundry of clothes is a nod to "Rhymes with Orange," which featured a circus cyclist who had to strut around in the buff since he couldn't get his clothes washed, and, of course, the "Jaws the Revenge" (or Jaws 4) poster is a reference to "Sherman's Lagoon."

1. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy!

2. WUMO 

3. Lio

4. Rhymes with Orange

5. Judge Parker

6. Speed Bump

7. Doonesbury

8. Frazz

9. Sherman's Lagoon

10. Foxtrot

Futbol Notebook: Good Day for Valencia

Valencia scored a 5-1 victory over St. Gallen (France). The Spanish team won in part because of two goals from Argentinian national Frederico Cartaba, who had two goals.

Amazingly enough, 23 other soccer games were played in the Europa League yesterday, here are some partial scores:

Liberec (Czech) 1 Seville (Spain) 1 (tie)

Sheriff Tiraspol (Moldova) 0 Tottenham (England) 2

Bordeaux (France) 1 APOEL (Cyprus) 1 (tie)

Valencia (Spain) 5 St. Gallen (France) 1

Wigan (England) 1 Rubin Kazan (Russia) 1 (tie)

Ch. Odessa (Ukarine) 0 Ludogorets (Bulgaria) 1

Other scores:

http://www.nocturnalguy38.blogspot.com

Presidential Quotes: James Madison

Greetings to our blog readers in Belgium, Portugal and New Zealand, today's quote comes from James Madison, the fourth president of America and an author of the U.S. Constitution. James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., is named after him, and he is frequently discussed on the public radio program "Your Weekly Constitution" ( http://www.montpelier.org/center/radio ) produced at WETS-FM in Johnson City, Tenn. (http://www.wets.org)

His home Montpelier in Orange County, Va., is also relatively close to Monticello, the mansion of Thomas Jefferson, America's third president, in Charlottesville.

Here is Madison's quip:

"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

http://www.jmu.edu

http://www.montpelier.org

Quote of the Day_ Sigmund Freud

We sense that we will not be getting blog hits from Spain or Portugal today, as those two countries are playing each other in the Euro Cup 2012 semi-finals in Ukraine. And, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whom we will be quoting today, is not likely to be trending. In fact, according to Bing today, the following topics are trending: Syrian TV raid, Rainbow Oreos, Waldo Canyon fire (near Colorado Springs, Colo.) and Science girl ad.

But, we are quoting Freud because he is one of the figures who has a plush toy doll made in his honor from the American novelty company The Unemployed Philosophers Guild. We also saw a promotion for Freudian Slippers in a "Mental Floss" magazine catalog. We contemplated getting them for my sister Aysegul Denizli (that is not her real name, and our apologies to at least one person with that name in Turkey) in Salt Lake City, Utah (not where my sister lives), but we don't always have the same sense of humor. Although we both love Wes Anderson movies, alas his latest film "Moonrise Kingdom" has yet to open in my market as of today.

Here is Freud's quote:

"A certain amount of neurosis is of inestimable values as a drive, especially to a psychologist."

http://www.mentalfloss.com

http://www.philosophersguild.com

http://www.freudfile.org

UPDATE: The answer to our Olympic Cities Distance Quiz from a few days back is B.

Quote of the Day- Jose Saramago

Today, we conclude our quotes from famous figures associated with each of the 16 countries represented in the Euro Cup 2012 with a quip from the Portuguese novelist Jose Saramgo (1922-2010).

Portugal advanced to the quarterfinals today with a 2-1 win over Denmark; they will join Germany who defeated the Netherlands 2-1 in advancing from the dreaded group of death.

Saramago was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, which in recent years has gone to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk and the late British playwright Harold Pinter.

The Portuguese writer was a communist politically which forced him to live a portion of his life in exile in the Canary Islands, joining the likes of the late Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who lived in Russia, and the late American novelist William Burroughs, who lived in Morocco (but lived the later years of his life in Lawrence, Kansas)  as writers who lived in exile for either political or personal reasons.

Saramago's most famous novels include "Baltasar and Blimunda" (1982), "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" (1991), which was very controversial, and "Blindness" (1997).

Here is his quote:

"As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved_ it's the citizen who changes things."

Congratulations to the University of Alabama for Winning Gymnastics Title

Yes, college gymnastics fans will undoubtedly notice that the headline and the photo of Georgia gymnast Kat Ding, a senior from Sparks, Nev., may not seem to go well, but please read the entry first!

And, before we get to that, I forgot to thank blog readers from Belgium, Portugal and Australia on our sister blog "The Daily Vampire,' in addition to them, I want to thank those of you from Bulgaria and Indonesia who have stopped by here in the last 24 hours.

The University of Alabama did indeed win its seventh NCAA championship in women's gymnastics on April 21, and this was the first time that the Crimson Tide had successfully defended its title.

For Tide senior Geralen Stack-Eaton, it must have been a particularly rewarding weekend for she also won an individual title on the balance beam.

Meanwhile, Ding defender her national title on bars with a 9.875 and she had a 9.995 on floor, which gave her a title on that apparatus as well; Ding edged out Stack-Eaton, the defending floor champ, and Ellyse Hopfner-Hobbs of UCLA, who is perhaps the top Canadian gymnast in the world at the moment.

Kyra Hunter of Florida won both the coveted all-around title as well as an apparatus title on vault. The Gators finished a very close second to the Tide in the team competition with the Bruins of UCLA coming in a close third.

Next year, UCLA hosts the NCAA championships in the sport.