(The petition seems to be from last week, but wouldn't you know, the kids didn't actually get around to emailing it out until today.)

NORML's protest will surely have devastating effects on the cereal business, at least once the chips run out. "Tell them that you oppose their decision to drop Michael Phelps," NORML instrusts, "and that, as a result of their actions, you will not be purchasing any Kellogg's related products for the next three months (or until the company decides to reinstate the Phelps as their spokesperson)." Three months! That'll teach 'em.

Here is what they recommend you send to the Kellogg's corporation:

"Hi, my name is _____________ and I'm a frequent consumer of Kellogg's products.

Nearly one out of two Americans has used marijuana. This includes tens of thousands of prominent, highly successful Americans - including our current President. Michael Phelps should not be stigmatized nor condemned for private behavior that he, and millions of others, engage in.

The majority of the public, as well as those in the media, are standing behind Michael Phelps and so am I. I will no longer be purchasing Kellogg's brand products until your company reverses its decision and reinstates Michael Phelps as your spokesperson."

Just make sure to sign your missive "Dave" so Kellogg's can write back "Dave's not here, man."

This is only slightly more embarrassing than Phelps' other punishment, today's loss of a cereal deal that expired this month anyway, for Corn Flakes, which Phelps doesn't even eat.

With $100 million in expected lifetime endorsements, we're guessing Phelps isn't living on USA Swimming's stipends. But the suspension will not help his image, given the message it sends:

"We decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero," the federation said in a statement.

Subway was reported to be on the fence about Phelps following the bong incident; maybe the suspension will push the sandwich-seller to sever ties. Pot smokers aren't known for their love of petit, low-calorie processed-turkey sandwiches anyway.

On the other hand, USA Swimming can't be that mad at the Olympic champion. His suspension will end just in time to let Phelps participate in the 2009 World Swimming World Swimming Championships in Rome, broadcast on NBC for the first time this year, thanks to Phelps. He'll be fine.

Micheal Phelps' current endorsements include Speedo, Visa, Kellogg's, AT&T, Rosetta Stone, PureSport Beverages. The first would be better if it was Nike or Adidas. The last two are crap niche products that will bring down Phelps' brand value. The middle three are okay (although Wheaties would have been preferable to Corn Pops).

What Phelps has to realize is that there are only two paths for athlete endorsers to take: the Nerd path, personified by Tiger Woods, or the Badass path, personified by Ray Lewis.

It's simple, really. Can a middle-aged white businessman imagine hanging out with you for a day, and maybe making friends? Then you're a Nerd. Tiger is the uber-nerd, and he's made it work to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you think Tiger motherfucking Woods drives a Buick? No, old people drive Buicks. But Tiger is nonthreatening enough that old people can imagine him plausibly driving one to their cocktail party, and then hitting a few putts in the putting green in their den. Pals.

Ray Lewis is a superstar linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens. He was on the cover of Madden 2005. He's also been indicted on murder charges. He will end you. Do you think Ray Lewis is going to come over to your apartment and sit on your couch and play Madden with you and offer you a high five and drink your Capri Sun in a spirit of friendly sportsmanship? No. You fear Ray Lewis, and that is why he's an effective endorser.

This is a spectrum, but everyone falls on one side or the other. Michael Jordan is at the friendly end of Badass. Donovan McNabb is at the cooler end of Nerd. Michael Phelps has placed himself squarely on the nerd track. The question is, is that the way to go.

Look, Phelps: you're young. You're going to be a tabloid star. You don't want to be Tiger Woods, a cold-blooded machine with an icy, beautiful wife, a billion bucks in the bank, and a Buick in the driveway. You want to be the Jordan of swimming: towering and inapproachable in the pool, and a relaxed, smiling cigar-smoker out of it, surrounded by women as you play craps with money that Cuba Gooding Jr. gave you for the privilege of wearing your underwear.

So lose the Speedo and the Rosetta Stone. Take up with Adidas and some Italian airline that will buy you your own villa. Keep up the aggressive grip. Grow rich and prosper. Send us 2%.

[I know you're actually a nerd, Mike. It's irrelevant.]

His size 14 feet may not dwarf Ian Thrope's size 17 but Phelps' double-jointed ankles allow him to do a ballerina's 'pointe' standing on the tips of the toes. It allows him to whip his feet as if those are flippers and break loose.

His unique constitution also produces less lactic acid than others which means Phelps takes less time to recover. And if he looks indefatigable at times, it's because of the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, which he was diagnosed with at the tender age of nine. His daily routine is equally mindboggling.

He consumes 12,000 calorie every day and trains 96 km every week. Naturally it was hardly surprising when Russian swimmer Alexander Sukhorukov went on to describe Phelps as "just a normal person, from a different planet, a planet from a different galaxy." [NDTV.com]

"They have a lot of big commitments to huge advertisers. What else were they going to do?" said Bob Jeffrey, chief executive of advertising agency JWT, a unit of WPP Group Plc. "We're in a commercial business here."

That sums it up. Nobody can be mad at the network, regardless how ridiculous it looked when the fireworks from the opening ceremony were going off behind CNBC anchors who had to ignore them, because they hadn't been rebroadcast in America yet. Or when they faked some other fireworks. Few people have purchased international satellite packages to watch everything in real time. Americans love the Olympics (though not as much as porn), and we're willing to put up with a big, badass media corporation throwing its weight around with the IOC and pushing handball and water polo to the side to ensure what we get our fill of Michael Phelps.

Have you noticed how boring swimming is, though? Pretty boring sport.

[Reuters via Jossip]

"The attack happened near the inlet in New Smyrna Beach (see map) just before 9:00am. The 17-year-old from Titusville was surfing with his friends in an area where sharks were spotted just the day before. And it was just Wednesday that a 15-year-old Edgewater boy was bitten there after stepping on a shark.

"Beach Patrol said one of the reasons behind the latest attacks is a large run of bait fish in the water. Large schools of the fish are moving along the coast, as they often do in the mid-summer months, and sharks eager to feed are going after the schools of fish.

"It's also hot on the coast and the water is calm and that draws a lot of people into the ocean, which increases the chances there will be a bite." [WFTV]

But, hey, maybe if you just move somewhere far, far away the sharks will leave you alone. Think again, dreamer. The mad beasts are taking over Hawaii too!

"Beachgoers seeking relief from steamy weather by taking a dip in Zach's Bay were thwarted for a second day by a lurking thresher shark - at least until it was caught Friday afternoon.

"The call dreaded by swimmers - 'Shark! Shark!' - rang out at Jones Beach State Park about 1:30 p.m., causing the 50 people to run from the water.

"Within a half-hour, the shark had made it to shore. Three lifeguards caught it by the tail, muscled it into a plastic container sans lid, and carted it away on an all-terrain vehicle as crowds gathered to catch a glimpse.

"Tim Byrne, the park's director of operations, said the shark caught Friday was the same one he first spotted on Thursday, and which had prompted officials to close the same beach to bathers.

"'It's the same size, same coloration - down to a small mark on its lower tail fin,' said Byrne, an avid fisherman."

"The shark was a baby with a 3-foot body and a 3-foot tail that is thought to have been disoriented when it entered the bay, said George Gorman, deputy regional director of the state Parks Department.

"Aside from being a little battered from the sand, Gorman said the shark looked healthy. 'It was small,' Gorman said. 'It was not imposing or threatening at all.'

"The shark was taken to an area off Jones Beach where it was released miles from shore into the Atlantic Ocean." [Newsday]

Oh my, did I overstate the threat this time? Well, one thing I know about baby sharks—they grow up!

BONUS: The guy featured in the ad, Thomas Hill, was himself persuaded to join the Marines by an ad!

"I was watching TV with some buddies when this commercial came on — a guy on a white horse locked in battle. Then, when he jumps off the horse, his suit of armor becomes dress blues. He's a Marine," he recalls. "I knew right then and there, I wanted to be that guy."

"A day earlier, a 21-year-old Mexican surfer was killed by a shark off a nearby beach. The two attacks came a month after a shark killed a San Francisco man surfing in the same area. The Guerrero state Public Safety Department identified the man as Bruce Greems but did not give his hometown in the U.S. Vazquez Sobreira said he lived in Zihuatanejo. The U.S. Embassy confirmed an American had been bitten by a shark but did not have additional information.

"Mexican authorities used baited hooks to catch sharks last month after the attack that killed 24-year-old Adrian Ruiz of San Francisco. Local conservationists protested the hunt, and it was not immediately clear if authorities would do it again." [AP]

"'The one thing that's affecting shark attacks more than anything else is human activity,' said Dr George Burgess of Florida University, a shark expert who maintains the database. 'As the population continues to rise, so does the number of people in the water for recreation. And as long as we have an increase in human hours in the water, we will have an increase in shark bites.'

"Some experts suggest that an abundance of seals has attracted high numbers of sharks, while others believe that overfishing has hit their food chain. 'I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's a convenient excuse,' Burgess said. Another contributory factor to the location of shark attacks could be global warming and rising sea temperatures. 'You'll find that some species will begin to appear in places they didn't in the past with some regularity,' he said." [Guardian via Drudge]

The two things that were most prevalent were tattoos and gays. And yet those two remained pretty segregated. By the pool nursing a beer was the very tattooed managing editor of A Public Space, Tom Roberge.

"This is pretty strange," he said, looking out over the empty pool. A blurb from Daily Candy (of all things!) was projected onto the wall. "I live in Brooklyn and rarely come into Manhattan, so this is very... different."

Upstairs, the man of the hour, Jesse Ball, was sitting at a table with a grumpy rumpled Jonathan Franzen, Vintage editor Jenny Jackson and baseball author Nicholas Dawidoff. Someone had brought along a copy of Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood. Ball wouldn't go swimming. "I don't want to reveal my tattoos," he said. "They're a lot of hearts."

Sun book reviewer Nick Antosca clutched a galley of the book of the hour in an arm that bore two black bars. "I can't comment on what it means," he said before kind of letting on that it was a quotation mark meant to bracket himself. He was chatting with Vintage PR guy Martin Wilson about working at the Sun. "Before I started working there, I had never read it. It's weird. When I started, the old books editor pointed at an anti-Bush book and said, 'Be careful what you say about this book....' I tried to write a negative review for an upcoming book but I don't know when they'll publish it. It's weird there....They love Conrad Black.... There are neocons in suits roaming the halls."

A cluster of gays surrounded the bar, including Kuhn's business partner Billy Kingsland; Billy's roommate and Advocate editor Sean Kennedy; Artforum's Kyle Bentley and the exquisitely named Lapo Belmestrieri who described himself as a "friend" before being corrected by Kennedy. "Say you are a freelance art director!"

"Whatever," he said.

Kennedy had just interviewed Hillary Clinton. "I asked her about the lesbian rumors. Her people were not pleased. I'm just glad they didn't kill the piece." Or him! Though he admitted his gaydar only worked for dudes, Kennedy believed Clinton's avowed heterosexuality.

Buntley disagreed: "Raging bulldyke."

Lapo, whose first language can't be English, said, "She doesn't have any lesbianic tendencies."

David Kuhn smelled very nice. "It's a cologne that was given to me by GQ fashion director Madeline Weeks for a favor I helped her out with. I can't tell you what it is." Did he mean the favor or the scent? "Either."

Vanity Fair researcher Brian Gallagher and GQ researcher Laurence Lowe were there. Gallagher was upset by the tone taken with him by the bartender, who had given him an overly-vermouthed martini. "She said, if you don't want so much vermouth, order it dry. What the fuck? What is this, a bartending intensive? I know how to order a fucking martini."

The real question of the evening was: On what side of the tattoo versus gay divide did Mr. Rich belong? The question was partly answered when he stripped down to a bathing suit and jumped in the pool. At least we found he was without tattoos.

Google, either encouraging physical fitness or zero population growth, offers the above helpful suggestion when mapping the route from Chicago to London.

Screw air travel: Google suggests you get out and swim [Upgrade: Travel Better]