Lighten up Francis

Well, it is the holiday and by now you're all probably about drinking all the beers and eating all the barbecue, so here's a mild amusement to lighten the mood. . Ted Cruz sings Amazing Grace to the tune of Gilligans's Island. Surprisingly the lyrics really do fit.

Eyes on you

Fabulous new webcam crossed the radar this morning. Abbey Road livestream. First thing I saw when I clicked over was a couple of tourists recreating the famous Beatle album cover. Not so easy with the heavy traffic. Added to the sidebar along with Retronaut.

People keep linking to Retronaut photo series and this page of 1961 Motorola ads predicting the future finally tipped me over to giving them a permanent spot. Put that one into Daily Buzz, even though I won't check it daily. But it occurs to me it's a good site to explore on a slow news day, especially if you love photography. [photo via]

It never gets old

As is the tradition, in honor of the holiday, the classic WKRP Thanksgiving clip. I know the segment by heart now, but it still makes me laugh every year.

Thanks to Atrios for finding the uncut version.

Run for the roses

It's been a busy week and I have a few fun links saved up. I love the Kentucky Derby. I developed an appreciation for horse racing late in life thanks to my friend and former employer, Ronnie Sarazin, may he rest in peace. But I loved the Derby even before that, because of the hats.

This is something I'd like to see in person. Lots of painted elephants in London.

I really want these no threat glasses.

In case you somehow missed this youtube, Lion cubs make their debut at the Bronx Zoo.

Liked this strangely colored beach sand.

A really heartwarming story, Superhero for a Day.

And the top 10 greatest science fiction detective novels.

Thanks to ahuntre, hudsonette, mtsw , TheLoneOlive, and history_geek.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Show and Tell

Via pwire, a short fun quiz from Pew that most Americans failed to answer correctly. I got all 12 right and I'm betting you will too.

From a fun follow on twitter, Tom Tomorrow just inked one of the best cartoons of his career. If real life were more like the internet.

Filed under WTF?, I find it depressing that Fox pays
Glenn Beck $23 million annually to spew his crap. The rest of the article isn't nearly as disgusting although it still makes you realize how undervalued some workers are, while some are so very overvalued.

And don't remember where I picked this up but these are some gorgeous wildlife photos. Love the elephant shots.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Year of the Tiger

I'm a bit under the weather today, so getting a very slow start on catching up to the news. While I collect my thoughts, here's the best photo of the Chinese New Year celebration, taken in NYC by my tweep John de Guzman.

And for your futher amusement, this video is indeed naughty, cautionary and funny. And when I say naughty, I mean it's x-rated but it's an animation, not a porno clip. [Via Erin O'Brien.]

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Picture Perfect

Time change is killing me so I'm late with this, but I loved this photo of the White House Halloween. Perfect costuming. FLOTUS was dressed up just enough and POTUS wisely chose to go as himself.


More photos here.

And this video is pretty incredible. A bat was flying around inside the court and delaying the game. One of the players got tired of waiting, knocked it out of the air and apparently killed it with his bare hand. On Halloween! Spooky.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Mental Health Break

It's been an entirely drizzly, dismal, dreary day here. The kind of day where once I would have spent it curled up in an easy chair, reading. But now that Gore invented teh internets, I spent it following random links. Ran across this video. I wasn't sure I would make it through the whole thing, but it was good. An instant storyboard made of sand. Maybe you'll like it as much as I did.



Update: I didn't realize when I posted this that it's from a Ukranian television program. Thanks to reader JimBob for finding a translation for the storyline.

It was in 1941. They were in love. They had a child. But World War II had began. And he gone to war to protect his country (Soviet Union). She was waiting for him to come back alive. She got the letter about his death. Obelisk with a star on the top - it's the memorial to all people from Soviet Union, who was died in this war. In the end of story inscription : "You are always with us."

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Mental Health Break of the Day

Needs no explanation. Thirty seconds of pure joy.



I think they may have a prodigy on their hands with this tyke.

Mental health break

I've long been fascinated by carnivorous plants. Like most kids of my era, I had a venus fly trap. They used to sell them somewhere. Maybe in the back of comic books or the five and dime store. It didn't live very long. Probably because I kept touching it to make the little hands close up and there weren't enough flies in the house to feed it. In any event, this new species of pitcher plant they discovered in some remote place is really cool. Apparently the largest ever found. Big enough to eat rodents.

If you're not a regular Daily Show watcher, and I'm not because I don't have cable anymore, Jon Stewart discovers Fox News has gone liberal. One of his better segments.

And my fascination with space pix continues. Astro_127 shared the view out of the back window of the space station yesterday and today, a view of ISS on the horizon as they left on their return trip home. I'm a person who is still amazed that you can get up in one place, hop a plane and arrive in a whole other part of the planet in one day. Can hardly imagine what it's like to wake up in space and arrive on earth that evening.

And I don't have any tats myself, but I know many who do. I found this graphic hilarious. What your tattoo locations say about you. My apologies to my tattoo sporting friends. I'm sure it doesn't necessarily apply.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

I have a crush on Mark Knoller

Not being attracted to pretty boys or big name celebrities, I've never had an internet crush before. But who could resist this cuddly geekiness?



I'm really much too old for this but it's kind of fun to finally have a pretend boyfriend, just like all the cool grrlz.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Space station Colbert?

You may recall a couple of weeks ago, I posted about Colbert's viewers flooding NASA's voting for a new name for a room in the space station. "The Colbert Room" won it fair and square, so it's hard to see how NASA could refuse to do so although they hedged a bit when the voting ended.

Looks like it may happen. They're scheduled to announce the winner on Colbert's show. I can't imagine they would do that, unless they intended to name it after him. Should be fun to watch.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

The secret life of Atrios

Everyone knows he's a somewhat terse blogger. Few realize he's also a semi-famous fashion icon.


Honestly, I love the hat.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

April Fool's Day

I'm not much in the mood for making jokes myself today but this one at The Guardian is cute.

Consolidating its position at the cutting edge of new media technology, the Guardian today announces that it will become the first newspaper in the world to be published exclusively via Twitter, the sensationally popular social networking service that has transformed online communication.

A mammoth project is also under way to rewrite the whole of the newspaper's archive, stretching back to 1821, in the form of tweets. Major stories already completed include "1832 Reform Act gives voting rights to one in five adult males yay!!!"; "OMG Hitler invades Poland, allies declare war see tinyurl.com/b5x6e for more"; and "JFK assassin8d @ Dallas, def. heard second gunshot from grassy knoll WTF?"

I'm also told that Jim Henley has a good one. Probably true since I can't get the blog to load at all. Probably because everyone is linking to it and the traffic crashed the server.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

Wall St. Excesses Take Ultimate Toll

Shocking news from Wall Street! Manhattan Sold Back to the Indians. For the same price but slightly different terms.

Perhaps fittingly, while the seller in such transactions typically springs for the celebratory lunch, in this case, the contracting parties went ”Dutch treat.”

Via the estimable Mad Kane who delivers the snark on the times in rhyme. Click over for her delicious dish on current events.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

March Madness

I know exactly zero about basketball but I love being in a March Madness pool because it gives me a reason to care who wins. I have a ultra sophisicated system for choosing my picks that's so good, rumor has it Nate Silver is trying to steal it. It combines a highly calibrated, scientific charting algorithm called eenie, meenie, miney, moe and a finely tuned distate for certain cities. Having just seen President Obama's bracket, I'm feeling pretty confident about placing well in the pool.

President Obama's NCAA Men's basketball Final Four picks, unveiled Wednesday, reveals the nation's first hoops fan picked Big East powerhouses Louisville and Pittsburgh, along with Memphis and the University of North Carolina.

I'd be willing to bet, it took him a lot longer to choose than it did to make my picks. Think you can beat me? Join us the Balloon Juice pool. It's open to anyone. You still have one day left to get in.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

My new record album

I found this really fun meme at m. heart's blog, so I had to try it.


I don't have photoshop so I just figured out how to do it in regular old MS Paint, which I barely know how to use. I'm not entirely happy with it. I would have tweaked the placement of the text if I knew how to edit but considering it took me four tries to just get this far, I decided to run with it. I expect it's much easier with a real photoshop program. Anyway, here's how the meme works.

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The title of the article is the name of your band.

2 - go to http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3. The last few words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop (or similar) to put it all together.

By the way, in case you wanted to know, Sadak is a 1991 Bollywood film loosely based on Robert DeNiro's Taxi Driver, so I guess my album would be the soundtrack.

My friend JP played and check out m. heart's album for inspiration. They did a much better job of it.

Update: I did a new one for my other blog. It's a little better.

All you need is love

Happy Valentine's Day my dears. If you have a sweetie, hope you have a wonderful romantic celebration and if you're like me, and don't have one, treat yourself to something nice anyway, because you deserve the best in life either way. As my gift to you all, this post is all just fun links.

Starting with this charming love story I ran across last night. I don't know if Rosie and Aaron are for real or if it's just a underground viral ad campaign, but their Compilation Sundays photo series is really beautiful.

Marcellina has a sad yet uplifting story about her neighbor. Keep scrolling for her photos of Austria that never fail to soothe my weary soul.

I love how Phila finds the hope in the news every week. It's easy to forget good things happen too but he found a lot of them.

The irresistible Erin O'Brien goes on assignment and shows us her boudoir photo session. As an added treat, she offers up some vintage burlesque photos. These may be NSFW, if you work in an uptight place.

Tacitus Voltaire pens a love song for us. If you were lost, I'd come and find you.

My favorite sea creature has a brilliant clay animation, Octopus love.

And being me, we can't totally avoid politics, so check out DLB's Remembering Reagan. Hilarious. I loved it.

I also loved this photo of Obama in a Snuggie. Made me feel all warm and fuzzy. [h/t HBK]

Speaking of warm and fuzzy, JP dependably delivers your weekly ration of cute kittehs pix. Scroll through for Larry Elvis and Curly's latest poses. Also don't miss the newest arrival to the DFH pet zone, Maddie will melt your heart.

And newly added to the blogroll, Moonbootica posts her share of cute kitties from the UK along with the latest pop Brit tunes. Cosa Nostradamus capture beaches in Hawaii and Plantsman delivers flowers and other botanical goodies.

And lastly, a couple of more shots of my personal history. I lived on a farm down the hill from William Cullen Bryant Homestead for many years. I never took the tour, but I often hiked in the woods behind it. And I always loved Northampton's City Hall. The inside of that building was just as beautiful.

Happy Day my darling readers. I love you all dearly.

If fortune cookies told the truth

The news is so depressing today, so how about a little game? What if fortune cookies told you what really was going to happen?

You will meet a short, bald, hapless sad sack.
Gravity will make your moobs sag.
We lied. There's MSG in your food.

Anon:

Your life is going to suck tomorrow, too.
Your wife is cheating on you.
Your kids think you're a dork.

Sum Dum Octopus:

You will lead a wonton life.
You will be lo mein on the totem pole.
Cogito ergo dim sum.

Cosa Nostradamus

FREE TIBET. No, really, just kiddin'! F**k Tibet!
I hope you didn't order the fish...
Printed on recycled toilet paper

Leave them in comments if you've got them and I'll add them to the post. [Shamelessly stolen from Erin O'Brien.]

Best inaugural tribute

I just love scale models of all sorts, and the tinier the better so I wish I lived close enough to see the inaugural exhibit at Legoland, CA.

The massive project features more than a thousand mini-figures, including President-elect Barack Obama and his family, vice president-elect Joe Biden, his wife Jill, George and Laura Bush, Dick and Lynn Cheney, and George Bush Sr and Barbara Bush.

The figures are amazing easy to identify considering they're made of plastic blocks. I thought the Babs Bush was especially good. [h/t, oddly enough, to jammie guy]

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]