Don’t embrace defeat, even defeated,
don’t feel yourself a slave even enslaved
trembling in terror, think you fearless,
and charge with fury, even wounded, even hurt.
Have the tenacity of the rusted nail,
though old and ruined, a nail as ever.
Not the cowardly folly of the turkey
that folds its plumage at first tremor.
Go forth like God, who never cries,
or like [...]

As a sort of follow-up to my Hugh Laurie tribute post earlier today, here’s a shoutout to Band From TV. I gotta say, as much as Hugh rocks, the one that stands out the most is Bob Guiney (formerly of Bachelorette.) Greg Grunberg (Heroes) came up with the concept. The band raises funds for the [...]

That’s it - next year I’m totally going.

See slideshow (SFgate.com)

I rcently was watching an old British comedy show with Rowan Atkinson when I went “hold on, hold on - I know that voice.” I was always amazed at Jen’s uncanny ability to recognize actors just from their voice; from voiceovers, narration, radio commercials, an ability I don’t usually have. But soon enough Google and [...]

I found this amazing time-lapse video on the Mattflies blog.
Matt says his friend John Turner created it.
John must have a LOT of time on his hands!

These examples of graffitty in Pompeii give us an insight into what the Romans were like. Not unlike us, seems to me:

Figulus loves Idaia
Vibius Restitutus slept here alone and missed his darling Urbana
Samius to Cornelius: go hang yourself!
We have wet the bed, host. I confess we have done wrong. If you want to [...]

11-year old James Leininger can remember when his WWII plane was shot down by the Japanese. He recognized his WWII war buddies and spotted, unaided, the place where his plane went into the water.
Makes a compelling case for believing in past lives.
What’s your take?

I can’t believe I did not have more exposure to Warren Zevon in the nineties. I loved his classic about getting into trouble while on vacation “Send Lawyers, Guns and Money,” but I never pursued his work beyond that (I guess I never cared for Warren’s Werewolves in London, which kinda dead-ended me back then.) [...]

A corpse flower bloomed in Kansas this month.
This is not the type of flower you give your sweetheart on Valentine’s. For one thing, at over 5ft. tall, it’d be pretty cumbersome as a corsage. For another, its characteristic aroma is said to resemble that of dead animals. Yup, delightful!
Supposedly, the plant came up with this [...]

A car-sized lump from space came crashing down towards our little blue-green ball recently. It was tracked by telescopes around the world before exploding into smithereens at about 23 miles over the Sudan desert.
The cool thing is that the stuff the asteroid was made of is a “completely new material,” according to Dr. Peter Jenniskens [...]