Scary food!
OK, be prepared to laugh so hard you'll give yourself a seizure. This is the funniest thing I've seen in ages. The captions are hilarious...whoever wrote them is a genius.

Sick of X-sports at the Olympics?
Yeah, me too. That's why I loved this opinion piece from the LA Times.

Happiness
While researching love poetry for an upcoming radio show, I came across this, which was too wonderful not to share.

Happiness
by Carl Sandburg

I asked professors who teach the meaning of life to tell me,
what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of thousands
of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile, as though I
was trying to fool with them.
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along the Des Plaines
River
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with their
women and children and a keg of beer and an accordion.

And gay people are an abomination?
This I can't believe.

Anti-gay crusader and all around asshole Fred Phelps and his band of inbred loonies are now going around to military funerals and holding protests. According to this genius, American deaths in Iraq are "divine punishment" for a country that "harbors homosexuals." So these idiots go to funerals carrying signs thanking god for explosives. And these people think they're Christian?!?

Enter a group of bikers who are going to the same funerals with flags and doing what they can to shield the grieving families from the taunts of the Reverend and his Klan of renown.

The CNN article is, frankly, both hilarious and terrifying. I mean how can people think like that? How can they believe that it's ok to make someone's sorrow worse by mocking their funeral, but that it's not OK for two adults who love each other to get married?

You know, there's just nothing I can say...

Cute overload
Your head just might explode, but here's a site with the cutest animal photos ever.

And speaking of the Olympics
Am I the only one in America who'd rather see the one Kenyan bobsledder actually make his run than hear yet another story about the over-rated, over-inflated Bode Miller? No, I thought not.

More random thoughts about the Olympics:
- Why, oh why, are all Olympic mascots so terrifying? The ice cube and snowball from hell characters above? Creepy! Nightmare-inducing, creepy. Hold me.
- Memo to the snowboarding broadcasters: What language were you speaking? Oh, and "podium" is not a verb. Never has been. Learn, people, learn.
- So many athletes. So many iPods. Oh the humanity!
- The Russian speedskating uniforms are an abomination unto us all.
- The opening ceremonies were....um....odd. Let's see, we'll get a Ferrari, some skaters with jet packs, a guy with an anvil, and Yoko Ono. Yup, got all we need. Pass the popcorn.
- Why does everyone sound like they're yelling the same languge in curling? Someone hurls a rock and instantly gets incomprehensible. Whether it's Danish, Finnish, or English, it all sounds exactly the same.
- Why don't those poor non-winter sports countries who want an Olympic team put together a curling squad? Infinitely safer than having some poor hapless African guy strap himself to a bobsled and roll off to his doom.

Don't buy that!
The Compact is a Bay Area group fed up with rampant consumerism. They've taken a pledge not to buy anything new in 2006, except for food, health item,s and underwear. Everything else must come from thrift shops, friends, or other outlets. It's an intriguing idea. I'm already a huge fan of thrift shops and used book and record stores....and I'm not a shopaholic. But I'm not sure if I could do this. Could you?

No more frying pans!

NOTE: Since posting this, I noticed CNN has changed the headline to "Bush urges end to violence over cartoons." I guess I'm not the only one who had visions of the RoadRunner.

This article on cnn.com deals with the escalating violence over the cartoon in Denmark. President Bush, always one for turning the other cheek (kidding) has urged that things just settle down. OK, nice sentiment but doubt it'll have any effect at all.

But what cracks me up is the headline of the article reads "Bush urges end to cartoon violence." Um....so Wile E. Coyote can no longer go "boom" via an Acme bomb? No more getting hit in the face with a frying pan to that satisfying "boooiiiinnnng" noise? No more Elmer Fudd trying to shoot Bugs Bunny and having the gun explode in his face?

How sad....Saturday mornings will seem so dull compared to the local jihad.

Thank you, Mrs. King
For as long as I can recall, at every place I've worked, I've written a quote for the day on a whiteboard. Even if I was the only one who ever bothered to read it, at least I could count on starting every morning with something inspiring, quirky, bitchy, or just plain smart-assed.

Often my quotes are relevant to my situation at work, current affairs, or commemorating a specific date.

Today's quote is "Hatred is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated," which was said by the late Coretta Scott King. And underneath today's quote I wrote "Thank you, Mrs. King."

While leaving my office to go get some water, a random person asked what I was thanking Mrs. King for. It rather took me aback. I replied that I was thanking her for spending her life as a champion of civil rights. That she'd never, even in the past few years, given up being an activist for equal rights for all.

And this guy asked, "is there still a fight for civil rights?"

Wow. What a question. I guess being a straight white guy in the rarified liberal climate of Northern California probably makes it seem like there's no longer any fight left, but I had to say that yes, there is still a fight.

That was my short answer. What I wanted to say was that until my gay friends can marry, then civil rights is still an issue. Until groups like the Aryan Brotherhood and the Klan stop recruiting people to hate others, then yes, civil rights is still an issue.

If you look at civil rights as the "rights" to live in a "civilized" society, then the battle is far from over. We may not have apartheid as an institution, but there is still a negative division between the majority of African Americans and the majority of European Americans. We may have the separation of church and state, but we have politicians who want to push a Christian agenda onto everyone through the teaching of so-called "Intelligent Design." Homosexuality may not be illegal, but it is also not exactly legal either. Especially when so-called "Christians" preach the gospel according to Saint Everyone is Wrong But Me and announce, with no logic whatsoever, that gay marriage threatens the sanctity of straight marriage. We may have freedom of speech on paper, but disagreeing with the current administration gets you labeled as a traitor. We may preach that America is the land of the free, and the great melting-pot, but those with Arabic-sounding names have come under criticism and hostility for nothing more than their ethnicity and their faith.

Dr. and Mrs. King did so much for the United States, and for the world as a whole. But the fight is far from over. If we've learned nothing from their commitment to equality, let us at least take away the message that the fight will be long and hard. In a world of cardboard heroes whose only claim to fame is being famous, it's good to be reminded of what real heroes and heroines are like. I can never claim to have the wisdom, the courage, or the strength of the Kings...but I can honestly say that I desire to be worthy of the legacy they gave to us all.

Long live Zookeeper!
The seriously cool online playlist keeper/database/goodie bag at KZSU, Stanford. In case you want to see what I've been playing, read some of my reviews, or otherwise check up on the sound of At the Cafe Bohemian, check out my page in the DJ Zone.

Who knew?
Who knew that Mussolini had a jazz-playing son? Romano Mussolini has died in Italy at the age of 79. He was apparently a high-respected jazz pianist who played with, among others, Dizzie Gillespie, Duke Ellington, and Chet Baker.

What an odd world it is.

Oh the humanity!
It's bad. It's culturally offensive. It's hilarious. It's David Hasselhoff and he's Hooked on a Feeling!

Two more Caravaggios!
Perhaps only those of us who studied Art History will be at all excited by this, but two paintings discovered in a French church have just been declared to be by Caravaggio.

The bad boy of the Renaissance is one of my all-time favorite artists (what can I say? I'm a sucker for someone who realizes that wandering around the holy lands in the time of Christ would probably lead to dirty feet and torn clothes -- rather than white robes and golden halos).

Any day that delivers two unexpected Caravaggios to the world has to be considered a good day!

R.I.P. Fayard Nicholas
I love the Nicholas Brothers. Fayard and Harold Nicholas were two of the most charismatic dancers ever captured on film. Made Astaire look like a super-sophisticated hack too cool to break a sweat.

From way back in 1934 when Samuel Goldwyn cast them in Kid Millions with Eddie Cantor, to their last movie in 1948 (The Pirate with Gene Kelly). Those two with their flawless style, unbridled energy, and trademark splits made every scene they were in truly memorable.

Fayard Nicholas died today at the age of 91. They were both irreplacable. Luckily, I have his autograph.

We regret the error...
How often have you seen that phrase, buried on page 7 of a newspaper that has to grovelingly report that they misidentified someone in a photo or made a claim in one of their stories that was, well, just plain wrong? Thanks fo Jon Carroll (my favorite columnist) I now know about Regret the Error a website of retractions -- many of them really odd and/or really funny.

What? Survivor contestants cheating???
Oooh, breaking news! Apparently an ex-Survivor contestent is claiming some of the contestants cheat.

Um...and this is surprising why? Let me see if I get this straight....here's a "contest" where the winner seems to be the person who can lie and backstab well enough to get everyone else on his or her side, and we're supposed to be apalled that perhaps people aren't exactly honest about how they play the game?

People, please, find something else to get upset about. Like, oh, perhaps a war?

The power of punctuation
As an editor-type person, I have a fondness for punctuation. I just came across this example of how punctuation can completely change the meaning of a phrase:

1. A woman, without her man, is nothing.
2. A woman: without her, man is nothing

That's all.

Remembering Poe
I love this story. For the past 57 years, a mystery mourner has left roses and abottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe to mark his January 19th birthday. This year was no exception. I love cool things like this...

Does the Pope like acrobats?
I don't know why, perhaps lack of caffeine, but this photo struck me as being highly surreal. The caption from the BBC website where I found this reads: Pope Benedict XVI watches Italian circus artists perform during his weekly general audience at the Vatican.

I always thought "an audience with the Pope" meant that you got to see the Pope....not that the Pope was the audience and you had to entertain him.

Forget Columbus Day!
We may have to start celebrating Zheng He Day. A 1763 Chinese map that claims to be a copy of an original map drawn in 1418 shows Africa and the Americas. Although the story is controversial, it's been a long-held belief that Chinese mariners did, in fact, sail to America long before that upstart Columbus.