If you’ve got ten minutes to kill, this is a fun way to do it. I won’t tell you the theme; you’ll figure it out soon enough:

I’m not much of a movie fan, so I was surprised how many of these I recognized. There’s everything here from “Casablanca” to “Star Wars,” from “Bridge on the [...]

What should I call this — the Geek-o-Lantern, or the Jack-o-Smiley?

I wish I could claim this idea as mine, but I can’t. I saw an image like this somewhere on the Internet last month. I can’t remember the site, but I definitely remembered the idea.
The font is 600 point Arial. Really.

6 Elephants Electrocuted in India
By WASBIR HUSSAIN – 9 hours ago
GAUHATI, India (AP) — Six Asiatic wild elephants were electrocuted as they went berserk after drinking rice beer in India’s remote northeast, a wildlife official said Tuesday.
Nearly 40 elephants came to a village on Friday looking for food. Some found beer, which farmers ferment and [...]

See the original photo.
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Well shiver me timbers! Today it be:
(a) Me 20th wedding anniversary. I loves you Wenday me lass!
(b) The 25th birthday o’ that freebooter’s bane, the smiley. ;-O Whether ye love ‘em er ye hate ‘em, they be everywhere.
(c) Talk like a pirate day.
Update: Dwight Silverman talked me into writing a post about smileys over [...]

September 13, 1982:

July 2, 1982:

These were easily the two best albums of 1982. I forgot to blog about Imperial Bedroom back in July, so now seems a fitting time to do so. (Yeah, Jerry, it’s still a better album than The Dreaming.)

This awesome 5-song EP came out on this day 25 years ago. It was the R.E.M. record I ever heard and it didn’t take me long to get hooked. I still like it as well as anything else the band has ever recorded.

I had the good fortune to be in Atlanta just after this record [...]

One of my favorite traditions turns out to have been a publicity stunt:
For decades, a mysterious figure dressed in black, his features cloaked by a wide-brimmed hat and scarf, crept into a churchyard to lay three roses and a bottle of cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.
Now, a 92-year-old man who led the [...]

I’ve spent most of the evening transfixed by CNN’s coverage of the bridge that collapsed late this afternoon.
It was the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River. It’s a 40 year old bridge; it was inspected just three years ago and given a clean bill of health. It was undergoing resurfacing when it collapsed, and only [...]

…but I’m stilled bummed. It’s been one year since they closed Terry’s Pizza in Huntsville.
Leigh Ann sent me a link to a Huntsville Times story earlier this year saying that the Star Market near five points is selling frozen pizzas made from the Terry’s recipe. A more recent report says that an expansion of the [...]

Marvin Zindler, Houston personality and TV reporter, died tonight at the age of 85. Zindler was one of the first people to catch my attention on TV after moving to Houston over 20 years ago. I saw him reporting on channel 13, with his blue-tinted glasses, his tan, and his shocking white toupee… I went [...]