Adorable-ness Break for NYE

I just want to marry both of them.  And be insufferably adorable all the time.  I'd give up snark for that.  Seriously.  I guess I'd have to learn to play Hendrix-style, however.

Happy end-of-2011, beginning-of-2012, everyone.  Big changes are on the horizon--perhaps a new website.  Maybe the Mayan Apocalypse will come, though, and I won't have to deal with it.  Or I'll live-Tweet it.  Fingers crossed.

Music Break

Love this song.  Also love the comment on YouTube* at the top: "I fell asleep with this song on and woke up with a beard."


Bonus track, H/T Kai.  The YouTube comment also applies.





*Disclaimer: reading YouTube comments is the most sure-fire way to become convinced that humanity is not inherently good.  

Heard Somebody Say (Part Deux)

I already did this once, but here we are again, at another "official" end to the Iraq War. 

Glancing Blows

Link Day

First, heartening news from the Obama administration!  Secretary of State Clinton announced yesterday that the US government would do more to protect and promote the rights of LGBT(QI...and so on) people around the world.  In remarks to the UNHRC (United Nations Human Rights Council, not to be confused with the UNHCR, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees...it gets me every time) Secretary Clinton said: "Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct, but in fact they are one and the same."  Despite President Obama's caginess on his personal stance on gay marriage, this administration has done a lot for gay rights in the US and, with hope, now abroad as well.  I love you, Hils & Barry!

The SF-based music blog Positive Destruction put together a list of their 15 fave (local) albums of 2011, which include a bunch of sample tracks.  Take a listen--you might find something you like.  Oh, and if you haven't checked it out already, Turntable Kitchen's November Mixtape is pretty awesome.  Come for the surf-canyon-electronica-pop blends, stay for the Eurythmics cover.  Now that I've moved my turntable up from Ojai and (re)cut my teeth on a kickass show from The National (pictured above), I anticipate that this will be an expensive year, music-wise. 

 Courtesy of Pajiba, here's a beautiful series of photos of paint dropped into water.  Jellyfish-explosion hybrids.

I thought I had a bit more than that to share, but with Mercury in retrograde, I can barely focus on anything.  I don't go in for astrology, but after I read up a bit, these past few weeks make so much more sense.  I was contemplating getting checked out for ADD.  There's one more week of this nonsense, so look out.  FYI, I can't really tell if I'm joking about all of this or not. 

Glancing Blows

Adultery Saturdays

New post at Foreign Policy Association on World AIDS Day (it was Thursday).  Kind of failing at (self-imposed) deadlines this week, but so it goes.  I also can't spell the name of the city in which I live, apparently.  Oh well. 

President Obama's speech on Thursday was pretty good.  Check it out:



Happy weekend!

A Little More Thacher

My high school (and home), The Thacher School, put together a video of typical Thacher scenes.  As you can gather from the video and from the one I shared a while ago, this is a truly special place, one that had an immense impact on my life.  My love for the outdoors, my intellectual curiosity, and my morals (laugh away) were all honed and cemented while at Thacher. 

Things have changed a bit from my time, however.  The kids seem to play a lot more guitar.  It's strange to see the buildings that feature so prominently in this piece and now in the make-up of the school, the new Lower School and Hill dorms and the Performing Arts Center/Student Building, did not exist when I was a student there.  Although it looks cute to wear a sundress to get your horse from pasture, put on some closed-toe shoes, girl!  If that pony steps on you, it's game over for your foot.  We would've gotten a Saturday or seven of trail crew for that kind of business.  Football wasn't the idyllic past-time it is now--it caused a bit of controversy when it was introduced as a new sport.  And we still had a clay track that was a nightmare to navigate after the rain.  But the shape of the mountains, that golden slant of light, and the sunsets over the Ojai Valley are just the same.