Shankopotamus

I don’t mean to promote ETrade, but I love these, particularly the facial expression on “Learn to fly again!”

And the official “outtakes.”

Sand Sculpture Competition (Oregon 2009)

Don’t know who’s responsible for this one, but I hope they won something:

This one is by Jeff Strong:

Wyclef Jean

I know this is another party I’m late to, and I admit I’m not a fan of his rappier stuff, but these songs by Wyclef are killer.  I’ll be looking for more.

1. Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)
2. Fast Car
3. Slow Down
4. Perfect Gentleman

Storyteller

The night sky, shimmered
By a chorus of starlight
Arches, sentence-less

Laughing and stumbling
The comma of a half moon
Checks its momentum

The light, pausing at
The period of full moon
Ends and then begins

Optimism

Barn's burnt down--
    now
        I can see the moon.

~Masahide

“Done With Apple-Picking Now”

This quote is prominently and professionally carved into the base of a picnic table in China Camp State Park north of San Francisco.

A bit unusual.  The first thing that came to mind was that it was some kind of negative critique of Apple Computers. I was deeply saddened when I realized, instead, that it is a direct quote from one of my favorite poems from my favorite poet, Robert Frost.  How did I not recognize it right away?

Maybe I’ve been here too long.

“One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.”

Quality

“Or if he takes whatever dull job he’s stuck with – and they are all, sooner or later, dull – and, just to keep himself amused, starts to look for options of Quality, and secretly pursues these options, just for their own sake, thus making an art out of what he is doing, he’s likely to discover that he becomes a much more interesting person and much less of an object to the people around him, because his Quality decisions change him too.”

~Robert M. Pirsig
from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Shadow Art

by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

Human Echolocation

Dan Kish has achieved an amazing breakthrough by teaching other blind people how to use echolocation (think bats) to “see” the world around them.  Check it out.

Drummers Wanted

Don’t try too hard to be like everyone else.

You might succeed.