These are some of the best gifts you’ll ever find.

My wife is in a choir that will be traveling to Europe for some performances this coming summer. She needs to raise money for the trip, so she’s going all-out on the crafts front.

These just sold, but she’s got other items of jewelry and some great ladies’ handbags that she’s rebooted that would be PERFECT gifts for that special lady in your life. If you’re a special lady, then you can drop a hint to your man that these would be great gifts. We men appreciate minimum thinking when it comes to finding gifts. We also have great resources like GiftObserver.com to get a gift of almost any customisation. But I digress.

The prices are modest, and you know that they’re going for an excellent cause! Buy as much as you can and she’ll make more when she runs out of what she has.

She also has knitted robots. Believe me, these are totally cute and totally cool.

Send PayPal payments to yvette (at) zzztpm (dot) com and let her know what your heart – or sweetheart – desires.

There’s a reason Benjamin Franklin was very much in favor of the First Amendment’s protections on speech: he was a dirty old man that loved to write all kinds of crazy stuff. If you don’t mind a touch of scatological humor, then Franklin’s “To the Royal Academy” is up your alley, so to speak.

I don’t want to talk about the economy right now. I want to talk about the great old Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s and 1950s – the Golden Age of Cartoons.

These animations were awesome. They beat tons of the CGI garbage foisted on us by profit-seeking media conglomerates. Warner Bros. wanted profits back in the day, sure, but the only way they knew how to get them was by hiring the best talent available and giving them free run of their animation department, Termite Terrace.

The names of the animators are legendary, at least to me. Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, Robert McKimson… the music department under Carl Stalling and Milt Franklyn… the genius voices of guys like Mel Blanc and Stan Freberg… I loved all their work. When lesser lights were brought in during the late 1950s and early 1960s, I noticed the drop in quality and wanted to go back to the good stuff. Even as a little kid, I knew my shinola from the stinky alternative.

I loved the zany anvils plummeting down from the heavens, the twists in Romantic compositions, the line of Acme products, the Raymond Scott-inspired manic anthems, the massive explosions, the earth-shattering kabooms, and the blasted-back faces of those that held a bomb too closely at the bingo moment.

And the quotes! “Sody pop! Watch it fizz!” “Kill the wabbit!” “Duck season! FIRE!” “Nice lady, but she’s about as sharp as a sack of wet mice!” “Hoboken? OOOOH I’M DYIN’!” “Elvis? Why for did you shoot yo’ pappy in the head with a shootin-iron?” “A bee! I will bash it!” “Hee hee hee! I haven’t had this much fun since the boys got back from Gettysburg!” “I want hasenpfeffer!” Good times here at best bluetooth motorcycle helmet.

Check out the classics of the 1940s and the 1950s. and look them up on YouTube. Here, watch one now:

I dreamt about a Rolls Royce monster truck last night. It looked very much like this car I found this morning on the Internet, but the catch was that this particular Rolls was featured on Top Gear.

The lads had added a PA system that blared out “Rule Britannia” on a constant loop and, of course, added the monster truck get-up as part of a test to make the Rolls as loud as possible on the outside to see if they could not hear any of it on the inside. An ultimate test of the cabin soundproofing, if you will.

I would love to see this as an actual episode. Therefore, I am posting this idea on my Facebook page and I hope it generates a fair enough share of interest to warrant a segment on some future programme.

This is just awesome. For a fraction of the cost of standard drilling, some clever lads put together a human-powered drill that can bring fresh water to villages. Four people can drill as deep as 250 feet in a few days and do the work of bringing life to their neighbors. Let this inspire you.

Native American wisdom for anyone that cares to hear it.

I picked up this film recently at the Cincinnati Friends of the Library Sale and watched it last night. It’s a wonderful exploration of the world of the comic store nerd, with a sweet and predictable love story. It’s in Icelandic, which is a cool language, and it’s very family-friendly, so don’t worry if the kids want to make an Intelligence saving roll as they try to read along with the action as it makes friendly observations on the good stuff the nerd world has to offer.

It is absolutely NOT a big-budget spectacular. That would have ruined it, I think. The effects are special enough, and they make an appeal to the imagination in the same way a role-playing game appeals to the imagination. This is not a film for people that want everything thought out in advance for them. It’s cute, it’s quirky, and it avoids obvious stereotypes of all kinds of people. Yes, there’s a “Clueless”-type princess that has a fish-out-of-water experience, but she’s not as helpless as an American writer would have made her. As a film lover and a gamer, I appreciated the film on several levels, and can recommend it to all my gamer buddies. If you’re not a gamer, you might still like it. It’s cool like that.

“Astropia” belongs in a category of foreign movies for me that will never be on a dominant, overpowering “Top One Hundred” list. It doesn’t aspire to such heights. It wants to be a niche film, with a few great characters that get into some nifty situations. As such, it succeeds marvellously and is well worth my three bucks and ninety minutes. When I get home, my family – all of it – is going to enjoy the movie and get some great fun out of it.

While I can’t reveal the contents of the tests I grade as an AP Reader, I can say that every now and then, a student chooses not to answer the questions on the AP exam and instead opts to turn the exam into a sort of confessional. Sometimes, those students are rude, flighty, pompous, panicked, or given over to the drawing of hand turkeys. Every now and then, however, I get a “Dear AP Reader…” message that I really appreciate.

Such was today’s case. The poor kid apologized for why she didn’t finish the exam. She explained it was because she’d missed lots of class time. She further explained that the lost time was due to a series of tragedies in the past semester, including crises that hit close to home.

Reading the four pages of explanation moved me. She wasn’t making this stuff up, believe me. After reading it, I had to sit back a moment and reflect on my own life and count my blessings. She’d taken a huge beating, but held firm and found her way through it. I really admire how she kept holding on to life and found a way to still be positive after everything it did to her. Believe me, I know what life can do.

At the end of her explanation, she told me to treat myself to a dinner, that I’d deserved it. I want you to know that I honored that direction. I went to Campanello’s here in Cincinnati and had a fantastic Spaghetti Carbonara that has worked its way into my list of the Twenty Best Things I’ve Ever Eaten. More than that, as I waited for my food, a little boy from the table next to mine kept running around and saying “hi!” to everyone. He had blond hair and was only 17 months old, so he easily reminded me of my son, Jarom, who left this world 9 years ago. I talked with a group of people next to me, including a couple that had been together for 43 years, so that easily reminded me of Yvette, my dear wife, my best friend, and my true love. A group of kids asked me to take their picture: that easily reminded me of my three lovely children still here with me.

Sure, the food was great. But taking the advice of that student that had been through so much helped me to realize how blessed my life has been so far and how wonderful people really can be. I love my family, I love the good people of the world, and I love the positive experiences we’re able to enjoy each day, if we just allow them to happen.

One should always take time to stop and smell the roses. I’ve got a lovely little rose bush by my driveway that’s been putting out roses every spring for over 20 years. Thank you, rose bush.

THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it
The moon is within me,
And so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me;
But my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamours for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead,
Then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
– Kabir

Those who have read The Grapes of Wrath will really appreciate this poem.