Alma

BoingBoing points out this delightfully creepy animation by Rodrigo Blass: Alma is a short, five minute piece with some lovely animation and the feel of the old style fairy tales (before they were all made acceptable and twee for small children):

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Merrie Melodies

Via the invaluable Internet Archive folks comes this wonderful and very early entry in the career of a rabbit who would later become one of the most enduring celluloid stars and a personal role model for me when I was growing up, Mr Bugs Bunny:

Sleeping Tree

One of my photo friends online pointed me to Giulio Frausin and some rather lovely music - you can listen to it online or download it here, check it out and if you enjoy it pass it on.

42

Today marks my 'Douglas Adams' birthday - 42. This, of course, means I now am perfectly at one with The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything. Mind you, as anyone who knows where their towel is can probably guess, I still don't understand the bloody Great Question, rendering it all pretty pointless (an apt metaphor for life, really - puzzling, frustrating, disappointing and pointless). At least I know my Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster from my Old Janx Spirit. I'm not really sure how I come to find myself at this age. On the one hand it seems like just the other year I was a happy mid 20s student drinking my way through college and quite happy, other days it feels like a lifetime ago. I suppose it was. Can't say I especially feel like celebrating; truth be told I don't really give a damn about my birthday, its on such an awkward day its a bit of an afterthought so it hasn't really meant much to me in my adult years, different when you are a kid. And these days it doesn't feel like there's much reason to celebrate.

Stormy weather

Down to Portobello this afternoon with my mate and his dog to let him have a run around off the leash on the beach (the dog, not my friend), only to find what was a cold wind in the city centre of Edinburgh was a howling gale coming right off the North Sea at Porty, whipping the waves up into big foaming gray peaks and slamming right into the sea wall so hard they splashed right up the side, across the Esplanade and hit the wall of the structure on the other side. That was when we decided to walk around the block at the worst bit :-) Pictures are a bit fuzzy, the wind was so high my camera lens, glasses and my face were all getting whipped by flying sand granules and salt spray, had to clean them repeatedly but within minutes they just got covered with a film of it again.

Christmas greetings from Scotland

After finishing work for the year I walked up a very snowy Royal Mile to the Castle gates. For the first time ever I had it all to myself, not another soul there for ten minutes, just me standing in snow that came over the toes of my boots, that soft scrunching sound that reminds you instantly of childhood playtimes in the snow. Just me and the cold and the snow and the Castle glowing in the night above the city, dusted with snow like icing on a historical cake. Below and around me views across the whole of Edinburgh, right out to the Pentland Hills. Freezing but incomparably beautiful. Merry Christmas from a snowy Scotland!

'Twas the Night Before Christmas...

... and all through the night not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... I've loved Tom'n'Jerry since I was a very small boy and have wonderfully warm memories of sitting there watching them with my dad. Truth be told even as an adult if a T&J came on when I was home dad and I would sit down to watch it, hee-hawing with laughter as we did so, my mum shaking her head and wondering when either of us would grow up. With crisp snow lying all around us this Christmas Eve it seems like a perfect evening to sit by a roaring fire and watch the classic Night Before Christmas film from the Oscar winning T&J:







Oh to be five years old again and watching this on Christmas Eve at home with dad while mum was making baking and cooking magic in the kitchen and all seemed right with the world and there was no problem in the world so big that your mum and dad couldn't sort it out and you felt wrapped up in that warmth and love. Looking back now I think that childhood was the most wonderful present I've ever received and at the time, of course, I didn't even know it. Little wonder as the world seems darker and colder that I warm myself by those memories of times that never come again.