Monday, December 31, 2012

2012 year-end Lists: Miscellaneous Lists

Guinness World Records 2012

A lot of world records were set and broken in 2012. You can find a list of them at the Guinness site.

14 Most WTF Moments from Russia.

The 45 Most WTF Red Carpet Moments Of 2012.

The 50 Best Animal Photos Of 2012.

60 Steps Forward for the LGBT Community in 2012.

Wall Street’s five worst trades of 2012.

The Best Food Inventions Of The Year. Or the worst, depending on your feelings about fast food.

40 Best Protest Signs Of 2012.

Unusual baby names of 2012.

26 Moments That Restored Our Faith In Humanity This Year.

Our favorite charts of 2012.

2012 in architecture.

Top 10 Illusions in 2012.

Dave Barry’s Year in Review.

Top Quotes Of 2012 from The Onion.

Sure, some of these should have been filed under the other categories, but I didn't get them until too late. See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Prediction for the New Year

(via Criggo)

Happy New Year Version 2.0.13



It's almost 2013, and once again, Rhe DeVille has updated my favorite New Year song, this time as a club mix and a story in the video. When the credits roll, the song is not over. Let's hope your new year is this happy! -Thanks, Rhe!


Party Poopers

(via reddit)

Jingle Cats Sing Auld Lang Syne




Happy New year from the Jingle Cats!


Ringing in 1950



This New Year greeting was shown in theaters among the pre-feature shorts in December of 1949. (via Nag on the Lake)



Fun Fact

From Drew at Toothpaste for Dinner.

Miss Cellania's Links

Barbershop of Horrors: 5 Extreme Hairstyles.

George White, at age 92, took off for Switzerland to spend a holiday -and write up his impressions for everyone to read. (via Metafilter)

9 New Year's Eve Kisses From The Big Screen.

In 1959, Bob Timm and John Wayne Cook took off from the Las Vegas airport in a Cessna 172 for the longest airplane flight of their lives. They stayed aloft for for 64 days, 22 hours, and 19 minutes, a record that has never been broken. (via mental_floss)

Peggielene Bartels has lived in the US for thirty years, and works as a secretary at the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, DC. But she is also the King of Otuam, a village in Ghana.

Take the TIME 2012 News Quiz. I scored 86% -how did you do?

Festive Vintage Photos from New Year’s Eves Past. These folks would be having a helluva time if they weren't busy posing for pictures.

25 Pictures Of Soldiers with Animals. 24 will melt your heart, and one is absolutely terrifying.

How Bullying Creates Suicide Bombers. Terrorist leaders know how to break someone's will to live, and use that to their own ends.

6 New Year Traditions from Around the World. You might want to try something new and different for your celebration! Happy New Year!

Keeping a Eye on the Festivities

2012 Year-end Lists: News

JibJab Year in Review 2012

Jib Jab's annual year-end wrap-up is one for the records, just like 2012 was.

Yahoo! Top News Stories of the Year.

The Biggest Headlines of 2012 (According to Google).

Fark's 2012 HEADLINE OF THE YEAR contest.

The Top 5 Political Stories of 2012.

The Year in Editorial Cartoons.

Best Political Cartoons of 2012

Billion-Dollar Weather Disasters of 2012.

2012's Most Talked-About Sex Scandals.

The 42 Biggest News Events of 2012, as Experienced through Dr. Ruth’s Sex-Obsessed Twitter. Undoubtedly, the funniest link here.

The year's 20 weirdest stories from Florida, America's weirdest state.

If that's not enough, read The 40 Most Insane Things That Happened In Florida In 2012.

FloriDUH's Sexapalooza 2012: Tales of sex gone bad.

The best (and worst) media errors and corrections of 2012.

The Best (Worst?) Typos, Mistakes, and Corrections of 2012. These are just plain funny.

The year's 9 most hilarious New York Times corrections.

News Reel of 2012

A collection of news bloopers, interruptions, photobombs, strange clips, and things that shouldn't be on TV news. Contains NSFW language. 


See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Meerkats



National Geographic tells us all about Timon and his family, including how much they love scorpions. For dinner. (via Tastefully Offensive)



2012 Year-end Lists: Best of Blogs

Miss Cellania’s Top 20 Weird News Stories of 2012.

Reddit's top posts of the year.

40 Essential Mashable Stories You May Have Missed in 2012.

The Ultimate List Of Gawker Media Longreads.

From the Hulk to Hacktivists: Wired’s Best Videos of 2012.

A Colossal Year: The Top 15 Posts on Colossal in 2012.

Slate’s Most Read Stories.


The Best of Brain Pickings 2012

The Craziest Craigslist Posts Of 2012.

The Top 25 Cracked Articles of 2012.

I Can Has Cheezeburger's Best Animals of 2012.

Twisted Sifter's Top 100 ‘Pictures of the Day’ for 2012.

The Smoking Gun Presents The 2012 Mug Shots Of The Year.

Gamma Squad's Compendium of Cool Comics Cosplay: Best of 2012.

Damn You, Autocorrect's 25 Funniest AutoCorrects Of 2012. Strangely, not posted on the site itself.  Who cares if they are fake, they will leave you in stitches.

The 30 Most Popular Warming Glow Posts Of 2012.

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Weapons

Star Trek: TNG Gag Reel



Outtakes, bloopers, and shenanigans from season two of Star Trek: The Next Generation. After 24 years, you should be able to handle seeing those familiar crew members break character without destroying your enjoyment of the series. If not… don't watch, because the actors just constantly lose it.


Piccione Profezia Morte

By Feng at Fengtastic!

Dogs Sing Auld Lang Syne



Puppy dogs wish you a happy New Year!


2012 Year-end Lists: Photographs

2012: The Year in Pictures. From the New York Times.

Best photos of the year 2012. From Reuters.

2012: The year in pictures. From CNN.

2012 World Press Photo Contest Winners.


Best of 2012 - National Geographic Magazine Photos of the Year.

The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2012.

The Most Controversial Photos of 2012.

60 Images From 2012 We Want Saved In A Time Machine.

The 40 Happiest Photos Taken This Year. 



See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Names of Things According to My Mom



I'm not quite Jeff Wysaski's mom yet, but I'm certainly on my way! I cannot tell the difference between the kids' game consoles. I might if I'd bought them, but they have several hand-me-down models that all look somewhat similar. (via Bits and Pieces)



2012 Year-end List: Internet

Rewind YouTube Style 2102

YouTube asked its most viral participants to star in a mash-up of culturally defining moments of 2012. That includes, PSY, Freddie Wong, Rhett & Link, Felicia Day, and more. Can you spot all the references?

YouTube’s Top Ten Viral Videos of 2012.

20 Funniest Viral Videos Of 2012.

The 50 Greatest Internet Memes of 2012. Bonus: it starts with #1, so you can read as far as you are interested in.

The 32 Best New (Image) Memes Of 2012. Grumpy Cats, Lawyer Dogs, And More: The 20 Best Memes Of 2012.

Greg Rutter's Definitive List of The Things You Should Have Already Experienced On The Internet In 2012 Unless You're a Loser or Old or Something.

The Most Read Wikipedia Articles From Around The World In 2012.

The 10 Most Popular Google Doodles of 2012.

The Year on Twitter.

The 54 Best Tumblrs Started In 2012.

Top 100 Mom Blogs of 2012.

The Funniest Law Blogs of 2012.

Facebook 'Year in Review' for you and your friends. Mine was not very exciting, but I don't live on Facebook.

The 30 Most Important Cats Of 2012.

The Craziest Russian Dash Cam Videos Of 2012.

Google Zeitgeist 2012: Year In Review

Google presents their annual look back at the highlights of the year, this time framing the events as they were presented at G+ as well as YouTube, but also remind us of the company's roots as a search engine.

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Wright's Law



Jeffrey Wright is a very popular and effective physics teacher at Louisville Male Traditional High School in Kentucky. But he has lessons from his own life that are even more important than physics. Read more about him at the New York Times.



Saturday, December 29, 2012

Frying Nemo

Kennedy Center Honors



Anne and Nancy Wilson perform "Stairway to Heaven" as Led Zeppelin watches, on the evening they were honored at the Kennedy Center last month.


2012 Year-end Lists: People

Heroes of 2012

Raw video of people doing extraordinary things in 2012. Plus some fictional heroes and one dog.

TIME's The World's 100 Most Influential People.

And the top 10 CNN Heroes of 2012 are ...

Travelers of the Year. NatGeo selects people whose travels inspired them to make the world a better place.

Top ten political winners of 2012.

Unexpected Political Winners of 2012.

I'm Gay: The 50 Most Powerful Coming Outs of 2012.

15 People Made Famous by the Internet in 2012.

The 2012 UPROXX People, Places And Things Of The Year Awards.

The Least Influential People of 2012.

Celebrity Breakups of 2012.

Celebrity Arrests 2012.

25 Biggest Celebrity Scandals Of 2012.

The Worst Cads of 2012.

The 20 Absolute Worst Parents of 2012.

The Dumbest People of 2012.

20 Dumbest Criminals of 2012.

Worst Year Ever: Top 10 Losers in 2012.

Banks, NFL, Walmart Lead List of 2012 Worst Reputational Crises.

The 23 Most Ridiculous Deaths of 2012.

Remembering Writers Who Left Us in 2012.

Photos: Notable people we've lost in 2012.

11 Not-So-Famous People We Lost in 2012.

The Lives They Lived. Looking back at those who left us in 2012.

Who Left Us in 2012


Invisi-owl

By Feng at Fengtastic!

Name Tag

2012 Year-end Lists: Tech and Games

Mobile Year in Review 2012

That gadget you carry around has become the future.

The Top 10 Tech Breakthroughs of 2012.

The Best Inventions of 2012 You Haven’t Heard of Yet Part 1 and Part 2.

This Dumb Year: The 57 Lamest Moments in Tech 2012.

From Apple Maps to Epic Hacks: The Year’s Top Tech Fails.

Overhyped, Overpriced: 2012′s Insanely Expensive Gear.

From Internet Uprisings to John McAfee: The Year in Privacy and Security.

2012 in video gaming.

Abort, Retry, Fail: Gaming’s Biggest Disappointments of 2012.

The 5 most significant video game controversies in 2012.

The most overrated games of 2012.

Check Out Forbes' Top Games of 2012 List.



See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Sportswriter

I wonder who this guy is writing for now.

Charlie the Unicorn 4



Finally, another episode of Charlie the Unicorn! This is pretty annoying until the millipede shows up about two minutes in …and then it becomes a magical musical! (via reddit)

See Charlie the Unicorn 3.

2012 Year-end Lists: Advertising

How Advertisers Failed Women in 2012

From the organization Miss Representation.

The Biggest Advertising News Stories of 2012, from Advertising Age.

Adweek's Top 10 Advertising Stories of 2012.

12 Best Print Ads Of 2012.

Take A Bow, Ad Wizards: 10 Best Commercials of 2012.

12 Best Commercials Of 2012.

Business Insider's 10 Best Ads of 2012.

The best online ads of 2012 weren’t ads.

The 12 Best Ads of The 2012 Olympics.

Best and worst political ads of 2012 (video).

Every Kiss Begins With F-You: The 10 Most Annoying, Awful Commercials Of 2012.

These Are The Biggest PR Disasters Of 2012.

The 20 Biggest Marketing Fails of 2012.

Top 10 Photoshop Disasters of 2012.





See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Some Tour!

(via Criggo)

Man



A brief history of what man has done to the earth, and a glimpse of the future. By Steve Cutts. (via Viral Viral Videos)



2012 Year-end Lists: Science

SourceFed's 2012 Space Video Retrospective


Sperm Trajectories, Evolving Humans and a Tomato Tapestry: The Best Scientific Figures of 2012.

Mythical Particles, Goldilocks Planets and More: Top 5 Surprising Scientific Milestones of 2012.

Scientific American's Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.

Top 10 Discoveries of 2012: Nat Geo News's Most Popular.

io9's Biggest Scientific Breakthroughs of 2012.

Wired's Top Scientific Discoveries of 2012.

The 11 most fascinating scientific discoveries of 2012.

The 10 Biggest Space Moments of 2012.

The Eight Biggest Energy Stories of 2012.

2012 in Review: 9 Important Archaeological Discoveries.

10 biggest health breakthroughs of 2012.

The Best Astronomy Images of 2012, from the Bad Astronomer.

NatGeo's Best Space Pictures of 2012: Editor's Picks.

The Top 10 Brain Science and Psychology Stories of 2012.

Physics World reveals its top 10 breakthroughs for 2012.

12 Amazing Species Discovered in 2012.

BBC Wildlife Camera-trap Photos of the Year 2012.

27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012.

Top 10 science videos of 2012.

Top five retracted science stories of 2012.

2012 Weird Science Awards.

Top Science Longreads of 2012.

Hidden Gems of 2012.

Academic nominative determinism: the year’s best.

2012 Wildlife Victories - National Wildlife Federation


See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.

2012 Year-end Lists: TV

This Year in Unnecessary Censorship

Jimmy Kimmel has fun looking back at 2012, with a few choice words deleted. 

Ten Best TV Shows of 2012.

AFI Names The 10 Best TV Shows Of 2012.

The Best TV of 2012.

The 10 Funniest Television Episodes Of 2012.

The 11 Best Dramatic Episodes of 2012.

10 Memorable TV Deaths Of 2012. Contains spoilers!

20 TV GIFs That Defined 2012.

The 10 Best ‘SNL’ Skits of 2012.

The 10 Best TV Shows To ‘Hate Watch’ From 2012. They're like train wrecks, and you can't turn away.

The Most Pirated TV Shows of 2012. 

The 2012 Very Official TV Superlatives.


The Worst TV of 2012. 

Top 10 TV blunders of 2012.

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists.



Miss Cellania's Links

The Father of the Countdown.

What Do Astronauts Eat? (via the Presurfer)

Wombat Poops Cubic Poo.

The Incredible Geometric Snow Art of Simon Beck. Each work requires hours or days of tramping around in snowshoes, and one false step will ruin everything.

She thought she was getting in iPad for Christmas, but she was wrong. A tale of prank packaging that went over quite well.

What I Learned Covering the War. A longtime war correspondent brings the horror home for a living.

13 Dogs Who Are So Ready to Celebrate New Year’s Eve. They're waiting for the party on Instagram.

Take Your Best $hot: 4 Average Joe Millionaires. The stories of sports fans who beats the odds to suddenly win arena promotions.

How To Write a Love Letter.

Trash

(via Buzzfeed)

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Appropriate, I Think

Cheerleaders and Soldiers: Call Me Maybe



This is fascinating. The Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders did a dance video to "Call Me Maybe." U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan saw it and and did their own version, matching the cheerleaders scene-by scene. Here are the two videos together. (via Everlasting Blort)




Language Evaluating Syndrome

By Feng at Fengtastic!

2012 Year-End Lists: Sports

You Gotta Love Sports

A compilation of the sporting events of 2012 in the Humans Are Awesome series. 

The 10 sports stories that defined 2012.

Sports Illustrated's Best Sports Moments of 2012.

The Biggest, Most Incredible, Unbelievable, Shouted About Sports Moments Of 2012.

The 50 Biggest Sports Fails of 2012.

The best sports stories of 2012 that never happened.

The Funniest Sports GIFs Of 2012.

2012 Sports Cursing Compilation.

The Most Inspiring Sports Photos Of 2012.

The Sexiest Male and Female Athletes Of 2012

The Ultimate Football NutShot Compilation 2012

Football is a dangerous sport.

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists

The Traveler's Republic of Tofu



Daniel Klein and Mirra Fine took a two week tour of China and recorded everything in gorgeous high-definition video. This production from The Perennial Plate focuses on the food they encountered. It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. (via Laughing Squid)


2012 Year-end Lists: Movies

Every Movie From 2012: The Supercut


Sleep Skunk edited together clips from the movies of 2012 into one supercut. How many of them did you see? Since he used the trailers, even those released in December are included. See a list of the films at his site.

The 10 Best Movies of 2012. From Slate.

The Top 100 Movies of 2012, as rated by readers at Rotten Tomatoes.

Andrew O’Hehir’s 10 Best Movies of 2012.

John Waters’ Favorite Films of 2012.

The Year's 15 Biggest Flops.

The Absolute Very Worst Movies Of 2012.

The 10 worst-reviewed movies of 2012.

The 10 Most Completely Forgettable Films of 2012: A Celebration of Mediocrity.

2012′s Best Movie Moments.

The Year in Film: 2012′s Biggest Movie Controversies. Which can also be termed "free publicity."

The Best And Worst Things About The Sci-fi Movies Of 2012.

Best and Worst Science Fiction/Fantasy Movies of 2012.

The Black List 2012: The best unproduced scripts that should be made into films.

The 30 Best Movie Posters of 2012.

The 10 best alternative film posters of 2012.

The 10 Most Enjoyable Supporting Performances That Don't Have A Shot In Hell At An Award This Year.

Filmography 2012


YouTube member genrocks put together a bit of the many films of 2012 into one video. It's not just a supercut; this is a masterfully edited mashup that you won't be able to turn away from. There's a list of all the films and music at Filmographile

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists

Miss Cellania's Links

Behind the Cover. Five stories of iconic album cover art. 

The 13-year-old Navy Veteran.

Michael Kranish says Mitt Romney lost the election because he didn't want the office bad enough. Mefites came up with a lot of other reasons.

Monica Lewinsky: The Inside Story of an Epic Newsweek Scoop. And they sat on it for a week.

An Early Tale of the Internet. The jargon engineers had to make up didn't translate perfectly to the real world.

The Moose Sex Project. Buying a strip of wilderness for the animals would be like giving the boys boats to cross over to the girls' summer camp.

Why Do Onions Make You Cry? And even more important, how can you avoid this when cutting them?

How the State of Georgia Declared War on Its Poorest Citizens.

Why Is It?

(via Fark)

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

How to Fight Global Warming

(via Criggo)

Grumpy Nyan Cat Destroys the World



There is no greater sign of the end times than the biggest cat meme of 2012 mashed up with the biggest cat meme of 2011. Simon Johnson animated this video of Tardar Sauce and his plans for bringing the eventual apocalypse. (via Buzzfeed)



Leftovers



This ad get pretty yucky as it goes along. It bet it causes quite a few people to head for a restaurant after Christmas. You can see a longer version if you really want to. (via Daily of the Day)


2012 Year-End Lists: Books

Ellen Degeneres Reads 50 Shades of Grey


The Slate Book Review Top 10 of 2012.

The Daily Beast's Favorite Books of 2012.

Best Suspense/Thrillers/Mysteries of 2012.

The Best Science Books 2012, from a variety of sources.

15 Best Cookbooks Of 2012.

Publisher's Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2012.

2012 Best Fiction for Young Adults.

Best science fiction and fantasy books of 2012.

The 21 Best Graphic Novels of 2012.

Favourite Comics, Art Books, and More of 2012.

The Best Design Books of 2012.

The 10 Best Debut Novels of 2012.

The many lists of the best books of 2012.

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists

A More Advanced Useless Machine



You've seen the world's most useless machine, but now it's new and improved! The openly thing a useless machine does is turn itself off. However, this one goes the extra mile. It came about when a printer was rendered useless by a broken printhead. But the mechanics of the machine still worked, so why not turn it into something entertaining? Get the specs at Stuff. (via Viral Viral Videos)


2012 Year-End Lists: Music

PopLove 2012

Twenty-four different artists, all sounding enough alike to mix together. Remix by Robin Skouteris. The list of songs is at the YouTube page.

Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks of 2012.

Rolling Stone's Top 25 Songs of 2012.

Spotify's Top 100 Most Popular Tracks of 2012.

The Ultimate 2012 Playlist. If you chose to play them all, it would take 11 hours.

21 of the grooviest songs released in 2012. 

Rolling Stone Readers' Poll: The Best Albums of 2012

UPROXX’s 10 Best Albums Of 2012.

Strictly Come Dancing About Architecture 2012. Or, in other words, the year's best music writing.

Buzzfeed's 23 Best Music Videos Of 2012.

TIME's 9 Best Music Videos of 2012.

Fartbarf, Neon Piss, and more: the year in band names 2012.

The Year in Memorable Musical Controversies.

The 25 Best Mixtapes of 2012.

The Best Country Music of 2012.

The Best Jazz Albums of 2012.

Stereogum’s Top 40 Rap Albums Of 2012.

Remembering the best classical music of 2012.

Pop Danthology 2012

Daniel Kim mashed up 50 hit songs from 2012 to make this year-end retrospective.

See the rest of the the 2012 Year-end Lists

Happy Boxing Day!

funny pictures - Maru Wishes You a Happy Boxing Day!

(via I Can Has Cheezburger)

Extreme Amazing Super-Chess



If all chess games were like this, there'd be a TV channel dedicated to the game. There's a move that would require a "mature" rating (although it's totally immature). From BBC Comedy (via Tastefully Offensive)



Brave Squirrel



This squirrel is either insanely brave or just insane. Or maybe he realizes that squirrel meat is not nearly as tempting to an eagle as the human with a camera sitting high in a tree. (via Daily of the Day)



Tuesday, December 25, 2012

The Difference Between The Netherlands and Holland


Ya wanna go to Holland? Would that be North Holland or South Holland? Or some other part of the Netherlands? If that's confusing, C.G.P. Grey will explain it, and you'll be even more confused. (via Neatorama)



Christmas Tree Raising Timelapse



Erecting and decorating the Christmas tree at Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina is a phenomenal chore. Luckily, the video version doesn't take so long!



Targeteer

Miss Cellania's Links

Things You Don't Know About Christmas Carols.

The Story of the Christmas Truce.

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Was Female?

Science Gangnam Style parodies. Well, they're all science-related except for the Klingon version.

Who Really Wrote “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”? 

The Cromwell Wall family of England had a wax cylinder phonograph on which they recorded family events, including Christmas celebrations, from 1902 to 1917. The Museum of London obtained the cylinders in 2008, and now they are digitized for all to hear. (via Fark)

Cartoonist Kate Beaton illustrated the story of how she spent Christmas in 2005, working the night shift by herself in the tool crib at a mine, a long way from home. I've spent a few holidays like that myself.

Where is Santa from?

The Eggheaded, Noggin-Filling Story of Eggnog.

Operation Christmas Drop



The people of Micronesia live on small, isolated islands, with little traffic and few modern amenities. The U.S. Air Force has delivered Christmas through Operation Christmas Drop for 60 years now. It's an assignment every Airman wants.

This large-scale humanitarian mission had relatively humble beginnings. According to the 36th Wing historian, the exact origin of the operation is unknown, but legend has it that the first supplies were dropped around Christmas in 1952. An aircrew, assigned to the 54th Weather Squadron at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, flew a WB-29 aircraft over a tiny island and saw the villagers below. The crew then packed a box and sent it down on a parachute used for weather buoys. This became tradition and continued each year until Operation Christmas Drop was officially named and organized in 1958.

Read more about the mission at Airman magazine. (via Buzzfeed)


My Christmas Card 2012


Marshmallow is having a White Christmas. Of course, she always does. Now if she could only get that last half of a string of Christmas lights to work...

Here's hoping that this commemoration of the birth of Christ is a blessed time for you and your family.

Best wishes for a wonderful holiday from Miss Cellania, Mr. Celllania, Marshmallow, Apollo, Gogo, Hannah, Helios, Hades, Gothgrrl, and Princess.

Mother Ginger and Isabella



This scene is always my favorite of The Nutcracker Ballet. In the version our ballet does, Mother Ginger is a man atop a wooden scaffolding that gets rolled out on stage. In this version, the lemon drop dancers underneath are so tiny that such shenanigans aren't necessary. Keep your eye on little Isabella, who is so full of the joy of dancing that she dumps the practiced routine and steals the entire number!


The Hallelujah Chorus



Always one of my favorite songs, this time a cappella. From the Roches. (via Daily of the Day)   

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Monday, December 24, 2012

Bringing Joy

Lazarus the Rescue Kitten



Lazarus was a stray kitten with a cleft palate. Now he's a healthy half-grown cat with a home and family! See more of Lazarus at his Facebook page. (via Buzzfeed)


Christmas Eve Hallucinations

Merry Christmas, My Friend

Written by James M. Schmidt, 1986

'Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone,
In a one-bedroom house made of plaster and stone.
I had come down the chimney, with presents to give
and to see just who in this home did live.

As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see,
no tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand.
On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land.

With medals and badges, awards of all kind,
a sobering thought soon came to my mind.
For this house was different, unlike any I’d seen.
This was the home of a U.S. Marine.

I’d heard stories about them, I had to see more,
so I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.
And there he lay sleeping, silent, alone,
Curled up on the floor in his one-bedroom home.

He seemed so gentle, his face so serene,
Not how I pictured a U.S. Marine.
Was this the hero, of whom I’d just read?
Curled up in his poncho, a floor for his bed?

His head was clean-shaven, his weathered face tan.
I soon understood, this was more than a man.
For I realized the families that I saw that night,
owed their lives to these men, who were willing to fight.

Soon around the Nation, the children would play,
And grown-ups would celebrate on a bright Christmas day.
They all enjoyed freedom, each month and all year,
because of Marines like this one lying here.

I couldn’t help wonder how many lay alone,
on a cold Christmas Eve, in a land far from home.
Just the very thought brought a tear to my eye.
I dropped to my knees and I started to cry.

He must have awoken, for I heard a rough voice,
“Santa, don’t cry, this life is my choice
I fight for freedom, I don’t ask for more.
My life is my God, my country, my Corps.”

With that he rolled over, drifted off into sleep,
I couldn’t control it, I continued to weep.
I watched him for hours, so silent and still.
I noticed he shivered from the cold night’s chill.

So I took off my jacket, the one made of red,
and covered this Marine from his toes to his head.
Then I put on his T-shirt of scarlet and gold,
with an eagle, globe and anchor emblazoned so bold.

And although it barely fit me, I began to swell with pride,
and for one shining moment, I was Marine Corps deep inside.
I didn’t want to leave him so quiet in the night,
this guardian of honor so willing to fight.

But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and pure,
said “Carry on, Santa, it’s Christmas Day, all secure.”
One look at my watch and I knew he was right,
Merry Christmas my friend, Semper Fi and goodnight.


Picture one: U.S. Marine David Gurfein spends Christmas in Saudi Arabia in 1990. Image credit: Flickr user United States Marine Corps Official Page.

Picture two: The USMC Blue Angels escort Santa in the 2012 Toys for Tots gift distribution. Image credit: Flickr user United States Marine Corps Official Page.