My dog waiting to open presents.

Hooked my old Atari back up. I've been loving Reactor, although I never would've figured out the purpose of the game without googling it.

"We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much and would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy and sick."

--John Steinbeck

via Letters of Note

Obama pretends to be caught in Spiderman's web. Shot by Pete Souza and featured in Time Magazine as part of their feature on Obama as person of the year who is most likely to sell the highest quantity of magazines.

Steve Jobs on Creativity

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.” 

--Steve Jobs

via Wired, February, 1996

Compelling article about suspected marathon fraud, the enigmatic suspect at the heart of the controversy, and the obsessed detectives who cracked the case, via the New Yorker.

San Francisco Patriots

This morning in the coffee shop an old man and his old wife were waiting in line to buy coffee. A pack of young construction workers walked in, and one of them noticed the old guy was wearing a San Francisco 49ers sweatshirt.
"San Francisco, huh?"
The old guy must have heard a tone in his voice, because he said very nicely, "Yes I'm from San Francisco. I grew up there. I lived there my whole life."
He smiled.
The construction worker glared at him angrily for a long time, then said quietly, "Go New England."
"Ha ha! Yeah, that was quite a game, huh?" The old man shifted uncomfortably.
The young guy didn't respond and turned his back on the guy.
The barista asked the old man, "Would you like anything else, sir?"
The old man laughed again, but this time it was a real laugh. "Nobody's called me sir since I was in the war!" he said, walking out with his wife.

Smoking Darth Vader and They Live! posters by Tony Delfino. I assume that Vader is a mashup with something else, but I can't figure out what. Michael Jackson? If you figure it out, lemme know.

"I got to feeling like a machine, and that's no way to feel."
--Shaft

Richard Roundtree, drawn by Doogie Horner.

Stephin Merritt, of the Magnetic Fields, covers one of Beck's songs from his new sheet music only "album."
Here is Old Shanghai.

Love Tree, by Poorly Drawn Lines

Murray Christmas everyone! For relaxing times, make it Suntory time.