Still, financial results of the likes Apple delivered yesterday serve as an affirmation of all that energy spent telling their story. Believing in the underdog. Like your favorite home team who couldn’t get into premier league while growing up just won the Superbowl, the Stanley Cup, and the World Series all together for the 10th time in a row — and you were the only one to believe in them. It’s an immensely satisfying feeling.

There is a hole in my heart dug deep by advertising and envy and a desire to see a thing that is new and different and beautiful. A place within me that is empty, and that I want to fill it up.

(via Daring Fireball)

Yet another song that I love because it’s featured in a Wes Anderson film, but would have never heard otherwise.

Well, Your Honor. We’ve plenty of hearsay and conjecture. Those are kinds of evidence.

Few things in the world have been more awesome than Lionel Hutz as played by Phil Hartman.

He wasn’t dragooned into this. Nobody drafted him. He walked into this role with his eyes open. Before he ever took a snap in the NFL, he appeared in an anti-choice television ad with his mother that was sponsored by Focus on the Family, an influential anti-choice, anti-gay-rights organization founded by the Rev. James Dobson. He knew what he was doing.

And that’s just it - you can’t make a television ad for bigots and then act surprised when people start to dislike you.

And another thing to consider, that I’ve never heard brought up. How often did Steve Young (hall-of-famer, tended to score more than 15 points per game) talk about his religion? Because, you know where he got the name Young, right? You know he’s from Salt Lake City, right? Yeah, that’s right, he shares his name with the University he attended because he’s a direct descendant of Brigham Young, but I don’t think I ever saw him do a commercial expounding those beliefs did he? No, he was just an great football player. Tebow could learn a lot from Steve Young.

Sad to see him retire.

Oh heck, this is going to be too much work listing out all the changes, so why don’t you just check out the demo right here.

Of course, as the URL implies, this is still very much a work in progress, and it’s not completed yet, and some spiffiness is turned off for now, but that should be enough to get an idea of where things are going.

(like always, if you’re using IE, it might not look too great, sorry.)

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

He followed his own advice and lived an amazing life.

Thank you.

A little gray dot, just like the one next to Cella’s name. As if he’s just not available to chat at the moment.

Clark is offline.

So wonderfully written, so wonderfully sad.

also:

how great would his call have been last night?

And they’re gone.

I wait for their car to vanish before I put up the sign. To most everybody else it is just another house on just another block in just another city in just another financial catastrophe.

But I was there. I saw the dream end.

But at least I don’t make them turn out the lights one last time as they leave.

That’s my job.

Depressing, but interesting, and something you definitely should read.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt