Short, dark tea times of the soul

by Colleen

I'm frequently up between the hours of 1 and 2 am. I don't mean to be; it just happens. One of the things that sucks about San Francisco is living in the butt of the continental US time zones. Being up at 1 am Central used to mean random gchats with friends in the east coast and west coast as we wound up our evenings and got ready for bed. 1 am Pacific is pretty much a dead zone: 4 am is about as somnolent as the city that never sleeps gets; at 3 am, Chicago and Indy are well past their REM stage; over here my friends are morning people; even in Asia most people are finishing up work or eating dinner - at least the ones in the time zones that matter are.

What's a night owl to do?

Tonight, or rather early this morning, I got this idea - for the same reasons above, my twitter feed basically dies after 1 am too - I'm now searching to see who people consider to be the "best" twitter accounts of the UK*, France, Germany, Spain...the EU, basically. Midnight in the Bay Area means the kickoff of a brand new day in Europe, so hopefully they'll end up acting as something of a "3rd shift" for news and links.

Stuff that's come up -

• @stealthmountain, probably not going to follow it, but conceptually it's pretty hilare, especially the tweets the account has favorited (favourited?)
• @pundamentalism may be the UK version of @bazecraze
• A surprising amount of Top UK Twitter Account lists suggest following @common_squirrel. Well, maybe I shouldn't be that surprised #british #subtlety. In the same vein, HuffPo makes up a surprising amount of these 'Top Twitter' articles. Is that all they report on these days?

Anyway, here's hoping twitter will generate me something of interest during this time-zone induced quiet time. Although, nothing too engrossing - I do have work in the morning.

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*OK this post contradicts almost everything I stated in the last post. eh.

Marmot Eating a Biscuit!

by Colleen

Hola peeps!

Here is a video introduced to me in a comment thread this morning as: the best video of a marmot eating a biscuit...in bed. I love the assonance/alliteration effect you get from the title. It's cuter if you say it out loud and have your voice get louder and higher in pitch at the end of 'marMOT' and 'bisCUIT'. :D The video's pretty cute too. I'm at work so I can't properly imbed it into the post. Unless Hubert does something about it.

edit: Hubert here, ftfy Col. :)

RAWRRRR

by Colleen

This is what greets all visitors to the great city of Denver. A bronco...SAURUS!!!11!!1
Tourists beware - he looks anatomically correct :p

 Seriously, why?

Colleen's Fables: The Tortise and the Hare

A tortise and a hare decided to race one day. So they gathered the woodland creatures together, and marked off the course: 100 yards- 50 out and 50 back. The starting line was set at the break where the forest turned into meadow and the turning point would be at the old, rotted stump. Badger agreed to be the referee and official race starter, and the chipmunks chittered excitedly as the hare and tortise lined up.

BLAM!

Badger fired the starting gun and they were off! The hare raced down the straight away and rounded the stump as the tortise took slow, steady steps towards his goal. The hare bounded back towards the start, picking up speed with each stride. He passed the tortise again and clocked a strong finish at 4.3 seconds. He laughed, and headed off into the forest surrounded by a cheering entourage of field mice, squirrels and other such creatures, while the tortise slowly, but steadily continued on his course.

Half an hour later the tortise crossed the finished line to the half hearted applause of a couple of chipmunks who had found a nice patch of clover earlier and now were slowly coming out of their food coma. Satisfied by a job well done, the tortise currently does the motivational speech circuit, speaking to mostly empty rooms and the occaisional Days Inn staffperson looking for a place to sneak a nap while on the job.

The hare went to Vegas with some of the field mice and a tipsy young rabbit with nice fur.


- And that's real life, baby.