Mixing pilgrims with cowboys gives you a Thanksgiving day roundup. So, what were bloggers up to today?

1. Rolando went all out and changed his blog theme. Or, maybe he did it yesterday, but it didn’t look like that on Tuesday!

2. Doug waxes so anti-poetic on drawing the short end of the wishbone.

3. John Chow bashes Apple, but likes their ads. No link for him!
http://www.johnchow.com/apple-may-suck-but-they-have-cool-ads/

4. Brent tells us the five technological wonders for which he’s thankful.

5. Chris works.

6. Nina takes the day off from book-signing to share some of the history of Thanksgiving.

7. Ed pities the “foo” that doesn’t play WoW. No word on what he thinks of the bar.

8. Jeanne offers a list of blessings for which modern day writers should be thankful.

9. Deborah shows you how to spend the day with your favorite celebrities–no travel arrangements required–they come to you!

10. Ann has a rockin’ good time.

11. Terence recommends some books to make you richer, which will also make you thankful if things work out for you.

12. Joanne has taken a sabbatical.

13. Pete photographs the last bloom of the year.

And, there is our Thanksgiving Day Blog Roundup.

Hey, look at that! My first car post. Maybe all those spammers were precognizant. (Most of my spam comments continue to be car-related. Go figure.)

Anyway, if you like bonsai and you like cars, artist John Rooney has the mix for you: CrashBonsai!

Makes a great gift, no doubt, for your favorite insurance agent.

Source: Snarfd

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Yesterday, I linked to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles entry at Wikipedia. One of the short stories published as part of The Martian Chronicles is “There Will Come Soft Rains.” The ending differs from the original short story.

The Wikipedia entry adds: “In 1984, Soviet studio Uzbekfilm produced There Will Come Soft Rains as a short animated film.” Here is the film, which is subtitled in case you don’t understand Russian. It’s a decent short, but the security system seems a bit overzealous–probably not something a family with children would want! You do have to feel sorry for the little bird at the end too.

The animation concludes with the portions of the poem “There Will Come Soft Rains” by Sara Teasdale.

The poem is in the public domain (in the U.S.), so I can share it with you here:

There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

~Sara Teasdale

While we’re on the subject of literature, apparently fire-breathing dragons are now “too dangerous” for children. Read the story here. First, they began banning tag on the playground. Now, fire-breathing dragons in books are threatening our children. What will they take away from kids next?

Ray Bradbury may have been right. We may be the Martians!

For whatever reason, my blog gained tremendous traffic this past week. Unfortunately, it was in the form of spambots trying to spam the comments. I quickly grew weary of deleting upwards of 50 spam comments per day, so the options were: (1) quit blogging, (2) turn off comments or (3) sign up with Akismet.

Akismet won out. I should have probably signed up a long time ago, but spam wasn’t too much of a problem until this past week. Only one spam comment slipped through since I’ve been using Akismet. It’s nice not to get notices that I have comments pending, only to get excited I’ve got new readers and then subsequently have the rug pulled from under that excitement when I see it was nobody but the spammers.

Now, I have removed the “Money from Spam” list in the sidebar to make room for the little block that tells you how many spam comments were blocked, which stands at 462 right now (was 460 only moments ago). In case anyone is still interested in that final tally, here it is:

• Money: $56,317,120.38
• Loans: $5,052,000.00

When I first activated Akismet, it found over 900 spam comments (which appeared to be all the comments I marked as “spam” previously). I assume that was for the lifetime of the blog. Compare that with the 462 spam comments it blocked since activation, which was just this week! That should tell you how popular I’ve become among the spambots!

So, if you’re using WordPress and are getting hot and bothered by spam, activate your Akismet plugin if you’ve not done so already. It appears to be well worth it.

Please help me with my “Show of Opinion for SciFi.” There are only 4 votes right now, which doesn’t give me much of a representative sampling. So, if you have any interest in SciFi, Fantasy or Horror, please vote. Thanks!

Once again, I’ve been tagged with the “Seven Things About Me That You Might Not Know” meme, this time by CHESSNOID. (Jon did too, but I’ll do his in a different post on a different day.)

1. I write letters in PageMaker. Though, I suspect it will be in InDesign from now on, since I’ve upgraded. Yes, real men do letters in PageMaker (or InDesign). Precision control over the page layout. No funky formatting. No unexpected line breaks or other wackiness when printing. Microsoft Word? As if!

2. I used to play video games a lot on the Sears Atari 2600 clone. My neighbor and I would spend the whole day playing video games. If I remember right, I “flipped” Pac-Man twice in one session. There was a trick to hiding him in the tunnel so the ghosts couldn’t get you even if they passed through. So, for lunch or dinner (since there was no PAUSE button!), you’d keep him in the tunnel with one hand and eat with the other.

3. The first computer I bought was a Macintosh PowerBook 180c. It was my main computer until I bought my Power Macintosh 7500, which I still use.

4. I had a font obsession, and still kind of do to a certain extent. I probably have enough fonts that I could write a letter in a different font each day for several years.

5. Hiding in plain sight works. One time when playing “Bloody Murder” with my neighbors, I “hid” by walking in the street (other people were walking too). While the gang looked for me, they mentally tuned out the pedestrians and never saw me!

6. A good friend of mine in the 8th grade (and high school, though we went to different high school) was of Philippine descent. I was the only one who could pronounce his name correctly, although it wasn’t that hard! For one thing, “a” sounds like “ah” not “oh.” See, not that tough! Anyway, last I heard he was working at Intel.

7. When I was a kid, I only remember being grounded once but I don’t remember what for, and my parents don’t remember it at all. I wasn’t allowed to use the phone for a week, which wasn’t all that bad since I only used the phone about once a week anyway.

So, who to tag this time? Well, I couldn’t tag Joanne last time because she had tagged me. But, that’s not the case this time. So, guess who gets the tag… That’s right, Joanne. If I can do it twice, so can she.

“For the World is Full of Beauty and I Have It on Film”

I’m somewhat astounded that no one mentioned it. Not even Joanne. Even with the clue. And, an unintended second clue to boot! Even the squirrel is shocked you didn’t notice!

Clearly, Jon was distracted by the cypher, and JD was taken aback by the sunset. Lalla Mira and Deborah were sidelined by the squirrel. And Rolando was too excited by the tag.

But, still… Or, maybe you did see it but were too ashamed to admit it?

So, what is it?