Warning: Crudeness ahead.

Zooey Deschanel Appreciation Day
Pray pardon the lascivious nature of the following, but this feature's eponymous heroine's boobs looked amazing on yesterday's new episode of New Girl. As a bonus, there were also laughs aplenty & pathos surrounding Schmidt & his erstwhile girlfriend, Elizabeth, from his "big guy" days. Lust, laughs, & human foibles: What more can you ask from any creative work, let alone a half-hour television situation comedy?



Commentary: I considered selecting a less boob-tacular photograph, but judged honesty—even in the service of lasciviousness—to be the best policy. I'm making a lascivious point & pretending otherwise with a misleadingly modest photograph would not change that.

Operation AXIOM
One hundred ninety-eight years ago to the day, 10 April 1815, Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies (today, Indonesia) erupted. The titanic eruption claimed an immediate ten thousand souls; tens of thousands more died of starvation on the surrounding islands, as the arable land was befouled by ash. Mind-boggling amounts of rock & ash were thrown into the atmosphere, & ash & steam continued to rise from what was left of Tambora for six months. The skies were darkened, the Accursed Sun's vital rays dimmed, & the resulting freeze was remembered as the "Year Without a Summer," though I prefer "Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death" (Wayback Machine: The Explorers' Club, № XXVI). Rivers were frozen in the middle of summer. There was a foot of snow on the ground in Quebec City in July. Red snow fell in Italy throughout the year. The weakened sunlight & cold temperatures caused crop failures around the world, & the years that followed saw the last great famine in the Western world. (On a lighter note, Mrs. Shelley wrote Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus when the "wet, ungenial summer" ruined her holiday in Switzerland.) The eruption of Mount Tambora was at that time the largest volcanic eruption in over a millennium & augured doom for the world entire. One hundred ninety-eight years ago to-day.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day: SKApril
The Aquabats!, "The Wild Sea!" from Myths, Legends, and Other Amazing Adventures (of The Aquabats!), Vol. 2 (Captain Thumbs Up!)

Commentary: The Aquabats!, admirable & endlessly amusing as they are, are no longer a ska band. But they once were, & a darned good one at that! "The Wild Sea!" is from that transitional period 'twixt their old ska sound & their modern, kind-of New Wave sound. It's ska enough for SKApril, & the song that popped into my noggin this morning like a bolt from the clear blue sky is a doozy!

"The wild sea is calling me!"