For a 90-second infusion of pure joy, watch this Terry Jones clip about a wonderful, unique colony of penguins:




Of course it's fake, but it still made me laugh out loud with sheer happiness. What a fantastic concept!

(And yes, there is an ad for the BBC iPlayer buried in there, but what the heck. I like the BBC iPlayer. And if you blink, you'll miss the advertisement.)

Another wonderful discovery for me today was Audra McDonald, a singer I'd never heard of before, whom I found through last.fm. I've just bought her CD "Build a Bridge" on iTunes, and I love it. (You can listen to the whole CD for free on last.fm, which I did before buying it.) The first song of hers I heard, in a random playlist ("artists similar to Natalie Dessay"), grabbed me immediately: Damned Ladies, a wonderful Rufus Wainwright cover about all the poor tragic heroines in opera. Exactly my kind of song. And there are also covers of other great songwriters, like Elvis Costello, on the CD. Just perfect! :)

Yesterday it took me three hours to write 900 words of Kat by Starlight, and at the end, something totally unexpected happened. Eep! Today my quest is to figure out why it happened, and what exactly happens next. I'm going to keep those super-penguins in mind for inspiration.