The Weekender | December 21st-22nd

The Weekender

The Weekender is your guide and open thread for the weekend, presented by the fine folks at Viva The Matadors. Things to quote, read, look, watch, listen and go to for the weekend. Let's do this.

Welcome to Viva The Matador's newest post, which I've decided to call, "The Weekender", and during the football offseason, and maybe during the football season depending on how this takes off. The Weekender is intended to be the open thread for the weekend and a place to read, or watch, or look at, or listen to different things. I was emailing with DanSwany before the basketball season about his role this year and I advised him that it’s always good to try something new and reinvent yourself. Plus, I am on a continuous to make Viva The Matadors better every day. Some of this could be Texas Tech related and some will not. I would like to thank Cool Stuff and WC Sold Out C-BTA for the icons. I just love the way these icons look.

I had been searching for some sort of way to do this sort of post. I knew what I wanted to do, but like so many things on VTM, I want to do my best to make it look good too. A few weekends ago, I was searching the icons on DaFont and once I saw those Buddy Holly glasses, I was pretty sure the direction I was going to go and once I saw that font sets, the rest was easy.

This post will stay near the top of the page. If there's any breaking news, then it will have it's own separate post. I hope you enjoy your weekend.

Quote

Bill Watterson: "Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless."

Bill Watterson: "I've been thinking Hobbes"
"On a weekend?"
"Well, it wasn't on purpose"

Read

Being that Christmas is right around the corner, the holiday reminded me of something that I had heard, but never really read or investigated about Christmas and World War I. In 1914, along the Western Front, there was an informal truce between the British and German soldiers. Remember, this was the time period of trench warfare, as both sides were very much dug in but the week leading up to Christmas the Germans placed candles and trees on their side of the trench and they both began singing holiday songs. By Christmas Eve and Christmas Day they were freely venturing into "no man’s land" which was the area between the trenches. You can read more at the following: Wikipedia for a general overview, The Guardian to read about the last survivor from the 194 Christmas Truce and the New York Times if you would like to avoid Wikipedia.

Look

These are The Boston Globe's 2013 year in pictures. If you really like photos, then this is a spot that you should bookmark. The Atlantic does something similar in terms of the big photos. This is what the internet was made for, which is to bring the world a bit closer to all of us. The Boston Globe photos are graphic and not for the faint of heart, so be forewarned.

Watch

As you know, I love time lapse videos of the sky and I also love GoPro videos. That will not be what this category is all of the time, but I am resistant to change. Since I'm using some ukulele music below, let's go to Hawaii. Besides, I think we don't look at the stars enough and this is the Mauna Kea Observatory. I imagine Mars will look like this in 50 years.

Listen

I've written about Jake Shimabukuro before and I never would have thought that I'd be listening to a guy playing ukulele, but I find myself listening to his music all of the time. I still think it looks strange to see a guy rocking out the ukulele with the Marines, but this is a perfect combination: Marines rocking out + ukulele virtuoso + "Carol of the Bells" = Merry Christmas.

There’s a ton of Shimabukuro stuff to listen to on SoundCloud if you enjoy this.