



[Mural in Marijampolė, Lithuania, by New York artist Ray Bartkus found here.]

Credito Emiliano, a bank in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, offers loans in exchange for uniquely Italian collateral: golden wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.
Housed in a high-security complex surrounded by barbed wire, the bank, known locally as Credem, holds some 430,000 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano made by farmers in the area. The stacks sit 20 wheels high and are carefully monitored. Credem staffers regularly clean, rotate, prick, and even taste each wheel.
All told, these assets are reportedly worth around €190 million.
[Image with more cheesy jokes found here.]
AI images by graphic artist Alphonse Marcel found here.
[h/t Charlene J.]
[Found in here.]

Pressure Drop, Toots and the Maytals (live ska version 2004)
It’s a song about revenge, but in the form of karma: If you do bad things to innocent people, then bad things will happen to you. The title was a phrase I used to say. If someone done me wrong, rather than fight them like a warrior, I’d say: ‘The pressure’s going to drop on you.’— Frederick ‘Toots’ Hibbert
67.
First get a dead tree, then light it.
Impossible Maps [via Bits & Pieces].
Magic jacket [via Everlasting Blört].
David Byrne’s Reasons to be Cheerful.
Addams’ auditions [via Memo Of The Air].
Yeah, it’s stupid, but you’re gonna watch it anyway.
Killings, disappearances, arbitrary arrests and torture.
[Top image dates to June 2009, found here.]
From the Archives: 1 year ago. 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 15 years ago.
From FB: Tom Waits on Everything and Nothing
In September 1988, fresh off the release of his concert film Big Time, Waits sat down with music journalist Chris Roberts in a London recording studio. Captured on a rare cassette recording amidst ambient studio noise, Waits takes us on a journey from Stonehenge and the streets of New York to a surreal Hawaiian nightmare.
Grammy winner Masa Takumi (a.k.a. Masanori Takumi) is a Japanese artist, composer, songwriter and producer. A self-taught multi-instrumentalist, he learned trumpet at 8 years old, and by high school was playing drums, guitar, bass and piano.
In 1995 guitarists Stevie Nimmo and his brother Alan formed The Nimmo Brothers band in Glasgow. Performing here with Matt Beable on bass and Craig Bacon on drums.
Hope everyone survived the New Year’s festivities. We didn’t have as many fireworks or sirens as in previous years, and I take that as a good omen.
Porch season starts tomorrow and I plan to attend, rain or shinola.

[Found here, and that’s not us.]

The end of a long year deserves a playlist to bring in the new one, so here’s a compilation of tunes that tugged on my earballs in 2025. Each set is in chronological order by date of recording.
Set 1 – January, February, March & April
Set 2 – May, June, July & August
Set 3 – September, October, November & December
I omitted seasonal tunes from the Halloween and Christmas playlists. Last year’s playlist (2024) is here, and the 2023 EoY list is here.

[Caveat: I don’t own the copyrights to any of these recordings. They are presented here for entertainment purposes only.]