Small & Big

What You Need For This Project 1 Broom 1 Dustpan 1 Floor Directions Using the broom, sweep dust, dirt, and debris into a pile. The tidier and more perfect the pile, the better. In fact, go ahead and thoroughly sweep your entire living space. Does the tidiness make your heart sing? Perfect. Wait 30 seconds. From out of nowhere a curious puppy appears, sniffing the pile. Before you can say “Oh no!,“ they are sitting on it, licking it, rolling in it, throwing it, just whooping it up. Your living space is ruined! Make a grab. With a forward motion of your arm like you’re scooping a puppy into a dustpan, scoop the puppy into the dustpan. Congratulations on your new puppy. You should probably move. Note Also works on kittens.

  Astronaut or space alien?   A little of both. This is Doppler, one of my dogs when he was a pup. He got dried tongue licks around the entire inside perimeter of his plastic cone. Scientists are still studying how this is possible.

Look for kindness, for love, for hope and joy and you will find them. Here are five stories to keep you in the mood, from HelpOthers.org : Today You, Tomorrow Me Flowers That She Couldn't Smell Home Is Where The Heart Is, Even For The Homeless Remembering Kindness 41 Years Later A Beautiful Act Of Pay-It-Forward You can read all ten stories of 2011 kindnesses at  Top 10 Kindness Stories of 2011 . Do you have a kind act you've performed, experienced, or even heard of? Please share it. Tell HelpOther.org about it here. Here's to twelve months of kindness in 2012!

But that's nothing compared to what Simon's cat accomplishes... I love everything about Simon Tofield's Simon's Cat cartoon animations: the writing, the sound effects, and especially that they're drawn in simple black-and-white outline. You can really see how a simple, well drawn line, moving through time, can express mass and volume. So well done. Watch more adorable feline atrocities committed by Simon's cat at www.simonscat.com and on YouTube at www.youtube.com/simonscat .

"I can't let (my parents) know I have super powers. They'd only worry." This is the first cartoon my pal John Fountain did. It's called  The Tantrum and it aired on Nickelodeon at like 3 am on a Sunday at the dawn of the 21st Century. It is autobiographical. This is the first time I've seen it because SOME people don't tell some other people stuff. As far as I know it is the only instance of Putting Out Fire By Giving It The Raspberry. A pity. (If the military jumps on it they'd call it POFBGITR. That's pronounced "PUFF-bah-giter" and help generals say "puff" more.) Without further a-doo-doo here's The Tantrum: Also, Fountain's better half has a good blog called To Kid or Not To Kid . Will she or won't she kid herself? Go there and peek.

Truly great people help others to feel great too.