A somewhat slapdash whiskey river Friday post this week, its author having been pretty much laid low by the stupidest of ailments — a cold — since Tuesday night.
From whiskey river’s commonplace book (a thematic archive):
Can You Imagine?
For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under [...]

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(hat tip to Janet Reid)

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I like to think of myself as a flexible guy — able to roll with the punches, able to work around problems, able to, y’know, cope. It’s amazing how quickly and how profoundly that self-image can be shaken simply by adding an extra person to the household.
Recently fallen on some sudden, transitory, but inarguably hard [...]

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From whiskey river:
Morning
Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?
This is the best–
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso–
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins–
but mostly [...]

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Marta was wondering a few days ago about writerly magic numbers: specific quantifiable targets which writers hope to achieve within some given time period. She’s doing NaNoWriMo, so of course over her head looms the magic 50,000-words-in-a-November target. But she asked what other writers might choose to be satisfied with: N pages or words per [...]

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…at least until the next revival: are werewolves the next It Creatures?
I have not read the Twilight series of books. But as I understand it, the new film, New Moon, features some sort of apocalyptic face-off between the vampires — brooding Edward and his ilk — and the werewolves.
(This premise seems to me to have [...]

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In my day job, I have a couple of stock responses to questions from clients or just to my (and their) experiences with computers. One of these stock responses is something which clients almost never like to hear, because it translates, roughly, to This may sound like a “yes,” but if you believe that you’re [...]

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From whiskey river:
Let me make this perfectly clear.
I have never written anything because it is a Poem.
This is a mistake you always make about me,
A dangerous mistake. I promise you
I am not writing this because it is a Poem.
You suspect this is a posture or an act
I am sorry to tell you it is not [...]

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[Technology alert: If you're not into PC tech, especially wonky stuff about operating systems and such, you might want to give this post a pass.]

As some of you may know, I almost never use Microsoft Windows anymore — at least, when at home. (At work, there’s no other option.) Until a couple days ago, in [...]

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[Above, a set of miniature Egyptian canopic jars depicting, according to the retailer, "Anubis, Horus, Monkey God, Prince."* Click image for original.]
From whiskey river (which this week celebrated eight years of bringing to the Web wisdom about things we generally know, but generally do not speak of):
Shinto
When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are [...]

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