This utterly breaks with the whiskey river Fridays tradition here. But the most recent post there seems to demand passing around among ourselves. From whiskey river: I had hardly begun to read I asked how can you ever be sure that what you write is really any good at all and he said you can’t [...]

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[The scene opens in the waiting room of Super Mega Giant medical center in a mid-sized city in northern Florida, USA. He is a middle-aged male, and has been for some time. This report includes two Shes: A, a medical assistant; and J, a nurse practitioner.] A: Mr. He? He: Right here. A: Very good, [...]

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From whiskey river (italicized portion): People don’t realize how much they are in the grip of ideas. We live among ideas much more than we live in nature… I think a person finally emerges from all this nonsense when he becomes aware that his life has a much larger meaning he has been ignoring — [...]

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[Alfalfa, of the Our Gang comedies, sings of his love for sweet little round-faced, soft-focus Darla. And yes, I know: the song title doesn't have that extra syllable in it. :)] Whom, exactly, do you try to impress? Note that I’m not asking about classes or groups of people. Most of us would like to [...]

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I’m pretty sure I posted a link to this on Facebook and/or Twitter a couple months ago, when I first encountered it. For some reason it’s found its way back into my head today, and has been positively ringing there for the last several hours. When a song will simply not leave me alone, my [...]

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[Image of Fay Ray, by William Wegman (1988), found here, as well as elsewhere on the Web (e.g., Style Me to the Moon)] From whiskey river: My Hand See how the past is not finished here in the present it is awake the whole time never waiting it is my hand now but not what [...]

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['Super Powers,' by Mark Stivers. Click to view the full set of six.] Given a choice, I think the caption below my portrait — in ten words or less — would say something like writes brilliant stories one hour at a time*. (My Kryptonite: the Internet.) Yours? _______________ * Edit to add: Just to make [...]

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Every year around now, a large chunk of blogosphere real estate is turned over to posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and Flickr albums about a gathering called BlogHer. As the conference title suggests, the focus in on women who blog — it’s apparently attended by a number of guys, as well — and for the [...]

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[Video above: "Rio," by Hey Marseilles. Lyrics at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis [...]

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When my siblings and I were kids, at some point Mom and Dad bought us a huge collection of LPs of music of all sorts — a passive music-appreciation course, of sorts, for kids in a small town. The entire set arrived in a cardboard box which none of us (but Dad) could lift. Each [...]

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