By John on February 3, 2012 |
[Image: xkcd #936, on password strength. Click image to enlarge; see xkcd itself for the full six panels and the punchline.] From whiskey river: This accidental meeting of possibilities calls itself I. I ask: what am I doing here? And, at once, this I becomes unreal. (Dag Hammarskjöld [source]) …and: Ch’ui the draftsman Could draw more [...]
Posted in Comics, Humor, Language, Movies, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, The Online World, Theater, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Chuang Tzu, Dag Hammarskjöld, Duncan J. Watts, Ellen Steinbaum, Internet memes, Stephen Sondheim, Tim Johnson, xkcd |
By John on January 27, 2012 |
[Image: display window of "mini-prints" taken with the Fujifilm Instax camera (originally from the Photojojo store). See note at bottom of post for more.] From whiskey river: You know what I believe? I remember in college I was taking this math class, this really great math class taught by this tiny old woman. She was [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Humor, Movies, Poetry, Ruminations, Television, Theater, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Anne Stevenson, dead parrot sketch, Instax, John Cleese, John Green, Mary Oliver, Monty Python, Pearl S. Buck |
By John on January 20, 2012 |
From whiskey river: In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is [...]
Posted in Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Albert Goldbarth, Dag Hammarskjöld, James Applewhite, Richard Jones, Stéphane Mallarmé, Terry Pratchett, Wislawa Szymborska |
By John on January 17, 2012 |
[Video: a zebra teaches a little girl to scat-sing. Found it at Zooglobble, home of "kids' music worth sharing." Warning: do not visit that site if you are even mildly distractable.] My Dad taught me many things about music, especially jazz, even (I’m certain) in ways which I have yet to understand or even recognize. [...]
Posted in Everyday Life, Music, Ruminations, Running After My Hat, Seems to Fit, Style and Craft, Writing | Tagged distraction, flogging metaphors until they scream, scat-singing, scatting |
By John on January 13, 2012 |
[Image: a Menger sponge overgrown with vines, found here. Wikipedia explains how to construct a real Menger sponge, noting -- without elaboration -- that the resulting object "simultaneously exhibits an infinite surface area and encloses zero volume."*] From whiskey river: You know when you see something like a marvelous mountain against the blue sky, the [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Albert Goldbarth, Eamon Grennan, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Ken Kesey, Menger sponge, Nat Baldwin |
By John on January 6, 2012 |
[Image: unretouched photograph of an anamorphically-painted building interior, by French artist George Rousse; I found it here. As suggested at that site, be sure to see the video about Rousse's "Durham (NC) project." And while you're at it, check out the similar but sometimes entire city-sized work of Swiss artist Felice Varini. I couldn't decide which artist's work to [...]
Posted in Music, Poetry, Politics, Ruminations, Science & Medicine, Television, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Arthur Stanley Eddington, Denise Levertov, Felice Varini, George Rousse, Groucho Marx, Naomi Shihab Nye, Noam Chomsky, Saturday Night Live, Stephen Dunn, Twin Peaks, William Stafford |
By John on December 31, 2011 |
[Image: "Doodle with Measuring Tape," by Bryan Reyna] I came across an interesting site this morning, called Renaissance Learning (subtitle: “Advanced Technology for Data-Driven Schools.” In general, Renaissance Learning is a resource for (as you might guess) teachers and other educators. One area of the site, the Quiz Store, peddles quizzes about specific books. What interests me today [...]
Posted in Books as Books, Ruminations, Style and Craft, The Business, Writing | Tagged Renaissance Learning, things writers freak out about, word counts |
By John on December 30, 2011 |
[Above: still images from the 2010 South Korean film Quiz King, also known as The Quiz Show Scandal. See the note at the bottom of this post for more information.] From whiskey river: We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by [...]
Posted in Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Alan Turing, Brian Christian, Dean Koontz, J. Allyn Rosser, Milan Kundera, Quiz King, Robert Bly, Terence McKenna |
By John on December 29, 2011 |
[Ed. Note: minor identifying details of this recently discovered letter have been obscured, to preserve the anonymity of the parties involved.] Dear J_____, So, you have finally finished me. I suppose I should offer not only thanks but congratulations to you — if so, then, sure: Congratulations! But I also can’t help thinking that maybe we [...]
Posted in Looking Backward, Perfect Moments, Ruminations, Seems to Fit, Writing | Tagged and now: to read it for pleasure |
By John on December 23, 2011 |
[Image found accompanying the "Christmas Snow" (December 25, 2010) post at John Bedell's bensozia blog] From whiskey river: Snow Walking through a field with my little brother Seth I pointed to a place where kids had made angels in the snow. For some reason, I told him that a troop of angels had been shot [...]
Posted in Humor, Movies, Poetry, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Anne Enright, Dave Barry, David Berman, Gary Johnson, Gary Snyder, John Bedell, Monty Python |
