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 25, 2012 |
My Old Kentucky Blog recently highlighted two of the films nominated for this year’s Oscar in the short-animations category. One of them really struck me, and I think it will really strike you as well — if you are someone who’s ever had a little jolt of excitement at opening a new book… or dreamt of adding [...]
Posted in Books as Books, Cartoons & Animation, In the News, Movies | Tagged Moonbot Studios, My Old Kentucky Blog, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore, The Oscars |
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 |
By John on December 19, 2011 |
Answer: roll the car window down sometimes. (We do have a little nervousness about doing this, with reason; The Pooch gets so excited that she seems to lose her basic sense of or concern about where she is in 3D space. Which isn’t a prescription for keeping the windows rolled up — it’s a prescription for [...]
Posted in Everyday Life, Movies, Music, Nature & Pets | Tagged dogs, short films |
By John on December 16, 2011 |
[Image: "Extrange shoes," by user pepel at stock.xchng] From whiskey river: They miss the whisper that runs any day in your mind, “Who are you really, wanderer?” and the answer you have to give no matter how dark and cold the world around you is: “Maybe I’m a king.” (William Stafford) …and: The people in [...]
Posted in Movies, Music, Poetry, Ruminations, Style and Craft, whiskey river Fridays, Writing | Tagged All That Jazz, Bob Fosse, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Cornish, Peter Allen, Robert Frost, Tony Hoagland, Wallace Stevens, William Stafford |
By John on November 11, 2011 |
[Video: Lista (The List), a short film by Paweł Łyczkowski. It won the 2010 "Best Film" Suzanne Award, for users of the Blender open-source animation and visual-effects software.] From whiskey river: Lao Tzu exhorts us to listen to the world “not with ears but with mind, not with mind but with spirit.” Some days I [...]
Posted in Cartoons & Animation, Movies, Ruminations, Seems to Fit, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Alberto Villoldo, Alison Pick, Gretel Ehrlich, Gustave Flaubert, Henri Nouwen, Murphy's Law, Pawel Lyczkowski, The Fantasticks, when 'imagined' isn't good enough |
By John on November 4, 2011 |
[Image: promotional still from The Troll Hunter, a 2010 "mockumentary" from Norway about -- well, perhaps you can guess.] From whiskey river: Fairy tales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. [...]
Posted in Art & Photography, Movies, Music, Ruminations, Video/Computer Gaming, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Alice Hoffman, Eugene O'Neill, fairy tales, Froog, Grim Fandango, Michael Titus, Terry Pratchett, The Troll Hunter |
By John on October 21, 2011 |
[Video: scene from 12 Monkeys, in which the protagonists learn the true intentions of a shadowy revolutionary movement] From whiskey river: The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. “In return for this jasmine odor, I’d like all the odor of your roses.” “I have no roses; I have no [...]
Posted in Movies, Music, Poetry, Research/Resources, Ruminations, whiskey river Fridays | Tagged Annie Dillard, Antonio Machado, Jane McKinley, Jerzy Kosinski, Reese Witherspoon, Robert Bly, Wildwood Flower |
By John on October 20, 2011 |
Spike Jonze’s short film Mourir Auprès de Toi (To Die By Your Side): Spike Jonze: Mourir Auprès de Toi on Nowness.com. Read about it — and watch a brief making-of film — at Brain Pickings. (And I should probably add, “…of course.”)
Posted in Books as Books, Cartoons & Animation, In the News, Movies | Tagged love stories, Olympia Le Tan, Spike Jonze |
