[Image: backglass from a new(ish) pinball game by Stern, currently available from Premier Amusements] From whiskey river‘s archive (a/k/a the commonplace book): A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance. “Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?” he asks. “No,” replies the colleague, “but I’ve [...]

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…and probably always will. But this is a pretty damned impressive advertisement/trailer: It sort of compresses all the memes from the SyFy cable network’s distinctive bumper spots into a big ol’ nearly coherent 2:40 whole (and avoids the corny-CGI temptations to which the network’s special-effects guys all too often succumb in the actual programs). Nice. [...]

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Taking off from the first edition… All I’m going to do for the music portion here is just add ten songs (and pray that, over time, I won’t blow the little WordPress audio-player thingie out of the water). As before, these artists and numbers appear, back-to-back, in the playlist: Peter Robbins et al.: dialogue from [...]

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[This is Part 2 of a two-part series about the song "Cry Me a River," made popular, originally, in a recording released in 1955. Part 1, about the song's history, appeared a few days ago. As I indicated there, if you hope to learn anything from this about the Justin Timberlake song of the same [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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[Above still depicts the Martian "war machines" devastating the California countryside. In the foreground lies a small propeller-driven spotter plane of terrestrial origin, which has crash-landed -- as they are wont to do at the peak of military operations against aliens.] So last night we’re watching the 1953 Hollywood version of The War of the [...]

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From whiskey river: Waking at 3 a.m. Even in the cave of the night when you wake and are free and lonely, neglected by others, discarded, loved only by what doesn’t matter — even in that big room no one can see, you push with your eyes till forever comes in its twisted figure eight [...]

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From whiskey river: In the morning I mused It won’t return, the magic of life it won’t return Suddenly in my house the sun became alive for me and the table with bread on it gold and the flower on the table and the glasses gold And what happened to the sadness In the sadness [...]

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From whiskey river: The states of mind or feelings that art can excite have been helpfully distinguished in Sanskrit aesthetics, where they are called rasas, from a word meaning “juice” or “essence”. A fully achieved work of art should flow with all nine of them: their names might be transposed into English as wonder, joy, [...]

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