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What Did the Dormouse Say?
[Image: T-shirt available from the Skreened store. Of all the images of this moment which I found online, the original Tenniel still seemed best. Disclaimer: I have no interest (vested or, ha, shirted) in the store other than this photo of this T-shirt.] From whiskey river: Brotherhood Homage to Octavius Ptolemy I am a man: [...]
The Shape of What You Live
[Image: "Angular Momentum," from xkcd.com. The tooltip/"hover title" at the original page says: "With reasonable assumptions about latitude and body shape, how much time might she gain them? Note: whatever the answer, sunrise always comes too soon. (Also, is it worth it if she throws up?)"] From whiskey river: Remembering And you wait. You wait [...]
A Conspiracy of Pages
[Etching: "The Hall of Planets," by Erik Desmazières, #5 in a series of eleven illustrating an edition of "The Library of Babel," by Jorges Luis Borges; click to enlarge] From whiskey river: The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was [...]
Slow Enough (To See the Large in the Small)
[Image: Still from Institute Benjaminta (1995), by the Brothers Quay. For an interesting interview with them about it, see this page at the Electric Sheep site.] From whiskey river: In reality there has never been a day in our lives (and maybe not one hour or even one minute) when something happened that did not [...]
Not Trying Quite So Hard, But It Feels Right
[Image: "Comb of Retrospection," by Michael Leunig] From whiskey river: How I Would Paint Happiness Something sudden, a windfall, a meteor shower. No – a flowering tree releasing all its blossoms at once, and the one standing beneath it unexpectedly robed in bloom, transformed into a stranger too beautiful to touch. (Lisel Mueller, from Alive [...]
Awake, Really Awake… for Good or Ill
[Image: "Insomnia, or Nocturnal Awakening," by "neosurrealist" artist George Grie; I found it here. Click the image for a larger view. More, in the footnote to this post.] From whiskey river: The Whale It is 1970 and the summer of love is over. I am three years old, barefoot, running along the surf near Florence, [...]
It Calls Me On and On
[Image: audio-animatronic scene at the 1960s-era Disneyland "Carousel of Progress" display. See yesterland.com for more information and a larger version of this image.] From whiskey river: The Bones (excerpt) …Shells were to shut out the sea, The bones of birds were built for floating On air and water, and those of fish were devised For [...]
Unexpectedly Needed, or Not Needed At All
[Video: classic moment from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre] From whiskey river: We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it [...]
Midweek Music Break: “St. James Infirmary”
Laissez les bons temps rouler, eh? And among the songs often regarded as “typical New Orleans,” we have the subject of today’s Midweek Music Break. No way could I even begin to match the masterful job of documenting its history which Robert W. Harwood undertook with his I Went Down to St. James Infirmary. One [...]
The Usefulness of Bad Things
[Cartoon found at the site of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland.] From whiskey river: Bad People A man told me once that all the bad people Were needed. Maybe not all, but your fingernails You need; they are really claws, and we know Claws. The sharks — what about them? They make [...]
