Take it to the Limit
(photo of The Eagles in Australia by jeaneeem
Song in Our Heart # 68 Take it to the Limit (The Eagles) (written by Randy Meisner, Don Henley & Glenn Frey; released November 1975) [This Grand Ole bit of inspired nonsense works beautifully, miraculously; Getting into your head, heart and blood like a virus. “You can spend all your time making money, You can spend all your love making time. If it all fell to pieces tomorrow Would you still be mine? And when you’re looking for your freedom Nobody seems to care And you can’t find the door Can’t find it anywhere When there’s nothing to believe in Still you’re coming back,…
Continue Reading →Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough
Songs in Our Heart # 67 Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (Michael Jackson) (written by Michael Jackson; released July 1979) [A great do-it-yourself medical check-up – if you don’t get up and boogie to this song, there’s something wrong with you! Michael here is at his youthful, innocent best – great delivery, inspired production.]
Continue Reading →If…
Rudyard Kipling born today, 30 December 1865, in Bombay (now Mumbai). If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and…
Continue Reading →Andrew’s Been Busy
'I haven't been so flat-out since the Civil War'
The Varnished Culture has decided to suspend our Dead Pool out of fear that we may be contributing to the general morbidity of 2016. So far this year, the Angel of Death has visited, inter alios: Richard Adams Edward Albee Muhammad Ali David Bowie Michael Cimino Leonard Cohen Umberto Eco Keith Emerson Carrie Fisher Glenn Frey Zsa Zsa Gabor Merle Haggard George Kennedy Harper Lee George Martin George Michael Prince Debbie Reynolds Alan Rickman Leon Russell Peter Shaffer Garry Shandling Abe Vigoda Elie Wiesel Gene Wilder
Continue Reading →When Empirical Observation is Dangerous
"Gee whiz, I only said I THOUGHT I saw Neptune..." (painting by Rubens)
28 December 1612: heretical heliocentrist Galileo Galiliei (1564 – 1642) observes the heavenly body later identified as the planet Neptune. Twenty one years later he would be punished with permanent home detention because he would not adhere to the received wisdom that all moved around the static earth. “And yet it moves…” Galilei, in the play by Bertolt Brecht*, says: I offer my observations, and they smile. I place my telescope at their disposal so they can convince themselves, and they quote Aristotle. But the man had no telescope!…Truth is the child of time, not of authority. Our ignorance is…
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