"I viewed the morning with much alarm;
The British Museum had lost its charm."
* Vide that phrase in this journal.
"A drunkard's dream if I ever did see one."
Friday, August 11, 2023
Lyrics for Damnation Morning*
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Thursday, March 31, 2016
Damnation Morning*
* See references in this journal to the classic Fritz Leiber story.
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Friday, October 30, 2015
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Damnation Morning*
The following is adapted from a 2011 post—
* The title, that of a Fritz Leiber story, is suggested by
the above picture of the symmetry axes of the square.
Click "Continued" above for further details. See also
last Wednesday's Cuber.
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Saturday, April 23, 2011
Damnation Morning (continued)
Background— Why Me? and the Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning."
The story, about the afterlife of a dead drunk, contains an intriguing dark lady.
Related material — Search for the Spider Woman.
See also Julie Taymor in an interview published last Dec. 12 —
“I’ve got two Broadway shows, a feature film, and Mozart,’’ she said.
“It’s a very interesting place to be and to be able to move back and forth,
but at a certain point you have to be able to step outside and see,’’
and here she dropped her voice to a tranquil whisper, “it’s just theater.
It’s all theater. It’s all theater. The whole thing is theater.’’
— and search for Taymor + Spider in this journal.
Happy Shakespeare's Birthday.
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Sunday, January 4, 2026
Identity Politics Today:
“One two three four,
Who are we for?”
3D Chess on a 4D Board
“The sigil was an eight-limbed asterisk
made of fine dark lines . . . . An X
superimposed on a plus sign.
It looked permanent.”
— Fritz Leiber, “Damnation Morning,”
1959 short story in Changewar
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“One two three four,
Who are we for?”
“One two three four,
Who are we for?”
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Family Values for Phil and Lily Collins
"Yes, you'll be goin' loco
down in Acapulco,
the magic down there
is so strong."
This song is from the 1988 film "Buster."
(Wikipedia: "Buster is a 1988 British
romantic crime comedy-drama
based on events from the Great Train Robbery,
starring Phil Collins….")
For a related religious use of that name —
"Look, Buster, do you want to live?" —
see Fritz Leiber's "Damnation Morning."
Yesterday, January 30, 2024, was Phil Collins's birthday.
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Sunday, October 8, 2023
Work and Play
"All work and no play . . ."
Sunday, November 15, 2015
|
See as well "Livingstone" in this journal.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2022
Plan 9 From Moriarty
Some related mathematical windmills —
|
For the eight-limbed star at the top of the quaternion array She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a delicate branding iron—especially when its tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire. “The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing. “Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth dimension or only die in it.” — Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959 |
See as well . . .
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Saturday, August 13, 2022
At the End
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Thursday, August 5, 2021
The Dumbing-Down
"How old is the 'Big Spider Beck' joke?"
From "Blackboard Jungle" (1955) —
Teacher:
– You see, music is based on mathematics,
and it's just that the next class …
is a little more advanced.
Students:
– We're advanced, teach.
– Two times two is four.
– Are four.
See also Damnation Morning in this journal and . . .
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Tuesday, January 5, 2021
Linker
For Bird Day . . .
A tweet from Scott Edelman on November 12, 2020 —
This journal on the above tweet date —
Damonizing Your Opponent
Excerpt from Fritz Leiber’s “Damnation Morning,” 1959:
“Time traveling . . . is not quite the good clean boyish fun
it’s cracked up to be . . . ."
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Sunday, December 11, 2016
Bad Dreams
"… were it not that I have bad dreams" — Hamlet
See references in this journal to
"Nightmare Alley" and "Damnation Morning."
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Monday, June 27, 2016
View from a Member
See also an adapted AA saying in this evening's previous post,
and Mary Karr in a "Damnation Morning" post.
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Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Eternity (Not by Calvin Klein*)
The two symbols on the monolith
may, if one likes, be interpreted
as standing for Damnation Morning
and for the Windmill of Time.
* "Award-winning fashion icon."
— Harvard Graduate School of Design
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Sunday, November 15, 2015
Sunday, September 27, 2015
She Said Carefully
A passage suggested by the previous post, Box Office:
|
From the 1959 Fritz Leiber story "Damnation Morning" — She looked at me and then nodded. She said carefully, “The person you killed or doomed is still in the room.” An aching impulse twisted me a little. “Maybe I should try to go back––” I began. “Try to go back and unite the selves . . .” “It’s too late now,” she repeated. “But I want to,” I persisted. “There’s something pulling at me, like a chain hooked to my chest.” She smiled unpleasantly. “Of course there is,” she said. “It’s the vampire in you—the same thing that drew me to your room or would draw any Spider or Snake. The blood scent of the person you killed or doomed.” |
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Friday, April 17, 2015
For Story Time
A book first published by Doubleday in 1979:
From Fritz Leiber's 1959 sci-fi classic "Damnation Morning" —
She drew from her handbag a pale grey
gleaming implement that looked by quick turns
to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a
delicate branding iron— especially when its tip
sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.
“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.
“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the
fourth dimension or only die in it.”
See also Philanthropic Numerology (St. Luke's Day, 2012).
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Thursday, May 22, 2014
Visual Structure
“Chaos is order yet undeciphered.”
— The novel The Double , by José Saramago,
on which the recent film "Enemy" was based
For Louise Bourgeois — a post from the date of Galois's death—
For Toronto — Scene from a film that premiered there on Sept. 8, 2013:
Related material: This journal on that date, Sept. 8, 2013:
"I still haven't found what I'm looking for." — Bono
"In fact Surrealism found what it had been looking for
from the first in the 1920 collages [by Max Ernst],
which introduced an entirely original scheme of
visual structure…."
— Rosalind Krauss quoting André Breton*
in "The Master's Bedroom"
* "Artistic Genesis and Perspective of Surrealism"
(1941), in Surrealism and Painting (New York,
Harper & Row, 1972, p. 64).
See also Damnation Morning in this journal.
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Friday, May 2, 2014
Midrash
From today's 3 AM (ET) post "Quote":
“You’ve got to decide which side of the cross you’re on."
Perhaps both? See yesterday morning's Jerusalem Post —
"Although he was one of Israel’s best known
secular, leftwing bohemians, he achieved
some of his greatest success as an actor
playing as ultra-Orthodox and national-religious
characters."
See also a similar ambiguity in Damnation Morning.
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Sunday, February 23, 2014
Or Only Die
Serge Lang, Collected Papers, Vol. 4 , p. 179—
"I find it appropriate to quote here a historical
comment made by Halberstam…."
This is Heini Halberstam, who reportedly died
on January 25, 2014.
I find it appropriate to quote here an unhistorical
comment made by a fictional character —
“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.
“Yes, to determine whether you can live
in the fourth dimension or only die in it.”
— From Fritz Leiber's classic story
"Damnation Morning"
The Leiber quote was suggested by the posts
in this journal on the day of Halberstam's death.
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Thursday, January 30, 2014
Test
From Fritz Leiber's 1959 sci-fi classic "Damnation Morning" —
She drew from her handbag a pale grey
gleaming implement that looked by quick turns
to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a
delicate branding iron— especially when its tip
sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire.
“The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing.
“Yes, to determine whether you can live in the
fourth dimension or only die in it.”
Related 1962 drama from the Twilight Zone —
"He's a physicist, maybe he can help us out."
See also Step.
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Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Release Date
The premiere of the Lily Collins film Abduction
(see previous post) was reportedly in Sydney, Australia,
on August 23, 2011.
From that date in this journal—
For the eight-limbed star at the top of the quaternion array above, She drew from her handbag a pale grey gleaming implement that looked by quick turns to me like a knife, a gun, a slim sceptre, and a delicate branding iron—especially when its tip sprouted an eight-limbed star of silver wire. “The test?” I faltered, staring at the thing. “Yes, to determine whether you can live in the fourth dimension or only die in it.” — Fritz Leiber, short story, 1959 |
Related material from Wikipedia, suggested by the reference quoted
in this morning's post to "a four-dimensionalist (perdurantist) ontology"—
"… perdurantism also applies if one believes there are temporal
but non-spatial abstract entities (like immaterial souls…)."
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Monday, September 23, 2013
For Danny Boy
"… It raced down the gossamer curtain of Its webbing,
a nightmare Spider from beyond time and space,
a Spider from beyond the fevered imaginings of
whatever inmates may live in the deepest depths of hell.
No, Bill thought coldly, not a Spider either, not really,
but this shape isn’t one It picked out of our minds;
it’s just the closest our minds can come to
(the deadlights)
whatever It really is."
— Stephen King, It (Sept. 15, 1986)
Related horror by Fritz Leiber—
"The Mind Spider" and "Damnation Morning."
Related fiction by Mark Helprin—
As a perceptive reviewer has noted, Helprin's title is
almost a verse from the song "Danny Boy."
See, too, the Danny Boy of The Shining ,
who returns tomorrow in a sequel, Doctor Sleep .
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Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Tribute
From February 24, 2005:
The above three-part image may be viewed as a tribute to
Jerusalem Day (today), to Saul Bass, or to Spider Jerusalem.
(See related posts and Damnation Morning.)
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Friday, April 12, 2013
Midnight in Paris
Surreal requiem for the late Jonathan Winters:
"They 'burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles
exploding like spiders across the stars,'
as Jack Kerouac once wrote. It was such a powerful
image that Wal-Mart sells it as a jigsaw puzzle."
— "When the Village Was the Vanguard,"
by Henry Allen, in today's Wall Street Journal
See also Damnation Morning and the picture in
yesterday evening's remarks on art:
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Monday, March 25, 2013
Brightness at Noon
The two symbols on the monolith from yesterday —
— may, if one likes, be interpreted as standing for
Damnation Morning and for the Windmill of Time
(alternately, as motifs for a ukara cloth).
The above explanation may help those confused by
knight's-move discourse like that described by
Jemima in The Eiger Sanction .
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The Dante Prize
(Damnation Morning, continued)
For the late, great Bebo Valdés, who
reportedly died on Friday in Stockholm:
"Mr. Valdés never returned to Cuba. He played piano
in Stockholm hotel lounges for more than three decades."
— Ben Ratliff in this morning's New York Times
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Saturday, December 1, 2012
Star Wars
Source: Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs
The American Mathematical Society
(AMS) yesterday:
|
Lars Hörmander (1931-2012) Hörmander, who received a Fields Medal in 1962, |
Some related material:
- A 1990 AMS review of a book by another mathematician,
Harmonic Analysis in Phase Space , that is closely
related to Hörmander's research (and perhaps more
accessible to the nonspecialist than his books), - Mathematical Imagery (Log24, Jan. 19, 2012),
- The Eight-Pointed Star, and yesterday's
- Point.
See also posts on Damnation Morning and, from the
date of Hörmander's death,
- Will and Representation.
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Thursday, September 13, 2012
Backstory
Yesterday's online Los Angeles Times
on a film that inspired recent protests in Cairo—
The film… was shown on June 23
to an audience of less than 10
at a theater on Hollywood Boulevard,
a source familiar with the screening said….
The screening was at The Vine Theater,
which rents itself out for private screenings,
said one person involved in the theater.
An image from this journal on that same day, June 23—
Source: Rudolf Koch, The Book of Signs
For some background on the symbol, see Damnation Morning.
See also Don Henley's Hollywood hymn "Garden of Allah."
Update of 8 PM Sept. 13, 2012—
Other sources give the film's screening date not as June 23,
2012, but rather as June 30, 2012. (BBC News, LAWEEKLY blogs)
The following post from this journal on that date may or
may not have some religious relevance.
| Saturday, June 30, 2012
Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 7:20 PM "… to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic" — The aim of the artist, according to Thomas Wolfe Related entertainment— High-minded— Many Dimensions . Not so high-minded— The Cosmic Cube . |
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