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Dedicated to the Master of Masks, Jeff McBride:
Prof. Oddfellow offers this free vintage clip-art frame, originally appearing in an 1896 issues of McClure's Magazine and painstakingly restored to its original glory. The image is available for download in high-resolution GIF and vector EPS formats. |
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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"Call it curiosity, call it a hunch, or call it, as my own analyst might be inclined to call it, an attempt to rectify a past mistake." —Heidi Julavits, The Uses of Enchantment, as if describing the plot of Young Frankenstein A still from the perennially hilarious Young Frankenstein. |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from A complete history of the Mexican War.
“The General’s ghost could not be exorcised by burning a few bundles of paper.” —Alfred W. McCoy
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Here's a review of our privately circulated treatise on the profound secrets of Twilit Silence (one of many Prof. Oddfellow works available only by special request): Conley puts forth a method of noticing the subtlety of the space between day and night, especially when one can experience silence at that liminal time. His thoughts on the matter, along with his collection of quotes and photographs on the subject, induced a bona-fide magical state of mind as I enjoyed them under the mid-day shade of a tree in a park in Berkeley.
"Hail, twilight, sovereign of one peaceful hour!" From Harper's magazine, 1889. |
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Staring into the depths: an illustration from a 1906 issue of Pall Mall magazine. The caption reads: "She took her eyes from the mile-deep caverns in the fire and glanced at the faded daguerrotype."
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| [The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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I dreamed a green-faced Gustav Meyrink confessed to me: "I want to be a full-stop rather than eternally a comma in the punctuation of time." |
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There's a fine line between the Atlantic and the Pacific:
This is a sliding tiles game from 1915. |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~
Frontispiece from Guardian’s Mystery.
"Only a ghostly shadow, but without that shadow, ironic nuance would be lost.” —W. B. Carnochan, Gibbon’s Solitude
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Long before the film Snakes on a Plane came this illustration in Pall Mall magazine (1896) of snakes on a train. The caption reads: "The ground was alive with snakes."
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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"You have to be able to laugh at anything and everything. The statues of the Buddha all smile, and not without reason, whilst the Christian saints are all bathed in tears. If people would smile more often, there would probably be fewer wars." —Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face |
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Staring into the depths: an illustration from Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, 1881. The caption reads: "She gathered her drapery about her, and leaped into the stormy darkness."
Dedicated to Teresa Burritt.
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| [The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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 "With the exception of their eyes being closed and their bodies being relaxed, hypnosis subjects are fully awake. This may surprise you and may perhaps be a little difficult to understand." — Joe Niehaus, Investigative Forensic Hypnosis (1998)
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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This quotation . . . "As one goes through it, one sees that the gate one went through was the self that went through it." —R. D. Laing (via Clifford Pickover) . . . reminds us of this illustration from Harper's magazine, 1912: |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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We're delighted to share this review of our Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine: Bibliomancer Craig Conley turns his attention to a decidedly modern bit of marginalia—Google Books' scanned images of author portraits as found in the frontispieces of Victorian-era books. From his introduction: "In old books, frontispieces were typically protected by a sheet of translucent onionskin. So thorough is the Google Books scanning process that even this page of onionskin is scanned. The figure in the plate beneath the onionskin—'beyond the veil,' as it were—emerges as from a foggy otherworld. The frontispieces were never meant to be seen this way." However, the eyes of Conley have seen them such, and he presents here an entire book of paired portraits, veiled and unveiled. The presentation evokes "necromancy by proxy," as Conley puts it, the scanning machine taking up the role of the crystal ball. Quotes on ghosts, shadows, mist, and nothingness culled from Conley's tireless research accompany each diptych. Ephemera of ephemera, The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine is an unexpectedly rewarding and transporting read. — Clint Marsh (editor of Swami Panchadasi's Clairvoyance and Occult Powers: A Lost Classic), from his review in The Pamphleteer |
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Prof. Oddfellow found his ideal of a wonky homestead: the Carpenter's House (1908), now part of the Dow Museum's preserved city block in the heart of St. Augustine's historic district. There's no lens distortion in the photo — the house really is that lopsided.
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An illustration from a 1906 issue of Pall Mall magazine. The caption reads: "'Oh, don't!' she cried. 'Don't get any bigger. I can't bear it.'"
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
Dedicated to Alayna Williams, of course. |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Memoir of Samuel Slater.
Slater’s ghost is a mirror image. The striped aura in his portrait appears courtesy of the scanning machine.
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Pre-dating the hilarious comedy series " Childrens Hospital" [sic], about a clown doctor who heals through the power of laughter, here's an illustration from an 1891 issue of The Strand magazine. The text reads: "'Doctor,' said the clown to the physician, 'do not be jealous, but it seems to me that my tomfooleries have done more good than your prescriptions.'" The caption reads, 'Thank you, Slap-Bang." |
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This bold, all-caps typo in Amanda Owen's The Power of Receiving disturbs us not because the apostrophe is upside down, and not because "don'r" isn't a word, but because "don'r" is pronounced "Donner," as in the snowbound American pioneers who didn't limit themselves to non-human meat. (Dedicated to the ever-beguiling Martha Brockenbrough.) |
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| Puzzles and Games :: Which is Funnier |
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 Which word is funnier: moist or supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?Clue: This is according to feminist/humour academic Gina Barreca. Answer: ..............moist................ (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.) Citation: Gene Weingarten & Gina Barreca, I'm with Stupid (2006)
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Margaret Woods.
Margaret’s insubstantial "Woods” is reminiscent of Victor Hugo’s perspective on death: "I feel in myself the future life; I am like a forest that has been more than once cut down.”
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Why begin "astonish" with a double S? Interestingly, the word derives from the Latin tonāre, "to thunder," and the double S glyph of pre-Columbian Mexico is a symbol of clouds, rain, and water.
This snippet is from William Mason Cornell, Recollections of "Ye Olden Time" (1878).
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This snippet is from William Mavor, An Historical Account of the Most Celebrated Voyages, Travels, and Discoveries from the Time of Columbus to the Present Period (1803).
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This snippet is from The Christian Witness and Church Members' Magazine (1858).
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Life of Washington.
"I don’t care if you’ve got George Washington’s ghost giving you evidence on this thing.” —Ellen Hawley, Open Line
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Imagine a game of "What's My Line," in which either a cherub or an imp whispers into a blindfolded panelist's ear. Are the following whispered words of an angelic or a diabolical nature? Where there's a will there's a way.
Answer: Angelic. ""Where there's a will there's a way,' his angel whispered.” —Eddie Stack, The West, 2010, p. 112. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.) |
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Yes, you may . . . on one condition: "I would like for you to have your cell phone on you at all times, so that if anything goes wrong, you can call someone." — Erin Sankey, Nalee |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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"This answer is simple, very simple indeed, and, to really honest minds, it ought to be self-evident. ... Human pride.”
—The Dublin Review (1903)
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To resist nightmares of the Spanish Inquisition, evoke the Danube at midday. (This tip comes to us from The Stone Door by the great surrealist painter and author Leonora Carrington.) |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
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"It is one of the oddest things in the world that you can read a page or more and think of something utterly different." —Christian Morgenstern (via Futility Closet) |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Some Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson.
“Distorted it’s true, but distinct enough to make out a face.” —Martin Grzimek, Heartstop
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We would swear this illustration of a fire eater is dated "1967," though the issue of Cosmopolitan in question was published in May 1900. Apparently, an artist is only as far ahead of his time as his autograph dates him. (Note that in 1902, Georges Melies will film his classic A Trip to the Moon, which will also be exactly sixty-seven years ahead of its time.)
Bob responds:
That performer is a fire eating magician! The mouth of the performer is functioning as a hat. The fire appears to have taken a specific shape of a rabbit: hand holding its rear end, paws reaching back to the performer's mouth, and two ears towering up from the too-small head. Not bad for the shaping of a flame.
And I can believe in anything else I want too.
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| [Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost
sense of immediacy. We follow the founder of the Theater of
Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then
flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free. The images
we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.] |
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
(permalink) |
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If: "We are all like snowflakes." —comedian Lewis BlackAnd: "Snow is a faked cleanliness." —Goethe Then: "We are all unclean, or rather we are all unclean persons." —Samuel Trickett |
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"The common pebble you find in your fist after having thrust your arm shoulder deep into water, where a jewel seemed to gleam on pale sand, is really the coveted gem though it looks like a pebble as it dries in the sun of everyday." —Vladimir Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight |
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Prof. Oddfellow offers this free collection of vintage frame clip-art, culled from 110-year-old issues of Cosmopolitan Magazine and painstakingly restored to their original glory. The frames are available for download in high-resolution GIF and vector EPS formats. See samples of the corners below: |
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| I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought |
(permalink) |
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"We got it the first time, Kurt [Vonnegut], when the books were written by Voltaire." — William Keckler |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from Letters of Emily Dickinson.
"The Frost of Death was on the Pane—” —Emily Dickinson
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There is "the finest line between unique and odd" (Jodi Picoult, Nineteen Minutes, 2008). |
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From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:
Inspired by and dedicated to Jonathan and Hilary Caws-Elwitt:
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Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Mindful Greetings and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle. |
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 Is it true, as Momus
suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the
addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"? Decide for
yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . . THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton On a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was singing in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.
Suddenly, a shot rang out.
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At age 75, Katsuhika Hokusai timelined his artistic quest: "At the age of 73, I finally apprehended something of the true quality of birds, animals, insects, fishes, and of the vital nature of grasses and trees. Therefore at 80, I shall have made some progress, at 90 I shall have penetrated even further into the deeper meaning of things, at 100 I shall have become truly marvelous, and at 110, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own." Vincent Van Gogh achieved Hokusai's dream at the age of 37. (Michael R. Zomber, Park Avenue, 2010) |
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| The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine |
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~ Amorphous Apparitions ~ 
Portrait from the Alfred Saker biography.
“As through a veil I glimpse your hands in the shadows.” —Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Page of 869
Original Content Copyright © 2015 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.
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![The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine](/weblog/images/covers/ghost-scanning-machine.png)
"Corporate America loves experts, and pays dearly for their expertise. This may surprise you—have you ever considered becoming an information expert in a small area?"
"Don't take this the wrong way, but from everything you've told me, it sounds like other than dark movie theaters, you don't exactly have a scene."
