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It sounds sensational, but it's true: Gary Numan has sent Chris Isaak straight into Hell, where Isaak is now embedded with His Satanic Majesty Himself.  Some are surprised by this, having assumed that Isaak was angelic and Numan demonic (especially given that black eyeliner and those Numanesque lyrics like, "I am the ghost that reminds Death of you," easily the spookiest line we've ever encountered).  But no — Numan is the angel, and he has sent Isaak to Hell with great panache.

Given the popularity of Isaak's entrancing song "Wicked Game" (1989), it's impossible not to believe that Gary Numan's new masterpiece "And It All Began With You" is a direct response.  There are some subtle harmonic and tonal similarities between the two songs, and to our ears Numan deliberately mimicked just enough of "Wicked Game" to make it obvious that he was sending Isaak directly to Hell.  You will recall the bleakness of Isaak's lyrics, proclaiming "I don't wanna fall in love" and ending with "Nobody loves no one."  To call Numan's response powerful or dramatic would be the understatement of the centuries.  Numan proclaims that not only does somebody love someone, but love can endure anything, in this life and well into the next world:

When you whisper my name, I'll be with you
When you reach out your hand, I'll be with you
When you walk to the light, I'll be with you
When you stand before God, I'll be with you

Here's a precusor to Walt Disney's Fantasia.  From Fliegende Blätter, 1927.

When you can't win for losing.  "They faced death by fire at the bottom of the sea."  From Popular Science Monthly, 1920.

From The Harvard Lampoon, 1891.

"The finger of the spirit touched his breast."  From Allegories by Frederic W. Farrar, 1898.

Pinkie and the Fairies by Walford Graham Robertson, 1909, with additional fairy twinkles punched by Indiana University.

"The light of Ong Zwarba."  From The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany.

"Half-man half-horse: a centaur captured at last," from The Sketch, 1908.

Our custom widget that checks for duplicated images suggested this unlikely pairing.  Click each image for its source.

Here's a snow owl from The Boy's Own Paper, 1880.

Insomnia treated via warm breath to the eyes from under an aluminum mask.  From Popular Mechanics, 1924.

Shimmering as if with the spark of life, this owl figurine has such an uncanny presence that we asked our Spirit Box radio (as seen on the Travel Channel show "Ghost Adventures"), "What is the nature of this owl?" The Spirit Box swept through the otherworldly static in the atmosphere for an answer, and what we heard was quite intriguing:

"It came down … why not … honor him … it's not something you can underestimate … it's great for a lot of things."

Here's an mp3 of the Spirit Box audio:

We have an aunt who won't stoop for a lucky penny.  Perhaps this is why.  From Kladderadatsch, 1931.  

Here's a precursor to William Castle-style gimmick advertising.  From Fliegende Blätter, 1933.

"You can't ignore the rat" (1948).  Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta.

"An imaginary flight to sun pictured by scienist."  Indubitably.  From Popular Mechanics, 1930.

From Die Muskete, 1933.

You've heard that the art of living is the art of dying.  This book about longevity confirms it -- note the appendix on the pleasure of making a will.

"Does anybody know anything about anything in particular?"  From Imaginotions: Truthless Tales by Tudor Jenks, 1894.

"Tom o' the roads," from The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany.

"The disaster-dodger: mascots for motor-cars.  Luck-bringers for the superstitious motorist."  From The Sketch, 1908.

Why not be perfectly happy?  From Popular Mechanics, 1924.

From Jugend, 1902. 

"She said, 'Nonsense.'"  From The Strand, 1908.

Here's a design for a book cabinet.  From Le Rire, 1899.

"When spooks come across my path I shall solve them (to my own satisfaction)."  From Pall Mall, 1895.

"Mountains caused by 'puffs' from inside the earth?"  Indubitably.  From Popular Mechanics, 1930.

"A tiny voice said, 'I am Princess Rain Drop.'"  

A tiny voice, to be sure, but recall that "nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands" (E. E. Cummings).

From Loraine and the Little People by Elizabeth Gordon and illustrated by M. T. Ross, 1915.

"Visitors from under the sun."  From Pinkie and the Fairies by Walford Graham Robertson, 1909.

"Good-bye!"  From The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany.

"Wily Willy passes the night in securing a record of the song of Tetrazzini's rival, the nightingale."  From The Sketch, 1908.

"Against," from Black and White Budget, 1902.

From Die Bühne, 1931.

A tale as old as sensationalism -- the exploitation of smaller-statured individuals to make giant things look even bigger.  From Popular Mechanics, 1924.

From Jugend, 1902. 

From Die Muskete, 1911.

"Making the deaf hear."  From Zone Therapy or Relieving Pain at a Home by William Fitzgerald and Edwin Bowers, 1917.

Here's a precursor to "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas."  The caption reads, "I can't tell you what tricks they performed, or how they did it."  From The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, 1868.

From A Voyage of Consolation:

***

Brother Eusebius, when he found Demetrius in bed, also took it for granted that we had gone on ahead. He did not inquire, he said, because the virtue of taciturnity being denied to them in the exercise of their business, they always diligently cultivated it in private. My own conviction was that they were not on speaking terms.

***

"Perhaps I jump rather hastily to conclusions sometimes. It's a family trait. We get it through the Warwick-Howards on my mother's side."

"Then, of course, there can't be any objection to it."

***

A note of momma's occurs here to the effect that there is a great deal too much fine art in Italian hotels, with a reference to the fact that the one at Naples had the whole of Pompeii painted on the dining room walls. She considers this practice embarrassing to the public mind, which has no way of knowing whether to admire these things or not, though personally we boldly decided to scorn them all.

***

Dicky and I took it with the more moderate appreciation natural to our years, but it gave us the greatest pleasure to watch the simple and unrestrained delight of momma and poppa, and to revert, as it were, in their experience, to what our own enjoyment might have been had we been born when they were. "No express agents, no delivery carts, no baggage checks," murmured poppa, as our trunks glided up to the hotel steps, "but it gets there all the same." This was the keynote of his admiration--everything got there all the same. The surprise of it was repeated every time anything got there.

***

At this I opened my eyes inadvertently--nobody could help it--and saw the barometrical change in poppa's countenance. It went down twenty degrees with a run, and wore all the disgust of an hon. gentleman who has jumped to conclusions and found nothing to stand on.

***

I offered him sandwiches, but he seemed to prefer his moustache.

***

Leaving out the scenery--the Senator declares that nothing spoils a book of travels like scenery--the impressions of St. Moritz which remain with me have something of the quality, for me, of the illustrations in a French novel.

***

Mr. Malt declared himself so full of the picturesque already that he didn't know how he was going to hold another castle.

***

[Patron saints, jesters, and harmless oaths]:

In connection with Heidelberg I wish there were something authentic to say about Perkeo; but nobody would believe the quantity of wine he is supposed to have drunk in a day, which is the statement oftenest made about him, so it is of no consequence that I have forgotten the number of bottles. He isn't the patron saint of Heidelberg, because he only lived about a hundred and fifty years ago, and the first qualification for a patron saint is antiquity. As poppa says, there may be elderly gentlemen in Heidelberg now whose grandfathers have warned them against the personal habits of Perkeo from actual observation. Also we know that he was a court jester, and the pages of the Calendar, for some reason, are closed to persons in that walk of life. Judging by the evidences of his popularity that survive on all sides, Mr. Malt declared that he was probably worth more to the town in attracting residents and investors than half-a-dozen patron saints, and in this there may have been more truth than reverence. The Elector Charles Philip, whose court he jested for, certainly made no such mark upon his town and time as Perkeo did, and in that, perhaps, there is a moral for sovereigns, although the Senator advises me not to dwell upon it. At all events, one writes of Heidelberg but one thinks of Perkeo, as he swings from the sign-boards of the Haupt-Strasse, and stands on the lids of the beer mugs, and smiles from the extra-mural decoration of the wine shops, and lifts his glass, in eternally good wooden fellowship, beside the big Tun in the Castle cellar. There is a Hotel Perkeo, there must be Clubs Perkeo, probably a suburb and steamboats of the same name, and the local oath "Per Perkeo!" has a harmless sound, but nothing could be more binding in Heidelberg. Momma thought his example a very unfortunate one for a University town, but the rest of us were inclined to admire Perkeo as a self-made man and a success. As Dicky protested he had made the fullest use of the capacities Nature had given him, it was evident from his figure that he had even developed them, and what more profitable course should the German youth follow? He was cheerful everywhere—as the forerunner of the comic paper one supposes he had to be—but most impressive in his effigy by his master's wine vat, in the perpetual aroma that most inspired him, where, by a mechanical arrangement inside him, he still makes a joke of sorts, in somewhat graceless aspersion of the methods of the professional humorists.

***

"My dear Dick, Isabel thinks you're engaged. So does her mamma. So does Mr. Mafferton."

"Who to?" exclaimed Mr. Dod, in ungrammatical amazement.

"I looked at him reproachfully. Don't be such an owl!" I said.

Light streamed in upon Dicky's mind. "To you!" he exclaimed. "Great Scott!"

"Preposterous, isn't it?" I said.

"I should ejaculate! Well, no, I mean—I shouldn't ejaculate, but—oh, you know what I mean——"

We, too, nicknamed our planchette "the despair of science."  From Planchete, Or the Despair of Science by E. Sargent, 1869.

"A herd of black creatures" from The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories by Lord Dunsany.

"Oh for the eye of a fly!  The joy of an eye of many lenses: how to see the principal boy a hundred times at one glance."  From The Sketch, 1908.

"I was a child to challenge such a woman to mortal combat."  From Black and White Budget, 1902.

From A Boy's Own Paper, 1881.

They left out one word from this headline.  "Radio static to be [incorrectly] forecast like the weather."  From Popular Mechanics, 1930.

You don't have to choose; you can have both!  "Doughnut life-preservers and a poetical horse."  From Andy's Adventures on Noah's Ark by Douglas Zabriskie Doty, 1902.

"Peerless and he won't speak."  From Pinkie and the Fairies by Walford Graham Robertson, 1909.  This should also be of interest: How to Be Your Own Cat.

"Leave a page blank at the beginning to make an index."

From Kladderadatsch, 1937.

If you can't say, "I lava you," it's not a volcanic romance.  From The Phantom CIty, A Volcanic Romance by William Westall, 1886.