Our first production assignment in film school was to film and edit together a silent short, then give it a sound­track that completely altered the emotional response of the viewer. It was a demon­stration of the equally-​​​​matched emotional power of picture and sound. It was a chal­lenging exercise. Today, I present you with two videos, both of which use nearly the same sound­track, but with different pictures. This inverts the exercise. Watch them both, then tell me how each made you feel. Don’t think too much, and don’t try to limit yourself by thinking which is better. Just watch and observe your automatic response to each. [ . . . ]

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WalMart sells replacement plans for Cabbage Patch dolls. At WalMart, I was helped by a man named Dexter wearing a long-​​​​sleeved Henley shirt. I went to two Targets, a Giant Eagle, a Home Depot, and a WalMart today. I encoun­tered two charity collection drives. A Salvation Army bell ringer, and a Firefighters’ Union toy drive. Both were stationed outside the WalMart. I have done something I never expected to do. I purchased an arti­ficial Christmas tree. Forgive me.

My mother has an addiction. Each year, she must see how far the laws of physics will stretch. She will not be satisfied unless she manages to push them further than the previous year. Her obsession is with Christmas trees. Every year of my life (except last year, when we were in Italy), we have had a live Christmas tree. For the past 10 years, it has always been a particular sort of tree, an aibes concolor, from a particular tree farm about a 30 minutes’ drive from her house. She loves this particular model of tree (and so do I) because it is resilient–the needles [ . . . ]

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It’s that time of year again. So it’s snowing here at WoPSR​.net and the Magic Special Buy Me Stuff for Christmas Happy Funtime Wow Wishlist Hat™ is back. I also moved the links from the right side to the left side and added a Flickr widget to the right side. It shows the latest three photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr. Clicking one will open it in a lightbox. If you click on the heading, “Flickr”, it will take you to the Flickr page, which has a full gallery. You can even­tually get to my actual factual Flickr page on Flickr’s servers by clicking on [ . . . ]

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