Jack Vettriano There's Always Someone Watching You

Jack Vettriano There's Always Someone Watching YouJack Vettriano The White SlipJack Vettriano The Unorthodox Approach
Ford gazed at the spectacle of light before them excitement burnt inside him, but only the excitement of seeing a strange new planet, it was enough for him to see it as it was. It faintly irritated him that Zaphod had to impose some ludicrous fantasy on to the scene to make it work for him. All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile. Isn't it enough to see that a is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? All this planets." Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was. "Is there any tea on this spaceship?" he asked. More of the planet was unfolding beneath them as the Heart of Gold streaked along its orbital path. The suns now stood high in the black sky, the pyrotechnics of dawn were over, and the surface of the planet appeared bleak and forbidding in the common light of day - grey, dusty and only Magrathea totally incomprehensible to Arthur. He edged up to Trillian and asked her what was going on. "I only know what Zaphod's told me," she whispered. "Apparently Magrathea is some kind of legend from way back which no one seriously believes in. Bit like Atlantis on Earth, except that the legends say the Magratheans used to manufacture

Perrault The Mirror

Perrault The MirrorPerrault Jeune mere et enfant endormiePerrault La Fille Du BucheronPerrault Cupid's Arrows
The more we look among the stars and galaxies, the weirder things seem to get.
Even space itself is puzzling, for example. Recent studies suggest that the fabric of the universe stretyou've ever gazed at the night sky, you've probably wished upon a shooting star (which are really meteors).
But shooting stars do exist, and they're as rare as one in 100 million.
In 2005, astronomers discovered the first "hypervelocity" star careening out of a galaxy at nearly 530 miles per second (10 times faster than ordinary star movement).
We have ideas about what flings these rare stars into deep space, but aren't certain; anything from off-kilter supernova explosions to supermassive black holes might be responsible.ches more than 150 billion light-years across -- in spite of the fact that the cosmos is 13.7 billion years old.
From super-fast stars to the nature of matter, here we cover other strange and mysterious elements of the universe.
10. Hypervelocity Stars

Machado Omelette and Truffles

Machado Omelette and TrufflesMachado Ladies and Gentlemen IIMachado Gala Night
reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket before and felt a sudden stab - the supermarket was gone, everything in it was gone. Nelson's Column had gone! Nelson's Column had gone and there would be no outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry. From now on Nelson's on this book thing and you were on Earth, you must have been gathering material on it." "Well, I was able to extend the original entry a bit, yes." "Let me see what it says in this edition then, I've got to see it."Column only existed in his mind. England only existed in his mind - his mind, stuck here in this dank smelly steel-lined spaceship. A wave of claustrophobia closed in on him. England no longer existed. He'd got that - somehow he'd got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn't grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York has gone. No reaction. He'd never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, had sunk for ever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonalds, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger. He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother. He jerked himself violently to his feet. "Ford!" Ford looked up from where he was sitting in a corner humming to himself. He always found the actual travelling-through-space part of space travel rather trying. "Yeah?" he said. "If you're a researcher

Van Gogh Le Moulin de la Galette

Van Gogh Le Moulin de la GaletteVan Gogh Le Moulin de Blute-FinVan Gogh Le Moulin de la GaletteVan Gogh The Trinquetaille Bridge
what you’re gonna say happened is, he was so sure of your total disability, of your inability to even make a sound anyone could hear outside, that the bastard took that board off this evening just to torment you with the sight of freedom. Can you sell that?”On an arid whisper of breath, brittle words scraped and grated from Dalton’s throat. “Laputa said and to pitch it at that window.”[554] “Can do,” Dalton promised shakily, though he looked as if he could do nothing more than blink his eyes.“The can smashed through the window and rolled down the porch roof as I was coming up the front walk. I heard you feebly calling for help, so I forced entry.”The story sucked. The first officers on the scene would know that it was bogus, but in light of Dalton’s ordeal, this would be a flavor of bogus that they could swallow.By the time Laputa found himself in a courtroom, Dalton would have largely recovered, and the jury would not know just how horribly weak he had been on the night of his rescue. Time ... he’ll kill me ... tonight.”“All right. Okay. Then it makes a little sense that he might do this.”From the nightstand, Hazard snatched up an aerosol can of pine-scented disinfectant. The container felt half full, heavy enough.“Next,” he told Dalton, “you have to tell them that you reached way down inside yourself, to your deepest reserves of strength, and somehow you found the will, the energy, the anger necessary to pull this can off the nightstand

Blum Chinoiserie II

Blum Chinoiserie IIBlum Burgundy Day LilyKimble Whiteback ChickenKimble White Persian Cat
exactly—and all—that he appeared to be.Nevertheless, Maxwell Dalton’s disappearance might, in fact, mean that he had started that included making threats against celebrities either with the intent to do harm or in the naive hope that intimidation could , switched off the headlights and windshield wipers, but left the engine running to keep the heater in action. Local kids wouldn’t be building snow forts; but with the coming of night, the air had grown wintry by southern-California standards.He’d been unable to reach the professor by phone. Now, although the Laputa house was dark, he tried again.serve extortion.Even setting aside bells out of dreams and men into mirrors, Hazard Yancy had seen stranger a once-honest professor, a man of reason, gone bad, made mad by envy, by greed.The Daltons lived in a good neighborhood, but Laputa lived in a better one, less than fifteen minutes from their door.The early winter twilight had crept in behind the storm while Hazard had been Rachel Dalton. Dusk drained all light from the day as he drove to Professor Laputa’s place, until the low clouds were no longer gray and backlit, but sour yellow and underlit by the rising radiance of the city.He parked across the street reputed worst of all academic hyenas

Eric Wallis Girls at the Beach painting

Eric Wallis Girls at the Beach paintingVincent van Gogh Starry Night over the Rhone paintingGustav Klimt The Bride painting
shows, he would discover, from one end of the dial to the other, only the voice that might be Hannah’s, futilely trying to speak to him on every frequency.Knuckles on glass—tap-tap-tap—startled him. Wearing a rolled seaman’s cap it out.”“You get anywhere?”“Right back where I started—lookin’ up my own ass.”“Not a view that’ll draw tourists,” Hazard said. “Sam Kesselman has the flu.”Ethan needed Kesselman—the detective assigned to the ormolu-lamp murder of Rolf Reynerd’s mother—to read Reynerd’s unfinished [376] screenplay and then to track and a scowl to curdle vinegar, Hazard Yancy peered through the passenger’s window.Ethan unlocked the doors.Filling the SUV as fully as he might have filled a bumper car at a carnival, Hazard climbed into the front passenger’s seat and pulled the door shut. Although he had more knees than knee space, he didn’t adjust the power controls to move the seat back. He seemed nervous. “They find Dunny?”“Who?”“The hospital.”“No.”“Then why’re you here?”“I talked to the doctor who signed the death certificate, trying to figure

William Bouguereau Innocence painting

William Bouguereau Innocence paintingVincent van Gogh Poppies 1886 paintingVincent van Gogh field of poppies painting
satisfying. Make-believe voodoo.Line 24 was still , where the telephone log continued to be displayed. This on all sides of him, a guardian army in which every soldier had the same famous face.He lay flat on his back, and not in bed. Although he remained cautiously still, pressing with something akin to desperation against the hard smooth surface under him, his mind turned lazily, lazily, in a whirlpool of confusion.Huge they were, these fathers, sometimes full towering figures and sometimes only disembodied heads, but giant heads, like balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade.Fric had the impression that he’d passed call, too, appeared to be from a number screened by Caller ID blocking.[285] Because the connection had not been broken, the time continued to change in the column headed LENGTH OF CALL. Already it was over four minutes.That was a long message to leave on an answering machine if the caller was or someone who’d unknowingly reached a wrong number. Curious.The indicator light blinked off.

George Frederick Watts The Three Graces painting

George Frederick Watts The Three Graces paintingGeorge Frederick Watts Charity paintingFrancisco de Goya Clothed Maja painting
Eventually the big man said, “Well, for sure I’m not sitting here beside a ghost.”“When you choose an institution for me,” Ethan said, “I’d prefer one with a good arts-and-crafts program.”“Other than having your blood tested for drugs, you my nails.”Hazard had absorbed this bizarre revelation with quiet trust and remarkable equanimity.Nevertheless, Ethan had no intention of telling him about being run down by the PT Cruiser and the truck. Or about dying in the ambulance.If you reported having seen a ghost, you were a regular guy who’d had an uncanny experience. If you reported seeing another ghost at another place and time, you were at best an eccentric whose every cooked up any theories about this?”“You mean, besides I’m in the Twilight Zone? Or I really did die from that gut shot, and this is Hell?”[238] Hazard took the point. “Aren’t a whole lot of theories come to mind, are there?”“Not the kind you can explore with what the suits at the police academy call ‘conventional investigative techniques.’ ”“You don’t seem nuts to me,” Hazard said.“I don’t seem nuts to me, either. But then the nut is always the last to know.”“Besides, you were right about the pistol in the potato chips. So it was at least like ... a psychic experience.”“Clairvoyance, yeah. Except that doesn’t explain the blood under

Johannes Vermeer Lady Seated at a Virginal painting

Johannes Vermeer Lady Seated at a Virginal paintingJames Jacques Joseph Tissot Too Early paintingJames Jacques Joseph Tissot Hide and Seek paintingMartin Johnson Heade Orchids and Hummingbird painting
The twelve-inch diameter door of the safe stood open. Ethan felt inside. The spacious box proved empty.He hadn’t known that the study contained a safe. Logic suggested that no one but Dunny—and the installer—FRIC IN A FRACAS: TWO TRAINS CLACKETY-clacking and whistling at key crossroads, Nazis in the villages, American troops fighting their way down from the hills, dead soldiers everywhere, and villainous SS officers in black uniforms herding Jews into the boxcars of a third train stopped at a station, more SS bastards shooting Catholics and burying their bodies in a mass grave here by a pine woods.Few people knew that the Nazis had killed not only Jews but also millions of Christians. Most of the higher-echelon Nazis had adhered to a strange and informal pagan creed, worshiping land and race and myths of ancient Saxony, worshiping blood and powerwould have been aware of its existence.Brain-damaged . Remembers the combination to his safe.Or ... . In a mood to party, he picks up some spending money.Dunny dead made nearly as much sense as Dunny with severe brain damage.

John William Waterhouse Boreas painting

John William Waterhouse Boreas paintingJohn William Waterhouse Ariadne paintingVincent van Gogh Tree and Man paintingVincent van Gogh In the Jardin du Luxembourg painting
all ye Elves! ' she cried to those about her. `Let none say again that Dwarves are grasping and ungracious! Yet surely, Gimli son of Glóin, you desire something that I could give? Name it, I bid you! You shall not be the only guest without a gift.'`There is nothing, Lady Galadriel,' said Gimli, bowing low and stammering. `Nothing, unless it might be – unless it is permitted to ask, nay, to name a single strand of your hair, which surpasses return to set in imperishable crystal to be an heirloom of my house, and a pledge of good will between the Mountain and the Wood until the end of days.'Then the Lady unbraided one of her long tresses, and cut off three golden hairs, and laid them in Gimli's hand. `These words shall go with the gift,' she said. `I do not foretell, for all foretelling the gold of the earth as the stars surpass the gems of the mine. I do not ask for such a gift. But you commanded me to name my desire.'The Elves stirred and murmured with astonishment, and Celeborn gazed at the Dwarf in wonder, but the Lady smiled. 'It is said that the skill of the Dwarves is in their hands rather than in their tongues ' she said; `yet that is not true of Gimli. For none have ever made to me a request so bold and yet so courteous. And how shall I refuse, since I commanded him to speak? But tell me, what would you do with such a gift? '`Treasure it, Lady,' he answered, `in memory of your words to me at our first meeting. And if ever I

Jasper Johns three flags painting

Jasper Johns three flags paintingVincent van Gogh Wheat Field with Crows painting
? He felt no doubt that Bilbo knew quite well. It was indeed a kingly gift. But now his thoughts had been carried away from the dark Mines, to Rivendell, to Bilbo, and to Bag End in the days while Bilbo was still there. He wished with all his heart that he the dream went on: he heard whispers, and saw the two pale points of light approaching, slowly. He woke and found that the others were speaking softly near him, and that a dim light was falling on his face. High up above the eastern archway through a shaft near the roof came a long pale gleam; and across the
Vincent van Gogh Mulberry Tree paintingVincent van Gogh Bedroom Arles painting
was back there, and in those days, mowing the lawn, or pottering among the flowers, and that he had never heard of Moria, or mithril – or the Ring.A deep silence fell. One by one the others fell asleep. Frodo was on guard. As if it were a breath that came in through unseen doors out of deep places, dread came over him. His hands were cold and his brow damp. He listened. All his mind was given to listening and nothing else for two slow hours; but he heard no sound, not even the imagined echo of a footfall.His watch was nearly over, when, far off where he guessed that the western archway stood, he fancied that he could see two pale points of light, almost like luminous eyes. He started. His head had nodded. `I must have nearly fallen asleep on guard,' he thought. `I was on the edge of a dream.' He stood up and rubbed his eyes, and remained standing, peering into the dark, until he was relieved by Legolas.When he lay down he quickly went to sleep, but it seemed to him that

Leonardo da Vinci paintings

Leonardo da Vinci paintingsMichael Austin paintings
thus alone are peace and freedom maintained in the lands behind us, bulwark of the West. But if the passages of the River should be won, what then?`Yet that hour, maybe, is not now far away. The Nameless Enemy has arisen again. Smoke rises once more from Orodruin that we call Mount Doom. The power of the Black Land grows and we are hard beset. When the Enemy returned our folk were driven from Ithilien, our fair domain east of the River, though we kept a foothold there and strength of arms. But this very year, in the days of June, sudden war came upon us out of Mordor, and we were swept away. We were outnumbered, for Mordor has allied itself with the Easterlings and the cruel Haradrim; but it was not by numbers that we
Montague Dawson paintingsMaxfield Parrish paintings
said that it could be seen, like a great black horseman, a dark shadow under the moon. Wherever he came a madness filled our foes, but fear fell on our boldest, so that horse and man gave way and fled. Only a remnant of our eastern force came back, destroying the last bridge that still stood amid the ruins of Osgiliath.'I was in the company that held the bridge, until it was cast down behind us. Four only were saved by swimming: my brother and myself and two others. But still we fight on, holding all the west shores of Anduin; and those who shelter behind us give us praise, if ever they hear our name: much praise but little help. Only from Rohan now will any men ride to us when we call.`In this evil hour I have come on an errand over many dangerous leagues to Elrond: a hundred

Leader Derwentwater From Ladore Morning With Skiddaw In The Distance

Leader Derwentwater From Ladore Morning With Skiddaw In The DistanceLeader A Peep Through The PinesHarlamoff The Flower GirlHarlamoff Auburn-haired Beauty with Bouqet of Roses
what of your own people?' asked Frodo.`There is much to tell, good and bad,' said Glóin; 'yet it is mostly good: we have so far been fortunate, though we do not escape the shadow of these times. If you really wish to hear of us, I will tell you tidings gladly. But stop me when you are weary! Dwarves' tongues run on when speaking of their handiwork, they say.'And with that Glóin embarked on a long account of the doings of the Dwarf-from his couch to his chair at table, and it took six young dwarves to lift him.'And what has become of Balin and Ori and Óin?' asked Frodo.A shadow passed over Glóin's face. `We do not know,' he answered. 'It is largely on account of Balin that I have come to ask the advice of those that dwell in Rivendell. But tonight let us speak of merrier things!'Glóin began then to talk of the works of his people, telling Frodo about their great labours in Dale kingdom. He was delighted to have found so polite a listener; for Frodo showed no sign of weariness and made no attempt to change the subject, though actually he soon got rather lost among the strange names of people and places that he had never heard of before. He was interested, however, to hear that Dáin was still King under the Mountain, and was now old (having passed his two hundred and fiftieth year), venerable, and fabulously rich. Of the ten companions who had survived the Battle of Five Armies seven were still with him: Dwalin, Glóin, Dori, Nori, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur. Bombur was now so fat that he could not move himself

Kinkade Homestead House

Kinkade Homestead HouseKlimt Water Serpents IIKlimt The Tree of Life Stoclet FriezeKlimt The Tree of Life 1909
Prancing PonyBree was the chief village of the Bree-land, a small inhabited region, like an island in the empty lands round about. Besides Bree itself, there was Staddle on the other side of the hill, Combe in a deep valley a little further eastward, and Archet on the edge of the Chetwood. Lying round Bree-hill and the villages was a small country of fields and tamed woodland only a few miles broad.The Men of Bree were brown-haired, when the memory of the old Kings had faded into the grass.In those days no other Men had settled dwellings so far west, or within a hundred leagues of the Shire. But in the wild lands beyond Bree there were mysterious wanderers. The Bree-folk called them Rangers, and knew nothing of their origin. They were taller and darker than the Men of Bree and were broad, and rather short, cheerful and independent: they belonged to nobody but themselves; but they were more friendly and familiar with Hobbits, Dwarves, Elves, and other inhabitants of the world about them than was (or is) usual with Big People. According to their own tales they were the original inhabitants and were the descendants of the first Men that ever wandered into the West of the middle-world. Few had survived the turmoils of the Elder Days; but when the Kings returned again over the Great Sea they had found the Bree-men