#Heath Robinson

[justbusterkeaton]

“As a child at the actor’s colony, Buster tore into each summer day as if doubting tomorrow. He tried every athletic sport and launched his lifetime avocation of gadget building. His simplest Muskegon gadget was the Clown Pole; the most complex, the Ed Gray Awakener. Over the years, certain qualities have come to define the Keaton machine: it has brought the inventor no money and only a passing local fame; it is often, though not always, a thing of staggering complexity; and it does its job with outstanding effectiveness. Its unmistakable aura is a genial, disarming madness.

Buster invented the Awakener for vaudeville monologist Ed Gray. Gray, a bachelor, was notably lazy. “It's a nightmare getting up,” was his habitual opening midafternoon remark to the world in general. Constant ribbing about it finally spurred him to buy an alarm clock. It rang its little heart out in vain. Buster then stepped in with an invention to guarantee prompt rising with nothing dependent upon Gray's willpower, if any. Automation in an early form, Buster's brainchild almost, but not quite, anticipated the electronic computer. It had an Orwellian, Nineteen Eighty-four quality.

"What time shall it be?" Buster asked. Gray went through an obvious struggle before saying, "Ten." So at 10 A.M. each and every summer weekday, Gray's alarm clock went off unheeded, naturally. But Big Brother was watching. The mechanism gave Gray thirty seconds to rise and turn it off, but he never did. Thereupon, hell broke loose. A lever operated by the clock started weights and counterweights of the greatest complexity all going at once: the gas was turned on and lit under the coffeepot (by a match scratched on sandpaper); a mechanical arm snatched off the sheet and blanket, if any; and an electric motor, operating through eccentric cams, made the bed rock like a foundering ship. Another day had dawned for Ed Gray.

"You know," says Buster, "in a month or so, that infernal gadget really trained him. Sometimes he'd even get up earlier all by himself and eat. A real trouper."

-Keaton by Rudi Blesh 1966

[innervoiceartblog]

“Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need.”

~ Tom Robbins

Artwork by William Heath Robinson

[katzenfalter]

Illustration by W. Heath Robinson.

Published in: Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales. London 1913.

[graemegardenappreciationsociety]

Graeme’s foreword to a book about Heath Robinson

[sohannabarberaesque]

But then again, the Cattanooga Cats have been known for producing some remarkable musical energy for a folk-pop band themselves.

(Incidentally, the cartoon, first published in Life magazine in 1884, imagined the potential of fighting cats generating battery power. As Snagglepuss would parse this, "Heavens to Faraday!")

[rozmorris]

The hidden shapes in stories and why drama isn't what you think it is - interview with @EHeathRobinson

This is a massive headline, I know. A massive headline for a massive and far-ranging conversation about storytelling. My host is Heath Robinson, whose YouTube channel has seen a stellar line-up of story nerds, including Christopher Vogler, author of The Writer’s Journey, Christopher Vogler, Matt Bird, author of The Secrets of Story, John Truby, author of The Anatomy of Genres, and Vic Mignogna,…

[myjetpack]

This week’s Guardian Books cartoon

[bibliosims]

titania | an upper body tattoo. ⊹₊ ⋆

download | sfs (free, no ads)

TOU: do not reupload and never put this behind a paywall !

previews and more under the cut !

meet titania, my first tattoo (and ts4 cc) ever ! i’ve so enjoyed working on this little project and am already planning out the next one ! enjoy :)

psa the back tattoo warps kind of weirdly on certain masc frames, sorry ! also, there are 10 individual swatches per 3 opacity options, so technically it's 30 swatches overall

also feel free to tag me if u use these ! it’d be cool to see these in the wild 🫶🏻

thumbnail previews:

unedited previews:

•☽────✧˖°˖ art by william heath robinson for shakespeare's a midsummer night's dream ˖°˖✧────☾•

[the-witcher-parks]

Mountain flyer par Steve Via Flickr : Steam engine needed to keep warm over Everest

[the-evil-clergyman]

Illustrations from The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe by W. Heath Robinson (1900)

[enchantedbook]

'The Leaping Match' from Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale illustrated by William Heath Robinson, 1913

[thefugitivesaint]

William Heath Robinson (1872-1944), 'Al Aaraaf', ''The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe'', 1900 Source

[lepetitdragonvert]

The Adventures of Uncle Lubin

New York, Brentano’s

1902

Author and artist : William Heath Robinson

[oldpaintings]

But like a cloistress she will veiled walk (illus. for Twelfth Night), 1908 by William Heath Robinson (English, 1872–1944)

[along-the-meadow-path]

W. Heath Robinson illustrations from The Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

[random-brushstrokes]

William Heath Robinson - Stories from the Odyssey book cover (1910)