"Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret toil as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave or tortured the living animal to animate the lifeless clay."
- Mary Shelley

ca·nis

- noun
1. the chief and type genus of the family Canidae that includes the domestic dog, the wolves and jackals, and sometimes in older classifications the foxes.

can·i·dae

- noun
1. a cosmopolitan family of digitigrade carnivorous mammals thatincludes the wolves, jackals, foxes, coyote, and the domestic dog.

cir⋅cum⋅stance

- noun
1. a condition, detail, part, or attribute, with respect to time, place, manner,agent, etc., that accompanies, determines, or modifies a fact or event; a modifying or influencing factor.
2. the existing conditions or state of affairs surrounding and affecting an agent.
3. an unessential or secondary accompaniment of any fact or event; minor detail.
4. the condition or state of a person.
5. an incident or occurrence.
6. detailed or circuitous narration; specification of particulars.
7. ceremonious accompaniment or display.
- verb
8. to place in particular relations.

"You might have a favorite book or film, but you can only watch or read it so many times before you have to let it sit and then go back and realize it's your favorite still. At some point everything gets a little stale and you have to step away from it."
- Les Claypool

"Nothing leads so straight to futility as literary ambitions without systematic knowledge."
- H. G. Wells

"And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint."
- Algernon H. Blackwood

"It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer."
- Harry Houdini

"Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness."
- George Orwell

pol⋅y⋅phon⋅ic

- adj.
1. consisting of many voices or sounds.
2. a. having two or more voices or parts, each with an independent melody, but all harmonizing; contrapuntal.
b. pertaining to music of this kind.
c. capable of producing more than one tone at a time.
3. having more than one phonetic value.

con⋅tra⋅pun⋅tal

- adj.
1. of or pertaining to counterpoint.
2. composed of two or more relatively independent melodies sounded together.

coun⋅ter⋅point

- noun
1. the art of combining melodies.
2. the texture resulting from the combining of individual melodic lines.
3. a melody composed to be combined with another melody.
4. syncopation.
5. any element that is juxtaposed and contrasted with another.
- verb
6. to emphasize or clarify by contrast or juxtaposition.

ra⋅di⋅o⋅lar⋅i⋅an

- noun
1. any minute, marine protozoan, having an amoebalike body with radiating, filamentous pseudopodia and an elaborate outer siliceous skeleton, shell, and sometimes spicules.

fugue

- noun
1. a polyphonic composition based upon one, two, or more themes, which are enunciated by several voices or parts in turn, subjected to contrapuntal treatment, and gradually built up into a complex form having somewhat distinct divisions or stages of development and a marked climax at the end.
2. a period during which a person suffers from loss of memory, often begins a new life, and, upon recovery, remembers nothing of the amnesic phase.

vamp

- noun
1. the portion of a shoe or boot upper that covers the instep and toes.
2. something patched up or pieced together.
3. an accompaniment, usually improvised, consisting of a succession of simple chords.
- verb
4. to patch up; repair.
5. to give something a new appearance by adding a patch or piece.
6. to concoct or invent.
7. to improvise an accompaniment, tune, etc.