Perhaps it is its perpetual ambivalence that is its secret charm.
Ulysse Nardin is often credited with developing the first truly user-friendly perpetual calendar in 1996, when it brought out its Perpetual Ludwig, which can be adjusted by winding the crown forward and backward.
Despite its perpetual need for money, it always seemed to be one of the many struggling arts organizations that somehow manage to survive.
The first is useful for getting things done, for acting on the world, but it fails to reach the essential reality of things precisely because it leaves out duration and its perpetual flux, which is inexpressible and to be grasped only by intuition.
The novel embodies the very virtues it exalts, the same virtues that probably relegate it, like its titular hero, to its perpetual place in the shade.
True, North Korea may have the skinniest and coldest soldiers in the world, but it is not only the wackiest country around (a few years ago, it appointed its dead dictator as its perpetual president) but also potentially the most threatening.
Seeing it revived now, what is shocking is its perpetual relevance to the present.
When I strolled back into the house, it didn't seem the same without its perpetual pall of smoke.
It carries 17 crew members and 50 day-trippers on its perpetual educational mission: each year exposing 20,000 ladies, gentlemen and children of all ages to the glories of the Hudson River and the mysteries of its ecology.
As we mixed and kneaded, the comforting sounds of my childhood reasserted themselves: the steady hum of the powerful electric mixer my mother uses, the dough hook humming and coughing as it turned, and, in harmony with it, the sound of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in the background, offering its perpetual mixture of grave-sounding news and bright-sounding Baroque music.
Since it feeds off the light of video screens and advertisements, its perpetual wail also serves to accentuate how intrusive and omnipresent ads can be in our everyday lives, even when we aren't paying direct attention to them.
