several things:

1: iClip is back. despite the complaints on here about iClip being unsupported, i got a response today from the developer (reasonably prompt, that) and, long story short, the crashing problem i was having turned out to be a corrupt plist file that i couldn't find for some reason (i guess i only searched with Spotlight, which deems searching ~/Library/Preferences to be beneath it). i tossed that file and all is well with iClip again...provided you overlook the overwrought UI.

2: thank you for the recommendation, epc; i've now installed PTH Pasteboard and am giving it a try, and as an iClip user, i see why you recommend it. i can even set it up to behave much like iClip, hot-key-wise - i have iClip set to pop up with Command-Option-Control-i, and PTH Pasteboard with Command-Option-Control-p so i can use both; if i prefer PTH i'll migrate to it altogether.

3: i'm not as sure about Keyboard Maestro as many of the other people reviewing it. but that's a matter for Keyboard Maestro's VT page.