Author: James Viscosi

Still Not A Review Of “Game of Thrones”

So we’re still watching “Game of Thrones”, and since we’re only partway through Season 3, will be for a while longer. At this point, I’m pretty sure that my wife has gotten into the show. How can I tell, you ask?

Me (discovering my wife on the sofa in the living room at nearly 10 o’clock, after getting home from the studio): “What are you doing?”
Wife: “I thought you* were going to watch ‘Game of Thrones’.”
Me: (looks pointedly at clock)
Wife (disappointed): “Oh, I guess it’s kind of late.”
Me: “Yeah it is. I’m glad you like the show though.”
Wife: “I do, but they could have made it with half the violence.”
Me: “Well HBO wants to make sure we get our money’s worth. Anyway we could watch an episode but you’ll be asleep in ten minutes.”
Wife: “No, I’m awake.”
Me: “Then I’ll be asleep in ten minutes.”

If my wife is asking about watching TV at 9:50pm, that must mean something.

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The Early Years: Jim’s Clarinet Sounds Like A Chicken

So last week, I posted an ancient report card progress report and mentioned that when I played the clarinet, our dog, Miss Marple (AKA “Missy”), would plant herself in front of me and howl. I further mentioned that it was too bad there was no video because it probably would have made us―or at least Missy―Internet stars. Well, there’s still no video, but since my dad knows where all his pictures are, there is, at least, photographic evidence:

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The Early Years: Jim Isn’t A Jock

It’s been quite a while since I reached into the huge stack of ancient school reports, assignments, “artwork”, etc., that I received from my parents a few years ago when they were cleaning out some rooms in the house, so I thought I would do so now. This time I pulled out a report card “progress report” from thirty-five years ago.

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Teaser Tuesday 8/29/2017: “Hyperion”

This week I’m reading Hyperion, the Hugo award-winning novel by Dan Simmons, in which … uh … well I’m not really sure I can explain what’s going on, because it seems really complicated. Suffice to say there’s a planet named Hyperion that seems to be about to become ground zero in an interplanetary war between a couple of different human factions (one planetary, one space-based), and which is also haunted by a possibly shapeshifting, definitely fearsome creature, called the Shrike, which essentially teleports around impaling people and hanging them as ornaments from its gigantic backwards-in-time-traveling aluminum Christmas tree, and which is worshiped as a god throughout inhabited space, and which our small band of protagonists is currently traveling upriver, Heart of Darkness-style, to visit. Oh and also there’s a huge planetary labyrinth (one of at least nine such labyrinths on different planets) full of cruciform parasites whose significance I don’t yet know.

But other than that nothing is happening.

Hyperion

Oooh. Spiky.

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Not a Review of “Game of Thrones”

So recently, having waited over six years for the next book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series to come out, with no end to the waiting in sight, and being tired of missing out on all the delicious things that have been happening in the HBO adaptation “Game of Thrones” since it went past the end of A Dance with Dragons―Tyrion meets Dany! Starks return to Winterfell! Jon meets Dany! Dragons meet Lannisters!―I decided it was finally time to bite the bullet and wade through the discs from Netflix.

GoTSeason1

Don’t get too comfortable.

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Teaser Tuesday 8/15/17: “The Great Iron War, Volumes 1-3”

This week I’m reading volumes 1-3 of The Great Iron War, by Dean F. Wilson, a science fantasy steampunk series in which Earth (or someplace like it) is invaded by outsiders, called “demons” (even though I’m pretty sure that’s not what they are) who come in search of iron. Hence the name of the war.

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Random Rejection: Weird Tales, “The Short Route”

It’s been a while since I reached into my giant stack of rejection (and a few acceptance) letters, so I figured it was time to totter off to random.org and ask them what letter I should choose. They told me “V”, but I already did the only V in my pile, so I asked them for a different letter and they told me “W”. As it turns out, nearly all my “W” rejections are from Weird Tales, or, as indicated in the scan below, “Worlds of Fantasy and Horror”, which is, uh, not quite as catchy a title as Weird Tales. (The astute reader will not be surprised to learn that this temporary title change involved the legal system.)

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