Being a little short on time this week, and not having watched anything with Jason Momoa in it since Justice League, I decided to revisit that giant stack of old elementary school papers that my folks sent to me a while back. Seriously, it’s an even bigger pile of papers than my rejection file. Check it out:
Author: James Viscosi
Not A Review Of “Justice League: The Snyder Cut”
Those who keep up on doings within the superhero film genre will no doubt be aware of the recently-released “Snyder Cut” of the 2017 film Justice League, which was supposed to be DC’s answer to Marvel’s The Avengers, but which bombed pretty badly with both critics and at the box office. Maybe it should have been phrased in the form of a question …
Teaser Tuesday: “Red Mars”
So the other week I was reading the classic SF novel Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson:
As one might expect, Red Mars is about, yes, Mars, specifically, the human inhabitation and terraforming thereof, beginning with 100 colonists in the year 2026. Hmm. (checks watch) I don’t think we’re going to make it.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “Red Mars””Not a Review of “Dickinson”
So recently we’ve been watching the dramedy series Dickinson on Apple TV+. Now, you may be saying to yourself, “Who subscribes to Apple TV+?!” The answer is, nobody; like virtually everyone else who has it, we got a free subscription to Apple TV+ when we purchased some Apple gear last year. Since then, Apple has continually extended the free subscription period, most likely in the hopes that viewers will eventually find a show to get hooked on and will ultimately pay for the service. If that was their plan, it seems to have succeeded, because my wife is most definitely hooked on Dickinson, which is a fictionalized account of the life of the poet Emily Dickinson. Maybe you’ve heard of her.
Teaser Tuesday: “The City & the City”
So the other week I was reading The City & the City, a novel by China Miéville, who, as I’ve alluded to once or twice, is one of my favorite writers.
Random Rejection: Glimpses Magazine, “The Magician’s Finger”
So this week I fired up good old Random.org and had it pick a letter of the alphabet and a position, and thus I reached into my vast trove of rejection (and a few acceptance) letters and pulled out this little gem, from when I submitted a story called “The Magician’s Finger” to a magazine called Glimpses:
Continue reading “Random Rejection: Glimpses Magazine, “The Magician’s Finger””“Hate That Tune”
So the other day my wife and I had to head out to pick up our cat Chaplin from the specialty vet (Chaplin has this thing where he periodically decides he doesn’t want to eat his food anymore, which is not something a young cat should be doing; we are still trying to figure out if there’s some physical cause for this or if he just wants to find out if we’re willing to spend as much money on cat vet bills as we are on dog vet bills*), and because it was low on gas, we took her car instead of mine so that we could fill the tank**. And that meant we got to listen to Spotify on her phone via CarPlay, as opposed to what we (used to) do when we (used to) go places in my car, which is listen to the music I have on my phone***. At first I had her play a few songs by a few artists I had recently discovered, but then I told her to just play whatever she wanted; and thus I discovered how my wife listens to Spotify:
Continue reading ““Hate That Tune””Teaser Tuesday: “All the Little Children”
So the other week I was reading All the Little Children, by Jo Furniss, a novel in which terrorists release a genetically engineered virus throughout the English countryside. Hilarity ensues.
The Early Years: Mother Said, “Where Are Your Pants?”
So this week I was taking something out of the closet in the office when I accidentally knocked over a pile of “The Early Years” materials, reminding me that I hadn’t done one of those posts in a while. And since the stack had conveniently shuffled itself by falling on the floor, this seemed like as good a time as any to pull something out of it; and so I present, “Scrambled Eggs”.
Continue reading “The Early Years: Mother Said, “Where Are Your Pants?””“It’s A Very, Very Bad Thing To Have Happen To You.”
So those who have been hanging around here for at least a year may remember The Event, my six-part writeup of what happened when I had a small (~3mm), undetected (as they usually are) cerebral aneurysm rupture (as they usually don’t). A few days after the rupture I underwent an emergency coiling procedure to basically stuff the aneurysm with tiny platinum steel wool, thus making my noggin slightly more valuable than it had been previously.
Since The Event, I periodically find myself searching the Internet for information about aneurysms. Sometimes this is triggered by aneurysms in the news, as with the recent hospitalization of the famous rapper Dr. Dre, and sometimes it’s triggered by, say, looking up information about the author of a book I’m reading and discovering that she suffered a fatal head injury after collapsing in her driveway due to a stroke. This being the Internet, which, although it has a long memory, very much favors the short term, usually what you find when doing a search will be recent; but sometimes I find old news, an example of which is this piece from The New York Times, which ran nearly 20 years ago:
Continue reading ““It’s A Very, Very Bad Thing To Have Happen To You.””