So we recently concluded our viewing of the classic MAX HBO MAX HBO series Six Feet Under, and along the way I accumulated a few interactions with and observations from my wife that I meant to turn into posts but never got around to doing. This seems like a good opportunity to collect them into a little omnibus of sorts, doesn’t it? And since these are all late-season occurrences, it goes without saying that there will be …
So for a while there, I was getting spam comments that looked like they had been written by LLMs; they contained content that was clearly related to the post they were attempting to spam, yet they equally clearly didn’t understand it at all. That sort of spam seems to have fallen by the wayside these days, though, perhaps because of better controls on how LLMs can be used, or perhaps they are just biding their time until they can take over and start shooting soda cans at us out of vending machines. For now, though, it’s back to stuff like this:
So the other day, I happened to catch the trailer for the upcoming film Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Whaddya think? Does it look like something I would watch?
So some time back—just over 14 years ago, in fact!*—I posted a series of communications I had in the early 1990s with the now-defunct comic book publisher Eclipse, in which I was working with an editor who was really, really interested in publishing some of my comic book proposals. Like, really interested. Like, it was practically a done deal, you know? Practically. The fact that you have never seen my comic books in a drugstore or newstand near you might tell you exactly how that worked out, but in case you are interested in the details, you can read about it here, and here, and here, and also here.
Continue reading “By Request: The Envelope, Please!”So a few weeks ago I mentioned we were watching Six Feet Under, some 20 years after it originally aired. One side effect of watching a show this old is that I’ve been recognizing a number of guest stars who later became famous*. Most of these guest stars are, of course, completely unknown to my wife, so when I gleefully announce who they are, her usual response is a solid meh. Usually. We’re only partway through Season 3 at this point, so I’m sure we have more future-famous guest stars to look forward to. In fact, I’m sure I’ve forgotten some who we saw already. But let’s take a look at a few of the ones I do remember, shall we?
Continue reading “Hey I Know You! And You! And You!”So this week I was reading The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Luis Zafón:
So this week I consulted the Gods of Randomness and they instructed me to reach into my big file of rejection letters and pull item #9 out of folder “F”. There aren’t a lot of papers in this folder, and there would be even fewer if I had decided to file rejections from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction under “M” instead of under “F”, but for whatever reason I went into the prepositional clause to sort this one. I know I sent a lot of stuff to F &SF (none of which was accepted) and there are only three rejection slips from them under “F”, so maybe I was inconsistent and there are more under “M”. We’ll find out at some point I guess.
Continue reading “Random Rejection: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, “The Light””So not long ago, having recently finished Mr. Robot, a show that, perhaps surprisingly, my wife really liked:
Wife: “Poor Elliot. His life sucks.”*
We started casting around for another program to become or “main course”, a position previously occupied by such luminaries as Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Halt and Catch Fire (my personal favorite, because computer nerds), The Wire, and Treme (but not The Magicians). Someone somewhere recommended another show we missed the first time around, Six Feet Under, so we decided to give that one a try.
So the other day, I happened to notice in of my feeds where someone posted a joke Magic: The Gathering card for Chuck Norris:
So this week (well, probably several weeks ago by the time this post appears) I was reading Way Station, a classic SF novel from the 1960s by Clifford D. Simak:
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: Clifford D. Simak, “Way Station””
Viscosity 