Last week I posted my 2023 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2023 listening report from Last.fm. What was playing this year? If you guessed it’s largely the same as what was playing last year, you won’t be too far off. Let’s start with the big report, shall we?
Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2023 Edition”That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2023 Edition
So this year, as it does every year, Goodreads compiled a list of the books I read, making a nice little ― or not so little ― tapestry of covers, along with a few details. You can check out the list at Goodreads here, or look at the screen shots below. The advantage of visiting the list at Goodreads is that you can interactively click on individual books to see their entries; the advantage of viewing the screen shots is you get to go make a nice hot cup of tea while waiting for them all to finish loading. Let’s review a few notes about this year’s list!
Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2023 Edition”‘Tis The Christmas Spammer Season
Fa la la la la, la la la la!
Doctor, Where Are Your Pants?
So recently I was watching the third Doctor Who special of 2023, AKA The One Where the 15th Doctor Shows Up. Although my wife is not, as a general rule, interested in Doctor Who, I knew that she was curious about the new Doctor, although she did have some questions.
Wife: “What number Doctor is this? Fourteen?”
Me: “No, this is Fifteen. Thirteen was Jodie Whittaker, and then they brought back David Tennant as Fourteen, so the new one is Fifteen.”
Wife: “But didn’t David Tennant already play the Doctor?”
Me: “Yes, he was Ten. But he’s also Fourteen.”
Wife: “I don’t think they should give him a new number when he was already the Doctor before. He should be like 10A or something.”
But we’re not in charge of the numbering, so Ncuti Gatwa will be Fifteen. Besides, they probably used an integer for this variable, so can’t just go slapping a string on the end of it. Oh and, by the way, in case you need it …
Not A Review Of “The Haunting of Bly Manor”
So for a while, we had canceled our Netflix subscription, because we were watching a lot of stuff on other services and Netflix didn’t have anything going that I really wanted to watch. (I know, I know, everyone loves Squid Game, but that doesn’t interest me, and the reality show version of it interests me even less.) I finally decided to resubscribe because I wanted to watch Mike Flanagan’s new horror series The Fall of the House of Usher, which is, essentially, an anthology based on Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, novels, and poems. I almost convinced my wife to watch this one, on the basis of the fact that the Mike Flanagan shows I’ve seen on Netflix have been spooky but not gory, and my wife is known to enjoy the spooky creepy stuff on occasion (in fact, she is currently reading The Little Stranger); but then I heard from several friends that House of Usher was, in fact, quite gory, and, yeah, you can kind of see that in the trailer:
Continue reading “Not A Review Of “The Haunting of Bly Manor””Busy Busy Bots
So I know I said I took back all the bad things I said about ChatGPT, but I also said that was only going to last until I had accumulated a good number of obviously-AI comments and needed to do a post, and, well, that didn’t take long, did it? Shocker! As usual, these are mostly from the animals’ blog, and the saga of Bean accidentally becoming the owner of Twitter* by peeing on it continues to be the most popular target of AI comments. Gosh, I wonder why that might be … 🤔
Continue reading “Busy Busy Bots”Random Rejection: Maelstrom Magazine, “Love and the Tides of Darkness”
It’s been a while since I reached into my giant stack of rejection letters, so I decided it was time to consult the Gods of Randomness to see which section and document I should pull out and scan for everyone’s edification. This week, they chose the letter “M” and the eighth position, which is somewhat appropriate, since that rejection was for a short story called “Love and the Tides of Darkness” (hereafter “LatToD”) that I originally wrote specifically for an anthology called On the Eighth Day, the theme of which was something to the effect of “What happened after the end of the beginning of the Old Testament?”, or something like that. (Hey, it was a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly.) In a nutshell, the concept of “LatToD” is that, near the end of the 20th Century, a potential new Savior of Mankind is born. Heaven sends an angel to guard him, and Hell sends a demon to assassinate him; but the angel and the demon turn out to have been romantic partners, back before The Fall, and they end up getting so sidetracked in squabbling with each other that neither one of them carries out their mission, leaving said potential Savior to go ahead and completely screw up his life all on his own.
Continue reading “Random Rejection: Maelstrom Magazine, “Love and the Tides of Darkness””Teaser Tuesday: “New Watch”
So recently (well, by the time this appears, probably around a month) ago, I was reading New Watch, the fifth book in the “Night Watch” trilogy*, by Sergei Lukyanenko, translated from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield:
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “New Watch””
The Early Years: Peace on Earth and Nana How Old Are You?
So today I reached into the pile of old papers and whatnot that my folks sent out some time ago, and this is what I came up with. It may be a little bit early to put up a Christmas card, but hey, if Lowes can have their decorations out in September, I can post this. So there. Besides, it’s never a bad time for peace on earth, right?
Continue reading “The Early Years: Peace on Earth and Nana How Old Are You?”Happy Annieversary! Or Something!
So it was four years ago to the day that The Event occurred, in which there were various ways I could’ve died but I somehow managed not to hit any of them. Members of the brain aneurysm group I’m in often refer to this as their “Annieversary” or, occasionally, their “Second Birthday”; I’m going with “Annieversary” since it didn’t involve cake or funny hats. (It did involve noisemakers, though, in the form of machines that whirred and beeped and went “ping”.)
Readers who have been around a while may remember my six-part series about this, which I posted a few months after the fact, and of course I’ve linked back to the first installment any number of times. Since it so happens that this year my weekly posting day falls on my “Annieversary”, I thought I would repost the whole spectacle in its entirety. So, be advised: This will be a long post, because a lot of stuff happened over the course of that three weeks. Oh, and, so as not to stress anyone out about it, here’s a little spoiler for you: I didn’t die. Not even once.
Continue reading “Happy Annieversary! Or Something!”
Viscosity 