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!”Well You Did Ask
An actual recent conversation at our house, regarding some new food for our kitten, Oona, who continues to have mild gastrointestinal issues (i.e., soft poops):
Continue reading “Well You Did Ask”Aneurysms in the News
So I’ve posted a few times before about celebrity aneurysms, because when celebrities have them it makes the news and that’s a good way to raise awareness about things that may be lurking in peoples’ brains. Usually this has been in the context of those who’ve passed away from them, such as Tom Sizemore and Grant Imahara, but not long ago I saw several articles about Lauren Miller Rogen, the actor Seth Rogen’s wife, whose story went a little differently. Well okay a lot differently:
Continue reading “Aneurysms in the News”Not A Review Of “The Magicians”
So recently, having just finished the post-apocalyptic science fiction series Silo—which, believe it or not, my wife actually watched:
We found ourselves in need of another “heavy” show, “heavy” in this case referring kinda to subject matter, but also kinda to length. Since I’d had success with Silo, which was, of course, based on Wool, I thought, why not try another series based on a book I ‘ve read? Abracadabra! It’s The Magicians:
Incidentally, if you have neither read nor seen The Magicians, you are going to encounter some
if you keep reading. Granted these are not major spoilers as they appear in the first episode of the show and fairly early in the book as well. But still. Have all you spoiler-phobes averted your eyes yet? You have? Good, let’s continue.
Continue reading “Not A Review Of “The Magicians””Teaser Tuesday: “Storm Front”
So this week I was reading (or rather, as has been remarked, finally reading) Storm Front, the first book in the Dresden Files series, by Jim Butcher:
We Don’t Die We Wordiply
So lately I’ve been playing yet another word game, Wordiply, by The Guardian. The way this game works is that they give you a short series of letters (the instructional blurb below says it’s a “starter word” but it is most definitely not always an actual word) and then you have to come up with the longest five words you can think of that includes these letters. This is a more difficult task than you might expect.
Wall! Of! Bots!
It’s been a while since I posted any comments from what are clearly ChatGPT/LLM-type automata, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been saving them up; and since I was out of town recently, this seemed like a good time to queue them up for presentation. As usual, these comments came from the animals’ blog*, and are all of a kinda-on-topic-but-clearly-not-understanding-anything-except-Jack-and-shit-and-Jack-left-town nature. Ready? Let’s begin!
Continue reading “Wall! Of! Bots!”
Viscosity 