Teaser Tuesday: “Across the Universe”

So this week I was reading Across the Universe, a YA/SF novel by Beth Revis, in which colonists from Earth are loaded into a gigantic spaceship and sent to Alpha Centauri to see about setting up shop there:

🎵 Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup … 🎵
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Apparently I’ve Been Watching “Doctor Who” For Too Long

So recently, the regular-season programming* for Jodie Whittaker’s final run as The Doctor aired on the AMC+ streaming service**. My understanding is that she will appear in a few more specials, but otherwise, this is the end for the first female Doctor, and she went out with a bang with a series called “Flux”, a six-part story about (you guessed it!) the potential destruction of the universe. Another day, another apocalypse.

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Not a Review of “Nothing in Common”

As I’ve mentioned several times, for the last few months we’ve been watching the AMC series Mad Men, which has proven to be of Breaking Bad-level addictivity for my wife; and so I thought it might be fun to subject her to another piece of fiction set largely in and around the world of advertising, namely, the old Tom Hanks/Jackie Gleason film Nothing in Common:

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Inaudible the Agency

So as I’ve mentioned once or twice, for a while now we’ve been watching Mad Men* streaming on AMC+. I haven’t done a “Not a Review” of it, mainly because it never puts my wife to sleep, barring extenuating circumstances, such as starting an episode right before bedtime (and even then she still might stay awake for it). This puts it right up there with Breaking Bad** and The Queen’s Gambit*** on the short list of “Shows That Never Put My Wife To Sleep”, but also leaves me with not much to write about it, since I, of course, don’t do actual reviews myself, on account of I like everything. Except August Rush.

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Teaser Tuesday: “The Gone-Away World”

So this week I was reading The Gone-Away World, by Nick Harkaway:

Not to be confused with the Offspring song
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Not A Not A Review Of “Le Week-End”

So recently we watched the film Le Week-End, in which a very English and very bickering couple played by Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan decide the take the train down to Paris for the weekend, as one is able to do when one lives in Europe, apparently.

Partway through the film they bump into Ian Malcolm Jeff Goldblum—forever known to my wife as “The Jurassic Park Guy“—who plays an old college friend of Jim Broadbent’s character who has now become a successful author. Jeff Goldblum invites the other two to a book launch party, or something, at his apartment, various things happen, and then, as Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan were leaving the apartment at the end of the evening, I suddenly had to pause the video and back it up a little.

Wife: “What are you doing?”
Me: “I think I spotted something.”

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We’re Making Good Words Go Bad

So as I’ve mentioned a number of times, we got in the habit years ago of watching television and movies with the subtitles turned on, because when Dennis the Vizsla got to be a Little Old Man Dog he would, on occasion, decide it was Time To Go To Bed, and when he decided that, he would stand in the living room loudly proclaiming it. (His brother Tucker, on the other hand, when he was a Little Old Man Dog, would just hie himself off to bed and burrow under the covers on his own. Tucker liked to take the initiative that way.)

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Teaser Tuesday: “The Boy Who Lost Fairyland”

So this week I was reading The Boy Who Lost Fairyland, the next-to-last entry in Catherynne M. Valente’s “Fairyland” series (not counting a couple of interstitial short stories):

🎵 … and when the wombat comes, he will find me gone … 🎶
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Not A Review Of “Dune (2021)”

So this week we started watching the new version of Dune:

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Spamcommentology, Part V: Porn (You Knew It Was Coming*)

So this week we’ve arrived at the climax** of my Spamcommentology series, with a very common sort of spam comment. I would ask the reader to take a wild guess what this category is, but since I already bared it all in the title, I’ll just get right down to it! (Incidentally, this kind of spam always includes links, but I’ve taking the liberty of stripping said links from the screen shots.)

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