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.””Teaser Tuesday: “Earthseed”
So far, in 2021, I’m back to reading the books on my eReader in the order in which I acquired them, which means at the moment I’m excavating the sedimentary layers of 2017. Remember 2017? It was a bygone era when everyone still liked Game of Thrones and people were able to leave the house and travel just about anywhere they wanted and, apparently, I picked up a lot of bad books, mostly, I think, from BookBub and Amazon Prime First Reads*.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “Earthseed””Te Big Bang Teory
So since we’ve spent the last ten months or so basically never leaving the house (other than to take the animals to the vet when necessary), we have, unsurprisingly, been watching a lot of television. One show that we picked up—which, amazingly enough, we never watched when it was originally airing—is The Big Bang Theory. My wife refers to this show as “dessert”, i.e., a nice little marzipan confection to be consumed after watching something dark, say, an episode of His Dark Materials or I May Destroy You or Lovecraft Country* or, you know, the news.
Continue reading “Te Big Bang Teory”(Don’t) Cover Me
In keeping with last week’s musical theme … So, those who are very familiar with my wife’s musical tastes, or who have been at the studio when one is played, are likely to know that, for the most part, she hates cover versions of songs. (Covers of Fleetwood Mac songs are the recipients of extra special hate.) I do not share this low opinion of covers; in fact, some of my favorite songs are cover versions.
Continue reading “(Don’t) Cover Me”That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2020 Edition
Last week I posted my 2020 reading report from Goodreads; this week, it’s time for my 2020 listening report from Last.fm:
Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Music): 2020 Edition”That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2020 Edition
So as they do every year, the algorithm elves over at Goodreads have prepared an annual review of the books their users read and rated in 2020. Being a year when there was, shall we say, not a lot in the way of places to go or things to do, plus one in which I managed not to end up in the ICU for a while, one might think I would have read quite a bit more than in 2019, but in fact, I only read about 200 more pages. Maybe I was spending too much time watching the news …
Continue reading “That Was The Year That Was (In Books): 2020 Edition”Teaser Tuesday: Finite Jest
So I finished Infinite Jest, exactly when my reader estimated I would*. And thus we see that the jest is not infinite**.
The Early Years: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. Or Possibly Just Coming to Get You.
And All It Took Was A Pandemic
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely*—I acquired a board game called Zombies!!!
Viscosity 