So this week I was reading Burnt Worlds, a science fiction novel by S.J. Madill, in which the spaceship Borealis tests out a new hyperspace jump drive by leaping 35,000 light years away from home, whereupon said jump drive promptly explodes, leaving the ship facing a multi-year journey to get back. Of course, they only packed enough supplies for a day trip. Whoops.
So last week, which ended with one of the let’s call it boomier of US holidays, we indulged in our annual tradition of finding something noisy to watch so that Lulu (and, to a much lesser extent, Bean) wouldn’t notice and/or be disturbed by all the popping and whooshing and whizzing and banging going on outside. This year, the selection was Captain American: Brave New World, AKA the one with the Red Hulk1:
For context, I’ve been scanning old prints and negatives (a project I’ve been meaning to do for years, and was finally motivated to start for due to family reasons), and sometimes I find ones that lend themselves to captions. Usually these involve my wife, who you may remember from such “Not a Review” posts as “Not a Review of Game of Thrones” and “Not a Review of Battlestar Galactica”. I have been posting these on Facebook from time to time but it finally occurred to me that I could also post them here. After all, this is supposed to be a blog about words, right? And a picture is worth a thousand words? So all I need is forty or fifty pictures and bam! I’ve got a novella.
BTW, don’t worry about her. It turned out the zombie ducks and geese were vegetarians.
The elusive wife, some 30-odd years ago, in the blockbuster horror sequel 28 Ducks Later. See? She does exist!
I was fully prepared for Spelling Bee to reject the word “Ecotone“1. Imagine my consternation when it was accepted and (almost) ruined my scheme to get a quick-n-dirty post out of it.
This week’s entry in the list of “Things Jim Pulled Out Of His Pile Of Old Villains & Vigilantes Stuff” is the character sheet for a giant killer robot from the future named Orion. You can tell this is a little newer than some of the others because it is printed with the latest in high-quality dot matrix technology, as befits a Robot … FROM THE FUTURE! Check it out:
Me: (Posts a 30-year-old picture of our cats staring at our goldfish, Milo, in his bag) Meta AI: “Oooh! Hey! I know all about Milo! Want to hear his story? I know his favorite food! Really I do! Did you ever want to be a Goldfish Inspector? Let’s see what their duties are! Also if you would like to book an appointment for Trouble and Pooh Bear to come and inspect your goldfish, just let me know!”
Also Meta AI:
“Milo is probably a goldfish and Trouble and Pooh Bear are dogs.”
“Let me just make up some stuff about what a Goldfish Inspector might do.”1
Viscosity 