It’s 1996 and I Can Probably Escape While the Zombie Ducks and Geese Are Finishing Off That Girl Over There

~ James Viscosi ~ 11 Comments
Braaaaaiiiiiins.

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!

So, Spelling Bee, I See You Too Watched “Six Feet Under”

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

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.

Continue reading “So, Spelling Bee, I See You Too Watched “Six Feet Under”” →

The Early Years: Robot … FROM THE FUTURE!

~ James Viscosi ~ 23 Comments

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:

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Meta AI, Making Sure To Focus On The Important Things

~ James Viscosi ~ 13 Comments

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
  • “I have no idea what Milo eats. Maybe flake?”2
  • “Did I mention that Trouble and Pooh Bear are dogs???”
  • “Maybe you should go look at their blog!”3

Well okay, I can get behind that last one at least.

  1. Which, do be fair, seem to be fairly reasonable duties for a Goldfish Inspector to have. ↩︎
  2. It wasn’t flake food. It was probably pellets, most likely from Hikari. ↩︎
  3. If you saw all this and said to yourself, “Self, I bet the animals are going to get a lot of mileage out of this as part of Oona’s on-again, off-again feud with ‘Zuckerbot‘, congratulations! You have been around here for more than five minutes. ↩︎

Not A Not A Review Of “Daredevil”

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

So recently I’ve started watching the old Netflix Daredevil series, which is now a Disney+ series, because I want to get caught up before I watch the Disney+ Daredevil series Born Again, since the “Born Again” story arc is my favorite Daredevil one from the Marvel comic, but which, as I understand it, is not really a straight-up adaptation of the “Born Again” storyline but is, instead, a mash-up of some other storylines*, and they decided to use the title just to lure in suckers like me. Whew! Did you follow all that? If so, congratulations. You may be able to read a comic book without getting totally confused as to what’s going on.

Oh, and, before we continue …

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That’s Right, Morgoth, There’s No Such Word As This.

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

(I will cop to trying this word a couple of times before remembering that it has everything to do with The Silmarillion and nothing to do with poling boats around the canals of Venice.)

Not A Review Of “Murderbot”

~ James Viscosi ~ 13 Comments

So recently, having finished up with all available seasons of The Serpent Queen*, we found ourselves in need of a new show to watch, possibly one that would blend drama and black comedy like TSQ did. Or maybe one that would blend science fiction and black comedy. Enter Murderbot.

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Spoiler Alert: It Isn’t.

~ James Viscosi ~ 3 Comments

Hodor?

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

Hodor hodor hodor hodor*. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.
Hodor hodor.

Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor!

Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.
Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor?

Hodor hodor.

Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.
Hodor hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor. Hodor?
Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.

Hodor hodor. Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.
Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor.
Hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor hodor!

Hodor hodor hodor? Hodor hodor.

*For all you non-former-Game-of-Thrones-watchers out there:

Lies, Damn Lies, and ChatGPT: The Chattening

~ James Viscosi ~ 17 Comments

So a while back, I had done a series of posts in which I had asked ChatGPT about a certain vizsla dog whose blog was much more famous than this one, and its responses ranged from semi-accurate to outright fabrication. In the intervening years I have been using ChatGPT off and on to amuse myself with important questions like “If all the most iconic Kurt Russell characters were dropped into the film Aliens, in what order would they get killed or cocooned and which would be the last one left to defeat the aliens at the end?”*, because it’s fun to see what it comes up with; but recently, the animals’ large friends over at the Leonberger Life blog posted the results of asking ChatGPT about their Leonberger Bronco, and the results were interesting; so I thought I would give ChatGPT another chance to lie about Dennis. To wit:

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