Friday, May 31, 2019

Battleship


    Once, as a kid, I was playing my older brother in Battleship, and lost because I couldn't find where he had stashed one of his two-space submarines.

    After the game was over, I demanded to know where he had placed that sub.  He replied that it was directly below one of his four-space battleships, and when I had called those squares, it only counted against the surface ship, not the sub.  According to him, I would've had to call those same two squares again to sink the second ship.

    I countered that the battleship, as it was sinking, would've crushed that frickin' sub on its way to the bottom of the sea.

    We never did resolve our differences of interpretation of the rules.

Thursday, May 30, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    I always wore a fanny pack when I exercised.  Water bottle.  Sunscreen.  Pocketknife.  PowerBar.  Handcuff picks.  And, finally, a palm-sized spray bottle of my own pepper spray concoction – Massachusetts regulated the purchase of Mace and I’m the kind of girl who appreciates her privacy, so instead, I’d invented my own high-test concoction.  No, Officer, I’m not carrying Mace.  What do you mean my attacker just went blind?  Huh.  Then I hope his publicly appointed defender knows how to prepare his reports in braille.


    (from Look For Me, by Lisa Gardner)

     8½*/10.  The full review is here.
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Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Heels


    Seriously, why??

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Aegilops


    A bodacious word.

Monday, May 27, 2019

Sunday, May 26, 2019

Nitpicking

    For the record, there is no hyphen in "nitpicking".

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Germophobia


    For all my germophobic friends.

Friday, May 24, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    Yes, men and women eat meals.  But they also ingest nutrients.  They grind and sculpt them into a moistened bolus that is delivered, via a stadium wave of sequential contractions, into a self-kneading sack of hydrochloric acid and then dumped into a tubular leach field, where it is converted into the most powerful taboo inhuman history.  Lunch is an opening act.


    (from Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach.

  9*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Thursday, May 23, 2019

The Dark Crystal - Age of Resistance


    Guess what's coming to Netflix this August!!

Wednesday, May 22, 2019

My First Computer


My first computer was a 386, which had just come out and was just barely starting to replace the 286's. It had a 40-meg hard drive, with 12 megs of that already taken up by MS-DOS. I felt like a pig in mud, having that much "free" hard drive space.

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Don't You Dare


    When editors have nightmares.

Monday, May 20, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    “I don’t understand why a man who can slay dragons wants to pick on someone half his size.”

    “Oh, I think I get it,” Myra winked.  “You know, I heard a sayin’ about men with big feet.  And Epik here’s got bigger feet than any man I’ve ever seen.”

    “What was the saying?” Gerdy asked, skeptically.

    “Was it that they wear big shoes?” Epik asked.  “Because I normally don’t wear shoes.”


    (from Hero in a Halfling by William Tyler Davis)

    7½*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Sunday, May 19, 2019

Séance Sunday


    Technology is constantly changing, and I have no doubt it has, and will, impact the metaphysical realm.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

The Neverending Story Mash-Up


    Can't remember from which movie the sweater-dude here is from, but the flying dog is from one of my favorite movies, The Neverending Story

Friday, May 17, 2019

Data


    Really, folks. The singular is "datum"; the plural are "data". Using "they" as a singular pronoun is justified when you want to "blur" whether the object of the pronoun is singular or plural, as in avoiding spoilers.

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    The sky was suddenly crowded with gigantic sparks and great luminous gas clouds.  The glitter of jam-packed stars, some so large they seemed to be broken-off pieces of Earth’s moon, and the shine of the clouds, awed them and made them feel pitifully microscopic and ill-made.

    Burton lay on his back on a pile of tree leaves and puffed on a cigar.  It was excellent, and in the London of his day would have cost at least a shilling.  He did not feel so minute and unworthy now.  The stars were inanimate matter, and he was alive.  No star could ever know the delicious taste of an expensive cigar.  Nor could it know the ecstasy of holding a warm well-curved woman next to it.


    (from To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip José Farmer)

    7*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Wednesday, May 15, 2019

My Favorite Avenger


    That's my answer, too.  Mrs. Peel in a black leather bodysuit was my teenage dream girl.

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Pi Digits


    Six3.14159.  Memorizing any more than that is just plain overkill.

Monday, May 13, 2019

Monday Pun Day


  Groan-worthy.

Sunday, May 12, 2019

Marketing


    I'm a chemist by trade.  This is also why they don't let chemists do marketing.  I could tell you stories. 

Saturday, May 11, 2019

Dilly Dallying and Lollygagging


    There is a difference between the two, albeit a subtle one.  Dilly dallying is aimlessly wandering around, while lollygagging is aimlessly idling in place.

Friday, May 10, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    “Oh, horrible!” I exclaimed to myself: “Does anyone really imagine that these motor-cars are as smart as the old carriage-and-pair?  I dare say.  I am too old now – but I was not intended for a world in which women shackle themselves in garments that are not even made of cloth.  To what purpose shall I walk among these trees if there is nothing left now of the assembly that used to meet beneath the delicate tracery of reddening leaves, if vulgarity and fatuity have supplanted the exquisite thing that once their branches framed?  Oh, horrible!”


    (from Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust)

  8*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Thursday, May 09, 2019

4,000 in Roman numerals


    Cute, but actually, no.  The ancient Romans had no symbol for 5,000, so they had no way to write "4,000".  I don't know why, nor what they did when they needed to write down a big number like that.

    Later on, in the Middle Ages and such, folks did "invent" a contrived symbol for bigger numbers in Roman numerals.  .One was a "V" with a line over it, to represent 5,000.  But hey, if the ancient Romans didn't use it, it doesn't count.

Wednesday, May 08, 2019

Famous Time-Travelers


    Not surprising.  I know for a fact that Billy Joel is a fellow time-traveler.

Tuesday, May 07, 2019

Shower Curtain


    Well, I'm gonna hafta get me one of these.  And we don't even have a shower curtain.

Monday, May 06, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    He was no fool, and could hardly have failed to notice that he was being obliquely invited to believe that Cadfael might, when confronted with his old sweetheart married to another, have so far succumbed to jealousy as to remove his rival from the world with his own hands.  Who, after all, knew the properties of herbs and plants better, or the proportions in which they could be used for good or ill?  God forbid it should enter any mind, Jerome had said piously, neatly planting the notion as he deplored it.


    (from Monk’s Hood by Ellis Peters)


    8*/10.  The complete review is here.
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Sunday, May 05, 2019

Psychic Fairs


    Back in my metaphysical days, I attended several Psychic Fairs here in the greater Phoenix area,  In those days, they were held in Scottsdale, sometimes indoors, sometimes outdoors.  One year I was even a participant, doing Tarot card readings for a couple dollars, all of which went to help with the costs of putting on the fair.

    And my thought always was, why does a psychic fair need to do any advertising?  Shouldn't anybody local who's psychic be able to feel the vibes about the upcoming fair, including where and when it's going to occur? 

Saturday, May 04, 2019

High Speed Blues


    This is why I get speeding tickets.

Friday, May 03, 2019

Baptizing Aliens


   Well, yes for Alf, no for ET.  And for Predator, whatever he wants, as long as he doesn't shoot me.  FWIW, this is a real book, available at Amazon in various formats, including digital.

    Seriously, from my Pentecostal days, the Fundamentalists hated this sort of question, preferring to believe that extraterrestrials don't exist.  They are probably wrong, but they will never be disproven , since intergalactic travel, particularly by living, sentient creatures, will most likely never happen. 

Thursday, May 02, 2019

Book Excerpt for the Day


    He had his arm around his girl of the evening, a short, thin, dark twenty-one-year-old from somewhere way out in the sticks.  (I’d carded her.)  I gave her a close look.  Jason didn’t know it, but she was a shape-shifter of some kind.  They’re easy to spot.  She was an attractive girl, but she changed into something with feathers or fur when the moon was full. I noticed Sam gave her a hard glare when Jason’s back was turned, to remind her to behave herself in his territory.  She returned the glare, with interest.  I had the feeling she didn’t become a kitten, or a squirrel.


    (from Dead To The World by Charlaine Harris)

    7½*/10.  The complete review is here.
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