The Problem With Uranus

I was recently assigned a short story to read for a podcast, and it's not only got a mission to Uranus in it, but it's got Uranus in the title.

And I don't know if you're aware of this, but the name of that planet, at least in American, sounds somewhat like . . . well, I'll explain when you're older.

It's been a problem since before I was born, and will probably be a problem long after I'm dead, as long as there are dumbasses out there.  But it is hard to deliver in a serious way in a Science Fiction story, regardless of the tone of that story.

So, I tried pronouncing it the other way, I tried substituting the planet Neptune, and I tried to just be a grown up and read the story as though I weren't mentally ten years old.  But still, that word appears again and again, and . . . and nothing, I guess.  I suppose I just needed somebody to talk to about it.

Gotta say, that play on words positively wrecked 'em.

Exercise In Futility

At the beginning of the year, I set the goal of exercising 250 days in 2025.  October just ended, and here's my chart for the year-in-progress:

And lookie there, I have already reached my goal, with two months remaining.  Now I know what Big Anklevich much feel like when he does that insane writing spree thing he does so well.  

And I guess I can coast for the rest of the year.  Just like I planned.

Rish Outcast 313: In Security 6

Rish talks a little more about working at the library. In this volume, we get:

1) When a bomb threat calls
2) An exchange of puzzles
3) Sleeping beauty and the runaway toddler
4) The new librarian's new "friend"

Bonus . . . 5) Oh, no.

If you wish to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

If you wish to support me on Patreon, click HERE.

Logo by Gino "Gin Security" Moretto.

Crappy Halloween

So, I got an episode of the Outcast all ready to go for Halloween, uploading it and completing the blog post . . . only to realize days later than I never posted it.  So, that ain't great.

I ended up working on Halloween night, and it was fine (the library was probably the most dead I have ever seen it--is that irony?), but at one point, I looked at the monitors and I saw someone standing in the corner, their back to me, BLAIR WITCH-style.

I zoomed in, and the person didn't move, just standing there in the corner, like the end of that terrible, terrible film.  "What the fudge?" I might have said aloud.

I kept watching, hoping to understand what I was seeing.  And eventually, I did.  Turns out, the woman was using the outlet there to charge her phone, but was also looking at it.  

What fun.

Marshal & I Face A Terror From Beyond Space

Once again, Marshal Latham and I have reviewed an old movie, this one 1958's IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE on the Outfield Excursions show over at Journey Into...

This was not a great movie, but it did influence Ridley Scott's ALIEN (along with Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES), and tells the story of the first manned expedition to Mars, which encounters a deadly alien life form, which naturally stows away on the rescue ship.

Check out our review HERE.

Not To Fifty!

Early this summer, I got it into my sick head that I would record Fake Sean Connery either quoting a dozen or so movies, or quoting a dozen or so pop songs, and post them every so often on his Instagram page . . . to see if people had a good time trying to identify them. I picked half a dozen songs on the first day and recorded them up at the cabin, and did another half dozen the next week. And another five or so a week later.  I was having a good time.

By the time I started posting them, I had double the amount I had intended to do. Before long, I had recorded fifty of them, some easy and some hard. And I thought it would be interesting to count how many songs I had done from each decade (assuming the Eighties would rule . . . since, after all, the Eighties rule). Maybe that will be interesting to you as well.

1920s - 1
1940s - 1
1950s - 1
1960s - 4
1970s - 6
1980s - 19
1990s - 8
2000s - 3
2010s - 2
2020s - 5

To my surprise, I learned that Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon was released in the Sixties, not the Seventies.

To my further surprise, nobody out there gives a mechanic's lugwrench about my little endeavor. But I enjoyed it very much--so much so that I think I'll continue to at least one hundred, regardless of the apathy of any potential Instagram viewers/followers. Sometimes, you create art (or "art," in my case) for an audience of one.

I'll see you at the century mark.

Abbie and I Become Assassin's Apprentices

Have you ever read The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb?  I haven't, but a fan of Abigail Hilton's books recently mentioned that her favorite books were those by Abbie and "The Elderlings" series by Hobb.  Abbie forwarded me the comment (since the listener said she was a fan of my narrations of the books), and I asked her if she thought I'd like the Hobb books.

Abbie said she thought I would, and wondered if I'd want to do a podcast where we read the books and talk about them.*  So, I went out and got "The Assassin's Apprentice," which is the first book in the series, and I started reading just as soon as I finished the previous book I was enjoying.**

If you too would like to read the book, then, hey, we could be brothers.  Or sisters.  Or heroes.  And if you want, you can hear the first episode of our joint podcast HERE (Abbie's page) or HERE (my page), where Abbie and I exchange questions and answers in a way that may be entertaining to you (but I make no guarantees).

Note: Abbie is very smart (or very educated, or both), and that can be intimidating. But I enjoy hearing about her breadth of experience or knowledge, and don't feel insulted if she has to mansplain something to me. I imagine we'll get tons of that as we go on with the books, especially since she has read them (the first three, anyway) before and I haven't. Of course, Abbie doesn't know that Alex McCrindle played General Dodonna in STAR WARS, so, well, you know.

*I initially misrememebered ME being the one who suggested we podcast about it, but I was wrong.  As I was about spelling "misremembered."

**That one was Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel "Far From The Madding Crowd," which I honestly only read because they made a movie of it, an annoying habit I have.

Podcast That Dares 63: The Slizzers

Rish presents Jerome Bixby's 1953 tale, "The Slizzers." When his buddy lets his guard down at their usual poker game, Jerry discovers the man is not what he appears to be.

Guest-starring Big Anklevich as Fred!

Note: Episode 62 was for Patreon supporters only.  So there.

If you'd like to download the episode, Right-Click HERE.

Come support me on Patreon HERE.

Logo by Gino "The Scissors" Moretto.

Marshal and Rish Stop By The AIRPORT

Though it seems like a long time ago, Marshal sent me a DVD with the 1970 disaster movie AIRPORT on it. He figured we needed more Disaster movies under our belts, and this particular film was the daddy of a bunch of them.

There are a couple of tropes we recognize in that Disaster subgenre, and you can find them here . . . along with the part that people most remember George Kennedy for.  Check out our review/conversation HERE.

Object Of Unknown Origin

This is another post from a while back that I abandoned once nothing came of it, but as I was deleting the photo, I decided to jot it down anyway.  For you. 

Look, Damien, it's all for you!

Since I am always late for work, I sometimes leave books to return or what I'm going to eat for lunch in my car, and have to go down to the underground lot at some point to retrieve them. Since I am 92% unsupervised (and that number is rounded down), no one cares that I do this, and one of the many times I went down, I saw an object sitting against one of the garbage cans in the lot.

But I didn't know what it could be.

It was a black cylinder about eight inches tall and five wide, with a white cover or lid, and a curious blue button on the top. It looked like nothing I had ever seen before, except maybe a grenade in a Science Fiction movie (not totally dissimilar to the charges Han and Leia used to blow up the shield generator on Endor's moon).

People lose things every single day at the public library, and people toss their garbage on the ground even oftener, but this might have been either . . . or it might have been something else.

So, I took the above photo of it, and I sent it to my boss with the message, "Any idea what this is?"

Almost immediately, he texted back, "Tent lamp maybe?"

"Ah," I thought aloud, and went back to my desk.

But a minute later, I got a call from my boss (he's Head of Security), asking where I'd seen it and if I had left it there. I told him I assumed somebody lost it, so I left it, but I could take it to Lost & Found, if he wanted me to.

"It's not that," he said. "I'm just worried that somebody's going to see it and call the police."

"But you told me it was a tent l--"

"Yeah, but I'm not sure. Did you pick it up?"

"No," I said, not adding that I was a bit afraid to do so, just in case it was some kind of explosive (we had gotten a bomb threat around this time when I wasn't there, and I'm typing this the day after my nephew's high school [and the one just north of it] got a bomb threat).

He said I'd better go down and get it, in case visitors to the library were freaked out by it.*

Once I'd picked it up and examined the object, I realized that it was a harmless portable lantern, and tonight, as I was typing this up, I discovered that there's a battery-operated lantern almost exactly like it right here in the family cabin (except the one here is even more bomb-like in its shape and coloring, sinisterly enough). 

Inevitably, by the time I get fired from this job too, I will have racked up several more experiences like this. Hopefully, at least a little wisdom will come along with it.

Rish

*That's not an entirely unlikely scenario--twice in the short time I've worked there, people have come up to me to report an item suspiciously left alone somewhere in the library, and I was told of an incident a couple of years back where the bomb squad was called in to dispose of a worrisome package, only to discover it was something utterly banal and inexplosive, but after it had been collected by a robot and pre-detonated in a safe container.

No, I Mean That Literally

You think your life is a dumpster fire?

Well, you and the public library have something in common.

The fire department visited my workplace today as a tossed cigarette started a surprisingly-large fire in the recycling dumpster on the north side of the library.  

While waiting for the firemen to arrive, my coworker Abe ran out and pulled the flaming representation of the Michael Bay Transformers movies away from the building, where it quickly melted the entire container into a bubbling, stinking puddle of charred filth (see also, THE REVENGE OF THE FALLEN).

It did create quite a smell, and the entry doors are propped open as we speak to air out the building (though I can't say if *opening* the doors when the fire was outside makes scientific sense to me).  I can't say that I participated in putting out the fire in any way, but I did take a picture, and made three or four lame jokes about dumpster fires.

Oh, add this one to the list.