This one is a fellow writer from a discord I belong to, very thoughtful and far-ranging person: https://carolinefurlong.wordpress.com/

This is a prepper’s blog that some writers from the same discord have contributed guest posts to: https://bluecollarprepping.blogspot.com/

Been playing with the Midjourney art AI for the giggles, and discovered that using Basil Gogos (Famous Monsters of Filmland cover artist) and Lisa Frank (she of the 1980s/1990s technicolor unicorn trapper keepers) in the prompts yielded some interesting results:

Creature From the Black Lagoon

Continue reading “Midjourney Monday: The Trapper Keeper Collaboration Between Basil Gogos and Lisa Frank” →

I refer you to last years post for clarification: https://jaglionpress.com/2022/07/13/happy-13th-of-july/

My last Vella related post implied that anyone could crown a story once a week. Actually, it’s tied to purchasing more tokens: the Sunday after your last purchase of tokens, you will have the opportunity to crown one story. I apologize for the error.

For the 103rd birthday of the British gentleman and the 116th birthday of his American friend, I thought I’d link to some lighthearted musical performances from these highly cultured individuals. Disclaimer: I’m mostly doing this as a companion piece to yesterday’s post; there is no guarantee that I will be doing equivalent tributes to the three horror gents on May 26 and 27 in 2024 or subsequent years.

Continue reading “Birthday Tribute to Sir Christopher Lee and Vincent Price” →

This person doesn’t strike me as particularly clever or admirable – note the moment late in this article where she, a white woman, Has Opinions about what jokes black men ought to laugh at. But in this article she touches on legitimate concerns about the way internet advertisers seem to get access to everything a smart phone+social media can tell them about specific individuals. Her language is at times almost superstitious, but that too is interesting as an insight into how superstition arises, from attempts to create mental models explaining what one does not understand.

My own advice to anyone trying to outfox the advertisers is to go wide with the number of your interests and narrow with the focus of them. For instance, I’ve watched at least excerpts of every surviving Jane Austen adaptation not set in contemporary times, plus read all seven books (if Northanger Abbey counts, then so does Lady Susan) at least once and 80% of Georgette Heyer; but I’m not super interested in a). Downton Abbey, b). The Crown, c). steamy Regency romances, or d). Charles Dickens, so a lot of ads that are aimed at me because the advertisers think interest A means interest B ends up being way off target.

If this sound like the best way to confuse online advertisers is to be an annoying, finicky hipster, well, here’s some humbler advice. Avoid social media as much as possible and avoid clicking on internet ads at all costs. Watch foreign language programming as much as you stand, from as many cultures/languages as you can stand, because few things are funnier than being served Spanish language ads right after you were watching the Italian language series Don Matteo. Engage with real life people about things that don’t particularly interest you and bring your phone along; the resulting confusion in the ads is hilarious.

Let’s move to Bray Studios, they said. That way if Sir Christopher Lee decides to lodge a protest from the afterlife, he’ll show up in Victorian evening wear instead of wizard’s robes, they said.

Incidentally, I get really tired of Lee’s fans going all CHOSEN BY TOLKIEN HIMSELF about Lee’s involvement in the LOTR movies. According to Lee, he sent Tolkien a fan letter mentioning that he was an actor who would like to play Gandalf someday. Tolkien wrote back “giving him permission” to play Gandalf. This sounds consistent with Tolkien’s somewhat stiff and unenthusiastic tone in published letters dealing with LOTR adaptation attempts.

Tolkien was not a big movie goer. There is a story about him chatting up Ava Gardner at a party without having the faintest idea who she was. It’s unlikely that he recognized Lee’s name or had seen enough of his work to have an opinion about said work.

Sir Christopher made a good Saruman. He would have made a better Saruman if the filmmakers had leaned into the Saruman traits he could identify with: the gifted man who’s confident in his abilities but feels like he’s not getting a fair shake from the people around him. He would also have been an excellent Gandalf. But enough with CHOSEN BY TOLKIEN HIMSELF.