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Biggles retrouve von Stalhein
( Biggles retrouve von Stalhein in detail )
Okay, am v depressed by all the ongoing hoohah around AI and the people using it rather than their own brains, quite aside from Evil Exploitation aspect -
- but on intellectual pollution, having been moaning inwardly, banging the floor with my ebony cane and beating my head on my antimacassar for a considerable while over the awful errors that appear in prose because the word is correctly spelt but it is THE WRONG BLOODY WORD.
That the person who created that text has not picked up on, sigh, groan.
Insert here a lament for the decline in copy-editing and proof-reading, which might have spotted this sort of thing and corrected it.
I am a little worried that we are now have generations who do not know what words actually mean, because spell-check has not said anything .
This is brought to you by having encountered the term 'itinerary' deployed for something that is not, as far as I can see, a journey, but the programme/timetable for a meeting. Perhaps there is some sense of a progression to be made???
(The mermaids signing, each to each: that is why I cannot hear them.)
What should I do for July?
A custom bingo card/prompt list created (by me) from all my favorite tropes
17 (56.7%)
A personal challenge to finish older inbox prompts/unwritten prompts from past fests
8 (26.7%)
Find a prompt list from a previous (non-July) fest that I didn't do at the time, and use that
6 (20.0%)
Ask my flist for new prompts until I get 31 of them for fresh inspiration
11 (36.7%)
Run a comment fest over at the Biggles comm
7 (23.3%)
Something else that I will suggest in comments
0 (0.0%)
Anakin has the most boringly perfect master in the entire Jedi Order. Some masters go on interesting missions; Obi-Wan does diplomatic missions where he sits at a table and says, "Hm, well…" a lot till he gets his way. Some masters have showy, dangerous lightsaber styles; Obi-Wan does Soresu, which is as purely defensive as anything anyone has ever devised. Some masters are fully-rounded people who drink and laugh and dance; Obi-Wan stays in with his three best friends and talks about philosophy all night, because he is a perfect Jedi, and so are they.
What I read
Gail Godwin, Getting to Know Death: A Meditation (2024) - rather slight, one for the completist, which I suppose I am.
Robert Rodi, Bitch Goddess (2014): 'told entirely through interviews, e-mails, fan magazine puff pieces, film reviews, shooting scripts, greeting cards, extortion notes, and court depositions', the story of the star of a lot of dire B-movies who has a later-life move into soap-stardom. I hadn't read this one before and it was a lot of campy fun.
TC Parker, Tradwife (2024) - another of those mystery/thrillers which riffs off true-crime style investigation - somebody here I think mentioned it? - I thought it went a few narrative twists too far though was pretty readable up till then.
On the go
Apart from those, still ticking on with Upton Sinclair, Wide Is The Gate (Lanny Budd, #4), boy I am glad that I am reading these in e-form, because they must be monstrous great bricks otherwise. In this one he actually ventures back to Germany, his marriage starts to crumble, he continues his delicate dance between all the various opposed interests in his life while managing to get support to the anti-Nazi/Fascist cause, Spain is now in the picture, and I have just seen a passing mention to Earl Russell being sent down for his Reno divorce (that wasn't quite the story, but one can quite imagine that was what gossip might have made of it 30 years down the line).
Up next
New Literary Review.
The three books for the essay review.
I think more Robert Rodi might be a nice change of pace from Lanny's ordeals.