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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I am reading (and enjoying) the final Laundry novel (_The Regicide Report_) by @cstross.bsky.social -- and for some reason I have the "What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor" stuck in my head...

Photo of 2 lines of text from a printed book:
"What am I going to do with the vampire vicar?
Quite a lot, as it turns out..."

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I'm re-reading @theodoragoss.bsky.social 's Athena Club books and this popped up in the Far Side archive (www.thefarside.com/2026/09/10) and it's remarkably on the nose.

A Far Side cartoon with the caption "The curse of mad scientist's block" - a scientist stands staring at a blackboard, chin in hand. A brain and a face float in jars behind them. The blackboard has a bunch of crossed-out ideas: "Put a gorilla brain in a cow's head", "Switch Mr. Rodger's brain with a maniac's"; "Take my cousin's brain, inject it with the DNA from a wolverine and toss it"; "Build a giant robot, install some serrated mandibles on the end of"; "Take a giant squid and cross"....

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

@catsofyore.bsky.social this seems relevant to your interests: a friend just posted that they found this book in their attic: www.abebooks.com/Little-Kitte... -- there's a lovely dedication page, too:

Dedication page:

Dedicated to all the little kittens who posed for the pictures in this book

Note: These unusual photographs of real kittens were made possible only by patient, unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

I'm slowly re-reading through @cstross.bsky.social 's _Laundry Files_ so I can read the just-released series-ender, and (a) I forgot how much funnier Mo is than Bob, and (b) I came across this. I can only assume this was a deliberate plant (rather than a later-chosen opportunity). <chef's kiss>

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

My favorite version of this is from Emma Bull's _Territory_, wherein one of the main characters is learning the ropes as a reporter in Tombstone, Arizona:

2 paragraphs from Emma Bull's _Territory_, when one of the main characters is learning to be a reporter in one of Tombstone, Arizona's newspapers:

She read them as he waited. He'd re-moved words as a gardener might prune the topiary. He'd cut phrases that separated facts from their meaning. He'd made work-manlike sentences graceful, and made halting paragraphs flow. She'd thought he was making her work his own. Instead he'd made it into what she'd meant it to be.
She handed the pages back. No, not pages - *copy*. "I see." What she wanted to say was, "I have been given a revelation," but she didn't think Richard Rule would be comfortable in the role of a literary burn-ing bush.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

💯 (county-level stuff, too) @marklevinenyc.bsky.social posted this (on Xitter, not here, come on, Mark) that pushes it the other way:

A post from Xitter by @MarkLevineNYC, caption "Every person in American Politics should be forced to look at this map"

An image of the united states broken down into 2 colors, red and light blue, each of which contributes 50% to GDP. The light blue are small-area, large-population metro areas like SF, LA, Boston, NYC-Philadelpha-Washington, Chicago, Raleigh-Durham, Seattle, etc.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 28/09/2025

The one that absolutely slew me (on a re-read) is from _Paladin's Faith":

Having grown up in Anuket City, Marguerite was familiar with many clockwork creations, not to mention all the ways that they could go horribly wrong. (Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it was an explosion. The hundredth time, it ran amok and stabbed innocent by-standers, and the artificer would be left standing there saying, "But I had to put blades on it, or how would it rake the leaves?" while the gutters filled up with blood.)

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 26/01/2025

This was the one where I nope'd out of Spelling Bee, from June 2022:

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

This is too good not to repost. @effinbirds.com and @murderbotbot.bsky.social , two great tastes that go great together.

Two juxtaposed Bluesky posts. Top: @effinbirds.com, with a lovely woodcut of a bird on a branch, text: "forgive me for wondering why the fuck you're still here". Bottom: @murderbotbot.bsky.social saying "Sometimes I wonder what the point of it all is."

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 18/01/2025

May you have better instructions than these (which I can only read as "don't drop this on your junk"):

An IKEA "warnings" cartoon from an IKEA assembly manual. 4 panels, 2 of them "normal": "I am puzzled by this", "so I will call IKEA for help". The other two are "I am kneeling next to this unit smiling, touching it with one hand" and the final is "I am kneeling next to this unit frowning, my arms behind my back, a crack in the corner of the unit, and a big X mark over it". That final panel looks like the person dropped the unit on part of their anatomy, possibly their genitalia.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 17/01/2025

Our orange tortie cat, Pippin, either hides in cardboard (a remarkably good camouflage for her shade of orange), or sits on blue or purple to really stand out. So yes. (Example of color coordination for cat tax.)

Pippin, an orange tortie cat, sits on top of a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) housed in a narrow side table, in the corner of a room painted a rich orange.)

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

I am not my cousin's keeper. (A dear friend made this for me. 😊)

Simpsons "don't make me tap the sign" meme: 2 panels one over the other. Top panel: bus driver saying "Don't make me tap sign". Bottom panel: bus driver's hand pointing to a sign that has been edited to say "I am not my cousin's keeper".

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 22/12/2024

Obligatory foone repost (not going to link to Xitter though):

foone
@Foone
friendly reminder since this is going around again: DO NOT EAT THE RICH!
it's called bio-magnification, people! the rich are at the top of the food
chain, so they accumulate toxins from their food at a greatly increased
rate. Instead, /compost/ the rich.

4:05 PM · Jun 29, 2018

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 03/11/2024

I have been obsessively rereading @tkingfisher.com books over the past few weeks, to keep myself from twitching. This quote is such an amazing distillation of why I love the World of the White Rat so much.

A quote from Paladin's Hope, by T. Kingfisher:

The older woman looked up at him with too-bright eyes. " The gods take care of you, son."
The corner of Piper's lip twisted up. "I hope so," he said, "but until then, we've got to take care of each other."

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 30/10/2024

For national cat day, Abby says "hi". Also "you don't get to use your backpack."

Abby, a Himalayan cat (light brown fur with dark points, like a Siamese cat, and bright blue eyes) lies on top of my black LL Bean backpack, which in turn lies on top of a blue comforter on a bed.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 15/10/2024

Today's Far Side replay (from 1990) is amazingly apropos for today's political climate. www.thefarside.com/2024/10/15/3 "In the corner, Vance was putting the move on two females—unaware that his fake hood had begun to slip."

A far side cartoon of a stereotypical party in a room full of hooded snakes (Cobras?). One of them has a fake hood (what looks like a pot lid with a handle around the snake's body); he is talking to two snakes with cartoon-ish female signifiers (long eyelashes, "librarian" horn-rimmed glasses).

Caption: In the corner, Vance was putting the move on two females—unaware that his fake hood had begun to slip.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 17/06/2024

If you see this, post a picture you took of a sunset

View of a street facing west, with the sun going down, lighting up clouds from below. A pair of red traffic lights looks like demonic eyes.

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 12/05/2024

Coraline reference on SNL! (2nd day running of me tagging @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com . Not planned, honest.) youtu.be/Ttska8oXZP4?...

SNL cast member Michael Longfellow, playing a teacher in a sketch. "I wore a yellow raincoat on a rainy day, and the sixth graders called me Coraline."

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 11/05/2024

This is my favorite line from #DeadBoyDetectives (which is a story from @neilhimself.neilgaiman.com 's Sandman universe). It's almost like Murderbot as a ghost. I really enjoyed this show.

A picture of a stereotypical Pacific Northwest Lighthouse Keeper (tall white guy wearing a sweater and cap), who is a ghost, with SUPER intense eyes, saying "If I wanted to be around people, I'd haunt a Denny's."

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JD (not that one) Paul (not that one) @rantingnerd.bsky.social · 26/01/2024

Our Pippin once pressed Control-A (select all) and then "az", deleting an entire document I was presenting to a meeting....

Pippin, an orange tortie cat, sits on a keyboard tray next to a keyboard.

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