Dr Vandermast

@drvandermast.bsky.social

2712 Followers 2551 Following

Writer of this and that. Reader of the other. Not a doctor, and my name isn't Vandermast. Generative AI is theft. https://tinyurl.com/jasonmillshq

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir.
Peter Bruegel the Elder's painting, Hunters in the Snow.
Charles Fort's Book of the Damned. Cover depicts at least three figures engaged in peculiar goings-on.
Alistair Sim.
Sunfish.
An African History of Africa, by Zeinab Badawi.
Headline: Trump says no foul play in Lindsey Graham's death.
Brueghel's Fall of Icarus.
An African History of Africa, by Zeinab Badawi.
Elegy in Blue by Mark Helprin. Review by Jason Mills. Grateful for his life, his time with Clare, His precious son, our doomed investment banker Narrates his love of Brooklyn’s timeless air, Waiting for his killers without rancour. A life not less well lived for scars of death, Not yet bereft by flames that stripped it bare Of art and wealth and love, of all but breath, Can summon murder, offered like a prayer. Lyrical as ever, Helprin’s prose, Refulgent, playful, rich and unashamed (Like its narrator), positively glows, Painting Brooklyn by one window framed. This elegy (perhaps it’s Mark’s swan song?) Is graceful, wise, immersive, not too long!
Story about Farage asking Reform activists to focus on Clacton rather than Manchester.
Count Binface. Isn't he cute?
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
Pride and Prejudice in Sonnets. By Jason Mills.
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
People of the Book: Sonnets in the Christian Mythos. By Jason Mills.
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
People of the Book: Sonnets in the Christian Mythos. By Jason Mills.
Resplendent Riddles. By Jason Mills.
Jessica Alba in the TV series Dark Angel standing on the Space Needle.
Mark Helprin, Elegy in Blue.
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
On the Origin of Species, in Sonnets. By Jason Mills.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K Dick Review by Jason Mills San Francisco’s not the one we know. The Japanese, politely, are in charge. Down south they grin and welcome back Jim Crow. Up east, the Fatherland must still enlarge. The rockets of the Reich arch o’er the bay. America’s remembered in antiques. Jewellers fumble blindly to the Way. The oracle of other futures speaks. Yin and Yang, I Ching, what can it mean? Julianna knows something’s amiss. The Nazis ban the book, but all have seen: Whatever world should be, it isn’t this. Savage violence has to be contained: When fascists win, reality is strained.
Portable Magic. By Emma Smith.
The Dreams of a Seahorse: Fantasy Poems. By Jason Mills.
Pride and Prejudice in Sonnets. By Jason Mills.
The Calm Before The Storm: A Prequel To The Tempest. By Jason Mills.
Resplendent Riddles. By Jason Mills.
The Man in the High Castle. By Philip K Dick.
Sonnets in Sand: A Salute to The Sandman. By Jason Mills.
The Science Fiction Tarot: Luminous Symbols of All the Tomorrows to Come. Edited by Brandon Butler.
Rick Wakeman's Country Airs. Sleeve shows a woodland stream.
The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K Dick. Woman running down city street away from authoritarian face in the sky.
The Ascent of Rum Doodle by WE Bowman. Review by Jason Mills. Forty thousand feet and then six inches! Rum Doodle is the planet’s highest peak! Our heroes are undaunted, no man flinches (Though lassitude strikes Burley, Prone is weak, Shute can't photograph, nor Wish take measure, Constant is confused and Jungle’s lost), Eager to surmount that tallest treasure, Heedless of terrain, champagne and cost! With porters, Bing (the Bang) and Pong for cooking, They struggle up and down the camps and slopes, Reckless, feckless, boldly forward-looking, Inspiring as they dangle on their ropes. A happy parody of mountaineering That has the reader chuckling first, then cheering.
The River in the Sky by Clive James. Review by Jason Mills. In his closing months, this man of letters Tangos round the memories of his life: The traveller whose limbs affliction fetters Is loosed in mind at least by Muse’s knife. A bee that flits from rose to dandelion, Whose journey is the tale, no more, no less, This fatherless antipodean scion Delights to recollect and then digress. The verse is blank, the crafting unobtrusive, The topics ranging wide in time and place; His bounding thoughts are culturally allusive, A last trip through the caves in search of grace. This river is a wormhole to Andromeda. (Perhaps with waters clearer if ’twere comma’der!)
Cartoon showing spiv shyster Farage disingenuously pontificating about the Nowak murder with a faux-outrage he's incapable of experiencing, then clamming up like the grifting coward he is when challenged about the highly suspect substantial undeclared donations that fund his reckless workshy lifestyle.
Excerpt: Yet everything began in those few thousand Pages of print and plates. Books are the anchors Left by the ships that rot away. The mud The anchors lie in is one's recollection Of what life was, and never, late or soon, Will be again.
Yet everything began in these few thousand Pages of print and plates. Books are the anchors Left by the ships that rot away. The mud The anchors lie in is one's recollection Of what life was, and never, late or soon, Will be again.
Updating reality... 94%
Eastern Wind, by Chris de Burgh.
Largely destroyed poster in shop window, leaving only the letters ART.
Resplendent Riddles. By Jason Mills.
The Known World by Edward P Jones. Review by Jason Mills. A tapestry of cloth, of paint, of clay, Of bondage, tension in the warp and weft; A patchwork quilt of grievance and dismay; A panelled map of where no freedom’s left. A small plantation, worked by twenty slaves And owned by one now free, is at the heart Of scores of tales, and how each soul behaves Is hobbled, dragged behind the slaver’s cart. Rich men, sheriffs, farmers, overseers, Lives defined and bound by unseen chains: A panorama broad in trials and years, A world long gone of which too much remains. So many jigsaw pieces need connecting, But still, the book’s impressive and affecting.
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
Pride and Prejudice in Sonnets. By Jason Mills.
Resplendent Riddles. By Jason Mills.
The Ascent of Rum Doodle, by WE Bowman.
The Wasp Factory, By Iain Banks. Review by Jason Mills. A comedy of terrors, this wasp factory, A grand guignol of cruelty and death: Young Frank obsessed with fluids, flesh, phylactery And grisly gear to horrify Macbeth. His brother is a different kind of crazy; His father is a twisted S.O.B. Whose memory's conveniently hazy, This island's Prospero by Scottish sea. As carnage past and present is recounted, Dark mysteries at last must come to light. Defence by private magic must be mounted, And counting sheep won't help Frank sleep at night. It's vivid and appalling without doubt. I'm just not certain what this yarn's about!
Life In Earnest: In honour of Sir David Attenborough. By Jason Mills. And in these jungles, nowhere else... But if we lift this rock, we find... Yet courtship for these birds is slow... So lizards in this cave are blind... For half a century, this man has been the best of BBC; He's squared the circle, squeezed the globe into the oblong of TV. The whale that wails, the fish that flies, the sloth that sleeps, the squid that squirts, Have landed in our living rooms with safaris and safari shirts. With cautious glee, he whispers to us, lying clasped within the arms Of a family of gorillas who can't resist his humble charms. We too are charmed to trust in nature's finest representative: He shows us life on Earth, but more than that, he shows us how to live. Behind that erudition, mischief underlies his schoolboy smiles – Eighty-odd years old, still turning stones and prodding crocodiles.
The Tremolo Diaries: Life on the Road and Other Diseases by Justin Currie. Our chronicler, beset by something chronic, Parkinson’s that undermines self-worth, Supports Bare Naked Ladies, Semisonic, Across America; supports the Earth, It seems, upon his shoulders, for his struggle Is mirrored by his stricken partner’s plight, So misery and music he must juggle, Hunting for his balance every night. Galleries, museums, coffee, strolling Feed him, fend off burdens, fill his days, With Simple Minds in Europe rock ’n’ rolling, Negotiating problems, finding ways. Sharp, clear-eyed and witty, Justin Currie Sings while he still can, adjusting worry.
Advent of Christmas: Sonnets of the Season. By Jason Mills.
The Tremolo Diaries: Life on the Road and Other Diseases. Justin Currie.
Sign says: Craven "A" will not affect your throat.
Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers by Emma Smith. Books, we find, are portable magicians, Dangerous in form as well as text: Ubiquitous Armed Services Editions; Algonquin converts by their book perplexed; Bacon going down with the Titanic; Gutenberg not quite the man we know; Oaths and cures by volumes talismanic; Mein Kampf the fascist screed we can't forgo; The book in portraits, inner self projected; Games with form, adventures you must choose; Silent Spring, its status long-perfected; Orton’s camp improvements in the news; Chatterley, Lolita, Ulysses; Books as kindling, collage, corpse and cheese!
Resplendent Riddles. By Jason Mills.
The Bible in Limericks: Each Chapter in Verse. By Jason Mills.
Justin Currie's The Tremolo Diaries.