The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"

@robtomshany

Reply guy turned alt-text scold. Film buff (esp. animated, funny or arty stuff), music nut (polyjamorous), fan of sf/fantasy/comics. Favors extending freedom to people who can't take freedom for granted, opposes putting people "in their place". He/him

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The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· 20d

My favorite recent reference to the Goya painting:

"Little Nuns" color cartoon panel #1556, "A Girl Devouring Her Hamburger". In the center is a painting of the nun known as "Hungry", dressed in country denim and flannel, kneeling and taking a big bite out of a huge hamburger; the depiction is strongly reminiscent of the famous Goya painting "Saturn Devouring His Child". Surrounding the painting are four of the "little nuns" in their regular habits except where noted, along with several animals including a sleeping mama duck nomming on her alarmed offspring (echoing the Goya painting once again). To the right are "Spicy" (wearing an "artistic" beret and an apron over her habit, along with several paint smudges and a small smile of quiet pride) and "Froggy" (looking away from the painting, a hint of a smirk within her usual scowl); on the left are a delighted "Clumsy" (pulling on the arm of someone otherwise out of the panel and pointing at the painting as though saying, "You've got to see this!") and the subject of the painting herself (holding a burger out of which she's just taken a bite, and looking up at the painting with an expression of irritation as though thinking, "I'm in this artwork and I don't like it").

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· 24d

Andy Burnham unveils his new Minister For AI

Mark Gustafson's stop-motion animated character "Mr. Resistor" (a humanoid figure made from pieces of metal and plastic scrap)

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· 25d

I'm going to have to finally see the John Carter movie; I'd forgotten Samantha Morton was in it until I looked up her recent filmography after seeing her as Circe in The Odyssey yesterday. (Excellent performance, BTW.)

The Thark (green Martian) known as Sola in the 2012 John Carter movie (motion capture performance by Samantha Morton)

Samantha Morton as Circe in the 2026 movie The Odyssey, seated with two of Odysseus's men behind her

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· 29d

Show me a comic page you love, no context.

A Sunday "Peanuts" comic strip. On a cloudy winter day over the course of five panels, a solitary Linus makes a number of snow person about half his height, putting great care and attention to detail into his task. In the fifth panel it's clear he has arranged the snow person into some sort of pattern, but the panel is staged so we cannot see it in full. In the sixth panel Linus rolls a large snowball about the height of his chest, and in the seventh he squares it off and angles the top a little so it resembles a lectern. In the final panel several dozen of Linus's snow people are arranged in a lightly curved set of rows as though in a lecture hall or amphitheater, all facing up at Linus (standing behind the snow lectern), who addresses them - "I suppose you're all wondering why I've asked you here today.."

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· 29d

The Godfather.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jul 11

face I’m submitting for my bluesky verification

Extreme close-up of an electrical outlet, resembling a highly abstracted mouth and pair of eyes

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jul 10

Alt-text:

A poem by Joseph Fasano entitled "Rumi". (ALL CAPS are used for some lines here to substitute for italics.)

In a dream I asked him
WHAT CAN I DO
IF I CAN'T CHANGE IT

and he pointed
to the graves
and whispered WITNESS IT

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jul 4

My favorite tribute to this iconic Bart catchphrase:

Still from the Powerpuff Girls episode "The Mane Event" - a TV news anchor reports on a destructive giant eyeball menacing Townsville, with a shot of the eyeball on a wall monitor behind the anchor, captioned "EYE CARUMBA".

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 30

Most of the A.I.'s in this film are definable as "rogue" one way or another.

Publicity still from WALL-E - the title character + EVE, M-O, and other "rogue robots" barrel down a corridor of the AXIOM.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 29

Ordinarily I'm not inclined to provide alt-text for a screenshotted social media post by the current president, but in this case it's worth it for the killer reply. Skip to the end if you want.

Social media post from someone (header cut off) screenshotting another post from Donald J. Trump. Their own text: "Damn just admitting he bankrupt the whole country". Screenshotted text follows (punctuation and capitalization in original):

The actual number that we would have to pay back if, for any reason, the Supreme Court were to rule against the United States of America on Tariffs, would be many Hundreds of Billions of Dollars, and that doesn't include the amount of "payback" that Countries and Companies would require for the investments they are making on building Plants, Factories, and Equipment, for the purpose of being able to avoid the payment of Tariffs. When these investments are added, we are talking about Trillions of Dollars! It would be a complete mess, and almost impossible for our Country to pay. Anybody who says that it can be quickly and easily done would be making a false, inaccurate, or totally misunderstood answer to this very large and complex question. It may not be possible but, if it were, it would be Dollars that would be so large that it would take many years to figure out what number we are talking about and even, who, when, and where, to pay. Remember, when America shines brightly, the World shines brightly. In other words, if the Supreme Court rules against the United States of America on this National Security bonanza, WE'RE SCREWED!

PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

And a reply from Melanie D'Arrigo:

"I broke the law so badly that if you hold me accountable, it'll cause so many problems that our country may never recover" is quite the way to tell on yourself.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 29

I'm fond of this version of the contest:

A FoxTrot comic strip in four panels:

Panel 1 - For the first three panels, Peter and Jason (brothers, teen and tween respectively) face each other at the dinner table.

Peter: I can eat this taco with TWO squirts of hot sauce.

Jason: I can eat this taco with THREE squirts of hot sauce.

Panel 2 - P: Four squirts.

J: Five squirts.

Panel 3 - P: Six squirts.

J: Eat that taco.

Panel 4 - Cut to Roger and Andy (dad and mom respectively), the former with his face buried in his hands.

Roger: (as flames, billowing smoke and a "FOOM!" sound effect appear from the left side of the panel) The Cleavers lived a lie.

Andy: (addressing middle-child Paige, off-panel) Paige, stay out of this!

Paige: Nine squirts.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 24

One of my favorite anecdotes along these lines, from the composer Morton Feldman (as passed along by Alex Ross):

Morton Feldman: My teacher Stefan Wolpe was a Marxist and he felt my music was too esoteric at the time. And he had his studio on a proletarian street, on Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. . . . He was on the second floor and we were looking out the window, and he said, “What about the man on the street?” At that moment . . . Jackson Pollock was crossing the street. The crazy artist of my generation was crossing the street at that moment.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 19

Alt-texting, and noting that the phenomenon described below reverberates down to the present day, in that there are white people who STILL have no idea how to interact with BlPoC's who are owned by no one except themselves.

Two microblogging posts on a thread from @red3blog.

Po 1 - We really should be teaching more white people that slavery absolutely WAS a choice for slaveowners. All too often, we act like it was a way of life or a force of nature and not a CHOICE made by people who felt entitled to regard other people as their property.

Post 2 - Slaveowners made a choice every single day to treat other human beings like their property. Plenty of people in their own time knew this was wrong, but they did it anyway. Teach THAT.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 14

The first instance I can recall of USAians singing in public is over a century old, and sorrowfully cathartic rather than celebratory. The composer Charles Ives witnessed (and maybe participated in) it and based an orchestral piece on the experience.

The final movement [from Charles Ives' Orchestral Set No. 2] "From Hanover Square North, At the End of a Tragic Day, The Voice of the People Again Arose", recalls Ives's experience of May 7, 1915, the day that the news broke of the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, preceding the United States' entry into the First World War. Ives's focus, however, as Clayton Henderson notes, is not about the sinking per se, but rather "the reaction of a group of commuters". According to his own memoirs, the crowd waiting on the platform of New York's Hanover Square station spontaneously broke into the gospel hymn "In the Sweet By and By" – a tune that was being played on a barrel organ on the street below. He stated:

Some workmen sitting on the side of the tracks began to whistle the tune, and others began to sing or hum the refrain. A workman with a shovel over his shoulder came on to the platform and joined in the chorus, and the next man, a Wall Street banker with white spats and a cane, joined in it, finally it seemed to me that everybody was singing this tune, and they didn't seem to be singing it in fun, but as a natural outlet for what their feelings had been going through all day long.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 10

The Soldier's Tale (voiced by Max von Sydow) Honorable Mention: The Robot Devil in Futurama (Dan Castellanata) Several other Honorable Mentions below.... 1/2

Still from the 1984 animated version of A Soldier's Tale, with the soldier of the title engaged in a tussle over a violin with a very devilish-looking individual

Still from the cartoon Futurama - The Robot Devil stands in the middle of Robot Hell, readying to play a golden file.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 8

Alt-texting this strip as an excuse to wonder whether Lauren has read Howard Waldrop's Martians vs. Texans story "Night of the Cooters"...or could she BE her world's version of Waldrop? (Who was once called "the resident Weird Mind of his generation." Could be one of Lauren's possible futures....)

Lauren Ipsum comic strip by Charles Brubaker, in seven panels.

Panel 1 - Lauren (an anthro rabbit; all the characters here are anthropomorphic animals unless otherwise specified) typing on a typewriter and thinking to herself, "I'm writing a serious historical drama that takes place in the 17th century."

Panel 2 - Lauren studying a large map tacked to a wall, with written notes taped up around it: "I researched the time period, took notes on the real-life location, and I made sure to plan the story out."

Panel 3 - Lauren pondering: "But slavishly trying to be period accurate can get boring to write, so some fudging is allowed..."

Panel 4 - "...like there are space aliens attacking the village!" This panel and the next two are scenes from Lauren's story, captioned with Lauren's narration. In this one, the aliens are menacing the villagers, who are either gawking or running around in panicked chaos.

Panel 5 - "Which turns out to be orchestrated by the mayor, who is an evil creature!" In the background are aliens (still menacing) and villagers (still panicking), while in the foreground the mayor (who appears to have a human foot for a head?..whatever, just go with it) chortles, "Mwa ha ha ha I'm so evil!"

Panel 6 - "His plan is to make a reality TV show based on this carnage..." As one villager fires a musket at a tentacled alien, another villager next to him responds to the narration, "But TV hasn't been invented yet!"

Panel 7 - Back in Lauren's world, Missy (an anthro wolf, Lauren's friend and sometimes editor/beta reader) holds a page with puzzlement and says, "This story makes no sense," and a slightly giddy Lauren (buried hip-deep in a pile of disordered pages) replies, "True, but it sure was fun to write!"

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 6

Among standalone novels or novellas, Wilhelm's Hugo-winning Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang is an obvious choice, but I'd love to see adaptations of the lesser-known Oh, Susannah!, Crazy Time, and Naming the Flowers s well. 2/end

Cover of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang by Kate Wilhelm. A black-&-white aerial view of an almost symmetrical farmscape with a checkerboard square arrangement of light and dark patches of land, except the squares deform higher in the picture into bird-shapes (reminiscent of Escher's tessellated figures), so that black birds are flying over the lighter color land on the left and white birds are flying over the darker colored land on the right.

Cover of Oh, Susannah!, by Kate Wilhelm. The word "Oh" is composed of a giant golden ring for the letter "O", leaning on a black "h"; "Susannah!" is written over this in enthusiastic lipstick-red cursive. Also, a cat wanders in from the right to look at the title.

Cover of Crazy Time by Kate Wilhelm. A somewhat cartoony drawing by Bill Sienkiewicz of a flustered-looking woman in a chair, facing forward but with eyes up toward the figure standing next to her, a glowing, translucently ghostly man with arms crossed and his back toward the woman, head turned to look at her with a slight smirk on his face.

Cover of Naming the Flowers by Kate Wilhelm. An elegant drawing of a woman's face composed of flower and leaf shapes, with a clock face (using Roman numerals for the hours) behind "her".

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 6

If only somebody with money would read some Kate Wilhelm. I'd love to see both of her major mystery series (the "Charlie and Constance" private detective stories, the "Barbara Holloway" legal thrillers) adapted as "American Mystery!" shows. 1/2

Cover of Smart House ("A Charlie Meiklejohn/Constance Leidl Mystery") by Kate Wilhelm. In the background, in the next room, is a woman lying down in a steaming hot bath. he room with the bath is brightly lit, everything else (on the viewer's side) is darker. In the middle foreground, slightly to the left, is a PC display screen (rich-folks' tech in the late 1980's, when the story takes place); the words on the screen are:

GOOD MORNING BETH.

WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO DRAW A BATH?

PLEASE CHOOSE A WEAPON.

YOUR NEXT VICTIM IS []

The last word on the final line is obscured by a suction-cup dart stuck to the screen. In the near foreground is a pair of hands readying to aim a toy pistol that shoots suction-cup darts.

$Cover of Death Qualified: A Mystery of Chaos, by Kate Wilhelm. A radial fractal design, composed of infinite copies of itself.$

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 3

And since I'm still comics/manga binging, here are some that I've put a priority on finishing. 2/en

Comics/manga:

Angelica and the Bear Prince (Trung Le Nguyen)
Don't Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro, Vol. 20 (Nanashi)
Magus of the Library, Vol. 5 (Mitsu Izumi)
Mao, Vol. 22 (Rumiko Takahashi)
Quality Assurance in Another World, Vol. 12 (Masamichi Sato)
Shikimori's Not Just a Cutie, Vol. 8 (Keigo Maki)
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime Vol. 17 (Fuse/Taiki Kawakami)
Urusei Yatsura [Viz Signature Edition], Vol. 3 (Rumiko Takahashi)

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· Jun 3

So my local library system abruptly switched the maximum checkouts from 75 to 50 for the summer, and since I was already maxed out I'm going to have to return a bunch of stuff. Since I'd like to read as much of what I return as possible, it struck me as a good idea to catch up on some novellas. 1/2

Books:

A Palace Near the Wind (Ai Jiang)
Rose/House (Arkady Martine)
Through Gates of Garnet and Gold (Seanan McGuire)
The Summer War (Naomi Novik)
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles (Malka Older)
A Mouthful of Dust (Nghi Vo)

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 28

I'm just hoping they don't follow in the footsteps of their forebears:

A famous Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon, depicting three dinosaurs of three different species all smoking cigarettes. Caption: "The real reason dinosaurs became extinct".

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 26

Post your warning sign:

NOTICE - The town of Madrid will no longer be responsible for:

UFO Abductions,
Werewolf Maulings,
Creepy Yeti Hugs,
Vampire Romances,
Unsolicited Bigfoot Pics,
Unicorn Stabbings,
Pixie Glitter,
Chupacabra Bites,
Average Sized Centaurs,
Sticky Vortexes
or Broke Leprechauns

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 23

Alt-texting a political cartoon about the USA's current war with Iran. (No dialogue, just the picture description.)

Political cartoon captioned, "WAITING FOR THE WAR". President Donald J. Trump, recognizable by his blue suit, white shirt, red tie and orange face (are we ever going to have a US president with such a distinctive color scheme again?), stands on a city sidewalk corner holding a club behind him to bash whoever comes around the corner. Out of Trump's sight around the corner is a procession of robed, bearded men intended to represent Iran's ayatollahs, but before they reach the corner they descend down a stairwell in the mile of the sidewalk, thus avoiding the president and his club. The "parade of ayatollahs" emerges from another stairwell, this one directly behind President Trump, who is too focused on what might be coming around the corner to notice it.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 18

To date myself in the extreme - I've played a couple of board games based upon 60+yo Hugo-winning novels....

Display photo of Avalon Hill's board game Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, with board sections, cardboard pieces/tokens, rulebook, box cover (with a painting of techno-armored soldiers - reminiscent of Marvel's Iron Man only Heinlein's version came first - plus the name of the game and the description, "Man vs Monster - Interstellar Warfare in the Twenty-Second Century"), plus a couple of measuring tapes for scale (the box looks to be 9" x 12").

Display photo of Avalon Hill's board game Frank Herbert's Dune, with board, cardboard pieces/tokens, cards, "Combat Wheel," character profiles, rulebook, and box cover with the name of the game and a painting of Fremen (humans native to the "Dune Planet" Arrakis) confronting a giant sandworm.

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 16

I dreamed I was getting ready to turn in a collge paper on 1980's post-punk rock, and I was hunting down citations that referenced the greatness of London Calling. I've heard of people who couldn't read in their dreams, but for sure I could read in this one. (Unless I was just dreaming I could....)

Cover of the Clash album London Calling, with the distinctive pink and green title lettering (a nod to the color scheme of Elvis Presley's self-titled debut album) and the iconic black-and-white photo of Paul Simonen swinging his bass toward the floor, presumably to smash it.

Someone sleeping in bed. (Presumably dreaming, possibly of Clash scholarship.)

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 16

What are the Six Genders? Wrong answers only. (Further info on this crew in the alt-text:)

The six principals (all furries/anthros) from a Dungeons & Dragons story created by artist/animator Eva Figueroa. In clockwise order:

9:00 - Theodora (thief), domestic cat

10:30 - Socrates (sorcerer), some sort of colorful talking bird

12:00 - Paola (paladin), large domestic dog

2:00 - Ralphine (ranger), wolf

4:00 - Armando (artificer), hedgehog (I think)

6:00 - Winnie (unknown), mouse

Original art at https://www.instagram.com/p/C8NKUtoKpgB/ , followed by character profiles, another collective art piece, and an animatic video with these characters ("warning for flashing colours and graphic violence").

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 14

Chinatown

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 13

Yep. Jane Austen herself documents the phenomenon in Northanger Abbey, in one of my favorite passages in classic English lit:

Dialogue from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, near the beginning of Chapter 6:

“...But, my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning? Have you gone on with Udolpho?”

“Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.”

“Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?”

“Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me—I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina’s skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.”

“Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.”

“Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?”

“I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.”

“Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?”

“Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every one of them. I wish you knew Miss Andrews, you would be delighted with her. She is netting herself the sweetest cloak you can conceive....”

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 13

Name a song with girl in the lyric but replace with squirrel [and have Marvel's Squirrel Girl and Tippy Toe perform it] SG: If you're having squirrel problems, I feel bad for you hon, I got 99 problems but a-- TT: [chk]* SG: --ain't one! *single syllable of squirrel chatter

Marvel's Squirrel Girl and her girl squirrel companion Tippy Toe

The Knights Who Say "Rob Tomshah-NI!"@robtomshany· May 13

"We aren't socialists; we are just better at accounting." It's alt-text time: