{"id":24551,"date":"2019-09-05T11:41:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T18:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=24551"},"modified":"2019-09-05T11:41:46","modified_gmt":"2019-09-05T18:41:46","slug":"dawn-patrol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=24551","title":{"rendered":"Dawn Patrol"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fullsizeoutput_419e\"<\/a>Mister B was on full alert during our crack-of-dawn\u00a0soir\u00e9e, stopping every few feet to stare into the brush on either side of the road. When I saw these tracks near our house, I understood. The\u00a0prints may have been a couple of hours old, but I don’t doubt Mister B\u00a0sniffed\u00a0lingering javelina\u00a0musk in the air. I’m surprised I didn’t. For\u00a0relatively\u00a0small creatures, javelina have a giant odor.<\/p>\n

Mister B’s curled in the doggie bed by my desk now, awake still but drifting off, an eventful\u00a0morning behind him, and it’s just 8 o’clock.<\/p>\n

These are the best mornings. Up early, walking through the neighborhood\u00a0while it’s still cool, policing the back yard for dog poop,\u00a0coffee\u00a0and\u00a0a hot muffin for breakfast, a devoted dog by my side, the rest of the morning\u00a0mine to write, read, or whatever I want.<\/p>\n

The past few days I’ve suspected the battery\u00a0in\u00a0my pickup truck was going.\u00a0Yesterday the\u00a0starter went ruh-ruh-ruh on a descending beat and\u00a0removed all doubt. I last replaced the battery\u00a0two years ago, almost to the day.\u00a0That time I told the guy at the parts store to give me the cheap one, the one rated to last two years.\u00a0How about that. This time I popped for the expensive one.<\/p>\n

We’re starting to think our internet data usage problem<\/a> is coming from inside the house (cue horror movie music). So far I’ve been by the Xfinity store three times. The first time they put an app on my iPhone that allows\u00a0me to monitor wi-fi connected devices in\u00a0the house. Nice to know, but I wasn’t sure the app had any practical application. The second time they gave me a new modem and router\u00a0on the possibility there was a problem with the old one. I set up a new wi-fi network and password with it, which should at least stop neighbors from piggybacking on our account, should that have been part of the problem (highly doubtful IMO). The third time, three days into September’s\u00a0billing cycle, they checked our usage and told me we’d already\u00a0consumed 10% of our monthly terabyte of data. What this tells me is that\u00a0the verbiage on the Xfinity web site, the part where it says a terabyte is enough to cover 600 to 700 hours of streaming TV, 12,000 hours of online gaming, 15,000 hours of streaming music, or uploading and downloading 60,000 high resolution photos, is somewhat misleading.<\/p>\n

The finger of blame, not surprisingly, is beginning to point to a\u00a0middle-aged chronically unemployed live-at-home daughter who spends all day in her room streaming Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu. And now I know what that\u00a0wi-fi usage app on my iPhone is good for. At the Xfinity store yesterday, the rep showed me how it can be used to turn the data stream on and off to different devices in the home. I’m pretty sure Polly doesn’t read my blog, so when she comes to us saying her stuff doesn’t work we\u00a0can pretend to be shocked. Shocked, I say.<\/p>\n

I follow a few defense industry journalists on Twitter. They’re all agog over a new Twitter account featuring photoshopped images of cats in military settings<\/a>, like this:<\/p>\n

\"EDpPO_8XUAAPiQl\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I know, I know, cute cats on Twitter blah blah blah, but as soon as I saw one I\u00a0ran panting to Google to see if anyone has done something similar with dachshunds. And guess what<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>
\nTrue,\u00a0the giant dachshund photos aren’t military (nor on Twitter;\u00a0they’re on a guy’s personal blog), but you can kind of pretend the apartment building roof in the background is the superstructure of a warship.<\/p>\n

Several friends have sent reports of a\u00a0recent attempt to ban Harry Potter books<\/a>, this time on the pretext they contain\u00a0working satanic spells and incantations. For years I wrote a regular column on banned books<\/a>\u00a0(a damned good one if I say so myself), finally giving up on it after realizing it was never going to get any outside traction<\/a>. The latest Harry Potter book-banning flareup isn’t enough to get me started again, because it’s the same old shit. They’ve\u00a0gone after Harry Potter since the beginning, and they’ll never stop. Tell you what, though, asserting that pig latin incantations like “Begoneous, evil spirit,” based on zero research into satanic ritual or witchcraft and written for a preteen audience, actually work? Well, that’s some brazen Hitleresque Big Lie shit, right up there with Trump telling us Kim Jong Un is our friend.<\/p>\n

You’d think if kids were casting actual spells, it would make the news, right?<\/p>\n

For years I’ve wondered where humanity’s central problem lies. Is it selfishness? Racism and xenophobia? Jingoism? Misogyny? Intolerance? Incoherence in speech and writing?\u00a0All these traits are grounded in and inseparable from stupidity. Whenever I encounter someone exhibiting\u00a0any or all of these traits, my overwhelming first\u00a0instinct\u00a0has always been\u00a0to write him or her off as a stupid person, not worthy of my time.<\/p>\n

Trust your instincts, they say. I trust mine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These are the best mornings. Up early, walking through the neighborhood while it’s still cool, policing the back yard for dog poop, coffee and a hot muffin for breakfast, a devoted dog by my side, the rest of the morning mine to write, read, or whatever I want to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47,18,40,555,27,14,2,827,6,2761],"tags":[2738,2873,288,2859,175,2874],"class_list":["post-24551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-banned-books","category-consumerism","category-critters","category-local-color","category-memes","category-military","category-personal","category-social-media","category-a-series-of-tubes","category-yell-clouds","tag-wildlife","tag-big-lie","tag-book-banning","tag-data-usage","tag-harry-potter","tag-the-stupid-it-burns"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24551"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24567,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24551\/revisions\/24567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}