{"id":24748,"date":"2019-10-06T10:19:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-06T17:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=24748"},"modified":"2019-10-08T09:23:15","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T16:23:15","slug":"sunday-bag-o-just-deserts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=24748","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Bag o’ Just Deserts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mister B doesn’t like having his photo taken. If\u00a0he sees a camera he immediately turns away. I have to trick him into looking at me if I want a good photo.
\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"fullsizeoutput_434e\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"fullsizeoutput_4354\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/center>
\nThese were taken at a nearby shopping plaza.\u00a0I had my iPhone on a selfie stick\u00a0in order to get it down on his level, but would he cooperate? No. In the second photo, though, he’s a captive subject, trapped on the seat of our pickup truck, too high to jump,\u00a0waiting for me\u00a0to help him down.<\/p>\n

I spend too much time thinking about the quality of my dog photos. There’s a Norwegian guy on Instagram who posts daily photos of his dachshund, a red short-hair named Reinert, and they’re all brilliant.\u00a0Reinert’s a camera hound, and his human takes him everywhere, snapping away. Mister B is camera shy, and our Instagram photos can’t come close to theirs. I know, I know … it’s not a competition.<\/p>\n

I’m supposed to head out on a week-long motorcycle trip through Arizona, Utah, and Nevada (with a possible side trip into southern California) this Thursday, but I suddenly have a toothache and think it may be serious. It’s coming from the last molar on my left lower jaw, next to a molar that required a root canal two years ago. I have a dental cleaning appointment Tuesday morning and will ask them what they think about the tooth. If they recommend immediate work, I’ll have to postpone the trip and cancel my motel reservations, all at the last minute. It’s always something, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

Went to see Ad Astra\u00a0with a friend who’s into science fiction. I had questions about the film’s depiction of gravity, but they’re the same questions I have about virtually every space opera. Two scenes on the Moon grated on me. In the first a group of people stride along normally, as if at one G, down an underground corridor at a lunar base; in\u00a0the second a lunar rover sails over a\u00a0crater’s edge, as it might in the Moon’s light gravity, then falls a couple of thousand feet before crashing into the crater’s floor without injuring its occupants.<\/p>\n

What bothered me more, though, are the dress blue uniforms worn by members of Space Command. They’re modeled on\u00a0contemporary military uniforms, but the astronauts don’t wear wings. That, my friends, would never happen, and anyone could have told the producers that. Brad Pitt, wearing major’s rank, sits at a table with two major generals. One two-star, an older man, is clearly in charge. The second two-star\u00a0plays some sort of admin second lieutenant role, not only subservient to the other general but even to the major.\u00a0That she’s female (and black) is a shocking anachronism in this day and age.<\/p>\n

Then there’s the death ray Tommy Lee Jones aims at Earth from from an antenna\u00a0on a space station orbiting Uranus, an antenna no bigger than the dishes one sees in trailer parks. I would have thought\u00a0a death ray powerful enough\u00a0to reach across the solar system and cause electrical blackouts on Earth would require\u00a0a somewhat more robust antenna, not to mention a power source\u00a0the size of a small star.<\/p>\n

But if the whole idea was to create a star vehicle for Brad Pitt (with Donald Sutherland and Tommy Lee Jones reprising their earlier roles in another astronaut movie), then who gives a shit about the science? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you want good science fiction, you have to read it. It’s too hard to do in movies or on TV.<\/p>\n

May I express\u00a0skepticism about the impeachment inquiry? Does anyone else think they’re going to\u00a0slow roll it\u00a0all the way\u00a0to the election, never deciding whether to impeach or not? Because I do. Everything I’ve seen from the Democrats in Congress tells me that’s what they’re up to. Why is another story, one I will probably never understand. More and more, I feel as if we’re getting what we deserve for our lazy, can’t-be-bothered tolerance of the racism and selfishness all around us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May I express\u00a0skepticism about the impeachment inquiry? Does anyone else think they’re going to\u00a0slow roll it\u00a0all the way\u00a0to the election, never deciding whether to impeach or not? Because I do. Everything I’ve seen from the Democrats in Congress tells me that’s what they’re up to. Why is another story, one I will probably never understand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,250,10,5,413,2,30,2761],"tags":[2448,2910,2911,436,2909,2176],"class_list":["post-24748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critters","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-motorcycling","category-movies-reviews","category-personal","category-reviews","category-yell-clouds","tag-fucktrump","tag-ad-astra","tag-bad-science-fiction","tag-dachshund","tag-mister-b","tag-toothache"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24748","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=24748"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24760,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24748\/revisions\/24760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}