To keep things brief …<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[1]<\/strong> October is almost over. I love both lists and plans. At some point I’ll personally and privately have to (re)evaluate October, but now I’m looking forward to November. I love “All Hallows’ Eve,” “All Saints’ Day” and the like … not for their religious connotations but for the historical and metaphorical, the latter being one of metamorphosis. Likewise I love the transition from “Walpurgis Night” to “May Day.” Which reminds me that Ms. S. and I need to watch not “The Wicker Man” (1973 or ‘remake’) but the recent “sequel.” But that is neither here nor there.<\/p>\n What is ‘here’ is that November approaches and it’s a time for NaNoWriMo (for which I do not really have the time …), Movember and No-Shave November, among others. With Thanksgiving there are dinners to plan. Pumpkins to carve and use. Cider to prepare.<\/p>\n [2]<\/strong> It’s a beautiful and bright Monday afternoon this 29th of the month. It’s also only 56F out and the wind is blowing. On the patio under the overhang in the shade it is chilly; but move a few feet forward onto the grass and into the sun and one warms a bit. It’s a constant contrast, the warmth of the sun and the breeze, but it is pleasant and a reminder of life and living.<\/p>\n With a long-lived laptop battery I can stay here quite a while.<\/p>\n [3]<\/strong> As of last night we finished working our way through the four (as of yet) “Die Hard” movies. As I reflect on the first and to a lesser extent the second, I realize how grounded each of them is in the realities of technology. They do not overreach. They only strain but do not sprain credulity, though there are a few elements at the end of the second — in particular the ejection from the plane about to explode — that make one giggle with their silliness, but like the special effects they seem physical, not generated. The third is just over-the-top after a certain point; it both replays the antics and scheme of the first movie but leaves realism behind for a prancing arch villain. Where this one is mildly novel is that in the first and second Bruce Willis’ character was a wrench in the works, but here Jeremy Irons made him part of the plot. And then we have the fourth. The first and second traffic in mild misdirection; but by 4.0 we’re dealing with a Rube Goldberg plot.<\/p>\n These are not particularly critical or incisive thoughts, but I figured I’d record them before the sun melts my brain and I become a zombiefied vitamin D generator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To keep things brief …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[281,288,279],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-various-and-sundry","tag-autumn","tag-die-hard","tag-nanowrimo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.universalem.org\/homo_aestheticus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}