It’s been a week since Jon Stewart hosted his final The Daily Show. I still haven’t recovered. I may never recover. [salty goggles]
Jon Stewart: A man who was on TV.
Jon, you will be missed. Sorely.
Twins: Serious Pain
It’s all gone wrnog!
I have an email friend who is a baseball fan, and when her daughter was very young, she (the daughter, not the friend) conflated “serious” and “series” (as in “World Serious”). It’s one of those great things kids sometimes say that sticks with you because it’s so perfect. Baseball series are serious, and none more so than the World Serious.
When I manage to come up with one, I delight in having puns in my post titles, and now you’ll understand the one used here. The Minnesota Twins just finished a three-game serious against division rival the Cleveland Indians, and it was an extraordinarily painful one. Seriously painful.
How bad was it? So bad. So very, very bad.
Twins: What a summer!
Torii Hunter wonders “WTF?”
Yesterday my Minnesota Twins played their 108th game, which means the season is now exactly 2/3 over. And I say “my” Twins, but given their performance since the All-Star break, many of us fans are about to disown them. When I last wrote about them, I said, “Now everything depends on what happens after the All-Star break.”
They’d surprised us with a Mighty May, had a rough June Swoon, but seemed to wake up again in July and ended the first half strong. Unfortunately, their second half has been pretty awful all around. Their batting struggles continue, but now the pitching is going downhill, too.
After a giddy rush of “post-season is possible” we’re back to our original ask: “Please just don’t suck again this year.”
Pterry Psnippets #1
As a memorial to the loss of my favorite voice in fiction, I’ve been doing a Sir Terry Pratchett Discworld memorial read. I’d been planning to read the Witches novels again anyway, so I did that and then went on to read the Rincewind novels. Now I’m working my way through the rest in chronological order. I just finished Hogfather.
This time, as I go, I’m leaving tape flags behind to mark bits I especially liked and plan to share (and record) here. Part of what is so engaging about the Discworld novels is how intelligent and perceptive the writing is. Pratchett was a brilliant writer. After reading these books many times I’m still learning to appreciate his genius.
Today I thought I’d share some of those flagged bits with you.
BB #45: Jerky Jerks
If you live in the USA and watch TV, you’ve probably seen the “Messin’ with Sasquatch” commercials advertising Jack Links Beef Jerky.
But have you ever really thought about the message behind these commercials?
Plutonic Star Tar!
There comes a time when words fail, and all you can do is stare in amazement. The Friday press conference from the New Horizons team had that effect on many of us. (I’m not the only one who wept with sheer joy.)
From behind, the Sun illuminates Pluto’s 100 mi layer of haze. Having an atmosphere kinda makes it seem like a planet to me.
They say pictures are worth thousands of words, so I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking (click on any image to go to the source)…
Movies: Oddballs & Eyeballs
As I’ve said many times, when it comes to storytelling: Take me someplace new! Last night I watched a rather unregarded movie, Bunraku (2010), and it delighted me by doing exactly that.
Now when I say “rather unregarded” what I mean is that both critics and audiences haven’t reacted at all well to it. It has a dismal 19% (critics) / 48% (audiences) rating on Rotten Tomatoes and only a 28 (out of 100) on Metacritic. That’s pretty unregarded. But I’m not sure they judged the movie on its own merits so much as against their own expectations.
It’s possible I’ve mellowed in my old age, but as far as I can tell, I’m still the same old highly critical SOB I’ve always been!
BB #44: Striking Things
It’s been ages since I posted any Brain Bubbles! That’s not for lack of my brain bubbling so much as various other “real world” (ha!) sharp pin bubble-popping things intruding. I thought it was high time I returned to effervescence!
There are some older bubbles queued up — they’ll surface eventually — but I was recently struck by a couple of brain bubbles recently (to the point of serious bemusement in one case and serious amusement in other).
Not feeling like a long post, so instead you get a pair of tiny bubbles!
Pluto Presents!
Hot off the press! Check out Pluto’s first close up:
The young surface of Pluto (the planet)! [click for NASA source]
Those mountains are up to 11,000 feet high! And the surface looks to be roughly 100 million years old — extremely young compared to the four-and-a-half billion-year age of the solar system (and not a crater in sight!).
Pluto Surprises!
Recent careful analysis of the early images from Pluto have turned up results that are astonishing and yet, perhaps, not surprising:
This explains a great deal…
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