Sometimes, Reality Interrupts

But you know that, right?

Last night as I'm getting ready to draft a post, I hear an unknown sound, but somehow a familiar sound.  It was clearly an alarm of some sort, but it didn't sound like anything I knew and could identify.  It was loud enough to make the cats run for cover, and I quickly localized it to the kitchen, but what was it?  An alarm from one our wireless freezer alarms?  No, the digital displays looked normal.  The door ajar alarm from the refrigerator?  No.  It took me a while to realize it was an alarm that we'd set up in 2016, but that had never gone off - and I didn't know what it sounded like.  It's a water detector with its sensor under the dishwasher, along the back wall (lowest point) so that if there's a leak back there we have a better chance of knowing it before we have thousands of dollars worth of damage.  Like we did in 2010.  Or just 3-1/2 years ago, summer of '16 (not as bad as '10).

It was almost like this:



The alarm did its job.  I don't know how much water was down there, or still is, but we shut off the dishwasher, and using the 2-1/2" hole cut through the cabinet base for the alarm sensor, vacuumed up or absorbed water with towels, sponges or whatever I could cram back there.  My little battery powered shop vac got very little water out of there.  With luck, it didn't soak plywood, and once we figure out why it's leaking and fix it, the whole thing will be over with.  Meanwhile, the major inconvenience is washing dishes by hand, and if washing dishes by hand is your biggest problem in life, you've got a sweet life.

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As long as I'm using column space for some “Me Me” stuff, after a few weeks of putting it off, we went to see Star Wars 27: The End of The Universe (just kidding).  Our local multiplex has an early morning special that gets the two of us in for under $9, and going for that price was part of the decision.  There might have been 10 people in the theater, which isn't bad for a starting time just before 10AM. 

I'm a bit of two minds about it.  If you're just going to a movie, it's fun and worth the price.  Space opera type adventure.  Lots of flash, lots of CGI, lots of action.  I've read bits and pieces about a few of the actors here and there: Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver and John Boyega, for a few, and they seem to come across as basically good kids, not “Hollyweird snots.”

On the other hand to millions, it's not just a movie, it's part of the Star Wars universe and story lines.  First off, if you go to this without having any idea of who the characters are and what they're talking about, you'll probably be too lost to make sense out of it.  If anyone can make sense of it, because as a coherent Star Wars universe story, they kind of stretch the ideas beyond recognition.  I'm sure you've heard that - Bayou Renaissance Man did a piece on that including a Bill Whittle video.  Like any movie, there's willing suspension of disbelief and then there's that point where (at least) my brain says, "WTF was that?"  It's fun unless you're looking for a coherent Star Wars story.

At times, it seemed like a collection of short stories that are written by entirely different authors, yet somehow sold as one book.  We all know these movies are written as distinct acts and scenes; it's like each act is a sub-movie but the integration of those acts into a coherent whole wasn't quite there.

So I say that there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours, like lying on the floor working on a dishwasher, and it's even a decent movie.  It's just got a lot to live up to and falls short.  Still, I walked out of the theater entertained and diverted for a couple hours, and that's a pretty good way to spend those hours.

And, listen: since the current version of Darth Vader is Kylo Ren, and the most twisted cartoon show in the '90s was Ren and Stimpy, you might want to do an image search on Kylo Ren and Stimpy.  That's all I'll say.

The principal characters in the movie (more or less).  In the background, Poe - Oscar Issac, and Finn - John Boyega.  Foreground Chewie - Joonas Suotomo and Rey - Daisy Ridley.  Disney photo.  (The original Chewbacca, Peter Mayhew, retired in 2015 and passed away last April, 2019)