Bolts & Nuts

Headline from newsmax.com: “GM Recalling 73,000 Bolt EVs at Cost of $1 Billion.” As usual, it’s the batteries. The company will seek reimbursement from its supplier, LG. I do not intend to bash alternative methods. I just dread they will be adopted before they are as reliable as fossil fuels and cost effective.

Headline from foxnews.com: “Greece extends border wall amid European fears of Afghan migrant wave.” AP photo of border with Turkey:

It’s tough keeping up with new terms spawned on the internet. Here’s another: To put someone “on blast” — To embarrass by publicly denouncing or exposing, especially by using social media.

Get out the calculators. Headline from FN: “Eating 1 hot dog claims 35 minutes off life, study suggests.” I’m on even less borrowed time than I feared. The research also found that eating a serving of nuts instead could help you gain 26 minutes. Tell that to my hemorrhoids!

Friday’s movie fix was an interesting look at mental illness, Bug (2006). A waitress with a sorrowful past crosses paths with a veteran of the war on terror who believes his system is riddled with insects put there by the military. Given the history of the individuals, it’s not surprising that they would bond. Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon are great actors and play their roles to the hilt. Harry Connick Jr. is solid as the abusive ex-husband. This is not a pleasant watch. Anyone offended by profanity, nudity, violence and substance abuse should pass. I don’t know if there’s a larger point at play. It simply seems a portrait of shared psychosis. It was directed by the legendary William Friedkin, who helmed The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), as well as 36 other titles. Actor/playwright Tracy Letts wrote the screenplay, his first of four full length features. He won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2008, August: Osage County, and was nominated for Man from Nebraska in 2004. He won a Tony in 2013 for Best Actor in a Play, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The TV show Superior Donuts, which shot 34 episodes, is based on one of his plays. Is this guy on a roll or what? Surprisingly, given its bleakness, Bug was successful at the box office, returning eight million on a budget of four million. No doubt DVD sales, rentals and streaming have added handsomely to that total. 34,000+ users at IMDb have rated Bug, forging to a consensus of 6.2 on a scale of ten. Can’t argue with that. Here are the leads in character:

It looked like it would be another disappointing day at the floating book shop, then a young woman picked out five books in Russian while I was packing up. My thanks, and also to the woman who bought two kids books, and to the little guy who insisted on paying for another even though I wanted him to have it as birthday gift; and to Mr. Conspiracy, aka Steve, who purchased Dictionary of Electronics; and to the woman who donated ten pictorials, eight on renowned artists.

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