Okay, so I did a google search of Wonder Woman animated gifs, and there's a lot of them. A LOT of them.
DM has effectively goaded me into resurrecting this tale.
I have a responsibility, after all, to spare DOOM further such carnage.
Be forewarned; there's a slow and reflective start to it, which may tempt you to fast forward to the fight scenes. But it is what it is.
Note: To recap, it's 1/1/2019 (New Year's!), JJ was ill in the morning, but eventually (after lunch?) took us on a medicinal plant walk. Later, Mohsin took us on a much longer walk following Transect C into one of the wildest patches of rainforest. We got back near dusk. We then made another shorter outing to the Catch Basin (that supplies the ecolodge with water) to look at water denizens. After that, we were just getting ready to have dinner.
LCF has since corrected me that after getting back from the Transect C hike we actually had dinner first (with darkness falling), and after that Mohsin rounded us up for the short walk in the dark to the Catch Basin. The order isn't that important, I suppose, but let me resume this tale with us just getting back from that long Transect C outing with dusk falling, the howlers active, and we're getting cleaned up for dinner.
1/1/2019: Part 4 -- Dinner
It's dinner time; in the distance I hear the others getting their food. Once more I'm a laggard, lingering in our shadowy room, headlamp propped upright on my bunk to serve as crude lamp. This time it's not a matter of finding some clean clothes.
I'm having some trouble with my left eye.
It started as some flickering squiggles moving about in my vision, something that occasionally happens. Most likely it's an ocular migraine (without the headache), caused by reduced blood flow or spasms of blood vessels in the retina or behind the eye. It's usually a minor nuisance lasting about ten minutes. However, my ophthalmologist has lectured me to call the emergency hotline without delay if it ever persists or gets worse, as it could mean a blood clot on the optic nerve, stroke, etc.
Well, it gets worse. The flickering squiggles intensify and then blackness. I'm a Cyclops. Well, this isn't good. It's not like I can call an emergency hotline out here in the middle of the jungle. Nor is it clear what good it would do to tell the others what's going on. So I don't.
I wait it out, staying relaxed, making funny faces to ascertain no part of my face is going numb, move my arms and legs, flex fingers and toes...
Ten minutes later the black curtain breaks up into a blurry kaleidoscope that slowly dissipates. My vision is back.
I head to dinner.
As usual, LCF has saved me a spot. Dinner is largely uneventful. We talk about various things. One is the lack of rain. We haven't had a good rain since we got here 5 days ago. Once or twice there was the start of a shower, prompting us to grab our clothes in off the railing ... only to put them back almost immediately as it fizzled out. There's something ominous about it: a rain forest in rainy season, and no rain...
Mohsin gives us an update on tomorrow's outing. We'll be trekking the Brazil Nut Trail. It's the longest, a five-hour trudge, so he urges us to bring plenty of water and maybe some snacks.
After dinner, LCF and I linger at the table. JJ has joined us, and in the flickering candlelight we chat. He's feeling better now. LCF hit it off well with him from the start, finding common ground in -- of all things -- motor vehicles. JJ has a ten-year-old Toyota pickup and doesn't see the point of getting new cars all the time. Also, it's a stick, and he doesn't like automatics. As it turns out, LCF has a Toyota Echo that is 17 years old, and it's a stick. JJ is suitably impressed. (I have a 13-year-old Toyota Prius. When buying it, I asked if there was a stick version and got laughed at by the dealer.)
So anyway, LCF asks how much traveling JJ has done. He's been to Europe a couple times -- but never to the US, though he'd like to visit the US some day. LCF points out that it's not the nicest of places these days -- politically. We get on the subject of history, and JJ asks who lived in America before we came there (Note: JJ is worldly wise in a lot of ways, but he does have some blind spots). We tell him of the Indians. He asks what happened to them, where are they now, and we tell him about reservations. He asks if anyone ever goes there, into the reservations, to contact the Indians. We explain that they aren't isolated, that they live in the modern world for the most part. They've been given special concessions to hunt and fish and collect eagle feathers, etc., forbidden for the rest of us -- in theory so they can continue their way of life -- but it's largely a symbolic gesture.
"So they don't live like they used to," JJ says, "isolated." We tell him that, other than in the Amazon, the only place we know of where people live in isolation from the modern world is on a small island off the coast of India, mentioning the misguided Christian missionary recently killed there. JJ takes this all in. Then in the flickering candlelight he leans in close and says in a hushed tone, "They're close. Very close." I realize he's talking about uncontacted tribes. "There's a lot of them, too," he adds. He looks at each of us in turn. "A LOT of them." Then, gazing past us into the jungle, he slowly shakes his head. "But we can't go there." He looks troubled, even haunted, and I sense he knows much more than he's willing to tell, that he's had some close brushes with them, or knows people who have. Still gazing into the distance, he repeats, emphasizing each syllable, "We cannot go there."
DM has effectively goaded me into resurrecting this tale.
I have a responsibility, after all, to spare DOOM further such carnage.
Be forewarned; there's a slow and reflective start to it, which may tempt you to fast forward to the fight scenes. But it is what it is.
Note: To recap, it's 1/1/2019 (New Year's!), JJ was ill in the morning, but eventually (after lunch?) took us on a medicinal plant walk. Later, Mohsin took us on a much longer walk following Transect C into one of the wildest patches of rainforest. We got back near dusk. We then made another shorter outing to the Catch Basin (that supplies the ecolodge with water) to look at water denizens. After that, we were just getting ready to have dinner.
LCF has since corrected me that after getting back from the Transect C hike we actually had dinner first (with darkness falling), and after that Mohsin rounded us up for the short walk in the dark to the Catch Basin. The order isn't that important, I suppose, but let me resume this tale with us just getting back from that long Transect C outing with dusk falling, the howlers active, and we're getting cleaned up for dinner.
1/1/2019: Part 4 -- Dinner
It's dinner time; in the distance I hear the others getting their food. Once more I'm a laggard, lingering in our shadowy room, headlamp propped upright on my bunk to serve as crude lamp. This time it's not a matter of finding some clean clothes.
I'm having some trouble with my left eye.
It started as some flickering squiggles moving about in my vision, something that occasionally happens. Most likely it's an ocular migraine (without the headache), caused by reduced blood flow or spasms of blood vessels in the retina or behind the eye. It's usually a minor nuisance lasting about ten minutes. However, my ophthalmologist has lectured me to call the emergency hotline without delay if it ever persists or gets worse, as it could mean a blood clot on the optic nerve, stroke, etc.
Well, it gets worse. The flickering squiggles intensify and then blackness. I'm a Cyclops. Well, this isn't good. It's not like I can call an emergency hotline out here in the middle of the jungle. Nor is it clear what good it would do to tell the others what's going on. So I don't.
I wait it out, staying relaxed, making funny faces to ascertain no part of my face is going numb, move my arms and legs, flex fingers and toes...
Ten minutes later the black curtain breaks up into a blurry kaleidoscope that slowly dissipates. My vision is back.
I head to dinner.
As usual, LCF has saved me a spot. Dinner is largely uneventful. We talk about various things. One is the lack of rain. We haven't had a good rain since we got here 5 days ago. Once or twice there was the start of a shower, prompting us to grab our clothes in off the railing ... only to put them back almost immediately as it fizzled out. There's something ominous about it: a rain forest in rainy season, and no rain...
Mohsin gives us an update on tomorrow's outing. We'll be trekking the Brazil Nut Trail. It's the longest, a five-hour trudge, so he urges us to bring plenty of water and maybe some snacks.
After dinner, LCF and I linger at the table. JJ has joined us, and in the flickering candlelight we chat. He's feeling better now. LCF hit it off well with him from the start, finding common ground in -- of all things -- motor vehicles. JJ has a ten-year-old Toyota pickup and doesn't see the point of getting new cars all the time. Also, it's a stick, and he doesn't like automatics. As it turns out, LCF has a Toyota Echo that is 17 years old, and it's a stick. JJ is suitably impressed. (I have a 13-year-old Toyota Prius. When buying it, I asked if there was a stick version and got laughed at by the dealer.)
So anyway, LCF asks how much traveling JJ has done. He's been to Europe a couple times -- but never to the US, though he'd like to visit the US some day. LCF points out that it's not the nicest of places these days -- politically. We get on the subject of history, and JJ asks who lived in America before we came there (Note: JJ is worldly wise in a lot of ways, but he does have some blind spots). We tell him of the Indians. He asks what happened to them, where are they now, and we tell him about reservations. He asks if anyone ever goes there, into the reservations, to contact the Indians. We explain that they aren't isolated, that they live in the modern world for the most part. They've been given special concessions to hunt and fish and collect eagle feathers, etc., forbidden for the rest of us -- in theory so they can continue their way of life -- but it's largely a symbolic gesture.
"So they don't live like they used to," JJ says, "isolated." We tell him that, other than in the Amazon, the only place we know of where people live in isolation from the modern world is on a small island off the coast of India, mentioning the misguided Christian missionary recently killed there. JJ takes this all in. Then in the flickering candlelight he leans in close and says in a hushed tone, "They're close. Very close." I realize he's talking about uncontacted tribes. "There's a lot of them, too," he adds. He looks at each of us in turn. "A LOT of them." Then, gazing past us into the jungle, he slowly shakes his head. "But we can't go there." He looks troubled, even haunted, and I sense he knows much more than he's willing to tell, that he's had some close brushes with them, or knows people who have. Still gazing into the distance, he repeats, emphasizing each syllable, "We cannot go there."
I'm nobody's pony.