A Vision

When I was seven (17 years ago, now), I woke up, very early on Christmas morning, before anyone else. I was headed downstairs, but I heard something moving downstairs.
I moved as quietly as I could, and peering into the living room, I saw Santa. He was about 9 feet tall and definitely was real. Not at the mall, the photo ops, anything of that -- he was downstairs and...it wasn't my parents, because they are a) not 9 feet tall, and b) not owners of a red and ermine robe.
I knew I saw something I should not view, a god of warmth and winter both together, who cannot be viewed head-on, only through representation. I scrambled upstairs and hid until my parents came downstairs. That was no human. A humanoid form, certainly, but...something else.

Week 30, Entry 8

I was rather irritated with Olivia yesterday. Starting this Autumn, we are supposed to both pay in $75/month to the household finances, as we have incomes of a sort. I add on $60 per month as well, to pay into gas money. Well, Olivia hasn't paid her monthly bill for November or December, despite having bought all sorts of nonsense online and off during the same time. Meanwhile, I exceeded my credit card yesterday, which was quite embarrassing. And it wasn't even for anything fancy, just for practical gifts for my family while we were at OfficeMax!

Thoughts on "The Essex Serpent"

I want to get some editing software and make a fan edit of this thing, because The Essex Serpent has a perfectly good two-and-a-half hour (or less!) film in it, but it's padded to all ends. Not in the "MST3K" type of padding, where every shot is taken slightly longer than it needs to be, dull, ham-faced men dully repeat everything they can, and stock footage is added on to fill in where that last can't. Instead, it's the "prestige drama" type of padding, where plots are added on for the sake of adding on plots, and absolutely no more than two people can talk to each other at once, meaning that any significant news can be stretched to two hours. 

The show is set in the 1860's, but the hair/costumes/dialogue is all over the place. More than Midsommar, it feels like a natural outgrowth of 1970's folk horror/Hammer horror, where historical accuracy takes a backseat to:
- whatever "old timey" costumes the production had on hand that week
- affording one actual star
Which means that you end up with films like The Blood on Satan's Claw, where one of the main characters, a peasant boy of the 18th century, has a perm. In that same vein, I'm enjoying the trend of increasingly colorblind casting in historical dramas as well. Like "we need a stuffy, old-timer politician", and "we need a medical student who's good-hearted, but a bit of a dandy" are played by people of color for no more reason than that the actors showed up and fit the part.

Speaking of parts, I don't like Tom Hiddleston's character as much as I wanted to. He just sounds and acts way too Eton, for a story set in the sticks. He can be a lot louder and weirder, but he isn't, here -- which means I'm left baffled at why his character is where he is. 

Week 30, Entry 9

Sometimes I feel defensive of who I'm attracted to, because it feels like it's not accurate to who most people I am around find attractive. I don't have a feeling of repulsion, just sort of like "eh, that's okay, I guess, just not my thing".

Hopefully, I will write more about this later.