johnguinness's Diaryland Diary
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The Mr. Potato Head one
Wow. I should technically have hours left in my day, but I need to offload some things before I get on with it.
First up: Centurion, my first Netflix movie of the day. I decided about a minute in that I would root for the Picts. It was kind of a revelation, because the Romans had previously impressed me in the UK. I'd been in a coach on highways that ran straight as an arrow, visited the baths in Bath, stood on a wee bit of Hadrian's Wall, and seen remnants of the civilization all over on my travels.
But the thing is, no matter how Gladiator might write them off as "barbarian hordes", the truth is that there were people living in their home area more or less minding their business, and the Romans came in with trained soldiers with fancy armor and weapons, and tried to kill them, enslave them and take their stuff, forever.
So if I sat here watching Braveheart rooting for the Scots to defend their lands and fight for freedom against the English, taking advantage of the terrain and using guerrilla tactics, how could I not side with the Picts for doing the same damned thing centuries before from European invaders?
I tried. There were mentions of what the Picts had been like before the invasion, and of things that drove certain ones to behave the way they did. But in the movie there weren't a lot of likable characters anyway. I predicted the ending with thirty minutes to go. By the way, I read in the news the other day that items from the Ninth Army may have been discovered in Germany, so there's a good chance a bunch of them ended up there.
Next up was a long Swedish film called The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. Oh my freaking goodness. Foreign films in general are kind of unusual to watch, because I don't know any of the actors, and I've never seen the places before. I'm guessing that all the faces in the crowd were Swedish, but I don't know if I watched big stars or people who never did anything else.
If I'd seen it in a theater, I'm not sure I would have made it all the way through. I took breaks every fifteen or twenty minutes to regroup. I saw stuff that if it had been in an American movie, I would have moved on to something else. The plot was deep, and there wasn't a predictable minute. It was just twists and turns and drama and "are you kidding me!?" moments, plus some suspense as in ohmigosh will someone get there in time?
I'm still not sure if it was good, although I know it was very well done. But it took me way out of the normal thought processes and movie and TV routines - I'd never seen, or wanted to see, people doing some of those things.
It was just two online films, but they did open my mind for hours, and that's a big part of what I'm after.
That was really all I planned to say for today, but then I got an e-mail from my sister. She had a digital camera out at my other sister's party Saturday. I had the spontaneous thought of asking her to snap a "before" picture of me. I hadn't had my picture taken in a long time, well before the crash, except for the one for the failed Golds Twelve Week Challenge that never ended.
She was happy to oblige, and snapped a couple of me over by the Christmas tree, before we posed for family shots.
I didn't know it, but my brother in law had surgery today. I guess that's part of the reason she hadn't sent the photos. I gave her access to one of my Gmail accounts, thinking it was a file size issue. Anyway, when I finished the second film, there were two e-mails waiting for me. Seeing the photos was like a kick in the stomach. I had no idea that's what I looked like to the few people who see me at the dollar tore, or the gas station, or walking up to the ticket window at the theater.
I won't go into details, so as not to scare you, but having seen my present state, I'm not at all sure that I can make a comeback from this. I enlarged the pic of just my face, complete with the ever present (when away from home) cap, and my first reaction was that I look like one of the Doctor Who characters from another planet - the dude with the big head in a glass container or whatever (but without the wrinkles) The features of my face have pretty much been absorbed.
My cousins, aunts and uncles haven't seen me in ages, due to the depression and lack of acceptable clothes to wear to funerals and weddings. I know that at least one sister has withheld what I've (not) been up to, at least while she could say I was working on my MBA rather than being a hobo. But the sister with the camera has been in touch with everyone on Facebook for ages, and I am in the group shot she said she posted, so there I am for all the extended family to see.
I'm still figuring out how to react. I'm grateful for the dose of reality, no matter how bitter the taste.
But wowser.
11:27 p.m. - Wednesday, Jan. 05, 2011
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