April 14, 2008

• April 14th

  Ugh, I 'm beat. Good thing I have off tomorrow so I can sit on my butt and do nothing. heh

  Actually, I'm hoping it's nice out tomorrow. Lately it seems like any time I've had spare time, it's been raining. Which is okay, we need the rain. I just wish it would rain when I was working and be nice when I had the time to enjoy it. I really want to get out to ramble in the woods before my allergies take a sharp turn for the worse.

  It used to be, when I was a kid, that my food allergies where the worst. Chocolate, citrus, malic acid... too much exposure to anyone of these could make as sick as if I had the flu. My air bourn allergies were never really that bad. When I was really little, I'd have pink eye every summer. But back then, we had cats, which I am terribly allergic to, in addition to my pollen and dust mite allergies. By the time we actually got the allergy testing done when I was eleven, the air bourn allergies weren't that bad. At the time, the main problem was that I was being exposed to so many things I was allergic to that it was like living in a poisonous environment. Once we got rid of the wool, the pine tree, the chocolate, the citrus, the apples, and the carpeting... I was a-ok... most of the time.

  After that, the only time I got sick was at the end of summer. So it's heading into summer now, and I want to get out into nature before I'm forced to seek refuge. My mother says that I belong in a bubble. But I seriously cannot open a window or be outside when someone is mowing the grass, or I might as well lick a petri dish containing a cold virus. I even run a low fever in the summer, due to my allergies, not the temperature.

  It's so frustrating to love trees and plants and to have to hide from them when they're at their most beautiful.

  We rented 30 Days of Night and Sweeney Todd yesterday. I was really impressed with Sweeney Todd, mostly because I'm not a big Depp fan and I'm even less into musicals, but it was good. Surprisingly good. I don't know if it was all the English accents, but I found myself thinking of Oliver. I half expected the Artful Dodger to be in the background, picking pockets. There were a few parts where I was thoroughly repulsed, but they had no connection to the fake blood squirting out of the numerous victims of Mr. Todd. That was some seriously fake blood. I actually winced more whenever they showed the body of his latest victim hitting the basement floor head first. At one point, I thought I saw brains. Ewwwww. And I know the movie was partially about cannibalism, but watching all the happy patrons digging into their meat pies..... Guhhh. Makes me glad I'm a vegetarian.

  30 Days of Night was really good too. After watching Sweeney Todd, I may have been desensitize to all the gore in 30 Days. The only part I didn't like is that the vampires mostly spoke in some kind of guttural screechy language. All in all though, I felt this "reinvention" of the vampire was in some respects a suitable heir to Nosferatu. (Note: the word nosferatu is a descriptive word for the "unclean" and contagious nature of a vampire. Only Hollywood and fiction have made the word interchangeable with the word vampire....Which is not to say that there are not other words for creatures like vampires, but that nosferatu is just not one of them... little pet peeve of mine.)They had the claws, some had the beaky noses, and bleak, black eyes that reminded me entirely of the original Nosferatu silent film. I think they would have done better if all of the vampire actors had been chosen for stereotypical "Slavic" features. Their pale coloration coupled with the black eyes and sharp features made some of them seem almost shark-like and only vestigially human. So that the shrieky made up language was entirely unnecessary or at least, was more distracting than useful in the grander scheme of things. Having read the novelization and the comic though, the movie adhered to the plot without veering too much away from the original story. I liked it.

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  April 14th

  This is the third day of the Cerealia.

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  This is the third day of the Japanese Kamo-Tama-Yori-Hime festival.

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  According to the Norse calendar, Sommersblot welcomes the summer half of the year.

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  According to superstitious belief, the fourteenth day of April is a very unlucky time for travel, especially by ship. (It was on this date in the year 1912 that the ocean liner Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the sea.) Whether the Titanic tragedy spawned the superstition or merely served to reinforce it is unknown.

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  Maryamma (or Mariamne), the Hindu goddess of the sea, is honored in India with an annual festival.

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  On the 30th day of Pachons, Celebrations were held in the House of Ra, Osiris and Horus.

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  • 6:35 pm
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