1542 The Mouse Shadow.

Dune. It keeps popping into my life at random so it infects my work. I listened to a fun review of the book versus the movie the other day. The movie is terrible in a lot of ways, but for whatever reason I love a lot of the stuff it gets criticized for. The bland acting for one. You just know that the actors, who you know can act, were being directed to deliver their lines without feeling for a large portion of the opening scenes. You don’t get that many great actors together and they all give you performances like that on accident. Except for Patrick Stewart, who apparently can only turn down his emotions to 5.

Anyway, I have this whole backstory built up about Carol’s dad. It may never get used, but I worked it out just so it would be consistent within her. They’ve all been at least thought through to a point for every character, since the people who raise you have a big effect on who you become later on. Unless you’re broken inside, then they either make that even worse, or offset the damage a little bit if everyone else is lucky. It’s not hard to work out what her dad’s life has been like with a house full of women. His wife is obviously a lot like Carol as she’s said as much. The other girls are pretty feisty too if her stories are to be believed. There was at least one very strong sibling rivalry which he would have had to mediate many times, I’m sure. He’s been fighting the good fight for a long while basically.

I think I might have caught a cold. Possibly I’m just having especially bad allergies. Either way I’m a little under the weather today. My nose tends to be clogged in a very dry way, but today it’s actually running a little bit. I try to stay clean but every so often someone manages to sneeze on me, or whatever, and I get a little something. Like I said though, I’m not sure. The world smells like flowers and dust, so it could be that too. I really hope it’s allergies because otherwise I’m set to have a really bad rest of the week otherwise.
The Teen and Mom are out of town for the week, so it’s just me looking after Dad and the dogs. I’m not great at this when I’m feeling fine, so you can imagine how bad I am when I’m feeling sick. I haven’t had a cold, or the flu, since before I went into the hospital the last time. That’s a pretty good record for keeping out of the germ radius of other humans, especially when you consider the Teen’s insane hug lust and reluctance to use hand sanitizer. The last time she was sick I wouldn’t let her touch me and she finally gave in and started paying attention to what she was touching on a daily basis. She was sick enough for long enough to see the benefits of not licking doorknobs.

My dad liked Star Wars, so we always heard “Do or do not, there is no try.” Which, upon multiple hearings, makes less and less sense the more you parse it out. It essentially means do it the first time or quit, which is fucking terrible advice, and a really messed up thing to say to a child.