Today was gross.

I felt icky and vomitocious all day, so I skipped going to get blood drawn this evening and just came home.

The only things that will make situations like today better are reading some Game of Thrones, cuddling up on the couch to watch Seinfeld with the boy, and

 

working more on Joan.

I need to take better pics of her... All of her skin is done in microscopic single-threaded backstitch and stem stitch. 

I really need to remind myself that these are towels, not museum pieces. Nobody cares if her ear stitching is the sort of thing that I really should be doing with a magnifying glass.

But it still makes me so proud.

The next project to tackle with some embroidery is a project that is much bigger. Roommate and best friend/best man Alex is a gifted cartoonist, who has developed a family of characters that (fictionally) reside in the crazy turreted house at the end of our street. They are rather Addams-like in tone, but much angrier and more neurotic. I have a series of embroideries planned, so that he can have someone do something with these characters. I don't think that I will be able to make all of the smaller, individual portraits before we move to foreign parts, but I want to see if I can get a group portrait done by his birthday. Blamsfords, here we come!!

The Book Thing.

So, I was talking with Ben about the papers I had written in college, specifically the papers that I wrote in my senior year. I wrote a paper about the nuclear bomb as portrayed in Cold War film and media which proved meandering but completely engrossing to write and research.

I was explaining to him that the film The Manchurian Candidate came out at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis, and than contrasted the media reaction to films with sensitive material coming out after the attacks of 9/11 (specifically the postponement of the release of the film Big Trouble, which featured a plane hijacking as a major plot point.)

After a lengthy discussion, we started compiling an outline for a book about the systemic shift among the American public and media in their reactions to film and television from the era of World War II to the post 9/11 era, specifically regarding violent conflicts and their portrayals.

The real reason I think that this book is worth pursuing is that my generation and I were the target audience for the films made after the post 9/11 period, both from an escapist, "comfort-food" angle, and in the films examining the whys and wherefores of the 9/11 tragedy and Iraq War.

Whaddia think, reading audience?