Especially vulnerable around movies about animals.

I cry really easily. I remember when I was six or seven I used to love watching the movie Homeward Bound about two dogs and a cat whose family leaves them in the care of a relative who owns a ranch while they go on holiday. The animals think they've been abandoned and run away from the ranch and try to find their way home through the wilderness. What happens in the end? Hint: it's got the word "Home" in the title.

There is one part of this movie where something happens and the cat falls over a waterfall. Every time I watched this movie, I cried so hard at this part that my mum threatened to take the thing away from me. But the cat! Went over the waterfall! How could you not be sad??? But in my mum's world, you're only allowed to cry the first time, when you don't know the ending yet.

But it's not just movies, which I seem to have become a bit more immune to in recent years. It's any kind of emotional conversation about anything, and it makes it difficult for me to talk about things I really care about without looking like a case of female hysteria from the 1800s. I HATE IT.

I went to look on the internet forums to see if anyone had found a solution to this problem. (I love the internet so much. I was watching Sleepless in Seattle the other day with Les and suddenly I realised, wait, the people in this movie DID NOT HAVE INTERNET. How did they live? How did they find out stuff? I love finding out stuff, but I really don't think I would have bothered going to the library every time I needed to know something. Internet-connected world, we no longer have an excuse to be stupid.) And of course there were loads of other people online who claimed to suffer the same thing I did, as there are for virtually any condition, imagined or real, on the internet. Hooray!

Admittedly, some of their cases were a bit more serious than mine. One confessed to crying whenever he turned the radio on. Naturally, no one in the pages of comments that followed suggested that he just don't turn the radio on. Huh. There was also a forum that simply asked: "Do you cry really easily?" to which people replied: "Yes, I do."

Thanks guys, super helpful!

But I did find my solution. Someone posted that it is impossible to cry if you tickle the roof of your mouth with your tongue, and it actually works. Anyway, I managed to talk to my father about getting married without dissolving, so hooray for me.

Deciding what to do with our Friday night.

Claire: What about District 9?
Holly: What's it about?
Claire: Reads off imdb "An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions on Earth suddenly finds a kindred spirit in a government agent who is exposed to their biotechnology."

Pause.

Holly: It doesn't sound very interesting.
Claire: But it was nominated for Best Oscar!
Holly: ... where all the directors forget about making good movies and instead polish their statuettes to be the shiniest of all?

On watching Goblet of Fire again.

Something like that SCENES FROM LORD OF THE RINGS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN USED AS SETUPS FOR BAD COMMERCIALS HAD THE FILMMAKERS NOT RESPECTED THE MATERIAL thing on mellie's blog. Also kind of one of those things that is not going to be funny to anyone but me and my sister, and maybe mel, but I had to remember somehow.

Barty Crouch JR.: I'll show you mine and you show me yours

He dramatically thrusts out his arm, revealing the dark mark.
Dumbledore looks shocked. He pulls Harry's arm forward, revealing the bloody scar left by Voldemort.

Holly: Huh? Why did he even do that?
Claire: Next take - Snape thrusts out arm bearing Spongebob Squarepants tattoo.
Holly: Everyone: Ooooooooh....

But seriously, after I watched GoF, I felt so darn excited. I don't even know why, that's not even the movie that I like, although I think it did redeem itself at the very very end when they reemerge from the maze, and you have to admit, all that nice chumminess between Cedric and Harry is kind of, well, nice. Anyway, I felt like re-reading all the books! The whole thing is just so amazing, the way it threads together, and to be fair, I don't think any commercial movie could give it justice in it's wholeness. It's sappy, but I love Harry Potter(!), especially when he bangs his head on the wall to the delightful rhythm of ANGST ANGST ANGST.

And I kind of realised that mellie, you will always be my friend, for who else could I turn to to gush about these things? I was looking for the LOTR thing on your website and so was scrolling through previous entries, and there was this whole 2-week period where you were like LOTR SOUNDTRACK IS MY LIFE every post, and I thought, man, this is totally the person I want to be friends with for the rest of my life!

I also need those soundtracks, badly. I've lost mine ):

After the whole uni-drama with my family, I think I'm the kind of person who doesn't say what she thinks, because she's afraid to disappoint people, so she kind of just rolls with the expected course. This is baaaaad, because I just feel worse and worse until finally, the reveal, and people are disappointed anyway AND angry, because I took so long to tell them. So I'm just going to say now, before it's too late and the dreaded AND angry becomes an inevitable consequence, that I've decided that I won't be going back to TJ, or any church for awhile. Because it was getting more stressful to go to services than anything else. I don't know why it was stressful, maybe the weight of the noise, and the emotion, and the smiling people. It felt like the dreams I had when I was very young, that I was in a big field full of black, enormous tyres, and they were crushing me. I used to take the train in, and sit at Hans and just dread it, then I'd start walking and end up exploring the city, or listening to music at the Esplanade, and it felt so much easier to be alive and to love everything. The last DCD pre-service I attended, I left early and as I came out of the building and burst into the daylight it was like flying away. It was one of the best feelings I have ever had, and I knew then that TJ wasn't the place for me anymore. It was too hard, and an awful, pointless kind of hard. It's sad, but I'm a happier person for not going.

RETURN OF THE LAST UNICORN!

I watched The Last Unicorn again today with bro db, mel, pam, prisc and michelle. While here I imply that we watched it together, it was more like me gawping at the screen while everyone said "Claire... Claire.... It's your turn...." in varying degrees of patience and loudness, because we were all playing the Game of Life. I don't know why it still has such an impact on me, I keep seeing new things in it. Today it was the part where the unicorn, now human, begs the magician not to turn her back, because she wants to marry Lir, but she is changed back anyway, and at that moment when she is encased with the light of his magic, she looks so frail and lost, caught up in the inevitability of her own existence, like all of us actually. It was so awful i wanted to cry - there are so many things i wish i didn't have to be too, but somehow i always get changed back to the default.

I have yet to find anyone to love that movie as much as i do, which is a bit sad, because unlike star wars and lotr (mel is my fellow buff) or weird stuff like edward scissorhands (vivienne and ling!) i cannot gush about it with anyone, and any opportunity to do some indulgent gushing over something you really like halves some of the joy.

my sister is going to secondary school tomorrow! i feel mixed pride and surprise and lots of other sisterly things.