Friday, December 31, 2010

little mermaid

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I wonder what it was like for the Little Mermaid when she was enchanted and turned from a half-fish ectotherm into a fully human endotherm?

    She'd know about heat and cold from different ocean currents and basking on rocks in the sunshine, of course, but it'd be so different once she was human.

    She'd have gone from never producing any of her own heat and mostly staying the same temperature all the time in the ocean (with the occasional change depending on the aforementioned environmental variables) to having this fire inside her, all throughout her body, all the time. Can you imagine how weird that would be? She would sweat when she ran. She would discover the magic of hot cocoa. She would finally understand blankets.

    It would be like a kind of thermal puberty!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

Sir Lancelot

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I'm so bored of Sir Lancelot.
    At the moment I'm reading The Once & Future King by T.H. White, I'm a bit more than halfway through, the third section of the book mostly has to do with Lancelot and he is so achingly boring I just want to kick myself in the teeth whenever I see his name. I don't know, maybe I'd be more sympathetic to his plights if I'd ever been in love with a real person and had real obstacles to my real love of realness, but I haven't and I'm not and I think he's a prat who ought to be able to control himself better. Basically.
   
    Oh, I've also been watching what I will refer to as BBC Merlin lately, and Lancelot is in a couple episodes of that and watching him is like stabbing myself in the eyes with ten of those oversized q-tips the dentist uses to numb your mouth prior to sticking a needle in your gums. Apparently this isn't a common problem, because some people ship him with other characters and my mother and sister (who also watch BBC Merlin) claim they enjoy him just fine. I just see him and listen to him and feel dead inside. Actively dead. Yes, I went there. Actively! dead. That's how dead I feel inside as regards Sir Lancelot. He can go stuff himself.

    In other news, Guinevere is a total skankbasket.

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Anagram

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I have mastered the Hideously Deformed Windsor Knot.

    Did you know that "Harriet Mary Walter" is an anagram of "Aware rather trimly"?
    And also martyr aware hitler.
    And Maltreat Harry Weir.
    And twirly harem errata.
    And heartily rewarm rat.

    And lots of things to do with weather.

    (Just "Harriet" can, of course, be rearranged as "hart ire," but phonetically speaking I think that's really more appropriate for Harriet Vane.)

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Maltese Falcon

(written at a previous date)

    Dear Harriet Walter,

    I watched The Maltese Falcon for the first time the other day. I've read the book before - well, listened to it, but the audiobook was unabridged so it counts - so I figured I ought to see the movie. If I went through life having only read the book and not seen the movie, inevitably there would be a day when I met a really nice young man and we were figuring out each other's film tastes, and I'd be like I watch a lot of old black-and-white movies and he'd be like oh man I love The Maltese Falcon it's one of my favorite movies, you like old movies so you must have seen it yes? And I'd be like er, no, but I've read the book! and he'd be like oh, well, I've seen the movie a bunch of times but I haven't read the book, and then we'd be at an awkward standstill like the time I went to the bank to set up my first banking account and was talking with my banker and for some reason we got to talking about piloting and he'd been on airplanes but never helicopters and I'd been on helicopters but never airplanes and it was awkward, I must have been 16 or so.

    Anyway. I have now seen The Maltese Falcon. Now if I ever meet such a person (the nice young man, not my banker) and have such a conversation, I can do a little bit of comparison. (Mary Astor is kind of annoying and not really pretty enough to be playing Brigid, although she is pretty enough to get on in life all right. But there are those roles, you know.)

    I love Humphrey Bogart. I love Humphrey Bogart's clothes. I love all the men's clothes in the 20s and 30s and 40s. In fact, let's just say I love all the men's clothes from the Victorian era to the 1940s.

    But between Humphrey Bogart's clothes and Fred Astaire's habit of wearing neckties as belts, I am really starting to desire me some neckties. I must start a collection. (I don't really need belts, because I have decently sizable hips and tend to wear stupid-tight pants, but I think we have all heard of accessories being useless. It still won't be completely useless anyway, because you can always kill people with belts and neckties and it's just handy to have things like that readily available.)

    I'm wearing a necktie right now, actually. Around my neck. It's loosely knotted, fat, silken and garish. I adore it. Still need to learn how to tie neckties though. My dad tried to teach me yesterday upon requesting him to do so, but I had to leave for class before I'd mastered the Windsor. (Of course, I still wanted to wear the garish tie to class, though, so he tied it around his own neck, loosened it and slipped it 'round mine. Very obliging man.)

    There must be directions online. Hrrmmmm.

    PS: Found the directions online. I will beat my ties into submission.

    PPS: If I was rich, and male, and homosexual, I would dress like Humphrey Bogart.

Monday, December 27, 2010

I wonder

    Dear Harriet Walter,
    I wonder what you would think if, sometime in the future, somebody would be like "hey Harriet Walter, did you know there is a blog on the internet presented in the format of letters to you?"

    You would probably be concerned, then check out said blog and read a couple entries and be like "god what a weirdo."

    But I would never have to find that out.