Maisie Williams

            On Thursday morning I ran through “Le Vide au Coeur” (The Empty Heart) by Serge Gainsbourg in French and English and uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to begin editing it for publishing online. Now with “A la pêche des coeurs" (To the Fishing Hole for Hearts) by Boris Vian I have two draft files on that blog. I should be done posting the latter on Christmas Day. 

            Around midday I scrubbed the rest of the section of my kitchen floor that goes just east of my stove and north to the stove. It will probably take the rest of the holiday just washing the wall and the shelves above the stove, putting in a new shelf at the top and cleaning the stove itself inside and out.

            Around 12:30 I decided to beat the Christmas eve rush and go early to Freshco. There was a line-up outside I guess because of covid. 

           Once again the red grapes were too soft and so I bought five bags of the more expensive black ones. I also got a mini watermelon, a pint of strawberries, a half pint of raspberries, a small bag of organic cranberries, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, three bags of milk, bacon, two containers of yogourt, a bag of Old Dutch kettle chips, a can of peaches and a can of fruit salad. 

            I had jalapeno chips and yogourt for lunch. 

            I took a siesta and slept for an extra hour and a quarter. I finished reading “The Return of the Prodigal Son” by André Gide in my dual language book. In the end, while trying to convince his younger sibling not to go away like he did, the prodigal realizes his own return was a failure. He decides to stay to console his mother but guides his little brother to the door. 

            I edited and published my song “Love Song” on Movie Maker. This was easy to do because it was from my July 3, 2020 song practice recording and I’d already synchronized the audio from the camera with that from the voice recorder for that session. On my description of the video I wrote that it was “formally called The Penis Song.” I had meant to say “formerly” but even though I changed it in the editor after publication it still pasted as “formally.” It looks like I would have to delete the whole video and re-upload just to change one annoying word, which doesn’t seem worth the trouble. I can only write a note showing what it is supposed to say. 

            Publishing this song frees it from my rehearsals and so instead of practicing “Love Song” every four days I’ll have an extra day to practice “Megaphor.” So now I’ll do “Megaphor” as the second song in my set for two days in a row and then do “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” as the second song for two days, then start over with “Megaphor” and so on. Neither of these songs turned out very well in last summer’s recording project but I think they will be ready next summer as long as I can get my guitar fixed. 

            I worked some more on my poem series, “My Blood In A Bug.” 

            I rubbed three chicken legs with olive oil, salt and curry powder and roasted them in the oven.

            I made a new batch of chicken gravy. 

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and gravy with a beer while watching “The New Mutants.” This movie was better than the reviews that I’ve read. I have the first few New Mutants comics and this was actually more interesting than those. 

            It begins with Daniel Moonstar being woken by her father as the reservation is in flames. He takes her to safety in the woods but runs back to save people. Daniel is chased by something, loses consciousness and wakes up in a facility for teaching new mutants how to control their powers. The doctor in charge is Cecilia Reyes and the rest of the hospital is fully animated, obeying her commands. The building looks like an old seminary or school that one might find in Quebec. There is a force field around it that none of the teenagers can penetrate with any of their powers. The other kids are Rahne, who can turn into a wolf. Or at least it’s a wolf in the comics. It looks more like a German Shepherd in the film; Ilyana is the most rebellious and she seems to have a bunch of strong powers, such as teleportation and extending her arm into an energy sword. She makes herself unlikeable at first. She has already killed eighteen men. She’s the only character that isn’t in any of the comics that I have; Sam is kind of a human rocket who is there because he blasted off in a coal mine and killed his father as well as several other miners; Roberto has the power to burst into flames and looks like a skeleton under the fire. Daniel does not know her power. There are therapy sessions in which Reyes tries to teach the teens self control and since they are teenagers they rebel when they think she’s not looking. Daniel and Rahne hit it off well and show a lesbian attraction for one another. Things start to happen to everybody. They begin to re-live some of their earlier traumatic experiences. A priest that branded Rahne as a with a real branding iron comes and does it again. There are rapists in smiley face masks coming for Ilyana. Sam relives the killing of his father. Creepy looking laughing creatures attack Ilyana and Sam. Roberto sees Ilyana turn into the monster that is actually him. The kids are told that when they are ready they will be transferred to a special school for mutants. They all believe that it is the X-Men but it’s really an organization called Essex that wants the new mutants to become assassins. Reyes gets an order from her superiors that Daniel is too powerful and must be killed. Under the pretence of treatment she tries to administer a gas like one would use to put down an animal but Rahne saves her and wounds Reyes. Reyes explains that Daniel’s power is to bring everyone’s worst fear to life. Reyes seems to also be a mutant and with a gesture covers them all in force fields. She begins to shrink Daniel’s force field to kill her. But Daniel’s spirit animal, a giant demon bear breaks through the wall and eats Reyes. The force fields disappear but Daniel is unconscious and the bear is out of control. They all fight the bear until Daniel’s father comes to her in a dream and tells her to wake up. Daniel wakes up, approaches the bear and calmly tells it to go to sleep, then it disappears. The forcefield is gone and the new mutants begin to leave at the end. 

             The only actor’s name I recognize since her name and photos are all over the internet because she was one of the stars of Game of Thrones is Maisie Williams, who played Rahne. Game of Thrones was her professional debut and she won several awards because of it. 

             Daniel was played by Blu Hunt who is actually Lakota. The guy who played her father is Manitoba Cree.