1. Dreamed about getting a phone call from Australians. I go to my phone and hear voices coming from it. I don't understand what's going on. Then I see my former Australian friend has left a video message. Her family is attempting to celebrate Chanukah and she wants to include us in it. She gets emotional and talks about how I'm such an important friend to her.
The message makes me feel very conflicted—sad and guilty, because I didn't consider us to be friends anymore. I thought it was all over.
Then later I had a dream within a dream.
I'm alone and think about the dream. I imagine telling my sister the dream, and imagine her saying that I shouldn't wait for this friend to call me. I should just go ahead and call her. I consider doing that, but don't like the idea. I imagine my friend not being like she was in the dream. I imagine her not being eager to hear from me.
2. Thought about the dream when I woke up.
Outside my family, I don't consider anyone to be my friend. I just stopped with the whole friend thing. It seems to me that I'm more content this way. I feel I have more confidence and emotional strength. I feel less lonely and rejected. Really. Without the whole friendship thing, my life seems to have improved. Yet I still feel I'm doing something wrong. It's ingrained in our society that we need to have friends, and those friends need to be from outside our family
3. Thought of reasons I gave up on the whole friendship thing.
The main thing is I'm tired of rejection. I had been in the friendship game for forty or so years. I think there was more pain—feelings of abandonment, rejection, being used, etc. than there were of positive and fun experiences.
Second. Because of the Internet, I think the concept of friendship has been greatly cheapened.
What is a friend?
Is it anyone you added to your Facebook list? Someone you follow on Twitter? A person you never talk to but every few months you click the heart on one of their Instagram photos?
Is it someone you see as a sort of diary—you email them every few weeks with all the details of your life? They know all about you, but you know barely anything about them.
Is it your favorite actress who once responded to one of your Tweets?
Is it someone you were once close to but now never talk to?
To me, a friend is someone you talk to on a regular basis—a minimum of about once a month but hopefully more than that. You know the major things happening in their life, and they know the major things happening in your life.
4. Wished there were better words to describe non-friends. Acquaintance sound so sterile...cold. Former friends sounds dramatic and mean.
There should be ways to describe people who you like but are not close to. And there should be a way to describe people who were your friends in the past. You have fond memories of them, and despite drifting apart, you hold them in your heart.
5. Started watching an episode of Scooter: Secret Agent.
I'm liking the show much more now that Scooter (Martin Sharpe) has lost the secret agent job.
Loss and the resulting depression is much more interesting to me than secret agent adventures.
6. Liked how Scooter is handling his loss. He's not allowed to work for the mysterious agency anymore, so he's decided to do his own independent detective work.
7. Thought the message of the episode was a little irresponsible. The basic idea is that people should complete their promised missions even if it puts their life in grave danger.
I think it would be different if the show were geared towards adults and if the goal in mind was about saving lives. But no. This episode was about a teenage boy risking his life to rescue a teddy bear.
8. Wondered how many people have died because of taking silly risks in order to achieve some goal or fulfill a promise.
9. Wanted to say that as a mother, AND as someone who has at times been very attached to particular dolls and stuffed animals, I'm not trying to trivialize their loss. As I've said before, I have a Pixar brain, and in my heart, stuffed animals have souls.
Still. Despite all this. I don't think the retrieval of a stuffed animal is worth the loss of a human life. Especially since the stuffed animal is unlikely to die. It will hopefully find a happy life somewhere else.
For example, the lost Teddy Bear , on the show, was found out in the open water. Teddy Bears don't have lungs, so he'd likely do fine living in the ocean. Maybe he'd befriend some jellyfish and sharks.
10. Felt that emotional attachments to stuffed animals and dolls should be taken seriously, and efforts should be made to reunite the person and toy—just not to the detriment of human life.
11. Started watching another episode of Scooter: Secret Agent.
12. Saw, from IMDb, that this is the episode that features Ryan Corr and Dena Kaplan.
13. Saw Dena Kaplan for a very brief moment.
I haven't seen Ryan Corr yet.
Or maybe I saw him, but didn't recognize him.
14. Saw Ryan Corr...probably.
I'm pretty sure that's him.
He looks so young!
15. Saw from IMDb that Corr's appearance on Scooter: Secret Agent happened four years before he became a cast member of Packed to the Rafters.
16. Saw that Corr was one of the stars of The Sleepover Club.
17. Listened to Vance Joy while wrapping Christmas presents.
I usually listen only to "Riptide" and "From Afar", but today I heard "Fire and the Flood". I like it.
I need to expand my horizons more when it comes to Vance Joy.
18. Went to the Tropfest website.
I'm going to watch a 2007 finalist film called "Real Thing". Although I'm kind of worried I already watched it.
19. Started to watch "Real Thing".
I don't think I've seen it before.
20. Liked the film so far. It's like a psychological mystery. A woman wakes up and is terrified to see a stranger has taken the place of her husband. The stranger claims he IS her husband, and that the woman is sick—suffering from delusions.
So far, I don't know if the man is telling the truth or if he's a con artist.
21. Not overly fond of the ending.
It's not terrible, but...maybe too abrupt?
It could be it happened too fast, and I want the story to continue.
I wouldn't mind seeing the story as a full-length movie.
22. Started to like the ending as I thought about it more.
23. Saw why I thought I had watched "Real Thing" already.
It's one of the movies, on the Tropfest site, where the connection to YouTube isn't working. A week or so ago, I skipped over the movie and instead watched another movie from the same director—"Teratoma".
Today I decided to not skip the films in which the link to YouTube is broken. I Googled the film to find it elsewhere. It was actually on YouTube via the Tropfest channel. I think just the link on the Tropfest website isn't working for some reason.
Anyway....
Rupert Glasson, the writer and director of "Teratoma" and "Real Thing" is the one who wrote and directed the thriller Coffin Rock.
24. Wondered if I've looked at What Lola Wants. This is a more recent movie from Glasson.
25. Saw that What Lola Wants is an American thriller.
26. Saw that one of the stars of What Lola Wants is Sophie Lowe. I couldn't remember who she was at first and then saw she was the teenage girl from The Slap.
27. Started looking at the cast of "Real Thing".
The woman was played by an actress named Emma Jackson. She appeared on a recent TV movie called The Killing Fields. I'm not sure if her role was big, medium, small, or very small.
She had various -probably small-parts in other projects—including All Saints and Water Rats.
Actually, on All Saints she appeared in three episodes as the same character. So that's fairly substantial.
28. Saw that Emma Jackson was also on four episodes of Crownies.
I've heard of that before, but haven't really looked at it yet.
29. Looked at Crownies. It was a 2011 drama that ran for twenty-two episodes.
30. Saw that one of the men from "Real Thing", Slava Orel, was in a 2007 TV movie called Hammer Bay. One of the stars of that was Jessica McNamee from Packed to the Rafters.
McNamee's character is murdered, though. McNamee might not have a lot of screen time—unless she appears in flashbacks.
31. Found an interview with Emma Jackson.
I think it's the right Jackson. .
There's a photo of her, and it looks quite similar to the woman in "Real Thing".
Though I'm not always good at faces.
My brain gets confused.
32. Started reading the interview.
Jackson likes fine wine and open fires.
What is an open fire? Would that be like a campfire rather than a fireplace fire?
She also likes board games. I wonder which are her favorites. Does she prefer the classics like Monopoly and Scrabble? Or does she like the new ones.
We tried playing a new one that's pretty popular. I forgot the name, but I think it had railroads. We couldn't figure out how to play; so then, I felt stupid.
33. Saw that making cushions is very important to Emma Jackson—maybe more important than fire, wine, and board games.
She also likes yoga.
34. Saw that Emma Jackson is a big fan of her mom.
That's very cool.
Also, she gave her mom and Wonder Woman costume for her birthday, and her mom actually wore it. That's awesome.
35. Wondered about this.
The interview asks what's happiness to Jackson. She replied, a warm gun.
What?!
36. Saw that Jackson has done a lot of theater work.
37. Saw from Google that there's another Emma Jackson. She's a triathlete.
38. Reminded by Google that Emma Jackson was Danni Minogue's character from Home and Away.
The Emma part is more familiar to me than the Jackson part. Was her last name always Jackson?
39. Saw a review of one of Kate Jackson's (the actress)'s plays. I think it was what the interview, I read, was promoting.
The play is called Food, and it was written by the actor Steve Rodgers (From Slide and The Code)
Emma Jackson's co-star in the play was Kate Box from Rake.
40. Realized that the thing about the play was more like a promotion. It wasn't really a review.
41. Felt my Tropfest adventures weren't as exciting today.
I could keep digging, but I think I'm going to quit early.
I don't think many people are going to be reading this anyway...with it being Christmas and all.
I hope if someone is reading this on Christmas, and they are of the Christmas-celebrating population, that they're having a nice, peaceful, and fun holiday.
The message makes me feel very conflicted—sad and guilty, because I didn't consider us to be friends anymore. I thought it was all over.
Then later I had a dream within a dream.
I'm alone and think about the dream. I imagine telling my sister the dream, and imagine her saying that I shouldn't wait for this friend to call me. I should just go ahead and call her. I consider doing that, but don't like the idea. I imagine my friend not being like she was in the dream. I imagine her not being eager to hear from me.
2. Thought about the dream when I woke up.
Outside my family, I don't consider anyone to be my friend. I just stopped with the whole friend thing. It seems to me that I'm more content this way. I feel I have more confidence and emotional strength. I feel less lonely and rejected. Really. Without the whole friendship thing, my life seems to have improved. Yet I still feel I'm doing something wrong. It's ingrained in our society that we need to have friends, and those friends need to be from outside our family
3. Thought of reasons I gave up on the whole friendship thing.
The main thing is I'm tired of rejection. I had been in the friendship game for forty or so years. I think there was more pain—feelings of abandonment, rejection, being used, etc. than there were of positive and fun experiences.
Second. Because of the Internet, I think the concept of friendship has been greatly cheapened.
What is a friend?
Is it anyone you added to your Facebook list? Someone you follow on Twitter? A person you never talk to but every few months you click the heart on one of their Instagram photos?
Is it someone you see as a sort of diary—you email them every few weeks with all the details of your life? They know all about you, but you know barely anything about them.
Is it your favorite actress who once responded to one of your Tweets?
Is it someone you were once close to but now never talk to?
To me, a friend is someone you talk to on a regular basis—a minimum of about once a month but hopefully more than that. You know the major things happening in their life, and they know the major things happening in your life.
4. Wished there were better words to describe non-friends. Acquaintance sound so sterile...cold. Former friends sounds dramatic and mean.
There should be ways to describe people who you like but are not close to. And there should be a way to describe people who were your friends in the past. You have fond memories of them, and despite drifting apart, you hold them in your heart.
5. Started watching an episode of Scooter: Secret Agent.
I'm liking the show much more now that Scooter (Martin Sharpe) has lost the secret agent job.
Loss and the resulting depression is much more interesting to me than secret agent adventures.
6. Liked how Scooter is handling his loss. He's not allowed to work for the mysterious agency anymore, so he's decided to do his own independent detective work.
7. Thought the message of the episode was a little irresponsible. The basic idea is that people should complete their promised missions even if it puts their life in grave danger.
I think it would be different if the show were geared towards adults and if the goal in mind was about saving lives. But no. This episode was about a teenage boy risking his life to rescue a teddy bear.
8. Wondered how many people have died because of taking silly risks in order to achieve some goal or fulfill a promise.
9. Wanted to say that as a mother, AND as someone who has at times been very attached to particular dolls and stuffed animals, I'm not trying to trivialize their loss. As I've said before, I have a Pixar brain, and in my heart, stuffed animals have souls.
Still. Despite all this. I don't think the retrieval of a stuffed animal is worth the loss of a human life. Especially since the stuffed animal is unlikely to die. It will hopefully find a happy life somewhere else.
For example, the lost Teddy Bear , on the show, was found out in the open water. Teddy Bears don't have lungs, so he'd likely do fine living in the ocean. Maybe he'd befriend some jellyfish and sharks.
10. Felt that emotional attachments to stuffed animals and dolls should be taken seriously, and efforts should be made to reunite the person and toy—just not to the detriment of human life.
11. Started watching another episode of Scooter: Secret Agent.
12. Saw, from IMDb, that this is the episode that features Ryan Corr and Dena Kaplan.
13. Saw Dena Kaplan for a very brief moment.
I haven't seen Ryan Corr yet.
Or maybe I saw him, but didn't recognize him.
14. Saw Ryan Corr...probably.
I'm pretty sure that's him.
He looks so young!
15. Saw from IMDb that Corr's appearance on Scooter: Secret Agent happened four years before he became a cast member of Packed to the Rafters.
16. Saw that Corr was one of the stars of The Sleepover Club.
17. Listened to Vance Joy while wrapping Christmas presents.
I usually listen only to "Riptide" and "From Afar", but today I heard "Fire and the Flood". I like it.
I need to expand my horizons more when it comes to Vance Joy.
18. Went to the Tropfest website.
I'm going to watch a 2007 finalist film called "Real Thing". Although I'm kind of worried I already watched it.
19. Started to watch "Real Thing".
I don't think I've seen it before.
20. Liked the film so far. It's like a psychological mystery. A woman wakes up and is terrified to see a stranger has taken the place of her husband. The stranger claims he IS her husband, and that the woman is sick—suffering from delusions.
So far, I don't know if the man is telling the truth or if he's a con artist.
21. Not overly fond of the ending.
It's not terrible, but...maybe too abrupt?
It could be it happened too fast, and I want the story to continue.
I wouldn't mind seeing the story as a full-length movie.
22. Started to like the ending as I thought about it more.
23. Saw why I thought I had watched "Real Thing" already.
It's one of the movies, on the Tropfest site, where the connection to YouTube isn't working. A week or so ago, I skipped over the movie and instead watched another movie from the same director—"Teratoma".
Today I decided to not skip the films in which the link to YouTube is broken. I Googled the film to find it elsewhere. It was actually on YouTube via the Tropfest channel. I think just the link on the Tropfest website isn't working for some reason.
Anyway....
Rupert Glasson, the writer and director of "Teratoma" and "Real Thing" is the one who wrote and directed the thriller Coffin Rock.
24. Wondered if I've looked at What Lola Wants. This is a more recent movie from Glasson.
25. Saw that What Lola Wants is an American thriller.
26. Saw that one of the stars of What Lola Wants is Sophie Lowe. I couldn't remember who she was at first and then saw she was the teenage girl from The Slap.
27. Started looking at the cast of "Real Thing".
The woman was played by an actress named Emma Jackson. She appeared on a recent TV movie called The Killing Fields. I'm not sure if her role was big, medium, small, or very small.
She had various -probably small-parts in other projects—including All Saints and Water Rats.
Actually, on All Saints she appeared in three episodes as the same character. So that's fairly substantial.
28. Saw that Emma Jackson was also on four episodes of Crownies.
I've heard of that before, but haven't really looked at it yet.
29. Looked at Crownies. It was a 2011 drama that ran for twenty-two episodes.
30. Saw that one of the men from "Real Thing", Slava Orel, was in a 2007 TV movie called Hammer Bay. One of the stars of that was Jessica McNamee from Packed to the Rafters.
McNamee's character is murdered, though. McNamee might not have a lot of screen time—unless she appears in flashbacks.
31. Found an interview with Emma Jackson.
I think it's the right Jackson. .
There's a photo of her, and it looks quite similar to the woman in "Real Thing".
Though I'm not always good at faces.
My brain gets confused.
32. Started reading the interview.
Jackson likes fine wine and open fires.
What is an open fire? Would that be like a campfire rather than a fireplace fire?
She also likes board games. I wonder which are her favorites. Does she prefer the classics like Monopoly and Scrabble? Or does she like the new ones.
We tried playing a new one that's pretty popular. I forgot the name, but I think it had railroads. We couldn't figure out how to play; so then, I felt stupid.
33. Saw that making cushions is very important to Emma Jackson—maybe more important than fire, wine, and board games.
She also likes yoga.
34. Saw that Emma Jackson is a big fan of her mom.
That's very cool.
Also, she gave her mom and Wonder Woman costume for her birthday, and her mom actually wore it. That's awesome.
35. Wondered about this.
The interview asks what's happiness to Jackson. She replied, a warm gun.
What?!
36. Saw that Jackson has done a lot of theater work.
37. Saw from Google that there's another Emma Jackson. She's a triathlete.
38. Reminded by Google that Emma Jackson was Danni Minogue's character from Home and Away.
The Emma part is more familiar to me than the Jackson part. Was her last name always Jackson?
39. Saw a review of one of Kate Jackson's (the actress)'s plays. I think it was what the interview, I read, was promoting.
The play is called Food, and it was written by the actor Steve Rodgers (From Slide and The Code)
Emma Jackson's co-star in the play was Kate Box from Rake.
40. Realized that the thing about the play was more like a promotion. It wasn't really a review.
41. Felt my Tropfest adventures weren't as exciting today.
I could keep digging, but I think I'm going to quit early.
I don't think many people are going to be reading this anyway...with it being Christmas and all.
I hope if someone is reading this on Christmas, and they are of the Christmas-celebrating population, that they're having a nice, peaceful, and fun holiday.
