Get me. I'm giving out wings.

[whatho]

Happy Christmas Eve. Mine's been going fairly decently and has been accompanied by florentines and a pleasing baked potato. Tonight I'm going to eat more mince pies, possibly until I explode a little bit, and then I'm going to watch It's a Wonderful Life. It's harder to watch than last night's fare of The Bishop's Wife, largely because I've spent the past few years with a sort of cold, sick feeling in the background as I identify more and more with George Bailey and his never getting away thing, but I still think this film is probably the best film ever made. It has one geniunely stupid bit, during George's vision of how the world would've been had he never been born: when it turns out that Mary never married, experienced failing eyesight and became a librarian (which is apparently supposed to be quite degrading). That bit's just funny and it breaks the mood somewhat. But the rest of it I pretty much adore. I do love Jimmy Stewart quite a lot in this, and the fellow who plays Clarence is very lovely. But mostly it's the message that you may make several choices in life that you come to massively regret but it turns out that every decision you make is what you wanted more than the realistic alternative at the time. Meaning it's not a feelgood film exactly for all that I've seen it called that: it's not that George wanted to work for the Building & Loan more than he wanted to travel the world; he just wanted to see the Building & Loan survive more than he wanted to travel the world, which were the only two options available. He's still robbed of the life he actually wanted, but he's made to see that he wouldn't have wanted the only real alternatives that were on offer. It's sort of the grimmest possible form of optimism going, and I find it rather comforting.

(Although I'm concerned that if Clarence did the 'You've never been born' bit on me, I wouldn't notice the slightest difference. Or the resulting world would be a utopia, and when I say a utopia, I don't mean one with a slave underclass like the original one. That'd be a downer.)

You'll notice in the dancing last night, if you watched it, that nobody performed my suggested showdance to the theme tune from Pirates of the Caribbean with tap dancing and swords. How much more fulfilled a person would you be today if they had done? Incalcuably, that's what I say.

Happy Christmas to you all if I neglect to post on the morrow.