Movies, a party, and paperwork.

“Hacksaw Ridge” is a presentation of the story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist and conscientious objector who won the Medal of Honor as a medic during the Battle of Okinawa in 1945. It’s bloody and manipulative and kind of awesome anyway.

“Doctor Strange” is surprisingly good, considering how fundamentally lame the central character is. Benedict Cumberbatch is responsible for a great deal of this, of course, but the whole cast is excellent.

“Inferno” is yet another Tom Hanks thriller based on a Dan Brown novel, and it has all of the usual elements: Tons of melodrama, lots of silly details, gorgeous European settings. This one is odd, though, because I wanted the bad guys to win. The “Evil Genius” actually had the moral high ground, and my experience of the film was colored by the knowledge that the real good guys were going to lose, because the writers didn’t understand their own material.

I did a fire vigil for Samhain; I started a fire in the fireplace before the sun set on October 31, and kept it burning until the sun came back up on November 1. It turned into a 26 hour day, which is something I haven’t done in a while. It was kind of fun. Not sure the meaning I was looking for came along.

My father turned 90 on November 1; we had a party for him on Sunday the 6th. Lots of distant relatives and old friends showed up; the last such gathering was my mother’s funeral in 2010. My father seemed to have a good time, which was the point of the exercise.

I have started digging into the horrors of filing for unemployment, updating my resume, and looking for work. I am NOT enjoying it. Not even a little bit.

Uncle Hyena