Weeknotes 194

Quiet week, basically.

Yes, I did go for an eye test. It revealed I have astigmatism and would benefit from wearing glasses to correct it. At least, that’s what the optician said, but it’s exactly what he would say, isn’t it, nestled deep in the pocket of Big Eye.

The optician was near the Barbican. Is it Phil’s former optician? Nobody knows. Is it Paul B’s current optician? Yes.

Choosing glasses frames is a prime opportunity for analogue decision terror so I didn’t try to do it in the heat of the moment and have been procrastinating ever since. All I really want is for them to be in no way noteworthy but that’s a near-paradoxical goal. Some of the options are kind of “normal”, but are they like, too normal? Bit normcore?

The silver lining of the astigmatism diagnosis is that it gives me a good excuse to say “prolate spheroid” outside of its usual context of a conversation about which cherry tomatoes to buy.

I had lunch with James on Wednesday and enjoyed hearing about the latest iteration of his decades-spanning thermal printer lifestyle.

The Foundation season finale wasn’t very good. I have a nagging suspicion that this show would make more sense if I rewatched it from the start, but it’s nowhere near good enough to justify doing that, so if I decide to watch the next season I need to remember it’s mostly incoherent and make sure I’ve got the patience to overlook it.

Spooky season continued with Talk to Me, a film that is good! I really liked the performances and the practical effects, and it was just… successfully… spooky. The tone and overall conceit reminded me of It Follows, and at one point I got that feeling from Hereditary, and the people seemed like actual people who say the things that actual people say. Well worth seeing and I’m excited about the prequel/sequel/whatever.

I also saw Nope, which cost fifteen times as much money to make and didn’t work for me at all. Was it high concept? I can’t even tell. It looked good and seemed important but the superficial sheen of prestige didn’t do much to conceal the naff Outer Limits episode underneath. I really liked Get Out but this might be the film that forces me to accept Jordan Peele doesn’t have more ideas where that came from.

I came close to buying Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Edition since it’s heavily discounted this week and includes the PS5 version of the first game, which I owned on PS4 but didn’t play for more than half an hour. Fortunately I had a moment of clarity and stopped myself.

Wool pages read: zero.