Is there anything better than a present that is also a surprise? That’s what happened to me this week, when my friend Jennifer stopped by with a little Happy Birthday box.
When I opened the wrappings, I could scarcely believe what a saw. A bracelet with a real scorpion (*okay, it’s not live now, but it was once) in the middle.
Jennifer and I both have end-of-October birthdays, which means we also share the astrological sign, Scorpio. About this, Jenn and I (along with firey Scorpio-sister Lorie Gardner) are really quite serious. Jenn remembered that long, long ago I made a joke** about getting the venom-stingered Anthropod tattooed right on my forearm where it could easily be seen. (**This may or may not have been a joke. At the time seemed like a good idea to warn The Unsuspecting, since we Scorpios are rather passionate, complicated beings.) Of course I am never getting a tattoo, as you know. So Jenn thought this bracelet might be a good substitute.
It is perfect.
*enlarged to show detail (and for dramatic effect)
It is also a wonderful reminder to me of the connection I have, dating back many, many years, to a treasured friend I don’t see often enough.
And so inspired by Jenn and the the surprise of the Scorpio Bracelet, I vow to plan a little surprise gift for someone I care about every month during 2012.
Won’t that be fun?
30 Days of Grace
Love a surprise gift – a gift for no reason. My grandmother called it a ‘sercy’ — one of my favorite words and the best kind of present!
I love a “sercy”. Perfect!
165 more shopping days ’til April 15th…
Or I could “surprise” you in January!
Nice, was looking for this for a while, a sustiggeon is to not have such a long wait when its basically one episode split in half.Ok, some feedback:I agree with a lot of Johns points (except about the light levels maybe) even though the future-speak was just a mild nuisance to me. The big problem for me was that it felt like I was watching a very stupid show compared to the latter half of season 1. What really grabs me about Dollhouse is that it describes the mechanisms of exploitation and oppression so very well. It’s not so much that the dollhouse is morally gray, I think it’s obviously a very very bad place. But more that you can see that decent and lovable people can be part of a system that is inherently oppressive and damaging and actually uphold that system without any evil masterplan but through ignorance, self-justification and because they enjoy some benefits from it. The show has also masterfully made the viewer almost complicit in the exploitation of the dolls, and made us question how we project out fantasies on other people and how society, culture etc. forms our expectations.In Epitaph One this is all torn down and we are back to good family vs evil corporation, complete with zombies! It felt very much like Firefly and even TSCC which I like alright but has never engaged me like Dollhouse does. It felt like the very interesting conflict at the heart of the show, how can someone (Echo) fight the imprinting and develop a sense of self in the face of this oppressive technology, had been replaced by an apocalypse storyline which ironically does not feel like it matters very much.I hope and think that season 2 will build more on the later season 1 than on this episode. But the nearly universal approval bothers me, do people really want cookie cutter shows with obvious and simple moral conflicts?