After a post about intrusive dark thoughts during this season, maybe it’s time to do a coping mechanism.
I like to watch fictional people do things carefully and log what they’re doing. Usually that just means I pay attention to what I’m watching, but this time, I’ll make an actual list of all the things they do.
Here’s Jack Skellington trying to figure out Christmas via science experiments.
He gets all of his equipment together. He starts with the microscope, looking at a holly berry. He cooks/electocutes (?) a candy cane, which loses its red stripes and becomes spaghetti. Cool trick.
Then he does a Nailed It challenge with cutting out a snowflake, but it turns out to be a spider. He incises a teddy, and looks at some fluff with a microscope. He crumbles up a red and gold striped ornament, places it in a thing of boiling water (?) and it flashes green.
This teaches him nothing.
Next is Sally:
She funnels some sort of liquid into a bottle. Then scoops a powder in as well, and corks it. She places the bottle in a gift basket with… I’m not sure what. Then she uses her sewing machine to drop the basket out the window safely.
She follows it by just jumping. To put herself back together, she pulls out needle and thread from behind her ear and pocket, then starts with her arm, and then her leg. Then she heads over to Jack’s.
It’s annoying that the part where he opens the bottle and there’s a smoke butterfly isn’t here, but that’s what happens.
This is a really menial thing, but it manages to focus the mind on something else. It’s not “just” a distraction – it’s a, “look, the thing you’re thinking about is self-destructive. There’s nothing constructive about it. Focus on something else and move on.”
Also, this task is helpful because Youtube will probably one day remove those videos, but there’s a full description of them there anyway, even if the videos are just grey space.
Maybe in the spring I’ll do this again with the cake and dress scene in Sleeping Beauty.
owl machine 