As I'm sure you know, I am addicted to YouTube. Almost every day I find something there (usually referred by my friends at JUB), and frequently I find myself laughing until the tears spurt from my eyes.
Here's a perfect example (NOT safe for work, nor for children, nor for anyone of a delicate sensibility):
I mentioned earlier my fondness for the British panel quiz show QI, which is hosted by one of my few real-life idols, Stephen Fry and perma-guested by the adorable Alan Davies. Here are three parts of one of my favorite episodes of the show, from the fourth season; pay special attention to Julian Clary recounting his meeting with HRH Elizabeth II (in the middle section).
If you'd like to catch up on the entire five seasons of the program, visit Nick Loizu's YouTube homepage.
Another British panel show caught my attention earlier, but it has fewer episodes: Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Actually, the show went on quite a bit longer, but I find I only enjoyed the last two seasons, in which the adorable Simon Amstell hosted. Again cut into three parts, enjoy my favorite episode (which features the delicious John Barrowman, who was in fact the name I was searching when I found this show).
So anyway, that's how I spend a lot of my time. I may be starting work sometime soon, I have a second interview for a particular nonprofit on Tuesday, and I have a really good feeling about the place...the first interview went really well, I think. I'll keep you updated as developments arise. I'll also post a picture of me in my beard, as soon as I get my camera working again...I found it, plugged it in, and nothing happened; I'll try replacing the batteries, that may make a difference.
I just don't feel like writing, is all. But I can't let you all languish in ignorance of my state-of-being, so here are some general updates:
I lost my job at the end of February; the position I was occupying was horribly unnecessary, and I was bored out of my mind, and I looked bored out of my mind, and having people who obviously have nothing important to do sitting around when there are budget cuts afoot is simply not feasible, so they laid me off.
Being laid off is cool, because now I get unemployment insurance! I've been paying into Unemployment for years now, and I've never collected any, they've always found some way of diddling me out of payment. Now I'm on it, I intend to stay on it as long as I can, squeezing out every penny to which I am entitled.
Of course, this means I have to job-hunt again (I search Yahoo Hot Jobs daily, and am signed up at a few other sites), and go through more interviews (eventually), and get used to a new environment when I do get a new job; it also means that I had to leave a company I loved and people I really liked... but whatever. I was so bored and miserable in my job that it's a huge relief to not have to go back, despite all the people I miss.
I'm growing a beard. I've been thinking about doing this for some time now, but I never have because I figured I'd just have to shave it off again next time I did drag. But I haven't done drag since January, and hadn't before that since the previous March, and I don't really feel like doing it again any time soon...and since I don't have to worry about a "professional appearance," and since I hate shaving, I decided to take this opportunity to let it grow.
It's very gray, but I think it gives me a sort of Gil Grissom-y goodness that I quite like. I'd show you a picture, but I can't find my camera. Grandmother hates it, most of my gay friends love it, and sometimes it itches. But God how I love not shaving!
Having so much free time on my hands, I have got into the habit of watching TV series again. Every day at 5 p.m. finds me on the couch catching the next syndicated installment of Gilmore Girls on ABC Family; Mondays at eight are set aside for another ABC Family series, GRΣΣK, in which I unexpectedly got very involved; Fridays are devoted to The Sarah Jane Adventures and Doctor Who on Sci Fi; and of course there's Ugly Betty and CSI on Thursdays. I have also started watching CSI: Miami (after taking a while getting used to David Caruso's unbearableness), Bones, and sometimes NCIS in reruns.
Speaking of TV, I'm obsessed with the following song, which I discovered in an AT&T Wireless commercial and which is now running through my head all the fucking time!
I'm still stuck in the mud over at Worst Luck. I just can't get myself through the rewrite of Chapter 11. Do I keep the Aunt Ems or throw them out? What kind of dialogue would Officer Pete Kelly use in court? Is Mademoiselle Marnie of any use at all? Is this entire courtroom scene nothing but a display of my own ignorance? And after the discovery of the identity of the Purple Haired Kid, where do we go? Does the PHK meekly stand about waiting to be arrested? Or does he flee? And if he flees, should I do something to bring him back?
The whole thing is very confusing, and I just don't have the impetus to sit down and write...as this blog goes, so goes the novel. I'm just feeling very dried-up right now.
I'm also feeling very demophobic still. After my last failed attempt at a mood-stabilizer, I have gone back to my original prescription of Prozac and let everything else slide. I feel OK, a little more depressive than I'd ideally like, but there have been no manic episodes as I feared when I went off the mood stabilizers. I see my shrink again later this month, but until I get medical coverage again (I was offered COBRA of my benefits from work, but the monthly cost was outrageous), I am a little reluctant to try any different medications.
Well, anyway, that's pretty much all I have going on in my life right now. I'm going to go back to cleaning my room and doing my laundry. Later on I'll come back and tell you about my recent obsessions with Simon Amstell, QI, and yaoi graphic novels.
Hi, thanks for visiting Mannersism.net; I can't come to the blog right now, as I have come down with a potentially fatal case of Procrastinitus. If you'll please leave a message after the tone, I will blog again as soon as I'm well. Thank you, and have a great day!
I just a few days ago got over my cold...the one that came hard on the heels of the flu I was telling you about last time; I've been sick for six weeks straight. Not terribly sick, of course, not sick enough to stay home from work, just sick enough to be completely useless and to make my life a burden and a misery. But now I'm feeling normal again (more or less), and am trying to catch up on life.
But while I've been sick, I've become rather oddly obsessed with a few things that I thought I'd share with you.
A Shropshire Lad
So, while I was sick, I was all about passive entertainment. Therefore I've been spending a lot of time on YouTube. And during my travels and adventures, I fell in love with a seventeen-year-old hetero English boy:
I've watched all 58 of his videos and felt like a dirty old lech the whole time. But he's very charming, nonetheless, and I think rather entertaining. And pretty. Pretty is important. Those enormous blue eyes just kill me.
But he lives in Bath (or rather "Baff" as he says in his adorable little accent), which is in Somerset, not Shropshire; however, "A Somerset Lad" doesn't mean anything, does it, so I took liberties with the counties.
LOLcats
People who know me at all well are probably aware that I don't like cats. No particular reason, I just don't like them, I have an antipathy for them. One friend has suggested that it's territorial: I am rather feline in nature, and so I don't like other felines horning in on my space. It has also been suggested that I blame all cats for the scar I have under my chin that came from the tuberculosis-infected claws of a cat who scratched me when I was a kid. At any rate, I am not a cat-person. I much prefer dogs.
Those who've read this blog with any assiduity must also be aware that I am driven insane by poor grammar and thoughtless spelling. I have been called a Grammar Nazi, but I consider myself more of a Grammar Fascist...I don't wish to eradicate you, I wish to reform you (on pain of torture); and really, it's a curse of oversensitivity more than anything else: every time I hear a misuse of who/whom or a sentence ending with a preposition or someone saying "nucular" instead of "nuclear," I die a thousand painful deaths.
And so it will come as a surprise to you, much as it did to me, that I have become enchanted/obsessed with the internet phenomenon known as "LOLcats." These are pictures of cats doing funny things with captions written in garbled English. Comme ça:
So enchanted am I with these things that I visit the site I Can Has Cheezburger? every single day. I think I'll add it to my Daily Reads list, too.
On a related note, here's another website that I am almost ashamed to admit I love: Cute Overload. "Oooooh, that's so sweeeeet!" I croon to myself, ogling a baby bunny in a teacup (sidenote, I hate rabbits more than I hate cats). It's disgusting. But then, I have so many disgusting habits that I've stopped caring.
From Russia With Love
I have become extremely enamored of the Erast Fandorin mysteries of Boris Akunin. I've read the first three so far (The Winter Queen, Turkish Gambit, and Murder on the Leviathan), and there are two more translated into English currently available (The Death of Achilles and Special Assignments) which I intend to purchase shortly, while a third (The State Counsellor) is coming out this year.
I am hopelessly besotted with the title character, a very interesting (and very pretty...remember, pretty is important) young man who solves mysteries in late-nineteenth-century Russia (and other related locales). The books are extremely well-written and extremely well-translated, and have been popular in Russia for years; they're very slowly being introduced to the English-speaking world, there are five more existing novels waiting to be translated, and the author intends the series to encompass eighteen novels all together (one for each sub-genre of the mystery genre that the author identified when he began the series).
On an only marginally related websearch, I also discovered a figure in Russian history who has caught my fancy: Prince Felix Yussupov. He was one of the men who murdered Rasputin, and was also the instigator of those "this film is a work of fiction" disclaimers at the ends of films, which resulted from a libel lawsuit he won against MGM over their portrayal of his wife Irina in 1932's Rasputin and the Empress.
But more importantly, he was pretty:
You know how I like the pretty. In fact, I think the Prince looks a good deal like what I imagined Erast Fandorin looked like in the novels. Hence my fascination with the characters, both real and fictional.
Oh, and did I mention that he was gay (Prince Felix, not Fandorin)? At least in his youth... in his late teens, he used to get dolled up in him mother's gowns and jewels and entertained in various St. Petersburg nightclubs, about which he was quite open in his memoirs; he was rather less open about his reputed relationship with the Grand Duke Dimitri Romanov, and his various adventures in England and Paris before he married.
Anyway, I've been reading his memoirs, which are online at the website of the Alexander Palace: Lost Splendor. It's really quite fascinating, I recommend it if you're interested in such things.
So anyway, that's what I've been up to lately. In case you were wondering.
Have you seen the movie Kinky Boots? If not, I highly recommend it. Anyway, they use this song in the course of the movie, and then play it during the closing credits. Instantly the movie was over, I was on iTunes downloading Krista MacColl's version (it's also been recorded by Bette Midler). And then I found it on YouTube so I could share it with you! (Pardon the weird Final Fantasy video, it was the best available).
Anyway, I'm home with the flu, my usual Christmastime Ailment; I've been coming down with it for a week or so, and it flared my depression, and my life has been a misery and a burden to me. And just when I thought I'd gotten my Christmas shopping done, I find that I have to buy three more presents because one broke during shipping and one broke in my car and the third was already broken but I didn't read the fine print of the eBay auction before bidding. When I'm going to find the time, sick as I am, I don't know.
But I guess it could be worse. I'm not sure how, but it's usually a safe statement to say that it could be worse. I'm going back to bed now. Toodles!
It's only a few days after Thanksgiving, and I'm already sick to death of Christmas.
I can deal with the decorations in all the stores, but do they have to play Christmas music now? Even the local Classical station, though they have a separate online channel just for Christmas music, has let the stray chorale and little bits of The Nutcracker loose already. It's especially irritating that so many Christmas songs are about snow and cold, while outside it's sunny and warm. Irritating, I tell you!
You have heard (or rather read) me complaining about my family Christmas tradition before (and if you haven't, check the archives to your right), and this year I face it with even more dread than usual. For some reason, the very idea of doing the exact same thing in the exact same place and the exact same way fills me with a sense of loathing that is almost physical. I cringe at the thought of the coming festivities.
Or maybe I'm just cringeing about my birthday. Exactly thirty days from now, I will turn forty. I'm not especially bothered by it, or at least I don't think I am... maybe I'm just supressing it, and it's coming out as a hatred for Christmas. But I've been practicing for forty all year, I should have gotten a handle on it by now.
Either way, I am straining against the desire to run away, to spend the next month holed up in a motel in Pocatello, Idaho.
But I won't, of course. The Grandmother needs my help putting together the family's labor-intensive traditions... cleaning the house, decorating the tree (a hateful epic of its own), helping bake pies and stuffing and yams, it's just endless.
So anyway, what else is going on? I've hit a speed-bump in the novel, I wrote a part of a chapter that I think sucked balls, and though a faithful reader gave me a very helpful critique, I need to expand the chapter considerably... and I'm not sure how. It requires the development of characters who are very vague and shady in my mind, so not only do I have to write the development, I have to develop the characters first.
I've also stopped taking mood-stabilizers. The last one I tried, Abilify, didn't do much of any good; I caught more than my share of side-effects (constipation, akathasia, waking up every two hours all night long, sexual side-effects, and something called urethral resistance syndrome that made it difficult to pee) and wasn't getting over my demophobia or losing weight... it was instead making me sad and logey. My doctor recommended that I try upping my dosage of Prozac to counteract that effect, but all that did was make me incredibly grouchy and unhappy. So I stopped taking the stuff altogether, and I feel a lot better.
I don't know what to do about the issue of manic episodes and preventing their occurrence... my doctor has been singing the praises of using Omega 3 fish oil capsules to help control bipolar disorder, and so I guess I'll try that again... I tried it for a while, and I had the most nasty-tasting burps... fish oil tastes just exactly as bad as you think it would. But nasty burps aren't as bad as constipation, akathasia, poor sleeping patterns, and all the rest. We shall see.
So I guess that's all that's going on in my life these days. I'll let you know if anything exciting happens. Cheers!
I don't quite know what to do with myself these days. I'm so bored at work that I'm having difficulty functioning. I mean it's nice to have steady work to do, and it's nice that the work isn't too difficult. But it's so barely bearable in its boringness that making myself do the work is sometimes very difficult.
It's all so repetitive and featureless: take the file apart, scan the file, save the scan to the provider's subdirectory, put the file back together, get another file. It's endless and tedious and makes me want to cry sometimes.
I've tried reading the files, but that's not very entertaining. I've tried seeing how many files I can do at once, but after one or two I want to slit my wrists. I listen to music while I'm doing the work, and when a good song comes on I bop around and even dance a little, but that doesn't really help with the central problem.
I have a feeling, however, that my problem is one of acceptance rather than of functionality. I mean, my last job wasn't a thrill a minute, either, but I managed to enjoy it a lot more than this one. I think the problem is that I haven't learned to accept this job at its most basic level, I am resisting it. And that resistance is what I have to overcome. I just don't really know how.
Speaking of which, though, I guess I'd better get to work, since they're paying me and all. Take the file apart, scan the file, save the scan to the provider's subdirectory, put the file back together, get another file. What could be more fun?
