Friday, July 6, 2007

Random Musings to the Tune of Bear Grylls

Why do I always sound slightly high on something when I decide to post? Yeesh. Granted, I am ever so slightly nuts, so perhaps "high" would be a nice change of pace for me. Well, to be honest, I'm only slightly neurotic. I have no problems with reality aside from it sucking. As you maybe can tell, I've had some book-learnin' in 'headology'. I find it a nice framework to think about how I think, which is a bit solipsistic, but a little solipsism can be good for you now and then.

And that bit about being high is beyond ironic, when you consider that, while I can hold my vodka exceptionally well, mild stimulants wreak major damage. Considering the godawful buzz I get off my mint tea (Bigelow Plantation Mint--faboo with honey, at least until my legs start to phase in and out of existance,) you can bet I'll never make a good crack whore. And certain depressants--sedatives in particular--make me anxious. Yes, my inner control freak can panic under 1mg of Clonazepam, and boy, does it suck. My mind is running in circles, making tiger butter around my brain stem, while my body is stuck in first. I HATE that feeling.

Double bonus points if you get the tiger butter reference. That is the trippiest, passive-aggressive-est children's book ever. EVER. You should all go out and read it.

Anyway, I get up to lots of things when I'm avoiding my knitting, and right now I'm not knitting the scarf for the Neiceling. So, my other hobbies, let me show you them.

1) Reading. I love reading. I read about four to five books per week, fewer when I'm reading something chewy. Typically, I like fantasy, science fiction and romance novels, because I enjoy the fantastic in my fiction. I'm inordinately fond of Harry Potter, and I'm in pre-mourning for whatever characters bite the big one in the last book, because after the end of Book 6, hooo, boy, I know it's gonna be a kick in the head! And I want to point out that, as a dedicated fan of the genre, I'm allowed to refer to romance novels as "trashy." The Smart Bitches tell me so.

2) Writing. Actually, I'm supposed to be doing a project for my 'creativity' teacher (he's my voice/piano/personal creativity coach, so he doesn't really fall under the heading "piano teacher" anymore, although that's what I tell my co-workers because it's great shorthand) that involves putting my portfolio of short stories together for him to review, arranging them as logically as possible with titles and stuff. As you can see, I'm right on that. :-p Actually, you can usually tell what I should be doing at any given point in time because I'm generally not doing it. When I'm supposed to be practicing piano, I'm knitting. When I should be knitting, I'm writing because the Muse is biting. When I think I should be writing, I can generally be found cross stitching somewhere, and my poor little piano is left sobbing in a corner all alone (a thought that's enough to prod me into practicing tonight.) I'm dependable like that. You'd think I could use this self knowledge to fake myself out and get myself where I should be at any given time, but no. I can generally out-think myself. Sigh.

3) Music. In theory, I've had over 10 years of voice lessons (not that you can really tell), and I've taken up piano. I love music, listening to it, thinking about it, trying to make it. I take it quite for granted, usually, except for when I think about the one time I lost it. We don't talk about the Dark Time anymore, not if we can help it.

4) Edutelly. Which is where Bear Grylls comes into this. Do you know who this nutjob is? Right now, I'm watching him battle what might have been tropical dysentery in the middle of what looks like the Amazon (although he just said something about the river carrying him out into the Pacific, so maybe East Asia?) Crazy. Crazy, crazy dude. He just ate raw crayfish, too. Last week, I watched him walk out of Iceland and the Everglades (two different episodes). The best part of this show is that he may be straining water out of animal droppings or falling down a glacier, but his droll, British voice-over keeps speaking as if it's nothing more taxing than tardy tea.

I love a lot of edutainment shows, actually. Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Cities of the Underground. I don't like "normal" television shows--the dramas bore me, the sitcoms frighten me, and there's really nothing else, unless I want to go for bored, anorexic housewives/single women in the city in heat who frustrate me with their apparent ability to make money in their basements, because they have no obvious jobs that would possibly keep them in the style to which they are accustomed. I do like BBC dramas--they tend to have a story arc (a beginning, a middle and an end) and the actors actually look like real people instead of overgrown Barbie dolls. They don't even Botox their faces into submission, so they can actually, you know, use their features to show emotion. Even ugly, fat and old people get to have sex on the BBC, so you know I'm all over that. Any country that puts gratuitous butt shots of wrinkly old dudes having sex with their rather schlumpy middle aged mistresses in morgues (and then killing her husband when he walks in on them with a candlestick)* is fabulous by me. God save the Queen.

5) Cooking. Which is a really good thing, considering how much processed food contains soy and how sick soy makes me. I actually need to make my dinner now--it had to be put off, because it's going to be calzones, which contain cheese and I can't have cheese within two hours of my antibiotic. Bear isn't eating anything weird at the moment, so I've still got my appetite. He's sliding down a rock face, trying to break his neck. *eye roll*

Must go make my calzones now. It's Friday, and Most Haunted comes on at 10.

*This happened in an episode of Midsommer Murders, and later episodes featured a gangster with a rather blown moll--seriously, she had great legs, but with her bottle-blonde hair looked about 60--and Orlando Bloom getting stabbed in the gut with a pitchfork**. I freakin' love that show!

**Don't get me wrong, I like Orlando Bloom. He's very pretty, and I have nothing against pretty boys--I rather like them, actually. I just think he needs to get messed up in a movie. Something scarring to the face. He needs some street cred. If he does a remake of The Elephant Man, maybe the guys would stfu about his prettiness and I could just enjoy the movie, yes?

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