Desire to have someone actually make me do things like get off the couch and go to class + desire to watch John Cleese-centric Monty Python skits + presence of various uniforms in many John Cleese skits = apparent desire to have John Cleese follow me around and shout me into doing things.

And then of course I think of the Hitler In England sketch, and it just all goes pear-shaped.

But would it not be marvellous? I heart John Cleese, I'm really kicking myself that I decided I couldn't afford to go to his show when he was here recently. On the plus side, he'll likely be touring again soon, given the terms of his divorce settlement, and I'm never averse to profiting off of human misery.

Lizard-brain is squealing that it wants to sew something awesome and Victorian, so I guess I'm doing Mrs. Lovett for Halloween 2010? I haven't yet decided on a dress, though I kind of like the "main" dress she has. Also, it has red bloomers.

HOMG. So, in case I thought that Ask Mat could get no better, with Mikey Way guest-starring on it this week, next week is William Beckett.

I ... don't know what to do with that. Except take a cold shower. A really cold shower. With some ice in it. I mean ... seriously? Just cover yourselves in whipped cream and get out the handcuffs now, boys!

Ladies and gentlemen, today I will commit cosplay.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

The dress is the wrong one, because I have procrastinated long enough on the right one that there's no way it's getting done, so I'm buying one, and I'm still open to better suggestions, but that said ... tonight, I go as aspiring mobster Vicky-T to a birthday party.

Everyone will know that it's my baseball bat that hit them.

I find the current attention on "Ardi" hilarious, given that A. ramidus was discovered back when I was actually still in high school; I referenced the find in a paper I wrote my senior year.

I graduated in 1995.

Haven't really looked into the articles yet; I know that he moved classifications a couple of times, but I don't have the faintest why it's taken them 14 years to get enough together to suddenly have a major media presence.

Okay. The massive The Academy Is... music spam. Based on my experiences with the Massive MCR Post, which, btw, I keep updated, though I'm not reuploading files except on request, I am not defaulting this post to include mediafire links. I'm lazy, what can I tell you? Ask if you want 'em.

Again, same rules apply. I make judgement calls based on whether I know you, the age of your LJ, the interests of your LJ, and what you request from me. I reserve the right to refuse to upload anything if I don't like the way you look.

There is a lot less here than there is there; I've never really seen a live recording, for example, and TAI doesn't really seem to get kind of all over the place the way that MCR does. That said, if you have something I don't have here, I'd love to swap for it, and if you have everything I have here, talk to me about other songs. Right now I'm pushing 9000 songs in my iTunes.

The fact that I have noted that there is only one song I know of that I'm looking for doesn't mean I know them all; if you know of something I don't, please let me know even if you don't want to trade.

( Under The Jump )

And so the great cycle has turned again; I have the sudden, urgent need to have a Mat Devine gracing my living room. This is based on the latest blog of his, which I find even more fabulous than usual. I'm sorry, Gerard, Bill, Gabe - I'm going to have to forsake you all. Don't forget not to write.

I'll keep him next to the shamrock plant, by the little bookcase. I think he'd look fab there. He can even wrap himself in my silk afghan.

In other news, I'm debating getting my other wrist tattooed because, well, I want another tattoo, I can probably do it for about $150, and I kind of really want to post to literarytattoos to point out that I am not an English major, and I do not read such high-flying literary works as produced by authors such as Toni Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, or William Faulkner and think "God, I need a tattoo of THAT," nor do I think that I need to demonstrate my logophilia by going absolutely bugfuck nuts with tattoos of really ludicrous things that are going to look like ass in five years.

Literary Tattoos: the latest "female bisexual college student".

But I tell you what - as soon as I have a job again, my dragon tattoo (which I have FINALLY decided should go on my upper back in all its glory) and the mice tattoos are happening. I have a list of things I get to buy when I have truly disposable income again, and they're on it. I probably would be smart to start pricing for going over all my other ones, all of which could use some cleanup and support now that I'm older.

It's sort of freaky to realise that I've had the tattoo on my back for TWELVE YEARS. HOW? But from everything I hear about it, it could use some touchup. If that's even entirely possible; apparently it's done some stretching. Alas, when I was twenty, I thought I would remain the same size essentially forever, unless I got pregnant.

I'm working on a wikidot theme (by working on it I mean I've now cleaned the bedroom and just need to make the bed and vacuum, and cleaned the kitchen except for cleaning up the sewing table, sweeping and taking out the recycling, and made coffee, and then pizza) and I am NOT working on a statistical analysis of what everyone who did that meme in my last post says in theirs, but rest assured that I find it absolutely fascinating and unsurprising that there is so much similarity between responses, and not least of all because there's no statistical outliers there - every person who's done that is friends with me (obviously) and also with apiphile so there's a lot of common personality there, but still. It's pretty interesting to me, in a casual-research-method sort of way, to see how similar we all are, and to see what I think of as the elegance of the answers.

ALSO. apiphile is recommending that everyone read Watching The English, which I intend to pick up since it's at Borders and I have a $5.00 credit at Borders and because the subject sounds fascinating. I recommend, in some sort of weird internet-reciprocal book exchange, The Cheating Culture, which, as I said on Twitter, is punching me in my relationship to America exactly as Three Cups Of Tea did. After the long drudge that was Nature's Metropolis and the success of Little House In The Big Woods, which I actually read because it's an extant biography of a time period and place that I'm deeply interested in currently, I was starting to fear that I actually had no more ability to read, but The Cheating Culture is making me think that this is an untrue statement.

Reminds me: I need to go poke Square 1 Books about whether they can get The Great Peshtigo Fire in or not, and decide whether I want to replace Under A Burning Sky, because all I will do is reread it and continue to be absolutely horrified at the fact that when human beings inhale superheated air, their vocal chords squeal from the contraction of the muscles as they cook. Evidently, it sounds somewhat like rubber bands. Right now, "late-nineteenth-century fire disasters in the upper Midwest" are like an immediate literaturegasm for me, evidently. "Nineteenth-century upper Midwest" is a little like porn, I guess - it'll get you there, but not without some help.

Apparently, I feel better today. I would like to quit losing bits of Italian sausage down my cleavage, though.

This weekend, I need to clean up some bits of my life.

I found out yesterday - because my mother found out the day before - that a woman who abandoned their friendship about twenty years ago died last year. It's been really strange to realise that we've been talking about Berkeley without knowing that - even two weeks ago we had a conversation about friendship that included my mom saying that if Berkeley called her tomorrow she would be able to speak to her, that the pain of the severance had eased enough that she would want to know why. This was provoked by my saying that when I have a friend who abandons me (or who I suppose I abandon) I want to know why. I won't fight you for the right to maintain a friendship you're not interested in, but I want to know why you've decided you can't be my friend, because otherwise, there are just unresolved bits of me out there in the world.

This is something like the mouse tattoo, I suppose, for those who read that post, ages ago.

So I have two plans of attack. One is to write letters to people that I am no longer able to contact - an excellent example is Evil Chris The Ex. The idea came about when I found a love letter in a book in the Pitt-Rivers library. My theory is, if you write a letter to the person who is no longer part of your life, you take it to a library and put it in a book. It will, someday, get where it needs to go, wherever that is. The person who finds it may ignore it, but you have to assume that they were where it needed to be, and maybe they'll know something from your letter.

The other is to write letters to some people I know who are currently being out of contact. I do require certain levels of interaction to assume that we have a relationship, and if you're being unwilling to go to lunch with me, call me, or get coffee with me, I have to assume that we no longer have a relationship. If that's in error, I want to give these people the chance to know that this is what I think - without judgement, but it's not a friendship if it's been eight months since you've initiated contact with me. I learned that a long time ago - there are too many people in the world who are willing to let you contact them but with no invested interest themselves, and I can't have time for those people any longer. It's too hard, and it's too pointless. I'd rather find out that the relationship should be severed, because then at least we can wrap things up on the same page.

I never want to find out that someone's been waiting twenty years for me to pull my head out of my ass and in the meantime I've died. Never. I can't conceive of voluntarily doing that to someone; that's what the unresolved nature of one-sided friendship-cancelling does. I promise: I can hear that you no longer want to be my friend without killing myself.

I can't believe that this has happened - it is so much more painful than my grandfather's death, and that's one I thought was unresolved. But I knew him, I know that he thought that if it was meant to be, it would happen, and I know that my mother had the chance to see him before he died. For her, that situation is resolved, and for me, I have to trust that someday, wherever we are, I'll have the chance to talk to him again and he'll know why I didn't take the time to come visit this month.

Though if he hadn't died, I'd be writing this from Montana, "almost" only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades.

It's time to get this cleaned up.

Sahlab (a Middle Eastern ... drink, I guess, if only because "roofing material" seems so unfair) does not cure any ills. It does not resurrect Jesus, it performs no miracles, it will not make your life better.

Instead, it sits in your cup, the bastard lovechild of milk and Stuff (tm), with a touch of "mushroom soup flavour" thrown in because apparently I can't boil milk without burning it. It's a lot like what would happen if you took drinking yogurt, heated it up, locked it in a room, exploded a Turkish Delight in there, then drank the result. It keeps being OMG SURPRISINGLY SWEET ARGH DIABETES one moment and MUSHROOM SOUP THAT I SMELL the next.

Also, it forms an impenetrable shield on your lip when you try to drink it.

In other news, my day is not off to the greatest of starts. THESE FACTS ARE RELATED.

Dear brain,

Shove it.

No love,
The rest of me

*****

Okay, yes, I get that I am not a designer. I get that I have the actual creativity of a lemon drop. I get that I do far, far better copying someone else - I am FAB at that - but cannot possibly create an original idea to save my ass.

I realise, further, that this is why I am having trouble with this class - this is creating out of whole cloth, not drawing what's there or what-the-fuck-ever - and that THAT is why I am going to be two fucking assignments behind in approximately 7.5 hours, and the class is over next week, and each assignment should have 10-20 hours of work evident in them.

I am going to fucking fail. And this is not a class *I* paid for, no, it's one that Washington State paid for, and so not only am I trying to shove a fucking idea out of a creativity spout that is currently not even wide enough for the lead from a pencil, I am having a guilt attack about it. And on top of THAT, I am trying, in theory, to fucking design a logo for something IMPORTANT, and therefore, I'm having a total freakout about THAT.

So I'm too busy freaking out to actually do the work - as I write this, I am getting physically sick from all the freaking out - and that's not helping EITHER.

Fail. Massive, irredeemable fucking fail.

I think I'm just preemptively going to quit school and go live in a fucking box, because obviously that's where I'm going to be if I'm relying on MY design abilities.