Confessions of an Internet Junkie

Just wanted to let y'all know that Hyperbole and a Half has a new update. Oh, those awkward social moments. I agree with several other commenters that it's not as much of a problem when you get older; it's so much easier now to say, "Gotta go. Bye." Except for the grocery store. Which is its own little circle of hell.

petranef? This one's for you :)

Old Jews telling jokes What? You shouldn't have some laughter?

1. I'm watching Law & Order: UK, and Jamie Bamber's English accent is very disconcerting. It keeps throwing me out of the story. FWIW, I'm liking him more in this than I did as Apollo - not because of his acting but because mostly I thought Apollo was an ass.

2. The answer to my clenching jaw was .5mg of Lorazepam. Nice and relaxed after that, and I got the added bonus of a solid 8 hours sleep. I sleep about 6 hours a night usually, and that's with frequent wake ups. I need a lot more than that these days, and I find that I end up having to go back to bed after having been up for an hour or so. I don't sleep in because I have so many meds to get down in the AM.

3. Speaking of meds, it looks as if my maintenance dose of prednisone is 4mg. Stepping it down to 3mg leaves me with so much fatigue and pain that it's too hard to function. It amazes me that 1mg can make that much of a difference. Don't get me wrong - with 4mg I still have fatigue and pain, but I can work my way around it. I'm trying to find the absolute minimum that I can get away with. I'm still going to try to step down every few weeks or so just to see what happens. I keep hoping that I'll go into remission, but I know that not everyone gets that lucky. I don't want to think that I'll be tied to pred for the rest of my life, but I'm grateful to have it when I need it.

4. I'm trying to get back into writing, but it's a scary proposition. I haven't written purposefully for several years now, and during that interim lupus has had its way with my fluency. Not to mention my ability to type :) I want to try to finish a long essay that I started (and quit) in 2006. I was rereading it earlier today, and I could barely recognize myself in it. I don't know if I can still write like that, but I have to try. I see a lot of frustration in my future.

5. Now they're on the "order" part of law & order, and it's the damn wigs that are distracting me. I can only hope that I'm never dragged into a British court, because even with my minimal OCD tendencies, I know I'd be trying to pull someone's wig down so it looked like it fit rather than perching precariously like a recently deceased albino muskrat on the person's pate. OK, you know what I'd love to see? Dolly Parton and her humongous hair playing a British barrister. Can you just see that curly little wiglet clinging for dear life to Dolly's mountainous mane? It would be like a little sheep straddling an alpine peak. Baaaaaaaa!

You must check out Disapproving Rabbits and ask yourself one question: "Do you feel lucky? Well, do you punk?"

That is the saddest monkey in the world!

I love flash mobs. And I want to marry flash dance mobs. It's the faux spontaneity that cracks me up, because there's a deal of planning for some of them, but it's the street theater that I love about it. I've seen clips of some flash mob dances and those send me into a paroxysm of glee.

Back in my 20s when I was a part of that underground theater group, my friends and I would do stuff like pretty regularly. Rarely planned ahead of time, mostly it was spontaneous. Out and about in the rain with umbrellas? Look! It's "Singing in the Rain" performed by three women with not a lot of dancing skills! We'd break into song, or fall into scenes from a play we'd been in (usually something wildly out of place) while window shopping in malls or eating in diners. Carol and I once seriously freaked out a cleaning lady in a road-side stop in Colorado somewhere by going into a Monty Python routine about putting down a cat. We didn't even realize she was there for the longest time :)

Spontaneous dancing was always fun. Actually not too long ago I was down in CT visiting my best friends, Carol and Robin. We were at a K-Mart roaming the aisles when the muzak kicked it up with a Latin beat. Without even thinking about it, we started dancing in the aisles. Next thing we know, another random shopping lady about our age is joining us. We formed a samba line and laughed and danced our way through several sections of the store before the music stopped. When it did, she thanked us, laughing. Said she'd done things like that with her friends, too; her kids thought she was an embarrassment, and she thought that they all had sticks up their asses :)

We did one piece of what National Lampoon magazine (back when it was cutting edge) called Mona Guerilla Theatre: we gathered around a sewer grate in one of our neighborhoods. Edgar (he kept the best straight face) started talking to his mother who was trapped down there. We don't know how it happened - maybe an open manhole cover - but she was down there and scared. "It's all right, mother. don't be scared. We've called for help." People gathered. My favorite part came up: "John's gone to get the canary, mother. When he gets back we're going to lower it down to you. Watch the canary very carefully, mother, OK?" Hee! Then you start slowly backing away from it until just the on-lookers are left, scratching their heads. Or there was our public duel in the park, except the guns turned out to be cream pies. Ah, good times.

I love that sort of spontaneous, joyful, goofy proof of being alive. One of the things I love about Dar is that when one of her favorite songs comes on the radio, she will sometimes swoop over to where I am in the kitchen and start dancing with me. Love. It. I pretend to grouse because that's my role in the game, but I get such a kick out of it.

Oh! Dancing with Fully Erect Mal in the parking lot of the York Hotel in Toronto on the night before WorldCon. sffan got in on that one, if I remember correctly. Yay! So I exhort you all to sing, to dance when the mood strikes you. And I leave you with a YouTube video of a flash dance on a London tube. (I gotta say, they're a bit uptight about it. If this was on the red line in Boston, they'd have people dancing along with them.)

I'm happy to report that the forecasted ice storm fizzled out to some occasional spotty freezing drizzle. Yay! I was telling Dar that I'd rather be over-prepared than just have ignored it. I always said that if I were going to be superhero, I'd be Worst Case Scenario Woman. My battle cry would be "Oh, noooooooes!" and I'd carry a big satchel (or probably just one of my purses) overflowing with little gadgets that might just come in handy at some point. But no spandex. Natural fibers only.

So in celebration of the Icy Passover, I leave you with a link to a very funny updated recreation of The Four Yorkshiremen skit made famous by Monty Python. But this one has . . . Alan Rickman and Eddie Izzard. And two very funny men I've never heard of before, not being a Brit and all. Enjoy!

I can haz prezent?

( Whoa Pixel )