1. Had dream inspired by what I wrote in my blog yesterday. I had mentioned the Australian celebrity John Clarke because he was on the list of most well-known Aussie celebrities. When I saw his name I thought of Mickey from Days of our Lives. The character used to be played by an American named John Clarke. Mickey's wife was Maggie played by Suzanne Rogers.
I dreamed.... I'm asking a trivia question. Suzanne Rogers is there, beyond a doorway. I joke around that she should know the answer. The question is, out of the three actors who played Mickey on Days of our Lives, which one won an award? The answer is not John Clarke who played Mickey for many years. It's some Australian actor who played Mickey for a very short time.
As far as I know, that's all fiction. I don't think there was ever an Aussie actor who played Mickey.
2. Received an enlightening email from Andrew. He pointed me to one of his old posts which is about older men. One of the ones he mentions is John Waters! The funny thing is I commented. I think this John Waters guy is very sexy......
I didn't remember any of that when seeing Waters on Offspring. Also, it's unusual for me to be attracted to someone by a photo alone. I have to see them in action. I mean not like porn; but I need substance. I usually need to get a sense of their personality and/or hear their voice.
Anyway, maybe there's something about John Waters that really stands out for me. He really does look amazing in the photos Andrew provides. I wonder if he was great looking when he was young as well. Or is he one of those men who look better as they get older?
3. Saw on Facebook that there's been another episode of Offspring. I'm still working on the first episode from season 2.
4. Sad to hear about the killer tornado in Missouri. That's very scary.
I don't like bad weather. Even this morning thunderstorm is bothering me. But I should think positively. It's watering all our plants outside.
5. Started watching Hamish and Andy at the Logies.
Katy Perry is there too.
I thought it was mildly entertaining.
6. Found Hamish and Andy's official YouTube Page. This might be helpful...and fun. I'm trying to indoctrinate myself with Hamish and Andy culture.
7. Started watching Hamish and Andy's interview with Hilary Clinton. The part starting at 1:02 made me laugh out loud. But even before that I was having silent inner type chuckles.
Clinton does a good job at interacting with Hamish and Andy. I think she's a good match for their comedy. She has fun responses to their questions.
8. Watched a 1980's commercial with John Waters. Just going by this alone, I'm going to say he has DEFINITELY bettered with age. I don't find the John Waters in the commercial at all interesting.
9. Watched the opening for a 1970's Australian show called Rush. John Waters was in that show. I'm not sure if I saw him in the video or not though.
10. Watched the Hamish and Andy video, How to get the day off work It didn't make me laugh out loud, but it did make me smile a bit. The tactic involves shooting your boss with a Nerf gun. Jack has that same gun. It's pretty fun but one of those toys which gets played with a lot in the beginning and then forgotten. He rarely plays with it anymore.
11. Read very gruesome scene in Candy. It involved a lot of blood.
12. Watched a Hamish and Andy video about workplace laziness and technology. It was cute but didn't make me laugh much.
13. Watched cute New Years type video from Hamish and Andy. It's about saying hello to 2011 and good-bye to 2010.
14. Decided to watch a little bit of Offspring.
15. Cooked and ate some of the green beans growing in our yard. That was pretty cool.
16. Started to look at photos of Australian authors. Why? Well, it's back to the Tallygarunga thing. If I do end up participating, I don't want a character that looks like a model. I looked at photos of actresses, and none of them fit with what I want. So then I thought, why use an actress? Almost all of them will have that certain type of beauty. I don't want that. I want someone who looks like the people we see in our daily lives.
Then I decided why not find a celebrity who's not an actress? I think a writer might work. Of course, it doesn't have to be an Australian author. I'm just starting with that.
So far....all the writers I'm looking at are too old. I need someone born around 1982-1989.
17. Decided to look at the Sydney Writer's Festival page, because they have photographs of various writers.
18. Found a photo of Anna Krien. She might work for the character...to a small degree. I'm not sure.
19. Frustrated and wanted to give up on this whole ridiculous audition process. But I keep going back to it. I'm not sure if it's even about wanting to join Tallygarunga. It might just be one of those things where I come up with a challenge, and feel compelled to work through it.
I'd probably have better luck going back to my original plan—creating the offspring of my Magic is Might characters. It might be easier to find a photo of a child. Or maybe it would be worse.
I really feel I should just forget it. If it's meant to be, I'll be doing something else one day, and the perfect face will come along. I'll say, that is exactly how my character is supposed to look.
20. Found someone who would fit my character, and it's embarrassing because she IS an actress and she's incredibly beautiful.
Anne Paquin.
But still. She has the kind of look that matches my character. Maybe it's not about beauty or non-beauty. It's just when you create a character in your mind, people either fit with what you imagine or they don't. Most of the actresses I've seen today totally don't fit what I have in my mind. Well, I actually don't have much in my mind, because I'm not a very visual person. But when I see a photo of someone I can say Yes, that's what she looks like or No, that's totally not what she looks like.
I think Anna Paquin would work, if she had brown hair. I don't think my character would be blond. I'm pretty sure Paquin actually does have brown hair. Maybe she'll go back to it someday and then I can use a photo of her. I could use a photo from X-Men, but I think she might be too young. It totally works for my character in my blog I'm working on currently. It's 1998, so she's only 15. Anna Paquin could totally be her. But for Tallygarunga, I'd be adding 13 years to her age.
21. Decided this role-playing thing is probably way too complicated for me, and I should probably just give it up.
I don't know. I thought of joining and using Paquin's photo. It made me feel weird. Like I'm stealing from her. I don't think it's illegal, and I'm sure tons of people are doing it in various role-playing sites around the internet. But it makes me feel...I don't know. Invasive? It's like I'd be making Paquin play a role she didn't agree to play. Not that she'd ever even know about it. But still. It's the principle of the whole thing.
I'm thinking maybe after the Magic is Might experience, my Muggle and my wizard teens need to be put to rest. I mean I won't kill them. I'll just imagine they went on with relatively happy and peaceful lives.
22. Decided I'm creative enough for online role-playing games but probably not mentally stable enough.
23. Finished reading Candy. I no longer regret buying that book.
24. Watched trailer for the movie Candy. I'm sure I've seen it before; but it's much more meaningful after reading the book.
25. Added my next book to read to my Shelfari page. It's Walking Naked by Alyssa Brugman. While I was at Shelfari, I realized I've read another book by Brugman. Finding Grace. I got it from the library when I was studying young adult literature (in hopes that I could publish my own someday). It was before I got super obsessed with Australia. I don't remember much about the book, but I do know I liked it. I think it had something to do with someone in a coma. Maybe? I'll go look it up.
26. Looked at Finding Grace on Amazon. Grace has been brain-damaged. Maybe she's no longer in a coma though.
27. Read disgusting article about people who went to the emergency room in Melbourne and found it to be extremely dirty. There was vomit in the bathrooms and blood on the floor....stuff like that.
Here's my confession. Jack and I both get majorly grossed out by hospitals and doctors offices. For me, this hasn't always been the case. My sister spent months in the hospital. We visited her every day. My grandfather was in the hospital periodically. We visited him. It never really bothered me. I thought of hospitals as clean places.
Then a few years ago my germaphobic friend expressed complete distaste that a homeschooling group was going to a hospital to sing. I mean I don't think she was against it in theory. She just didn't want to have anything to do with it. She talked about all the germs in the hospital. I thought she was being snobby and ridiculous. Of course hospitals aren't dirty! They're VERY careful to keep things clean. They don't want infections. Right? But then I did some reading and realized hospitals are not often very clean. Here's a disturbing article that talks about all of that.
Our family is lucky (for now) in that we don't often have to go to hospitals. I guess if you're unlucky, you make the best of it. I guess you hope that you won't go into the hospital for one thing and come out with worse things.
Maybe in the end, though, you just remind yourself that people work in the hospital, and they're not sick all the time. My brother-in-law works in the ER. He's not constantly sick or anything (knock on wood). He's in pretty good health (knock on wood, again). Hospitals are probably much less clean than I used to imagine they were; but they're probably more clean than what my imagination says now.
28. Started reading Walking Naked. It's a Breakfast Club type story. Popular girl gets detention, and she's forced to hang out with the school outcast. It's fairly good so far.
29. Saw that the Aussie dollar is down to 1.0525. I won't get too excited. I realize it's going to have its ups and downs.
30. Read Doc Jenson's feature article about the Anniversary of the Lost finale. I thought it was charming, interesting, and entertaining. I can't say I understood all of it, but I still liked it. I especially liked the post-script that starts on page 6. Jenson talks about how he had big plans and made promises to people; then he broke those promises. It's very honest. He says, The enterprise was doomed from the start. I rushed into the project because I wasn't yet ready to give up the fun of Lost theorizing and the privilege of engaging and interacting with the Lost fan culture on the Web. I was also motivated by a desire to engage those who were left confused or angered by the finale; I wanted to help clarify and assuage, and I believed that by sharing my ongoing, evolving post-mortem on the finale, I could give them both. I was foolish, pretentious, and condescending. It was also a very fanboy thing to do, too — the needy, insecure desire to want everyone (the media, critics, bloggers, fellow fans) to like and affirm the thing they irrationally love. My ''Final Theory of Lost,'' then, was born out of wanting something from you — not wanting to give you something.
I don't think Jenson is pretentious or condescending. At least I never get that sense from his writing. I think it's about not wanting to let go. We cling to things sometimes. There's something sad about being a fan of something and then pretty much forgetting about it. For me, it's often out of sight/out of mind. I stop engaging with something, and the love fades away. So when something ends, I want to cling to it so that won't happen. Like Jenson, I did that with Lost. I made grand plans to read an episode a day on Lostpedia. It backfired, though. Remembering all the little plot questions, and realizing that there really WAS a lot of loose-ends made me frustrated. I lost love and respect for the show.
But within this year, I've rekindled the love every so often. I did this by watching all the tear-jerker remembrance scenes from the finale.
31. Thought more about the letting go and out of sight/out of mind concept. I think, for me, what happens is once I'm away from something, I lose interest. I don't care anymore. Then if it comes back, I'm not really excited. It takes me awhile to get back into caring about it. I'm just talking about fan stuff here. I'm not sure if it applies to anything else.
Anyway, I think for most seasons of Lost I was slightly obsessed after each season finale. But as we lived through the summer, autumn, and part of the winter; my interest greatly faded. This was especially the case when I had been critical of the season finale. The season premiere would come, and I'd watch it more out of obligation and tradition. I wouldn't be that thrilled about it.
I'd watch it, and then it would pull me back in to it. I'd get obsessed again.
It's the same thing with Harry Potter. I guess I read the last book in 2007. Probably? My love for it faded. I didn't care anymore. Then I decided I should try to get back into it for the last movies. I started re-reading the books, and I became even more obsessed than I had been in the first place. That love and obsession has been unfortunately tainted by the Magic is Might Experience. I think, though, that I'll see the movie. I'll have some closure. Then a few years from now, something will pull be back in to it. Maybe. Or maybe not. I might end up busy with other things. That's another thing Doc Jenson talks about in his article. He says, And then I got distracted. Pop culture moved on after Lost, producing shiny new toys that I wanted to play with....New fixations shoved aside old ones. There's a lot of fun stuff out there. It's hard to let go, but in the end, finding something new can help us do that. It's a bit sad, though.
32. Watched a sneak peak of the season finale of Modern Family and remembered this is exactly what we used to replace Lost. It was literally our rebound show. We were mourning Lost (and the untimely death of Fast-Forward) and we wanted something new to watch.
Now we love Modern Family as much as we loved Lost. We might even love it more.
I feel guilty admitting that.
I'm wondering then if I love Offspring more than Lost. Wow. I might. The other day I said I loved Offspring as much as Modern Family. Logically speaking....if I love Modern Family as much as Offspring; and I love Modern Family more than Lost; than I have to love Offspring more than Lost. But I'm not sure if that's true....yet. Maybe I'm not ready to love Offspring more than Lost because it's so new to me. It's a new love. I mean I just discovered it a few weeks ago. Lost was with us for many years. We've been with Modern Family for several months. I need time for the Offspring love to grow.
I dreamed.... I'm asking a trivia question. Suzanne Rogers is there, beyond a doorway. I joke around that she should know the answer. The question is, out of the three actors who played Mickey on Days of our Lives, which one won an award? The answer is not John Clarke who played Mickey for many years. It's some Australian actor who played Mickey for a very short time.
As far as I know, that's all fiction. I don't think there was ever an Aussie actor who played Mickey.
2. Received an enlightening email from Andrew. He pointed me to one of his old posts which is about older men. One of the ones he mentions is John Waters! The funny thing is I commented. I think this John Waters guy is very sexy......
I didn't remember any of that when seeing Waters on Offspring. Also, it's unusual for me to be attracted to someone by a photo alone. I have to see them in action. I mean not like porn; but I need substance. I usually need to get a sense of their personality and/or hear their voice.
Anyway, maybe there's something about John Waters that really stands out for me. He really does look amazing in the photos Andrew provides. I wonder if he was great looking when he was young as well. Or is he one of those men who look better as they get older?
3. Saw on Facebook that there's been another episode of Offspring. I'm still working on the first episode from season 2.
4. Sad to hear about the killer tornado in Missouri. That's very scary.
I don't like bad weather. Even this morning thunderstorm is bothering me. But I should think positively. It's watering all our plants outside.
5. Started watching Hamish and Andy at the Logies.
Katy Perry is there too.
I thought it was mildly entertaining.
6. Found Hamish and Andy's official YouTube Page. This might be helpful...and fun. I'm trying to indoctrinate myself with Hamish and Andy culture.
7. Started watching Hamish and Andy's interview with Hilary Clinton. The part starting at 1:02 made me laugh out loud. But even before that I was having silent inner type chuckles.
Clinton does a good job at interacting with Hamish and Andy. I think she's a good match for their comedy. She has fun responses to their questions.
8. Watched a 1980's commercial with John Waters. Just going by this alone, I'm going to say he has DEFINITELY bettered with age. I don't find the John Waters in the commercial at all interesting.
9. Watched the opening for a 1970's Australian show called Rush. John Waters was in that show. I'm not sure if I saw him in the video or not though.
10. Watched the Hamish and Andy video, How to get the day off work It didn't make me laugh out loud, but it did make me smile a bit. The tactic involves shooting your boss with a Nerf gun. Jack has that same gun. It's pretty fun but one of those toys which gets played with a lot in the beginning and then forgotten. He rarely plays with it anymore.
11. Read very gruesome scene in Candy. It involved a lot of blood.
12. Watched a Hamish and Andy video about workplace laziness and technology. It was cute but didn't make me laugh much.
13. Watched cute New Years type video from Hamish and Andy. It's about saying hello to 2011 and good-bye to 2010.
14. Decided to watch a little bit of Offspring.
15. Cooked and ate some of the green beans growing in our yard. That was pretty cool.
16. Started to look at photos of Australian authors. Why? Well, it's back to the Tallygarunga thing. If I do end up participating, I don't want a character that looks like a model. I looked at photos of actresses, and none of them fit with what I want. So then I thought, why use an actress? Almost all of them will have that certain type of beauty. I don't want that. I want someone who looks like the people we see in our daily lives.
Then I decided why not find a celebrity who's not an actress? I think a writer might work. Of course, it doesn't have to be an Australian author. I'm just starting with that.
So far....all the writers I'm looking at are too old. I need someone born around 1982-1989.
17. Decided to look at the Sydney Writer's Festival page, because they have photographs of various writers.
18. Found a photo of Anna Krien. She might work for the character...to a small degree. I'm not sure.
19. Frustrated and wanted to give up on this whole ridiculous audition process. But I keep going back to it. I'm not sure if it's even about wanting to join Tallygarunga. It might just be one of those things where I come up with a challenge, and feel compelled to work through it.
I'd probably have better luck going back to my original plan—creating the offspring of my Magic is Might characters. It might be easier to find a photo of a child. Or maybe it would be worse.
I really feel I should just forget it. If it's meant to be, I'll be doing something else one day, and the perfect face will come along. I'll say, that is exactly how my character is supposed to look.
20. Found someone who would fit my character, and it's embarrassing because she IS an actress and she's incredibly beautiful.
Anne Paquin.
But still. She has the kind of look that matches my character. Maybe it's not about beauty or non-beauty. It's just when you create a character in your mind, people either fit with what you imagine or they don't. Most of the actresses I've seen today totally don't fit what I have in my mind. Well, I actually don't have much in my mind, because I'm not a very visual person. But when I see a photo of someone I can say Yes, that's what she looks like or No, that's totally not what she looks like.
I think Anna Paquin would work, if she had brown hair. I don't think my character would be blond. I'm pretty sure Paquin actually does have brown hair. Maybe she'll go back to it someday and then I can use a photo of her. I could use a photo from X-Men, but I think she might be too young. It totally works for my character in my blog I'm working on currently. It's 1998, so she's only 15. Anna Paquin could totally be her. But for Tallygarunga, I'd be adding 13 years to her age.
21. Decided this role-playing thing is probably way too complicated for me, and I should probably just give it up.
I don't know. I thought of joining and using Paquin's photo. It made me feel weird. Like I'm stealing from her. I don't think it's illegal, and I'm sure tons of people are doing it in various role-playing sites around the internet. But it makes me feel...I don't know. Invasive? It's like I'd be making Paquin play a role she didn't agree to play. Not that she'd ever even know about it. But still. It's the principle of the whole thing.
I'm thinking maybe after the Magic is Might experience, my Muggle and my wizard teens need to be put to rest. I mean I won't kill them. I'll just imagine they went on with relatively happy and peaceful lives.
22. Decided I'm creative enough for online role-playing games but probably not mentally stable enough.
23. Finished reading Candy. I no longer regret buying that book.
24. Watched trailer for the movie Candy. I'm sure I've seen it before; but it's much more meaningful after reading the book.
25. Added my next book to read to my Shelfari page. It's Walking Naked by Alyssa Brugman. While I was at Shelfari, I realized I've read another book by Brugman. Finding Grace. I got it from the library when I was studying young adult literature (in hopes that I could publish my own someday). It was before I got super obsessed with Australia. I don't remember much about the book, but I do know I liked it. I think it had something to do with someone in a coma. Maybe? I'll go look it up.
26. Looked at Finding Grace on Amazon. Grace has been brain-damaged. Maybe she's no longer in a coma though.
27. Read disgusting article about people who went to the emergency room in Melbourne and found it to be extremely dirty. There was vomit in the bathrooms and blood on the floor....stuff like that.
Here's my confession. Jack and I both get majorly grossed out by hospitals and doctors offices. For me, this hasn't always been the case. My sister spent months in the hospital. We visited her every day. My grandfather was in the hospital periodically. We visited him. It never really bothered me. I thought of hospitals as clean places.
Then a few years ago my germaphobic friend expressed complete distaste that a homeschooling group was going to a hospital to sing. I mean I don't think she was against it in theory. She just didn't want to have anything to do with it. She talked about all the germs in the hospital. I thought she was being snobby and ridiculous. Of course hospitals aren't dirty! They're VERY careful to keep things clean. They don't want infections. Right? But then I did some reading and realized hospitals are not often very clean. Here's a disturbing article that talks about all of that.
Our family is lucky (for now) in that we don't often have to go to hospitals. I guess if you're unlucky, you make the best of it. I guess you hope that you won't go into the hospital for one thing and come out with worse things.
Maybe in the end, though, you just remind yourself that people work in the hospital, and they're not sick all the time. My brother-in-law works in the ER. He's not constantly sick or anything (knock on wood). He's in pretty good health (knock on wood, again). Hospitals are probably much less clean than I used to imagine they were; but they're probably more clean than what my imagination says now.
28. Started reading Walking Naked. It's a Breakfast Club type story. Popular girl gets detention, and she's forced to hang out with the school outcast. It's fairly good so far.
29. Saw that the Aussie dollar is down to 1.0525. I won't get too excited. I realize it's going to have its ups and downs.
30. Read Doc Jenson's feature article about the Anniversary of the Lost finale. I thought it was charming, interesting, and entertaining. I can't say I understood all of it, but I still liked it. I especially liked the post-script that starts on page 6. Jenson talks about how he had big plans and made promises to people; then he broke those promises. It's very honest. He says, The enterprise was doomed from the start. I rushed into the project because I wasn't yet ready to give up the fun of Lost theorizing and the privilege of engaging and interacting with the Lost fan culture on the Web. I was also motivated by a desire to engage those who were left confused or angered by the finale; I wanted to help clarify and assuage, and I believed that by sharing my ongoing, evolving post-mortem on the finale, I could give them both. I was foolish, pretentious, and condescending. It was also a very fanboy thing to do, too — the needy, insecure desire to want everyone (the media, critics, bloggers, fellow fans) to like and affirm the thing they irrationally love. My ''Final Theory of Lost,'' then, was born out of wanting something from you — not wanting to give you something.
I don't think Jenson is pretentious or condescending. At least I never get that sense from his writing. I think it's about not wanting to let go. We cling to things sometimes. There's something sad about being a fan of something and then pretty much forgetting about it. For me, it's often out of sight/out of mind. I stop engaging with something, and the love fades away. So when something ends, I want to cling to it so that won't happen. Like Jenson, I did that with Lost. I made grand plans to read an episode a day on Lostpedia. It backfired, though. Remembering all the little plot questions, and realizing that there really WAS a lot of loose-ends made me frustrated. I lost love and respect for the show.
But within this year, I've rekindled the love every so often. I did this by watching all the tear-jerker remembrance scenes from the finale.
31. Thought more about the letting go and out of sight/out of mind concept. I think, for me, what happens is once I'm away from something, I lose interest. I don't care anymore. Then if it comes back, I'm not really excited. It takes me awhile to get back into caring about it. I'm just talking about fan stuff here. I'm not sure if it applies to anything else.
Anyway, I think for most seasons of Lost I was slightly obsessed after each season finale. But as we lived through the summer, autumn, and part of the winter; my interest greatly faded. This was especially the case when I had been critical of the season finale. The season premiere would come, and I'd watch it more out of obligation and tradition. I wouldn't be that thrilled about it.
I'd watch it, and then it would pull me back in to it. I'd get obsessed again.
It's the same thing with Harry Potter. I guess I read the last book in 2007. Probably? My love for it faded. I didn't care anymore. Then I decided I should try to get back into it for the last movies. I started re-reading the books, and I became even more obsessed than I had been in the first place. That love and obsession has been unfortunately tainted by the Magic is Might Experience. I think, though, that I'll see the movie. I'll have some closure. Then a few years from now, something will pull be back in to it. Maybe. Or maybe not. I might end up busy with other things. That's another thing Doc Jenson talks about in his article. He says, And then I got distracted. Pop culture moved on after Lost, producing shiny new toys that I wanted to play with....New fixations shoved aside old ones. There's a lot of fun stuff out there. It's hard to let go, but in the end, finding something new can help us do that. It's a bit sad, though.
32. Watched a sneak peak of the season finale of Modern Family and remembered this is exactly what we used to replace Lost. It was literally our rebound show. We were mourning Lost (and the untimely death of Fast-Forward) and we wanted something new to watch.
Now we love Modern Family as much as we loved Lost. We might even love it more.
I feel guilty admitting that.
I'm wondering then if I love Offspring more than Lost. Wow. I might. The other day I said I loved Offspring as much as Modern Family. Logically speaking....if I love Modern Family as much as Offspring; and I love Modern Family more than Lost; than I have to love Offspring more than Lost. But I'm not sure if that's true....yet. Maybe I'm not ready to love Offspring more than Lost because it's so new to me. It's a new love. I mean I just discovered it a few weeks ago. Lost was with us for many years. We've been with Modern Family for several months. I need time for the Offspring love to grow.
