Please forgive me, this is going to be a boring, self-indulgent post.

Too Far, Kylie Minogue (yes, Kylie)

Caught up in this house
Trapped my very own self in the snare of my mind
No more space than a slither
What I'd give for deep breath inside
Where the chaos has me captive
Where there's no exit sign
Where I fuel the stupid fire with these feelings of mine

Ah, ah, ah ah ah

Lured into this den
It's bitter and I want the sweetness again
A taste that I agree with
Get me past these perils and to my Eden
Where the silence is a comfort
Where there is no one else
Where I'll be up from under and can uncurl myself

Ah, ah, ah ha ha
Ah, ah, ah ha ha...

Too many, too much, too hard
Help me, this time I went too far
Too many, too much, too hard
Help me, this time I went too far -

Too far, too far, too far,
Too far, too far, too far, too far...

Can I smash all of this open?
Can I pass the hurt with a little pain?
I wanna see all of it crumble
And start afresh and over again
My eyes are wide open
But I can hardly see
Will laughter find a way around these silent tears?

... etc.

I prayed that I'd never feel those lyrics again. Once was enough. Damn OCD.

My old obsession resurfaced about three days ago. I have an appointment with one of the top psychs/medication experts in the field on Wednesday, and I hope he can help. I just want to be better again.

Have you ever felt like you want to take your brain out of your head and scream "STOP!" at it? "START WORKING AGAIN!", and then punch it? I do. "Get better, brain!" - from a Monty Python sketch.

It's as though my mind saw that I was happy about Christmas coming and decorating and all that and thought "Well, we can't have that, can we? BAM! Mega-OCD!".

And, the Daily Show isn't on this week (no new episodes). That's sad too.

(Feck it, I'm having trouble typing now. I never thought that one would come back. I have to have a "neutral" thought when I hit a key, or else I have to go back and erase or whatever. Damn it, damn it, damn it.)

I don't know if I'll post before Christmas or New Year's, so Happy Chrismahanukwanza and Happy New Year. :D Have a great holiday!

Cheery bye, Scarlet


Listening to: Mish Fadilak (Natacha Atlas)

Whee! A new layout. Ain't it spangly?

Well, I happen to think it is. :) I rather like the colors - the light blue and orange-y red work quite well. And the picture is just lovely, don't you agree? (Freddie's terribly dee-lish in it!).

The old, b&w layout just got to be too depressing, I think. It was classy and simple, but... a bit dull, really. This layout is pretty vibrant, but is simple too. Yay. :)

I gave this version the name "Let Us Blog Together", a play on "Let Us Cling Together", from the excellent "Teo Torriate (Let Us Cling Together)". The kimono-clad Roger and Deaky, as well as the lovely garishly oriental coat that Freddie is wearing, originally made me think of calling the layout "Down at Geisha Minah", from "Killer Queen", but I'm not sure what Geisha Minah is and I was too lazy to look it up. Besides, I couldn't have done a clever play on words with it, like I did with Teo Torriate. OK, so maybe it wasn't exactly "clever", but it's just very slightly mildly amusingly clever.

Well... there's nothing else I can think of to ramble about...

Cheery bye, Scarlett


Listening to: I Want Tomorrow (Enya)
Currently amused by: Nothing at the moment, really

Ah, not much to say (yet again), but I just felt like rambling a bit cos I'm dead tired and probably will be attempting to sleep shortly.

I just sent off a begging email (well, not begging) to a cool LJ user whose journal I came across by clicking my "not only but also" Interest link in my userinfo - you know, there should be a less complicated way to explain this. OK. Long story short (too late!), she has a delicious icon featuring not only teh Peter Cook, but also teh Dudley Moore. (Heh. NOBA pun. ;) ) It's a pic I haven't seen, and so because I'm a strange person, I emailed the cool LJ user to ask where she found the original image. I don't know if one can link directly to LJ userpics, so I'll just link to her icons page and you can find the pic yourself, if you're so inclined. ;) (It just occured to me that she's going to think I'm some sort of stalker; I'm not, honest, I just like teh Cook and Moore!)

No, I have no idea why I'm prefacing Peter Cook and Dudley Moore with "teh". The only reason I can think of is that I find the use of "teh" terribly amusing on blogs/LiveJournals/wherever, I'm sleepy and extremely easily amused, and I feel strongly that teh Peter Cook should have "teh" in front of his name cos he's so spangly. Dudley Moore's spangly too, so he should be called teh Dudley Moore too. Come to think of it, NOBA should be prefaced by "teh" as well. Oh my gosh, I have just gone completely insane.

You see, "teh" is intentionally misspelled in blogs/journals for some reason or other. I think it's funny. You can often find something being described as "teh seks", which also amuses me, because incorrectly spelled words amuse me. Well, at least when they're misspelled on purpose - I generally can't stand incorrect grammar/misspelled words. Which, I suppose, is why I find intentionally bad grammar/spelling to be funny... All right, I'll be quiet about the "teh".

Ah well, it's fun being insane then. I made a new layout for the SAVVY fanlisting today, huzzah and such. I quite like the font for the big ol' "S" I used (it's called "Cretino" for any font nuts reading this). :) Like my Paul McGann fanlisting's layout, SAVVY's is boxy and predominately orange (well, Paul's is green, but you get the idea). It's also, like the Paul layout, absurdly small. But it's kind of neat. I was tired of the old blue layout (it was a light, baby blue color - what was I thinking? For SAVVY? Light blue?), so I'm rather pleased with the new one. :)

I have several emails I need to get back to that I'm putting off till I'm, um, awake (I'm not even sure any of this post is making sense, so I really shouldn't try to write back to anybody with my present state of mind - sleepy and a bit hungry). Hmm, what else to ramble about... I played a game called Soul Calibur II with my brother tonight, and as usual when I play games with him, he clobbered me. I did beat him a few times, but only by luck. I'm far better at the old SNES games. My feeling is that the games now are much more graphics-obsessed, more into "interactivity", more attempts to be realistic. I like a game where the main character just jumps up and down and pounds enemies on the head, and occasionally acquires fireballs. (I am a child of the SNES system.) I love me some Super Mario World. Those games never get old!

I'm thinking of changing F&P's layout, must search through my Queen pics for inspiration... (The prospect of looking at long-haired Freddie pics, as that is surely the Freddie look I will be seeking for my layout, is definitely appealing.)

Speaking of layouts, it occured to me a little while after I changed the layout for lunaestas.com from Freddie Mercury to teh Peter Cook and teh Dudley Moore that next to no one would know what the layout is on about. You go to lunaestas.com and are greeted by a pic of two guys looking at a painting (actually it's Pete n' Dud appreciating art), then you enter the site and see in the upper left-hand corner some guy apparently in hysterics and another who looks like he's falling asleep (actually it's the Bo Dudley sketch). My apologies to those not familiar with teh Cook and teh Moore, because I fear that I will ramble about them muchly in the future on this blog. You have been warned. ;)

Well, I think I'm going to go to bed now, seeing as it's... 7:15 AM. Another bad night. OCD stinks muchly.

Cheery bye, Scarlett

Oh yeah - teh Peter Cook. :D

//Listening to:
The Memory of Tress (Enya)

I received a spam email yesterday and was surprised to see that it didn't contain an ad, pictures of naughty bits, or links urging me to either buy medicine or knock-off software. A rare piece of spam indeed!

This is the entirety of the message:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!

When I read the "highest happiness" bit my first thought was "Paradise Towers"? It's a Seventh Doctor story where the line "Build high for happiness" (towers, geddit?) is repeated frequently, which is why I have it etched into my mind for eternity. Not much to do with anything, but I was amused by myself and my Who-ness.

Terribly intrigued by this "Gouranga" thing, I checked it out on Google and came across other bloggers who were puzzled and then amused by the same spam. It turns out that, to cut a long story short (too late!), it's basically Hare Krishna spam. Ohm, hmm?

So that was neat. Hmm, let's see... Ah, I've updated my Withnail and I fanlisting (love love love) with a lovely (if I do say so myself!) new layout. In the layout, I use a passage of text from Hamlet, which is quoted by Withnail at the end of the movie *wipes away tear*. I wanted to make sure I had the text formatted correctly so I found a site that has the play in its entirety, and after failing to locate the bit of text I needed by using the Find feature thingy (I still can't figure out why it didn't pick up the text I was looking for), I skimmed it and found it. Boring, I know. But what was odd was that I read Hamlet two summers ago for a summer reading assignment thing, and literally fell asleep every few pages. Serves me right for reading it in bed, but still - 'twas terribly sleep inducing. I was listening to an Ofra Haza album, which had the unfortunate effect of calming me, so it was extra hard to stay awake. I didn't really have any feelings one way or the other on the book - the only Shakespeare work I had actually rather enjoyed reading was The Tempest, which I think I read in 10th grade.

The odd thing (I knew I'd find my way back to my point eventually) was that I enjoyed skimming the play, and could actually remember bits of the story and stuff as I read through, so I was able to follow the story. I guarantee you that this would not have happened while I was in school - I figure that high school English class is not the ideal setting for appreciating classic literature.

I also remembered Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as I skimmed (Ros and Guil were in Hamlet, and their "story" is told in ...Dead), and was reminded of how much I enjoyed reading it last year. It was probably the only assigned book I really, truly enjoyed in all of my school years, so I think I may try and find it somewhere. Can't be too hard to find, I should think. Ah, here I go again - rambling.

Larry King told Jon Stewart he (Jon) was "hot". Tee hee hee. Too true. ;)

Cheery bye, Scarlett

//Listening to:
Ray of Light [William Orbit Liquid Mix] [Mix]

'Twas muchly amused by the comments on the fake uniformed Bush on Eschaton:
Thunderbirds Are GO!




//Listening to:
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix)

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. :)

Ah, not much new stuff to write about. My current med seems to be helping a bit, so I'm able to function a bit again. I've noticed little improvements, nothing big, but enough so that I'm not feeling as hopelessly depressed as I was. :/

Exciting new development (not really): Hallelujah Sweet Jebus, I found Not Only... But Also a few days ago! Oh yeah! Turns out it was shoved back in a shelf somehow. My theory is that it fell off the side of the shelfy thing (it's what my TV sits on), hit the side of my bed (it's right next to my bed, you see), and sort of ricocheted back into the shelf. It's very sad that I have a theory about this, but... meh. Still haven't found the main bra, so I guess NOBA wasn't off cavorting with it. I haven't been able to find my Pyramids of Mars (Doctor Who) DVD for awhile now... perhaps it's absconded with my bra? Oh, that Tom Baker!

Another exciting new development (nope, not really) - I was approved for the Enya fanlisting. Whoo yeah!

I didn't think I'd get it. I was sure there would be tons of applications, but I suppose either (a) mine was very good or (b) there weren't that many after all, because I was approved (very quickly too!). Whoop! Exciting.

I was also approved for the Remixes fanlisting (for remixes in general), yay!

That's quite neat. I love remixes, so I jumped at the chance to apply for the fanlisting.

Let's see, what else... really not that much going on... ooh, I made a new layout for my Paul McGann fanlisting, featuring and exceptionally spiffy pic of him.

(The link pic isn't the spiffy pic, although it is lovely). The new layout is absurdly small and boxy and... green, but I just didn't want a big ol' splashy layout, like the previous one, which I created to be flush right and though I really liked the color scheme and the main image, I grew really tired of it really fast.

Ooh! I updated my Doctor Who site.

I love Doctor Who. I don't update the site that often, but there isn't a whole lot to update it with. I need to make more icons, cos, well, Tom Baker is a great subject for icons... ;) You wanna know something scary? I didn't realize this until I counted them all up, but I've got a total of 77 scans and DVD photo gallery screen captures on the site. I really didn't think I had that many, but I do! It's pretty cool.

Doctor Who kept me from going insane, you know. I was at my lowest with my first big obsession, and I kept catching bits of Doctor Who stories on Saturday nights when I would flip through the channels. It was either on before or after Red Dwarf; it depended on the scheduling. So I'd either watch the end of it when I was waiting for Red Dwarf to start or watch the beginning when Red Dwarf ended, and was intrigued by a few of the Third Doctor stories. But when I saw a bit of The Ark in Space, I saw Tom Baker, and thought "Hello...! Why, that's rather nice, innit?" and was amused by the camp sci-fi-ness of it. But it wasn't quite enough to really interest me, and the next week, I happened upon the show again (this time it was The Sontaran Experiment) and was muchly amused by the Sontaran Styre (tee hee hee, he looks like a potato - look to your left), and further intrigued by Tom Baker. Another week passed, and - honestly, I did not go looking for the show, I just kept happening upon it - the story was Genesis of the Daleks, and all I remember was being vaguely creeped out by Davros (he's on the right in the pic, Tom Baker's on the left, so no clever comments like 'Which one is Davros?' ;) ). The next three stories that I didn't catch anything of were Revenge of the Cybermen, Terror of the Zygons, and Planet of Evil (not that you care, but I do).

Pyramids of Mars was the kind-of-first story I watched. I saw about twenty minutes of it - the combo of sci-fi-Egyptology and Tom Baker, who was becoming increasingly intriguing to me, caught my attention. Again, the "sci-fi" was amusing but there was something that was really cool about it. Being me, I forgot about it until the next week, when I came across (drumroll) The Android Invasion. (crowd cheers for some reason) Apparently the story isn't regarded very highly in many fans' eyes, but I love it. So pbfft.

Oh, Android Invasion. OK. So, I actually watched the last half-hour or so of it. I know the exact moment that I fell in love with the show.
...
OK, OK, OK. The exact moment I fell in love with Tom Baker. But I vowed then to never miss a show. So, the exact moment - TWO exact moments, actually (I'm beginning to feel like I'm going to end up doing a Spanish Inquisition!). The first moment was when the Dr was talking to the android Sarah Jane in the candy shop or whatever it was, and he was kneeling next to her and looking up at her and I was sort of amazed that his eyes actually stayed in his head (he's got HUGE goggly eyes), but was at the same time thinking that he was rather dishy. That was sort of the lead-up moment. A few chases, androids and explosions later, we get to The Moment. Sarah Jane thinks the Doc has been killed (yet again), but - oh my gosh, what a shock ;) - it was just an android. So the Doctor stands in the doorway and says something along the lines of "Don't waste any tears over him, Sarah", and she looks up and is all surprised to see the *real* Doctor standing there, as the android Doc "decomposes" (they superimpose the metal framework of the "android" over the image of the Doctor lying there. Extraordinary special effect, hmm?). Relieved, she says "Don't EVER do anything like that AGAIN.". The Doctor looks stoic for a second, then grins, fiddles with his hat, grins some more, says "Come on.", beckons with his head, and turns and walks out of the door. I was in love.

Now I have to explain why this is such a big thing to me, because to the casual reader, this would indicate that I'm insane. I'm not! I swear, I'm quite sane. I'm just very slightly mad, that's all. But anyways... I was miserable at the time, because the obsession was really starting to consume my life, and I had nothing to ground me, no defense mechanism. The Doctor represented safety, protection, seemed to exude an "it's-ok-everything's-gonna-be-all-right" sentiment, to me. Again, I am NOT insane. I am fully aware that the guy is a fictional character. I would make up stories in my mind to get to sleep at that time, really elaborate things, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to fall asleep (I realized later that this was a defense mechanism). By using my mind to make stuff up instead of just analyzing my thoughts, I could get to sleep. I made up all sorts of storylines, but the central theme of the stories was that I was OK. That I wasn't miserable. The stories centered around traveling with the Doctor, being taken away from my misery in his TARDIS and being OK and rid of OCD. I thought I was crazy because I was really using this fake "universe" I had imagined to cope with everything I was going through, but I learned later that when one is suffering from anything, whatever works to get you through is not crazy. If I had just concentrated on my reality, I would have been in a really bad way. I imagined being better (albeit better in a crazy setting!), and that was the important point. I held onto those stories because they were my light at the end of the tunnel. When I went through the intensive CBT, I finally saw that light, and was OK. Since then, Doctor Who has just been one of my favorite TV shows and not a defense mechanism. It will always have a place in my heart, though. And there are certain stories that I'll watch and be reminded that *hey, I got through it!*, and feel proud of myself. There were times I couldn't even watch the TV, let alone Who, because I'd have to keep rewinding and fast forwarding and stopping the tape because... do I even need a reason? It's OCD, there was no rational reason - after the CBT, I would watch the Who stories I'd had trouble watching and cry a bit, remembering the times when I couldn't even watch a tape. And I'd feel proud, and strong, and confident, that I had beaten that obsession to a pulp and could once again live.

I'm really not crazy.

Of course I'm all but back at square one, but this time there's no clear-cut obsession, and I know it's all irrational bunk.

Blimey, all that remembering really drains a person...

Cheery bye, Scarlett


//Listening to:
The Last Time (Rolling Stones)
//Currently amused by this quote:
"You could confuse a stupid person." (Pete of Pete n' Dud)