I have no idea what I’m doing

And it's a lot of good things, but I don't like it regardless. Just because it's a lot of things with a lot of people, and I'm not in a particularly social mood today. As I was going to bed last night, I could hear people shouting and screaming in the parking lot outside, and so that made it difficult to go to sleep. Instead, I wound up watching this week's Taskmaster again on YouTube just for the hell of it, even though the YouTube episodes are slightly cut down. I think they're doing that because of the upcoming ad changes, since the things they've been cutting out are the ad break gags. But maybe if enough people complain about it, they'll stop doing it, because idk. I watch on Premium anyway, so it doesn't matter. I still find those gags funny, and it doesn't really disrupt the flow to have them. IDK. It's a weird choice. I'm not overly fond of it. Some of the funniest Greg and Alex moments happen during those bits, and it's such a shame they get cut out.

I made some butter last night, to give to my uncle when he gets here later today. And by that, I mean I put a pound of butter in a crock pot for about six hours with an ounce of shake he gave me a while back from one of the plants he grew last year. That's in the fridge, and I still need to get it out and package it up for him, which I'll do after this. We also bought a dresser from the neighbour, so we're killing two birds with one stone today. When my uncle comes up with the rolltop desk he's bringing, we're going to also move the dresser over from the neighbour's apartment. I'm of mixed feelings about her moving out, because it was nice having someone I could go hang with, but she's very much the sort of person who brings about her own cloud of negativity. She's got beef with half the building, and that's 100% why they haven't renewed her lease. In order to move all this in, we're going to have to do a lot of moving around, which luckily we accounted for when we redid the apartment earlier this year when we thought we'd be moving an oven in. The most difficult bit will be actually getting the dresser into the bedroom, but that's why we decided to wait until today while my uncle's here with the hand trolley. Between that, and our very large wagon for the drawers to do it in fewer trips, it'll go a bit more smoothly.

We bought the dresser with lunch and a half rack of beer, so once my uncle texts me from Ridgefield, I'm gonna run across the street and get the lunch, and then wake my husband so we can clear out the space in the bedroom for the dresser. The space for the rolltop is a bit more nebulous, and I can deal with that on my own, I think. Right now, the space in the bedroom is occupied by a large folding card table with a television on top of it, and I've already cleared out all the junk that was underneath it last night, and that's now stacked up in my office to be dealt with later this week.

But there's also a new episode of Mortimer and Whitehouse on today, so by the time we're done with all this crap, that should be up and I can chill out and watch that.

I gave up by noon yesterday. Them stomping around above my head had me glued to the ceiling, so I gave up and went out to go watch TV all day instead, which is a really lame use of my time, but I genuinely couldn't think. But aside from series 4 of TMNZ because I can't be arsed to download the episodes individually, I've now seen all the Anglophone versions of Taskmaster, and overall, they're enjoyable.

Except TMUS. That's still a flaming disaster, and I stand by everything I said about it, and even have a few things to add.

( This got long again, so behind a cut it goes )

After I finished TMAU, I wasn't quite ready for bed, so I decided to watch Everyone Else Burns, which I've been meaning to watch for a while. I missed it when it first aired earlier this year, and I really like Simon Bird, so I decided to finally put that on. It's not quite what I thought it would be, but at the same time it's exactly what I thought it would be. I really enjoyed it, I think in large part because it focused on the church aspect a lot less than I expected it to. It seemed like that was going to be a bigger part of it, given the whole concept of the show. It was very much there, but it was more of an undertone to the whole thing, and less of the central focus to everything. Somehow I guess I thought the culty religion itself would be the focus of the comedy, but it's more used as scaffolding to build around. What surprised me most is that even though this is very much a parody of culty religions like Mormonism and Jehovah's Witness, the comedy isn't coming from poking fun at the religion itself. The rest of their church is very much played straight, if overly strict and fairly outdated even by their own community's standards—there's one episode where they have a fête sort of thing with other sects, and they have to play nice with one church that flies pride flags, even though everyone from David's church clearly thinks the folks from that one are going to burn in hell. Instead, the humour very much comes from how out of touch they are. David has a mobile phone he gives to his daughter that hasn't been plugged in since 9/11, and he destroyed the television as part of "God's will" because it had sex on it.

( And a cut for spoilers )

All in all, a tremendously unproductive day, but whatever. It was the weekend, so who cares? I got a lot of work done on a new blanket, and it seems quiet today so I'll make up for it today. I want to work more on Malapropism, because I think I've finally found the right groove for it. That's always the trick with new projects, is figuring out what they want to be. Starting out with something real was definitely the right move, because it let me find the right voice and tempo for it, but also it's let me find the right amount of embellishment to pepper in. People who have been with the newsletter will be able to tell how much is real in the first few chapters, I think, but the goal is to reach a point where that line becomes so blurred that eventually it is all fiction, with bits that are simply inspired by stupid shit that happens around me. But this year has been so astronomically stupid that it was the best place to start, so it was the right call in the end, I think.

Ugh. Awful. Spent the whole day feeling dumb as a bag of rocks. Mostly I just sat around working on my blanket while I caught up on TMNZ on C4, and now I am fully up to date there. I've not watched series 4 yet, because C4 hasn't got the new series, but I can't be fucked to download it right now. But unfortunately I think TMNZ fell victim to the general fandom effect. Even getting past the New Show Weirdness, it was good, and I did enjoy it, but I still don't think it's better than TMUK. That's not its fault. But the way it was hyped up by its own little section of the fandom, I really was led to believe it would be better than TMUK. Because so many people do actually say that, to the point that I'm starting to get sick of seeing it even discussed on the subreddit if only because any time it's mentioned it actively devolves into an argument between the two factions of fans. I don't give a fuck either way, but the people who care really care, and this is becoming the big source of wank (right after the topic of RPF within the fandom).

It's a bit better on Tumblr, but Tumblr is slower to pick up on news and updates, so I'm hesitate to stop following the subreddit. I use them both for different reasons. Tumblr is where I go for traditional fandom interaction. Over there, it's more typical fansquee bullshit. There's a lot of old man thirst and fanart over there, and I love that. People on Tumblr are proper unhinged in all the best ways, and totally unashamed about it, and the different factions coexist rather seamlessly. I haven't seen TMAU, but I imagine it'll take off and become a third big faction soon enough, being another Anglophone version. Though funny enough, I don't think I've seen a single gif from it. Or if I have done, I haven't recognise it as being from TMAU. But there's only been one series so far, so we'll see. But my point is I don't see people on Tumblr fighting over it the same way I do on Reddit, which is both odd and refreshing. With the new UK series starting next week, I am both excited and nervous though, because new episodes do always bring the weirdos out into the open.

This franchise does have a unique sort of group psychosis almost that other fandoms I've been haven't really experienced before. And I've talked about this on Tumblr a bit. I have never been in a fandom before that has been so consistently spoilt for new content. Every fandom I've ever been in has always had big waits betwen new seasons/series. Always. Or if not televisual, then the release schedule was something else entirely. The Venture Bros would go years between seasons, just to drop twelve episodes or whatever. Sherlock made us wait years for three episodes that seemed hell-bent on telling the fans to go fuck themselves. Marvel have so many comic titles that they wind up pulling their titles for months at a time without warning, and then you go six months without seeing the one you're reading, with no explanation for why. Or sometimes it just gets cancelled for no reason at all. And the MCU is an over-saturated garbage fire that releases too much stuff that all stopped being good about eight years ago anyway.

TMUK releases two series a year, plus the New Year special. That's 21 episodes. 22 episodes if it's a Champion of Champions year (rumour has it that's filming in November, so next year, probably). TMNZ does one series a year, so if you watch that, you get 32 episodes a year. Now there's TMAU, which seems to be doing one a year, so that's 42 episodes a year. And those are just the Anglophone versions. Assuming they don't overlap, you've nearly got a new episode every week. If NZ and AU kick it up to two a year, this would be the most well-fed fandom I'd ever been in. I think it already is, honestly. TMNZ just aired its final episode for series 4, and there's a whole week's break between that and UK's series 16 starting next Thursday. This'll end toward the end of the year, take a little break, have it's New Year Treat, and if TMAU's second series airs the same time its first one did, there'll only be a few weeks in between the NYT and that. And while that's airing, it's entirely likely TMUK's series 17 will overlap. They don't seem to really care about spacing the series out with one another, because technically they're not in competition with another country's channels or ratings, but it sure makes for an interesting schedule for people who are following all of it. And it'll be interesting to see if (when) C4 does pick up TMAU as well. They aired TMNZ during a really bizarre time slot, on one of their weird tertiary channels, but it was all on catch up immediately so it didn't really matter. So is I think the Swedish version as well? Which is an odd one to have picked up before TMAU, but I bet there's some sort of exclusivity agreement, and that one probably won't show up on C4 until next year. I'm betting the same for TMNZ's series 4.

Although, they sure got TMUK's series 15 up on YouTube immediately, so Avalon seems to have got some hidden power from somewhere.

While I was completely zoned out on the couch all day watching this, I managed to blaze through three more stripes on my blanket, and now I'm on the very last one. I'd found a few more colours I hadn't realised I had left, and I didn't want to just leave them there, so I decided to use them anyway. The blanket is a really stupid size, but I don't care. My plan for today is to put the newsletter together and go finish the fucking blanket, I think. The weather's really cool, so I'll probably go for a walk as well. The summer weather has really got in the way of that, and I hate it so much, but I just get so miserable going out in the heat. The topamax makes it easy to overheat, and the pills for my stomach do the same so I'm at a double risk of just falling over dead on the pavement if I'm not careful. When I do go out, I've been listening to the Sun Also Rises, since I've finished my podcast and can't find anything else worth listening to. I really liked the podcast for going on walks, and it's what got me going out in the first place. I can't fucking believe I've lost about 100lbs on the back of some stupid podcast, and I'm really tempted to start going into the other one with Jack Bernhardt and Lou Sanders, but man, Lou Sanders can really grate after a while. Maybe I'll finish my book and then try giving the People's Podcast a go.

But I can't wait to finish this blanket. It needs to be done so I can never think about it again. My husband asked if the next one I start will be just as unhinged, and the answer was yes, of course it will, because I'm still trying to use up as much yarn as possible. I'm close to the goal of using up pretty much all of it, which was a lot of damn yarn, and then I can buy more without guilt, and start all over again.

Also, in the process of typing this up, I got a notice on my door that starting next week, they're going to start redoing the roof of our building, so that's going to be terrible for me. Not looking forward to that. My husband works nights, so idk how he's meant to sleep, with us on the top floor. They're scheduling it to take a week or two, and knowing how roofing works, the noise won't be right above us the entire time. The building is quite big, and presumably they'll be working from one end to the other over that time. We'll probably have two or three days of really bad noise above us, and since we're right on the end of the building, either be at the very beginning, or very end of it. Here's hoping, anyway.

Apparently I'm still up to date with the most recent one the pharmacy has, which may or may not be the most up to date one available elsewhere. In the end, I only got flu, so I'm actually feeling all right today.

Other than that, yesterday was pretty much a non-event. As I was getting ready to head out, one of the giant, heavy owl decorations I have up for Halloween fell, but I didn't know it was that which had fallen. All I knew was that something loud had fallen and scared the hell out of me, so I had to go on a fucking scavenger hunt to find it. I finally found it wedged between my husband's bike and the wall, and put back up, and then I got to my appointment about 20 minutes early to make up for the clusterfuck that was the day before. And I explained to my therapist why I do that sometimes, because she has noticed a few times that I get there comically early (though the time I was there 45 minutes early was not because of this neurotic white rabbit tendency to always feel like I'm running late. That was because I straight up misread the times tamp in my diary). But I did explain that being late to things, even if it is arriving in a manner that is technically on time, not only stresses me out in the usual way, but makes me feel a bit of an inconsiderate dickhead, which just adds to the stress. So I'd rather just be the weirdo who shows up comically early to appointments and things instead.

I came home and worked on some fic a bit, and then went out front to work on my blanket and watch more Taskmaster NZ. I'd tried watching it once before, when I had to go hunting it down, but being on Channel 4 now makes it a bit easier and less frustrating. It still wasn't quite doing it for me though, but I do ultimately think it is that New Show Weirdness because I can't find any particular reason why it wasn't working for me. Because it is the exact same show, without the glaring mistakes Taskmaster US made by making a bunch of weird changes to the format. The only change is that aside from Alex Horne's name being everywhere in the credits again, it's a totally different team on and off camera. And I think that's the only reason I couldn't get into it. It's weird for the same reason the first series of the original was weird, except it didn't have the benefit of someone almost dying from choking on a watermelon in the very first task to shock you into getting on board. The decision to put that in the very first task was probably the smartest thing they ever did, because it is the perfect task. It has this bizarre escalation of tactics up to pure carnage, it has physical pain and jeopardy, it has cheating, it has failure. It's the perfect task.

The episode I came back to last night just happened to be the one where Greg Davies' video letter to Jeremy Wells was shown, which was a nice little treat, at least. I'd seen the clip out of context, but I didn't know what the task actually was until last night. And then, as Jeremy decided to wilfully misinterpret the content of the message and give one point for it, I decided to approach this show from a different angle as well. I ate a brownie from the freezer, got out my little white box from beneath the Victrola, and somehow managed to smoke two entire bowls without my husband noticing. It was game night, and despite him being at his desk not six feet away from me, I was not even on his radar. It wasn't until I got up later and nearly tripped over my blanket and swore at everything that he even noticed me, and even then he didn't consider I might be off my tits. I still had to tell him.

I got about three episodes into series 2, and I've heard that one is much better. It definitely seems like it, but idk if that's just because I was on Mars by that point and would have laughed at anything. This panel is a lot more lively in the studio though, which is always a delight. I love it when they get up out their seats and bounce around and scream and shout over things that don't matter. It's my favourite part of the show.

But I went to bed a bit later than usual, instantly fell asleep, and woke up a lot later than usual. I haven't been sleeping well lately to begin with though, so I'm not overly fussed about that. I'm still a bit toasty though, but brownies always do that to me. I do want to see if I can get some writing done today, and then maybe try to go on a walk later and get back into that habit. I think if I leave a bit closer to noon or 1pm, I can go downtown and it won't be as busy, but it is Saturday so we'll see about that. Also, we'll see about how I feel, because if I'm still a bit fucked up, I'm not going anywhere.

Channel 4 uploaded the first three series to whatever the fuck the online streaming platform is called now, and I started watching it again last night.  I watched a few episodes of it last year, and was extremely cold on it, and then never bothered to go download the rest, so this is a nice, easy way to watch the rest.  And the reason I'm saying this here, and not anywhere else where people actually watch this show is I'm still very meh on it.  There was a post about it on Reddit, but in true reddit fashion, the comments pretty quickly devolved into UK vs NZ infighting, with people pre-emptively getting annoyed at anyone who might not like the NZ version for not having the same dynamic, but honestly?  If someone watches the UK version for that dynamic and finds the NZ show lacking, that's a valid criticism.

While that is, I think, part of why NZ falls a bit flat for me, it's not the whole of it.  There's something in the overall edit that feels a bit off as well, and I can't quite figure out what it is.  One thing that I do think NZ has absolutely nailed, and I think it's something Ed Gamble said on the podcast, is that Paul Williams is someone who is inherently bully-able, which makes him a great assistant.

It'll probably become what I watch while I work out, because I'm just not that into it but maybe it'll grow on me.

I've finally got my sleep schedule more or less back on track where I want it, instead of sleeping in until nearly 10am, waking up closer to 6am.  Which I realise is a bit insane when one is self-employed and working from home, but that's when my husband gets home and it's nice to see him before he goes to bed.  So I got up this morning and was immediately ambushed by the kitchen torn apart and towels all over the floor.  Because there was water everywhere.  I hadn't run the dishwasher the night before, so it wasn't that.  Sometimes the drain in that gets backed up and it pisses all over the floor, but it was immediately ruled out.  While my husband flapped about, I noticed he hadn't done a great job at cleaning it up, or else whatever the cause of the water, it was still ongoing.  So I stepped in it and noticed it was sticky, and had him go fetch a clean towel.  Then, I checked the shelf where we have various syrups and oils and things, but nothing was leaking there.  Then I opened the fridge, and nothing was leaking from there.  My husband was watching me, very confused, because it was easier for me to just get on with it than to explain what I was looking for.

Then, I spotted it.  The trail of water leading to the carpet cleaner, and the empty tank.  I had used it fairly recently, and had not totally emptied it out, but now it was empty.  I picked it up, and there it was.  This was not exactly the sort of problem I needed to be dealing with five minutes after rolling out of bed, but it's not the worst problem I've faced immediately after getting out of bed in recent months either.

But if the universe wants to be extra kind to me, I may wind up getting a delivery with a whole bunch of shirts today.  It's looking increasingly like that won't be happening though, as it's now 8am, and the last scan was the package departing Portland at 11:30pm last night.  Which means either something hasn't been scanned and I'm going to get a surprise package later today, or it's encountered a weird delay and it won't get here tomorrow.  Annoyingly, I don't have a direct USPS tracking number, and only the courier tracking number, so it's entirely possible that the courier's system is on a significant delay and the 11:30pm time stamp that I saw when I checked it this morning is what they consider up to date.  But I have an appointment tomorrow, so it would be nice to be able to wear something new to that.

ETA: I've just refreshed the page, and a new time stamp from 6:10 this morning has appeared, marking the package as "out for delivery."  So, I was right.  The courier's system is just extremely delayed.  Yay!  I'm getting my shirts today!