Welcome, brother, to our world…
ah, hellatus, how i’ve missed you…
Today started out great, went downhill ridiculously quickly, was redeemed, and then, I don’t know what to call this mood I’m in.
Melancholy?
I woke up EARLY because I was so excited! I was supposed to get my limited edition David Tennant as Ten doll today. (Oh. Shut. Up. He will look awesome next to Katniss!) Stupid weather delayed the flight from Memphis to wherever the fuck it was supposed to go on its merry way to me.
Then, in my long-running, never ending battle with iTunes, we came to an impasse. I was trying to download Star Trek Into Darkness so that I could watch it on my iPad when I travel, and it kept maxing out at 4.0 of 4.44GB. I couldn’t figure out why and it was pissing me off. I got in contact with iTunes Tech Support and - even though I told them a thousand times that my library was on an external drive - they found a few things wonky with the back end of my account, but nothing that would fix the download issue.
Today’s email was, “Sorry. You’re completely fucked. Here’s 15 song credits. Good luck trying to use them!”
I screwed around with my laptop (which I’ve never used iTunes on) and came to the conclusion that, while the major problem was FINALLY gone, I still can’t download directly to my iTunes library.
So, I called AppleCare.
Guy figured it out in under an hour. (Seriously, there was MUCH rejoicing in the kingdom. Dancin’ and hootin’ and hollerin’.)
My stupid hard drive is formatted FAT 32, and can only take a file that is 4.0 GB or LESS.
Fuck me.
I emailed iTunes back and let her know. They either didn’t have access to that kind of information, or the AppleCare guy knew it from somewhere else. Either way, I’m moving my library to a hard drive that’s less fussy.
So redemption.
Then, I made the mistake of watching “Third Star”, which is a Benedict Cumberbatch film where he plays the lead character. A guy dying of cancer out on one last trip with his friends… Yup. Pretty much went the way you’d figure it’d go. The ending’s a no brainer, but the journey he takes to get to that point? I was in tears. Ugly, messy, snotty, tears. The film broke my heart. Shattered it into itty, bitty pieces.
Then, I was feeling all… I don’t know… Christmassy?
It’s a weird feeling. I never get into Christmas. NEVER. It was ruined for me a long time ago, and now it only makes me sad. Wistful. Melancholy. Depressed. Disappointed at how my family disintegrated and fucked me over.
Whatever.
Christmas just fucking sucks and it’s my least favourite time of the year.
I have to build up to the 25th all fucking month, and during that time, I avoid everything Christmas like the plague. I’m dead serious. Christmas carols are not allowed until the 24th at the earliest. I tolerate a tree early in the month if only for the lights. (We can’t do ornaments. The dogs and cat would destroy them. Which is a good thing. The majority of my ornaments are sentimental. I have very few that don’t mean anything - emotional fucking land mines in that box. I mean, all the feels, kids. All. The. Fucking. Feels. But I like the lights, so the tree’s OK.)
At any rate, during one of my test film downloads (also thoughtfully provided by iTunes), I bought “Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas”.
This was my favourite Christmas film growing up, and I do still have a soft spot for it. Even after all these years, I remember watching it with my dad on HBO, sharing a bowl of popcorn, and how he’d whistle some of the songs for days afterwards.
It’s the only thing about Christmas that my mother never fucked up. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it is. Emmet, Ma, Wendell, and all their friends, live in this little bubble that she was never able to pop… and I love that fucking film like I can’t even tell you.
So, I thought I’d watch it.
Not my best idea.
Normally, I can feel my father when I watch it. Smell the popcorn. Hear his whistling.
Gone. All of it.
*poof*
So there I am washing dishes and watching “Emmet Otter” like the sad suburban housewife who is trying desperately to cling to her youth I’ve obviously become.
Is it January yet?
——
I caught shit because I write my dates “12 December 2013” when I fill out paperwork unless I have to use mm/dd/yyyy… This is all Martin at DGO UK’s fault. (Dude I used to work with in the dark ages… ) He would make fun of my American way of doing things and once we both got fucked up with a date that was like 03/12/14. He thought it was December. It was March. We reached a compromise, if you want to call it that, and I’ve been writing it out in words ever since.
I also almost got in trouble because I called my new workplace the “[something] Centre”. It’s CENTER. Of course it is. I’m an American living in the US. There’s no reason for me to spell it the British way, but writing almost 80K words of fan fic based on British shows will make it a habit. If I had done my Johnlock using the British spellings, I’d be at close to 100K words. Yeah, I could write in American English, but I’ve found it’s jarring to see American words, spelt the American way, when British characters are speaking. So. I’ve gone as British as I can without a brit-picker and it’s starting to show. A lot. Apparently, it makes me ‘poncey’. Which I needed to look up, thankyouverymuch. But, hey, one day I’ll live over there and it will be normal. So suck it.
——
And finally… found when I was looking for a EOJBC quote:
Title: Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
Year: 1977
Synopsis: Young Emmet and his ma, Ma, are super-duper fucking poor, thanks to their dead dumbass father/husband, who they deify even though he was a failed snake oil salesman who left them with nothing but a broken-down shack, a toolbox, and a slide. Ma washes clothes and Emmet does odd jobs, but since they’re both so “nice”, they have problems obtaining fair payment. They hear that there is a talent contest at the Frogtown Hollow City Hall, for which the winning prize is $50. Since O. Henry can’t sue for copyright infringement, Ma sells Emmet’s toolbox for a pretty dress, and Emmet drills a hole in Ma’s washtub to make a bass. They each want to win in order to buy the other an instrument for Christmas (clothes and food and college savings never come up). They both perform well in an poor-man’s-Allison-Krauss-kind-of-way, but a group of hoodlums called The Riverbottom Nightmare Band proves that evil, i.e. electric instrumentation, always wins. On the way home, Ma starts singing with Emmet’s band. Doc Bullfrog, the owner of a riverside restaurant, overhears them and offers them a job. They happily head into a future of entertaining at Frogtown’s equivalent of Applebee’s. Since Ma was a week away from giving handies to swamp animals at $2 a throw, it’s probably for the best.
If the film hadn’t already been ruined for me, this might have done it.
I will never be able to watch it again without thinking about how Ma might have given a handy to Yancy Woodchuck backstage at the talent show.
*shudders*