Obsessions y Compulsions

As I've said before, I am a ruminator. I think about the same things over and over and over again. In some instances this is really unhealthy and causes me to freak out and defeat myself with repetitive negative thought patterns. In less serious instances, my single-mindedness just leads me to become obsessed with things that entertain me. If I don't have at least one thing--the same thing--to think about constantly...I'm just not myself, and it's better for me if it's the entertaining kind of obsessive thinking rather than the self-defeating kind. I've written about past obsessions here, here, and here, and I thought it would be fun to write about some of my current obsessions and compulsions.

1. Nachos: For the past several weeks, I've been on what I refer to as Nacho Rampage 2009: I've eaten nachos at restaurants 7 times in 14 days. I've already posted some restaurant reviews at #15 here. I've always been pretty indifferent to nachos before, and I have no idea what's caused me to lust after them so (probably has something to do with cheese; also I think nacho is a funny word). I don't know if Nacho Rampage '09 is over or not, all I know is that some days when lunch rolls around I develop a fever, and the only cure is nachos. I suspect the nacho fever will rear it's greasy, gooey head again in the near future. That said, I realize the nacho thing is more of a compulsion than an obsession, because I don't really think about nachos much, I just feel compelled to cram them into my face on a regular basis. Though to be honest I spend a lot of time thinking about my next meal.

2. Twitter: You know how sometimes you get into a conversation via text messaging that is totally inane and hilarious? There's a website that pretty much gives you the chance to have inane conversations with people all day long and witness other inane conversations. I complained about Twitter before, but now I can't live without it. It's like a whole website of just Facebook status updates. Alot of people use it as a business networking tool, and I think it's really good for those who want to get their blogs read by more people. Here is an article that explains better than I can what Twitter is and why people like it.

I've had a Twitter account since last summer, but I'd never really payed much attention to the site until Inauguration Day (two whole weeks ago). I couldn't watch any of the live inauguration footage in my office because our internet filter blocks streaming media, so I watched Twitter instead for photos and updates of the proceedings. I've been hooked ever since. So hooked that I check it compulsively all day at work, after work, on weekends, etc. It keeps me from going to bed on time. I'm going to have to get a Blackberry just so I can be on the internet all the time.

I can't really explain what's so addictive about Twitter; you talk to people all day long and you may not even know them, but it's fun and everyone is very positive.

3. Firefly: Sometimes my obsessions begin with a dream. Like last Sunday morning, I woke from a dream where I was a character in Firefly. I watched that series about a month ago and fell completely under its spell. The show was so well-made and brilliant that it still has a huge following, even six years after it was on the air. To find proof of this, all one has to do is look up Firefly's Wikipedia pages (there are many more websites devoted to Firefly, but Wikipedia is about as geeky as I like to get). They're some of the most articulate and thoughtful Wikipedia entries I've ever seen. In a strange coincidence, after reading all about Firefly on Wikipedia the other day, I went to the breakroom and found my coworker reading a book full of scholarly-type articles about the show. Glad to know I'm not the nerdiest nerd in nerdville. And he told me that Joss Whedon has a new show called Dollhouse (I think this link contains spoilers) debuting Feb 13 on Fox. I hardly ever watch TV and I don't ever watch Fox, so I'm glad I found out about this, yay synchronicity!

And, typical to my obsessive nature, part of my fascination with Firefly comes in the form of a crush. Surprisingly, I haven't fixated on any of the more intellectual or sensitive characters. Nope, I like the big meathead guy with all the guns, Jayne Cobb.

He's tall. He's funny. He's a total badass. He also wears a hilarious hat with earflaps in one episode. I love earflap hats, partly because one of my other pet obsessions, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov, has written about "ridiculous hat[s] with earflaps" in several of his stories. (Boy is that hat popular. A Google image search for "Jayne Cobb" yields 10 times as many photos of the hat than of Adam Baldwin, the actor who played Jayne Cobb. You can buy hats like it or patterns to knit your own. There are songs about it. I love how crazy people are!).

Ok, now back to my quest to determine whether Joss Whedon has a Twitter account.

Ugh. I just went to lunch and saw a guy I totally hate wearing an earflap hat. He is definitely not worthy. >:[

Laughing Myself Awake

I woke myself up laughing this morning. I don't think I've ever done that before. I was dreaming that Drew Quizenberry (or however you spell his stupid name) was going to be on a new local Sesame Street knockoff show for kids. His costars, aside from muppets, were a chick named Nancy Grape and a guy whose last name was Levine or something. The thing that made me laugh was because I was making fun of all this, and I said shouldn't the Levine guy's last name be Cherry or Lemon or something? Then I started laughing and woke myself up.

Several G&Ts, a shot of Tuaca, and a Spicy Tendercrisp later...

Published almost simultaneously on Myspace.

I woke up from the weirdest dream this morning. I was on vacation with some friends in California or somewhere. One friend was trying to set me up with her ex-husband, who was also on the trip, but they kept running off and having sex in mausoleums. My other friend and I went for a walk and ended up hanging out with this big bunch of locals sitting around outside of a mobile home and smoking. I realized one of my left molars, (which I really do have problems with), was loose, so I panicked and my friend and I headed back to the hotel, seeking the hotel's in-house dentist.
This is where it gets really weird. As my friend and I were nearing the hotel pool, Ricardo Montalban approached us and started sweet-talking us, trying to sell us on his master plan. He wanted to turn us into cyborgs. We jumped into the pool, knowing he couldn't go in the water, since he himself was a cyborg. We swam out into the middle of the pool, and Ricardo just stood on the edge proselytizing to us about his cyborg dreams. He was dressed like the millionaire from Gilligan's Island, in a navy blazer, white pants (ugh, the horror!), and a red ascot. The hotel and pool were really elaborate, the pool extending under the entire hotel, which had a mall and many restaurants and coffee shops. My friend and I first tried to swim in circles around each other in order to make Ricardo get sick and give up, but this didn't work because cyborgs don't get sick. So we went under the bridge he was standing on, and swam on, under waterfalls, past palm tree islands, past all the shops and ladies having coffee, to the far side of the hotel. Here, the pool just sort of got shallower and shallower until it became dry ground, imitating a natural body of water. Of course, Ricardo was there. My friend ran away from the pool and disappeared, while I tried to run back into the water. I woke up just as I was struggling to get back to the deeper part of the pool.
I have always found Ricardo Montalban vaguely menacing after being exposed to The Wrath of Khan at the tender age of eight. Near the end half of his face gets melted off, and it really freaked me out. I had always thought Mr. Roarke was creepy for more reasons than just being omniscient and keeping a little person for a pet, but after that movie, Fantasy Island moved several steps up the sinister scale for me.