Early Mornings

I went to bed at 11-ish. For those of you who have been keeping up with my weird insomnia-thingy, what time did I wake up? Four. Four AM. Two hours before the alarm. Knowing that fighting it was a waste of time, I got up and stole into the living room with my laptop. I wound up spending all that time on YouTube.

Last night, while in Promy-Holla, I was listening to S-I, again. And "Caramelldansen" came on. So naturally, that's what I looked for on YT. I saw quite a few versions, many of them quite good. I found some that make the "dance" easier to figure out. Guess all that line-dancing is gonna come in handy if I plan to cosplay-dansen someday!

I also watched a number of Evanescence vids. While I /love/ Ev and Amy Lee's divine singing, their videomaking is not quite to my liking. Too many cuts and not enough focus on events. The style is wonderful but it's hard to take it all in when they keep bouncing around.

Also in the playlist was "My Immortal", live, from the Anywhere but Home concert. I've always had a soft spot for this song (and its later twin "Good Enough") because they're vocal and piano only, and the lyrics are powerful. Lately, in the car while driving to work, I lip-sync most of the songs from Fallen and The Open Door. Including this one.

Well, during the live version, Amy called for the audience to sing along. Which many were doing anyway. Several shots showed many many in the crowd singing or mouthing the words. It's clear this music is personal for a great many people.

Also, under the vids were a slew of comments. A number of them echoed my opinions of Amy's artistry. Some called her fat. You have got to be frigging kidding me. /sigh. May I remind those people that I have a link to Dove's Campaign for Real Women over to the right? Use it. Nao.

Oh, also, I read that Pepsi (maker of AMP) has pulled their iPhone app called "AMP up Before You Score". I won't go into it but let's just say it contained crib notes for scoring with two dozen female stereotypes. I have a sense of humor and I can see some lols here. But the app further included a brag wall feature. During whatever meeting this thing was pitched in, was there someone from AMP's corporate parent Pepsi present to say, "Are you out of your mind?!" Guess not...

Other vids I saw included a weird Xenosaga cutscene redone using FFXI models. But someone had fully rendered a few characters in a real studio. The motion and texturing was extremely well done and the actual scene, titled something like "A Dynamis Nobody Wants to Enter" was creepily atmospheric - just in time for my fave holiday, Halloween!

Work went well, with much progress made, so Saturday was mine. I left work on time and met Ape at Clone the Younger's Fall Festival. He was scheduled to go in the dunking booth and Ape and I each had a shift taking tickets. This turned out to be a lot of fun because when throwers failed to dunk someone, either the ball-boy (or girl) would hit the trigger, or the thrower would run up and smack it themselves. We ate some carny food and walked around a bit, then went to Target prior to dropping the kids off at my parents'. I spent some time looking for new glasses. My current pair is literally nearly 20 years old. And not stylish.

After dropping off the boys, Ape wanted to go home. She's been feeling really lousy this week. But her friend called and she wanted to at least eat dinner with her and her hubby. Which was fine by me - we're all good friends and they're fun to hang out with too. We opted for Chili's, which was having their 2 for 20 food orgy. We got an app, two full dinners, plus dessert (Vanilla Lava cake!). I wound up taking nearly all my dinner home as I was pretty full from the carnival fare, and I wanted room for cake ^^

After, we stopped by Books-a-Million for a quick browse. I couldn't find *any* Tanith Lee books and I couldn't remember most of the other titles I was looking for. I really need to finish that booklist so I can go shopping!

At home, I spent a lot of time watching TV with Ape. A lot of Somer news :( but we also watched the second half of The Negotiator. I massaged her back and legs and played with her hair, plus juiced her up with Bio-Freeze to help her fall asleep.

Which she did just after midnight. So I ran out and spent about 90 minutes in Vana'diel selling off last night's memories and my Mercenary Captain's Headgear. I've been dragging this stupid thing around for my melees even after getting my Empress pin, but now I have no use for it. Also, turns out Somber memories are worth 10k! Yaaay!

I chatted with Deej and Kep while moving around to sort my house and complete my sales. Deej didn't get that animal care job, due to an administrative screwup :( Kep's been keeping busy too. I joked about Carmelldansen overload and no sleep and I was told to go to bed ^^ I actually dragged up more vids, but this time I was looking for live-action where I could see how humans dance it. I'm still trying to get the knack of the hip-swing.

One vid I found was from AnthroCon. A fursuited wolf was dansen and doing a very good job of it. There was something sublime about seeing that much quirkiness wrapped up in one vid... And before anyone takes exception to my use of the work quirky to describe a dancing wolf, please remember Aer's not that far from that. I also found a great group performance from AnimeEx 2008. I picked Captain Jack Sparrow as the most interesting participant.

At about 1:30 I packed it in, having obtained my Tactics Pearl reward before shutting down.