Is it me, or has CNN gotten really weird? It’s on the basement TV at school right now, and I’m struck by how informal it’s become since the last time I watched a 24-hour TV news network who-knows-when.

First there was a guy talking about the blizzard in the Northeast. He mentioned the rain in Southern California for a few sentences, then summed it up with “so the whole country is experiencing this.” Right. Okay, so that part wasn’t particularly informal, it just annoyed me.

Then the same guy and another CNN anchor (do they still call them that?), apparently in another studio, had a gripe session between themselves about how dumb the word “bipartisanship” is. They both leaned on their desks and made faces, and the lady actually rolled her eyes at one point. They agreed that Congress was being childish, and that everything would be okay if all of Congress went out and got drunk together.

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It’s over. By my count, I wrote 22 posts during the 30 days of November, which I’ll call respectable, considering. I missed a shot at perfection right off the bat when I spent the first evening of November in the emergency room, and the drawn-out sickity-sick through the rest of the month made even near-perfection tough to attain.

But what’s done is done, and I’m not bothered by my missing the mark this year. NaBloPoMo got me out of the blogging slump I’d been in, and that was what I’d most hoped for.

There was once an afternoon when I mused idly that I might like to try making a video every day in December, but John quickly talked me out of that one, thank goodness. Success at such a project would likely be much, much worse than failure.

So long, NaBlo! See you next year! Thanks for the hostess gifts; they’re lovely.

But not just any video editor, oh no. I’m looking for one that can import video clips. One that can do more than five operations in a row without crashing. One that can take a clip with sound in it and render it with the video and audio still synchronized. Crazy, I know.

I realize that maybe one of you will be half-interested in the content of this post. Maybe. But this is what I’ve been working on for most of the last two days, so this is what I’m writing about.

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Below the fold is the video I made of pre-excision Larry II, as promised. [And here it is in its original YT context.]

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The seventh book, it is good. Every time I pick it up I tell myself I’m only going to read one chapter, maybe two, but stuff just keeps HAPPENING. Geezus.

Last night I was up until two doing math homework but didn’t actually get to sleep until after four, thanks to Ms. Rowling. I’m trying to stop reading, really I am. I have a bunch of assignments due by the end of the week, and it would be awesome if I, you know, slept every now and then. We’ll be off on a wee road trip this weekend, so that should be a good time to get those last five hundred pages finished off before anyone can ruin it for me.

In other news, YouTube’s front page just got hacked, about ten minutes ago. Now every featured video is a version of the song “Chocolate Rain,” whatever that is. YT has certainly broken itself many times before, but this is the first outside job I’ve seen. You don’t care. That’s cool. By the way, have you seen the head-cleaner tape for my camcorder? It’s decided to put wide green stripes across anything it plays—not a desirable effect. I’ve been looking for this tape since July 4th. I could give it up for lost and buy a new one, I suppose, but they’re kinda pricey. Plus I would have to leave the house. No, better to sit on my ass and hope it flies in here and whacks me in the face. Accio tape!

Dork.

EDIT: Um, apparently it was an inside job after all. YouTube took themselves over. Mmmmkay.

At the wifi-enabled teahouse in which I sit, there are several fish tanks. For the last three hours, I’ve been watching (via a large mirror on the wall in front of me) a man clean two of them behind me. Cleaning a fish tank isn’t something I’d ever given much thought to, as I’ve never had fish, but it’s a rather involved process. Hoses and filters and chemicals and lots of scrubbity-scrub.

At intervals, the fish’s apparent owner came out to chat with the guy about all sorts of fishy things: tank size, water temperature, all the different types of fish they’d owned, etc., and I was struck by the depth of cleaner-dude’s knowledge. To my untrained ears, it sounded as though he knew EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD EVER about fish.

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Still no internet. Friday morning, 8:00. Bring it, AT&T.

LSAT scores, I learned today, will be emailed July 2. Twiddle twiddle.

You know the LOLcats*, but are you dork enough to have seen LOLastronomy? I’m wishing there were more, as I rack my brains for a contribution of my own.

How is it the second half of June already? That’s, like, almost the middle of summer. Summer passes too quickly; I’m enjoying it as furiously as I can.

Last night John and I went out for Indian food. Mmmmmmm. Best leftovers in the world, IMO.

If you’d like a tour of my new apartment, I made my dad a video.

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* Check out the latest kitty. An apt time for a link, no?

As a (female) YouTuber, I’ve gotten my fair share of “friendly” private messages. I’m not flooded with the rain of love/hatemail that falls on the popular people, but I get maybe two or three a week. Very few of these messages are from people I actually know (in the internet sense of the word)—my YT pals leave their comments directly on the videos, where everyone can see them. The private messages I get from strangers range from a quick “I like your videos, make more” to detailed critiques of particular videos to blatant “i think you’ll enjoy my hilarious videos” spam to less-than-subtle suggestions that we “get to know each other better.” I’d say the split between friendly and “friendly” is about half and half (give or take ten percent for the haters).

For your voyeuristic pleasure, I provide a few samples spanning the range of weirdness. I hadn’t heard from any of these people (that I remember) before they started messaging me.

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Blogging, like many things, is subject to inertia. When I’m chugging along at my usual pace of four or five posts a week, I can summon up the motivation most days to write a little somethin’-somethin’—an overheard conversation, tales of appalling grammar, or a gushy-mom update on the continuing preciousness of my sweet widdle shnuffle-pumpkin*.

Once a week slips by without a post, though, it’s so easy to fall into the one-more-day-won’t-hurt mentality. I’ve half-composed several posts in my head during the last month, but I don’t even remember what most of them were about.

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Since I haven’t been writing anything lately, I might as well shamelessly steal and repost content from my YouTube channel. No, I haven’t made another Holland video yet, I’m sorry to say (it’s the next one on my list, I swear!), but I did dance around like the nerdy white girl I am.

Do you release stress by dancing? I do. Should I put “dancing” in quotes when I use it to describe the uncoordinated flailing-about that appears in this video? I should.

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