Aeronautic Primates and Other Delights

Still Here!

2023-04-13T18:16:51Z

This account is mostly used for posting vids now and I post vids about once a year.

Things are going well. We moved into a townhouse back in November and I have my own office space now. No more sharing with the bedroom.

I'm running D&D about once a month for settiai and other friends.

I'm slowly backfilling my old Vimeo-exclusive vids onto Youtube to give them a wider audience. I'm surprised by how many views they're racking up in just a day or two. Alas, some vids like David Cronenberg are not suitable for the platform (but that one doesn't need the help, probably, as it's my most kudos'd work on AO3).

One bummer is that the ADHD med shortage has been hitting me on and off for the last year. I'm currently three weeks without meds and my pharmacy still has them on backorder. I'm annoyed because this shortage is entirely artificially manufactured by the federal government. It would take one pen stroke (and some time) to resolve.

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Brief Update

2021-03-25T20:42:55Z

I haven't forgotten about My Week in Movies. This week at work has been a trash fire and I just haven't had the brain cycles for it, especially since last week was a vacation week so there were a lot of movies. With any luck, there should be a double-size post on Sunday.

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Good

2018-03-28T05:38:27Z

It's been nearly two months since I made a post. Let's not do that again, huh? (I will totally do that again)

I've been making some changes, trying out new things, and I fell into something really good unexpectedly.

* I started going to a gym, Nerdstrong, which has these geeky Crossfit workouts. I don't go every week, but when I don't go, I try to do a little mini workout at home and then go for a brief run. I've found when I don't work out at least a little, my brain turns to sludge. Brains and bodies work well together, apparently.

* Cooking! I'm doing it. Really basic stuff. Pasta, porkchops, grilled cheese. I have the ingredients for a chicken parmigiana for when I'm feeling a little bolder.

* Movie Nights. I'm having friends over for a monthly movie night where I show something weird from my collection while drinks are had. It's gone over really well I think.

* Something Good Unexpectedly. I don't want to get into any details on this because it's still very amorphous and unsure. But if it works out, I promise I will say more. I really want it to work out. I'll know for certain in August.

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Verklempt

2012-07-22T02:49:33Z

Something happened in the last couple of years where I've started tearing up, sniffling, or downright crying at the drop of a hat while watching media. I've always had a soft gushy spot for family moments -- parents reuniting with children, emotionally-distant fathers finally admitting how much their offspring means to them -- but now it seems like a week doesn't go by where I don't at least feel that odd prickly sensation rise around my nose bridge.

Just this weekend, it happened a bunch of times times. I was watching Batman Begins, specifically the scene where Bruce's parents are shot and I just started getting blubbery... then they cut to Jim Gordon talking to Bruce and he reaches out and touches the kid and I just *lost* it.

I had a misty moment in an episode of Fringe where Walter expresses his love for Peter (when Peter's not even in the room).

Then, echan was watching Suits and I was half-attentive and there was a freakin' car commercial where a father drives off-road to share a rainbow with his daughter. I had a few sniffles and maybe a little wetness around the eyes.

I dunno, is there something about heading into your thirties that makes you extra-sensitive to emotional moments or am I just a big gooby softie?

I should probably carry some tissue with me on emergency reserve at Vividcon.

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State of the Monkey and a couple Thor vid recs

2012-06-05T02:51:55Z

Hello friends! Been a busy busy couple of weeks. I've been writing my very last review for Classic-Horror.com, catching up on this Game of Thrones thing (isn't Tyrion awesome? He's totally awesome) and hugging my new iPad and calling it Acquanetta. Because that's its name.

I watched the entire first season of New Girl. At first it was this thing I did and I didn't know why. I didn't like the title character and the supporting cast was marginally interesting. But I kept watching. And eventually I found that I loved the show and I really liked all the characters, even the main character. Looking forward to Season 2.

Game of Thrones owns my soul. It is so amazing. However, unlike New Girl, I'm sharing the experience with echan , so it's kind of slow-going. I am only up to episode 8 of Season 1. That said, I am reading the books at the same time and may eventually surpass my place in the series. I'm up to roughly episode five in the first book.

I have abandoned my planned Vividcon Premiere. I'll be whipping up something else instead, hopefully.

Going to the Stanley Cup Final Game 4 on Wednesday thanks to a raffle at work. Hoping to get into hockey through the experience.

Some awesome Thor vids that I have loved:

Everything You Ever by airawyn (Loki focus, plus bonus Iron Man vid on the same page)
Somebody That I Used to Know (Sweet Dreams remix) by talitha78 (Thor/Loki)

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A Great Man Passes...

2012-05-24T02:27:27Z

Mark McKissick, junior high English teacher, passed away earlier this week.

To say that I had a difficult time in school vastly understates the issue. The worst of it was junior high for a variety of reasons. Mainly? It was junior high, that purgatory of all school tiers. You have a lot of kids from a bunch of different schools, some who know each other, some who don't, all pushed together for the first time after spending 6-7 years with the same bunch of faces year after year. Throw into that cauldron that most, but not all of these kids are just starting puberty and their bodies are in turmoil, their brains overtaken by hormones. As the natural narcissism of children slips away and leaves behind only questions and self-doubt, social groups from grade school get broken, refactored, and reformed as belligerent cliques of adolescents trying to belong to something just a bit bigger than themselves. They're just self-conscious enough to know that they need to put up walls and define boundaries, but not self-aware enough to know that it's because they're terrified -- of not knowing who they are, what to do, where to go, why any of it matters.

And in this never-ending flood of hormones, fear and pain, there are those who must try to teach.

Most of them hold back the waters just long enough to get from one bell to the next. You can't honestly expect much more of them, poor bastards.

One in particular, however, tried to teach us how to swim.

Mr. McKissick taught English at Washington Junior High in Rock Island, IL. He started as the 7th Grade English teacher and moved up to the 8th Grade with my class, a bit of good luck which I am eternally grateful for. He helped make me the human being I am today.

He had his work cut out for him. I was awkward. Everyone is in junior high, but I felt like I was the most awkward. I was completely lacking in self-awareness and basically did everything wrong that you can do in junior high, socially. I frequently kept my hands above waist-level. When I spoke, my voice would get extremely high when I was excited, and I always said what I was thinking and feeling. I wore whatever I owned that didn't smell. I would speed walk from class to class, taking pleasure in getting seated before anyone else even entered the room. I loved being called on and knowing the answer. I was convinced I was the smartest and the funniest, but I almost never did homework and I couldn't take a joke, good-natured or mean-spirited.

Basically, on the junior high totem pole, I was below the dirt.*

My parents didn't understand. They were unhappy about my grades. They didn't understand how I wasn't making friends. They suggested things like "Pay attention to what the other kids are doing and wearing." They pushed books on body language so that I could present myself better and maybe the other kids would stop calling me gay.** Like most of my teachers, they were holding back the waters*** and again, that's about as much as anyone can expect. Junior high kids don't know what they're going through or why they're going through it. How the hell are parents supposed to know?

Mr. McKissick knew. I suspect he'd been where I am, the lonely scared kid different from everybody else but not really sure why. Or maybe not. He seemed too cool to have ever been scared or lonely.

He gave a crap. I mean, most everyone did, but they were so overwhelmed. He had a way of talking to you like your concerns were the only ones on his mind at the time. He wanted to know how you were doing, what was going on. He kept me back after class a couple times because he saw I was hurt about something and he wanted to make sure I was all right. I always brushed it off and said it was nothing, but it meant a lot that he noticed. I, king of the unsporty, ended up joining the tennis team because he coached it and I managed the girl's tennis team in 8th Grade as well.

I was a voracious reader and he would occasionally let me borrow books from him, books normally not allowed outside the classroom. His class was the first time I ever really wrote at any great length about literature critically, which I think eventually segued into me writing about film critically. When it came to homework, I didn't want to disappoint him (even though I did, repeatedly, because I had ADHD and didn't know it).

He didn't let me get away with my usual crap, either. My ever-present litany of excuses were always met with alternatives -- not pushy, but just snarky enough to say, "I know what you're doing, I understand, but you have to stop."

I can still hear his voice in my head, measured but with the kind of twinkle you usually ascribe to eyes.

I'm not the only one with stories like this. He inspired other classmates in other ways. I stopped by to visit him at Washington right before I graduated high school and saw him work with another kid who was like me at that same age -- lonely and scared.

He was a good man and a great teacher. At a time when I felt like I was drowning, he reached his hand out to pull me above water. I didn't always take it, but it was always appreciated.

* Yes, I just went from a water metaphor to a totem pole metaphor. Deal with it.
** I want to emphasize that it was because being called "gay" was said to hurt me. I know that if I was gay, my parents would have been amazing about it.
*** Back to water again.

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My life in a nutshell

2012-03-11T04:07:23Z

Okay, the fact that I'm using an icon based on the poster of a movie that has a title that translates to "Hell" is not telling. I just really love that movie.

Lotta stuff going on.

-- Classic-Horror.com has been nominated for a Rondo Award for Best Website! If you like horror, you can vote here: http://rondoaward.com/rondo/rondos.html (voting ends April 1st at Midnight EST). For reasons, they only accept copy and pasted email ballots, so it's a bit of a slog to vote.

-- Working on my playlist for the Vividcon horror vidshow. I, uh, didn't realize how much work this would be, but I'm having fun discovering vids that I did not know existed before! If you know of any horror-related vids that you think would be awesome additions, please send them my way. I'm specifically having trouble finding vids made from older (pre-1980) and non-English (Eurohorror/Asian horror) sources. I also want to include at least one television vid that uses the source for creepy/scary purposes and maybe a multifandom vid.

-- On a related note, I am also looking for Premieres for my horror vidshow, because having more horror-related vids in this world cannot be a bad thing. Contact me at nate AT monkeyswithjetpacks.com.

-- I have a lot (a lot) of reviews to edit lately. Just a lot. Many. Need to work on those.

-- Talked with mresundance extensively today. He is made of awesomeness.

-- Finally watched Sherlock 2x01. AWESOME. Need to see the rest, clearly, although Tumblr has spoiled me to some extent.

-- FUS DO RAH!

-- Ugh, need to do more clipping for my Club Vivid vid. Getting sick of the source already and I haven't even laid anything down in Final Cut. This cannot be a good sign.

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ragebunny

2012-01-29T22:18:49Z

If it weren't for Festivids, my life would be total crap right now. Work stuff. Just, argh. Every time things seem to be getting better, something else goes completely wrong.

So, thank you Festividders. Thank you all!

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When change is not a change, except for the difference

2011-07-14T00:04:35Z

So I've been a terrible DW/LJ person lately. Sorry about that. I've tried to start a few entries, but they were quickly nixed because I either didn't have a lot to say or I was just whining about crap.

Today I kind of want to document my experiences with something that both affects me and has no bearing on reality (beyond what has always been true).

Recently, my spouse echan came out as gender-neutral. I haven't talked about it a lot here because, A) I haven't been talking about anything and B) it's a complete non-issue and issue wrapped into a paradox ball.

It's mostly in the language, honestly. I don't have a wife, I have a spouse. It's "ze" not "she", "zir" not "her", etc. I'm better at rejiggering my nouns than my pronouns. Still, there are times when my sentences end rather lamely when I found that they were driving towards a gender-specific term like "girl" or "lady" (and the sentences really don't work with "person" instead -- this whole thing has been a grand lesson in how unconsciously I use language to sort out gender-specific sorts of phrasings). Also, lots of epic backtracking after letting slip the dogs of gender-specific speech.

I find that some part of me -- some very stupid part of me -- is a little put out by the fact that I'm not paired with a woman anymore. I think this is the part that's still damaged by all the gay-bashing I received in high school when I wasn't gay*. I am not proud of this part of my reaction. I simply note it because I'm trying to be honest about this experience.

I am, however, paired with an Echan and that's ultimately the most important thing to me. I'm actually a little surprised about how much zir coming out doesn't actually matter, except as far as I'm happy ze's found a way of self-identifying that ze is pleased with. Is ze the person I fell in love with? Yes. Has anything fundamentally changed about zir? No. Ze's exactly the same person I married, has all the qualities I fell in love with (and the ones that I find occasionally annoying). I find zir just as attractive and ze still thinks I'm hot.

When Echan woke me up to come out to me, I poked my head up and said, roughly, "Not really surprised. Still my Echan." This is the truest part of the experience. Echan is as Echan always was. Ze's just putting a name to it now.

* After Echan came out, I did have a little internal discussion about my sexuality and found that I actually didn't give a fuck who I was attracted to (male, female, neither or both) beyond Echan. So that was interesting.

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Long Time No Type

2011-02-16T00:27:21Z

Hey, it's my birthday! Another year older!

Sorry I've been incommunicado. I've been moving into a new place (the final place), waiting for Internet to get set-up, and generally getting adjusted to living in a new city, working at a new job, etc.

I haven't even read my friendslist in... too too long. So if you've had any major life changes, er, point me to the relevant posts.

No birthday mixtape this year, I think. I just don't have the wherewithal (which is a shame, because I've discovered a metric eff-ton of cool new music courtesy of my lead at work).

Going to Disneyland on Friday for my birthday. It will be echan 's very first time going. Very exciting.

Okay, back to the grind now. Later!

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Actual Update Alert

2011-01-06T10:16:51Z

It occurs to me that, other than my brief and completely unintelligible post from earlier, I haven't made a significant update in two weeks. Whoops. Here's the deal:

I was in fact, offered a job at a different web hosting company which I accepted and now I work with lizbetann (same schedule and everything). Went home for Christmas and moving, vastly underestimated the amount of time needed to get our crap out of the apartment, ending up doing the drive to Los Angeles a day late and the schlepping of items into the storage unit a day after that. But long story short, both echan and I are now Los Angeles residents (crashing with Lizbet and diannelamerc for the time being). We four drew up plans to live in a big geek commune of a two-bedroom apartment, only to be thwarted by unavailability and then unthwarted today when one opened up. Woot.

Also, I've been exercising daily on the Wii Fit. It's weird but I feel healthier and my ADD (which is currently unmedicated due to a foul-up with the prescriptions in the moving process) is actually semi-manageable. Mind you, when the expectations start to ramp up, I'll want my shiny orange pills again, but for now, I'm kind of okay.

Also, Lizbet and Dee are made of win. That is all.

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jetpack_monkey @ 2010-11-23T13:21:00

2010-11-23T21:24:12Z

Just an ounce of stability. Give me just one ounce.

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Still Alive

2010-01-18T22:41:23Z

I haven't disappeared. I'm just busy busy busy.

1. My Club Vivid vid of awesomeness.

2. A Barney/Robin vid that I bunnied on over the weekend. I've been meaning to do one forever, then "Rough Patch" came along and killed my desire. However, I found the perfect song and now I'm laying down clips.

3. Just bunnied on my Vividcon Premieres vid. It's kind of my attempt to be absolutedestiny, except I'll still be me (translation: I'll cling to the lyrics like a seat-cushion-turned-flotation-device). It's Classic Hollywood set to Classic 70s Rock.

4. For some reason, I feel this driving need to construct a How I Met Your Mother chronology.

5. At some point I tripped and fell face-first into my own web design firm? Don't ask me how. It's all very Vorkosigan-y. I have three projects lined up right now.

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