Love In The Asylum

• took the bus into town and went to the bookstore, which /always/ tremendously improves my weekend
• read an entire Torchwood novel, Something In The Water. I liked it very much in that it was centered on a mythological monster type thing - water hags, women creatures who live in bogs and draw men in to drown - profoundly creepy, and I do love when Torchwood draws on those sort of themes. It also squicked me a little, though, but that's just because I have this thing where plagues and epidemics of any sort reeeeeally freak me out. And not nearly enough Jack/Ianto love, sadly, although I choose to assume a coda exists where Jack cuddles Ianto and reassures him that aliens aren't about to burst out his throat with his tongue.
• bought new books! I had a bunch of left-over funds from Yaoi-Con in my wallet, so I decided to splurge and spent 50 dollars on books. I'm a little ashamed of myself, but on the other hand...books soooo shiiiiny
• had a loud conversation with hanjuuluver  on the phone while riding on a bus full of presumably normal-ish people about non-con as an element of fiction, Booster Gold related angst, and gay porn.
• rearranged my bookcase - I got kind of sick of having my side of the room covered in untidy piles of books, so I moved all my SLE books and non-interesting/useful textbooks to under my bed. My bookcase is /still/ almost completely full though. I counted - I have about 70 "personal" books with me at school - which includes dictionaries, comics, manga, and actual fiction and non-fiction books - and about 40 SLE books/books from his history seminar/textbooks. 120 books is way too many for one dorm room. DX
• watched the new episode of Merlin! I kind of love that every single week, everyone I know who watches Merlin posts to say that the newest episode is most gay-filled episode yet. And they are always right. Although at times I think that the vibe that Gwen and Merlin have, where she is the fag hag and he is her gay BFF and they check out boys together and do all their shopping together, is even better than the blatant Arthur/Merlin slashiness. At times. And this episode had Lancelot, because presumably the producers were sitting around and telling each other, "you know, this show doesn't have nearly enough nubile young men getting filthy and sweaty and rolling around on the ground together. LET'S FIX THAT."
• Joe Flanagin. In a fedora. JOE FLANAGIN IN A FEDORA. I have heard rumors that in this movie he also wears a vest. GUH. SO HOT.

• Young Avengers: Family Matters - in which Billy and Teddy accidentally come out to Billy's parents, and then fight a super-Skrull. Also Eli finds out that superpowers don't make the hero (and then gets them anyway yay), and everyone talks to a reporter about why they joined the team. And Tommy! Blowing shit up! So much cuteness, concentrated in such a short comic! Its awesome cannot be contained!
• Hero Heel v2 - second volume of a manga series in which Minami, who plays the lead on a children's super hero show, falls in love with the gay Sawada, who plays the villain in the same show.  The first volume of this ended with Minami blackmailing Sawada into sleeping with him by threatening to out him, so I had my reservations - non-con is Not My Kink, and I have issues with the way it is often played down in yaoi. The protesting uke who eventually gives in and loves it is a huge trope, but it's always made me more than a little uncomfortable. But then the second vol turns out to be all about how blackmailing Sawada completely fucked things up between them and now there are /consequences/ and Sawada hates him and mmmm. Goodness.
• Chalice by Robin McKinley - this was a terribly dificult decision to make, because all three of my favorite woman authors - McKinley, Patricia McKillip, and Diana Wynne Jones - have new books out right now, and all of them sound /fantastic/. But I just read a review of this the other day that made it sound quite facinating (bee-keeper heroine+lots of fire-magic, one of my major kinks for sure), and reminded me why I love McKinley's prose so much to begin with, so Chalice it is.

So, a few years ago, back when I still watched television on, like, an actual physical tv, there were these commercials for one of those internet travel-booking sites, I think travelocity but possibly not. The premise of these commercials was that there was this (fictional) game show where contestants had to book a trip somewhere as quickly as possible; contestant A would be using the site being advertised while being distracted by small children, animals, cooking dinner, etc, while contestant B would be undistracted but only able to use the horribly outdated method of increasingly frantic phone calls. Surprise, surprise, contestant A always won, whatever.

But see, the thing is, I can distinctly remember having the tv on at one point, and seeing that ad, and the set up for that week's version of the ad was that contestant A was a guy with a new boyfriend distracting him by hanging all over him and trying to make out while he's booking this trip. 

I just remembered this, and it is driving me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY that I cannot figure out if this ad ever existed, or if it's just some of weird commercial hallucination on my part. WTF, brain?