that is if you’re an enormous nerd like me.
1. Watch a Lifetime movie starring Jenna Elfman as a woman obsessed with a surgeon who has invented an entire relationship in her head (as well as a gauzily-lit psychiatrist and a contempt of court-prone journalist). Best line from the court-appointed psychiatrist: “she has seven of the ten traits of an assassin.” …? I didn’t know these had been catalogued. Fortunately, the good people at Lifetime TV have their eyes on things.
Aside: Thank god people don’t diagnose themselves with imagined illnesses based on Lifetime plots like they do on WebMD. My friend Christina jokes that she hates that website because somehow, whenever she feels ill and researches her symptoms, she ends up with a diagnosis of testicular cancer and the prognosis does not look good. The Lifetime result would be neuro-eroticism (Jenna’s official diagnosis) or imaginary child syndrome (featured in an excellent production starring Rita Wilson and Victor Garber, by the way).
2. Color in your coloring books. Yeah, you heard me. I do indeed have coloring books. And man, do I need some new ones. At this point I’m pretty much down to the German Sesame Street coloring book I got as a freebie at an old job. It’s not very challenging, but it is awesomely sterotypical as several of the scenes face pages that firmly instruct kiddies on exaclty which colors to use and how one must play properly.
3. Brush your teeth a lot. For some reason, being lazy makes my mouth feel dirty. God help me if a Freudian gets a hold of this sentence.
4. Watch Empire Strikes Back. Awesome, it is.
5. Play word games on a website designed for seven year olds. It’s not that I’m looking for easy- I can usually nail the Sunday Times crossword in half an hour flat- I just need enough points to buy my virtual pet some food and books. I don’t want my red, bowtie wearing penguin to be considered stupid, after all.
6. Whatever you do, don’t clean, organize, balance your check book, pay bills, write to people or make overdue phone calls. That sounds like work, man. And we cannot have that on our rainy day off.
7. Write inconsequential entries on your blog to bide time until the Psychic Detectives marathon begins.
4 Comments
11 June, 2007 at 09:00
I think that Lifetime operates in a non-Google research world. When seeking out the ten traits of an assassin (looking into a career change and all), I kept coming up with RPG definitions. While fascinated by the skill set of a 10th level blackguard, I am quite certain that my journey is not that of a fallen paladin.
22 November, 2009 at 19:50
This is so funny… I am just now watching the Lifetime show you refer to, since I burst out laughing when I heard the dialogue “She has seven out of ten traits of an assassin!” upon finding out that she’s been let out of jail without bail… I couldn’t believe my ears.
Never heard of this nonsensical “diagnosis” before, and your site was the ONLY one where “ten traits of an assassin” showed up in my Google search. Thanks for this posting from tw0 years ago… I must be watching a rerun in Nov. 2009. LOL. But it’s not really funny how they make out “a woman scorned,” is it? Psychiatry stinks when it comes to females.
22 November, 2009 at 19:52
Did my thank-you for this posting go through? Yours was the ONLY site that carried “ten traits of an assassin” in my Google search. Couldn’t believe it! Glad someone got a laugh out of this one, even though psychiatry never gives women a fair shake. I must be watching the same Life Time movie “Obsession” two years later… re-runs, anyone?
25 November, 2009 at 07:23
i KNOW. for some reason, I insist on watching these movies because they’re hilarious. Guys always think the Lifetime movies are ones in which the men are all jerks and bastards, but usually the women are the worst.
It’s probably the most misogynistic network on tv, or at least tied with Spike and MTV.
I watched one episode of Ellen, one, and she had a game “real Lifetime movie title or not?” It was amazing because the only way to know was if you’d seen the movie in question; they were all equally absurd.
You’ve come a long way, baby.