Weekly obsession update
I really spent most of the week reading interviews with Mr. Armitage on the web, but squeezed in a viewing of North & South and three complete viewings of Strike Back. I also listed to Venetia twice in bits and pieces in my car.
What I am really wondering is, given everything I published this week, whether I should change the subtitle of the blog. “Not quite an obsession, but getting close” now seems to be inaccurate. I spent an hour staring at that picture of Guy of Gisborne I published below to demonstrate Mr. Armitage’s straightleggedness.
“Yup, pretty much an obsession now!”
“Addicted beyond hope of intervention”
“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”
??? Any suggestions???
(Servetus grins pathetically)
Me + Richard Armitage 
Oh definitely! I’ve been meaning to comment about that subtitle for awhile! LOL
I like all your suggestions, but the last one applies to all of us, and made me belly-laugh!
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Of course, it’s been used before, and I’d hate to imply that Armitage addiction is like the inferno. On the other hand, it definitely does warm me up! 🙂
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I’ve been visiting your blog on a regular basis in the last month or so, and I agree with Phylly3 that an update of the subtitle is timely. The last one certainly applies to self 😉
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Welcome, TeaLady, and thanks for your sympathy. 🙂
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My suggestion – a 12 step program with Richard Armitage Addicts Anonymous (RAAA!). It seems you are ready, as you’ve just reached step one… admitting obsession 😉 This program hopes to achieve moderation, not abstinence. Good luck.
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I would have to go with Scully’s suggestion, and perhaps I should enrol on it myself. Actually I find that my obsession is kinda limited by the ‘very little time’ I have available to indulge myself big time. And of course by the sheer embarrassment factor of having a husband who just shakes his head at me and says things like ‘that man is really ugly’ 🙂
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I liked what Nat said about this on Richard Armitage Fan Blog — that her crush was leading to her giving her husband all kinds of extra loving. 🙂
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You could just shorten your subtitle to “quite an obsession” – but I do like your third suggestion & Skully’s RAAA!
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@srvetus: ah, go with the flow! Do you think the RA addiction is just another avenue for exploring your creativity, analytical capabilties?
Actually, I love Skully’s suggestion for 12-step programme. We all set up our own. Or would that defeat the purpose?
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Go with the flow? Fitzg, you’re an enabler! All you! Enablers!!!
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D’oh! I meant to say “all of you” .. not “all you”
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In Texas we say y’all. I’ve read a lot of ” you know you’re addicted to Mr. Armitage when …” posts, but has anyone made any suggestions for a program for withdrawal?
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fitzg, not to be too somber, but the day I started the blog I wrote the last post, and it explains in detail why I started writing it — and you are not far wrong. This is an affirmative way for me to be creative, and it’s why I am so grateful for your and everyone’s support (or as we would say in Texas: all y’all’s support).
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You could try some ‘Armitage-free’ days when you avoid indulging at all. Appreciate that may be difficult.
Then your blog title could be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday – completely obsessed, Thursday, Friday, mildly interested. Saturday, Sunday, who’s Richard Armitage?
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LOL!
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LOL!
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ROFLOL! Creative idea, would unplugging be necessary?
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Pretty much, and that is part of the issue. If you have to be online for work then why not just flip over to Armitageworld?
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Perhaps a play on words for the Freudians out there – “not quite a fixation, but getting close” 😉 presuming there is a difference between fixation and obsession?!
Given your academic leanings, how about ‘ The Independent Journal of Richard Armitage Studies” – or something in that vein 😉
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I like the idea of a tongue in cheek reference to an academic journal a great deal.
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Oh, I love that. Think of the possibilities. Maybe that interview with RA, uh, I mean research can be done with the subject in question!
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Get thee behind me. 🙂
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I’d been thinking of creating an academic journal parody for a post on my blog – “The International Journal of Richard Armitage Studies” with a table of contents featuring fake article titles.. just for fun. That’s where the idea comes from. A reference to “Richard Armitage Studies” at least would seem to suit your style 🙂
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I concur, this blog is educational in my book. It always makes me think and expands my vocabulary.
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We do our best. 🙂
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I can’t take your idea, though, Skully, if you plan to use it yourself.
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😀 Like that one Skully!
I just remembered what I have been muttering after reading the subtitle lately….Oh, it’s an obsession all right! 🙂
Glad you are out of the closet with the rest of us!
@kaprekar — Armitage-free days are a good idea, but I’d have to have a pretty serious concussion to arrive at “Who is Richard Armitage”?!
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Well maybe Saturday and Sunday should be dedicated to someone else …. *thinks hard* well maybe Brad Pitt Saturday day or Johnny Depp Sunday. BTW please don’t think that I’m particularly a fan of either of the above mentioned actors, true, I enjoy their work, especially Depp but only on a ‘yeah iok’d pretty good’ kind of level. Although Depp was the only reason I could stick through The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and I do rather like Captain Jack (Sparrow, that is). Insert whatever actor takes your fancy, servetus, except RA of course. Dear me.
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Kaprekar, you can totally be a fan of Johnny Depp and not have me question your loyalty to Mr. Armitage. 🙂
My issue is that this is my first and only real celebrity crush. With the possible exception of Richard Chamberlain when I was 12. So I’d have to find osmeone to make myself get interested in.
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Well it doesn’t have to be another crush, or anything to do with movies or entertainment. Could be a hobby or just finding some new avenues of life to explore.
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This is, I think, a more exact description of my problem than you may realize. In fact, I’d given up all of my hobbies in favor of work until I discovered Mr. Armitage. You’re right. I need something else.
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Diversifying ones interests is a good step. One of the reasons I got heavily into Spooks was so that my brain could think about something other than my PhD. One of the take aways I got from reading William James is that new experiences are the essence of life. Whether it be food, people, places, ideas, entertainment… time to throw something new into the work/RA mix? For me it’s tai chi!
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This decision is coming up for me in the next year, as I try to decide whether to continue being a professor or try something else. One of the issues for me with the professoriate is the absolute lack of time for anything else during the semester.
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Gosh, hope I’m not “enabler”! Moderation, and a good sense of humour, and a way of pursuing the “obsession” in these analytical directions.
With GoG, I had to keep stepping back, and thinking, “what am I doing, critiquing a programme directed primarily to kids, from an adult viewpoint?!!! Blame a good actor. Etc. (Anyone but but me – giggle, and 🙂 )
This is a good actor. Lucky to possess the physical attibutes not vouchsafed to all actors. And apparently serious and respectful of the theatrical industry, etc. So, the “obsession” holds us on many levels.
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Yeah, TOTALLY overdetermined.
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Fine, Skully!! We’re not qualified to set up our own 12-step! (darn!):)
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No! You’re all contaminated by RA fan fervor. Only an objective figure can devise the RAAA program… otherwise it’ll be the blind leading the blind!
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Perhaps husbands and OH/SOs should be called into service in the devising of said 12-point programme, but there is always the risk that they might institute unusually brutual methods, a la clockwork Orange and aversion therapy, which is not quite what we’re aiming for, is it?
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That is a risk, but I am trying to figure out how aversion therapy would work. After a long day of writing about Mr. Armitage, what I usually feel is the blissful sense that my brain’s pleasure centers have been overloaded. I am not sure how an aversion to him could be created in me. It seems implausible.
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Speaking from personal experience, I believe it’s implausible. I secretly thought my blog would cure me, and well, you can see that was a joke.
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We may not yet have allowed enough time for the therapy to be effective.
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When I admitted less than a year ago I was a fan, then was the only moment I dared myself to give name to this… RAness of mine. Though since it has grown so very much (why do I hear again Lovelace’s friend Toby saying ‘obsession’ in french? 😛 )
I like Skully’s idea, would fit perfectly. Also like something like ‘Quite an obsession and embracing it wholeheartedly’.
OML 😀
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we could say it in German, too, it would sound just the same. 🙂
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[…] I read a comment about aversion therapy on Servetus’ blog and had to chuckle. What started out as a little aversion therapy for me has turned into immersion […]
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Lol – I’m in denial about my “obsession”. Sorry if this has been mentioned above but I was reminded of the “Stages of Change” model (used by weight watchers but also used in other areas of life eg for addictions). Precontemplation; contemplation; preparation/determination; action/willpower; maintenance; relapse. I asked myself in all honesty where I might sit in this model and if I really want to change. Happiy or unhappliy I am stuck in the precontemplation stage (denial). If I were to go through all the stages of change (by denying internet access and DVD players) I suspect I would end up in a relapse the moment the internet and DVDs were returned .
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Yeah, I am thinking that I can admit it to myself and not care. Maybe. When I was not admitting that it was an obsession it was bothering me a lot.
I think you are right about the need for absolute, lifelong change (just like what they say about dieting). I stopped watching N&S shortly after my students did, thinking I had had too much and there was nothing more to see. I brought it with me and put it in the DVD player on Sunday night, and it was like falling in love all over again. It’s on heavy rotation now.
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To admit obsession is liberating, yes? Honesty is the best policy.
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I do think it makes it easier to realize how much time one is spending on the hobby — but that in itself is disturbing.
I’m reading a really interesting book on addiction at the moment by Gabriel Mate and he has a combined biological / emotional explanation that relates nerve receptor issues to the experience of unresolved chronic stress in the lives of children that then reerupts for adults. This would be a good explanation for my addiction, anyway.
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MTA: @ tealady above … nice to see you here!! 🙂
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Things were just about to wane, getting under control, I went on a little sidetrack watching BBC Clarissa and checking out that actor’s body of work out from his younger days. And then Strike Back happened and now with the new vids the flame is roaring. Since I’ve become determined to jump in the comments more rather than just read. It’s an effort as I do all my reading on an iPod touch. Ok enough, I’ll step out of the confession booth! But I do have faith that some sort of balance will occur. Frankly I might join you with controlled dozes of days on, days off.
As for SO he has no clue who’s RA, is not into anything British. But I was over the moon when we listened to The Siege in the car Memorial Day weekend on the way home and he tolerated it for the kids sake, who love all the RH audiobooks. I might have to try it again for the 4th of July wkd!
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I like the idea of sneaking Mr. Armitage in unnoticed via the audiobooks.
I share this experience of thinking it’s about to abate and then being pepped up for the next thing. Right now it’s waiting for _Convenient Marriage_ and _Spooks 9_. Part of me is hoping that he does get to do “The Rover” because I have no chance of seeing it — and while he’s doing that he can’t be preparing anything else for me to anticipate.
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Probably aversion therapy is out of our control. It would be something like reading or viewing an interview with Mr A where he said something that one finds distasteful, objectionable, immoral whatever, etc. Or it being reported that he had done something along those lines.
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I wonder what he’d have to do to cause that to happen to me. Adultery/infidelity is usually a big turnoff for me, but since he’s single. … One can’t imagine the man committing murder, participating in genocide, soliciting a prostitute …
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Your interesting blog seems to fan the flames of my obsession, servetus! *chortles madly*!
I’m at the newbie stage of being totally enamoured and deliriously infatuated, and I’m certainly not ready to try any 12-point programme just yet. Like servetus, this is my first ever crush on a well-known person and it feels exhilirating and bewildering, but I’m going along for the ride.
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In 12-step jargon, that’s called “denial” 🙂
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I think you should maybe avoid the use of the word ‘obsession’ since ‘obsessive fan’ has some stalkerish connotations, perhaps? I prefer ‘crush’ for example or just to say he is my favourite actor.
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Interesting comment. I was thinking of something like
An unabashedly obsessive, occasionally cerebral journal of Richard Armitage Studies
but you make a good point.
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Thoroughly enjoy all the directions in which this blog takes everyone. And the common bases, whatever our cultures be.
Harking back, would rather fancy a separate segment? Journal title – that neat “International Journal of Richard Armitage Studies”. Strictly tongue-in cheek. Incorporating national/cultural slants.
Would suggest, under Canadian humour, “Ouch! You stepped on my toe – I’m so sorry”. Just take that as a joke, I probably do it, but- 🙂 It is stereotypical, so we might find ourselves where we don’t want to be. Just ruminating, as usual – where’s my cud?
(I am a Canadian, btw)
Love British humour, of the deadpan, dry variety. And Bob Newhart, and several other American comedians.
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I really don’t like the journal title.
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Yeah, I think you are right. I am going to change the subtitle but I think it needs more thought. I am going to take journal out of it for sure because part of what I am trying to get away from is the conventions of academic writing.
Richard Armitage Studies for Cerebral Readers?
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Yes I have to concur for that journal idea but this sounds to big for one blogger perhaps it should be a colaberation like the fanstRAvaganza, that would be a hoot. I can think of another post: the healthbenefits of being a RA fan 🙂
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I’m not sure about the journal idea – I think that it’s maybe taking something that is ‘tongue in cheek’ a little too far. And would be easily misunderstood.
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