Not From The Desk of Rory McCann…

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve put some more work into this. It isn’t a huge amount every time (seriously; a lot of it’s copy-and-pasting), but every little bit helps. That tag cloud is certainly growing.

I have been tagging things he’s been in wherever they’ve been mentioned. I could have just limited it to when something substantial was written about the work in question, but then we get into how to define “substantial.” I won’t worry about it. However. Come to think of it, one of the things I’ll be including in-line with this blog is an entry for each of his works on the date it was first released, and that will have its own Filmography category. So there’s that. Aaand when I do that I’ll likely include the screenshots when I have them! So that’ll be fun. I might not do it right away but edit the screenshots in later, depending on how generally busy I am. But the nice thing about a blog post is that you can shorten it with a “read more” tag, so I can make those posts nice and long when I have the material and it won’t interfere with the general blog layout. So I guess that solves that mystery. You longtimers may recall I argued with myself for probably literal years over whether to do screenshots as a separate page or to include them with the filmography. There. Sorted.

I am sorry to note that I will probably remove the “love life” page. Might even remove the boat page. That’ll likely mean I fall in search rankings. Oh well. I am not making any real moral pronouncement about those things, I’m just not sure where they will fit into the rearranged sitemap. Plus, well, they don’t really help anything at this point. Me writing about Rory’s boat always gave a certain group of people conniptions, and we could never get the straight story about Rory’s love life either, not even the stuff that’s usually public for non-famous people. (Seriously. If someone you actually knew kept his marital status secret from you for years, wouldn’t that weird you out?) I’m at a point where I prefer to share stuff I can actually prove, since I’m wrong at least half the time with my speculations anyway. (Me guessing he’d end up on Instagram was a fucking unicorn, and then it was spoiled because I came up with it after he’d already started his account there, which at the time I didn’t know yet, but of course what the fuck does that look like? DAMN YOU, McCANN. 🤪) I can’t see how me dropping the bullshit speculation will take anything away from this site but its search ranking. I can live with that.

Still pondering the whole “administrivia” thing. It’s possible I will keep that feature but much more subdued. But jury’s still out.

Okay. I’m now sitting here staring at this thinking Was there something else I wanted to add? Never mind. Onward!

They have updated Rory’s photo at his agent’s site.

Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.

Ah, yes. The photo I tried to draw THREE SEPARATE TIMES. One of these days I’ll do it. I don’t have a good setup or a good mindset for it yet.

Here’s one of my attempts. It’s long gone. I threw it away or I set it on fire — I did a lot of trash-burning while I stayed with my dad. Normal for South Louisiana, and actually kind of cathartic (not Rory’s drawing specifically, but other stuff I made gone). But enough about that. Drawing. Here.

I actually want to do the other one of him making the silly face, too, so I have the pair. Maybe one day.

P.S. Edited to add. I am not sure when it happened, but Rory’s Instagram is blue-checked now.

Of course people are going to say “well, any idiot can get a blue check now.” No pleasing people.

It is testament to the mis-wiring of my mind that I fucked off all day (note the “off”… my life has been boring in that way for a long, long time) and then suddenly, close to two hours after I usually get off work except it’s Saturday, I’m working on this site. GOD. I could have gotten SO much done by now.

Oh well. It’s a start. I figure I’ll give me til about 2am or so, my time, for this little work session here.

You will find that stuff disappears. I have ideas about how I want to move forward with this and it’s looking like — no promises — there will be considerably less autobiography and smartassitude going forward. I know some of you like me being silly — you made that obvious when I still had a Facebook page for this project, and didn’t we have a time? — and maybe even Rory doesn’t mind it, if he even looks at this place, but I don’t know yet whether I will fit my humor in here somewhere going forward or even how I will do it. At this point I just want to get a straight-up narrative going, and then we’ll see what else fits. And it could be by then that you’re getting enough out of the site just as I envision it now that you won’t miss the bullshit. Fun as it sometimes was. There will still be a personal “voice” here though. That’s too difficult for me personally to leave off.

Anyway. We will see how this goes! I’m already pleased to note the index page looks like it will work as it should. So there’s that.

Oh, and a further personal note. At one point I had opined that I would not be going tracking down Rory’s birth info. I still have not personally seen his birth certificate and will not be seeking it out. I did, however, stumble across an information source that contained both his apparent birth data (time and place and date) and his middle name, claiming his birth certificate as a source of that information. You know… someone, no idea who, took it upon themselves to declare his middle name was Philip some years ago and to append it to his Wikipedia article (and it has since been deleted). I can’t see how it is worse for me to share information I’m two degrees away from verifying versus someone just making shit up.

Plus this came off a public site. I didn’t need a password to see it. It’s out there. My keeping my mouth shut didn’t make it less public.

And if it makes you feel better, my middle name’s Rachael. So there.

Okay. Onward. Let me not distract myself with nonsense again. This post won’t stay up forever, but hopefully enough of you will see it until then. The times, they are a-changin’.

Hi again.

I “sound” a bit too somber there. Things are going okay [knocks on head]. It’s just I get seven paid holidays a year and we’re winding up Independence Day. I keep telling myself I only have three days left to go in my work week and I got paid for doing fuck-all today. Well, not entirely fuck-all. I’ve cleaned some and cooked some. Though I may be about to punt that new slow cooker out the kitchen door. I’ve not decided yet. Anyway, I hate being regimented, and I knew that going in, but I need the job and it pays okay, so here I be. I am apparently doing well for a beginner, if not brilliantly, so that’s a good sign. I’m also paying rent on my apartment now like a normal person. Gasp.

I think I’ve just spent too much time alone if you want to know the truth. It’s not a big deal usually; I may actually be a bigger introvert than Rory is. I KNOW Seriously, though, he still goes out and parties. Or did until fairly recently. Me, I always feel awkward in social gatherings. Maybe that’s why he drinks at parties? He can do that, though. He’s six and a half feet worth of big strong dudely dude. In my experience, men take a drunken woman as an invitation to mayhem and they will not care that I’m fat and frumpy and funny-looking. I’d be easy. No good. So I stay out of that shit. But I could do with some sort of social interaction that my ability to make a living isn’t hinging upon. I’ll think of something.

Anyway! I’m pushing myself hard on this ’cause once I get going, it won’t be so bad… I’m finally beginning work here at the site. I had considered, and posted at least twice about, doing everything in a sandbox WordPress installation and then replacing this all at once. I have decided that that is probably too much planning and possibly redundant effort. Also no good. But it’ll creep up on you from the past moving forwards. I intend to still have some auxiliary pages here to serve specific functions, but most of it’s going to be inline as part of the blog, and I will be making liberal use of tags and categories. It will all be searchable, just as it is now, and hopefully the increased use of tags and categories will make it even more so.

I’m afraid that when it comes to using source material it’s going to wind up looking more like a Tumblr blog and someone get me a fucking eyepatch and a parrot, BUT, I will link to sources wherever I can. And the archived versions of those sources. I want you to go find where this stuff came from. By all means please do. I will make it easy for you.

In the end, well, I don’t want to say “ultimate Rory McCann fan resource” but maybe I’ll get it top ten? I’d like that. That would be fairly awesome.

Okay. I’m gonna go see if that fucking slow cooker is working

[exit to kitchen]

[triumphant re-entry]

IT’S WORKING

Holy shit, Batman! I’m cooking! HOW long has it been. Jesus. I will have my own meal to take to work tomorrow!

It’s the little things.

But not only the little things.

Sigh.

[edit] Couple of very minor changes thus far because I kept getting sidetracked:

1. Installed a plugin that will create a tag cloud on its very own page. Actually, I have to create the tag page, but it’ll have a shortcode on it that’ll display all the tags I use from here on out.

The idea, ultimately, is to give you three ways to search info: (a) broad categories of information, such as filmography; (b) tags for more specific details; (c) search bar, which is not going away and which will search both pages and posts (an important distinction in WordPress).

2. Deleted the previously existing categories. They are likely to be fine-tuned over the next several months, but I wanted to start over from scratch, anyway.

Not terribly important info for most people but if you geek out about this shit, that’s what’s up. Sorry there isn’t more yet. It’s a start.

I guess all my whinging about Scotland not dropping by has paid off. At least three over the past few days. Even saw Irvine and Glesga in the mix for the first time in weeks.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿💙🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

(You may or may not be able to see that. It’s the saltire. I see a black flag from my vantage point.)

(EDIT: Never mind. I can see it fine on the site, it’s in the back end that it looks wrong to me.)

I am becoming a consummate professional at wasting my weekends. I did at least get laundry done.

Am now moving to evenings at work. Curious to see how that’s going to go.

No word on the big man really. People recycling one another’s news about him per usual. I did watch this again. Enjoy.

I’m looking at my visitor logs again — and I should repeat this. I’ve said it before, somewhere here, but some of you probably didn’t see it: I can’t see WHO you are. Nor your home address. I can only see your city, state or province if applicable, and country — and still no Scotland, or almost none. This is so strange. I doubt all my previous Scottish visitors would have changed over to anonymous proxies. It could be that some have visited so often that some kind of cookie has kicked in and they just don’t trigger the counter anymore. I don’t really know how all that works. I know bits and pieces but not enough to form a coherent conceptual whole.

But I’m getting a lot from England. Which is even stranger. I have never not gotten visitors from England, but used to be I’d hear about as often from England as I heard from Scotland, and sometimes I’d hear significantly less often. But now as far as UK visitors go, it’s just about all England. One day recently, and I mentioned this at the time, I noted that I’d gotten way more visits than normal from London. Rory’s agent is based there and he probably pops in to them now and again for meetings and to pick up mail, so you understand why I was a little weirded out.

I wonder about that, actually. Is the big man working in England again, and that’s why I get England hits? Like, people see him in public and then decide to google him* and here they come? Is he visiting here himself? I don’t dare hope for that one. I’ve let things get sloppy here. The mind boggles, though!

There isn’t any way anyone could answer these questions in a manner I would trust. I will just have to wonder. Frowny face.

I will admit, I left it an open question as to whether I would ever set up a contact method here. I’ve thought about it. Like, one email address for fan pics, another for questions, that kind of thing. I don’t really want to, or I’d have done it already. Like, part of me is curious what would happen, but most of me doesn’t want to deal with the drama which inevitably would tag along for the ride. People just don’t know how to enjoy things anymore, they’ve always got to shit in someone else’s punch bowl. I’m not interested. I’ve had enough drama the past two years to last me the rest of my life. I just want to have fun now. I also have to work, and I’m not at my best at work if I’m stressed out. So there’s that.

Anyway, those of you who really wanted to get in touch with me figured out how to do it. I don’t always see your emails timely because for some reason they get shunted off into my junk-mail inbox, but I’ve seen a few. Even Emily pops in now and again to catch up, so that’s nice.

Okay. I did absolutely fuck-all yesterday, and I can’t do that today because I need a haircut and a bit of grocery shopping. (WOW it is weird to say that.) I will try and make myself work on this tonight, because I’ve put it off long enough. I think I’m mostly afraid I won’t get it finished, even though by its nature it can’t be finished under present circumstances. I’d elaborate, but that’s really fucking morbid, so we’ll just leave it alone. But I’m not good at putting something down and then coming back to it later, is my point. I should just get the fuck over that. Site needs work. The end.

‘Later.

[edit] Oh hey! I have found something interesting. Independent confirmation of a few things I had been wondering about. Rory’s birth time and middle name and birthplace — and it wasn’t in Glasgow, though close enough and he did grow up in the big city. But look here and here. You’re welcome. I will incorporate them as sources later. Hey, you who mentioned to me he was sighted in Paisley. What do you want to bet his mom lives there and he was visiting? Her or other family, or possibly old schoolmates he’s still in touch with. He may be an introvert, but he values his relationships from what I’ve seen.

Okay, really gotta go now.

—–
*I just checked… and I’m on the first page of search results!!! Well below his Emptage Hallett listing, which is sensible — but, I’m pleased to note, a few entries ahead of that fan-fiction romance about him. Just… don’t ask. Yes I read it. Ten minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

I have been sleeping in my own bed in a real apartment since Saturday and y’all, I don’t know what to do with myself.

We’re still ironing bits and pieces out, though it’s been whittled down by this point to one document that both the landlady and I have to sign. I suspect we’ll have that done by the end of the weekend if everything goes well. This is about the Salvation Army paying my landlady for deposit and first month, so it benefits her if we get it done. I’m going to try very hard not to be fussed. She’s had a rough year too. That’s her story to tell, but maybe that’s why we’ve come to this point. It’s this whole thing that really doesn’t belong here. I should write a book.

Nah. No I shouldn’t.

Never mind.

It’s basically this little wooded oasis in the middle of a city — or, more properly, its northwest edge — and if I told a local my address, just the street name, no house number, and then what my rent is, they’d be amazed. I’m like ten minutes from work, and that only because there are traffic lights between there and here. The trees muffle the worst of the noise. First night I was here I slept like a rock. It hasn’t been much different since.

Numbered among my near neighbors: more than half a dozen chickens, a rooster, two goats, some rabbits (quantity unknown), a pony, TWO DOGS (yellow Labs), and if I don’t watch it there’s gonna be a fucking partridge in a pear tree somewhere. Just you wait.

Work’s going well. Tomorrow will be a month I’ve been there. World goddamn record. I get to use my job to help people, which is really cool. The bizarre bit is that the woman who started the company got her start in Savannah, Georgia, where I’ve lived in the past and which just happens to be one of my favorite cities and my ass would be living there today, and so would the rest of me, if I could stand the heat, humidity, and fucking hurricanes. I love these little coincidences.

And we get free popcorn.

I have no idea why.

…..

Wow. Speaking of world goddamn record. Hey? Scotland? Where are you? Used to be I could count on one of you fuckers visiting daily at least. Suddenly… poof. For days and days. But for some reason I am getting a ton of visits from London. The fuck’s in London? No, I know what’s in London. Don’t fucking tell me. That’s just ridiculous. You’re just random Londoners. Right?

Bueller?

Eh. I’ll never know. Might as well roll with it.

…..

Oh hey. Got the big man’s autographed photo out of storage finally. All my stuff under one roof again. I am waiting for the landlady’s daughter, previous inhabitant of this place, to get the rest of her stuff out before I start deciding where to put my things. So I haven’t set him up yet. Yet.

(This is him signing it)

…..

I cannot take my work home with me, it’s just the nature of the job and I don’t work remotely, so I need to find something better to do with my off-time than natter on social media. Not that I will stop nattering on social media. Just that I need to diversify. So that’s what I’m a-gonna do. So expect more here soon.