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My Duff Névrotique
Quick follow-up on my Willow post, which I've been thinking about on and off. I probably should have qualified my language more; maybe the "typical" drinking experience does define the paradigm, but that doesn't necessarily mean it defines it for everyone. Basically, I just yield any pretense to authority, because I really can't sustain it for any length of time without reverting to a girlish disclaimer of "That's just my opinion, of course." But still, I was talking about this last night with S., who noted that the power trip of Willow's (i.e., that magic made her power hungry, which seemed at first to be the relevant metaphor) contradicted the addiction metaphor. But I think the sense of power is to magical addiction what inebriation is to alcohol addiction. They can be conflated. With inebriation can come many feelings, and one of them is power. In the sense of self-confidence and invulnerability. This morning woke from dreams of a giant high scool, problematic bathrooms, and divas attending some kind of counseling meeting--Whitney Houston, Jennifer Lopez. Then went back to bed and reawoke from a dream that someone had broken into my apartment. Cue me standing in the doorway of my bedroom, staring nearsightedly at this strange man in the front room. At first he looks like a normal man, maybe a maintenance guy. I ask him what he's doing in my apartment. He says nothing, and I start saying: "Get out. Get out! Get out!" Wordlessly he begins to leave, gathering up stuff around the room, including a black bag. I finally inch out into the living room and lock the door behind him. I start to do a morning ritual of making breakfast, but when I go to turn on the TV, my remote doesn't work. After several attempts, I realize it's not my remote at all. Creepy feeling as I stare at this strange remote. The man must have brought it with him, but why? Then I keep finding other things that aren't mine: several more remotes, two bedrolls by the sink, etc. I realize that the man was a tramp, and he must have broken in. I check all my windows and fine the one he entered through--broken window, cut and twisted metal bars. In my mind now, I remember him much differently, as this older, raggedy-assed guy. I freak, and prepare to call the police. As usual in my dreams, making a phone call is a big hassle that takes absolutely fucking forever, and as I'm trying to call them, my parents and brother show up, along with my brother's friend. It's a totally unannounced visit, and they've practically moved lock stock and barrel into my apartment while I wasn't paying attention--mom has cleaned out dresser drawers and put her own stuff in them, they've got the TV blaring, they're all wandering around and touching my stuff (screwing up the evidence), and a huge messy meal is being made in the kitchen. Long bit here where I flip through a phone book trying to find the police number, while telling my family what happened--that this guy broke in, was with me all night. No one seems very worried as I have a little nervous breakdown from all this. I finally find the police number, and explain what happened to the sympathetic cop on the line, while my family is obnoxiously loud in the background. I keep misunderstanding what the cop is saying and apologizing, then I go through my apartment and detail all the things that were left behind. There was a lot of weird stuff, I know, but the only other item I recall now is a toothbrush shaped like a shoe. I keep telling my family to shut the hell up--I break off to scream at them, I slam my hand against the TV to turn it down, etc. It's absolutely absurd to me that they're in my apartment like this, being so careless about my things and my personal space. I loathe their rudeness. And I want to find fingerprints for the cops, so I return to my unbroken bedroom window and scrape a big clump of dirt off, in which maybe they can find prints. There are dried-up lemon wedges on the sill and I want to attribute them to the tramp, but I decide they must be mine. Eventually, as I'm talking to the cop, I realize he isn't on the line anymore. All the yelling I was directing at my family might have fooled him into thinking I was not rejoining the call. But a woman from social services appears; the cop had arranged for her to come. She was more or less a cop herself, actually, with a gun; a black woman, competent and calm. She led me through my apartment, as I described what had occurred. We were in the bathroom, talking with the door shut, when my brother barged in and began messing with a bowl of bath salts. Running his fingers through them, making sifting clacking sounds. All of this for no particular reason, and some friend of his was with him. I shoved my brother out, viciously told him to shut up or I'd kill him. I hit him. Weird POV as he writhed on the floor, me inches from his face as it turned itself around at various angles. Frustrated, I grabbed his neck and began to strangle him, while giving him silent warnings, conscious of the cop behind the closed bathroom door, who could arrest me for this. I was staring into his eyes and waiting for him to capitulate, but he wouldn't. His eyes were strange and kept growing more and more narrow, like some beady-eyed animal's, until I finally gave up and let him go. Capsule reaction to tonight's Angel, with spoilers hidden: wow. That felt like it was scripted as the season ender. Now apparently we must wait several weeks for the remaining eps. Damn them. I guess they know what they are doing, though, getting us all worked up like that. Bonibaru has some interesting speculations about where this one might be going. I like possibility 4.4 (as I count it), which would be so fucking brutal, if, you know, (spoilers) Connor was actually one of Holtz's children, killed by Angelus--did he have a son or just daughters? Of course, it didn't sound like time travel, but dimensional travel, unless it's one of those waiting-for-the-punchline jokes that ours is the darkest world ever. (/spoilers). Hmmm. Climax of story finished. Rather plotty, with less of an emotional peak than usual, I suspect, but still: sigh of relief. Now must sweep the pieces back together briefly for the denouement. I stayed home from work today. The last of my unpaid vacation time is being dribbled away bit by bit (those hours a carry-over from when I was hired), leaving me with only my normal annual paid vacation and sick days, which are never enough, damn it. And I need money so bad, I'm ready to rob banks for it. I mean, if cheerleaders and surfers can do it in the movies, why can't I? Oh wait. They got caught.... posted 3.04.2002 @ 10:49pm -- right-click here to grab a link Administrivia and More I've just realized very belatedly that my menu scripts don't work in Netscape. Argh! And, you know, I'm just about to the point where I don't care. I'm all for cross-browser design, but this is too much. It's enough to make a person crave a giant, callous, evil corporate monopoly. Oh, hey. I've been having all these long, complex dreams recently that I forget the details of as soon as I wake. One night it was all Buffy, a lot of plot and wackiness, but all I recall is Spike wearing raccoon-heavy black eyeliner. Another night, same type of thing, and I remember a girl stacking her spare change by size--quarters on the bottom, up to dimes on the top, and aggrievedly saying she was ready to go, because see, she'd stacked her change. Why these not so representative scraps, and nothing else? Oh, and god...I just remembered. Last night I dreamed that I returned to a shabby little hotel, because I'd left my Spike tee-shirt there, the one I bought at the con. Except I'd actually brought the shirt back with me. And the lady behind the counter took my shirt, and said yeah, I could have it back if I paid the daily fees that had accumulated while it had been left in the hotel. Then she told me it was, like, eight ninety-five a day. And the total was over a hundred dollars. I was outraged, gasping. I pleaded with her, gave her this long tearful spiel about how much the shirt meant to me, how deeply I needed it, what a huge amount of money that was. And she was totally unimpressed, said I was troublesome, complained that I'd been that way while I was staying in the hotel, always being so difficult about taking phone calls, always getting pages. And at this gross unfairness, I said: No, wait, you're confusing me with someone else. I never made any phone calls while I was here, never had pages. And our argument escalated until I stalked out with some retort on my lips, trembling and enraged, and without my shirt, feeling very glad that next year the con would be in L.A. This doesn't reflect at all on the actual hotel experience I had, which was lovely. I think it has more to do with my dentist, actually, but nevermind that. Have managed to further my story this weekend and do laundry. The mind boggles, the crowd cheers. I am pleased. It's three-quarters done now, maybe. Random list of three hotties. All of whom tend to be beautiful in a particularly evil, snarky way.
Am now going to Sandy's for dinner and vid-watching and lazy girl-bonding. Don't want to work tomorrow. I mean, duh. But I'll say it anyway. Am half-trying to convince myself to stay home. posted 3.03.2002 @ 5:44pm -- right-click here to grab a link 100% Guaranteed A sure-fire cure for lower back pain: 1. Realize you are in pain, groan.On my mind:  Breakdancing Ninja Turtles. Ehi, serpentello, volete tralasciar d'esser sì bello! (Hey, little serpent, will you stop being so beautiful! -- The Marriage of Figaro) Why haven't I seen the little rabbits-clucking-like-hens Cadbury Easter commercial yet? The candy is in the stores. Giles.
posted 3.03.2002 @ 11:04am -- right-click here to grab a link Hobgoblin of Little Minds I don't know why I'm stalled on "Carnival." It's been mostly done for quite a while--which is perhaps the ironical equivalent of 'mostly harmless.' Maybe I can get some action going if I pretend that Monday is my deadline and if I don't get it done, I'll be fired. Sigh. I kind of want to rewatch "As You Were" and see if I still hate it. I'm willing to alter my impressions. But I think I'll defer that challenge for a while. I'm still trying not to deconstruct the vampy one, but people out there are echoing various thoughts I've had. Jess had some stuff I agree with in her review, particularly about seasonal arcs vis-a-vis Big Bads, and the great line, "the nakedness was getting excessive." Yes. Strangely, I've had that thought too. In fact, it was actually bothering me as far back as "Wrecked." Call me crazy, but all those clever shots with posts and debris and Buffy's body obscuring Spike's naked sprawl--I just kept going to the Austin Powers place. Bad and wrong. Vonnie had more to say about AYW and Spike which echo my thoughts even more closely than her first review; about his (in)competence and (in)effectualness and so forth. And, switching fandoms, there's a great little Smallville essay by Justine up at the Fanfic Symposium. The title: "Save Me: The Redemption of Lex Luthor." And, damn it, it's started up a whole Spike-Lex thread on one of my lists, which I am gonna try not to get sucked into, despite how fascinating it is. I troll blogs pretty often, and so I've visited Sara's blog and read the first few lines of her February 28 entry probably a half dozen times now, and this cracks me up every time: "OH MY GOD, Mr. Sinatra, stop chewing on my toothbrush!" I picture it like a comic strip: this whitish lump of a cat hunched precariously on a sink with a toothbrush sticking straight out of its mouth, chewing energetically on the bristles and then giving a startled look as its owner walks in and cries out in alarm. The cat's eyes go big and it scrambles in place on the porcelain, paws skittering, then leaps off and runs across the apartment, brush poking from its mouth, winding around the furniture, chased by its owner. I keep semi-visualizing Chicken, actually, the Hothead Paisan kitty. I can't have cats. It's a rental thing. This is now officially wasting time. I knew it was a bad sign when I cracked my knuckles, preparing to write, then immediately opened up FreeCell. posted 3.02.2002 @ 11:29am -- right-click here to grab a link The Road to Wellville... ...is paved with good intentions. Or, why I don't pursue happiness. When I'm in a funk--not full blown depression but a funky little funk--I ask myself, could I just bootstrap myself out of this? Why am I wallowing? Is it that I want to be unhappy? I dwell in myself, but I let the weather in. Sometimes it's a dark and stormy night, and cold. I like to be happy. That's normal. But I don't will myself to happiness, because it creeps me out. When I was eighteen or so, and very malleable, Silly Putty that would absorb anything, I joined a Unitarian church, and also began going to different types of meetings held upstairs. There was this one group run by Jim and Judy--cult leaders just waiting for their big break on Broadway--which was all about realizing your higher power. These folks were a pair of fruits that had dropped straight off this whole New-Agey-Edgar-Cacey tree native to our area, and they'd spent a lot of time creating their own pseudo-religious program, built with a hodgepodge of principles derived from the counter-culture trends of the last quarter-century, as outlined in cheap thrift-store paperbacks. Jim, a thin weaselly guy with bad teeth, wispy grey hair, and a hokum soap-box charm, smelled like a redeemed ex-con. His wife Judy was a huge dough-faced woman with a cultivatedly pleasant and calm demeanor which spoke of deep inner rage. They both wore identical smiles that never left their faces, no matter what the topic of conversation; knowing, self-satisfied, imperturbable smiles, as if in their simple wisdom they could anticipate your every reaction and were amused by it. You know the sort. Like, ah, they'd heard it all before, they'd been down that path, and you had to sort it out for yourself, but at least they were here to watch and nod and smirk from their safe perch on the other side of that river of experience. Jim worked with prisoners in some capacity--I think he'd managed to install his self-help program in a prison. Both were bisexual. In what was somehow a watchful, disturbing way that fell just short of predatory. I was cute then, and they carefully made it clear they'd sleep with me. I politely made it clear in return that our currently established boundaries worked very well for me, thanks very much. Privately thinking: no fucking way in hell. Even being aware of all this (in my half-formed way), I worked hard, tried to get with their little program. I was susceptible, looking for something to distract me from my circumstances. Actually, though, I was also pretty skeptical, always squinting at things sideways. And I quickly decided that much of what they were touting was bullshit. Or, too rich for my blood. The best example was their principle of self-determination, the idea that you create your own life. Nothing wrong with that in practical terms--except they carried it to its illogical extreme, and affirmed that every single thing bad that happened to you, you'd somehow created from your own negative energies. Get hit by a car? Dude, that was your fault. Likewise any illness, accident, tragedy, all the way up to dismemberment and death: you'd created that, and you could somehow fix it all, if your will and power of creative visualization was strong enough. Of course, along with this they also believed deeply in reincarnation. So this was really just an Americanized dish of Eastern and Indian religious principles. But once you lose the cultural context, it's really hard to choke that crap down. And so the more I struggled with this idea, the more I resisted it. I mean, yes, I knew there'd been suggestive, valid studies done about the mind-body connection, about mental outlook and illness, the power of visualization, etc. And I'd spent my entire childhood reading science fiction and fantasy books premised on ideals like this--that, say, someday the human race might evolve enough to heal itself and realize its spiritual potential. But I was even then, I think, more pragmatic than I realized, and less willing to let go of my negative energy. Pain, anger, and depression defined me in some important way. They still do, a lot of the time. I want to be happy, on the whole. But I don't want to put any effort into it. I don't want to write affirmations and try and bend my mind like a bonsai to make myself feel content. It feels fake and it makes me itch. I do want to be someone cool and fun (even when I'm alone), not one of those people who walk around with a chip on the shoulder, always anxious, always seeking big emotional drama. I hate that shit. But on the other hand, some part of me is still prickly and finds it hard to let friction go. To let go. So...I don't pursue happiness, I just kind of let my own life happen to me, sort of pace myself through my own moods, the crappy ones and the happy ones. I just accept the weather without trying very hard to change it. I don't know what that says about me. I'm just rambling tonight, mostly because I'm getting to the point where I can't stand to deconstruct Spike anymore. I need a break from that. I want to get back to my story, write him without writing about him, if that makes any sense. I also kind of want ice cream. Or perhaps a taco. posted 3.01.2002 @ 10:28pm -- right-click here to grab a link 303.90 Last night was the Night O' Drunkenness, a word which should not have two n's and sounds like a village in Scotland. I started drinking right after work this time. It was a pretty joyless experience, and as I enter a new day, a new month, the pattern begins to emerge: one night of sottedness followed by three weeks of more or less grateful sobriety, then one week of rising tension ending in one day of excruciating anticipation, and one night of sottedness again. Lather, rinse, repeat. It seems to work so far. The sudden assaults on my system of massive alcohol consumption make me feel like crap and remind me why I've stopped indulging regularly. So, onward to the next flip of the calendar. This morning, as part of my hangover, I was thinking of Willow. Like everyone else, I've been bitching and moaning about the addiction plotline they've created for her. Its abrupt introduction and ham-handedness--its, you know, bad anvilness--has been bugging me. But this morning I realized that really, my only gripe is with its dramatic handling. Not with the paradigm itself. Because, in truth, the paradigm works. And I should know. Here's the deal: it looks inconsistent but it isn't. We've seen Willow's gradual apprenticeship to magic over the years. It follows a recognizable pattern, and it helps if whenever I describe the magical part, you also think about drinking, a parallel of magic to alcohol. So, she begins doing magic occasionally; she dabbles, and the magic isn't that strong. She does it socially in high school, hooking up with other Wicca-types, and finding it a cool way to identify herself, as with Anya. It's also her social "in" to the Scoobies--a thing she can do that makes her feel comfortable, not so much a useless outsider. Gradually, over time, she begins to practice more on her own, devotes it increasing attention, and the power of the magic increases too. Occasionally it whammies her--nosebleeds, headaches, other after-affects. But she recovers quickly, because it's still an occasional thing. It doesn't throw her off too badly, so she doesn't see its risks. Even so, the rhythms of her life are beginning to center more and more around magic, and it bolsters her identity. Eventually, she becomes self-indulgent with it; she's doing it all the time. Every day, at the smallest prompt, she works some magic. And it feeds on itself, it builds, she's always inebriated with it, and she always wants more. Finally, we see her on serious binges, steeped in the magic, utterly unlike the Willow we've come to expect--dark and drunk with it, behaving recklessly, falling over the edge. Until she gets slapped in the face with the realization that it's too much. She needs to stop. I'm here to tell you that's exactly like alcohol addiction, if you'll pardon the disconcerting note of authority in my voice. (I'm finding it hard to. Because I'm such a girl, you know, and we have no authority.) I drank for years without any significant problems, and it was a long slippery slope with a sinkhole at the end that came up on me more suddenly. I think all that was missing from Willow's long--years' long--arc, were better signposts for the metaphor. It feels to me like the creative team at BtVS recognized the potential of what they'd been doing very late in the game, realized they could retrofit, and then forced it on us too fast. And they didn't explain it well enough. If they'd given Willow even one good monologue to fill in the gaps of our understanding, the paradigm shift wouldn't have seemed so abrupt. What annoys us, of course, is that magic isn't alcohol, not even dramatically speaking in some very important respects. It's a powerful tool that does define identity in the Buffyverse. To be a witch or a warlock can be a positive thing--and I think we all wanted that for Willow, we wanted her to flourish into her adopted role. And obviously other people can handle magic in moderation, so why can't she? Yeah, but maybe it just doesn't work like that. Some people may be more susceptible than others--and in fact, isn't that one of the oldest conceits in witchcraft stories, that the energies can take you over if you've got a weakness for them, make you dark and dangerous? Our other complaint is that if Willow doesn't do magic, what the hell does she do? It feels like she's been painted into a dramatic corner and we worry that she'll become extraneous, that stripped of her glamour she'll become an unfun Willow, deeply mundane in terms of the show's drama. (Like, er, Xander?) Basically, we're an audience of enablers. Weird thought. Anyway. Must go to work. But I feel a sense of insight clicking into place now, because I was like: why do I hate this plotline so much, and yet incorporate addictive tendencies into my own fictional characterization of Willow? It makes more sense now. posted 3.01.2002 @ 6:40am -- right-click here to grab a link The Letter I have always wanted to post this. This is one of my favorite poems ever. It gives me strange, resonant chills of language if not meaning. The Letter by Alan Shapiro The letter said you had to speak to me. I read it and reread it, running down and every time, as in an anagram, as new words cancelling the ones before: I never meant to hurt you like I did. The letter virulent with changing moods, seemed to infect each place I hurried through: the long low tunnel, and the turnstiles where nobody on the platform either, far nothing around me but a fever of clues O mother, my Eurydice in reverse, To hear within its Thou Shalt Not a "Shall" The page went blank. Below me now I saw and in the sharp script of its angry weaving of forgotten life, dismembered dolls, the tiny shatterings of cups and saucers, their glitter indecipherable except the barbed discarded relics of a wanting As if they could be words, and those words yours, each leading to a darker one beyond and there at last among them crawled and read, The pain was good, the pain exhilarated, Cauled in my own blood, mute and lame and free I saw your face above me leaning down. It's for your own good, child, believe me, and posted 2.28.2002 @ 6:39pm -- right-click here to grab a link Wanted: Synonyms for Randomness Saw a guy's bumperstickers on the way home: first I read, "Lawn Sprinklers Save Your Grass / Fire Sprinklers Save Your Ass," then glanced quickly across the bumper and thought the other one said, "Lawn Sprinklers Save Elves." It actually said, "Fire Sprinklers Save Lives." I am drinking and it has not made me happy yet, but it has blunted the edge of the knife that has been ripping at me all this week. I am mellowing and my head feels all fuzzy at the edges. I won't even kill my upstairs neighbor tonight, even though he is doing weird calisthenics on my ceiling. Cool old Salon article on blogs that someone posted to a list--sadly, I can't find Lizzie's Journal, because I'd love to read it. Amazing to think this article was written three and a half years ago. Three stories that have saved my life this week, in--hey--three different fandoms:
Mmm. Read today an older blog entry by Jenny-O (also brought to my attention by a cool list-sib) on Spike/Buffy, a lot of which I agree with, as it mirrors how I think of Spike in my mind, as a predator with a morality distinct from that of humans. The stuff about the logical constraints of fictional universes stands in contradiction to opinions I recently posted on that same issue. But I can respect that, as long as people are reasonable about it. The thing is, I don't have to buy Angel as sui generis, I don't have to buy that Giles et al know it all--or that Angel himself, as an unreliable narrator, knows it all. Not if there's a persuasive exception. And, okay, I don't want to sound as if I'm all that wack, because I like having natural laws to define a universe, but I can also accept the exceptions--given a dash of plausible justification. Or even none at all, really: mutants can retain their mystery for all I care, if they are realized well enough. Yeah, I had to look up sui generis too. It's been way too long since my formal education shuddered to a halt. Thamiris has had a lot of cool entries lately that I kept meaning to link to but didn't. Her blog is like this hip bug-light which excited fans throw themselves against, buzzing madly. These tiny entries, truly minimalist, though not quite haiku. I just remembered that Briar was the last person I saw at Escapade before I left in my shuttle for the airport. I had commemorated that on my blog napkin and just found the note. I also got to briefly chat with Cynthia and Jane, and hadn't mentioned that before now. I feel I should be required to warble "Memories" on stage in front of a hungry audience as punishment for not acknowledging this sooner. But please...no. I don't know what to do with myself. So...ha. I am going to drink some more. posted 2.28.2002 @ 5:37pm -- right-click here to grab a link Nuclear Strike This morning I dreamed of a nuclear strike. There was strange weather in the sky, and some kind of automated, floating missile came to investigate, and fell to the earth, lodging there. Its recorded tape began instructing anyone in the vicinity to get away. I wasn't paying attention to the precise directions, I just began to run. Down a road, into the woods. It said to get over the firewall and I climbed this bank along which ran railroad tracks. A train passed, and I carefully moved across the tracks and down the other side. I hadn't realized there were people on this island. But now I could see parked cars. On the other side, there were two naked people stretched out in a car, man and woman. Vaguely Russian or otherwise foreign. They look out at me, smiling, as I move past. Someone who had been running with me broke away and tried to hide in the car trunk to avoid the blast. The man got out, trying to pry loose the interloper. I could see this in the distance behind me as I kept running. I had to get at least six klicks away--something like that. Eventually, I ended up at home. A houseboat on the edge of a city. People I knew--my mom, and maybe three kids--were inside. One of them was this sarcastic boylike man. I was worked up, panicking. I said, you're not going to believe what happened, I know, but I have to tell you. And I begin to shove out my story word by difficult word, telling what happened and what's going to happen, and they are all scoffing at me, moving around the kitchen where we're gathered. Some of them just walking away, not really listening. I go out on the deck. I am calling Kat on the phone, and I am watching the cityscape skyline in the distance. Kat is making dinner on the other end. I say, Kat, I need you to listen, okay? And my voice is funny, full of panic and trembling horror; it's hitching as I'm on the edge of losing it, and Kat is replying, okay. And I say: go outside, get in your car, and drive. Bring--and I pause, because I don't know what to tell her to bring--bring whatever you can grab, your cat, just go. There's a nuclear strike coming. You need to go and drive away. Now. And Kat's like, I'm chopping mushrooms. And she sounds distracted and absorbed, and maybe carefully neutral as if she is going to ignore my babbled warnings as those of a nutty friend. And I'm feeling how ineffective I am. I know where she is in relation to what's happening--she's out there, in the city--but she can't see what I'm seeing. And what I'm seeing now is the earth detaching itself in huge chunks and raining up into the sky (like in that Yahtzee story), floating across the sky toward me. It's the beginning. People are running away from the city in huge numbers. I keep talking on the phone to Kat, trying to convince her to go as I stand on my deck and watch the dissolution of the earth. And I'm saying, nuclear, there'll be a strike, and then from the overcast sky a huge mushroom cloud is forming above the city, and I simply watch it. Suddenly it blossoms with a sharp, blinding light that is radiating toward me, and I realize I'm not far enough away, not at all, and the light fills my eyes, and I close them and turn and try to get to cover, but it rolls over me and I stagger along the deck of the houseboat, round the corner, realizing I've had what is probably a fatal dose of radiation. I imagine I can feel it in my bones already, my terminus. I go back inside, Kat's voice vaguely, weakly coming to me through the cell phone. I think it's possible she still doesn't know what just happened. Another part of the dream, before or after this, I can't remember: me wandering around in only a pair of underwear, scrounging for clothes. There is a pile on a table, just inside the doorway of a thrift store. My mom's clothes, I tell this woman watching, because I am trying to pull on a pair of jeans that are way too small. She is interested in the clothes, gives me her phone number, wants to look through them if I decide to sell them. She is a size seven. Of course, they are not really my clothes or my mom's, just some I found and was stealing. I walk outside in my strange tight pants, a loose white sweater over some shirt, very conscious that I could dress like this all the time if I wanted to. Just pick up anything I wanted from thrift stores and be uniquely attired in the world. My goal now is to infiltrate someplace, a Mormon airport, I think. I walk through a parking lot, pretend to be looking for my car. Then carefully, in my new clothes, I cross an overpass, moving toward the secured gates of the airport. My trick is going to be to deliver bouquets of flowers. I pick up several, some of which turn out to be merely bundles of dry sticks. Next to me, a real delivery man is assembling his own fresh bouquets. I remembered quite a bit more a few minutes ago, but it's gone now. posted 2.28.2002 @ 6:59am -- right-click here to grab a link Dear Mother of God... ...how I hate LiveJournals some days. I just spent the better part of half an hour repeatedly clicking to get through to three LJ's I particularly wanted to read. I give up on the rest. Almost all my blog posts and list posts in the--last three days, maybe?--prove the truth of my anxieties that I should not be allowed to speak to others, because I (a) do it so awkwardly and make myself foolish, or (b) I do it just fine (who really knows what other people are thinking, anyway), but then go on to second-guess myself incessantly and tiresomely. And yet if I don't socialize it's merely me in this box, listening to the sound of my own voice and getting to believe I'm actually smart and making sense. When in fact I'm full of filters and blind spots and conflicted thoughts and my thoughts and words tumble out all ghuwe ohadosjf ljdii. And I am repetitive too. I think I must make a rule for myself not to angst about e-mail for, like, six months or something. I'm in a slump. There, I've said it. Jintian isn't in a slump; in fact, her most recent post is full of fannish ebullience and energy that pours right off the page and makes me fleetingly happy by proxy. Am I passive-agressive? I really try not to be. It's a life-long effort and a very conscious one. Because I know I was when I was younger. I came from that kind of family. Dark looks and loaded words and guilt trips, all very cleverly delivered. Oh, christ I want a drink. I could cry. Tomorrow night is my monthly allowed night of lush fun but I want a half-pint of cheap whiskey right now. Right now I feel like Benton Fraser, somehow. Because, you know, ALL PAIN IS FANNISH. So fucking pathetic. As is the fact that Fraser is a better person than me, even as a fiction, than I am in real life. I imagine I feel like Fraser--deeply, unutterably alone, locked inside myself, so sad my chest hurts, but in fact I'm letting some of it bleed out in public, and he'd be appalled, or kindly sympathetic but reproving and detached, and I'm really nothing like him at all except by being human. Or maybe I mean fictional. Portrait of Anna as wet noodle clinging to a wall. I distract myself by thinking of this theory I have about television being like Greek mythology, its characters like the gods, about whom we share communal stories, changing them as we retell them to each other. I mean, what other shared archetypes do we have except those we see on TV or in the movies? Be they real (sports stars, talk show hosts) or unreal (Lex, Fraser, Mulder, Spike). I have to stop writing, because I am trembling on the edge of being way too revelatory. More than this. And that would be wrong. posted 2.27.2002 @ 8:01pm -- right-click here to grab a link Distractions Yet another night when I did not get around to writing noir--and now I really don't want to go there. I added a few more thoughts to my review of tonight's ep (link below). A dollop of optimism sweetening the bitters. I'm so glad when other people rant for me, saves me the time--complaints about livejournals and memes are popping up, both of which have been making me crazy. I think people should be allowed a quota of two memes a month, no more. Memes in moderation. That's my electoral platform. I don't know what to do about LJ's, though. All I can say is when I try three times a day, several days in a row, to read through my links, and can't get to ninety percent of them, I get cranky. I wanted to write some more Xander/Spike rambling, just to cheer myself up. But there is nothing in my head. Well, there's the other X/S fantasy I entertain, which is far more tawdry. If you can believe that's possible. Yes...yes. I will embarrass myself by sharing, I have decided. The thing is, fantasies such as I have sound truly lame when summarized. They can only be compelling if actually written. And even then, it's bucking the odds. Because my fantasies are inherently goofy and kinky and trite. So, the Other Fantasy. Which is one where the guys have ended up in this demon realm, which is not so bad, all things considered. Sort of like Pylea except it's an enormous world, half of which has cycles of twilight and night, the other half of which has day and night. Just because. Just for fun. And the day of course is not harmful to vampires, of which there are many. Noble vampires with human serfs, who more often feed from cattle than humans. Because after all, humans are so fragile and hard to breed. Vamps are common enough that blood is sold in taverns, but there are demons too, a whole miscellaneous galore of them. The vamps groom up promising humans to become anointed members of their clans--it's a privilege, and full of ritual. But actually none of this is very relevant. Anyway, back to Spike and Xander, who get dumped there, kick around the capital city in which the portal is located, then have to leave. They head out across the desert, which has scattered vegetation for humans, but no animals. Spike slowly starves but even though his chip has stopped working--yeah, didn't I mention that?--he doesn't eat Xander. He's gotten to where it's a point of pride not to give in, plus it's perhaps somewhat disgusting to feed off someone he has come to know so well. Other issues bundled up in this, I'd think, and it is plausible, damn it, because I would make it so. And maybe he comes very close to chowing down, but is conflicted and desperate, and winds up grimly trudging on until he's dazed and weak and has pretty much forgotten why he's not feeding off the handy human. So, bonding, more or less. And more adventures follow. And the ready availability of animal blood on tap--cheap and plentiful, with human blood an expensive luxury, like a high-priced wine--makes it easier for Spike to stick to his regime of "vegetarianism" i.e., not feeding off humans. Lots of sword and sorcery shit, la la la, and eventual boinking, comfort sex, possibly in a snow storm as they huddle together, lightly wounded. All the cliches, yes indeed. And the guys have to get to another portal on the opposite end of the world, so we have a nice long quest, lasting years in fact, because the temporal alignment has shifted between the dimensions now that the original portal is closed, and a year on Earth equals many years here. And of course they grow and change a bit as circumstances demand, and Xander slims down even while muscling up (physical idealization: cliche #367), and learns how to sword-fight and hones his strength and fighting skills against Spike's. And Spike grows his hair long (sigh) and they both wear flowing cloaks and close-fitting tunics and breeches, and leather boots, and long swords at their hips.... ...Where was I? Oh, right. And they grow closer, and I toss in a lot of life-altering events, some vampire religion, and many manly mercenaries, and by the time that, oh say, ten years have passed, Xander is pretty much your average hunky, alpha male warrior and Spike is a devilishly handsome vampire mage with long white hair, whose eyes flare into fathomless jet-black pools when he works his mojo. (Because one of them had to learn magic so that they could eventually open a portal again, you see, which would be when twenty-five years had passed--the next possible alignment for traveling between the dimensions.) And Spike is still demon-souled but so disciplined by now that he's taken up a whole new way of life. And Xander has a magic ring that keeps him from aging! God, I just snerked so hard at myself I think I broke a rib. Must stop now and go to bed. I think I managed to work off my pain. posted 2.27.2002 @ 12:17am -- right-click here to grab a link Buffy: As You Were Read my snarky and foul-mouthed review here. Current Mood: Bitter and Irritated Addendum: More justifiable dislike of this ep from Vonnie and Mely and bonibaru. posted 2.26.2002 @ 10:05pm -- right-click here to grab a link
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