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Friday, January 11, 2002

Whew. Back again, after a wackazoid few days. This was the week of the big academic cutdown, in which students got notified about going on probation or suspension, and I've had several tearful kids on the phone and in my office.

In some cases, students take the bad news with equanimity. I'm convinced a number of them are, in effect, chewing off their leg to get out of a trap; they didn't want to go to college in the first place, but got bulldozed by parental pressure, and so they're taking the passive/aggressive route of flunking themselves out. And in some cases I think students have already figured out that this isn't the place or time for them to be doing the student thing and are more or less at peace with it. But every semester, there are a few who've really been trying, working their asses off, studying hard, but who just...aren't...cutting it. And they're the ones that are painful.

I'd been planning to go out of town this weekend, but circumstances conspired against it, so I'm going to stay home and try to get my life thumbtacked back together (get new license tabs on the car before I get a ticket; get the printer that I bought back in October actually out of its box and hooked up; clean mysterious life forms out of the refrigerator; etc.). It's probably just as well that I'm not trying to drive any distance today, since I'm running on about two hours of sleep (alarms & excursions in the night with sick cat). I took a nap just a bit ago and had many odd dreams, which mostly dissipated on awakening, but I do recall some brief dream-snippet in which Joe and Billy (of Hard Core Logo) were vampires. I think I've been watching too much Buffy.

One of the biggest things I've gotten from watching early seasons of Buffy, btw, is a greatly increased regard and affection for Xander; the downside of that is I'm left wondering "My god, what's happened to him in the last year or so?" Is it just me, or has he really been back-burnered lately? It's a shame; I like the glimpses we've seen of him moving tentatively into adulthood, finding a sort of grounding and sense of competence in his construction work. But the spotlight's really been on Buffy's and Willow's high-dramatics.

At the risk of sounding like an Evil Bitch, I'll say that I'm hoping for some major blow-up action between him and Anya. Not that I like to see characters suffer or anything! (Um. OK, I knew I couldn't say that with a straight face.) And it's not that I dislike Anya, really. I just want to see those two have some function in the show besides planning the seating at the reception. And I've long gotten a major his-feet-could-not-be-any-colder-if-he-were-standing-in-a-bucket-of-ice-water vibe off Xander. And I'd like to see Anya do a little Vengeance-Demon reversion.

[sudden topic swerve] Hey, The Spike's got a LiveJournal! As does cmshaw! Both added to side links. And the blogstickers are a cute new accessory, like putting a bumpersticker on your blog. Can't decide if I want one, though, or if so, which.

Posted @ 04:16 PM CST [Link]3 comments

Wednesday, January 9, 2002

I just stood out on my back deck for a while, without even a jacket, in perfect comfort. It is 40 degrees out, at 8:00 a.m. On January 9. In Minnesota. The end days are upon us. Stay tuned for hail of toads and rain of blood.

Watched new Buffy last night, and judged it a forgettable episode--mostly treading water, as a number of last season's seemed as well. Then left the TV on while I did other things, and wandered over for random chunks of the Smallville rerun. I've been reading Te's and Thamiris's comments on underage characters in erotic fiction; it's not a topic that personally yanks any chains for me one way or the other (I've known some people who had sex very young who said it was a great thing for them, others who said it was a harmful thing, have decided it's so entirely individual that generalizations are useless, and in any event personally find the very young to be wholly uninteresting sexually). But what I have found myself wondering is -- how different would Smallville (the show, and the fandom) be if Clark was played by someone who was actually fifteen years old, and looked it, rather than by a guy who (for all his efforts to portray youthful lunky innocence) is clearly, obviously, in his mid-twenties?

Maybe I'm more attuned to this because I spend most of my working life dealing with teenagers, but there is--to my eye, at least--a very distinctive quality about the appearance and movement and voice of people who are in their mid-teens, a quality that even the best older actor is probably not going to be successful at reproducing. So when I look at Lex and Clark I see two people who are young adults, unequal of course in worldly power and life experience, but equally capable of making reasonably informed choices about sex. Thus, the "underaged sex" debate in the context of Smallville seems to me entirely theoretical--which is not to say it's bad or anything, just that I have no problem with slash writers who in effect treat it as a non-issue in this fandom. But I do wonder if others would feel differently, or approach the issue differently, if Clark was really, convincingly, a high school freshman.

I mean, I don't know. I'm just throwing the question out there.

And I've started several lengthy blathers, in my head, in response to all the interesting blog-and-list conversations going about about Buffy/Spike, but have decided that others (mostly Anna [g]) are making most of the points I would and doing it better. What I'm enjoying, of course, is the way that this particular convo allows movement beyond just the "I like/don't like this character" and into questions of good/evil, the existence of the soul and free will, consequences of choices, power in erotic relationships, and so on. And that there's serious, well-thought-out disagreement on these points, disagreement being voiced clearly but (for the most part) civilly. Cool. I may actually try to assemble some comments myself, at some point, but this week has gotten wackazoid and I'm going away for the weekend, so perhaps not.

Posted @ 08:47 AM CST [Link]7 comments

Sunday, January 6, 2002

A quiet weekend--apart from blog-wrangling, I mostly wrote (or played Boxt and procrastinated writing). I did, at least, get the Christmas tree taken down, earlier than usual for me, but I'd neglected watering it, and it had gotten crunchy-dry.

Putting up the tree is a tradition with highly ritualized elements: the tree must be a balsam, for the wonderful fragrance; it must be bought early in the day, and set in a bucket of water so the branches can relax; the decoration commences around 3:00 or 3:30, so that by the time one has wrestled it into the stand and gotten the !@^%$#@ lights all strung, it's dark enough that the lights glow beautifully, when plugged in. Then the music is put on (always, invariably, Perotin), and the ornaments are hung one at a time, with much misty reminiscence of the history of each and the circumstances under which each entered my life. By the time all is finished, it's night; all house lights are turned out, and a glass of port is poured and sipped, while listening to the final few tracks of Perotin and admiring the gorgeousness of the whole thing. All in all, a delightful interlude in the year's cycle.

Taking down the tree, though, is just sad utilitarian drudge--usually done on a Sunday afternoon (and Sunday afternoons in January are by definition bleak), the ornaments hurriedly wrapped and boxed, the @#$*%$(* lights unstrung, untangled, and bundled, and finally the denuded tree hauled through the house, strewing needles all the way, and dumped out by the trashcans, all forlorn.

I've finally gotten most of the needles swept up (though I'll still be finding stray ones in June), and it is nice to have that end of the living room back again. But, still. Melancholy.

Posted @ 05:55 PM CST [Link]3 comments