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Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Beautiful summery morning. Have been sitting out on the back deck with coffee, in a t-shirt and sandals, recalling that last Thursday I biked in to work wishing I'd worn gloves because my fingers were numb and I could see my breath.

Randomness, randomness. Various people, including Robin, report deep annoyance with the Mitsubishi commercial, the one with the woman in the pink hat doing the bizarre arm-twisty dance in the passenger seat. I find it not so much annoying as deeply creepy; every time I see it now I flash back to that red-room dream-scene in Twin Peaks, the one where Laura Palmer, in her weird 45-played-at-33-rpm voice, slurs "Szsommmetimmmes ... my arrrrrmmsss ... bennnnd backwardsssss ...." Then I have to switch the channel fast, shuddering.

I love Sars. Out on the town with her buds and on her 11th Corona-with-lime of the night: "We don't like musical montage sequences on Buffy. We've tried to give them a chance, but we just don't like them. We don't go over to Marti Noxon's house while she's reading a book and look over her shoulder until she gets to A Poignant Moment and point at the page and tell her, 'That's poignant, see? Because she -- do you get that? Hold on, let me put a CD on. Okay, now do you get it? Okay. Let me know when you get to page 143, because it's resonant, and we don't want you to miss it,' now, do we? No, we certainly don't. And we want her to stop doing it to us. " Heee.

And, OK, what is the deal with the capri pants this year?? I went to Target yesterday, with the simple naive hope that I could buy a pair of blue jeans, just a plain, ordinary, non-lycra'd, non-spangly, pair of blue jeans -- and every single goddam pair of pants in the goddam store was capri length, as if the entire human race had suddenly been chopped off below the knees and I somehow didn't get the memo. I have, somewhere, a photo of myself wearing capri pants (although we called them "pedal pushers" back then); I was cute as a bug in them. I was also eight years old and had 0.7% body fat. Nowadays I would like some pants, please, and not the old-lady pants in pastel polyester.

Plus, also, in random retail bitchery, is no one in the world making canister-type vacuum cleaners any more? And if they are not, could they at least please continue making bags for my old canister vacuum? Thank you.

My recent favorite example of the glorious weirdness of the internet is Momo's Parts, which makes me terribly happy. My recent favorite on-line time-waster is Mah Jong Tiles. I'm also very fond of this page, which has utility for web designers (check the hex #'s in the lower left corner as you mouse around), but which is also nice for those utterly blank moments. It's especially soothing to keep the cursor in the blue zone, start at the top, pull it slowly straight down, and imagine night falling. (Make sure the little box is set for 16M.)

And now I must run to work, which I very much do not want to do; it's academic review day again, and I have to go through and see which of my students have flunked out and make the sad phone calls. Least favorite part of my job, by far.

Posted @ 08:07 AM CST [Link]12 comments

Monday, May 27, 2002

p.s. -- the inevitable meteorological commentary -- today was, most appropriately for Memorial Day, effectively the first day of summer. After the second-mildest winter in recorded history, we've been having the second-coldest spring in recorded history (Minnesota weather is all about the TANSTAAFL), but today it was like the Weather Gods woke out of their stupor and hit the fast-forward, and all of a sudden I can put away the leather jacket and open all the windows. I was just out on the back deck, and--at a quarter to ten p.m.--it's not fully, entirely dark; there are huge banks of cumulus clouds in the southern sky, clearly etched and almost white in the last deeply-angled rays of the sun (which is easing down below the horizon), and the air is mild as warm milk, fragrant with lilacs. Lots of cars speeding around in the distance, radios blaring, dogs barking. Summertime. It's good. If I had to live in a really hot climate, I think I'd find a third-shift job and become an entirely nocturnal creature, because nothing really is lovelier than summer nights.

Posted @ 09:59 PM CST [Link]2 comments

Lordy. Having spent some time catching up on e-mail and roaming around recent goings-on in blog/LJ-land, I have concluded that half of fandom is either (a) depressed, (b) mightily pissed off at various other individual(s) in fandom, or (c) having godawful family hassles.

I feel like a bit of a cheerful dolt for currently falling into none of the above categories. Spent the long weekend mostly helping some friends paint their house, and engaging in my 947th attempt to teach my dad how to use his computer and access the internet. Poor guy -- he's never even used a word processor, so I really have to get myself deeply into beginner's mind, and it's a struggle to try to remember all the stuff he doesn't know. ("OK--so, you see this kind of box on the screen with text in it? That's called a window. Now, to get rid of it, you move the pointer to the upper right-hand corner -- see the little X? Click on that. With the left button. Just once. That's it!") He called me this afternoon in a panic, from the neighbor's house, because, like an idiot, I showed him how to connect to his dial-in service but left without showing him how to disconnect -- he kept saying "The computer broke my phone!" I fear this may have negated all the encouraging things I kept saying to him about "Just keep playing around with it, as long as you don't put anything in Recycle you're not going to break anything." Ah well.

(This would all be marginally less difficult if he didn't have XP on his computer, the interface of which which leaves me seething with annoyance every time I try to use it. I firmly believe that every software designer, interface designer, webpage designer on the planet should be required to spend some time teaching the use of their product to someone like my dad, someone who's never touched a computer before. Seethe, seethe.)

But anyway. Circling back, the prevailing fannish climate: depressed, pissed off, or beset-by-family. I can't do a thing about (a) or (c), and really I can't do much about (b) either except probably muddy the waters and lodge my foot firmly in my oral cavity. But for whatever bent masochistic reason I feel compelled to say that --

Hm. I've sat here staring at the monitor for perhaps ten minutes, and I find myself thinking that what I keep seeing is not really straightforward pissed-offedness; rather, it's a recurring cycle of sniping-defensiveness-reactive sniping-defensiveness-ad infinitum. About which I want to say one or two things. Rambling-incoherent warnings ahoy, maties; grab a railing.

OK, fannish defensiveness, right. We've all felt it, I'd assume. That moment when you read something--a list e-mail, an LJ/blog entry, a TWOP board post--that trash-talks some show or character or episode or pairing that you love, and you're stung. Your blood pressure spikes, your face heats up, snappy or not-so-snappy retorts flood your brain, you start composing long elaborate paragraphs intended to demonstrate just why the perpetrator of the trash-talk is a dullard and a lout.

Or you read a posting somewhere by someone who has strong opinions about how fandom ought to operate, how writers ought to approach their work, which differ wildly from your own opinions; you feel excluded and put down, and you rear back and load the cannons and prepare to fire a return volley.

Why is it that we get so defensive? Well, often we perceive an embedded syllogism in these posts, an emotional rather than logical one, which runs something like: "I like X. I like X better than Y. I think X is better than Y. I think people who like X are better than people who like Y. If you like Y, I'm better than you." ("Better" taking various meanings here--smarter, hipper, more perceptive, deeper, more ethical, etc.)

Sometimes this syllogism is pretty clearly played out in the text of the original posting. Sometimes it creeps into the insinuative subtext of implication and tonal shading.

And sometimes -- it's not there at all. Sometimes all it takes is a simple statement of preference -- "I like X better than Y" -- and we immediately read in all the sequelae, whether they're there or not. When a topic is emotionally loaded for us, this is an easy mistake to make.

Further complicating the issue is that people (myself included at times) like to indulge in Recreational Snark, without any overt intent to hurt those who actually like our snarkage-targets. Snark, and those who practice it skilfully, are highly valued in fandom, and not much attention is given to collateral damage, until we ourselves are at the other end of a bit of shrapnel.

But defensive sniping doesn't really allow us to make subtle distinctions among these various types and categories. It's like one of those Mutual-Assured-Destruction launch-the-rockets 'bots. And often, the fallout--whether in the direct form of damaged friendships and fandoms, or the more diffuse general sense of annoyance and disgruntlement with fandom in general--drifts far beyond the original targets.

So -- in conclusion ( please god, is she almost done?? I hear you cry), a few of Kat's Rules -- not golden rules, more like tarnished-brass general guidelines, and speckled with old blood spatter -- for retaining your sanity and peace of mind in fannish disputes.

1. If you vehemently disagree with someone about something, going all vituperative on her ass is not likely to bend her to your way of seeing things. (If anything, it is likely to push her in turn into a defensive-sniping stance, in which she will be much less interested in hearing anything you have to say than in looking for ways to pick you apart and take you down.)

2. Furthermore, it will make your friends nervous. Especially those who would like to remain on civil terms with both parties.

3. On the other hand, it will give great glee to your enemies, who will be sitting on the sidelines munching popcorn and cackling.

4. If someone seems to you to be really, honestly, clearly, irrational on a certain topic ... well, you know, she may really not be rational on that topic, which would imply that attempting to engage her in rational debate about it is a foredoomed enterprise unlikely to lead to much except rancor. Each of us has our little red-button iggy spots, those things that cause us to froth at the mouth; bear in mind that others have them too. Walking around them would seem a prudent course of action.

5. That which seems terribly, cuttingly clever to you at 11 p.m. is much less likely to seem so at 7 a.m. Especially if alcohol was involved the night before. Often, the "save" button is a better friend to you than "send."

6. Anything you post in a public forum is, by god, public, and will be seen by people who don't know you, don't know the other party, don't know the history or the personalities or the context, and may be e-mailed on elsewhere, quoted out of context, whatever. Bear this in mind, always and forever.

7. The vast majority of people who "know" you in fandom only know you by your words. They form their assessment of you on the basis of what comes across their monitors. And if things ever do get truly ugly in a fandom, if you end up needing people on your side -- then your street cred is really all you've got to lean on, the image and persona you've created by what you've said and how you've said it. Consider this well.

6. Sometimes I think the widespread nature of defensiveness in fandom is tied to a pervasive unease about the worth and legitimacy of what we're doing. (For godsake, we're writing smut about TV shows! Aiiieeeee!!) It makes us feel exceptionally vulnerable to others' negative judgments about those things to which we're so deeply and emotionally attached. Hence, if you find yourself feeling particularly defensive, it might signal a need to replenish your own aquifers of confidence. Go to those things that nourish you--really great stories, really great episodes. Bolster yourself. Remind yourself of why it is you love the things that you do love. Then see if you really need to counterattack.

7. Finally--dusting off one of the moldiest old chestnuts in my therapist repertoire--remember: you really can't change anybody else. No. You really can't make others write or behave or think the way you'd like. All you have control over is your own reactions to them, and that's enough of a chore to keep anyone busy. You may feel unable to control your reactive anger, when you feel stung, but you can control what you do about it.

OK, I'm stepping down off the pulpit, grabbing the decidedly-non-sacramental wine and slopping it all over the stained white robes, and putting on some Liz Phair. Pay no attention to that middle-aged lady behind the curtain who's singing along with Help Me Mary. She's violated every one of the rules above, more than once, and no doubt will again. We're all just fucked-up human beings; we all have our sore spots and our bruised pride and our irrational loves. We can maybe be a little kinder to each other about them.

Posted @ 07:55 PM CST [Link]8 comments