In case you were wondering

Happy as I am to be here today addressing you, I must admit that I didn't prepare a topic in advance.

First, let me thank the organizers of this fine event for giving us all something to do while we drink our morning coffee. Let's have a round of applause for those fine folks, okay?

Second, let me take a moment to speak to the Kind Reader who sent me the ipreviously mentioned nformative post with instructions for how one might deal with Geezers in Grocery Stores. Much food for thought certainly but I'm currently balancing the pleasure of the moment against the somewhat liberal odds that a jail sentence would result.

Does anyone have suggestions, a spell or a potion maybe, that could be used to alleviate Psychotic Checker Syndrome?

I thought not.

Aw, well, keep me posted.

Another Kind Reader, via comments, suggested that I slap myself and get over the Spike BtVS thing. To her, I say, Bah! And also, humbug! And, while I'm at it, a touch of the old pot, meet kettle. I'm not the only obsessive personality in these parts my child. Your secrets are mine. Don't ever forget that.

Yet another Kind Reader finally wrote to tell me that the S4 DVDs won't be released until June. That sucks.

I'm just saying. Now that I've decided to grace this fandom with my personal attention, they should be catering to my desires a little more. The next DVD player I buy is going to be one of those fancy, multi-region ones.

Today I must vacuum the carpet and carry out some trash. Not a strenuous agenda but, remembering last Sunday, I need to add something quasi-strenuous. A brisk, mile-long walk in the late-afternoon or something.

And before anyone tells me to embrace my insomnia and make it my friend, let me warn you that I've got PMS, okay? What I'd really like to do it bitchslap my insomnia back to the netherworld.

Actually, I think I've had PMS for the last two or three days. I mean, speaking of bitchslapping, I've been restraining myself with both hands to prevent myself from doing the same to a witless, congenital idiot with an underdeveloped sense of reality who is insisting that passage in the 19th century of laws to make it illegal for a man to kill his wife is one instance of proof that women are and have always been the "privileged" gender.

Ahem. Okay...deep breath.

I bring the subject up, not to thresh it all out again in this forum, but to mention, with a sort of distant bemusement, that my inner feminist has been reawakened by this experience in much the way that the gift of the Presidency to that man reawaked my inner liberal.

I'm currently putting as least as much passion, time, and energy into politics as I ever put into fandom.

Hobbies are odd things, aren't they? I never would have thought, when I was searching for a way to spend those idle hours that might have been dedicated to laundry and dusting the bookshelves, that I would settle on politics. (Lest anyone think such a hobby is devoid of opportunities for mockery, let me point out that just this past week I had the opportunity to heap piles of scorn on a woman who actually wrote a little fantasy about imagining George Bush, as Clark Kent, ripping off his clothes to expose his 'S' during the State of the Union speech. No, this wasn't some deranged fan, it was a deranged national columnist and she posted this in her column in a nationally known newspaper. Psychos abound in this field.)

Not that that matters here, today, in this forum, because this is the me-me-me blog. Except that there isn't much me-me-me yet today since I just got up and haven't actually done much except work for the past week.

Well, okay, I watched most of the S2 Spike BtVS DVDs again, of course. Goes without saying, doesn't it?

Even though their exclusion of about two out of every three episodes is annoying, I'm still looking forward to the time when FX gets back to showing S4. Something is better than nothing, right?

Of course, it will be a decade before I finally get to see Seasons 5-7, I'm sure, but whatever. Doesn't matter what I want.

(Sorry. Little PMS moment there.)

As it happens, I know someone with tapes who has offered to loan me a chunk of tapes, so I shouldn't be whining. At least not until after I see which seasons she's loaning me.

And, speaking of Spike (I was, even if you weren't), I'm having More Thoughts about the canon on this show.

(You gotta love having a topic where you possess a complete absence of facts. Really opens up the field of speculation.)

I'm still a little unclear on this demon possession thing. I know how it goes. Bite, drain, return favor, voila! vampire, but I don't get the point.

In one place, maybe in more than one, they say that vampires are choosy about who they "bring over" or whatever they call it, but it seems to me that a pretty motley collection of characters has been deemed "worthy" by someone.

I mean, who thought that Research Boy, the little geek that helped Spike and Drusilla figure out Drusilla's cure, was a suitable candidate for an eternity of blood-sucking evil? The guy looked like a dry-cleaner and was afraid of his shadow.

And Harmony? What on earth was wrong with Spike that he thought anyone would want to spend a week, much less eternity, with such a half-wit? (If you make someone a vampire and then change your mind, is it considered in bad taste to off them?)

Nor did I understand Angel's early fascination with Drusilla, but I'm less interested in that, of course. What is it about Drusilla that makes her supposedly a Big Evil, anyhow? So far I haven't seen her doing anything except have visions (useful, but hardly evil) and threaten to poke people's eyes out. Granted, the whole poking thing is something I'd rather pass on, personally, but I don't see anything else out of the ordinary about her.

Maybe it's revealed in later seasons, I don't know. I do find her less annoying post-healing, though. Now that she's not running around with her mouth hanging open, on the verge of drooling on herself all of the time, she looks less like a lobotomy patient. (Also, she combs her hair, post-healing, a pastime I approve of.)

Anyhow. If these demons, or bits of demons or whatever they are, are all about evil, why are they only bringing over people they seem to "like"? Why not roam the back alleys and biker bars of the planet and bring over some seriously mean characters who can add psychotic personality flaws to the natural human-hating inclinations of the demons?

If I were in charge, these things would be organized a lot better, I can tell you.

Also…is burial required for those about to be reborn as vamps, or is it possible to just drop the body into a quiet corner and wait? Is it sheer ritual and tradition or does burial serve a purpose? How long does the transformation take?

And what about all of the other variety of demons who appear to be non-vampiric but are running around Sunnydale? What is it with these characters? Does the Hellmouth emit some kind of cosmic rays that the demons like to bask in? Is this why they don't just spread out across the continent, if not the planet, and wreak havoc at such distant locations that no one Slayer would be able to stake them all? It would up their individual odds of survival, surely they see that?

Not that they seem to care about such things. For evil beings, these guys are remarkably social, aren't they? I mean, they have their own bar and everything. They go to weddings.

You don't see them out on the streets much, though, do you? I mean, in one bar scene, there must have been a dozen or more assorted demons, sitting around drinking some kind of unimaginable swill. Why weren't they out killing people?

Whoever demonized these characters must be tearing their hair (or tentacles) out in frustration. I'm serious. You just can't get good help these days. There's just no commitment to the job.

I'm thinking that one of my original speculations might have been right. Evil demon possession or no evil demon possession, most "people" just don't have the drive and determination to go out and make a success of things on their own. Everyone waits for someone else to come up with a plan.

I mean, supposedly they all get this supernatural strength and this lust for blood when they're demonized, right? Why aren't they out running amok? I don't see many of your average demons running amok. Newbies, mostly. Do they get some kind of control if they survive for a while? Is that whole, bite everything that moves thing just a phase, like a two year-old putting everything they get their hands on in their mouths?

How much blood does a vampire need on a daily basis, anyhow? And how long can they go without it? What happens to them? Do they just get hungrier and hungrier?

And, while I'm at it, who are these friends of Anya's? They seem like a fairly genial bunch. What's their purpose for existing? Are they vampires I just haven't seen vamping anyone yet? What is it with all of these demons not being demonic?

Did Angel and Spike and Drusilla and vamps like them just get lucky and get possessed by the spirit of a more proactive evil?

Or, maybe I should say Angel and Drusilla because when Spike isn't being led by the nose by one of them, he doesn't seem to get up to that much. Not in a big way, I mean. He's not all apocalyptic or anything.

Actually, he's kind of an insecure mess, isn't he? Starting with his period of weepy mourning for the slack-jawed Drusilla, he's always got some petty-schemer variety plan to make himself more powerful going, but he seems to lack any deep-seated conviction about it.

I'm not sure I'm going to like the episodes where he comes over all lurrrrve-enthralled to Buffy. I mean, sure, it worked for Angel because of the contrast. Big Evil vs. Big Brooding, you know?

I'm not sure I see the point of taming Spike. Dramatically, I mean. In the context of the show.

Anyhow, I like him this way.

Of course, he couldn't have become a regular on the show if they hadn't put him under some kind of control. I do understand that.

I also understand that he gets a chip in his head that prevents him from hurting people which sounds like a process that's going to annoy him pretty extremely and also, either before or after that time, he gets all in love with Buffy, but I'm not sure I'm going to like the character as much when they turn him into Buffy's lapdog, that's all. What's the point of a fangless vampire?

Maybe they work with that concept. I mean, finding a 'point' for a fangless vampire, but I strongly suspect that, dramatically, they confine themselves to having him loiter around and be in lurrrve.

Bah.