So, it's been a while since I rambled on endlessly about Spike BtVS, hasn't it? Between work and venting ire at our sort-of elected officials, I've been busy. Mostly work, I'll admit.
I tamed the beast that is FrontPage. Well, 'caged it' might be a better way of putting it. Alvin helped. As we were dinking with formatting I re-read my prose, realized it all sucked sugarless lemon-lime, and re-wrote 75 percent of it on the fly. It's still not good, but it doesn't wander as aimlessly as it did.
For the rest of today I'm working graphics. I'm probably the least visual person I know. Why do I get stuck with choosing layouts and finding graphics that don't suck?
We're migrating the new page up to the web this weekend, so I don't have time to complain and get the work done. (Well, at the moment I've clearly chosen 'complain' over 'work' but it's just a brief interlude.
Next week's delightful chores: A mock white-paper I'm putting together for Version 2.0 of the site, and marketing/sales material we can e-mail or hand out at trade shows.
I've made an outline of the elements that should, generically, appear in a white paper. I'm still waiting for inspiration about Spike.
Freudian typo, there. Honestly. I meant to type, "content." Still waiting for inspiration about content.
Oh, well. On to the matter at hand.
Finally watched the ep I taped last Tuesday. Not enough Spike, but don't I usually feel that way?
What's with all of the proto-slayers? They aren't really thinking spin-off, are they?
Do I care? Not. I doubt Spike will appear, after all. Or Giles. Or Willow. What would be the point?
Reluctantly I'm compelled to admit that I like Xander better after watching that episode. I still think that anyone whose been in the thick of things for seven years should by now be less whiney about it all and should have developed a few useful skills beyond the window-replacing variety but I doubt I'd fare much better in the same situation, so I won't annoy the Xander fans by complaining about it endlessly. He had a seriously good point, though. It would be hell to be no-one in the middle of all of that talent for years on end. (Pudgy little devil, isn't he?)
Why doesn't anyone write and tell me when the S4 DVDs will be released? Have I not made it clear yet that time is at a premium for me right now? Can you informed fans step up to the plate and share a little information?
While you're at it, someone give me the URL to a decent site on the web where the backstory of this show is listed, okay?
(Apparently it's me-me-me day at Casa AnneZo. The world sighs in irritation and starts to sidle out of the room, hoping to find a decent rant going on somewhere else.)
Someone wrote me a long, lovely note about the Geezers In Grocery Stores rant. Condensed, let's just say that she advocates a degree of violence toward the old dears that I can't quite reconcile with my passively passive-aggressive nature. But I've thought about doing those things, yes.
I've thought about handcuffing Spike to a bed, too. That doesn't mean I'd do it if given the opportunity.
Hot flash ensues.
Oops. My mind is never far from the gutter, is it?
(An intriguing flash of a pristine, white bed and a pair of empty handcuffs distracts Anne's attention for several consecutive minutes.)
It's not like I had anything to say, okay? It's a blog. It's not a staggering work of heart-breaking genius. Just me, wandering around inside of my psyche, picking out the more publicly acceptable bits to share.
I'm disappointed. I've watched three seasons of this show, and bits of a few episodes from this season, and I'm still getting zero slash vibes. It's all very upsetting. Spike is too beautiful not to slash but I can't go there without subtext. I need the vibe.
(Another long pause while the critical 'vibe' is considered in the context of Spike. The world fidgets and wonders why it bothers to come over here, anyhow.)
Fine. Go somewhere else.
I may have brilliant thoughts to share later, but you'll never know, will you?
Posted by AnneZook at 11:46 AM
Can't help it
I'm thinking about blogging, but I have this job, you know.
Posted by AnneZook at 06:35 PM
Adventures in living
Well, not so much, except that I stopped by the grocery store on the way home (tortilla chips, cantaloupe, milk, and stamps, if you must know).
I had my usual cashier luck, which means I wound up with the guy whom I always suspect of being an escapee from a home for the psychotically sullen.
Crowned with a ring of bald skull sprouting stringy, unwashed hair that catches decoratively in the unshaven stubble that seems to stretch to his eyebrows, this is a guy you wouldn't want to see on a crowded street at high noon, never mind in a dark alley. If Norman Bates' house grabbed a body and set out to be seriously scary for a change, it would look like this guy.
He seemed to take it personally that I'd chosen to infest his lane with my measly haul but I had to if I wanted stamps.
Besides, it was geezer night at the self-scan and of the things that can make me insane, standing behind a 120 year-old woman who doesn't understand the concept of a bar code is a big one.
You'd think that my better nature would prevent me from mocking the elderly, considering how close I am to becoming one, but as it turns out, I don't have a better nature, so that's okay.
I'm always surrounded by geezers at the grocery store. If they're not meandering down the middle of an aisle enjoying the sensation of being out for an airing, or peering at the shelves and wondering why they can't find the mayonnaise next to the Pepsi products, they're abandoning their seat-and-shop carts in the middle of traffic to toddle off and ask the butcher inane questions about hamburger.
There's one store we used to grocery shop at but the aisles aren't very wide and my roommate finally forbid me to go there any more after the fortieth time I whomped some old dear in the butt with my cart.
Grocery aisles are like streets, okay? Move with the darned traffic or pull over in a quiet spot, but don't cut me off for the pleasure of coming to an abrupt halt so you can compare the brands of pickle relish.
They're pickles. Chopped up. Just grab one and get on with it already.
Ahem.
Sorry. Bad hair day.
Let's start over, shall we?
More yadda, yadda
Okay, so, you know, so what if he's an amoral, blood-sucking fiend with a need to be dominated by strong but unstable women? Okay, sure, he's untrustworthy, unstable, and insecure.
How important, in the long run, are these little personality flaws? Me, I squeeze the toothpaste from the middle.
(Therapy. Often considered, rarely tried. Go there today.)
Posted by AnneZook at 06:20 PM
Stream of half-consciousness
Finished up S3 last night. Mayor, Faith, evil power, eating bugs, apocalypse, yadda, yadda, yadda. Willow still surprisingly babe-a-licious, not a thing I usually notice. Xander marginally less annoying. Angel considerably less annoying since seen nekkid.
Neither a decent substitute for Spike. What a waste of an entire season.
Swept and mopped kitchen and bathroom floors yesterday, spot-cleaned entryway carpet, did a smidge of dusting.
Today's agenda: laundry, wash woodwork, grouse because BtVS is available for S4 in the UK (Region 2) but not in the USofA, rewatch S2, stare at Spike, eat chocolate, finally watch first-run ep taped on Tuesday.
A little bored with loitering in the living room since did that all day yesterday. Might gather up enormous energy and wend my way to the grocery store to stock up on lunch foods for next week. Should decide soon, before entirely catatonic, but requires showering to rid myself of scary bed-hair, so not sure.
Must exercise. Slept late, will have insomnia tonight if not careful. Hate starting the work week that way.
Man knocked on door last night, I opened it. Getting older, no smarter.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:03 PM
Ick
In the, "oh, good grief" department, I saw this advertised on blogspot's front page today.
When I pictured this long, lovely weekend with my roommate out of town, I didn't picture it quite the way it's turning out today. So far all I've eaten is tomatoes and toast, which is weird.
And, owing to having gotten into something of a kerfuffle via blog-comments, I've had to spend three hours looking up material to back up my own half-baked opinions.
Also I was messing about with links.
I have to do something that gets me out of this chair today!
(P.S. Spike. Pretttty.)
Posted by AnneZook at 01:19 PM
Kids today
I should point out that my objection to Angel's brooding, open-mouthed stupidity shtick doesn't in any way interfere with my appreciation of watching him rolling around naked on the floor. Last night, for instance, I managed not to be annoyed by that scene during four consecutive viewings.
My appreciation, I assure you, was purely aesthetic.
But.
Buffy chains a half-naked man to a wall and then all she can think of to do with him is to stand in a corner and stare at him pensively?
Kids today, I swear. Youth is just so wasted on the young.
I was getting ready to leave the house this morning and my brain suddenly flashed on an image of Spike handcuffed to a bed. Could have been imagination, but I'm thinking I saw this in an episode?
It doesn't really matter because by the time I finished mopping up the coffee from the kitchen floor, I was late to work.
Today I've stayed virtuously away from blogging, in spite of an invitation, in a different forum, to comment on a post that is going to require a 1,200 word response to do it justice. Today I'm working.
Why this burst of virtuous behavior, you ask? Because I'm aggravated that my Season 3 DVDs arrived last night and, upon investigation, promise to provide only one Spike episode in all 22 or whatever episodes.
What a ripoff. And I have a sad, scary feeling that Season 4 isn't out on DVD yet. Life is sad.
Of course, I still have the new episode I taped (most of) on Tuesday to look forward to, right?
And I can spend the weekend re-watching Season 2 episodes, right?
Or, you know, mopping the kitchen floor every time my brain flashes on an unlikely, but I swear it's canon, picture of Spike handcuffed naked to a bed.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:59 PM
Aha!
Stupid MicrosoftFrontPage.
Having gotten to the point where I was willing to admit I couldn't go it alone, I gave in and read the instructions, starting with page one. I did figure out how to create a "web" out of my individual pages, but I can't see any benefit to having done it.
Still, it was a new thing I learned, right?
Now if I can just figure out how to make the headers and footers appear....
I'll bet it has something to do with those mysterious asp pages, what do you think? I can, of course, save a page "as" an asp, but I'm not sure that's really the point.
Back to the table of contents in the help file....
I'm spending my days working, not thinking about Spike BtVS. Except that I sort of thought about him it for an hour or so yesterday. You know, in between doing work things. Mostly I've been working because I wanted to have this stupid website done by Tuesday.
I've thought about him it a bit, now and then. I have Many Thoughts, but my Season 3 DVDs arrived, so maybe I should wait until I've seen those eps and see if any of my questions get answered.
Must. Have. Coffee.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:50 AM
Aauugghh!
Why aren't there any html pages in the "original" website folder? Why don't you use FrontPage to write html files? What is it with the asp pages? Why can't you actually use FrontPage to design a website? Why does it make asp pages instead? Where are the original html pages? Didn't they write html pages?
What kind of sadistic monster designed this nightmare?
I don't know how to use this stupid program and I hate it, hate it, hate it. If this was Sunnydale, I'd be wishing for a demon to inhabit this stupid computer and eat this stupid, ugly, badly designed software program.
I've stripped everything out of these stupid pages until this is going to be the plainest website ever designed. There's only one graphic left, in the header, and I can't figure out how you force FrontPage to pull the header at the top of every page.
I'm getting cranky. Can you tell?
I can't believe Bill Gates is going to pocket an extra $98.5 million or something out of that moron Bush's newest tax cut program. He, Gates, should be forced to spend the money teaching me to use his software.
If there's anything left, I'll use it to pay my therapy bills.
Sheesh.
I guess the first step is to admit defeat. I'll have to admit that I'm powerless over FrontPage and get Alvin to intercede with a higher power for me.
Or I could throw the computer through a window.
I think I'll go write a long blog entry about some totally new subject. That should take my mind off of things.
)Let me see...I haven't written about Spike in a while, have I? I have some No Doubt Very Important Thoughts to share. And some, you know, just general drooling.)
Posted by AnneZook at 09:10 AM
More things I'm not thinking about
I'm not thinking about why a person who has never even seen FrontPage before is sitting here trying to convert my rough-draft text for our web pages into .asp files instead of trying to convert said rough-draft text into decent prose.
Why asp? Why not html? I don't understand what I'm doing. Someone explain to me why a static web page has to be saved as an .asp?
What am I doing and why aren't you allowed to be creative with business websites? It's boring to write in such a boring style.
I created a logo yesterday. I was very proud of it until my sister told me it looked like a gun. I told her it was a hand and then she wanted to know why my company logo was going to be a hand cupping a breast.
Sigh. So, this morning I started over.
I'm neither a marketing person nor a graphic designer, okay?
As far as that goes, I'm barely able to write html code to put a link into a document, so I'm not a programmer, either. At the moment, I'm staring blindly at an open file and trying to remember how I get a picture to show up.
I may be about to panic. Fortunately, I have chocolate in my desk.
I know I had a freeware program once-upon-a-time that let you create those nifty hotspots inside of pictures so that you could have links embedded in different parts of a graphic, but I don't remember what it was called or where I found it. Nor do I think I could force FrontPage, which is currently insisting on making all of my text bold for reasons I can't identify, to accept the product of such an attempt, so I don't know why the unoccupied parts of my brain are insisting upon dwelling on the subject.
Hmph. I wonder how much it costs to hire someone who can write html code? I could pay someone on the side to do this stuff for me, then I'd look smart.
I'd be hard at work on the whole web page thing, but when I finish with it I have to write a 3-year business plan for a company that, you know, doesn't have any actual business, and there's no real rush to move on.
Remind me again why I work for these small companies?
Oh, yeah. They're the only ones willing to pay me double what I'm worth for learning to do my job on the job.
And it's the only kind of job where I can usually spend several hours a day thinking about...wait for it...Spike!
Heh. Heh.
It's not that I'm obsessed or anything, of course. It's just that he was So Pretty.
(Ladies and other people, there will be a short pause while today's featured speaker pulls herself together)
So. Spike and Angelus love Drusilla but Drusilla is too much of a psychopath to just pick one and stick with him?
Or is she just a nympho who couldn't wait for Spike to get well once Angelus showed up and was willing?
Or was it that even Angelus got tired of her weirdness after a century or so and so he bailed on her and she went walkabout and found William, aka. Spike? And then, in a move that I think is probably typical of him, Angelus decided that if someone else wanted Drusilla, then maybe he wasn't tired of her after all, so he came back and interfered until he got his soul back?
Or. Were Angelus and Drusilla still together when she vamped Spike and he was in love with her but had to wait until Angelus left until he could get his hands on her?
Or. Were Angelus and Drusilla together and Spike a third wheel until sometime after Angelus got his soul back and left, and then Drusilla picked up Spike because she had time on her hands?
Why would anyone sleep with Angelus if Spike was around?
Why do vampires have sex lives anyhow?
Do I care? Not a lot, except that the question of why on earth Spike wanted Drusilla bothers me. (Actually, I found Drusilla pretty gross on a number of levels and I can't imagine why anyone would want to sleep with her. I mean, there's Willow and even Cordelia and Buffy. Who here really thinks Drusilla looks that appetizing next to those three? Especially Willow, who is just yummy.)
(I'm just saying, okay? About five minutes of that whole Evil Ophelia thing and I'd be putting Drusilla's head in a bucket.
Yeah, I know, it's not her fault and Angelus did it to her. Someone do the woman a favor and stake her. She is way past her sell-by date.)
I seem to remember some offhand remark in an episode that indicates that vampires pretty much want what "people" want. Food, shelter, etc. Why do demons want these things? Are they somehow entrapped by the "needs" of the human bodies they misappropriate?
If demons really did show up first and then humans infested the planet later, as I remember hearing in an episode, what did the demons live on before the humans appeared? Fruits and nuts? When did animals show up?
What do demons do besides drink blood? Do they all plot to overthrow humanity or are most of them pretty content with regular meals and a dark corner to snooze in? Do you suppose that the hapless vamps enlisted by Angelus, et. al., secretly wish they could just sneak off and live a life of peace and quiet somewhere else?
What purpose do these beings serve? If all they do is eat and sleep, why do they want to take over the world? It's not like they're going to do anything with it, right? Is it just spitefulness because they're not able to go sit on a sunny, summer beach?
Are demons actually militant environmentalists, determined to wipe out the polluting scourge that's ruining the planet? Are they mad because it doesn't look like we're going to be able to save all the whales? If we switch to wind power and promise to stop digging up Alaska, will they settle down and leave us alone? Can we volunteer people we don't like as food?
I don't know why I'm nitpicking like this. Compared to the canon Chris, yes, it's the Anti-Christ, Carter gave us, this show is positively brilliant when it comes to internal consistency.
I have many thoughts, none of which are getting this stupid web page finished.
Spike=Pretty
FrontPage=Real Evil
Posted by AnneZook at 12:02 PMI'm feeling a bit smug today because I am not thinking about PrettySpike and how Pretty he looked smacking that annoying Drusilla around and carrying her off.
And he looked Pretty, looking at Angelus and Buffy and thinking Angelus was about to kill Buffy, but shrugging philosophically and going on about his business.
Sometimes I like disinterested altruism, but not most of the time. My favorite characters tend to cast a somewhat jaundiced eye over the concept of noble, self-sacrifice and decide it's a sucker's game.
I like it that Spike kept his eyes on the main point, dragging Drusilla out of there before Buffy did her in, not that I don't want Drusilla dead, or at least gone, but whatever.
I like his capacity for loving extravagantly. I think it's interesting that we're getting this in a character who lives (so to speak) in an environment where this kind of passion is completely unexpected.
I liked the contrast between Drusilla's relationship with Angelus and her relationship with Spike, as well. (I'm marginally put off by the violence of these relationships, but I'm pretty wussy.)
Anyhow. For whatever reason Spike is crazy in love with this pathologically sadistic lunatic. (Why is he in love with her? Just because she's the one who vamped him? Does he lack alternates? Why do we only see three, so far, "human-looking" vampire women, and one of them not until post-Drusilla? Are women who aren't half-decomposed rare enough in the vamp world that Spike has to stay with Drusilla or risk not getting any?)
Why won't anyone explain to me why there are a few human-like vampires scattered amongst the armies of animated, decomposing bodies?
You people who know these things and won't tell me are pissing me off, but don't bother to write and tell me now because I'm not listening. (La-la-la-la I can't hear you.)
I don't need no stinking canon. I can make up my own reasons. I'd tell you what I've decided, but I'm not speaking to you, either.
Continuing with my original train of thought, if vampires are, as that annoying Xander keeps shrieking, just demons inhabiting the bodies and memories of "real people" then does that mean demons have the capacity for love as well as hate? For loyalty, even honor? Where do these emotions come from? Are the side-effects of inhabiting human bodies with all of the hormones and whatnot? Can't be...once the body is dead, all of the chemical reactions that produce emotions are pretty much at an end. That means the emotional reactions have to be those of the demons, and not the original humans. Unless the bodies are "alive" again once inhabited, but that doesn't seem to be the case based on Angel saying he doesn't breathe (and we'll just skip on past Spike being able to smoke, but he is Pretty, isn't he?), in which case it could be that the demons are getting all tangeled up in the "human" emotions produced by the chemical reactions in the bodies they take over.
I may be over-thinking some of these details, of course.
What in the heck is a "demon" in this universe, then? Are we getting a bait-and-switch and are all of these elements really just standard-issue bible/mythology characters, with angels and fallen angels and whatnot?
Not that I care. I love that Whistler guy. I think it's sort of amusing that instead of demons being "fallen angels", we're getting some "ennobled demons" or whatever the guy is. I hope we see him again. Also, I think Angel was out of line complaining about Whistler's wardrobe, considering that he, Angel, looked like he'd been living in a dumpster and apparently smelled much the same.
What is it with this whole vampire thing? How much of a "person" is their memories? It's an Id thing, isn't it? Vampires are the Id and without souls, they don't have an ego or superego? (Didn't I hear that on one episode?) Sounds plausible, except that I don't think we've seen any vamps that are really focused on the "I want" to the complete exclusion of everything else. (Plus which I've always had my doubts about Freud.)
What kind of intelligence does a vampire have? The average vamp, I mean. The same intelligence as the person who used to own the body had? Not if "the person" is gone, though. Not unless you're postulating that "intelligence" is somehow a function of the structure of the brain instead of...whatever else it actually is and no one really knows.
Why do some vamps kowtow to the humanish looking ones? What is "power" in the vamp world and how is it exercised? How do the vamps "in power" keep the others in line? Or is it that demons aren't that much different from "people" after all, and most of them really just want someone to tell them what to do and to think?
So, we have vamps that can totally pass for human, vamps that almost can, and vamps that should just start shedding bits of bandaging and moaning, Ooohhhh since they look so completely like something out of a Vincent Price movie. What's up with that, anyhow? (La, la, la Not listening.)
How boring does it get that every episode has to have the action stopped for ten minutes while the characters fight with a bushel o'baddies? Why does Buffy whomp the enemy around forever before she stakes them? Why not just stake them when they show up? But, noooo, we always have this scene where she's getting ready to fight and they're getting ready to fight and when everyone is finally settled and braced, then they fight. Even when a baddie jumps out of the bushes, everyone stops to collect their thoughts for a few seconds before any real battle commences.
Tedious. I love being on DVD. I mostly fast-forward the fight scenes.
I don't care if he got his soul back or not, I'm glad Angel got stuck and sent to the netherworld. How dare he smash up Giles?
Spike looked Pretty, didn't he?
Posted by AnneZook at 01:26 PMI think I just like typing it, what do you think?
For those of you who don't actually know me, and there seem to be a couple of you, based on the comments, which is very flattering because why on earth go and read a rambling, self-absorbed blog kept by a stranger but don't answer that because this is the doggone internet and it's still a place of largely open access, no matter what the gov'ment and certain corporate profiteers want to make of it....
I hate when that happens.
I've entirely lost my train of thought, not that it doesn't derail easily at the best of times.
Anyhow. For those of you who don't actually know me, be aware that among my other half-hearted hobbies, I follow competitive figure skating. At this point in time, an important event called "Nationals" is taking place and since figure skating gets good ratings (ever since Nancy Kerrigan, may she stay off my television screen, got her knee whacked with a pipe, anyhow), they show it during primetime. The televised coverage usually goes on for 2-3 hours and there are usually three or four installments.
That means that tonight and tomorrow evening and for a significant chunk of the day on Sunday, I'll be watching thin, talented people do amazing things on ice instead of (sob) watching Spike BtVS episodes.
By the time I get to the second part of that two-parter, I'm going to have forgotten why I cared in the first place.
Also, an event which is very sad, my roommate will be leaving for several days, beginning next week. It's very sad to be all alone in the world.
On the plus side, on evenings where there isn't any ice skating I need to tape, or when I don't need to tape Frasier for her, or watch West Wing or CSI for myself, I'll have plenty of time to watch Other Things.
I don't know the skating schedule for the week when she's gone, but even without it I'm down to Monday and Friday for watching DVDs.
There's no point in writing to say I can watch Spike BtVS before and after these other programs. As I've been trying to establish, I'm running several, consecutive hobbies at once here. They each need their moments of TLC. I can only allot about an hour on a weekday evening to watch DVDs.
(Did I fool anyone or do we all know I just ordered the Season 3 DVDs, and that I intend to spend most of my "free" 10 evenings watching the rest of Season 2 and then Season 3? I thought so.)
Posted by AnneZook at 05:01 PMHarry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix will clock in around 225,000 words, according to its publishers. One report says that this entry is 33 percent longer than the Goblet of Fire, suggesting that the 272 page Goblet was around 151,000 words and that the Phoenix will be around 350 pages, so we'd all better start muscling up our biceps.
Here are the lengths of other literary works:
Hawaii James Michener: 500,000
David Copperfield Charles Dickens: 357,000
The Bible (King James Version): 181,000
Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte: 116,000
Treasure Island Robert Louis Stevenson: 68,000
Julius Caesar William Shakespeare: 19,000
Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln: 272
The Cat in the Hat Dr. Seuss: 237
What I really wanted to know was how long this book is going to be compared to War and Peace, but whatever, because I found that elsewhere. (It's around 600,000, for those interested, and Gone With the Wind is around 416,00.)
I don't actually remember now why I wanted to know those things except that I thought 225,000 was too darned long for a children's book and started mouthing off about the subject and someone sent me some comparative numbers which seemed like as much of a reason as any to start a new blog entry.
In any case, publishers don't actually count "words", they count pages, right? They assume something like 250 words to a page, so the new HP book, at 225,000 words, must be 900 pages and even as I'm typing this, I know that's got to be wrong but math isn't my strong suit, okay?
The critical thing to remember is that the new book is about 1/3 longer than the previous one and while I grew to like Goblet, the first time I read it, I thought it needed some serious editing.
I hate the part where an author gets really famous and the publisher stops editing their work.
It's practically undemocratic and I don't care if J.K.R. lives in a Constitutional Monarchy. It ain't fair.
The lack of decent editing had a lot to do with the drastic decline in quality of Stephen King's stuff. R. A. Heinlein suffered from stringent editing and, late in his life, admitted that it had been a good thing. For that reason, I never bought any of the "expanded" versions of his works that were released after his death.
Speaking as someone who suffered the slings and arrows of having about 30% of my output deleted each time I wrote a new story, I think it's unfair that other people don't have to go through it.
Spike
Nothing new to report on that front is all I have to report.
Haven't had a chance to watch any new episodes since Monday and I stopped in the middle of what appears to be a two-parter where they'll either restore Angel's soul or Buffy will finally have to kill him or something. And Spike is Up To Something, based on the fact that he's hiding his renewed ability to walk from both Drusilla and Angelus.
I'm finishing up a book I want to do a review of (no, not in this space, so don't be afraid), re-reading P. G. Wodehouse, as I said previously, and playing the new Zelda game on the Game Boy. All of these hobbies require time and I can't neglect any one of them in favor of another, can I?
And!
Today I'm having lunch with a friend. Saturday I'm having lunch with a friend.
I just booked my airline ticket to Escapade and I'm going to book my train ride from the airport to Oxnard later today.
I get paid this week!
All in all, things aren't bad.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:45 AMThanks to the immortal and irreplaceable McSwain, I finally found one of those quiz/list things I like enough to want to do it myself. Except she calls it a "meme" for reasons I'll probably never understand.
What is your favorite word?
Right now? Bobble-head (Is too a word!)
What is your least favorite word?
Ditch
What turns you on?
Things that make me laugh unexpectedly. (You thought I was going to say, "Spike", didn't you?)
What turns you off?
Stupidity
What sound (or noise) do you love?
Silver bells. Really. There's a tone to silver. It was put on this earth to make bells.
What sound (or noise) do you hate
The dentist's drill.
What is your favorite curse word?
I don't curse. Really. I almost never say any really bad words. I guess I go for "damnit" when I'm really hot under the collar.
What profession other than yours would you like to attempt?
Teaching. I wanted to be a teacher when I was younger.
What profession other than yours would you not like to participate in?
Telemarketing? Retail sales person? Mortician? Garbage collecting? Or, you know, anything repetitive and boring. I worked in a factory, operating a machine once. It was considered a pretty good job at the time and paid well. I lasted one day.
If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
We left the light on for you.
Posted by AnneZook at 10:04 PMI'm going to make a sincere effort to, you know, blog more often.
I'm not sure why. Friends who love me enough to want to know what is passing through my tiny brain on a daily basis are usually in touch with me via e-mail.
Strangers who want to mock me are welcome to buy tickets to the next episode where I fall down a flight of stairs.
The indifferent majority probably wishes I'd take up less space on the internet.
Did you ever hear of a thing called, "Blogstreet"? I did, just recently.
Apparently it's a site you can check to see how often you're "blogrolling" other blogs, which doesn't make much sense to me, and also to find your "blog neighborhood" which I also don't quite understand. There's also a "ranking" system that seems to mean nothing. I love this site.
It's like reading about cricket. I have only the vaguest idea of what the words mean, but there's a weird charm in the way they flow. Every time I read about "googlies" I just have to laugh.
As for Blogstreet, I was only mildly amused by my own confusion until I ran into "googlatives." Now I love them unconditionally. I have no idea what a "googlative" is and I don't suppose I ever will, but that doesn't matter.
Organized gibberish entertains me.
I'm thinking (stop me if you've heard this one before) of getting my own domain name. Then, of course, I'll have to find out how you get your stuff online under your own domain name. I'm pretty sure you don't have to buy and run your own server, but I may be wrong.
I'm not quite amused by my ignorance of the internet, considering that I've been online for about twelve years, but whatever. Nowhere on this or any other page is there a claim made that I'm intelligent.
I could learn to do these things, but my interest in doing so is tepid at best. I'd prefer to save my remaining brain cells for contemplating Spike* things that matter.
(*You didn't think I was going to write an entire blog entry and not mention that name, did you?)
What I really need to do is to update my list of "blogs you should read" because I've started reading three or four more on a semi-regular basis. (Such linking is less for your entertainment than to keep me from having to actually memorize any URLs, you understand.)
There's a man out lurrrking in the hallway next to the women's restroom. You don't actually get much of that kind of thing here.
Okay, once some disturbed teenager tried to peek at me while I was in there, but I caught him at it and scared him half to death, but that's not quite the same thing.
Actually, I'm not certain which is scarier.
I had something to say, but I've forgotten what it was. If I remember, I'll come back and say it.
Posted by AnneZook at 09:25 AMActually, I think I got that from a Doonsbury cartoon about a million years ago.
Still. It's funny. And! I do care, and deeply!
I care about making blog entries but as most of you are aware, it was my habit to spend from 2-6 hours a (work)day writing the things (okay, mostly for a different blog, but sometimes for this one) and now that there's, like, work to do at my work, I'm having trouble finding time to write blogs.
I mean, my roommate was out all Monday evening and I could have written reams but instead I selfishly chose to spend that 3-1/2 hours watching Spike Buffy DVDs.
Which, rather neatly I think, leads us to the subject of...Spike!
Heh.
I won't go on and on because I have no idea how many of the four people who read this blog give a sh*t about BtVS but I do want to say that my favorite Spike moment so far came in the "new home" Angel found for the three of them, when ChinlessDrusilla was making like a slut with Angel and Spike had to sit there in his wheelchair and watch the groping and moaning. He looked so hurt and jealous. And then a few seconds later, we see that he's got a lot of self-control, because he managed to disguise his recovery from Angel so that he can get his revenge. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. It was a great scene.
I'm becoming sort of impressed by Marster's acting. He's got an amazing subtlety that I really do enjoy. I hate those, and this is my 'determined' face actors who just go from emote to emote.
For those already bored of the subject, I assure you there's more going on in my head than Spike right now. Honestly. I'm a person of many interests, none of which have ever before been platinum blond dead guys.
For instance, I got my OaT tapes back and I plan to rewatch some episodes and work on my OaT story one of these days soon.
In today's news, the fifth Harry Potter book will be released June 21 and is reputed to top 250,000 words.
That's sort of appalling. (The word count, not the release.) What with trickster being down and all, I don't know how long my own longest story is, nor can I find a word count on the fourth HP novel to use for comparison but I can state with authority (which is not, let us be clear, the same thing as expertise, it just means that I sound very sure of myself, regardless of the facts of the matter) that 250,000 is an absurd length for a book aimed at twelve year-olds.
That's a QUARTER OF A MILLION words! She's making the rest of us, including Tolstoy, look like slackers.
I've been following two or three HP slash WIPs on-line and have decided, in the last couple of days, to give up on all of them. I guess I'm just not a WIP kind of person. I don't find that a story is improved by being dribbled out to the readers a few words at a time and I don't find that the already shaky quality of most fanfic writing is easier to ignore when each new story installment is so action-limited that you couldn't get carried away by the action and ignore writing weaknesses if you wanted to.
There's something wrong with that sentence but I know what I mean.
I mean, it's okay if you never read anything but fanfiction or the average quality fiction that shows up on the shelves these days, but if you make the mistake of reading someone who can really write with a side of genius, then it's very, very difficult to "step down" and lower your standards to accommodate fanfiction again.
I mean, I've read, maybe, five fanfiction authors (that I remember at the moment) who didn't make part of my brain feel, guiltily, that I was slumming by spending the time to read their writing. It was better in the first rush of on-line enthusiasm when I was all-fanfiction-all-the-time, but once that fever died down (several years ago, I might add), I found that I was increasingly dissatisfied with fanfiction.
That includes reading it and writing it. I reasoned that if I was going to suck at writing and if that suckage was eating up time I could be spending reading good writers, then why not just give up writing and read real stories?
So I did, but now I've forgotten where I was going with that when I started.
I'm re-reading P. G. Wodehouse (a thing I habitually do when reality becomes too much for me) but not (no matter what bad example torch sets) contemplating writing J/W slash. Not! Not, I say, not!
Except that I adore PGW's use of language and upon occasion I do feel a teeny-tiny urge to try and mimic it.
So far I'm holding out.
I'm sort of tangential today, aren't I?
Someone asked, via e-mail, what the heck had happened to the Chipmunk. I will naturally be answering her directly but in case anyone else was wondering, Alvin and I have long suspected that the Chipmunk's so-called "strategy" for the company was sadly flawed and recently Alvin and Buehler got together and agreed that not only was the Chipmunk's original idea a dud, but that the Chipmunk didn't have much else to offer as compensation for the something-like 25 percent equity he was demanding in the company, so we're spinning the Chipmunk and his original concept off into a separate company, giving him full control, and Alvin and I are now hard at work on creating an all-new company with an all-new concept.
If you've never met me, you'll be appalled to know I talk just like this. All one long run-on sentence with very little punctuation.
Still. I blogged, right? One more thing I can check off of today's list.
(If anyone is bored, they can post a list of 10 reasons why not to watch the Horatio Hornblower series. I'd appreciate it. I've been tempted since I first heard about it but managed to resist since the Hornblower books are far from being my favorite Napoleonic War series, but recently....
No, never mind. I'll buy a new season of Jeeves & Wooster DVDs instead.)
Posted by AnneZook at 03:27 PMOkay, so ChinlessDrusilla is back on top, Spike's on wheels (Who knew that a pipe organ, if knocked to the floor, would burst into flame?), and Angel got laid and turned into a jerk.
Drusilla is pleased to have her "daddy" (oh, so ick) back, Spike is jealous, and Angel wants to do a psycho trip on Buffy.
At the core of these problems are an early-model Frankenstein and a gypsy curse.
What a weird show this is.
Giles remains completely edible, as does Willow and I'm enjoying watching her falling in love with her cuddly little werewolf boy.
Xander hates everyone, is willing to do Cordelia, is in love with Buffy, and exhibiting a mountainous ration of sour grapes over Willow's affection for another. Could this character be any less attractive?
Giles is wonderful. Did I mention that part yet?
But, sad to say, I'm just not getting any slash vibes from this show.
I'm told that Giles is slashed with Ethan but my brain doesn't want to go there. I can see Ethan living a life of sleazy once-offs under cover of darkness, but not Giles. (I can see him going down the path of sex, drugs, and evil magic in his misspent youth, but not today. Maybe the slashers are writing the two of them in their youth or something. Whatever.)
It's also my understanding that the unlovable Xander is slashed most often with Spike and I'm thinking that even the undead would show better taste, okay? I don't even want to know how people envision these encounters coming about.
Maybe I'll look at it all differently when the characters grow up a little, who knows? I find it hard to contemplate high-school kids sexually in a fannish sense (or, really, any other). Makes me go all squick and stuff.
I wonder how long a fannish obsession lasts without the fuel of slash? I've never really had a slash-free fannish obsession. It's an interesting experience.
I like EvilSpike. He's interesting. Multi-dimensional, and much more so than Drusilla or Angelus.
I wonder how they wrote Spike-in-Slayer-love on the show? I really haven't seen more than three or four of those episodes and I wasn't paying that much attention at the time. I wonder if there's a contingent of fans who think his later obsession Buffy ruined the character? I wonder if it did?
Having now met both Angel and Angelus, I'll admit I'm curious to see the ensouled version of Spike. (Maybe the actor playing Angel wasn't sure of how to play the part or something, I'm not sure, but I find myself mentally referring to his before-and-after-evil personas as "ham and hammier" and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I don't get that same feeling about Spike.)
I still want to know how come some vampires can pass for human and some lurch around the dark streets grunting and losing parts of themselves on the pavement.
I am totally buried at work today so I'm blogging. That's just so typical of me.
Posted by AnneZook at 12:41 PMBut it's late on a Friday afternoon, so who would fault me for goofing off just a little?
Probably no one but Alvin and Buehler, since they're responsible for paying my salary.
Angel - I withdraw my remarks about him being an annoying mouth breather. I mean, okay, he's like that later, but in the early eps he's a lot more fun. I like the episode where he talked about his jealousy and attributed it to spending a century 'feeling guilty and honing his brooding skills.'
Also, now that we're hearing excerpts of his early behavior (i.e., the Drusilla incident), I understand the crushing load of shame and self-loathing he seems to be carrying around (Although I still have issues with the demon vs. reanimated human thing and I'm wondering just where the soul, or lack thereof, fits into everything.)
One of the best parts about coming to a fandom late is that all I have to do is buy a new set of DVDs or whine at friends who have spare tapes to lay my hands on 20+ episodes all at once. It's much preferable to that whole one week at a time with long summer and holiday breaks system. I get to do all of this speculating and objecting and wondering all of the time, knowing that I have only to pop in a DVD and watch a few episodes to either get answers or get a whole new series of fascinating questions.
Spike - He's a verrry naughty demon. I still wonder why he's so smart and human-like and why the demons around him are mostly shambling ghouls, but whatever.
Drusilla - A character I'll never like but she's much more interesting now that I know how she got so crazy. And she's, you know, butt-ugly, so I don't understand why she's portrayed as being pretty or even beautiful on the show. I mean, it's possible the buck teeth and receding chin are some kind of fx they put on her right now to show how sick she is, but what kind of illness would eliminate someone's chin? It's a mystery.
Giles - If someone doesn't restrain me, I'm going to grab a spoon and dig in. When he took that first swing at Ethan, I fell even more deeply into lust. There's something about the combination of tea-drinking and street brawler that's incredibly sexy.
Willow - I remain convinced that she's one of the best things about this show. Totally. The more I see her, the more fabulous I think she is.
Xander - Continues to be irritating and so far I'm seeing no reason why I'd ever like the character. He's a typical teenage boy and I thought they were mostly nutcases even when I was a teenage girl so there's not much likelihood he'll ever grow on me. Yeah, yeah, he has issues. I'd be more impressed if my brief viewing of a couple of later episodes didn't indicate that he never really moves past them.
Buffy - Eh. In the same way I'm indifferent to most "hero" characters, paying attention to them only as they impact the more interesting (to me) secondary characters, I don't mind her, but I don't pay special attention to her either.
Cordelia - Watching her sail through these disasters has a sort of train-wreck fascination. She's a character who probably should annoy me, but doesn't. Maybe because she's pretty much the only person on the show who approaches Buffy as just another teenage girl, instead of with the Kid Gloves of Slayer Care.
I remain impressed by how creative these early episodes were.
And now, I really must get back to work.
(P.S. Sorry about the missing graphics. The crash of trickster's server has eaten my graphics. And my website, of course.)
Posted by AnneZook at 04:15 PMNo, I don't really have anything to say about him. I just wanted to remind myself that I'm supposed to be in thrall to a new obsession and that this is no time to start getting all involved in actually working for a living.
I've watched the first couple DVDs from Season Two and am bemoaning the fact that the only time I do get to watch episodes is on Sundays.
How can I be this short on time? I don't get it. No husband, no kids, no pets, no house that I have to do my own maintenance on. I don't work much overtime and don't watch much regular television. I should have hours a day to spend on my obsessions hobbies, shouldn't I?
But somehow, between commute time, my exercise schedule, trying to get chores like banking, grocery store, dry cleaning, eating, bathing, and laundry done, I seem to have about two hours an evening of free time. By the time I get relaxed of an evening and get some reading done, it's time to go to bed.
I have no idea how women with families manage and that's the truth. If I had a whole house to clean, a family to cook for, and/or laundry for four people to do, I'd go insane.
Anyhow.
I've finally gotten to see Early Spike and, when I can drag my attention away from the charms of Early Giles, I'm finding him interesting. I've only seen the famous Drusilla once and so far I'm not impressed. I understand she's supposed to be ill or something, but I find her babyish behavior and prepubescent dolly fetish fairly icky.
But then, as I have to keep reminding myself, I'm not supposed to like these characters. They are, after all, demon animations of dead bodies.
It was fairly easy to overlook that aspect of Spike, coming in, as I did, after he'd been given the chip and more-or-less domesticated by his lust for Buffy, but it isn't as easy to over look it now that I've seen his first outing. I'll admit that hearing that he got his nickname from torturing people with railroad spikes has somewhat taken the luster from my lust for him, anyhow.
I'll have to think about this when I have some time. I mean, I'm all about not torturing people but on the other hand it's very hard to tell yourself that you simply mustn't become all BSO-fannish about some character because he's evil when your psyche has already glommed onto him, you know? I have no control over my brain and never have had.
I'm sort of brooding over what it means to be a vampire in this particular universe. We have all of the standard, allergic to garlic, freaky about crosses, can't stand the sunlight, dine on fresh blood things but why are some vampires barely animated decaying bodies that look subhuman or extraterrestrial and others able to pass in a crowd? Why are some vampires always bumpy-faced and some only when they get aggravated? Why can Spike eat Wheatbix? Why do some vampires have personalities while others are shuffling, stumbling ghouls?
There are other more technical objections, but I don't want to get too mundane. A vampire is essentially too impossible a construct to take critical deconstruction well, but I'd like to see that the vampires in this universe follow some kind of consistent plan.
I guess I had a few things to say, didn't I?
Alvin, sans Chipmunk
Work continues to be...interesting. I'm doing my best but Alvin came in this morning with New Thoughts and we rearranged the priority on some of the things we'd decided to do pursuant to our latest reinvention, which means the stuff I've spent the last three days on is now at the bottom of the priority pole.
If we'd just keep moving in the same darned direction for several consecutive days, I might have a chance, but I can't simultaneously invent marketing material, sales and promotional material, and website information for five different strategies.
Something Gaia, Alvin's wife, said to me today leads me to suspect that this is more or less Alvin's modus operandi and that I'd better get used to being dragged off to work on a new project before I get done with the old one.
It's a bit absurd. I mean, I like change as much as the next person and more than most, and I'm all about planning work instead of doing work, yet my brain remains stubbornly attached to the notion that if we don't pick a direction and stick with it for a while, the money will fail to roll in.
P.S.
And if vampires are dead bodies animated by demons, why do they want to have sex? And why did Angel pretend he couldn't breathe and give Buffy CPR when he naturally had to be able to breathe, based on the fact that he can talk and that we've seen him out of breath? And if vampires can't breathe, how can Spike smoke? Why do these vampires bleed? If vampires are dead bodies, how can Spike get drunk?
Those are sort of the "obvious" questions I wasn't going to ask, but what the heck.
Okay. Now I'm stopping. Back to work....
Posted by AnneZook at 02:39 PMPeople are writing about elves, everywhere you look.
I understand that Cesperanza started it in some inexplicable fashion and now there are elves infesting every fandom in sight.
And torch, to compound the evil, has written not only elf fiction, but (may her tiny, little conscience kick her on the ankles and tell her she's naughty) P.G.Wodehouse elf fiction.
Of course, maybe I shouldn't get uppity. I got this whole attitude thing going about those "shack" stories and then it naturally turned out that some of them were delightful.
I'm not reading elf stories, though. I mean, okay, I read torch's and of course it was charming, even with my irrational prejudice against the concept because that's just sort of how torch affects me, but I refuse to get sucked into stories featuring elves in such disparate fandoms as Firefly, CSI, Oz, and Seaquest. I've seen each of these shows at least once and the thought of them in connection with elves makes my head hurt.
Well, maybe not so much Seaquest which I found pretty stupid. It would be funny if the elf was the dolphin, wouldn't it?
I do encourage the rest of you to go and read, if you haven't already, just because I'm mean. (And because I suspect, based on the list of authors, that many of the stories are well worth reading, of course.)
Yes, I'm still busybusybusy at work, but I'm tired of working. I could, of course, read about the development of tools for the assessment of depression or about knowledge integration across distributed heterogeneous data sources, but a little of that kind of thing goes a long way, don't you think?
I've been hard at it for the past seven hours or so. Take a look at this:
For example, the nature and incidence of depression varies across the lifespan; negative cognitive styles or negative information processing, when coupled with stressful events, place an individual at elevated risk for depression; a ruminative coping style is predictive of longer and more severe episodes of depression and appears to enhance negative cognitions; stressful life events predict the onset of new episodes of depression; hopelessness appears to mediate the relation between the cognitive vulnerability-stress interaction and depressive episodes; and primary depression has been associated with a variety of neuroendocrine, neurochemical, neurophysiological, and neuromorphometric abnormalities.
And people wonder why, when I sit and read things like that all day, I keep Advil at my desk.
Hmph. This really makes me long for the days when I sat around and doodled patterns for stoneware pots, okay?
Posted by AnneZook at 04:31 PMThere's, like, a ton of work happening at my workplace.
I wanna talk about Spike BtVs but I have to work!
Bleah.
Posted by AnneZook at 08:53 AMAlas, poor Chipmunk, I knew him not at all well.
It's been four days since my last entry but life has not been uneventful. For three hours on Thursday and over eight hours on Friday, Alvin and I reinvented our little corner of the world. Again. This is about the fourth time we've been through this since I started working here six months ago.
The process is not without its charms. There's something to be said, after all, for sitting around talking about how things should be done, instead of actually working on anything.
Anyhow. The upshot of this last round of negotiations is that the Chipmunk is out, in spite of previous plans to form a corporation and issue stock and all of those other business-related tasks that marry people of dissimilar abilities into a team intended to produce a product or service that will suck money from the pockets of the unsuspecting public.
The Chipmunk, it was determined, wasn't bringing enough to the table. At the birthday party of life, he was the boy who carried in a grubby twenty-five cent card and explained that he'd meant to go shopping, he'd thought about going shopping, but that there was a game on that day and he never got around to it.
It's all very weird. We'll have to change the name of this company and design a new logo. We'll need new stationary. Business cards. Comb-binder covers.
Alvin is trying to convince Buehler to fund the two of us for 12 months to let us put the new! improved! business plan into action and prove that we can, in fact, make some serious money. To that end, a two-hour meetings has been scheduled for this coming Wednesday. (A meeting, I should add, that I'm supposed to be preparing for at this minute.)
In the divorce, the Chipmunk got the clients set up under the then-existing agreement which makes it a tad embarrassing that the only contact information most of them have is mine. (On the plus side, I can see no reason I would ever have to go back to New Orleans under the new arrangement!)
The biggest kicker, of course, is that we can now no longer blame the Chipmunk for not doing something when business affairs aren't hustling along to our satisfaction. There will be no one to blame but the two of us.
Considering that I spend about six hour surfing and blogging most days, that's a little scary. (I've been looking for that missing work ethic but haven't located the little monster yet. I must have misfiled it the last time I cleaned out the closet.)
And now, just to add to the charm of facing my first five-day work week in quite a while, we're about to go back into the meeting and decide how to implement all of the grandiose plans we made last week.
Honestly, I continue to wonder why I continue to work for such small companies. I mean, sure, you get a lot of flexibility, but I'm beginning to think there's a lot to be said for the kind of job where you're just a cog in a really large wheel.
And since I have to go into a meeting, I don't have time to write about Spike BtVS, which is a pity since I bought Season Two this weekend and got to see the first three or four episodes.