Flooded Lizard Kingdom

My writing about cultural products gets extremely boring if it's over a paragraph.

I discovered this while cleaning out my blog a couple of months ago. I was making sure all the posts were marked up properly, checking for spelling errors, etc. I also read over everything to make sure I really wanted to keep it.

True, I didn't delete the excruciatingly boring posts about these movies I saw or something I objected to where someone dissed comic books.

My only motivation for keeping them was this: someday, my grandchildren are going to request proof that I have ever been boring. "Surely not!" they will say, hanging on my every word as I regale them with partially fabricated tales of my youth during the emergence of the Internet and the end of dependable cheap oil. And I will point them to those posts.

All this is to explain why my following comments are short.

Comment 1: Elisa Camahort and media girl have both blogged recently about Fiona Apple's album Extraordinary Machine. They can actually describe music, so you should read what they have to say. I think the album is amazing, and I was never all that impressed with Ms. Apple.

Comment 2: What the fuck is going on with the new Dr. Who where The Girl did something spunky and action-oriented in the first episode, but since then has been completely useless? I'm depressed about it.

All the Chinese phrases from Firefly translated for you. Turns out they curse a lot - who knew?

Thanks to UnwiredBen for sending this link to me. It's amazing what one finds when renewing one's drive to clean out electronic storage systems.

Can I just say again how f*cking annoying it is that the Buffy world treats Angel as completely responsible for everything he does when he's Angelus? After Buffy's big speech to Ford about how when you're turned, a demon moves in who isn't you? Hell, Xander killed his friend Jesse in the first episode or something, does that make him a murderer?

(Yes, sometimes reruns are a bad thing when you're trying to have a lazy Sunday.)

Oh my, is that a soapbox? I may have to stand on it...

A reader of unillustrated fiction completes the work in his mind; the reader of a comic book or the viewer of a movie is passive. That is why kids lose a lot when they don't read fiction, even when the movies and TV that they watch are aesthetically superior.

From Gaiman v. McFarlane, blogged by a lawyer as a citation for parents to use when convincing their children to read. I think he's joking. I hope he's joking. Because while I don't have a clue in the world what the context was for this assertion by the judge, despite repeated attempts to follow the link to the case, I do have an opinion about his assertion.

It's bullsh*t.

There was not a single television program or comic book that I consumed as a child which didn't launch an entire series of imagined what-ifs, whys, and sequels in my brain. I don't know if I was taught to imagine, or if I came out of the box like this, but interacting with cultural products has always involved playing with them in my mind, teasing them apart and reassembling pieces into something new. I did it with Hanna-Barbera's science fiction cartoons when I was in grade school, and I do it now with Farscape and the Invisibles. There's nothing about a particular medium that limits my level of engagement with a cultural product, forcing me into passivity. I create my experience.

Anecdote does not equal data, and thus my experience does not make the case for how all humans interact with cultural products. But I can't accept that unillustrated fiction always forces a consumer to be more engaged with the text, to think more, because they have to imagine a Fabio look-alike in their Harlequin romance novel rather than see a representation. I can't accept that Sweet Valley High or Babysitter's Club teen fluff fiction is automatically superior to Sandman just because there are no pictures of the insufferably perfect heroines.

I'm willing to play nice with the Judge-man, though. I would never argue that unillustrated fiction is without value, so how about this revision?

A reader of unillustrated fiction is often pushed to complete the work in his or her mind; the reader of a comic book or the viewer of a movie may be able to sit back and rely solely on what's given by the creator of the work. That is why kids lose a lot when they don't read fiction, even when the movies and TV that they watch are aesthetically superior.

Please note that it also takes care of the "his" problem in the original quote, since women do in fact read books thankyouverymuch. Really. I did it just yesterday, and I will do it again tomorrow. Just watch me!

When we enter into a fictional world, or let the fictional world enter into our imaginations, we do not "willingly suspend our disbelief." ...we cannot willingly decide to believe or disbelieve anything... When engaging with fiction we do not suspend a critical faculty, but rather exercise a creative faculty. We do not actively suspend disbelief - we actively create belief. As we learn to enter into fictional spaces (and I do believe this is something that we have to learn and that requires skills we must practice and develop) we desire more and more to experience the new space more fully... To do this we can focus our attention on the enveloping world and use our creative faculties to reinforce the reality of the experience, rather than to question it.

-Sarah E. Worth, "The Paradox of Real Response to Neo-Fiction." The Matrix and Philosophy: The Movie and the Reality. Ed. William Irwin. Open Court Press. 2002.

SaveFarscape News : Congratulations Scapers - You did it!

What I have learned from watching Seasons 1-3 of the X-Files in as many weeks:

1. If you are dedicated to bringing government misdeeds to the public's attention, the only rational response to an international cover-up of an intergalactic conspiracy is to immediately proceed to your friendly locally owned copy shop, make 10,000 copies of any evidence you uncover, and mail it to all of your friends. Note: this response rules out the strategy of keeping only one copy of the evidence in your motel room while you are away.
2. Corollary: If you are a hacker and you get into a Defense Department top secret file, please do not put "copy protection" on the "DAT tape" so that no one can make additional copies.
3. Light bulbs are an incredibly scarce and valuable resource, so they must be used as little as possible.
4. Good scriptwriting in the third season of a series is not about having your female character lapse into unprovoked and stilted speeches reflecting her philosophy from the pilot episode.
5. Even if you are an innocent victim of a murderous alien who can switch genders, all is not lost. You can later show up as a murderous agent of the government, with no links whatsoever to your prior identity.
6. When you notice a situation in which a person's life depends on your action and you must exit your car and run somewhere to save that person, it is vital to spend time closing your car door before proceeding to offer assistance.
7. Mulder was so in love with Scully, and anyone who argues otherwise is a damn liar. Note: Something may have happened in the superfluous seasons (7 and above) that I don't know about, but I reject those seasons as non-canon.

Stay tuned for my lessons from Seasons 4-6, in which we learn that vaccines cure diseases.

I told E. a while ago that *someone* who really loved me would buy me the Firefly boxed set for christmas. Guess what, it's me! Hurray for pre-ordering.

Reading: Could not finish The System. I would have quit my job in despair. So it's How the Irish Saved Civilization, which is delightfully well written and tends to make me laugh quietly on the bus every few pages. And now I know much more about Rome. And I have realized that I'm just not all that Irish. Really. I'm just too much of a coward and an anti-hedonist. Plus, going into battle *naked*? You could get *hurt*!

Listening: Pete Yorn, The Ukrainians, Cake, Nick Cave, and a few other things that make me feel so alternative...but we all know I sing along to Belinda Carlisle's "Mad About You" when I hear it in the grocery store.

Watching: Agni Varsha was the last movie, I think. I watched the entire thing without realizing that the female lead (Sonali Kulkarni as Nittilai) was also Pooja in Dil Chahta Hai, which I loved loved loved. Agni Varsha struck me as extremely Shakespearian, and I'm just barely educated enough that I said "Aha!" when I saw this on IMDB: "The story is derived from the myth of Yavakri, which is a part of the great Indian epic, the Mahabharata."

I'm also plowing through reruns of Cybill as fast as the chick channel can air them. I don't know why I find sitcoms so reassuring. They are not Shakespearian at all. Shakespearian and reassuring are opposites, though, so maybe that helps explain it.

Ford is running a television commercial in which this fish-looking white guy in a dress shirt and suspenders "raves" about his lifelong love affair with the Mustang. I say "raves" because there isn't a scrap of actual emotion displayed during the ad. Who's going to buy a car based on lack of affect? Or suspenders?

They cancelled Farscape.

I quit. No more liking anything.