Update from the Desk

Working weekend.  I'd sigh, but I have to admit that it's pretty cool to see things get marked off my list.  Moreover, I have to remind myself that these weekend "chores" are the result of some pretty darned cosmically-cool opportunities that came my way and it ill-behooves me to whine about good fortune.  So buck up, sunshine.

What had me chained to my desk this weekend?  Mostly, I've been turning a stack of notes and vague ideas into a coherent presentation for the upcoming PCA-South conference which is scheduled for the beginning of October.  I'm fortunate that the conference coincides with my fall break, but getting this paper ready whilst juggling the responsibilities of five good-sized classes along with some other tasks has not been easy and (let's admit it) a few plates have dropped.  The draft isn't quite finished yet - I have about four pages to go - but the hard stuff is done.  I've covered the basics of feng shui (the link isn't one of my sources, but what the heck), the difference between manga  and anime, some of the conventions of anime (not to give too much away, but look for the cherry blossoms!) and discussed why "cartoon" isn't a dirty word.  I've been creating the bibliography and the accompanying Powerpoint as I went along, so once the draft is complete, revising should be fairly simple.  I have no idea if this project will go beyond the conference, but if it does, I don't have to re-create all the initial research this way.  Hopefully, I'll finish the draft by tomorrow night and walk away from it for a few days before working on revisions.

Also, FryDaddy and I had a chance to be part of the Great Buffy Rewatch's super-special "Once More, with Feeling" episode.  It was VERY last minute and I hope our part is entertaining, because - well, let's just say we really can't rely on super-slick production values.  Tune in to Week 39 of the Rewatch Tuesday night when it becomes available - you get to see us dance!  It may be better than Angel's dancing in Season 1, but then again, there's a reason I don't write about us going out dancing.

You make the call!

Television and Work

Or maybe that should be "television AS work"!  Sounds a bit strange, perhaps, but after hearing about what's going on, you might agree with me.

First up, I'm due to hand in my solo write-up for the ongoing Buffy Rewatch project that's being going on all year.  I'm in charge of three mid-Season 6 episodes which focus on Willow and her downward spiral.  I think the post is nearly ready to send off - it'll be a few weeks before it's published and it's a spot on my plate that I'll be glad to have cleared for other projects.  (It's a crowded plate these days!)  Actually, the post is scheduled to be published when I'll be out of town in New Orleans at the annual conference of the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association in the South.  Which brings me to . . .

Second, I'm working on my presentation for the PCA-South conference.  The paper explores the links between Watanabe's Cowboy Bebop and Whedon's Firefly.  I've gone from the stage of "It's a cool idea, but is there enough here to write about?" to the stage of "Gaak! I've got too much to possibly narrow it down to my time limit!  What do I do?"  I guess that's good, but I have to tell you - work, work, work!  (In fact, I have three more books to add into the research draft tonight before I can comfortably consider myself as being done for the day.)

Third, working on these two projects (in addition to everything associated with the job I get paid to do) means making some choices.  One of those choices involved NOT attending the 6th annual "Can't Stop the Serenity" event held by the Charlotte Browncoats today.  While I'm sure that was the right decision - I was able to both edit the blog post and start putting quotes and research in the proper places in my presentation outline - it was not an easy decision.  I like that event so much - it gives me a chance to hang out with like-minded people who are Whedon fans and at the same time, raise some coin for good causes, including Equality Now.  Not to mention, seeing Serenity on the big screen with a bunch of Browncoats is always a good time.

Sigh.  Being a grown up is sometimes not the whirligig of fun I thought it would be back when I was nine.  Still - having these opportunities to write and present and be heard and advance the field of credible academic study of quality television in general and Whedon in particular is not to be sneezed at.

By the way - I watched Sarah Michelle Gellar's return to the small screen with the premiere of Ringer this week.  Quite promising, I'd say.  I detached my brain a little (Identical twins?  And both with dark secrets?  Really?) and had a rollicking good time.  And I'll admit, I didn't see the final twist coming, which is what should provide the show with its oomph and staying power.  Let's see what the ratings say over the next few weeks, but give it a try.

Back to the books!

Ten Years Out . . .

It's inescapable.  Ten years ago on this day, September 11 stopped being the day between the tenth and the twelfth and instead became a synonym for catastrophic.  All through this past week, just about anywhere you looked were reminders, memorials, and loops of footage of dust-covered, shell-shocked people wandering the streets of New York.


I don't like it.  Not one teensy bit.


I have my own ways of remembering that day.  I re-read the story of the first official victim of that day, at least in terms of death certificates issued.  Father Mychal Judge's story is inspiring, not for his death, but for his life.  There is much in his life to instruct those of us left here on Earth.


In the days immediately following that horrible September morn, my country changed.  And in the ten years since, we've changed more.  And in many ways, I dislike what I see.  We've become fragmented and suspicious.  It's harder to simply disagree with the opinions held by another - instead, we rush to demonize that other person as hopelessly naive at best and downright evil at worst.  We talk, often shrilly, but listen very little.  We're losing ourselves.


I think memorials are a fine thing.  It helps us psychologically to have a physical place to leave flowers and notes and teddy bears and combat boots.  But at the end of the day, memorials are still only places.  By all means, lay a wreath.  But also resolve to work to change the world.  


Abraham Lincoln got this right at the Gettysburg battlefield when he stated that dedicating part of the battlefield was "altogether fitting and proper" but "in a larger sense we cannot dedicate - we cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow this ground" for that has already been done by those who struggled there.  Rather, President Lincoln challenged his audience "to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on."  The task was to "highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom . . ." 

Mind you, this is much harder than making pretty speeches and flying the flag.  But it must be done.  For if we permit our hearts to harden to amber and use these days and places to only entrench our own dark fears, we dishonor our heritage.  America is a grand experiment in democracy and, for the most part, we've taken that ball and had a good run with it.  However, success in experiments is rarely total.  We've had setbacks and shameful chapters in our collective history and to refuse to acknowledge that is to willfully remain blind.  We're the home of the representative republic and rugged individualism.  We're the birthplace of the interchangeable part and the assembly line.  We invented powered flight and the computer chip.  Those are American footprints on the moon and we rounded up our own citizens and housed them in camps during World War 2 because we feared almond-shaped eyes.  We were the last industrialized country to abolish slavery and we turned attack dogs loose on citizens who dared to vote.  We're Walt Whitman and Bull Connor.  We're Hetty Green and Jane Addams.  We're robber barons and Labor Day.

It's easy to be fearful and it's hard to be brave, but the ability is in all of us.  So today, don't just fly the flag.  Live the best values it represents.

Visual Delights!

This weekend is one of those lovely crossroads - FryDaddy and I have both reached stopping places on our respective writing projects and, while the next one for both of us is gesturing frantically from the wings, we made a conscious decision to spend the long Labor Day weekend resolutely not working.  As experience (that harshest of professors who refuses to grade on a curve) has taught me again and again, taking time off to breathe is necessary to produce quality work.  Just going and going and going results in motion, but not usually of the forward-reaching kind.  So we've spent a chunk of time watching things that we don't intend to turn into articles, presentations, or chapters.

It's been lovely.

First up, I worked to get caught up on Season 4 of Breaking Bad.  I'm still not caught up on past seasons, but that'll come.  Seriously, if you're not watching this, you ought to be.  At least, you ought to be if you enjoy character-driven drama, seeing the effects of hubris, and flat-out gorgeous cinematography.  The look is lush and the story has that sense of impending doom - bad things are coming, and they were set in motion by conscious choices.  You can build the levee, but it won't hold back the tide forever.  What's even worse is that the high water mark from this storm is likely to be so high you don't even see the mark, for the whole house is underwater.

We also treated ourselves to a popcorn matinee.  (Yeah, the "eat healthy" plan took a hike for the afternoon.  Good for it.)  We decided on Apollo 18, which I will heartily recommend.  It's a member of the "found footage" genre, but don't make the mistake of thinking it's "Blair Witch in Space."  The production values are much, much higher and the story is a keeper for anyone who enjoys a slow burn.  (Blair Witch made me jump, but also irritated me - just follow the river, people!  It'll lead to some sort of settlement.  Always.)  By the way, Apollo 18 is not a film for the "whiz-bang-blow-'em-up" crowd.  I was impressed with the film, which I predict will become a cult classic, despite a plot hole or two.  The tricks with the film stock, the marketing ploy with the website given at the end of the film and the reminder that Watergate did indeed change everything about how we view our own government - all of these are reasons the see the film on the big screen.  Having just read Mary Roach's Packing for Mars, which answers many of those questions you may have had about space travel, but never felt comfortable asking (How do you test a space toilet?  How do you shower in zero-g?), the film has a different level.  Astronauts are carefully vetted for psychological stability as well as desirable mission skills.  It's pretty cramped up there and the flip side is that there's an awful lot of nothin' up there, too.  Going bibbledy isn't an option.

I've read some rather vicious criticism of the film, which leads me to my next point.  No one is going to like everything.  However, if your main complaint is that the film takes too long and isn't scary enough, try watching something that wasn't edited together with smash cuts.  Further, if you want a film where the astronauts are slashed apart and their innards are floating in space (1) this isn't the film for you and (2) exactly what's wrong with you?  Disclaimer:  I count myself in the "I don't like everything" category.  For example, I despise slasher films.  I find them to be uncreative, shocking-just-to-shock, and generally very unkind to women.  Some people like that sort of thing.  I try not to leave sharp objects around such individuals.

Also, one of the actors in Apollo 18 plays one of the leads in Alphas, a SyFy series about super-powered (read: mutant) beings.  It has some promise - there are some very interesting characters and anything that brings the amazingly under-rated David Strathairn to television is worth a look.  The fact that it also gives Ryan Cartwright a role that will make your jaw drop to the point of forgetting his very entertaining turn on Bones is simply a bonus.

Work beckons and a stack of books on anime yearns to be gutted for a short presentation on Cowboy Bebop in about a month, but this was the right call for this weekend!

Irons in the Fire!

School has started back - the first week was crazybusy, but with fairly easy-to-manage stuff when viewed individually.  The trick is that the stuff didn't come individually, but rather attacked in battalions, which made keeping the importance of various things in perspective a bit of a trick.  (Forced perspective, perhaps?)  Too many irons in the fire . . .

My nose continues to heal from the recent sinus surgery - I spent Friday morning at the doctor's office discovering just how many different suction tools can be utilized to clear out the *ahem* "debris."  I'll have another couple of these appointments for Dr. Nostrildamus to check on his work and my healing.  (I must say, it wasn't something that exactly hurt, but it sure felt weird, even after the "yummy numby" stuff, which is applied to strips of gauze which are then gently stuffed up each nostril and then left to [no kidding] "marinate.")

The blog post I co-wrote with FryDaddy was published as part of the ongoing Buffy Rewatch - check that out here.  I'll have another one in about a month, but this one was specially special, as it concerned the Season Five episode "The Body," which has always packed such an emotional punch for me.

I've spent the last few days fine-tuning my chapter for an upcoming Whedon project which is to be published by Syracuse University Press, who has some very definite ideas about citation style and formatting madness.  I think it's done, but I'm taking one more look at it tomorrow before I send it off to the editors.  So many little things to fix (along with the big one of "switch all of the internal cites and references to Chicago author-date style" which made me go, "Huh?"), it wouldn't surprise me if something slipped by and I want to avoid that if I can.  I'll own my mistakes, but I'd rather they not be the boneheaded kind.

FryDaddy and I are back to our commuter marriage, since classes have also started for him.  In a way, it was fortunate that we both had writing projects this weekend - he's drafting a chapter dealing with Farscape as a allegory for the Cold War - but I'm already looking forward to next weekend, which we have ruled off as a "we're married; let's act like it" weekend.  Between the doctor's delicate anteater-crossed-with-an-Electrolux procedure and the writing, we didn't have much time to enjoy each other this weekend, and we got spoiled over the summer.

Well, this too shall pass.

Post surgery, I'm discovering that I don't have to hack and cough to clear the clutter from my throat, which means I can push myself with exercise more.  Still not training for any marathons, but it feels good to stretch.  As a reward for hitting the gym today, my toenails are now a gleaming shade of dark, dark purple.  Think black and you'd not be far wrong.

It's all about the small rewards.  And surely I deserve one for (a) not biting the doctor, (b) getting a publishing project another step towards completion, and/or (c) keeping my sense of humor during the first week of the semester, among other alphabetized items.

And I like dark purple.  And the glow from the fire with all those irons in it is actually quite pretty.

Nosey About Surgery

I try to post here every week, but I'm a bit behind due to some recent surgery.  I'm well on the way to recovery now and thought I should probably update.  Be warned - while none of the following content is exactly graphic, there's a certain amount of ewwww!  That's simply to be expected with Things Surgical, so let's be grown-ups about it.

The surgery itself was considered routine, but let's face it.  Thanks to amazing advances in medical technology, "routine" is used to describe heart bypass surgery.  It is a mistake to confuse "routine" with "no problem."  Even if the procedure has been done to the point of boredom by the surgical team, your body is still undergoing assault and trauma and you're not likely to feel that great afterward.  In my case, I was dealing with two separate and distinct procedures involving two doctors (no, there was no volume discount on the billing, but at least we could double up and not do this twice).  First, Dr. Gullet, my throat specialist, would go into my trachea with a tiny li'l light and a tiny li'l camera and a tiny li'l laser to cut a star pattern in the scar tissue in my windpipe.  Then he'd gently spread the cut tissue and laser away as much excess as possible, thereby widening the airway.  Scar tissue always comes back - the goal is to (pardon the pun) stretch out the time between surgeries through medication, exercise, and diet.  But I'll keep seeing him always.

Now that's the "routine" part to me.  The surgery involves general anesthesia, but it's short - usually less than an hour.  And it's miles better than it would have been say, thirty years ago when the solution was a tracheotomy and I'd have been breathing through a tube forever.

So let's wave a thankful goodbye to Dr. Gullet and let him go off and do other work on vocal disorders.  Next up to the plate, we have Dr. Nostrildamus, whose specialty is nose stuff.  This is the guy who was going to break and reset the deviated septum that had slowly smushed half my sinuses, then painstakingly rebuild my mutant sinuses which had openings that needed to be closed and closures that needed to be opened.  He would be doing very delicate work from inside the nose, just under the eye sockets.  This was going to take time.

And it did.  Both procedures took approximately five hours. We started a bit later than expected - operating rooms are booked, but things sometimes happen and I don't want anybody pounding on the door and rushing my docs, so we have to be patient while being a patient.  Still - that whole "fasting after midnight" thing is easier when you have to be at the day hospital at 6 am than when it's later.

The surgeries went well - or so I'm told.  As with all good anesthesia, it came with amnesia.  Don't remember a thing.  I could very well have declaimed on literary theory in the recovery room or cussed like a longshoreman on leave - I don't know and they (wisely) won't tell.

But - ow.

I've never had "big" surgery before.  I've never had to stay overnight in the hospital before.  I come from very Calvinist stock and, provided you don't see bone, you simply soldier on.  We were having None Of That.  I was so drugged, hungry, and overall puny that my hands were shaking eating my post-operative applesauce. My feet seemed to belong to someone else entirely for all the good I was having in moving them.

So this is the romantic part.  If you're going to be sick and puny and whiny with pain, it's absolutely marvelous to have someone else there with you.  FryDaddy and I have reached a new level of intimacy that has nothing to do with Victoria's Secret and everything to do with those vows we took more than a year ago.  Face it, my health affects him and his affects me.  So we have to be able to talk about all sorts of things that polite company doesn't discuss and we have to be able to do it without averting our eyes or blushing too much.  (This blog is for public consumption, so let's just say this - anesthesia takes a while to wear off and pain medication has some unusual effects on other parts of the body.  As the book may tell us, everybody poops, but things change after surgery for a few days.)

My nose had "discharge" for two days after the surgery and it was heavy enough to be issued a "nasal dressing" which is a fancy way of describing a thingamabob that straps over your ears and runs under your nose to hold a gauze pad in place so you don't constantly dab at your healing schnozz.  (Yes, the name of the device is real.)  Yes, you look ridiculous.  No, the nurses won't loan you a Sharpie to draw a mustache on the gauze.  It's hard to sleep in, too.  As the nose heals, there is a surprising amount of crusty blood and gunk.  You can't breathe all that well, although stents have been inserted in your nose to help with that.  You just have to tough it out and it'll take longer than you think.  If you have good doctors - they ARE Board-certified, right? - you don't even have black eyes after all of this, but don't think that you're okay.  You're not.  I've been running on about half-throttle for the last few days (due some to the lack of sleep and some to the lack of good breathing and some to the drugs - there was infection in those sinuses) and that's pretty much typical.

But yesterday I had the stents taken out.  (The packing in the sinuses stays for about another week.)  Easy-peasy.  Snip, snip and out come the stitches then gentle pressure and gravity remove the stents which OH, MY GOD, THOSE THINGS ARE HUGE!  AND THEY WERE IN MY NOSE?!? WHAT'S GOING ON HERE??  Yes, I asked to keep one.  I washed it carefully to make it pretty before I posted it here.  The almond is only provided for scale - please don't put either of these up your nose yourself.

Two other asides in this lengthy post - one, when taking out the stents, Dr. Nostrildamus wore one of those Norman Rockwell headbands with the metal disk thing.  I suppose it's intended to reflect light up into the nose, but maybe he's a worshiper of the Egyptian sun god Ra.  Having those stents out feels so good that I don't really care.  Also, that doctor's office has a lady on staff who - seriously - pushes a little treat cart around the the waiting room to provide patients with coffee, candy, and granola bars.  Amazing.  Still plenty of healing to do, but the breathing is already improved.

And that's what I did on my summer vacation.

I Will Not Bite My Nails . . .

Nail-biting is a bad habit and usually done as an outward sign of anxiety.  I don't usually engage in it, but lately - well, who could really blame me?  After all, among the things that are on my squirrelly little mind these days . . .

1. Congress is behaving like a large group of spoiled children.  Not wanting to make hard decisions that might cost them votes (oh, no!), they elevated foot-dragging to a near art form, reluctantly raised the debt ceiling (sort of) and then skedaddled from D.C. as quickly as possible to pout in their home states, which led to . . .
2. The FAA furlough mess.  Upwards of 70,000 people were facing furloughs (way to go with that job creation stuff!) because the two houses of Congress couldn't decide how to/whether rural airports should be subsidized by tickets purchased at much larger hub airports.  Sure, that wasn't the only issue.  There was a big fuss about how to get around a labor ruling that would make it easier for airport employees to unionize.  (Let's be clear on that one.  The new rule would require a simple majority of the votes cast to be in favor of unionization.  The old rule would require a simple majority of everyone who's eligible to vote to cast votes in favor, regardless of how few/many actually show up to vote.  We don't run Presidential elections that way.)
3. Then Standard and Poor's downgrades the credit rating of the United States and investors begin to act like Chicken Little.  These are the same jackwagons, by the way, who kept many investment banks (Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns among them) at "gold" ratings the banks did not deserve as the banks were in the middle of free fall.  So I'm not sure how much weight I want to give this development, but it's still a Something That Must Be Dealt With.
4. On more local news, classes begin next week and, while I've spent my days on the Hamster Wheel of Paperwork, it seems that there is so very much to get done so that the first day is smooth.
5. I have surgery scheduled in a few days and, minor though it is, I'll admit to being a bit jumpy at the prospect of spending the night in the hospital.  FryDaddy is doing  his best (which is quite good) to reassure me that all will be well, but I'm still nervous and want this to be done with.
6. I have a writing project due in less than a month that involves learning and applying the Chicago style of citation, about which I know exactly nothing aside from the fact that I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with adding commas to deep dish pizza.
7. All of which adds up to -- diet? What diet?  Bring on the fried chicken and pimento cheese and just back off so no one needs to get hurt, Drake!

As far as I'm concerned, there's plenty there to cause nail-biting.  So then my job becomes to search for solutions.

Well, I can't do much about the first three.  Write my representatives, be polite, be persistent and know that America is large enough to withstand any number of idiocies.  (But they do seem to be grouping, don't they?) I try to keep in mind that people -- everybody -- really are doing the best they can with what they have, but some days, that's a harder point of view to maintain than others.

As for #4, who am I kidding?  The first day will be smooth, despite the fact that there will be things that are not quite done.  It'll work.

As for #5, I've got some of the best surgeons in the Southeast, if not the country.  We're talking about relatively minor procedures; I'm just a teensy bit of a wuss about being knocked out and out of control as my insides are being reshaped.  (Although the prospect of performing sinus and throat surgery on myself should make me quake with a totally different kind of fear, don't you think?)

As for #6, I'll learn.  Fast.

And #7 - well, that's a battle to be picked another day.

I've been told that there are some days that you just do your level best to get through without screaming at people.  Come home, pet your animals, wash your face, say your prayers, and go to bed.

And I realize that in life, sometimes you give the advice and sometimes you take it.