True Confessions . . .
"Lord, give me chastity, . . . but not yet." No, wait, that's not me -- that's St. Augustine. My "confessions" are of a much more pedestrian nature, I'm afraid. But here goes:
Apparently, I'm very slow to catch on to some things (the doctor who presided over my birth may not have been entirely wrong about the oxygen-deprived brain damage, after all).
Not just the usual social inter-action stuff -- I mean, I've always known that I pretty much suck at picking up on social cues, since all my attention and powers of observation seem to be permanently focused on a very narrow spectrum of human behavior (specifically, looking for signs that someone else is about to fly into a manic rage or display other not-entirely-sane behavior that might endanger me, so I can either get to the minimum safe distance before they blow, or, if necessary, try to diffuse or defuse the situation in advance). For instance, as an adult I've never been aware of any other human being expressing interest in me of a romantic or sexual nature (outside of the science fiction convention con-suite milieu, where the combination of a high blood alcohol level in my fellow con-goers and a low-cut costume on me sometimes leads to displays of interest that even I can pick up on; oh, and I have partial memories of some creepy and confusing comments from grown men when I was a very adult-looking 12-year-old, but I'm pretty much trying to repress those). Miss M and other RL friends tell me I'm just not picking up on a lot of stuff, and I have to take their word for it.
No, I'm talking about the areas in which I've always PRIDED myself on being an astute observer: TV shows, movies -- important stuff like that.
I'm ashamed to say that I only just put together the "MacGyver"-"Simpsons"-"Stargate: SG1" in-joke progression three days ago.
Since I was getting a REALLY late start on Tuesday, my TV was on when the noon-hour rolled around, and I clicked on "TVLand" to see what "MacGyver" episode was showing that day. It was in the middle of the opening credits of a middle-to-late-season-ish episode, and I found myself going "yummy!" when the clip of a long-haired MacGyver in a black tank-top flashed across the screen. (Well, it WAS the lunch hour, after all.)
Suddenly I could hear in my head the dialogue from the "Simpsons" episode where Marge's sisters Patty and Selma were temporarily split up by the nefarious efforts of Sideshow Bob to marry and murder one of them (I can never remember which one). When the sister who's dating Sideshow Bob comes home too late to watch "MacGyver" with her sister as was their invariable habit before then, I can hear the stay-at-home sister saying something like, "You missed a really good one: MacGyver wore a tank top."
So, then, I'm remembering all those times in episodes of "Stargate: SG1" when they referred to Col. O'Neill's love of taping and watching "The Simpsons", and I'm starting to feel like I should go to the window and see if the short schoolbus is waiting for me outside my apartment building.
I mean, maybe it's not intentional, or not entirely, since Richard Dean Anderson admits to loving "The Simpsons" and many of O'Neill's quirks were apparently his idea. Maybe I'm seeing connections and causal relationships where none exist -- maybe I'm just paranoid, and not really stupid. But when paranoia is the LESS embarassing explanation, something in my universe has gone awry.
Next evidence of my greatly-reduced-brain-power comes from Wednesday night, when -- after watching and taping the new "Angel" episode "In Harm's Way" -- I found myself hearing the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" holosuite character Vic Fontaine (James Darren) singing, "You're nobody 'til somebody loves you . . . so find yourself somebody to love" in my head, only I was changing it to "You're nobody 'til somebody hates you," in honor of Harmony. That tune is running through my head, along with pleasant memories of good Vic Fontaine-holosuite-related episodes of DS9, from Wednesday night on through this morning.
Not until this morning do I run through the entire episode of "It's Only a Paper Moon" (DS9 season 7), and finally get to Vic's words to Nog at the end, telling him how lucky he is to HAVE a real life to lead, no matter how scary and painful it might be at times (where you can get your leg shot off in a war and might die next time), how much Vic-the-holographic-character envies him that, and why, no matter how much he's enjoyed having Nog's company in a fantasy version of 1960's Las Vegas, he won't permit Nog to stay any longer or re-activate the holosuite program against Vic's will. Finally, at long last, I'm seeing the resemblance to what (several years after I last watched the DS9 episode) Spike sings to Buffy at the end of "Once More, With Feeling," when he's stopped her from dancing herself to death:
Life's not a song.
Life isn't bliss; life is just this: it's living.
You'll get along:
the pain that you feel, you only can heal by living.
You have to go on living, so one of us is living.
As I've noted elsewhere (in my paper for the UEA "Buffy" conference in 2002), Spike seems to me, in that brief song fragment, to be speaking for the whole BtVS television series, telling us, the fans and viewers, that ultimately we're the ones who have to do the living, because we're the only ones who can. Sooner or later, like Nog being evicted from the holosuite Las Vegas casino, when we're strong enough and sufficiently on the road to recovery, we have to leave the safe refuge provided by fantasy worlds where the patterns are easy to find and things almost always add up, and go back to unpredictable reality.
And now I'm thinking that maybe, instead of obsessing ad nauseum over possibly flimsy connections and parallels between TV shows enshrined forever in syndication or DVD, maybe -- just maybe -- I should listen to the content of those words, both spoken and sung, and do something about living in the real world for a bit. No matter how scary and painful it is (where people say things I don't understand and look at me in ways that make me feel ashamed and bad about myself -- sorry, I seem to have slipped back into 12-year-old mode for a minute there), it's real and alive, and maybe, MAYBE, someday I'll learn to value that.
Here endeth the ranting.
Apparently, I'm very slow to catch on to some things (the doctor who presided over my birth may not have been entirely wrong about the oxygen-deprived brain damage, after all).
Not just the usual social inter-action stuff -- I mean, I've always known that I pretty much suck at picking up on social cues, since all my attention and powers of observation seem to be permanently focused on a very narrow spectrum of human behavior (specifically, looking for signs that someone else is about to fly into a manic rage or display other not-entirely-sane behavior that might endanger me, so I can either get to the minimum safe distance before they blow, or, if necessary, try to diffuse or defuse the situation in advance). For instance, as an adult I've never been aware of any other human being expressing interest in me of a romantic or sexual nature (outside of the science fiction convention con-suite milieu, where the combination of a high blood alcohol level in my fellow con-goers and a low-cut costume on me sometimes leads to displays of interest that even I can pick up on; oh, and I have partial memories of some creepy and confusing comments from grown men when I was a very adult-looking 12-year-old, but I'm pretty much trying to repress those). Miss M and other RL friends tell me I'm just not picking up on a lot of stuff, and I have to take their word for it.
No, I'm talking about the areas in which I've always PRIDED myself on being an astute observer: TV shows, movies -- important stuff like that.
I'm ashamed to say that I only just put together the "MacGyver"-"Simpsons"-"Stargate: SG1" in-joke progression three days ago.
Since I was getting a REALLY late start on Tuesday, my TV was on when the noon-hour rolled around, and I clicked on "TVLand" to see what "MacGyver" episode was showing that day. It was in the middle of the opening credits of a middle-to-late-season-ish episode, and I found myself going "yummy!" when the clip of a long-haired MacGyver in a black tank-top flashed across the screen. (Well, it WAS the lunch hour, after all.)
Suddenly I could hear in my head the dialogue from the "Simpsons" episode where Marge's sisters Patty and Selma were temporarily split up by the nefarious efforts of Sideshow Bob to marry and murder one of them (I can never remember which one). When the sister who's dating Sideshow Bob comes home too late to watch "MacGyver" with her sister as was their invariable habit before then, I can hear the stay-at-home sister saying something like, "You missed a really good one: MacGyver wore a tank top."
So, then, I'm remembering all those times in episodes of "Stargate: SG1" when they referred to Col. O'Neill's love of taping and watching "The Simpsons", and I'm starting to feel like I should go to the window and see if the short schoolbus is waiting for me outside my apartment building.
I mean, maybe it's not intentional, or not entirely, since Richard Dean Anderson admits to loving "The Simpsons" and many of O'Neill's quirks were apparently his idea. Maybe I'm seeing connections and causal relationships where none exist -- maybe I'm just paranoid, and not really stupid. But when paranoia is the LESS embarassing explanation, something in my universe has gone awry.
Next evidence of my greatly-reduced-brain-power comes from Wednesday night, when -- after watching and taping the new "Angel" episode "In Harm's Way" -- I found myself hearing the "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" holosuite character Vic Fontaine (James Darren) singing, "You're nobody 'til somebody loves you . . . so find yourself somebody to love" in my head, only I was changing it to "You're nobody 'til somebody hates you," in honor of Harmony. That tune is running through my head, along with pleasant memories of good Vic Fontaine-holosuite-related episodes of DS9, from Wednesday night on through this morning.
Not until this morning do I run through the entire episode of "It's Only a Paper Moon" (DS9 season 7), and finally get to Vic's words to Nog at the end, telling him how lucky he is to HAVE a real life to lead, no matter how scary and painful it might be at times (where you can get your leg shot off in a war and might die next time), how much Vic-the-holographic-character envies him that, and why, no matter how much he's enjoyed having Nog's company in a fantasy version of 1960's Las Vegas, he won't permit Nog to stay any longer or re-activate the holosuite program against Vic's will. Finally, at long last, I'm seeing the resemblance to what (several years after I last watched the DS9 episode) Spike sings to Buffy at the end of "Once More, With Feeling," when he's stopped her from dancing herself to death:
Life's not a song.
Life isn't bliss; life is just this: it's living.
You'll get along:
the pain that you feel, you only can heal by living.
You have to go on living, so one of us is living.
As I've noted elsewhere (in my paper for the UEA "Buffy" conference in 2002), Spike seems to me, in that brief song fragment, to be speaking for the whole BtVS television series, telling us, the fans and viewers, that ultimately we're the ones who have to do the living, because we're the only ones who can. Sooner or later, like Nog being evicted from the holosuite Las Vegas casino, when we're strong enough and sufficiently on the road to recovery, we have to leave the safe refuge provided by fantasy worlds where the patterns are easy to find and things almost always add up, and go back to unpredictable reality.
And now I'm thinking that maybe, instead of obsessing ad nauseum over possibly flimsy connections and parallels between TV shows enshrined forever in syndication or DVD, maybe -- just maybe -- I should listen to the content of those words, both spoken and sung, and do something about living in the real world for a bit. No matter how scary and painful it is (where people say things I don't understand and look at me in ways that make me feel ashamed and bad about myself -- sorry, I seem to have slipped back into 12-year-old mode for a minute there), it's real and alive, and maybe, MAYBE, someday I'll learn to value that.
Here endeth the ranting.