andrew_jorgensen

So, are we meeting tomorrow or what?

I have promised myself that I will write a real, substantial, LJ entry before Friday. It will pull no punches and speak truth to power. It will change your life, give you renewed purpose, and blow the lid off the military-hiphopdustrial complex.

In the meantime, please excuse the following blather.

Item the first: should I ever be in the mood to scare my cats, I now know exactly what to do. I just need to get them on edge by carting them off to the vets for some yearly boosters, then bring them home, let them get snug and warm and comfortable, almost to the point where they trust me again, then slip on my headphones and dance (if one can call a semi-epileptic crossbreed between the Watusi and a torn anterior cruciate ligament "dancing") around the kitchen to O{+>'s "Billy Jack Bitch."

Item the second: it crosses my mind that I'd like to see whether or not my spawn, my scion, the sole heir to all my worldly widely webly possessions, atpotch will be able to get down to London around the weekend of the 22nd. I assume that my meeting londonkds and yabyumpan is, as we say in O{+> speak, a 4gone conclusion. But I would be willing to expend an especial effort to meet the one I sired; though, obviously, it would be all the more convenient if I could get him to be the one who goes through all the hassle of UK travel.

Item the third: it's amazing how a not-that-flattering picture can, with the judicious application of just a little Photoshopping, be turned into an absolute nightmare of blotchiness and bignosiness. Errr, I mean, GIP.

I don't know whether there's any particular use for new, non-intuitive ways of presenting internet search results, but this one is just so pretty. KartOO is a Flash system which presents its findings as a map. For example, I ran my standard egotism-googlism, "d'Herblay buffy," and came up with ( this honkin' big graphic. )

It's like a little continent populated by my ATPo writings! In the center, we have the major city of Voy, bounded by the twin mountains of atpobtvs and vampire. Down to the south, we have another metropolis, ATPoBtVS itself (nowhere near the mountain of the same name, confusing me much in the same way that Vancouver's separation from Vancouver Island is befuddling). My inclusion in Derik Badman's bibliography of buffyology accounts for the presence of a largish city at madkinbeard.com and the (to reflect how laughable my inclusion among the academics really is) much smaller town of slayage.tv. buffyannotater and fresne have founded cities as well, and JBone's tournaments populate small towns at Geocities and Angelfire. And off to the west, perhaps not even on the continent -- like a ghost town, abandoned by its citizens, left to decay among the tumbleweeds -- is my livejournal.

Of course, there are invaders. Hermit.org and Knightwriter.org have nothing to do with me, but record the existence of a zine written by "Kira d'Herblay," no relation. Also, www.litob.com (connected by railroad to lifeamgood) is all about some French priest or something.

Burning with something like a need for eminent domain, I attempted to repel these interlopers. My efforts ( were not totally successful. )

While I did manage to get rid of Kira, this inscrutable Jesuit remains poised off the north coast. Who knows what www.bebesitting.com is; it surely is alien to my realm. And we have our first appearance of religious cultism, a whole outpost of the Rosicrucians. Unfortunately I have no more excuse than Rhode Island: I invited them in.

I also, on this map, have highlighted the paths joining various populations in my realm running through atpobtvs. (That you can get here from there should be no indication that you'd want to: these paths go mostly through archives anyway.)

So, anyway, useless but neat. Kind of like me!

In other Flash news, Pac-Man!! And, just for rahael, I know you wanted this earlier, but here it is, better late than never.

I'd like to issue warm welcomes to all the spawn! One of the most highly anticipated debuts comes from TCH, who has chosen the name of atpotch. Then, just when I thought it couldn't get any better, here's Rob, as buffyannotater! And now we're some sort of atpobtvsats refugee community. Maybe it's time to bring in shiver (bonibaru) and Rowan (rowanswhimsy) and Nos (bloodypoetry). I'm sure there are others out there who would like to forget that they used to hang out in one of the darker corners of the internet, but no longer can they ignore their pasts! We're taking over, and we'll be toting up what is owed us.

That's the most I think you'll ever see me use the <lj user=> tag. I am reluctant to because most people here have LJ names that are different from their board names. I'm confused most days over what I should call Masq, but masqthephlsphr isn't one of my options: I'm still not completely sure that isn't pronounced "Masq the Falsifier." (Strangely, of the two people on my friends list who have their pure unadulterated board name as an LJ name, one is someone I automatically think of under another, more real name.) Anyway, I'll be calling TCH "TCH" and Rob "Rob." I'm already having trouble parsing the names. buffyannotater starts off for me with "buff," because Rob's a stud; but he's also the ultimate couch potato, so "tater" leaps right out. I don't know what "yanno" means -- maybe it's some sort of anime thing. atpotch just won't break down at all for me; I just end up rhyming it with "crotch." All this is pretty rich coming from someone who sometimes wishes he had chosen the pseudonym "dapostrophecapitalherblay."

In any case, despite some unfelicitous nomenclature, we have entered a new, exciting and happy time here in LJ land. I love being surrounded by friends! And to maintain that feeling, I hope they don't read this!

Happy Independence Day to that small fraction of my small readership that celebrates it. I'm still not sure why the British don't take the day off to shoot off some fireworks and yell, "We're right rid of those bloody wankers!" (In my mind, all British people talk exactly like Spike in lackluster fanfic.) The Canadians could all go cook outdoors and raise a toast to not being in an even larger country.

Anyway, I'm not feeling particularly independent. While my immediate family (those providing approximately 50% of my genetic material) has decamped from Cleveland for various locales, the 25% crew seems to be breathing down my neck. My prodigal uncle is visiting my grandmother. I did not meet this uncle until my Grandfather's funeral, when I was twenty-five; we didn't really hit it off. Now, I don't really get along with very many among my extended family, but at least I know they're family. I figure that if you skip the first quarter-century of my life, I'm not obligated by "family" to sit around and pretend that you're not one of the most boring people ever. But all of this is really just an excuse to avoid my Grandmother's cooking. (You know, when you come right down to it, I'm just a little tiny ball of resentment and bitterness.)

So I'm considering escaping. Going for a long drive. Getting away from it all. Hey, Scroll! Doing anything for lunch tomorrow?

In the meantime, I'm going to celebrate this July 4th by catching X Men 2 at the local dollar theater (all shows before 6 Pm 50 cents!); reading some more Goblet of Fire; maybe, just maybe, seeing a firework or two; and finishing it all off with my annually planned but rarely executed viewing of 1776. I've got an hour before X Men.

I'd like to thank everyone who responded to Rah's posting about my grandmother's trip to the hospital. Rah offered to block comments on it, as I have mixed feelings about the whole personal revelation thing and might have been made uncomfortable by expressions of sympathy, but I demurred.

My grandmother is now out of the hospital and home doing fine. She had a bout of congestive heart failure, but nothing she's not used to at this point. She was treated and then she was streeted (I occasionally tune into ER) and she has promised to not go back in the next ten days. Not for her sake, but because this is Rah's vacation, and she didn't sign up for trips to the ICU -- or to the post office or storage facilities, either, but that's my mom's fault. She has signed on for dim sum, which we will be henceforth pursuing. (And I've promised her coffee -- not decent coffee, though, just coffee, so don't be surprised when she starts complaining about American coffee. This always brings out the jingoist in me: I'm surprised that we don't have more conversations along the lines of "I can't find a good cup of coffee over here." "Yeah, well, if it wasn't for that coffee, you'd be speaking German." "Japanese, more likely. Can we just go to Starbucks, already?") I love me some dim sum! Also, some Rah!

Meanwhile, on the board, I'd like to thank cjl, KdS, Earl Allison, Malandanza, BMF, shadowkat, and a cast of thousands for initiating a Golden Age of S7-bashing! If by any chance sophist drops by here, I'd just like to say that the question is not whether seasons one through six contained continuity errors; the question is whether season seven contained continuity.

In honor of the Bay Area meet (at which, to correct the popular misapprehension, I did not guzzle 16 sample beers, but merely tasted 4 -- plus a rather large glass that was mine alone . . . and a little bit of wine, because how often do you sit with a vintner?).

Over at ATPo, there's a discussion about a possible season 5 scenario wherein Connor retains the powers he has as the product of a mystical union between two vampires, but not his memories of his time in LA, and then returns to AI seeking his true identity. Vash the Stampeder and Masq have independently arrived at the same basic plot (I'm claiming that I thought of a similar plot, but because I never wrote up my thoughts on "Home" like an interesting LJer and instead blathered witlessly about my icon, I can't prove this and you can safely ignore my bandwagon-jumping). While I was typing up a different scenario, one that is unfortunately more final, Vash posted another idea (wherein Connor just replaced another young man, who is going to want to get back to his family and out this imposter). I don't wish to discuss this scenario, or, really, the body of the post or anything about the earlier thread. I want to concentrate on one tiny little parenthetical. Vash writes, "Also, if Connor still possesses his powers (which I believe he does) [ . . . ]"

Less than 48 hours since we got a glimpse of new Connor in which his actions were basically passing the biscuits, and already people had beliefs as to what his powers are? It's not as if we've seen him leap over tall buildings in a single bound; there is not only no evidence with which to assess Connor's current powers, there haven't been any hints! And yet people are starting to believe things about him? I find this hard to comprehend.

Vash seems like a reasonable person, so I doubt he holds this belief so dearly as to declare a crusade against the infidels, but I have seen on the board at least several vicious debates between posters who knew in their hearts with absolute conviction that after Spike had been vamped, he went back to the party shown in "Fool For Love" and killed the people who had made fun of him (these posters swore he did it with a railroad spike, those providing the story Giles repeats in "School Hard"), posters who firmly believed that it was all part of Spike's blustery self-created mythos, and posters who repeated again and again that no evidence existed either way.

Ok, two points don't provide a stable foundation for a structured argument, but I wonder about this sort of belief. I think what Vash is saying is that he would, for dramatic reasons, prefer that Connor retain his powers (insofar as it would mean Kartheiser would return to the show, I share this preference). It makes for an interesting story, it brings a charismatic character back, and it dulls the knife that "Home" stuck in our hearts. By extension, I guess, this means that the people who argued that Spike went back and slaughtered the partygoers would somehow prefer the gruesome deaths of a whole bunch of innocent people to their survival. (In their defense, it should be pointed out that the partygoers were upper-class British twits, so those who believe Spike killed them can be excused. Ok, I should add that they were fictional upper-class British twits, so it's not like bad boy Spike fans are all deeply disturbed bloodthirsty homicidal maniacs. On a related note, I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome deadsoul820 to my friends list!) Indeed this sort of strongly held preference supports a hell of a lot of LiveJournals, as it is (as Masq is discovering) the root of fanfickery. I am sure that there exist fanfics in which Spike does go back and cold-bloodedly exact revenge on the people who belittled his poetry. (I am also sure that there exist fanfics in which Spike engages each and every one of them in hot sex, but that's another discussion.)

How much does preference affect belief? Many people of the Book, at least on paper, seem to prefer a world with some sort of ultimate meaning, or where mercy is the ruling consideration, to one without meaning, without mercy; I can't blame them. I, on the other hand, call myself a skeptic, an agnostic, and an atheist. (These are overlapping but not identical categories: I am a skeptic because I do not like to accept notions until I believe that someone trustworthy has empirically investigated and verified them; I am an agnostic because I believe that the existence of God is not verifiable through empirical investigation; I am an atheist because, when you come down to it, I just don't believe in higher powers.) I suppose I do prefer a universe where humans have to accept all responsibility for their actions. I wonder about Gnostics and their spiritual relatives, though. Do they really prefer to live in a world that has been corrupted, to live among a poor, deluded mass of humanity? I suppose they prefer to be the few specially enlightened ones. I can understand that -- it is admittedly similar to why I call myself a skeptic; it gives me a vantage point from which to look down on the poor deluded mass of humanity. Still, I wonder if while I'm sneering at those faces I'm really just looking into a mirror.

I don't suppose a fanfic theory of religious studies will get anywhere, but what is Talmudic scholarship but fanwanking the Torah? And some Biblical fanfics are of Halo award-quality. There's been Jesus/Mary Magdalen het; for those who like their 'ships twisted and angsty, like Wes/Lilah and CLex, Jesus/Judas has to be the greatest slash ever told.

[My sincere apologies to Vash, Masq, dead soul, Spike fans, Christians, Muslims, atheists, Gnostics, anyone who has ever believed anything, anyone who enjoys good writing and serious thought, and my mother.]