Books

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

So I was busily using this keen LJ feature called “Memories” to categorize and quick-link all my LJ entries on movies, TV shows, writing, books, etc, etc, when I realized I haven’t written much about books. It’s not that I haven’t been reading them, I have–what else is there to do while you’re walking down the sidewalk in San Francisco?

I did get to the library and checked out some books, as I mentioned previously, mostly out of the juvenile reading section. This may be part of my summer fluff-mode thing. I’m just not up for serious movies, or adult reading.

I’ve been writing journal entries about what I’ve read, I just haven’t been writing them in my LJ. I think it’s because every time I’m moved to write about what I’m reading, I’m somewhere like deep in the forest hiking or up 30,000 feet in a plane. And then I’m too lazy to transcribe what I’ve written long hand onto the computer. Books I read and wrote about elsewhere: “The Fancy Dancer” by Patricia Nell Warren and “Dive” by Stacey Donovan.

“The Fancy Dancer” is a book I’ve owned for 20 years and have read many times in that span, but I got something totally new out of reading it while I was in Guernville in May. It’s about a priest in Montana who has an affair with a half-breed mechanic. It explores some controversial issues around using sexual metaphors in religion (an example of such a metaphor would be “the bride of Christ”, but in this case the metaphor is homoerotic).

“Dive” I read on the plane heading down to Arizona. It was about a 15-year old girl who’s father is dying of a rare blood disease. It has the most beautiful use of similes I’ve ever read, used to get across this anxiety-laden, claustrophobic feeling of having a family member dying (and in case you’re wondering how that fits into my “fluff mode”, I checked it out because it was supposedly a teen lesbian romance. The love interest doesn’t even appear until 150 pages into the book!)

I more recently discovered a fun little teen book series by Tamora Pierce called The Song of the Lioness series, which tells the story of a young girl growing up in a mythical land not unlike Medieval Europe. She and her brother are each being sent off to school, her to learn magic and him to earn knighthood. But each wants to do what the other sibling is being sent to do, so they trade places. She pretends to be a boy and goes to the palace to learn how to be a knight. I’m not usually into historical fantasy, but with a spirited little cross-dressing tomboy, how could I resist?

I’ve decided that libraries are a Good Thing. However, bookstores are also a good thing. I ordered the four-volume set of the Harry Potter books from amazon.co.uk. My friend Gloria was supposed to buy me “Philospher’s Stone” when she was in England. Then she comes home with two copies of “Order of the Phoenix”. I assumed one was for me, and then she gives me this weird look and says she bought the other copy for her ex-girlfriend.

Whatever. As soon as I get through the first four books, I’ll buy my own friggin’ copy of “Phoenix”. Who can resist a story about a cranky, morally ambiguous teen-aged boy?

Philosophically brunette

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 13 Comments

So, I rented “Legally Blonde” from netflix. That’s about the level of intelligence in movies I can deal with these days. Pretty brain-fried this summer. Movie-lite is the order of the day. Now, I realize every character in this movie is a caricature (hence why I won’t go into a rant about the stereotypical way they depicted gay men), but this Elle woman just puzzles the hell out of me.

I don’t get women like her. I mean, it’s one thing to be high-maintenance to the people around you, it’s another thing entirely to be high maintenance to yourself. When does she find time to study for her Harvard Law classes between shopping, doing her hair, nails, make-up, leg waxes, and every other thing she has to do to look the way she does?

I’ve never understood why some women spend so much time and money on that kind of stuff. I used to assume it was All About Attracting Men, and that they’d been brain-washed by our consumerist society into thinking they Had to do this, but that deep down in their heart of hearts, they didn’t want to. One reason I became a feminist in junior high school was so that I could rebel against this sort of slavery. I mean, I feel put out because, ever since I decided to grow my hair out long, I have to blow-dry my hair everyday. Some days, I just don’t wash my hair at all because I hate wasting 15 minutes with that damned blow-dryer.

Of course, as I grew older and wider in experience, I realized some women actually enjoy spending a sizeable chunk of their time getting facials and manicures and shopping for new shoes. And it really doesn’t have much to do with Getting A Guy, although apparently it doesn’t hurt in that regard, either. I think this lesson was really hit home for me when I started getting to know some drag queens. I mean, guys have it easy in the getting-ready-for-the-new-day department. Shit, shower and shave, throw on a pair of pants, and you’re out the door. This was always my ideal, except for the shaving part. Then I meet these men who seem to enjoy the whole business of getting trussed-up in complicated outfits and make-up and shoes.

People who actually wear high-heels by choice? I mean, it’s like voluntarily choosing foot-binding. “Gee, I want to make myself completely helpless if some deranged criminal started chasing me down the street.”

But, see, the truth is, I have always been one of those women born to wear sensible shoes, slacks that actually have back pockets (for pencils and billfolds), and just a smidge of mascara to bring out my eyes.

But back to Elle. I realize “Legally Blonde” isn’t a complete marshmallow movie. The idea here is “she can be [stereotyically] womanly and smart” (as if we all believed that was a contradiction in terms). And I know OnM and some of the other board guys were very Impressed by this movie and the actress who plays her. Different strokes.

For me, it’s fluff, because I need fluff, I can’t deal with too much seriousness this summer. So, bonus points to LB for keeping my head out of the murk.

But she loses mega-points for dissing Rachel Welch because she’s a brunette.

The Champion

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 12 Comments

One of my favorite TV shows of all time is “Highlander”. It’s about Duncan MacLeod, a champion. In fact, looking over the TV shows I like best–BtVS, Angel, DSN, and Highlander–they are all about champions. I don’t apologize for the use of that term anymore than the producers and writers of “Angel” do, even though they do overuse it.

A champion is a warrior who takes on the battles of people who can’t fight (physically) for themselves. I used to wonder why I was so into shows about warriors and fighters, given my own pacifist proclivities. Duncan Macleod helps illuminate this. He is a warrior. He’s killed lots of people and continues to. And yet, at the same time, he is a pacifist. There was a time when he wasn’t a pacifist, at least not consciously. He was raised a Scottish clan warrior. His responsibility was to protect his people from their enemies. He continued to be a professional soldier for years and years until he met Darius, who helped him recognized within himself a feeling he already had–that most killing is senseless slaughter, that the cycle of revenge is pointless. That the only reason to fight is to defend people against those who would slaughter senselessly.

The Duncan we meet in 1993 doesn’t go looking for fights, but if someone challenges him, he will fight if he is forced to. Often he tries to find ways to avoid a battle. But if he must fight, he does, and if he has to, he will kill.

As a warrior, Duncan can never stay far away from battles for very long. He tried to. He stayed on “holy ground” for years avoiding other immortals and their quest for “the prize”. He was an abolitionist during the Civil War. He lived with the Sioux during an era when American Indians were being mass slaughtered. He was a medic in World War I. He helped save refuges in the Viet Nam War. Always in the war zone. Always the champion.

Pacifism isn’t about believing that all war is bad. It’s about recognizing that all war is sad. Sometimes it is necessary for the greater good, but the pacifist warrior is someone who choses his battles carefully, who never seeks them out, who defends the innocent and recognizes that the value of people isn’t based on how strong they are.

Some of his pacifism probably isn’t always wise. He lives by a code of chivalry that won’t allow him to kill people who can’t engage him in a “fair fight”–he won’t kill women immortals, or child immortals. As Methos pointed out to him, there’s more than physical strength involved in a fight. The women and children have their own weapons. Duncan knows this, and he understands the “weapons” they use. But still he won’t kill them, and this may one day be his undoing.

Or maybe he will be the one. He will be the last immortal in the end. He will win “the prize”–all the strength and knowledge of the other immortals will go into him, making him the most powerful person on Earth. Jim Dawson hopes so. And when his clansman Connor forced Duncan to kill him so that they could defeat a powerful evil immortal, Duncan came that much closer to being “the one”, as far as story lines go.

We’ll probably never know if Duncan will be the last immortal, although, what’s the point of telling his story if he isn’t?

Babylon 5

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Now I know why, given all the sci-fi shows I have on tape, I don’t have Babylon 5 on tape. The first season is so tedious, and I caught the rest of the show in bits and pieces. I think I have yet to see any of Season 5.

I’ve never been interested in shows that focus on “political intrigue”. If I wanted political intrigue, I’d watch the news or read a newspaper. Both things depress the hell out of me. I prefer shows that focus on personal relationships, like BtVS and Angel do.

That doesn’t explain why I adore Deep Space Nine, which also had political intrigue, but Star Trek never seemed nearly so in-your-face about political story lines. Deep Space Nine was always ultimately about the characters and their interpersonal relationships with each other, not how the Romulans hate the Klingons who hate the Cardassians who hate the Bajorans who hate the blah blah blah. That was part of it, yes, but I don’t remember it bothering me or boring me like it does with B5.

I know enough about Babylon 5 to know some interesting things arise when the races have to ban together against the Shadows. A lot like the DSN war against the Dominion. And I know there is a whole messiah story line involving Commander Sinclair as the Minbari prophet, Valen. It’s funny all the parallels between B5 and DSN, with the Sisko-as-Emissary storyline.

I’m going to watch all of B5 and give it a chance to impress me, through the magic of cable and rental DVDs. I think I’ve seen it all the way through at least once, but I don’t remember it moving me the way DSN did. We’ll see.

I already am a big Ivanova/Talia shipper. Sexual tension or what? And it’s good to know in advance it gets consummated, even if it was done too subtley.

Yet more results in my spiritual/ethical journey

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

Results not surprising to me. Again, the appeal of New-agey ideas like pantheism. Agnosticism towards the top. This gets at some of my discomfort with Secular Humanism. Buddhism, Zen, all that stuff in the middle. Atheism, Rand, and Relativism bite the dust!

#1 Scientific Pantheism
#2 Taoism
#3 Agnostic Church
#4 Pantheism
#5 Atheistic Paganism
#6 Secular Humanism
#7 Deism
#8 Theraveda Buddhism
#9 Rationalism
#10 Unitarian Universalism
#11 Zen Atheism
#12 Ethical Culture
#13 Transhumanism
#14 Atheism a la American Atheists
#15 Freethought, Church of
#16 Confucianism
#17 Randaism (Objectivism)
#18 Relativism, moral/cultural

I had to do this one

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ Leave a comment

I’m in the middle of trying to define what exactly, if anything I believe. It’s difficult if you’re an agnostic. It’s part of that system that you consciously chose neither to believe nor not to believe things you have no empirical experience of. But that does leave a certain spiritual emptiness that I do have empirical experience of. Or perhaps the better term here is “subjective experience of”, meaning internal to my psyche rather than “experienced in the external world”.

The results are not surprising. Alternative points of view at the top, favoring secular humanism, which I’ve always had an uncomfortable alliance with. Buddhism towards the middle–I can never quite connect with Eastern Religions. Western Religious orthodoxies at the bottom. I think I’m interested in the root religious concepts behind paganism and New Age movements, although the actual practices and institutions and individuals in these movements make me uncomfortable as well. *sigh*

1.  Neo-Pagan (100%)
2.  New Age (94%)
3.  Liberal Quakers (75%)
4.  Unitarian Universalism (75%)
5.  Secular Humanism (66%)
6.  Orthodox Quaker (62%)
7.  Scientology (61%)
8.  Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (60%)
9.  Mainline – Liberal Christian Protestants (60%)
10.  Mahayana Buddhism (59%)
11.  Taoism (58%)
12.  New Thought (55%)
13.  Bahá’í Faith (50%)
14.  Theravada Buddhism (50%)
15.  Sikhism (48%)
16.  Reform Judaism (47%)
17.  Hinduism (43%)
18.  Non-theist (41%)
19.  Jainism (40%)
20.  Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (39%)
21.  Mainline – Conservative Christian Protestant (31%)
22.  Seventh Day Adventist (30%)
23.  Islam (28%)
24.  Orthodox Judaism (28%)
25.  Jehovah’s Witness (27%)
26.  Eastern Orthodox (24%)
27.  Roman Catholic (24%)

I’m a TV whore

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 46 Comments

According to many of my local friends (I am no longer calling them my “real life” friends. The internet is “real life”, too, isn’t it?), television is a vast wasteland of continuing stereotypes and gratuitous violence dumbed down to the level of a ten-year old. A ten-year old boy of course, because somehow in this sexist way of thinking, that’s worse than a ten-year old girl.

The only reason you’d want to watch television, according to this way of thinking, is if you want to ogle half-naked breasts. And *we*, sniff, do NOT want to do that (this is coming mostly from lesbians, and I really, really believe them when they say that. It’s a contextual thing. Ogling breasts is really only enjoyable/appropriate in a non-exploitative context. Otherwise it’s… also uncomfortable).

Of course, you CANNOT convince people like this that a show called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” has any redeeming social value, no matter how many times you talk about Buffy’s butt-kicking or the number of academic papers on her feminist symbolism.

But, screw them. I find plenty to enjoy on television even if I agree that ogling breasts is really only appropriate in a non-exploitative context.

The whole point of this post is to say I got the rest of my goodies in the mail today–the Queer as Folk season 3 tapes and the Highlander Season 1 DVD set. Oh, this is such a dangerous thing. Not the free QAF tapes from a bud, but the pricey DVD sets from amazon. Scrollgirl can attest to this–the temptations of amazon.com and a credit card. Oh, my wishlist overfloweth–I’ve got ST:TNG, ST:DSN, Highlander, and X-Files beckoning from my wish list.

At home, I have home-made VHS copies of all of the above, not to mention ST: TOS, Voyager, and Enterprise and Forever Knight and H: The Raven and Lois and Clark and Roswell and Space: Above and Beyond (sniff! It died too young!), and “Soap”.

I’ve got drug dealers… er, I mean friends, sending me Six Feet Under and Queer as Folk tapes. I am pre-ordered at amazon for All Things BtVS and Angel, because they’re BtVS and Angel. Plus, they’re cheaper than the aforementioned DVD stuff.

Through the magic that is netflix, I am catching up on Babylon 5, which I’ve only seen once through, Space 1999, which I haven’t seen in 25 years, Dark Shadows, which is impossible to keep up with on cable, La Femme Nikita, and Stargate SG-1.

And ooh! Did you know that Season 1 of “ER” is coming out on DVD soon? I had to stop watching that show after the first season because I just had too many viewing commitments at the time. I’d love to catch up in a more systematic way than the occasional cable rerun. Plus “Alias” is coming out on DVD in September. I haven’t seen it because of the previous conflict with Angel. Ditto on Smallville, whenever it comes out. It conflicted with some show or other I watched/taped back when it debuted.

And ooh! The new season of “The Dead Zone” started last night.

Do you see a trend here? Do you see how this is? I am a TV whore!

What happens next?

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 16 Comments

So I’ve been watching the “Six Feet Under” tapes Rob sent, and I have to say, the show is a real kick. I’m just not sure if it’s a fun kick or a kick in the ribs. I’ve never seen so many neurotic people in my life, and I come from a family that specializes in all the important neuroses (like my dad, this past week. Oy! The man is the master of the “poor me” guilt trip. Comes by my room towards the end of the week, “I don’t know if you remember me, I’m your father”. As if I hadn’t spoken to the man all week and gone out to meals with him and everything).

I was reading reviews of “Six Feet Under” on Netflix and someone says in there, “I don’t know why Nate is with that high-maintenance Brenda”. And I’m like, “Um… have you seen all the sex he’s getting?” Now that I’m a little further along, I’m beginning to wonder, too. OK, so I’m a big sucker for the serialized drama (we do not call them “Soap Operas” anymore!) I have to know what’s going to happen next in on-going relationships between people.

The only thing that drags me down with SFU is the way someone always dies at the beginning of each episode. If it was mostly the elderly/natural causes or leukemia patients going quietly in hospitals with family at their side, I could deal with it. But it’s invariably someone young-ish and healthy who doesn’t see it coming. Accidents. The episode starts, and you’re thrust into a scene with some characters you don’t know going about their lives, and what you DO know is, someone’s going to kick it tragically by the end of this scene. I’ve started fast-forwarding through these because it’s not my idea of hang-on-the-edge-of-my-seat suspense finding out who and how. Bleah.

Well, I guess I’d better get back to work. I’m still recovering from my vacation and a Benedryl hang-over (Bennie used as a sleep aid, not as an allergy medication).

Messiah complex

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 13 Comments

Enjoying my vacation in Arizona. I’ve spent most of my time relaxing and watching movies. Mostly movies on cable, since I’m trying to get some work done on my novel and who wants to venture out into the 110-degree heat, anyway?

But I have gone out twice now to the movie theater, once to see “Matrix 2” and then again to see “Terminator 3”. I can’t think of the last time I went to a newly-released movie on opening day, but since I’m on vacation, I can hit the less-crowded morning matinee. Plus I had the probably not-coincidental good fortune to catch both “Terminator” and “Terminator 2” on cable this week before Wednesday, so I was pretty primed for T3.

Spoilers for Terminator 3, Matrix 2, Season 4 AtS

The joys of borrowing and renting

~ Nancy E. Shaffer ~ 7 Comments

Somewhere along the line after I became a Grown Up, I stopped going to the library and decided I had to buy books that I wanted to read. I’m not sure when this happened. I was always library-girl in grade school. My first part-time job was in the public library.

In fact, I decided that the public library had gone the way of the dinosaur, because it had in many towns I lived in as an adult. Or you couldn’t find anything there worth checking out. Or if you did, it sat on your desk until its due-date and you had to take it back unread.

Plus, I decided that if I was going to go to the trouble of reading a book, I wanted to have it on my shelf like a trophy for All To See. “See, I read this.” Problem is, I got books on my shelf that I bought and then never read. Most of them are gone now, I sold them for a quarter of the price I bought them for when I realized I’d never read them.

So all this talk of Harry Potter and other book recommendations on the board and here in LJ land got me itching to read. That, and I have NOTHING on my shelves anymore that I haven’t read or actually really intend to read. It makes riding the bus abysmally dull. But I go to amazon.com and hesitate to put anything into my shopping cart; after all, what if I buy this and don’t read it, too? Or what if I buy it and don’t like it?

Honestly, when did I cave in to the international capitalist conspiracy to make me part with my hard-earned money? Hey, you corporate suck-pigs, it’s mine and you can’t have it!!

So yesterday I snuck out of work early and went to get myself a library card. They do have functioning public libraries in San Francisco. Makes sense; this is the last bastion of liberalism-isn’t-a-dirty-word in the United States. Or perhaps the last bastion of home-grown socialism. Pass the bean sprouts while I tighten the straps on my faded Birkenstocks.

I didn’t actually find any books at the library yesterday. By the time I got my card, the library was closing. They can’t have decent hours anymore because everybody else in this country doesn’t want to give their money to the government. Well, maybe for bombs, but not for books.

Well, fuck ’em all, this is the age of the internet, and I just spend a glorious hour in the on-line catalog for the library seeing what they had in science fiction and fantasy and gay and lesbian fiction. Yee haw! Books, books, books. I’ve noticed, however, that everything that interests me is in the “Teen Center”. OK, so my idea of entertainment shows that I am permanently stuck in adolescence because I never really had one. I was a big fat no-life nerd in High School. OK, not fat. Why do you think “Buffy” interested me when it first came out?

So now I have my library card and a list of books to locate before I go on vacation. Is it horribly risky to take library books with you on a plane to another state? ‘Cause I’m thinking of hauling my netflix DVDs there, too.

This netflix thing is also big fun. I do feel guilty about not patronizing my corner Mom-and-Pop video store. But for $3.80 for every rental, it was bleeding me dry! I figure with netflix, I have to rent 5 movies a month to make it as expensive as the corner store, but through the magic of DVD, I am discovering TV shows I’m too cheap, er, I mean frugal to spring for digital cable to see: Queer as Folk, Six Feet Under, Oz. I’m catching up on shows I don’t get around to watching on cable because they come on every friggin’ day and they never are at episode 1 season 1 when you need them to be: Dark Shadows, Babylon 5. Ooh, and reliving Space: 1999!

So this is fun. And when I get a life in the Real World, I’ll be sure to let you know.