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A little bit late, but I only just learned this (the quote, not the news -- the news made yesterday morning sad). Mr. Rogers to CNN: "The secret of life is that when you are with another person -- whether in the flesh or on the phone -- is to make sure that other person does not feel alone."

And if anyone would know the secret of life, it would be Mr. Rogers.

Now this is what I'm talking about. Twentieth of February, middle of winter, rainstorm with a touch of lightning (woohoo!) went through last night, and this morning it's clear and sun sun sun. Damn, you know it's clear when you can see the Hollywood sign from the 110 north before Manchester. It's sunroof weather!

The only thing one has to be careful of with sunroofs, in theory, if one has longish hair, is when closing it while in motion, to make sure no wisps of hair blow up into the way for the sunroof to close upon. in theory.

ow.

but no momentary hair-pull pain will steal my sunshine!

I got home only about ten minutes late and saw most of it anyway. I have to say, Spike back in his old coat and some of his old attitude goes a long way to helping. Bullying, badgering (and in the end hypocritical) Buffy still feels wrong to me though.

I think what it is, is: I just don't like to see friends argue and criticize each other. I understand I'm probably oversensitive to this, as arguments were a lot less common in my family growing up than the national average. I'm not as used to it. I don't see why it's necessary. If there's a problem, talking it out while maintaining a tone of love and respect would get the job done a lot more effectively, seems to me.

I suppose the problem with that is, as the professor of a screenwriting class I once took noted, "No one wants to watch a movie called 'Village of the Happy Nice People.'"

Except me, I guess. Well, ok, 'Village of the Happy Nice People vs. [insert villain or natural disaster]' would I suppose be more interesting. But "Village of the Happy People" sounds like it would be a reality show, and I liked MTV's Real World a lot better when the casts included many people who were basically nice, and somewhat aware of others/the world, instead of entirely blindly selfish as in most groups after the first two or three (I quit regular viewing mid-season-4 and only checked in here and there for a few seasons afterwards). Watching someone put together a big surprise birthday party, and watching the surprisee's reaction to it, was a lot more fun than watching X complain that Y was a racist because Y objected to some rude behavior by X, vary complaint and complainers and repeat ad infinitum.

I just read Television Without Pity's recap of last week's Buffy and it crystallized my thinking about latter seasons, with this quote:

We should have known we were all in deep shit when Marti [Noxon, co-writer/producer] admitted that her vision of Buffy was "Party of Five with monsters." Party of Five was a terrible, depressing, whiny, loathsome show about terrible, depressing, whiny, loathsome people. And that's just what Buffy has turned into.

I watched Party of Five from its very first episode and partway through the first season, and liked it. Then I think I got distracted somehow; my TV watching got disrupted, can't remember why. I tried checking back several times after that, and discovered that most all the characters had started behaving in pretty stupid ways. Now, everyone does something stupid once in a while, being human, but it seemed like everyone was bent on making the wrong choice on every important life decision they came across, even when the right choice would be obvious to most thinking people, orphans or not. Since I didn't stick around, I can't remember too many examples [besides 'cheating on tests/schoolwork is a Bad Idea'], but I just completely lost patience with them. I have better things to do with my time than watch characters demonstrate things I already know, with predictable depressing results.

I only started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer at the beginning of the sixth season. But very soon thereafter, during my week in New York City, I saw quite a few episodes, mostly from the second season, on F/X. I think if I hadn't seen those, and also then bought the first three seasons on DVD, I might not still be watching. Last season and this season -- I keep waiting for it to be like it was, and waiting, and waiting. Every so often there's a glimmer of hope that keeps me on board -- I liked the Principal Wood part of last week -- but the overall tone is just off. I think that may be one reason that animated-series concept art pleased me so: to see the characters starting again, in high school, from the beginning. I miss their high-school selves. I get to feeling a bit itchy that they shouldn't have changed this much. Is that unrealistic of me?

Finding Television Without Pity around the beginning of this season hasn't helped my attitude, as they often point out problems that I missed when watching, but have to agree with. And it IS like with Party of Five. I don't like to watch people unnecessarily complicate their lives. I find it much more interesting to watch people confront reasonably unavoidable/unforeseeable situations, and figure out how to solve them. FIGURE OUT, CLEVERLY.

This Rant of Marginal Coherence (tm) brought to you by the realization that I forgot to set the tape for Buffy tonight -- again -- and the further realization that I will be pretty much just as happy to read the recaps afterwards to find out what happened. Again.

Check out this concept art for an animated Buffy series (pointed out by John Allison of Scary Go Round to his mailing list -- he said it's been "shelved", aww).

It is very hard to beat the happiness quotient of eating a freshly grilled (well, toaster-ovened) cheese sandwich on an overcast day. About the only thing I could have wanted was some tomato soup to go with it, but the sandwich itself was really all I needed.

m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m m.

I have an idea. (Happily it is one of several, but this one for some reason has stompled the others to take precedence for the moment.) It appeared in my head while listening to a particular bit of music. I imagined a whole scene that fits that music, an opening scene of a movie.

Two problems: I don't know what happens next in the story, and it's kind of special-effects heavy. Solution: just make a little personal movie thing of it, using storyboard-type pictures since I don't know how to attempt real animation. Maybe write a full script later when I know what happens, but get the opening scene set so I can at least have some record for posterity of this thing in my head.

New problems: no digital video camera with which to shoot footage that would be easily pluggable into a computer, no cute laptop to plug it into. I suppose the cute laptop wouldn't be absolutely necessary, but I'm going to pretend it is.

Root problem: insufficient funds at this time. Solution: save money. I had been planning to save with the goal of home-buying, but that seems so impossibly distant, and desires like this idea so important, that I think the short-term desires are ascendant.

Problem: perhaps too ascendant. I went shopping this weekend, and a couple weeks ago, and bought clothes. and a few other things. No savings for me this month. Or much last month either. Bother. but the clothes are pretty, mm mm mm. At least I'm not going into debt. This not-paying-rent aspect of moving back to the homestead is very nice, I must say (I cover my costs, but no rent just for living there).

My new, shorter-term-goal philosophy: create some art this year. Make the Nicholl contest. Make the tons of drawings it will take to shoot this 3 minute :30 sequence. By the time I finish the contest screenplay and the drawings, I ought to have saved enough for the technology. And that will be a happy day.

Is it just me, not paying as much attention to the media as I used to, or is less public attention being focused on the loss of the Columbia than on other disasters that went before? I notice even in myself that the wound has not felt as deep, the shadow thrown over subsequent days not as dark or as long, as with the Challenger. Is it because we've already gone here, once before? Is it because seven brilliant and talented people lost now seems, since a year and some months ago, to be such a small number? Just because I believe that death and disaster are inevitable in the progress of human exploration, a necessary risk that must be taken, does not mean I think that the inevitable need not be mourned.

And I do mourn, am mourning. But I remember the day of the Challenger accident so vividly. That day and September 11 are the two days in my life that I can remember feeling as if I were standing aside from myself, my mind watching something happen on television that it refused - just refused, on some level - to believe was true. It was, is, a very strange feeling. I did not get that same feeling while watching the bright star of Columbia glitter into a constellation. Is it because we couldn't really see exactly what was happening, couldn't see close enough to watch the first space shuttle, whose first launch and landing I remember watching as a child, returning to parts from a whole? Easier, perhaps, for our minds to avoid the full truth, when more is left to our imaginations? That's not really our Columbia, with seven people in it; that's just a specially beautiful meteor.

ashes to ashes.

Or is it because such things have happened within our memories, that we now have a place in our thoughts to file such things as "space shuttle lost," that in 1986 we did not have? If (forbid) another airliner were to be plunged into a tall building, would it have equal resonance to the first such experience? Certainly it would be horrible, I am not saying otherwise; I simply wonder whether humans' great adaptibility extends to accepting such as this. Not that it would be entirely a bad thing, if it were to be a choice between abject, impotent fear and the resolute ability to act defensively, and continue on. I hope we don't have to find out.

Maybe it's just me who's feeling it's different this time. I don't want Columbia to be too easily passed by, that's all. It's important to keep the thought of death at a certain distance -- not so close that it obscures daily joys, but not so far away that insignificant things grow weedily out of all proportion in daily awareness. Loving other people, doing things of value, changing your own small facet of the universe for the better somehow, seeing and hearing and tasting all that is beautiful in the world around you wherever you happen to be: that is what I want to be aware of, all the time, for however much time I happen to get.

All of us are made from the ashes of stars, stars that burned and died a long time ago. I couldn't help, amid my sadness, finding the beauty in Columbia's constellation as it shone out that morning. I will not forget.

dust to dust.

"It takes but one foe to breed a war, not two, Master Warden. Would you have the people gather you herbs only, while the Dark Lord gathers armies?" --Eowyn, in The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

as i was in the shower just now, after watching cnn show the footage of the bright spot of the descending columbia turning into many sparkling bright spots, over and over and over, i had an odd thought but one that i stand by:

despite how horrible this is, again (i still vividly remember the day that challenger exploded), i hope this is not the last humans-in-space accident.

because that would simply mean that we stopped trying, and resigned ourselves to slow decay and eventual obliteration with the extinction of our sun (or perhaps even sooner, depending on the vagaries of local meteors).

and that would be an even worse tragedy, to me.

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