Courses taught: 5

Papers graded: 870, not counting homework

Book contracts for an edited collection on Margaret Atwood given by Cambridge: 1

Car accidents: 1

Hours of physical therapy per week for over two months: 3-6

Nieces and nephews born: 2

Books read for work: about 20

Books read for pleasure: None, I think, even over break.

Upper GIs: 1

Cancers found by Upper GI: 0 (yay!)

Conference panels chaired: 2

Book chapters written and sent to editors: 2

Margaret Atwood Journal issues out: 1

Minor foot surgeries: 1 (a redo, since the Jan doc did it so badly)

Campus Book Project talks given: 1

Campus Book Project talks chaired: 3

Campus Book Project books chosen: 1

Plays attended: 3

Awesome Halloween costumes: 1

Mix CDs produced: 3

Kittens fixed: 2

Kittens taught to stay off the desk and counters: 0

New Recipes Tried: probably 15-20

New mentees for the Guardian Scholars Program: 1

Trips to take the boy’s car to the shop: 2

Letters of recommendation written: 6

Types of bitters homemade by me, Vanessa, Rae, Marina, and Melissa: 5

Trips to wine country: 2

Here’s to a better year (all the good stuff, but less of the silly medical stuff)!

Yesterday, I sat in a dark theatre to see the second Hobbit movie for a second time. The film is PG-13. The child sitting behind me with his father was about half the requisite age.

Now, each parent should get to make his/her own decision about whether a movie is too adult for the child in terms of sex and violence. While I think certain scenes were a bit much for a child that age, the parent knows what might cause his/her child nightmares much better than I do.

However, if you know your child doesn’t have the capability to follow the plot of a movie without your constant oral aid, perhaps this is a movie you could watch at home together.

I took my son to a ton of plays and movies before he was necessarily sophisticated enough for them–this made him a sophisticated audience member. Yet I didn’t allow him to talk through plays or movies. Questions were for after.

If your child can’t follow when we’re in “real” time or flashback, if your child doesn’t understand that most questions can be answered by letting the scene play out (who’s that? they’re about to tell you!), or if the movie is going to use a bunch of words your child doesn’t know (like “forge”), then you have three options, especially if you are incapable of teaching your child to whisper, as the father behind me was.

1. See the movie at home.

2. Have your child ask you questions after the movie.

3. Sit in what I propose to be the “not mentally up to this film” zone. I would like to suggest that the first few rows of films be reserved for young children (and others who aren’t ready for what they’re seeing). It’s not practical to put children and their parents in a separate theatre or have a walled-off space, but those first few rows tend to be fairly empty of other patrons. Also, children don’t get neckaches the way the rest of us do. (As for their parents, they don’t want to start arguing with me about being or having a pain the neck when their kids can’t shut up.)

This would allow those parents who want to see an adult film but not get a babysitter or who want to see an adult film but not alone or those who want to teach their children the magic of a film before the film hits DVD to view the movie (though they should still try to teach the art of the whisper).

This would have made life easier yesterday; I actually started anticipating questions, which was not a fun game even though I was spot on. It would not have solved the problem completely when I sat in front of a child who was MUCH too young for a Harry Potter movie and who started screaming and sobbing when Dobby died, but at least the screamer would have been a few rows farther away.

If that’s sitting too close to the screen for some parents, then might I suggest options 1 or 2?

I don’t love everything about Christmas. I don’t like that the season starts too early (thanks to our amazing commercialism); I don’t like realizing that while I’m in the midst of finals after what is usually my busiest quarter, I am behind on making, buying, baking, and shipping presents; I don’t like the pressure to buy things for people I don’t know well.

I don’t like how the phrase “Merry Christmas” is changing. I say both “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas” interchangeably–I always have. Both are accurate for me and basically everyone I know. Almost all of us get Christmas off, so even the few people I know who don’t celebrate Christmas can still enjoy that break. Happy Holidays, despite what Fox news says, has always been fine–there are more than this month that we celebrate. I’ve never had anyone who doesn’t celebrate Christmas get upset with me for wishing them well. But now there are apparently people out there who get upset when I wish them well for more than one day in a season.

Dan Savage recently wrote about reading Sarah Palin’s book, which says you can’t wish people peace and love without wishing them “Merry Christmas” because there is no peace and love without Jesus. I guess that means a bunch of people I know, including myself, don’t really love. This war on the made-up war on Christmas is going to create the very thing it rails against, as I, like Dan Savage, now feel obligated to say “Happy Holidays,” as reaction against those who say we’re not allowed to. Years ago, those people took the American flag and made it the symbol for conservative rather than American; now they’re taking my ability to say “Merry Christmas.”

Just the other day, I said “Merry Christmas” to a local business owner on the way out the door. He commented that he “had” to say “Happy Holidays” so as not to alienate people. He had mistaken my automatic I’m-leaving-now holiday wish as a statement against political correctness. I probably gave him the impression that I’m conservative and Christian by my thoughtless use of a phrase. I just noted that I say both phrases and that I’ve never gotten in trouble for either one. He confessed that he had never been corrected by someone for using the Christmas word in his greetings, so in the spirit of Christmas getting-along, we were able to agree that since neither of us had actually experienced this particular front of the war on Christmas, it was likely just something those people on TV made up.

Why, you might ask, do I celebrate Christmas if I’m not Christian?

Well, like most Americans, I was raised Christian, so Christmas is part of my childhood, part of my life. It represents family, the gorging on gifts that comes with being a kid, and the only time when my mother and stepfather would try not to fight, when my mother’s smile would return for days on end.

When it was my turn to be a parent, I didn’t want to lose that connection to childhood or to rob my child of it. Christmas can be magic. Not celebrating the birth of Jesus (which would be in Spring anyway, Biblical scholars agree) is surprisingly easy, given how pagan the whole holiday is. We combine solstice festival traditions, medieval traditions, and the Roman sun-God Baal’s day (today) into a frenzy of presents, singing, eating, drinking, and decorating trees inside the house.

However, what I’d like to confess about Christmas is how much I love it. Despite all its problems, despite the commercialism, despite the war I’m apparently in about it, I love it.

I love finding the perfect gift for someone. I love those moments when my friends find that perfect thing for me.

I love the baking. Although I cook all through the year, I rarely give myself the time to bake. Each Christmas, there’s a little frenzy. Alexander says it’s the most stereotypical mom thing about me. Each year, I make some classics, which, because I only make them once a year, mean it’s Christmas when I bite into them (eggnog pie, cranberry apple pie, scotchies, oatmeal lace cookies, sour cream drops with burnt butter frosting, etc). And each year I try something new. This year, it was Mansikkalumi, Finnish Strawberry Snow. And then there’s the ham, which I usually only get at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and which is my very favorite meat.

I love the movies and TV shows. Not all of them, of course. Today, Alexander and I are watching Doctor Who Christmas specials and Simpsons and Futurama Christmas episodes. I haven’t had the chance to watch the movies this year–Christmas is often like that–once I’m ready for it to be Christmas, there isn’t time to see everything I love, from strange Finnish horror films about Santa (Rare Exports) to Bridget Jones’ Diary to Scrooged to About A Boy to the original Miracle on 34th Street, the ultimate Christmas movie. (Back when I wrote a movie column, I wrote about the best Christmas films: http://www.matchflick.com/column/2510; http://www.matchflick.com/column/1829; http://www.matchflick.com/column/1820.)

As the creator of 9 volumes of Christmas mix cds, I must admit that there are several songs I apparently love as well, some traditional, some new. “The Carpenters Christmas Portrait” is my favorite cd of the old hits. I had the records as a child. I also have a house mix of totally secular awesome Christmas songs by Weird Al, Jonathan Coulton, etc.

I love the tree almost most of all. My stepfather’s house had a large, open foyer. He would put a big tree on a very big table in front of the sweeping staircase. I would spend hours playing in the tree. The more anthropomorphic ornaments became my dolls for a short season. My smallest toys would find their own places in the branches. My tree is always the first signal that it’s really Christmas and is usually with us for way longer than it should be. This year, I refrained from putting breakable ornaments on it, due to the mischievous presence of two little kittens, but it’s still here, staying moist from all the water bottle punishment sprays it takes with Jareth and Anubis.

Finally, I love Christmas because it’s the time of the year when I get out my address book and send a little something to those I love. I try to call people I haven’t talked to lately, but whom I miss.

(And did I mention the eggnog?)

Happy Holidays!

It’s the season that critics are posting their Best Of lists for the year. (What always strikes me as a bit odd is that year is not technically over when the critics do this.)

As I don’t want to be like everyone else, I’m going to use the rest of the month to post about non-traditional “Best Of”s.

The best ABBA song?

“Waterloo.”

Why?

Not because it won the Eurovision competition in 1974, but because it begins:

“My, my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender
Oh yeah, and I have met my destiny in quite a similar way”

I just can’t imagine any pop song today beginning with a historical reference. This song not only does that, but continues all the way through, comparing this woman’s finally giving into love to Napoleon’s defeat. The military analogy somehow blends perfectly with the upbeat, danceable tempo.

“So how could I ever refuse” to love this song?

This week, Marcia Wallace, the voice of Mrs. Krabappel, died, just a few days short of her 71st birthday.
Edna Krabappel will not be replaced. She’ll join Lionel Hutz and other voices who have been silenced in similar ways.
Wallace was a wonderful actress and comedian. I think I first became really aware of her work with Bob Newhart, but of course I will remember her as Edna.
There’s something about our elementary school teachers, the good and the bad. They stay with us, in our dreams, our imaginations. They spend more waking time with us than our parents often do at that age. They are experts in all subjects (or at least seem so). They are more patient than I will ever be. They read whole books to us, chapter by chapter, day by day. They figure us out, push us towards new things (at least the good ones do.)
My favorite things about Edna:
1. Her willingness to believe in the love of a certain Woodrow, who couldn’t tell her why he couldn’t be with her, where he was going, or even how he was going to get there.
2. The fact that she has bad days sometimes and she doesn’t beat herself up about it.
3. The fact that she is, in fact, an excellent teacher, as evidenced by her Teacher of the Year award.
4. When Principal Skinner abuses her heart, not only does she refuse to take him back, but she also is wise enough to reject her rebound guy just in the nick of time.
5. On occasion, she has stood up to the administration.
6. After she marries Ned, she also asserts her right to co-parent (and perhaps will help the boys turn out a little less sheltered and helpless).
7. When Ned almost didn’t marry her, because of her “promiscuous” past, it was upsetting. Equally upsetting, though, was when he decided to “forgive” her for having had a sex life before him. Luckily, Edna refuses to accept this and demands that accept her –and love her– for who she is.
8. Through everything–getting her fired, faking serious illnesses, replacing her birth control with tic tacs–Edna has only hit Bart once.
9. Yet he’s kissed her once, when she acknowledged his applied learning.
10. Edna will be remembered for her laugh and, most of all, the way in which her relationship with Bart so defined them both.

Usually, I can understand why the other side is doing what it’s doing, even if I don’t agree.

I understand that pro-lifers put the life of a fetus above everything else, even above the fact that the outlawing of abortion has historically been correlated with higher rates of abortion. I don’t think most pro-lifers are evil (the ones who would murder for it are)–I just wish they would put their energy into assuring that women have access to good birth control and sex education and that the babies who are born are born with good health care etc., since I find it SO problematic when lifers are fine with letting babies, but not fetuses, die.

I get the fiscal libertarian view, which is: “this is my money, don’t touch it. You and your child can go die in that ditch, there, no–that’s my ditch–THAT ditch over there–the one off my property.” I do think it’s evil, but I get it.

I get why the Republican leadership are against Obamacare. It’s because they’re on the side of business. They want the insurance company to have the freedom to spend as much of their profit on their shareholders and paperwork as they want (Obama wants them to use it on patients). They want the insurance company to have the freedom to not insure me, to turn me down for procedures, to drop me when I get too expensive. They tell me they don’t want the government to get between me and my doctor–that’s the insurance company’s job!!! I get it.

But I don’t get the shut down.

The law passed.

We elected the guy. Twice.

When W got elected the second time (the first time, really), he said he had a mandate and that he was going to use it.

Republicans ignored the law and the mandate and sued, and the Supreme Court said sorry, and so here we are.

I’m trying to imagine applying this logic to my life. There’s A bill I don’t want to pay. So I don’t pay any of them. And I tell the people I owe money to that it’s what they want and that it’s for their own good. It’s for their freedom!

I think I’d get locked up. I would at least get sued and kicked out of my house and a bunch of my shit would stop working. Republicans are half complaining that national parks are closed and half crowing that only the national parks are closed (not true–lots of things are affected–but they haven’t decided on just one message here).

And I can’t get my head around it. When I hear people say we need to find a compromise with these people, I scream, “No, we don’t!” or “What compromise?”

And this is how America becomes divided.

It’s easy to get discouraged these days.

I’ve had a bad headache for almost two months now.* It’s exhausting. Eula Biss, in her essay, “The Pain Scale,” argues that one of the worst limitations of how we measure pain is that we don’t have a metric for how long it lasts. I’ve gone through the summer without a break, and I’ve been sort of beating myself up because I don’t have any more money than I started with and a lot of “to do” list things didn’t get done. And my oven broke about an hour ago. Flames shot out of it.

Thus, I have had to give myself little lectures on what got done this summer. They help.

WHAT GOT DONE THIS SUMMER:

I taught four classes (successfully).

We judged the Prized Writing submissions, then I edited the publication, and now it’s out.

I prepped my five Fall classes.

I served on two Campus Book Project committees.

I paid the “pay off the credit card in three years instead of a billion” amount.

I was given a new crock pot, and I tried out a bunch of new recipes.

I got two new kitties.

I fixed one expensive thing on my car and two on the boy’s.

I went to London to be in the wedding of two people I love dearly.

I spent quality time with my son, my friends, my man.

I’ve done a lot to try to make this headache go away–switching drugs (including going off the one that caused hallucinations), massage, chiropractic, physical therapy, lots of doctors’ appointments.

I went to Ashland with Vanessa and Kevin, where we had good food, good drinks, and saw five amazing plays in three days (The Heart of Robin Hood, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Cymbeline, The Tenth Muse, and King Lear).

My fractured tailbone healed.

I kept the house reasonably clean.

In addition to the plays I’ve already written about in past blogs, I saw Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen and Billy Crudup in No Man’s Land (not my favorite play, but it didn’t matter!).

I chose essays for an edited book proposal I’m about to send off.

There, now I feel better. Time for more painkillers.

*For those who don’t know, I have a low grade headache every day. This has been the case since I was 12. It’s always there. All of my treatments over the years are to minimize the days it’s bad–the days it’s debilitating–the days I identify which muscle groups I would like to inject with some miracle that would make them release–the days I fantasize about guillotines. It’s been almost two months now of those days.

Tomorrow marks the second ending of Futurama. I’m going to miss it.

The show originally aired on Fox from 1999-2003. It was revived by Comedy Central in 2008. While the original Fox shows were good (with perhaps the exceptions of the film-length works), the Comedy Central version has been really good, producing some wonderful episodes with biting satire.

Futurama is the brainchild of Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons. When The Simpsons aired, Groening’s team had creative control (i.e. the show didn’t receive ‘notes’). Groening fought hard to maintain that policy with Futurama. Those of us who love the show are grateful–Fox would have taken out a lot of the darker elements that make the show what it is.

The title comes from an exhibit at the 1939 World’s Fair that imagined what the world would look like in 1959. Futurama shows us the years right after the start of the fourth millennium–the year 3000. It’s the show’s inherent science fiction that both turns off some anti sci-fi people and attracts the rest of us. It also allows the writers to play with reality for the sake of humor and social commentary. When else but in the year 3000 could Richard Nixon’s head be president? Could an evil “mom” figure rule the world through the eyePhone? Could a robot steward remind his airline passengers, “In the event of a wormhole causing us to travel back in time, do not kill your parents. If you are traveling with a small child, help them to not kill you before you don’t kill your parents.”

Well, you could maybe have those things in a Simpsons Halloween episode, but the whole joy of Futurama is that you can have the horror and comedy of sci-fi without having to wait for October (or, when stupid sports are ruining my life, November).

I still prefer The Simpsons to Futurama. And while Futurama is critically acclaimed, it seems the fans continue to support the family comedy that changed television over its sci-fi little brother. However, I don’t claim that The Simpsons is superior in writing, satire, or animation. Or that family comedies are inherently better than workplace comedies. Rather, my loyalty to The Simpsons is partially caused by it coming into my life when I was so young.

Also, I have never really liked Fry. And it’s hard to really, really love a show when you don’t love its main character. Although Bart and Homer both have problematic personalities, deep down, I like them. However, Fry could go back into a freeze pod, and I wouldn’t miss him. I would miss lots of the other characters–Leela, Kif, Zap (whom I wish we could have heard voiced by Phil Hartman, as was intended [miss you, Phil]), Morbo, and the Robot Devil, a diabolically good singer, etc.

Now they’re all leaving. Luckily, Netflix is streaming them, so you can binge watch, as I’ve been doing this week. Find yourself in future when suicide booths are luckily not well constructed, when Christmas has finally become X-Mas, when those who have difficulty with lessons in love can have a very sexy learning disability (sexlexia), when we finally discover why cats are so adorable,* when Al Gore can explain the true role of the V.P.:
Fry: “Who are you people?”
Al Gore: “I’m Al Gore. And these are my vice presidential action rangers, a group of top-nerds whose sole duty is to prevent disruptions in the space-time continuum.”
Fry: “I thought your sole duty was to cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.”
Al Gore: “That, and protect the space-time continuum. Read the Constitution!”

Futurama will remain one of the few shows to come back after a cancellation (the other two notable shows are Family Guy and Arrested Development). It’s fitting, really, that this show (in which the main character didn’t quite succeed in his world and gets another chance in the future) came back from the dead to succeed again. As we say goodbye tomorrow, we’ll cross our fingers that the space-time continuum will allow another rebirth. Until then, let’s eat that pizza the I.C. Wiener ordered.

* The cats are adorable because they have an ulterior motive. Josh Weinstein, who wrote this episode, is also adorable, but it’s hard to believe he has an ulterior motive (which is probably exactly what he wants me to think).

This Tuesday, September 3rd, will see the release of the third and final installment of Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy—MaddAddam.

Although I read the book several months ago, I decided to wait to review it until more of you could get your hands on it, so as not to make you hate me (more) for getting it early. Where did this great gift come from, by the way? Let’s just say I have a friend at the bookstore.

I was able to read the book in almost one setting, as I got hold of it when I was recuperating from my surgery in May. It was absolutely the best thing about being laid up.

The MaddAddam triology is a dystopic fiction of a post-apocalyptic world in which a very smart young man has unleashed a virus that has killed almost all of the world’s human population. This smart young man designed another race to take our place–yet they’re vulnerable to the few remaining humans.

Atwood’s vision demonstrates her unique ability to see trends before the rest of us do. She wrote about body image before it was popular to do so, about girl on girl crime before Mean Girls, about the oncoming debt crisis before it hit. The technologies and trends in the trilogy are all based on things that are in development, have been developed, or are logical extensions of things in development. Some of these things are scientific, some are religious, some are ecological, etc.

I’m going to try not to spoil anything in this short review of the end. The most important thing to know is that it’s a good read. Fast, solid, funny, and touching all at once.

Most of the book comes from Toby’s point of view (whom we know from the previous book). We learn more about Zeb’s past and about Adam through her storytelling to the Crakers. In this fashion, some blanks are filled in. And the story does end–you get a sense of how the lives of our characters will end and how life will go on from where we are.

However, not every hole is filled in. While we get a few more fragments of Crake–a few more sightings–we end the series without ever going into his non-neurotypical head. Thus, we still have to put together the pieces of why he did what he did from the pieces Atwood gives us. Did he ever love Oryx? Was that Oryx? Why did he kill her? What did she know? Did she enjoy Jimmy’s company or was she sent to him as a distraction?

I have my own ideas about these questions–as I’m sure you do.

And that’s why I’ll enjoy re-reading these texts from years to come. I have a whole story–but not the WHOLE story. And I’m fine with that. (If I weren’t, I couldn’t be an Atwood reader and scholar.)

Every time I read any of Atwood’s texts, I see new things. (Each time I read Alias Grace, I change my mind about whether she’s guilty or not.)

Her books keep me guessing, keep me working, but they don’t disappoint–I don’t feel like I’m missing any thing just because some viewpoints are incomplete–indeed, that’s what makes her writing so intriguing and so realistic.

A final note. Oryx and Crake focused on the science and the powerful. The Year of the Flood focused on the faith and the powerless. MaddAddam focuses on a world beyond science and faith and their ethical quandries* and on pragmatism and survival. This survival is all about storytelling, which is how knowledge will be passed on, how the Crakers will understand their place in the world, and how future generations will understand their human and Craker progenitors.

*It is not, however, a world of superscience and sorcery, which is what you’re supposed to get after an apocalypse, as I learned from watching Thundar the Barbarian (which, by the way, claimed that the end of the world came in 1994).