Bruce Baugh:

I’m catching up with Battlestar Galactica and Heroes from the last few weeks, and reading some weblog and forum comments on them. I’m struck by how disconnected I feel from what it is that seems to most concern the posting fans. Specifically, I find that I genuinely just don’t care how well some things hold up under an allegedly dispassionate logical analysis. I’m really interested in qualities of experience: fascinating places, intense emotions, struggles and epiphanies, the tangible world and the internal growth and changes of interesting characters thrust into the midst of it.

Yoon Ha Lee:

This explains why I have such a tumultuous relationship with Whedon’s creations:

From Angel, it’s all about the emotions, stupid. Joss just hammered into all of us that ultimately, if you had to choose between logic and emotion, then go with emotion. You want to build as logical a show as possible, but if there’s no emotion, people won’t care. That was a profound influence on me, and I’ve forced that on people I’ve been involved with since then.
from an interview with Jeff Bell [LA Times]

NO, KILLING THE LOGIC MERELY DRIVES SOME OF US SPORKRIFFIC AND WE THROW YOUR SHOW ACROSS THE ROOM AND STOMP ON IT WITH SPIKES OF PREDICATE LOGIC AND WE STOP CARING ANYWAY.

I’ve been noodling at this topic during my spare time today. For those of you who aren’t big fans of SF/fantasy, us fans have a habit of tearing apart the logic of shows and books and the like. Inside most every fan is the Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons, ready to point out minutiae and grumble about “obvious” plot holes.

TV shows are especially fertile ground for this sort of thing. As John Rogers says in explaining the term “fridge logic,”

TV is a very tight little medium time-wise, with an enormous amount of hand-waving to begin with. Often a logic problem that seems to smack you in the face because you’ve had the time to read the script, reread it, give notes, break it down, etc. is going to fly by your average — and hopefully emotionally engaged — viewer.

When a show engages me, I glide right past plot holes. I’m actively participating in keeping my belief suspended. As I stop being engaged, though, I become more and more annoyed by inconsistencies. Eventually I reach the point of kicking holes in the story’s walls out of frustration and grumbling about its physics.

Trouble arises when you get a bunch of fans like me together. We all have different set-points where we are no longer engaged. We have different buttons to be pushed or left alone. There is no consensus; there is only disharmony. And in such an atmosphere, negative comments tend to amplify each other until all you hear is a standing wave of disapproval.

And look! The Internet has a large population of SF/F fans, removes geographic barriers to discussion, and tends to archive discussions for posterity. The result is an environment that fosters the worst of our group’s tendencies.

Critical analysis can be fun. I’ve spent a lot of time teasing apart the threads of shows like Heroes with friends. “What do you think that meant?” “Who’s Claire’s dad taking orders from?” “I wonder what the extent of Peter’s powers are?” It can be instructive. It can even be entertaining in and of itself. In watching Jericho, I’ve enjoyed the ludicrousness of it all. But there’s a point where you cross over into bullying by way of snobbery. You actively look for reasons to be disappointed in a story, and can’t believe anyone actually enjoys that dreck. You elevate matters of opinion to statements of fact and use them as cudgels with which to smite the unbelievers.

There’s not a bright line dividing good from bad here. I enjoy Mystery Science Theater 3000, which has a nougaty center of mocking bad movies. I read recaps at Television Without Pity, most of which point out numerous plot holes. Negative criticism is not a priori bad criticism. But at some point it passes a nebulous threshold and the only solution is for all involved in the discussion to step back, take deep breaths, and move on to something else.

It took me a while to come up with my own coping mechanism for dealing with the dark side of SF/F Fandom. For works that I like, I’ll gladly obsess over tiny details with others and further my enjoyment through what amounts to collaborative study. For most any story or show I’ll discuss what I thought worked and what didn’t. But if Fans are carving up something I like and are throwing the leftover bits at people like me while hooting their derision, I will smile politely and walk away. You can shove your anger towards me all you want. I will not take it from your hand.

Bookslut has posted my review of The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor. Not to spoil you too much, but the book is as unwieldy as the subtitle.

Since several people had questions about Advent, I thought I’d talk a little bit about the Christian traditions and more specifically what we do to celebrate the birth of Christ.

Stephen and I both grew up Southern Baptist. Baptists tend to be a bit more low church than other strains of Protestantism, so in many cases they don’t follow the liturgical calendar. The church we belong to right now is the most Liturgy-minded church I’ve ever been a part of (our church is also dually aligned with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, so we tend to be a bit more liberal than a typical Southern Baptist church). I don’t know if this more liberal view is why our church is a bit more focused on Liturgy or if it’s our pastor but I do know that following the liturgical calendar produces a rhythm to life that I love. Geof will say that I’m secretly Methodist. I’m not sure that he’s too far wrong in that assumption.

Our two big events during the Christian year are, of course, Easter and Christmas. So just as Lent is the beginning of preparing for Easter, Advent is preparation for Christmas.

My Advent season starts in October. Advent is actually the period of time comprised of the four Sundays before Christmas. I start in October by helping Stephen’s father, Ray, put together his church’s Advent devotional booklet. People from his church write devotionals based on scripture passages (usually tied to the day’s liturgy but sometimes it’s scripture about the coming Christ child), he edits them, and I prepare them for printing. The books are passed out at the beginning of Advent and are a way for the congregation to spend some time every day focusing on anticipating the coming celebration of Christ’s birth and also as a time to anticipate the Second Coming. This year I helped prepare our church’s Advent booklet as well.

At our house, we tend to read them both during Advent. The scripture from each usually overlap but the stories that people tell are often vastly different. The one from Ray’s church is usually chock full of folks that Stephen grew up around, so I know for him, it’s a little piece of home to read from that booklet.

Some people celebrate Advent with an evergreen wreath and candles. (I say some people because I am lazy and have never taken the time to search for the correct colored candles to use. I know that’s a really lame excuse but there it is anyway.) There are four candles that sit on top of a circular evergreen wreath and one that sits in the middle. (More on evergreens in the next paragraph.) The four candles are tied to the four weeks. Usually before a family meal, a devotional and/or scripture is read or a hymn can be sung, a prayer is offered, and one or more candles are lit. The first week is a purple candle that stands for hope. The second candle is also purple and stands for love. The third week candle is either purple or pink and stands for joy. I’ve also heard this called the “Mary” candle but didn’t find any reference to it in my research. The fourth candle is purple and stands for peace. And the white candle in the middle is the Christ candle and is only lit on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The candles were originally just a way to count down the weeks before Christmas, but of course, in use, have developed a ton of meaning.

Early in the Advent season we have a church service that incorporates the “hanging of the green.” We hang evergreen bows and branches around the sanctuary. Evergreen branches are symbols of the unchanging nature of God and are a physical reminder of our everlasting life in Christ. In researching exactly what the hanging of the green stood for I ran across something that said early Christians put evergreens in their windows to indicate when Christ had entered their home. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s a really great story and I love the symbolism behind that. Also, our lovely secular Christmas tree that caused us so much trouble this past Saturday totally counts toward our Evergreen quotient.

We also have lots of extra music during this time. The choir usually has a big performance and the children and youth usually have a musical/drama program sometime during Advent. We sing all the Christmas hymns during the Advent season. My favorite is “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” but pretty much all of them make me cry.

We also have a service especially for the grieving. At our church we call it a “Service of Remembrance and Hope.” This is probably a celebration of All Souls Day which is traditionally December 2.

There is usually a Christmas Eve Communion Service which we unfortunately don’t ever get to attend as we are always traveling during the holidays. The Christmas Eve Communion Services I’ve attended are some of the most holy services I can remember.

When we gather on Christmas day we always start with a reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2. Nothing puts consumerism in perspective like a family having no place to go but a stable. We also talk about the things/events/people in our lives over the past year that we are thankful for.

Epiphany is usually the last thing celebrated during Christmas and we don’t do it very well. It is January 6 and commemorates the coming of the Magi to Bethlehem after the birth of Christ. We typically keep our wise men separated out from our nativity and then after Christmas, move them closer. But a lot of years we take our Christmas stuff down before January 6, so we don’t even do this small commemoration.

After Eli was born, we instituted a three gift rule for birthdays and Christmas at our house. If you want, you can tie that to the three gifts the wise men brought but really, for me, it’s just a reasonable number of toys for the grandparents to be giving. When Eli asks about it, I’ll totally be telling the wise men story. “If it’s good enough for Baby Jesus…”

We are also doing something new with Stephen’s family this year to try to stem the flood tide of stuff coming into our house. Instead of everybody buying gifts for everybody we are trading names and giving the money we would have otherwise spent to charity. The best part is we are going to tell who we gave money to and why when we get together to open gifts.

So that’s what we do during Advent and Christmas. A lot of it about building community, some of it is based on old traditions and all of it is about anticipating the coming of light into a very dark world. This is the second time I have been pregnant during Christmas. It is amazing how much extra anticipation I feel during this time, my eagerness and hopes for my own child tied up in the hope and anticipation of the Christ child. I hope you are anticipating Christmas as well. I hope you have family and friends to share it with. Merry Christmas.

Eli is of the age that he makes requests repeatedly, and if the answer is “no” or “not right now,” he alters his request slightly. “Do you want to come play in my room?” “Do you want to play marble tower?” “Do you want to play Candyland?” “Do you want to do shoulders?”

Last night he made a new request. “Do you want to rock out with me?”

So we did.

I have really learned to love Christmas. Part of it is that in the past several years we have begun to earnestly celebrate Advent. Part of it is having a kid to watch getting excited about the prospect of seemingly limitless presents. This next story is about neither of those great things.

We bought a 7.5-foot tree last year after Christmas for an amazing bargain. We got this total steal because it’s a lit tree but one of the strands wasn’t working. Stephen, being handy in that way, declared he would be able to fix it once we put it up.

Yesterday was set aside for hall decking at the Granade house so after a trip to our new, local community center to walk on the indoor track, we got started. We pulled boxes out of the attic and stowed the Thanksgiving paraphernalia. All was going well until we got to the tree part. I wanted to put it in our office since that window faces the street and I wanted our neighbors to be able to admire our great tree. We flopped open the bottom umbrella-like portion of the tree in the office and it took up every inch of available floor space between my side of the desk, the closet, the window, and the bookcase.

I’ll admit to the panic attack I had next because I hadn’t even considered the diameter of the tree being a problem. My first thought was that it had to go. If you ask Stephen, he’ll tell you that I proclaimed it was too big about 300 times. I thought we might return it. No luck. I thought we might sell it after Christmas. Doesn’t fix the current problem. I even tried to trade with Andrew and Joy for their skinnier tree. Still don’t have an answer there and also, doesn’t fix the current problem.

We talked about putting it in our bedroom but finally settled for in front of our back door. Yes, that’s right, it’s sitting in front of our back door, taking up all available floor space between it and the piano. While this paragraph only took about two minutes to write, the actual events it describes took somewhere between two and three hours. And we hadn’t even tackled the truly hairy part of fixing the broken strand of lights.

That was a whole different ball of wax. We plugged and replugged each of the lights that weren’t working. We checked the fuses in three different plugs. I had another panic attack when I read the troubleshooting guide and it said the wires contained lead and that pregnant women shouldn’t handle them. Stephen took over and began removing that string of lights from the tree while I started unpacking other boxes. He had about two branches unstrung when he found the problem. One of the wires had pulled out from the base of a bulb. It was a completely easy fix except we didn’t have any wire nuts around. Stephen phoned our nearest friends to see if they might have some (they too are a handy lot) but no one was home. He got ready to go to Lowe Depot when I decided to ferret around in the tool chest. I came up with exactly one wire nut. Stephen had it fixed in under a minute. Elapsed time this phase of the project: about an hour.

In the background of all this tree angst is Eli. We stayed up late Friday night to go to our Sunday School Christmas party. He woke up early yesterday morning and had a lousy nap yesterday afternoon. Insufficient sleep makes for a grumpy Eli. The house being topsy-turvy makes for a grumpy Eli. We had that in spades yesterday with all the boxes and the intense discussions about the tree. Eli not getting enough one-on-one attention makes for a grumpy Eli. Grumpy Eli makes for a grumpy Mommy and Daddy. We grouched at Eli the whole day yesterday. He couldn’t keep his hands off things. He couldn’t listen. He wanted to watch tv all day long. Eli was a whole drama unto himself.

Finally, ornament hanging time arrived. We actually had fun during that part except for not having enough hooks to get stuff on the tree. There were a few moments of discussion, “Go out for more hooks?” But I unearthed a box of ball ornaments we didn’t plan to use and scavenged off of them for hooks.

Stephen and I both had to have a nap before dinner. But the upside is the pre-lit tree is really beautiful. Here’s the proof.

Here’s hoping the rest of the Advent season is less eventful than yesterday.

Muse: Starlight (2006)

Hey, look, Muse is playing on the deck of a bulk carrier! It’s not the best Muse video ever (wait a couple of weeks for that one), but I do dig the song. Plus halfway through the video they start firing flare guns in an attempt to summon the spirit of Queen.

(Thanks to Storme for the suggestion)

Cher: If I Could Turn Back Time (1989)

The US Missouri certainly has a lot of very big guns.

I feel a little bad about that last video, so let me make it up to you with a video of a hamster running through a live-action videogame. If you played games on the original Nintendo, this will be startlingly familiar to you.

So I went to the doctor on Tuesday and all is well with Baby TBA. Heatbeat is normal and my next appointment is January 2, when we will potentially find out the baby’s gender. I’ve been thinking of it as a boy in my head (and mostly out loud) but I don’t really care what it is as long as he/she gets here in a timely fashion and whole. My due date is still the second week in May. I lost two pounds last month due to vomiting and only gained one this month. The nurse was somewhat impressed with that number as I was just coming off the week of Thanksgiving. I would have posted that sooner but our internet was down at the beginning of the week.

And also, I have jobs! Real paying jobs! More than one, at once! Pardon me while I pass out from the hyperventilation.

My Kindermusik-ing sister-in-law commissioned me to do some stuff for her business, which I suppose I should ask her if I can post here to show us both off. I also have a logo commission I’m working on as well as very large Word document that I’m spiffing up for a friend of a friend from church. And I’m happy to say that after this week, I have caught up on all three projects and am waiting to hear back from two of them so I can continue work. How do I always manage to get busy right at Christmas?

I decided to do a medium-sized crafty project for someone’s Christmas gift. So after working out some details last night, Eli and I hauled it to Hobby Lobby this morning to collect some supplies. I, of course, over spent but I’m thinking that I’ll be able to return multiple items. Or I might just keep them and have Christmas supplies for the next project that hits me.

I’ve also managed to get some housework done this week, attend a birthday party for one of Eli’s friends, and get a good chunk of my Christmas shopping done. On Mother’s Morning Out mornings this week I went to the doctor, chiropractor, and dentist, got my haircut, and still had time to help do some Christmas decorating at the church. It’s amazing what a person can accomplish when they don’t feel like dog food 90% of the time.

Hallelujah! Second Trimester!