This Very Small Amount of Internet Fame Will Go Straight to My Head

In the past few days I've had almost four hundred hits. Four hundred! That's how much I get in a typical month, and what makes it a little frustrating is that I can't figure out where you people get here from. The keywords are not helping, the referral sites are the same ones that always refer my site (and the numbers there look the same), and the pages "hit" are a motley collection of bikey posts, writing posts, and posts way the hell from last year. So if you're on this site for the first time, my question to you is: why?

So I might as well take advantage of my sudden Internet fame to update you with some important life news:

• I got a new job! My last job, as I think I might have mentioned here at some point (or maybe it was on Dreamwidth), was at this deli, and while it definitely gave me fodder for a potential writing project, it wasn't the job for me. Even "in this economy." I'm not going to say anything specific about the new job because hi, separating Internet life from work life is always a solid plan but it's the best job I've had since 2007. Looking forward to staying the course, racking up experience points, and learning much more about the profession I work in.
• I've been re-reading a lot of my favorite books this month, because that always gets me more into the groove of writing my own stuff. First I re-read Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem, which might be the book I've read more often than any other. Now I'm onto the Light/Nova Swing duology by M. John Harrison, which was groundbreaking when I first read it (I still hadn't read all that much SF by that point despite writing it... the fact that I only got into SF as an adult and how that's influenced my reading/writing/thoughts about "fandom" should really be its own blog post at some point) and is still amazing now. Up next: probably some Philip K. Dick, since I'm getting the Exegesis for Giftmas and I want to get in the mood.
• Sparkle Season isn't annoying me this year as much as it has in the past. I still don't like the semi-compulsory participation in a holiday I have no religious connection to, I still really don't like giving or receiving presents, but this season I've managed to be more Andy Rooney than Lewis Black about the whole thing.
• My new work commute is over twice as long as my old commute, which would make most people groan but not me, because I'm insane. Or a bike commuter, same difference really. Maybe I'll write about it on the bikey blog but I update there even less frequently than here. I'm learning how to ride safely with one earbud in which makes the commute all the more sweet. (And will hopefully get me back into music. I've only listened to ONE album released this year, I used to care so much more about new music. Of course, I am also 30, and I gather that one's enjoyment of new music tends to wither after you hit your third decade.)
• Working on stories, same old, same old. The revised story I thought about self-publishing as a social experiment is actually turning out to be good, so I may attempt to publish it for real after all. I've come to the conclusion that blogging about writing is sort of boring because it's pretty much a one-woman enterprise and anything that isn't "hey I finished something" or "hey I published something" (and dudes I totally did publish something this year) is frankly kind of dull, don't you think? Being a short story writer and zinester, I hit this "finishing point" more often than novelists but still, it's not climbing Everest, exactly. Maybe taking "action shots" of my netbook in various exotic locations will help, it certainly works for bike bloggers.

And... that's it! Bye for now, my hundreds upon hundreds of mystery readers.

Christmas is a time for nitpicking TV shows

Well, Christmas is almost upon us. I really don't get the logic behind holding a festive holiday in the worst season, and as such I'm not a big fan of Christmas. Nevertheless, I did a little bit of decorating, picking up a bright pink tree at Target, which led the cashier to ask "what are you going to use this crappy little tree for, I mean look at this thing!" "Um, it's going to be my Christmas tree." She was incredulous, saying "oh no, honey, you want a BIG tree." But one of our cats likes to crawl up big Christmas trees, and anyway, they are a pain to set up and tear down. So, crappy little tree it is! (And yes, said cat has still managed to knock it over like five times, which is partially why there are no ornaments on it.)

I also attempted to make a gingerbread house, which was foiled when I managed to break the roof, and dinosaur-shaped sugar cookies, which I managed not to break, but did manage to eat within 24 hours after baking. I am not at all domestic, but Christmas can kind of be a way to pretend that I am.

Thanks to the magic of Hulu, I was also able to get into the holiday spirit this year by watching the Christmas episode of Sliders, a television show I appreciate both ironically and non-ironically (most of my TV watching is ironic, by the way). I don't think I've seen this episode since it originally aired. So anyway, inspired by Chris Sims' recaps of holiday episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess and Walker, Texas Ranger, I present the following recap of "Season's Greedings," the Sliders Christmas episode.

For those unfamiliar with the show--which I'm going to assume is almost everyone reading this blog--it follows four adventurers as they travel to alternate dimensions where small changes in history can lead to worlds either very similar to or very different from our own on "Earth Prime." In the first two seasons, this meant largely alternate history stories that were generally well done. In the third and later seasons, however, the alt-history pretense was dropped and it became just another CGI-laden adventure show which had a tendency to kill off characters for absolutely no reason.

The Christmas episode is near the beginning of the third season, which means that it's only alt-history in the flimsiest sense ("what if... everyone lived in a mall... in the SKY?!"), but is not as horrible as the episodes that come after a certain character, Prof. Maximillian Arturo, is killed off. That character is played by John Rhys-Davies, a classically-trained scene-chewer better known by most nerds (neeeerrdss!!) for playing Gimli the dwarf in Lord of the Rings. I don't really remember his part since I slept through most of Lord of the Rings.

ANYWAY. This episode is Arturo-centric, which means that already it was destined to be at least a moderately entertaining episode. After escaping a world of jealous "pygmies" (their word, not mine), the Sliders decide to give thanks at a denominational chapel, where they arrive just in time to help a woman abandon her baby. The Professor ignores his own Prime Directive and vows to find the mother, and takes the gang to a mall suspended on a cloud in the sky. Now, you'd think that a civilization which has learned to defeat gravity would do more with this technology than stick malls into the sky for absolutely no reason, but perhaps I'm expecting too much realism from a show about interdimensional wormholes.

At the mall, the Sliders bemoan this world's consumerism, which actually doesn't seem much more brash than our consumerism. The alt-mall is not really that much more flashy or decadent than any real mall around the holidays, and as it was filmed in a real mall, there's a fair amount of product placement, making the complaints about consumerism (and later, subliminal advertising) a little hypocritical.

You can't pay for housing or food with cash on Debit Card World, so the team gets hired to work at the mall by Wade's (the cute, petite lady Slider who you shouldn't get too attached to, because yeah...) alt-sister Kelly, whose hairstyle and shoulder pads are imported from alt-1987 (unless part of the alternate history here is that Dallas never went off the air). On an exposition walk-and-talk, the mall manager describes the debt-slave setup of the mall, where you can be fired and kicked out of your mall-provided housing for not spending enough money. This is illustrated by a scene where someone is reprimanded for saving money, which again, doesn't seem all that outrageous if you know anything about the history of company towns. Or maybe it's supposed to be an obvious parallel?

More outrage over this world's rejection of the true meaning of Christmas in favor of rampant consumerism follows, as Arturo (playing Santa Claus) bores the greedy children of Debit Card World with morality tales, until he spots Carol (oh, brother), the baby-dumping woman from the first scene. She, however, manages to fend him off with a janitor's cart pushed strategically in his path. Arturo then decries this as one of the worst worlds they've landed on, which seems a little rash considering they have already landed on a world that's a giant prison, and a world run by J. Edgar Hoover. But that doesn't hold a candle to forgetting the true meaning of Christmas.

The conspiracy B-plot deepens, as Quinn (for the newbs, he's the boy genius who invented sliding) and Arturo find out that Carol is a debt-slave, and Rembrandt (comic relief/everyman character) becomes addicted to shopping through subliminal advertising. Quinn then preaches to alt-Kelly about the artificiality of Debit Card World's Christmas. Case in point: they don't even use real Christmas trees! Of course, I don't know anyone who DOES use a real Christmas tree, and it wouldn't make any sense to use a real tree in a mall anyway. But I guess this is supposed to demonstrate Earth Prime's moral superiority over other dimensions, with our subtle, understated celebration of Jesus' birthday.

We're then treated with more first-class acting by Rhys-Davies, who tries to guilt Carol (oh, brother) into taking back her baby by recounting his mother's death in the blitzkrieg, and the terrible abandonment fears he now has, which is ironic if you remember that he abandoned his own son. Or maybe the writers just forgot that bit of character history. This is the third season, they just didn't care. The C-plot, involving Wade and her alt-family, chugs along. That plot isn't very interesting.

The crux of the mass consumerism and debt slavery is revealed to be the subliminal advertising in the commercials, which isn't really subliminal advertising since the messages are on the screen long enough for you to see/read them consciously, and anyway, subliminal advertising doesn't work and especially wouldn't work on a large scale. Again, I'm nitpicking at a show about interdimensional travel. But it's a lot easier to get me to suspend belief over something that just doesn't exist than to believe in something that's been proven NOT to exist.

Anyway, it's Sliders to the rescue, as Carol (oh, brother), Quinn, and Wade break into the mall president's office and randomly pound on his computer keyboard, which as we all know from 1990s sci-fi, will get you into any computer security system, no matter how guarded. Meanwhile, Arturo continues to indoctrinate the children of Debit Card World with his tales of the real meaning of Christmas. He self-righteously tells the mall president that his reign of consumerism is over now that children have been instructed about “true values,” showing that Arturo has perhaps too high an opinion of most children's attention spans. Seriously, these kids aren't going to remember being told a Christmas story by John Rhys-Davies, no matter how classy his voice is.

Finally, there is a confrontation between alt-Kelly, Quinn, and the mall president, and Quinn socks the president in the jaw, since pretty much every season three episode had to end with some kind of fight or chase (there is also a short chase). Everyone convenes at Wade's alt-family's house for sappy songs and recollections.

Preachiness aside, this is a decent episode, especially considering that it's in the third season. If I do more of these sarcastic Sliders episode recaps, I'll have to pick a really awful episode like the Dune or Island of Dr. Moreau homages.

Anyway, happy holidays, readers!