Short, spoiler-free review of Enterprise: Don’t let the truly vile Diane-Warren-penned theme song fool you.* There’s some definite potential here. It could very well not suck in the least.

Addendum: apparently, there are rumors of insinuations of whispers about one of the main characters being gay. Just in case, I would like to officially place my wager on the engineer, ‘Trip’. (I have a history of guessing, correctly, that characters on TV shows will later be revealed to be gay, and certain other people have a history of later denying that I ever made the claim.)

* (opening credits run, our players share a pained look) “Jeez, could you get any more Diane Warren?” (end credits run, our players share a shocked, amazed, betrayed look)

Amidst all of the doom-saying from on high about metafilter, I have only these things to say:

1. Yes, emphatically yes. I have noticed this dichotomy in my own home. When my husband types anything of length into the magic box, it is a long furious flurry of fingerstrokes followed immediately by a decisive pounding on the keyboard or the mouse. When I do so, it is a deliberate tapping out of a few words, a pause, a few more words, a longer pause, a flurry of keyboard shortcuts as I cut and paste something into a very slightly more logical structure, &c. Except more often than not the pauses, for thought, are interpreted as harbingers of imminent boredom, which any considerate person would attempt to alleviated by providing conversation. And now I fear I have gone too far in my support of kindall’s thesis and revealed my secret shame: yes, my very own husband is Not A Geek. Anyway.
2. Has anyone else noticed, and been alarmed by the realization, that the thread mentioned above contains all the five stages of grief, with perhaps a preponderance of bargaining?
3. Yesterday’s MeFi was the best, overall, that I have seen since immediately after the fortnight of our discontent. Or maybe before. More effort? On whose part?

The last few days have been spent, almost in their entirety, consuming The Diamond Age, the latest effort in my apparent quest to read Neal Stephenson’s works entirely in reverse of the order in which they were written. The joy I have taken in these two small glimpses of the arcane warrens contained in the author’s head, combined with my knowledge of others’ laments over the scarcity of these gems, almost overpower my compulsion to immediately dive into the next. Almost, but not quite. The fact that I will first have to wait for said gemological curiosity to be returned to the library that sometimes serves as its repository, and then drive to that location in another county, and also somehow manage to procure it before some other prospector snatches it from my grasp — that, and only that, is what prevents me from devouring it right now instead of writing this.

As a side note, all of this has led me to conclude that if I ever become one of the idle rich, that my chief effort in alleviating my own bourgeois guilt (these efforts are sometimes erroneously labeled charity; see Gates, Bill) will be donating copies of books that I perceive as Important, in great numbers, to the libraries of otherwise-middling intellectual backwaters. This undertaking will of course require great amounts of research into what books are indeed Important, the execution of which will become my chief occupation. And while I’m here in the realm of fantasy, I also would be amenable to the idea of procuring a pony.

The Coming Storm
or And Now Back to Our… Oh, Whatever
or Why I Really Need a TiVo

Starting a few years ago, when TV networks basically abandoned the concept of steady time slots, I became more organized in my TV-viewing habits than is probably warranted by such a frivolous pursuit. History informs us that despite all this, I’ll probably forget some of these anyway. And in the event of any more presidential addresses, I’m completely screwed.

Monday 9/24The Ellen Show, 9:30 - 10:00, CBS Series Premier
Tuesday 9/25Frasier, 9:00 - 10:00, NBC Season Premier
Wednesday 9/26Enterprise, 8:00 - 10:00, UPN Series Premier

West Wing, 9:00 - 10:00, NBC Season Premier

Law & Order, 10:00 - 11:00, NBC Season Premier
Thursday 9/27Friends, 8:00 - 8:30, NBC Season Premier

Will & Grace, 9:00 - 9:30, NBC Season Premier

Just Shoot Me, 9:30 - 10:00, NBC Season Premier

ER, 10:00 - 11:00, NBC Season Premier
Friday 9/28The Ellen Show, 8:00 - 8:30, CBS (Permanent Timeslot)
Monday 10/1America Loves: Star Trek, 7:00, TNN Kickoff to a five-day Star Trek: The Next Generation Marathon (drool)
Tuesday 10/2Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, 8:00 - 10:00, UPN Season Premier
Wednesday 10/3West Wing, 9:00 - 10:00, NBC Season Premier

A lovely article refuting the idea that America’s ironic voice may be faltering. Certainly, many are holding back a bit, trying to show proper respect and gravity. But one can still sense the coming explosion of satire, irreverence and impropriety. Hell, Helen Keller could.

Invaluable sources of metajournalism, especially during the current media cycle: Spin of the Day and MediaNews. Because there really are people who believe everything they read, see, or hear. (I know some of them.)

While the positive and negative aspects of a vacation-induced two week effective media blackout could be argued for weeks (see below), I can identify at least one positive. In that two weeks, I managed to finish reading the remaining two thirds of my birthday presents, including that epic beast of a book*, Cryptonomicon, which I thankfully read last. Thankfully, due to the fact that it immediately found a place among the top ten best books I have ever read, and whatever I pick up next will likely pale in comparison.
* Let’s just say that finishing it in (significantly) less than a week probably places me in a club with membership in the double digits, and leave it at that.

I inhabit the interesting wrinkles.
I watched more broadcast network news in the last week, trapped in an apartment with no cable and no internet, than I have in the past six years. And yet I was deprived of any mental grasp of the full scope of this tragedy until last night, in the midst of catching up on my blog-reading, when I was waylaid by the sheer tidal-wave feed of other people’s experiences. Either my mental processes are quite broken, or something in me just wouldn’t let me fully process any of these events based solely on talking heads and endlessly cycling collapsing-building money shots. I’m completely open to either interpretation.

When I say that the actual loss of life — while horrendous|mind-boggling|appalling — will take second place behind America’s own reactions in the final account of the damage wrought, I’m talking about stuff like this.

It was 9:30 AM. I was in Charleston, South Carolina. The people I cared most about in the world were in Augusta and Atlanta, Georgia. All worked at US government facilities which would be high on any nut job’s list of shit to blow up. Predictably, none were actually at their desks.

I left a half-frantic voice mail for my eldest sister. “Hi. Still in Charleston. If you’re still at work, do me two favors: go home, and then call me and tell me where Mom is.”

My own fruitless calls were sandwiched between my husband’s and those of the couple we were staying with, all of whom had family and friends in D.C. When their efforts were met with fast busy signals, the sign of a communications infrastructure taxed beyond all reasonable expectations, I experienced a bond with my fellow humans unlike anything I’ve ever known. Across the country, and indeed the entire world, people were trying to reach their families.

Five numb hours later, all of my family had checked in. I could safely begin to wrap my mind around the initial damage; I could think of all those whose families would not be checking in. I could think of how most of the damage from this attack was yet to come, assuming America’s collective reaction was as wrong as could reasonably be expected. And this last is still on my mind, a week later. It never ended, and is nowhere near doing so: residual shock waves continue to fan out, fraying the loose fabric of beliefs and assumptions that is America.

Hatred, fear, and violence are not the appropriate response to hatred, fear, and violence.

I’m in Charleston, South Carolina. Sort of a last minute thing. I’m on a borrowed laptop, connecting through AOL (ugh ugh ugh). Posts will probably be sparse for the next week, after which I plan to actually spend a whole week in my own home, for the sheer novelty of it.

One final, almost content-free article about the Scarfo case before gag orders and general apathy sweep it under the rug. Shortly, we’ll all forget about this for half a year, only to emerge feeling righteously vindicated or righteously enraged. Ya heard it here first. (found using Daypop, “a current events search engine,” via Firda.)