As anyone whose perused the book portion of my website has noticed, I’m a big fan of storytelling. I love a well-written book, where the story pulls me and it’s nearly impossible for me to put the book down. (Okay, I like the stories, although not the consequences of staying up too late reading.) I love stories that stick with me long after I’ve put the book down. Stories with characters I think about long afterwards.

And although I’ve never been a huge fan of the medium, there are also TV shows with good storytelling.

The funny thing, however, is that even I can’t predict what stories will stick with me.

But following a long virtual discussion with Jedi Jawa (no offense, but I have a hard time writing that and taking it seriously.) I started thinking about what–to me–makes a good story, and what are the stories that stick with me long after I’m done watching them.

There are two shows that are at the top of my list of all time favorites: Deep Space Nine and Firefly. I can watch these shows time and again and still they thrill me–hell, sometimes they’re even more enjoyable the better I get to know them (to paraphrase Michael, “would you stop laughing in advance!”)

What surprised me, however, was that Farscape stuck with me far more than Babylon 5 did. Now I have to admit that some of this was coming up with ways to fix some of the more problematic episodes (Take the mini-series, Peacekeeper Wars. I decided that if I ignore the entire Arin pregnancy thing, I quite liked the story.), but that’s not all of it. There’s something about the characters, the way they were written, and they way they were portrayed that crawled into my brain and took up residence.

But as much as I loved the storytelling of Babylon 5, for the most part it just didn’t stick with me in the same way. As much as I wanted to find out what happened, as much as I loved the twists and turns and the way everything tied back upon itself, I didn’t give the characters much thought once I was done watching. (With the notable exceptions of Ivonava, Marcus, and Vir.)

Which makes me wonder, what is more important in a show? Good writing or good acting? Or is it an individual thing? Obviously, when both come together (such as in Firefly) it is a wonder and a joy.

Which is a really long way of saying, holy crap I really love Six Feet Under and how come no one told me it was this good? I mean, there are no space ships, nothing gets blown up, and there’s lots of boinking… I should be hating it, but I’m not. And boy do I hope that there’s not some point where everything goes off in some direction that just pisses me off (i.e. the first half of season 6 of Buffy).

I tend to mull over touchy subjects for awhile, before I write about them. I didn’t used to do this, but when I started writing here five years ago, I think Erin was the only person reading, so it didn’t much matter what I said.

But now I must consider that what I write may well be read by current and future employers, which makes certain subjects even more difficult to write about than they are already.

At the top of that list is the subject of mental illness.

The Virginia Tech shootings have brought the subject of mental illness back into the spotlight, and in the most negative light possible.

Now I admit that I am lucky in that my depression and obsessive compulsive disorder are relatively mild, but despite that I have at multiple times in my life seen psychologists and psychiatrists and been on a variety of medications. And through those times I have typically feared discussing these health issues with others.

At the root of that silence is a sense of shame and embarrassment.

Consider the phrase “it’s all in your head.” Well, yes. It is all in my head. But that doesn’t mean that I can control it, no matter how hard I try. During our pre-marital counseling, we were asked whether we had a history of mental illness, when I responded yes, I suffered from depression (I was still in denial about my OCD at that point) the response was basically, “no, I meant a real mental illness.” As if depression were something I could control. As if my depression were something that did not affect my relationships and my life.

Consider the attitude most people have about mental illness. I had a direct supervisor who repeatedly referred to one of the local mental health facilities as “the nuthouse” and constantly used other disparaging terms to refer to those who suffer from mental illness.

Now, as I again consider therapy and medication to help me deal with problems that are slowly spiraling out of my control, I am afraid let people know what is happening in my life. Afraid that they will think less of me for an inability to control something that’s “all in my head.” Afraid that they’ll see me as a threat and a danger.

Which brings me to the disclosure of the mental illness of the shooter. There is now a discussion about the treatment of mental illness.

It is possible this could be a good thing–that treatment for mental illness will be easier to receive, and will be better covered by health insurance companies.

But it could also lead to a greater ostracization of those who suffer from mental illness. That mental illness will become grounds for losing your job or being kicked out of school, for the “safety” of other students or co-workers. That it will become easier to commit someone with mental illness against their will.

And that most people won’t see a problem with either of those things.

As previously mentioned, between episodes of Babylon 5 we’re watching with my grandmother, I’ve been reading a lot. Some recent recommendations:

Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher, where I finally get to stop being so annoyed with Harry Dresden.

Unshapely Things by Mark del Franco, which is an excellent urban fantasy that isn’t cluttered by with boinking.

I had mixed feelings about Shadows in the Darkness which scored very high as a mystery, but also managed to do some of the things that really annoy me.

And I didn’t much like Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth. It has lots of glowing reviews, but I’m not quite sure why, since I found the book to be very uneven.

For a variety of reasons, mostly to do with the fact that we have new furniture, Kit (the small, evil, secondary cat )was sent to get declawed this week. We tried the kitty nail covers, we tried double sided tape… nothing.

So before she destroyed the new furniture, we got her declawed. She came through fine–better that I had expected actually–and was gone for a day and a half, but now that she’s back Kat (the large, not extremely friendly, primary cat) no longer recognizes her.

Never mind the fact that the whole time she was gone he moped around the house. Now she’s back, she smells like the vet and so every time Kat sees her he hisses and gets a big fat bushy tail.

Of course, now that I think about it, he WAS freaked out by a doorstop.

We’ve made sure she spent lots of time lying in the window seat, where the two of them would cuddle together. No dice.

Hopefully he gets over it soon.

A toy black leopard left lying in a footpath sparked panic in a Chinese city.

(via my brother)

So what have I made with my time off?

Apple pie
Bittersweet brownies
Chocolate biscotti

So I’m feeling better than I did last week, but I could still stand a little more relaxation.

Because you can never have too many chocolate baked goods.

I set down the book I’d finished and was thinking about the review I was write when I suddenly woke up and realized that it was 3:30. “Oh man,” I thought, “I just wasted the afternoon napping.”

Guess maybe I’m not really clear about the idea of taking time off from work to relax.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already 21 April and this is the first time I’ve gone out to look at my plants and flowers, but it’s true. This is the first weekend that we were home that was nice weather (the previous nice weekend was when we were in Cincinnati, which was probably more than a month ago).

I knew that the cold and freezing weather coming so late were going to cause problems, but I was still surprised to see the amount of damage. My bleeding hearts look horrible, most of the roses needed pruned back hard, and the two hybrid tea roses are dead. The Japanese maple looks rough, as it was just coming into leaf when the snow came. But it looks like it is putting out new buds, so it may come through okay. Several other shrubs–including my favorite, the broom–took damage, with most having several inches of dead branches or stems.

Combine this with the fact that in order for my grandmother to fit into the house, I gave away or composted a lot of plants in the fall, and things are looking pretty barren.

On the bright side, however, this means that I can get all *kinds* of annuals this year.

Just to fill in the bare spots, you know.

After all, it’s not like we had anything else planned for our disposable income.

Except books.

deus ex machina \DAY-us-eks-MAH-kih-nuh\ noun
: a person or thing (as in fiction or drama) that appears or is introduced suddenly and unexpectedly and provides a contrived solution to an apparently insoluble difficulty

The New Latin term “deus ex machina” is a translation of a Greek phrase and means literally “a god from a machine.” “Machine,” in this case, refers to the crane that held a god over the stage in ancient Greek and Roman drama. The practice of introducing a god at the end of a play to unravel and resolve the plot dates from at least the 5th century B.C.; Euripides (circa 484-406 B.C.) was one playwright who made frequent use of the device. Since the late 1600s, “deus ex machina” has been applied in English to unlikely saviors and improbable events that bring order out of chaos in sudden and surprising ways.

The reason today’s word is appropriate is that it’s the working title for the story I was writing. Was, because a bout of depression threw me out of it, and I haven’t been able to get back in. So here’s a reminder for me to try and get my ass in gear.

Is it just me, or does the teen on the cover of the Garth Nix “Keys to the Kingdom” series look eerily like a younger Neil Gaiman?

(click through to find a larger image on the Amazon website.)

See also Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, Drowned Wednesday, and Lady Friday

“Let’s sit down and discuss finances.”

In case you haven’t yet seen this:

Go to Google.com

Click on Maps.

Click on get Directions.

From New York, New York

To Paris,France.

Make sure to read line # 23.

All things considered, I really don’t have much to say about the selection of WVU’s new president other than between Michael Garrison’s selection, and the selection of Bob Huggins as the new basketball coach, I think it’s pretty obvious what WVU’s priorities are.

Ready or not, my Grandmother is back, and it’s really for real now.

Her house is sold; there’s no going back.

It’s strange. The things that I expected to be difficult have been relatively painless, while the things I never considered have been the most frustrating. (Speaker phone conversations between individuals who are hard of hearing but don’t have hearing aids? Although I usually see the humor–or at least the potential for humor–you can only hear someone repeat a phone number so many times before you just have to leave the room.)

Life is a funny thing–how it’s the little stuff that get you. If we were just able to live–live without having to worry about the details–would things be easier? Or would we just invent new things to worry about and plague our days and still keep us from enjoying the little moments?

I think the answer to that question is that I shouldn’t even consider writing when I’m over tired and it’s past my bedtime. (Yes. I’m a morning person. Wanna make something of it?)

Me:”Hey, you dressed up for something or just need to do laundry?”
Him: “Laundry.”

I’m pretty sure it’s a good measure of what complete and total geeks Michael and I are that when watching TV shows on DVD, were are likely to call out things like, “Hey! It’s Admiral Leyton! or “Wasn’t she one of the Ziyals?

That said, we’re really enjoying Season One of Six Feet Under. Though I’m sorry that they don’t have more of the commercials that they had in the pilot. Those commercials were what made us decide to keep watching.

And Netflix is definitely one of the best inventions in the past decade, second only to the upside down ketchup bottle.

Thanks to Michael, at the top, right corner of the page you’ll now see random quotations. Unless of course your browser is too narrow, in which case the quotes will be between the header image and the first post. I’ll check some different computers and see how annoying that is.

And like the rest of this site, they are definitely random.

ADDENDUM the First:
Refresh (F5) will bring up a new quotation.

And now for something completely different.

I’ve actually had a hard time finding a book to keep my interest recently.

My current bed time books are Vellum: The Book of All Hours by Hal Duncan, Labyrinth by Kate Mosse, and The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history by John M. Barry. All three are good, but none of them have yet engrossed me (though Labyrinth is getting there.)

I’ve also started and put right down several other books, including:
Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, Book 8) by Jim Butcher (Harry was really annoying me), The Coffin Dancer (A Lincoln Rhyme Novel) by Jeffery Deaver (I wasn’t really in the mood for reading about people getting gruesomely killed), Whose Body? (Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries) by Dorothy L Sayers (I read a forensic thriller last week–all I could think was “he is totally contaminating the crime scene”), and Shadows in the Darkness (Changeling) by Elaine Cunningham (Is there going to be boinking in this book? I don’t want to read any boinking right now).

So none of these were what I was in the mood for. Which meant I was all the more impressed that Mister Monday pulled me in immediately, since nothing else has seemed to be doing that right now.

Now I have to see if any of those will pique my interest, or if I’ll I should pick up another book on the pile: Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship’s Boy (Bloody Jack Adventures) by L.A. Meyer, 30 Days Of Night: Three Tales (30 Days of Night) by Steve Niles & Jeff Mariotte, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories by Liz Williams.

Unless of course I pick up one of the other unread books lying around the house…

Back to another of my favorite subjects: The way that the Bush administration is caring for soldiers and veterans.

There are two excellent pieces out right now about how the care that our soldiers and veterans are receiving.

The Washington Post has an excellent article on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the increasing number of solders who are suffering from TBI after being near the explosion of an IED–even if they walk away from the explosion.

Here’s why IEDS carry such hidden danger. The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point of explosion and travels hundreds of yards. The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain against the skull. The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by the “secondary wind”: a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again under high pressure. No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.

It is these sudden and extreme differences in pressures — routinely 1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure — that lead to significant neurological injury. Blast waves cause severe concussions, resulting in loss of consciousness and obvious neurological deficits such as blindness, deafness and mental retardation.

The article uses a term that I had not heard in a long time in describing what is happening to these soldiers: Shell Shock.

There is also a discussion of the fatality-casualty rates in this war as compared to the Vietnam War.

It’s a very interesting piece.

The second piece is in US News and World Report, and looks at the rates at which veterans are being denied disability benefits.

…the U.S. military appears to have dispensed low disability ratings to wounded service members with serious injuries and thus avoided paying them full military disabled retirement benefits. While most recent attention has been paid to substandard conditions and outpatient care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the first stop for many wounded soldiers stateside, veterans’ advocates say that a more grievous problem is an arbitrary and dysfunctional disability ratings process that is short-changing the nation’s newest crop of veterans. The trouble has existed for years, but now that the country is at war, tens of thousands of Americans are being caught up in it.

Before we went to war with Iraq, there were complaints about the veterans’ administration, especially regarding the underfunding of programs. Things are not getting better.

What I’d really like to see is all those jackasses with “Support Our Troops” magnets on their cars actually do something to support the troops–like paying higher taxes so we can afford better care and benefits.

Okay, my day job is software support, so I know how difficult the job can be.

But.

Our DSL has been giving us problems. It’s intermittently up and down. Although this could be due to a problem in the line somewhere, chances are, the DSL modem is going bad.

But that didn’t seem to occur to any of the tech support people we spoke to this weekend. We received a variety of suggestions, none of which worked. At last, we received the helpful suggestion that we call back when the modem wasn’t functioning. (It wasn’t functioning during the first calls we made) . Of course by the time Michael called, the modem would start working again.

So, after multiple phone calls we still don’t have a stable DSL connection. Perhaps if we call during the week we’ll get someone actually capable of solving the problem.

And I get yet another reminder of why people hate dealing with tech support.

BTW, there’s a new addition to the Fables series, Jack of Fables.

That, Ex Machina, some supernatural fantasies, and a Victorian mystery are some of what I’ve been reading.

It’s 28 degrees and still snowing.

Just in case you were curious.

It’s still snowing.

Just so you know.

For those of you who are not complete geeks, WV Public Radio has been doing a very good series recently on the VA hospital in Beckley. (See the WVPR News page, but go quickly as the articles probably won’t stay up long.)

Apparently Senator Rockefeller has been complaining about the VA facility in Beckley for some time, but it was only with the the revelations of what was happening at Walter Reed that people have started to pay attention.

A brief synopsis is that the VA facility on Beckley cannot keep doctors, and Senator Rockefeller believes that these problems are due to the administration at the hospital.

The hospital administration, of course, denies that there is a problem.

I do take issue with one thing that was brought up by the reporters–they were kicked off hospital property by security, who claimed that reporters were not allowed on federal property. (I think that is correct.)

Okay, I understand that reporters should check out these places, to make sure that patients are being treated correctly. But. This isn’t just federal property. This is a medical facility. Patients have privacy rights, and I am not certain that bringing a TV camera (and my understanding was that she had video recording equipment in addition to audio recording equipment) into a medical facility meets with those privacy standards. How can you guarantee that you are not accidentally getting someone on camera who does not want to be on camera?

I don’t know.

And let me make it clear that I very much appreciate the work that WVPR is putting into researching this issue, but I can also understand why video equipment could be a problem.

So, I hope that bringing this issue to light helps veterans. And I think making the public aware of the care our veterans are receiving should be a priority for all news organizations. But I don’t think that bringing to light these problems should trump a veteran’s right to privacy.

ersatz \AIR-sahts\ adjective
: being a usually artificial and inferior substitute or imitation

The is one of those words I’ve never been able to pronounce, because thought I’ve read it multiple times, I don’t remember ever hearing it.