Ben Still Doesn't Know Anything About Sports: Hockey

Seems like there's still too much space between my posts these days, isn't there? (And in this case, basically another month. Whoops.) Once again, I blame novel work. I'm down to the last very two chapters and epilogue, and once I finish the last of these revisions, it's time to begin the long, arduous, and inevitably soul-crushing process of chucking my work at agents while bellowing "YOU READ IT, YOU READ IT!" and maybe a "YOU MAKE ME MONIES!" for good measure. Because it might be nice to have some of those monies for once in life, maybe a means of eventually getting out and actually doing the whole starting of one's life thing. I've heard some talk that the literary publishing world's getting ready to start moving forward and taking chances again as of late, which should help, seeing as the economy's just starting to begin its painful recovery, and we're starting to see more books selling again. I'd kinda like to see my book join those, hopefully give people something to enjoy.

So, fall began just over a week ago. (Up here where the world doesn't run in REVERSE.) People seem to like to watch that sports stuff on TV a whole lot when fall arrives. It's been a long time since I last wrote about sports. Almost as though I don't actually care about athletics in any meaningful capacity. But of course, you're all about that stuff, aren't you? Whether you're about those frequently fatal hot dog eating contests or that one game the rest of the world really likes where you kick a ball with your feet. What was that game called again?

At any rate, I figure I may as well use that athletics tag a bit more and explain everything to you about some more sports I know nothing about and don't care to know anything about. Let's start with hockey. (That's the one everybody spends half the year fixated on, right? With the end zones and field goals and crap like that.) Hockey's fun. If the game goes well, all the players and the entire audience will be dead by the end of the game. Now that's a SPORT! (A blood sport, maybe, hurr hurr hurr ow. Why must I say these things?)

So there's some ice, but the important thing is that everyone's wearing skates - skates are sharp. You don't want to get cut by those, but frankly, that's the whole point of the game. That and punching. (Brass and barbed-wire knuckles are standard issue equipment.) You want to punch each other - ideally making good use of those hockey sticks/bludgeons in there somewhere too - until you knock teeth out of the opposing team's players (And in some cases the same team's) so you can score points based on toothcount. It's a fact.

If a player manages to accumulate ten teeth, they can take a trip to the penalty box, where they keep the game's "tooth fairy." (A hobo recruited off the street for each game, plied by bottle of Jack Daniel's and given a pair of fairy wings and a shotgun.) The player in question sits out for the next five minutes while the "fairy" fires his shotgun (All fairies have these. But you already knew that, right?) indiscriminately at other players and into the audience. You can think of him as the "loose cannon" or "wild card" of the game. A good tooth fairy can end the game in ten to fifteen minutes. But chances are they'll be so drunk that they probably won't.

Some hockey enthusiasts are probably protesting as they read this post. "But Ben! Hockey's not like this at all! You didn't even mention the puck!" Jesus, what is it with you purists? Of course I was getting to the puck, but get over your pucking hangup already! It's not the most important part of the game, okay!? Why is that some people can't stand it when I just tell it like it is? Some people can't handle a straight shooter. So obviously, there's a little black disc on the ground called the puck. Named after the character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the puck in hockey is a jester to the players much in the same sense that the character Puck was to the fairy king Oberon. As Puck was there to create mischief, the puck in hockey so exists to distract players from the real point of the game. (Hence all THESE JERKS who just won't let up about how the game is played. YOU'VE ALL BEEN TRICKED! GET OVER IT!) They want you to think you're supposed to hit the puck into a goal on the other side of the rink, but this couldn't be further from the truth. The reality of it is, the puck's only real use in hockey is as a long range projectile to knock out other players at a long distance once they've lost their helmets. (First rule of hockey: WORK THE FACE. If you make it through the game without becoming horribly disfigured, you're DOING IT WRONG. This also applies to hockey fans in the audience. Sorry, mutilation's the name of the game. I DON'T WRITE THESE RULES STOP COMPLAINING.) You also get bonus points if you break someone's teeth or nose by using the puck as a melee weapon in close-range combat. (Note: Use THE Puck, not Wolfgang Puck. Otherwise you won't get to eat after the game and you'll have no one but yourself to blame.)

The puck-crazed crowd also seems to have a fixation on those goal nets on either side of the rink. You aren't supposed to see those. What's wrong with you guys? Have you been shooting smack into your eyeballs again? (Generally not well-advised behavior.) There's only supposed to be two junkies in the rink at any given time, the "goalies," who hallucinate the existence of these "goals" as so to give them more direction than the rest of the players. With everyone else on the offensive, you want at least two strictly defensive players out there to shake things up. Otherwise the whole game'd get dreadfully boring. (And once the novelty wears off, there's nothing more boring than wanton violence.) And most sports are unforgivably boring - especially when they don't involve robots - which is why I don't watch these things. BECAUSE I HAVE TASTE. (Stay tuned for my soon to arrive next post after these long delays, looking at what I've deemed worth watching in the 2009-2010 TV season!) Clearly yours is questionable.

The best thing that can possibly happen at any hockey game is the arrival of a zamboni. (You know, those ice resurfacers.) If a game goes over time, it's the only way to settle things - and it's much more exciting than watching people get flattened by a steamroller. (Which is, in actually, nowhere near as funny as you'd think.) OHH! THE CLOCK'S RUN OUT! AND MR. JONES HAS ARRIVED ON THE ZAMBONI! CAN THAT ONE DISFIGURED GUY OUTSKATE IT!? I DON'T THINK SO, TOM, HE'S LOST A LOT OF BLOOD! IT'S GOOD! TOUCHDOWN! GOAL! (Imagine that last word stretched out for as long an interval as humanly possible. There's no limit to imagination.) Now this is what athleticism is all about.

Next time! Competitive ice skating: like hockey, but slightly harder to kill people. That is to say, I have no idea when I'm going to do another of these. (IT'S A MYSTERY.)

Healthcare Reform: How 'Bout It?

It's been a little while since my last political entry, so I figured it was getting to be about time. (I did say I'd get another post up while it was still August - maybe not in those exact words, but close enough!) And with all the insanity buzzing around the very notion of reforming our broken healthcare system here in the United States, I felt like it was time for me to weigh in. (Particularly to honor the recently deceased Ted Kennedy in this case, an admirable politician with high ideals who fought hard for healthcare reform up until his death to brain cancer the better part of a week ago. A sad, troubling time in which to pass on, but his funeral on Saturday was a fitting tribute to in many ways the most important Kennedy family member in American politics.)

Let's start by looking at the heart of the basic problem of healthcare reform. What's wrong with this country? The insurance industry, of course. Even I grew up thinking the basic concept was screwed up. "Really? We pay other people for the promise of helping us with our healthcare, and they do everything they can to avoid paying out? Why are we trying to make money on going to the doctor?" Legally, we place more importance on making sure everybody has to buy CAR insurance than we do making sure people have access to healthcare. We place more value on liability insurance for our vehicles than we do our own national health. (In fact, you can't even be legally issued a Driver's License here in North Carolina without car insurance.) Yes, it's safe to say that our priorities are more than a little screwed up. Here in America, we have a $400 billion industry standing as a giant barricade between the people and the healthcare that the rest of the developed world deemed a human right quite some time ago. When faced with a money-wall that dauntingly dense, corporations that have indeed placed prices on human lives - lobbying Congress like there's no tomorrow, keeping as many politicians as deeply in their pockets as possible from both parties - those of us fighting for reform face a seemingly unbeatable beast. And it's imperative that we - not only as moral creatures who care about others than ourselves, but as human beings in general - defeat this monster birthed by our greed.

Back in 2007, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore's Sicko highlighted the serious problems of this corrupt industry and made a strong argument for public healthcare. Over 40 million Americans are uninsured. Moore covered this, along with the focus on profits for shareholders at insurance companies - talking with former employees, who discussed the cost-cutting lengths they'd go to in denying service. (In short, even having insurance is no guarantee of actual healthcare. Their end goal is to take your money and give you as little back as possible for it - ideally nothing at all. It's a crooked system in its very conception.) He also looked at the right's framing their opposition of healthcare reform and nationalization as a Cold War era style battle against Communism, appealing to the Baby Boomer generation that actually responds to this kind of fear propaganda. Two years later, here we are seriously fighting for healthcare reform with a historic moderate president in office keen on mopping up long-term right-wing political mistakes, and the right's attacking reform through exactly the means Moore brought up. He even found that the origins of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 were rooted in a conversation between John Ehrlichman and Richard Nixon (President at the time) in which Ehrlichman spoke of the HMO system being expanded in a way to focus on profit for insurance companies through giving the public as little care as possible. Nixon - in this, one of the many obviously regrettable conversations he taped - remarked that it sounded just fine to him. He also looked at the healthcare systems in Canada, France, and the UK - all of which are far better than the US's, and far less expensive than this bloated mess our love affair with unregulated capitalism has wrought. (Despite what Libertarians often espouse, the "Free Market" will not "take care of everybody." In fact, from what we've seen repeatedly here when deregulation occurs - and in this case, when we try building a for-profit industry on an essential service - the "Free Market" will screw everybody it possibly can given the opportunity.) And this description is merely the tip of the iceberg - Moore addresses the problem in his documentary far better than I can in a blog post, but I'm taking a crack at it regardless. Typically, the far right has written the contents of the documentary off, as they're not exactly shy about their hatred of Moore - in particular because he tends to back up his arguments with facts they can't exactly counter. When you get to the bottom of the matter, the big issue is that healthcare itself is an essential service - the sort of services that the government has socialized virtually all of for a very long time. No essential service should ever be a for-profit industry. We could not run the post office, police, or fire departments as for-profit industries without shutting out a dauntingly large portion of the nation. This is exactly what we are doing with our healthcare system.

The Republicans, Michael Steele's proclaimed "Party of No," have NO interest in the future of this country or the quality of life for the average American. (No reform, No empathy, No intellectual honesty. We're seeing a veritable "Let's run this shit into the ground!" mentality blossom in this George W. Bush/Sarah Palin era where incredibly ignorant fringe politics are considered mainstream. Opposition for opposition's sake.) This is a point that they have both established and hammered to death since this administration took power earlier this year. And with the extremely high deficits forecast for the future, they'd like now more than ever to shut down all nonmilitary government spending (And the military takes up an inordinately large part of our spending as a result of the travesties the previous administration pushed us into abroad. There absolutely shouldn't be any of the buzz we still hear here and there about a potential war with Iran, either. If the chaos around the recent stolen election there shows anything, it's that their leadership is definitely corrupt, but the people? Absolutely not. And if we attack Iran, it's the people who suffer the most. They are not our enemies, but we will be making them into them and giving them every reason to hate us if we attack them.) in the name of reducing the deficit. (An issue they curiously didn't care about with our trainwreck of a previous president, who cast us headfirst into a deep fiscal well as a nation. They'd rather put all the focus and blame on Obama as though he were responsible for the numerous terrible decisions made by the Bush administration.) Of course, this is also a completely unrealistic concept that they like to cling to because a government that cannot spend money is a crippled, ineffective government. And if they could shut down the Obama administration's spending, that would ensure the collapse of their support and give the insanely far right another opening to pursue election as their party's disturbing ideologies continue to slide further from mainstream acceptance. They talk about "reform" every now and then, but offer up nothing of value, deeper in the pockets of the insurance companies than even the Democrats. For them, this is all about "defeating" Obama with dangerous fringe politics and the inciting of fear, with the incredibly ignorant Sarah Palin (Who seems to lower the glass ceiling another inch every time she opens her mouth.), hateful Rush Limbaugh, and openly deceitful Fox News (Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly as standouts) at the forefront. If these people win with their politics of hate, fear, ethnocentrism, incitement of violence, and class warfare (With the rich deified and the poor vilified - after all, "If you're not rich, you're just lazy!"), this country has no future.

While numerous lies have been told about healthcare reform - all by people who haven't actually read the bill, and tend to come up with "It's too long to read!" as the best of their flimsy excuses - one in particular has stood out in recent weeks, made especially popular by Sarah "Dingoes/gubmint/Good healthcare ate/tried to eat/might eat in the future/does a concept have an appetite? my political prop/grandpa/baby with Down's Syndrome/normal baby that I also use as a political prop!" Palin. She claimed in a Facebook post (The real blogging outlet for all serious politicians who resign halfway through their only term in elected office out of personal narcissism. The same page has been full of all kinds of ugliness toward the Kennedy's since Ted Kennedy's death as well - representative again of how low her followers' political discourse is, if you can even really call it that.) that the government would begin forming these so-called "Death Panels" to determine who would live or die, and suggested rather blatantly that she would be forced to stand before one in order to justify her child with Down's Syndrome's existence. This, of course, is based in this meme-like claim from the right that universal healthcare will take away our freedoms and choice in regard to our healthcare, that not only will we not be able to choose our own physicians, but that there will be forced abortions and mass killings of the elderly once it's no longer "cost effective" to keep them alive on things like life support or to pay for expensive medical equipment in general. The thing is, that's the exact opposite of universal, socialized healthcare - specifically because it's a program designed to operate at a loss, funded by taxpayer dollars like all other essential services, because the private sector can't do a better job providing these services. In fact, the "Death Panels" spoken of already exist in many capacities - sure, they're not forcing anybody to abort their Down's babies, but they sure as hell are looking for every excuse they can to abandon their clients, citing any "preexisting condition" they can to drop coverage and justify not paying for things as so to avoid taking losses. There may not be a "bureaucrat between us and our doctors" like they claim with nationalized healthcare, but we've certainly got businessmen with profit incentives behind denying healthcare coverage between us.

Who put all this "Death Panel" talk in Sarah Palin's head? None other than Betsy McCaughey. On the last Daily Show, Jon Stewart took her to task on her criticism of end-of-life counseling and claims that the healthcare bill makes it mandatory. She had the bill right there in front of her on the show, and still could not back up her claims with anything in the bill. The claims she's made stemmed from her twisting her own misinterpretation of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel's writings on making the most ethical medical decisions about organ transplants when supplies are low into claiming that he was advocating the rationing of healthcare based on age and disability. (And from there, Sarah Palin took that to a whole new level of stupid, and ta-da! Death Panels.) Ultimately, McCaughey's proven herself to be a very unreliable source of commentary on the issue of healthcare reform, writing from a perspective well established as being in no way rational or objective - geared instead toward giving the Republicans ammunition with which to sink legislation aimed at improving the American people's quality of life.

Even when McCain made some halfhearted efforts to defend Obama and the administration at a town hall meeting last week, we saw an audience ultimately filled with the kinds of daunting ignorance and hate that Palin spent their campaign last fall whipping up. And with things like that Facebook post intended to incite, she continues to do so alongside with Fox News. These are the kind of dangerously radical far right wing people that actual conservatives should have stepped up to and quieted as they started to get rowdy instead of gorging themselves on the adulation of the racist and ignorant. A political party that now builds itself on ignorance and hate has no future and is no better than the enemies it claims exist around the world seeking to destroy us. Their platforms these days are largely constructed in an unsustainable manner to cater to the last people who need the government looking after their interests, while shutting out those who need assistance the most, with the usual "bootstrap" excuses, as though every problem in this country can be solved by "hard work." (And accusations of "laziness.") A very popular right-wing myth that they - in all their corporate love - have helped to successfully make a myth.

Also getting media attention as of late is the stepping up of comparisons between Obama and Hitler. While you'd think this might have come from the same crowd shrieking about "socialism" (See: Surrogate terminology for racism-derived anger in no way socially accepted as a form of expression anymore, like the constant focus on Obama's "Hussein" middle name throughout the election, in many of these cases.) and "Getting government out of my Medicare!" (Despite Medicare being a government program and nothing but.), it didn't. (Not that they don't enjoy seeing that kind of rhetoric, of course.) Rather the blatant Hitler comparisons come from a cult of personality of sorts around a man named Lyndon LaRouche. He's a creep, a criminal, a fascist (The actual kind - not what the Republicans mean by the word here.), and a crook, with a long-established history of fixation on linking everything he can to Hitler and the Nazis. Basically, he's the worst kind of cult internet celebrity. There's no sanity or value behind the "contributions" to discourse we get from his followers. (Not to mention people outright shouting "Heil Hitler!" at Jewish people over the healthcare reform issue now. It's both a little scary and beyond ridiculous how the extreme right is trying to label those fighting for a better healthcare system - for that all-important first part of "Life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" - as Nazis while themselves invoking the Holocaust in the name of their own brand of ignorance and fear-driven political oppression. For all the talk of "fascism" from the left, while we're seeing fascist mentalities publicly expressed in this country out of fear and ignorance, the left's the last place it's coming from.) Hitler comparisons add nothing of value to a political debate, when you get down to it. All they do is serve to insult all who died in the Holocaust. We've certainly had some terrible people in power over the past few decades - Obama and Clinton are not amongst them - but even as bad as things got under Bush, he didn't deserve Hitler comparisons either. In fact, while we've had quite a few terrible presidents, none of them have anything on Hitler's brand of "terrible." But the Hitler image isn't about a comparison with any kind of basis. It's all about manipulation through McCarthy-esque fear mongering - not unlike what the Bush administration used throughout their years in power following the September 11th attacks in 2001. It's the lowest of the political tactics, the most effective way to counter facts and rationality - with emotion and irrationality. If you can't win on facts or anything reflected by reality or human empathy, you shift gears to focus on bringing out the worst in humanity in the name of your cause.

There are people fighting against healthcare reform saying that so many people don't "deserve" healthcare because they can't afford it in our current broken system. This is downright sociopathic - however, most people who say this have no idea what they're actually saying and lack actual understanding of our problem at its root. There are people worth tearing into over this issue - those who knowingly spread deceit and sow the seeds of rage and fear - but those being deceived by these individuals gain nothing by having their anger met by anger. They may have lost sight of reality after listening to twisted, lying individuals with their own anti-reform agendas to push in their opposition to this administration - elected in the very name of reform - but odds are for all those who won't listen, there are still undoubtedly a few whom reason has a shot at reaching. Antagonizing these people achieves nothing, and antagonizing those who refuse to listen doesn't achieve anything either - rather than acknowledging them, we should remain steadfast in keeping our focus on making our voices heard far more clearly as the masses we are. The right's whipped up a potentially dangerous, vocal minority, but what they amount to is hot air - sound and fury lacking substance and significance. It's with empathy and reason that we can stand against an enraged fringe - in standing against what they do with the methods they use, all they do is serve to vilify themselves.

Another real problem we face is that we're enamored with the myth that "America is this way, it's the way we're SUPPOSED to be, this is the pinnacle of civilization, those who succeed do so by their power and their power alone, all those who fail are lazy and should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, change is bad." Naturally, it's a myth the far right continues to try to sell, drifting further and further from reality. (Frankly, you'd have to fairly out of your mind to think that consumer capitalism is the pinnacle of human civilization. It's insane to think that there's any permanence to where we are now, given that the entirety of history has shown us that there is no such thing as permanence - nor is there such a thing as perfection, though some Republicans seem to take offense to the idea of America's imperfection. Part of the whole narcissistic "patriotism" shtick.) There are some things in this nation we should not uphold - like the insurance system. Its existence is an obstacle to obtaining the kind of humanistic healthcare the rest of the developed world provides their people. We're absurdly obsessed with the concept of an individual's power and the idea that free market capitalism can save everyone and everything, while relying heavily on government-provided services and opportunities on a day to day basis - there's a tremendous amount of cognitive dissonance on the part of the conservative "bootstraps" crowd that lives to pat themselves on their back and insist that their every accomplishment was achieved solely because they "worked hard." It's utter nonsense in a society ruled by corporate interest. There is no level playing field - hell, the whole existence experience itself is pretty damn rocky unless you were born into wealth and privilege. (And yet we can't get enough of trying to make dramas about how hard it is to be a rich white teenager on TV here. Pretty hilarious.) It's in their interest that this "free market" delusion remain popular, since it makes it easier for them to avoid proper regulation and more effectively fight off competition. Even the insurance industry itself has no real competition, and there isn't much inter-company competition, as they're all focused on the same goal - not one that results in healthcare being treated like the human right it is.

What does all this say about us? We on the left (Or frankly, all of us left of dangerously far right on our arbitrary political spectrum) got plenty ugly when Bush was in the White House. But we played NICE compared to the far right now. Since Obama made it to the general election and even more since his successful election to the office of the president, the racists have come out of the woodwork in this country, reminding that despite how far we've come, we haven't really come anywhere near as far as we should have. We have prominent political thought in a major political party that still harbors and feeds racist thought, all in an era where we've seen Republicans claim for years that we have a "post-racism" society where we no longer need important programs like Affirmative Action. (Naturally, they're completely wrong and they've only proven just how wrong they are to a scary degree in the past year.) But while racism is absolutely a big factor in all of this, it isn't the whole picture. Our conservative-leaning media (Fox News now terribly being the most popular 24-hours news network in America, they have no room to claim there's a "liberal media" in any sense. Their accusations only played a big part in further drifting away from objective journalism and into profit, sensationalism, and fear-based territory where there were always "two sides" to every story, and where the "left" and "right" had pundits being dragged onto TV to duke it out over every issue with zero real journalistic regard for where the actual truth lies. This is the kind of journalism that led to Walter Cronkite passing on deeply saddened by the pathetic state our newsmedia has sunk to.) openly works to keep the public misinformed now, with their owners (In Fox's case, the openly crazy-far-right Rupert Murdoch) having their own narratives they want to press upon the public. The newsmedia has failed us and helped to break this country.

As much rage as we get over "socialism," these McCarthy-esque claims are being made by people who have no idea what actual socialism is - and those who do are simply lying to manipulate older generations with whom McCarthy style paranoia strikes a nerve. The Republicans and their cable news network took this nation in a very dangerous direction with Bush, and now that they're out of power, they're hellbent on doing whatever they can to tear down whatever hope we have left of real change and reform away from the terrible things they represent. Unfortunately, we have no real leftist, progressive political presence on the national stage in this country. (Dennis Kucinich is probably the most progressive Congressman we've got, and even he's just one representative in the House.) Instead, we have a somewhat moderate right-leaning party in the Democrats, in which corporate lobbyists have taken a depressing amount of control, and then we have a dangerously far-right fringe party in the Republicans, completely in the pockets of the interests of corporations and the wealthy.

As for real healthcare reform, however you look at it, unless the Democrats stop trying to court the Republicans - who've made it clear that they want no part in real reform - and fight to push through a major overhaul of the system with a strong public option, we're not going to get anywhere near as much change as we need. (Though I would absolutely love to be wrong. PLEASE prove me wrong, Congress.) At this point, even something incremental and some real regulation of the corrupt insurance industry would be welcome, but until we start to study the healthcare systems in Canada, the UK, France, Scandinavia, and most of Europe in general, we're not going to get the real overhaul that we need. During the Bush years, "bipartisanship" meant pushing Democrats to vote for Republican legislation. Now during the Obama years, the very concept of bipartisanship is sadly essentially dead thanks to terrible, ignorant individuals leading the Republican party. When they cannot win on logic, rationale, and honesty - and they even tried to make "empathy" into a dirty word during Sonia Sotomayor's historic Supreme Court confirmation hearings (Implicit was that her sympathies should lie solely with the rich, white, and conservative, serving the same function as Bush's Supreme Court justices, Roberts and Alito. The conservatives seem keen on the Supreme Court being a last stop to forcibly ensuring a backwards status quo, rather than making the difficult decisions without a blatant right-wing slant.) - all they have left is fear and threat of violence. This is a political party encouraging oppressive values, and whipping up the absolute worst in America in what - in any sane reality - should be the beginning of the end of the party's political viability. It's time we start using our hearts and brains and move toward a more empathetic - and less greedy - national philosophy, toward a future with stronger left-wing and moderate politics, away from the right, which hasn't served this nation well. And away from the corporate kings who essentially rule the nation in so many ways and have broken our political system. A great first step would be in continuing to push for public healthcare for the masses - competition and regulation the corrupt insurance industry has long needed. For the good of the people.

Healthcare reform was a major theme at Ted Kennedy's funeral on Saturday. The Lion of the Senate was known for fighting the good fight for the right causes and not backing down. Once he died, the most disgusting people in this country began to verbally dance on his grave across the internet, and Republicans who respected him - including John McCain - began to try to politicize his death in their favor, claiming that in this one case, he would have backed down, given in, and compromised with them. Despite the fact that this is not what he was known for, and the last thing he would have done - and they know this. They knew his death would be politicized - and as one of our most important politicians of the 20th and early 21st centuries, that's only natural - but not in the direction they wanted it. (Rather, his death deserves to be politicized as he wanted it to be politicized - in fighting all the harder in his name to achieve his life's goal. He may not be on the Senate floor to cast his vote when the time comes this fall, but he'll be there in spirit.) So instead of being honest, they went on to disrespect him, claiming that were he still alive, he would have done exactly what he wouldn't have, just to continue their push against his own proclaimed life's cause. A worthy cause for one of our most important and respectable politicians. But the way the right's handled his death in trying to use it in a push against healthcare is downright sleazy. You'd think that out of respect, they'd avoid addressing Kennedy's passion for it, knowing that he was an opponent who wouldn't back down in the face of their fear mongering. But instead, they chose to go to another low.

This is where we are as a nation. Over one of the most important human rights. You're sorely missed, Ted.

Double-Edged Optimism

Hey, look! Two and a half weeks later and another blog post! TWO posts in ONE month? Now that's something to celebrate. (On the upside, despite my lack of regular posting, I added an update to my novel info on the right column here to at least provide more of an indicator of progress. And I HAVE been productive despite how slow I've been here lately. Last ten chapters and epilogue, and then it's time to start chucking bricks through agents' windows. (Metaphorically, of course.))

At any rate, we're less than a month from the autumnal equinox, so we've arrived at last in the final weeks of summer! Summer has a track record of being a slower blogging period for me, so I should be getting back to business on this front more soon. (Especially once I've begun the agent querying process, since I'll effectively be laying the groundwork for my second novel at that time, and that tends to take longer and is generally less intensive than the main writing and editing work.) Plus, with the new TV season beginning next month, that always provides some decent pop culture babbling fodder.

Getting down to business, as some may recall, I blogged about optimism and its seeming apparent health benefits not quite half a year ago. You've all developed an appetite for my science posts by now, haven't you? Of course you have. (YOU DON'T GET A CHOICE.) Anyway, the short of it is that optimists lead longer, healthier lives than pessimists, according to University of Pittsburgh researchers. As a cynic, I was a smug jerk about the whole thing. (It's contractual.) HOWEVER! Nearly half a year later, I get to enjoy contradicting that last post (Implicitly smugly) courtesy of a recent study by Canadian psychologists.

The power of positive thinking, you say? NOT SO! The power of frustrating failure to delude one's self! We all knew that self-affirmation is a pretty weak concept to base self-improvement around - it doesn't matter how much time you invest in complimenting yourself if you don't think much of yourself, and frankly, all you're doing then is lying to yourself since you don't really believe what you're saying. The root of the problem is being ignored. But hey, who's to say you have to love yourself? You can be a real jerk sometimes, y'know. If anything, the world's far too full of people infatuated with themselves. (America's especially guilty of this problem.) It might just be better, I postulate, not to worry about loving or hating yourself, but rather finding a comfortable neutral ground: you are who you are, and self-improvement is all well and good as a concept, but if it doesn't come naturally and organically - if you force it - it's not exactly genuine, is it? Nobody's perfect.

Now that I've gone off on it (in)appropriately, the study found the long-recommended practice of self-affirmation to be flawed. For some people, forcing themselves to be positive about their undertakings or who they are doesn't make them feel any better. (Words are empty if you don't mean them, after all. Nobody can really lie to themselves, at least, barring serious mental illness.) They asked people with high and low self-esteem to repeat "I am a lovable person" to themselves, and those who started with low self-esteem came out feeling worse after having said it. Again, something that obviously stems from their immediately thinking the opposite when pushed to make a statement like that, because it's not what they really believe. And, of course, some of them probably just thought, "This is stupid." (Can you blame them?)

Of course, positive thinking is still thought to be effective when part of a broader therapy program, but the quick cure-all it's been presented as on daytime talk shows, in self-improvement books, magazines, and such? It's useless. Of course, if you already have high self-esteem, you don't need positive self-affirmations and shouldn't be feeding your ego on them. (Cut it out already. You're annoying the rest of us.)

That's it for today - I'll try to get another something up here before September crashes down on us next week. In the meantime, what you should take away from this is that we're not all Stuart Smalley. (And after months of recounts and legal jousting, he's a sitting Senator now.)

An Evolutionary Snapshot of Wizardry

So, it's the dead of summer and it's not always easy to come up with compelling blog material. Naturally, I don't have this problem (Ignore the month-long break I just conveniently took and my generally slower blogging pace in recent months. Those are all optical illusions - all of them.), and that's cause for celebration. (You over there, that jig isn't merry enough! JIG MERRIER!)

Summer's generally the biggest movie season of the year, of course. Blockbuster after blockbuster crams itself into the box office roaring "HEY WATCH ME I'VE GOT EXPLOSIONS YOU LIKE EXPLOSIONS DON'T YOU?" Of course, they're lying, and instead of bringing your childhood to the big screen, they're redesigning the robots and snuffing them out while trying to convince you that Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox can act (Or that we're supposed to care about them because the tabloids are obsessed) or simply making a generic action flick (I'm looking at you, G.I. Joe. Joseph Gordon Levitt gets a pass for his involvement in both having one of the best roles, and for Brick and 500 Days of Summer, the latter of which I'm looking forward to seeing whether in a theater this summer or by DVD release.).

Personally, all I've gone to see so far this summer are Star Trek (Basically classic Star Trek meets big budget Hollywood action. Doesn't live up to the previous works at their best, but it certainly beats their worst and makes for a fun popcorn flick, so it gets my recommendation for some geeky fun.) and Up (While not flawless unless you're wearing the Pixar blinders that many do, still a thoroughly enjoyable and at times genuinely evocative family adventure. The talking dogs were epic.). But the next film I'll undoubtedly be catching yet this summer just hit theaters a few weeks ago: Harry Potter and the Wicked Headcheese. I mean, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As longtime Spiral Reverie readers (All 3 and 2/3rds of you) know, I've already addressed everything you need to know about the adventures of the always-popular boy wizard. (Particularly in juxtaposition to another popular fictional character presumed to have some super powers of his own. Subpar powers are more like it. Even Aquaman could kick that guy's ass, and all he does is talk to fish!) But this time, speaking as an expert on the subject (No, you can't see my credentials.), I'll be taking you on a guided tour through the evolutionary history of WIZARDRY ITSELF! (No, not the classic PC games. You'll have to go elsewhere for that.) There's a lot people don't know, you see.

"Why should I care?" you ask? Why should you care, indeed. It's only a matter of national security, after all. So why should you care about some pithy little thing like the imminent threat of MAGIC TERRORISTS on US soil!? That got your attention, didn't it? Good, now vote for everybody I tell you to, otherwise you're all doomed. Also taxes are bad, no matter what. Don't stop to think - let alone think critically - where do you think you are, Iraqistan?

Ahem.

We begin our tour of MAGIC HISTORY back where it began: at the DAWN OF TIME! (After the Earth developed an oxygen-based breathable atmosphere and fish began to crawl onto land and evolve. The giant bugs that dominated the globe beforehand had no imagination, the philistines, so let's not even acknowledge them.)

The first wizards were, oh, let's say they were essentially primitive amphibians. But their little three-toed appendages had just enough gripping power for them to pick up pine needles and bits of twigs and wave them around while shouting things like "Bippity Boppity Boop!" The other animals would only pick on them for this, as no matter how you look at it, it wasn't a particularly cool thing to do, even back then. I mean, what were those spazzes thinking? (Do not confuse this with "Bippity Boppity Bacon!" That results in much greater things.)

It wasn't until they found a hidden passage under rock ungh - they didn't have numerical systems back then - that they discovered the convenient fantasy-fulfillment parallel world of MAGIC Savannah. Or at least, that's what they would have called it if language existed back then. But it didn't. This is merely the scientific term retroactively ascribed to the locale. Don't argue with science.

At any rate, Magic Savannah was a pretty gnarly place where the amphib-wiz-kids could LARP in peace until Newt "Newtie" Ginger-itch stumbled upon the entrance in a drunken stupor and invited all his friends. (Interestingly, every era of life on Earth seems to have been ruined by a "Newtie" of some form or another. Funny how that worked out.) By the time they were done with Magic Savannah, the whole place was littered with empty beer cans and excrement. (Don't ask me where the beer cans came from. THESE ARE FACTS.) After that, our poor magical amphibian friends became pretty despondent and gave up on everything that made life enjoyable to become mid-level corporate executives trapped in the dead-end hell of materialistic careerist middle class primitive life. Sure, they eventually got to reproduce in swarms, but without MAGIC what was the point?

Skipping ahead to the next important era, we come to the dinosaur wizards. Unfortunately, dinosaur wizardry continued this wizarding low point for another few million years. Nobody was really interested save for the Ankylosaurs, and even then, nobody talked to them anyway. A couple of Tyrannosaurus Rexes gave it a shot once, but they couldn't very well hold a wand in their little vestigial arms, and that only infuriated them, much to the Ankylosaurs' dismay.

Most other dinosaurs were too busy doing cool things like smoking to take up nerdy pursuits like magic and games like Caves & Carcasses. The latter dinosaurs never even got to reproduce. Whether on Pangaea, Gondwana, Laurasia, or any of the other supercontinents, magic-using dinosaurs were never widely accepted. They couldn't even fit through the entrance to Magic Savannah, which had really begun to stink by then and some of the excrement had begun to develop consciousness. That's never a good sign.

Hit the fast forward button again on that time distortion device of yours and we arrive at the Ice Age(s). (So technically it looks like there were several. At least four major ones, in fact. Ignore your cute children's movies. THEY ONLY LIE TO YOU. You also might want to ignore anything Year One tried to teach you. The box office certainly did.) Watch out, things were a wee bit nippy back then. As such, the mighty mammoths - the ONLY CREATURE OF NOTE at the time(s) - were too busy surviving the harsh conditions to focus on magic. Sure, magic could have helped, or perhaps even transformed the Earth at the time, but technically, the occurrence of ice ages at all could be blamed entirely on the wizards of the time - mammoths who DUAL-WIELDED their magic-wand-tusks and caused quite a few historical disasters. Which ones? None of your business - THOSE ONES.

Time to leap forward again. The rest of history? That's just filler. Boring, dull filler. You can't make explosion-filled movies out of that. Early humans would beat each other to death with massive wooden clubs in mockery of the nerds with their magic powers. Granted, back then, "nerd" was a hard word to pronounce, but cut them some slack, phonetics was a new concept. And let's be honest, fire's only impressive when created through rocks and kindling without any of that fancy shmancy twinkly magic crap. And who needed to fly on those specialized stick bundles then there was that wheel to roll around? That thing was round. Round was a big thing back then too.

By the 18th century, some humans - mostly groups of young women - decided that it was time for them to see what that magic hoopla was all about for themselves. They'd start fires and pronounce words in tones before unthought of, moving their feet in ways deeply wholly unchristian. In fact, they were better dancers than Jesus himself - every single one of them. His envious rage moved the peasantry to burn these magical goody-two-shoes. In America's early days, fun was expressly forbidden, mostly because people with poor imaginations had a hard time figuring out the predecessor to The Hustle. (Doot-doot doot-doot doot-doot doot-doot-doot doot-doot doot-doot doot-doot doot-doot-doot~)

In the 1950s, popular cartoon character Felix the Cat returned to prominence with a "Magic Bag of Tricks." Exactly how you can fill a bag with such an abstract concept dumbfounded audiences across the globe and caused seizures in those overthinking the concept only matched since by a "Pokemon" cartoon in 1997. (Which incidentally also has something to do with a MAGIC RAT. Coincidence? THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY THAT THAT COULD BE THE CASE.) Felix's popularity was not to last, of course, but despite that, America's fixation on bags sustained, as James Brown would go on to famously exploit in 1965.

The '80s were relevant only in what a disgraceful era they were for all of humanity, wizards included. While you could dance if you wanted to, you probably would end up leaving your friends behind. (Though some argued that if they did not dance - yes, in fact did not dance - they were probably not your friends to begin with.) Conservative Christian America panicked as its young people sold their souls to the devil over a game of Dungeons & Dragons, the wizardry it involved destroying even a young Tom Hanks. The era also suffered from the fact that Ronald Reagan wasn't a wizard (And this was an era where wizards were only just starting to be socially accepted - allowed to leave the MAGIC closet, so to speak.), but frankly, he probably could've used a wizard in his cabinet to manipulate him like a puppet into making BETTER policy decisions. (Reaganomics? Only a 'muggle' would think that was a good idea.) Sadly, conservative forces have conspired to deny the existence of the recently deceased John Hughes' mid-'80s wizardry teen angst classic, Nedrick McGee, Teen Wizard to the point of purging all evidence of its existence from the internet by the early 2000s. That film was a major step forward in humanizing our wizards the public eye, and there were a bunch of memorable cauldron jokes too, all now lost to the ages. When will you learn, America?

WIZARDS ARE PEOPLE TOO.

BOOSH. (That's the latest time travel sound effect. Learn to live with it, perhaps someday even come to love it.) Now everyone's waving wands about willy-nilly, even non-wizards - wizard-wannabes. (Wizabees, if you're particularly bigoted, but you didn't hear that from me.) The Harry Potter literary craze (WHAT DO YOU MEAN PEOPLE ARE STILL LITERATE) of this past decade helped wizardry to finally achieve full mainstream cultural acceptance in most parts of the globe. Canada made history in 2002 when their parliament voted to finally extend suffrage to their growing Yukon wizard populace. (They live in a tree up there. A MAGIC TREE.) But unfortunately, with growing wizard acceptance has also come an increasing rate of before unheard-of enslavement of "house-elves." At this point, no government has gone as far as to recognize these scrawny little creatures that have an odd habit of abruptly disappearing from movies to never be seen again as humanoid creatures deserving of any particular civil rights or protections. So for now, keep beating those house-elves of yours halfway to death if they don't get the starch in your work coat just right, I guess. (WHY DO I FEEL SO DIRTY WRITING THIS) Otherwise, things still aren't quite peachy-keen for the wizards just yet. Texas and Oklahoma are presently attempting to enact legislation to deport the wizards from their states - keeping their eye on Massachusetts and New Hampshire as their ideal places to ship "these goddamn lib'rul magic freaks." Once again, the bulging veins of angry-Jesus have reared their ugly head. Former presidential candidate and internet libertarian icon Ron Paul has openly supported these efforts, citing, "States' rights. Yep. Let's be 50 different little countries instead of one big one. States can decide if bigotry's okay." Getting back to summer season pop culture, reports indicate that he has yet to recover from his recent appearance in Sasha Baron Cohen's Bruno.

With that, we seem to have come full circle. (Full MAGIC CIRCLE, even. HAR HAR HAR why did I write this joke.) I hope that this has been enlightening for you, because if it hasn't, you just wasted your time reading this. If you take nothing else away from this, it's that we're only a few years away from our first MAGIC world leaders. So you'd best work on overcoming any prejudice you have as so to prepare yourself to vote for our first MAGIC presidential candidate in 2016. Because if you don't, you're probably going to end up being turned into a newt or something. You might not necessary get better after that.

Recharging the Brain Battery

You're reading this, therefore you aren't dead.

You're reading this, therefore you're probably human.

If you're a living human being, you'll have spent a huge portion of your life sleeping. (Otherwise you'd fail the first premise.)

If you've slept, you've dreamt. Regardless of the frequency with which you dream, the fact remains that you have and probably still do. Little vacations from reality within your head, fodder for those of us paranoid about dementia, and ultimately experiences either pleasant or unpleasant and almost uniformly confusing by nature.

Sigmund Freud, father of modern psychology (And subject of some comedy in my forthcoming first novel), first posited 110 years ago in 1899 that dreams act as a sort of secret window into the unconscious mind's frustrated desires. Hence the cultural obsession we have with dream analysis. (I dreamed about flying! GET OUT OF MY OFFICE YOU WORTHLESS SCRAP OF- Uh, I guess it means you yearn for freedom. Yeah. Freedom isn't free. That'll be fifty bucks.)

As discussed last month at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Seattle, research has made evident that Freud was wrong. (What do you mean women don't suffer from anatomical envy-) Adequate sleep has been recently tied to the ability to process and understand complex emotions in waking life. (Undoubtedly part of why we get so irritable when we're sleep deprived as well.)

Director Matthew Walker of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, described sleep at the meeting as essentially being "resetting the magnetic north of your emotional compass." I for one prefer to think of it as recharging our brain's emotional battery.

A recent study by Walker and colleagues examined the relationship between REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep (In which our most vividly recalled dreams occur) and our ability to read the emotions on others' faces. Those who had experienced REM sleep in a recent nap as a part of the experiment were able to better identify positive emotions on people's faces in the photographs they were shown. The volunteers who did not achieve REM sleep or nap at all were more sensitive to negative expressions like anger and fear.

Past research has also indicated that activity in the prefrontal lobe - which is involved in the control of emotion - is significantly diminished in the sleep deprived. Walker suggests that this is evident - though to a lesser extent - in the research recently presented. He also suggested that this may be an evolved survival reaction to sleep deprivation, essentially becoming hypersensitive to any and all perceived potential threats when conserving mental energy. While on the other hand, being well-rested makes you more sensitive to positive things, which obviously play an important role in survival themselves.

As lead author of the study Ninad Gujar observed, these mental processes guide and impact our personal and professional lives, being key in our ability to understand social interactions, others' emotional state of mind, and read the expression on their face. None of us would get very far or accomplish much in our day to day existence without the capacity for these things.

Walker suggests that through this connection, REM sleep helps us to round out the sharper edges of our own emotional experiences in addition to better identify positive emotions in others. Dreaming that takes place during REM sleep is suggested to put the day's events through a mental sieve of sorts, sifting out any negative emotion and stripping it from memories. This process is key in humans achieving the kind of emotional resilience that they typically do, though one would imagine that anything more deeply traumatizing would present a challenge to even REM sleep. You don't forget the emotional experience itself, but the spine of the emotion has been removed. Failing to achieve REM sleep or having it disrupted, however, leads to anxiety overwhelming people.

These findings and theorizings are consistent with recent research conducted by Rebecca Bernert at Florida State University, who presented her own findings linking sleep deprivation - typically due to insomnia and nightmares - with suicidal feelings and behaviors. While this link has been made before, Bernert separated the insomnia and nightmare cases and found that nightmares are especially predictive of suicidal behavior. She suggested that they may also have something to do with how we process emotion in our dreams.

Walker suggests that if Bernert's right, her findings may help explain the problem of recurrent nightmares characterizing numerous psychiatric conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In these cases, it's possible that "the brain has not stripped away the emotional rind from that experience memory." And as a result, the brain continues its efforts to separate the intense negative emotions from the memory, creating a grating effect like a broken record, and producing the feeling that you cannot get over the experience. And thus, trauma.

This "rind" Walker describes is, in reality, sympathetic nervous system activity during sleep, which includes a faster heart rate and the body's release of stress chemicals. It's becoming clear that understanding the relationship between REM sleep and emotional processing - especially when it seems to perpetuate problems in the face of trauma - may be crucial in finding effective treatments for more difficult mental disorders. And ideally, addressing the problem of sleep may allow for the disruption of emotional cycles that can lead to suicide.

Ultimately, researchers are finding a seemingly clear two-way relationship between psychiatric disorders and disrupted sleep. Walker observes that historically, medicine and psychiatry have looked at psychological disorders as producing the sleep problems that often occur in tandem. These recent findings have shone light on that the relationship may in fact be the other way around.

I thought that these findings would be worth sharing, at any rate, since they're not only fascinating, but also relevant to my own writing. Dreams frequently take center stage in my first novel - as do memories - though largely as narrative devices, abstracted enough to ideally in some way resemble the genuine article. (Abstraction itself also being a central focus of the story.) They function as hazy pieces of a puzzle I hope to engage the reader through, the end goal being encouraging them to piece things together themselves as the characters make their own efforts to comprehend their unconscious experiences.

Pushing Up Daisies

The end of another week, time for another blog post. (I have another science-related one planned for the next of the month next week.) This time, I talk pop culture - in particular, yet another great show that was recently canceled. After a long delay in airing the final three episodes, Pushing Daisies finally came to an end this past weekend. ABC's bright, colorful and conversely dark detective/pie-making romantic comedy show had a lot of things going against it from the get-go - the biggest being the ABC network itself.

The show debuted back in fall of '07, to much initial hype - plus, actual advertising! - and critical acclaim that followed the show for the rest of its run. After the first episode saw solid ratings, ABC began drastic advertising cutbacks. Between a sudden lack of advertising and the loss of the portion of the premiere's viewership that tuned in for the novelty and opted not to continue watching due to the perceived 'too weird'-ness of the show, ratings began to drop soon after. Then the WGA strike happened, cutting the show - like many - off mid-season with only nine episodes for its first season. Planned story arcs and development had be dropped. And by the time the show returned for its season season last fall, it was clear that ABC wasn't interested in keeping it afloat. (The show was expensive, and this follows an in no way uncommon trend of networks barely backing fresh and original shows, and then dropping them when they can't compete with much more popular mainstream reality shows on other networks. Like what CW did to Veronica Mars after UPN had openly supported the show in its first two years - prior to the merger with WB that created the CW network - due to its critical acclaim and a desire to have a great niche show, rather than fixating on ratings.)

ABC made virtually no effort to make the public aware when Pushing Daisies returned to television last October, the first season's fans mostly only aware of the show's return due to its being in the online schedule. The only commercials ABC aired for the show over the remainder of its run were the brief previews for the next episode at the conclusion of the most recent episode's airing. The ratings fluctuated little as the network acted as a key architect of the show's demise. (When even Fox managed to keep Arrested Development around longer in harping on its acclaim left and right.) Thirteen episodes were shot for the second season, and creator Bryan Fuller, the cast, and crew were expecting the show to be picked up for another half-season in the spring so the show could finally get a solid whole-season run. This did not happen. ABC instead canceled the show after only airing ten episodes last fall, and then removed all evidence of the show's existence from their site and pussyfooted around questions of when the last episodes would air. The show ended up finishing its run in Europe and hitting DVD in the UK before the US run was finally completed over the last Saturday night in May and the first two in June, in completely unadvertised time slots that reminded that the only reason ABC was airing the last episodes at all was due to contractual obligation.

The ending was unplanned, and had to effectively be rushed and tacked on in the form of a final two minute epilogue of sorts added to the last episode, "Kerplunk," which, while a strong episode to conclude with, still wasn't written with any intention of ending the show there or providing any real closure - numerous major plot threads were left dangling. Thanks, ABC!

This kind of luck is not exactly something unfamiliar to fans of Bryan Fuller's shows. Showtime's Dead Like Me - which Fuller himself left several episodes into the first season, but the show continued to be stellar even without him - was canceled despite being the premium cable network's second most popular show. One of many poor decisions made by then new - and now no longer - head of programming Bob Greenblatt (Who seemed to have something personal against the show's existence, stemming from his own involvement in HBO's death show, Six Feet Under, though the respective premium networks' death-themed shows were very distinct from one another - HBO's focusing on a family and funeral home, versus Showtime's being a laugh out loud funny dramedy about grim reapers.) whose only noteworthy pick-up for the network was Weeds. (Which I just finished the 4th season of on DVD, and it continues to be fantastic.)

Fuller's second show, Wonderfalls, aired briefly on Fox in spring of 2004. And by briefly, I mean that they aired four episodes of the thirteen - out of order - and then pulled the show from the air, having made no real effort to push it to begin with despite early critical notice. And naturally, it aired in the same Friday night at 9 PM time slot that killed Joss Whedon's Firefly back in 2002, and which Whedon's Dollhouse has astonishingly managed to weather enough to get a second season for this fall. (And while Firefly was excellent from the get-go, Dollhouse took about half a season to get away from corporate meddling and into fantastic territory.) Where Pushing Daisies was "too weird" for the average TV viewer, Wonderfalls was probably a mix of that and "too cute" for Fox's audience, as it worked as one of the better TV romantic comedies in some time. (Though thankfully, its thirteen episode run provided enough closure with its conclusion that for what it is as a short, self-contained magic realistic series, it's wonderful as the name implies.) Dead Like Me was pitch perfect for its network and audience - so of course it'd take an unprofessional executive to mess that up.

ABC hasn't exactly been known for their good decisions in regards to programming in recent times either. Pushing Daisies was pretty much in their crosshairs after the pilot, as they've made it clear that they're more concerned with ratings and advertising dollars than they are with producing quality original content. (A notable ongoing trend on network television in general, since it's cheaper and easier to make zero-IQ reality shows based around competitions - whether singing, dancing, or something as insipid as the Wipeout obstacle course show ABC's shoving down America's throat at the moment.) Ugly Betty was surprisingly renewed after enduring talk of that show's heading toward cancellation with its lower viewership numbers. They premiered Rob Thomas' (Veronica Mars) reimagining of his short-lived '90s series Cupid (Which originally starred Jeremy Piven) with Bobby Cannavale at the helm and canceled that as soon as they could after airing its episodes, without any advertising or any hint of interest in considering keeping the show. (I only caught the last episode, and it wasn't bad. I haven't seen the originals how to compare, though.) Following the effective ending of Mike Judge's long running animated series King of the Hill, they premiered his next show - with a couple of other creators - The Goode Family, only to chuck it into a Friday night 8:30 PM ratings death slot, rather than giving the show a chance to find an audience. (Again, an observable trend.)

And of course, after Scrubs got the ending it had been building up to for years after issues at NBC kept them from getting a proper ending done there (And ABC picked the show up after NBC decided not to after the WGA strike delayed the ending another season - though in the least, the official 'final season' was consistently good, returning to many of the themes that made the show's earlier seasons memorable.), ABC's executives decided to renew the show after its ending. Scrubs creator Bill Lawrence saw ABC renew his previous show on their network - Spin City - after his departure and run it into the ground for a couple of seasons before canceling it, with some major notable casting changes. Lawrence almost escaped the same thing in Scrubs' run on NBC, but ABC was having none of that - they wanted to 'capitalize' on their investment when the show was only trying to wrap things up when they picked it up. So while we got a strong final season, now we have a season or two ahead - which I plan on not watching - without Bill Lawrence and several key members of the main cast. I imagine they'll be making the new interns introduced in the final season into regulars, and considering how past its prime the show has been, there's really nothing good about what ABC's doing with it. Let it die with dignity, ABC.

In the least, Pushing Daisies fans have some things to look forward to. Starting this fall, DC comics will be publishing a 12-issue Pushing Daisies comic book miniseries - which Fuller himself is involved with - as the official "third season." (Much like what Joss Whedon has done with Buffy the Vampire Slayer in more recent years.) The only plotline revealed for the comics so far involves an offbeat take on dealings with zombies - which should be interesting to see, given the undoubtedly inevitable connection with the leading Pie Maker character's supernatural ability to bring back the dead with a single touch and return them to death forever with a second. This also makes sense in that Pushing Daisies made its initial debut in the form of a promotional comic book at San Diego Comic-Con 2007 before its television premiere that fall. Both ABC and Fuller have stated that we may see a movie sequel to the series yet as well, not unlike that which Dead Like Me received years after cancellation earlier this year. (In part thanks to DVD sales, which also revived Family Guy a few years ago, and just recently led to Comedy Central picking up a new season of Futurama thanks to the strong sales of its DVD movies.)

Since Pushing Daisies' cancellation, Fuller returned to work on Heroes after having been involved in its first season, and effectively helped the latter half of season 3 avoid being terrible. (Unlike the first half and the entirety of the second season.) He's announced since that he's moving on to new projects, and currently working on two pilots - the details of which are currently unknown. As such, when Heroes returns for season 4 this fall, odds are that it's going to go right back to terrible. (And yet this is what gets the ratings and picked up by NBC - Chuck was lucky to get picked up for a third and final half-season for next spring, and they're facing major budget cuts, including one of the main cast members. At least they'll get a final half-season to wrap things up, but one has to wonder how much of that half-season will be advertising for Subway, considering that they had to work that directly into the show a few times in season 2.)

Fuller has confirmed that he's been interested in developing a new Star Trek series - something set back in the same timeline as the original series, pending the success of the recent revival movie. (Which was a huge hit, of course. Only movie I've seen in theaters this year so far - only other one that I know for certain that I will being Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - and while my mind wasn't blown, I still enjoyed it and wouldn't mind seeing more in that vein. I'm looking forward to the sequel.) This prosposed new Star Trek series wouldn't be set around the Enterprise, but a different ship and crew in the era. There's no confirmation of whether this proposed series is one of the pilots he's presently working on, though. And questions remain of how stylistically in line it'd be with his original shows, and whether being tied in with such a big brand and established universe might somewhat stifle the creativity involved - he did start out as a writer on Voyager as is, before going on to much bigger and better things - and whether or not having this particular big brand attached would be enough to create something lasting. (Considering how much public interest had waned in Star Trek by the end of The Next Generation, with Deep Space Nine and Voyager not having the hugest viewer bases, and Enterprise getting canceled for - among other reasons - low viewership numbers.) Was the Star Trek movie this summer a fluke, or a sign of new interest in the franchise? It's needed a reboot for some time, and the movies and a new Fuller show could potentially accomplish everything a Star Trek reboot's needed - to become fresh again. But now that we know the public's willing to rush out to see a new action-oriented Star Trek summer blockbuster with Sylar as Spock, the question is, will they watch a new TV series? Network involvement can be worrying as well, considering how much Fox's meddling held back Dollhouse in its earlier episodes. And Fuller himself obviously doesn't have a great history with networks, as amazing as his shows have been. Outside of Dead Like Me on Showtime, his work is not known for pulling big ratings numbers - though it gets the critics talking - or being easily marketable to the masses. And that's Fuller at his best - even while his work on Heroes is easily the best part of that show, it's still nowhere near his completely original projects.

One also has to question whether or not he might be at his most creatively uninhibited and at least risk in terms of audience in perhaps returning to premium cable at some point, considering the audience Dead Like Me found on Showtime.

Suffice to say, ABC's showing itself to be one of the more rotten and unadventurous networks these days, and in being uninclined to watch the forced continuation of Scrubs, once The Goode Family's gone, I don't anticipate watching anything on ABC anytime soon.

Network television is turning into a cesspit, as the networks continue to flood themselves with reality garbage and refuse to commit to - or even properly promote - quality original programming,. We're lucky Chuck got picked up for a third half-season and it's outright surprising that that Fox decided to give Dollhouse a second season. But at this point, it's becoming more apparent that if you want to find the best shows on television, you have to turn increasingly to cable and subscription channels, with FX having continued to support It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Despite ratings that would've gotten it canceled in no time on a network. Now they're shooting their 5th season and planning an hour-long Christmas special to air later this year.) in its twisted hilarity, and channels like Showtime bringing Weeds, HBO bringing Flight of the Conchords, True Blood (Which I just finished the first season of.), and so forth.

If I ever end up getting any opportunities in the television business - depending on where and how far my writing career takes me, seeing as it's far from even having really begun at this point - I'm doubtful anything I'd write or work on would have any kind of shot on a network. (Unless it was work I was pretty much taking to pay the bills, as opposed to something I'd have any creative control over.) Even CW rushed to cancel Veronica Mars after forcibly changing many aspects of the show and drastically dropping the quality of the writing. But of course, CW wants to be Lifetime Lite, in now fixating solely on an audience of teenage girls, axing Reaper despite its better ratings (And better writing) than the atrocious 90210 revival that's followed it. But then, the CW execs also seem to be deadset on creating "controversial" shows, when all they're doing is making bottom of the barrel crap for that audience. Yes, we get it, teenagers like to have sex. This is not shocking, controversial, or new. I don't have the greatest amount of confidence, but I'd still love to see the Reaper team's syndication revival efforts actually go somewhere, since that show's final episode only left me wanting more.

At any rate, things to the effect of "argle bargle bargle." Network TV is run by idiots and they're fixated on the idiot audience. It's a sad time, looking for intelligent, sharp, well-written and funny programming these days. Anything that's remotely daringly original gets no backing and dropped as soon as it can't compete with something like American Idol in the ratings. There's my pop culture/TV nerd rant for you (Until my usual new TV season lineup post this fall), full of the necessary agitation and vitriol. It says a lot that both networks focus so heavily on terrible reality programming, and that it's so popular to begin with. Even these past few weeks, everyone's been fixated on that disgusting "Jon and Kate" show about a couple basically exploiting their mob of fertility drug kids and the entirely unsurprising inevitable dissolution of their marriage. You took fertility drugs, had way too many kids, and spent years exploiting them on national television. How is this the basis for a healthy marriage or a good environment to raise kids in? NONE OF THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA.

What is wrong with us that we watch these things? Is it like this obsessive cycle we have with celebrities, where we love to see them rise just so that we can watch and cheer on everything that tears them down? Do we want to see people make stupid decisions, just so that we can sit back smugly in our den and think to ourselves, "I'm smarter than them?" Is this what entertainment's come to? It's not exacty healthy, is it?

Five Years Past

I've been trying to get through another blog entry for a bit over a week now - I'll finish and post that one soon - but I've been a bit under the weather and focused even more on my novel revision work, so I haven't been able to get myself to just sit down and finish that post. There are plenty of important things going on at the moment, summer just began, and Iran's facing citizen uprising over the recent election fraud there. No idea if I'm going to do a full post commenting on the situation there yet, but at least, I'd like to naturally state my full support for the protesters and Mousavi, as well as denounce the corrupt Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollah, who clearly isn't concerned with the interests of the Iranian people, who've made it clear as day that they want a new direction.

At any rate, I'm typing this short little blurb up now just to share some thoughts. As of today, June 23rd, it's been five years since I went through major jaw surgery to correct a pretty huge underbite that would have eventually led to some serious movement problems later in life.

As you would imagine, jaw surgery's not the most pleasant of experiences. Getting my wisdom teeth out between 11th and 12th grades back in summer '01 wasn't so bad - they just knocked me out and I woke up a couple of hours later sans wisdom teeth and a couple of others they'd removed to reduce crowding. (The gaps from which were closed soon after by braces I had in my last year of high school. The wonders of having a small mouth and a fairly cursed dental history.)

The whole jaw surgery experience was preceded by copious amounts of dread, the feeling that the world was closing in on me as it was time to go to the orthodontic surgeon's office, and a general state of suppressed panic as I waited to be called in to go through with the surgery itself. I couldn't eat or drink for either six or eight hours prior to the surgery - as was the case with my wisdom teeth removal - since I was under general anesthesia in both cases. Once I got into the chair, they stuck the IV in my arm and had me count backward until I was out. Then the real fun began.

The procedure itself basically amounted to having my lower jaw broken, moved back, so that its row of teeth would naturally go behind the upper set when I closed my mouth, and screws were drilled into my jaw to secure it in place. (Yes, I am in fact screwed in the head. Literally.) I regained enough consciousness - to the point at which I was slightly aware of outside physical sensation though I couldn't feel any pain - after the worst of it was over in time to actually feel them vacuum out my stomach with one of the two tubes they'd placed in my nose (The other had gone in my wind pipe or something like that to aid with breathing, as I recall.), which is every bit as nightmare-come-true unpleasant as you would imagine.

After gradually recovering consciousness and regaining some of my mobility, I returned home and spent the majority of the next few days in bed, on all the painkillers they'd pumped into me. I couldn't sleep, though - for the first week or so, I couldn't so much as lie down because my jaw had to set in its new position in beginning the healing process, and lying down would have caused it to permanently shift. So I got to spend the first week feeling especially sick and exhausted with severe sleep deprivation on top of all the trauma, and when I did nod off for even a few minutes sitting up, I had some pretty horrific night terrors and sleep paralysis. The psychological norm as the mind registers and deals with the rather deep shock of going through major surgery.

It took me a couple of months to recover fully, only getting to finally eat solid food again by later mid-August '04 - even then, it was mostly soft things like pasta, sushi, mashed potatoes, and so forth, and I had to eat slowly and carefully - after months of nothing but really fluffy light yogurt, drinks designed to replace full meals (Which taste pretty nasty), and a handful of soups blended up to eliminate the need for even the slightest chewing. Nothing teaches you to appreciate solid food like months of inability to eat it or even consciously move your jaw much while it heals.

Time flies far too quickly. It's been over two years since I left college now (And almost two years since I started writing in this blog regularly.), and I'd still like to go back to school if I can, but I'm not exactly confident that another creative writing MFA grad school application rush would yield anything but further rejection. Thus, my primary focus is now on finishing and polishing this novel so I can get to working on finding an agent and publisher by the end of summer. NPR's got a writing contest going on now that I plan on participating in, though competition will be incredibly stiff and I expect to fail. The subject matter itself amounts to trying to write something emotionally evocative that can be read aloud on the radio within 3 minutes, at 500-600 words at most. A fairly vague, wide subject with a lot of room for interpretation, but so far everything I've been able to think of feels rather inauthentic in a contrived search for authenticity. I can make people laugh within those sorts of constraints, but evoking emotion is a different ballgame. I feel like most of the thoughts that come to mind just end up being cheap melodramatic ploys for an emotional reaction, rather than something pure and genuine.

And while time has flown far too quickly in regards to all these things, now it's been exactly half a decade since my jaw surgery. On the upside of all of it, while my jaw still tires easily and I can't chew things like gum anymore - nor am I any more keen on particularly crunchy foods than I have been in the past - most dental procedures don't seem nearly as bad anymore. I had to get a root canal back in early 2007 - and with my dental fortunes changing for the better in more recent times, I should hopefully never have to deal with another - and I ended up dreading it quite a bit, having always heard about how terrible the experience was. It was an exhausting experience, to be sure, but I came away from it thinking that it had been nowhere near as bad as I'd expected. I pretty much wisecracked my way through the whole thing. (I could still speak clearly enough in the breaks between each of the steps of the procedure to actually coherently joke about it.)

For the first few years after my surgery, I'd fall ill around this time of the summer and start dealing with surgery flashbacks in dreams that caused a good several nights of insomnia. Fortunately, that's stopped in more recent years, and all I'm dealing with now is a minor stomach bug - which I'm mostly over, the good homemade Indian food I had for dinner earlier's sitting just fine - that I've had since roughly last Wednesday.

So yeah, on this anniversary of the intensely unpleasant events of that day, I thought it'd be worth it to take a little time to look back and reflect. Invasive orthodontic surgeries? Not recommended if you can avoid them. But of all things, at least I gained a little more perspective from the experience. Generally what one should strive to get out of any painful experience.