A red letter day
Jul. 24th, 2004 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithOne for the calendar...
For the first time since we moved into this house, I was able to pull a vehicle into the garage. Harrison the Ford truck is now safely ensconced. With a little more rearranging and use of hooks and shelving, Kuro the Forester should fit as well. That will be nice come winter. No more having to shovel snow off the vehicle in the morning. I'll even be able to hook up a battery warmer if the temps drop low enough.
Sawed two 12-foot wire shelves into 6-foot lengths, which will be easier to handle and stabilize. Put up some racks/hooks to hold garden tools. Broke up two garbage cans-worth of branches into shorter lengths in the hope that the yard waste guys will take them on Monday. If they don't, they'll have to sit there until the chipper truck comes through, and that could take weeks.
All in all, I spent five hours in said garage and the darned thing is, it doesn't look like I did that much. Isn't that always the way.
Still plowing through DVDs, watching all in all Too Much Buffy. I know, can there possibly be such a thing as Too Much Buffy? I'm sure this is a subject that is open to much debate.
One thing that happens when you watch great swodges of a series over the course of a week is that certain things start popping out at you.
1. Spike's crypt has no plumbing, does it? Do vamps ever shower? If so, what does Spike do, set off the cemetery sprinkler system at midnight?
2. Does Buffy drive?
3. Do the average citizens of Sunny D know they're located at the opening to a
Hellmouth? Everyone seems remarkably oblivious, even though there's enough of a market out there to support a magic shop. Don't any of the community centers offer self-defense classes that cover vampire attacks and such? Couldn't the police use a class in Demon Recognition 101? Do these people take any steps at all to protect themselves?
4. With that in mind, why isn't Buffy on the city payroll? Why aren't the Watchers helping ensure she receives a steady income for doing what she was born to do. Between patrolling, working, and life in general this woman gets no sleep. No wonder Slayers cave by 25.
Yeah, I know--thinking too much.
For the first time since we moved into this house, I was able to pull a vehicle into the garage. Harrison the Ford truck is now safely ensconced. With a little more rearranging and use of hooks and shelving, Kuro the Forester should fit as well. That will be nice come winter. No more having to shovel snow off the vehicle in the morning. I'll even be able to hook up a battery warmer if the temps drop low enough.
Sawed two 12-foot wire shelves into 6-foot lengths, which will be easier to handle and stabilize. Put up some racks/hooks to hold garden tools. Broke up two garbage cans-worth of branches into shorter lengths in the hope that the yard waste guys will take them on Monday. If they don't, they'll have to sit there until the chipper truck comes through, and that could take weeks.
All in all, I spent five hours in said garage and the darned thing is, it doesn't look like I did that much. Isn't that always the way.
Still plowing through DVDs, watching all in all Too Much Buffy. I know, can there possibly be such a thing as Too Much Buffy? I'm sure this is a subject that is open to much debate.
One thing that happens when you watch great swodges of a series over the course of a week is that certain things start popping out at you.
1. Spike's crypt has no plumbing, does it? Do vamps ever shower? If so, what does Spike do, set off the cemetery sprinkler system at midnight?
2. Does Buffy drive?
3. Do the average citizens of Sunny D know they're located at the opening to a
Hellmouth? Everyone seems remarkably oblivious, even though there's enough of a market out there to support a magic shop. Don't any of the community centers offer self-defense classes that cover vampire attacks and such? Couldn't the police use a class in Demon Recognition 101? Do these people take any steps at all to protect themselves?
4. With that in mind, why isn't Buffy on the city payroll? Why aren't the Watchers helping ensure she receives a steady income for doing what she was born to do. Between patrolling, working, and life in general this woman gets no sleep. No wonder Slayers cave by 25.
Yeah, I know--thinking too much.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-24 04:57 pm (UTC)Very, very badly. I'm pretty sure that the only time we actually see her driving a car is in the "Band Candy" episode of the third season (and if you haven't watched that one yet, do so. It is much fun.) and she manages to crash it.
3. Do the average citizens of Sunny D know they're located at the opening to a
Hellmouth? Everyone seems remarkably oblivious, even though there's enough of a market out there to support a magic shop. Don't any of the community centers offer self-defense classes that cover vampire attacks and such? Couldn't the police use a class in Demon Recognition 101? Do these people take any steps at all to protect themselves?
The standard joke is that everyone in Sunnydale must be Egyptian, because they all live in de Nile. There are occasional hints dropped in the background that folks in Sunnydale are aware of the difficulties of living in their town. The two that spring immediately to mind are Jonathan's speech at the prom when he gives Buffy her class award and talks about how she's responsible for the class having the lowest mortality rate of any graduating class in Sunnydale history, and the final episode of the season where we get a quick look into various students pulling things out of their lockers, and the lockers have bunches of garlic and crosses and other protective items in them.
As for number 4 - well, there's a lot of problems with the Watchers Council, and it becomes obvious that they don't really care all that much about individual slayers. After all, why should they? One gets knocked off and the next appears, just like clockwork. Buffy hanging on for so long is a source of great annoyance.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-24 09:50 pm (UTC)Saw the episode in the Glory cycle where the Council members visit in order to test Buffy. What pieces of work, she said, getting all het up about the unfair ways in which a fictional supergirl is being treated. I mean really, if there's only one Slayer at a time to worry about, the least those rich/powerful/snap their fingers and Giles gets his Green Card pulled Watchers can do is haul the poor kid's financial freight until she gets offed. I mean really, I think a strike is in order.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 12:40 pm (UTC)It is a pity you can't wipe your mind of the knowledge of what is to come and watch them the way I did way back when. The twists and turns, the sheer surprise at how GOOD it was; ah, those were the days. Yoon Ha Lee is in the process of watching them all from the start. She's never seen any of them before and apparently has managed to avoid all knowledge of the show up until she got the DVDs. She's been posting about it in her LJ: http://www.livejournal.com/users/yhlee/
On July 16 she hit "What's My Line, Part 1" and reacted to the last line of the show thusly:
Briefly, on Buffy episode for the afternoon: I am Kendra the WHO THE WHAT THE BLOODY THE HECK? *thud* Full report later. Probably.
Of course, *she* got to find out what was going on right away - I had to wait a whole week for Part 2.
Buffy is the only Cool Show bandwagon that I've ever ridden from the very beginning. Through sheerest happenstance, I watched the very first made-for-tv movie that was later split into two parts as the pilot episode (considering how little television I watch, it required a major alignment of the astral powers to have me in the right place at the right time and in the right mood to tune into something with that goofy a title) and was hooked right off the bat.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-25 04:31 pm (UTC)Knowing the endings as I do (except for Season 7), I enjoy picking up the foreshadowing bits in earlier shows, the apparently offhand remarks that turn out to be not so offhand after all.
Starting in the middle...
Date: 2004-07-26 09:19 pm (UTC)But with friends heavily into the show, I know bits and pieces about how things went--including a couple of friends bailing in, I think, Season 6 where things just got too grim and it wasn't an escape anymore--so they didn't go there.
For real amusement, go to www.universallivingwage.com, and go to the link for ULW for cities. Pick the CA city closest to Buffy--there's no way she could support a house on minimum wage... .
Eventually, I will see them.
Re: Starting in the middle...
Date: 2004-07-27 09:23 am (UTC)Don't read any further if you haven't watched Season 6 and don't want even semi-spoilers...
Granted, I haven't seen the entire series, but I have watched Season 6 and angsty me confesses that I liked it for the reasons your friends bailed. Buffy never asked to be a Slayer. Dawn never asked to be born. They both paid in ways they should never have had to for burdens they didn't ask for, and they went a little wiggy. I'd have gone a lot wiggy, and taken half of Sunnydale with me in the bargain.
I think that comparing Willow's magic management problems to those of an addict dealing with their addiction was sound, and well done.
Yes, it was grim. But these are 20-somethings dealing with world-altering powers and a teen dealing with the facts she didn't want to face. To treat these matters in a more lighthearted fashion would have cheapened them, imho. But I've never been a fan of escapism.
Re: Starting in the middle...
Date: 2004-07-27 09:04 pm (UTC)Re: Starting in the middle...
Date: 2004-07-28 09:52 am (UTC)