I am such a wuss.

A lifetime ago, Kara chose good cries.

I bit the insides of my cheeks to stop from crying during Steel Magnolias.

I have never read it, but I saw the 1949 film version of Little Women and, though it is not the one with Katherine Hepburn, thought it was superior to the 33 version. Victor Heerman wrote the adapted screenplay for both (thank you TCM), and some elements that seem rushed in the earlier movie have a more suitable pace in this one.
Anyway.
One such scene stayed with me. For weeks after I saw it, I would tear up whenever I thought of the scene where Jo reveals that she's cut her hair. Her mother is taking a train to tend to their father, and after having a blow-up with her aunt when she was supposed to ask her for the money, Jo takes matters in her own hands. She comes back to their house with all the money. "Jo, how did you come by this?" "I didn't beg, borrow, or steal. I sold what was rightfully mine," she says, taking her hat off. Her family gasps. Her sisters begin to fuss over her. "Jo your hair!" But their mother silences them. She touches the side of Jo's head and says, "Your hair will grow back, and it will be lovely, but you will never look more beautiful than you do right now." I guess that love for and pride in your family is what touched me so much and that's the devotion I hope I can show to my family.

I remember being very upset when I finished the Last Battle and found that Susan had forsaken her place in Narnia for... really sex. I don't think I quite grasped that at the time (I read a J. K. Rowling interview where she talked about how angry that made her.), but I think it was the tone of betrayal. Her brothers, sister, cousin, and all are basically devoted readers of their own story who want to revisit/reread Narnia as adults, and since I was a loved the stories, it felt very personal. Or something like that. I don't know.
Anyway. Whenever I would start to tear up, I'd sing a light song from the oldies station that was stuck in my head. "Little Old Lady from Pasadena," I think.

The only comparable cry to that -- one where I would think of the story weeks later and still tear up -- was the first time I made it all the way through the miniseries versions of Winds of War and War and Remembrance. The story revolves around an American naval family during the 30s and 40s. The younger son Byron marries Natalie Jastrow (played so wonderfully by Ali McGraw in the first series), who gets trapped in Europe along with her newborn son and her uncle Professor Aaorn Jastrow when war breaks out. They're Jewish, so you know at least one of them has to die, but the two series together are almost fifty hours, and they all stay alive until about the forty-ninth hour.
A few hours before that, the three are transferred to Theresienstadt, the so-called Paradise Ghetto. (The one from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.) When he arrives, Aaron initially refuses the window-dressing status as one of the community elders but after some brutal coercion, he reconsiders.
Similarly, after the same scene, he retires to his room, retrieves his conversion documents -- Aaron has been an atheist for decades but flirted with Christianity and was even baptised -- and rips them up. He had been counting on them as an ace-in-the-hole, but after the incident, a voice-over from his journal tells us that he feels like Jonah, having run away from God for so long.
I am always a bit troubled by this scene. There has been little build-up to it. We see Aaron tutoring other children in Hebrew and insisting that Natalie brush up on it, but that's it. Without a more gradual conversion, it seems ... too like the smarmy "there are no atheists in foxholes." Surely, the book would do a better job. But yeah.
Eventually, anticipating the Allies overtaking the ghetto, the entire town is liquidated and sent east to Auschwitz. Since he's an old man, Aaron is selected for the gas chamber upon arrival. He recites the 23rd Psalm as he strips and staggers among the others and finally falls, coughing to the floor.
Between this and his conversion, you're tempted to think maybe he is with God until the gravelly-voiced narrator tells us Aaron's body was cremated with the others, and the ashes were dumped into the river. "The atoms that made up Aaron Jastrow's body flow through his native Poland, past villages and farms, before pouring into the icy Baltic."

This is the worst part of my job. I don't know how to tell you this, but your son is fat.

Susie chose Doctor visits.

The PTA in Rockdale County was a bit nosey. I'm not sure how the subject came up, if my parents asked them, or if they had spies at PE, but they had noticed that I was not very athletic and a little -- oh how best to put this delicately? -- on the husky side. Their solution: get me involved in sports.
I'm not sure if my Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. O'Kelly, was in on it, but she did enthusiastically endorse the local soccer program, and since I had a kind of crush on her, I insisted that we sign up.
The less said about me soccer career the better. My poor parents deserve medals for suffering through my painful attempts at playing soccer every Saturday. How embarrassing it must have been for them! I, at the time, did not have the sense to be embarrassed by how I would start off running after the ball only to kind of dawdle after it because of my size -- husky, as the PTA helpfully pointed out -- and lack of interest. It's only going to come back this way again. Why rush?
Why couldn't I be the goalie? They just stood in one place.
So yeah. I signed up for two years of that before wising up.

The PTA was not done with me yet. Oh no. I actually forget what their intermediary suggestion was after I stopped playing soccer. But, during my third grade year, they finally told my parents maybe something was physically wrong with me and that it would be best to take me to a doctor to be on the safe side.
A boy who is a little overweight, doesn't like sports, and prefers to read? In Rockdale County? Must be something wrong with him.
So my parents took me to a doctor so that he might diagnose my fat ass.
I remember Mom sitting me down at the kitchen table to explain why they were taking me to a doctor.
I bawled.
I felt like such a disappointment especially since my parents seemed to agree. Why else would they go along with all this? As distasteful as the idea was and as isolated from my family as it made me feel, a part of me also secretly hoped there would be something wrong with me for all the attention I would get. (Take that, Ethan!)
So they took me to the doctor. I don't remember much of the examination except that the doctor had me walk back and forth a bit. Then, he said, "Apart from an odd walk, there's nothing wrong with him. He's just not athletic. He'd rather read."
"I could have told you that for free," I said.
If it ever comes up, I might blame that doctor's visit for making gay.

And eventually, the problem took care of itself. I hit a growth spurt, and it all went vertical.

It holds up to three gallons!

Katie's quote.

I think this means that we are forever learning things first taught in kindergarten. It takes longer for these simple things to sink in than it did for previous generations. I always have to stop myself from making snap judgments or from being so hateful of other people.
I'll catch Miss Leigh or Mom chastising my younger cousins for something, and I'll think, "I do that all the time."
And then I get in even more trouble for writing these angry flashes in a blog.
This modern learning disability exacerbated by technology led my friend Linzy to shake her head. "Man, those blogs are of the devil. I just talk about people behind their back." No paper trail.
She is a sensible neo-Luddite of shit-causing.

Or

I think this means I should start wearing adult undergarments. Here I've been taking care of myself like a sucker and letting my body be a time thief. Think of how much more productive I could be! And no one will want to hang around me, so I'll have that much more time to work. I will finally be a multi-tasker and will stop letting my bowels and urethra boss me around.

Scars

Danielle chose scars.

My family had a swing set, and my cousin Lee and I had taken to pushing that one where you sit facing each other like a mini ski lift as high as we could and then run underneath the arch without getting hit.
That's why we were known as Lee and Will: Rocket Scientists.
So one day, as you might expect, things did not go quite according to plan.
Now at this time, I had immeasurable power over Lee. I don't know what happened to that. But anyway. I talked her into going into the house and telling Mom that I had had a little accident because I was too afraid I'd get in trouble if I went myself.
Mom called me in and examined the back of my head where I'd been beaned.
She was very calm until she saw bone.
She rushed me to the doctor's office, telling me to look down in order to stop the blood or keep the wound level or whatever. I didn't care for that.
The doctor told her to take me to the emergency room.
They gave me stitches, and the nurse gave me a teddy bear to hold during the surgery, but I shoved it down the side of the bed/operating table.

What always really weirded me out about was that we had my Aunt Vanessa remove the stitches.
"We're not paying another hospital bill. She can do it. She works there anyway."
"Yeah. As a respiratory therapist," I said. "My breathing's fine. I have stitches in the back of my head."
The family tried to explain that my skin grow over the stitches if we left them in. I was fine with that, but no one listened to me.
So while we were on vacation at Montreat, Vanessa removed the stitches, which really felt sturdier than surgical thread although admittedly it's not like I could have gotten a good look at them. She would coax one end up with her pliers -- I remember seeing the tool made me renew my insistence that I was fine with leaving the stitches in -- and I could feel it dangling from the back of my head like a misplaced antennae.
"Ow!"
"Well. Sit. Still!" Vanessa would say.

When I get a haircut, people can see the scar. But yeah.

Microchips Here and There.

TV Remix

So many sitcom premises and episodes center around people being way dumber than they would be in real life, but I guess there's a certain suspension of disbelief at work. But I really love terrible shows that strain it so far I no longer question the characters' motivation but the executives that put it on in the first place.
At the same time, though, I think there might be hidden reasons in the story that asserted itself. That is why I would like to be ... Vicki from Small Wonder.
You know, the show about the robot designed to look like a little girl, but who practically went around saying, "I sure am human."
In fact, she might have.
I was originally going to put, "who couldn't have been more obviously a robot unless she went around saying 'beep,'" but I'm pretty sure she did on one episode.
And then her "brother" put her hand over her mouth and made some clearly fake excuse about a Morse code project.

I was trying to remember why the Dad built the robot in the first place and thought it was because they couldn't have kids.
But no. She had a "brother."
This show just keeps posing more and more questions. It's like Churchill's quote about Russia: it's just an enigma wrapped in a puzzle.
Why did Vicki have to go to school?
Was the Dad, like, a toymaker or something?
Why did Vicki have to wear that same damn outift -- red-and-white polka dots with a white apron? Didn't that raise a few flags?

The only way to answer these questions is to go inside. (Or look it all up on wikipedia.) Otherwise, they will be lost to us like who built the pyramids.
I would be posing as Ricky the Robot, or I would be Ricky the Robot posing as a simple human boy going to school. Nothing to see here. Certainly, no robots. I would try to observe human children in their own environment so that I might more successfully fool my creator and his family into releasing me or somehow bypass their watchful eyes.

This is why so many of the Small Wonder episodes seemed to be VSEs or very special episodes -- special episodes about Vicki having a problem with obesity, drugs, being easy. Not her brother. There might have been one VSE about bullying where the brother uses Vicki as a protector. But for the most part, the robot is the one with all the health/social problems.
Part of this does go back to her investigations into human culture, but just as great a motivation is the robot's escape attempt.
If Vicki is sent to rehab, a free clinic, or a even a weight-watchers meeting, there's a chance she might be left alone with a doctor or a police officer or social worker or someone. She can look at him and say in that flat, inflectionless way, "Please. Help. Me."

But the father is a cruel son of a bitch and is one step ahead of Vicki. She would try to slide open a discreet panel and find herself unable to do so.
Because knowing full well she might try something like that at anytime, the father designed his abomination unto the Lord a little... rudimentary. The voice, the embarrassingly consistent clothes are all parts of a program she is helpless to obey and -- in the case of the voice and in an especially dickish move -- is unaware of.

Doctor, we're so sorry. We didn't know she would get this bad while she was with you. It must be all the stress, but... well... you've probably noticed that Vicki's a special girl. We all just learned to indulge her a long time ago, and maybe we shouldn't, but sometimes we forget to tell other people.
It's a well-rehearsed scene from saying the same thing to friends, teachers, and God knows how many others.

Please, it's best if you don't challenge her on it. It shouldn't be a problem or cause to much of a disruption.

When I inject myself into the show and once I gain all this information, I content myself with being as embarrassing as I can be or embarrassing for the family. I'm a robot. What the hell do I care?
"Out of the way. Puny humans."
As my family scrambles with excuses trying to repair the credulity I strain, I wait for them to slip up, so I can escape. I'll find another technical wizard like my father. One who can reverse the traps he encoded in me like this ridiculous voice, and once that's done, there'll be no stopping me. I've already seen how easily they're fooled by an obvious simulacrum.
But every week, my plans would backfire in hilarious ways because of some pre-existing code or fleshy, human contingency I hadn't taken into account.

So it would be a cross among the Incredible Hulk, Invader Zim, Bender from Futurama, and the Prisoner.
And I would say things like "simulacrum."
It would totally rule.

TV Remix

Oops.
It's my turn isn't it?
What television character would you want to be by either putting yourself in that show or being like that character in the real world?

the ABCs of Summer

V chose summer flings.

Ages and days ago, I worked at the UGA bookstore in the receiving warehouse. It was the first of many jobs I would have that I was no where near qualified to perform. I guess the assistant manager took me seriously when I said I was a strapping young man.
I tried to dissuade her by telling a story about how I was locked in Kroger's walk-in freezer on my first job, but her rationale must have been, "We don't have a walk-in freezer. He'll be fine."
I worked there for three years.
The first year, I took off for the summer to go back home.
The third year, ... I somehow lucked out and had a week off for family vacation or something.
So the second year was the only time I faced the full-fledged Hell of Inventory Season.

The assistant manager was in charge of inventory and to say she took those responsibilities a little too seriously is like Fox News might be the teensiest lop-sided in their reporting and not so balanced as they'd like to think.
With her ubiquitous pant suit and sneaker combinations, her stout physique and slight waddle to her walk, the guys in receiving took to calling her Peng -- short for penguin.
After book rush one semester, she ambled through, saw me reading, and insisted that I break down boxes and put them in the recycling bin. Never mind that is pouring down rain. Another worker came by as I was finishing it up.
"Why are you doing that? It's raining."
"Peng told me to. Or at least I guess she did. All I really heard was 'Waa waa waa.'" That was supposed to be a Burgess Meredith noise. Anyway.

Inventory was a summer-long affair. We would work in pairs. One person calling out the number of items while they other recorded the information on a slips of paper that looked like fat book marks and were color-coded according to the department.
Peng ordered Ivan from Supplies and me to work on book bags while she demonstrated the process to a group of other workers.
Oh my word.
Ivan and I caught the worst case of Church Giggles -- you know when you really shouldn't laugh, and you just start for no damn reason -- I have ever had.
So we were trying to count these book bags but kept cracking up so bad and so loud that Peng came back over and shouted at us, "Inventory. Is Not! A laughing! Matter!"
"Yeah, Ivan," I said, trying to control myself.
Biting our cheeks, we somehow made it long enough without laughing for Peng to be satisfied with our Inventory reverence.

On another day, I was paired with a girl from customer service -- Katherine? -- and we were working our way through the Gifts department portion of the warehouse. Each portion of the shelves had a corresponding gold-colored ticket, but we ran out a few times and had to ask Patsy -- the Gifts manager -- for more.
"Patsy's got the golden ticket! Patsy's got the golden ticket!" we sang.
Oh that apparently did not set well with Peng who must have yelled at Patsy.
A few minutes later, as Katherine and I counted decapitated bulldawg heads you could hang on your wall, a hand shot out through the boxes, knocking several to the floor, and grabbed my wrist.
I yelped, but then I saw Patsy looking at me from her side of the shelf.
"Oh Will," she whispered. "You musn't be so loud." She glanced to her right and left in case Peng were watching. "I've gotta go." She gave my wrist a reassuring squeeze. "I'll talk to you later."

The next day, Katherine and I were pulled to a different section that Peng was overseeing personally and where we again ran out of space on a ticket.
Without singing -- I knew enough not to do that anymore -- we found Peng and asked for another ticket.
She turned to another department manager and shook her head. "It's just like being at home. Every runs to me. I never get a break." She loved to play the victim and not as a joke, but I didn't realize that. She was always serious about it.
"I'm only asking for a ticket. Just one little thing," I said facetiously and thinking I had matched her tone.
Oh no.
That was a mistake.
"Do you want my job?" she started yelling at me.
I didn't get the joke anymore, so I was a bit caught off guard.
"Do you want my job?"
"Um... um..."
"Well, you would be next to Mr. Bryant," Katherine said helpfully.
"Good point," I said.
"Ok, so I'll wait for your answer later today," Peng said and stormed off. Or did her best impression of storming off as she could on her stumpy legs.
Katherine and I went back to work and after a few minutes she asked, "Are you ok?"

With no class, that's how it was all day during the summer. For Katie too. She worked in customer service.
And after the harrowing work day, we needed to relax with the nurturing, wholesome programming of ABC Family.
I think Katie started turning the tv to that channel in preparation for the Gilmore Girls later in the evening, but we quickly became fans of ABC Family's earlier programming.
We watched the Olsen twin shows. Not Full House but one of the two other series they had after that. And they didn't have two time-slots for both shows. They had one time-slot for Olsen twin goodness. They did seem to run through the entire run of one series before running the other. So it wasn't like you would see them at nine, and then the next day, they'd be fourteen.
Although really, it wouldn't be that much a continuity gap. Both shows are very similar, and not just because there's a set of twins in both of them.
"Do they have a line in their contract that says they cannot have a full set of parents on these shows?" Katie wondered, noticing one of the more glaring similarities.
Both shows also have nannies.
Or a manny in one case.
I guess that was all it took. The pitch must have been like, "Completely different show. The nanny -- get this! -- is a man."

The Olsen twins' may have had troubles comparable to inventory, but they overcame them, and if anyone ever treated that plucky twosome shabbily, you could rest assured that person would receive a comeuppance within half-an-hour.
One day, the twins' adventure centered around a fundraiser. One of them, Twin 1?, was rather emphatically coaching some of her helpers.
"No! Those leads are only for closers!" She shouted. Something seemed familiar about her speech, but maybe it was just the similar, shrieking harangue Peng had subjected me to earlier.
ABC was written on the chalkboard behind the twin. "Always. Be. Closing," she said, swatting the board with a yardstick.
"Oh my God!" I said. I remembered where I'd heard that. "The Olsen Twins are alluding to Glengary Glenross. The Olsen Twins know of David Mamet!"
Katie laughed. "Maybe someone the writing staff?"
"Yeah. Some frustrated English graduate wound up writing for the Olsen twins show, and this is his little joke."
We spent the rest of the afternoon in much better spirits, thinking of other allusions to shoe-horn into an Olsen Twins' episode.

After the Olsen twins' show, S Club 7 came on. Like the Olsen show and like Power Rangers, if my cousin Colin's video and toy collection is any indication, but that came on too early for Katie and me to get into, S Club 7 comes in many iterations but the core synopsis held true: an all-British version of the Monkees.
There was one where they were the cheap entertainment at a Florida Spring Break rat trap.
There was the season where the gang tried to break into Hollywood.
And there was the big new one that was premiering that August where the gang was on tour in Spain. ABC Family promoted the shit out of that.
For example, there was one promotional spot that had the following mini-scene:
Blond bandmember explaining who they are: We're a band from England.
The gang breaks down old school.
Spanish guy who just wants to be left alone: You sing like that, you banned in Spain too.
Oh S Club 7! You are a treasure.

Those persevering Brits wouldn't be held down by inventory. They'd sing a poppy tune and kick inventory's ass. Although Peng would probably be very upset by all the singing and happiness.

S Club 7 had a very distinctive editing style. Many of the scenes seemed to last a bit too long, and the characters literally just stared at each other waiting for the scene break until someone would blurt out some totally random fact.
"Jo hates mayonnaise," Bradley would shout and point at Jo accusingly.
Then the scene break. An S and a 7 superimposed on one another would flash on the screen and twirl about, and you would hear the band cheerily singing, "EEEsssss Cluuuub."

ABC Family also farms out parcels of air time to religious programs that DO NOT necessarily reflect the views of ABC Family. Pat Robertson's Living the Life and the 700 Club appear on ABC Fam as does the occasional James Hagee program.
One time the Reverend Hagee interviewed the author of the Christian sex book: Intimate and Unashamed. Basically, the book said men have to initiate everything and should be on top.
Hey, everyone remembers the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife. She wanted to be on top, and the next thing she knows, she's the mother of all demons.
At one point in the interview, Hagee said, "Praise God! He knows what you want and need and will pour it out for you from the Heavens in abundance."
I thought about it a moment. "Katie, did he just say, 'Hallelujah! It's Raining Men'?"
"I think that's exactly what he said. We should go out tonight."

But yeah. Once classes started back up, I lost track of ABC Family. I never did find out what happened to the gang in Spain. And that was also my sole summer fling with inventory. Ugh.
... Um... but yeah. That's it. I don't have anything else to say about summer flings.
Eeeessss Cluuuuub!