Day in the Life of an Idiot

Yesterday I decided it was time to turn the compost pile again, so I grabbed my shovel and unhooked the fence and started flipping shovelful after shovelful. I'd noticed a potato plant growing in the compost, but that happens now and again, but nothing usually comes of it. So, I yanked up the spindly plant and discovered...


Image: a potato, granted by the goddess of compost.

... a nice and firm brand-new spud. I have taken it in the house and intend to wash it up and ceremoniously eat it in gratitude to the goddess of compost who is providing dark, rich loam this year and... a singular potato.

Of course, I feel I should mention that I believe "compost happens" is as much of a lie as "sourdough is easy." Yesterday was the second time that I have turned the heap this year--and that is sweaty work.  On top of that, I try to water it every day. Compost will happen naturally, of course, but I've had fairly inert compost piles in the past.... the kind where it takes years and years to break down. If you want compost that is actively cooking, you actually have to work at it.

Meanwhile, since it is Wednesday I should probably enumerate some of the things I've been reading and consuming. I am still deep into my Loft class prep, but that's just going to be me for awhile. I am not good at non-fiction writing, and prepping lectures for a asynchronous class is a bit like writing a whole series of non-fiction articles. They're a little more casual than all that, but I do like to add links to terms I'm using (this is an intermediate rather than beginning level class) and, of course, provide examples in short stories for the class to read. Given that I normally walk in the room and start talking, this is very different. I am going to be recording all sorts of other things--short videos, etc., but there's a lot of content to generate before the end of September.

Oh, hey, I should mention that if you want to direct someone to this class (or you want to take it), the information is here: https://loft.org/classes/over-transom-sff-intermediate-writers

But, okay, so some of the short stories I read for class this last week (I'm not going to teach all of these, but I gave students the option of reading any number of stories on various websites that I pointed them to, so I need to make sure I was familiar with most of them):

• “The Key” by Nnedi Okorafor (Enkore Review, November 2016)
• “Afrofuturist 419” by Nnedi Okorafor (Clarkesworld, November 2016)
• “Rusties” by Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu (Clarkesworld, October 2016)
• “The Frequency of Compassion” by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor (Uncanny, September/October 2018.)
• “The Shape of my Name” by Nino Cipri (Tor.com, 2015)
• “Four-Point Affective Calibration,” by Bogi Takacs (Lightspeed, February 2018.)
• “Nothing is Pixels Here” by K. M. Szpara (Lightspeed, June 2015)
• “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island” by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare, May 2019)
• “Give the Family My Love,” by A. T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld, Feb. 2019)
• “And Now HIs Lordship is Laughing,” by Shiv Ramadas (Strange Horizons, Sept. 2019)
• “Fandom for Robots” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, October 2017)
• “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience,” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017)

Then, I re-read:

• “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M. Yoachim (Lightspeed, March 2016)
• “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies,” by Brooke Bolander (Uncanny, 2016)

I really loved a lot of these, but I especially enjoyed the podcast of "Rusties," which is read by Wanrui Kahiu (who, if you recall, is the filmmaker whose short film I watched last week, "Pumzi.") I also enjoyed "Give the Family My Love" a lot. But, there are not a lot of duds in the stories listed above.

Also, after talking to jiawen the other day, I decided to check out some Taiwanese TV shows.

Taiwan News recommended some top 10 TV shows, so I watched the first couple episodes of "Close Your Eyes Before Its Dark," which is a horror show about a reunion of the high school hiking club at a remote mountain inn. They return to dig up their time capsule and maybe finish that game of "Mafia" they started... only who WAS the killer? and why are people dying in the order they died in the game??? I liked that one okay (or at least so far), but I quit after a couple of episodes because I wasn't in a horror mood? I was there for the scenery and once the typhoon causes the landslide that traps everyone at the cabin, I was like, "Meh, interior shots. I'll be back to find out who the killer is later."

Instead I decided to start a different show. It's one that I'm really enjoying which is "A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities." This one is on Netflix and a quarter of it is in English since partly it takes place in San Francisco. The set-up for this is that there are these two women--one living in Taipei and the other in San Francisco--they end up friends after getting caught up in a scam contest for "the best job in the Pacific!" They commiserate together and in a drunken pact, decide to trade lives.

Lee Nien-Nien, who has been obsessed with San Francisco since she heard the story of how her biological mother fell in love there, ends up taking Josephine "Jo" Huang's apartment in SF. Jo stays with Nien-Nien's parents in Taipei. Wacky hijinx ensue.

"A Taiwanese Tale of Two Cities," has kind of everything I want? There's a lot of local scenery and some cultural bits here and there and a moderately sappy, but so far satisfying story about coming of age, female friendship, and made families/falling in love.  I'm a sucker for these kinds of stories? I've watched a lot of "and I traveled to a far away place to learn a life lesson and fall in love" movies. Things like, "Second Best Marigold Hotel."  I am almost always up for that story, probably partly because, like in this one, I get to armchair travel.

That's what I've been consuming, you?

 I should preface this question I have for my Christian friends by explaining, for those who don't know me, that I grew-up non-Christian, but Roman Catholic adjacent.  

Both of my parents came from Catholic families, but left the church before I was born. I was raised in a secular humanist Unitarian Universalist fellowship, which was its own weirdness, but is only tangentially related to my question. The thing to know is that my extended family remained Roman Catholic. I also spent 4, 5, and 6th grades in Catholic school. Then, I got my undergraduate degree at a Lutheran college (now university,) where I was required to have several religion credits, including one Bible Study course (which I passed, with a B.) 

So, it's not that I'm, like, "Christianity? What even is?"

Also, if you ONLY know me through DW and my previous stint at LJ, the other thing to know is that I wrote a five book trilogy about angels and demons of all sorts (by which I mean, I wrote not only about Christian angels, but also Muslim and Jewish ones.) I did a f*ck ton of research in these areas because 1) it fascinates me, and 2) I have literally no dog in the fight--I'm now a pagan, but I still very much hold to the UU tenant of "universal salvation," which at it's core means that there is truth of some kind in all religious doctrines and all y'all are already "saved" no need for any intermediary, like a personal relationship with a particular "correct" deity.

And that's the thing that I suspect is critical to my question. I have no personal, emotional attachment to any elements of Christianity. 

With that set-up, now on to the actual question I have for you, my Christian friends on Dreamwidth (or anyone who wants to weigh in, honestly)....

So, there I was last night, sitting at a new friend's house watching Good Omens with the hostess and another friend of hers. We've been watching two episodes at a time and I'm not very regular, so I think last night was episodes 3 and 4. Three, I think, starts with a super-long montage of Crowley and Aziraphale meeting-up at various historical/Biblical moments throughout time. 

When we hit the crucification, my friends almost audibly gasp and say: "I can't believe they went there."

Okay. I get that this is "the" moment of Christianity (though one could argue that the resurrection is a bit more critical.)

BUT.

These two people are long time nerds. I have no idea how they responded to THE MUSICAL NUMBER in "Life of Brian," but I suspect, like nearly every nerd I have ever known, these two could probably sing the words to "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!" and would do so, with relish.

The crucification, so far, as this non-Christian can tell, is live-action depicted all over the place, including in another musical "Jesus Christ, Superstar." 

Pardon the pun, but I did not think that the crucification was all that sacrosanct. 

During the break, I asked my friends what the big a$$ deal was, but I think they were much more surprised to discover I wasn't Christian and so we kind of talked around it or, if they gave me an answer, it was vague and unsatisfactory. Something like, "You just don't," which seems patently UNTRUE.

I have been thinking about this A LOT and my only current conclusion is that the objection wasn't to the crucification itself, but to its inclusion in a montage clearly designed to show the viewer that these two angels are very, very much in LOVE. I will take no argument on this point. The screenplay adaptor/co-writer (Neil Himself) seems to agree with me and I don't need his twitter confirmation, since someone, presumably Mr. Gaiman, wrote in a gay man on the street comforting Aziraphile when Crowley storms off after asking him to run away with him and says, LITERALLY, "Oh, honey, I've been there. You're better off without him." And Aziraphile nods sadly instead of, you know, no homo-ing the fuck out of that and saying (like he often does when other angels confront him about this forbidden relationship) "We're not friends!" (I should have counted how many times Aziraphile says that in the episode. I would guess three, as it seems a very clear nod to Peter's denial of Christ. They are friends, after all, very much more than, though clearly never consummated.)

So, is it that the presence of gay angels sully the crucification?

Or is there something, my Christian friends, that I am MISSING about the way that scene was portrayed in Good Omens (as opposed to, say, "Life of Brian.")

Was it because the Jesus in Good Omens was clearly suffering while they, two emissary from a "higher authority," watched without doing anything to mitigate that suffering or even seemed to have much sympathy (never mind that earlier, there was a lovely and VERY RADICAL discussion about WTF with the flood, God, why would you kill all these people because you're feeling pissy? EXCELLENT question and one many non-Christians have wondered!)? Was it the fact that the stigma were clearly being placed in the CORRECT place? So, that added some kind of "historical" accuracy that made the humor hard to deal with, what?  I mean, was it the implication that the God of the Old Testament was not, in point of fact, any kinder than the God of the New? That does, by the way, seem to be a theme, given that God's army clearly WANT the end of the world and war, so you wouldn't think JUST that scene would be gasp-worthy if you were going to be offended by how God is being portrayed in this series. 

Thoughts?

I teach today at the Loft from 1 to 4 pm. It's a one-day workshop for teens writing science fiction fantasy called "The Dawn of the Attack of the 80-Foot Writer" (which is possibly my best class title, ever.) However, despite my dazzling title, I have only 8 confirmed students, and I think that's why I'm not feeling super-anxious. Eight is normally a very manageable number for me. Of course, it could all go horribly wrong if every one of those 8 students is a complete introvert...and no one talks or offers suggestions at all. Though, I have been known to fill my own silences, so I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I'm very much of the attitude, "It will be what it will be." Which might be awesome... or dangerous.

Mason is off again today at a debate tournament. It's the final one of the year, but he informed us yesterday that he'd like to be a debate judge. I guess that's going to involve a lot of us dropping him off at various school campuses around town, but I'm up for it. I'm really pleased that he's found something like this that he enjoys so much.

Though it's weird for Shawn and I to find ourselves with so much alone time. We continued our earlier binge watch of the last season of "Longmire" I spent much of last night dreaming about Wyoming. I think after this we're either going to finish up the weird set in the arctic show "Fortitude" (spoiler: cannibalistic zombie police procedural) and/or watch the third season of "Broadchurch." Meanwhile, while doing dishes I've been working my way through the anime of Mushi-shi, which I've been really enjoying.

In about a half-hour I'm going to do a Google hang-out with jiawen  , which should be fun. I've been writing a lot of letters to her in Taiwan, but we haven't chatted for a number of months.  

Well, I suppose I should see if there is, in fact, anything I need to do to prepare for class.  Hope you have a nice Saturday!

Getting back to work is hard, and, what's up with this day light savings time change thing? Everyone I know (including myself) is getting their butt kicked by the time change. As I told Shawn this morning when we woke up (late, AGAIN,) it's not like my body isn't getting the same amount of sleep. My brain is somehow still wired to think I'm getting up at 5:30 am, even though the clock says 6:30 am.

Another reason to hate the former president, I say.

Today I got a lot of non-writing work done: collected our tax forms (whoot! Getting a refund!) and corrected a proposal I sent my agent that still had [troubled love interest] instead of a real name in the text and returned it to her. But otherwise, it's gray and rainy and hard to focus.

Squirrel!

Did you watch the Academy Awards? True confessions: I LOVE red carpet banter. It's so lame and stupid, but I find the whole glittery dress stuff vaguely amusing. It's my inner gay man, I suspect. At any rate, they had these little faux interviews with the characters from the various movies up for best animated feature, and the one for "Up" (which I still haven't seen) was so awesome, I'm still thinking about it. The Ed Asner character is sitting in one of those director chairs and the dog comes bounding up right into the camera while he's trying to talk. The dog says, something like, "What is this thing? Is it food?" A big tongue covers the screen, and then a disappointed, "It is *not* food!" Then someone yells, "squirrel" and the whole thing ends in chaos.

But lately that's been my new catch phrase, "It is NOT food!" I don't know why that amuses me so.

I suspect I should go/rent the movie. Instead, Shawn and I have been watching episodes of the first season of "Burn Notice" which isn't science fiction, but is a kind of serious/parody of the spy genre. And made of awesome. I think my favorite character is the crazy-ex-girlfriend (and ex-IRA soldier) Fi (Fiona). Our hero, Michael, is inscrutable in the way of James Bond, but gives these lovely voice-overs about the spy business which are often both hillarious and informative. Interestingly, they're very in character, because he's kind of a nerd spy. He likes to explain to the villians why they're being idiots (a prime example, he's waving a lighter near a pile of money he's soaked with gasoline, and he reminds the bad guys that "it's the fumes that ignite!") I've been enjoying the show tremendously.

How's by you?