Not a cliffhanger

My TV-makin' hero, Joss Whedon, interviewed over at the Onion AV Club.

With Buffy, I needed closure, because she, poor girl, had earned it. Buffy is about growing up. Angel is really about already having grown up, dealing with what you've done, and redemption. Redemption is something you fight for every day, so I wanted him to go out fighting. People kept calling it a cliffhanger. I was like, "Are you mad, sir? Don't you see that that is the final statement?" And then they would say "Shut up."

"everything around her is a silver pool of light" -KT Tunstall

I collect websites about abandoned urban spaces. This is related to my obsession with the end of the world, or with apocalyptic events which pretty much put an end to humanity in general--an obsession which is strong enough to mean I even enjoyed watching The Day After Tomorrow. (As well as some better end-of-the-world obsessed things, like Douglas Coupland's Life After God.) Thus: urban curators, the vanishing point and abandoned places.

"The SCREAM meme suggests that we're so ironic that we can't even take our own apocalypse-- our lurking sense, on the eve of the future, of social disintegration and simmering discontent-- seriously. This is the moment Walter Benjamin warned us of, when humankind's 'self-alienation' reaches 'such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.'" -Fighting the Forces

"The dead rose! We should've at least had an assembly!" -Xander, Buffy

[from the archives]

Pertinent Buffy quote, plus a two-sentence excuse for my absense

Willow, reading the course calendar: Ah! "Introduction to the Modern Novel. A survey study of twentieth century novelists." Open to freshmen. You might like that.
Buffy: "Introduction to the Modern Novel"? I'm guessing I'd probably have to read the modern novel.
Willow: Maybe more than one.
Buffy: I like books. I just don't want to take on too much. Do they have an introduction to the modern blurb?

Trying to be productive. Back later.

Diegesis, vampires, and gummi bears

From the astonishing bowels of the interweb: a fairly pretty chandelier made of gummi bears. Gummi bears are a good choice for lighting because they are sort of luminescent. On the other hand, you could just eat them, because they are luminescently delicious.

Yesterday James pointed me in the direction of some interesting theoretical math related to the vampire population in Buffy. However, this whole supposition is based on the idea that every time a vampire kills a human, that human then becomes a vampire, which (at least within the diegesis of the show) is patently false, as established in the first episode. "To make you a vampire they have to suck your blood. And then you have to suck their blood. It's like a whole big sucking thing. Mostly, they're just gonna kill you." I am linking to this article nonetheless, because I admire the amount of time and abstract thought that went in to it, but i think it constitutes a fairly radical interpretation of the text.

[Edited March 17 @ 11:11 AM to add: James: "I think the problem is that they have applied the zombie model to vampires." Jocelyn: "Exactly."]

weekend haiku
making scrambled eggs
and law and order c.i.
doth a weekend make.