Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

It seems to be confession time again, so here are my current sources of guilt, shame, and guilty pleasure:

1) I've become strangely addicted to taping and watching re-runs of "Roswell" on the Sci-Fi channel's 'mini-marathons', though I sniffed in disdain at the very idea of watching that show when it was on the networks (much as I once sniffed at the very idea of me watching BtVS, until the series was already three or four weeks into its first season, and something I read made me think that I should give it a try -- and then, of course, I loved it beyond all reason).

I don't love it beyond reason, and so far the only episode I've been tempted to keep for my permanent tape collection is the Christmas episode from their second season, which was the last of the 5 episodes shown on March 1 and had me frantically searching for kleenex to wipe my weeping eyes.

I might have tuned into "Roswell" earlier, but the context in which I was first told that it was worth a look for scholars of religion was the day after I had totally humiliated myself (I felt, though no one else would tell me so to my face) by trying to bluff my way through presenting a paper on Hayao Miyazaki that wasn't nearly done yet and wasn't at all geared for the Religion, Film & Visual Culture group to which I was presenting it at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in 2001.

Since many of the same people who witnessed my humiliation on the Film panel on Saturday were also at the panel on religion and television (which I was only attending because there was going to be a paper on "Buffy" -- which wasn't bad, but wasn't all that great, either), I couldn't really listen with an open mind and heart to the paper on "Roswell" that one of the senior scholars was presenting. (Though, as a bonus, I was able to enjoy the fact that some other presenter chose to show a clip from "Northern Exposure" in which James Marsters had guest-starred as Maggie's family priest.)

Anyway, I feel better for confessing how petty and narrow-minded I've been all those years since my great Hayao Miyazaki anime paper debacle.

2) I completely forgot to grade the exams and papers from the Anthropology class I'm helping with -- the grading I was supposed to have done by yesterday, so I could inform the professor of any students who were currently pulling down a C- or below --until 4 AM this morning, when I woke up suddenly remembering what had been due yesterday. I spent the next four and a half hours grading exams and papers for the most at-risk of my students, and then tortured myself mightily over my total screw-up (the professor had needed those grades yesterday, because he was leaving town early this morning and wouldn't be back until next Sunday) until about 1 PM. That's when I finally dragged my sick and tired butt to campus, checked in at the Anthro. dept. office, and learned that I HAD in fact been able to e-mail my grades to the prof. in time for him to turn in the deficiency reports on his way out of town. From the tone of his e-mail, he didn't even seem angry with me (though most people won't get mad at you up front, if you've really been sick, but they can't help but resent it). What shocks me is that I FORGOT that I had this due. That doesn't happen to me, usually. If I remember nothing else, I remember the next big deadline. But I let myself forget, deeming other things (like spending 4 hours updating my LJ on Sunday, goofing off with my sister all yesterday afternoon, and then coming home in the evening and drinking most of a bottle of shiraz all by myself while she went back to trying to straighten up my messy apartment) more important, I guess. Perhaps worst of all, I seem to have gotten away with it, no harm, no foul. That may just make it that much easier for me to conveniently forget the NEXT deadline. The adrenaline of this morning's panic has worn off by now, and I'm wondering where my next fix will come from, just like any other addict.

3) I'd much rather be continuing to try to put together or distill down to something remotely relevant my reflections on the past two weeks' "Angel" episodes (I sense that there's some stuff in there that's really relevant for my "Slayage" conference paper, which I need to present at the end of May) than to do the rewrites of my dissertation proposal that I said I would have to show my advisor by this Friday. But I guess I'll manage somehow.

4) Instead of finishing up my Anthro. grading this afternoon (so I wouldn't be running into this same problem again, being late or nearly late turning in the rest of my work next week), I chose to spend my time writing stuff like this in responses to responses to responses to LJ posts from a week or two ago:

I confess, I DO love and have on tape almost every episode of "B5" and "DS9" and "Alien Nation" and several key episodes of "Xena," "Farscape" and several other "Trek" series, in addition to my absolutely complete (with redundant copies, wherever possible) video-tape and growing DVD library of "Buffy" and "Angel" episodes. And I AM intimately acquainted with every science fiction-ish show produced during the 'wilderness years' of the 1970's and 80's.

That was "In the beginning" (subjectively speaking -- since my science fiction fandom and my earliest memories of having a love which the rest of my family might not even understand, much less share, began with obsessively watching and re-watching for the umpteenth time every original 'Trek' episode in syndication). That was back in the days when you watched a genre-related series, no matter how bad or good it might be, because you were damn lucky to get ANY science fiction on TV, and most of the time you had none (and these kids today, they don't know how spoiled they are, 'cause in MY day you had to walk five miles through the snow to see a "Star Trek" re-run, and ... oops, there I go again, lapsing into curmudgeonliness).

In the beginning there was re-runs of "Star Trek" (which was good, though sexist) and imports of Japanese animation and British 'super-marionation' series, but all the rest of the television landscape was without form and void of interest. Then, over the next two decades, behold, there came in fits and starts series like "Planet of the Apes", "Man from Atlantis", "Fantastic Journey", "Logan's Run", "Battlestar Galactica" and "Galactica 1980", "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", "Wonder Woman", "The Bionic Woman", "Misfits of Science", "V", "The Phoenix", "Wizards and Warriors", "Voyagers", and the British imports of "Dr. Who" and "Blake's 7" on PBS. And whether they were unsung masterpieces, guilty pleasures, or memories-I'm-now-trying-hard-to-repress, I watched them all, as religiously as I was able in the dark days before VHS and cable and Tivo.

And then the universe smiled upon us, and there was CGI, and it was good and less expensive to produce and so genre series didn't need huge ratings to survive. And there was J. Michael Straczynski, and he was good (and he begat Sheridan and Delenn and G'Kar, who were very, very good), and there were story-arcs on a "Trek" series set in the liminal gray areas of a space station somewhere between reason and faith, and then there was "Xena" and she was good (especially when she was being bad), and then there was Joss Whedon and "Buffy", and lo, it was very, very, VERY good.

And on the sixth (well, more than that, but who's counting?) sentence starting with "And" I rested.