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tzikehWork ate my brain. My brain is eaten. I have no brain anymore. The Web Experts did it to me again, and for the second year in a row I have been working on a weekend instead of attending ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taraljc's lovely Onion Soup party. The Experts so screwed up my schedule and my workload and so stressed me this time that my head a splode. Literally. I was knocked back by a headache which sprang, fully-formed, into the left side of my head with such force, out of nowhere, that when I called my GP and described it to him, he ordered me to the Emergency Room for a CT scan, for fear that I had burst something in my head. Whee. I'm going to start a collection of ER admittance bracelets.
The CT came back negative, and the ER doc "reassured" me by telling me that you know, CTs are only 80% accurate and a small bleed could easily be missed. I asked if maybe there weren't some way to be 100% sure, since, you know, my head might be bleeding on the inside. He said yeah, a lumbar puncture (spinal tap). If it gives you an indication of just how bad this headache was, I was seriously considering letting them do it to be sure. My GP and the ER doc had a conference call and we all decided not to go ahead with that, but that I should return to the ER if anything changed for the worse. So I went home to rest, and went back to work on Sunday. Because I had to.
It's been three days, and I'm not dead, and the headache is better, so we'll assume all is well. This is apparently what they call a "tension headache". I think I will call mine "Athena", because Zeus had to be downing the Advil like Skittles after that little adventure.
In order to re-grow my brain, I need a little fun time, a little down time, a little me time. For many people, this might mean a long bubble bath and a mug of hot cocoa, or a night of dancing and karaoke, or possibly a long weekend of anonymous sex with a variety of well-heeled foreigners in a private retreat cleverly hidden behind the facade of an Indian take-out place.
Er. But, you know, not for me.
As media fandom has become more and more widely appropriated and diluted (and I don't mean since 1996, I mean since the early 1970s), there no longer seem to be any hard and fast lines dividing that which is fannish from that which isn't. Rather, each of us defines the term for ourselves along a sliding scale, and then sifts through the teeming masses to find people whose definitions most closely overlap our own, and clings to those people.
The key difference for me between just liking something and being fannish about it is in how I think about the show when it's not on, or the movie when I'm not watching it, or the book when I'm not reading it. If I wonder what the characters do outside of the stories we've been handed, or I tease out the rules of the universe, or I mull what would happen if a story took a left when, in canon, it took a right, then that is the tipping point from enjoying a product to being fannish about it. Otherwise, I could just as well say "I like X" instead of "I'm fannish about X".
For me, being fannish can be both passive and active -- I can be fannish about a show or movie or book without buying merchandise, writing or reading fanfiction, vidding or watching vids, joining lists, heck - I don't even have to talk about it with other people. So long as I'm thinking fannishly about it, the show is now a fandom for me, and not just a show I watch or a movie I saw or a book I read that I liked a whole lot.
A great example of a show I watch which I am not fannish about is Law and Order. I love Law and Order. I can watch it all day, and sometimes I do watch it all day. I love the characters, I love the process, I even love the "shocking last-minute twist, ripped from the headlines". If a conversation begins about Jack McCoy's predilection for sleeping with his assistants, I will readily agree that he's got some work-related problems. But the second the show is over, it is gone from my mind. Left to my own devices, I don't think about what Jack McCoy does when the case is over. I don't wonder how Ben Stone is. I don't try to come up with a case and determine how it would go. I am not fannish about Law and Order, but I still think it's good television. Why didn't Law and Order tip over into my fannish life, where other shows like West Wing did? Who knows. We talk about "the hook", that thing that grabs you, but I cannot find a common denominator to all of my fannish pursuits over the years, and so, for now, I leave it a mystery.
For my own edification, and for those of you who love lists (you know who you are), here's a semi-exhaustive collection of tv shows I have been fannish about. Bold indicates some kind of fannish activity (attending panels at cons, joining clubs, marathon viewing sessions, collecting merchandise, buying tapes/dvds, pimping, vidding, reading fanfiction, joining discussion lists, etc.) was involved.
A-Team
Adventures of Brisco County, Junior
Alias
Alien Nation
American Gothic
Animaniacs
Angel
Battlestar Galactica
Best of the West
Blackadder
Boomtown
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Carnivale
Covington Cross
Cupid
Danger Mouse
Dead Like Me
Dead Zone
Doctor, Doctor
Doctor Who
Due South
Dungeons and Dragons
EZ Streets
Family Guy
Farscape
Freakazoid!
Get Smart
Gvs.E (Good vs. Evil)
Greatest American Hero
Homicide: Life on the Street
I Spy
Invisible Man
Jake 2.0
Joan of Arcadia
Knight Rider
Legend
Little House on the Prairie
Lois & Clark
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Max Headroom
Monkees
Moonlighting
Muppets Tonight!
Mystery Science Theatre 3000
Night Court
Northern Exposure
Nothing Sacred
Now and Again
Nowhere Man
Oz
Police Squad!
Prisoner
Profit
Quantum Leap
Real Ghostbusters
Remington Steele
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scrubs
Six Feet Under
Sledge Hammer!
Smallville
Sopranos
South Park
Sports Night
St. Elsewhere
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Voyager
Strange Luck
Tick (anim)
Tick (live)
Twin Peaks
Upstairs, Downstairs
Voyagers!
West Wing
Wild Wild West
Wiseguy
WKRP in Cincinnati
X-Files
taraljc's lovely Onion Soup party. The Experts so screwed up my schedule and my workload and so stressed me this time that my head a splode. Literally. I was knocked back by a headache which sprang, fully-formed, into the left side of my head with such force, out of nowhere, that when I called my GP and described it to him, he ordered me to the Emergency Room for a CT scan, for fear that I had burst something in my head. Whee. I'm going to start a collection of ER admittance bracelets.The CT came back negative, and the ER doc "reassured" me by telling me that you know, CTs are only 80% accurate and a small bleed could easily be missed. I asked if maybe there weren't some way to be 100% sure, since, you know, my head might be bleeding on the inside. He said yeah, a lumbar puncture (spinal tap). If it gives you an indication of just how bad this headache was, I was seriously considering letting them do it to be sure. My GP and the ER doc had a conference call and we all decided not to go ahead with that, but that I should return to the ER if anything changed for the worse. So I went home to rest, and went back to work on Sunday. Because I had to.
It's been three days, and I'm not dead, and the headache is better, so we'll assume all is well. This is apparently what they call a "tension headache". I think I will call mine "Athena", because Zeus had to be downing the Advil like Skittles after that little adventure.
In order to re-grow my brain, I need a little fun time, a little down time, a little me time. For many people, this might mean a long bubble bath and a mug of hot cocoa, or a night of dancing and karaoke, or possibly a long weekend of anonymous sex with a variety of well-heeled foreigners in a private retreat cleverly hidden behind the facade of an Indian take-out place.
Er. But, you know, not for me.
As media fandom has become more and more widely appropriated and diluted (and I don't mean since 1996, I mean since the early 1970s), there no longer seem to be any hard and fast lines dividing that which is fannish from that which isn't. Rather, each of us defines the term for ourselves along a sliding scale, and then sifts through the teeming masses to find people whose definitions most closely overlap our own, and clings to those people.
The key difference for me between just liking something and being fannish about it is in how I think about the show when it's not on, or the movie when I'm not watching it, or the book when I'm not reading it. If I wonder what the characters do outside of the stories we've been handed, or I tease out the rules of the universe, or I mull what would happen if a story took a left when, in canon, it took a right, then that is the tipping point from enjoying a product to being fannish about it. Otherwise, I could just as well say "I like X" instead of "I'm fannish about X".
For me, being fannish can be both passive and active -- I can be fannish about a show or movie or book without buying merchandise, writing or reading fanfiction, vidding or watching vids, joining lists, heck - I don't even have to talk about it with other people. So long as I'm thinking fannishly about it, the show is now a fandom for me, and not just a show I watch or a movie I saw or a book I read that I liked a whole lot.
A great example of a show I watch which I am not fannish about is Law and Order. I love Law and Order. I can watch it all day, and sometimes I do watch it all day. I love the characters, I love the process, I even love the "shocking last-minute twist, ripped from the headlines". If a conversation begins about Jack McCoy's predilection for sleeping with his assistants, I will readily agree that he's got some work-related problems. But the second the show is over, it is gone from my mind. Left to my own devices, I don't think about what Jack McCoy does when the case is over. I don't wonder how Ben Stone is. I don't try to come up with a case and determine how it would go. I am not fannish about Law and Order, but I still think it's good television. Why didn't Law and Order tip over into my fannish life, where other shows like West Wing did? Who knows. We talk about "the hook", that thing that grabs you, but I cannot find a common denominator to all of my fannish pursuits over the years, and so, for now, I leave it a mystery.
For my own edification, and for those of you who love lists (you know who you are), here's a semi-exhaustive collection of tv shows I have been fannish about. Bold indicates some kind of fannish activity (attending panels at cons, joining clubs, marathon viewing sessions, collecting merchandise, buying tapes/dvds, pimping, vidding, reading fanfiction, joining discussion lists, etc.) was involved.
A-Team
Adventures of Brisco County, Junior
Alias
Alien Nation
American Gothic
Animaniacs
Angel
Battlestar Galactica
Best of the West
Blackadder
Boomtown
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Carnivale
Covington Cross
Cupid
Danger Mouse
Dead Like Me
Dead Zone
Doctor, Doctor
Doctor Who
Due South
Dungeons and Dragons
EZ Streets
Family Guy
Farscape
Freakazoid!
Get Smart
Gvs.E (Good vs. Evil)
Greatest American Hero
Homicide: Life on the Street
I Spy
Invisible Man
Jake 2.0
Joan of Arcadia
Knight Rider
Legend
Little House on the Prairie
Lois & Clark
Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Max Headroom
Monkees
Moonlighting
Muppets Tonight!
Mystery Science Theatre 3000
Night Court
Northern Exposure
Nothing Sacred
Now and Again
Nowhere Man
Oz
Police Squad!
Prisoner
Profit
Quantum Leap
Real Ghostbusters
Remington Steele
Scarecrow and Mrs. King
Scrubs
Six Feet Under
Sledge Hammer!
Smallville
Sopranos
South Park
Sports Night
St. Elsewhere
Star Trek
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Star Trek: Voyager
Strange Luck
Tick (anim)
Tick (live)
Twin Peaks
Upstairs, Downstairs
Voyagers!
West Wing
Wild Wild West
Wiseguy
WKRP in Cincinnati
X-Files
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 04:34 pm (UTC)(In case you didn't know, sandy was in the hospital this weekend; and a couple other folks here in Seattle were having health crises. I think I broke my little finger, but I'm staying away from the hospital, dammit!)
You know what scares me? I'm tempted to do your meme, but I'm not sure i could remember all the shows. It's that bad. And I had to work too much this weekend too, so I sympathize and send hugs. Not looking forward to another 60 hour week, either.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 04:36 pm (UTC)You know how I did my list - I went to www.epguides.com and just went through the alphabetical menus.
Yeah, I heard about Sandy and other things. Shitty week all around last week.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-19 08:13 pm (UTC)I certainly hope that goes well.