older blog (2006)

In Which the Author Fights the Future

I know, Gentle Reader. I said I wouldn't have time to post today. And I didn't. Not really. My day started around 6:30 this morning and hasn't stopped since. What is it about inanimate objects' complete and utter inability to make themselves understood that drives us to cursing and screaming? We attempted to fix my husband's car battery on our own. Five hours and 1200 degrees later, we had it towed to the mechanic's and let *them* scream and sweat and curse for a while. Our time, we felt, was served.
Now I find myself in possession of a stolen moment in time, and as there are no new comic books to read at the moment (mental note: head to comic store tomorrow for subscriptions), only 70 pages left to savor of the fluff book I'm reading, and a husband distracted from X-Files by Jon Stewart, I decided to blaze ahead with my final introductory post.

Part IV: Collecting New Geeky Things
I have a tendency, a very strange tendency, towards obsessive compulsion. This is sometimes A Good Thing (tm) when one dedicates one's life to the pursuit of truth and scholarship of a very specific time period. This is sometimes A Bad Thing (tm) when one latches on to a television series, or comic book, or novel sequence, and just can't let go.
The husband and I are recent subscribers to that radical internet phenomenon, Netflix. This was brought on by the sheer lack of decent rental stores in our area. That big one--you know, the really big franchise--did a bad, bad thing a few years back: it purged all of its stores of older movies to make way for more new releases. One may therefore find dozens of copies of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, but a classic like Flash Gordon is, I'm sorry to say, nowhere to be found. Although our local public library fights the good fight against this, bless its heart, and its stock is generous, we've exhausted it.
A few months back, we checked out X-Files, Season One, from said library. I've seen X-Files in bits and pieces over the years--who hasn't?--but have managed to catch the same one or two episodes over and over (the mushroom fungus camper one high on that list). I believe I've mentioned before that I refuse to watch a television show unless I see it from the start. The trend towards releasing series on DVD has helped this compulsion of mine; Buffy, Angel, Carnivale, and Sopranos were all watched via DVD. But X-Files was a show I had always wanted to watch, and never had the chance to catch all nine seasons, from the beginning, on television.
After the first few episodes, I was hooked.
We're elbow-deep in Season Four, and I find myself screaming, "Kiss her, Mulder!" at the screen on a regular basis.

I consider myself a collector. There was a time when I could name my collections on all fingers and toes. Paper journals, bottles of rain (oh, the angsty confessions of the nineteen-year-old incarnation of the adult!), books about Mary Shelley, I had several. Now, I've whittled it down to a few.
I collect Wonder Woman paraphernalia, mainly action figures, but other things, too. I have a soft spot for comic book character-inspired Barbies (Batgirl, Elektra, Harley Quinn), and original art (thank goodness the brother-in-law and the best friend are artists, otherwise I would be even poorer than I already am!). But I also collect new aspects of my geekiness.
That, currently, is X-Files.

I see What Came Before in What Has Come After. All of my shows, all of my pet loves, are influenced by X-Files. It paved the way for supernatural, conspiracy-driven, freak of the week and season- or series-long Big Bads. It blazed a path towards character-driven television. And come on. Mulder is the geek girl's dream come true the way Batman is the former angsty teenager's dream come true. And an inspirational platonic relationship between a man and woman on screen that actually *works*? It defies explanation.

We're almost finished with season four, and that leaves several more seasons to go. But this comes on the heels of Carnivale, and Battlestar Galactica, and I wonder, what will come next? How will my geek OCD manifest itself several months down the line?

Time, as we know, will tell.
Until then, we fight the future.
Why?
Because The Truth Is Out There, of course.

np: The Fire Theft

posted by Amy Reads @ 10:03 PM