There are many other illustrious figures born on March 18, including at least two others born in 1977, the year that Star Wars was released and Harvey Milk was elected.  A very special happy birthday to Peter Ball, my birthday-brother from Australia, a fellow writer who defies categorization, writing in every genre from magic realism to pulp noir, and possibly inventing some new sub-genres along the way.  For a free online taste, I recommend this short story at Strange Horizons about merfolk, Copenhagen, love, and loss.

And happy birthday to all the other fabulous March 18ers, including Jordan, a new friend who was born only a half-hour apart from me, and Fernando, an old friend who was born a bit further apart from me than that.  

In other news, SF Signal recently asked this year’s Nebula award nominees for recommendations of other worthy stories.  I was honored and flattered to see that “Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts“ was mentioned by several of the nominees.  Many thanks to Chris Barzak, Richard Bowes, Will McIntosh, and Rachel Swirsky for the shout-outs.  It’s especially nice to get kudos from those four writers, all of whom much deserved their nominations and routinely write some of the best stuff out there these days.

All right, time to get some real writing done…

I was probably 7 or so the last time I saw the full movie, and it was fascinatingly familiar yet new.  I remembered most of it in surprising detail, but my experience of it was through entirely different eyes - kind of like going back to your old elementary school as an adult.  To pick an obvious example, I remembered Eliot’s high-school-age brother and his friends as being “big kids,” unknowable giants to my 7-year-old eyes.   As a kid, I was completely terrified by Eliot’s first meeting with E.T. in the backyard, when they both get scared of each other and run off.  I also think I completely missed the whole divorce theme that looms over the whole story – or at least I didn’t remember it at all until re-watching.

Mostly, though, I was just amazed at the storytelling – so emotionally powerful, effective – and economical!  Not one minute of the movie is wasted: Spielberg spends a few minutes setting up that E.T.’s stranded and establishing the characters in Elliot’s family, and then goes straight to their first encounter, and while he’s building their friendship makes sure he also plants the seeds for the confrontation with the scary guys from the government.  As soon as he’s established that E.T. and Elliot have a psychic link and that E.T. wants to phone home, the bad guys show up and E.T. gets *really* sick *really* fast and we jump straight to the satisfying climax. 

They just don’t make movies that tight anymore.  I feel like if E.T. were made today, it would be three and a half hours long, would start with several scenes presenting a detailed picture of life on E.T.’s homeworld, and would also include a romantic subplot for Elliot. Plus at least three epilogues of E.T. and his buddies in space and Elliot and his family having dinner and God-knows-what-else.

In any case, this one holds up, to say the least. If you haven’t seen it since you were a wee lass or lad, it’s definitely worth seeing again – it’s a different but equally wonderful experience.

Oh wait, some exposition first for those who are new to the show: Almost a decade ago (have I really been an “adult” for an entire decade?) I started getting severe pain and stiffness in my joints, especially my back and neck, and I was told it was most likely a rare and chronic type of arthritis.  They tried various uber-strong painkiller meds on me, which gave me lots of stomach pain and didn’t really help the joint pain at all, plus I do have a bit of a rebellious streak, so I just stopped taking them.  Swimming and stretching helped a lot and didn’t make my stomach hurt, so I stuck with that. 

Now, years later, the pain has been getting worse, so I went back to the doctors circuit (primary care provider to blood tests to rheumatologist to x-rays to more blood tests etc.) to see what was up.  And it seems these latest X-rays show that my joints have degenerated, with quite a bit of visible damage on my spine.

So in the first 24 hours or so since this news, I have experienced three reactions to this:

1. Whoa, this is actually serious. I really do have a chronic problem I need to deal with.
2. I feel oddly relieved to get a verifiable confirmation of the pain I’ve been feeling for almost 10 years.  I know that probably sounds strange, but a big part of me is like, hey this is not just in my head and it’s not just me being whiny, something really is happening in my body, yay.
3. I feel hopeful, because apparently there have been a lot of advances in treatment of this in recent years (mostly involving biologics) that seem to be quite effective.  And, in contrast to the meds they tried on me before (which only put a band-aid on the symptoms, if that) these new treatments actually address the cause and can help prevent further joint deterioration and loss of mobility.  This is most definitely a Good Thing, plus I get to take part in a very science-fictioney treatment.

So mostly I am feeling pretty good about this, because I’m in the same condition and position I was two days ago, I just have some new information, and information is usually a useful thing to have. I don’t anticipate posting regular medical updates here, but for some reason this time I felt the urge to share.

But then, after I read the article, it actually started to make sense to me.  Of course, it broadens their scope without losing those who already have loyalty to their brand!  Clearly, I’ve sat through far too many branding discussion meetings for this to make sense to me.

I especially like the part about how, sadly, they can’t own ”Sci Fi” since it is after all an entire genre (but they can own Syfy!).  It reminds me of a story I heard once that a certain gay American institution hoped to lay proprietary claim to the word “out.”  No, actually,  you cannot own “out.”  Even gay people as a community don’t have exclusive ownership of “coming out” anymore.  You can’t turn on the TV or radio without hearing someone talking about “coming out as a Jesuit” or confessing that they’re a “closet Stephenie Meyer fan,” etc.  Gay people should be getting royalties for giving the world this apparently incredibly useful metaphor.

Okay, this has officially been your rambling blog post for the day.

I don’t know what to call this other than Amish-sploitation. On the full infomercial, there are even more references to the brilliant craftsmanship of the Amish, including a testimonial from one satisfied customer who bought it because he knows “the Amish make great products.”  The whole thing is hilarious on too many levels. 

But here is my favorite quote from the infomercial (sadly not in the Youtube clip) – and I wrote this down word for word, it was so perfect in its brilliance:

Order now while supplies last … Entire communities of Amish craftsmen are straining to keep up with the demand!

So today I logged into my Google Reader account for the first time in many months, and in the upperleft hand corner it says, “All Items (1000+ Unread).”  As if it’s not enough that I have 400+ messages at my work email account, and 4797 unread messages in my yahoo account (not as bad as it sounds, mostly spam or listserv messages – I hope), now I have 1000+ unread items in Google Reader? 

This is particularly tragic, because reading blogs is primarily a tool for procrastination.  (You are procrastinating about doing something else you should be doing right now, aren’t you?)  GoogleReader takes this lovely, joyous activity of pure procrastination and transforms it into another stressful obligation: “Oh no, I’m more than 1000 posts behind on all my blog reading!” That’s just not right.  Plus, part of the fun of blog-related procrastination is the physical act of clicking on all the different sites.  Right?  Okay, maybe I’m alone on that part, but still…

Not that I’m against GoogleReader.  It’s actually a really good tool, with a really nice user interface and everything….