My latest Matchflick column is on Jack Lemmon, comedy god. http://www.matchflick.com/column/1870

I was going to pick up the boy from Robotics today when I heard the following on NPR:

Most people hate flying. I love it. Nothing makes me happier than a long flight — the longer, the better. I once flew nonstop from New York to Bangkok: 17 hours of pure bliss. I packed two books and actually read them. I stared out the window and actually had … thoughts. Some of my best ideas take flight at 35,000 feet. It could be the thin air up there, but I think there’s another reason: disconnection. No e-mail, no cell phones. No guilt, either, because at 35,000 feet I am “offline.” Don’t you love that word, offline? I do. But it is about to go the way of other cherished expressions, like “out of the office ” and “on vacation.”

Every culture has its out-of-bounds venues, circumscribed places and times in which the normal demands of society no longer apply. Buddhist monks on meditation retreats, college students on spring break. Instinctively, we humans recognize the value of tuning out the world, at least for a while. We know we’ll return refreshed and ready to cope again.

These off-limits spaces, though, have been steadily shrinking as technology’s reach has expanded. Oddly, we don’t put up a fight, but rather embrace this erosion of our leisure space. Many people love their BlackBerrys and iPhones, viewing them as tools of liberation rather than what they really are: electronic tethers, like those ankle bracelets that some convicts have to wear. The airline cabin represents the last refuge from ubiquitous connectivity, the last place where we are forced, for better or worse, to be with ourselves … and our thoughts.

But, I hear the technothusiats say, just don’t log on. No one’s forcing you. You can always opt out. If only. Every technology, from the car to the cell phone, starts out as optional and soon becomes mandatory. We can’t opt out, lest we be labeled an out-of-touch Luddite or, worse, old.

But, the technothusiats coo, onboard Internet access will be so convenient. Those who can log on at 35,000 feet will enjoy a “competitive advantage.” Perhaps, but the first person to send a package Federal Express also enjoyed a competitive advantage — for about two seconds. Once everyone can send a package overnight, the advantage disappears, and all that remains is the expectation.

So, please, airline executives, I beg of you: Don’t do it. You’ve already deprived me of leg room, decent food and dignity. Don’t take away my peace of mind, too.

I haven’t been quite so resistant to tethers, but I was really struck by the line about an advantage becoming required (and not advantageous).

I know that my workaholism is my own problem; it’s about the expectations I have for myself, but I don’t need society making it harder than it needs to be.

I just bought a laptop so I can work when my back is acting up and so I can do technological presentations at conferences, etc, but does this mean I won’t be able to catch up on my New Yorkers when I’m stuck on that plane?

I didn’t realize until the end of this piece that I was listening to Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss, which happens to be next year’s Campus Book Project at UC Davis. Bliss at many thousand feet? I hope so.

I don’t want to keep evolving to have more work.

Speaking of evolving (see what I did there?), this weekend is Evolution Weekend. Take the time to explain the basic theory to someone who doesn’t know it. (Those people who don’t believe in evolution don’t actually know what Darwin said. Explain how viruses become drug-resistant and how that’s evolution. If they say that there are no germs, that it’s God making you sick and making the evil antibiotics not work, give up.)

There are zombies everywhere!  Tons of zombie books and movies have been coming out this decade. (The other day I saw The Zen of Zombie in the self help section.)

Each era has its monsters and we’re in the zombie/vampire era right now. While vampire motifs haven’t changed that much over time (except for that one big shift into sexuality), the symbolism of zombies changes.

For example, it started as an embodiment of the fear of slavery in Haiti. Now, in films like Shaun of the Dead, zombies represent our deadening lives–how we stumble through life, occasionally ripping into those we love.

So far, my favorite zombie book is World War Z by Max Brooks–it’s a story of the apocalypse told from multiple points of view. It, like all good horror, doesn’t focus on the monsters, but on our reactions to them and acknowledges that we are monstrous sometimes.

I hear on NPR that some guy has come out with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies–he’s keeping Austen’s words, but adding zombies.

I don’t know what to say about that, so I’ll end with this:
Afzal has sent me a postcard! What’s the matter with the rest of you?

I was so ill yesterday that I didn’t even remember that it was Eddie Izzard’s birthday.

I think my feelings for Eddie came across pretty clearly in the column I wrote on him last March. You can (re)read it here: http://www.matchflick.com/column/1629

For your post-birthday enjoyment, there’s also a good article out in the Times London, in which Eddie says, “You rack up all the deaths we’ve had — stackloads. That’s one bastard of a God if he’s up there. And why doesn’t he ever shave?” You can read the whole article here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/comedy/article5670333.ece

Yesterday morning I find out that The Flight of the Conchords has tickets on sale for a Berkeley show. They are sold out the second they go on sale. Ticketmaster informs me that there was a week long pre-sale for fans.

I’m on their myspace; I signed up on their HBO page months ago. Are they only counting people who’ve mailed panties as their friends?

Apparently, dr-karma.com is great enough to now have spammers trying to add comments.

Not feeling well this morning.

1.  That re-communicated bishop I wrote about has been charged to disavow his denial of the Holocaust.  (See the story here:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7869995.stm).  Interestingly, he is not being called on to disavow any of his sexist shit.  He doesn’t believe women should wear pants.  I’d like to sick the ghosts of Katharine Hepburn and George Bernard Shaw on him.  It’s also fascinating that the Pope apparently didn’t know he’d been saying all those anti-Semitic things.  Isn’t the Pope infallible?  Oh, wait, if he were, this guy wouldn’t need to be re-communicated.

2.  Obama has signed into legislation a bill that will grant insurance to a bunch of children.  I am all for this, and for the eventual plan to have everyone covered.  However, I find it odd that we always take care of the children first.  I know that it’s easier to make people care about abstract children than abstract adults, but adults are more likely to get seriously ill as their bodies fall apart.  And if the adult in a child’s life is ill, that child suffers big time.  Won’t somebody please think of the adults?

3.  I heard Heart’s “All I Wanna Do Is Make Love to You” in the car today.  I have three problems with this song.  You know the story, right?  A woman picks up a hitchhiker and fucks him for a night and then she runs into him years later.  She has had his child, and says she only slept with him because her partner was incapable of providing said child.  Fine.  But she says, “We made love–love like strangers.”  Um, they were strangers.  It wasn’t “like” they were strangers.  Second, she said “I am the flower, you are the seed, we walked in the garden, we planted a tree.”  Has this woman not taken any biology classes?  Middle school bio will tell you this isn’t how you plant a tree.  Third (and this is not a writing problem), I remember when this song came out and all these guys would dedicate this song to their girlfriends.  Presumably because they had only listened to the title of the song.  Or else there were a bunch of sperm-lacking men who were comfortable enough about it to make songs suggesting they be cuckholded.

4.  If you haven’t seen them, there are two souces of internet fun you need to see.  www.escapistmagazine.com has two weekly series.  Zero Punctuation is a review of video games by a brilliant, funny Brit who lives in Aussie Land.  I don’t even play video games, but I love this series, mostly because of the analogies (he makes fun of his own analogies this week).  Unskippable is a new series that does the MST3K thing to video game opening stories.  Again, you don’t have to be a nerd, you just have to have a sense of humor.  Most videos are only five minutes.  Enjoy!

The Zero Punctuation guy's basic relationship to most games

Davis, Ca: An area woman with an odd name (for privacy, we’ll call her Sharma Shaltonen) has confounded the many health care providers in her town.

Her cranial sacral therapist is dismayed by her eyes: “Even when she’s relaxed, with her eyes closed, it’s like I’m looking at someone in R.E.M. sleep.” The therapist suggested the primary care physician do a brain scan.

“I already have,” he complained, shrugging his shoulders. We were hoping to find something to explain her symptoms–we would have been happy to find alien eggs about to hatch–at least it would have been some kind of explanation.” Her physician had earlier sent her back to a neurologist she’d seen some years before, but “he just sent her back to me–he said he didn’t know what to do then and he didn’t know what to do now and wondered why I was wasting his time.”

Sharma’s chiropractor was equally confused. “I talk about her all the time,” he began. “I’ve never seen a patient who was so flexible and who’s bones were so unyielding. I can twist her into a pretzel, but I can’t get the bones to release.”

Sharma’s allergist was perhaps the least confounded. He at least understood what was wrong with her, at least within his own specialty. “She’s allergic to everything except mold and cockroach dander. She’s difficult to treat because any time we raise the dose on the allergen treatment, she goes into shock.” The allergist is hopeful, though, and thus has her on seven different treatments/medications. Two were added today, as Spring is coming. This particular doctor, whose entire practice is made up of people with allergies, refers to Ms. Shaltonen as his “allergic” patient.

We tried to reach Sharma for comment, but when our reporter arrived at her office, we found her on the floor, covered in student papers, seemingly asleep, with her eyes twitching.

The patient (front), apparently about to faint on another woman.

• At what point does something (e.g. a hairball) become so fossilized that you can be excited when you discover it rather than upset?

• In the news this week: The woman who does the voice of Bart Simpson phoned a bunch of people to ask for money (she was shilling for Scientology) using Bart’s voice. The show keeps having to disassociate themselves from the religion/shilling. The media isn’t helping since it headlines its stories with things like “Bart Simpson is a Scientologist.”

• We have a new word: saddlebacking. This is the practice of engaging in anal sex to preserve “virginity.” A lot of those abstinence-only girls who go to weird proms with their dads are doing it now. I knew several girls in high school who did it. I thought it was stupid (anal sex has the word sex in it), but I’m sure they would remind me that I was the one who got knocked up. Yes, but not in the ass.

• House this week started to tackle a really interesting issue. A woman adopted a child after wanting one badly, but didn’t feel anything for it. This could have been productive–a lot of mothers, not just adoptive mothers have this problem. Unfortunately, the problem was solved with a little looking into the baby’s eyes.

• W signed something dangerous before he left office.  Health care providers in this country are protected if they would like to withhold your contraception.  They are not required to provide you with a referral to someone who actually will do the job, either.  This issue has been coming up a lot in the past few years.  Some pharmacists have gone so far as to refuse to give a woman her prescription back, forcing her to go back to the doctor before she finds a pharmacist who will fulfill the order.

This makes things especially difficult for those women who need emergency contraception.

These workers say that they shouldn’t have to go against their morals.  It results, of course, in forcing their morals on other people.

If eating pork was against my religion, but I worked in a restaurant that sold it, I wouldn’t be allowed to refuse to fill the order.  I definitely wouldn’t be allowed to be holier-than-thou to those who ordered it.

If you don’t want to ring up something your place of business sells, don’t work there.  Go work in a Catholic Hospital pharmacy (where they often don’t carry birth control).  Or go work in that town in Florida the Domino’s CEO built–contraception isn’t allowed in that town at all.

• Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, is my new hero.  I got a major crush on him when I heard him speak on Friday at UCD.  He’s brilliant AND able to give a brilliant lecture.  He spoke without notes in a gorgeous British accent about economics and food availability and poverty.  And he was funny.  I picked up some whiffs of Izzard, so when I got to meet him briefly after the talk, I asked him about it.  He confessed that he worshipped at the altar of Izzard.  I’ve always said that Eddie should be a History Professor.  Now that I’ve met an Izzarian Prof/Author, Eddie may have a run for his money in my fantasies.

I'll always think of him as Raj Izzard

• Neil Gaiman has gotten an award for The Graveyard Book.  It’s an amazing story of a boy who grows up in a graveyard–raised by the ghosts and something that is likely a vampire.  I like this so much better than The Jungle Book.

• I’ve been giving myself a break by going to Discworld.  Terry Pratchett is always great, but this week I read Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad.  The former is a mash up of several Shakespeare works, though Macbethis the main source of fun.  The murdered King’s son grows up in a theatre company while the witches try to figure out how to depose the usurper without “interferring.”

Witches Abroad is a sequel of sorts.  It’s part travel narrative (take three very different women –think odd couple plus one more odd), send them into various lands with foreigners, and have them stumble across a series of fairy tales in progress and you have one of my new favorite books.  I mean, it’s not going to replace Eddie or Raj, but it’s great.  And the opening is perhaps the most thoughtful and beautiful discourse on stories I’ve ever read.

• Finally, it looks like I might get my class after all, but since the last one was cancelled just two days before the term started, I’m still sort of holding my breath.

It has been brought to my attention that the only full-time “real” doll repairman hails from my current hometown: http://machochip.com/2009/01/slade-fiero-fixes-real-dolls.php

Does that say something about my quiet little burg?  I’d like to think so.  I’ve often spoken lovingly of my liberal Mayberry.  I won’t go on and on about how cool it is, I’ll just give you some facts and you can make up your own mind.

1.  We apparently have a plan in place to start giving the squirrels birth control because there are too many of them.

2.  We have a vital, vibrant downtown that’s walking distance from campus.

3.  We will soon have the world’s only “green” target.

4.  We apparently abhor billboards, high signs, and excess night light–there are laws in place to keep our skies visible.

5.  We have been on The Daily Show multiple times.  We have been made fun of for having a professor study (and create) Asian male centered porn, for our whiny Republicans on campus having their own “coming out” day (they feel oppressed!), and for our toad crossing (which didn’t work until it was redesigned).

6.  We have also been in national news for the gang of wild turkeys who loiter in the graveyard (which is my backyard) and for a neighbor calling the police on another neighbor for disturbing the peace by snoring too loud.  The latter, by the way, was a weird piece of performance art, designed to make fun of what makes national news.  The snorer was not in on it and was terribly embarrassed.

7.  We have a really cool university with amazing faculty, but maybe the best thing is that we have one of the few wine making degrees in the world.

8.  Our tallest building is nine stories.

9.  We usually can’t feel the earthquakes that happen around us.

10.  Our schools are really good (because our housing costs are atrocious).  Most of the parents of children in this system have higher education degrees, so we’re demanding, too.

11.  There are no traffic jams, but we’re close enough to big cities like Sacramento and San Francisco to go right to them if we miss being angry drivers.

12.  We have almost as many bikes per capita as China.

13.  We have the only running London double-decker buses in the world now that London doesn’t use them anymore.

14.  We have a great micro-brewery.

15.  Julie, Julie was filmed here.

Finally, of course, I live here, as do many of my friends.  And while it’s great to be in Davis, I have to admit that I’m kind of bitchy today because it looks like I might not get my workload class for this Spring (as I didn’t this Winter) and thus I have to have income loss-induced panic attacks.

Warning: they're all driven by UCD students!