Y2/D311...Brrrr

[shadowkat]

Went back into the office again - which required venturing out into far below freezing temperatures (single digits and possibly below 0) to get there. On the news they were saying thirty minutes outside would result in frostbite. Good news, my walk to the subway is about ten minutes or twenty all together.

Not to worry, bundled up. Tight and cozy, like Yanuk of the North (as one co-worker used to call me). Considered wearing a wool sweater but thought better of it - I get hot flashes. And sure enough I was hot and sweaty by the time I got to my second train, peeling off layers inside the train itself, which is heated. They retired the cold trains that weren't well heated about a year or so ago.

The pandemic brought with it - new trains.

I've not managed to make it through the week without either a panic attack (two this week) and a skirmish with BYT (two this week associated with the panic attacks).

T (aka cubicle aisle mate) informed me that I scared her on Wednesday, when I didn't come in. At first no one came in - and it was deserted. Then Babs and A showed up. But she got worried about me, and so did Babs. T told me that I always came in on the right day - so something must have happened.
(I told her the story.)

Not the best of work weeks. But I may be making some progress through the tangled bureaucratic web instituted by bad management practices.

Found out, while I was in his cubicle getting information (I had a mask on, he did not) that AA had COVID last week, was very sick with it, and this is his first day back. They've lessened the time out or isolation period from fourteen days to five, so the airlines can run. Another co-worker informed me that his flights to Florida to visit his brother had been cancelled by Jetblue. Apparently the airlines are still having issues in that regard.

Also, our attorney - has apparently had COVID twice now. Half my workplace, and most of the people on my floor have either had COVID, or been exposed to it. T said her entire family had had it, except her. So she's optimistic she'll remain COVID free.

***

Interesting thing about that Whedon article that I did not know - the journalist interviewed a lot of people in the Buffy and Whedon fandom. She interviewed the scholars who set up and organized Whedon Studies Association, and conducted all of her interviews last spring. They are upset because while the group is mentioned (in a derogatory bordering on insulting manner), their interviews and the information they conveyed isn't. Also she took them seriously about certain things, that they were joking about.

I found how the author of the article focused on and criticized/judged the fandom unsettling. But I didn't know she had contacted them and actually interviewed them prior to writing it. I found out when I responded to someone on the Whedon Studies Association FB Page - that I thought the journalist may not have understood where the fandom was coming from. They said - she should know, considering how many interviews she'd conducted with them.

This is why I chose not to go into journalism. I find a lot of journalism rather unethical and exploitative.

Spoke with Gabe today, and she made a salient point - "everyone is a villain in someone else's story, as I keep telling my son, we're not always the superhero, sometimes we're the villain in another's story. For example to the family we out bid on our house, we're the villains."

I think this is true. It's why I keep trying to give folks the benefit of the doubt.

***

That's it for tonight. I need to watch something fluffy for the weekend. Happy. Last weekend was way too dark and gloomy, I ended up depressing myself, so by the end of this week I was crying on the train and feeling kind of hopeless.

Feel better now - having had a hot shower. And a pleasant chat with mother.
We're both accused of not having filters by my rather judgemental brother, who doesn't like to share things with folks. I don't either - people know rather little about me actually.

Whoa. I just got liked by Ellen DeGeneres on Facebook. In answer to the question of "what did you want to be as a kid?" I responded, "novelist, still working on it".

Random Photo of the Evening

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

You're so right about journalism. A lot of times people are interviewed and nothing gets into the finished article (or one is never run) and other times the angle is completely different from what was actually said, and then there are the just plain errors in misquoting someone or misunderstanding what was said. But mostly I've noticed journalists are looking for "quotes" and not information, because what you tell them changes what they actually wanted to write about.

[shadowkat]

Exactly.

I mean I know because I did journalism in junior high through college. And I've written articles here and there for church - in small church publications. And each time - I was looking for specific quotes, and often used a quote to build the piece around.

The problem with most journalism is it is opinion pieces or editorializing.

A lot of times people are interviewed and nothing gets into the finished article (or one is never run) and other times the angle is completely different from what was actually said, and then there are the just plain errors in misquoting someone or misunderstanding what was said.

That's my difficulty with this article. It's not a straight up interview. It's a lot of contextualizing. She takes statements or quotes from various folks and peppers them throughout, with a lot of editorializing between. And a lot of those quotes or statements may be completely out of context. Or spun in a direction that changes the meaning completely. It seems to me that the writer had an agenda, and spun the article to meet that agenda.

For example? There's a story that I read three times at the very beginning, because at first glance it seems that Whedon at the age of 5 was responsible for the death of his 4 year old neighbor. And a lot of people thought that was the case. But it's not. He played with the boy, with no adult supervision, neither knew how to swim. Whedon went home, the kid was found to have drowned in their lake or pond. The point Whedon is making is his parents couldn't be bothered to supervise, didn't teach him to swim, and did nothing as a result of it. And it was traumatizing. But the journalist frames it in such a way that it is almost creepy, and people think Whedon was responsible.

And I've seen journalists do that a lot in the last several years - manipulate their subjects, quotes and facts to tell a story or get across a specific theme or agenda. That's not journalism, that's
editorializing, and if taken too far marketing and propaganda. Journalism should be about conveying facts and information. And I think a lot of journalists forget that.

[mtbc]

Absolutely. Editorializing's a charitably kind word for what they're actually doing!

[shadowkat]

I don't think they see it. The journalists and documentary writers online are applauding this writer for how she wrote this article. One of them, a professor of journalism, a Dean, thought it was a masterful piece of journalism and didn't see any of the problems.

I find this disconcerting. It also explains a lot - why journalism has so many issues. I was about to say slid down-hill, but it's always been problematic. Alexander Hamiliton died in a duel due to his less than stellar journalistic practices.

[yourlibrarian]

Ah, I didn't realize that interpretation was going around. Of course even if he had, a 5 year old couldn't be held responsible for that. I'm pretty sure quite a few unsupervised children have caused another's death every year just out of ignorance or being in a dangerous situation (look at gun deaths). I agree that the most telling thing to me about that story is that he was never taught to swim -- either before or after the incident, despite having a pond in the area.

However there was a lot less parental supervision in the 1960s and early 70s than there is now. The movement to gate pools and warn parents about pool safety started in the 1980s and it took until the 2000s for countries and territories to start implementing laws about fencing. (I link this to pools specifically, because the pond was part of the property rather than something they went to for recreation). It still doesn't let them off the hook for their inaction later, but given the time period it doesn't surprise me much that it happened.

In fact one of the things I find kind of interesting about the whole change in parenting is how much hovering is expected now, even though at the time women were much more likely to be at home caretaking than they are now. I suspect it has to do with the reduced size of families. If you've got all your eggs in one basket, you're more careful with it than if you have a lot of kids. I remember it recently being said of the woman who launched Mrs. Meyer's cleaning supplies that she was a mother of 9, and the announcer marveled at how she had the time. I said to Mike "That's because the kids raised one another."

[shadowkat]

Yeah, on Twitter, people were focusing on the five year left his friend alone...and possibly causes his drowning. And if you don't read it carefully - and honestly most people don't read articles carefully online - you could make that interpretation.

In fact one of the things I find kind of interesting about the whole change in parenting is how much hovering is expected now, even though at the time women were much more likely to be at home caretaking than they are now. I suspect it has to do with the reduced size of families. If you've got all your eggs in one basket, you're more careful with it than if you have a lot of kids. I remember it recently being said of the woman who launched Mrs. Meyer's cleaning supplies that she was a mother of 9, and the announcer marveled at how she had the time. I said to Mike "That's because the kids raised one another."

This is very true. While my mother didn't have a "career" and stayed at home, many of my friends mother's didn't - and they basically raised themselves. One of my best friends as a kid, would come over to our house after school because her parents weren't home. It was either that or she stayed home alone and looked after her brothers by herself. Many friends that I knew had this situation. My sister-in-law pretty much ran around NYC on her own.

Now, they hover more. But we also have more information on parenting, and we have better day care, plus maternity and paternity leave, and family medical leave, none of which existed in the 20th Century or not to that degree. Add cell phones - which enable parents to keep track of kids better and better communication.

Whedon's description of being 5 and left alone with a 4 year old, who ended up drowning isn't that different than stories I could have told. (Although no one I knew died.) I was discussing it with my mother today - and the area I grew up in as a child was ripe with dangers. We had various creeks that a child could fall and drown in, ponds, and underground tunnels. I was constantly crawling through storm drains and tunnels, that if water were to suddenly come through - I could have drowned and no one would have found me.

When I think about it - it is amazing I've survived to the age of 54. I certainly did enough crazy ass things in my life time to make that less than certain - and I tend to be on the cautious side.

[yourlibrarian]

Yeah, I didn't tend to do stuff that was necessarily that risky but it was in the sense of wandering places where no one would have known where I was. Usually this was done with friends but not always.

The thing is that some things like letting someone know where you'll be just seems like a general safety thing for adults as well.

[atpo_onm]

need to watch something fluffy for the weekend.

Oops... for a moment there I thought you said "Buffy", not "fluffy". I was having an optical migraine at the moment, so my vision was a little impaired, sorry.

(My fave go-to in the Buffyverse if I'm feeling bummed is always "The Prom".)

Anyway... Monty Python's Flying Circus? Any of your services stream that? Hard to go wrong with pretty much any wacky British humor!

[shadowkat]

Thanks for the recs - but no, neither of us those fit "fluffy" which basically requires little thought, is romantic or happy, often soapy, and fun.

Also, I don't think I can watch anything Whedon created for a very very long time.

[atpo_onm]

...basically requires little thought, is romantic or happy, often soapy, and fun.

Hmmm... have you ever seen Steve Martin's L.A. Story? One of my top fave films of all time, and I think fits much of your criteria.