Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Graduation Day, Parts 1 & 2.

It's time to settle in for a two-parter...take a deep breath, get out the shot glasses for the Angel shirtless drinking game, and let's settle in for approximately an hour and a half of cheesy Buffy goodness!

Episodes 55 & 56 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 18 May 1999 (part 1) & 13 July 1999 (part 2).

Everyone's picking up their caps and gowns. They are maroon (yech) like we had at Joplin High. Willow is all sentimental and nostalgic, JUST like I was at the end of senior year. Xander says he won't make it out alive, which is the whole Joss metaphor, of course. High school = hell/demon playground. I'm feeling nostalgic, too. I like the familiarity of the school backdrop. The soda machine that looks like it's from the '50s, etc.

Faith kills a professor brutally. She stabs him in the stomach! That's a little much, don't ya think? More Mayor/Faith bond reassurances. Since when does Willow ride a bike to school?

Anya tries to ask Xander out and he reveals that he may not make it to next weekend 'cause of the Ascension and all and she freaks...she's seen Ascensions before, so that adds to the cryptic. She has information and tells everyone. This is the first revelation of the Buffy mythology that the demons that walk the earth aren't PURE demons, only part and that an Ascension is when a human becomes a PURE demon. She decides to leave town. Buffy makes her mom leave town as well. Willow is trying to find a spell to stop the Ascension and getting nowhere. This is the time for her and Oz to do it, apparently. Impending doom and all that. Rowr! It's so sweet to see two normal people on this show do it. They're consensual, similar ages, no weird desperation or malice. Just sweetness. If only all of our first times were this nice.

Buffy and Angel are fighting and Faith shoots him with a huge arrow. Angel has LIFTED his shirt for Buffy to bandage him...take a half shot. Angel has clearly been poisoned.

Ooh, Oz topless! Bonus shot! Anya tries to convince Xander to run away with her. She likes him! "When I think that something could happen to you I feel bad inside...like I might vomit!" This is THE moment where Anya's super bluntness really presents itself. Yay for Anya regularity! Angel topless and squalling with fever. Take a shot!

Buffy quits the Council when they won't help cure Angel. Giles immediately, and stoic-wordlessly, backs her up. Xander looks yummy in a minty sweater.

The only way to cure the poison is to drain the blood of a Slayer. It takes Buffy a minute, but she decides to kill Faith. Xander tries to talk sense into her. Buffy gets Faith's knife and goes to Faith's new apartment. Faith looks like any teenage girl laying in her bed listening to girl rock, reading a magazine, and eating Twizzlers. It's almost sweet, for a minute. Buffy's wearing her red vinyl pants. I used to have pants just like that in high school. They're probably in a landfill now, as I left them in my wind-desiccated house. When Faith sees her knife during their fight, she says, "That's mine." Buffy replies, "Well, you're about to get it back." but she doesn't say it like a badass. She says it with a catch in her throat, obviously tormented by what she has to do.
She stabs her in the gut and Faith jumps into a passing truck to keep from helping Angel, though she seems resigned to die.

Begin part 2...

The Mayor discovers Faith's empty apartment and is very upset. He genuinely does care about her. Angel mistakes Willow for Buffy and makes a whole speech about how he was wrong and he can't leaver her, etc. Angel is STILL topless, but I don't recommend taking shots for every scene he's topless, 'cause you'd be pretty sloshed.

Buffy offers herself to him, of course...the fact that her friends don't suspect she'll do something so stupid is a little lame. This is her atonement for killing him last season. Of course when he drinks from her she has to trick him into doing it and it's all erotic and shit. He stops himself, but she's unconscious so he takes her to the hospital. Note: he puts on a shirt to go to the hospital. This is what classy men do. they put on shirts to go out in PUBLIC. Just sayin'.

Faith is also in the hospital. She's in a coma. The Mayor overhears a nurse talking to a doctor about "another young girl with severe blood loss" and he goes and starts to suffocate Buffy. Angel stops him. Everyone's mad at Angel, of course. Further reinforcement that he should get out of town. I totally see the logic in that now.

Ooh, it's the first Buffy/Faith dream. Faith has all her stuff in boxes at her apartment and Buffy asks her how she's going to fit all this stuff and she says "Not gonna. It's yours...just take what you need. You ready?" Then she touches her and Buffy wakes up. I would argue this is the very beginning of Faith's redemption. Buffy showed vulnerability by trying to kill Faith and Faith understands her a little more now. So she chooses to give herself to save Buffy, in that dream-like metaphor way. This is also a turning point for Buffy, because I'm pretty sure she never forgives herself for putting Faith in a coma and is harder and more like Faith forever more...as a survival tactic. She HAS to become harder to save the world all the time. To live her life as a Slayer. She is graduating, man! That's deep. OMG they're in the same hospital room! Buffy kisses Faith on the forehead like she's thanking her. Another of her resurrections. She has a lot of those. Anyway, she has a plan when she wakes up, of course. She tells Xander he's the key to this whole thing. Is this another Apocalypse we can say Xander has thwarted? I'm going to count it.

Wesley decides to help.

The Mayor is all excited about his speech. Cordelia is so skinny...glad she bulks up when she's on Angel. Her and Wesley share an awkward kiss and they sort of mutually hate it and thus the sexual tension is resolved.

And the Mayor turns into a giant snake and the entire senior class takes off their robes to reveal weapons. They are an army that Xander organized. Snyder gets eaten. That's for all the teenagers that hated their principals. Cordelia stakes a vamp. Harmony gets bit. Buffy distracts the Mayor with Faith's knife and they blow him up along with the school. I wonder if the high school graduates that survived the tornado feel like this...their school got destroyed on the DAY they graduated. Spooky.

Angel has told Buffy he's not going to say goodbye, but she looks for him afterwards...

Giles saved Buffy's diploma from the wreckage. "You've earned it." Sweet Giles, how I love thee.

Angel and Buffy make eye contact right before he walks away. Sad moment.

Everyone meets at the end to have a reflection moment. I love those. Jokes and stuff.

Oz: Guys, take a moment to deal with this. We survived.
Buffy: It was a HELL of a battle.
Oz: Not the battle...high school.

I am about to embark...

across the south. Tomorrow night we will be in Alabama. Sunday night we will be curled up on the couch of my best friend Kim watching something ridiculous on TV in Fort Pierce, Florida. Tuesday we will be staying in Vero Beach for Michael's birthday at a really cool quirky hotel on the beach.

I love traveling. Less the older I get, I will admit, but I do love being on the road. Right now I'm envisioning myself in the backseat of the car watching the South roll by the window as I listen to my Strict Machine (160GB iPod). It's calm in my daydreamy world. Road trips are especially awesome when my Asperger's self doesn't have to drive, as this time I will likely not have to drive.

I always return from the road more enlightened. More knowledgable about myself. More ready for my life. It's like taking your life and balling it up and throwing it far enough away so that you can still see it, but you can't reach it without considerable effort. It leaves you able to examine yourself from a distance. When I return I will be so happy to be home, but I will appreciate my life more than usual...I will have the relaxed exhaustion of a person that's soaked up a lot of sun and had a little time to think about everything.

Ooh, I need a raunchy paperback to read on the beach! I can't take my iPad or library books to the beach! What should I read? Perhaps Stephen King's Firestarter or my favorite Poppy Z. Brite. I've read that SOOO many times, however. Perhaps an Austen?

I love the theme of chicks of horror. Firestarter. Carrie. Bride of Frankenstein. Barbarella (not really horror, but she has that feel or campy powerful awesomeness). Return of the Living Dead 3's Julie. Kabuki. Queen of the Damned. Perhaps that could be my obsession! I'll start collecting something!! Ok, everyone, that's my thing: girls in horror. OMG, that is my obsession. I've always loved wicked witches and bad girls...who doesn't really?

Music archiving.

I must have control of my musical environment. I recently turned my iTunes Match back on after several months of having it off after a fiasco with a Tina Fey audiobook not showing up in my audiobooks correctly and it erased my play counts from the months that Match was off. This may mean nothing to you, but it screwed with my world, I tell you!

As I've mentioned before, I am listening to all 80GB of my music this year. From January 1st until yesterday I had listened to over 900 songs and I was keeping track by using the play count data iTunes automatically keeps and it was all for naught! Luckily, I still have my last.fm stats and I still remember almost everything I've listened to this year, so today I painstakingly went through my entire music library (9477 songs, mind you) and fast-forwarded to the end of each track I know I've listened to this year so far so that iTunes would know that I've played it.

Needless to write, but I will, it took hours -- about 4, to be almost exact about it. This is an obsession. How many people would even notice that their play counts are different after messing with setting on their iTunes? How many people even mess with settings on their iTunes? How many people even know what iTunes Match even is? How many people even know they have play counts in their iTunes? How many people that know about Match and play counts and all that would even care if they knew their play counts were messed up?

My archiving nature is screaming so loud right now. It seems completely arbitrary which songs it counted and didn't...my counts are nowhere near accurate now, nor were they before this fiasco. Thank goddess/Buddha/Jesus/whoever for last.fm.

The glitch also erased my most recent mix. Thankfully, I keep a detailed notebook of my mixes. What's wrong with me?

I have also been preoccupied lately with how much awesome music is out there and how little time in the day, in my life, there is to listen to it all. Every moment I don't have headphones in or around my ears I feel guilty for not consuming music. I want it at all times! Even past the point of having a headache from all the brain-processing. I'll pop a few ibuprofen and dive back into the distortion!

I have a problem.

Hi, my name is Mixtress Rae and I am a music nerd.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Prom.

Episode 54 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 11 May 1999.

Buffy is talking about couple stuff as Angel and Buffy wake up from a nap together. Getting a drawer and mirrors and such.

Ooh, Anya asks Xander to the Prom!! Yeay for the beginning of Anya.

Joyce has a serious talk with Angel about how Buffy has no future with him. She does it real classy-like. "I know you care about her. I just hope you care enough."

The Angel/Buffy breakup happens in an underground tunnel. The tunnel wherein the classic line is uttered, "No, you have something face." when Angel says "nothing" is wrong. This is the first time I've felt anything while watching them break up. I still agree it needs to happen, but I don't like that this means stupid Riley is coming. Grumble.

Xander finds out Cordelia works at the boutique and that her dad is in trouble for tax evasion and the whole family is now poor. Then the Hellhound breaks in. The Hellhound trained to attack people in formal wear...so the prom's out, but no, Buffy is going to save the day so everyone can have a normal prom, goddamnit!

Xander paid for Cordelia's dress because she didn't make enough money in time to pay for it herself. How sweet is my TV boyfriend? The sweetest, I answer.

My boyfriend in high school didn't take me to the prom either, but it was because he was a jerk-face and backed out at the last minute, so I had to go alone.

I don't know if I have said this before, but Sarah Michelle Gellar is the only person I have ever seen who doesn't look stupid when she runs.

This is the episode where Buffy gets the cute handmade umbrella award for saving everyone all the time: Class Protector. Angel shows up to dance with her one last time. Sweet.

I SO need a prom do-over. Who's with me?

Brash.

Bold. Ballsy. Blunt. Blousy.

These are all B-words.

No, but seriously, these are all things I think of myself as, when in reality, I do a lot of another B-word...backpedalling. I am the eternal peacemaker, like my astrological sign (Libra). I am constantly trying to control my environment, but instead of CREATing my own environment, I am manipulating space so that everyone is harmonious, and I am sick of wasting that energy.

The truth is, I have original ideas and weird thought patterns lurking around in my brainspace and I would like to choose to use these skills more often than the ones I have wherein I am well-liked and peaceful. Yes, I am generally unaffected and I genuinely want others to get along and extreme emotions confuse me, as they confuse one of my idols in this life, the fictional character of Spock and a new hero, Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, as previously mentioned in this blog like three days ago.

You see, the thing I admire about all of my heroes (Buffy, Courtney Love, Spock, Sheldon, etc) is that they don't care what you think. Secretly, I don't care what you think, either, but I do want to be liked, so I pretend to make sense for what I perceive is the benefit of others, but really makes my interactions with them boring and generic. The self that I project in my blogs and zines are closer to who I really am than how I act in the social stratosphere. It is not as if I am trying to hide or am ashamed of who I am, I am just trying to survive in a world that I have chosen to perceive as bland.

But the world is anything but bland. The world is rich and exciting and full of incomprehensible beauty. I fiercely love a lot of things in this world. I will fight for yearly vacations to the beach and the desert. I will throw large percentages of what little money I possess at breathtaking electronic devices or the donation to internet radio stations I like. In short, I do what I want and you're not the boss of me!

And I realize that I am a grownup and no one wants to be the boss of me (I don't even think my boss at work really wants to be the boss of anyone), so my outcry is really only towards myself in this regard. I want to be more openly who I am. I want to come out as the secret Courtney Love that I am. If you ask me about this blog tomorrow in person, I will most likely act the part of the wrong B-word: blase.

The only boys I have ever truly been able to fall for are the ones that knew me in high school and I used to think the reason for this was because it takes me forever to get to know and trust someone and while this is part of it, I think another reason is that I was more myself in high school than I ever have been as an adult and people that knew me in high school knew the real me. For some reason I have attached adulthood to this weird cage of bourgeois. I have done all these things to distance my body from this norm (tattoos, piercings, weirdo thrift store clothes), while my manner has been quite tame in comparison. In high school, my goth style was an enhancement of my weird self instead of counteracting tameness.

It sounds as if I'm barely holding back an over-brimming crazy, and perhaps I am, but this crazy is who I am. I am someone who blurts out weird things and likes to get into conversations that are meaningful and cause people to question themselves. I will always advocate for the outcast and try to get someone to see another's point of view. Accuse me of having an agenda. The thing is, we all do...those that embrace this agenda and put it out there in the world are those that get it done. They are usually also called "Bitch" which is another B-word I embrace fully.

My biggest pet peeve is when someone expresses a driven desire to do something, but they don't because of what someone else will think. But, I am capable of something almost as bad, if not more so...I profess that I don't care about things I'm not doing that I secretly wish I was doing. I'm not an extrovert. All of this madness happens within for the large part, so it is not as if I will suddenly be different, I may perhaps blurt out my weirdness a little more often until I become more confident overall. I want a manifesto. I want to write myself into thinking I am a mythological being. I want to be my own muse.

I want my self-actualization to be glittery.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Choices

Episode 53 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 4 May 1999.

Off the top of my head, I can't remember which episode this is, but I have always really enjoyed the concept of choice. It was one of the main themes that drew me to the mythology of "The Matrix" and I really enjoy when pop culture symbolism harkens back to the reality that everything we do in life is our choice. No one is forcing your hand. You do as you wish and the consequences/rewards follow, NOT the other way around. There's nothing more intolerable than people who think life happens TO them. If you are a person that tends to blame fate or thank God, give YOURSELF a little credit once in awhile.

Now, let's begin. The Mayor is giving Faith a beautiful knife in the opening scene. Buffy and Angel are killing vampires and wondering if they're in a "rut" in their relationship. Credits.

Buffy thinks that she can't go to college 'cause of being the Slayer. Faith is reaping the rewards of her choice to align herself with the Mayor with her new knife and the doting he places upon her. Xander is choosing to forego school to get "On the Road" like Kerouac. Cordelia is being mean as per usual. Buffy has decided to stop waiting for the Mayor to make his move and go on the offensive. Faith kills another human (I think he was human).

Willow is wearing a velvety witchy dress. Xander sees Cordelia working in a boutique which is a big deal because Cordelia shouldn't have to work because her daddy is rich. Intrigue?

Angel and Buffy are nice in a rut. They work well together fightin' evil...like a choreographed dance. Oh no, Faith has Willow captive. Everyone is fighting over the choice to trade back the thing the Mayor wants for Willow or, as Wesley wants, NOT trade and possibly sacrifice Willow. Everyone is yelling and arguing and Oz walks up and throws a pot, shattering it against a wall. He has made his point.

Willow kills a vampire by levitating and then staking him with a pencil. Cool. She then escapes and finds the Books of Ascension. Faith finds her and Willow gives her a rousing speech about how she could have made a better choice. She was also a little TOO insulting, but hey that's the innate meanness of Willow.

When they all meet up with the Mayor makes a rousing speech about how Buffy and Angel are doomed. He, like Spike did earlier this season, says a lot of very insightful things. Like how dismal their future will be. "You're immortal, she's not." Just as they're making the trade, Snyder shows up and ruins everything, opening the box and unleashing the contents; ew, a huge spider. Turns out there are 50 billion in the box and the Mayor has to eat them all. Ew.

Willow has chosen to stay in Sunnydale to go to school.

Weighted Variables.

One of the things I've learned in therapy is that different things need different weights. Different people need different scores. You have to categorize others. You can't put an effort of 10 into a friendship that's, at best, a 6.

I spend hours, days, joyous meticulous time categorizing my music, why wouldn't I categorize my interactions as well? I have realized I am a lot like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. I often worry that I will unintentionally offend because I never know what offends others. Usually if I offend others it is because they misunderstand me, not that I am as heartless as I seem. I think differently than others. I am a weirdo.

Anyway, my therapist has given me a task to assign values to the people in my life. I tend to worry too much about what others think when I don't understand them yet, and he pointed out that if I don't really care to understand them, why worry about how they see me?

I like to work within boundaries. If I don't know where my parameters lie, I falter. I stumble without bars to hold. I am most comfortable around people who are upfront, blunt, and set clear boundaries with me. This is why I gravitate towards boisterous people. I have tremendous respect for direct individuals and find passive-aggressiveness incredibly exhausting and inefficient. I can compromise and I will say what I want...and when I say "I don't care" I really DON'T CARE. Being somewhat Asperger's and terribly literal (like Sheldon, I often don't pick up on sarcasm) I genuinely feel like this is a simple thing. It seems to me like the general public is stumbling around trying to be nice and not taking what they want out of life. I hate the thought of doing wrong by someone, but if they don't tell me when I overstep a boundary, how do I know it's there?

So, friends and family: I know I am off-putting in my strangeness often, but I do want to do right by you. If you give me a boundary, I will respect you and try to exist within that boundary. I'm going to put my shields down a bit more from now on because I am wilting not opening up to others. I want to be my ballsy self in more places than merely print (blogs, texts, zines, etc). I don't take things personally, therefore I never expect others to do so, therefore, if I offend, please let me know.

If you think of the social interactions/comprehensions of the social atmosphere as a continuum and Sheldon is on the "doesn't get it, doesn't care" side and Penny is on the "socially responsible, empathetic" opposite side of the spectrum, I lie somewhere in between. I usually don't get it, but I am empathetic and I do care...so help me out and explain it to me if I'm not getting it, and don't wast my time or your own in this life being passive. Take what you want and draw those lines!

Insecurities.

We all have 'em. A typical sentiment, but I don't usually admit mine.

The truth is, I'm insecure about losing weight. I REALLY want to, but I don't like to admit I want to or that I'm trying, but I am. I'm trying really hard. I've been working out 6 times a week since the beginning of the year and though I have successfully hit the third belt hole, I have not lost any pounds. I am thisclose to being overweight and despite walking and Just Dance-ing and getting a gym membership and killing myself on the elliptical, no weight lost! It makes me nauseous to admit it, because this is the most common problem. The most mundane thing. Everyone is always trying to lose weight and I'm just another chink in the weight loss machine. I have the same insecurities as millions of Americans. There it is; I've admitted it. I'm out of the closet.

I tell everyone, including myself, that I don't care about a number and that I just want to feel healthy. And that really is the biggest part of it, but there IS a fucking number in my head and I want to hit it. I want to at least have lost the 5-10 pounds that I feel like I SHOULD have lost by now. It's been nearly a month and a half, goddamnit! Where's that scale satisfaction? I keep trying to remind myself that I am doing great. I am walking and elliptical-ing and dancing and moving a lot more. I'm even using the weight machines, but I am tempted to go on some crazy raw food diet for a week just to jump start this thing!!

This is typically something I would put in my private blog, but I am trying to show more of my vulnerability, so here it is. I'm one of the hordes of overweight Americans attempting to lose weight in a new year.

I'm usually not hard on myself at all. I'm not an insecure person. In my head I am a goddess, and when I look in the mirror I see what I want to see and move on. I barely glance at myself, in fact...I don't linger long enough to see the flaws. What's the point? I'm not trying to hit anyone's beauty standards but my own...but those standards are getting more rigorous with age. Why? Is it because it's harder to lose weight the older I get? I used to be able to just decide I'm going to lose weight, and I would. I can remember in my teenage years I could gorge myself to belly-distention and then wake up flat the following morning. Those were the days, man!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Earshot

Episode 52 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
airdate: 21 Sept 1999.

Buffy's fighting demons without mouths. Some of their blood seeps into her skin. This is the episode they had to delay significantly because of the Columbine shootings...'cause Jonathan freaks out and almost shoots himself at the school. Uh, spoiler alert.

Giles finds out the demon can "infect" the host with an "aspect of the demon" so of course Buffy is freaking out she's going to grow a tail or something because her hand is all itchy. I know I've said it before, but what makes Oz so hot is not in small part the black fingernails. Black fingernails just do it for me.

Buffy is all paranoid also about Angel's involvement with Faith in the last episode. Blegh, I'll be glad when Angel is gone simply because I don't like him and Buffy together.

Suddenly, the aspect of the demon shows up...gasp! Buffy can read minds. She's enjoying it at first. Maybe I should read Othello. Buffy goes over to see Angel and starts talking about Faith to see what Angel secretly thinks about her, but of course she can't read a vampire's thoughts. "The thoughts are there, but they create no reflection in you."

Sometimes as I'm trying to have deep thoughts about the episodes as I'm writing these blogs and all I can think about is trivial things like how pretty Buffy's eyes are or how witty Oz's quips. I suppose it's not always insightful to do these freewriting Buffy blogs, but I have to forgive myself for not always being insightful. I'm doing this for writing practice. I'm doing it to be more aware of my culture consumption. Sometimes it's really awesome and I have 'a-ha" moments.

I love that Cordelia says out loud exactly what she thinks.

Oz thinks: I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, then Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me. I cease to exist.

In the cafeteria Buffy is overwhelmed by thoughts of others' insecurities. Everyone is worrying about something: grades, if people like them, etc. She hears the thought, "This time tomorrow, I'll kill you all." She tries touching everyone around her to focus on their thoughts, but she passes out. She goes home to rest and overhears Joyce thinking about having sex with Giles. He he.

Willow has everyone question everyone in the school to try to find out who is planning to kill everyone in the school while Buffy quietly (loudly in her head) goes mad at home in her bed in her cow spot pajamas.

Angel is trying to find the demon of course, 'cause he's all manly like that. He gets her the antidote of the demon's blood? That's what infected her in the first place! Whatever. And Jonathan is in the clock tower with a rifle.

Buffy wakes up blissfully calm, her head quiet.

Cordelia finds a letter for the newspaper editor that sounds like a confession from Jonathan. It's a few minutes before lunch so everyone splits up to search for Jonathan. Buffy finds him in the clock tower and dramatically somersaults herself up to the top breaking in through a window.

I really like the insight Buffy has in this scene. Jonathan says everyone thinks he's an idiot and Buffy tells him she doesn't think about him much at all, that no one thinks about anyone else because they're all too busy worrying about their own shit to notice someone else. It's so true, man! I always think that when someone is being really fatalistic and self-centered worrying about what other people think. People don't think. Not about others. We're all selfish beings and that's ok. It's not bad to be selfish. We all have to be self-sufficient so of course we're only worried about ourselves. It's survival. No one cares what you do unless you're invading someone else's privacy.

Buffy speech: My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones, the popular ones, the guys that pick on you, everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling: the loneliness, the confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not...it's deafening.

So good! The Slayer has gained some serious empathy through this experience. After her big speech Jonathan gives her the rifle and she says something about "mass murder" and he tells her he'd never hurt anyone, he was going to kill himself. Meanwhile, Xander has snuck into the kitchen to get some jello and sees the lunch lady putting rat poison in a big pot. Earlier in the episode he mentioned that it was probably her. Xander is again going to save the day.

All is averted.

Commentary (by Jane Espenson) notes added 5.19.13: Buffy wishes she knew what Angel was thinking and in this episode she takes on an aspect of a demon that allows her to hear the thoughts of everyone. Jane makes a comment about how Buffy at first thinks it's cool, "all these rooms I can walk into" and then later she hates it: "all these people can walk into my head". A "be careful what you wish for" episode like "Band Candy" when Buffy wishes Giles and her mom would stop being so parental for a bit. 

I think that if someone could really hear what you were thinking, it wouldn't come out in words like it does in pop culture. You'd feel what they felt maybe, or perspective would change in some weird way, but would you really HEAR thoughts like the words of the other person in your head? That seems unlikely to me.

Not a very interesting commentary. Mostly Jane is just remembering writing it and telling us what's going on with the plot. I'm glad I have less than ten of these left. I'm ready to move on to the next thing, which I think will be watching special features in order (instead of reverse order, like I'm doing now). Then, finally, I will start the comics...catch up to now and then start on the special comics like Omnibus and side plot stuff. 

February=writing.

So, I'm doing this whole self-improvement thing this year. That sounds so lame, but I am really enjoying it. My bathroom scale is total crapola, but I think that January=exercise worked out really well. I swear I've lost weight even though the dumb scale disagrees with me.

Anyway, last month my goal was to do 30 minutes of activity per day, allowing one day per week as a SKIP day. I took an extra SKIP day the week I got my tattoo because I was incredibly worn out, but other than that, I did it! This month I have a bunch of writing assignments AND I have to write one blog per day. This either means writing something like this here, a Buffy blog, or I'll write in my private blog. I toyed with the idea of separating my Buffy blog from this or making this my Buffy blog and making another one for my more personal bloggy writings, but I think I'll just keep them the same. I'm not quite a "product" (fully, or even partially formed writer) yet, so it doesn't yet matter if I compartmentalize properly. I just need to write a LOT right now and later worry about HOW I'm writing. I have all kinds of ideas. Beyond the general plan of improvement wherein I will focus on one thing per month I'm also:

*listening to ALL my music this year (around 6000 songs haven't been heard in over a year, so I am listening to everything I haven't in the past year this year, if that makes sense-so this equals around 17 songs a day, and I'm adding music all the time). This, so far has proved to be a very potent way to curate my music more effectively. Every once in awhile a song comes up on shuffle that makes me cock my head and go, "WTF is this?!" and then I can satisfactorily delete it from my life. It's liberating!

*writing for the Current, Etc, a local free newspaper. An issue comes out every two weeks and I should be in every one if all goes well!

*putting out 4 zines this year, one for each season.

*reading 52 books this year (I've already read 6!).

*writing a novel in November: I read in "The Happiness Project" that if you write 1667 words a day for every day in November, you'll have a "Great Gatsby"-sized novel by the end of the month!! I'm doing it! I haven't decided if I'm going to be ambitious and write fiction or do the first draft of my music memoir, but I'm doing it!

*finishing my Buffy blogging this year. I might even start Angel when I'm finished.

*I'm going to revisit the idea of creating a radio station. I'm not sure how I'll do it...if it will be podcast-based or linked to a radio website...I'm just going to get back into it and start!

I'm really going to try to get the most out of my life. Oh, and each month is EXPANDING on the one before, so not only will I be blogging every day in February, but every month after; thusly, I am continuing on my exercise plan as well. I'm feeling more in control than I have in a long time. I love checking shit off lists!!

Oh, and the Cibo Matto album cover has nothing to do with anything except that it's an image that I equate with Rosie the Riveter in its inspirationalness and it makes me happy to look upon it.