Stuck in the Middle, Without You

Some people enjoy serials (print, tee-vee, or otherwise) precisely because of all the waiting around they contain. They actually relish the long periods of wondering what could possibly happen next, thrill at enduring seemingly-endless gaps between carefully-measured doses of story, cheer for plot twists that are made on purpose to make no sense... It's like they're down at the docks again, waiting for random boats from England to drop anchor and yelling "Little Nell...Does she yet live?" at the befuddled crew.

Obviously I am not one of these people. I'm a much bigger fan of total uncontrolled gluttonous wallowing. When I'm in, I'm in, and I'm not happy to come out again until the absolute, definitive, the villain has exploded and been set on fire and buried and exorcised and his parents-erased-in-a-complex-time-travel-scheme-leaving-no-possibility-of-ever-even-
conceiving-him end. Which is why I'm not happy to find myself in the following unresolved states.

1. Me vs. Netflix vs. Battlestar Galactica. Sure, it's great that those cute little red envelopes come in the mail, cutting down on potentially hazardous surly video-store clerk interaction and wallet-depleting late fees. But then they start slowing down, ON PURPOSE, and the BSG disk ends with a cliff-hanger where Starbuck is crash-landing on the planet, and it's not like I don't know that she's going to survive, but I'd really like to see it for myself, and the DVD still hasn't come, and it STILL hasn't come, and now I understand why Netflix has that crazy 8-DVDs at a time plan which might otherwise seem to be for insane people who can't wait 2 days to watch a tv show that aired four years ago and instead must have all DVDs that they ever might want to watch ever in their possession at all times. Insane people totally unlike me, that is.

2. Me vs. Keith Hernandez. This one is actually a place where I'm realizing what looks like the middle is, actually, for me, the end. Not that I am not loving his Pure Baseball: Pitch by Pitch for the Advanced Fan, (not so much am I loving the reality of his public persona), and I'm seriously trying to work my way through all of Sars's baseball recs, but this book is too dense for me, dense-book lover extraordinaire. The conceit is, Keith explains the rationale behind every pitch of two games, one NL and one AL, and goes into some further discussion of specific strategies to boot. I think one night I may have actually fallen asleep simultaneously drooling and muttering fiercely about the difference between cut fastballs and tailing fastballs. And surely that difference is important. But not important enough for me to keep reading this book right now.

3. Me vs. Hepatitis A vaccinations. Did you know you were supposed to have two of these? Yep, I didn't either. Did you know travel clinics charge you $100 just to walk in the door and then $50 more to laugh at you when they find out you didn't know you were supposed to have 2 hepatitis A shots and that your 1 shot from back in '99 won't do squat against "street food", the CDC's most dreaded foe? Well, that second part isn't really true. But damn, Michael Moore is right. It's hecka hard for a girl to resist typhoid these days.

4. Me vs. Expert Reviewers. Actually, this one's probably better stuck. Because, when it comes unstuck, there might be tears.

One more, sad, thing. I'd like to add a "5. Me vs. Veronica Mars." But I can't. Because the stupid CW has canceled it. For some show that's too stupid to make fun of--possibly Supernatural. And also Kristin Bell could totally beat me up, even if she is only about 1/4 of my height.