A Medical Aside

I went to the hematologist at UVRMC on Monday, and he said he doesn't think I have an anticardiolipin antibody problem (although I do have the antibodies and test "moderately positive") because I have no evidence or history of a clotting problem. He said he would send an email to the blood guru in SLC to ask about precautions with surgery or cancer treatment. He was the one who called him the "blood guru," which is kind of reassuring, actually.

I have another appointment with my Cylon gynecologist on this coming Monday to talk more in depth about diagnosis and treatment options.

I keep thinking all this stuff about blood and illness and cutting and femaleness and so forth is very linked to the whole vampire/werewolf world.

News From the Dark Side

For those interested in preternatural issues, my avatar/character/delusion(?)--Claire R. Wallace, Ph.D.--has been posting* more frequently. It's amazing how parallel our universes are.

*Credit to Nicolle for the faery pix

From the Dark Side

...check out Dr. Wallace's opinion of the Twilight phenomenon. [the result of spending last night messing around online rather than doing my work]

Vampire Update

I think I have finally figured out the climactic scene in "Blood Practice"--the encounter with the demon. All along Claire has been both too passive and too reckless, characteristics which don't usually go together. And in the end, what does she do? She doesn't even rescue herself. But I didn't want her strength to be fighting, and although there's plenty of bloody action in the story (at least in the last third) I didn't want the whole thing to hinge on violence. I want her courage, her curiosity, her openness, and her integrity to make the difference. And maybe, finally, after twenty revisions, I've made it to the answer.

I'm giving the second draft of the demon-zombie encounter to my SF group next Tuesday (the first draft I gave to John, who said, "this is pretty skimpy"). We'll see if it works.

Scandinavian Vampires

This afternoon we went back up to SLC to watch "Let the Right One In" (I posted the trailer on my vampire blog). I liked a lot of things about the movie--the sweet awkwardness of the two protagonists, the lovely, heartbreaking forshadowing of Oskar's doom--but mostly, the details about the vampires. I love the bone-deep cold of the movie, that the vampire is cold as stone. I gave a little jump of surprise and delight when Eli scrambles up the wall like a spider or a bat. I love that they sleep all day in the dark, that they change when the bloodlust is on them (but not too much or grotesquely, like the Buffy vamps), that some new vamps are suicidal, that they burst into flames in the sunlight. I quibble with the fact that a once and non-fatally bitten human awakens next as a vamp--nobody has improved on Bram Stoker's seductive ritual of three bites and an exchange of blood for creating a vampire. Guess I'm just a conservative traditionalist that way. No sparkling, sunwalking, self-disciplined bloodsuckers for me. But Eli is the perfect 12 year old Swedish vampire, if you find such a creature intriguing.

Buffy Anxiety

We're almost through with Season 3, and I just read this:

...even though I loved Buffy, after she started sleeping with every vampire in sight and morphed into Buffy the Vampire Layer, it became harder to watch.

Tell me it ain't so! I realize that vampirism is on some level a stand-in for sex, but it isn't only about sex, and it's a lot more fun when the sexual tension etc. is sublimated and disguised. Like flying dreams are "really" sex dreams--except they're not--if you're going to have a sex dream, just have a sex dream, but let the flying dreams be about flying. If you're going to have vampires, let it be about vampires, not porn of whatever degree of disgustingness. Or let it be vampire disgustingness at least.