So there were two Borgias this year! (Or last year, I suppose I should say.) There was the Showtime series The Borgias, and there was the French and German series Borgia. How sad for them both! I imagine there was all sorts of hair-tearing and gnashing of teeth in the showrunner department when the spies brought the news.

( Habemus Papam! )

As far as history goes, well, I have no freaking clue. I imagine they're both wreaking havoc.

Edited to add: Here's a late-breaking bit of trivia gleaned from a message board: "I think everyone who watched the show in English must keep in mind that 'Borgia'--as a European co-production--was primarily meant to be aired in French, German and Italian dubbed versions in those countries. Filming it in English was most likely only a production crutch - so all the actors and crew would understand one another (after all 18 nations were involved!). I don't think they cared much that the accents were all over the place or tried to make an effort to all sound the same since they figured it wouldn't be aired that way anyway. Many of the actors went on to dub themselves in their native language and I'm not sure they ever expected the show to be picked up by any English speaking countries."

I rented Twilight. I wanted to see what it was all about, and. I figured it would be relatively fun. My entertainment threshold is fairly low. Plus, I've liked a lot of YA and teen fantasy. I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies and I own them all and I have two sets of the books. I figured this would probably be the same sort of thing: light fantasy entertainment. A low-key, tolerably fun way to spend a couple of hours.

But... oh my GOD. Oh my god, oh my god. That was as close to unwatchable as anything I've seen in recent memory. (I unfortunately rented Conan the same weekend. The new Conan, not the old Arnold ones which are still fun.)

I don't think I've ever seen two actors have less on-screen chemistry. It was like watching two boring people in need of a shower mumble at each other while trying not to actually open their mouths fully or change their facial expressions. It was painfully awful.

I made it about an hour, then I gave up and sent it back to Netflix. (Ditto, by the way, for Conan.)

What a weekend, right? Twilight and Conan?

But hey, I tried! And now I know!

Am I the only person in my orbit who hasn't read or seen or had any other exposure to Twilight?

I did finally add the first movie to my Netflix queue, but it probably won't get here until next summer, if I don't end up cancelling Netflix when the post office slows down their first-class delivery.

Do I need to do a year-end pimpage post? I suppose it's what we do now, isn't it! I've been working on this novel for so long now that short fiction seems like a memory from a hundred years ago. OK, maybe ten.

Here are a couple of 2011 offerings:
   Short story: “Dirt Witch,” Beneath Ceaseless Skies, February 2011.
   Novelette: “Jackstraw Magic,” GigaNotoSaurus, October 2011.

I love both of those magazines. BCS is a strong home for original world fantasy, and GNS is one of the few places to read longer stories -- the ones that let me really get a chance to inhabit the story world for a while.

The flurry of year-end short fiction reading kind of makes me want to break down and finally get an e-reader. Although I'm not sure what kind I'm going to get, when I bite the bullet. Not a Kindle; that much I know.

Of course, now that my recent colonoscopy is finished, the US medical system is chewing me up. I got a bill on Saturday, the day after the procedure, for an enormous copay.

Now, I'd done everything right. I checked with everyone at every stage. "Is this covered by my insurance?" "Yes, it is." I'd even called the insurance company to verify that there was no copay.

And of course, I got the bill on a Saturday when all the offices were closed for the weekend. So I spent two days doing research here and there.

( Details behind the cut... )

Some sort of patient advocacy slot in the system is really crucial. But, of course, no entity currently in the system has any incentive for creating one.

Update: Spoke with the 'financial counselor' at the hospital. She said that those bills go out to everybody, whether the service is preventive or diagnostic. (WTF?) She also said that, assuming the physician coded the procedure as preventive, I should disregard the bill. So... potentially resolved. I'll be holding my breath for a while, though--until I actually see the claim information show up on my insurance company's website. All I can think is "Seriously? Seriously? You must do 15, 20, 50 colonoscopies a day. That's what you do there: colonoscopies. And you just randomly waste the postage, paper, ink, and aggravation by sending unnecessary bills to probably more than half of those people?"

Well... I did it! I went and had the dreaded colonoscopy.

I'd targeted it for this year, and let me tell you, I've been anxious. But I did it --  in large part because I'm a faithful reader of Jay Lake's blog, and in large part because my maternal grandmother died of colorectal cancer when I was about ten.

Last month I bit the bullet and made the arrangements. Yesterday I did the prep. Well, actually, the prep started on Monday when I had to switch to a low-residue diet. Oddly, the low-residue diet was the worst part of the prep. Since I live alone, my normal diet pretty much consists of beans and candy and soymilk and whatever else is quick and convenient, like bagged carrots and broccoli -- and here, they were taking away three quarters of it! And making me eat nothing but white bread and egg noodles and white crackers, to boot! I felt sort of bloated and gummed up all week.

Then yesterday, liquid diet (coffee was OK, thank god). Even the purging part wasn't as bad as I expected. Four pills, and a couple of bottles of lemon-lime 7-Up-type stuff that actually bordered on tasty. Some Gatorade. Then for a few hours, trips to the bathroom about every 7 or 10 minutes, but nothing where I had to linger there. Just urge, cross the hall, a half minute of taking care of business, then back to Dexter episodes and my blankets. The worst part of that whole process was that I was freezing. I couldn't get warm. I felt like I had the flu -- which apparently is a side effect of the laxatives, according to the nurse this morning. That, and drinking a lot of cold liquid in a relatively short period of time. Overnight I was up every hour or two, but only briefly.

Then this morning the worst part was the IV. It was my first IV, and I can say now that I didn't care for it, as experiences go. But the nurse was good, and it was still better than a Pap smear. In fact, all things considered, now that I've done them all I can say for sure that I'd rather get a colonoscopy than a pelvic exam or a mammogram. In fact, as long as I'm ranking things, the colonoscopy was better than my semiannual trip to the dentist.

They used anesthesia. Out cold. No conscious sedation, nothing like that... nope. Complete and utter nap time. First IV fluids, then they warned me the anesthesia was starting, and after a few beats I started to feel a little high and the world went very suddenly gray and then black. Done.

Next thing I knew, I was in a little hospital room by myself while the nurse was brushing my arm. I asked her if I was on CSI, and where were my glasses. (They were on my face.)

So... yeah. I was scared, but I did it. Thanks, Jay Lake, and thanks to my grandmother.

Oh, and the results? Completely clean. Not a polyp in sight. So I'm officially done for ten years.

Being a private sort of person, I'm not usually one to post about health issues. But in this case I thought I'd put it out there just in case anybody's as apprehensive as I was. It was no big deal. And having the clean bill of health feels much better than the wondering.

Netflix, sweetie, can we talk? I love it when you do that wacky, crazy thing of yours. It's true that I enjoyed Doctor Who, and continue to enjoy Doctor Who, but unless George Carlin's showing up in the TARDIS (which would be the only way he could manage it), I'm thinking... no. Not that George Carlin wasn't funny. He was, in fact, nearly pee-producingly funny live, at least when I saw him.
 
Recommended for you: George Carlin: Jammin' in New York
Because you enjoyed: Doctor Who
 
Recommended for you: Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill
Because you enjoyed: Battlestar Galactica

Recommended for you: Rowan Atkinson Live!
Because you enjoyed: Howl's Moving Castle

"With giant dogs," said the vet, "it always comes down to hard decisions. That's why I won't have one."
 
( Read more... )
 
So here's to Molly. Wish us well today and tomorrow, and today the best day ever.

I'm thinking about sending pizza to Wall Street. I'd feel better about the whole thing if they had a single clear-cut message: for instance, "We're staying here until you show real motion in increasing the taxes paid by the super rich." Got any manifestos you'd suggest to them?

In other news, my story "Jackstraw Magic" is now live at GigaNotoSaurus. Yay! I love GigaNotoSaurus. It's a great market for longer stories, and they've published some outstanding work.

In other other news... winter! OK, fall. But it sure feels like winter. Wet, wet winter. In the middle of the June and July drought, you never could have told me that I ought to start just building a boat. Also, there's so much standing water around that every time I open my back door, I get a minimum of three mosquito bites. But not anymore! Because... winter!