Reading: Delirium

Moving: Abs. That doesn't really count, since it didn't boost my heart rate, but since I haven't done anything else today, and since I don't do enough to my abs, I count it.

15 March 2000: Spermicide and William Sleator, not in that order

I was going through my booklist graying out the titles I've read and adding the ones from last week's library haul and realized that, to my surprise, I had up to now omitted William Sleator from my read list. We--HPV and I--discovered Into the Dream just as our interest in the paranormal and supernatural was beginning. We read all the books on ESP and ghosts and the Loch Ness Monster and UFOs and so Into the Dream was a perfect fit. A boy and a girl, classmates but not friends, each have the same recurring dream, and once they realize this, it gets stronger, they notice their extrasensory perception, and they figure out the dream is a message. Plus it has a Newfoundland dog and a little boy in footie pajamas. Really, what more could you want?

Later on--because it was on the YA shelf, not in the children's room--I discovered House of Stairs. How that freaked me out, let me count the ways. Sleator never explicitly states "This happens in the future" but there are little clues, like that books are electronic and it was "only" an eight-lane road. A great experiment in human psychology and in the endurance of humanity.

On the strength of those two, which it seems I've always known, I've read his others. That's why I picked up Oddballs, Among the Dolls, and Rewind last week. Only the first, autobiographical one was okay; the second was weak in an early way and third weak in a later way. However, since the strength of House of Stairs (after Among the Dolls, after he'd found his voice) and before the disposability of The Nights the Heads Came (which, according to Kirkus Reviews, I'd be as well to give a miss), came the freakily scary The Green Futures of Tycho and Singularity. Being able to alter not only your future but your past, and becoming a slave to it--I didn't want to be Tycho. Before I'd ever learned about anchorites and asceticism, I read about the concept in Singularity. Would I have the discipline to lock myself away for a year?

So. William Sleator. He and Lois Duncan have been the closest to thrillers, suspense, and horror I have ever read--well, except for Stephen King, whom I'd rather forget.

Actually, yesterday after remembering the specific English requirements (by the way, UConn no longer requires Shakespeare for English majors), I was trying to remember a specific effect of Milton on the language. I don't remember. I've never read Paradise Lost or Regained. If it hadn't been for the popularity of Chaucer, we'd all be speaking a different form of English now, not the descendent of his particular regional dialect. Shakespeare did wonderful things like split infinitives and invent the word humongous--well, no, that was a California deejay in the '60s--and left his indelible mark. But Milton, what'd he do? I dunno.

So anyway from this I got to wondering what the effect of today's popular writers will be, has already been. It is only in the past several years--fewer than five--that I've noticed what I call the "which splice." People use "which" as a conjunction; my name for it comes from the "comma splice" in which someone joins two complete sentences with just a comma, not a semi-colon or a conjunction or a concept. I should come up with a different name, though, since the comma splice exists as only a written error. I hope "which splices" have not occurred in edited written form, because if they do, descriptivists, damn their eyes, will document them such that eventually they'll become standard and prescriptivists will have to suck it up. "There's a book, which I don't remember what its title is..."

But if which splices have occurred in written form, I can guess one author who writes sloppily and is noticeably, critically underedited, yet who nevertheless is widely read enough to have wrought such an effect in the 25 years he's been wildly popular: Stephen King.

Language must and should evolve, but only as I permit.

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Beth asked in her forum about methods of birth control, and various people chimed in, until one fellow asked why condoms as prophylactics cum contraceptives [oh, I slay me] hadn't been discussed. I had mentioned them, but, being such a virulent soapboxer as I am about personal responsibility and no parturition without representation [excuse me, I just filled out my Census form], I should have made clear that The Pill Is Not Enough. Mea culpa (I start with the Latin and I can't quit; speaking of the taste of spermicide, I shall deliver a line of John Malkovich's from "Dangerous Liaisons": "Let us begin with a couple of Latin terms...") Spermicide reminded me of one of the last coherent, if not logical, conversations I had with my grandfather. Yes, spermicide and my grandfather. It could happen.

It was the fall of 1991, and my sister and mother and I were at my grandparents' house for Thanksgiving. The prevalence of AIDS and HIV had finally penetrated my grandparents' septuagenarian world, and my grandfather was concerned for the blood supply. His great concept was this: if condoms were now being impregnated with nonoxydol-9 in the manufacturing process, why could not all the donated blood be treated with nonoxydol-9 to kill off the HIV? This is the best bit: my mother, who was in nursing school, was stumped. Her father had just solved the problem the CHC had been grappling for ten years! I, being meaner than my sister and therefore collecting myself faster, explained the difference between preventing one person's ejaculate from reaching another person and poisoning a pint of blood with some damn toxin.

He was trying. He didn't care what happened to "pansies"--which was unfortunate, since BHM had less than six months left that November--but he was trying to understand the Red Cross's concern.

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Yes, the Census. I was hoping for the long form, not that stupid measly six-question thing, and I got it wheeee! I opened the mailbox Monday night and said Wheeeeee! and pranced and danced in my seat and didn't want to continue on to CostCo (where we got nothing fun that would justify my having to wait a whole 45 minutes to apply pen to paper). (It was the second of the two fun things.) Okay, I like filling out stuff like that anyway; probably the only reason I did well on the SAT and GRE is that I like marking those little ovals so neatly. The Census didn't need a #2 pencil and doesn't have ovals, though. Nonetheless, I had fun.

Lynette sounds dubious that divulging such information to the government should be required by law. When in the course of human events, taxation without representation happens, you can't just say "shit happens." You have to know who you've got where in order that everyone has the same say in what's going on. You have to say, "The actual enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent term of ten Years, in such manner as they shall by law direct" (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, U.S. Constitution). According to the 1990 Census, of all the states Kentucky has the least representation in the House of Representatives per citizen vote.

The federal government doesn't need to know how much I pay for utilities or how long it takes me to get to work in order to prevent gerrymandering, but if my providing those details helps the just deregulation of utilities or encourages Congress to provide better public transportation, then ask away, Uncle Sam.

Perhaps I am not cynical enough, but I believe the Census Bureau doesn't tell anyone anything. It wants to count everyone, and it can't do that if people are afraid of being deported or institutionalized. If it's straightforward about not telling tales out of school, and then doesn't, more people will trust it.

Besides, last summer I untangled and reformatted a monster of a book (only 200 pages, but 500 footnotes, five pages of cases cited) on redistricting (do you think I know all that off the top of my head?), and I would rather not have that go to waste.

My latest project is a book on health care and how the states measure up, how many physicians per thousand, who has what access to dental care, what provisions are made for children and marginal populations. It's fascinating stuff, and I wonder if RRP, who runs a group of health clinics for the indigent in northeastern Connecticut, would find it useful.