No, That's Fatiguée

Every time I hear about another campaign to ban books, or a cry to keep a movie from being shown, or a V-chip, I think: Hello? Does anyone remember that they have free will? (The first Calvinist to write me will be publicly ridiculed; know ye this.) There's a lot of crap out there that I don't want to read or see or listen to. I feel it is imperative for me to avoid seeing or hearing these things, and I will argue with others that they shouldn't see or hear it. But stop it? Not show a movie just because some people find it stupid or disgusting?

Please. I don't think so.

The other day, when I was still up north -- Sunday? -- I bought a book named Osler's Web: Inside the labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic. I figured I would do some reading about it, to see if perhaps this really is what's bothering me. Or even to find out if it's a real syndrome: Tiffany assures me it is, but I've heard all of the disparaging remarks about it -- "Oh, you're just depressed." But what I feel isn't depression; what I feel is so tired that I don't have time to feel depressed.

I began reading Osler's Web, and I mentally checked off my reaction to the various symptoms: sleepiness, yes; visual problems, no; sore throats, yup; memory loss, definitely (I'm always making jokes about how I've lost my short-term memory due to drug experimentation in the 60s); bodily aches kinda... Then I came across this:

He became practically nocturnal, sleeping during the day, a victim of remorseless insomnia throughout the night.

I damn near fell out of bed. I wanted to phone Darin immediately, except I knew he was asleep and probably wouldn't appreciate it. This was the first time I've ever come across the exact same problem that I've suffered from so much recently. Where recently is "the last two to three years."

I was so energized by what I read last night that I went to the Student Health Center today to start investigating what resources there are in this area. Part of the problem with going to see a doctor who specializes in CFS is that they have a vested interest in finding you stricken with it, which makes me nervous, but I have to find something.

I ended up making an appointment with an internal medicine doctor. And I'm going to send for my medical records, so that he knows I'm not starting with CFS; it's my last resort. I haven't gotten to the point in the book where they talk about "cures" or "treatments". But a girl can dream.

Today I went to the Cinema-TV Library (later than I wanted to -- I couldn't wake up, ha ha) to begin my primary sources research for my Film History paper. My film is The Singing Kid, an Al Jolson musical from the mid-30s. I appear to have lucked out: I had one small box of materials; some people have a large box or even two large boxes of materials to go through.

USC houses or hosts the Warner Collection, a collection of materials dealing with decades of Warner Brothers films. I can request the materials on a certain film and then at my appointment, go to the Warners room and sit at a desk with no pens or paper -- they provide index cards and pencils. Each collection has most of the production memos relating to the film (though not ALL of them, I discovered; whether they're missing by duplicity or oversight, those missing memos have given me an idea for the paper I'm going to write), the contracts, and the reviews clipped from various newspapers.

I'm glad some people out there like being archivists. I couldn't do it, but I'm sure glad they do.

Yesterday: up at 8, went to Film History class, went location scouting for the film we're shooting on Saturday (which necessitated driving halfway across Los Angeles -- oy), then I ended up at Babylonian at 4 and was kept busy until 7. I came home and collapsed, but not for long: I had many phone calls to make, including one to Max to congratulate her on finding the house of her dreams, one to the director, Kathleen, about Saturday, and one to Bernice, the writer of Saturday's opus.

I called Bernice because when I went location scouting, I went into a baseball card shop to ask about filming in there. When I explained what we were doing, he mentioned that someone else had already been in there, asking about the same project. A woman who rode a Harley, and she had spent about an hour in there, hanging out, talking.

Bernice, of course, had not bothered to tell me this. This baseball card shop is on the west side, and I went way out of my way to seek it out.

Hey, don't waste my time.

I called her and said I'd been there, and I would have appreciated it if she'd said something to me, just so we could keep coordinated.

"Oh, well," she said in that little girl voice of hers, "I just stopped in there briefly to see the layout."

Great. Now she's lying. I'm sure she's lying, because she made such an impression on the shop owner. This is not a big deal, not up there with "There was no holocaust" or anything, but a simple "I forgot" or "I didn't think it was a big deal" or whatever would have sat a lot better. I decided not to get into it. Oy.

The great shakeout cometh: Maggy stopped Maggy's World for a host of reasons, Tracy has stopped i am becoming (perhaps adding new entries every so rarely). Ophelia has started to rethink her purpose: was it to record, to entertain, or both? And the other day I went through Open Pages and wrote down when each one there started...and when the last entry was. I sent the names of the tardy to Kymm, deputy of the Open Pages, and she sent it on to Ophelia. I fully admit my nosiness.

Anyhow, several journals have stopped cold in the past couple of months. I think that this will continue. Anyone can start one of these things, and it's definitely fun at first, but it's work to keep it up. I myself just look forward to spewing out some kind of verbiage every day or so. What propels most people...no clue.