A confession: I am a hard core science fiction fan.  Not hard core as in attends conferences dressed up (although scarily I can see the attraction), but hard core as in I read almost exclusively science fiction books and watch every decent science fiction movie and television series that comes out, and, like any good science fiction fan, now hate George Lucas for as I believe Harry Knowles put it, “raping my childhood”, with the production of the three crapfest prequels he put the Star Wars name on (now really, we all knew it was going down the crapper back in the 80s when the toy “cum-characters” of the Ewoks showed up, but I still had clung faintly to hope that was residual from “Empire”).  As a kid I watched the original Battlestar Galactica and in an eerily prescient action demonstrating why I would never have a prom date, I named my stuffed toy bear “Muffet” after the robotic dog in the show. 

Enter the new Battlestar Galactica now being made by the Sci Fi channel.  It started out very promising; a scene in the pilot episode showed an adorable little girl picking the petals off a daisy in the atrium of a large space ship.  Cut to space with a missile headed for the ship, then black screen.  I thought “ooohhh they have balls, they aren’t afraid to be dark, perhaps this is promising, and the characters are very good.  The show goes on, we watch every episode but I have this one, very serious problem when watching science fiction–I HATE IT WHEN THEY DON’T LOGICALLY EXPLAIN SHIT, even if they just make up a half lame explanation, if it has some sense and I like the show, I’ll be willing to suspend my disbelief.  So my main problem with Battlestar: They have never explained what the human Cylons are at all.  Believe me, if any half intelligent person was among the 45 K or so survivors, they would have cut that shit up in half a second to determine what they are; are they clones, are they cyborgs, WTF?  They can interbreed with humans (of course, this aspect of sexual exploitation is in an ingredient in EVERY sci fi show, at least they’ve moved on from anal probes).  So in this universe they have space travel but no electron microscopes, gel electrophoresis, or scalpels?  Hello!  And I don’t think there is much of a morality concern here: if some organism killed billions of humans you can sure as shit bet no one would think twice about taking it apart bit by bit to see what kind of threat they were dealing with.  All I’m asking for is some logical order, or some excuse why this logical order can’t be followed (a virus destroyed all our medical equipment, they have acid for blood etc…).  Sometimes I regret having 7 years of scientific training.  I think I would enjoy things a lot more if I wasn’t so anal.

This article at Salon I thought was very amusing

 I even wrote a letter, which was picked as editor’s choice

It has become my firm conviction that there is a gulf separating parents from non-parents that cannot be crossed with information of any type, only experience.  In my opinion, there is nothing that even comes close to as life changing as having a child (except, perhaps, death)–especially for women who leave their work to stay at home in this totally non-supportive culture.

I remember reading The Mask of Motherhood when I was pregnant and thinking how horrible and pessimistic it was.  I picked it up again six months after my daughter was born and thought-shit, this is so accurate but I couldn’t have known until I actually went through it.  That book made me feel so much better about feeling bad regarding motherhood, it was a lifesaver.  I’m willing to bet, as I wrote in my letter about the Salon article, that the author of that piece will look back at her naïveté with a chuckle several months after crossing the gulf. 

When you read negative things about motherhood when you are pregnant you think, “it couldn’t possibly be that bad!”, but, for a lot of women, it is and then some; but that’s OK, it’s normal and it will pass eventually as things get easier, every single new mom needs to have that drilled into her head.  Everyone spouts the platitude about how much you will love your child—and while it’s true—what they don’t tell you is that you will, on occasion, hate them too; that doesn’t make you a bad mom, it makes you a normal human being.