In two or three evenings my rentmate, the snob, has sat through four episodes of Buffy with seeming pleasure. She says season four is more endurable than the foregoing because most of the teenage angst has been more or less resolved. Or at least matured into a more grown-up angst.

Ugh! This morning’s storm caused sewage to spew into the streets near the waterfront in San Francisco.

I’ve now watched three whole seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I’ve also looked at various related websites. I usually don’t mind spoilers, but in retrospect the “panicking” scene would have been better somehow if I hadn’t known when to expect it. (I don’t read about specific unseen episodes, but I have read capsule biographies of most characters.)

Angel breaks it off with Buffy. Star-crossed love is touching, and my tear is jerked as readily as the next; but that story progressed hardly at all in this season, and I’ve read it before in any number of tales about interstellar time-dilation. That aside, I think better use could have been made of Angel (and was, i trust, in the spinoff); something is surely wrong if a unique character, ingeniously conceived, becomes more entertaining when he loses his uniqueness (latter part of season 2). And then in “Graduation Day” (third season finale), after Buffy risks all to save him, his role in the main event is trivial.

What makes a few vampires witty and colorful, most of the rest bovinely dull, and at least a few suicidally submissive? Does it depend more on the former human, or on the parent vampire, or on chance circumstances of the transition? (Later: a possible answer.)

And why so few female vampires?

After Willow worked the curse on Angel in “Becoming”, why not try it on other vampires? Perhaps because the obvious candidates – the only other (surviving) vampires known by name – had left the scene. Perhaps Drusilla is mad enough that even in Angel’s condition she’d be dangerous. (Oct 19: Is the orb of Thesulah destroyed in the process?)

Anyway I have an ethical problem with restoring Angel’s soul: doing so makes a human soul suffer for a demon’s actions in which it had no part. The stake is cleaner.

What did Faith’s last words mean?: “Should have been there, B. Quite a ride.”

The new human Anya is pretty funny (so far), and well played. It will be interesting to see where the writers go with her.

When Trick arrived in Sunnydale he commented on its overwhelmingly pallid population; so I was amused to see more dark faces at the Prom and Graduation than had been in the series previously.

Decided today it was high time I tested my recently repaired .22 handguns; and the Glock came along for the ride. Despite not having shot since May, I still mostly hit what I aim at. But o my poor elbow!

The plot of Hal Clement‘s story “The Mechanic” (1966) is awkward and dated, but it’s still noteworthy as an early exposition of biotechnology quite similar to current concepts.

How Ben Franklin taught himself to write better

Wisecrack of the day, from E B Rasmusen:

Europe is going through a birth rate collapse, a singularly odd and disquieting thing, I should think. . . . Maybe humans are like other organisms that don’t reproduce well in captivity.