There Is No Hope for Me Now.

Well, I hope all you Buffy fans are happy. (Yes, you know who you are!) There's just no denying it: I have become a pathetic, drooling, Buffy addict. Is there maybe some kind of Buffyholics Anonymous support group I can join or something?

Yesterday, instead of any of the things I really should have been doing -- working on my Phoenix zine, getting out my winter clothes, answering my e-mail, bringing some order to the chaos that I call my home -- I spent the day watching Buffy. All day, from almost the moment I got home from work until I went to bed at what, considering how early I had to get up this morning, was probably a somewhat later hour than it should have been. And then, when I did go to bed, I had trouble sleeping, because I was excited about still having more Buffy to watch, as well as being all upset about what happened with Willow and Oz.

That's not all, either. I'm even dreaming Buffy. I'm serious. I had this dream where they were all on some kind of organized camping trip, and the scout leader or whatever he was turned out (of course) to be a vampire. Giles was actually arguing against killing it for reasons I'm a little vague on. I think his argument was that this was a very powerful vamp that was obviously going to become the head vampire back in Sunnydale, but that he seemed to be a lot more amenable to reason than most vamps, so it was better to have him around to deal with as the leader of the vampires. Which logic seemed a little strange to me (and Buffy thought so, too). But they went out hunting the thing, anyway. Giles had this big old rifle with a telescopic sight on it (which is perhaps in slightly poor taste right about now, but I refuse to accept responsibility for the content of my dreams). I think he was going to shoot it with a tranquilizer dart. I never got to find out how it came out, though, because that's when my stupid alarm went off.

And that, boys and girls, is how you know you've been watching too much Buffy.

I have to say, though, that watching through the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth season has been both extremely wonderful and extremely frustrating. Wonderful because, well, it's Buffy. It's awesome stuff! I mean, geez, did you see the third season finale? Does TV get any cooler than that? Yowza! But it's frustrating because there are a few epsiodes missing from the tapes I've been watching, and every time I start getting really, really into the story arc-y stuff, I'll hit, say, an episode with "previously on..." scenes that I haven't seen before, and I'll find myself wailing "Wait, I missed that?! Nooooo!" Of course, thanks to the modern marvel that is the internet, it's easy enough for me to go and look up episode transcripts of the ones I missed so that I know everything that I need to know about what's going on, but it's just not the same. I need DVDs! I need them badly! I need them now!

Man, is there, like, some kind of Buffy methadone that I can take until the next batch comes out? Maybe reading the novels will help...

Yes, my name is Betty, and I'm a Buffyholic.

Thanks, guys. Seriously!