Dana Scully Never Took Newborn Care Class...

Incidentally, the title of this post should be said to the rhythm of "Hitler never played Risk as a kid" from this clip.

Dana. Can I call you Dana? Apparently everyone else in Season 9 gets to, including Mulder for fuck's sake, and since I am suffering through these episodes, I think I'd like to claim that right.

So anyway. Dana. I know your baby, who you are unable to remember to call by his name, apparently, is in terrible risk from Teh Evilz, in whatever form Teh Evilz are taking at this point in the conspiracy, which I realize none of us know or will ever understand.

But I'm a little more worried about you killing your baby at this point. Honestly, woman, have you read nothing on infant safety, SIDS prevention, and newborn development?

Let's start with this:


Notice how William's face is turned into the blankets? This is prime territory for rebreathing, which eventually causes suffocation. Soft bedding in the bassinet is a definite no-no.

Even though he appears to survive it.

Your mother has the right idea; she's clearly attempting a swaddle here. However, her technique is off; with his arms free to wave around, and the blankets behind his head, he could very quickly undo the swaddle and, again, get into smothering territory. In addition, the looseness of this swaddle doesn't provide the psychological comfort factor that swaddling should provide. So, good attempt from Maggie Scully, but it simply does not pass muster.

Plus: when the hell is this kid born that he needs to have so many blankets on him? Not that time seems to travel at the same pace in the X-Files 'verse as the rest of the universe, but it was not the dead of winter when he was born, which was apparently 48 hours ago; Xena D'Anna Shannon McMahon wore a cute slutty dress in a convertible and didn't appear to be freezing in the teaser. Overheating is another prime SIDS risk factor. Get the kid some of those cute bag things, already.

Hmph. By the internal timeline, William is...four to five days old here, depending on how many days elapse during the events of Nothing Important Happened Today I and II. Pacifiers are not recommended until two months of age because 1) newborns will try to nurse the pacifier and drop it 2) if newborns want to suck they need to be eating, due to their extremely small stomach size 3) nipple confusion and problems establishing breastfeeding if pacifiers are used too early.

None of this is to mention the fact that you gave birth less than a week ago and you are running around looking fabulous and fighting Evilz. You have brushed, washed hair, a shirt without milk stains on it, and literally the hottest coat you have ever worn in the entire series. AND, your whoever-he-is just departed for points unknown, so you are a single parent for the moment. WHY ARE YOU NOT HAVING A NERVOUS BREAKDOWN? Are you superhuman? (Oh. Possibly you are.)

So anyway, Dana, I know things are very stressful. I feel you, I really do. But can I put together a reading list for you? Sit down and have a little talk about baby safety? Please? For William's sake? That is his name, right?

(Screencaps from Chris Nu's site.)

(This nitpicking brought to you by Realbirth's class package: take 5 childbirth classes, and add breastfeeding class and newborn care class for SuperCheap! They're actually really great, NYC-ers; we highly recommend them, especially Erica Lyon, the founder who taught one of our childbirth classes and our newborn care class, and Jeremi, our teacher for regular class.)

(Also brought to you by my lovely wife's screaming at the TV last night, obviously.)

Things We Have Done in the Past Month

• Told Kate's grandparents. Upon hearing one of our girl names--which happens to be the name she and Kate's mom share--she said that's what we were calling the baby. Regardless of sex. OK, Nana.
• Told my great-aunt. She thinks we're awfully young to be having children. And it's too close to the wedding. But she's happy. (I love my great-aunt.)
  
• Told the first of our friends. They're all freaking out appropriately, given that we're one of first among our friends to have kids. (The other kid came eight years ago, right out of high school.)
  
• Heard Willa's little heartbeat for the first time. She sounds like a horsey. We heard it for the second time today.
• Willa has become visible to the outside world.
  

• Kate felt the first kick. Last night, when she woke up at 3:30 AM. And a bunch more today. We have bought her soccer shoes already.
• Kate's also had gas so bad she's thrown up. Twice.
  
• Incidentally, I've been writing like a demon. I'm about 7 pages from being done my last semester of coursework, and being able to start in on my dissertation. Whoo-hoo!
• We've been on the road more than we've been off it. Visits to our families, going to a conference and staying with family while there. Thursday we leave for Kate's five-year college reunion. I'm considering making her a t-shirt that says "Yep, it's a bump."
• And I really cannot tell you how many times I've watched this. Or this. Or this.
  

More detailed posts to come. But we wanted to touch base.

Reading the X-Files: Mulder and Scully's "Partnership" and the Question of Queer Marriage, Empedocles (8X17)

(I'm going to be doing a few of these as I'm studying the show closely for a paper I'm writing; they're close readings of intellectually compelling moments in specific episodes. For the blog, I'm going to stick to moments about pregnancy, fertility/infertility, parenting, and queer stuff. Hopefully you'll find them interesting.)

There are a million things I love about the X Files:

1. The incredible hotness of the protagonists.
2. The gonzo way nothing ever makes good sense but somehow it is always AWESOME.
3. That there are spaceships and hot girls with guns .
   
4. That the government simultaneously is evil and full of good people who want to save the world.
5. Did I mention the hotness? Oh, I did? Let me say it again. THE HOTNESS.

Tell me you don't kinda want to make out with at least one of these people.

But what I really love is the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Here we have a smokin' hot vibe between two gorgeous people who are totally devoted to each other, which is simultaenously not a standard heterosexual love story. Despite the fact that we get teased about it plenty, we don't get any mushyness until nearly the end of the serious--the first kiss comes in season 7, and it's not even unambiguous that they're involved until season 8, and then just barely. Instead, we see the World's Longest, Smartest Seduction, consisting of moments of comfort and protection as the world is ending, a never-ending procession of banter and flirtation, and a lot of time spent in hospital beds. They reverse typical gender performances: Scully is the scientist, the rationalist, the hard-edged one, while Mulder is all feelings, hunches, instinct. They are equally likely to do caring work for each other, as well; this is a relationship built on equality and cooperation, at work and (presumably) outside of it.

And it gets really interesting when they're having a kid.

The expectant parents and a large pizza.

(OK, ten-second recap: Scully's infertile due to alien abduction, Mulder stole her eggs from the humans who work with the aliens, they try to conceive via IVF and fail, she *magically* gets pregnant with a baby that may or may not be an alien hybrid implanted by the bad guys and simultaneously he gets abducted by aliens, he is returned dead and they bury him, then they dig him up and he's not dead anymore. There's no explicit proof within show canon that they've ever slept together up to the point we're talking about, but there are significant hints, and there has been no definitive statement about the parentage of the baby. Does that make sense? No? Go with it, Scully, as Mulder would say. Just remember the writers were probably high at the time.)

The episode I'm talking about here is Empedocles (TWoP recap; Episode Transcript). This is the second episode after Mulder has come back to life. In the previous episode (Three Words), he has said he feels cut off, out of place, doesn't know where he fits in, and it's clear he means with with regard to Scully and her pregnancy. There is no on-camera discussion of the paternity of the child, although a minor character later asks him about his possible involvement, which results in a Serious Mulder-Scully Mutual Look (if you've ever seen the show, you know what I mean). By my reading, they seem to be on the same page, and that page is that Mulder is most definitely 'involved.' However, his exact relationship to Scully and the baby is left purposely unclear, in part because of doubt that the baby is really human. Three Words ended with Scully driving getaway vehicle for Mulder's bust into a federal data facility: that is, everything normal except for the Scully Waistline Situation (she's at about 7 months, and looks fantastic, as Gillian Anderson always does, even in the early, puffy-hair-and-white-tights phase, and the strange, long-hair-and-sad-looks Season 9 thing).

The scenes from Empedocles that I want to analyze here are 3 and 4 in the transcript. Mulder shows up on Scully's doorstep unexpectedly. They engage in supercute banter: Rational!Scully has an attack of pregnancy brain, Mulder posits the pizza delivery boy as a possible father for the baby, there is a significant double entendre around the phrase "nice package," etc. The attitude is light, lighter than usual for them; the vibe is definitely more couple than friends, but, as with everything on this show, it's not perfectly clear.

There is this exchange:

SCULLY: I feel like I'm stuck in an episode of Mad About You.

MULDER: Well, uh, yeah, but small technicality. Mad About You was about a married couple and we just work together.

SCULLY: Yeah, well, you know what I'm talking about.

MULDER: I do, I do.

This is the show's greatest fiction: they "just work together." People, these folks are in six kinds of lurve. They've called each other best friend, soulmate, touchstone, only person I can trust, and a million other things. He was the executor of her living will as early as season 2. They tried to have a kid together, and then succeeded (I believe). When his body was discovered and then again at his funeral, she was treated as a widow. These people? Are. So. Totally. Together.

But what they are isn't named. The only word they ever use to describe who they are to each other to the outside world is 'partner.' The word was given to them by the FBI, but, of course, it has a double meaning: it's what most queer folks, and a growing contingent of radical folks in heterosexual relationships call their significant others. Mulder and Scully aren't married; in fact, it's meant to be unclear if they are even in a romantic or sexual relationship. (But they so totally are.) The name they have for it is ambiguous: they "just work together." But when Scully says, "You know what I mean," look what he says: "I do, I do." I don't think it's irrelevant that he responds to her assertion (that they've become a quipping sitcom couple, complete with bad pizza man jokes) with marriage words. In that moment, whatever the world thinks, the solidity and commitment of their relationship is established. They're partners. Just the type for whom the word means forever.

Then, crisis. Scully doubles over in pain, clutching her belly. Mulder rushes to her side, orders the pizza guy to call 911. We cut to Scully being rushed into the hospital on a guerney, Mulder holding her hand, the nurse knowing her name. (It's been a dramatic pregnancy.) Mulder corrects the nurse on the gender of Scully's OB-GYN, and we get this exchange.

ER NURSE: Who are you? The husband?

MULDER: No.

ER NURSE: Then you wait outside.

Scully is whisked away, and Mulder is left alone, looking desperate. My beloved wife, at this point in the episode, said "Come on. Everyone knows the right answer to that question is yes." And we know this, because we know if we were ever somewhere without our legal paperwork, the question would be "Are you her sister?" and the answer would be "yes," without a doubt, because there is no way we would be separated. Scully and Mulder, partners-which-means-everything, are separated here becasue they don't have the magic words. Partnership, that safe word that can mean "we just work together" or can mean "we aren't telling the government we're fucking" or "we disagree about the structural utility of the institution of marriage" or "we are too busy saving the world to pick out a china pattern" is here shown to be socially less, to be entirely insufficient at the moment of crisis. He can't do anything but stand there.

Although it isn't explicit, I want to read a critique of the dominance of 'marriage' into this moment. No one watching this show has any doubt about the fact that Mulder should have followed Scully into that ER. After all, they seem to spend all their time in ERs together. It's like date night in X-Files-land. Because this is a "personal" crisis (e.g., neither of them has been shot, abducted by aliens or serial killers, or attacked by goo), the badge-flashing routine doesn't work here, so they are forcibly separated. Because their "partnership" does not map on to our conventional notions of how relationships should be patterned, an injustice is done in that waiting room.

What is the solution here? Is it for Mulder and Scully to get married? Emphatically, no, at least in my opinion. (OK, if they show up in the movie that's coming out this summer wearing wedding rings, I'm not going to be upset. In fact, I'ma squee like the crazy mushy fangirl I am. Not that it's gonna happen.) They don't need to be married. No one needs to be married. Mulder and Scully don't need the approval of God and the District of Columbia to establish who they are to each other. All they need is a Crown Victoria, a pair of Sig Sauers, and an alien invasion to fight.

The solution I would articulate would be to allow people to determine their own words and practices. The question would be "Are you the next of kin?" The metaphysical state of marriage would be reserved for those who desired it (like myself, which I should talk about sometime). The legal state of becoming a family would be available to any arrangement of individuals who agreed to care for each other, regardless of whether their relationships were romantic, sexual, or biological. Mulder and Scully can just be Mulder and Scully (and potentially extraterrestrial fetus makes three). But in a world of compulsory heterosexuality and the sanctity of marriage, Mulder stands on the wrong side of the ER doors, waiting with the pizza men of the world for something to change.

William The Transsexual Parakeet: A Story (With An Important Payoff)

Kate and I do this thing. She makes me tell her stories for her. Not just things that happened that we both know about: she makes me tell her childhood stories, her college stories, all of them. I'm the storyteller, which is hilarious if you consider that she's the one who wants us to blog every damn thing. Wants me to blog every damn thing, more like.

But anyway, today I'm the storyteller. And this is her story, but I'm telling it for my own purposes. So make of that what you want.

Anyway, when Kate was seven or so, a shed got delivered to her house. And in that shed was a tiny little parakeet. She and her mother and her little brother (who was about four) spent a good deal of time trying to catch that parakeet. Actually, Kate's mom did most of the work, aided by the ever-well-behaved Kate, and disturbed by the less-well-behaved brother, who desperately wanted to pet the pretty birdy. But, in the end, the bird was captured and brought inside. Kate's mom refused to let the kids name the bird for about six months or so, until she had exhausted every possible avenue for finding its original home. After all hope was lost, the kids named him William.

Several years down the road, William became sick. So he was taken to the vet, for the first time ever. At the vet, it was revealed that William was, in Kate's words, Williamette: they had a lady bird on their hands. William/ette's condition did not improve substantially, and about six months later s/he Flew To The Great Shed In The Sky, so to speak.

So, it is in honor of this bird, who managed to live for a time in both genders, who appeared without warning and shocked everyone by sticking around, that we christen the Non-Hysteri-Keet.

Blogosphere, meet Willa. Willa, meet Blogosphere.

Why Willa, and not William? Well, because we've basically decided that it's too hard to play the gender-neutral pronoun game all the time, and that our personal default pronoun is female, so she should have a vaguely female name. However, we picked Willa in part because it references the chromozonal question mark: Willa might be William might be Williamette, and all is well. We'll know when we know, or we won't, and it's fine.

(Oh, and alternative sources for the name include this and this. Look, the one walked the line between genders and wrote one of my favorite novels, and the other is a mysterious production of parents who shouldn't have been able to procreate AND had magical powers as an infant. Either way, it's good.)

What, you want a real story of yesterday morning's positive? Well, maybe I'll tell you. But not today. Willa's mama is demanding dinner, and her mom has some Guy Debord to read. The world continues turning, but it's one Keet heavier round these parts.

Happy Freakin' Valentine's Day

To quote the renowned C.G.B. Spender:

"Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. You're stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there's a peanut butter cup, or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-crunching nuts, and if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is a... is an empty box... filled with useless, brown paper wrappers."

--From "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man," Episode 4x07, The X-Files

I'd just like to say I bought a good box of chocolates. Mostly caramels and turtles and truffles. Kate appears to be enjoying it.

Oh, and that test this morning? A negative, which at 9 dpo is not shocking. And so drama-causing that I'm tagging the wife to tell y'all about it.

It Begins

I came home yesterday, tired. My exam had finished up at 6 on Monday; I had immediately shared celebratory shots of Absolut Citron with Uncle, which did a good job of counteracting the caffeine-and-all-nighter high I was running on. I took a nap, was awakened around 9:45 to knock up the wife, watched some X-Files, went back to sleep. Woke up in the morning around 11, watched more X-Files, rescheduled my chiropractor appointment so I could vote, went to therapy, went to my class (taught by a pleasant, easily distractable old man who really doesn't do anything to direct the discussion), got out early and went to that chiropractor appointment, got dinner at my favorite Mexican place, went to what I thought was the first Arabic class of the semester only to discover that, last week while I was cramming for the exam, they had all met without me. Got out of class at 10, walked exhaustedly to the subway, listed to my Lupe Fiasco/Shakira/Jay-Z playlist of the moment six times (or however many, I didn't pay attention except for mentally choreographing the trailer to the X-Files movie about colonization they're never going to make to the sounds of Hello Goodbye--there's lots of Dana Scully with AK-47s), wandered in the door, dropped my shit, and said hello to my wife.

Who promptly burst into tears.

She didn't feel well. She was having cramps. Her stomach hurt. Everything hurt. She didn't know why she was crying. She didn't know anything. She was just crying.

And as I sat there, holding her hand, saying everything was ok, petting her hair, telling her to call her mother if she wants to, and all of that, I thought: oh, shit. She can't be more than 24 hours pregnant. Honestly, at most there's a little fertilized egg in there trying to figure out whether it wants to implant. And that's if she's pregnant at all. And she's hysterical already.

And all of a sudden I'm realizing precisely what I meant when I told my therapist that I was going to have to deal with her hysterical pregnancies two weeks out of the month from here forward.

She calmed down. I held her and petted her and we laughed about the mood swings and I told her everything was OK. She's still crampy and bloated today, and I swear to God she looks fatter. (My wife, she is the opposite of fat.) Who knows? Maybe these are the best signs every and she's totally pregnant. Maybe her body is reacting to encountering sperm for the first time by screaming in horror. Maybe it's a psychosomatic reaction. But this is how it's going to be from here forward.

I think I'm ready. I hope so, at least.

24 Hours in Pictures

The Katester informs me that there's this thing? Where you take a photo every hour you're awake of a day? One of the bloggers she reads said we should do it? Yeah, so I did it.

Here is:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, IN CRAPPY CAMERAPHONE PHOTOS

MIDNIGHT

We're watching a lot of TV these days that comes on late at night. A Daily Show (not The Daily Show; The Daily Show has writers, A Daily Show has Jon Stewart and Jon Oliver fuckin' around without a script), followed by multiple re-runs of Sex and the City, followed by the midnight Simpsons episode, and by the time we've worked through all of that the 2 AM X-Files is on...It's pretty terrible for us. Plus, Uncle's schedule keeps having him get in around 12:30...so we just stay up to be together. So this is what midnight looks like in our house: my wife, in her fleece pajama pants and robe that my mom got her for Christmas, clutching that remote like her life depends on it.

ONE AM

My comprehensive exams start in a week: Friday the First. For those not in academia, comps are a series of absurd hoops that grad students need to jump through; they ensure that you have a basic grounding in the core texts of your field, and they compel you to spend a whole weekend of your life writing pointless essays. Because of this, I'm spending all my time lately reading articles I don't find particularly interesting, so I can write pointless essays about them in a week's time. 32 pages worth of pointless essays. On the left is an article by Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan about democratic consolodation. On the right is my EndNote entry for said article. On the couch in the background you can see Sara's leg.

TWO AM

Oh, and did I mention our projected insem date is somewhere between Monday the fourth (the last day of my exam) and Wednesday the sixth? So we're a little obsessed. At 2 AM the wife felt the need to read to me about insemination timing.

I coulda done a three AM shot, but it would have been of me in bed in the dark, trying to fall asleep.

EIGHT AM

Kate had to leave for work early, so I got up to see her off, pack her lunch, and generally be wifelike. After she left, I picked up her bathrobe and put it on. I've been doing that a lot lately. This is a bathroom-mirror shot, if you can't tell.

NINE AM

Incidentally, all of the shots from this point forward? Could have been mirrors of the one AM shot. Instead, I photographed other things. There was some sort of Serious Cat Dramatics happening in the house this morning; I think there were more squirrels than usual on the back porch. Both Wicket and Sara kept tearing back and forth between back door and kitchen window with puffy tails. These R Srius Cats.

TEN AM

Because every morning needs some Dana Scully in it. Her hair looks so freakin' good in the ninth season, which is funny because the show is breaking my heart. Why even bother pretending it's the X-Files without some Mulder/Scully longing gazes and witty repartee? And Invisible Mulder? Not cute. I CAN HAS VISIBLE MULDER NOW PLZ. (Funny, I think that's what Scully's thinking the whole season, too.)

ELEVEN AM.

Finally I get around to breakfast. The smoothie of the week is strawberries, blackstrap molasses, maple syrup, soy milk, and plain cow's-milk yogurt. It's not disgusting, and it's healthy. Apparently.

NOON
Time to get dressed. I bought that shirt at the beach last weekend. This is roughly my fashion MO on school-or-other-official-days: ribbed tank top, button down shirt, sweater over top if it's cold enough, cool looking jeans. Hair alternates between up in a bun and clipped, and pulled in a low pony-tail. I like up better, but pony-tail is winning these days because 1) cold=hats=hair should be down and b) my hair is just a little too long and I run a severe risk of a big poof of hair puffing up like a rooster's comb. Need a haircut.

ONE PM

Workin' on the train. A different article this time. Also I kept having to pause in my reading to dance in my seat to "Dirt Off Your Shoulders," which is only recently on my iPod.

TWO PM

And I arrive at 'Snice, a vegetarian/vegan coffee shop in the West Village. I was meeting my exam study group. We are a motley bunch: different regional foci, different theoretical foci, different tastes in caffeinated beverages. You can see the edges of them through the glass. I got the seat by the door. It was cold.

THREE PM

'Snice has the most amazing freakin' cupcakes. They're vegan and covered with icing like I used to eat out of the can that I kept by my bed when I was a kid. We almost had them be the cupcakes at our wedding (for our gluten-eating guests), but the vanilla ones are healthy-looking: you know, they look like they have nutritional value. We didn't want to scare our guests, so we went with Crumbs' less healthy-looking but almost as yummy cupcakes. But I got one today. And a Cuban with soy ham and lots of mustard. And a large hot chocolate, which had entirely too like chocolate in it. Basically, I want liquid chocolate pudding.

FOUR PM

Once something passes two hours in length, unless it has a lot of shiny bells and whistles, I've lost my attention span. This is my "I'm done studying for my exam today" face. Taken in the bathroom at 'Snice. Luckily, we broke up the session about 20 minutes later.

FIVE PM

I got home around 5:30 to a very exciting piece of mail: my very first journal article is published! My copies have arrived! It's a graduate-student women's studies journal; the article is the first published thing I've gotten out of my undergrad thesis. That was my squee of the day.

SIX PM

My evening needed some Dana Scully in it, too. On second thought, those Doggett and Reyes kids are OK. I like there being Mexicans on TV, even when they're played by white girls. And there's a baby around. But still. I CAN HAZ. Etc.

SEVEN PM

Kate gets home from her super-stressful day, and we have to go out tonight (more on that below). Dinner is tomato soup with shredded cheese melted on top. This is a loser's way out of a meal, but she will eat it and it contains vegetables and/or fruit.

EIGHT PM

Our evening was spent at the Park Slope Food Co-op, where we've been members since we moved to the city. It's the largest member-run co-op in the country; there are about 30 paid employees, and 14000 active members, who all work one shift a month (roughly) and do all the major work of the store, from stocking to checkout to designing the newspaper and running the office. Kate's shift started at eight-thirty, but mine didn't start until 9, so I grabbed some much-needed groceries in the break. In this basket: cream cheese, frozen peas, soy milk, tortilla chips, peanut butter, and other necessaries.

NINE PM

Then I took my place at the cash register. Checking out groceries and taking payment are different jobs at the co-op, in order to reduce the number of people who handle cash. I handle cash. We just got a new system, that makes our lives much easier.

TEN PM

Providing plenty of time to do my homework. This is for class, not for exams. It hurt my brain due to the dumb. Sigh.

ELEVEN PM

Then we took the bus home. And came home. And watched TV (not the X-Files: I want her to stay married to me, after all). And ate cheese puffs. And blogged. (Photos not included of that. No one wants to see my in my little brother's red hoodie and blue cotton panties. Not even my wife; she hates this hoodie.)

Kate promises to do this soon...on a day when she won't just be taking photos of what she's watching on TV all day, which is what tomorrow is expected to be.

Things Dana Scully Does While Pregnant That Kate Is Not Allowed To Do

• Pull Guns On People
• Wander Through The Desert Alone At Night With a Flashlight
• Lift Heavy Trapdoors
• Get Strangled By Alien Bounty Hunter
• Get Thrown Against A Glass Wall By Alien Bounty Hunter
• Be Exposed To Dead Alien Slime
• Do Any Of The Above In Three Inch Heels
• Look Seriously Dehydrated After Doing All of The Above
• End Up Bruised About The Face And In The Hospital
• Smell Regurgitated Fingers
• Perform Autopsies
• Ride In Rowboats (Especially With John Doggett)
• Shoot The Ceiling (Actually The Giant Man-Bat On The Roof, But Anyway)
• Hunt Man-Bats In General

Items Not On The List:

• Save The World. I mean, if duty calls...
• Become Pregnant By Fox Mulder. Seriously, if he were willing to be our donor, I'd be all over that shit.

Why, yes, we have been watching the X-Files Season Eight marathon that ran on SciFi today. And, yes, this show seriously blows without Mulder on it. And I think I want to push John Doggett off a cliff. And not an Alien Bounty Hunter John Doggett either.