STFU

At the cafe on Clark – this idiot is on his Bluetooth headset and  cellphone talking loudly. What a dumb prick.

I think people make me misanthropic.

I want to tear that headset off his ear and throw it in to the fireplace. Then maybe break his laptop over my knee.

It is Friday. I just FedExed my book contract off. Yeah you might think that is a bit strange, that I’d sent off the manuscript two weeks ago and am now sending off the actual contract. Yeah it is strange. Not a long story – not a short story – mostly about hurry-up-and-wait and the fact that a large publishing company is still a large company and so moves at the deliberate pace of large organizations. I wonder if I’ll have to harangue to get the book advance. I’m trying to figure out if there’s some way I can have the book advance on my 2006 ledger. I don’t want it to wreck my taxes for this year since income has been low due to freelancing it.

Also hired an accountant today. I was going to do a line item check of the sales reports from the shopping cart, the payment gateway and to my bank. I ran a quick report and saw that I’m missing quite a bit of money from my checking account! I had a feeling the numbers were off but was a bit surprised to see by how much. I’ve hired Michael’s accountant to work with me. Hopefully she can audit back pretty far and see if there are other funds missing. I’m guessing that the bank is holding on to the funds for an extra week so they can grab some interest out of it.

Posted a podcast 2 nights ago. I had fun mixing the Orwell audio intro – those are phrases from 1984:

War is Peace
Ignorance is Strength
Freedom is Slavery

And then from Brave New World:

Community, Identity, Stability.

I had some THX-1138 quotes to add in but I’ll fit those somewhere – stuff about ‘Buy More’ or ‘you feel you are not properly sedated, call 348-844 immediately.’ I want sound effects of a large tiled lobby or airport to give the intro more ‘air’. And I do want to fit in a slogan from Brazil:

Don’t suspect a friend – report him.

I had fun transforming my voice into different qualities and effects. Probably a little too much. But it was fun. Also the levels on that podcast are uneven. I’ll work on that for the next one.

Ron is off to – I forgot where he is off today. Then tomorrow he goes to San Francisco with his mom. She likes to shop for pearls there and browbeat fisherman at the wharf to let her cook her own damned lobster herself.

We have one more DVD of Season 1 of Lost. I like the show for the same reason I like X-Files, Twin Peaks and 24. I like the puzzles.

Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize for LiIterature-

Oh fuck. This guy has another phone call. Shut the fuck up you stupid skinny Lakeview yuppie conspicuously consuming motherfucker.

(I moved to the other side of the coffeeshop.)

Harold Pinter got the Nobel Prize for Literature. I don’t think I really understood his plays when I was in college. I remember trying to make my way through Birthday Party and not understanding what the hell anyone was talking about. I think that trying to read a play for a theatre class is like trying to enjoy a house by looking at a blueprint. It is like trying to taste a cake by reading the recipe. Or enjoying a symphony by staring a sheet music.

Lost has a really strong cast and such rich characters. I really like Jorge Garcia as Hurley – great character and great acting. Same with Dominic Monaghan, Daniel Dae Kim and of course Matthew Fox. Though, I really don’t like the Sawyer character very much – I mean I know you’re not supposed to. And I think I would have choked Shannon down to the ground on day one.

I always liked the idea of Pinter – just like I love the idea of Wagner’s gesamkunstwerk or Brecht’s verfremdungseffekt or even Artaud’s Théâtre et son double. But I don’t really get the execution of that particular idea. I love the idea of cryptic menace but if it is in the hands of unskilled artists it just turns into boredom a la bad productions of Beckett. Boredom as a theatrical device is kinda like yawning onstage. You can’t have bored characters and not bore the hell out of your audience.

You like that foreign language stuff don’t ya?

I think it’d be fun to make a trope database. Have every episode of 24 or Lost for example and check off the tropes: Pregnant Woman Has False Labor, Torture Ends Up Un-Needed, Gun Isn’t Really Loaded, Hostage Is Complicit in Hold Up, Religious Person Inflicts Pain, Protege is Really Spy.. stuff like that. That’s why I love these shows – especially 24 – because they gleefully burn through a canon’s worth of tropes every episode and then you can just hear the writers trying to figure out what themes to mine next.

Take for instance Stumble on Evidence From Previous Carnage. How many films start out with characters hearing or receiving or finding evidence of a previous struggle? And I’m just counting LV-246 here.


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2 responses to “STFU”

  1. Fr.John Avatar
    Fr.John

    Glad to seee that you on zanax or you would kill peole that bug you!!

  2. Andy Avatar
    Andy

    Nah – the Xanax wrecks my day. I’m Vitamin Z from here on out.

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