The parchment thing was kind of pissing me off.
So here I am.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Sorry.
I should be blogging more. I have plenty going on to blog about, but I've felt overwhelmed lately. I'm sure I've felt overwhelmed more than I actually have been overwhelmed, but somethimes perception is reality.
I'm working a little more than I was, so I have a little less time. I've been interacting on the American Zoetrope website, which has become my workshop-away-from-home now that I'm jonesing for an MFA fix. I've been writing what seems to be a really promising screenplay, and I'm still reading way too much. I'm going through about two books a week with no real time to work with. Right now it's John Cheever's Falconer, and it's great.
Michele's been getting feedback from only her longshot schools, and they've been rejections, so she's a little down about that. She needs some good news. I don't like to see her sad.
The RBO's been behaving. Or, as I said when I was a kid, "being have."
We got a buttload of snow the last couple days, or in Buffalo terms, a flurry. A foot, and that amounts to the biggest snowstorm in eight years. Pathetic. When I was a kid . . . uphill both ways . . . no shoes . . . backwards . . .
That's all I have for now. Hopefully I'll be able to say something significant in the next few days.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
How the RBO got its R back.
It occurred to Michele and me while we were sitting in the nonfunctional Rolling Blue Oven last Saturday that the RBO, at that moment, was neither B nor O, and only unhelpfully R. The blue was mostly masked by a skin of road-salt, and some of it has been eroded by rust. And the poor car can't be an oven when the atmosphere it inhabits is below zero, so it more resembled an icebox than an oven.
And the rolling was compromised. I could move in reverse just fine, but any forward motion would require a Barney-Rubble accelerator kit, as the car was stuck in reverse.
So now we had a number of new letters for a clever acronym. S can be road salt, R is now rust, and I stands for icebox. And I can only call its limited mobility useless. Instead of an RBO, I was in possession of a USRI. A useless, salty, rusty icebox.
RBO sounds better, though. And this weekend it got its R back.
The guys at Auto Shop told me that I had a broken shifter-cabley thing, and that they could fix said shifter-cabley thing for just over $330. Father-In-Law said he could handle it for much cheaper. And he did. Fixed it in just a few hours. He's good at the car-fixing.
So now I'm driving a RSRI. I think. I could pronounce it "Rosary." But a rosary is a prayer, or an object that helps keep track of prayers. It's not an object that necessitates prayers. Owned by an atheist, no less.
And the rolling was compromised. I could move in reverse just fine, but any forward motion would require a Barney-Rubble accelerator kit, as the car was stuck in reverse.
So now we had a number of new letters for a clever acronym. S can be road salt, R is now rust, and I stands for icebox. And I can only call its limited mobility useless. Instead of an RBO, I was in possession of a USRI. A useless, salty, rusty icebox.
RBO sounds better, though. And this weekend it got its R back.
The guys at Auto Shop told me that I had a broken shifter-cabley thing, and that they could fix said shifter-cabley thing for just over $330. Father-In-Law said he could handle it for much cheaper. And he did. Fixed it in just a few hours. He's good at the car-fixing.
So now I'm driving a RSRI. I think. I could pronounce it "Rosary." But a rosary is a prayer, or an object that helps keep track of prayers. It's not an object that necessitates prayers. Owned by an atheist, no less.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
I'm It!
Sure, I drop my guard for ten minutes and Diana tags me. So now I have to actually think about my oddness and select five odd things about me.
1. I can do "the wave" with my eyebrows. It started with my dad, really. He could raise one eyebrow at a time (either one), and he did it to great effect. When he wanted to let me know that the thing that I just said was out of line, up went an eyebrow. The eyebrows had power, and I wanted that power. So I worked at it until I was just as good. Almost. I'll never have the authoritative demeanor my dad had.
Anyway, in the mid-eighties I saw a movie called Once Bitten starring Jim Carrey. In one scene he's goofing around in a department store and he pops up from behind a rack of shirts and does the wave with his eyebrows. I said, "I have to do that." So I worked until I got it right. I can do it in either direction, but right-to-left is easier than left-to-right.
2. Sometimes I'll start breathing in time with music. It happens without me realizing it, and then all of a sudden I'm getting light-headed because I've been breathing sixteenth notes for a whole heavy metal song. It can get irritating.
3. The weekend after I left boot camp I slept 69 out of 72 hours. I don't remember what I did with the other three hours, but I didn't eat all weekend. I just slept.
4. If I notice that I've touched my fingertip to my thumb I have to do the same with the same finger on the other hand. Then I have to do all of the fingers on both hands in synchronicity. This can lead to hours of finger-thumb touching sequences. The same happens if I blink one eye and not the other. I have to do both sides an even number of times, which means I have to blink the other eye (I suppose that's a wink, isn't it?), then both, then each in the opposite order from before, and then both again. If I'm feeling really obsessive I'll do the whole thing in reverse after that. This can go on for a long time.
5. I'm afraid of heights, but not afraid of falling. I'm afraid that I'll be overcome by curiosity about what it feels like to fall and I'll jump on an impulse, only to realize a second too late how dumb that is.
Now that I've done that much damage to my public persona, I'm gonna tag me some people. How about Michele, Mike, Sean, and Matt. Ha!
1. I can do "the wave" with my eyebrows. It started with my dad, really. He could raise one eyebrow at a time (either one), and he did it to great effect. When he wanted to let me know that the thing that I just said was out of line, up went an eyebrow. The eyebrows had power, and I wanted that power. So I worked at it until I was just as good. Almost. I'll never have the authoritative demeanor my dad had.
Anyway, in the mid-eighties I saw a movie called Once Bitten starring Jim Carrey. In one scene he's goofing around in a department store and he pops up from behind a rack of shirts and does the wave with his eyebrows. I said, "I have to do that." So I worked until I got it right. I can do it in either direction, but right-to-left is easier than left-to-right.
2. Sometimes I'll start breathing in time with music. It happens without me realizing it, and then all of a sudden I'm getting light-headed because I've been breathing sixteenth notes for a whole heavy metal song. It can get irritating.
3. The weekend after I left boot camp I slept 69 out of 72 hours. I don't remember what I did with the other three hours, but I didn't eat all weekend. I just slept.
4. If I notice that I've touched my fingertip to my thumb I have to do the same with the same finger on the other hand. Then I have to do all of the fingers on both hands in synchronicity. This can lead to hours of finger-thumb touching sequences. The same happens if I blink one eye and not the other. I have to do both sides an even number of times, which means I have to blink the other eye (I suppose that's a wink, isn't it?), then both, then each in the opposite order from before, and then both again. If I'm feeling really obsessive I'll do the whole thing in reverse after that. This can go on for a long time.
5. I'm afraid of heights, but not afraid of falling. I'm afraid that I'll be overcome by curiosity about what it feels like to fall and I'll jump on an impulse, only to realize a second too late how dumb that is.
Now that I've done that much damage to my public persona, I'm gonna tag me some people. How about Michele, Mike, Sean, and Matt. Ha!
Sunday, February 11, 2007
My Kingdom for a Horseless Carriage That Works
Yesterday started pretty well. I slept in, drank a lot of coffee, wrote a few pages on the screenplay—all before noon. We had a few errands to run, but nothing major. I could get back home and write some more, watch a movie, get a good night’s sleep. Everything looked good.
Until the RBO decided to break again.
We stopped at Noodles & Company for lunch, and our last errand was a visit to Half Price Books. I had a box full of books I wanted to sell and needed to reload my reading list. We never got there.
When we left Noodles I started the RBO, let it warm up for a few seconds. I try to treat it gently, since I know it’s decrepit and liable to disintegrate at any moment. After the engine sounded comfortable I put the car in reverse—and the shift lever thunked and flopped loose in the console. It wouldn’t move side-to-side, but wobbled front-to-back without any resistance. My car was permanently in reverse. Like my luck.
“I can’t take any more,” I said. I couldn’t even muster up anger or frustration. We have three months until Michele graduates, twelve weeks before we’re secure enough that we can deal with this kind of thing as just another obligation. If the car lasted ninety more days, we could happily wave goodbye as the junk-man hauled it away. We could throw a retirement party for it to match the one my mom had last week. But no. It has to shit the bed during the coldest stretch of the winter (again), and add to the accumulating tension of waiting for grad schools to decide our future.
Where’s the nearest dynamite store?
Anyway, Michele made a call, and Future Brother-In-Law came to the rescue. We gathered our box of books from the back seat and he drove us home, where we were going to get into Michele’s car and finish our errands.
FBIL dropped us off in the parking ramp, we waved goodbye and got into the other car.
It wouldn’t start. The battery was dead.
So a little later the FIL/MIL rescue team showed up. FIL and I went to push the RBO to a car-fixin’ place a couple of blocks from where it died. We did a little low-speed bumper cars thing along the back roads, FIL easing his truck up to the back bumper of the RBO and pushing while I sat in the zombie car and steered.
So we got the car to its destination, I locked it and dropped the keys into the little slot in the door. And realized I’d just locked my hat and gloves in my car. That’s okay, though. The temperature had to be at least zero.
The good news is that we were able to jump Michele’s car to life. Now I can drive that to work for the next couple of days while we wait to find out if the RBO’s worth the cost of fixing it.
I’m back to being tempted by the idea of living in a cave. No phones, no lights, no motor cars—not a single luxury.
Until the RBO decided to break again.
We stopped at Noodles & Company for lunch, and our last errand was a visit to Half Price Books. I had a box full of books I wanted to sell and needed to reload my reading list. We never got there.
When we left Noodles I started the RBO, let it warm up for a few seconds. I try to treat it gently, since I know it’s decrepit and liable to disintegrate at any moment. After the engine sounded comfortable I put the car in reverse—and the shift lever thunked and flopped loose in the console. It wouldn’t move side-to-side, but wobbled front-to-back without any resistance. My car was permanently in reverse. Like my luck.
“I can’t take any more,” I said. I couldn’t even muster up anger or frustration. We have three months until Michele graduates, twelve weeks before we’re secure enough that we can deal with this kind of thing as just another obligation. If the car lasted ninety more days, we could happily wave goodbye as the junk-man hauled it away. We could throw a retirement party for it to match the one my mom had last week. But no. It has to shit the bed during the coldest stretch of the winter (again), and add to the accumulating tension of waiting for grad schools to decide our future.
Where’s the nearest dynamite store?
Anyway, Michele made a call, and Future Brother-In-Law came to the rescue. We gathered our box of books from the back seat and he drove us home, where we were going to get into Michele’s car and finish our errands.
FBIL dropped us off in the parking ramp, we waved goodbye and got into the other car.
It wouldn’t start. The battery was dead.
So a little later the FIL/MIL rescue team showed up. FIL and I went to push the RBO to a car-fixin’ place a couple of blocks from where it died. We did a little low-speed bumper cars thing along the back roads, FIL easing his truck up to the back bumper of the RBO and pushing while I sat in the zombie car and steered.
So we got the car to its destination, I locked it and dropped the keys into the little slot in the door. And realized I’d just locked my hat and gloves in my car. That’s okay, though. The temperature had to be at least zero.
The good news is that we were able to jump Michele’s car to life. Now I can drive that to work for the next couple of days while we wait to find out if the RBO’s worth the cost of fixing it.
I’m back to being tempted by the idea of living in a cave. No phones, no lights, no motor cars—not a single luxury.
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Bullsh*t
I worked late last night. It was 11:30 before I got home, and I'd been delirious long before that. At one point, while I was at Book Store, I walked past a shelf and saw this book leering at me:
I know there are women (and probably some men) who would read that and say "Tell 'em, sister!" Or maybe "sistah!" (I don't know if that's cross-cultural yet.) And I don't have a problem with feminists in general (though they are fun to get wound up), but this stuck in my craw. I started talking to myself. I had an entire dialogue in my head that turned into a political platform. Then the platform was dismantled and the materials were used to build housing for all the personalities stuck in my head.
Anyway, since I was in such a grand humor my first thought was: "Sure, sh*t would get done. Jack sh*t. Zip-sh*t." See, at this point, my mind was just playing with the language. I love a pun, and the opportunity to insert a word or twist one to reverse the meaning is just one step off that. It really tickles me. I was tickled.
My next mental step was a riff on the idea of the title, and my brain produced: "You can't get your sh*t together enough to take control, so why are you so optimistic about your chances of exercising power on the off-chance someone hands it to you?" This was clearly more confrontational, but since it was my mind confronting my mind, the conflict wasn't that intense.
Then I realized all my thoughts had asterisks* in them, and I shook those out. That shit was irritating.
What bugged me about the book was this: whatever idiot decided on that title probably doesn't dislike men--probably doesn't even consider men incapable of problem-solving. She (and I'm sure it was a she) probably thought the title was humorous and provocative, and that was enough to sway all the "You tell 'em, sistah!" thought-bots. She probably thought this would enhance the sale of the book, because controversy sells--just look at Ann "Satan's Enema" Coulter. But she couldn't possibly think that there are problems men can't solve, can she? Because if she thinks gender is a barrier that certain abilities can't pass, then she's just the other side of the coin from those who thought when women used their brains their uteruses dried up. Problems are solved by minds--not chromosomes.
I think she's just exploiting legitimate debate, and destructively arousing knee-jerk reactions like the one I had while I was zombie-walking through my late shift.
That pisses me off.
That's bullshit.
*I discovered, through an exploration of Wikipedia, that since the figure on the cover of the book has eight points it's considered an Arabic star and not an asterisk**. I like to learn things.
**When I was a kid I called these "asterixes." I still have trouble with that.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
It's Been a Hell of a Week
I haven't posted in a while, but that's only because there isn't much to say. Life has been bumping along pretty monotonously since the holidays wound down, which is mostly a good thing. I'm only working about 55 hours a week now, so I get a little more time to write than I'd had while Book Store was blazingly busy. Just a few things are worthy of mention:
1. It's cold. According to Michele's perusal of the internet this morning, it was -13. With wind chill? -34. I'm not one who generally takes note of the temperature, because it just doesn't impact what I do or how I do it, but this is crazy. The air, without movement, makes my cheeks sting. My eyes continue to water ten minutes after I've gotten inside. Days like this make me hope Michele gets a letter of acceptance from the University of Texas at Austin. And fast.
2. I'm a loser. American Zoetrope announced the winner of their screenplay contest, and it wasn't me. They also listed the top ten runners up. No me. The semifinalists and quarterfinalists included about a million names. But not mine. Lucky for me I have another screenplay in the works and it feels better than Running the Asylum did as I wrote it. It's more cinematic, funnier, and more commercial. I hate thinking of that as a benefit, but screenwriting is as much business as art. Maybe more.
3. I was sick. Yesterday I only lasted two hours at work before I had to go home, green and gasping with nausea. Just the day before we'd been exposed to others with the same bug, but I didn't worry--I never get that stuff. I have a stomach of iron. If either of us gets something, it's usually Michele. No consolation when I was facedown in the throne yesterday doing the technicolor yawn.
4. I'm interviewing. I sent my resume off to an online university, and while they're not hiring right now, they want to put my materials on file for future possibilities. I identified about ten courses they list that I'd be qualified to teach and they agree on four of them, so they sent me an e-mail interview. It feels weird interviewing without seeing the interviewer, for a job at which I may never see my supervisor or my students. Complete disconnect. But I have no way to predict our direction for the next six months or so, and I really want to teach. This might be the only way.
Hopefully we start hearing from grad schools soon. That will help a lot. This limbo crap sucks. On the bright side--I'm writing pretty well now, though I have creative ADD. I spend a week on my short story, then completely fail in the AZ contest and hit the screenplay hard. I should be taking some sort of drugs, I think. Prozac or Zoloft or crack*. Something.
*I am, of course, kidding. I would never take Zoloft.
1. It's cold. According to Michele's perusal of the internet this morning, it was -13. With wind chill? -34. I'm not one who generally takes note of the temperature, because it just doesn't impact what I do or how I do it, but this is crazy. The air, without movement, makes my cheeks sting. My eyes continue to water ten minutes after I've gotten inside. Days like this make me hope Michele gets a letter of acceptance from the University of Texas at Austin. And fast.
2. I'm a loser. American Zoetrope announced the winner of their screenplay contest, and it wasn't me. They also listed the top ten runners up. No me. The semifinalists and quarterfinalists included about a million names. But not mine. Lucky for me I have another screenplay in the works and it feels better than Running the Asylum did as I wrote it. It's more cinematic, funnier, and more commercial. I hate thinking of that as a benefit, but screenwriting is as much business as art. Maybe more.
3. I was sick. Yesterday I only lasted two hours at work before I had to go home, green and gasping with nausea. Just the day before we'd been exposed to others with the same bug, but I didn't worry--I never get that stuff. I have a stomach of iron. If either of us gets something, it's usually Michele. No consolation when I was facedown in the throne yesterday doing the technicolor yawn.
4. I'm interviewing. I sent my resume off to an online university, and while they're not hiring right now, they want to put my materials on file for future possibilities. I identified about ten courses they list that I'd be qualified to teach and they agree on four of them, so they sent me an e-mail interview. It feels weird interviewing without seeing the interviewer, for a job at which I may never see my supervisor or my students. Complete disconnect. But I have no way to predict our direction for the next six months or so, and I really want to teach. This might be the only way.
Hopefully we start hearing from grad schools soon. That will help a lot. This limbo crap sucks. On the bright side--I'm writing pretty well now, though I have creative ADD. I spend a week on my short story, then completely fail in the AZ contest and hit the screenplay hard. I should be taking some sort of drugs, I think. Prozac or Zoloft or crack*. Something.
*I am, of course, kidding. I would never take Zoloft.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
