November 2002 Archives
November 7, 2002
Disappointment
I gotta say the new Nirvana album bugs me. I don’t like a few of the song choices, but then again, it’s sort of supposed to be “greatest hits,” and technically, most of these were greatest hits. But there are better songs.
My main beef, though, is with the guy who decided to remaster the songs from the “Unplugged” session and make it sound like a studio recording, with all the “live” mistakes sucked out and no audience ambience (except for applause at the end and some that couldn’t be sucked out of the beginning). It was just kinda stupid.
The “new” song is interesting, though. When I first listened to it, I made the somewhat hasty judgement that it sounds more like a Radiohead song than it does like Nirvana, but when I listened to it again, I was wrong. I could make a horrible pun on either the Radiohead song title “I Might Be Wrong” or on the title of this Nirvana song, “You Know You’re Right,” but I won’t do that.
Posted by Stan on November 7, 2002 8:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
November 6, 2002
Explain Why Turning 21 Is Useless in 200 Words or Less or Possibly More
The strange thing about this week — and, for the record, my weeks start on Thursday and end on Wednesday night, so right now I’m about done — was that I had a birthday. Theoretically it was an important milestone. If we were still living in pre-Vietnam days, I’d be excited that my 21st birthday rather conveniently fell on the very first election day in which I would be legally allowed to participate. But we are living in a more contemporary society, so that exciting milestone came and went, and the excitement was decreased by the very simple fact that there was no election that year. Also, my birthday did not fall on a Tuesday that year.
Now, the most exciting claim I can stake as a result of this birthday is lower insurance premiums. And it’s kind of sad that I do genuinely find the prospect of lower insurance premiums exciting. Instead of being anally raped by a gorilla who periodically receives brain shocks, I will now be gently raped by a tender lover who will periodically nibble on my ear affectionately. I will wonder at that point how a tender lover who smells of lilac could possibly be cleaning out the rim of my anal canal like so many ear-bound Q-tips, and I will dismiss her as some form of hermaphrodite. Hopefully I won’t be wrong.
Posted by Stan on November 6, 2002 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
More on Fiction Writing
The best birthday present I got was from the two most irritating and horrible excuses for human beings I have ever met, both of whom happen to tag team me with torture on a weekly basis in Fiction Writing. But on Tuesday, they didn’t show up. Neither of them. I was so thrilled, I actually — dare I say it? — enjoyed a session of Fiction Writing. I didn’t really think those two were the dual sources of pain in the class, but the class environment improved so much in their absence, I guess I misjudged the power of their evil.
My sister got me “The Simpsons” Clue, which earns a close second place, tied with the ph@t c@$h I received from my grandparents.
In last place: the clothes my parents gave me. Granted, I like clothes. Granted, I need clothes because my jeans are shrinking (no, really, it’s the jeans), so it was a thoughtful and practical gift, but it’s not exactly the thing that makes you shout out, “Thank God I’m alive!” I was more hoping that I would receive one — if not both — of the Fiction Twins’ heads in a box. Of course, with my luck, the head would then take possession of my body and force me to do its bidding. But it’d be cool initially.
Posted by Stan on November 6, 2002 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
November 4, 2002
Prententiousness: Why ‘The Bluest Eye’ Is So Suck-assy
I wrote what’s below for my Fiction Writing class. Technically, it’s supposed to be a journal entry, but since I won’t keep a journal for that or any other class, I figured I may as well post it here, since it does concern issues I am thinking about…sort of.
I really don’t like The Bluest Eye. Granted, I’m only about 2/3rds of the way through it, so perhaps there’s some sort of grand occurrence in the last sixty pages of the book that will cause me to leap from my chair and exclaim, “This is the most brilliant book I have ever read in my entire life! Compared to it, anything else that has ever been printed on paper is nothing but crap!” Call me cynical, but I don’t foresee anything like that happening when I finish it.
I usually give a book or story a chance until I reach the halfway mark, unless it is an assignment. In that case, I force myself to muddle through, no matter how bad the book is. In this particular case, I’m sort of lucky. I’ve read books that are much, much, much, much worse than this. Anything Raymond Carver has ever written springs immediately to mind.
I had this daydream that we were in class, and my professor was talking to us about the book. She began telling me how much she loved and adored it, and I sort of rolled my eyes at the hilarity.
Finally, she asked me, “What do you think of it?”
“I really don’t like it,” I said.
“Really? You know it won the Nobel Prize for Literature?”
“Yeah,” I said, “I gleaned that from the large print on the cover that says ‘Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.’”
She nodded, smiling. “Yup, Nobel Prize winner — what have you done lately?”
To which I responded, “I shot the last creative writing teacher who forced me to read a shitty book because it won an award.”
Unfazed, she said, “Also, Oprah liked it.”
In the grand scheme of life, I haven’t really noticed a significant impact of this book on my writing. Usually when I read a book, it hits me in subtle ways that creep into my writing. Or sometimes I’ll come up with an idea that’s seemingly unrelated to the book, although I’m sure there’s some kind of deep subconscious relationship that my conscious mind doesn’t care to know about.
That’s not to say I haven’t been impacted in any way. I do sort of admire the strangely poetic imagery, like “mountain of flesh,” which gives me this sort of hideous mental picture on its own, but in the context of the book, it just makes think, “Oh right, she’s a big fat lady.” It’s a difference in writing styles. I enjoy the sort of absurdist, sci-fi, pop/geek culture references, so I would have written something like “Jabba the Hutt with feet.”
Or maybe not. Still, I’m sure the book is influencing me in subtle ways. I may see it tomorrow, I may see it in six weeks, but I’m sure I’ll see it some day. “Oh, I stole that phrase from The Bluest Eye. Oh, I came up with the idea for that really shitty poem from The Bluest Eye.” It happens quite often, even though there are no surface similarities. I can always tell what I’ve ripped off after I finish something. Also, I always seem to work a Craig T. Nelson joke into anything I write that’s longer than twenty pages. I don’t know what that’s about, but I certainly didn’t pick it up from The Bluest Eye.
“Pretentious” is really the word that keeps springing to mind when I try to identify why, exactly, I don’t like this book. It’s not poorly written, in its own way it’s actually quite interesting — but it’s trying way too hard to be good, it’s almost show-offy. It’s like Toni Morrison is saying, “Check this out.”
I’ve always hated people like that. When I was seven years old, I wanted to learn how to skateboard because, even at that tender age, I wanted to be a PUNK RAWKER. I could never quite do it, though, because I am completely incompetent when it comes to anything that requires agility and coordination. And, of course, as soon as I decided I wanted to skateboard, my neighbor across the street immediately ran out and got a skateboard.
I hated that son-of-a-bitch. Robert was his name. Of course, by the end of the day, he was able to actually skateboard, and I was still working on balancing while in motion. So he was showing off, shouting, “Hey, look what I can do! Check this out!”
So I beat the crap out of him. Problem solved.
Unfortunately, I can’t do that with Toni Morrison. I believe it was Jean-Luc Godard — though it might have been François Traffaut; I’m really too lazy to look it up — who famously wrote that the only way to criticize a film is to make a better one, and I think that philosophy can apply to any other art form. Perhaps the most influential impact The Bluest Eye will have on my writing is that I will tirelessly and constantly try to outdo what is done in that book, but I won’t do it in such a pretentious, show-offy way, so as not to get the crap beat out of me by an esteemed group of literary critics.
Posted by Stan on November 4, 2002 12:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | School Rants
November 3, 2002
All Caught Up
Well, officially, I’ve finished reading the worst novel ever written and I’m completely caught up in African history. In fact, I did something I used to do way back in the days of AP US History (goddamn Ms. Oppliger for being right) — I made up study guides with important people, dates, places, etc., and the reasons for their importance. So that’ll be nice to study with, because I’ve condensed a few hundred pages into ten pages in study guides.
And I got a response from Amazon — free game city. I ended up getting Grand Theft Auto 3 instead of THPS4 or FFX. FFX is only $40, and part of the promotion is that it has to be a $50 game…I’m not sure why, because it’d save them money in the long run to give me a $40 game for free instead of a $50 game. And I played THPS4 at my cousin’s house at that shitty party last weekend, and I have to say that while it’s a good THPS game, I’m just not that into it. Not into it enough to buy, anyway. The THPS kinda ran its course with me by the time I beat 3, and the nifty new features and levels in 4 aren’t really appealing enough for me to spend money on it. Yeah, yeah, I know — I wouldn’t be spending money on it, but I’d rather get a game that I already know I love than a game I already know I’m not gonna love.
And this concludes the interesting part of the weekend, which isn’t even interesting because I refuse to address the hilarity of important personal matters in so public a forum. I’m having an early-birthday dinner after the Bears game, and then I’m watching TV and going to bed.
Posted by Stan on November 3, 2002 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
November 2, 2002
I Need a T-Shirt that Says “YOU ARE LOOKING AT AN IDIOT”
I got my Juliana Hatfield t-shirt today, so now I can be the envy of my friend.
Also, I got some ph@t birthday c@$h today and decided to make some f00lish impulse purchases — a Sony Playstation 2 with Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Kingdom Hearts.
And then all my friends on 8bop reminded me that Amazon.com is having a deal this week — buy two PS2 games, get one free. And I forgot about it and didn’t take advantage of the deal, and since my order went into shipping almost immediately, I didn’t have a chance to cancel or add anything to it. So now I’m fucked up the goat ass.
I fired off a politely worded e-mail to Amazon, explaining the nature of their promotion and the nature of my predicament. Hopefully they’ll let me slide with an extra game (I’m thinking Tony Hawk 4 or FFX…but I haven’t decided yet), but I’m thinking they’re gonna e-mail me back and be like, “Jesus, you’re a goddamn idiot. Get a fucking life. Here, we’ll cancel your order and use the money to send you a plane ticket as far away from Loserville as $314.94 can take you.”
And then I’ll have to retort, “Hey, just because my life is a trainwreck of failure and wasted lies” — and, yes, I stole that line from Something Awful — “doesn’t mean you have the right to mock me. I mean, just because I have no friends and am too unstable to actually stay in a relationship for more than 15 minutes, and ironically I found a girl who is exactly the same way, so we’re having fun not actually having a relationship — where do you get off? Just because I love video games and movies and TV and books because I’m too unmotivated/cheap/fat to actually leave the house without being dragged by a young lady who looks like Snow White from hell, is that any reason for you to insult me and deprive me of the free game I so achingly desire?”
To which they will respond, “Yes.”
And I’ll have absolutely no comeback.
Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.
Posted by Stan on November 2, 2002 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
Of Poetry and Kings…or Something…
I hacked out a poem today. It’s the first of my attempts to simply destroy every person in my Fiction Writing class, one by one, and make them all hate me. I envision the final for that class consisting of them chasing me through Grant Park with pitch-forks and torches, and whoever gets a clean kill gets an A.
Here’s the backstory: there’s a kid in the class. He seems like a nice guy. He’s a theatre/acting major, African-American, and pretty gay. He’s open about it — in fact, all of his work revolves around it. He writes these elaborate, terrible poems about what it’s like to come out of the closet — how everybody turns their back on you, or, even worse, beats you to a bloody pulp. His protagonist is always sort of staring at a full moon, picking scabs from his most recent beating, and waxing nostalgiac for a time when he wasn’t so oppressed.
So I wrote a horribly offensive, outright mean counterpoint to that (which I may put on the blog, but I’ll probably forget) style and subject matter. Basically, it concerns the most popular guy in school — varsity athlete, captain of the football team, homecoming king, full scholarship to Harvard, valedictorian, a new date every night — you know the kinda fictional guy I mean. He’s a big deal, and all the girls love him, but the one day, he comes out of the closet and tells everybody — parents, friends, teachers, coaches — that he’s gay.
It’s built up in this sort of first-person monologue where he wonders about how badly it will go, but he has to do it because he doesn’t want to live a lie any longer. Blah, blah — I made that about as cliché-ridden as I could. And then, in the second half, he comes out of the closet…and nobody cares. His parents are supportive, his teachers and coaches couldn’t give a rat’s ass, his friends mostly knew, and the girls begin to reevaluate his “performance” and decide that he’s better off gay.
I’m not sure what’ll happen with this. Of course, it amuses me, but then again, the “turtle turtle” thing from Master of Disguise makes me laugh out loud. I think I may be crossing one of those lines that is invisible until crossed, and then suddenly and irreversibly, you are on the other side of that line. Frankly, I’m hoping that line is there. I want to cross it — it’s the main goal of writing this stupid thing. And I plan to continue doing this as the weeks progress, picking out a student each week (or maybe I’ll double up, since the semester will end before I get through all of them) and just ape their style and subject matter to ruin their lives.
Posted by Stan on November 2, 2002 2:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
November 1, 2002
Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Nader — No, Really!
I’m reading this article right now that sort of put things in a perspective I never really thought about. Basically, it’s about Bush and what a big fucking liar he is (and a bad, incompetent one at that), but people buy what he’s saying like the gospel truth. It also points out how, essentially, he was elected on the idea that he would restore truth and honor to the White House. I mean, he didn’t have a whole lot of government experience, he’s a total idiot, and his father was part of a few executive administrations that basically shot our economy into the toilet and unemployment into the stratosphere.
So now we elect Bush, the plainspoken hayseed who ran some oil companies into the ground before becoming the governor of execution in Texas and, eventually, the grossly unqualified leader of the free world. Bad move, America. The day that the 2000 election debacle was finally settled at Bush was declared the winner was the day I finally conceded that Canadians really are smarter than we are.
And he’s started lying. He’s not lying about relatively minor things like blowjobs in the Oval Office…I mean, by Christ, if I was getting blowjobs from somebody like Monica Lewinsky, I’d probably lie about it, too. But that’s neither here nor there — the fact is, Clinton is a liar. And he took a lie and ran with it, which was stupid. But in the grand scheme of things, his lie wasn’t such a big one. And in my not-so-humble opinion, that lie did not call into question every other word he’s ever uttered in the history of the universe. Hell, everybody know he was a slicker-than-oil-shit liar. What tipped us off? The fact that he was a lawyer, or the fact that during his election he tried to make the honest claim that he tried to smoke marijuana, but couldn’t quite figure out how to inhale? Or maybe just the fact that he was a politician? I mean, come on people…
Aaaaaaaaaanyway, Bush is lying about big things. Very big things. He’s decided that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11th attacks, despite the fact that there is not one shred of evidence — not one, not even a little tiny sliver of toilet paper with the words “Hey Binny, knock down some buildings; your pal, S.H.” scrawled on it — to back up that bizarre assertion. Okay, I’m not running out and defending Saddam Hussein because he’s no peach himself, but that doesn’t make him responsible for the attacks.
And don’t give me that old “Maybe he knows things we don’t know” routine. He doesn’t know things we don’t know. Hell, he doesn’t even know what most of us glean from watching 30 seconds of CNN. He sounds informed in his rehearsed, pre-written speeches that are read from the teleprompter, but when he strays away from that, he comes out with things like, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me, uh, fool…uh, we can’t get fooled again!” No, seriously, he can’t even properly say one of the oldest clichés in modern English, and when he does botch it, he can’t pause, say, “Excuse me,” and start over because his pea-sized brain can’t handle the overhead.
Sixty-five percent of the people in this country are under the horribly misguided impression that Saddam Hussein was behind the September 11th attacks. This is something that was directly caused by Bush basically rattling off lies and assertions, but doing it in that clever Clinton way (thanks, no doubt, to his speechwriters and aides) so when he gets caught, he can get out of it without, you know, getting impeached. Okay, so maybe his writers are cleverer than Clinton…
And now we’ve got an economy that’s sagging to a point unmatched since — when? 1989? When somebody named George Bush Sr. was the President of the United States? Right…so how do we solve this economic crisis? Here’s a brilliant solution: ignore it and hone in on things like destroying Saddam Hussein’s stranglehold on…uh…nothing, and then continue to shout, “Whoo! Let’s spend some more money! Whoo! Whoo!” And sink our national debt into the quadrillions.
That’s what-doo economics? Anybody? Anybody? Voodoo economics.
Posted by Stan on November 1, 2002 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
November 30, 2002
Invasion of the Pretentious Art Film
I watched Jane Campion’s The Piano last night. I was supposed to watch it Monday in Aesthetics, but as usual, I ditched out early and rented the movie to watch over the weekend. It’s a bad movie. A very bad movie. It won all sorts of acclaim and popularity, despite being an indie flick that on the surface doesn’t seem entirely accessible to a wide audience (or, for that matter, any audience). But I know why.
As I watched the movie, I kept thinking of a line from The Simpsons: “Um, excuse me…proactive and paradigm? Aren’t these just buzzwords that dumb people use to sound important?” With a few minor alterations, that sentence can be applied to The Piano: it’s an “art film” that dumb people enjoy (or claim to enjoy) to seem important. Ooh, I’m well-rounded because I saw an art film last night.
Well, I got news for the dumb people. Monochrome cinematography and Harvey Keitel’s penis do not an art film make. Here’s my main problem with it: its unbearable use of symbolism. Symbolic imagery or devices don’t bother me in general. They bother me when they are so obvious, they aren’t even symbols anymore. The piano. Gee, I wonder what that’s supposed to imply. I mean, all of the symbols and moments of foreshadowing are so cheesily obvious that anybody with an IQ over 40 slaps his head and thinks, “Why am I wasting my time with this?”
I cringed at the end when they knock the piano off the boat, but her foot gets caught in the rope and she’s pulled underwater. And then, after letting it drag her down, she finally struggles to break free of the rope and gets back to the surface. IS THAT A METAPHOR? I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEXITY OF THIS COMPLEX FILM. I think this was supposed to be some sort of epiphany moment, and I guess it was, for I had an epiphany: this movie sucks.
It did have a couple of redeeming qualities. Harvey Keitel’s penis is not one of them. I don’t want that statement to sound all homophobic — it’s just that, if given a choice of any male actor who I’d like to see fully nude, Harvey Keitel would not be anywhere near my list of candidates. In fact, his name would be somewhere in an alternate dimension where fish live in the sky and women wear underwear on their head.
Sorry, got a little sidetracked. Among the redeeming qualities: Anna Paquin’s performance, and the music. Her performance won a much-deserved Oscar. It’s kind of surprising that somebody so young could so thoroughly get what her purpose in the film was. It’s also amazing that with a pretty decent cast, she managed to out-act everybody at such a young age. But, hey, she’s no Hermione.
The music was also very good. A lot of interesting, wacky stuff, most of it on the piano. I never really dug the piano until I started listening to Dinu Lipatti, and now I have sort of a bizarre appreciation for it as an instrument. But the score itself is amazingly complex — there doesn’t really seem to be any rhyme or reason to any of the musical progressions, but yet it all somehow adds up.
As for the rest of it — shit. Full of symbols and metaphors that a four-year-old on acid would comprehend with no problem. And all I really have to say was that I guess it was good that I didn’t stay and watch it in class. My Aesthetics professor — who, despite being a verbose lunatic, usually has pretty good taste in movies — was insisting that this film was one of the great triumphs of the past two decades, and he made us all promise that when we discussed it afterward, nobody would say anything negative about it. Kind of a strange promise to make, but I wouldn’t have been able to keep it.
My rating: * 1/2 (out of 4)
Posted by Stan on November 30, 2002 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Reviews
November 29, 2002
Slayerfest ‘02
I watched fourteen hours of Buffy yesterday, including the obscenely depressing “The Body” (in which Buffy’s mother dies and the entire gang is forced to deal with that) and the less depressing “The Gift” (Buffy sacrifices herself to save the universe and Dawn, which is depressing in an heroic way), and that was fun even though they didn’t play my favorite episode (“Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” — the one where Xander does a spell to get Cordelia to love him, but it backfires and causes everyone except Cordelia to love him — it’s absolutely hilarious). The day flew by quickly. It also reminded me of how much I miss Cordelia in the Scooby gang (though she’s fun on Angel).
But the thing is, during this fourteen-hour slayerfest, they showed one commercial during literally every break. This Kia Spectra commercial. You probably know the one I’m talking about. It’s got this shitty new-wave sample playing, and there’s this obscenely cute girl and her dog, and she goes through a bunch of different boyfriends, but the only thing that stays the same is her car and the dog, because there’s something wrong with all the boyfriends. Over the fourteen hours, I managed to develop a major crush on this girl. And that is kind of depressing. But still, she’s sooooo cute.
Posted by Stan on November 29, 2002 7:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
November 27, 2002
The Best Word to Sum Up My Week: “Hrm”
I ran into an old friend today. It’s weird that I think of her as an old friend, when I only met and befriended her last spring. I guess not talking for an entire summer and only seeing each other on occasions where the only thing to do was nod and continue walking will make a friendship seem more weathered than it actually is.
She was on the same train as I was on the way to school, believe it or not. She was with a friend who was cute, but she didn’t introduce me, and I was not nearly forthright enough to introduce myself. We shot the shit on the way to class, and it was just like old times. It made me wonder why, after our class ended, we simply lost contact. But that happens pretty much every semester with me. I’ll become roughly best friends with someone in class, and we’ll hang out and shit all the time, before class, after class, whenever. And then the semester ends, and I rarely see them. And, for some reason, we rarely exchange e-mail addresses or AIM info, even during the course of the semester. And we never call after the semester ends. Occasionally I’ll see people, and we may talk for a minute or two, but it’s nothing.
Of course, it’s not like I’m trying really hard to stay in touch. As close as we become during a semester, I still generally think of these people as casual acquaintances who I see in class and never again. That’s a mental block that I just can’t get past. I’m not sure why.
On an unrelated topic, Lucy has started calling my father’s cell phone looking for me. I called her from his phone once, and apparently she put it in her address book, even though I specifically told her at the time that it was my dad’s phone and this would be a one-time thing. I guess she tried calling my old cell phone and found it disconnected. She doesn’t have the new number, and even though we’re on speaking terms again, I’d still prefer it if she just thinks I don’t have a cell phone anymore. I don’t want her calling it all the time like she used to. Even when I liked her, it annoyed the piss out of me.
Of course, now she’s doing that to my dad, and that puts me in some hot water because (1) they don’t know we’ve resumed speaking to each other and (2) she shouldn’t know my dad’s cell phone number. That was an accidental thing, and I hope she just stops calling that number. I’d rather have her calling me at home than on a phone that spends most of its time in my dad’s pocket.
I screwed that up. Hopefully my parents won’t put two and two together if they decide to interrogate me on how Lucy got the phone number. I borrowed my dad’s cell phone a total of once in my life — when I went to Iowa City to see Juliana. My dad let me use his phone because it had free long-distance, and he had one of those cigarette lighter adapters so the battery wouldn’t wear down. Unbeknownst to my parents, I was also planning to meet Lucy down there.
We had dinner and went to the concert together, but as far as my parents know, I spent the entire evening by myself. I had to call her from the road — from my dad’s cell phone, because I didn’t want her having my number, though in retrospect that seems like a stupid decision — so she wouldn’t do something horrible like call my house and leave a long-winded message to the effect of, “Gee, where are you? I am waiting for you to arrive here in Iowa City. I hope you’re on the road.” Because my parents would have gotten that message, and that would have been bad. My parents are not big fans of Lucy, but they absolutely hate being lied to. It would have been safer to just admit that I was meeting her and take their crap for the next six weeks.
Ugh. Somebody told me that lies always come back to bite you in the ass — the bigger the lie, the bigger the bite. Suddenly I’m starting to buy that theory.
Posted by Stan on November 27, 2002 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
November 24, 2002
Fiduciosity
I overspent. Not the first time, but certainly the most irritating. I fell victim to one of my late-night compulsions to scour eBay for a deal, coupled with a sudden burst of late-night excitement about the film I’ve been trying to make for about six months and will probably not end up making at all.
When I try to fall asleep, I usually just keep myself awake thinking about future prospects; usually when that happens, they’re so depressing and full of self-loathing that I end up exhausted, but this was one of the few night when I’ve actually worked myself into a tizzy about this film. And I was mulling over all sorts of logistical problems that would be created by my current lighting system, which right now is pretty asstastic (more on that later). What I decided I needed was something more portable — something like the lighting kits at school.
So, at around 2:30, I leaped out of bed after trying to fall asleep for the better part of two hours, flipped on my computer, and started searching eBay for a deal on a lighting kit similar to — if not exactly like — the lighting kits we have at school. Basically, cheap lights that are decent for my purposes. They’re actually somewhat of an “industry standard” for low-budget films. And then I found a perfect deal — a used kit almost identical to the D.P. kits at school (the only difference is this one had two key/fill lights and an exclusive fill light, as opposed to the three key/fills in the Columbia kits), for the low low buy-it-now price of roughly $750, which is basically half price for this kit.
That’s a deal. Last summer, before my sister convinced me to go the “cheaper” route, I scoured eBay for similar kits, but through ferocious bidding and excessive buy-it-now prices, the only “deals” I found would have cost me about as much as it would have to buy the kit new. I would have done that, knowing the value of this kit in comparison to other lighting attempts…but I didn’t have that kind of money at the time. Temp work had dried up (except for a whopping three-day assignment and a one-day sentence to hell, I didn’t temp the entire summer, and I’m currently employed by four different agencies in the area), and the job from Starbucks was in the distant future. So I was running low on cash, and I needed cheaper alternatives.
Enter the sister. With her bafflingly thorough knowledge of any and all lighting equipment and its usefulness in a variety of settings on the stage and screen, I was guided toward buying cheap but (theoretically) useful lighting equipment. Mostly, she said, because of the 3CCD chips in DV cams that don’t require buckets full of light to come out properly exposed, I could pretty much fudge decent lighting through DJ equipment. So I scoured eBay, as usual, looking for deals on par cans and accessories.
As it turned out, in order to get the par 64s to work properly, I needed to invest several buckets o’ money into them. The base units came as basically a shell of a light — no lamp fixture, no barn doors, not even a plug. Just the ground, hot, and neutral wires protruding from a black cable. I had to wire it myself, which I could do (but I hate it, so even now I haven’t gotten around to doing it), and the theory was to plug all of the lights into this doohickey from American DJ that carefully controlled the wattage distribution among each of the lights, so as to prevent blown fuses or tripped circuits. As it turned out, though, without some sort of mini-light board, that doohickey did not function.
So here’s what I ended up with: four light fixtures (with gel frames), three lamps, three standard stands, one backlight stand, three light switches (in metal boxes), and three extension cords. The thing that needs to be understood about the light stands — despite the claim that they were designed for par 64s, they are not. So I had to rig them — complete with safety cables around the light fixtures, as they were likely to fall at the slightest movement — so that they’d stay somewhat properly on the stands.
It’s a terrible set up, and it’s not specifically mobile. Not that there are many exciting action shots in this film that require mobile lights, but there are enough that it’s a necessity. And it’s just generally a good idea, in the grand scheme of things, to shell out some money for decent lights instead of spending hours fighting with the lights you have…I mean, whether it seems like it or not, I do want to get this film shot sometime before the end of the decade. So I, in a somewhat incoherent stupor that I would regret come morning, immediately leaped on the $750 buy-it-now so I could own a decent light kit and put the horror of the par 64s behind me.
It was only after that that I realized I don’t have any money. I’ve been burning money this semester like it’s going out of style. Part of it was grief, in a way. “Gee, your girlfriend broke up with you and you’ve got half a dozen birthday checks streaming in via the USPS? Why don’t you buy a Playstation and some games?” I bought a ridiculous amount of stuff I don’t need this month. My AmEx bill was ridiculous — ~$650. The only thing in the list of charges that I actually flat-out needed were my textbooks. But considering the way this semester’s going, I’d debate the necessity of said textbooks. Hell, I didn’t even buy textbooks for two classes (and, fuck, it still cost me almost $200 in total), and those are the only two that I’m getting an A in right now.
But I got obsessive. I’d like to say it’s just the horrible aftermath of the relationship, but reviewing the charges, most of them occurred before that happened. I did splurge quite a bit after that happened — the Playstation 2 and games, as I mentioned, but also five script books from the greatest show in the history of humanity (i.e., Buffy), and all of the Juliana/Blake Babies CDs I didn’t have.
It’s not like I don’t have the money — I actually do — I just needed to not spend the $750 on a lighting kit right now. I should have saved it for next semester, because as of now, I’ve depleted all but $400 of savings. And while $400 will more than take me through the end of the semester if I just stop burning money, I’ve also got a car insurance premium to cover in December, and I have no idea if Christmas money will cover that. And there’s my cell phone bill (thank God I’m now using only about 30 of my 250 monthly minutes; at least I won’t have to worry about additional charges). And I owe my sister money for my parents’ Christmas gifts. And I need to get her a gift. And I really want to buy Bob Woodward’s new book, because everything he writes is gold. But there I go again, slipping into what I want to have as opposed to what I need.
I’ve got about two dozen textbooks to sell. Mostly, I’ve been too fucking lazy to sell them when they have their buy-back thing at the bookstore, but now I need the money, so I’m gonna dump them all off. I checked all of them but two, and they’re (fortunately) still the most current editions in print. That should bring me about $30. I’m also going to sell all of my current lighting rig on eBay. Usually that stuff sells like hotcakes, so I might be able to at least recoup the amount I wasted on it.
And then a friend of mine invited me to NYC in December. I’ve only been to New York once, but I was too young to remember it well. All I remember is that the Statue of Liberty is far less interesting from the inside. A week and a half ago, I could have gone with a clear conscience. As expensive as New York is, a weekend trip (…I think it was only supposed to be a weekend trip…) would have been at least slightly cheaper than this lighting kit. I’d hope so, anyway, but I’m going by Chicago prices. Just so long as we got our hotel in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and took a bus into Manhattan, we would’ve been fine.
Posted by Stan on November 24, 2002 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Money Troubles
November 20, 2002
More on Fiction Writing…and Some Other Stuff
I find it odd how all of a sudden I don’t hate Fiction Writing. I’m warming up to several of the students in the class, even the ones I initially despised (and still do, albeit to a lesser extent), the professor is becoming generally less irritating, and I actually almost dig the structure that I originally hated. Granted, the structure of the class — which, in simplest form, is designed to force a writing process on the students — doesn’t actually work, and I’d be much better off writing, reading, and/or discussing for four hours instead of playing shitty games. But as I get to know the others in my class, I sort of like the shitty games better. It’s more fun, I guess, when you know the people you’re playing with. Like, in geek terms, a LAN party for Unreal Tournament instead of finding some random open match online in the wee hours of the morning (in addition to knowing the people, you get a better framerate!).
I had a conference with my professor on Tuesday after class. I dreaded it all week, but when it came time for the conference, it wasn’t so bad. And she actually displayed an admirable respect for my work. That’s not me being cocky, necessarily — it just surprises me that, considering 90% of what I write for that class is either an insane rant or something incredibly sarcastic and offensive, she totally gets it. And she doesn’t mind my somewhat extreme opinions, even if they aren’t actually opinions that I really hold.
She also had me read through some of the work I turned in, and when I looked over it, I was kind of surprised by how good it actually is. Again, this is me being less arrogant than flat-out surprised. I wrote most of this stuff in the hour between taking a shower and leaving for class, and the writing is surprisingly clear and effective.
My strength is usually dialogue, but when I sat back and looked at the pieces in their entirety, I was kind of surprised by the quality of the “filler” I would insert to get to the next significant passage of dialogue. Not overwritten, but still with enough description of actions, gestures, and locations to really get the points across. I guess it surprises me that I can still do that when I haven’t honestly tried to write a short story that wasn’t just a lengthy joke in about five years. I’ve been putting all my eggs in the screenplay basket, and I sort of forgot about all those skills I have as a writer that generally go untapped as a screenwriter.
As a requirement of the format and the page limitations, in a spec script I have to be as sparse as possible with everything, including the dialogue. It all comes out sort of rigid and terse, but that’s necessary. In the event that I ever become established as a screenwriter or some type of filmmaker, I’ll basically have carte blanche to do whatever the fuck I want. But as a lowly wannabe sending out a steady stream of query letters to try and find an agent or a studio that’ll at least read one of my shitty screenplays (that’s another entry in itself), I need to play by the rules.
E.g., in my most recent Fiction Writing story, I wrote this passage: “He stood back, leering in the shadows, a habit from his early years at the job, before he requisitioned an invisibility belt (also black, and they only took 50% of the cost out of his salary) from St. Alexius. He saw the perfect group: five tourists strolling down 43rd. They had stopped at the corner, waiting for the light to change so they could cross. Five beautiful people: Grandpa, Grandma, Mom, Dad, and some little tyke. Every single one of them wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the hilarious slogan ‘IT’S A DRY HEAT,’ accompanied by an equally hilarious photo of a skeleton playing golf or a skeleton swimming in desert sand or something equally comical.” (Note: I did go to the trouble of looking up the patron saint of belt-makers, and it is St. Alexius.)
If I had written the exact same material in a screenplay, it would roughly translate as this: “He stands back and sees a group of FIVE TOURISTS stopped at the street corner, waiting for the light to change.” It’s just a tad different, and to be totally honest, now that I’m back and shaking my groove-thang, unrestrained by the confines of the screenwriting format, I’ve sort of turned on screenplays as a whole. They frustrate me. For a medium that is entirely visual, I find it ridiculous that the writer, the guy inventing everything that will be put on the screen is not allowed to include any more visual information than is absolutely necessary so as not to step on the toes of the director, producers, actors, costume designers, production designers, caterers, union teamsters, etc. It makes my skin crawl.
I can’t wait to get out to L.A.
Posted by Stan on November 20, 2002 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
November 19, 2002
Stop Making Sense
It’s fun how I can make people pissed off at me simply by doing things like, for example, existing.
Today I pissed Kelly off, and I don’t understand why. I believe she was mildly drunk, which might account for her baffling behavior. But I don’t know.
Apparently the root of the problem is that I started talking to an old friend, Lucy, from whom I was inseparable at one time or another. That’s changed somewhat…there’s been a rift between us for quite some time for many, many reasons that I shan’t go into because it’s inappropriate, but those of you reading probably know already, so there’s really no purpose anyway. And if you don’t know, you probably shouldn’t so fuck off.
I started talking to Lucy because, as a result of certain events highlighted earlier in this blog, I started feeling really, really depressed, and when I get like that, she’s the only one who has ever been able to make me feel better. And Lucy did make me feel better — I’ve felt great for the past few days, since I started talking to her again. I didn’t even go into the hoary details of my problems — just talking to her made me feel good.
But now, as a result of that, Kelly is pissed off and baffled. She talked to me tonight about it, but I was simply not in the mood to deal with it. I had a long day, I had just finished watching two extremely depressing episodes of Buffy (come on, she sacrificed Angel right when he got his soul back so she could save the world…if that doesn’t get you down, you’re a robot), and I really needed to concentrate on my homework. So Kelly got a whole bunch of shit off her chest during the course of about 30 seconds, while I was paying no attention to Instant Messenger, and I really had no legitimate response.
Kelly wanted me to stop talking to Lucy — she wanted me to talk to her instead. But I just can’t do that. I don’t trust Kelly. I’ve tried to, but I can’t, because invariably she tells everything to every single other living person within her immediate vicinity. And, thanks to the magic of the Internet, her immediate vicinity spans much further than the confines of Champaign-Urbana.
Believe it or not, I trust Lucy, this friend I haven’t talked to in months because — ironically — I lost my ability to trust her. She’s done absolutely nothing to regain my trust, and I have to tread lightly because chances are every word she says to me is a lie or at least some form of distorted truth…but I can handle that, and in the case of Lucy I can even understand it.
What bothers me is when I tell people things in confidence, and they spread them around to the other vultures, feeding on my misery in order to survive. Especially when revealing weaknesses and emotional problems and shit like that is invited by Kelly. It’s one thing to say, as an impossible for-instance, “Kelly, I’m pregnant,” completely out of the blue and not expect her to run out and tell everyone she meets. She shouldn’t. It’s not right. But if she did do it, I could understand that. Somebody just blabbed something to her, so she thinks it’s okay — even if I explicitly said it wasn’t — to blab it herself.
But when Kelly says, “Gee, what’s on your mind? You know you can talk to me about anything,” and then takes what you tell her, after she invites you to open up in the strictest of confidence, and blabs it to the world. They’re two totally different things. They’re both bad, but they’re different degrees of bad. One is bad in a stupid, forgivable way. The other is just malicious and evil.
At any rate, when she said that — “You can tell me anything” — I responded simply, “Okay.” I was less than enthusiastic, and despite the fact that she was reading streaming bits of electrons formed into visual information by these magical boxes we’ve all grown so accustomed to using, she could read my tone like a book. I guess she knows me better than I thought.
Kelly responded to this succinctly: “Okay, forget it.” Then she signed off before I could even attempt to get the last word. So now I’m in hot water…and why? Because I’m talking to somebody of whom she doesn’t approve? Last time I checked, she wasn’t my mother.
This whole thing of me not telling her what she apparently thinks is pertinent personal information has bugged her for a long time, ever since — way back when — I had a surgery performed on my eyes, and I never even told her about it. Meanwhile, I told Lucy all about it and even asked her opinion on whether or not she thought it would be beneficial. It eats Kelly’s ass that I talk about stuff like that with Lucy and not with her. Maybe it should. But until she stops treating my most private thoughts with the same amount of sanctity as used toilet paper, Kelly will know nothing.
It bothers me, and it sure as hell bothers her, but that’s the way it has to be.
Posted by Stan on November 19, 2002 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Friends: Can’t Live with ‘Em
November 17, 2002
Last Paycheck
I just got back from picking up my last paycheck/tips from Starbucks. What a depressing experience.
I really liked working there. I’m tentative to admit that, because (1) it’s Starbucks and (2) it’s a job, but I really did enjoy it. Fun, pleasant, and — believe it or not — hard-working co-workers; decent customers (the one I work at is smack dab in the middle of an industrial park…we mostly get — there, look, I’m still referring to it in the present tense — truckers and blue-collar businesspeople from the area, and what few yuppies we get are usually asking directions on how to get back to Wicker Park or Schaumburg); and it was pretty easy work. The drink recipes generally follow a very basic pattern, and once you have the pattern in your head, it’s almost impossible to screw it up. And eventually, you reach a point where you could make every single drink, one after another, in your sleep.
It also made me feel a sense of accomplishment that is generally lacking. I used to temp, but when I’d temp I’d do sloppy work, and I’d never know what the hell I was doing or interact with any of the people it affected, so there was no real sense of purpose. Just another corporate drone, only on a temporary basis. There’s a line in a very funny (if you’ve temped) film called Clockwatchers: “You can make as many mistakes as you want because usually by the time anybody catches it, you’ve moved on.” That sums up my temping experience. Also, another line: “I can sit here and do nothing as good as anybody.”
And, lazy and unambitious and lumpy as I am, I can’t stand doing nothing all day. Even the very basic nothingness of my existence, which essentially consists of playing video games, watching television/movies, doing Internet shit, and writing, leaves me more fulfilled than temping.
When I write, I accomplish something. I put something down on a blank sheet of paper (or, more accurately, Word document) that previously only existed in my head. When I watch TV or movies, believe it or not, I feel like I’ve done something with myself. I’ve learned something new about the human condition or manatees or I’ve been inspired to feel some sort of emotion, positive or negative. When I play video games — which I do a lot lately — I finish a level or a mission or a certain section of the story, and I feel like I’ve done something. It may not be cracking the human genome or solving world hunger, but it’s better than randomly typing in numbers to aid some bitchy middle-manager frustrated about her station in life and secretly paranoid about the not-so-secret affair she is having with a close co-worker.
Yeah, when you temp, you also find out all the inside gossip. Nobody cares about telling you things they wouldn’t tell permanent workers because you’ll be gone in two months. And chances are, you won’t even care. I never did care, but I always knew things. I like knowing things, whether I genuinely care about them or not. I also like gossiping. Or, as my father says, “exchanging information. Men do not gossip.”
So with temping leaving me feeling empty — and, more often than not, unemployed in this harsh economic climate — I decided to go retail. I figured the pay would be much, much less, but since I could do it during school, over time it’d even out. I was right — I was making assloads of money at Starbucks, thanks to the tips. But I reached a point where I could not work the hours anymore. I simply couldn’t balance school, work, a social life (yeah, a month ago I had one), and extracurriculars (also a month ago, I had those, too). And then she started shoving me on morning shifts before class. That was where I drew the line.
I told myself I’d never let the job become the top priority. It’s just a part-time job to make extra money, money I don’t even really need — it’s just nice to have. And as soon as it did — that is, as soon as I worked a 5-9 a.m. shift on a Monday and collapsed on my bed and slept for six hours instead of going to school — I quit. That was it.
And I feel bad about it. I feel guilty for giving no notice and leaving them in the lurch, but it was necessary. I liked a lot about the job, but at the same time there was a lot I disliked about it. I hated the fact that people would call my house almost nonstop on evenings and weekends, trying to convince me to switch shifts. I never particularly liked the manager or her policies. Occasionally, customers got on my nerves. I didn’t like how, because I was the guy, I was always the one who had to check the bathrooms and take out the garbage. And the hours were getting in the way of developing what turned out to be a doomed relationship. Not exactly stuff that’d make you quit, but eventually it adds up. Also, when it’s a luxury and not a necessity, quitting is an easy card to play when you get dealt a shitty hand.
Now that I got my last paycheck, part of me wants to say, “Fuck off, guys. I’m gone for good.” But another part of me wants to get down on my hands and knees and beg for my job back. I’m sort of stuck in the middle of that, and the outcome will probably be that I just never go back there. Too many good memories. Too many pleasant people. Walking in there tonight just made me sad.
Posted by Stan on November 17, 2002 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | “I’m a living joke!” - Horror Stories from the Workplace
November 15, 2002
The Hot-Ass Financial Chick Brigade
I can’t watch television news anymore. Not because of blandness or bias or anything like that — because the women (it’s always women) who do those financial reports are just too hot. They make my heart and my loins ache with desire, affecting me down in my most secret of places, and it’s just unacceptable.
But what I don’t understand is why news stations only employ the finest bevy of babes to do these financial reports. Actually, I understand it in the current economic climate — who better to soften the blow (no pun(s) intended) that basically your entire investment is worth 4¢ and a stick of DoubleMint gum than a fine-ass woman?
What about when the economy’s good? Well…I guess even that makes sense. It’s like celebrating good fortune, with some hot chick giving you the news. Like sailors coming back from WWII and going through the ticker-tape parades and just planting hot smootchies on whatever attractive woman is standing around. What better way to find out you’re wealthy than to have the news passed on by a girl whose face and body you would lick if it wasn’t standing on the floor of the NYSE?
Or maybe I’m the only one who’s attracted to them. I — usually — dig the smart women. The complete package: smart and hot. And, really, this is a lesson for the ladies who read my blog (you hear me, Jeff?): I only care about how smart and how physically attractive you are. Anything else is just extra. Sense of humor, ability to do mental math and/or fill out income tax forms, dominatrix fetishes…it’s like buying a Cadillac, but they throw in a free CD player. The Cadillac is fine on its own, but the CD player is the icing on the cake.
Was that a mixed metaphor?
Posted by Stan on November 15, 2002 9:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | Random Musings
November 14, 2002
Writing for TV
There’s a woman in my Writing for Television class who I can’t stand. She’s about 10 years older than the majority of us, and she just finished time in the military and is now going to Columbia College in Chicago’s beautiful South Loop. I’m not generally so fatalistic, but I get one person like this in at least one class every semester since I’ve started at Columbia, and I have reached the point where I believe that they are put on this planet for the sole purpose of ruining my life. They do a bang-up job, too.
But, man, I had the chance to make her eat shit and enjoy it. I love it when I get a chance to do that because, honestly, I’m kind of an asshole. And that’s kind of putting it mildly. Just ask women.
At any rate, this woman is rock stupid. But she’s the worst kind of rock stupid — she thinks she’s really smart. Not only that, but she thinks she’s really smart and she has a superiority complex because she’s older than all of us, so she’s wiser. Bullshit — she’s an idiot. Believe me.
For this class, we choose a sitcom currently in production and, over the course of a semester’s work, write an episode of the show. It’s pretty slow-paced in my opinion, but what can I do about that? (For the record, I chose to write for Scrubs, because we have to do a sitcom and it has to be in production, and Scrubs is my favorite of the few sitcoms I can tolerate. If I had to write for a sitcom, I’d rather write for NewsRadio, but it’s off the air, so I can’t. What I’d really like to do, though, is write an hour-long drama like The West Wing or Ed or Buffy — but it has to be a 30-minute sitcom. Goddammit.)
Anyway, this woman is writing for Frasier, and I, of course, noticed two problems with her choosing this show — (1) it’s a show with smart characters written by smarter people, and (2) she’s an idiot. But, hey, I’m not the professor. It is not my place to say, for example, “Hey, why don’t you write for — oh, I don’t know — Yes, Dear. It’s the worst show on television, and they employ that ‘shaved-ape’ writing style you possess.” I kinda wish it was, but it’s not. It almost makes me want to be a teacher of some kind, because I can just be mean. God, that’d be great.
But I digress…again. As part of our in-class dialogue exercise, we had to take two characters from our show and have them argue about what to have for dinner. When she read hers, she had Frasier rushing in and excitedly telling Marty about how he bumped into — no, seriously, this is what she said — “the composer of Mozart’s ‘The Magic Flute’ opera.”
I, for one, can understand Frasier being excited about bumping into such an esteemed composer, considering he’s been dead for 210 years (211 on December 5th!). Also, I know Marty’s not exactly big on the classics, but one would figure that after being married to his wife and hanging out with Frasier and Niles, he’d at least know that ‘The Magic Flute’ is an opera. He’s not a total idiot.
I wanted to point these things out with my patented glibness, but I refrained. I actually like this class, and the professor, and the other students (except for her), and when I’m in that position, I don’t generally like for people to think I’m a big asshole. At least, not until they get to know me. So I kept my mouth shut, mentally saying to myself, “Gee, maybe it was just a mistake on her part. Maybe she will realize she meant ‘conductor’ or even ‘contralto,’ and she’ll fix it.” But no such luck — she re-read the passage, and said “composer” again, and at that point I was about ready to put her in her place.
But, again, I didn’t. Sometimes I’m too nice. Personally, I blame the attractive girl who took a shine to me but who is also married. I hit on her constantly, even after I found out she was married (hey, she’s young, it was probably a mistake to get married anyway…who am I to rule her out?), and to my surprise, she flirts back. This probably has something to do with the mutual knowledge that it won’t go anywhere, but it still makes me feel warm and fuzzy and aroused.
If I had it to do over again, the woman would be toast. Sure, she could kick my ass, but fuck — I’m smarter than her. She’ll come after me, but I won’t fight back — I’ll get a bunch of pillows and build a fort. That’ll learn her.
Posted by Stan on November 14, 2002 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | School Rants
November 12, 2002
Teh Horrar… Teh Horrar
I wrote a new story for Fiction Writing. She told us to write a folk tale, and we discussed all the archetypes of folk tales and all that bullshit, and I came up with one that’s simply awful.
Essentially, a clean-cut, religious farmer’s son named Charlie decides to ask God if He can save his sister, who is very ill. God takes a pass on that issue, but He decides Charlie would be perfect for a quest. Did I mention that this all takes place in a biker bar? Did I also mention that God is portrayed as a foul-mouthed alcoholic pedophile whose position in the universe is the equivalent of middle management?
Charlie’s quest is to stop the Rapture, which is one of those things God thought sounded good at the time, but then He realized that maybe it’s bad in general. Charlie is reluctant to accept his fate, but when God gives him a nasty case of hemorrhoids and causes him to shit out a bloody map of the United States with small turds indicating his destinations, Charlie decides to hit the road.
Along the way, he meets Jesus (who has been condemned to running a diner in Wyoming after crashing God’s car), a talking manatee named Rance, and a transient named Philip. They finally piece together their true purpose — go to Los Angeles, find an Enchanted 7-Eleven, and defeat the Devil, who is just chilling out and waiting for the Rapture to start so he can unleash all sorts of demons from the underworld.
Jesus explains that a weapon will reveal itself to Charlie when they reach their final confrontation, and one does — a Slim Jim. In what is probably the ultimate deus ex machina of American fiction, Charlie snaps into a Slim Jim, makes the Devil explode, and then he, Jesus, Rance, and Philip ride off into the sunset to watch Must-See TV Thursday.
I had no particular goal in mind to offend anybody, although I imagine if there are any religious types in class (I don’t think there are), they might get a little irritated at my characterizations of, you know, things that they worship. I really just wanted to write the most fucked-up folk tale that I could. I think I succeeded, if only for the hemorrhoid/bloody shit map scene.
Posted by Stan on November 12, 2002 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Random Musings
November 10, 2002
My Brain Stinks
It’s weird how I keep thinking about things. Or, to rephrase that slightly so as to actually make sense, I am thinking about certain things that I haven’t thought of for a long time, but suddenly they keep rushing into my head. This is a recurring thing with me: when something bad happens that is pretty much entirely my fault, I start thinking about every single other bad thing that I can remember for which I have either been singularly or partially responsible. Trust me, that’s a lot of stuff — and that’s just the stuff I remember, which I’m sure is maybe 2% of the grand total of horrible chains of events that have been my fault.
Of course, in spite of all these random painful memories shooting through my brain, what I mainly think about is the badness at hand. There’s very little I can do about it now, at least for the time being, but my mind is constantly plagued with the things I could have and probably should have done differently to save that vague illusion of a relationship. Or even to improve upon it. I didn’t, though, and it’s too late to dwell. But dwell I shall, because it’s what I do.
I think it all boils down to a lack of commitment on both of our parts. She wasn’t ready for a mature relationship, and I guess I wasn’t either. I thought I was and that I was just playing along, waiting for her to be ready. But I was lying to myself. Also, I was harboring inappropriate — and perhaps misplaced — feelings for another person throughout pretty much the entire course of the relationship. In the beginning, I was using her as an escape from those reluctant feelings.
So I could have strained for more commitment. I could have been more serious about it. But it would have been selfish, and it would have been bullshit. And, goddammit, if I’m going to seek refuge in self-destruction, I’m not gonna bring her down with me. She didn’t deserve that.
Then the inappropriate lusting after someone I couldn’t have and really didn’t actually want dissipated because she moved to a different state and, as a result of a wide variety of indiscretions, we are no longer on speaking terms. After that, I tried to be more serious and more committed. And less paranoid. And it didn’t work. And she broke up with me. And I deserved it. And I know that.
But still…I don’t want it this way. I’m straining to say what I should have said to her, but I can’t say it now and I couldn’t say it then because I don’t even know whether or not it’s true. I’m an idiot. And I’m bad at relationships. And I have commitment problems. I’m like 95% of other guys on the planet. Fuck, I try to move on. I try to hit on girls who I think I’d be interested in. They’re always married. I don’t know how that happens — they look so young. And every time, I’m too fucking stupid to check for a ring before I start hitting on them.
I started working on my novel again. I do that every time things are going badly in the women department, so needless to say I work on it frequently. It’s also really bad. It has no focus, no direction — it’s a moebius strip of the written word. Doesn’t start, doesn’t end. Just words. Meaningless words.
Posted by Stan on November 10, 2002 11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | Fumbling Attempts at Relationships
