Everything Is Wrong With Me
Beer, for me, is my girlfriend. She’s safe. She takes care of you – fixes you dinner, is pleasant company in your free time, gives you regular sex. And you take care of her – take her to dinner, buy her presents, spend your money on her. Sure, once in a while things might get a little crazy and you’ll fuck on the kitchen floor or in a stairwell, but for the most part you know what you’re going to get: a nice, even time. You love her because you need her. That may not have always been the case, but it is now.

Whiskey, for me, is my whore. She’s nuts, and it’s precisely her insanity that drives you crazy. She’ll toy with your emotions, lulling you into a sense of security, before she’ll pull away from you entirely, make you look like a jerk in front of your friends, leave you lonely and confused. But you put up with her because when you have sex her body because a piston (a piston that spews forth the dirtiest words in the English language – or any other language, for that language). And because nothing cures boredom quite like danger.

Read more of Jason’s stuff.  And laugh, puppet monkeys! LAUGH!

• I’ve changed the title of the current script from 10 Equals 2 to Pentium Lad and… Chip? After proofing the short this morning, it just seems a little catchier. Don’t worry. Both are equally meaningless in the overall big picture.

  This script isn’t the real one, either. It’s kind of a throwaway, but there’s a scene in it that had some dialogue that I had to get out. No choice. None. Nada. Choiceless.

  Which, coincidentally, is the working title of script number two, hopefully to be written tonight.

• The glorious little bunnies are scanned from a book about Bunny Suicides. I came across it in a Barnes and Nobles once, and proceeded to laugh so hard that I peed a little.

  Okay, a lot. Yeah, right there in the store. And yes, it was a little embarrassing.

  But Jesus, man — Bunny Suicides!

• The vacation over the weekend was, in fact, to the north*west* part of a state, not the northeast. Oops. Geography was never my strong point.

  But I did get to meet CL’s mother, sister, and nephew. Meeting family for the first time is always a little unnerving — mostly because you never know how judgmental they are, and what their reaction to long hair and tattoos and earrings and such will be.

  Fortunately, I felt at home with them immediately. Her sister (who is our age) is a really sweet girl (and, dare I say it publicly – pretty hot, herself. Yay, good genetics!), and CL’s nephew is a ball of energy. I think that anyone looking for perpetual motion might do better to start looking at three year old children. A really nice, really relaxing (yeah, I know — what do I know from relaxing?) time. I look forward to visiting with them again sometime this fall.

• You may ask yourself — is that me? Really?

  Right now, my family is looking for where I hid the pod.

• Flying Spaghetti Monster: The Hatemail. Hilarity ensues.
• Finally, there’s a game coming out from Valve called Portal — and while I’ve by and large lost all interest in videogames (although I really need to finish X-Men: Legends 2 one of these days), the trailer makes it look to be incredbily worth playing. More puzzle than anything else….

“Much of my life has been a pilgrimage—constantly learning, changing, growing and maturing.”
–Rev. Billy Graham

Two things are certain in life: death and change (don’t give me that taxes crap; I’ve got friends and acquaintances that haven’t filed or paid in a decade [and yet have no qualms about bitching about how the government spends money]).

Personally, I think these are the exciting things, the entire point of getting out of bed in the morning.  Who wants a world of the same thing, day in, day out, utter predictability waiting around every corner?

Right.  Republicans.

I hope never to look back twenty — hell, one — years and think that nothing has changed in my world.  Especially to realize that I haven’t changed, that I’m the same person underneath the new gray hairs and the ever-increasing evidence of gravity. Obviously, I hope to find more balance and moderation (even in my balance and moderation) as the years pass, but even a shift to some extreme is better than stagnance.  Stagnation?  Staying put, either way.

It’s frightening to me to look around at some people and realize that, by and large, they are the same people that I met ten or twenty years ago.  It means that they haven’t grown, they haven’t learned, they haven’t moved.  Decades have passed, and they’re still right where they were.

Does anyone really imagine at 20 or even 40 that they’ve got it all figured out?

Is it possible they do?  Sure.  Likely?  Not.

I’m glad that there are constants in my life. Laws of physics, personalities traits, strengths, weaknesses, knowledge. But even those things might change without warning.

The best static element in my life is the group of people that I call friends: Wade, Kevin, Richard, Andrew, my parents and siblings, Neely, Jonas, Chance and Carlos and Eric and CL.  Even a great lengthy friendship may shift or dissipate while you blink (Daniel and I had fifteen years between us, as an example), but that’s part of the dynamics of life, isn’t it?

My Super Ex-Girlfriend: sadly, not so great.  Not even Eddie Izzard saved it.  Lack of chemistry all around, nothing really firing on all four cylinders.  Great concept, a few good laughs, and that’s about all.

Talladega Nights: everything that Anchorman was and more.  If you don’t laugh yourself sick watching this one, then (to paraphrase Ricky Bobby), fuck you. Worth putting up with redneck teenagers at midnight, even.
Out of here.  Three days away from the new home, the cat in heat, email, and life as I know it.  Just me, CL, and whatever awaits us in northeast other state. Posting as normal will resume post-vacation. But in the meantime, just remember:

Ten equals 2.

There’s nothing worse (at this exact moment, any way; get back to me in a few days when my vacation is over) than staring at the screen, two fully formed short scripts in your head, neither wanting to jump from brain to screen.

I’ve got until August 10th to get at least one (though there’s no reason not to finish both, as they are complete, at least in my head) done, in time for the Sidewalk Sidewrite contest.  And there’s a large part of me that is willing to wait until August 10th to start writing them.  But in the meantime, life continues to take steps forward, time passes by, new ideas are popping into my head, and nothing is getting accomplished.

I shouldn’t be as hard on myself about such things as I am.  After all, I’ve been largely consumed for the past month with moving and all that that task ensues.  And there’s been CL, whose company I enjoy immensely — enough so that I’m finally starting to slow down, for the first time in a long time.  Which is good, I think (and my body and brain agree, at that).

So in the meantime, I distract myself by talking about working, here, for all of you to see.  You lucky bastard(s).

Alright.  Time to force something out.

Finished.

That’s my version of an exclamation point, by the way.

Okay, not entirely finished.  I still need to finish changing my address in all the appropriate places (again), and there’s some piles of junk that I have to weed through, and two biggish boxes of garbage that need to go out.  Outside of that, though…

And so the vacation begins.  Hoo fucking rah. Or whatever.  I’m really too wiped out to be excited like I should be, and digesting a monstrously huge stuffed potato to boot. Tomorrow, more significant pontificating about remembering the future and other lightheaded ideas. Today, catching up on Netflix.

Wade sent me an article from Wired.com (Condemning Comic-Con Costumes) this morning with the subject “for a blog post.”

This, kids, is how we writers come up with our inspiration. Fuck a bunch of muses, or drug-induced bursts of spirituality, or even imagination. It’s pretty much friends mailing friends, saying, “Hey. Fucker. Write about this, or I’ll poke you in the eye with a really big sharp pencil.”

I stopped going to conventions a while back, around the same time that I got out of comics. Unfortunately, I started reading comics again (heroin, you ain’t shit next to four-color collectibles). Also, CL is a comic- and various-other-forms-of-geekery nerd; while this is endearing, and one of the biggest reasons that we got together in the first place (thanks, Warren and Joss), it also means that I might be going to Dragon*Con this year, to do a little reporting for my old friends at RevolutionSF.com and to see the sights. And said sights tend to include people in costumes.

I’ve got nothing against people in costumes, for the most part. These cons are one of the rare havens for people like me* to really relax and be comfortable in their utter and sort of sad detachment from reality. If they want to dress up like Darth Maul or a hobbit or Harry Potter, more power to them. Even more power to the girls who emulate Dark Phoenix or Witchblade or Leia’s bikini moment.

If your costume is a little shoddy, a little on the cheap side — who cares? Not everyone has money to spend on a weekend’s outfit, or access to special effects wizards or makeup artists. All that matters, really, is that they’re having fun. God knows the cons are so overpriced and often underwhelming that whatever you want to do to have fun should slide. Especially if you’re a hot girl who wants to dress like an anime schoolgirl.

Sjöberg makes some salient points — the lightsaber comment, for instance.  And the mask guys — why bother?  The only thing that I can think of here is that you’re stalking someone, and that’s not fun.  That’s barely funny, for that matter.

Oh, and — well, there’s really no nice way of saying that fat people and spandex just don’t mix.  Seriously.  There’s no humor here.  Just — look, there are plenty of characters that wear loose clothing.  Hagrid. Jabba the Hut.  Hell, show up as the Kingpin.  Or… just don’t wear spandex, okay?  It’s just wrong.  And maybe I’m wrong for being so blunt about it, but if my girlfriend can look like she does at 36, then you can break away from your eight hundredth rereading of Lord of the Rings or your Klingon lessons and get outside for a little exercise, yeah?

Sorry.  Rant off.

One last thing, though — this Sjöberg, as noted in his byline, is a Foley artist.  Cool.  He’s also a performance artist, which is another way of saying, “I have no room to talk about people that wear shoddy costumes to conventions, because performance art is synonymous with pretentious time wasting.” So all you kids with tin foil Wolverine claws — keep on raiding mom’s kitchen for those supplies.  You’re no worse off than a performance artist in the long run.

* Oh, who am I kidding?  I’m a nerd, sure, but I look like James Dean and Elvis and Frank Sinatra in his heyday, all rolled together and then multiplied by ten, in a roomful of comic conventioneers.  My week at San Diego was one of the most hellish times of my life, when I learned the importance of daily showers and appreciation for every woman in my life, past and future.  

In a major crossover move, rock superstar Eddie Van Halen has joined forces with adult director Michael Ninn to write and perform two songs for the upcoming Ninn Worx feature, Sacred Sin. Although several big-name rappers have contributed material to XXX movies, Van Halen is probably the first major rock star to lend his name to an adult project.

Van Halen told AVN.com he’s not bothered by possible criticism. “I’m working with a friend — very simple. I like his work,” he said. “Michael Ninn is like a Spielberg to me: the imagery, the way he makes things look, just… sensual.”

AVN :: Articles – Rocker Eddie Van Halen Collaborates with Michael Ninn in Sacred Sin

[Even more disturbing is the teaser trailer for the movie.]

Finally, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in this move.  Or maybe I should say that I’m finally starting to see bare walls and bits of what may or may not be the floor in my soon-to-be old apartment…

Moving like I do has its ups and downs.  I like to take a week or so to move, making a trip or two a day to get things from one place to the next. It’s much less tiring, and I can recycle boxes, as I go.  This keeps me unpacked as I go, and doesn’t give me the chance to let things pile up in towering stacks of boxes in the new place.  On the flip side, it means that my stuff is in two different places for up to a week.

It’s a balancing game, really.

Moving the cats is always fun, too.  I forget how much they hate getting in a moving car, how much more rapidly they tend to shed as I go down the road, and how godawfully annoying that scared and confused sound that comes out of their throats is.

It’s a good time to weed things out that you’ve let collect over the months or years.  It’s also a really good time to clean things that don’t always get hit on the weekends — the backs of bookshelves, for instance, or the powerstrip that has collected cat hair behind the widescreen TV.

All this said, I’m ready to be done.  I’ll finish up next Monday, the first day of my first vacation in quite some time.  Cleaning the carpets, making sure all my stuff is out, returning the keys and making sure the utilities are off or out of my name.  After that, it’s a week of catching up on DVDs and books, playing some XBox, writing a few short scripts — nothing out of the ordinary, except that, for the first time in two years, I’ll be doing all that in the comfort of an air-conditioned apartment.