data entry, lunacy, writing, and other stuff not worth mentioning
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found the following on a post-it note in my desk drawer:

enter item number, enter quantity, enter cost per unit, hard return
enter item number, enter quantity, enter cost per unit, hard return...

and so on.

some days i wonder if these "items" even exist or if it's all just some ploy to keep we deskslaves drained of anything resembling hope or happiness. sell your sould to the gods of data entry and you won't even have the energy to be depressed about it.

and there's a note to "reference muslims to mecca, deskworkers to breaktime," and it's dated 12-2-5 with an REGB (my initials)

guess i wasn't too keen on my data entry job last december. odd to find this post-it now, when i'm looking for a new job (my current one at puppydogweb coems to an end this week or maybe next, as the business is relocating out of my commute range) and may very well end up in yet another data entry related position. got my resume into a closed caption place, which could be interesting, but who knows? of late, i've been

1. thinking on the whole giving up on writing thing, cause who's got the time when it goes nowhere?
2. thinking on trying my hand at some crazy, forward things, like contacting frank darabont about a chance to write something, or sending one of my scripts to atom egoyan's agent or kevin bacon's people

the latter sounds like a perfectly feasible idea late at night, but morning comes and i think myself a lunatic (literally, i suppose). and, also last night, i was looking forward to writing a bit of "on the slopes of stanjantuwel," my gardea version novel of my old vikariad online comic--i'm halfway through chapter three, of what looks to be nine (as opposed to the original seven), and it's in now way a regular everyday writing thing--but morning comes and it seems more another waste of time. i've already got to go by the post office today and i've got to try listing some comics on ebay (again) to make a little money, and of course, i've got to find a new job (an activity i'm not eager to do--the finding part, i mean). been up for more than two hours already and i've looked up contact information for darabont (already had contact information for egoyan and bacon in that same drawer where i found that bit about data entry), copied some photos off the digital camera to the hard drive--for a book cover of all things, as if i'm about to put together another self published book (i've got seeing her naked available on cafepress already, but i've only sold a copy to one person, go figure). i like designing covers, i like writing, i love the idea of selling my work to an audience, but i really suck at making that audience grow

speaking of "seeing her naked" though, when i wrote it originally, it built an audience, emailed chapter by chapter to an audience that reached near a hundred, later posted to two different message boards, chapter by chapter again, to an audience the number of which i couldn't be too precise, but all in all, read by (benefit of the doubt to me, here) a couple hundred people. still, it isn't much, but it's a lot more than one. and, i've got newer stuff--my gardea books, a novel called "clubhouse blues," a novel called "beginning," various short stories and some older novels that could probably use rewrites--that, often at night, as i mentioned, i think could use a wider audience, deserve a wider audience. but, who am i to decide that last bit, you know? i've got a weird combination of low self esteem and arrogance that tends too often toward the low self esteem side when it counts and tends too often toward the arrogance when it doesn't, getting me to work on project after project over the years and get hardly a one out to any real audience. of course, i must consider that half the problem is my work isn't really that good, my biggest fans being folks who obviously relate to me personally anyway and have a biased (consciously or not) view of things, and that it isn't all about my inability to get stuff out there, though that is a big problem

and i've gained weight of late, and it's been a horribly hot summer here in california, and now i've got to find a new job, so my future schedule is blurry... which i suppose explains why i like my moxi dvr so much, watching all my tv on whatever schedule i can manage, and why i like knowing what's coming of late, specific times and dates, things to do, the more specific the better i suppose...

except, even that isn't exactly true. some of my best times are when i get to, on the spur of the moment, pop a dvd in and watch a movie or an episode of some old show (currently making my way through space: above and beyond) or when i get to pull out some lego blocks and go to town building whatever occurs to me, or often a movie or tv show while i build with lego blocks, all the while checking that the kids are alive in the next room (cause, you know, that's a must)

and one of the kids is gone right now, a couple weeks into a four week visit with her grandparents on the other side of the country, so the house is different all around, different feel, different tone, not drastically--not like she runs the place or anything--but noticeably. and, i really should be writing about vik (formerly "vike") right now, headed into the balkor (formerly "the woods") with his pere (formerly "father"). so, i suppose i'll cut this entry here

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airports, agnostics, atheists, asylums and alcatraz (or the lack thereof)
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hayley left the state this morning. had to get up at 6 to go to the airport. was asleep about midnight, after the colbert report, so it wasn't too bad.

been wanting to write an essay about agnosticism and atheism, but just can't stand reading the various "proof of god" websites thismorning. there's arrogance and inanity all around--even from my side of things, i'll admit--and i'm just not in the mood. did find a nifty little quote about agnostics though, then lost it when i did a copy and paste and can't seem to figure out which site in the firefox history had it (clicked each one and can't find it again, which is odd). it was something like--and i wish i could get the wording right as i saw it--"how can you be sure you know enough to decide you can't know everything?"

busy of late in my spare moments building a few lego things, using the new batman sets. built an elaborate batcave:

and now arkham asylum:

and after watching murder in the first the previous weekend, we went on a whim to san francisco this last weekend, got around to chinatown, fisherman's wharf, pier 39, lombard street, ate at a chinese restaurant in chinatown, at hard rock cafe, at ghiardelli square, but alcatraz boat tickets were sold out. had a good time, did a lot of walking (just left the car at the hotel and walked everywhere) and a bit of swimming (in the hotel pool, not the bay).

by the by, that urge to write about agnostics came from a guy on pbs friday night in the hotel in san francisco, talking about politics and the mideast and whatnot, then asked about his agnosticism, he proceeds to ask why the universe is so complicated, why this and why that... and that bugs me to no end, when folks claim they don't believe in a creator then presume to ask "why?"

see, if you think the "how" of it is complex, fine, i'll grant you that; i will never know everything, but i allow for the possibility that everything can be known, even if it takes a lot of time and a lot of research. but, throwing out that "why" question assumes a reason, a purpose, and if you're going to bother with that, i say pick a diety already, be it allah, jhwh or even cthulhu. at least, then, we've got a debate

magic crap lady in the water
m night shyamalan, like those folk in the village, isolates himself from the world at large, from hollywood, and does his thing in his own way, with nary a dissenting voice getting in his way--though his delivery of his latest script, it seems, wasn't received well by his people at warner. they thought him crazy, thought he'd lost touch with reality, with film, with, well, anything normal i suppose...

and, they were right

lady in the water amounts to a nice looking piece, but a self-indulgent, often silly, thing that makes itself up as it goes along, purporting to be about finding purpose in a world gone crazy (and we're reminded by every tv and radio in the background that the world is caught up in wars and rumours of wars), or some shit like that, even while the end of the movie puts to an end any purpose found within by any of the multitude of characters were get to meet (and, really, we do little more than meet most of them, shyamalan only allowing time to get to know a handful, including his own character (but i'll get to his character in a moment))

a fairy tale in structure, but far too complicated within to really work for children, i'm betting, and far too obsessed with bryce dallas howard's legs (not that there's anything wrong with that, in theory) as a constant reminder that she's wearing nothing more than a borrowed man's shirt, cause, remind us and remind us again, she's not human... cause she's got so few lines and so little to do, oddly enough, that we really need those constant reminders

then, there's paul giamatti's schlubbish caretaker, isolated even from the rest of the cast by living in a small house at the edge of the apartment building property, scarred by the trama of losing his wife, a la mel gibson's minister in signs, and his kids. and giamatti, as usual, puts his all into the role, makes cleveland heep into a real person, even if he then gets dragged into exposition scene after exposition scene--which, you'd think would be even more traumatic than losing his family, but no, apparently, saving the narf from the scrunt that wants to kill her so the giant eagle can take her away--seriously, that's the plot--we're supposed to believe is saving his life, even though it only supplies him a day or two of adventure, and localized adventure at that

but, there's another character worth mentioning as well. and it isn't the recluse who we're supposed to believe is a well respected old man, when he just seems like a crabby old hermit in his early scenes. and it isn't any of the other myriad of characters--not even the film critic, shyamalan's obvious attack on similar ilk in and around hollywood after his previous film was so poorly received, who tells us exactly how the film is structured, when important characters would have been introduced to foreshadow their later importance, and all that, even predicting his own surviving of an attack by the scrutn to be important later, then, surprise surprise, getting killed like all those hateful film critics need to be, apparently). no, it's shyamalan's own character, his largest role yet in any of his movies, a writer who's work is going to change the world. seriously, he's arrogant enough to cast himself as a writer who will change the world. i mean, i'd like to cast myself as that sort of thing also, in real life if not in a story, but, i don't know, i'd like to think i would have the presence of mind not to present myself as such to the audience with a big "fuck you, it's my movie and i'll do what i want" attitude. although, i do wish i could do a movie and be free to do what i want with it, i hope i'd have a better grasp of narrative structure, a better sense of subtlety, and, hell, the wherewithall to at least get a nice mermaid butt shot at least as brief as that in the disney produced splash instead of lingering so much on legs...

and what was with putting the camera in the position of story--that's the narf's name--so often? is shyamalan that desperate to speak directly to his audience?

and, why try to be clever about storytelling--the amusing back and forth and forth between heep, the korean student and her mother withstanding--with the critic's exposition about how the introduction of characters works, nevermind that cleveland would have been introduced to all the characters long before we meet them, and the critic's final scene, commenting specifically on film structure and unlikeable characters, only to die and turn immediately into a useless character, a misstep among missteps in a script riddled with them... and i think all that paragraph was supposed to be a question, so... ?

why make up your own mythology when you can discuss purpose and meaning much easier if you use something more familiar?

and why cast yourself when you can barely emote and just come off as a self centered, arrogant prick by doing so?

and, why build your own apartment building? were there none available at all in philadelphia?

and, why the fuck did you cut to the two villagers finding the costume missing when the drama would have been heightened by us NOT FRICKIN KNOWING THAT NOAH'S DRESSED UP?!

oh, scratch that last one. wrong movie

bombs, profanity and fantasy worlds
Now Playing: kevin & bean on KROQ
so, israel's bombing the shit out of lebanon, president bush gets caught using profanity (which only raises him up in my book, not that that puts him anywhere near acceptable) and life goes on in the empire

speaking of bush, he's about to veto an expansion of stem cell research funding

and it's still pretty damn hot outside

but i'm off work today... or rather i'll be working on my own writing-related stuff at home today, finishing off an update of my gardea glossary in preparations to do my fantasy novel version of my viking story, the vikariad

and, cutting this rambling short, here's something to pass your time: the lemming drops studio store

it's hot out there for a blimp

california + summer	global warming	+ being overweight = bad

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nine steps out of hell (a comedy of a sort)

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thank god for terrorists
first, it should be noted that my title is not serious. i wouldn't thank god for anything, even if he did bother to exist. second, i should clarify my thankfulness. without the so-called "terrorists" commandeering planes back in ought one, airline prices might not have been so cheap and sarah (now my wife) would not have been able to afford five flights between her home in pennsylvania and california inside a half year or so and we wouldn't have ever moved in together and we wouldn't be married

but, enough about that. in other news, it's just coming out that, back in march, a handful of us soldiers deliberately murdered the family of a young iraqi girl they saw while running a roadblock, just so they could have the time to rape her before they shot her and burned her (and her family's) remains

and, on that light note, i should mention that north korea has been firing off some missiles of late, one of them supposedly with a long enough range to reach alaska, and apparently this was breaking news the other day, cause we all know that 1) alaska is the #1 target of all sovereign nations with missiles and 2) if something is breaking news it just has to be important, nevermind all the car chases we get here in southern california that make "breaking news" status then mean nothing by like the next day--and that's if you're a car chase enthusiast

but, of course it matters that north korea has long range missiles, cause that means we can act threatened and act more justified in killing foreigners half a world away. you know, pretending that north korea will ever actually be a problem for us. but, nuclear warheads involved or not (in this test case, of course, not) japan wants the UN to get some sanctions going against north korea, cause such an evil, horrible place as our forever and constant enemy of eastasia, er, north korea wants to fire some nuclear weapons at us--or at anyone for that matter--a little slap on the wrist (aka sanction) oughta put a quick stop to that. bureaucracy trumps evil everytime, right. that is how god threw lucifer out of heaven, afterall, by passing sanctions against guys with horns

and instead of raping young iraqi girls, we should just be sanctioning them. cause sanctions never created any "terrorists" now, did they?

a haiku lament
first love in high school
dating... spring break... something more
a felled tree remains

apparently, i wasn't meant to be a writer
watched why we fight yesterday and actually felt like writing something politcally themed today, maybe about the war, more likely about something more specific, like the attempt to get flag-burning illegal again (which apparently only lost by one vote. but, i can't find any news headlines about that and the other news is boring, britney spears posing nude, president bush fighting about gitmo detainees, babar turning 75, nothing riveting

so, i did some work from home this morning for a couple hours, then had a go at fixing a pdf for a self-published (through cafepress) novel, but the margins got screwed up, and i'm not sure i've got a cover for the damn book anyway. figured out pdf stuff and even bought an old copy of adobe acrobat just so i could self-publish a few things, all my attempts at actual publication being abject failures, and i can't even manage that. oh well

so, apparently, i wasn't meant to be a writer

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just listening to pandora and doing not much
Mood:  cool
Now Playing: pandora
quick rundown of a few things:

• grew up in a cultish church (the worldwide church of god)
• attended that church's private school (imperial)
• didn't have a proper (or at least semiproper) date until i was 17
• didn't have a girlfriend until i was frickin' 23, pathetic late bloomer that i was, and that girlfriend, like the two subsequent ones, was met online
• dropped out of college (this was before that girlfriend thing, but i just thought of it) where i'd intended to get into the film school... that college was usc
• moved to tennessee and then arkansas to be with the second girlfriend. that ended so well that i came running back home to california (where i should probably have stayed in the first place)
• asked my wife to marry me... actually, told my wife to marry me just a few days after we met for the first time in person. we were actually married in vegas two weeks after she managed to move out to california just a handful of months later
• been writing off and on since at least the fourth grade--i've even still got a copy of a couple pages of a silly little story called the black lion i wrote way back then--but of late i've been lacking the initiative and/or will to really get into it again. set my hopes on a few specific chances at publication that didn't pan out. if i'd just been doing like i did a little over a decade ago, sending out stuff so regularly that rejections weren't that big a deal, it wouldn't be so bad, but i don't know enough about ... well, any of it, i guess.
• so, i look after kids and i watch tv and i drive my wife around and occasionally have sex, like last night, and build stuff with lego blocks... odd juxtaposition there, i suppose, but i won a lego contest recently and am working on something big today probably, and can't have sex again until at least tonight, so fuck proper order and propriety or what have you
• anyway, gonna show hayley how to do a few things on the computer today, then maybe make a quick trip to target for a few things, and probably stop by blockbuster--it is new movie day, afterall--and maybe put on a movie while i deal with lego stuff
• not that anyone reading this needed to know all that
• just sayin'

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