It's sad, and more than just a bit scary, to see the lengths these "leaders" will go to to turn American and against American. Al-Qaida has nothing on them.
I doubt my comment is going to make it past the authorization process. I find that people who take the most extreme positions possible on their blogs, have a deep distaste for anyone to critique their deceptively intelligent remarks.
I simply just wanted to make you, humble Readers, aware of the utter lack of compassion the self (and other) hatred homophobia can engender in its victims.
Feel for Steve Bennett. The pain that haunts his psyche is far, far worse than the shit that falls from his mouth.
Update: He actually replied. Terrible justification for his comment. "Letter of the Law." He misses the point of compassion so completely. Sad.
Update #2: Questions are a tough thing to handle. One can either answer them forthrightly, with honesty and conviction, or one can clam up, trill loudly, and erase the fact that someone disagreed with them. Guess which one Steven did?
That's because I read the literature on the effectiveness of Abstinence Only Education. But since the truthiness of things is all that matters these days, I don't really know anything.
Al Jazeera, the Arab all-news cable network, is moving into the film business, launching a $1.4 million fund to aid independent TV and theatrical film producers.
The announcement of the fund was made at an Arab TV documentary festival sponsored by Al Jazeera, which opened Tuesday in Doha, Qatar, where Al Jazeera is headquartered, and continues through today (Thursday). In addition to direct production investment, the fund will also provide training and technical services for young filmmakers.
I doubt they'd be interested in any of my films anyway.
There are so many days I think I'm not doing any freaking work towards my future -- that life is just getting away from me. Then, I pop open this blog, scroll back through the entries, click on the "On Writing" category, and find recent entries showing what, indeed, I've done.
Since the entry linked to above, I've also completed the draft of yet one more screenplay, the only mention of which is a "Coming Soon" tag I added to this page. No blog entry to remind me -- or whine to y'all -- that I cranked out another 50 some-odd pages between Feb 18th and March 16th on another creation, plus a 15 page report on a multi-national cable company, read a half-dozen screenplays and television scripts, polished off two non-fiction books (read, before bed) plus interned 20 hours a week.
I'm not trying to brag here -- far from it. I'm just a little... amazed, that's all. It might be hard to believe, but in my head I have this vision of myself as "slacking." Since I haven't had a day job for almost two years (has it really been two years since I walked away from the Department of Children and Family Services? Wow!) it's just so easy to see this past time as having "goofed off."
Writing really is about daydreaming. I can teach anyone the mechanics of writing the way its been taught to me. I can tell you how to format a script, how to streamline a scene, how to create better drama, deepen characterization and sharpen themes. At the end of the day though that's just stitching a basket to hold a dream, to a daydream. Screenplays, stories, are really just daydreams, and I've been daydreaming for the past two years.
I think that's what feels so odd -- I've been lost in daydreams. I haven't spent this much time daydreaming since I was a kid. As a kid though, I also didn't churn out 2000 plus pages of product either. I've got a stack of reports out the ass that I wrote these past two years, coverage, notes on others screenplays, plus four, 100 plus page scripts that only existed as a wish in 2004. Damn.
No wonder I feel tired.
No wonder I came home tonight and said fuck writing, fuck reading, fuck playing Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth on my X-Box, and really fuck turning in one last assignment for this quarter for class. I just want to watch TV and zone-out.
And even now, even as I write all of this, I still feel as if I haven't been productive.
It's utterly and unbelievably insane.
I graduate from UCLA on June 16th. More or less I have 3 months, say 12 weeks give or take, before I'm back out in the world. In two weeks, the third and last quarter of the year starts. I'm scheduled to revise one screenplay (which means re-write 75 to 95% of a 110 page script), produce, direct and edit a 25 minute short film, continue my wonderful internship, and quite possibly teach a class. Plus I have to find a job for when I graduate so that I can continue paying my mortgage and making my car note. That's another wow.
That's also utterly and unbelievably insane.
No wonder I don't have boyfriend. Hell, no wonder I'm not getting laid regularly.
Ack. 12:54 AM.
Still have time to complete that journal thing for school and get to bed before my internship in the morning. I started this just to post yet another in my endless series of graphs, this one outlining my progress on polishing a totally-unrelated-to-anything-I-mentioned-before screenplay called "The Dark Place.". There are four or five writing contests that have due-dates starting next week and I have to get this baby done before Monday or Tuesday.
MEMORY FLASH: I wonder whatever happened to Jed, the boy I played "house" with in Ms. Dombrosky's kindergarten class, three decades ago? Of course, the "house" was one of those plastic play-sets you see banged up in the corner of the playroom and "going to work" in our game involved a day spent killing dinosaurs and other scaly beasts. You haven't lived though until you've had tyrannosaur steak broiled in an Easy Bake Oven.
I also knew, younger than 10, that most other people didn't feel this way. As time went on, and crushes ceased having a little "c" in front of them and began having a big "C" leading the way, that those feelings had to be stuffed down and away. It wasn't good to talk about them, express them, even acknowledge them.
I'm really excited then that these kids might actually get to express their feelings at an age appropriate time, to socialize and learn the same life-lessons right alongside their peers. I do, though, remain concerned that the safe structure for that -- formed by parents, peers, community -- is firmly established enough so that these kids don't encounter disaster by the ignorance of those so charged with helping them.
But hey, it's still really cool.
I wonder if I can get an Easy Bake on Ebay? Dinosaur meat just doesn't taste the same stir-fried on my range.
Since the broadcaster was forced to pay $3.6 million dollars for showing it, (note: on appeal) if you think yes, what should you be forced to pay to the government for having watched it? If you think no, what are you willing to spend to stop the government from fining others?
