Complaint Rolling

jelewis8 — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 16:47:39 +0000

It’s astonishing how quickly time passes when you don’t really want it to. You keep thinking it’s Wednesday, a perpetual moment of neither here nor there, comfortably situated mid-week to allow you that last burst of work output (if you’re behind) and not too far from Friday (if you’re finished and want the weekend). You want it to be Wednesday, but the clock advises you to consider getting with the times or face imminent loss of face when you show up for a Thursday meeting on Friday. It is Friday, isn’t it? And I didn’t even notice Thursday. Thursday was a blurry, out of focus, hazy mass of blur. When I snapped out of my cloudy fog, it was Friday, and I feared the worst.
Not to worry. I planned accordingly. Instead of scheduling a Thursday meeting to which I would either be late or completely absent, it was agreed that Friday would be ideal. Now at least I won’t be a no-show. But I still have 192 frames of three dimensional visual trickery to complete before 1:30. Aren’t I the lucky one?
If you thought I was depressed yesterday and about to ditch my writing career in favour of something more stable, like janitorial service, hopefully you first considered the fact that my “career” thus far consists of unpublished ephemera, ongoing literary projects, film scripts, and this blog, which runs the gamut from essay-like pages on the mundane and uneternal to horrible mutated Resident Evil creature-like writing, where you don’t know whether to laugh nervously or run away. If I had to abandon it, the happy-meter might decrease slightly, but it wouldn’t really affect my financial state. So I figure, why quit now?
I’m lucky in that I already know, and acknowledge that for every good word I write, I write a thousand bad ones, and someone else is writing three hundred good ones. And they have an agent. Most people take years to realize this truth, so in some ways, I’m ahead of the curve. It’s just a question of taking that acknowledgement and turning it into profit. And since I’m not so good at math (as demonstrated yesterday) I guess I’ll write. And edit feature films. And create film titles, and production logos. And direct short films. Basically everything that I love.
One can roll complaints like cigarettes. It takes a cheerfully optimistic person to unroll the cigarette and use the leaves in a salad. Or an idiot. Either way, I’m doing fine, thanks for asking. Have a great weekend, and look for a podcast sometime before Monday. Cheers.

Cocoa Krispies and Haircuts

jelewis8 — Thu, 06 Oct 2005 21:45:02 +0000

You haven’t lived if you haven’t eat Cocoa Krispies for breakfast. No, wait, what I mean to say is, if you want to live, don’t eat Cocoa Krispies for breakfast. Or any other meal, for that matter. This is clearly a cereal marketed toward the part of a kid’s brain that has no intention of ever living right. It consists of tiny puffs of rice-based cereal (so not eligible for Communion food) dipped in a chocolate-like substance. It however does not have the pleasing taste of chocolate, rather the equivalent of a sickening dread you get when you are being stalked by an unseen, omnipotent killer (I could say cereal killer, but that might be going too far). If any of you has ever been stalked by a killer, you know exactly what I mean.
Los Angeles is currently experiencing another spate of round-the-clock hotness. One problem with moving to a new location is you’re never sure if the weather you’re experiencing is the norm or an anomoly. Even if it’s an anomoly, it might be a normal anomoly, and if you want total confusion, you can consider that the weather is neither normal nor an anomoly, but the onset of a new weather pattern paradigm. Then everyone’s screwed, and we can all blame Bush for not signing Kyoto.
In general, moving to a new town means having to establish new routines, new places to frequent, new schedules. I have happily found a coffee shop that, despite its lack of wifi, is quite good, and I go there often to wake up in the morning. One thing I haven’t found is a hair cuttery. This is quite a frightening ordeal, going into an untested hair place. You never know if you’re going to come out looking like your stylist was a psychotic lawn care professional or not. The most you can hope for is not to be disappointed. You will almost never come out of a new place thinking, “That was the most amazing experience of my life.” Then again, not everyone has access to Hollywood’s finest.
So I have yet to get a haircut, despite that I am back on my short hair kick. I like short hair, I like not having to deal with the intricacies of hair combing and knot untangling and shedding. I think I look better with short hair. But with no haircut, I’m fearful every morning. I wake up and look in the mirror and think about the possibility of immediate removal with a surgical, military strike. But no, I haven’t lost every brain cell.
I apologize for my lack of updates. I have a review of A History of Violence half-finished, and another short story I’ve been wanting to start writing. I have no excuse. Please forgive me, and come again tomorrow. I promise I won’t be slack.

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Complaint Rolling

Cocoa Krispies and Haircuts