I'm torn on what to do tonight. I need to get a lot of creative work done, but then there's also this thing at school that I'm kinda supposed to go to. It's a night with Horton Foote, the screenwriter who adapted "To Kill a Mockingbird" to a film script and wrote the really great movie, "Tender Mercies". My professor says he's the best thing out there in American film writing, but I really don't want to go. I went to this thing with a producer who worked a lot with Milos Forman and Martin Scorsese and it was really boring and all the people asking questions were asking questions in such a way to make themselves look like hot stuff...I really hate that and I can't stand to see someone as nice as Horton Foote have to endure a bunch of self-serving questions from the Orlando art-elite.

Wow, this little rant has convinced me...I'll stay home later and write. =) That was easy!

I'm probably going to go thrift store shopping with Megan today. Hooray! I need new t-shirts. But the real question stands...Will I be able to find sweaterbands to match my new finds?

This is just one of the new fall "advertisements" for Gap found at this site...you have to see these full size (I had to shrink this one)...I'm a former employee of the evil retail empire and I busted a gut...or I could just be nuts...if you're the type to go backwards in a site, be warned that there are other more naughty pics in another section (like you haven't seen a fake penis at a party before...).

I just realized that I didn't really post any "content" (okay, last time I use quotes) today.

It was a really good day. I started by trying to get through a short story I have to critique for class. Oh man, it was tough to critique it and not decimate the work (or the author, for that matter). The girl who wrote it is trying hard, but the story was just implausable and played like a pulp novel from the 1940s ("He looked her up and down. Did those legs go all the way up?" - that kind of thing). To add to it, she tried to incorporate multiple shifts in time which ended up muddying the already opaque storyline. But now I have to actually tell her these things...in class...with 13 other people who also don't like her story. I'm a little sad over the whole thing.

It doesn't help that she's being critiqued on the same day as this guy who's a great writer. His story is a blast and breaks all sorts of conventions, but in a good way. That'll be a lot more fun to critique when I go over it tomorrow.

Other than that, I went to a work meeting where I had to convince my boss that we don't want a web site that puts a pop up ad everytime someone leaves the site...I was really close to telling him that only scam sites and porn sites do that...At least we're getting our "Virtual Tour" (I work for the county courthouse) crap in gear...they're going to buy Quicktime VR Authoring software for my Mac and I'm going to start developing a virtual tour of our dark, ugly building. Whatever. It's a job, it pays money.

Enough money that I might be able to afford a Sweaterband from the Gap.

After work, I went to Bahama Breeze with Braden and Nicole. It was fun. I drank a Long Island Ice Tea and a Rum Runner...I think Bahama Breeze is just a scam to get you to wait on their patio and order overpriced drinks...

After that, well, I came home and read The Onion. It wasn't as good as always, but I did enjoy the article entitled "Area Man experiences the Thinkable" or something like that...

Well, my mind is going...I can feel it. So I'll say good night.

Okay folks, this is the last one for awhile...thank God that I believe in the forgiveness of Sins, otherwise I'm apparently a pretty vile person!

I am 20% evil.




I try to stay away from evil deeds but succumb to temptation every once in a while. I'm not quite on my way to hell but I certainly have some explaining to do.


Are you evil? find out at Hilowitz.com

What's that blue thing doing here?

I found a new friend underneath my pillow...

I'm getting the feeling that my political theory classmates are just a tad bit more conservative than me. Also, no one seems to be able to talk about politcal theory like it's, oh wait, just a theory! So, here I am, a student who just defended orgainized religion for the campus newspaper and I'm going on with the teacher describing how Christianity is the perfect relgion to keep workers from revolting because of it's promise of riches in heaven. Now the Christians in class think I'm this horrible person who wants the end of capitalism and the church...if we're going to discuss Marx, don't we have to at least try to understand things from his point of view every once and awhile?

There's this guy in class who is very smart and comments a lot, but the thing about him is that he's always wearing the same grey tweed pants, white poplin shirt, black "Newsie"-style cap, and a grey tweed trenchcoat...he's got a "look". I've always wanted to do that, but I can't pull it off. I don't know if he's got a lot of friends or not, but he definately radiates a detached and cool exterior. I usually just goofily smile at everyone, ready to be anyone's friend (it's a choice I made in middle and high school after finally getting into the cool clique and realizing that it was the most vapid thing I'd ever experienced)...but I think nowadays, people, especially girls, don't want some strange 6 ft. guy to be smiling at them. Oh well...genuine doesn't always work. Maybe I should wear my trenchcoat more often. Mr. Cool Guy, if you're reading this, bravo!

I did get to see my friend Paul yesterday. He's really cool, but we don't cross paths often. So I bump into him and I ask him what's up lately and this, of course, means that each of us spill our guts about what's on our minds lately, so he goes into this diatribe against the Gap using sweatshops in other countries and how he thought of me because I work there, but then he realized that I don't work there anymore and now he's going to picket them...which is fine, but I start to do this mental inventory of what I'm wearing at the time...shirt:Gap Fall 2000, pants: Gap Fall 2000, underwear: Gap Body Summer 2001, socks: Gap Fall 2000...well, let's just say _thank God my shoes were generic!_ or we could've had a scene.

Not really. He's ultra cool. I might go down to the store he's going to and watch from a distance and see how all my former co-workers deal with the whole thing. Oh, in the sake of fair play and all that, Gap says that they don't use sweatshops and will refuse to buy finished goods from any factory practicing sweatshop labor.

A good waste of time can be found here.

Everyone should see "Ghost World". Don't argue.

God must read blogs because I've had quite enough Aaron Sorkin for one day...I mean, the "West Wing" is good and all, but today during Russian class, the class next door was watching "A Few Good Men" (w/ Tom Cruise, Jack Nicholson) with the volume turned all the way up..."A Few Good Men" just happens to be written by Sorkin. Not only did they watch it once, they watched it again, complete with two, ringing "You can't handle the truth!!!"s desturbing our already jumpy Russian professor. So, my only explaination is that God reads blogs AND has a sense of humor (or is it mischeviousness?).

Now I'm in the honors computer lab waiting for my readings for tonight's Marxist Political Theory class. The PDF is taking a really long time. I don't understand the professor, though. He gives us a ton of online readings and then asks us to bring them printed to class. What's the use of a paperless system like PDF if you don't leave it on the freakin' computer?

"The Theory of the Avant Garde" class was a lot of fun. We talked about Strauss's opera "Salome" (Sal-o-may) and how it embodied the idea of decadence in the avant garde movement. Our teacher then read this really wild passage of a book talking about the images conjured by the opera, about the writhing smoke and incense filling the palace, the sparkle of gold and silver, and then, to make things really interesting, the author (this is from the 19th century, mind you) starts describing Salome's breasts bouncing up and down and then goes into this really long passage about her nipples (which I will refrain from passing on, you know, wouldn't be circumspect, right LHBC?). Well, you should of seen everyone sit lower in their chairs, covering their faces, trying not to giggle...it was like 7th grade health class all over again. The teacher was also a little unnaturally into the entire thing, demonstrating with her arms what the word "writhing" meant. The author of the passage, though, used one of my least favorite words - quiver. What a horrible word. It sounds like a reject cartoon character.

It's off to the bookstore for me. Later!

"The West Wing" is so good. Aaron Sorkin really knows what he's doing when he writes a TV show. Don't get me wrong - I know that a great chunk of the success of the show is the actors and the direction (and that Allison Janney. I know that she's older than me, but wow!). It's just that Sorkin seems to make good writing seem easy, almost fun. Mary-Louise Parker was on tonight as well. I hadn't really seen her in much since "The Client" and "Fried Green Tomatoes", but she's quite a good comic actress...and she's got these LOOKS that just bore through you.

School was cool this afternoon. I'm taking a script adaptation class with a prof that I've had many times over. He's rather set in his ways regarding writing movies and he doesn't like contemporary sensibility, but he's very knowledgable and really committed to everyone learning the craft, so I don't mind that we only look at movies made before 1985 in class (heck, we'd do good to get screenings in color!). He gave us this really wild assignment of adapting "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz"...heard of it? He declares last class that we should forget everything we know about the classic and tell him how WE would adapt it. Well, that took quite a lot of thinking on my part b/c the classic is so ingrained in our nation's collective cultural identity that I didn't think I could look at the story w/o thinking of Judy Garland, etc.

Well, here's what I thought...the book is a little bit more violent and eerie than the movie version and I thought it would be good to pick up on some of the more gothic elements (not black pleather gothic, but Frankenstien gothic) in the book. I ended up giving him a treatment for a Tim Burton-esque version of the Wizard of Oz, complete with the full story of the Tin Man (he used to be a real man, but chopped himself into pieces because the Witch of the East put a spell on him...no shit!) and all the decapitations that take place in the book. Why not make it spooky when the biggest selling kids book series is "Goosebumps" and everyone younger than me has seen more of the "Scream" series than I have?

For the first time in a long time, this teacher liked what I said...and actually let the class in on it. Usually his response is more like, "Well, Keith, you're absolutely wrong, and quite ugly, if I do say myself. Class, don't you agree that Keith is a little slow and fugly?" Then after class he'd pat me on the back and let me know that I was his most attentive student and that he expects great things. After awhile of that duality, I was like "Eat sh*t and die!" no matter what he said to me. So, tonight was a pleasant surprise.

Tomorrow I have to take my mom to the doctor early in the morning, so I better get to bed.

Meg did this, so I thought I'd do it too. Maybe now she'll believe me when I tell her that we don't share a brain. =)

I am a Breakout Bat. I am an abstract sort of creature, who dislikes any sort of restraint. If you try to pigeonhole me, I'll break the box, and come back for more. I don't have any particular ambitions, I just drift, but I am adept at keeping life going along. What Video Game Character Are You?

I'm realizing that being creative takes time and effort. I'm finding that when we're young, we're rewarded for thinking differently or creatively about something mostly because we surprise those who are raising us with our observations while learning. Now that I'm 23, creativity is a lot harder - I'm not really learning that the toilet is for poo or that you get behind the last person in line - so, in essence, to be creative, I have to destruct and recreate everything that I see.

Sorry for getting all philosophical, but I had to write this down. Mainly I have 3 short stories due this semester and I'm challenging what I find creative. I think that my writing is a bore, actually. I keep writing about suburban housewives or young professional women. I'm not even a woman!!! Not that I think I have to be...it's just that I'm not exactly the edgy type of guy you'd expect in someone who's hoping to write for a career.

So, who knows, maybe the toilet is for He-Man action figures - a sort of transportation to the underworld...

I made you think "underworld"...

OK, I'm back. The last few days have been rather uninteresting. I got a lot of homework done and I cleaned my bathroom. But really, it's amazing the power a clean and organized bathroom has. I can now wake up 10 minutes before I have to go anywhere and everything I need to look, smell, and see correctly is there at my fingertips. Don't tell my mom that I like organization. As for the homework, I'm finding that as long as I write it all down in my dayplanner ahead of time, I'll remember to do all of it.

Crap! A girl at the counter in the UCF bookstore was looking at me. I don't know why I'm still suprised at this activity, even though I do it all the time.

I was so happy to see that I have a link from my friend's blog (imperrfections.blogspot.com)! Thanks! I'll link to you as soon as I make up my own HTML.

Well, back to homework.

My friend Megan has got me hooked on blogging as sort of a diary (ahem...journal...I'm a boy) and since I'm supposed to be writing at least a few hundred words a day, I thought this would be a pretty good habit.

The title's taken from a line in "When Harry Met Sally". I decided to edit it slightly...for young, innocent eyes and all.

I guess for a first post, I'll do the whole "who am I" thing. I'm 23...about to graduate with my BA in Political Science (minor in Screenwriting)...I'm ditching the whole political scene to focus on my writing, though. I hope to get into a MFA program somewhere in 2003. Oh, I just found out that I'm getting published in my first literary journal! I was totally shocked - I was standing in line at the Starbucks on campus (isn't that obnoxious? They couldn't have a mom and pop coffeeshop on campus...) and my friend Danny comes up to me and whispers that my story was chosen for the Universities Lit. journal...I mean, it's not the New Yorker or anything, but I was happy seeing as I'm kinda leaping over to Creative Writing from a much more analytical feild.

I'm not always a school freak though...in my spare time I like to travel - but not the big time travel that you think of when someone says that they like to travel. No, I just like to hop in the car and drive around the city, or to a friend's house, or downtown...I just like the going somewhere I haven't been. I especially like finding hole in the wall places and eating there, acting like I've been a regular all my life. Okay, that might sound stupid, but it's fun.

Otherwise for fun, I go to movies, hang out at the local coffeehouse, go to concerts, read books, corny entertainment mags, and hang out with friends, most of the time with Megan, Braden, or Aaron. I've grown to like camping and outdoors-y stuff lately. I even cought two fish over the new year break! It was weird, but kinda fun. I was releived when we through them back...

Well, today was kinda crappy. I spent the whole day making this PDF file for a teacher just so that I didn't have to buy a book for class. I think it would have been worth the price to not have to sit on the couch, scanning page after page and tweaking it until I got a PDF file that wasn't huge...well, then I renigged on a shopping trip with Braden and his girlfriend, Nicole, in order to clean my room. My room! I don't know who I've become lately...I'm getting old. So, I spent the rest of the day cleaning my room and I got some sort of weird satisfaction out of it. Really strange...

I'm now going to raid the fridge even though I should be going to bed...but there's some leftover chinese food just waing for me...later!