Forgot to mention that my friend Paul is in NYC for the anti-WEF protests. The protests are against extreme global capitalism that keeps workers and idiginous people of 3rd world countries in bad straits. Paul constantly amazes me by his committment to what he believes in. You can check out the happenings in NYC at Indymedia.org (link to the left)... He's asked that I cross my fingers in hope that he doesn't get pepper-sprayed...I don't think he was kidding.

I was under the wrong impression - the doctor's office wasn't downtown, but in the Conway area. I ended up going to the Publix on Curry Ford and Conway. =( No crazy people, no people without teeth. The doctor says that mom and dad are fine. Dad says he wasted an hour and a half. This is not the life changing experience I was looking forward to. Oh well.

This friday doesn't look that great considering I've already done something with Megan and her parents probably won't let us go do something two nights in a row. Braden has to wake up early to go paintball shooting and Nicole's parents are coming in. Blah. Yuck. Oh well. There's always homework...

For some reason, my mom's appointment got moved and now BOTH my parents are getting checked by the doctor for their plague-like sickness that just passed through the house. I so hope that I don't catch it. At least I get to avoid the doctor's office - Mom has quite a shopping list for me to fill while they're being checked. I'm actually a little excited because the doctor is downtown, which means I'll get to go to a grocery store downtown and that's 10 times more exciting that grocery shopping on the edge of the city or in a suburb, right? (trying to psych myself up)

Actually, last time I went grocery shopping downtown, I found out that I have a toothless "country" cousin who rides around downtown Orlando on one of those scooters for elderly people. He's gone a little crazy and I had a hard time believing that he was my cousin considering that I'd never heard about him before. Mom then explained that no one talks about that side of the family (the "why" of that still hasn't been explained), but that I shouldn't be decieved - just because he looked ragged and poor didn't mean anything...that side of the family happens to be filthy rich from operating a grocery store on Paramore Ave. in the low rent district.

Wow.

Maybe something life changing like that will happen today.

Marx class went by uneventfully. We discussed the value of labor as well as the worker's alienation from his or her labor. The teacher used a lot of examples from Jai Alai in his lecture. Hmm...

On a whim, Megan and I went to see the late night showing of Godsford Park. We both agreed that it was a good movie, really funny. On the way home, however, I started to think about how impersonal Altman's movies can be and, in my mind, I'm finding that to be a good thing. So many movies try to get us into one person's head, but Altman lets us watch as a detached observer, learning things we might not have seen up close and invested fully in one main character. Emily Watson's performance was as smooth as silk (for that matter, so was Ryan Phillipe's - even though Meg and I decided that he ended up being a real schmuck), but Maggie Smith stole the show.

I have to take mom to the doctor tomorrow morning, so I'm going to turn in.

Done with "The German Ideology"! Did I read every word? I'll never tell... Gonna take a walk and probably end up at the cafe later. I'm so pathetic.

Oh, I learned something new about myself (how could this be possible since I, well, AM myself)...anyways, I found that if I listen to music that I know well at a low volume while reading, I can actually read faster and comprehend more. I must have a little autism or something.

They lied...he's still singing. My head is pounding. Why didn't I go to the library?

Finally, open mic time at the Cafe is over and I can actually read Marx...my brain can filter a lot, but not continuous beat poetry...It was kinda funny, though, that as soon as I started reading in Marx this girl read a poem about smashing the bourgeousie.

Mood: Gleeful
Why: The Marx reading is only about 50 pages
Additional information for comprehending mood: I've read these 50 pages last semester

Small detractions: Sore places on my calves that have no explanation. Left the Elvis CD at home.

Prediction of day: Lazy, spent almost entirely online in UCF Cafe commincating virtually with all my friends (rather than communicating with virtually all my friends)... I should get out of here, but UCF has quite a dearth of hanging out places.

***

I agree entirely with Juan's view of exercise along with the quote from Rabbit. Lately, whenever I get the chance to exercise, it's usually so that I don't feel like crap (and so I can breathe, as well - bronchial asthma since birth). It used to be for looks, but after my mom pointed out that my cousins all have little bellies even though they exercise and lift weights constantly, I've grown a little less concerned - after all, I'm borderline 6 ft. tall and I've got a large build...I'm not going to be 165 lbs no matter how hard I try. =) But I can always be healthier.

As for exercising before writing, I'll have to try that! I've always drank the vast amounts of coffee, but never combined it with exercise.

If anyone gets bored today, check out this page at the AIR site...thought provoking.

I hope that today doesn't turn into another one of last week's Read-all-day-get-double-vision-and-ringing-in-your-ears-take-Excedrin-on-an-empty-stomach-die-during-evening-class sort of Thursday. I have Russian first, which I am not prepared for. Then I go to Avant Garde and listen to 2 speeches...that'll be fun I think. Then it's off to the UCF Bookstore Cafe to read Marx...all day...or at least until my class at 7pm.

I think I'm writing my schedule down preemptively so that I'll follow through and make it to my classes today. Think it'll work? Ah, either way, I better go!

Overall, today (somehow I count this is Wednesday still) was a wonderful day. Let's review:
1) Got out of the bar thing with Clare...such relief - I didn't want to go, but I said yes as to not hurt Clare's feelings. Yet, if you look at it, I was actually lying to her in order to not hurt her feelings. Isn't that just as bad?
2) Got to see Braden and Nicole and hear Braden's story of accidently flicking Chicken soup at Nicole over lunch. Priceless!
3) Got to spend parts of my day picturing Megan trying on froofy bridesmaid dresses with her sister Jessica...just kidding - I feel for you, Meg...
4) Got to wave at Juan in passing...I think we talk more online than in real life...very post-modern =)
5) Got to listen to "beautifulGarbage" by Garbage - more about that below
6) Got congratulated multiple times on getting my submission published in UCF's student lit. journal - don't know why this is common knowledge to the general student population at UCF, however...
7) Recieved a "Great Job" from the evil teacher who never tells me I'm doing a good job...he did it in front of other students this time. Maybe because the story I'm adapting involves murder rather than my too-pleasant suburban love stories...
8) Avoided the black plague-like sickness that both my mom and dad have at the moment.

Okay, about Garbage...I've always been a little skeptical about liking them, the whole banality of recent pop music really gets to me and I suspected that beneath the surface, Garbage would be exactly the same. Well, I'm being proven wrong by this album. For one thing, they've got this whole 1950s thing going with a lot of the harmonies and chorus structures - there are some real big "Earth Angel"/Back to the Future style moments on this album...I'm waiting for a video with Manson in a poodleskirt. All the while, they've really got the whole electronic, synth thing going on as well (their album cover is a floating bunch of fractals becoming a real rose, so I expected as much). So, at first I was thinking, "What's the big deal about this? Lots of pop artists experiment with electronica and retro elements...". But do they concieve a whole package that carries ideological wallop about modern times?

Cases in point:

1) Electronic doo-wop song "Cherry Lips" starts with the traditional story of Boy meets Girl and then verse one ends with Girl leaving boy devastated. Chorus is "Such a delicate boy, in the hysterical realm, of an emotional landslide, in physical terms". Stop there and you've got anyone else's psuedo-retro pop song. Well, listen to the second verse and you realize that this song goes from "Boy meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl" to "Boy becomes a Transvestite whose good looks and cheery disposition bring light into the entire world." Holy shit! Pop brilliance!

2) "Earth Angel" type song "Can't Cry These Tears Anymore" carries two great punches. One is it's post-modern take on love and love lost - the oft repeated line in the song is "I just don't care anymore" - rather than be torn up, why not just be worn out and not care? The second is it's fun word play through the verse's motif of "Can't find it (in the Bible), Can't find it (on TV), Can't find it" etc., until the end of the verse where Manson sings desperately, "Oh babe I can't hide it" then a little comically and self-referentially adds "I can't even find it..." Too fun not to like.

Sorry about all the musical analysis. Maybe I'm just trying to justify liking them. Who gives a flip? I do like them. =)

Only bad thing today: Mary Johnson, my screenwriting professor, was in my Grad Writer's Workshop but had to drop out. Well, I saw her today and she almost burst into tears telling me about how much she wanted to stay in the class and how the film department dumped a ton of new things in her lap. She kept saying that that class was the only thing she actually wanted to do as a person this semester and how everything else was just part of her job persona...I didn't help things by getting all sad faced with her. There was no good way to transition to the question I had to ask (whether or not I could send her attachments over email), so I just asked it. Bad idea. Through her sniffles, she was like, "I guess (sniff) you could send it (sniff). And if it doesn't (sniff) work (sniff), I'll write you back (sniff)". How sad... why'd I end with this?

I went to the Faculty and Student Reading for the Cypress Dome Society tonight after class. The stories and poems were good and I felt all English-y all over...I might try to get out of the bar thing tonight as I'm kinda tired and I still haven't found my copy of "The German Ideology" by Marx which I need for tomorrow's class. Later!

I'm on my way to Stardust Coffee and Video to find a good Russian movie for class. The teacher's asked me to pick a lighthearted one with English subtitles that doesn't have too much sex. I'm trying to figure out if a Russian movie could embody all of those principles...

Afterwards, it's off the the beautiful UCF Bookstore Cafe, where I will leech off the wireless network and type up a paper for a class at 4pm - why I think the "Wizard of Oz" (the classic w/ Judy Garland) did or did not succeed in adaptation of the book. Huzzah!

After that, it's off to a fiction reading in the Student Union...in which conference room, I have no idea. Then, I've been roped into going to "Chillers", a bar in downtown Orlando, with a bunch of English majors for a 21st birthday... Of course, none of these things will happen if I don't get out of this chair at home and get going. Later!

Oh! I've been listening to the newest Garbage album, "Beautiful Garbage". It's great mind-floss, as I call it. You know, something easy to listen to that cleans out all the gunk and stress from the day...

Also, Juan let me borrow a very nice Elvis record. I'm looking forward to popping it in the CD player, but right now I think I'm going to sleep.

The class was much less painful than I thought...in fact, I had this gleeful smile on my face the whole time. The teacher would say, "This isn't plausible" and I'd be like, "Yeah...who wrote this crap?", and laugh to myself. Overall - an actual good experience that gave me lots to think about...things like dropping a lot of detail, but expanding the story to include the first party that the main character goes to. I'm going to make it feel like one party is very grounded in reality while the next has sort of an Alice through the looking glass quality to it. In the end, she'll still reject both worlds, though. I've already thought of a stupid reworking of the title (after the prof said to steal from song titles)...how about "A Night in Black Satin"? Wait, that might be as bad as Clare's...

If the above only made sense to five people...I'm sorry. But I think that they might be the only five who read this. =)

The other part of the class that was soooo funny to me, but I couldn't share with anyone, was when the professor asked my friend Clare to establish immediately the gender of her 1st person narrative in the first sentence...well, that first sentence is this dense, pseudo-poetic line that goes something like "A slice of pale moonlight peeled from the moon and fell through the blinds of my window into my open eye..." The prof. kept saying, "You have to establish this as a man, right off!" and all I could think of was the following:

"As I reached down and touched my penis, a slice of pale moonlight peeled from the moon..."

- at which I started laughing quietly, but uncontrollably to myself (once again, was I actually going mad?). A few people looked at me, so I tried to stop. Even Clare gave me a funny look. Oh well - it was established in the first sentence, right?

Missed my first class (Russian II) today. My mom was actually really sick and tending to her kept me from leaving on time...but what professor is going to believe that? Instead, with the hour that not going to the last half of class gave me, I visited Megan's mom who is recovering from surgery and needed a "pick-me-up"...it's "Sick Mom" day - hug the closest one near you.

Afterwards, I went to the UCF Bookstore's cafe (wireless internet, that's why) and obsessed collectively with Clare who's story is also up for workshop today. We read through the critiques, bitched and smiled alternatingly at the good and bad (but mostly true) points. I didn't know that Jeanne (our teacher) would be writing a critique for mine. I was in the state of being okay with the whole thing until I read hers...the only positive comment was that "there's a story somewhere in there". Oh man... At least Clare picked up on my self-righteousness indignation (as well as total decimation) and pointed out that Jeanne just didn't get the part about the girl thinking the house had already been sold (of course, this means nothing to anyone who hasn't read the story, sorry) and if I made that clear, the rest of her concerns on plot would actually be solved. I sniffed a few times and agreed wholeheartedly...of course the teacher's wrong! Ahh, I feel better... =)

So now I'm going to write some pages for my Screenwriting Independent study...I hope the prof. doesn't mind the scenes to be written out of order - I'm just not an "A to B" sort of guy.

By the way, big thanks to Juan whose repeated linking to my blog has resulted in an exponential increase in hits!

You think your parents were strict? Try going to the park...

I've heard nothing about my layout, so I think it'll stay as it is for awhile. =) Yea!

Just finished chatting with Meg for the last hour. Also got some chatting in with my old friend Stephanie as well as Clare. I'm thinking of creating some sort of photo album of friends so that everyone will know who I'm talking about (I'm thinking that Danny, Dave, and Clare should be reimagined as a Charlie's Angel's theme...maybe Braden and Nicole could be a whole Resident Evil:Code Veronica thing...I think Megan could be redone as Arwen from LOTR, even though she doesn't think she looks similar [she does]...hmmmmm...no wait! Megan could be Lauralie Gilmore although she's acutally closer in age to Rory), but that project will have to wait.

I also got 3 pages of actual screenplay writing done. A nice outline for my entire screenplay also jumped from my mind to Microsoft Word, so I'm happy about that as well. I'll post pages once they look like entires scenes, acts, etc.

I'm currently freezing in the UCF Cafe, so I'm going to find a better place to compute on my trusty laptop. Later!

Finished both my critiques. They were both good stories. Gene's kinda freaked me out in a benovlent "Stephen King"-but-still-paying-attention sort of way. Clare's was beautifully sparse and I know it will really sparkle after she edits it. I'm feeling better about my story. Not because I got a nice critique to buffer the not-so-nice one, but because I have a plan to edit it now - I might even bring it into 1st person...dum dum dummmmmmm...(not to be confused with "dumb"). This workshop thing is better than I thought.

For those of you who have given up on me because of my giant sways in thinking, you're right to do so - run, run as fast as you can in any direction, as long as it's away. In fact, click the link to The Onion right this moment.

For those of you who might understand, thanks! =)

Instantaneous communication through the internet might not be a good thing - especially when it comes to this Grad. Writers Workshop that I'm in. You see, everyone in the class has to critique my work for the Tuesday class, but they also have to post it beforehand on the website. Well, I've read a few of the critiques and I'm finding that everyone knows what I know about my story, but was hoping no one else would catch. Like the fact that it has 5 pages of blah before the story actually starts, like the fact that many of the sentences belong in a legal contract because of their length and density of description, like the fact that I should have said that my main character was in her LATE twenties because someone thinks that she's too savvy to be in her early twenties.

As I was saying, though, this instantaneous communication thing isn't helping because I keep pressing reload hoping to find another critique so that I can wallow in self pity until class comes when I can hear all these things verbally PLUS the teacher's comments while I sit there quietly, writing down everything on my copy of the story, secretly hoping that someone will, instead of pulling out their tattered, thrice edited copy, pull out a semi-automatic weapon and put me out of my misery.

However, this feeling may have more to do with my inflated sense of self and the perfectionism that I've suffered with since 2 years of age. That might actually be it.

So next time I think that the people in this class will like me less because I didn't blow them away with my writing, I'll just smile and decide not to worry about it.

=)

Forgot to say what cool soy food I made:

I had a Boca Spicy "Chicken" patty with a tofu + vegetable stir fry w/ teryaki sauce. Yum. Those "Chicken" patties are unnervingly good tasting.

Church was very nice today. During the service, I started thinking about the fact that we have so many nationalities and personalities all under one roof - the diversity is really cool (for those who like labels, we've got African Americans, Indians (from India of course), Argentinians, Germans (that still speak German), Arabs (like my mom), and WASPy types as well). Of course, there are a few divisions on ideology and political leanings, ones that I usually end up on the left of. =) Oh well, can't be helped really.

Some people at the church invited me and my parents to lunch, but I declined in order to get work done here at home. Well, after cooking myself lunch and cleaning the kitchen, I'm realizing that I could have accepted and been able to get to work at the same time (not that this is work...it's just that logging has become a pre-work habit, I guess to clear out distractions in my head). One thing I couldn't have done, however, is eat the food I'm supposed to be eating. I've been feeling really crappy in the health department, so I've started limiting my carbs and animal protein. I'm not a vegetarian, but soy protien just seems to work better for me. I've never understood the whole thing about not eating animals...you'd think they'd be poisenous if we weren't supposed to eat them. Maybe they are! Damn public schooling, lying to me about the food groups!

This would be a good moment to get to work. =)

PS - Music on right now - my "driving" CD that I never burned - Cat Power, Rufus Wainwright, REM, The Strokes, They Might Be Giants, Jars of Clay (imagine that!), Madonna (I like everything but the "Bedtime Stories", "Erotica" period - maybe I'm repressed or something), Solex, and Sixpence None The Richer