Curious...
It's always interesting to see which topics grab onto people. For example, my blog entry from early April about Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar has proved very popular, with 19 different reader comments so far. That's more comments than the Duggars have kids--but not by many. Click here to see where various people weigh in on the topic of the Duggar's prodigious brood.
Posted by patrick at 01:49 PM | Comments (0)
May 27, 2004
I'm back, and badder than ever...
It's good to have access to the internet again; for the last three days, some variant of the Sasser worm was rebooting my computer every time I tried to log on. That made downloading the needed Windows Security Update difficult, to say the least, and forced me to endure the shame of checking my e-mail and sending out needed messages from Kinko's.
I got some good news via e-mail a few evenings ago, right before my modem turned into Hellen Keller--I entered three short stories in SpecFicWorld.com's Second Annual Speculative Fiction Contest, and, out of a field of 87 entries, my pieces managed to place fifth, ninth, and fourteenth. Click the link to check out the list of the top fourteen stories.
I turned in my screenplay draft this morning, all 87 insane pages of it. My professor made the comment earlier in the week that my script is "almost beyond comprehension because it's so stupid." However, as I'm trying to write something in the vein of "Half-Baked" and "Not Another Teen Movie," I'm taking that as a compliment.
The only other newsworthy item is that I auditioned for "Proof" at RCC a few evenings ago, and I'm waiting to hear back on that. I don't expect to know until Sunday or Monday, but that's okay. Between the essays I need to grade, the essay I need to write, and the playwriting pages I need to crank out, there's plenty to keep me from pining by the phone.
Posted by patrick at 05:59 PM | Comments (1)
May 22, 2004
I'm a Hollywood Animal, all right...
I managed to write 13 pages of my screenplay draft today--including a mind-boggling 12 in three hours (six of which were written in a single hour).
I'd like to say that my intentions were pure, and my results were borne of a renewed commitment towards my craft. The truth is that I went Sonic the Hedgehog on my screenplay draft today so that I could justify my attending a party this evening at which I knew that a very cute girl was gong to wear a very flattering cheerleader outfit.
Dear God, I'm turning into Joe Eszterhas...
Posted by patrick at 01:24 AM | Comments (2)
May 19, 2004
We had our Chamber Singers
We had our Chamber Singers concert last Saturday night, and it went pretty well. We were responsible for memorizing half of our songs, which had me stressed out. In fact, it wasn't until the other uber-bass and I got together the night before the concert for a memory-enhancing session of pizza, sangria and sheet music that the lyrics to the most perniciously elusive song finally stuck in my brain.
With that concert out of the way, all that stands between me and a carefree summer is another 40 pages of screenplay, another 40 pages for playwriting, an edit of my first 40 pages in playwriting, a 20-page essay for my independent study class, and grading 60-odd essays.
And, actually, that carefree summer might not be the halcyon three-month chunk o' dandelion wine I had quite expected. In the last 48 hours, I found out A) that my car is basically on its last legs, B) I won't be teaching summer school at my old high school (which sounded like it might happen), and C) my financial situation for next school year is nowhere near as rosy or secure as I had originally thought.
My friend James and I are fixing to sell t-shirts and whatnot on our respective sites, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Buy early, buy often!
Posted by patrick at 01:33 AM | Comments (2)
May 11, 2004
McDonald's puts the "ground" in "ground beef"...
From page four of Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, which, for being frightening as all hell, is a very interesting read:
"An estimated one out of every eight workers in the United States has at some point been employed by McDonald's. The company annually hires about one million people, more than any other American organization, public or private. McDonald's is the nation’s largest purchaser of beef, pork, and potatoes – and the second largest purchaser of chicken. The McDonald's Corporation is the largest owner of retail property in the world."
"A survey of American schoolchildren found that 96 percent could identify Ronald McDonald. The only fictional character with a higher degree of recognition was Santa Claus. The impact of McDonald's on the way we live today is hard to overstate. The Golden Arches are now more widely recognized than the Christian cross."
I won't give away the other horrors that await you in Fast Food Nation, but suffice it to say I'm glad that red meat has never been a dietary staple of mine. In-N-Out is still okay, but you'd do well to avoid ground beef from just about any other source--including supermarkets. Once you've read how unregulated the beef industry is, you'll be surprised that E. coli didn't take us all out long ago.
Posted by patrick at 11:14 PM | Comments (6)
May 10, 2004
"Goin’ down to cow town, the cow’s a friend to me…"
According to VacavilleNews.com, SB 1606 (a bill that would lower California’s legal voting age to 14) passed the state Senate Committee on Elections and Reappointment last Wednesday.
Condescendingly dubbed "Training Wheels for Citizenship" by Sen. John Vasconcellos (D-San Jose), the proposed constitutional amendment "would give 14- and 15-year-olds 1/4 of a full vote, while 16- and 17-year-olds would get 1/2 a full vote."
Says Vasconcellos: "It is so sad that so many of our young people today are deserting our voting ranks in ever larger numbers. They are simply not feeling engaged enough to attract them into the regular practice and habit of voting, to participate in their own self-determination. And self-determination is the glory and thrill of our American way of government, and of life itself."
The glory and thrill of our American way of government, and of life itself?
Sounds like "Mr. Smith Goes to San Jose". I don’t think I could say that with a straight face, much less since the Supreme Court arbitrarily installed Dubya in 2000.
This was brought about thanks to the abysmally low voter turnout for the 18-to-25 demographic. I’m not sure what the bill is supposed to accomplish, aside from giving Britney Spears a viable shot in California politics.
Is it any wonder that young voters aren’t feeling engaged? The answer isn’t to dole out fragments of votes to teenagers in the hopes that they’ll get in the habit of voting. That’s like trying to fix a high mortality rate at a hospital by bringing in more patients. That might skew the numbers in a more favorable light, sure, but wouldn’t the real solution be to look at the doctors, the administrators, and the hospital itself to try and figure out what’s gone fundamentally wrong with how it does business?
Instead of installing "Training Wheels for Citizenship," Vasconcellos and his supporters should be working to rectify the widespread governmental cronyism and self-interest that convince people to stop pedaling in the first place.
Posted by patrick at 10:19 PM | Comments (1)
May 08, 2004
Great way to build bridges with the community, RPD...
How cynical would somebody have to be to insinuate that the following announcement's headline is a little thoughtless, given the f-word most people are probably associate (whether consciously or subconsciously) with "ready" and "aim"?
Very cynical, indeed. I'm glad I'm of more optimistic stock. :p
Posted by patrick at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)
May 03, 2004
"LXG," sushi, math, Damon Knight, and cheap books...
The Japanese dinner went well. We had a few no-shows, but my ex-girlfriend had made enough sushi to encircle the globe twice over, so we weren't any worse off for the missing entrees the MIAs were to have brought. Actually, ending up with six participants worked out just fine, as A) my dinner table isn't really big enough accommodate the ten guests I had expected, and B) my dining area isn't really big enough to accommodate the dinner table. With ten diners, we would have all ended up with bruised elbows and chafed kneecaps.
A few days ago, I received a curious letter in the mail. The Mathematical Association of America offered me an invitation to join their ranks. Anybody who has known me for any time at all knows of my near-legendary ineptitude in any caliber of math higher than that I'd employ in a supermarket or at the gas pump. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, this really is a case of my not wanting to join any club that would have me as a member.
In other news, it would seem that my frugality knows almost no limits. I drove over to campus today to attend the weekly Highlander meeting and find out if I got a position for next year (I did: head copy editor, one of the positions I held as an undergrad). I had about ten minutes to kill before the meeting, so I headed to the library to look through the secondhand stuff they had for sale. I usually can't find anything to catch my interest among their offerings, but I stumbled upon a Mishima novel, a collection of Damon Knight stories, and a collection of Rod Serling stories. Now, Rivera Library charges more for used books than I'm used to paying--a full dollar for paperbacks (scandalous!), and three dollars for hardbacks (obscene!). The total came to a little over five dollars. I ended up buying the books, but I had to think about it. A whopping $1.80 a book almost proved too rich for my blood. Geez, I'm a tightwad.
Speaking of Damon Knight (the influential S-F editor whose own stories included the memorable "To Serve Man" ["It's a cookbook!"]), this is as good a time as any to mention how bad-ass it would be to have Damon Knight as your honest-to-goodness birth name. I mean, Damon Knight. Think about it. I'd have business cards made.
My copy of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II" arrived in the mail today. I had originally ordered it from Amazon.com, who hemmed and hawed and told me it would be delayed. And then told me it would be delayed again. I finally cancelled my order and ordered it from B&N.com, who had it to me in about a week. Amazon should have bought my copy from B&N and shipped it to me; I'd never have been the wiser. Anyhow, I set out to read the two graphic novels so that I could compare them to the film "based" on them for an independent study class I'm taking this quarter. I'd heard nothing but praise for the original material, and nothing but contempt for the movie ("LXG," Hollywood so desperately wanted to call it--figuring, probably correctly, that the full title was just waaaaaay too many syllables for its target demographic).
After my reading/viewing, I'm of the opinion that the praise and scorn were all deserved. The graphic novels are very good, a satisfying read, a fun premise, and bursting at the seams with literary allusions (which have been painstakingly catalogued here by Jess Nevins).
The film was Tinseltown cookie-cutter dreck. Hollywood took everything that earned the original graphic novels a fan-base and threw it out the window. They added characters for crass marketing reasons. They flattened the characters into two-dimensional, interchangeable retreads of innumerable action movie heroes/villains. My essay panning the transformation from graphic novels to movie is already some 2,300 words long, and I'm not done yet.
Posted by patrick at 06:51 PM | Comments (0)
Embarrassing moment contest winner announced!
Here's the winning entry from my "embarrassing moment" contest, submitted by Sam from my undergraduate Highlander days. I could try and spell Sam's name, but it'd be wrong, and I have no desire to disrespect her like that.
When I was but a young, innocent girl, I worked at a newspaper in college. It was a pretty casual setting, and we were a pretty tight knit group. I was a junior at the time and the end of the year rolled around. I found out that I had been selected to be the editor-in-chief of the paper for the following year, and was very excited to get the job. As part of the job, I would get my own office for the first time since I worked there, and couldn't wait to get in there to decorate it.
Little did I know that there was a little tradition where the previous e-i-c would vandalize the office in some way before handing it off to the next e-i-c. When I went in the office during the first day of my new job, I was confronted with... let's just say very graphic bits and pieces of several adult magazines. The group had done a very thorough job of... decorating my office. It took me weeks before I found everything: between the folders in the file cabinet, taped to the bottom of my phone, in every single drawer of my desk, between seat cushions, etc. In mortifying weeks to follow, at least one person a day would come into my office, reach over, and hand me a bit of pornography and say "Oh here, you missed one." It was at least January of the next year before I felt completely confident that I had purged my office.
Oh no, folks. It gets worse. One day, I was talking to a student who I had been mentoring in one of my previous jobs. I was sitting next to her at one of the armchairs in front of my desk. As I was listening to her, my eyes wondered up casually to the blinking smoke detector. To my horror I saw, taped to the outside of the smoke detector, plain as day, a cut out picture of male genitalia.
My breath caught. I stopped mid-sentence. Do you know how many people had been in my office by then? I had held interviews for my entire staff, I had interviewed important people for story articles and I had hosted campus administrators. How many people had done what I had just done while sitting in that armchair and thought that I, a sweet, innocent, young girl was some kind of pervert? And how could I have missed such an obvious place for almost 6 months?
I turned bright red, trying to keep calm. My mentee asked me what was the matter as she looked up to see where I was looking at. She started to ask, "Hey, is that a--" I violently shook my head, grabbed her by the arm, said I wasn't feeling very well and led her out the door, promising to call her later to continue the conversation. Quickly, I climbed on my desk, ripped off the offending bit of paper (and it was just a bit, poor guy) and tore it into many pieces before throwing it away.
The moral of the story, kids: Check your smoke detectors regularly. You never know when you might be caught off guard.
That's pretty embarrassing, all right. I hardly ever see Sam, though, so it looks like I might be keeper of the Uber-Soy for quite some time.
I'd like to thank all the other participants. Well, participant. Yeah...thanks, James. You're first runner-up by default. I'll give you something, too.
Posted by patrick at 03:04 AM | Comments (0)