See you, space cowboy

I was reprimanded by my buddy Marisa through a comment on the last post. It lovingly reads, "I wish you blogged more, punk." That was 11 days ago, but I am only getting it right now because, as she points out, I have not been keeping up with this blog. My last post on Old Man Ira was a little over a month ago.

But I have been blogging. I have actually been more rigorous in my posts than ever before. But not here. Old Man Ira, I am afraid, was something of a starter blog.

So, if you are still periodically looking to this blog for my wheres and whats, then you should definitely check out http://darkknightdramaturgy.wordpress.com/ as it has been where I've been writing since September 8.

And sorry, Marisa, for not sending out a memo!

Punk.

me and my red pen

This is the sort of English up with which I will not put.
-Winston Churchill

At the age of 26, after having finished six years of university, after having written a thesis and gotten some minor things published, and after having taught Writing 1 for four semesters, I am taking my first non-fiction writing course since AP English, senior year of high school.

Okay, it's not a writing course: it's a copyediting course. And work is paying for it. But still.

I am writing this entry because I am avoiding doing my homework. HOMEWORK! My current assignment is to read Chapter 14 from The Copyeditor's Handbook, "Grammar: Principles and Pitfalls." It's not bad actually; I wish I had known about it so I could have assigned it.

Having never taken a writing course (other than playwriting), I am learning a lot of little things, and, yes, as a writer I really do geek out over them. This whole concept of notional agreement (which formally disregards formal agreement by relying on the meaning of what is being said rather that the words being used) BLOWS MY MIND.

Rachel is sitting next to me, working on a real writing assignment. She is struggling to get started, and asks for advice. I read over the prompt: basic, beginning of the semester, let's see how loose I can get them to go (is this phrase a subjunctive?!), assignment. Write about anything from the perspective of anyone but yourself in a detail-oriented style. I turn off the student inside me (careful, you sick bastards) and turn on the teacher and go to work, with 5 pages left in Chapter 14: the preposition section.

"The more pressing issue for copyeditors is to ensure that the author has selected the correct preposition."

Soon I get to do a worksheet!

in appreciation of articulation

The human body evolved over eons into an intricate machine whose expected fuel is fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, meat, and, since the last Ice Age ended ten thousand years ago, a modicum of wheat, corn, and rice. Food was abundant only seasonally, while migration or at least nomadism was a way of life. In the epochs before domesticated meat sources, those centuries of hunting wild prey with spears and traps, the body's metabolism adapted to store any caloric surplus in the form of fat--which could be broken down during subsequent starving times into fuel again.

That plan remains the evolutionary strategy of all the human bodies now making their way though our entirely different contemporary world. Reduce the greens in that body's intake, add dairy and processed carbohydrates, make meat a daily part of the diet, shovel in sugar and oils, provide a steady supply for the appetite, and on top of all this turn the hunter-gatherer into a mostly sedentary being, and the result is both unfortunate and predictable. The machine stores fat to its own detriment, while the body's strategy for nomadic survival becomes a fatal anachronism. Evolution did not anticipate nine to five. Evolution has no reply to TV.

From Stephen P. Kiernan's Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System (which I am reading as part of my research for Jane Anderson's Quality of Life, in which we explore the topic of Right to Die)

off the job training

I did not know this morning that tomorrow I would be a student again, but today I found myself registering for UC Berkeley's Extension course down the street from where I work at A.C.T. in the heart of San Francisco. Tomorrow at 6:30 p.m., I will be sitting in a computer room learning the finer points of copyediting. And, yes, I am excited.

I have actually really been wanting to learn Spanish so I don't have to read Hispanic / Latino / Mexican / etc. plays in translation. I searched Craigslist for a used Rosetta Stone (Tangent: This was before Mr. Phelps started promoting Rosetta Stone with that stupid "I like to do everything fast" commercial. If the pool at the 1972 Olympic games had been as deep as the pool in China's Cube, and if the swimmers wore the same Speedo LZR Racer suit that they wore this summer, Mark Spitz would still not have been able to win eight medals because there weren't eight medals to be won), but all of the deals sounded sketchy--the kind of sketchy that means that either a) the program wouldn't work properly or b) I would be caught up in some FBI sting operation targeting this guy named Sam:

I have been in the business of selling these for 3 years now. I am aware
that others on craigslist is selling stuff for cheaper but in all
honesty, I can bet those are not authentic. I can sell burned stuff for
even $50 and make more then what I make on authentic stuff but I care
for my customers and don't want them to get in trouble!

You have to be very carefull with
non authentic rosetta products as there is a license as a copied one
will work anywhere from 3 days to 6 months as rosetta will then see a
duplicate of the license being used and will blur it as the disk will
then read as disk error and there is a good chance rosetta will issue
you a $1000US fine as I can give you contacts of people who have got
these fines.. the sellers of copied rosetta don't care for the buyers
as they are trying to make a quick buck! If you have any problems with
my rosetta products I promise to give even 10 times your money back!

Please let me know
thanks kindly
Sam

So I didn't buy from Sam. I learned that you can access some verion of Rosetta Stone through the library here, but it won't work on my computer yet. All this is to say that I am in no way opposed to becoming a student again, even a student of Chicago Manuel editing rules.

musings of a sore throat in september

It is an ugly day. San Francisco, realizing it should be autumn now, has covered itself with a wet blanket of fog that, unlike its frequent fog, has lasted throughout the day. I think it too is moody that it doesn't really get autumny here. My boss took last week off, finally having someone she could trust with the office (me!), only to get slightly sick with a soar throat. We both joked (when we spoke the one time I called her so that she could explain to me what a House Board is and what my role should be in acquiring the information for said House Board) that it was just her immune system's way of saying, Yeah, well if you can take a break so can I; I've been holding this ship together with chewing gum and paper clips for two years while you went full speed. So screw you, I'm going to Vegas.

But now I too have a soar throat, meaning that it was not just a psychological-turned-physiological phenomenon. And we are out of juice. And it is an ugly day.

I dropped a commission last Thursday. Horrible, isn't it? Someone is actually willing to pay me to write a play, and I tell them to go screw. Criminal. But they didn't meet my terms (my terms begin that I, not they, would own the end product). And I could have probably negotiated, but they were only giving me a month to write the thing, and, honestly, I was sick of dealing with it. Too much going on here.

Stage direction: As he writes this last bit about the commission, a bright pink post-it should slowly fall from the notes from the project in questoin, notes he has tucked between two magazing holders. The post-it should fall like a spray painted leaf, and when it lands the words, "Luis = Warrior" and "Nesto = Serious", should be visible to remind him that he had put some thought into it. He will be left with the question, Should I throw this note away just like I threw the commission away? Or should I save it as a reminder? Should I save it for some future play when I need two brothers, one who is fighting for change and one who is too serious about his future to disrupt the status quo.

I dropped the commission and then preceded to waste my weekend. I have never been good with spare time. Rachel says I need to learn how to relax. I tried to relax by watching Arrested Development on Hulu, and then moseying through episodes of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Very different shows, both good and bad for very different reasons. I kept trying to tell myself that I was relaxing, but I kept retorting, you aren't relaxing, you twit, you're wasting time.

Time I should spend doing what exactly, I ask.

To which I scoff, Time you should be figuring out how you are going to spend your time.

You twit.

this message will inevitably self destruct at some point in the future whether you read it or not

I am a reluctant nihilist. I do not embrace this. I do not rejoice in my nihilism (though maybe I do wear it around my neck like a pet albatross), and that I look to the distant future and see nothing but void does not give me a sense of liberty or freedom. The literally inconceivable absence of myself forces me to turn to other options: the breathing of the cat passed out around my feet; a thought on a script I read earlier that day; memories; the near future. Anything. Even writing about it is not thinking about it. Writing about it does not create the panic because I am choosing words. I am carefully crafting sentences to convey a meaning so that I can avoid feeling what is behind that meaning.

Life is a defense mechanism.

I have had many MANY a conversation with the faithful about my envy of their security. Do not mock it, their devotion to a higher power: how can you accuse them of being illogical when they live their lives in comfort and promise? I think missionaries would find me endlessly frustrating: a willing convert whose ______is too stubborn to accept what his______would like to accept. You cannot CHOOSE to believe in something. The question, How can you believe in something, is no more difficult to answer than, How can you not believe in anything? Maybe we should be using "may": How MAY you believe in that? Who let you? What opened you up to it? Where can I get some? Do they sell it at Walgreens?

And yet this is not a sad post for me. I have been grappling with this on some level since I was 13 and in the affirmation program of my church and we were told that we get to decide what to believe in. A great gift, not to be forced into a doctrine; but no doubt a burden to those of us who took it seriously. So this is not a new conversation I am having with myself.

And here's the kicker: the flip side to nihilism is that there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON NOT TO BE HAPPY. If nothing matters, than misery is just as worthless as happiness. And yet happiness is just so much more enjoyable.

This was going to be an entry about my new life in San Francisco. It tried really hard to be, but fell to a false start. I am thinking about moving my conversations related to theater over to the Dark Knight blog, but that idea stresses me out. That idea makes it seem like I should take it more seriously. And should one take a blog seriously?

i'm writing again i'm writing again i'm writing again so stop nagging my brain and let me write again

Write something.
Write anything.
Sneeze in your hand and wipe the snot on the page.
Anything to start.

Draw a line around the snot.
Oh that's a nice shape.
Looks kind of like a flower.
Maybe you should write about a flower.
You like flowers.
You were a gardener once.
You bought a calathia for your bathroom. Though those don't flower.

Flowers remind me of vampires. Cue vampire segue:
I am reading Twilight that new book (with vampires) that is supposedly the next Harry Potter. It's not the next Harry Potter. It's not a smart book. It's an easy book. It is the kind of novel that makes me think that I could write a novel. In like three weeks. I actually started. In my head. To write a novel. I think the problem a lot of writers have is that they are trying to be good; when I write my novel, I am going to do like Stephenie Meyer did it: to make enough money to pay for maintenance on her mini-van. She needed to make 10,000 bucks; she got a book deal for 250,000.

Okay, I don't know where I heard that, but I definitely heard that. I just tried to find a link to some evidence that this is truly what happened, and came up shorthanded.

Sometimes I am in the mood for that kind of book; other times I read one sentence and am disgusted with myself and more disgusted with how it really is just up to a publisher to decide what becomes popular.

I have often thought that becoming famous isn't all that difficult: you just have to find someone who wants to make you famous who has the power to make you famous. That's it. That simple.