Archive for November, 2004
Turkey Day!
25 November 2004Well, it seems I’d be committing an atrocity if I didn’t share the things I’m thankful for. So, for starters, I’m thankful for…
Turkey. Stuffing. Green bean casserole & scalloped corn–double yum! Candied yams. Deviled eggs. Mashed potatoes & gravy, though I still don’t consider that “thanksgivingy” food. Cranberry sauce. Pumpkin pie!
For my gym membership, so I can go back and work off all the pounds I’m gonna put right back on today, after losing them in the past couple weeks.
For my family. For actually preferring to stay at home with my folks & bro, because I know I’ll enjoy it.
For friends. Always on my mind, but somehow Thanksgiving puts us closer in touch. Here I am talking to my new friend Jenna online, and expecting to have spent time with Kaleena, Genelle & Erin over the course of this weekend. I suppose I’m getting old enough to watch & see which friends keep coming back after absence, and which ones I need to come back to myself, and I’m happy for it. Sure, low quantity, but amazing quality. Heck, I’m even thankful to be able to hang out with my ex-girlfriend’s husband and enjoy myself.
Mmm, while I’m thinking of it… Thankful for that hostess at the Olive Garden. I must lock her away in a corner of my memory :-D *ahem* Anyhow…
I’m thankful for confidence in those people and things in my life. It’s nice that I, he who questions everything, can sit back and count my blessings with relative ease. The only real question in my mind is, “Is this entry going to be long enough?” ;-)
For opportunity. I haven’t acted much on them, but there are so many opportunities ahead of me that can help me work towards many thankful years to come, if I only take them. I sense a New Year’s resolution coming from this, but hey, that’s a whole other month away.
And that just about covers it. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!
Brand New “Day”
24 November 2004Well, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been trying to get going again on “Day’s End”, but have been fighting a mental block. Part of me has been telling itself, the idea’s good but the details suck so far… go back and start over. But I haven’t been able to put a finger on what I don’t like. So today, I decided to sit down w/ a copy of the plot outline and some highlighters and mark what I loved, what was simply “alright”, and what needs work. Here’s what I got:
Act I: The Touch
- Bethany calls the hotline & talks to Alex. (First Phone Call/FPC)
Note: Bethany is in a casual mood, rather embarrassed.
- Alex & Bethany meet in his summer class.
- They have dinner, Alex tells John’s story.
- Back at the hotline, Alex talk to volunteers about Beth. They all encourage him to make a move.
- After taking the final exam, they give their thankful “goodbyes”. Almost walking away indefinitely, Alex asks if she likes camping.
- Alex & Bethany go on an amazing camping trip, have a steamy night up north.
- Alex walking on air at the hotline.
Note: Other vols note that camping trip has always been a private place for him.
Ø PLOT POINT 1: Bethany calls, very distraught, and Alex rushes to comfort her.
Shot Note: I wanna get a shot where Bethany places a pill bottle in the extreme foreground.
Act II: The Embrace
Flashback to FPC: Bethany crying over ex-boyfriend’s accusation; he considers her too lustful, ‘whorish’.
- Alex admits he’s “crazy” about Bethany, that camping trip was not just a fling.
Shot Note: Include shots of Alex looking at Bethany’s picture, among them, presumably, her “ex”.
- Alex & Bethany both sit at a river, just outside town, talk about following dreams, seeing the world together.
…points to be expanded…
- Bethany considers meeting/calling ex-boyfriend. Alex gets jealous, Bethany explains she’s just trying to make amends. Alex insists it’s too soon. Alex is teaching Bethany guitar.
- Alex gets a call from John, who’s having a bit of a slip.
- School starts back up, and one of Bethany’s friends invites the pair to a little party. Alex is amazed to discover how well-regarded Bethany is by her friends.
- After seeing her with her friends, Alex insists she’d be a great volunteer for the helpline. Bethany visits the call center, meets everybody.
- Alex goes out & researches travel costs, plans to surprise Bethany with a trip.
- Alex finds bethany embracing, hugging a guy. He assumes it’s her ex-boyfriend and retreats.
Ø PLOT POINT 2: Bethany calls and Alex overreacts to what he saw, fears she’s abandoning him.
Act III: The Retreat
Flashback to FPC: Alex comforts Bethany, convinces her that she’s more than what others accuse her to be.
- The pair drift apart. Bethany dates others casually, Alex withdraws.
- Alex comes over some time later and attempts to apologize, Bethany forgives but can’t forget.
- More drifting.
Note: Include scene where Alex comforts miscellaneous helpdesk caller. Continued VO has him saying “there are more people who care about you than you know” while he himself sulks in isolation.
- After not hearing from him for weeks, Alex discovers John killed himself.
- Alex revisits the river to contemplate. Another helpline volunteer comes out and offers some sage-like advice.
- Alex calls Bethany offering to loan his guitar, gets answering machine.
- Bethany rushes over to Alex’s, fearing he’s going to commit suicide.
- Bethany find’s Alex’s goodbye letter.
- Alex gets on a bus, train, plane, et al… Travels the world.
- Bethany continues on in school, more motivated, obviously changed.
- Bethany visits hotline to relay Alex’s goodbyes, takes a call for help at his old desk.
I’m pleased, actually. Most of it’s yellow or green, some of it’s kinda in-between. I think a lot of those areas can be made green just by seeing how I implement them in the script. There are only a few red spots and most of them center around the flashbacks, which are always a controversial plot device. I may just try writing the script w/o them and, if they’re necessary, put them back in. Unless I can make them tie into the current events in a really kick-ass fashion.
Otherwise, my main concern is striking the balance between angst and cheese, because I’m confident that somewhere between those two extremes lies reality, and that’s what I’m looking for. I don’t think any parts are too angsty as of yet… Those parts that would be are more…melancholy, or glum. And the angry parts aren’t angsty, they’re more mature & more dynamic. But the cheese, yeah, I need to work on. It seems “real” to me because I’ve always been a bit cheesy, but I’ve got to draw those moments in so that others would be able to appreciate it.
I’m definitely gonna try to sit down and write a complete draft of Day’s End during winter break. I know the Movies Askew contest has been foremost on my mind lately, but something’s telling me to get past my blocks and work on this a.s.a.p., and I’ve just gotta follow it.
Shee-it…
16 November 2004Went back reading through my journal today… ALL of it. I’m creating these “memories”–essentially I’m keywording my entries according to “political”, “filmmaking”, “Genelle”, etc.–and not even half done yet. I have spent enough time, however, to realize just how full of shit I’ve been in past entries here.
Now, I don’t think I’ve had any intentions of pulling the wool over my friends’ eyes or anything. I’m not sure if I wrote a lot of the sappy shit I did because I was so naive and foolish to believe those things, or if I was just trying to fool myself.
So if you’ve ever wondered, “How come Thom doesn’t write as often as he used to?” Well, the answer is simple: I don’t buy my own bullshit anymore. :-P
So, in attempts to be able to look back at this thing and read at least one entry about myself and my life that doesn’t cause me to roll my eyes, let me get a few things out here.
- I most certainly do not have all the answers about life, love, or myself.
- I’m not terribly pleased by that fact.
- I don’t lose sleep over it, either. Most nights, at least.
There we go. I don’t know how much more honest I can get than that.
All things considered, however, I’m a bit disappointed I haven’t kept up better with this journal. At points when I was writing, it seems to have helped me find my direction (fraudulent or otherwise) in life. So I think I will try to get back at it. Hey… Two posts in one day… That ain’t bad.
Must… get… crackin’…
15 November 2004Anytime I try to do anything even remotely constructive, productive, expressive or whatnot, I’m running into a huge mental block lately. Even right now. As I’m writing this entry, my mind just wants me to sit back and think about not writing it. This is horrible… In the past, even when I was lost in thought and consequently unproductive, I was still usually thinking about doing whatever was at task. Now it’s like actually putting mental effort into procrastinating.
The good news is I feel like I’m at the bottom of this trough and about to swing back up again, so I’m gonna try my damnedest to make that happen, and to make the most of it when it does. But man, it’s just been hitting me everywhere. I realized last week that I literally have done nothing to do with filmmaking since summer. I’m finally gearing up to work on my Movies Askew project, and have gotten riled up about Goldfield stuff again lately. I’d been planning on doing some smaller projects before taking on something like Goldfield, but I think it’s a waste of time to do feature-length projects simply for “practice”. I’ll get ahold of a camera, do some shorts, and I’ll shoot the MA project in a flexible manner so that it can run anywhere from 10-45 minutes. That should be good practice. But no Charity or Day’s End or watered down version of Trip before I do Goldfield. If I think small, I’m gonna be small. Let’s just get it done.
Then there’s my Synergy business… not so much a business yet. I have very few friends to “hit up” and fewer that have a need for the products. Most of my family is already involved, and work just isn’t the environment that embraces this type of stuff. So I’m already down to looking for cold leads. I wrote up an ad w/ my mom this weekend that I believe we’ll be putting on some free sites tonight… We’ll see how that goes. Worse comes to worse, we might have to take out an ad in the paper and get some responses from that. Hopefully we can get that ball rolling, because an extra few hundred bucks a month would really help with the filmmaking stuff.
Eh, so what else needs to be improved… Social life? Ah-hahahahaha… It’s actually surprising how unimportant that is right now. On one hand, it worries me that I might be becoming like my parents who have NO life and no desire to change it. But that’s not how I feel… I think there are just more important things I can do right now (if I’ll only start doing them). That will come when it’s time.
While my mind is on such things, though… Man, was I glad to drive up to the river Friday! Ran into some totally hot Forest Service chicks who were releasing a raccoon. I tell ya, if they’re the standard for young wannabe rangers, I might just have to look into some forestry or conservation major to go back to school for. Find one of them and go live out our collective lives in the woods? Doesn’t sound bad at all.
Oh yes, one more point of improvement… Kaleena and I have decided to go to the gym nightly (Mon-Fri) from now on. She figures it’ll be easier to make a habit of it if it’s actually a daily routine, like with working and all that. Makes sense to me. Even if we miss a day a week, we’ll still get in the necessary four required to workout the heart. Of course, I’m hoping it’ll cover some serious fat burning too. ;-)
So that’s just about that. I guess I’ll go back to pretending to work again. Uhh… Laters, y’all.
Ignorance = Bliss?
8 November 2004“Ignorance is Bliss,” they say? I’ve never believed so myself. Always found ignorance to be foolish. (Still do.) But this past week has taught me that the “ignorant masses” have an advantage… Those informed few sometimes have trouble taking things in stride. Read an article about a Georgian man who, upset by the results of the election, drove to NY and killed himself at “ground zero” of the WTC. So we know, he had a good family, good job, was engaged, would have no seeming personal reasons to take his own life. Of course, usually there are reasons and they’re buried far deeper than a news brief could dig, but still, jesus… Talk about an inability to deal with things.
He’s not alone in that, though thankfully the ones I know deal better than that. All this past week, my boss–who seems to have been reliving his old hippy days a bit, for better or worse–was hunched over in his walk and slamming doors every time he went through the room. Ended up giving himself a weeklong headache and took Friday off. I’m glad I haven’t run into my boss’s boss, whom I could tell was almost obsessively rooting against Bush. Then there’s that someone who’s probably going to read this entry, whom I’m in no hurry to jump back into chit-chat with, not so much because I’m disappointed or disagree but largely because I’ve been called “politically correct” in the aftermath. And I happen to take offense to that.
My point is, all these rather informed or semi-informed people seem to be taking a “sky is falling”/”world is going to end”/”country’s going down the gutter” attitude that’s in some ways as bizarre and radical as those really, really uninformed people who make up their own view of the world in their mind. I’m talking the tongue-talking, snake-handling, cult types here. That’s how silly some of these attitudes are.
You know, I’m not happy by the way things are going, by any means. I’m disappointed that 11 states passed the gay marriage ban. As for other issues, I’m ambivalent about many of them that others are upset about, but I certainly don’t like the way that, in general, the world and all it’s factioned fractions are dealing with one another… It’s not very civil. But it’s all been done and it’ll be done again. People have feared the world was falling apart, but all its pieces have been picked right up again. I’m reminded of a famous saying:
“Don’t sweat the small stuff.” …and it’s all small stuff.
What’s going on right now is just a season of bad weather. That’s short-term. Look at the climate–it still ain’t that bad.
Weapons of Mass Disinformation (Incomplete)
8 November 2004I’ve come upon the realization that civilization is defined, sometimes euphamistically, by its greatest weapon, its greatest asset and tactical advantage in warfare. In the Stone Age, primitive man hunted for food–and for each other–with spears, arrows, and small blades carved out of flint or other similarly manipulable rocks. The Bronze Age brought about swords and armor, as well as refinements in earlier weapons, all forged with the titular metal. The Iron Age made guns and cannons commonplace, and as iron turned to steel we saw tanks, planes, and submarines. We might have fond memories of the Space Age, but we mustn’t forget the underlying motives–to develop a “space platform” for dropping weapons before the other side could do so–and the by-products: thousands of nuclear-equipped ICBMs which, thank god, have never been used.
Today we live in the Information Age, and it’s fitting (but often unrealized) that the dissemination of information is among our greatest weapons. Just as ancient stonecutters chiseled and tweaked dull stones into blades, so do we now manipulate facts and figures, fracturing them, polishing them to smooth out noticeable flaws, until such point as they penetrate and harm whomever or whatever we want, whenever and wherever we desire. Sadly, unlike those Titan rockets that sat collecting dust, present society seems to engage in information warfare without reservation… Not only do we target foreign bodies we consider a threat–Iran, pre-war Iraq, Al Queda affiliate–and not only those countries like France, Russia, and Germany, whom we simply disagree with, but we even target our fellow domestic citizens. We especially target ourselves.
It’s hard to think of information as a bad thing. It is, because knowledge has always been that which has moved us beyond our most primitive behavior. It was knowledge of the destructive force of nuclear war that ultimately deterred us from never using our stockpile. But we’re not just dealing with the cold, hard facts anymore. In a world where everyone has a voice and an opinion, where the people are clever enough to use ambiguous “facts” that are impossible to dispute, in a world where we can get 10 million search results and 14,000 news articles by searching for the term “Information Age” in Google, it’s become too easy to abuse information. Indeed, we’re dealing not only with information but with misinformation, and even disinformation.
And unfortunately, we can’t just blame our leaders in government, business, and media. Sure, the presidential candidates and their most die-hard party loyalists originate the smear tactics, the mudslinging. Sure, Michael Moore, and nobody else, makes the decision to make misleading editorial cuts in his films to make people appear more oafish and disconnected than they are. But too many of us–the general public, the people who listen–too many of us choose to listen, and all too often we listen without disputing the set of facts we choose to agree with. People find validity in one news channel, one political party, one documentary film because they agree with the same ideology presented within. They use this validity to disparage and “discredit” those people, parties, and publications that contradict their ideology. Of course, the same situation unfolds itself both ways.
This isn’t strictly an American phenomenon. It could be argued that France has dealt with us using the same selective interpretation by which we have dismissed their opinions on our foreign relations. The same can be said with other European countries. But at least in this instance, some of the discrepancy can be attributed to wholly different national perspectives. We’re left with much less excuse for our internal behavior.
And what about terrorism? Well, a lot has been said of terrorists getting ahold of a dirty bomb or a nuke, or belt-bombing, or hijacking more planes, but while all this is going on, the “evil ones” are having greater success than we realize. One of their keys to success is that they restrict the amount of information available about their groups. There might be a lot of “chatter”, but it’s hard to decipher and hard to sort out fact from friction, and there’s nothing allowing us to hear what goes on when they aren’t talking over common channels. By being so evasive, they require the rest of the world to fill in the blanks, a process which causes us to disagree an awful, awful lot. Some of us are so convinced that they’re evil incarnate that we have a kneejerk reaction and wage war–sometimes when and where it’s not needed. Others among us want to close up operations as we try to “find the source of their hostility”, an admirable approach but usually taken with a naive attitude and paradigm of bias that it must ultimately be our own fault.
… (to be continued)
An Open Letter to Kerry Supporters
3 November 2004This is an open letter to the 55 million people who were hoping to elect John F. Kerry as President. Bush supporters, please read along. I would hope there is some insightful observations for you as well.
Friends, Democrats, countrymen, (…and Bush-haters,)
Well, it’s over. Kerry’s tenacious bid for presidency has ended in a whimper.
Bush has won–not by much, but by enough to compel Kerry to concede. He even won the popular vote this time, leading 51% to 48% by most accounts. No recounts, it seems. No major battles in the court. For all the mudslinging, the dirty desparation with the election had been run by both sides, it has been won and lost in good form. Of course, that probably doesn’t make you feel better.
“How did this happen?”
“Why did people actually re-elect him?”
“Is the American public just idiots?”
I’m sure many of you have asked yourselves and one another questions such as these; some of you have already asked me the same. And you have a full right to be concerned, because, if nothing else, your opinion counts. But I hope you don’t just assume that more than half the people in America are stupid, uninformed, evil, or what not. That’s not any more correct or productive than it would be if they assumed nearly half were “sissy, un-American whiners”. Instead, let’s realize that there’s a huge difference of opinion among different segments of the population. Then, let’s try to really figure out what that difference is.
A very simple explanation for this outcome may be that Kerry was a very, very weak candidate. Zero charisma aside, even when he tried to get personal, he always seemed too calculated and rhetorical to come off as sincere. With a candidate like this, it doesn’t matter how strong his plan is… He’s an open target to criticism. Just look at his war record, his protesting days, his voting record, or his hideous wife–these might seem like minor issues, but they’re easy to focus on when there’s so little else to embrace about him as a person. This seems to be a popular explanation, as already many democrats have agreed with me. But this can only explain the behavior of the so-called “undecided” voters. Yet, over 90% of those who voted had made their choice more than a month before the election. So we must dig deeper to find where that 51% came from.
So what else is there?
If the exit polls are any indication, Bush may have won because moderate-conservatives fear the country is headed toward a state of moral bankruptcy. I’m the first to believe that moral issues shouldn’t be politicized one way or another, but if these voters felt so desparate as to vote for someone who would protect their values, perhaps those issues are worth taking a look, aren’t they?
Another important issue was terrorism. Now, from what I’ve seen, most Democrats argue that Bush has fumbled the war on terror by going into Iraq. That’s one way to see it. Others see it differently: Bush has kept the conflict on the other side of the globe. We’ve “stirred up the hornets’ nest”, so to speak, and whether they’ve been there or just got there, we’re fighting terrorists in Iraq, not within our own borders. That we took out a brutal dictator in the process is, in the grand scheme of things, just a bonus. Another seeming indication of Bush’s success against terrorism is Bin Laden’s publicity stunt last week… He sent us a video tape. It’s obvious he intended to intimidate us, and likely to influence the election. This guy, and his organization, usually try to intimidate and influence through huge explosions and mass murder. It makes sense that, if he could, he would’ve gone that same route with us prior to the election, wouldn’t he? Before you write this off as Cheney scare tactics, look up what Putin’s response was to the Bin Laden tape. He seems to agree.
These are just two of the many reasons for which 51% fo voters chose Bush. I’m sure there are more… Seek them out, and discuss, but be civil. Don’t be afraid to offer your opinions… That fifty-one percent needs to understand your concerns that Bush may be eroding our freedoms, creating a theocracy, and so forth. But again, be civil. Maybe, by the time 2008 comes around, we will exist in a completely different political landscape that began at a grassroots level. Let’s hope so, because there’s plenty to change. The electoral process, campaign tactics, and the two-party system are just a few things we need to reform if we’re to ever have candidates we can all appreciate.
It is our right to disagree, but it is our responsibility to compromise.
Friends don’t let friends commit media bias
1 November 2004(Do note that the subject of this entry is mostly jestful and only tangentially indicative of the intent of the entry. Any opinions stated herein which may apply directly to friends are offered strictly as constructive and inspirational suggestions.)
Last night marked the third or fourth editorial article I’ve proofread this year for Genelle. This is at least the second that concerned politics or at least quasi-political topics, and I wonder just a bit what G’s looking for when, after I’ve checked an article for spelling and grammatical errors, she asks me what I think about the “content”. Is she simply trying to get me more talkative, or trying to spark a political debate in particular? Is she trying to sway my opinion from “undecided”? I have to wonder because, in this mode, she’s not just my friend–she’s also a journalism major, who are in my experience are second only to PoliSci majors in having obscure secret motivations.
So what of the content? Well, as I recall, both articles had valid underlying points, but they also had a tone of… Well, a tone that Jon Stewart would probably comment about if the articles were, for some reason, repeated on CNN’s Crossfire. While not explicitly stated, the impression is given that Fahrenheit 9/11 is a glorious triumph of truth, that the Bush administration and Republicans make up some sort of evil empire, and anyone who doesn’t vote for Kerry is naive, misinformed, or yadda yadda yadda. I’m sure this sounds way too critical for what these articles are–submissions for journalism classes at a small college-town in the mountains, with professors that probably expect such tones to be taken. It’s not exactly a high-stakes situation.
But it worries me that I see Genelle–the one whom, two years ago, had “no interest” in politics–picking up such habits. I believe she’s fully capable of generating an audience well beyond that of her professors and classmates, the Lumberjack readership and that the AZ Daily Sun. At those greater levels of news reporting, media bias isn’t anything we need more of. First of all, it’s a dead horse. No need to beat it. Lumping herself in as one more liberal commentator won’t help her make a name of her self. But another reason–and the one that sets off the warning light for me–is that political bias makes it a dangerous system for journalists, readers/viewers, and the entire system. Just look at the current situation. There are at least two distinctly different versions of the “truth” to any situation, and politicians, journalists, and everyday folk alike choose to believe whichever version supports their preconceived notions.
For consideration, let’s compare two major journalistic landmarks over the years. Exhibit A: