Happy Fifth Anniversary!

On July 12th, we will have been married five years. So we're going to Santa Fe, New Mexico for a long weekend.

Maybe I'll have pictures when I get back.

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

That Book Meme Thing

This will be short and sweet.

Blogger.com does not really allow you to create blog posts as drafts and then rearrange them when they are ready to be published. So when you pre-draft your next week's worth of blog entries, inevitably something comes up and you have to delete them, add the new blog entry in the right spot, and recreate them later. Ach, Blogger, thank goodness you are free, otherwise I might complain.

So I got tagged with this book meme thing. Here are the instructions:


1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you. Sorry. I don't tag other people. There is an established precedent.

There are two non-technical books by my computer at home. Because Oscar Wilde was featured in a previous entry, I'm using the other book.

"I've often dreamt about falling off a tower and never reaching the ground, and when I've woken up I've felt as weak and exhausted as if I really had fallen off it."

"That's the funny thing about it, lady," said Sancho Panza. "I wasn't dreaming at all, I was wider awake than I am now, yet I'm almost as badly bruised as my master Don Quixote."

From Don Quixote by Cervantes

Another Music Video

This one comes from Bully the Little Stuffed Bull. Check out Gail Ann Dorsey singing with David Bowie.



Wow.

It makes me wonder if Gail Ann Dorsey inspired Mim Bracca in the novel A Fistful of Rain. Good book, but better video.

That "Handlebars" Song

That "Handlebars" song has been stuck in my head ever since I first heard it on Randy's blog.

As much as I love the song and the general art design of the video (included at the bottom of this entry), I think the ideas behind the video are pretty wrong-headed.

Two points.

One - There is not usually a point in your life where you make a choice and then stay on that path forever. Even seemingly permanent decisions (like marriage and kids) can be temporary (like divorce and child abandonment). And you aren't ever given choices to make like "Corporation" or "Peace." People can and do choose both, and they can switch paths whenever they want. People drop out of Corporate America all the time just like people are constantly entering Corporate America from other avenues of life.

Two - Dividing the world into two groups of people and presenting one as ALL GOOD and the other as ALL EVIL is the sort of fanatic behavior that starts conflict. I know the makers of the video are trying to make a point, but they are feeding the beast.

Having said that, I really like the look and feel of the video, and the song is a real knockout. PLUS, it is really easy to write your own lyrics to the tune.

I can clean my teeth with no dental floss... no dental floss... no dental floss...

Anyone Know a Good Web Hosting Service?

Ok, here's a secret. One reason I didn't post the script excerpt was that my web hosting service seems to have imploded.

Yes, I am having some problems with my current web hosting company. They registered my website in my name (a whois search turns up me), but put up a link farm on the URL. The back end still shows all of my files and my web pages and scripts and podcast files and whachehoochee, but those files do not seem accessible from the world wide web.

When I click around and doodeelee doodeeleee, my web hosting account now tells me I haven't registered this website and I need to "click here" to do so. "Clicking here" leads me to a blank page.

I've opened three separate trouble tickets on it. In the past, they have been very good with the trouble tickets, responding withing 48 hours. So I'm giving them 48 hours before I actively start looking for other domain registrars and web hosts. Any suggestions?

This Month's Shameless Self Promotion

On Tuesday, July 8th, there is another Dallas Screenwriters Association Scene Reading at the Half Price Books on Northwest Highway here in Dallas.

Part of the agenda should include pages 11 through 21 of my work-in-progress, Not Again.

Last month's reading was incredible - I was really inspired by the actors and actresses, and they said nice things about my ten-page sample.

I also was told I shouldn't be putting all sorts of my writing on the internet for free for anyone to read and plagiarize. I don't totally agree with this attitude, for reasons I might get into in a later blog post, but I've decided to comply and stop posting this particular work-in-progress script on the blog.

So.

To hear the rest of the screenplay, you will have to attend the DSA Scene readings over the next eight or nine months.

Blogging will be light this week - the non-internet portion of my life is going to be really, really busy.

Happy Independence Day!

Hope everyone is having a happy and fun Independence Day!

I thought about writing something patriotic, about how I love America and how, despite my firm dedication to complaining about everything, I am really grateful to be born here and to live here.

But then I decided to put on my best Eugene Peterson* hat and re-present the Declaration of Independence in contemporary language.

*Eugene Peterson, for those of you who don't know, wrote a translation of the Bible that is actually readable. It is actually pretty fun to read no matter what your religious (or non-religious) views are.

So here we go.

The Declaration of Independence - 2008 Interpretation

We are Americans. We want you to know that we tried to work it out with you but enough is enough. You have pushed us too far. We are letting you know it isn't going to work out for us in the long run because there are some fundamental concepts you are ignoring.

We are human beings. We are not your playthings. We believe that we need to be treated with respect. We believe we have the right to live. We have the right to be free. We have the right to strive to be the best we can be.

Your job as a leader is to respect us and acknowledge first that we are people. When a government treats us like dirt or cattle or anything that is not a person, that government has failed. We give you the right to govern us, but if you take advantage of us, we are forced to take that right away from you.

We're not doing this lightly. We know life is hard and life without you might seem harder at first, but the way you have treated us is beyond reason. You need to learn that people are not supposed to be treated that way, and the only way that it seems that you will get the message is if we just end it now and walk away. To not end it now, to just endure in silence, would be wrong.

So, listen up everyone, here is what the King of England has done:

-He behaves like he is above the law.
-He prevents the local government officials from doing what needs to be done.
-He doesn't listen.
-He doesn't have public hearings - all of his dealings are in some undisclosed back room.
-He fires or hampers people who he perceives to be political opponents.
-He appoints weak political cronies. They don't do their jobs right and actually cause harm.
-He prevents hardworking people from other lands from obtaining citizenship or getting a leg up.
-He doesn't believe in fair trials.
-He only pays court judges who are loyal to him and not to the law.
-He has created an insane bureaucracy that bleeds all of our money and food away from us.
-He has created a police state when there is no need for one.
-He has taken the military away from us.
-He makes us obey his political allies, even of they have no legal authority over us.
-He places large amounts of armed men among our unarmed citizenry.
-He covers up for these armed men when they commit violent crimes or murder us.
-He keeps us from trading with anyone but him.
-He taxes us without cause.
-He doesn't let us be tried by a jury.
-He packs us up, takes us to faraway places, and tries us in secret there.
-He doesn't honor the laws on the books; he just makes it up as he goes.
-He rewrites the laws on the books when they don't suit his agenda.
-He ignores our attempts to write laws and to maintain the peace.
-He has abandoned his job, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
-He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

At this moment, there are ships of mercenaries headed towards us. When they arrive, they will kill us. We tried to be reasonable and this is how we are treated.

He has taken Americans away from us and asked them to fight America.

He has caused civil unrest.

Throughout all of this, we have calmly asked for him to reconsider. When we ask for some reasonableness, he responds by treating us even worse. He is a bad leader and is unfit to govern us.

The British people who are loyal to him have not been much better. We tried to be reasonable with them. We filed the right papers and played their little government game. And even after all that, they still ignore us and treat us as something less than human.

Enough is enough. If they want to fight us, then we shall fight. If they want to help us, then we shall be friends.

We are Americans. We are men. We are women. We are human beings. We should be an Independent Nation. We should no longer support the British Crown. We should no longer have to report to a tyrant. As Americans we can make war, negotiate peace, write treaties, buy and sell things, and do anything else Independent States can do.

We believe this is what God intended us to be when He made us humans. We will give our lives to these believes. We will give our money for these believes. With every bit of our personal integrity, we will dedicate ourselves to these beliefs.

***

And for those of you who like the ol' reliable standby, here it is:

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Dell Unboxing #2

So I have been reinstalling software on my new computer for the past three days.

As you can see, I have a lot of software.



And when I staged this photo, I accidentally forgot to include the Mrs.'s copy of Visio and MS Project - software packages I really need on my home PC for certain projects when I work from home.

And the Oscar Wilde book gives me something to read while the software loads.

Here are some interesting things I learned from this experience.

1) Microsoft deserves its reputation for being evil. To install the latest Service Packs for MS Office, the website would not give me the software until I let the "Windows Genuine Advantage" application scan my computer to determine if my software is legitimate or pirated. It determined that my software is legitimate, but STILL wouldn't install the updates until I put the original CDs in the drive and let the installer verify the legitimacy of the software again.

2) iTunes lets you use one account on up to five computers at a time. Because I did not plan on my computer crashing, I did not get a chance to deactivate my old computer. So I am now up to my limit of five (the desktop, the laptop, the work laptop, the dead desktop, and one mystery machine (it is either my wife's laptop or my computer at my previous employer). In case you wind up in a situation where you have a dead computer still listed as an active iTunes account, you can deactivate all five computers and start over. You get to do this once a year.

3) Sony Media Software is AWESOME! I log into my account and can download and reinstall my registered software directly from the website. So I don't need my CDs (even thought I have them), I just need my account and my registration numbers.

4) Final Draft and Final Draft AV are also pretty good software packages as far as re-installation goes. The website lets you download the latest version of the software from the website if you are a registered user (which is awesome!). You are only supposed to have this software on two machines (a desktop and a laptop) so you need to activate the software. Of course, my activation did not work because I am at the 2 machine limit. The software gave me a 1-800 number that I had to call to deactivate my software to reactivate my software. Call wait time was less than 90 seconds and the phone rep was awesome. Everything is working fine now.

5) Starcraft apparently doesn't care if you register the software or not. When you click "Register Starcraft" after installation, you get a nice juicy 404 error on the Blizzard site. Same goes for the PC version of Halo. Not that I use the computer to play games. No. It is to be productive and nothing else.

Still working on the data recovery. I will try to write about that. Haven't configured Outlook yet. Probably won't write about that.

The Most Horrifying Thing Known to Man

The other day, the Mrs. and I went to see WALL-E (which we loved).

However, there was one terrible thing we endured at the theater - awful awful trailers.

One of them (which I now present with warnings) was for "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." The Disney advertising machine went into overdrive on this one and resorted to some good ol' fashioned Cold War Brainwashing techniques for this trailer.

Basically, they give you a rhythmic beat and the words "chihuahua, chihuahua" repeated over and over and over and over and over and over and over again until there is nothing left in your mind.

When the trailer ended there were children in the theater still chanting "chihuahua, chihuahua, chihuahua, chihuahua."

It freaked me out.

To illustrate, here is the trailer:



And this is how I felt when watching it:



This whole thing reminds me of my rant about The Matrix (although, to be honest, it doesn't take much to get me to rant about The Matrix) and my rant about the Disney Chip.

My rant about the Matrix is this - the entire premise of the film is flawed.

The story goes like this - the robots decided to enslave humanity so they attacked and put humanity in the Matrix. This is preposterous. All they had to do is say, "Hey! We created this totally awesome place called The Matrix! Just sign in and you get to wear leather, do kung fu, and make time with hot women in red dresses" and people would line up in droves faster than you can say "Whoa." There is no need to "forcibly enslave" anyone. Heck, I'd sign up if they thew in an unlimited supply of bacon.

Which leads me to my rant about the Disney chip. One day, in the near future, the Disney company will come up with a chip to implant in your brain. It will be terrible and awful and it will eventually enslave humanity, but every child on the planet will want one and will whine and whine and whine and whine until he or she gets one.

And there is nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Just like Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

Chihuahua...

Chihuahua...

Dell Unboxing #1

So my replacement Dall arrived last week.

There are three general phases to getting a new computer.

1) Unboxing it and doing the manual setup.

2) Installing all of the software and configuring the machine.

3) Restoring the data from the old computer system.

As of this writing, I'm finished with 1 and am in the middle of 2. It looks like 3 is going to take about six hours to do. The good news is that there is SOMEthing on the backup hard drive that I thought was wiped. The bad news is that I am not quite sure what it is. Sunday night, I started the scan and recovery process and went to bed, only to check the machine on Monday morning to find that the whole process "hung up" (the technical term) at 1:10 am. I do not know if this is a Windows issue, a Dell issue, or the data recovery software's issue. All I know is that the entire operating system froze and neither the keyboard or the mouse worked. (My guess it has something to do with the default settings on the powersave/hibernate option.)

But that is neither here nor there. The purpose of this entry is to describe the unboxing of the replacement Dell.

As some of you know, I through a fit here on the blog after the incredibly shoddy technical support I received from Dell and its third party vendor. Brad at Dell responded in my comments and we worked out a deal for me to exchange my old broken Dell for a new working one.

It came in a box.



Covered in Dell logos.



And an image instructing you to lift it out of the box with a buddy.



The box contained instructions.



And even instructions that depict users reading the instructions.



All of the pre-installed software came on CDs (which was very nice).



And I even found some religious pamphlets included in the box. I guess this means the system was blessed.



I cracked open the case to make sure everything was in order.



I set the new next to the old for some side-by-side comparison action.



Wired up all of my 5,099,234,155 peripherals to the machine.



And cranked her up.



Then I set the old machine in the box, preparing it for the inevitable Viking funeral.



To Be Continued....

My Lunch with Cyber

One of the advantages of living in the Dallas area is that I am in close proximity to Cyber D. As many of you know, Cyber D, Gyuss Baltaar, and I all went to college together until one fateful night when I left that institute of higher learning, slunk off into the shadows, and began to pursue my sacred destiny of heavy drinking.

Thanks to the power of the internet (specifically Facebook), Cyber D found me and wrote a really nice blog entry about me. A blog entry to which I responded in kind.

Every since these fateful blog entries, we have been talking on and off about meeting for lunch, and after a series of almost-connects, we finally met last week. I showed up early because I told Cyber "look for the man dressed up as a Viking" and I wanted to make sure no other Vikings showed up and forced me to wait outside. (For those of you unaware of this, Dallas has a very strict "one guy dressed up as a Viking per restaurant" city ordinance after it was determined that two or more Vikings eventually led to berserker rages, pillaging, and streets that run red with blood and grog. While cities like Seattle were having a grand ol' time in the 90s with their grunge movement and their flannel, Dallas lived in fear of wild packs of Nordic invaders wielding battle axes. Anyway, I love to dress up as a Viking and listen to Pearl Jam sometimes, just for nostalgia's sake.)

We picked a nice little Mexican restaurant known for its great food and family of vampire-slaying waitresses - a nice quiet place for two guys to reminisce and talk. I looked around, wondering what Cyber now looked like. Maybe he had turned evil and grown a goatee? Maybe he joined the hair club for men and now wore a patch of carpet on the top of his head. Or worse! A patch of carpet with the price tag still attached! The mind reeled.

But then I saw the shiny silver dome of his space helmet and knew within seconds that it was the same ol' Cyber. We embraced in that manly way only a Viking and a man in a silver space outfit can and then sat down to our hearty meal of jalapenos and dipping sauce.

"So, how have you been these past... eight, nine, ten... DARN! I will have to take off my shoes to go any higher, so let's just say TEN years."

"I've been great. I started blogging with a group called 'The Quad'. There are four of us." (At this point, Cyber D did a great thing and held up the appropriate number of fingers so I wouldn't get confused. What a helpful guy, that Cyber D.)

"Wow. Four whole people. That must have been your secret to getting smokin' hot women to read and comment on your blogs all the time. I only started blogging with one person." (I held up a single finger so he would know the number.)

"Was that one person you?"

"You are smart as well as good looking! That is why I've always liked you, Cyber D! Yes it was just me, and now I see how I went wrong. I should have started writing the blog with FOUR people at the beginning, and then the smokin' hot women would have started reading. As it stands now, I have had to graciously accept all of the smokin' hot women from your blog traffic."

"I am sure smokin' hot women read your blog before I linked to you and send over some of my spare Quadness."

"Yes, there were a few, but I am related to all of them. I am automatically disqualified from calling women relatives smokin' hot. If I do that too much, I'll get deported to one of those unmentionable states like Alabama, West Virginia, or Louisiana."

"Yes. I suppose that might cause problems."

"But now that we've reconnected, it is all better." I reached across the table and clasped his hand in a rough, manly, Viking way. Maybe I held it a little too long, because he eventually wrested it away, explaining that he needed it for the dipping sauce.

We talked for a long time, sharing stories that were both epic and exciting. He focused on his space and time adventures while I talked mostly about how the people of Dallas kept mistaking me for a mere barbarian when I was obviously a Viking.

We talked about our blogs and who our secret blog crushes are, but the whole purpose of writing blog entries is to keep things short, so I shall end it here. I am sure Cyber D has his own version of our lunch that he might be willing to share on his blog sometime soon.

How to Pretend You Care about the Election

Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

My Favorite Muppet Show Sketch

Dysfunctional Family

Cruel New Jersey Stereotypes Perpetuated in This Horrible Horrible Video

For those of you don't follow the blog-a-drama, a Woman with No Regrets took umbrage with some of my more disparaging remarks about the nigh-perfect state of New Jersey.

In this blog post, NoR (as she is wont to be called) took 150 precious words and crafted a near-impenetrable argument about the greatness of the state.

So now that I'm a fan of NJ (or "Jersey" as the locals call it), I feel compelled to bring to light the horrible horrible New Jersey stereotypes perpetuated by our media.

And by "our media," I mean Triumph the Insult Dog.

Watch this film, and FEEL THE PAIN!

Dysfunctional Family

Click the image to make it larger.

PGS

"Can you believe a grown woman can't make iced tea?"
"Excuse me?"
"Betty just asked me how to make a cup of iced tea. She didn't know how to do it."
"Oh dear."
"I know! I just put the hot water in the cup, let it steep, then added ice. I can't believe some people have gotten this point in their lives without knowing how to make iced tea."
"No, I mean 'oh dear' for you."
"What do you mean?"
"You have PGS."
"What's PGS?"
"Pretty Girl Syndrome."
"But I'm not a pretty girl."
"No, but pretty girls can get you to do something for them by pretending to be stupid."
"I don't follow you."
"Say I'm a pretty girl and I want a cup of iced tea. I can either go do it for myself or go to YOU and ask you how to make a cup of iced tea because I'm just so pretty and stupid and helpless that I can't do it for myself."
"Get outta here!"
"PGS afflicts about 98% of the male population. It is a very serious condition."
"How are you so sure I'm the one with PGS? Maybe Betty is just stupid."
"Ok, Mr. Hotshot, answer this question - Who made the cup of iced tea? You or her?"
"Crap."

Missed it by this much...

Somehow thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to read Frank Darabont's initial draft for the fourth Indiana Jones move - something he called Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. And you know what? It is really good. Basically the same story as the final film, but it addresses my complaints about the film - there is no bad dialogue and the movie doesn't lose focus of that fact that Indiana Jones is the main character.

Plus (and this is a big plus for me) it gets the Indiana Jones character right (which the final film only sort of does). Because despite the fact that he gets to make out with beautiful women and crack a whip, deep down, Indiana Jones is a nerd. Seriously, can you imagine Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger growling at a bad guy, "It belongs in a museum!" No. Because only nerdy nerd nerds say stuff like that. Only nerdy nerd nerds care this much. Just like only nerdy nerd nerds download early rejected drafts of a film screenplay and blog about it.

Yes, I am aware that George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg don't want this available to the public. No, I am not quite sure how I got it and, no, it is not on my computer anymore so I can't email you a copy, so all of you lawyers just put down your cease and desist letters and go back to suing each other. I justified this to myself because I already paid my $10 to Spielberg and Lucas and did not think I got anywhere near $10 worth of entertainment. Let me read this script and we'll call it even.

I did not like Indiana Jones 4 for a number of reasons, but mainly because it epitomizes the type of movie I hate more than anything else - the half-assed movie.

I love a lot of movies, including some really bad ones. Much to my wife's chagrin, I own (and occasionally sing along with) Xanadu. One of my favorite movies of all time is Little Shop of Horrors (the musical version). I am also a big big fan/champion of Freaked, the movie once described my dad as, "What's the point of that?"

In case you haven't guessed, none of these are what you would call Academy Award winning material.

One thing about all of those films is that, while some people may call them bad, no one can say they are inconsistent. I will take consistently bad over good in places, sort of good in places, and bad in places.

One of the films I dislike the most for this very reason is Cradle Will Rock. The film suddenly become so busy saying BIG IMPORTANT THINGS about THE POWER OF ART that is shirks the subplot of Bill Murray and Joan Cusak - two frightened and damaged people who find a moment of connection. That is the real story of the film - not the main story about the big musical for the masses and yadda yadda. The fact that the filmmakers could get the moments between these two people so subtle and right and then surround it with bombastic theater people waving their arms and clamoring for attention is unforgivable. I would rather the movie be out-and-out bad than something like that.

If you are going to make a movie - make a consistant movie. Don't give me something namby pamby, make it all good or, if you can't do that, make it all bad and then some. I am sure some day some guy will write a blog entry about it and you can die satisfied.

Ok, enough of the ranty post. Tomorrow, I'll try for the funny again.

Follow up on the Dell Thing

Some of you may have read about my situation with Dell tech support.

Brad at Dell posted in my comments, we had a discussion, and arranged an exchange of my old broken Dell for a new one. The new one was from the was same line (XPS) and was an upgrade in terms of processor power and hard drive space (which is very nice and is something Dell didn't have to do). It was supposed to ship on or around June 6th. It hasn't yet. (For those of you counting the days - the computer originally crashed on April 7th.)

Because this is a special deal and because this is circumventing the normal lines of Dell support, I do not think it is appropriate to complain. (And, in case Brad or anyone else at Dell is reading, this post is not a complaint - just a status report for my dozen or so regular blog readers.)

Brad sent me this email yesterday, which was pleasant and proactive.

***

Robert,

I have found out the part that is delaying the system is the 8800GTX, and the only card for this system that is currently an option on Dell.com are 2 8800GT’s. If the 2 8800GT’s are agreeable with you I can get the new order setup tomorrow. As of right now I do not have an accurate time frame of when or if we will offer the 8800GTX again. I apologize for the inconvenience on this but I did not want to keep you waiting much longer. Please let me know if you have any questions.

***

Here is my response:

Hi Brad -

This is good to know. My main concern about the graphic card is the dual-monitor support. I assume the 2 8800GTs will support dual monitors.

I do not need the HDTV out functionality the 8800GTX offers. That seems like the biggest difference between the two options and it is a non-issue. Simple dual monitor support is all I need.

So, yes. Please change the part and continue with the order. I appreciate your efforts.

-Robert

***

See? I can be a grown up about these things.

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In my profession, the work is either feast or famine. There are weeks on end where I put in 60 to 80 hours and develop amusing little facial tics, and there are weeks where I show up for 32 to 35 hours and act as a security blanket for my managers.

The last couple of weeks were a time of feast and now we are hitting a week-to-two time of famine. This is my opportunity to catch up on sleep and maybe write something on the ol' blog.

The first thing I feel compelled to do is follow up on all of the shameless self promotion I did here last week.

The scene reading went even better than expected. The actors really sank teeth into their parts and knocked it out of the park (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). It is one thing to have voices in your head to tell you what to write; it is quite another to hear people lend their voices to the ones in your head, and do a better job than your brain does.

Afterwards, I had several people tell me that I needed to bring the next ten pages to the July 8th scene reading because everyone wants to know what happens next. It made me feel all warm and gooey inside. Expect me at the scene readings for the next nine months (approx) so I can finish this screenplay.

I attended two sessions of the writer's workshop at the Trinity Arts Conference and presented two films (which you can read about here and here). I did not realize that there was a three-page limit for the writer's workshop and brought an eight-page short film screenplay for the workshop attendees to scrutinize. Fortunately, this blog entry from a few months ago counted as less than three pages. The other workshop attendees seemed to get a kick out of it and for the rest of the conference people kindly reminded me that meat is murder.

The film presentations went well, too. I wound up giving out this blog's URL to someone so he could read my introduction for one of the films, which was a little surprising and humbling. (I had to write it out, because, let's be honest, the blog's URL is an alphabet soup that is hard to remember.) PLUS someone was kind enough to ask me if I would be willing to speak to his screenwriting class in Houston sometime. That blew me away because most of my life people have been trying to keep me AWAY from impressionable young minds.

We had interesting discussions after the films, too. Some people were taken aback by the 1940sness of Sullivan's Travels - let's just say there is some racial humor in that film that is way uncool. (I forgive it because I believe the film it a relic of its time and we should accept it as such. Some people didn't share my opinion and that is perfectly fine.)

Afterwards I spoke to someone about how people from our grandparents' generation had no problems with cruel racial stereotypes but had issues with an occasional f-bomb, and how now the situation is reversed. "I wonder what people will hate about our generation years from now?" the person asked.

"Bet you anything it will involve Jim Carrey."