The only people warring on Christmas...

...are the ones trying to put Christ back into it.

I wish them a happy holiday, and to all my fellow heathens: merry Christmas!

Dormant protagonists.

Every story, Frank Daniel theorizes, is about someone who wants something badly, but has trouble getting it.

That “someone” is called a protagonist, and what he wants is called an objective. The story ends when the protagonist either succeeds or fails to achieve the objective, and we’re satisfied with the result.

David Howard and Edward Mabley add that “protagonist and objective are so closely identified in our minds that it is impossible to consider one without the other.”

Their relationship is symbiotic because of us. We know Dorothy Gale because, in the Wizard of Oz, she wants to return to Kansas.

From her perspective, sure, returning to Kansas is important, but it’s only one of a billion goals she’ll have in her lifetime. Maybe she aspires to overturn Roe v. Wade. It’s not impossible--she’s from a red state. But if it’s true, we wouldn’t know it, because it doesn’t affect her objective, so we don’t even think to ask.

That’s how important the bond between the protagonist and the objective is. We like watching someone rise to a challenge so much that we’re willing to ignore everything else. The more ardently a protagonist pursues her objective, the more invested we are in the story.

In the Wizard of Oz, the protagonist and her objective are inextricable. If Dorothy isn’t in the story, we can’t root for her to get back to Kansas, and if Dorothy doesn’t care about getting back to Kansas, then we don’t care either, and there’s no reason to watch the movie.

But the link between a protagonist and his objective doesn’t have to be so straightforward. While a protagonist cannot exist without an objective, an objective can exist without its protagonist.

Not for too long, of course. If the protagonist is missing for most of the story, then he doesn’t really care about achieving his objective, and we’re likely to get bored. But if a protagonist goes dormant, another character can pursue the objective in his place.

There are three effective ways of transferring the objective between a dormant protagonist and his surrogate.

A brief Muppet rant.

These are Sesame Street characters, but the image of Muppets arranged in a mass grave feels apropos.

I haven't seen the Muppets, but I read an early draft of the script. I regret to say that I appreciate the Muppets on a deeper level than Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller.

I didn't make it all the way through--it was too painful--but I counted a whopping total of three jokes in the first act: on pages ten, sixteen, and twenty-one. There's a fourth joke on page twenty-five, if you count the phrase "freedom fries" as a joke.

Without exaggeration, there are more non-sequiturs than jokes.

For some reason, it keeps insisting they're puppets, not animals.

The Muppets, who are perennial underdogs, spend the first act being rich, successful, and wholly unsympathetic.

The best part is when they sing a great song from another Muppet movie.

It relies heavily on the beat where there's shitty writing, and a character breaks the fourth wall to acknowledge how shitty it was. The trailers were full of this, too.

There's a parody that fails so thoroughly that the script feels obligated to name the original work in parenthesis.

There's a speech about how the Muppets lost their relevance because they're too wholesome. Kids today want violence. (Henson took up puppetry so he could blow up his characters.)

It's great that this is drawing interest back to the Muppets. I cherish the franchise. But it's heartbreaking to see them handled so poorly. And I'm in pretty good company, here.

Grist for the mill.

MY GRANDMA
I wish you heard the conversation those people were having. It could go in a script.

ME
What were they talking about?

MY GRANDMA
Not a fucking thing.

Superman: Red Son has a great premise.

The planet Krypton was gonna explode. Two scientists put their baby in an escape pod and shot him into space. The baby landed in Kansas, and he was raised to be Superman, an American icon.

Red Son takes place in an alternate reality where Superman's escape pod was launched a few hours later. It's small difference with major ramifications: he landed in Stalinist Ukraine, where he was raised to be a communist icon.

I love that. What a simple way to subvert a quintessentially American character!

And it's a pretty different world. Instead of being a ruthless capitalist, Lex Luthor is the world's smartest scientist. And he's married to Lois Lane. And Jimmy Olsen works for the CIA, instead of the Daily Planet.

Interesting! Why did Superman's Soviet upbringing cause Lex to pursue more academic endeavors? How could Lois fall in love with an emotionally negligent supervillain? What idiot allowed Jimmy Olsen in the CIA?

Unfortunately, writer Mark Millar doesn't explore the ripple effect of his premise. The characters' names are familiar, but the characters, themselves, aren't.

Luthor has been depicted as a machiavellian CEO for thirty years, but in Red Son, he's an evil Mr. Fantastic. This change in personality is never explained. Millar might as well have written him as a polar bear.

And with that, Red Son's great premise is squandered.

We like alternate realities because we like to speculate about whether or not we've made the right decisions. The whole point of writing an alternate reality is to compare it with the reality it's based upon.

If you're not gonna compare the realities, then it shouldn't be an alternate reality, to begin with. Take pride in the fact that you're telling an original story, and don't get distracted with cameos, allusions, and general fanservice.

I'm disappointed that I have to write this down. Like, it's a good theory, but it feels a little like saying, "If you're producing a movie, you should make sure there's stuff for the audience to look at on the screen."

Why Valencia?

My ex's boyfriend entered this video to win a scholarship to his college.

His community college.

Where he's pursuing an AA in Engineering.

My friend, Jae, posted a quote.

“'I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. 'I feel, therefore I am' is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that’s alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism.”

--Milan Kundera, Immortality

I replied,

I like it, but how do we know that we’re not exchanging, borrowing, or stealing pain in the same way that we exchange, borrow, and steal ideas?

Jae replied,

Touché. I guess it depends on if you buy into Orwell's theory that "the only thing you can desire in relation to real pain is that it will stop," to the extent of sacrificing even those you love to escape it. But that centres around a view of humans as inherently egotistical & solipsistic, & unwilling to ever deliberately take on legitimately awful pain for those they love, which I personally am quite sceptical of.

Also, I suppose that one could argue that pain only exists when we are conscious of it. An idea can start to sustain itself, if written down or transmitted to enough people, but pain can only be present to you when you are experiencing it directly. Any indirect form of it is once-removed, & therefore maybe not actual pain? Anyway, I don't think I'm making any sense.

I don't know if she's making any sense, but I'm getting a headache trying to figure it out.

...shit, did I just prove her point?

I used to cry because I had no shoes...

...until I met a man with no feet. He laughed at my pettiness, which improved his mood, and he went on to have a nice day, but I still had no shoes, so now I cry twice as hard.

The Pulitzer Tweets.

I tweet a joke.

@ENKEsq
Not saying we should, but if we fused English and Hebrew into a new language, palindroms could be read from left-to-right AND right-to-left.

A day passes.

I get pissy at having so few followers.

@ENKEsq
If I've followed you and you haven't reciprocated, it's fine. Maybe you'll read my English-Hebrew Palindrome joke WHEN IT WINS A PULITZER.

@PulitzerTweets
(re-tweets me)
If I've followed you and you haven't reciprocated, it's fine. Maybe you'll read my English-Hebrew Palindrome joke WHEN IT WINS A PULITZER.

[MY FRIEND]
How will the people who aren't following you read your spite?

@ENKEsq
They'll see it when my People Who Aren't Follwing Me joke wins me MY SECOND PULITZER.

@PulitzerTweets does not re-tweet this.

@ENKEsq
@PulitzerTweets re-tweeted my first Pulitzer joke, but not the second. Fine. Maybe they'll re-tweet it WHEN IT WINS AN EMMY.

If I admitted that...

...I think about you while masturbating, it would be creepy,

but if you knew how often I did it, you'd be flattered,
but if you were flattered, then you'd be happy,

and you're never happy in my fantasies,
so out of self-interest,

I ain't admitting nothing.

Men are the weakest link.

"[My girlfriend] says the Human Centipede would have been less gross if the girls were up front in the chain, since girls don't poop."

- Nat.

Personally, I think she's full of shit.

Internet Law is a harsh mistress.

CLAIRE
Well, Wesley, a mentor on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is lame...but then he moves to LA and becomes cool. (Y'know, like y'do.)

IAN
I wonder if that's a trope. Can you do me a favor? Check Wikipedia for a List of Mentors Who Move to LA and Become Cool.

CLAIRE
I'm not finding anything.

IAN
You know, Internet Law states that if you're the first person to search for something, and it doesn't exist, then you're the most qualified to write it. So...good luck!

CLAIRE
Damn it. I don't know anything about Mentors in LA! It's hopeless.

IAN
Look on the bright side: at least this wasn't an infraction of Rule 34. You could've typed "Michael Palin + Batman + felching," and been responsible for bringing it to life.

CLAIRE
What's felching? No, I take it back. I don't want to know.

IAN
Clever girl.

Pure Imagineering.

I used to Hate on creative missteps in the Disney parks.

Now I've decided to use my powers for Good by writing Disney Theme Park Fan Fiction!!

(...that sounded healthier in my head.)

Check out my new blog, Pure Imagineering!

I love EPCOT.

I do. But I love it mostly for its ambition, and less so for its reality. The things that (should have existed / used to exist / ought to exist) fascinate me much more than the things that do exist.

I dunno what my favorite park is, but it's probably not EPCOT.

I notice that it is the favorite of most of the (worthwhile) Disney bloggers. It speaks well of the park. Its fans are learned, thorough, and insightful.

This got me wondering which personality types the other parks attract. Here's my speculation.


If your favorite park is...
...let's be honest, you're the only sort of person who'd read a blog post like this. Hullo!


If your favorite park is...
...go to Disneyland and change your mind.


If your favorite park is...
...then some of your other favorite things include vanilla ice cream, the Beatles, and the missionary position.


If your favorite park is...
...then some of your other favorite things include pistachio ice cream, Dexy's Midnight Runners, and genital mutilation.


If your favorite park is...
...bless you, you're doing the Lord's work.


If your favorite park is...
...you're lying, and we should hang out and shit-talk sometime.

A round-table analysis of the Oslo bombing.

SPIEL
I'm surprised that there was a bombing in Norway. They're usually a pretty peaceful people.

RICHARD
You mean like their ancestors, the vikings?

SPIEL
Hey, man! They've turned over a new Lief!

IAN
If y'ask me, Spiel's off by a longship.

Jeffrey Katzenberg hates this summer's movies.

The CEO of Dreamworks Animation opined, "The last seven or eight months of movies is the worst lineup of movies...in the last five years."

This is the head of a fucking studio, people. This is the man responsible for Kung Fu Panda 2. This is the Man, and he's sticking it to Himself.

I'm not much of a theater-goer, but the three movies I've seen this summer--Midnight in Paris, Horrible Bosses, and Winnie the Pooh--have been delightful. What the hell is Katzenberg complaining about?

Kung Fu Panda 2, presumably.

Surely his cranky outburst has nothing to do with the fact that 3D movies appear to be in decline. That would make it sound like his evil fucking passion project isn't paying off. That would make him sound defensive.

No, Jeffrey Katzenberg is right. 3D movies would be unimpeachable, but all of the movies this summer are horrible. Here are some other things that are hindering the success of 3D movies.

The Holocaust.

Mars' alignment with Jupiter.

Not Me, the mischievous gremlin from the Family Circus.

2D movies, for being "too visual."

Weapons of Mass Destruction.

The sun being in Jeffrey Katzenberg's eyes! He wants a do-over!!

The lack of 3D radio programs.

The gay gene.

Jeffrey Katzenberg's father, for missing the first inning of Jeffrey's little league debut.

Theater, for being the dominant form of 3D entertainment. If only the public would give movies a chance!!

The second dimension, Width, for not pulling its weight.

Roy Disney.

Reality, for being "too visual."

At this point...

...I've spent most of my fucking life writing a screenplay called Awestruck.

It's a buddy comedy between God and a skeptic. This will be my last draft, for better or worse.

I'd like to share the backstory with you. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

More flattery.

"I don't like disliking things! I'm just good at it!"

- Me, in a debate on Facebook.

"If we deleted everything else you've ever written, that line would be enough information."

- My friend, Alex.

Flattery.

I saw this, and thought of the story where Walt took his daughters to a dirty park, and became inspired to make Disneyland.

Is this a commentary on the decline of Disney culture, or just a shitty t-shirt?

Man, I’ve been reading your blog too much.

- My friend, Joe.

Go where you need to go.

The people who love you may not go with you.

Don't be dissuaded.

You're too important.

And they'll still love you.

Return of the mass grave jokes!

Some literary places for a mass grave:

beneath the corpse that's beneath the floorboards,
in an enchanted wardrobe,
under Yertle the Turtle.

Some Shakespearean places for a mass grave:

at the end of every fucking tragedy,
dressed as women onstage,
buried amid Kenneth Branagh's ego.

Some poetic, American places for a mass grave:

at the end of the road less traveled,
dragged through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
in the icebox to probably save for breakfast.

I put the "erotic" in "neurotic."

Or anyway, I would, if "neurotic" was spelled without a U.

And I was a better in bed.

And my penis wasn't frail.


On second thought, I'll leave "erotic" where it is.

A simple word.

Dirgedicate, v., To sympathize with sad music so thoroughly that you start to feel better, since there's someone who's as sad as you...

...but you get sad again when you remember that they've made music and you haven't done anything.

AT NIGHT

leaves fall on the tennis court.

BEFORE WORK
a tennis coach sweeps the court.

AT WORK
the tennis coach guilts me.

DURING WORK
no leaves fall on the tennis court.

AT NIGHT
leaves fall on the tennis court.

seventeen syllables

tear away your shedding skin
like the tablecloth under
the dishes

Poor, unfortunate ride.

Here's a ride-through of the anticipated dark ride, Ariel's Undersea Adventure.



Wow.

"Hey! Remember that Little Mermaid movie we made, a few years ago? Yes? Well, just in case you don't, here's a synopsis of its major scenes! Now available on Disney Blu-ray™!"

I'm of the opinion that when you make a dark ride, its content should dictate its form. Peter Pan's Flight, for example, uses miniatures and a suspended ride vehicle to simulate flying like Peter and friends. You could just as easily make Peter Pan's Flight into a Dumbo's Flight ride, and it would be just as affecting.

Peter Pan's Flight isn't interested in telling the story of the film it's based on. It prioritizes the experience of flying over London and Neverland more than re-telling the film's story. It gives you an experience you can't get in front of a television set. It gives you an experience you can only get in Fantasyland.

Following this ideology (like WDI once did), I can think of two options for a Little Mermaid ride.

A submarine ride (a dark ride that's actually underwater). Since dance and fluidity of movement are so important to the movie, the challenge would be building animatronics that are graceful underwater, and not clunky like the ones in (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea / Finding Nemo's Submarine Voyage).

A dark ride that simulates being underwater. The challenge would be building animatronics, sets, and ride vehicles that believably adhere to underwater physics, while still maintaining the grace mentioned above. WDI has already toyed with this, set-wise, in the queue to the Seas with Nemo and Friends, so this isn't a revolutionary suggestion on my part.

Projecting a few bubbles on the walls and hanging metal overhead to look like currents don't quite cut it. Also, Ariel's beehive, lol. A for effort, fellas.

Ariel's Undersea Adventure is a soulless exercise. Its only successes are the movie's successes. Fortunately there are ample successes, since the Little Mermaid is a great film, but it's a shame that all of WDI's effort went into xeroxing a great film.

I shouldn't be harsh. I can't imagine how many Imagineers had to move to Ursula's garden after building this ride.

The wind knocked over my Red Bull can.

It spilled on my script notes.

I had a fuckin' paroxysm.

It only spilled on a few pages of notes. These notes were typed. These notes were saved on my computer. These notes could be replaced by pressing Ctrl+P.

But I took the can and whipped it around my head until the remaining Red Bull was marinating me, my chair, the sliding glass door, and some palm trees.

And I grabbed the notes--both the wet pages and the dry--and flung them into the pool.

And I crushed the can against a wall, and then I crushed it width-ways.

And this tantrum was directed at the wind.

The fucking wind.

I'm in therapy, and I exercise, and I meditate, and I keep myself very well occupied. I don't quite know how to cope with wanting to beat up a meteorological force.

If you have any ideas, you can find me taunting Poseidon's bullshit son, Aeolus.

I went on a date.

She was interesting. I was awkward, and wanted to die.

But the night had its perks. She had pretty great taste in music. She was kind enough to share Gold Panda's "Quitters Raga" with me, for one.



She also had pretty great taste in music videos.

Music videos are not my thing. I love music because I'm jealous of it...of how easily it evokes emotions: subtle emotions, bold emotions, and emotions that're too alien for words.

It takes reams of prose to do what music does in two minutes. And music doesn't need the investigation that poetry requires, nor the focus that paintings demand.

Music slugs you in the fucking heart.

So attaching a video to it...well, it limits the experience. It does the introspection for you. "Here's what you should be imagining when you hear this."

Critics of Fantasia, for example, resent associating "Dance of the Hours" with tutu'd hippopotami.



The counter-argument is that Fantasia is a fucking masterpiece, and fuck you.

My date phrased it better (but only slightly). She explained that her favorite music videos provide a thrill of escapism.

The video for Beirut's "Elephant Gun" has a bunch of people twirling on a soundstage, but the song loads it with so much nostalgia, celebration, longing, and whimsy that she wished she could live there. The combination of music and film was enough to make her feel like a crowded, confetti-littered room could be a home.



Sigur Rós is important to me and my introspection...but when she showed me the video for "Gobbledigook," I had to admit, it wasn't half bad.



I was not my best self during my date, but if audio and visual can coexist, maybe I can too.

My inaugural moustache.

September 2010 - May 2011.


I don't remember my upper lip being so tall. It must've grown since September.

Thicker than water.

My little cousin asked me how boats float.

I explained that boats are filled with mosquitos, because mosquitos are able to land on top of water. Mosquitos make boats buoyant.

Two weeks later, my little cousin trekked into the swamp and purposely got herself covered in mosquitos.

I'm just glad she drowned before the malaria kicked in.

The Aristocrats, the Haiku.

Family acts vile.
Agent asks what their act's called.
"The Aristocrats!"

I was feeling adventurous...

...so I put my iTunes on 'shuffle' while I was wanking. The score of Full Metal Jacket came on.

I shot a blank.

I didn't want my pipe clogged, so I changed the track and wanked again. This time, it was the score of a Clockwork Orange.

I got really, really sick before I could finish.

By now, it was a point of pride. I changed the track and returned to wanking, now to the score of Spartacus.

It worked, but it was so underwhelming that I disowned the spunk.

Pass(ed)over!

I had a sub today. I'm not Jewish, but I felt guilty.

Then I kinda felt left out that it didn't matter.

Then I felt depressed that I'm not a Chosen One.

I'm gonna go drown myself in a package of Hawaiian rolls, liquor, and ziti.

- My poor friend, Cindy.

Some wordsmithery.

Pre-nostalgia, n., When you're happy, and someone's about to take a photograph of you, and you think, "I hope when I see that photo, I feel as good as I feel right now."

Unintended consequences.

Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of a church.

He didn't mind inciting the Protestant Reformation. That was fine.

But he was dissapointed that he didn't provoke a trend of minimalist wallpaper.

Penis.

A cow so fat from grass,
her milk will last a while.

A cow who’s now a side of beef.
A cow who’s hung by her legs on a hook.

She swings from side to side.
She's skinned. She's veined.

She's white as gauze, with red
on her nubs. A tube of ribs.

Her flesh is set, her blood is dry,
but her milk still flows, still fresh.

A deleted scene.

I'm re-writing my thesis script.

It's a buddy comedy between God and a skeptic.

The twist is that God's a dumb guy who happens to be omnipotent. He realizes what a shitty job he's done, creating an uncertain universe and whatnot, and he wants to commit suicide.

Unfortunately, if God commits suicide, the Universe will die with him. So Harry the skeptic must convince him that there's a Meaning of Life.

Here's a scene from the first draft. I love it, but it won't be in the new draft.

Where we are in the story: the roles have changed. Harry the skeptic is now suicidal, and God wants to keep his buddy alive.

One of my jobs is burying roadkill.

Today I found an armadillo.


It didn't look like an armadillo at first. More like a gray football that had been deflated. I only realized that it wasn't a football when I lifted it, and felt its weight.

While this was unsanitary, it wasn't gruesome. The armadillo was packed neatly inside its cracked taco of a shell. It didn't twitch, leak, or even squish.

As I laid it in its grave, I couldn't help but think, "What remarkable manners!"

Is that so much to ask for?

I just want a girl who'll keep re-watching Hannah and Her Sisters, Company, and Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice while daydreaming about the girls I love with me.

(Maybe I should wait to make an eHarmony profile.)

Thanks to the internet...

...we can communicate constantly.

For example, I'm typing this blog post in real time!

Why, you're even reading it in real time!

So this is being written and read simultaneously!

The future, my friends, is now.

I wrote a joke yesterday.

The premise is okay, but the execution needs work. It goes:

I'm gonna put an assortment of my personal essays into one book, and call them a manual biography.

The punchline relies upon the audience associating a manual biography with an autobiography.

Unfortunately, the phrasing does a lousy job of leading the audience to the punchline. This was confirmed by my test audience. My mother was part of the test audience.

Meanwhile.

I've written a lot of poems. I hadn't read 'em for a while, but I remember they were publishable-ish. My ego could use a boost...and I guess I could deign to be published...so I looked back over the ol' oeuvre.

The good news: my poems are pretty good.

The bad news: my poems are all about male insecurity and masturbation.

There's not much of a market for that.

I presented this problem to my mother. "Should I widen the scope of my subject matter," I asked, "or should I publish a book of poems about male insecurity and masturbation?"

Mom thought hard for a moment, and then her eyes lit up.

"If you did the latter," she said, "it would definitely be a manual biography!"

The greatest human achievement of the twentieth century.

When I was in Los Angeles, I took a standardized test that would certify me to teach high school. The test had three sections: Reading Comprehension, Math, and Writing.

One of the prompts in the Writing section was, "What is the greatest human achievement of the twentieth century?"

I was a little paralyzed by the scope of the question, but by the end, I was proud of my essay. So proud, in fact, that I've re-written it here.

Humankind had an especially productive twentieth century. When comparing feats like the isolation of penicillin, Apollo 11's moon landing, and the creation of the internet, it is difficult to exalt one above the others. Fortunately, these paltry successes are dwarfed by an achievement that will no doubt be remembered as our legacy to nature, itself. This triumph is the Rainier cherry, and it is the most perfect fruit on Earth.

Sometimes my dad sends me inspirational text messages.

Today's text was, "Dr. Seuss' first book was rejected thirty times before it was published."

"That's encouraging," I replied," but Dr. Seuss' books are, like, ten pages long. How many times can you re-write a ten page book before it becomes a new book?"

"That was his niche," he explained, nonplussed.

I wonder how many times I'll have to re-write my joke for him to understand it.

Judah's phone beeps.

CLAIRE
Who texted you?

JUDAH
This girl I almost dated.

CLAIRE
You should almost date her now...only more.

JUDAH
(shakes his head)
She's Born Again now.

CLAIRE
Oh, so she's underage?

Monks take vows of silence...

...so they must be good at charades.

And when a monk speaks in charades, the other monks have to use charades to guess what he said, and then the first monk has to use charades to guess what the others guessed...

O, how winters in the monastery must fly!

It turned into a concert hall blitz.

My mother and I went to the symphony on Saturday. It was delightful...until they played the Radetzky March.



The piece was charming, but, well...the audience started clapping along.

I leaned over to my mom, rolled my eyes, and whispered, "What a bold percussive choice, on Herr Strauss' part."

After two minutes, the audience realized they'd been clapping for two minutes, and started to peter out.

"I wish the orchestra would stop playing their instruments," I snarled. "I can hardly hear the clapping."

Finally the music ended, and the clapping blossomed into applause.

"We're watching a musical evolution. After all, applause is just improvised clapping," I observed.

"Seriously, fuck this audience," I added.

After the symphony, I Wikipedia'd the Radetzky March. Apparently audiences have been clapping along with it since its debut in 1848.

There are plenty of things to hate about the symphony. For one thing, you're not supposed to applaud between movements.

For a second thing, a lot of people don't know you're not supposed to applaud between movements.

For a third thing, the people who don't know they're not supposed to applaud between movements seem really happy to express their happiness when they applaud between movements.

But a march that institutionalizes clapping?

Fuck you, Johann Strauss, Sr. You're aiding the enemy.

"For never was a story of more woe...

...than this of Juliet and her Romeo?"

Fine. I'll concede that. But it's tied for first.

I saw West Side Story yesterday, and it featured equal woe to the story of Juliet and her Romeo.

In fact, there's equal woe in Shakespeare in Love, Pocahontas, and the Lion King Two Colon Simba's Pride, too!

With this much originality, it's only a matter of time before contemporary writers out-woe R&J!

Watch your back, Bill!

My grandma thinks I'm handsome.

My grandma thinks I'm handsome. She tells me often.

But she can't just give me a compliment. I have low self esteem, and don't believe compliments. So she's kind enough to convince me.

"You are so handsome," she insists. "You are so handsome, you couldn't even hide it with all the ugly haircuts you've had."

'Ugly haircuts?' I have no idea what she's talking about.

The art inside.

When Michelangelo was asked how he sculpted David, he explained, "I just removed everything that didn't look like David."

When Gutzon Borglum was asked how he sculpted Stone Mountain, he explained, "I just removed everything that didn't look like three racists on a zit."

That showed him!

I was at a restaurant, and I couldn't decide between ordering the fish, the chicken, or the hamburger. I was leaning towards the fish, but it was the most expensive of the three.

I asked the server for his preference, hoping he'd recommend the fish and thus, justify my extravagance. He didn't have a preference, and his response was rather curt...so I ordered the hamburger, because it was cheapest.

When the patty arrived, it was overdone and lukewarm. The cheese was even colder, retaining the thick corners of an individually wrapped slice. The lettuce, in my professional opinion, had liver spots.

I ate it nonetheless. Yes, every rubbery bite made me long for the fish...

...but the tip I left my server was only twenty percent of the cheapest entrée! That showed him!

Rest assured, I'll never patronize that McDonald's again.

My father offers me his porn collection.

Here it is. Quite a stack, no?
No. Not a stack. A tower.
A tower of Babel! Only, y’know, with different girls
instead of different languages.
Can you believe how tall it is?

Damn it.

I'd write a haiku, but that isn't possible: my 'Enter' key broke!

Binary Haiku.

01100
0001010
11010

(I'm especially proud of the rhyme scheme.)

Sorry for the slow bloggery.

Apparently writing--the very act of writing--triggers my depression. I’m working on changing that, because, fuck.

Rest assured, there's an oodle of content brewing. I've started so many drafts for future posts, they outnumber the published posts.

Maybe there's an award for 'Most Attempted.'

Moderates are defending Sarah Palin.

They say that she wasn't responsible for the Tucson shooting, just as Natural Born Killers wasn't responsible for the Columbine High School massacre.

I understand the argument. I don't blame Palin. That would be absurd. But there's an important distinction between her and Oliver Stone.

Stone is an artist. Artists express themselves, with the intent of communicating with an audience.

Palin is a pundit. Pundits express themselves, with the intent of persuading an audience.

Palin has the right to spew whatever hatred she wants. She exercises this right often, and has riled up a lot of uninformed, emotional people. And she's used her platform to encourage violence.

Whether she influenced Jared Loughner to commit an act of terrorism is irrelevant.

What is relevant: there's legitimate discussion as to whether she influenced Jared Loughner to commit an act of terrorism. "Is Loughner a tea-bagger, or is it just coincidence that he shot a Representative who Palin happened to 'target?'"

As a pundit, Palin's first responsibility is to ask herself, "Do I believe what I'm saying enough to offer it to the public?"

In the best case scenario, her actions constitute a grievous professional failure...unless she believes it's okay to encourage violence against her political opponents. Then she's doing a great job.

It's important to kvetch about this. At the moment, the only power that Palin has is her influence over those uninformed, emotional people. The best way to diminish her influence is by informing them.

I'm disappointed that moderates aren't taking this opportunity to do so.

As I've always said...

...fool a short-term amnesiac once, shame on you.

Fool a short-term amnesiac once, shame on you.

Fool a short-term amnesiac once, shame on you.