Good Lord (No Pun Intended)
I have a thought for those morons in the diocese: how about you stop acting like anal-retentive, slightly mentally handicapped imbeciles stuck in the 13th century. Seriously. Dan Brown may not be the best writer ever, but he is a FICTION writer. F-I-C-T-I-O-N. Do you have any idea what that word even means? It means it’s not real. And people stupid enough to think it is real (or at least think his fictional presentation of the myth is real) are not people you should be clambering to suck up into your religious dogma. Get over yourselves and realize that people like to read books that are controversial and we like to see movies for the same bloody reason. Your attempts to stomp out “dissent” have failed over and over again. So bend over and accept that you can’t do anything about it. And, if you manage to do that, maybe you could also bend over and be flattered that someone would like to use your church as a setting in a fictional movie. Likewise, the movie is going to be made anyway, whether you let them use your churches or not. You see, Hollywood does this thing called “building sets” and it really won’t be that difficult to recreate your church. Now for a handy quote: The story drew anger and prompted calls for boycotts by church leaders worldwide with the idea that Jesus married and fathered children and by depicting the conservative Catholic movement, Opus Dei, as a murderous cult. Yes, because the Catholic church has never, ever, ever murdered someone before, right? No, not once. Heck now. That couldn’t possibly be true. Nobody died in the Crusades. That’s all just anti-religious propaganda. This is exactly why a lot of people in the world are pretty much convinced that overly religious folks are crazy. If you believe that a fictional book is real then you really are completely and utterly insane. Seek psychiatric help immediately. Please. For all our sakes.
Asthma: My Movie Pet Peeve
It might seem like an insignificant detail, but when people screw up characters with asthma it really ticks me off. Why? Because I have yet to see a movie in which someone uses an inhaler correctly and it’s not that bloody hard to do it right. Trust me, I know because I use an inhaler. The problem with Hollywood is that they either just don’t give a flying fig about getting health problems such as asthma–which is kind of a big deal, by the way, considering that about 31 million Americans have it (about 1/10th of us)–or they haven’t clue how to do it because by some stroke of luck there are absolutely no actors, directors, set workers, etc. who have the condition. I find the latter part hard to believe, but at the same time it may very well be true because I think after seeing a scene done incorrectly ten, twenty, maybe thirty times in the same day, someone like me might raise a hand and go, “Excuse me, sir, but that’s not right.”How exactly do they screw up asthma? Well, every time you see someone use an inhaler (whether or actual asthma, or a disease of some sort that would need an inhaler) they always take a puff, suck in for a brief second, and immediately let it out, usually the instant after removing the inhaler. I’m sorry to report, but this NOT how it is done. Not even close. It’s so blatantly wrong it actually hurts, and Hollywood has been at this for a long time. When you use an inhaler the object is to get the medicine deep into the longs, hold it there for a suitable amount of time so it can get into all the little cells and what not. This produces the maximum amount of relief. Think of it this way: you wouldn’t take an aspirin, lick it, and expect it to work the same as swallowing the whole pill, right? Exactly.Hollywood has NEVER got this right (at least, not that I have seen) and it’s disturbing and annoying. Stop it. Seriously. It’s not that hard to say “Mr. Actor (because for some reason almost all asthmatics on film are male, because there are absolutely no women with asthma at all right?), could you please suck in and hold your breath for five seconds after pretending to take a puff? Thank you.”What prompted this rant? The Goonies. Don’t get me wrong, I love the film too. It’s fantastic, a wonderful 1980s children’s adventure movie with a little family drama and a little fantasy thrown into the mix. But the main character, Mikey (played by Sean Astin, who is a good actor), is supposed to have asthma, yet never uses his inhaler correctly. Not once. It’s always “put it to his lips, push, breath, release, done”. No holding of breath, nothing. This happens in Signs, Casino Royal, and Superman Returns (it’s in I, Robot as well, but because that film is a futuristic film it sort of gets away with it). There are likely dozens of other films that screw it up (you can search IMDB for “asthma” and see a list of some seventy titles, in fact).The point is, Hollywood has been screwing up and some of us actually notice. So stop it! Something seemingly so simple should be easy to do right. Or am I asking too much?
I’m Getting Irritated
It’s not that I have a problem with music being a little loud. It’s not that the music is bad. The problem is that they are playing it at 10 PM. They’re not having a party. They’re not having a get-together or anything of that sort. But I can hear the bloody words from the music through their door and then through mine. That should give you an idea of how loud they are playing their music.The question isn’t why I’m not saying something, but why should I have to? Look, let’s be realistic here. Nobody should be playing music that loud at any point after dark. Period. It’s a respect issue. I shouldn’t have to ask for them to turn it down. I live in the same damn house.The only reason I bring this up is because I was finally in a writing groove. I was WRITING. I was feeling great, because I could get some things out of my head. And just when I was in the middle of it, just as the words were really flowing and my character was blossoming and the story itself was taking an awesome turn (some action and stuff) their bloody music came on and broke me. This is why I don’t listen to music with words. It breaks my concentration. And now my concentration is broken and I don’t know if I can get back into the story now. I’ve been desperate to write for months, not being able to get much on the page because my head is so engrossed in the school work. So when I do get to write and things do flow it’s especially important. So I’m a bit irritated right now. I think they’re drunk because they’re cheering when a song ends…Anyone wanting to give me 300 bucks a month so I can get my own place is more than welcome to make an offer, by the way… Now I’m going to work up the courage to say something if the music gets too loud again…(Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!) P.S.: I need to write again…grr!
A San Francisco Trip
This is late in coming, but so be it. I recently went on a lovely, yet strangely difficult trip to San Francisco to meet with Paul Genesse, author of The Golden Cord (you can find the review here and my interview with the author here). So, here’s how it went down: Figuring out how to get to San Francisco without a car is actually a lot more difficult than you might think. You see, there are plenty of ways to get to San Francisco from the actual Bay Area (i.e. places that actually border the same bay as San Francisco). But when you’re coming from the South Bay, across the Santa Cruz Mountains along the coast it’s a whole different experience. There is only one public bus that goes over the mountains and it doesn’t go to San Francisco, but to San Jose. Then you have to get from San Jose to a train or subway that will take you into San Francisco, which is a problem because there is no direct route from San Jose to San Francisco at all, despite it being relatively close to a variety of methods that can get you there. The only way to get directly to San Francisco from Santa Cruz is via Greyhound, which is fine, except that the Greyhound stops in a lot of rather scary places (such as the not-so-nice part of Oakland) and the types of folks who ride the Greyhound from Santa Cruz aren’t exactly “friendly” looking. Regardless, I didn’t want to take one bus from SC, another from SJ to Fremont, and then get on the rather confusing BART system (i.e. SF’s subway) and end up lost in one of the largest cities in the United States. So I decided to take a Greyhound. In comes problem #2. The Greyhound only leaves from SC four times during the day and only comes back four times during the day, each trip being about three hours. Those four times, however, are really crappy if you are wanting to meet someone in San Francisco at around one or two in the afternoon and even more crappy when you don’t want to come home at three in the morning because you have class at 8 AM (or only spend two hours in the big city rather than several). So, I made the decision to take a Greyhound there and do the whole BART/Bus thing and take a cab from downtown to home. Exciting as that may seem, it was actually somewhat terrifying. When I got downtown to climb onto the Greyhound and head out to lovely SF I was bothered by Santa Cruz’s most noticeable and downright irritating of groups: the homeless. I have nothing necessarily against homeless people. I understand that life isn’t easy and sometimes you get a good kick in the butt and you can’t recover. The problem with Santa Cruz isn’t that we have homeless, because most towns/cities have them, but that they all cluster in a part of town that, quite frankly, is meant for tourists and to simply look good for the city. You see, Downtown SC is actually a nice little place. There are an assortment of fascinating stores and restaurants, and it’s built to basically look good. Except for the homeless. Some cities have a lot of pigeons, but Santa Cruz has homeless. They collect on the streets, on the sidewalk, on all the benches where shoppers might want to sit, in corners, in front of doors, in the alleyways, and anywhere else they can get to. And nobody does anything about it. You can’t walk downtown without seeing ten or twenty of them in your immediate vision. It’s sometimes so bad that I don’t even want to go downtown, even though several of my favorite stores are there (Borders and Logos, both fantastic bookstores). Having said all that I can now explain my first disturbing experience of the day. I got off the bus and was heading for the Greyhound station just on the other side of the metro center when this lady came up to me and started asking me for money. As a rule I don’t carry cash on me, except in this instant because I needed it for all the buses and what not that I would have to take. So I calmly told her I don’t have any cash (technically a lie, but I didn’t really have any cash, since the money I had was, in theory, in use). Then she proceeded to ask me if I was going to the Greyhound, to which I said yes, which prompted her to ask me if I could buy her a ticket, which in turn received my answer of “no, I can’t”. That’s mostly the truth. Yes, I could probably have afforded to buy her the ticket, but I’m also not rich and have to make sure that the money I do spend is on what is most important to me. That might sound selfish, but, you know what, I don’t have a lot of money as it is and I’d rather it went to myself or my immediate family or a close friend first, rather than someone I don’t know and who generally kind of scares me. So, having averted the homeless lady I headed for the Greyhound where I was confronted with a peculiar group of people: European surfers (and more specifically German and Slavic surfers). Beyond that there isn’t much to say except that I got my ticket, sat down and began to read. When the bus came I got on and found myself a seat amongst the folks who looked like they very well could have been gangsters. I’m talking the scary types, some of which were carrying things with them as if they were their final possessions before going to prison. So I spent most of the trip huddled in a corner praying someone wouldn’t go postal and starting the place up (or steal the bus, for that matter). After
Question About Food
This might sound like a stupid thing to ask but: can you kill yourself or become really unhealthy if you eat too much fruit? For clarification, I don’t mean eating only fruit, but eating an especially large quantity of fruit. The reason I ask is I am obsessed with fruit. I love it. To death. The only way I could be vegetarian is if I could eat nothing but fruit. As I write this I’m looking at what remains of a package of raspberries, which isn’t much at all to be honest. I do this with just about all berries (blackberries, blueberries, and any other berries I can get my hands on). I also plow through ripe peaches and apricots because they are simply divine. So, seriously, can I kill myself if I eat too much fruit? Or is it okay to eat fruit like candy? (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)
Wednesday: Too Far Away
I’m going slightly insane at the moment. I won’t know with any certainty if “Interstellar Realty” will be rejected until Wednesday, since that is apparently the day when finalists are announced. It’s driving me absolutely bonkers right now. Some part of me wishes they’d just call me and say “no, it sucked, better luck next time”. Obviously I’d love to be a semi-finalist or a finalist, but I’m being realistic, however pessimistic that might be. You can hit me at any point and tell me to stop being that way, though. It might help. The good news is I spent some time with Jennifer who took the Modern German Fiction class along with me two quarters ago and we had a fascinating discussion about Philip K. Dick and his amazing work Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. We may be having another discussion next weekend, which would be a lot of fun, to be honest. As soon as I know what my grade is on my first serious essay for my PKD class I’ll post it. Alright, I’m off before my head explodes! (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this!)