Mission Accomplished

Well, I did it. Yes, ma'am. I wrote 50,000 words of a novel entitled "Anchor Them" in one month. I took the National Novel Writing Month challenge and came up a winner. You know what lesson I garnered from the whole experience? What gem of knowledge was left behind in its wake? What deep insight I learned about myself and my place in the world?... Well here it is...

I don't like writing novels.

There you go folks. I've always pondered in my mind what it would be like to be a famous novelist. To hole up in a cabin by a lake somewhere and pen my memoir. Or rent a villa in Tuscany to hash through my latest best seller. But now I know. It's not for me. I'm a screenwriter at heart. I like to write telling dialogue and to tell a whole universe in one frame. I don't like to bother with in depth description. Bo-ring. Grab the heart of the matter, the soul of your character, the core of your message, throw it up on screen in the most concise way possible and relish in the fact that you did it all in 120 pages.

Thoroughly-good For Your Soul

In Spin Class today I was pleasantly surprised by the sub's awesome and eclectic taste in music, especially her choice of George Thorogood's "Who Do You Love?" What I love about that man and his lyrics is the real sense he instills of the Wild West - freedom, adventure, savage love, all the vices you can handle. I also appreciate his taste for the macabre, something I, myself, am trying to achieve in this National Novel Writing Month challenge - that colorful mixture of life and love and grit and madness and morbidity. In his lyrics you feel death looming around the corner, making his lyrics and you feel ever the more alive. (Kind of like my favorite television show "True Blood", really...) So below I've offered up this tune in all its lyrical glory. Enjoy it if you know what's 'good' for you.

George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Who Do You Love?

I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the road side, and it's a-made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's a-made out of human skull
Come on take a little walk with me baby, and tell me who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

Around the town I use a rattlesnake whip, take it easy baby don't you give me no lip
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

I've got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind, I'm just twenty-two and I don't mind dying
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

Now Arlene took a-me by my hand, she said "Lonesome George you don't understand,
who do you love?"
The night were dark and the sky were blue, down the alleyway a house wagon flew
Hit a bump and somebody screamed, you should've heard what I'd seen
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

Yeah, I've got a tombstone hand in a graveyard mine, just twenty-two baby I don't mind dying
Snake skin shoes baby put them on your feet, got the goodtime music and the Bo Diddley beat
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie
A brand new house on the road side, and it's made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's made out of human skull
Come on take a little walk with me child, tell me who do you love?
Who do you love?
Who do you love?

The United States of Racism

Honestly, I can't take it anymore. When we elected our new president I thought to myself, "wow, we've done it. We've finally grown up as a country." Don't take me wrong, I wasn't under the assumption that's we'd eradicated racism. All you have to do is take the drive along Highway 40 from the West to Nashville, Tennessee to know racism still lurks in the dirty subconscious of our great nation. But, still, I was hopeful. I was also, unfortunately, blind.

This election has only fed the dragon, waking it from it's demonic underground lair so that it can wreak havoc on America, once again. All you have to do is turn on Fox news or flip on AM radio to see and hear the dragon spewing its venom across the airways, making gullible Americans mistake trash for truth. What is the real truth? Well, in things are pretty much the same as they were before the election. The sky isn't falling, Chicken Little. Swarms of locusts are descending on our crops. Socialists haven't taken over the country. The status quo is essentially still in effect. So we have a president who actually wants his people to be able to afford to see a doctor. Oh no! What ever will we do if the country's poor are suddenly leading long, healthy lives? How will be feel grateful for our lives if our fellow man isn't suffering by comparison? The terror!

Change is coming but the dragon is doing its scale-y, slimy best to burn it to a crisp. If you believe the hype the racists put out, you'd think we were experiencing Armageddon. And maybe were are. But it's not Obama ushering in this terrible realm, it's America's twisted hate. It's racism that's taking hold, dragging us down into the muck and mire. Once we as a country can call it what it is, we might actually be able to do something about it. Until that day, I'm going to start stocking up on flame retardant suits.

National Novel Writing Month - Take the Challenge!

National Novel Writing Month has begun, folks, and in my desire to thrust myself off the cliff known as 'the comfortable life' I've decided to take the challenge. From November 1st until midnight November 30th the goal is to have written 55,000 words (about 175 pages) of a novel, the emphasis being on quantity, not quality. Here's some quotes I love from the website:

"Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft..."
"Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing."
"We can't do this unless we have some other people trying it as well. Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together."

After trying, yet failing, to get another writer in my life to take the challenge with me, I thought I'd make the plea here. All it takes is a quick sign-up online. Winners (they count your words after midnight November 30th and then immediately erase your prose so there's no worry of plagiarism - you can also submit it scrambled if you're super paranoid) will get their names in the coveted Winners Circle online. Yes, it's a real challenge, but the point is to just go, man, go! Don't think about it too much. Just write for the mere sake of writing and see what wonderful crap you come up with. And please let me know if you sign up so I can add you as a writing partner.

By the way, the site also has a 'procrastination station' and tons of advice when you get stuck, not to mention motivational emails to get you pumped. So what the hell, let's keep our eye on that finish line and get our creative juices flowin'. Who's with me?!

Cleocatra

Not much to say about this one other than 1.) I'm not a cat lady, I swear, but this is truly amazing 2.) She actually seemed to like it, posing for my roommate, giving us all her good angles and 3.) There is nothing better than cats in disguise. My boyfriend had already searched online for a ninja cat costumes but came up short. As luck would have it, though, while shopping for a gold pen for my Joan Holloway outfit at Target I stumbled upon three marvelous options for $5 - rooster, jester and pharaoh. I chose this one because of the golden cobra (duh) and because it's light-weight; therefore, suitable for her tiny head. Can't you just see her floating down the Nile, male cats fanning her fur and hand feeding her Whisker Lickins? If you can't, you have no imagination. By the way, these photos are a bit blurred because they were taken on my Blackberry. Still, I think they capture the essence of Cleocatra...

The Reason for Sports

Call me naive, but I've never been able to wrap my head around sports mania. I mean what is it that attracts so many people to their TV screens, radios and sports arenas to watch men and women battle it out to prove their athletic superiority? Why do we care about these people? Why are blogs, television shows and newspaper articles dedicated to picking them apart? How do such strong emotions as love, hate, fear, anxiety, passion and zealousness find their way into something so relatively unimportant? Is baseball going to score a cure for cancer? Will football tackle the health care debate? Will basketball make a slam dunk in the fight against crime?

Bad puns aside, it all just seems like one big distraction from real life and from what really counts. Do we put our hopes and dreams into these super athletes so our dashed hopes and missed dreams don't seem as bad? If they can make gobs of money, score pretty ladies all over the globe and spend their days doing what they love, then it's not so bad that we're in debt to our ears, divorced (or considering it daily) and stuck in a dead end job.

Well, at least this is what I've felt for years. But something has changed recently as I watch my intelligent, go-getter, environment loving, money hungry boyfriend cherish every minute of his Sunday football/World Series extravaganza. When I met him I had no idea he was a sports fan. He just didn't fit the bill. Yes he was a living, breathing male - that should have been a tip off. But his cynicism, know-how, worldliness and "total lack of athletic ability" (his words, not mine) made me assume he thought sports were a joke, just as I did (a blackhearted, know-it-all cynic myself.) But, alas, I was wrong. The Red Socks, the Patriots, the Giants - they're all his friends. He's sad when they're sad and happy when they're happy.

Even if he's an anomaly, then what are the other reasons people watch sports and cheer on their teams? Here's a list of some food-for-thought theories I've come up with observing my boyfriend and other sports fans in their natural habitat:

1. It's a reason to eat really yummy snacks that you normally don't let yourself have. Greasy, cheesy, salty, fatty things that make life worth living.
2. It's a good way to put off important work - like paying the bills or writing that school essay.
3. It's a reason to drink copious amounts of beer and liquor. How can you justify screaming at the television screen if you're not hammered?
4. It's a reason to not "talk" about things - i.e. your partner knows not to bring up "the relationship" or the need for more cat litter when the game's on. (At least not until commercial.)
5. It provides a sense of purpose. If you didn't watch the game, then it's your fault if they lose. You're their good luck charm! You just know it!
6. It keeps life from feeling too serious. So you just found out your Aunt Diane has kidney failure and the stock market is plummeting... so what? You can think about them when the game's over.
7. It makes you feel a part of something. This is your team, your fellow fans, your sport.
8. It simulates war. Men love war. They're creating new wars all the time. And what is sports other than watered-down war games? The ball for the grenade. The interception for the coup. The touchdown for the bombing. The Super Bowl for the victory.
9. It helps you blow off steam. You don't need to yell at your business partner, wife or kids when you can yell at the referee and the other team's dumbass coach.
10. It give you something to talk about with your friends, family and coworkers. Conversation hit a speed bump? Can't think of what to say? Have nothing in common? Don't know how to bond with your son? Go to sports immediately. Ahhh, that's better. Now you're the best of chums.
11. It's okay to act like an idiot. Ever fancied painting your face, pounding your bare chest and screaming profanities at the top of your lungs in a large crowd? Sports let's you do that and still hold your head high. In fact, it's downright honorable.
    

When 'Comfortable' Is No Longer Comforting

My brain has turned into soggy gray matter. I can feel is swishing back and forth against my skull as I twist and turn in Sculpt Class. If I even take our front steps too quickly, there it goes like an orange thrown against a trampoline. Why the sudden blobification of my most vital organ?... Comfort. I have grown far too comfortable with my life. The other day my boyfriend actually called me a "waiter," as in someone who waits, not a food service employee.

It's as if I'm waiting for something to happen to me, twiddling my thumbs, hoping for the best. I wake up. Go to the gym. Do some work. Eat a salad. Do some more work. Kiss my boyfriend when he gets home and then turn on the television and relax with Diet Ginger Hansen's and think "I deserve this for all my hard work." It's not a bad life by any stretch of the imagination, but the next morning I wake up thinking, what the hell did I actually accomplish yesterday besides firming by backside and making some money? Really, what? Well, the waiting ends today. This comfort is no longer comforting.

Every week I vow to do one activity that is out of my comfort zone. I'm not going to advance as a screenwriter, make friends in this new town of mine or really experience southern living until I take that mushy ball in my cranium and make it strong again. Take chances. Have adventures. Fail miserably and succeed beautifully.

First up, finally taking a banjo lesson. Playing an instrument scares me to death because 1.) I'm not musically inclined and 2.) I fear my teacher laughing at me or telling antidotes to his other students about that 'brain dead wannabe banjo player from LA' he teaches every Monday. Wonderfully uncomfortable, indeed, so this will be a great start. My brand new, practically unused banjo (if you count my pathetic attempt at learning from a dvd) is sitting collecting dust in the corner as it gently weeps. No more weeping; it's time to kick comfort to the curb and embrace uncertainty.