Cream City

More Carp pictures are on the way, but I haven't got time today to do it all up with commentary so they will come later.I did have time to finish another collage/placemat. The meat and potatos of this one consists of work by Jamie Hernandez. Now I've got an even four, which is nice, but I've got three more in states of semi-completion. I might have to accept some whitespace on the lead contender for "next finished".

Meanwhile, the date is set - I'll be heading down to Toronto on the 19th. I'll be staying with a friend of the family in North York, but not for too long I don't think. It'll actually be kind of fun for a while, since he has a small kid that is great to play with. I'd say the little one has better manners than all but one of the house mates I had while in London.

Prognosis: Yes.

For a bit of contrast with my shot from two days ago, here is a non-misty picture from the same spot. Moving on, let's saunter down to the "Giant's Golf Ball" - which no longer seems to be directly working within the military anymore.It now seems to be working on behalf of Canadian Space Services Ltd. and is also, according to the signs out front, somehow connected to an Internet service at www.koallo.com ? Anyways, I caught a few more fun shots along the far side of the Diefenbuker land while I was walking down to the "radome".I'm not sure what the hell this thing is - an emergency exit maybe? Something to do with ventilation?For a fan of Fallout and other such things, this sign is pretty money.In case of apocalypse, do up your goddamn seatbelt.Another view of the "golf ball". Along this river, and not far from the bridge I was standing on, there is a huge beaver dam that gets dynamited by humans only to be rebuilt by long suffering beavers every single year.Then we have a glimpse of the Diefenbunker as seen from afar, while standing on......the lone railway which passes through many a farmers field and......past the "mighty" Carp river, which I remember caused a furor when folk were trying to build the Palladium/Corel Centre/ Scotiabank Whore n' Hockey box (for kids) on account of how it might have been "navigable" or not. Oh yes, it won't be long now before I set my gambling barge along it's swift currents and sip mint juleps while listening to the sound of my coffers being filled with the money of desperate men.Coming into town we see the most ill advised corporate logo since that brief summer when Subway decided to use a blurry jpg of a blistered anus. And finally we have the Carp Agricultural Society building, where the weekly Farmers Market is held most of the non-winter year.Will the be more of Carp to show? Prognosis: Yes.

Diefencrunker...oh wait, I made that "joke" already

Today I thought my plan to take pictures would be a bust on account of a bloody great big fog that settled in about two days ago. I'm basically living in Silent Hill right now, though with less knife wielding babies.Then I realized that maybe I could take pictures of the fog? Good idea, good idea...especially when mixed with the Diefenbunker.Here we have the tobogganing hill in Carp, where a younger Oliver often enjoyed himself and sometimes wondered if the fence really was electrified - as the now missing signs used to inform us back when the Cold War was still busy petering out. I am old is basically what I am getting at here. And then we look over the Carp Valley.Und zen ve are havink some of ze bunkair.Near the Diefenbunker is a military communications....node (?) that has been there as long as I can remember. When I was little my dad liked to tell me that it was a giant's golf ball which might be claimed by it's owner any day now.The back entrance, as it were. There used to be an antique car from the 1930's that was inexplicably sitting in front of it. I used to wonder if it was supposed to be the Prime Minister's get-away car in which to run over/from the mutants.A side view of the main entrance.MOREYou can read a lot of facts about the Diefenbunker at it's website, which I've already linked to. But I can tell you that the few things I remember most from the tour are thus:

1) There is a vault [for gold] inside with just one hallway leading to and around it. In each corner of the surrounding hallway there is a tall mirror placed so that you can always see (and be seen by) whoever else is outside the vault. This is pretty much James Bond in a towel, which is suitable since I think one of my first thoughts at the time was "God this would be so good for a level in Goldeneye".

2) Like anything from the Cold War, particularly a structure that was built in the early years, there was a reasonable amount of very black humor to be taken in. Things like how they thought that radiation would have dropped down to safe levels after only two years. Like how part of the plan involved storing a gold deposit to re-establish the currency and copies of every single document needed to facilitate the running of the Canadian government...but no women. Not even the Prime Minister's wife!

One thing I'm not entirely sure about, now that the years have fuzzed my memory a bit, is that one unfortunate guard got to stand outside while the bombs dropped to, you know, keep an eye on things. Since nobody in the village of Carp (or anyone else who wasn't on The List) was allowed in the bunker, it would have fallen on this poor SOB to make sure none of the locals fleeing the bombs got anywhere near the bunker doors and since he would be outnumbered by a fat margin then this would almost certainly lead to his having to use his gun for this purpose.

Good times!

3)A bunch of students from West Carleton High School put together diagrams which illustrate the blast radius of different atomic bombs as they would spread over the downtown Ottawa area (generally with Parliament as ground zero). These were your standard "Red dot - Orange Ring - Yellow ring - White ring" icons.

My apartment where I lived for two and a half years before leaving for England fell within the yellow ring.

Yellow = "Those who envy the dead"

Huh.
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Addendum: The most recent "We The Robots" made me laugh my ass off by really hitting on one of them fundamental truths. Maybe your ass will fall off too?

Also this.

And okay maybe this too.

DOUBLE Addendum(nity?): I just saw someone pluralize "Vagina" as "Vaginae".
WHAT?

All quiet on the western FONT

Is that a pun?

I do not think it is a pun.

Now that the holiday season is over I'm pretty much just focusing on getting a job and a place in Toronto ASAP...which means few immediate adventures to put up here, sadly. That being said, those long promised pictures of "What Carp Has To Offer" will likely get taken (and then uploaded) tomorrow, as any lad who wishes to avoid The Fear should take a break from job/house hunting at least once in the dang ol' day.

Until then I shall just upload this reminder that you are On The Internet - a stupid, slightly drunken New Years Eve clip that was taken while my pal Joe and I did our darndest to get set up for a purty picture.

Alcohol is spilled. Shame is increased.

This Year We Shall Call Them Scarer-ists, Which is Way Cuter.

Resolutions

-GET FAT
-SMOKE
-SMOKE A FATTY (phatty?)

This seems a pretty reasonable list and I think my North American lifestyle just might facilitate the first and last, though staying in Europe would have been better for the middle one.

So it's a new year and I am asking the same question that most people do - where are my amazon bitches at?

Okay, maybe that is me being facetious. Maybe this post has been a complete farce up until now. This is something worth pondering.

Last year was pretty okay.
I got to see Athens.
...perched myself upon the great white horse of Uffington.
...spent a good deal of time exploring London (too many links to bother).
...got a good deal of writing done and continue to fill my notebooks with seeds for future writing.
...got some film work set up in Canada less than a month after arriving back.
...finally did some watercolor painting.
...took a stab at a webcomic, even if it has slipped into a coma thanks to a)life getting generally crazy then b)my big move back and c) the holidays.
...went to my first (and possibly last) goon meet. I'm not sure if that's one I should mention but...
...got to have a hilarious discussion about inventing slang in a squat/bar/art gallery which "should" have made me fear for my life, but actually made me feel more relaxed than any other point in the year. Basically I learned that just because it looks like it should be a crack den and it's in a neighborhood with a reputation for horrible crimes, that doesn't mean you can't still have the time of your life!

And some other stuff too. I'm just back from a few days in Toronto, where I had a great New Years Eve but also spent time renewing my impression of the city while learning more about the downtown core which intrigues me. Walking through Bloor, College street, Kensington Market, Spadina and Chinatown as well as other central areas...it felt extremely correct. I'm glad about this because, frankly, wherever I move next should feel this way in order to justify what I want to be a long term move. By the time of my move to Toronto I will have moved five times in less than eighteen months (with a sixth time to go, depending on whether or not I stay with a friend of the family during the initial weeks - we'll see how the job hunt goes as to whether or not that happens).

Add in the four times I'd moved since turning nineteen and the summer of 2006....well, I think I'd like to try setting down roots a little bit! Not so much having kids and buying a house "setting down roots"...but maybe a "take pride in my neighborhood and spruce up my apartment so it looks more like a home and less like a very personalized hotel room" kind of setting down root. I wouldn't say my "biological clock" is ticking (though my "quotation marks" "clock" "seems" to "be" "t"i"c"k"i"n"g"), but I am starting to feel some priorities shift. Then again, fuggit, for all I know I'll get some great offer of work six months down that road that will have me traveling to a secret North Korean surgery to have my penis replaced with a live cobra (all in the name of authenticity).

So, onto the next year and maybe a marvelous, deadlier penis!

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Addendum: The Onion has a very interesting interview with the man I recently remarked upon as being my original inspiration to pursue film, if you're interested.

ALSO, last night I caught the back end of Trekkies 2 and I have learned one thing - if you want to meet a hot trekkie, go to Serbia! Apparently all the men look like reasonably clean cut gents and the women all have aquiline features which are complimented by exotic, dyed hair.

Two days into 2008 and I reckon I'd best do up this year's "End of a Year" post before it becomes time to do the next one.

So that'll be my next post.

For now, I'll share this great look not so much at climate change but the "Economy vs Environment" pseudo-debate. It involves, particularly near the end, points which I've been banging on about for ages but is much - let's say "consumer friendly" - than a tirade from yours truly. I recommend going to the guys YouTube account for further info.

NAKED DAVID SUZUKI

NAKED DAVID SUZUKI!

Just sayin'!

Scriptwriter, Know-It-All in Training

If there is reason I'm often grateful for choosing this difficult career path it is that it gives me a legitimate reason - not that "general interest" isn't one, but you know - to research pretty much everything in the known universe. One of two web series I'm working on for my new collaborator, the same fellow with him I am recording a second monologue tonight, is somewhat high concept and rooted in a twenty years ahead projection of the modern global scene. A "The World in 2008" issue of The Economist which my pal Rob gave me has been an invaluable leaping off point and another present, from Tom, looks to be quite useful as well. From that I'll leave it to you to guess at the nature of this series - for which I'm trying to get...

1) A treatment
2) A thirteen episode, episode guide
3) A scripted first episode
and
4) A character guide

...finished up. It's going well so far and given the novelty of the distribution medium (webisodes - a rare example of new jargon that I actually like) and how it shapes the message, I've been thinking a bit more about the business of storytelling and how it affects the story being told. For example, I've been making a list of neat background elements which I feel could help to snare those valuable OCD cases that turn a show from just "popular" into "cult". These nibbits are useful for the writer since they expand the world of the story and thus give you more room to tell more stories after - but let's face it, "stories" become "DVD's" and other salable products, which lead to money which I'm told a lot of people are fond of. This is an angle I haven't thought about much before now, I must admit.

I MUST

Meanwhile my favorite writer-director, and basically a huge inspiration behind my original decision to pursue this career, P.T. Anderson has finally come out with a new movie since the criminally underrated Punch-Drunk Love. There Will Be Blood looks very interesting and I will almost certainly review it in some depth after I see it. Until then, cheggout the trailer...

Each year, Scarygoround's creator takes a break by putting up the top 20 albums of the year as reviewed by his main character Shelley. Even if you aren't familiar with the music, the whimsical and inventive descriptions of the music make a great read. Today's reviews includes one of Radiohead's latest which carried a very different method of description than my own and made me grin. Maybe you will to?

Maybe!

A No Good, Uppity Collage Boy

Mostly she cheated on him for how every time he entered her, he insisted on referring to it as a "Slam Dunc".

When I got my first apartment all of my own, I knew I wanted something on the walls that nobody else had and which was all my own. Not having much faith in my drawing or painting skills, I decided to make use of a large store of magazine clippings I'd been hoarding for several years to no specific purpose. Using a standard Grade Six Presentation On Ancient Rome sized piece of bristol board, I did up a big collage and hung it up in a cheap frame that my parents had had laying around. To my surprise, a lot of people other than myself found it very enjoyable to look at.
A year later, upon moving into the bachelor box by the Ottawa canal which would hold me until I left for England, I decided to do up another. The first was just pure stream of consciousness while the latter was loosely gender-themed, with lads dominating one half and ladies the other. Of the same size as the first, I laminated it and then used the collage as a fun cover for my tiny table.

Knowing I'll be heading down to Toronto next month and, ideally, getting my own place by February...I decided it might be time to do some more - having given the two previous collages to my pal Joe when I left for England. This time around I am taking stiff pieces of standard printer paper sized card and doing up a series of smaller collages which I will then get laminated and use for place mats in whatever my new home turns out to be.

The lion's share of my clippings are coming from a tall stack of 1970's teen girl romance comics which contain, by and large, solid gold. The shiniest of the nuggets I have thus far mined would have to be the following "Alphabet of Differences Between Boys and Girls". Yeah, some of it is the predictable patronizing female programming...but honestly, I think that the guys take a much harsher lesson from this cursed alphabet!
Unfortunately the teen-aged girl who owned these several yonks ago must have had a go with her own pair of scissors, so we miss a couple of letters and two descriptions. Still, there's plenty to work with!I suppose you could say that I have my work cut out for me? "You could, but you probably shouldn't."Boys possess some of the same qualities, but to a much lesser degree""When a girl has a quarrel, all she has to do is shed a few tears, and everything becomes all right"I...I have to say that the "S...is for Sex" text confused the hell out of me until I realized it was referring to "Sex" as in "Gender" and not "MAKIN' BACON".For all the old fashioned crap in the other letters, at least X is being hell of progressive by putting forward the idea that women want to see porno films...?

Now I'm off to go make Christmas martinis - I hope you've all had as peaceful and satisfying a day as I have!

First World Problem #2487c

I've come home to find that all of my bookmarks have mysteriously disappeared! Got-damn, there where like 150 of the buggers!

Just thought I'd make this post to say that this space is likely to be quiet until Boxing Day or maybe the day after, for obvious reasons. I definitely want to take some pictures around Carp in that time, so perhaps I will finally deliver on my "Carp has some stuff too!" post(s). Merry Christmas and all that!

Addendum: Though this article is written with America in mind, I think it applies (to varying degrees) even in countries without abstinence education. An interesting read on the sexualized/puritanical conflict of interests in teaching young people how to see themselves and the bodies of the opposite sex.

Brackenbeatzzz the Rapping Secular, Anglo-Saxon Male

So as I alluded to yesterday but maybe didn't explain properly - my head is just fuggin' buzzing with ideas for a new project, as well as the monologues and an older idea that has found new life in my head as a potential series of webisodes (and this isn't including a hoard of other, more tangential notions for this and that). Essentially it can feel like someone just dumped a bunch of pop rocks into my brain pan...in a good way, mind!

This kind of glorious thing pretty much always leads to plenty of long, highly detailed dreams that I can remember very easily the next day.

Last night I had the second in what seems to be maybe a series of dreams wherein a friend of mine whose name begins with "R" and is a writer shows up...and hijinks ensue.

This second dream involved me wandering through a webcomic convention that was cobbled together from pieces of the one I went to earlier this year and my high school gym. Quite soon, I found myself at Ryan North's table...which was more like a large desk. He was all excited about something so I came over and asked "What's up?". "Oh man, Oliver, I totally have a new thing that I'm working on and I'm so stoked about it!" he said. I asked if it was a new book or a new web project and he told me it was the former. "Here, you can see this preview copy" he said, then pulled one out from under the desk and plopped it right there in front of me.

The title was "Why Does Anybody Tell Jokes to Italians?" in this really ugly, yellow font. As I pored over the cover, which was the title overlaid on a fuzzy photo of Michelangelo's David, Ryan whispered "Just between you and me, I was only able to get twenty pages out of that idea so the other hundred pages are just filler". I turned to page twenty one and was greeted by another full-page, color photograph. The photograph was of "Grove St." which I knew in the dream to be the most recognizable street in all of Compton. Overlaid upon this picture was a grid of smaller photographs, evenly spaced, of dogs done up like the various members of NWA - though I swear one of them was Heartbeatzzz The Rapping Dog. "So, what do you think?" Ryan asked and thank goodness I woke up at that point because I may have had to tell dream-Ryan that his book was sub-par at best!

The previous night is not as clearly remembered, but I gather I was standing in a field not far from a school I was attending. I had an essay I needed to get done and it was due soon, but I'd only written a single page. Rob Near walked up out of the surrounding mists and offered to help out. I handed him the essay and as he put it behind his back with one hand, he pulled it back out again with the other. "All done!" Rob told me, before starting to walk away. Looking at the cover of the paper I saw that he had written on the cover sheet, in pencil, "This is basically a perfect 'C' grade paper and does not deserve any less". "Well" I thought "a 'C' is better than the fail I was going to get" and turned the cover page. I very quickly saw that Rob hadn't written the rest of the essay for me at all! He'd just inserted his full name, in 72 point font, in-between every other word and thus inflated my one page into five.

But as I looked up to chase after him, he was just stepping into the mist and the next moment he was gone. I had a brief flashback to when he carved his name eighty-two times into my ruler in grade five, then woke up.

Ah well!

Today I'm reviewing a short script by Mark Z, the fellow who was my other half in making the trailer the summer before last. It's nice to have someone to not only put that kind of trust in me as a person, but in my abilities. After that, more brainstorming for the project that came out of yesterdays crazed conversation...

When you get drunk and party inside it you're allowed to call it the "Diefencrunker"

So!

I just got back from the second go in front of the camera and my first monologue that I can feel decent about. I'm sorrrrrely tempted to post the actual text, but I'm going to raise my testicles into the "steely courage" position (they're like aircraft landing gear, ladies) and wait until a rudimentary edit is put together that I can then upload for feedback.

The other nice thing is that my collaborator and I got chatting afterwards about our mutual desire to film something in the Diefenbunker before we die of old age and it led into a spontaneous brainstorming session of the absolute best kind - one that produces tons of interconnected ideas as well as an intense enthusiasm to get working on them. So with that, I must now fall into my fat green notebook and not crawl out for a few hours.

Oh darling, I think I'm about to peak (oil)

Minus the oil part, that used to be how some folk in olden days used to announce to their partners that ejaculation was along the way. True story!

While researching details for a monologue connected to peak oil, I stumbled across one of the stupidest things I've read in a long, long time. I'd link to the blog I'm copying this from, but do not want to start some sort of pathetic blog war. So feast your eyes, if you dare, on THIS...

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9. THE FEMALE PERSPECTIVE ON PEAK OIL

Some peak oilers think street lights are a waste, and should be eliminated. I couldn't help but think how this would come into conflict with, for example, on-campus feminists who want to *increase* the number of street lights as a countermeasure against rape and sexual assault.

Peak oil has a strong male bias. They want to get back to basics and eliminate wasteful electrical appliances. Guys: you may not need that appliance, but how does your wife/girlfriend/mother, who actually uses it, feel about getting rid of it?"

It reminds me of the program "Frontier House" which I saw on public TV. In that program, a number of modern families were selected to go back and live on the land in Frontier style for a summer. No make-up, no conveniences, no energy other than that available to the pioneers (wood and kerosene, I believe). You can read about the program here:
Source

Anyway, the eye-opener about that series was how hard the women's work was in those days. They were washing dishes/clothes, fetching water, cooking, sewing, milking, cleaning-up non-stop from dawn to dusk everyday. It was totally exhausting and monotonous and they complained about it. The men, on the other hand, were outside chopping wood all day and building, and generally enjoyed it and had a favorable view of the whole experience.

That's part of the male bias of peak oil. Men think it's fun to rough it and go back to nature, and shoot guns in a Mad Max scenario. It's like playing cowboys and indians. Women, on the other hand, don't like it, because they can see themselves in the backdrop of this male fantasy, getting raped or rubbing their fingers to the bone on a washboard.

So my point is this: It may very well be that an energy surplus is a precondition of emancipating women from household slavery. So when we lose that surplus, how are you men going to explain the need for drudgery to your women? They may *demand* that you fix the problem by finding more energy, not by rationalizing how important it is for them to be a drudge again.
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Addendum: It's nice to know that the idea of using a nuclear fucking bomb to get at the oil in the Albertan sands was seriously considered more than once.

So er uh hey what about them things that don't make sense when you give them a cursory analysis?

Wow...

So yesterday involved a lot of barking my shins up against familiar and unfamiliar obstacles in both the writing and the performing side of things. This is good, really, since it's always better to get as much of that out of your system as possible - in general, but especially during the planning stage.

It also drilled home the fact that I hadn't seriously written comedy in well over a year - in fact, all my big writing efforts while in England fell into horror, dystopian and post-apocalyptic genres! These are not genres that are generally known for Big Komedy Laffs (with some notable exceptions). It also reminded me how much easier it is to write something that is character or plot driven rather then pure, uncut humor. When I mentioned this monologue thing to some folk over the weekend I was told by some that I'd basically just have to rant off about whatever, to just "be myself" for a few minutes and hey presto an episode.

But I'll tell ya, the time to space-filled-on-the-page ratio is easily the most unforgiving for writing a comedic monologue...or so I was finding yesterday. I'd wager this is at least partially because a story will always suggest several next steps while a joke does not come with this guarantee. Oh sure, it might lead into more general blather on the topic being dealt with but maybe not a joke. However, a lot of the grunting involved in the process was probably mostly due to my having to work out the kinks in my komedy muskles.

Not to mention that I was trying to write a broad, non-topical bit when my strengths lay in anecdotal, topical humor. Luckily my collaborator and I hit on that last night and as soon as I was able to unclench and let myself know that the latter style would be suitable...the ideas starting coming a lot easier. That being said, we're keeping the episode length to between two and three minutes, at least at the start. That may make it sound like ADD theater to some, but pay attention to the length of something like what Rick Mercer does or ZeFrank. An awful lot can be said in that time.

We're filming again on Thursday with the intention of getting at least one workable episode put together. As we're not concerned with a big launch, per se, y'all may very well get a preview of what is to come sometime not long after (depending on how much the holidays get in the way).

The style is still being refined, but let me show you someone whose set design I considered imitating and whose interview style I just plain admire - Charlie Rose. More and more I find myself digging through his archives on YouTube, his calm and friendly manner is a rare treat amongst all the screaming on TV these days.

In this clip he talks with Edward Norton about the High Line, a section of railway in New York that displays what would happen if nature was allowed to start taking back the domains of man. They show some clips but you can also check out a gallery here.

The Isolation of Yesterday's Storm Got Put To Good Use

So yesterday I finished polishing the latest draft of "Radio Days" and, after receiving the initial (thankfully positive) response from my collaborator, I continue to feel like it's a strong improvement - even if it's now seven pages longer. Originally the goal was to keep it to no longer than fifteen minutes as my collaborator (Myspace Man) had informed me that this was a standard length for UK festivals. Now it sits at twenty-three pages and with the rough [one page = one minute] formula being kept in mind...well I'm sure there are other "weight classes" for festival submissions. Plus one to three pages could end up being pruned if only through my thinning out the scene descriptions.

Due to all my earliest writing forays being short and long stories, a tad too much prose can wind up in the aforementioned descriptions which in turn can artificially bulk up the assumed running time (i.e. it only takes a moment to show a complex background that may have taken "fifteen seconds" to describe. How much the viewer will pick up in that moment is another story). That being said, I wonder at what point you draw the line regarding highly stylized films where the world is as much of a character as the people in it?

Now I'm going to spend the day attending to something folk have been telling me I should write since long before I even decided that film was the avenue I wanted to go down - comedic monologues. I still have my sexy Belkin iPod widget that lets me record my jabberings in the time-honored style, so I'm going to have a go at that while keeping a list of topics and sub-topics I doodled out last night under my nose. This will probably feel particularly apt after having watched Adaptation last night for the first time since it was in theaters.



Let us all take a solemn moment to remember those who have fallen in the battle between technology and horse.

Some people find peace of mind through meditation...

...I find it in my six year old, tri-testicled, phallic cactus. Small red flowers have started to spring up around the tip, so I can only reason that it has been messing about with those filthy girl cacti that hang around street corners during the late hours.

If I ever find myself impotent, I'm going to grind this thing up and snort it.

Gore in Bali, Winter in Canada

Guys, this is seriously mandatory knowledge. Please go here and watch this short speech by Gore upon the topic of the ice caps and the price of burying your head in the sand. This stuff isn't just the next generations problem!

You can read more about it here (and here) and perhaps take a dark kind of joy in seeing Gore take his own country to task while gently reminding delegates from the rest of the world that there isn't much time left in office for that guy and that they should plan under the assumption that the next president will be more on board with dealing with climate change. Canada didn't go unscathed either, nor should it when you look at Harper's awful approach.
Meanwhile, I appreciate that a lot of Canadians are looking at how our winter has been thus far and the way it's shaping up for the rest of the season...then figuring this means things are getting better or that the weather even constitutes a kind of rebuttal to the issue. But just because you see this out the window, it doesn't mean that climate change is over or that "it's just cyclical". As always, if the big news stories leave you feeling overwhelmed and impotent - you can find all sorts of sites with ways for the individual to do their part and even save money along the way (even make money). If you want you know why you should bother, this article is a decent stepping stone towards the answer.

Addendum: Check out this video with Gore outlining 15 ways for the individual to help out and also display the great sense of humor I suspect he had surgically implanted about three years ago.

The Aggregate Rewards of Notebooking

Just a moment I thought I'd share.

In preparation for meeting with folk to discuss future film collaboration in Canada, as well as to help myself decide which script to develop next, I've been spending time at the local library organizing my ideas into index card length summaries - title, genre, length, amount of work already done, novel points of interest...plus the hardest part, a one or two sentence synopsis.

While plunging through my last notebook I reached a blank page and figured I was done. Flipping the page out of habit, I came across several more pages filled with notes. "Bleurgh" I sighed at the thought of having more stuff to summarize. Then it occurred to me that there are certainly worse problems for a writer then having too many neat ideas. Sheesh!

But yeah, hurrah for notebooks. With eighteen months of notes to go through, I certainly won't feel at a loss for concepts to pitch!

Shameless Pilfering

Good old Stephen Fry is at it again, this time with a game show where the points don't matter but you do win said points for not only giving correct answers but also being interesting. It's a great premise and the first episode is a great watch, partially because his old comedy partner Huge Laurie (who most folk enjoy in House these days) is one of the players. You could do a lot worse than to give this a watch.

(I shamelessly pilfered this from that scientifically proven reprobate...Marc)