we sail tonight for Singapore.

FADE IN:

INT. ROGER’S BEDROOM -- MORNING

ROGER is lying in bed, sprawled out, diagonal, alone. He’s a narrow late twenties guy, and by the look of the place he’s single. A blanket blocks the light from spilling in through the curtainless window. The clock by the bed reads 7:36 a.m.

Clothes and food containers decorate the room in lieu of knickknacks. Draped across a chair in front of a closed laptop is a white button down, tie still knotted loosely, hanging from the collar.

The clock changes to 7:37. An imperceptible whine starts to issue from it. The whine grows louder slowly and Roger turns on his side.

The whine grows louder and Roger, eyes still closed, wraps a pillow around his head.
The clock is screeching now and Roger sits up slow and awkward. He rolls over toward it and flails toward the button that will make the noise stop.

He misses and leans up more, stretching out over the divide between bedside table and mattress. He reaches for the clock, slaps clumsily out at it. He misses.

The momentum takes him, with a cry, tumbling out of bed. All the sheets come off with him as he falls off the side of the bed, the alarm still screeching away.

Beside the bed, where Roger and his sheet ought to be, there is nothing but dirty floor.

EXT. OCEAN -- DAY

Waves lap against the hull of a ship. Despite the fact that the material comprising it resembles nothing so much as cast iron, the ship is, otherwise, a pirate vessel. It sails effortlessly on a gentle wind over the calm seas and under the clear blue sky.

The Iron Boat is sailing alone on the open ocean, no land in sight.

Suddenly, from far up in the sky, something falls.

The object is too far to be clearly discerned as it falls, though it falls from a great, great height. It does look to be human-shaped, though. And it appears to be trailing bed sheets.

It stop abruptly as the silhouette of falling object is intercepted by the Iron Boat. A thud is heard.

MUSIC: the decemberists: california one/youth and beauty brigade

(P.S. the preceeding is the beginning, finally, of what I've been getting ready to write for two months.)

(P.P.S. "We're lining up the light-loafered and the bored bench warmers, castaways and cutouts, fill it up. Come join the youth and beauty brigade.")

It's well over now,

the Ghost Festival, that is. Dear sons and daughters of hungry ghosts, I am afraid that your next chance to appease and free, albeit culturally cross-wise, will be November 1.

I hope they can wait, because otherwise we've a trite horror movie on our hands.

And speaking of trite horror movies, is it wrong to be purposefully derivative if it's in a lauditory, self-aware, original way? Can you be derivative in an original way, you ask? And in response I direct you to numerous episodes of the X-Files as well as The Man Who Wasn't There and the script I intend to start outlining once I get my hands on a copy of Shadow of A Doubt.

I spent one dollar on a local paper today which has given me absolutely no leads in the hunt for work. I spent five dollars today on lottery tickets. It's either a waste of money five times as great or a fantastic investment. Though I believe it to be the former, clearly my money, literally, is on it being the latter.

Adventures ought to happen for free.

MUSIC: Godspeed you black emperor: providence

cotton

"This song is for the rats who hurled themselves into the ocean when they saw that the explosives in the cargo hold were just about to blow.

This song is for the soil that's toxic clear down to the bedrock, where no thing of consequence can grow. Drop your seeds there, let them go. Let them go.

Let them all go.
Let 'em all go.

This song is for the people who tell their families that they're sorry for things they can't and won't feel sorry for.

And once there was a desk, and now it's in a storage locker somewhere, and this song is for the stick pins and the cottons I left in the top drawer.

Let 'em all go.
Let 'em all go.

I wanna sing one for the cars that are right now headed silent down the highway, and it's dark and there is nobody driving, and something has got to give.

I saw you waiting by the roadside. You didn't know that I was watching.

Now you know.

Let it all go.

Let 'em all go.
Let it all go."

-The Mountain Goats

I'm on my way...

...to becoming either a bond company stooge or a waiter (again). Tomorrow I will buy lottery tickets.

MUSIC: the pixies: caribou

"Best summer ever:

stickers."

Thanks, old navy.

though your inexpensive clearance shorts are grand.

In other news: the heatwave has broken, at least for the moment. Dramatically, the heat wave shattered over 36 hours of downpour, and now it's not even 65.

"Spidoors are go!" -Joel Robinson.

MUSIC: lambchop: something's going on

An educational film:

Here we see Jef carrying what appears to be a computer monitor. Now, Jef appears to be a strapping young lad, fully capable of carrying a monitor to the very ends of the earth...

but what if I were to tell you that Jef hasn't eaten in three days?

You see, without proper nutrition and a reasonable caloric intake, Jef here is as weak as a kitten. The way it works is, each night when Jef is asleep, his body takes what it needs to repair itself, not from the food he's eaten, but from itself. So when he wakes up and should feel refreshed and ready for the day, he is actually sluggish and weak as a kitten.

Oh! Good job, Jef... you nearly lost it there.

Let's hope Jef gets a good meal tonight... and let's not watch him try to get the refrigerator.

(and such was the inner monologue during my move out.)

MUSIC: the cure: the end of the world

(note: college accomplished)

The end of the semester...

... and the end of college are conspiring with my birthday to make it seem like I suddenly became far, far older over the weekend.

Mealcard spent, the eating isn't happening too often, and every waking moment is spent with either reading or writing. There is no significant difference between being 23 years, 11 months and 29 days old and being 24 years and two days old, but somewhere between there I lost enough sleep and got enough work to feel like an old man.

old old old old old.

You kids turn down that damned rock and/or roll, I'm trying to write a research paper on the Plastic People in the form of a script for an after school special. Back in my day we had respect for people who took slightly less than six years to finish a bachelor's degree.

Just wait until your father gets home.

MUSIC: regina spektor: oedipus

Factual errors

amdb

Factual errors: People do not turn into vampires when bitten by skeletons.
Factual errors: Napoleon was not a centaur.
Factual errors: District attorneys do not have the power to commandeer airplanes.
Factual errors: Alex fires his Colt Python revolver 167 times without reloading. This gun holds fewer than 100 bullets.
Factual errors: Winston Churchill was not killed by a swinging log trap; he died of a stroke in 1965 (although he was twice gravely injured by swinging log traps in his home).


MUSIC: the new pornographers: streets of fire

(EDIT: I saw a werewolf drinking a pina colada at Trader Vic's. His hair was perfect.)

Everyone had given up hope.

Originally uploaded by Vocal Shrapnel.

The night was too dark, the fog too thick. On board the plane a priest had been invited to the cockpit. The loudspeaker was resonating with the last rights. The muslim couple aboard were praying. The Rabbi considered saying something about the insensitivity of a Catholic sacrament being given to a religiously and ethnically diverse planeload, but thought better of it as the plane dipped precariously.

The families inside the airport were slowly coming to grips with the impending fate of their loved ones. Signs made to greet the arrivals sat foot-printed and forgotten on the linoleum. It seemed clear that the anticipated arrival which they were heralding would never come.

Just then, an idea struck -- so simple and yet so elusive. Running onto the airstrip, a hand clutching sticks, the other holding a lighter, was Shleeve.

Grief, everyone assumed.

He'd gone mad with grief. Running onto the tarmac through the mist and the shadows, unable to cope with the imminent disaster.

Then a glimmer.

Then a flame.

Sparklers!

They cut the fog. The landing was perfect.

The rabbi sued, but the case was dismissed. "Don't be a dick," the judge said.

Shleeve got a parade.

MUSIC: clinic: the second line

"It's already July...

Shleeve blows
Originally uploaded by Vocal Shrapnel.

...summer's passing us by..."

So the fourth is here and gone France is going to win a world cup and my little sister's in Italy for the last game and Pete and Shleeve and my dad are older.

I will never have to take a math class again for the rest of my life.

Michael Collins' girlfriend was real, I have learned to my chagrin.

"She said she loved me like fireworks...

MUSIC: ben lee: catch my disease

...and that's the way I like it"

Letter from Belgium

"Martin calls to say he's sending old electrical equipment.
That's good we can always use some more electrical equipment.

In the cold clear light of day down here
Everyone's a monster
That's cool with all of us
We've been past the point of help since early April

Susan and her notebook
Freehand drawings of Lon Chaney
Blueprints for geodesic domes
Recipes for cake

Yeah we're all here
Chewing our tongues off
Waiting for the fever to break

When we walk out in the sunlight we tell every we know it hurts our eyes
When the real reason we don't like it is that it makes us wonder if we're dying

And Martin's found an old trunk full of stage makeup in the basement
And he's sending it along
We can always use more makeup
Yeah more creams and powders

And Carrie's got the feeling
That the people next door
Will close in like a wolf pack
Should we make one small mistake

Yeah we're all here
Chewing our tongues off
Waiting for the fever to break."

-the mountain goats

Harrison Ford is driving down the road...

...and he looks out his window. Instead of the idyllic small town scene he expects, there is a fucking volkswagen completely ingulfed in flames in a bank parking lot. This scene produced by Jerry Bruckheimer.

Except that I was driving down the road and there was a fucking volkswagen completely ingulfed in flames in a bank parking lot.



Walmart, it turns out, does not have hummus. I searched high and low. I asked. No, Walmart does not have hummus. So I bought my bagels and orange juice and drove down to ingles for hummus. As I neared ingles, I noticed that there was a particularly horrible odor in the air, even for papermill country. And there was an awful lot of smoke blowing across the road.

Some crazy hillbilly no doubt burning trash, I thought, and turned into the parking lot at ingles and fucking christ is that a car on fire?! I parked sideways and ran to cross the street, but the one fireman there wouldn't let that happen.



He couldn't do anything except watch, the fire was uncontainable. The red VW bus was flaming bumper to bumper and just sitting there. There was a tiny car-sized fire extinguisher sitting in the parking lot, obviously used up to no avail. I tried to zoom in, but my camera was shitty. I'd have killed for my canon, but at least I had something.

I called Pete... I had to tell someone. There is a goddamn car on fire! I am watching it!

Glass and metal fell burning to the asphalt spreading debris and making the firemen jump back. I couldn't feel the heat in a physical sense.

How in hell does this even happen?

Finally a truck showed up, and there was more attention paid to extinguishing the van than to a kid running across traffic.

Perhaps I am a horrible person, I didn't even think to ask if there'd been anyone inside until after it was well out. There had been, but they had, after exhausting their fire extinguisher, gotten the hell out and watched it burn.

Go to flickr.

Goddamn.

MUSIC: guided by voices: the finest joke is upon us

"for my heart's a boat in in tow...

fertilizer., originally uploaded by Vocal Shrapnel.

...and I'd give the world to know..." why I signed up for statistics five days a week.

Writing until way past four then getting up at nine for an exam... I took my first nap in at least a decade and woke up hungry and with the odd feeling that I'd dreamt of an easy statistics exam.

That's the first full week behind me, and it only gets better. I get to start eating somewhere other than Brown (though this is the name of the cafeteria, it also describes all the food served in it) and my history class starts up.

My advisor miscounted, so I was set to be ONE HOUR short of graduating this august. The head of the department has given agreed to give me the hour credit for an 8+ page paper in which I assault the historical accuracy of the film Michael Collins and discuss the pitfalls and compromises of history as film.

This is, of course, the Michael Collins who bribed and blew up English people and not the Michael Collins who flew around the moon while Neil and Buzz quipped about stepping on mankind.

(or for... who knows?)

On my deadman's walk to Brown today I saw that the ground had been... colored. I suspect it's fertilizer, but the color suggests it could also be actual paint. Someone did a bad job of matching the colors, but the idea, I surmise, is to cover all those bald patches on the lawn like some giant Ron Popeil commercial. This bottle has also been fertilized.

I was carrying my camera because yesterday the sewer lid had been open and I wanted to get a ninja-turtles-esque picture of that. Alas, it was sealed today.

Everyone and their mom should go to youtube and seach for 'quiet as a mouse.' Find the video for said song by Margot and the Nuclear So and So's and watch it. Oil painting animation has never made cats look like such bastards.

Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors is probably the best book to keep by your bed, ever.

MUSIC: coco rosie: terrible angels

In lieu of actually getting anything worthwhile done...

...like working on my script, I'm looking at things to try to work into my script that happened on July 24th aside from the near-simultaneous birth of myself and Anna Paquin. After spending a solid hour deciding what the plot of Lost actual is with my stepbrother (hint: dirty hippies) it actually seems close enough to a constructive use of my time that I can probably go to bed.

July 24th:
-Death of Peter Sellers
-Feast day for Christina the Astonishing, patron saint of insanity and mental disorders
-Vanuatu children's day
-Martin Van Buren's death
-Birth of Alexander Dumas, Alfons Mucha, and Gus Van Sant
-first successful treatment with insulin

Last night, as if in communion with Andrew Malcovsky on the eve of his voyage, I decided that half a gallon of Chianti wasn't that much. Perhaps some of my lethargy today is the fault of this decision.

MUSIC: joan of arc: excitement is exciting

This is a bird...

, originally uploaded by Vocal Shrapnel.

...in it's post-eaten state.

I cooked that turkey, and there are pictures of the first weekly monday night party up on flickr.

I dare you.

In the tradition of 'Being John Malkovich' ...

... I have begun to work on a screenplay involving an actual real actor. I have just written the opening of a screenplay which would feature Anna Paquin as herself. This originates with the fact that I have the same birthday as her, and it kind of went crazy following a conversation I had with the other Jef in my screenwriting class.

On a vaguely related note, I really like this little scene for which I stole my stepbrother's name.

INT. BEDROOM -- LATE MORNING

The alarm clock is going off, analog and a decade old and sounding furious. PETER LORENZ -- early 20’s and apparantly lacking in the sleep department -- rolls over and strikes uselessly at his alarm clock.

Opening his eyes he finds a little more success in getting the alarm to shut off, and with a groan he mobilizes. He rolls off the bed and seems to land on his feet only by luck. He drags his sheets behind him for several feet as he makes his way to the door, rubbing his eyes.

INT. KITCHEN -- MOMENTS LATER

Peter walks into the kitchen, yawning and looking scarcely alive. He walks over to the counter and grabs the carafe from the coffee pot. His movements all inertia, really, as if he has no energy of his own, he manages to get the carafe under the faucet in the sink and turns it on.

Once the carafe fills, he fills the coffee pot from it, getting most of it into the machine while making sure the counter top gets a bit of a wash, too.
He opens the filter tray and takes out the removable filter-holder. Taking a step and pivoting, showing an amazing economy of motion, he upends it into the trash can and empties it of grounds and old filter.

Without rinsing, he puts a new filter in and opens the lid of the coffee can.
With the lid off, A WHOLE LOT OF JOKE SPRING SNAKES, shoot out into the air and hit him in the face. Peter falls back.

PETER
What the fuck?!

He lands on the floor amid a spray of spring snakes, trying not to smile, still looking a little shaken. He stands up slowly, a lot more awake, and looks into the can.

Inside is no coffee, but there is a note. The camera zooms in past his shoulder to show what it reads. “Pete, Since we’re out of coffee, I thought I’d try to help you wake up. I’ll pick some up after work. Love, Calvin.”

Peter takes the note out and crumbles it, throwing it at the trashcan, missing, and kicking a spring snake.

MUSIC: tom waits: grapfruit moon

a list

Create your own Music List @ HotFreeLayouts!

If you're going to compare fruit...

...the least you can do is compare apples to pears. They're not that dissimilar. So many people seem to enjoy comparing apples to oranges, but that's just silly.

There is no more break, gang.

Exams end on the first friday in May, and I'll have finished my chemistry class by the fourth friday of the month.

I will have a degree in August and I will not know what to do with it.

For the second week in a row I have been given virtually no feedback on my scene for screenwriting class. "This is so good, I had to read it twice before realizing how much information I was getting" is certainly a gratifying thing to hear. Especially from a professional in the field. I hope it indicates that I can make this thing happen.

In the down time in my own little room when I'm not in my two hours of classes a day, I will try to do the actual work that will tell me if that response was a fluke.

"I'm learning to hunt for you."

MUSIC: guided by voices: learning to hunt

"...and I feel just like a television...

...left on in an empty room..."



This picture is the first day of spring in Asheville, NC. It was taken at one p.m. The white spot there in the middle of the windshield... that is ice.

It's supposed to snow friday.

Thanks for nothin', spring.

On another topic all together, the quote is from a Small 23 song called 'empty room' from their Cakes ep. I own this ep, and if I leant it to you, give it back. I really want to hear this song.

Does anyone remember that episode of the critic (I know you do) in which Jay Sherman sets out to win another Pulitzer? Remember the advice that wins it for him?

Let me remind you: "If the movie stinks, just don't go."

I bring this up because of Larry the Cable Guy.

This guy knows what I'm talkin' about.

Seriously though, when you pay money to see a movie, be it in a theater or to rent it and watch it at home, you are voting. You are voting on the kinds of movies that make money and thereby you are voting for the kinds of movies that will get made.

And there's no mispunched ballots or thrown out votes in the world of cold hard cash. So let's see if we can all do our part, resist the temptation to see Resident Evil 3 or Snakes on a Plane. If you have to see shit, sneak in. Or rent it and watch it with lots of friends. The rental costs the same whether you watch it with a dozen friends or all alone, in the dark, with your shades pulled down, eating hagen dazs.

Encourage Spike Lee and discourage (or kill) Larry the Cable Guy. Choose wisely.

MUSIC: the microphones: the glow

If you know your saints...

...then you know this is actually kind of appropriate. Still, I am deeply, deeply sorry.