10:00 AM: Stop all over again

I don't free-associate much in my day-to-day goings on, or my writing. Between myself and my brother Eric I am by far the one more concerned with cause and effect, rhyme and reason. That's not to say I can't dig the unconventional or appreciate it when it's done well, but as far as things I create, I'm always aware of progression and development. I think awareness allows me to manipulate more.

I think it comes down to our differing notions of what constitutes art. He is very into David Lynch and Kafka and things, the obscure things, the ambiguous and open-to-interpretation. I like them too to a degree, and he likes the conventional to a degree, but I think he privileges the obscure, ambiguous things over the direct. True art is incomprehensible.

I see no reason why art can't be something that simply is what it is. If not, how could the Mona Lisa or the Statue of David be? They would simply be things, not works of art. Art, to me, (at least for now) is any work in which every piece can be said to work together, to perform its duty, whatever that duty may be. The original Star Wars trilogy is a work of art, and the Conversation is a work of art. but people paid money to see the former a lot more.

What I'm getting at has to do with my entry titles, which are not usually references to anything, and are the only real free-form stuff I do, some nearly being short poems in themselves. I think Eric would appreciate them, but for very good reasons I have kept Eric separate from SWP, and he has kept himself separate from it too.

I've been battling with other peoples' poetry recently. I hate other peoples' poetry, and it is from this hatred that I make my own, which everyone else is free to hate. Professional poets usually manage to avoid or even subvert the tendency of amateurs to rely on the overly vague. It was Guthrie who told me - and Reibetanz who praised me for pointing out - the virtue of the concrete. Guth went so far as to say it was probably inadvisable to write the word "love" in your poem because of how abstract that is. Symbolism is one thing, but if you can't figure out what you're talking about, nobody else will either. Consider Robert Frost. Go consider him.

Nearly all the poetry I have written is, to some extent, my attempt to recapture for other people the feeling I got when I read Mexican Loneliness, an obscure poem by Kerouac (always more celebrated for his prose than verse, and with good reason.) It was reading that one poem that really opened my mind about poetry. It says so much just be being direct and simple. I have read and enjoyed many poems since then - occasionally written by people who are not professionals - but that was really the first one I got, really got. It was a little like my first viewing of Night On Earth: it made me realize what I wanted to say, or rather how to go about saying it. You invoke a time and a place, and then let the language you use to describe it invoke the feelings, rather than try to force someone to feel some way.

Funny for a guy who spends much of his time writing elaborate penis jokes to be talking so much of art. I don't want to be pretentious, I don't want to aspire to great things, I want to be great at things that are in my sphere, things like penis jokes and relationship humour. I think Half-Past might actually be close to art, especially when you consider it was written to deliberately exploit peoples' expectations when they go to the theatre. All the pieces working together.

I think the most influential image I ever saw was of a woman's crotch, when I was in grade 7 or maybe early in grade 8. It was about that time when you have known for a while the score: romantic comedies make sense (but still seem stupid) the boy-girl dynamic is getting into the shape it will be of the rest of your life. You know the game, but you're not yet aware of the stakes. It was a panty shot, not a nudie pic, although I think the panties were at least a little see-through. I'd probably seen naked pictures or models or whatever somewhere or other, (what young boy, in a misguided search for racy material, does not thumb through the lingerie section of the Sears catalogue?) but this was the first one that stuck with me, that felt like it meant something, even though it was just a meaningless still designed to titillate perverts (a pervert in my view is someone who is aroused by something that ought not to be arousing... so this doesn't really count.) I had obsessed over girls before seeing this photo, but I think it really crystallized a feeling I'd chase for years, even to this day, and that has motivated my writing, and the way I've lived my life, this entire time, and for the foreseeable future.

I am inching closer to finishing this draft. And then I will go back and smooth out the uneven ends in the tone. I've got to learn not to write before bed, it jsut gets me keyed up.

I watched Funny People last night, talking of the art of the penis joke. It was more or less as I'd expected it, which is probably more than most people can say, people who were expecting a funny movie rather than a rather introspective deconstruction of people who are funny. Not surprising it wasn't much of a financial success and I have to wonder whether this will color the public perception of Apatow going forward. Probably not -- people don't think about perception. It was actually a little hard to deal with, especially how alienating the Adam Sandler character was, even moreso than his Punch-Drunk Love character because this guy was closer to reality, making his flaws that much more unnerving. More than wondering about how people will see Apatow, I wonder where Apatow goes after this, how he goes back to lightweight comedic fare (or even heavyweight comedic fare like 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up) when he has so thoroughly disassembled that world.

Maybe by doing something with Bill Murray. That'd be cool.

Something weird happened on Saturday. Dad picked me up after work, it was his weekend. His kitchen is being repainted, so the four of us (with B. and Deb) went out to Swiss Chalet. As usual when this idea was proposed, my first thought was "Oh no, dinner in a public place." then I thought "Fuck it, it's Swiss Chalet. It's literally the exact same as every other meal I have had from there over the years." Like 90% of the people who go there, I got the quarter white with fries. Partway through the meal, suddenly, B. got violently ill as badly or worse than I normally do, and hid out in the washroom until we were ready to go. Since I was feeling perfectly fine, I wondered whether I had passed it on. But that's silly... isn't it?

Today, a patently uninteresting day during which I slacked, and we worked for two hours after closing to do nothing of particular importance. I mainly amused myself by chatting up Alex, although nothing important was said. Small crew, a few had no-showed. Me, Spencer and Alex as the temps, Gus and Alan as the management. No Taylors or Chantelles. I haven't seen Kas in weeks. One temp has flown the coop, Brad, who seemed a decent bloke, Jaime still out sick I reckon. Before work I hung out with Manda, the usual, or at least its abbreviated form. Still no haircut.

That's the long and short of it. I've been steadily posting old poems and stuff to Writer's Cafe. Check it out if you're not afraid to brave the dark recesses of my psyche.

Everything I do is an attempt at a balancing act. I never want to be too much of anything.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

9:00 AM: It's broken and it will break you

A day full of predictable surprises.

Yesterday in film we watched Tightrope, a rather obscure Eastwood film. Not a film he directed, but one that clearly bore his mark as star and driving force; a vehicle. The "actor as auteur," the lecture was called. In a way, it leaned toward deconstructing the ultra-masculine archetype he played in Dirty Harry and other roles. It had some interesting ideas, but execution that had us shaking our heads and laughing out loud. Still, some of the best films to watch are the ones that engage you in that way. During Heaven's Gate last week all I could do was sit and in stunned silence at this appalling thing happening onscreen. I tried to explain that one to Eric, and I had to do so in terms of Manos. Tightrope was written and directed by Richard "Rub And" Tuggle. McKenzie's joke about him was to refer to him as "The Great" Richard Tuggle, because he one movie before this one, and none after, and this was his first film as director, and did one afterward. With the exception of Cleopatra Jones, I think, every film we have watched up until now has been by somebody. The important thing about this movie is that it was by nobody - Eastwood essentially calling the shots.

After that, we tackled Alice Munro in Short Story. She won't be on the final, but we talked about her anyway. I already read the book last year in Canadian Lit, and then read the first story (Royal Beatings) over the summer in that short story class. There's some really good stuff in there about what it means to build up a narrative of oneself. After all, the book is called "Who Do You Think You Are?" a title that English profs jizz over year after year. I can't think of a single more meaningfully-titled piece amongst all the texts I've studied in University English, although to be fair I'm not thinking about it very hard. In The Skin of a Lion and Elle have a certain degree of cache, and there are your Drama entries like Ghosts and Earnest (particular attention paid to the subtitle "A serious play for trivial people.")

The plan for today, at one point, was to go see Joe at Starbucks, hang around doing a study group with my film pals, go home and eat dinner, then maybe, if I felt up to it, go out and see some noir films for free in Toronto with Eric.

Well the study group was canceled, which I was fine with since I don't really need to study this one, not urgently anyway. I did go see Joe - in fact getting up early to do so. I was the only friend there, and it was a subdued, un-microphoned performance of most of his notable songs and some interesting covers. Integrated I'll Melt With You into Hourglass, and Ain't No Sunshine into Every Message Sent. Both worked very well.

We talked a little bit afterward, but not much. I had a book to return to the library, and while I was on the subway, I missed a call from who else but Karen. That's where the predictable surprise comes in. I hadn't gotten a call in a while, wondered if maybe they were over with due to the influx of new blood, but apparently one of my compatriots Jamie had called in sick with flu (not sure if it's H1N1 or classic) so I was on deck. I like to think of myself as the first call, but the reality is probably just her being fair since I tend to get fewer hours due to my limited availability. Such is life.

So I called from the train around 2 and said I could come in at 3. And that was that. No Noir films but lots of stocking. Cait was there for a few hours, Chantelle for the whole time, others. Slow night. A fair bit of slacking. But fun.

Another predictable surprise is me coming home and not writing the play, much as I like to. As I draw nearer to te completion I keep fidgeting and fussing with it in my head, trying to draw the line between too subtle and too obvious. I tend to lean toward the obvious, as much as I like to give the audience credit, sometimes I don't know how to say what I mean to without coming right out with it, the way you sometimes wish a character would, or wish they wouldn't when they do.

Tone. I'm struggling a bit with tone. At least, in my head I am. I'm confident in the humour at this point, which had been a source of angst, and now I just want to make sure that it is thematically sound. Revise, revise, revise that bitch. But I guess I ought to get it done first. It's on its way, just not tonight. There was one scene I knew was wholesale wrong, and the better version I daydreamed up the other day, but I have yet to put it on paper. Well that's my affair.

Might as well sneak out. Yawn. Time to go wake myself up by brushing my teeth and then struggle to get back to sleep. Tomorrow another work day.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

8:00 AM: Clyde the Orangutan

Yesterday was, all things considered, a pretty gay day. Or at least a queer one.

It's funny how things seem to align a lot in unrelated classes. In first year, the word synechdoche kept coming up. Last year I was able to transpose a lot of my film-based knowledge of WWII German and Russian propaganda into a fairly coherent European History paper. This year stuff crops up left and right particularly out of Film Theory. Sometimes the similarities, however, haven't got anything to do with each other.

Wednesday, we saw a scene from The Children's Hour in drama. The play is about two teachers accused of lesbianism in an all-girls reform school. According to the author, Lillian "More than Mayonnaise" Hellman, It's not so much about gay and straight as it is about the truth. And it was around this time that I realized that all of the plays in the second half of Drama were about more or less the same thing, how diabolical.

Later that night, in Literary Theory, we talked about Queer Theorists, those theorists who are eager to discuss the question of sexual identity in literature without politicking for one orientation/gender or the other. I liked the idea of gender as representation in particular; as some people may deduce from Half-Past, I've had some ideas about gender issues for a while (not my own, but as a social phenomenon.) I've half-written a lot of really awful stories over the years, Ranma shit. There's a whole subculture on the internet, and the people involved are all pretty disgusting; they've got some really backwards ideas about women's roles, really disturbing shit. If I had to generalize (or wanted to for sport.)

The prof explained the very enlightening concept of gender as performance -- not like acting, but like an action, every action we undertake builds one's gendered identity, using the example of why he didn't come to class wearing a dress. It gave me an idea for a play, in which a female character was played by male actor, dressed as a man and acting in no way feminine, but assuring the audience all the while that the character is female. I would probably never actually write the play, but it's an intriguing notion to think about in regards to gender.

But I think we can all agree blue means penises and pink means vaginae. Sidenote: Did you know that was the plural of vagina? Thanks Firefox!

Finals are fast approaching. I keep daydreaming about the play, but can't muster up the energy to do the re-writes I want to. Hurk. I also came up with a solid storyline for one of the numerous novels I have yet to write, and solved the question of how to juggle the pieces of Whatever It Takes, the ill-conceived lesbian play I attempted to write over the summer (it sucked then; the first draft of End of the Night wasn't much better but this new one ought to be.) Not to mention, just now, right on the spot, Eric and I came up with a half-decent premise for a Sewerman story. However, we are both kind of in agreement that I shouldn't write it -- not that I really don't want to, but it's a deadline/quality thing.

I may end up asking Martina, since she can draw and might somewhat get the material.

I think, generally speaking, my creative juices are flowing far too much lately. I need to settle down and finish one thing before starting three others.

Nothing much more of interest has been going on lately, though. So I'll end it there.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott

7:00 AM: Crazy Carl's Causation/Correlation Calamity Conversation

It's not a secret that I have a tendency to overextend myself. I take on a shitload of projects, of varying importance. In some respects it is important to me to finish the next chapter of my webcomic (before the end of 2009) and do my reviews and write all the good stuff I think is in my head. And also do my homework and try not to fail tests. I also have a job and go to school in a place that takes a great deal of time to get to, so...... time is weird to me.

It's starting to show. I'm losing my grip, I think, everything is getting magnified, particularly those negative emotions you folks have been good enough to put up with for years anyway. It's not uncommon for me to just spend a large portion of the day thinking "I suck, everything I write sucks, I have no future, my life is pointless, nobody will ever love me." I don't know how many of those notions are true. Probably not all of them.

The overextension is of course part of the problem. I get exhausted, I get burned out. I look at this script I'm doing and I'm although I think it is better than most of what I've already done, I still think it's bad. In a sense. I have a really warped sense of good and bad, and it changes often. I think a lot of writers are familiar with the idea of wanting to write something they think they can't, as opposed to whatever they naturally do. What I naturally do sprinkles clever(ish) dialogue amongst long character-based passages. If Half-Past is any indication, it should work, if done well... I want to believe Half-Past for reasons not related to transexual mobsters.

I think all I'm going to need is to finish the draft I am working on, then immediately go back and smooth it out. Structurally it's okay, but as it's a fairly fresh piece I spend a lot of time shoehorning in a lot of stuff about characters' motivations and shit that could get tedious to the audience. I'm working with a limited capacity of "show don't tell" since I work in the realm of minimalist theatre.

I would love to write something, you know, gut-bustingly funny, something that is just all-out laughs. A lot of people attempt stuff like that and fail miserably, and I simply lack the confidence to take that risk, so I bring in the sbutle emotional undertones and hit what I consider to be an easier target. Ironically it may be a more rewarding one. Rcall Robyn's dad telling me on the way home when I took them to see the play, how honest and real the play felt. The dude was gushing. That's when I knew I was onto something. Well, I knew before that, but I can't help but be suspect of my audiences. I'm still curious to meet someone who is willing to tell me to my face "This actually sucks."

Not that I hate compliments. I love compliments. It's the entire reason I'm back on WritersCafe writing my weird little poems. (Last night: "I Want To Lick Your Brains.")

I have ideas for plays that go beyond the territory of Half-Past and End of the Night. Maybe not complete, self-conscious avoidance of their tropes, but definitly taking my work into different territory, not just in content but in presentation. It's a meta-theatre thing, but I think the distinction between my work and others is that most people are doing meta-theatre these days and I'm willing to take people for granted that yes, they are watching a show, and no, it's not all that different from a movie. No need to shoehorn much fourth-wall-breaking monologue, although Cary and I had some talks on that when we were prepping Half-Past, since I was all about those monologues for a while. I've learned since then.

Eric's main comment was that he didn't like the dream scene, particularly the "You're having a dream bit." I can understand him on that, even if I feel the exact opposite way. I kind of dig those "You are having a dream" moments, because unlike an art film where a dream sequence would be trippy, this is meant as a way for him to communicate with himself, to be open, and it starts by being honest about the scene.

I was feeling pretty shitty today, part of my ongoing psychotic episode. After groceries, though, I did get a word back, which was a relief. I can put it out of mind for now, although absolute confidence eludes me, at least I know there's a short-term future and I am not just kidding myself. This is important, as I was finding it ridiculously difficult to be productive with all that uncertainty hanging over my head. So while I've still got uncertainty, it's a good kind. A kind I can live with.

I was picking fights with the world today. Really. Everything was getting on my nerves. A girl took my usual seat in Film. I paid too much money for a stupid "Thai" chicken wrap (pretty much just the spicy chicken breast you get pre-diced in the supermarket) and at dinner, making my taco (yes, two different variations of wrap in one day, it's not like I planned either) I discovered the sour cream had gone moldy at the last minute before it would have been too late. Well, not the last moment, but it was a waste of a taco either way.

Suffice it to say, I was an irritable bitch today and every inconvenient thing that happened, every irritation, felt like a tragedy. It's been that way off and on for weeks and thankfully I can relax, at least for a while. I can refocus my energies.

I was doing some rewrites earlier -- I started this entry before dinner and now all the post-"I got a reply" stuff is at midnight. I've been going through this script trying to straighten it out. As much as I have the idea that it's not working, a lot of it does. There are parts that I'm sure do not work and I am thinking about them a lot, how to improve them. It's going to be a bit of a process. But I've still got a good clear view of how I want this to go down.

Yesterday, a power-outage prevented my alarm from going off. Today, another one narrowly missed. The downside of Monday was that I had stayed up until 3 AM the night before, for no real reason, and slept in past my train. The good news was, at least I slept better than I have in months.

I should probably prepare for some finals. Later.

Sleep now, though. And Keep on rockin'
-Scotto, writer of the disjoined uneven half-angsty post.

6:00 AM: Invest yourself in something new

It won't be much of an entry, it hasn't been much of a weekend, but there are thoughts.

I started posting to Writers Cafe again in the last month. I did a few years ago, probably when I was first at U of T, mainly lightweight poems that it wouldn't have hurt if nobody liked. I don't think anyone posts negative comments on that site. I sure don't; I haven't posted a review in a long while. I had stopped posting to it when they lost EVERYTHING anyone had ever posted, and I stupidly had neglected to back up some pieces that I had written in the spur of the moment.

That and I kept getting spammed by some keener whose group I had found myself joining because its name had to do with "21st Century Beats" (as in Kerouac) and I wanted to be part of it until I realized I didn't fit with this dude's go-get-em let's-be-a-movement attitude. I'd rather just be left to myself.

Well a few weeks ago I decided to post a short story and see if anyone thought anything about it. I really liked this one, which I wrote in the summer between studying Joyce and Hemingway. Re-reading it I still have some problems with it, but it was a deliberate, and mostly successful attempt to employ a lighter touch with my prose. For a long while, I was writing stories like essays, like I was trying to illustrate a point, which is stupid. I would bring characters into a situation and unpack their whole histories, or at least as much as I felt I could get away with. I want to re-write all my old stories with my new philosophy. The main exception is the Insomniac, and to a lesser extent the Spat. I wouldn't shy away from tinkering with them, but they fit in better with this attitude than a lot of my other ones.

But we're not thinking about stories these days. That said, I have them plenty in mind, and ideas for a novel I originally conceived of in 2006 when I was working at HMV for he first time and was really deeply involved for the first time in the cesspool of human misery that is Holiday shopping.

Anyway, after posting that story, and a few others to this site, I started looking at the people who were commenting on my stuff, telling me stuff I was glad to hear (great story, love that paragraph, good feel, maybe change this word.) On the internet, most people write poetry. As much as I love William Carlos Williams, his work had the unfortunate side effect of proving to people they could pretty much write anything and call it poetry. Once you write "This Is Just To Say" there's no turning back. And nothing that has come since, even my beloved Beats, have been as good as William Carlos Williams.

I'm not really here to criticize other peoples' poetry. for my own taste, I've been strongly influenced by Guthrie when he railed against abstract terms, which of course abound in peoples' poetry. I try to include the feeling of a story in most of my poems. Not necessarily, you know, the beginning, middle and end, but the idea that it is about something that has happened or is happening. And I'm also very, very conscious of rhythm and rhyme (or at any rate, sound) which most people are not.

I am rather fond of most of the work I did in Reibetanz's class, and most of it concerned itself with the physical, the real, and not the abstract. The two ones I got the most notice for were "For a Stalker" (a miniature story on its own terms) and "Where We Live," (a shadow of one.) Other good ones I did include "Fragile Thing" which observed a girl in terms of things that are very physical and tactile, and "Valentine Poem" which took the same concept in reverse. Of course, those are just four of the eight, and not all of them were winners.

Anyway. Thinking about other peoples' poetry and how I try to write differently, I wrote a couple, my first in a while. Not bad stuff, at least, I was pleased with myself after I got them out, and they only took one take each to get to that format. Stream of consciousness. I use a lot of repetition these days, maybe my mind has a stutter. There's something really rhythmic about repetition, applied correctly, in the right spot with the right words, which I do maybe 10% of the time.

Anyway. I don't have much else in the way of prepped and ready writing, aside from more old poems, given my current desire to re-write everything. Might as well not drag the Insomniac back out, I may have more to do with it.

It was a busy, work-flavoured weekend. Saturday was crazy at the store if only because most of the staff was in for some reason. Met a couple of the new girls, both cool. With their addition, the environment has shifted, and I don't mean that in some kind of sexually charged way, but I think in any workplace like this there has to be some interplay between the genders, to keep the edge off. This is part of the reason it was good when Chantelle came back after her surgery.

I mentioned repeatedly how I missed Mandy, the girl who worked there last year, who was both important enough to be a keyholder, and cool enough for me to hang around and make sexually-charged jokes with. She was exactly the kind of girl I needed to work with, to both feel slightly awkward and slightly cool in my attempts to amuse her or amuse myself with her. Nothing romantic, nothing sexual. Not to say I wasn't attracted to her, but I didn't entertain ideas (serious ideas) about getting with her. I just looked forward to working with her.

So now we have this girl Cait, who is a perky, quirky, face-pierced chick who is glad to hear any random joke. She laughs a lot, maybe too easily, but she's a joy to be around. And like Mandy, it's not a romantic thing; she's attached and I simply don't pine after attached girls. Besides, pretty unattached girls who are legitimately interested in talking to you don't just fall into your lap. Not twice in one month anyway.

She seems to have glommed onto Taylor particularly, as her go-to work friend.

Girls like that dude. He's goofy and non-threatening, can take a joke and flirting with them seems to come naturally to him. For me it takes a great deal more self-consciousness. Amanda sometimes talks about Perrin (not that often but his name came up when we were recently talking about former classmates) and how he could be very charismatic and outgoing for a while then one day do a turn and become extremely anti-social; it was a fact suddenly noticed by her co-workers at Coles.

Taylor's like the pleasant side of Perrin, but all the time, and moreso. Less mysterious, aloof and self-involved, more in the moment. I don't think there's a ton of substance to the guy (God help him if there was, he'd be as fucked as I am) but there's plenty of surface.

I can't help but think that part of this has to do with how severely he was taunted, for no real good reason, in Grade School. He was just a weird kid, a good target, and he clearly learned how to deal with it, and I congratulate him on that and I have no problem being pally with him now. I should know, I was targeted plenty myself, but the only difference is that Taylor got it from people like me (and me) as well as the people that targeted me. It's a pecking order thing.

I can't help but remember this Cub Camp weekend in Grade 5 where he was pretty much the only person I knew -- we weren't even in the same Cub Group -- but we hung out all weekend and I had to pretend to be friends with him, and then afterward it was like "Okay, we go back to not being friends now, pretty much" although it's not like we never talked. For a while in grade 6, it was him, me, and Matty Oh, until I was called up to a new group of friends. (Grades 6, 7 8 and 9 I started hanging out with "losers" but became friends with different people by the end of the year.)

So, it was a pretty brutal process of character-building. And now all the girls like him, if not love him, but at least they give him attention, so what the fuck. (It also doesn't hurt his chances that I've heard some girls saying he's apparently a good-looking dude, whereas by contrast, I ended up looking like, well, me. Take that how you will.)

Three's part of me that hates myself and suspects that most of the rest of the world hates me too, or is at best on the negative side of indifference. That I don't deserve a girl's attention for some reason or another; because I'm faking it, because I'm not really an interesting person and I don't know how to deal with reality. Maybe. Maybe none of that is true. Maybe it wouldn't matter if it were. I think the fucked up thing is how close to normal I am, that I seem okay a lot of the time, yet how very sharply I diverge into fucked-upness that it seems that much weirder when my weirdness comes out. I am fucked up, I am fucked up, you had better believe it; I wouldn't be writing here if I weren't.

I think at the heart of things, the thing that bothers me most about this thing I'm going through, about this girl I haven't spoken to in over a week, is how strongly it plays into all those negative perceptions I have about myself, the ones I spend so much energy, and seek so much reassurance to remind myself are not true. Maybe she is busy. Or maybe she just didn't like what she saw. I am a needy motherfucker, and what I need is the truth.

The best I can hope for is a few hours of distraction from my intense self-loathing with some innocent interaction with a neutral female figure. I hate that there's a part of me that thinks that's all I deserve.

I'm climbing up the walls.

I had a dream last night that my cell phone was eating people. I had to take out its battery to stop it. Everyone I told it to was thoroughly amused.

I'm off in my own little world most of the time, that's why enjoy sleep so much because I can do it without guilt. I was hoping to write more of the play tonight but I got caught up in talking to my brother about random stuff, and then this sidetrip engendered by my WritersCafe stuff.

I'm taking my time, I'm being patient and thoughtful, trying to rebuild as I go, fixing up the dents. In my recent projects I was so desperate to get them done, so single-minded, that they ended up being very messy and I did not want to dig into them. Mistake. Clean as you go. I keep re-reading it all and looking for cracks in the narrative, and I find them, believe me. I feel like I should take another whole pass through it after the draft is done, but I don't think it'll come out that much better. The other thing is it could be/probably is just me. I've got that same generally critical attitude about it as I did even as recently as the first Half-Past rehearsal. It's actually a good sign, albeit not a pleasant one to live through.

The ending gets clearer every day though.

Keep on rockin
-Scotto

5:00 AM: The universe isn't the best place for you

Yeah, we've all heard this story before. "Scott, you should be working on a paper, or at the very least a play, why the fuck are you writing in SWP? Really, shouldn't you be done with it anyway? You don't update as much as you used to and when you do it's pretty repetitive. And it was pretty repetitive to begin with. Why the hell do I read SWP anyway? Fuck you." Well that was pretty specific. But that first part.

I have a thousand words due tomorrow on Jaws. I had 1250 words due today on Lit Theory. I got home after my three hour shift last night and felt unmotivated to start learning Jameson and Benjamin, my two chosen subjects. I thought I had the gist of it. It's a good thing my Drama prof name-dropped Benjamin randomly in class today because I had the wrong idea about him. I thought he was anti-film but it turned out he was pro-film, at least according to a pullquote I used to that effect. So his views really did jibe with Jameson's (on postmodernism) so I think I tied the two together well. But I'm also not 100% sure I did what the assignment asked so maybe not. If I had to guess I'd say it was a 73, because I'm just a 73 kinda guy. Actually, I was a 73 last time and I got "You should cite more." I cited the fuck out of this one, and I think it's at least as coherent (depending whether my connections make sense to anyone else) so it's probably more than 73. But who the fuck knows. I sure don't.

But anyway, I did it in only a couple hours between classes. I'm really living on the edge (speaking of which, how have I not mentioned the fucked-up predicament of my favourite band Aerosmith? Every day it's something new with those dudes.)

I'm going a little crazy. I'm starting to become convinced that lat week was all just a figment of my imagination. It would make sense. I would be less surprised to find out I had become completely unhinged from reality than that last week actually happened.

I don't know. Any occasion to indulge in a little self-hate, I guess. I'm finding it incredibly difficult to write comedy in this mood. Rejection I can handle. It stings, but I brush the dirt off my hands and move on with my life. Uncertainty I can't stand. Sent an e-mail out, no reply (No re-plyyyy) don't wanna send another one for fear of seeming... clingy? I keep trying to convince myself she's probably just busy and frankly there's plenty of evidence for that but every day that passes... it gets a little harder to deal with. I am really the wrong guy to handle this stuff. A "hey, I've been kinda busy lately" would be nice, I'm saying.

Ugh. Who else am I going to turn to at 1:30 in the morning? SWP, you're all I have.

How the fuck am I supposed to write about Jaws when this is all I can think about. Fuck you, universe. I don't deserve this treatment. It's one thing to take away something I already have, but to tease me in this way... not cool, not even slightly cool.

I'm so over-fucking-dramatic. Nobody should listen to me ever. Don't read this, it'll poison your mind.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

4:00 AM: Keep your story straight

Not destined for a long one tonight. Not a lot going on. Paranoia, the usual mind tricks. It's not easy being this high strung, it's exhausting and hardly worth it.

You can guess what I'm alluding to.

I have a 1200 word paper due tomorrow. I ought to have written it tonight but for whatever reason I accepted a call into work, I guess because I am a pussy. I don't even know why I'm surprised when they call. It's been clear for weeks now that management is never going to get its head out from the nethers about scheduling. People being booked on their unavailable days, not enough people being booked at once. I compromised and came in for about 3 hours at the end of the shift because I wanted to eat dinner fist. Wound up working with Chantelle and Brad, it was basically fun times, and I didn't do anything but put product out for 2.5 hours and help some customers. I was supposed to go grocery shopping (B. handled it himself, apparently without incident) and that still would've had me a bit too wound up to really effectively do my paper. As it was, I came home after working for about 3 hours, watched the Daily Show/Colbert, procrastinated more, then read some of the readings I was supposed to quote.

Halfway through the reading I got tired and thought "Fuck it, it's 1 AM, I can do this tomorrow." I had some quotes written down and stuff. This one will not be my finest hour. I wrote my last Lit Theory paper before class, too -- it was a decent mark, and now I know how to recoup some marks onto it. Plus I more or less know what I want to say... it's just a matter of refraining from rambling.

It really shouldn't be that hard. Although I may take the liberty of skipping drama to get a couple extra hours with it.

I finished reading Easy Riders, Raging Bulls today also. I have a love-hate relationship with that book. I'm fascinated by it and yet also mystified by the eternal perception of New Hollywood cinema as some kind of golden moment that was brought down in its prime. Biskind illustrates how it destroyed itself, and yet the narrative doesn't really encourage the idea (and maybe I'm the only one who thinks this) that New Hollywood was an aberration - a shot in the arm that actually revitalized commercial cinema. When art is commercial, all is well, and when it's not, it must fall by the wayside. It's totally Darwinian. And cinema more than anything is commercial and those who cry about it must not have understood what business they were getting into. Eric would probably ring my neck if he heard me talking like this but I think he gets the point, like, art is great, but if nobody wants it, is it art? Art that has value as entertainment, though... that stands the test of time.

But I'm just as much of an asshole as anybody.

My favourite quote in that book (probably) came from Coppola near the end, when he mentions Woody Allen. Allen has been making films since the late 1960's, continuously without break. Sometimes they're good, sometimes not, but he hasn't been inactive, ever. Only a few of the last 40 years have not featured a Woody Allen picture. And he gets his financing from outside the studio system (mostly, I think) and his films all feel distinct from each other yet also part of his oeuvre. So Coppola compares himself, negatively, to Allen, saying in effect, "I'm not that. I wish I were." And maybe by remarkable coincidence, Allen never got caught up in drugs and politics and nonsense like most of the directors named in the book. No controversy greater than marrying Soon-Yi.

I mean, I guess it just puts it all in perspective, you know. Allen the auteur, Allen the artist, Allen the entertainer. Left out of Biskind's narrative of course, because he is singular, beyond the trend, which probably explains his endurance. I think the problem was, the New hollywoodians lost sight of what art meant; they thought along the lines of "true art is angsty." The Conversation is art, but Annie Hall is also art (don't deny it) and fuck man, no matter how much everyone wants to deny it, Jaws and Star Wars are fuckin' art. Art doesn't have to be meaningful or message-laden. It just has to be good, and that's so subjective that when you start saying "This isn't art" you open up a can of worms by causing people to ask "What IS art?" and in return you get angsty bullshit that wants desperately to be art.

Because I say fuck art, fuck the pursuit of art. If art is authentic, it will come naturally, angst or no angst. I'd rather provide entertainment. I kind of think Half-Past approaches art because all of the pieces are there and it seems to glide smoothly, if I do say so. But it also has a lot of penis jokes (and the new play has even more, oh so many.) and I didn't really set out to say "Let me make a statement, an artistic legacy." I say: if it works, it's art.

But I may be too inclusive for some peoples' taste. But fuck 'em.

Which is funny, because all this has to do, in a sorta roundabout way, with my paper (Walter Benjamin* on discrediting mechanical reproductions - and therefore all films - as art) and my own current angst, which is for an artist.

In fact, having tied all those elements together somewhat loosely, I daresay that as far as SWP entries go, this one was a work of art. Well, it's all subjective.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

*That's Ben-ya-meen, not Ben-jammin.

3:00 AM: Count your change

I have been having quite the week.

As a matter of fact, if I had to gauge such matters, it's probably been the most notable-in-a-good-way week since Half-Past. Not that everything's been all magical and sparkly, but then again, nor was Half-Past. Indeed, in some respects, Half-Past was agonizing not because it was a lot o effort on my part (the wonderful thing about being a writer is that you never have to do the heavy lifting.) But the fact was that despite all the signs to the contrary, self-doubt is a tough dragon to slay. So after every awesome successful show I'd come back the next day worried tonight's audience might not feel the same. I'm weird, okay.

So that was tough but in every way rewarding. This week has had its difficulties but it truly feels like I came out on top of this one. And of course I've still got them shreds of self-doubt in me. But more on that later. For the first two days it was a patently ordinary week.

Wednesday was when things got a tad shuffled, due to Wacky Wednesday/Virtual Monday/Wednesday Monday/What The Fuck Week. It's not that hard a concept to grasp and honestly once I wrapped my brain around it, it seemed eminently practical. Because of the deficit of Mondays during the school year, this past Wednesday was a Monday, and then no Thursday or Friday classes. Reasonable enough. This was easy for me to cope with, because my first Wednesday class is my Monday class doubled in length. So I went to the same place at the same time as I would on Wednesday, and was talked at for half as long (well ,there was no presentation, such as it is.)

The talk was about blackface; well, race as representation. But really, about white people painting their faces black, as the last two plays we studied (actually movies) were Showboat (1936) and The Jazz Singer (1927, the first talking picture, famously.) I had seen neither, although the screening of Jazz Singer was later that night. So after class, I went and watched Showboat in Media Commons. All the salient points occurred in the first hour and the second hour was kind of a bore and fell apart narratively. It has some pretty keen songs though, mostly Old Man River, Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man Of Mine (apparently about how loyal negro women of the early 20th century were to their apparently no good lazy husbands,) and The Room Above Her. By the time the official couple got together and had a kid, I lost interest in both the story and characters.

After a quick dinner I came back to watch the Jazz Singer with four other students. The scheduling of the screenings is ridiculous because he did not consult anyone, and it seems most of us have class on Wednesday evenings at 6, when they are set. I know I do. And many seem to have it on Monday at 6, which this was, ostensibly. So yeah, 5 20-somethings made to sit (unsupervised) high in the turret of Robarts, watching this dredge of a picture. I actually don't mean to slag it that much, and in cultural context it's pretty decent. They couldn't synchronize sound the whole way, so they mainly had Jolson do a bunch of songs with a bit of banter surrounding them, then back to intertitles. Anyway.

The plot of the movie, you'd probably remember from the episode of the Simpsons with Krusty's father. The original play was based on Jolson's life although oddly enough Jolson didn't originate the role based on him on stage. The son of a Jewish Cantor (guy who sings in the Synagogue) is more interested in singing Jazz numbers. Dad, understandably disappointed, whips him with a belt, prompting him to run away to LA and seek his fortunes as a singer. By the time we get to grown-up Jolson (the character is Jakie Rabinowitz, or Jack Robin) we've had some musical numbers. Jolson makes his debut in the picture with the somewhat overwrought Dirty Hands, Dirty Faces. It is after this song he utters the first synchronized dialogue in history, "Wait a minute, you ain't heard nothin' yet." Fitting. Then the launches into what I felt was the one musical number worth thinking about 80 years later, "Toot, Toot, Tootsie," which actually kinda rocks. Well, it swings and swings hard.

Anyway, what I mainly objected to in the film was the extremity of the pressure Robin was under to please his family -- his dad, on his death bed, begs to see Jakie perform the Cantoring. He's booked in a Broadway show set to open. Cantor Rabinowitz has denied his son's existence for years and refuses to acknowledge his career choice. The character basically does not lend himself to compromise. Rabinowitz has to give up his ambition to embrace the religion that shunned him. The punishment for this decision is supposedly that his Broadway career will be ruined, but the very next scene has him back on Broadway singing Mammy for, well, his Mammy. So there's your Hollywood ending. He makes a tough decision and suffers no setback. Then I guess it wasn't really a tough decision.

Oh, and the Blackface. I also object to the Blackface. Although Jolson performed in the first half of the movie repeatedly as himself, by the time he got to Broadway, his schtick was shown as being Blackface. Not that he performed a minstrel show (as in Showboat, which was the most offensive in that it had absolutely nothing to do with anything, see Big Lipped Alligator Moment. Which is saying something for a musical.) Anyway. It seems pretty clear that Jolson dug black folk and was a friend to them, and in my view if it's not malicious it doesn't really count on the same level of racism (this is of course the white person's standard view of racism.)

Anyway. Apart from the kid playing young Rabinowitz and the Cantor stuff, it was basically Jolson's show. So it's not any more of a musical than that play I once conceived of where Joe would be onstage playing his songs.

Anyway, that all was a drag of sorts. I lighted out for Vasa's to watch Glee with the usual gang. I'm getting better acquainted and all, especially given my drunken buffoonery at the Halloween party. So we hung out, I argued some hard geek topics with the resident pundit. I have a habit of contradicting/deflating people who think they know something, as I like to remind everybody that everybody knows nothing anyway, myself included. It's kind of a mean trick but also a bonding measure, when you can be half a dick to someone but in a jovial way, you get in with them, and that's mainly how I operate. And also because yes, I genuinely dislike people spouting their unannounced opinions to the whole room.

The other big bit from Wednesday was that I got my marks back for my drama project. Well I got my Film marks back the day before, and it was a low 70's like I thought. Drama was considerably kinder and considering the improvement in those two figures over my dismal midterm performance I am happy about it. I think at least one of my groupmates will be disappointed but I am not keen on aligning my opinions with anyone else's anyhow. I have no delusions, for starters, and am prone to blaming myself. As far as the paper goes, it was the usual note of "Good point poorly arranged." I guess that's just my lot. I often think I am overcoming it but I guess I just haven't got the knack. I ought to use writing centers sometimes. He also said I paid too little attention to the actual text (I'll cop to it) and that when I quoted it, I misquoted it (questionable, but possible.)

He took issue with the way we set the audience up, which was fair enough to me, questioning how it may have damaged the play's message, as did the exaggerated performances of certain male characters (Clara as Peters, most likely.)

SO it seems like I may have regained some footing, although the mark's still up in the air you know. I think I'm really living up to this perception I have/cultivate about myself that I'm a fairly smart guy who is a bad student. Which of course I'd rather be than a dumb guy who was a good student. Of course, there are times I think I'm a dumb guy is is a bad student, so there's your self-doubt back for more.

I've got a couple short papers due this week. I ought to be more attentive. No work until Saturday, after tomorrow. It bothers me only slightly that I'm now getting fewer hours; I'm happy just to do the job when I can, and the fact is there's less time I can now, and I've got other concerns, so the less time it eats up the better. It's still fairly likely I'll get called in at some point in the week anyway. Probably Friday.

And it's been a fairly hectic few days at work, getting some good customer service done lately. Doing a decent job not losing my top, and actually coming through for people when I can. Despite certain asinine inquiries. Please note, if you ever order something from HMV, we WILL call you if it comes in, you don't need to call us (except for that one guy I helped who had no phone.) After work today I had to have fake christmas, which was a debacle of its own kind, since I was super late and fairly worn and as always the kids were clamoring for me. The price of being the favourite.

Anyway, I've been rambling all this time and I haven't even really explained or alluded to why this week was really all that great. I mentioned in my last entry, Sunday night, that I had just started communicating with a girl who seemed cool. Tuesday night, after having viewed Jaws for film class (belatedly) I was talking to her about it, and she suggested we ought to go to Big Al's Aquarium supplies and see sharks. So we did! We met up at the mall, walked down to Kerr St, and hung out there a while, then moved further down to places like the Salvation Army (where she bought a wicker bag and a creepy yarn clown) and the comic store (where I bought comics and she bought a gumball and asked me why I didn't shop at Conspiracy) and further down the line. Ultimately we circled back around Trafalgar and I walked her home.

I won't say too much about it more than that I really enjoyed her company. Lord knows I've had enough starts and stops with women that to get really caught up in it would make me feel lame if it goes nowhere, but at the same time, she's really cool so I've got to put in an effort, and she seems to enjoy my company and after hanging out for like 4 hours we didn't run out of conversation, so... yeah.

I sometimes find it very hard to believe people enjoy spending time with me.

Anyway. Considering my crazy ass schedule and her own, who knows when we'll see one another again, but when we do...... it could be good.

That's me, for ya. Even the victories are in some sense defeat. Everything I write is consciously along those lines. Whenever it seems like a character is getting everything, I have to bring him down to Earth somehow, because I'm obsessed with the idea people are reading/viewing with thoughts like "The writer just wanted a happy ending for everyone" or "The writer just wanted a sappy, overdramatic ending for everyone." You know what's surprisingly tough? Ambiguity. Nobody criticizes you much when you leave things ambiguous, if you do it properly. People like being left to consider the ending on their own. That's what I've learned through Short Story anyhow.

Enough of my grousing though, whatever that means. Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

2:00 AM: Think about the words you've chosen

Watch your language.

It's been an interesting day. In all a good one. I was walking home feeling bummed about it, in my way, because feeling good reminds me how lame I feel, and then feeling lame cheers me up because it reminds me I have some perspective, in which I take solace. I repeat this cycle about 8-12 times per day. It can be trying. But all is balance.

I woke up thinking the same thing I think every Saturday and Sunday morning when I have to work. "Aww... fuck! A perfectly good sleep ruined by waking." It's a peculiar fact of my life that I get to sleep later on days when I am in school than those I work.

But I was determined to not be miserable today. I wanted to find as much pleasure as I could in every little thing. I stood up and said to myself. "Okay, now I'm gonna shower. It's going to be one of the best showers ever." I don't think about it often, but a good shower is a revitalizing experience. Awakening the soul with hot water sprinkled somewhat forcefully, stretching out those muscles.

It was one of the better days thus far at work, although I never say "That was a really shitty day." There are shitty moments. There are shitty customers and especially there are shitty fuck-up moments from yours truly that are entirely on me. You betcha. But even as most days are good enough to overpower those elements, and even as much as those elements were generally present today, it was still a really good day.

It's really a question of atmosphere. For a while it was just me, Taylor and Alan. Real chill. Eventually Karen showed up, and brought in a new temp (potentially the last one?) She mainly did grunt work, and for a time it was my responsibility to train her on the cash. It was... interesting, attempting to impart knowledge. A lot of it has been converted to instinct over the years, and I don't even work there most of the time.

The day rushed by very quickly, to the point where I was taken aback when it was time to go on break. After I got back and we were down to me, Taylor and Alan again, it started to crawl, with a few very rough customer interactions. There was just one that happened to be incredibly poorly-timed as I had a bunch of other stuff going on and it simply would not end, where this woman wanted a refund because she was displeased with her iPod Touch Screen cover, which I'd sold her the previous day. It was a combination of mounting pressure and a lack of ability to get in contact with Alan the only keyholder present (occupied with another customer) that nearly set me off. I mean, it was the first time I've ever actually visualized myself punching a customer in the face. And she was a middle-aged lady.

Early in the day, before we opened, Taylor and I made a coffee run, and he called across the mall to a girl he spotted passing by, who works in EB Games. She didn't hear, had her earbuds in. Later she returned to buy something from us (him) and chat him up in a bubbly, ebullient, even giddy way. At the end of the shift, I remarked, "So, I think that video game girl is into you." His excited reply, "You think? It's not just my imagination?" I told him sure, but don't trust my view, I'm notoriously bad at this sort of thing. But he insisted it was just good to get someone else's opinion on it. Suffice it to say, if I were writing a scene in which a girl were into a guy, it would be a fairly toned-down version of the exchange I witnessed between them two. And probably about something other than video games.

Well, it was adorkable anyway.

Counted out and went home, pondering the spark I saw between them, and as usual managed to turn my good feeling about other people into bad feeling about myself. Got glum by the time I walked up to my front door. The problem with being emotionally isolated as I am is that you really never know when it will randomly come back to you.

Anyway. I got on the computer. For yuks I got on POF as I often do when I've got nothing better going on. I came across this girl's profile. And I thought "Boy, she's interesting. If I had a bit more energy maybe I'd message her." And of course what I was really thinking was "I've not got the balls to message her, but I kinda wish she'd message me." A few minutes later, she did. and we've been going back and forth for a while, and hell, she works at a place right across the road from Oakville Place. So clearly distance is not an object, which is typically what messes up these deals for me as I am a geographic oddity (2 weeks from anywhere. So to speak.)

For the most part the weekend has been uneventful. Ought to note though that for whatever reason, B. got a free plain-cheese pizza with our order from Dominos that he made while I was absent working. I've gotten into the weird habit of eating a second dinner after coming home from work on days where I work late. So I've been pecking away at that, re-heating bits late at night. It should be in the compost soon though. Sunday night is usually the end of the line for leftover pizza, and that's at best.

Now that I've written all that, I intend to take a rest and come back and try to get some more writing done. I'm finding I'm having more ideas for dialogue exchanges than I could reasonably fit, and some of them aren't that good anyway. Edit, edit, edit. Also I had a good idea for a joke that I stole virtually wholesale from Jeph Jacques, but really had my own spin on, so I'm torn as to whether I should use it. Sigh. Moral dilemma.

I ought also to draw at some point.

I've got a 5 hour shift after school tomorrow. It's not such a bad thing, although I'd rather not, I don't mind it. The sun is shining, I'd better make the hay.

Speaking of which, Goddamn has the weather been gorgeous. And me having to work all weekend. Tomorrow I think will be the last day it crawls to the mid-high teens, before going to regular November weather again.

Oh well. Take it as it is. Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

1:00 AM: Frame of reference, web of influences, sphere of knowledge

I have been having what I might describe as "a week."

As you'll recall, in my last entry, I was looking forward to having several days in a row off from work, after three consecutive days at HMV. It isn't that I hate my job or anything, but I'm not so desperate for cash that I need to spend all my free time working. It's exhausting and not good for my spirit. Plus, I can't stand the Glee cover of Can't Fight This Feeling that is airing on HMV Radio. There are other songs I hate, but the fact that that CD is loaded with songs I'd rather hear is really irksome. Also, when Alan Cross introduces it, he says "This is Gleecast" like a compound word, so I didn't even register it was from Glee.

Rant, rant, rant.

Soyeah. While I was looking forward to this reprieve, I knew it wouldn't last as long as it should've on paper. It managed to last even short than I thought. I got a call on Tuesday while I was waiting for the bus, Karen calling to see if I could work at all that day. She pitched me a 1:00-9:30 shift, and I reminded her that I had school, so she asked me just to come in after school, and I reluctantly agreed because I still don't wanna be the guy turning down shifts, until they pick up a few more temps.

So the rest of the school day was spent angsting over it a bit. I was actually a little offended she didn't even check my availability (technically I'm not available until 5:30, an arbitrary number whose sole purpose is pretty much to discourage being booked Mondays and Tuesdays.) When I got there and saw the store in disarray over the redesign of the shelves, I realized what it was about and my anger turned to understanding.

It was actually a pretty easy day. I hardly even had to help customers because it was a weekday afternoon so there weren't many, and we were so busy doing price changes and shit. A few people commented on the dismal state of affairs.

It was also pretty fun because I was working with people I liked working with. I've lamented the fact that people I really liked last year (Mandy, Fieldhouse, and of course Coop and Aryn) are gone, although that's not fair to the people who remain. I don't see Trevor often, and I think he gets along with everyone, ditto Taylor. Taylor's a good sport, and I rag on him a fair bit, but he takes it well with good humour. We were actually a bit cruel to him in grade school, but I hardly think that's still the case. In fact, I think certain other employees see me busting his chops and assume it's just co-worker talk and maybe taking it a bit far. I'm not saying we're best buds, but I've known him for well over a decade now, although we didn't go to high school together. There's a good dynamic, is what I'm saying.

Manda stopped in on her way out for the day. She briefly complained about how hard her day had been. She said she'd catch my on MSN later that night to give me the low-down. Later that night, on my break, I ran into Emily, a girl I went to high school with. The connection was immediately drawn in my head, and sure enough Manda had plenty to say on the subject.

So the night went easy, and the next couple of days at school, too. I'm really starting to pick my shit up after the dismal midterm season. I was really thrown due to the volume of half-credit courses, but that's only an excuse and I mean to say that it's my own fault for being ill-prepared. Suffice it to say this won't be my finest semester ever. But I'm trying to rebound. Then again... after work on Tuesday I went home and wrote my 1000-word paper on our presentation of Trifles. It was a bit disorganized and I am increasingly dissatisfied with it in retrospect. Part of the reason I was bitter about working is that it was time I could've been writing that paper, although realistically it would've gotten doen in more or less the same time. So reall,y I'm still blaming myself if it's bad. I'm aiming for 66 (yeah, dream big.) Could be more, hopefully not less.

Yesterday after I got home was writing time. I have/had been neglecting my ltest script. I did write a play in August/September that had a workable premise but was way out all over the map, far beyond being comprehensible, it was not representative of my abilities. I was just so caught up in the act of writing it that I forgot that other people are eventually going to need to see it. I responded to myself (and Cary) with a streamlined plot outline that focused the story in a way it had not been. I still did not get around to writing it (in the grips of those deadly midterms) but by late October I had a revelation of sorts, which I hadn't realized I was waiting for. I was clinging to this subplot, these characters, and I knew there was a problem with them but I couldn't see myself erasing them. Once I solved that problem (rolling them into one, as I had two other unruly overlapping characters) the play started to really make sense in my head, and I knew I could begin writing.

And then I didn't.

And then I did, but I didn't like it. I was falling back into my indulgent traps. So instead of doing what I would previously have and kept going and hoping to fix it later, I hit reset yet again, salvaged what I liked (most of which was from the first draft anyway, at only 5 pages in there wasn't too much divergence) and re-wrote it yesterday. I like what I've got enough to keep going, although who knows when... it's late now, so hopefully I'll have energy to pick it up tomorrow after work. Sigh.

When I was in first year, taking that ferkakte Philosophy class, there were these two guys. I saw them in every lecture, twice a week, at 9 AM. One was a nondescript rocker with a shaved head. The other a Dave Grohl-looking fella with shoulder-length or longer brown hair, leather jacket, prominent eyebrows, chin beard. They were quite the pair. They're the type of guys who seemed like they were up to no good despite you having to idea in what way. In fact, it seems like they were the exact type who would skip, but I remember seeing them down in the lower level from my balcony seat, all the freaking time. Then after a while I started seeing them on the subway all the freaking time. And you rarely see the same person on the TTC over and over again so I concluded they were on the same train as I was every morning.

I've seen them a few times since then, never having confirmed this... until tonight. On my way home, at 9:43 of all times, I got on the same GO train car as them. They got off at Clarkson, thus settling the question of their origins once and for all. It kinda shows that you can never tell a book from its cover, although not really because I never spoke to them and I have no idea if they were good at Philosophy (or at any rate better than I was) but they were there every week. So you can only sorta tell a book by its cover, is what I'm saying.

So in all the craziness of Tuesday, I was bestowed with another shift for Friday (just like I thought!) and I'm working Saturday and I assume I'll be working Sunday as well. And in the meantime, as always, there is that play to write and comics to draw and books to read and reviews to do....... hm. Sometimes you just gotta bite off more than you can chew, and hope it strengthens your jaw. You know?

Bad metaphor. I know nothing about orthodontics. Don't listen to me. I'm wonky.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

Midnight: Fill in the ______

It was an unusual weekend, thought perhaps not a remarkable one.

I told you about Friday, and therefore Thursday. A shame I didn't get to party all weekend, since I rarely do that anyway. Saturday I worked from 12 to 6:30 (deliberately engineered so as to have time for coffee with Manda) and then went to have dinner at Dad's; it's was Eric's birthday, and of course, Halloween. At one point we were talking about previous costumes, and I mentioned the last time I ever went trick-or-treating I was dressed as Torgo from Manos, Hands of Fate. A discussion then ensued describing to dad exactly how awful Manos is, even compared to Plan 9.

We made our point pretty soundly without even mentioning the "shocking" ending, and then realized we had talked about it so much that we now wanted to watch it. So Eric had dad drive him home and back (as opposed to just home) to get stuff so he could stay the night. We watched Manos (me new non-party Halloween tradition) and then Lost (which is tradition anytime Eric comes over.)

I went to bed at a reasonable hour (~1:00) knowing I had to work the next morning. What I did not take into account was the end of daylight savings time, which meant I got up at 7, not 8, and did not learn of this until I got out of the shower. So then I went back to bed for a while, and worked all day.

Sunday was a good day since Alan was the only authority figure around and he left us to our own devices. I'm still struggling with being perceived as the know-nothing new guy temp, despite my general experience. It doesn't help matters that I do occasionally fuck up, or forget things, or encounter things I do not know. Matt, one of the two people I was mostly working with all day, must have a weird perception of me. I'm not as into punk and shit as he is (or at least, different punk... before opening, he turned off Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, my choice, in favour of Billy Talent. I guess he just didn't get it.) I also am still trying to relax a little in the workplace, loosen up a little.

It's actually a little hard working with Chantelle. This time last year, we were on equal footing, and now she's only been part time a few months, but it feels different, like now she's playing the part of full-time employee exasperated by my n00bness. Damn do I miss last year's staff.

TLDR: All of the other reindeer seem a tad reluctant to let me join in.

Gee Scott, maybe it's time you stopped coming back, perhaps even found a new place to work.

Well, in a few weeks, there'll hopefully be more, even less competent temps, and I'll be comparatively high in stature.

When I got home, it was another family gathering. At first I felt odd about leaving the kids to B and E, considering they tend to gravitate to me more (what can I say? Of the three of us, I'm the people person.) But Cam was ill, so it was just Ali, who obsessed over a little rib I played on her saying I was incapable of whispering.

The evening breezed by after the family left I zonked out, kinda, starting to draw something, and using as background noise the film of Twilight. It wasn't nearly as ridiculously bad as I'd hoped, just kinda one-dimensionally bad. Disappointing then in a few respects. Anyone with some writing talent could've come up with a better plot, or at least a better-structured one. I don't hold it against the screenwriter because although I haven't read the book I think it was judicious omission on the screenwriter's part that kept the movie from being over-the-top unwatchable. The actors also did commendable jobs with their one-dimensional characters, because it's easier to imply characteristics through acting than to state them organically in text.

Today was nothing special, although I spent it procrastinating, and that's my problem. I've got a lot to do and I am doing very little of it. Focus, Scotto, focus. On something. Work, work, work, work, work.

I imported a bunch of mp3s from my old (circa 2002) harddrive. I had some very esoteric tastes back then. Like now, I would download anything that really caught my ear, which covered a broad base. So there are things like HWC by Liz Phair mingling with the Vines and Degenerated (from Airheads; Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi and Adam Sandler.) I Only Wrote This Song For You by Johnny Thunders, Gone Away by Offspring, Crying by Roy Orbison, Zeppelin, Rush, Zack Attack, April O'Neil (as in, from the TMNT album, "April Ballad") the theme from Birds of Prey (which Kris used to obsess over when he was here, with a zeal only he was capable of) so some legitimately good songs, so quirky one-offs, and some deliberately gauche selections. Also downloaded Death of Ferdinand de Saussure by Magnetic Fields since, gosh darnit, it's the catchiest song ever written about a linguistic theorist.

A small number of these tracks have been incorporated, at least for the time being, into the iPod, and a few old standbys have been retired, or at least given leave. Having only 2 gigs means that you have to be a bit more choosy. I mean, with fewer than 500 songs, you still get a lot of mileage, but you need to rotate a bunch out every so often. I heard November Rain a few times today alone, although one of those was the radio. It's 9 minutes I can go without for a while. Some of the songs I don't expect to be permanent additions, but sometimes stuff sticks around because I'm too lazy to remember what I wanted to get rid of.

Anyway, it's probably about time I peaced.

Another song I downloaded was Amnesia by Chumbawumba. It's the song after Tubthumping on that album, also the second single, and about as far as I can ever remember listening. Somehow it caught my ear, I still think it's a pretty neat tune, although clearly not the smash its predecessor was.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto