Some bitterness with nuttiness. A bit of smokey touch. Yes, I am a maniac, especially since I had vowed not to touch coffee, except on Mondays. Just as a consolation for the fact that the weekend is over. The pain resulting from that British-like obstinacy, together with reason, eventually won over my chestpain-related hypochondria and I now allow myself one cup per day, Tuesday through Sunday. Monday is still that hog-wild escape into the addict's heaven. Medium roast, just barely stimulating to the sides of the tongue. Dark roast, without sugar, just to show my taste pores that the drink means business. With milk and sugar. With sugar and without milk. Hiding under the two-inch foamy mound of cappuccino. Sometimes with dark chocolate. Sometimes without water, a single roasted bean ground up between my teeth. ``I think, therefore I am,'' somebody said. Once that roasty, refreshing aroma is reaching my nostrils together with the heat wave of the fresh-brewed cup, I know with greatest certainty that I am.
Floating through every day like a scuba diver in murky water. Some sunlight reaches from the surface, but not much. Half my brain, one of the hemispheres, permanently in some dreamy realm, as if I were a fish. There is no mental presence in the moment, it's fucking impossible. I remember that state when I first went to an American hight school, back in late 80's. Having to get up early together with the long bus ride accross half of San Francisco achieved that effect as reliably as of some dangerous, illicit drug. After school, I had to go deliver newspapers, half asleep the whole time. Today I finally got around to blogging. And to answering dad's email, he was trying to figure out which tablet to buy for mom and grandma. One would think, a software engineer, even at his age, would not sound like ``all dat tukhnologah stuff is too complicated,'' but there you have it. Sent me a list of four trivial requirements which, pretty much, amounted to that toy being good enough to read a book. How can I give him a specific answer recommendation to what describes the whole damn market?
I don't make New Year resolutions. Just resolutions, yes, but not for New Year. If a decision is right, the best day for it is today. It doesn't make sense to associate it with your average date whose demarcation happens to stand out on some random calendar. Gregorian calendar in this case, but if it hadn't been for pope Gregory, the same day would have been thirteen days later. And if I were a practicing Jew, it'd be end of September. Postponing things until that special date means succumbing to laziness, but without the disgrace of admitting it. Anyway, just now, tired after two days at a software conference, and having made yet another short story submission, with incredible strain of my willpower muscle I have forced myself to sit down and write. Instead of watching Pulp Fiction yet again, a treat I've been promising myself for weeks. I think, I'll get a beer, go to the bathroom mirror, and silently praise myself for the former and call myself a lying, procrastinating bitch for the latter. You don't delay a present to yourself like that! Excessive restraint is as bad for your soul as any other excess.
Not rushing through a scene. Pausing, imagining finest visual or contextual detail. Tatoos on characters. Their entire biographies. Maybe, I'm just saying this because I am at the editing stage. Damn it, it takes LONG to finish something.
The man to kick-start the acting career of Danny Trejo (Desperado, the guy with the knives, also appears in From Dusk Till Dawn) is the Russian director Andrey Konchalovsky. The brother of Nikita Mikhalkov. Go figure.
My old Nokia 5130 has worked just fine for me, thank you. And being a frugal and sometimes downright cheap sort of a guy, I hadn't coughed up the cash for a newer smartphone with a full-fledged keyboard. Allright, I was embarrassed yesterday, texting in the middle of a mall, like I'd been born in the last century. There were all these teenagers running around. I'm old enough to be their father anyway. But I'm fine with my Nokia. No, really. Video Camera. Music Player. USB. Bluetooth. 3 letters per button. Smartphone my tuckhes.
In writing, I sometimes go out of the way describing how a character breathes, how their eyes move, etc. That's micromanagement. A good impressionist painting has a few key strokes of a brush. The viewer's brain fills in the details. Let your characters do their own acting in each reader's mind. They'll do a better job.
but some thoughts come in uninvited. I'm Sitting here in Caribou Coffee. A gentleman is sitting next to me with his family. He looks allright, but kinda "goody-two-shoes." Yeah, I may be wrong, book judged by the cover, et cetera. I know. But for no reason at all this phrase pop up in my mind: "Sir, you won't catch me schooling your children in your absence. Would you kindly extend the same courtesy to my mom and dad." I should use that somewhere. No, we have not interacted in any way.
I wonder if there is scientific evidence for the link between the music playing in a store and the amounts of money people spend. In the spirit of the season, I have visited many a store lately and have heard one of exactly 3 (three!) songs in every one of them. No wait, Hot Topic was a bit ahead of the curve: they had heavy metal, though they've switched to Let It Snow pretty much as soon as I came in. No, I don't have a white beard and a red cap. To make matters worse, I have a decent musical memory. Santa Clause is Coming is playing in my head right now.
I've been thinking much about trucks, of all the things. Mind you, I don't mean those shiny Chevys or Toyotas. I don't understand using an industry-grade vehicle just to haul a single tukhes around. No, I mean the ones that haul big trailers accross the country. I've had the misfortune of reading that some companies are willing to train you, as long as you lease your immortal soul to them for one year. Pros: no nauseating office environment (I suck at politics), no artificial smiles executed with acting so poor it wouldn't fool an eight-year-old. Maybe, enough times to scribble a short story here and there. Not to mention being free to think about whatever the heck I want. I sometimes entertain myself by solving math problems in my head while driving. Cons: a huge pay cut. Any other reasons not to do something that looks like it could make me a lot happier?
I keep reminding myself to listen to the music more often, just as I should always carry around a water bottle. It actually has a very practical, tangible value. It affects the mood, the psyche and, hence, productivity. Better arts does mean better services and consumer goods. I've read somewhere that your average westerner is badly dehydrated most of the day, which makes a water bottle a living necessity. The same goes for an i-pod.
I have recently gotten hooked on this meme, a song by Czech comedian Ivan Mladek. I loved it so much I have read through the original Czech text and more or less understand the individual sentences. Mind you, I also speak Russian. Yeah, Czech is also a Slavic language, but geez, the syntax is practically the same. I strongly suspect the same could be said of French and Spanish -- at least, I can tell the adjective goes after the noun. But I've never studied either of those, so I can't say. Also, having put some effort into studying German -- 3 semesters plus two trips to the country, plus periodic reading/listening online -- I can often understand sentences written in Dutch. The syntax also looks identical. All that said, transition from German to English or vice versa should be quite a bit harder than transition between Russain and Czech or Spanish and French. That's a guess, I don't know for sure, but check this out: G: Wie heisst du? E: What's your name (lit. How <callest-thyself> thee, heissen is a verb which means 'to be called'). G: Ich habe es schon gekauft. E: I have already bought it. (lit: I have IT already BOUGHT, except it is an object of bought not have). G: Ich bin in der Stadt geblieben. E: I have stayed in the city. (lit: I am in the City remained.The verb am is always added when talking about position or motion of the subject). G: four cases, actively used. E: two cases, almost dead.
...is often inferior. I recently needed to review a couple of scenes from La Traviata. The scenes were famous enough, so that there were several versions of them posted you-know-where. (Hint: starts with a 'y'). The drinking song ( libiamo) is a duet by the heroine and a poor young fellow who is quite hopelessly in love. Why does the male singer often look like an overconfident buffoon! My guess is, he is a star, a great singer. Nobody else would be trusted with Alfred's role. He presents himself to the audience, and sings. He doesn't act. But he is perceived as expressing his love to the beautiful, popular lady. Hence the result. A wonderful exception to this is Rolando Villazon in this beautiful performance with Anna Netrebko. I can also mention another memorable scene from Boris Godunov, where a few street boys steal a coin from an insane beggar, snatch it out of his hand. In most cases, the beggar suggestively extends his hand with the coin to one of them. "Here, take that."
About bloody time, too. Excellent script and superb acting. But doubts I have. At the risk of sounding like a purple-faced self-righteous shmuck at а dinner table -- or his mother-in-law -- are the central characters really a fair representation of the clientele? Allright, Andy is not really a criminal. But Red, Heywood and Tommy aren't scary either. They look suspiciously like educated, well-versed actors who aren't even trying to appear criminal. The guards look sinister and believable, so the director certainly had the skill to make the crooks look the part. Obviously, he didn't intend to. I don't think the film is about a prison. It's a tale about an emotional backbone, without which no freedom is possible. Maybe it's my prejudice. Indeed, I am ignorant of what is it like to be actually locked up. And I don't have much respect for dinner-table judges either, you don't throw judgments around like that. It's your moral duty to precisely understand both the crime and the punishment. P.S. Freeman is the best. A man who was born to talk. P.P.S. I didn't like Cheeger's Falconer one bit.
In this thread originally posted by CrazyIvan, one of the replies mentions the good old "cut-to-the-bone" principle. Reviewing my own opus in progress, I've pondered how exactly to understand that guideline. Should anything non-essential be deleted? Definitely not. How about redundant or irrelevant? Definitely yes. A few thoughts here. First, the porter in Macbeth. (Who's there, i' th' name of Beelzebub?). Hold on to your rotten tomatoes, I am not suggesting to edit him out, just to improve upon the classic. But even without it, would not we still have a masterpiece of a play on our hands? On the other hand, I have enountered a specific situation, when removing an appealing piece was called for. I had three sentences: A, B, and C. 'A' presented an initial idea. Both B and C improved upon it, though they were redundant. Both appeared witty, and the choice was a bit painful. But a choice it was. Stuffing in anything that appears original, relevant and clever results in amateurish-looking clutter. I also have a chapter which is essential to the plot, although I really hate it. So, I intend to condense it to a paragraph. I guess, I would rephrase the rule as: Without mercy, but with judgement, cut and condense.