Mood Swings

Geez, I must be manic depressive or something.

I just noticed that I created two entries, one called "Fun!" and one called "Waxing Morose," within a few hours of each other!

Waxing Morose

I took all references to being a writer out of my profile.

I am nothing more than a technical writer, which is about as much like a real writer as a pig is like a football.

I'm utterly broken hearted over my failure to get any of my four novels or four screenplays accepted. I can't even get an agent. My heart is shattered into a million pieces. I'm a failure.

Fun!

It took me forever to find this online. Anyway, here it is, for the time being (it'll probably get taken down soon!). P.S. It ends rather abruptly. P.P.S. Hope no one takes this personally (you know who you are).

Hair

I found this cool website online where you can upload a photo and put a different hair color and style on your face. Here I am as a brunette.

Write?

Maybe I should take the "I can write" out of my profile.

I entered a TV series pilot script and concept at Slamdance, and found out today I didn't even make the quarterfinalists.

I didn't really expect to win, but some encouragement would have been nice.

Marcus Aurelius

I love reading quotations from Marcus Aurelius (who was, by the way, the father of the evil Commodus played by Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator).

I have lots of favorites. I latch onto a favorite and forget all the others, then reread them all again, find one I'd never noticed before or had noticed and then forgotten, and it becomes a new favorite.

Anyway, here's my new favorite today:

"Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking."

Here's a cute little video I found on YouTube:

SNAFU

Okay, the formatting on this blog is all effed up and I can't figure out how to fix it. I got help from users in a forum and followed their instructions, but I think it's an internal error at blogger because when I try to fix it, I get this weird error message about ". . . can't access . . . blah blah blah blah." It won't even let me start over by picking a new template. Plus it seems stupid to have two blogs, so maybe I'll just abandon this one and put everything in the Turquoise Trailer blog. No one reads this stuff anyway.

"Aqaba Is Over There; It's Only a Matter of Going."

Today I'm thinking about my favorite scene from my favorite movie, Lawrence of Arabia.

In case you don't know the plot, it's World War One and Lawrence (Peter O'Toole) is an Englishman helping the Bedouins in the Middle East in their revolt against the Turks, who are allies of the Germans.

After a night of intense thought, Lawrence decides the thing to do is to capture the coastal town of Aqaba. This will enable the British forces to be supplied by sea and it will strengthen the British control over the Suez Canal. The problem is that Aqaba can't be taken by sea because it's heavily armed, and it can't be approached by land without crossing the world's worst desert.

So here's the clip, in which Lawrence proposes his plan (to take Aqaba by land) to one of the Bedouin leaders, Sharif Ali (Omar Sharif).

To me, it's an allegory about having lofty goals and attempting the impossible.

Frustration

Doing this blog can be an exercise in frustation.

First of all, if I add a picture, it always shows up at the top of the post. There's no way to specify where I want it when I upload it. I have to upload it and then move it, which can only be done by going into the "edit html" section, which scares the hell out of me because I don't understand html.

Then, once I move the picture, suddenly the paragraphs all have triple spacing between them. I have to futz around with the spacing in the "compose" function, and if that doesn't work, I have to go back into the dreaded html section and try to make the changes there.

Then, if I manage to get the spacing right, sometimes when I hit "publish post" I get a warning message about how there's something wrong with the html.

And last night, my "about me," "blog archive," "my blog list," and "followers" sections mysteriously moved to the bottom of the blog page and there's no way in hell, it seems, to move them back to the right side where they belong.

Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!

Light Therapy

I'm doing my tanning thing again. First thing every morning all last winter, I used a small sunlamp on my face to eliminate "winter pallor." I never really baked in front of it, but for some reason I used to really look forward to sitting in front of the lamp and listening to Internet radio.

A psychiatrist friend of mine said I was inadvertantly getting giving myself light therapy, which is a treatment for depression.

I stopped the sunlamp thing after I sprained my ankle three weeks ago today, and now I think maybe that's why my mood has been so low.

So this morning, I resumed the sunlamp, which is kind of goofy seeing as how it's mid-June and I can just go sit in the sun, but go figure.

Mood, Part Two

I think I must be depressed. I have absolutely no appetite, which is odd for me, because I typically eat like a horse. (Fortunately, I come from a family of skinny women, so I don't gain weight--I know you hate my guts for this, but I can't help it!)

Anyway, it's all I can do to force down a milkshake every day for the sake of getting some nutrition. Nothing else sounds good to me. I got a box of cookies last week as a gift, and it took me almost a week to finish them. Normally I'd polish them off at one sitting.

And suddenly tonight, I feel like going to bed early, like now, 10 p.m. This is really odd, because I've been known to stay up until 5 a.m. or even 7 a.m.

I thought maybe the appetite thing was due to the ibuprofen I've been taking for my ankle, so I stopped it for a couple of days. But I still didn't feel like eating.

I do think the whole thing revolves around the ankle sprain, which is almost healed. No appetite and excessive sleep are symptoms of depression, but I don't really feel depressed. I mean, I'm not crying or anything.

I think I'm just bored.

Dazed and Confused

This is funny--to me, anyway. I'm keeping two blogs, which doesn't seem like a lot to manage, but I just finished creating a post for this one that belongs in the other one. Duh!

Mood

I wish there was a "my mood today is" function here like they have on MySpace.

Although I think my mood is indescribable. Stressed? Overwhelmed? Tired? Slightly nauseous?

The cartoon above just about says it all.

Lost Dispatches

If you look at my blog list over there on the right, you'll see that I'm following one called Dispatches from the Island.

This is the blog of Jorge Garcia, who plays Hugo, aka Hurley, on the Lost tv series. Most blogs (including this one, probably) are kind of boring, but Jorge has a wry and amusing take on things, so if you want to read a blog other than this one (!), check it out!

David Carradine

Of course, the David Carradine death is awful.

But I don't understand why everyone keeps thinking there must have been someone else in the room just because his wrists were tied behind him.

Every time I hear this on the radio or TV I just think, "Hello? Slip knot!"

I guess everyone is just in denial.

Ankle Update

Well, it's been more than two weeks, and my ankle is almost back to normal. It barely looks swollen, and I'm walking without the cane.

The trouble is, I'm favoring certain muscles or tendons or whatever when I walk on it, so that's throwing off the whole "skeletal-muscular" system.

My ankle doesn't hurt, but after I walk, my whole leg aches, especially on the side of the calf and at the hip joint. I'm sure there's a medical name for this; I call it, "the-hip-bone's-connected-to-the-thigh-bone syndrome."

I am way better, though, so I'm grateful for that!

Mini Movie Reviews

And now, the next two long-awaited movie reviews!

As if anyone actually reads these. But they're fun to write, so here goes:

Taken (zero broomsticks, not even a broom straw!)

I hated this movie! As one who traveled in Europe alone at age 20, I heard numerous tales about the "trade des blanches" or "white slave trade" or abductions of young western women to be sold in North Africa and the Middle East. Of course this stuff does happen, but not with the frequency this film suggests, and most of the stories you hear have the hallmarks of urban legends.

This film's plot is loaded with inconsistencies that you can read about elsewhere on the Internet and that aren't worth going into here. We know what's going to happen before the film starts--the title, duh!--and the movie trudges down that predictable and cliched road until the end. I was bored and fast-forwarded through the last half--something I almost never do once I commit to watching a film. If you want to keep your daughter scared and unwilling to travel and learn about the world, this might be a great cautionary tale. Otherwise, IMHO, it's worthless.

Valkyrie (5 broomsticks)

With this film, couch-jumping episode notwithstanding, Tom Cruise moves completely beyond his pretty-boy image and into the ranks of Hollywood's mature and serious actors. There are no female characters in this film for women to identify with (the wife is a very minor character), and the subject matter is rather dry and, of course, predictable (I wasn't sitting there wondering, "Gee will the plot succeed? Will they really kill Hitler?"). Nevertheless, Valkyrie is compelling, and it maintains suspense until the credits roll at the end.

I love history, and although the WWII era is not one of my favorite periods, I'd gladly rent this DVD a second time, or maybe even buy it. Valkyrie has the perfect balance of historical information, character study, suspense, and action. This is a solid film, and I highly recommend it.

More reviews coming soon!

New Graphic

I just added a new photo at the top of the blog page.

Before this I just had a sexy witch, and the photo was a little more revealing than I would have liked. Not that I'm a prude, but people kept thinking it was me in the photo.

So now I've got the witch without the cleavage, and with art that suggests, to me at least, a border or a choice between sanity and insanity.

I know it's a little sloppy looking, but it's the best I can do with my primitive graphic design resources.

Any comments will be welcomed!

Mean Kitty Update!

Wow! I just read that Cory "Mr. Safety" Williams, the guy who did "The Mean Kitty Song," became a YouTube sensation with that video (which got 20 million hits) and now makes $20,000 a month from YouTube and related activities!

Mean Kitty Video

I could spend all day watching videos on YouTube!

Here's my most recent favorite:

My Mini Movie Reviews

Because of my sprained ankle (which is WAY better today, btw), I've been watching a lot of DVDs, so I thought I'd do some quickie reviews here, in case you're wondering what to rent from NetFlix or the video store.

Because people think "Hepzibah" is a witch's name, I'll use broomsticks as my rating system, 5 broomsticks being the best.

Into the Wild (5 broomsticks)

This is really a super film! I like it so much I've watched it twice already. It's a great character study of the Chris/Alexander protagonist, and an interesting look through his eyes at what he seems to perceive as a materialist, consumerist, status-obsessed world.

I read the book a few years ago when it first came out (it's the only book I've ever recommended to my brother), and the film is absolutely as good as the book, imho. I'm not into nature films or the whole "man in the wilderness" theme, but this film rises above that genre. See it!

Killshot (4 broomsticks)

This is based on my favorite book by my favorite writer, Elmore Leonard. The film was panned a lot on the Internet, but I rented it anyway, preparing to be disappointed--partly because Get Shorty, Out of Site, and Tarantino's Jackie Brown, all based on Elmore Leonard novels, are such great films and such hard acts to follow. In addition, the release was delayed; when it did happen, it was limited; and for the most part, this was a straight-to-DVD movie--not a good sign.

But this film is okay--well, even better than okay. The casting was pretty good, even though the actors aren't my faves: Mickey Roarke as Blackbird and Diane Lane as Carmen. Rosario Dawson as Donna was an interesting choice, because I'd always envisioned Donna as plump and pale, but it worked. In fact, everything about the film works for me. Yeah, I know, it doesn't follow the book perfectly, but watching it is a good way to spend 95 minutes and whatever you pay to rent your movies.

Reviews coming up soon: Valkyrie and Taken.

SEXY!!!!!

I'm moving in about six weeks, so I've been selling things on eBay.

I've got some old vintage greeting cards that I'm trying to sell. I've also got a bunch of old family photos of complete strangers (family friends, I suppose, who have long since passed away), so I'm selling them in the "vintage photo" section, because a lot of collectors like old pictures.

I've found that the way to get a lot of people to look at your eBay listing is to put the word "sexy" in the headline.

I have some photos of ladies in old-fashioned bathing suits--not revealing at all--and so almost as a joke, the first time I listed one I put the word "sexy" in the headline.

(That's not the photo, but it gives you an idea of the kind of photo I'm talking about--not really sexy at all, by modern standards.)

Not only did it sell quickly, but it drew about fifty hits!

Right now I've got a cute little vintage greeting card that's getting no looks at all, while people are falling all over themselves to look at photos of a woman in a bathing cap and old-style swimsuit because I put the word "sexy" in the ad.

So the trick to eBay success is to put the word "sexy" in the ad.

I want to do an experiment selling a plain black cast-iron frying pan, or maybe a wooden spoon, or an old electric fan. I will write the word "SEXY" in capital letters in the headline, and see how many looks it gets!!!