Looking California, Feeling New Jersey

It is set in stone I'm heading back to Jersey, the place I vacated almost two years ago. I lived in Jersey all my life until that fateful day, Jan 23rd, 2004. Now, at the behest of my girlfriend, I'm off to home base in October. Good news and bad news. All my buddies are up there, and I could really use a drink. Afraid 'have a drink' will turn into too many lost weekends. Don't get me wrong, I love getting a nice buzz going, and I even love just drinking a weekend away every now and then.

But I have that gene, the one that says, "So you had 18 beers and 18 shots? Try for 24!" So do my friends. Well, the few that aren't married, that is. I believe the crew is now split 50/50 between married/not. I guess I fall on both sides, since I have a long relationship, but am not hitched up. At any rate, my main goal is to shoot my horror movie, and kick ass promoting it myself. And it appears the next half year is set up for great things. I believe the move down here has done some good. I came down here with no scripts finished, and ended up with 5. And I'm working on another 5. I think it helped me focus, which is hard to do when you're stuck in the same old habits, with the same old people, even if they're great people. We shall see how it ends up.

My Hand Is A Sore, Ugly, Stiff, Claw

I finished DIRT. tonight! Hand wrote 94 pages the last two days. My hand is a bloody mess. But anyway, I haven't updated the progress bar since it's not in FD yet, thereby preventing me from getting a final page count. But I'll go ahead and max out the bar and we can get back to that. 12 days, so many some-odd pages.

Time to play with Madden, the cat!

Contrary To The Blog Title

..this is not a place of healing for real , physical constipation problems. So, for the 13 people in the last two days who have been 'Googling' for a remedy, and been led here, I am sorry to say I have none. Although one would assume eating a shit load of McDonald's would help.

--JD

con·sti·pa·tion Audio pronunciation of "constipation" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (knst-pshn)
n.

1. Difficult, incomplete, or infrequent evacuation of dry hardened feces from the bowels.
2. Obstruction; stultification.

Mmm Bop

I decided to scrap my daily round up style in favor of my more natural- throw a few updates in the blog here and there, instead of one novel sized. Too much writing, especially when I'm writing.

In any event, I might finish my script today. Don't let the progress bar fool ya, I haven't typed all of my chicken scratch into Final Draft yet. If I do finish today, it'll be 12 overall days, which includes two days in which I did nothing.

I have been on a Nintendo kick on eBay. Right now, I'm trying for my favorite system of all time, Super Nintendo, for $20. Plus I've been playing my old NES and N64. Just a phase I go through from time to time.

I figured out a way to save money. Here's the basic idea, which can be formulated to fit any item. I bought Baldur's Gate a few months back for 99 cents. It's a 6 year old game. But it's new to me. Maybe if I stay back one full cycle of releases on electronics, I'll save a ton of cash. For instance, I haven't got a flat screen monitor. I think I can get one for under $100. If I had tried 3 years ago, we're talking $999. If I could just put new product out of my mind, I think I could be very happy. And there's your tip of the day-be content with what you have, until what you don't have costs as much as what you do have cost when originally purchased.

Time to write!

Fool For A Lifetime

I wake up at 2pm, again in the bedroom, and not in the living room which is where I fell asleep. I come out and jump on the PC. After checking up on some fantasy sports, I get a shower. I come back out, and watch a little bit of Judge Mathis, thinking about my script. The disgust from not writing the previous night runs deep. I get back on the pc and check up on blogs, then my email again. Classmates.com is having a free trial, and it peaks my interest, even though anyone I'm not friends with from high school currently, I probably don't care for. I click the free trial, and get to filling out the info. required for things such as these. Which is everything about me. I finish and confirm my account, which unbeknownst to me, cost me $59. I see I have signed up for the Gold Membership without trying to. No free trial for me! I immediately feel my stomach plunge into a sickness I can only describe as the feeling after being kicked in the balls. I send an immediate email to customer support, and sign off the the net hastily. I sit and watch Judge Milian again. This show is so entertaining, but also shows such a faulty system, it makes me really question a lot of laws, and things of that nature.

Katie walks in, sweating like a marathon runner (no air in her car), which I'm sure will make her reaction to the $59 extremely rationale. To my surprise, she seems only slightly irked, and we sit and cuddle around for a few minutes. I need WD-40 to try and 'fix' my truck, so I leave and enter Albertsons. I find the WD-40 hidden behind racks of engine cleaners, gas additives and other scams. I decide on two 2-liters of Diet cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, seeing as it's buy one, get one free. I leave, excited that my truck will be running safely again instead of scaring other drivers and pedestrians.

I spray the acceleration cable with the wd40 liberally, which really means I saturated it, and all of it's components. I go back inside and forget about it. I check the roast I put in at 3pm, and it's not finished yet. We're both famished, though. I sit outside with her on our screened in porch and talk about moving again. And again, we fight about apartments. She walks back in the apartment after her cigarette is finished, and I follow. We then get in a ridiculous argument about which towns in South Jersey are where in relation to her store, Gertrude Hawk Chocolates. For clarification purposes, the three towns in question are Pennsauken, Blackwood and the Quaker Bridge Mall. I inform her that Blackwood is in the middle of the other two, and she laughs and says I'm incorrect rather snootily, then proceeds to show me exactly where they are. But unwittingly, she confirms I'm right, at which point I yell about the stupidity of her arguing with me about something so trivial, and she yells back I'm an asshole, or something. She heads to the room, and slams the door.

I decide it's time to buckle down and write, since it's already around 7pm. And write I do. I end up writing 45 pages in my notebook, making up for the prior nights embarrassing outcome, and then some. As I write, I listen to music through headphones. Last night was a nice shuffle of Danzig 2 & 4, Faith No More King For Day...Fool For A LifeTime, Soundgarden Superunknown, Tool Lateralus, Pink Floyd The Final Cut, A couple of Faces tunes, and a few Metallica tunes as well. I write to the soundtrack for 3 and a half hours. At 10:30, I take a ride in my truck, which runs good now. I get gas and air for my front tire. I get back about 15 minutes later, feeling good about myself. I check on Katie, who is asleep. She informs me with a perturbed for being disturbed tone, that she will not be eating the roast, or which I saved a nice portion just for her. I let sleeping dogs lie, and come back and begin typing in the now 61 hand written pages. I surf the web for an hour, checking up on the usual suspects. I then begin the hideous act of typing in those pages, so I begin. After about 20, I am spent, and it's now 130am, so I figure I may have an early night, which I feel good about considering how much work I got done.

I throw in Clerks cartoon, disc 2, and turn the commentary on. As I'm enjoying the first episode, Katie awakens and comes out into the living room. Actually, she awakens because I go in to get some blankets. Actually, she wakes up because I see her shift in the bed when I get my blankets, so I return to kiss her on her forehead, and tuck her in. Nevertheless, she is now out in the living room. She wants Cheerios, which needless to say, is not on the diet we started, yesterday. I say I'm not going out at 2am for Cheerios, and for her to go back to bed. She states she's hungry, and I say have some roast. "I can't, it's too heavy." After several minutes, maybe fifteen, she finally says fine, just drive me to Steak & Shake, or something else that has a drive through. She doesn't care for the diet at this moment, obviously. But I remind her anyway. Now I know she definitely does not care as she snaps at me. I say fine, and we're off. On the way out the door, I say we're taking my truck, proud as a man usually is when he fixes something. She says fine. We hop in the truck and I start it up. As I pull through the parking lot, I realize it's not fixed anymore. I am accelerating without hitting the gas again.

Pissed off, I turn around and park it with a screech.(ever hold the gas and the brake together? Then you get a good idea what it would be like driving). It's no 145am, and we get in her car. I drive to Steak & Shake. I don't know the menu, which sends my cranky lover into a mini fit. But I inform her, I had only dined there once, at 4am, while hammered. We get to the ordering point, and we order some hodge podge of garbage. I get a shake only, because I'm not hungry. She gets some meal deal, but replaces the soda with a coffee shake. And we're off. Or, no we're not. It takes at least 10 minutes to get to the window. Once at the window, we find out it's 12$, but we only have 9-something. I tell them to take off my shake. (FYI-The reason we didn't anticipate the price is her meal was $6.80, but upgrading it with the shake made it another $2). (FYI #2-The reason we couldn't use out debit card is because there's no money in there, I wasted it on Classmates, apparently). We finally get lost, and go inside the apartment around 215am. She eats, and doesn't really like the food, so she leaves it for me to inhale, and I do at 245am. We talk in the bedroom until 315am. She has to get up for work at 630, so I ask if the alarm is set. She says it is, and off I go to sleep while watching the Clerks Cartoon commentaries.

At 5am, I am sprung to life by her alarm blasting. I head in and tell her it's still set for the prior day, and I'll fix it. I set it for 630, and sleepily head back out. 10 minutes later, I hear it again, and incensed, head back into the room. I fiddle with it, and mistakenly hit the radio button, so that Michael Bolton is screaming at me. In a panic, I try to turn it off, but to no avail. Katie slams snooze and knocks the clock to the floor. She yells "Don't worry about it!", but I am worried. I hate that damn alarm sound. I head back out and fall asleep to Clerks at 530am.

King For A Day...Fool For A Lifetime

I just finished writing 45 pages tonight. Now I have about 60 pages to enter into Final Draft. I think that will translate to approximately 35 pages, typed. I write extensively tomorrow morning as I try and adapt my blogging style to Mr. Kevin Smith's.