There is a legend that if the first words you utter each month are “Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits,” then good fortune will follow you. I’m a skeptic about a lot of that supernormal stuff, but this particular story I believe completely. It’s so obvious on the face of it that I don’t know why it’s considered a myth.

Tonight my faithful computer made a noise. It does that now and again, and different noises mean different things. I did not correctly recognize the noise. “Freakin’ piece of hell,” I said (I’m not so good at cussing), as I brought the screen to life. Oops. New month. I think it’s safe to assume that the next thirty-one days will not be filled with good fortune. Just wait for me on the other end of March.

Sweet!

Thanks!

It’s been going on for a while now. We all have our ups and downs. As emotional cycles go, mine tend to linger more in “up” territory, and the amplitude of my mood wave is fairly small. I’m a pretty steady guy. When I am feeling a little low, I’ll even nurse it, gravitating toward melancholy reading and letting it show in my writing. This last low spot has been, for whatever reason, different. The words, they have not come.

Saturday was a productive day, however, and I thought I was back on the upswing. Maybe I was. I could contemplate all the stuff I need to get done and decided that Sunday I’d hit the ground running and and least shift part of the mountain. I even wrote a bit of doggerel about it.

Nope. Sunday, the very giganticness of everything I needed to do lay on top of me like a ton of paper (heavier than a ton of lead), making it impossible to even sit up. (When I get the jers software hut email working again, it will be hours of work going through it all. And that’s just one fairly minor chore.) Complete paralysis. Knowing that I was failing in my resolve, that Jer’s Software Hut could be going down the toilet and I wouldn’t even know it, that I was missing deadlines, and so forth just added to the weight.

This is not like me. I blame global warming.

Today’s a little better, perhaps because I had to leave the house to eat. (Sunday’s fare: two slices of cheese and a can of pineapple slices. I should probably unplug the refrigerator.) I got a bit of writing done, the intro to a story I think I’ll post here so I don’t have to finish the story. I really do have a lot of better things to spend my writing time on.

Sweet!

Thanks!

I woke up this morning wondering just how many days has passed under the banner of February. Quite a few, I was certain. But fourteen? I hoped not.

The prospect of Valentines Day looms. That Girl assures me that for her That Day is not a perilous journey into the valley of despair in which man in certain of only one thing: It was not enough. It’s a holiday in which a guy could hire the Rolling Stones to play just for her in the corner of the four-star restaurant, and she would say, “I wanted the original drummer.” I don’t have any figures to back this up, but I’ll bet dollars to donuts that more couples break up on valentines day than any other day.

Once Jesse told me about a buddy of his that routinely broke up with his girlfriend before the day of horror, and reconnect after. I laughed at the time, but later I realized that the trauma of the disconnect-reconnect was miniscule compared to the failure on the big day.

Womenfolk out there, I can hear you now: “That’s not me.” Based on a fairly large sample, I regret to inform you that YES IT IS YOU. Ask yourself honestly, what would you say if your boyfriend/husband/other said, “Let’s not do valentines this year.” Wait, let me rephrase that. You would say “oh, that’s fine. I don’t like the whole obligatory show of affection anyway.” Then the day comes around and you discover to your horror that he meant it. “Not even a card? No flowers?” Valentines Day is a big, fat, hairy deal, and I hate it.

From a guy point of view, it’s a cynical chance to go nuts and hope to overcome all the little failures from the previous year. It’s like going to church only at Easter. Keeping the faith is an every-day thing. Observing the annual rites doesn’t make you a true believer.

Dudes, you want to be a good valentine? Give her love 368 days a year. That means love her every day, and go double (no big deal) on her birthday, valentines day, and one other day when she least suspects it. In fact, don’t hesitate to spontanify a few more of those special, unscheduled days. Those are the ones that will live forever in her heart. And screw those guys with their mass-market holidays. After a couple of years she’ll forgive your inferior valentines performance, and appreciate the other 364 days of the year.

Of course, this gives you the chance, around your 17th Valentines, to really blow her socks off. Oh, yeah, baby. Been setting it up all along.

Sweet!

Thanks!

So, while nobody’s actually come out and said “Hey! Blog, dammit!” I’ve had a few gentle prods lately reminding me that the blogosphere has been under-rambled lately. Sorry about that. The Media Empire is crumbling, and I am playing kazoo while MySpace clamors at the gates. (‘Clamors’ carefully chosen; I like to tell myself that the signal-to-noise ratio here, while dismal, is better than elsewhere. I am fighting a trend that finds signal to be a quaint ideal. Long live noise.)

Here’s the thing: I haven’t been saying much because I don’t have that much to say. While I was hanging with That Girl plenty of things happened, but they fell under the unbrella of None of Your Damn Business. [Type retained. Unbrella is a word that deserves to live.] Now I’m back in Prague, doing the same shit I’ve been doing for years now, and really if you want to know what I’m up to, the archives are there for you.

There have been a couple of developments worth noting, however.

My most rejected story has added to its legacy. Truly the Lou Gherig of rejection, this story is not finished yet.

That Girl sent me an email today that helped me up when I was down. I intend to reply to it before she reads this. Just so I can tell her personally first.

It’s still February, and I’ve already picked up the Most Awesome Birthday Present Ever. I intend to send a thank-you before the generous giver reads about it here. He gave me a vote, in a place that really matters, and made it clear that he thought I deserved that vote. Dang, that feels good.

Meanwhile, I’ve still been wrestling with the screenplay format. The biggest problem: No Rambling! I’ve been trying to pack my story into the required package and it’s been driving me crazy. Every time I want to tear my hair out and shout “It’s Impossible!” I think of The Usual Suspects. That’s a lot of story in the confined realm of the screenplay. How do they do it? A magnificent cast to turn a few words into an epic doesn’t hurt. Extensive voiceover by one of the best actors of our age doesn’t hurt. Then I realized… voiceover, quick-sliced action… the whole damn movie is a montage! (Any time you want a lot to happen in a little time, use a montage!)

Last year fuego and I got word through Charles 1th that there was a guy out in LA who had cash and wanted to make a movie. He was looking for a low-budget Usual Suspects. There are, as I write this, a thousand people trying to write the next Usual Suspects. Minimum. Suspects had some locations (burning freighters and stuff) but spent its main capital on director and cast. Still, it was the writing that brought all those people together. The stars bought into the script. kevin Spacey is brilliant, but the words come from somewhere else. It started with a script, and the entire industry is looking for the second coming.

So I look at that flick, and I wonder why I can’t achieve the same story density. It looks so easy there on the screen. What fuego and I did write was completely different, but actually rather good, and made to fly on a low budget. What if the mysterious powers that toss you around like a plaything are acting in your best interest? Makes you wish you’d payed more attention to the crazy lady next door, before she died on your sofa.

In the end, all my work with Dark War (with the help of fuego’s story-tellin’ flair) makes it more cinematic, more divorced from paper, and more trusting of skilled actors. But it’s still too damn long.

So, there’s that. Writing to constraints. It’s uncomfortable sometimes. Although that’s the biggest part of this post, it’s not the biggest contributor to my current state of mind. It’s just the one I’m most able to discuss. The rest of it — I’m not really sure.

Sweet!

Thanks!

They go together, ice and snow, and in hockey country you get plenty of both. It’s a bit strange, then, to think that yesterday was the first NHL game ever played in the snow. That’s because it was the second NHL game ever played outdoors.

Even on television, the outdoor game amid the swirling flakes was fun to watch. The players, apparently, enjoyed it as well, as it took them back to childhood games at the local outdoor rink or on a frozen lake. It was also the highest attendance ever for an NHL match; the football stadium they played in was packed with more then 71,000 enthusiastic fans, few of whom could see the action very well.

The ice itself was a problem, though. The rink was constructed over plywood laid out over the grass of the stadium field, and there were bad areas that required repeated attention. In general the ice was soft and the pace of the game relatively slow (for hockey). Note to the NHL: Take a cue from the Czechs. Ice babes. Several Czech teams have attractive women whose job it is to rush out onto the ice to repair problem spots. All we got in this game was a batch of guys in parkas. Judging by the results, the ice babes may be more skilled as well. Perhaps an enterprising individual can start an ice babe agency over here, and bring some of the czechs over here as instructors. It’s a win-win!

Still, it was fun to watch the game being set free from the confines of buildings constructed to hold at bay the very elements that created hockey in the first place. The game ended in a shootout, which I dislike in principle but grudgingly admit is pretty exciting. The Penguins won, and I imagined that somewhere Rose was smiling.

Sweet!

Thanks!