Cafepress started offering custom light switch covers yesterday, so today, I’ve got one.
The Truth/Beauty lightswitch cover will help you to reconsider what that little switch is really doing for you. It is especially useful when installed near mirrors. Order them for use wherever you have light switches.
Humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit. Without doubt, these dreamers do not deserve wealth, because they do not desire it. Even so, a well-organized society should assure to such workers the efficient means of accomplishing their task, in a life freed from material care and freely consecrated to research.
– Marie Curie, scientist, Nobel laureate (1867-1934)
It’s weird. It’s only 4AM and I’m getting tired. Being sure I’m up at 7AM in time to go to [unnamed all-day event I’m attending today] is why I took modafinil in the first place. The idea is that it’s easier to stay awake than to wake up early. Now, based on my previous extended uses of the drug, there’s a strong correlation to not eating right or at the right times, but (of course) I haven’t felt hungry, and actually I feel really really full after a few cookies almost an hour ago. So if I still feel full in another 15, 20 minutes, I’m going to eat something proper anyway. I have some leftovers from dinner last night.
. . .
Okay, that was like, an hour ago. I don’t feel full anymore, but I don’t feel nearly as sleepy. And I haven’t got up to eat yet. I’m writing a review of sorts in another tab and watching The Pelican Brief. Which reminds me…
I noticed a couple of hours ago, while watching Primal Fear, that I don’t much like ‘lawyer movies’ – that is, movies based on Grisham’s novels and those like them. Which, I think, both of these movies are… which might be why they’re next to each other in my Netflix queue. I did some stream of consciousness queueing when I first signed up, adding 500 movies just by riding the waves of titles and ‘similar titles’ and ‘recommended titles’ and ‘titles with something alike’ and so on, and except for inserting the occasional new release or personal recommendation to the top of my queue (such as Downfall, which came out on DVD last week and which I didn’t get a chance to see in theatres), I pretty much let that random-like stream of movies flow in to meet me.
But I’ve got off course. I don’t mean to say I dislike these lawyer-type movies; some of them are quite entertaining, as movies. But it occurred to me that … well, I can’t think of one I ever liked so much that I bought it. And I didn’t trust my memory, so I went through all 300 or so of my DVDs to check, and not one of them is one of these lawyer-type movies. I know I don’t like the judicial system that much, but this is a weird pattern. Of all the lawyer/trial based movies I’ve seen, I can’t think of one I’d like to watch again or own.
Which, upon quick reflection I thought might relate to why I didn’t like Chicago much.
But then again, after realising the problem and watching Richard Gere doing the same song and dance in Primal Fear that he did so much more ostentatiously in Chicago, I think I might give Chicago a second chance. Upgrade it from a movie I dislike to a movie I just don’t like.
There is a real difference.
…
Well, my movie is over. I think I’ll get some breakfast, freshen up a bit, re-dose on modafinil, get dressed, and go to that [unnamed event].
I’ve been using moviefone.com for years. I was using them before I ever saw an ad for them on a movie screen. They were an internet service of use to me before they ever had the marketing muscle to get a wacky ad on the screen before every movie I watch.
I watch a lot of movies. I’ve already seen four movies in theatres this weekend, and plan to see one or two more. I spend not less than $60 a month in movie theatres, every month, sometimes more than $100. It is an expensive habit.
And it requires having accurate information about when and where the movies I want to see are playing. Especially considering I watch at least a couple of ‘independent’ and foreign movies a month, which typically play on only one screen at one theatre, if they play at all – knowing which of the dozens of theatres in town to show up at to to see a movie like My Date With Drew or Broken Flowers or Layer Cake, each of which I had to drive to a different theatre to see at the only place it was playing. Moviefone has been very helpful over the years with getting me to the theatre I need at the time I need to see the movie I want to see.
But lately, I’ve noticed more and more problems with the information Moviefone has, not only on the website, but over the phone at well.
Moviefone knew there was a midnight showing of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory at the Cine Capri, but didn’t know it had sold out half a day in advance, and didn’t know about the midnight show at Arizona Mills across town with virtually unlimited seating. When Fantastic Four opened, Moviefone did not list it among the movies playing at my local cineplex, so I went to a movie theatre twenty minutes away. The following day I was watching another movie that WAS listed at my local theatre, and found that Fantastic Four hadbeen playing locally, but that Moviefone didn’t know about it.
I’ve had at least five incidents in the last two months where I myself or someone I was with had looked up showtimes on moviefone.com, sometimes more than once before going to the theatre, and arrived to find we were fifteen or twenty minutes late, sometimes while thinking we were the same amount early. Needless to say, that causes some anxiety and often ruins the afternoon/evening’s plans entirely.
Oh, and then this weekend a few things: Four Brothers is not listed as playing at my local cineplex, but I know it’s the widest-opening movie this weekend, so I called them – they were well aware that moviefone was listing Broken Flowers as playing there at the times they were actually playing Four Brothers, and that the only theatre in town playing Broken Flowers is the Camelview, almost half an hour away, depending on traffic. When I went to see Four Brothers there tonight I stood in line behind two people who had come to see Broken Flowers and had to go home for the evening, since the Camelview showing was starting as they stood there trying to understand the mixup. Another film, Last Days, an ‘independent’ film by Gus Van Sant, I know is playing at the Centerpoint in Tempe, but moviefone doesn’t even acknowledge that there exists a movie called Last Days. I knew it was playing because Harkins emails me the showtimes of all the ‘independent’ and foreign films playing at Harkins theatres every week, and then to be sure, I called the box office at the Centerpoint (yes, I know the direct numbers for the Centerpoint and my local theatre by heart, so what of it?) to verify that it was playing, and at what times. My email was right, and moviefone didn’t have a clue.
Oh, and then today when I was out, my plan had been to watch four movies at three theatres. I had the showtimes and theatres written down, but somewhere after the first movie I lost the list and couldn’t recall how much time I had left to get across town. I tried calling moviefone as I drove in that direction, and … there were problems.
First, it said all the circuits were busy. Then I got through on the other moviefone number (did you know we have two in town?) and it seemed dead at first. After several calls and attempts to gather information about showtimes, it seemed to me that their servers were probably overloaded, crashing, or hacked altogether. There was a multi-second lag between prompts, even between the greeting and the ad and the ad and the menu, and between pressing a button and getting a response, and then there seemed to be no data available. It didn’t recognize ANY theatre express codes, it wouldn’t accept a zip code to search by area, it wouldn’t accept input of letters to search by movie title; nothing beyond basic navigation was working.
I stopped for gas and managed to find my list of movies and showtimes in time to discover that because I hadn’t remembered to be in a hurry to get to the theatre (I had taken surface streets and, obviously, stopped for gas) I had missed the movie. That wasn’t exactly moviefone’s fault, but I was on the phone before I even got to my car, and with even a reasonably-paced automated system to give me the information would have told me what I needed to know before I got out of the parking lot or, or to the first street that connects with a freeway, at the latest, and I might have made it on time.
Many web errors, information missing, incorrect movie names (I remember when House of Wax came out, they were listing the new House of Wax as playing at some theatres and the Vincent Price House of Wax in 3D as playing in others, though they all showed the same film.), incorrect show times, and now a total lack of service over the phone.
I think I’ll start cross-checking all my movie listings against google for a while, see how that works out. I recommend that you do the same, or risk disappointment and frustration.
(straight to the bottom line; read the short version – or just donate without reading it at all)
There was a time when I thought writing a book was difficult, perhaps even impossible for any but a select few whose innate talent and carefully honed skill allowed them to grind out books over the course of years and years of great personal turmoil. (Well, plus a much more select few, such as Asimov, King, Clancy and Hubbard, who could apparently churn out huge, door-stopping tomes every month or two or three without apparent effort.) Still, I was determined to at least attempt to join that group of men and women which are called authors; I’ve always felt writing calling me.
To my luck, I stumbled across National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), a community of people so called to writing that they work together supporting each other, all trying to write their own unique novel into existence at the same time. It was this supportive community that I found most attractive, fellow writers to share the experiences and struggles of writing with, to encourage and be encouraged by as we worked toward the same goal. The fact that the entire thing was based around what seemed at the time to be a ridiculous goal of writing an entire novel from start to finish (a first draft, anyway) in only 30 days seemed overwhelming and preposterous and I did not entirely expect to succeed, but I knew that I couldn’t ever finish writing a novel without starting one.
Since I first attempted it, during that first NaNoWriMo, I have completed four novels in under three years, and also put together a fifth book, a collection of short fiction and poetry.
Finishing a novel in a month? Done that.
A novel in two weeks? Did that, too.
A novel in eight days? Sure thing, no problem.
For my most recently completed novel, I wrote fully half of it in a single three-day weekend. All of these are, of course, simply the first drafts of books that have since been edited, copy-edited, typeset, and so forth until they were completed, readable books you can hold in your hands (or read on a screen). Also of note is that all of these things were accomplished in between working a full-time “day job” and without much sacrificing my other interests or social life (save for that three-day weekend spent entirely on writing). And it was all easy for me.
Now, I’m not yet writing the thick tomes of that select-of-the-select group, but quite intentionally, so far. I’m trying to write my books all approximately the same length so that I can get an idea of how fast I can write. The novel I wrote in a month is as long as the novel I wrote in two weeks, which is as long as the first draft of the one I wrote in eight days. But I think I can do better than that. In fact, I think I can write an entire book in a “single sitting.”
Continue reading The “Single-Sitting-Book” – A Call For Donations