Love, Love, Love - by the Mountain Goats

King Saul fell on his sword when it all went wrong
And Joseph's brothers sold him down the river for a song
Sonny Liston rubbed some Tiger Balm into his glove
Some things you do for money
And some you do for love, love, love

Raskalnikov felt sick but he couldn't say why
When he saw his face reflected in his victim's twinkling eye
Some things you do for money
And some you do for fun
But the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one

Love love is gonna lead you by the hand
into a white and soundless place
Now we see things as in a mirror darkly
Then we shall see each other face to face

Somewhere in Seattle, young Kurt Cobain
Snuck out to the greenhouse put a bullet in his brain
snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above
some moments last forever, but some flare up with love, love, love

I will f-ing get through Ulysses this time

I mean it. Damnnit.

The only time I've been able to get further than 90 pages into this book was in college once when going up on acid. I managed to read a good hundred pages, but I just found I couldn't maintain interest after the sparkle faded from the universe.

Well, I found an awesome service, which I will recommend to my fellow cubemates. Please to follow the link to the Daily Lit Website. There you will find a great number of books, most of them free, which they will be kind enough to send to you in daily installments to your email account or blog-reader. I found Ulysses (320 some segments! - I'll finish it around the end of the year, I guess) and also Don Quixote. I am a bit leery of reading public domain translations, but what the hell, right? This is a prime example of "chunking" a large task into smaller tasks and doing each of those as you go.

I guess I'm adding "Ulysses" to my list of things to do in 2008. Wish they had "Finnegan's Wake", though.

Actors are important?

Great post over here at Isaac Butler's blog about the importance of actors and how training may have a place outside academia.

And it's not just great for his agreeing with me about the primacy of actors and audiences to the playmaking process.

It's part of a series of posts on his blog that I'm still digesting, and I'll probably have something to say about it later. That is all.

addendum - goals for 2008

I've also decided I will participate in National Novel Writing Month. Cuz I'm crazy. That'll be in November. If you happen to see me that month, please ask, in a high pitched, rising intonation, "Yeah? How's that book coming? Hmmm? Got an outline written? Hmmm? Maybe a main character? Coupla themes, hmmmm?" That'll be awesome.

So, who wants to do this with me?

Obama won in Iowa

It is interesting to note that second place John Edwards recieved 30% of the votes for a total of 716. To put that in perspective, second place Republican Mitt "I get my own planet when I die" Romney recieved 23,682. Anybody who thinks Obama's (or any even relatively progressive candidate) got it locked should rethink that.

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It is a testament to my father's love of this country that no President in his lifetime has been worthy of governing it.

goals for 2008

I almost titled this post "well, kids, what have we learned?" but..., ugh.

So, looking forward. Stuff to do.

- I am moving the fuck out of Kew Gardens. Yes. I. Am.
- I really want to do a comic book/graphic novel/comic strip. I have awesome, ridiculous scripts filled chock-a-block with obscure, esoteric references, excessive verbiage, and ludicrous plotlines. Artists! Call me! Seriously!
- regardless if the pathetic plea of the previous bullet point gets a response, I will write another comic script.
- I will work with some new people in the theatre (not that I don't love my previous collaborators, but I want new blood!). Steps have been taken and results already achieved: watch this space for details.
- I will be more social. I fell off the world last year, mostly out of a sense of guilt. I like to think I've flagellated myself enough for one decade. So that's enough of that. I want to be amongst friends! I like people and I want them to know it!
- I will continue writing the hell out of my new blog/project Four Every Day. I don't know what it means, but it feels significant. So I'ma gonna do it some more.

That's all. Are those resolutions? whatever. I'm also gonna look at things with "soft eyes" (stole that from The Wire). I'm choosing to use it to mean looking at things without trying to figure them out quite so much, without trying to see only what I want to see.

In some ways I lost a lot of ground last year, but I feel like I was really destroying the village to save it. I want to build things on a firm foundation, not just what I think I should be. I hurt a lot of people last year, too, and I hope to have learned from that to be honest in the first place, and not just when I've run out of options.

The theme last year was "I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me". I guess life is what happens after you think it's all over. I hope you have a wonderful year, full of love and happiness, and I really wish you well. God (in whatever flavor you happen to favor) bless.