A Winnie!

A long time between posts, that is for sure.  But - rest assured dear reader, I am still (Stubbornly) at work with the task of selling my screenplay.

The past few years have seen a lot of screenplay competitions.  I always make the first cut, but never the finalists.  I believe it's because the people that award the laurels think kid-friendly movies are not marketable.  That is bullshit.  Kid movies always sell.  I could go off on a tangent right here about everything that comes out of Hollywood now is a remake of an old blockbuster, a sequel or a prequel of an old blockbuster, or just pure crap.  But that is obvious to any moviegoer and I will let it rest at that.

I entered the EQUUS film festival and won first prize - a Winnie! - for Screenplay - Literary.  A poser to me because aren't screenplays by definition literary?  First thing that happened is that my copyrighted screenplay got published and is available on Amazon.  So, that's a foot in the door, dear readers!

Also, I was contacted by one of the EQUUS staff who has expressed interest in optioning my screenplay for 18 months!  She's meeting with her attorney today and will phone tomorrow.

'Nother Year Come 'n Gone

It's been a long time since I've written.

Stubborn is still dead in the water.  Hubby has a poker-playing friend who plays with B-listers.  Poker player promises to distribute Stubborn investor packets to anyone showing an interest.  That is where I am.

Something will come along, on its own sweet time.

Another year, come and gone.

So, where is your bucket?

I'm at SEATAC which is synonymous for miserable.  The saving grace is that I'm at Vino Volo, a cool place to sit and have a decent glass of wine and nary a TV-sports screen in sight.  It is lovely, as far as an airport bar goes.

General misery, etc., for going back to work in the miserable place that pays my bills most handsomely.  My ex-boyfriend Stevie summed it up most appropriately:  the things we do for money, doll.

Overheard a comment:  "where's your bucket?"

Indeed.  How is my bucket list coming along?  How m'I progressing?  Tough call on account of I didn't have one.

A Lotta Water's Gone Under the Bridge

That title fits in a bunch of ways.

1 - (and engineers love to enumerate) Stubborn will be reborn within the next two weeks.  It's been tweaked and revised ad infinitum.  This is in preparation to send it to the lovely Raven who has a Friend.

2 - I've been in Anchorage the past two days instead of my normal work routine in Prudhoe Bay (aka Pestilence Place).  If I really wanted to be anal I would subtitle this in to sub-sections (a) and (b).  But I will spare you the misery.

In my visit to Anchorage I had some spare time to cruise by my old house.  And where I first found a job as an Engineer.  I can't tell you how depressing that was.  Everything came flooding back.  That ever happen to you?  And everything I remembered was overwhelmingly bad.  Really bad.  What the hell did I ever come up here for?  This place is awful.  Awful.  Anyone trying to tell you something different is trying to sell you real estate.  Hey, you want to dispute my opinion?  This place spawned that imbecile Sarah Palin.

I met a woman today for lunch that I first met when I worked at the pump station in Delta Junction fourteen years ago.  Lunch was bad, too.  How so?  This woman had to quit her job to avoid being fired because of political pressure.  See, she didn't fit in.  She was 'rough around the edges' and hadn't learned to parse her phrases to be politically correct, easily digestible pablum.  She was chosen as a scapegoat.  And she chose to 'retire' so she could retain her health insurance benefits.  She was a sad skeleton of the person I knew before.  Where is there justice in this world?  I used to believe in such a ghost.

I used to be like this skeleton.  I didn't have a degree in engineering and was treated with the same lack of respect and courtesy.  It didn't matter where I came from nor what I knew.  I was just a dumb girl.  And that I was probably Easy.  That was the way I was treated.

Somehow, with the conferring of my engineering degree and "all rights and privileges afforded" things got turned around.  People don't treat me like a used tampon anymore and I just can't figure.  I guess it's because I can push back now with a vengeance, and damn if I don't.  But I did pre-degree and I was just smirked at.   Like my non-degreed Delta Junction friend.

If there was any justice in the world, which there certainly isn't, ________________________.

You fill in the blank.

Packing for Mars

This is from a book I just finished by Mary Roach.  It was her last paragraph, and boy, what a paragraph is was - I've separated it out in easy-to-digest bites:

"The nobility of the human spirit grows harder for me to believe in.  War, zealotry, greed, malls, narcissism.

I see a backhanded nobility in excessive, impractical outlays of cash prompted by nothing loftier than a species joining hands and saying "I bet we can do this."

Yes, the money could be better spent on Earth.  But would it?  Since when has money saved by government redlining been spent on education and cancer research?  It is always squandered.  Let's squander some on Mars.

Let's go out and play."

The Lovely Raven Revisits

Friday was a nadir in my screenwriting endeavors and frankly my life.  You get to that point where you wonder why you're even bothering.  All the creatures from the dark side of your subconscious swim over to the light and start yowling and screaming:  It'll never work!  You're crazy for trying!  ...Well, you get the picture.  I'm certain of few things but this is one:  I'm not the only one that faces these demons on a daily basis.

Woke up on Satuday at a cruel, cruel hour, even before the alarm, ever deeper in Nadir-ville.  Came to work and in my email in-box was a holiday message from the lovely Raven:  How are you?  You have been on my mind.  How is the screenplay coming?  I took that as a Good Sign.

There is Nothing New Except a Shooting Star

Ecclesiastes:  (and forgive me if I misspelled it)  There Is Nothing New Under The Sun.  The sun goes around and it comes around.  It it all utter foolishness, all chasing the wind.  

I haven't updated this blog in a while because, There Is Nothing New Under The Sun.  Still slogging through re-writing and how many times do you want to read that trite phrase?  So I haven't written.

This morning I was thinking of the musings of Solomon in Ecclesiastes.  But riding in the clapped-out derelict school bus that is relegated to taking the pump station personnel to and from work, this morning, this morning I saw a shooting star.  At oh-my-god-it's-early-thirty.

Of course it's pitch black dark in Prudhoe Bay now for about 23 out of 24 hours so a pitch black dark sky is the norm.  But not a shooting star.  I heard words that were mine:  Oh wow.  Wow.  Didja see that?  No one else did.  Someone said, "Well, you gotta make a wish!  You gotta make a wish on a falling star!"

Cripes, have I become that far removed from childhood that I'd forgotten that set-in-stone LAW?

Evidently.

So wish I did.  We will see if it comes true.