May 2005 Archives

Alton Brown commercials
Starship Troppers Woo Hoo song
Pepto Bismol black tongue
I ate mango skin
Christian Stella

Sadly, the stats only go back 100 hits... so these are only the searches since yesterday.

In other news, all three vehicles at this house have had a flat tire in the last month... coincidence? I think not! Freakin' construction on these roads. Nails, screws and wood with nails and screws sticking out of it. Sometimes you feel like a victim.

Because I can't sit still, www.christianstella.com is now a temporary site. Enjoy!

More from super-secret land in time. For now, I've got much work to do.

$5.19 a year for a domain name at GoDaddy.com, it's crazy. They give you $5 off their normal price if you sign up for one of their services. So I then signed up for their $2 traffic fact service and cancelled it immediately afterward. Finally, there's a coupon code "David" that gets another $1 off. Total, $5.19.

We're going to be on German television, apparently. The camera people will be coming to our house a week from Monday. They'll be spending an entire day with us.

Supposedly, it's a German show comparable to Dateline called, Taff. You can check out their website here. Though, the website is, of course, in German.

Exploring their site, I've made the discovery that Taff is also a great source of softcore pornography. Now, how come Dateline isn't like this?

Nothing.

Hope all is well with you today. All is well with me except for that I am sick-ish, that I haven't been getting much sleep and that I'm busy as all fuck. Monday I'll feel better all around.

Next Tuesday I'm going into the city to see Chuck Palahniuk. This Wednesday is going to be a hard Ribcage story to write, if only because I am exhausted and will be more. Update on my weight loss book is that it is mostly done, but it is mostly waiting to be finished.

I want to make a new song called The Birds but I can't. I don't have time. I'm a busy man, you know?

I have animal friends, they keep me company while I'm writing. I do most of my writing on my old computer that I set up in our sun room with all the big windows. The animals spend their time outside the windows, eating what looks to be cabbage in our yard. I'm sure it isn't cabbage, but that's what it looks like. There's a big rabbit and a baby rabbit and then there's squirrels and chipmunks and many, many birds. Obviously the rabbit family is the most important to watch, because you don't see a rabbit everyday. Well, I do... but that's besides the point. I will have to name them soon.

That's where last week's story came from, you know? Well, from the Bleeding Hearts in my front yard and the animals that kept me company as I wrote. From the deer that scared the shit out of me two weeks ago.

I wanted to write this humorous essay, but I'm afraid the time has passed. I'm a busy man, you know? I wrote that thing on revolving doors last year, I Feel the Need to Impress Girls with My Command of Big City Revolving Doors... it's one of the reasons Elise and I are together... me rambling on about revolving doors. It was also much loved at the Chuck Palahniuk Writer's Workshop. I wanted to write another one of those called My Cats Pee on Computer Cables, but I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon.

I posted two weeks ago's story, Animal Assignments on the Writer's Workshop, it was not much loved. 3 out of 5 stars overall, buy many, many ass reamings. A few 2 star reviews. Doesn't make me feel bad or anything. I'm in a good place right now, writing wise. I've got this two year plan in my head and I am more than beating expectations. Life can be surprising like that. I can't say anything else.

Also... some will be happy to see the new format of the stories on the site. No more bold, blurry, double-spaced text! Hooray! I am going to work on reformatting all of the old stories in time, but it's quite time consuming. Plus, I'm going to start revising a few of the old stories and they are going to need to be re-uploaded anyway... don't need to do everything twice. You may also notice the main page loading faster now. The stories have always been images to deter plagerism and retain formatting that you lose on webpages... well, now... the nicer, cleaner images are less than half of the file size that they use to be! And they're made in MS Paint... go figure! I guess sometimes the best solution is the easiest. Before I was exporting from Word into Adobe Acrobat, exporting from Acrobat as a very large JPEG that I then shrunk and cropped in Photoshop. What a waste of time! You can copy text and paste it as a crystal clear image in MS Paint!

Robert Cake scoring notes for Anthony when matching the score to the scenes in the movie...
-And She Was Holding A Candle - on the cut to Jeremy eating the cake.
-Got to Get a New Job - when Jeremy says, "You lost your job?"
-I Don't Think This Merits a Stay in My Vacationing Boat Yacht - when ET says, "Robert?" this is right before Jeremy says, "Robert! Of course!"
-Chris Cries Tomatoes - on the cut to Chris crying.
-Pissing on the Memories - at the beginning of pissing scene… fit it nice and good for me.
-Car Choir - 8:26b (Anthony, I don't remember what this is anymore… but it's in the same chunk as the clamato scenes… and it's named Car… so it must have to do with a car)
-Golden Girls Ashes Transition - at 3:39 b
-Guttural Love - Starts as Ryan is walking out of the apartment. It should kick in right when it cuts to Jeremy trying to push his guts in.

So what else is in my My Documents folder?

The streetlights come on as we're kissing and things between us are momentarily cosmic.

Unfinished Ribcage Theatre

{ cooking classes }

Her teacher says it again. "Béchamel."

Emily says it again. "What?"

Her teacher, he gets such a kick.

***

He wakes up with an entire box of Froot Loops spread over him, his bed. He's overslept.

Last time she couldn't wake him, it was her footprint in grape jelly, stepped upon his bare chest.

Before that, a blueberry pancake draped over his face.

This is what she does when her efforts to wake him up for breakfast fall flat.

***

We'd reverted back to elementary school. Ten thousand feet up, four hours until landing, three rows of seats apart and we're passing notes.

Her first note: The people next to me are playing travel Monopoly. I hate them.

What the hell is this?

When you unscrew a pair of scissors and remove the screw that holds them together, you can hold just the top or bottom half and you are holding a scissor.

Notes for Orbiting Ethan Oort (a script written by Jeremy and myself) that thankfully never panned out and in some sad cases did...

Simon Spinks spontaneously combusts.

Pirate Ben gets show for discovering the Crystal Skull. Pirate Benjamin's Mysterious Treasures… On, The Exploration Station.

Winnie burns her shirt. To second generation Jupiter girl she says, "Don't let your brother have sex with you."

"I can go outside and pick a flower and tell you if it's going to rain. I don't even have to pick the flower."

"I don't need this to tell me who I am anymore." Winnie pulls her shirt off… boobs all exposed and shit. Damn. Jeremy gives her a t-shirt that says, "I helped build the Hoover Dam." "Did you really?" "No… my dad's shirt." "Oh, did your dad?" "No. He bought it."

Gary Perry and Pirate Ben, hanging with Mr. Cooper.

Define Ethan and Venus with more jazz. Snappier dialogue. Raise the importance level of their relationship. Find the cuteness that all those Romantic Comedy writing fucks find.

What is this? Part two.

She says, "The universe isn't shaped… it's just kind of big."

***

Well, I had fun, how about you? I learned nothing.

You should feel how heavy it is. You should hold what I have, you really should.

You wear yourself out writing a book. You expend all energy, and then you get that one last burst. The burst you get from holding ninety percent of it in your hands.

And when that burst is gone and the book is done, then the real terror sets in. I'm gearing up for it all. I've never made it this far before. My writing has never had a destination. Representation.

This is looming over my head, this stuff. Exciting one day. Terrifying the next.

I'll get around to explaining this stuff. Even if it is after the fact.

There is nothing else going on in my life right now. Just THIS. And this is going to take some time still.

They now list statistically inprobable phrases from within the book... just for fun. Phrases in the book that appear rarely throughout all other scanned books on the site. For instance, my father's book has used the statistically improbable phrase, "wear mitts."

Dave Eggers' Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius has, "green fluid."

Now that's all fun and cool, but that's not all. They now have a "concordance" page listing the top 100 words used in the book and how many times they are used! My mother's name appears in my father's book 82 times. Stella appears 263 times.

Together, "fuck" and "fucking" appear in Heartbreaking Work 248 times.

Finally there is the new "text stats" feature. I can't tell you how many times I looked at a book wondering, genuinely WANTING to know how many words it was. I have to know these things, don't ask why. I look at my 43,000 word manuscript that will barely make it to 60,000 words when finished and I ask, is that too short? What can I compare that to?

Not Heartbreaking Work, that's for sure. Heartbreaking Work is 155,000 words long. It's understandable, it's a rather wordy book... but I was thinking closer to 120,000 words.

My father's book comes in at 48,000 words... 12,000 less than my target. Now that's more like it. Of course, his book IS a cookbook first and foremost.

Reading levels are also calculated. My father's book is suitable for a ninth grade reading level, which is actually the highest of any of the books I just looked at. Heartbreaking Work is a sixth grade. I guess it's because my father's book is chock full of directions and Heartbreaking Work says "fuck" a lot, but the calculations seem hit and miss. Amy Hempel got a reading level just under fifth grade and it's probably because she uses short words, short sentences... but she's anything but elementary. Sometimes I have to read her stuff over again just to take it all in.

Once again, Amazon.com is the shit. How else would I know how many words are in Stephen King's The Stand? Do you know how long I've wanted to know that?

464,218 words.

The last few weeks have been a little repetitive. I decided to break away. And I hope you enjoy!

My book is on that final stretch, it's just this really long final stretch. The good news is that I know how it ends. It's funny that I could have been confused to how an autobiographical book ends, but I was. I knew what needed to be wrapped up, I just didn't know how. I know my themes, it's just going back and elaborating upon them that has to be done. I knocked the ending (sadly, only the ending) of my terrible first novel out of the park, I expect no different here. So now I know how to wrap it up. I know and knowing is a bitch. Writing willy nilly is now out of the picture because I can see the WHOLE picture and so my brain is smoking and I'm looking at 180 pages that needs to be 225 and I'm trying to fill the gaps and fill them perfectly. I have to know my book inside and out, basically. I have to go into a hole, I think.

Tomorrow is a big day for the book... a lot of weight lifted... but that's all I can say. Tomorrow relieves some of the pressure.

I hope to be on nitpicking status with this thing next month. I want it done and combed. June 15th sounds like a good date, because it's my father's own book deadline.

Chuck Palahniuk wrote an essay on his site about book structure and it was very, very assuring. I've been thinking of Ribcage as a novel for some time, but a novel of stories... he called it a "quilt" structure. The sum equals more than the parts. A little reassuring. What's more, he said the first time he saw it done was in Douglas Coupland's Generation X... the first time I saw it done was in Coupland's Life After God.

I'm looking forward to having more time to focus on Ribcage when this book is finished. I have many big ideas that I've been putting off and putting off. The great thing is that everything is interchangable, expendable when it comes to the whole project. When I'm finished, the weak can disappear and the strong can be dispersed, as long as they aren't necessary to the plot and there will be one of those... plots. The seeds of the plot are already there, you just don't know that yet.

I am also going to start revising the stories as I go. Old stories on the site may soon be noted as revised on the archive page... better to make everything stronger as I go, then to overwhelm myself later.

Better to have stronger pieces for submission to more and more magazines. Not to mention, I am going to actively participate in Chuck Palahniuk's writing workshop, where I receive critique and criticism and can work toward getting a piece in an anthology book at the end of the year, introduced by Chuck himself.

These are my goals for this year.

To finish this book.
To bring Ribcage to that next level.
To try my damndest at getting in that Chuck anthology.

And if life is smooth sailing... to start work on my more traditional Ribcage prequel novel. The one about Jonathon. The one I've been taking photos for.

That is all for now... I smell another long sprawling post tomorrow. Gotta bring this blog up to speed.

To my Florida friends, it's on the shelf at the Downtown Disney Virgin Megastore.

To everyone else, you can click here for a handy dandy store locator.

My story is on page 54. The magazine is definitely worth checking out... it's really well done.

The photos that I posted were taken in West Point, New York, specifically the West Point Military Academy. A beautiful place, even under the circumstances.

Finally, Elise's car is in the driveway. GOOD AS NEW. We can breathe out. We can actually leave the house!