The “holiday season” has come. Sweetie and I spent a nice day at home. She made pies and I went to the driving range. Then, we took one of Sweetie’s friends up on her invitation to Thanksgiving dinner. Very good food. I missed the traditional formal accoutrement of the holiday celebration, however. Would a table to sit at have been too much to ask for? Also, Sweetie’s friend’s boyfriend was a great and friendly guy, but a screenwriter. He’s made about as much money at it as I have, which is to say not a lot (maybe he’s made a little, I don’t know). Regardless, I almost always feel an awkward jealously thing when meeting other screenwriters. A big plus is that he has the potential to be a golf buddy.
(You thought I was going to get all introspective about my jealousy, but no.)
Typically, this time of year I feel a malaise. An ennui. I get grumpy. Why? Could it be that I don’t like to spend money on others? Maybe. Is it that the sun doesn’t provide the nourishment that it usually does? Could be. Is it lingering memories of my youth? Definitely. It sucks to have to pick which of your parents to spend Christmas with and that stuff sticks with you. (If you’re reading this and you are one of my parents, don’t beat yourself up about it. You did the best you could. I’ve got my issues, and I’m sure you have your issues.) This holiday grumpiness thing will come up in future posts. So be warned. But that's all for today.
Briefly:
- Walter, the guy who lived in his van on the street behind our house, has moved on. His truck and van are both gone. Where did he go? Did he migrate? Did the cops force him to go? I can’t say and I can't say I’ll miss him, but I’ll never forget him. Go with God, Walter.
- I had my meeting with ME at his house. It was cool. He made me coffee and we hung out. Just two writers shooting the bull. He didn’t want to read Chronic Psycho, but I didn’t care.
(Special to Sweetie’s mom, you could also send your support over the ethereal wires for me and DS to sell Chronic Psycho for low against mid to high sixes. [that’s Hollywood talk for “enough money to pay off all of our student loans and have enough left over for half of a house”.])
Friday, November 25, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Chronic Psycho Qu'est Que C'est
The Chronic Psycho reading was last night. Had a good turn out. Sweetie and me were the only ones not to read. The script has come a long way since I batted it around with the other CP, our friend in Singapore. The script is, in descending order, a stoner-comedy-horror-sex film, although it’s clearer to say stoner-horror comedy with a couple short episodes of explicit sex, nudity and phantasmal genitalia.
All the readers were exceptional. People were laughing throughout the reading. Sweetie and I worked hard to set the right tone for the evening. If I had had my druthers it would have been in the afternoon, but it was difficult to find an afternoon that was good for everyone. The trick is that it seemed like it would be a party because it was at night, but really it needed to be more like work, because it is my work. I debated getting some weed for the reading, but ultimately didn’t. I didn’t want to put out alcohol either at first, but we put out some beers and a bottle of wine and it all worked out fine. My big worry was that people would get drunk or high and not have good feedback or not read their parts well. That turned out not to be an issue.
The most gratifying thing was, and this is corny, I know, was that people seemed to be genuinely entertained by the script and to enjoy it.
The next step is to start getting some attention to it. I’ll show it to ME (a big time comedy writer), perhaps he’ll read it. My friend DS is very interested in it, and in fact, he has been a driving force behind its development. He read the first draft and encouraged me to continue to work on it when most of the other comments were ambiguous or reflected confusion with the script. The script had an uneasy birth. Anyway, I believe that DS wants to send it around with the intention of getting it produced. My goal is to get paying work. That’s my mantra: Chronic Psycho brings paying screenwriting jobs.
All the readers were exceptional. People were laughing throughout the reading. Sweetie and I worked hard to set the right tone for the evening. If I had had my druthers it would have been in the afternoon, but it was difficult to find an afternoon that was good for everyone. The trick is that it seemed like it would be a party because it was at night, but really it needed to be more like work, because it is my work. I debated getting some weed for the reading, but ultimately didn’t. I didn’t want to put out alcohol either at first, but we put out some beers and a bottle of wine and it all worked out fine. My big worry was that people would get drunk or high and not have good feedback or not read their parts well. That turned out not to be an issue.
The most gratifying thing was, and this is corny, I know, was that people seemed to be genuinely entertained by the script and to enjoy it.
The next step is to start getting some attention to it. I’ll show it to ME (a big time comedy writer), perhaps he’ll read it. My friend DS is very interested in it, and in fact, he has been a driving force behind its development. He read the first draft and encouraged me to continue to work on it when most of the other comments were ambiguous or reflected confusion with the script. The script had an uneasy birth. Anyway, I believe that DS wants to send it around with the intention of getting it produced. My goal is to get paying work. That’s my mantra: Chronic Psycho brings paying screenwriting jobs.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
A Post on "Getting Out There"
So the in the wake of the BigEvent the good work of our little nonprofit continues on. We have liquid assets for the moment so I’m going to buy some nice bookcases for the office. The preparations for next year’s awards begin as box after box of books come in to be judged. That’s why the need for bookcases. I’m also making a lot of phone calls thanking people. Which leads to...
I emailed big deal screenwriter ME (he’s the guy who polished my draft of the BigEvent script) yesterday. We’re going to get together next week for a chat about the “the business.” If I’m lucky he’ll agree to read Chronic Psycho. I’ll also tell him about Not for Profit, a sit-com I worked up last year for a contest. And since he created a sit-com that ran for five seasons he may be helpful. That’s the comedy angle.
I have also emailed RS, a big time working writer who I met at the awards. I asked him if it might be possible to chat. And if he agrees then I’ll ask him to read Sandow. He (and his wife) is completely in line with the “manifesting” and “positive vibration” action that is happening in my life right now. So I feel good about him.
There are two other writers who are also prime targets. I have not quite figured out the correct approach for them. Why I think of Hollywood people as skittish deer, I don’t know. Anyway. I have some comedy writing and some dramatic-period writing. Those are my two prongs.
My Free Will Astrology horoscope said this week, “People with less skill than you have won out because they had more raw drive than you. Now I'm alerting you to the possibility that the same damn thing could happen again soon unless you take vigorous action.”
Whether or not astrology is based in reality or not is something that I don’t want to debate. But let me tell you the truth of the above statement has moved me to vigorous action, and that’s the important thing.
I want to be able to support me and Sweetie (and little Rabbi Jr. when he or she comes along) with my writing.
Also, we are reading Chronic Psycho this weekend at my house. Having a few people over. It's kind of scary to open the thing up like that, but I think it's a great and important step.
I emailed big deal screenwriter ME (he’s the guy who polished my draft of the BigEvent script) yesterday. We’re going to get together next week for a chat about the “the business.” If I’m lucky he’ll agree to read Chronic Psycho. I’ll also tell him about Not for Profit, a sit-com I worked up last year for a contest. And since he created a sit-com that ran for five seasons he may be helpful. That’s the comedy angle.
I have also emailed RS, a big time working writer who I met at the awards. I asked him if it might be possible to chat. And if he agrees then I’ll ask him to read Sandow. He (and his wife) is completely in line with the “manifesting” and “positive vibration” action that is happening in my life right now. So I feel good about him.
There are two other writers who are also prime targets. I have not quite figured out the correct approach for them. Why I think of Hollywood people as skittish deer, I don’t know. Anyway. I have some comedy writing and some dramatic-period writing. Those are my two prongs.
My Free Will Astrology horoscope said this week, “People with less skill than you have won out because they had more raw drive than you. Now I'm alerting you to the possibility that the same damn thing could happen again soon unless you take vigorous action.”
Whether or not astrology is based in reality or not is something that I don’t want to debate. But let me tell you the truth of the above statement has moved me to vigorous action, and that’s the important thing.
I want to be able to support me and Sweetie (and little Rabbi Jr. when he or she comes along) with my writing.
Also, we are reading Chronic Psycho this weekend at my house. Having a few people over. It's kind of scary to open the thing up like that, but I think it's a great and important step.
Friday, November 11, 2005
BigEvent = Rebirth! (this is part 2, read part 1 first!)
5:30 p.m. The biggest fundraiser of the year approches in an hour and it looks like the eighty page program book will not arrive in time. For all the time and money we spent on it this is a disaster. It also means that the guests won't know what's going on, and the funders won't see their ads. This is a BFD.
I am nearly shivering with nerves. Thankfully our room captain has ordered his minions to move the twenty pound gift bags – did I mention that there were 400 of them? - from the staging area into the ball room. They are also placing them under the seats, a separate job. Didn’t have nearly enough people for this thing. There was no way we could have done it ourselves. It’s hard to get volunteers for the middle of the day on a weekday. Thankfully, Kid and her team of eye-rolling undergrads have done a bang-up job on the silent auction and it is now finished. Unfortunately that also means that they are going up to the room to change. No more help. I see the bag stuffers going up to change into their party clothes as well. I can only hope that my team has stuffed enough bags.
I too must go up the room to change. The thing will start soon. I’m wandering around. Not quite blindly. I made photocopies in the hotel business center. At $2.49 a minute it came to $18. That’ll go on the expense sheet. I need to change. The show must go on. I don’t know when it happened that I became the primary contact with the printer. I think no one else wants to know that the iceberg is coming. So. With Sweetie trailing me, she’s my booster tonight, I decide to go up to the room to change. No tribute/progam book. Failure is pushing her arm down my throat and stirring my insides in preparation of ripping my viscera out through my mouth.
But before I do, I decide to make one last call to the printer. Standing outside the valet parking, surrounded by cocktail dresses and sport coats, I call the printer.
“Can I talk to Jim?” I say.
“He wants to talk to you,” the guy who answers the phone says.
A pause.
“Hey, Rabbi, how’s it going? Did you get the poster and the postcards? I sent them over separately?”
“Yeah, Jim, I got them, thank you. What’s up with the tribute book?”
“I sent it over with two guys. I sent two guys in a white van.”
I look up and rounding the corner is a white van.
“It’s a white van?”
“Yeah, I sent two guys…
The van pulls up next to me, blocking half of the valet parking lane. The driver leans out the window.
“You from the printer?” I ask the driver.
“Yeah,” he says.
“They’re here, Jim. Thank you.”
I hang up the phone and me and one of the guys take half the books inside while the driver directs traffic around his lane blocking double – no triple! – parking job. I hold up the sample book for the event planner. Anuses unclench.
The helper and I go back out. We get the last half of the books.
The rest of the event went off well. I showered and changed. Sweetie ironed my shirt. My god I love her. I went downstairs and helped the PR folks round up photo ops.
The last-minute-script-rewriting board member arrive with an insert page for the MC. She gave it to him. Of course when the program actually started he ignored it.
Also, I ran into NK. (Read my summary of my relationship with NK here.) The first thing he said to me was, “I owe you a phone call.” I was so gratified. He had gotten Sandow but hadn’t yet read it. But he said that he would. I told him how I had been fretting about not contacting him directly when I sent Sandow. “Don’t worry. Just keep sending out your stuff,” he said. It was incredibly heartening.
The program went on. Sweetie and I split a meal. Some of the program was awkward, some of the speeches were blah, but it did tend to get better as it went on. And Gore Vidal has more stagecraft than Madonna. Wonderful.
Wonderful.
I am nearly shivering with nerves. Thankfully our room captain has ordered his minions to move the twenty pound gift bags – did I mention that there were 400 of them? - from the staging area into the ball room. They are also placing them under the seats, a separate job. Didn’t have nearly enough people for this thing. There was no way we could have done it ourselves. It’s hard to get volunteers for the middle of the day on a weekday. Thankfully, Kid and her team of eye-rolling undergrads have done a bang-up job on the silent auction and it is now finished. Unfortunately that also means that they are going up to the room to change. No more help. I see the bag stuffers going up to change into their party clothes as well. I can only hope that my team has stuffed enough bags.
I too must go up the room to change. The thing will start soon. I’m wandering around. Not quite blindly. I made photocopies in the hotel business center. At $2.49 a minute it came to $18. That’ll go on the expense sheet. I need to change. The show must go on. I don’t know when it happened that I became the primary contact with the printer. I think no one else wants to know that the iceberg is coming. So. With Sweetie trailing me, she’s my booster tonight, I decide to go up to the room to change. No tribute/progam book. Failure is pushing her arm down my throat and stirring my insides in preparation of ripping my viscera out through my mouth.
But before I do, I decide to make one last call to the printer. Standing outside the valet parking, surrounded by cocktail dresses and sport coats, I call the printer.
“Can I talk to Jim?” I say.
“He wants to talk to you,” the guy who answers the phone says.
A pause.
“Hey, Rabbi, how’s it going? Did you get the poster and the postcards? I sent them over separately?”
“Yeah, Jim, I got them, thank you. What’s up with the tribute book?”
“I sent it over with two guys. I sent two guys in a white van.”
I look up and rounding the corner is a white van.
“It’s a white van?”
“Yeah, I sent two guys…
The van pulls up next to me, blocking half of the valet parking lane. The driver leans out the window.
“You from the printer?” I ask the driver.
“Yeah,” he says.
“They’re here, Jim. Thank you.”
I hang up the phone and me and one of the guys take half the books inside while the driver directs traffic around his lane blocking double – no triple! – parking job. I hold up the sample book for the event planner. Anuses unclench.
The helper and I go back out. We get the last half of the books.
The rest of the event went off well. I showered and changed. Sweetie ironed my shirt. My god I love her. I went downstairs and helped the PR folks round up photo ops.
The last-minute-script-rewriting board member arrive with an insert page for the MC. She gave it to him. Of course when the program actually started he ignored it.
Also, I ran into NK. (Read my summary of my relationship with NK here.) The first thing he said to me was, “I owe you a phone call.” I was so gratified. He had gotten Sandow but hadn’t yet read it. But he said that he would. I told him how I had been fretting about not contacting him directly when I sent Sandow. “Don’t worry. Just keep sending out your stuff,” he said. It was incredibly heartening.
The program went on. Sweetie and I split a meal. Some of the program was awkward, some of the speeches were blah, but it did tend to get better as it went on. And Gore Vidal has more stagecraft than Madonna. Wonderful.
Wonderful.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
BigEvent = Holy Crap! (part 1)
I am writing this at 3:30 a.m. the night after the annual Big Literary Event. I tried to go to sleep at 12:30 and then woke at 3 a.m. with the adrenaline still working on me like Bolivian marching powder. I just had a shot of some Canadian whiskey that my father gave me last Christmas – the only alcohol in the house – to take the edge off. I hate that crap. Still I needed to do something.
My anxiety nearly overwhelmed me. I was very close to curling into a corner screaming and crying. I was eating my own head and digesting my own heart.
How can I explain in this short forum how much pressure I felt and how much nearly went wrong?
To begin, I got to the office yesterday morning, the morning of the BigEvent, knowing that there were changes to the program script to the Big Literary Event. What I didn’t know is that the night before I had sent the wrong version of the script to the president of our board, who had commented on it and sent it back. In addition she had sent it around to two other board members. So on a day when I shouldn’t have even been in the office I was spending two hours making changes to the script and hoping that I didn’t bruise any egos when they found out that we wouldn’t be using the draft they commented on. I did what damage control I could beforehand, but this feeling of waiting to be pounced on by board members loomed all day. Eventually it happened, but I’ll tell that tale when I get to it.
After driving in the rain to the Historic hotel in downtown Los Angeles, me and my small team got going putting together the gift bag. Now this bag weighs about twenty pounds. It is canvas and included a book by Gore Vidal as well as books by four of our literary winners, three magazines (Including a magazine weighing three pounds! We weighed it!), a very new biography of a blacklist collaborator/film director, and five postcards. This was the manual labor that consumed my day. Luckily we were able to get the wonderful, magnificent folks at the hotel to actually move the bags from the staging area to the room and they also put the bags under the seats. Those guys rock and they are great. Always do your events there. (I will comment now on my co-worker who wanted more help putting the bags together, help that would have come from the silent auction team. Understandably she wanted help. But I had to keep telling her that the silent auction is fundraising. The gift bags are not, and silent auction comes first. Ultimately, of course it all got done.)
Now we come to the soul churner, the seemingly never-ending bamboo under fingernail treatment. There’s this thing called the tribute book. It’s eighty pages long. It’s the program for the event, listing everything that happens. It’s also has essays on all the important awards, excerpts of the literary winners, and, most important, advertisements bought by our donors. Our printer told us that the book would be there on Tuesday, the day before the event. The book didn’t come on Tuesday. And by the time I got to the hotel at noon on Wednesday, the book still wasn’t there. Our event was in six and a half hours. I called the printer. He was still putting it together. He told me two-thirty. I was worried. It wasn’t my project like it was my responsibility, but I did much of the work writing the book and I had some control about how it was handled. It got to the printer late. I could have gotten it there sooner, and really I should have worked much harder to get it there sooner. Anyway. It needed to be there. If there’s no book, then the sponsors who bought ads would get very, very mad. So mad we might not get money from them. Two-thirty and three o’clock roll around. Still no books. I call the printer. It’s three o’clock, three and half hours before the start of the event. The printer tells me something like, “We’re still gluing them. They will be there at four-thirty.” Oh, god. This is the point when I started feeling the doomed gut feeling that I’ve only had in the past during life-changing personal failure. I was flipping out inside.
About this time I spent a half-hour on the phone with a board member who insisted on making script changes. It was too late, I told her, the script is done. We have no computer here. She pitched me on it. I told her I didn’t have the equipment. She insisted. Ultimately she and my boss agreed that she could bring in a replacement page. Half an hour. Like I’ve got nothing better to do. I returned to the assembly of the gift bags. I was close to tears although I don’t think it showed.
Four rolls around. No tribute books. I call the printer. He’s sending some other smaller things. But not the tribute book.
Five comes. Sweetie calls me. She’s leaving work. She’s going to help with the audio-visual components of the show. We’re an hour and a half out. Still no tribute books. Sweetie helped my heart quite a bit. I got a little of my mojo back.
Stay tuned for part 2...
My anxiety nearly overwhelmed me. I was very close to curling into a corner screaming and crying. I was eating my own head and digesting my own heart.
How can I explain in this short forum how much pressure I felt and how much nearly went wrong?
To begin, I got to the office yesterday morning, the morning of the BigEvent, knowing that there were changes to the program script to the Big Literary Event. What I didn’t know is that the night before I had sent the wrong version of the script to the president of our board, who had commented on it and sent it back. In addition she had sent it around to two other board members. So on a day when I shouldn’t have even been in the office I was spending two hours making changes to the script and hoping that I didn’t bruise any egos when they found out that we wouldn’t be using the draft they commented on. I did what damage control I could beforehand, but this feeling of waiting to be pounced on by board members loomed all day. Eventually it happened, but I’ll tell that tale when I get to it.
After driving in the rain to the Historic hotel in downtown Los Angeles, me and my small team got going putting together the gift bag. Now this bag weighs about twenty pounds. It is canvas and included a book by Gore Vidal as well as books by four of our literary winners, three magazines (Including a magazine weighing three pounds! We weighed it!), a very new biography of a blacklist collaborator/film director, and five postcards. This was the manual labor that consumed my day. Luckily we were able to get the wonderful, magnificent folks at the hotel to actually move the bags from the staging area to the room and they also put the bags under the seats. Those guys rock and they are great. Always do your events there. (I will comment now on my co-worker who wanted more help putting the bags together, help that would have come from the silent auction team. Understandably she wanted help. But I had to keep telling her that the silent auction is fundraising. The gift bags are not, and silent auction comes first. Ultimately, of course it all got done.)
Now we come to the soul churner, the seemingly never-ending bamboo under fingernail treatment. There’s this thing called the tribute book. It’s eighty pages long. It’s the program for the event, listing everything that happens. It’s also has essays on all the important awards, excerpts of the literary winners, and, most important, advertisements bought by our donors. Our printer told us that the book would be there on Tuesday, the day before the event. The book didn’t come on Tuesday. And by the time I got to the hotel at noon on Wednesday, the book still wasn’t there. Our event was in six and a half hours. I called the printer. He was still putting it together. He told me two-thirty. I was worried. It wasn’t my project like it was my responsibility, but I did much of the work writing the book and I had some control about how it was handled. It got to the printer late. I could have gotten it there sooner, and really I should have worked much harder to get it there sooner. Anyway. It needed to be there. If there’s no book, then the sponsors who bought ads would get very, very mad. So mad we might not get money from them. Two-thirty and three o’clock roll around. Still no books. I call the printer. It’s three o’clock, three and half hours before the start of the event. The printer tells me something like, “We’re still gluing them. They will be there at four-thirty.” Oh, god. This is the point when I started feeling the doomed gut feeling that I’ve only had in the past during life-changing personal failure. I was flipping out inside.
About this time I spent a half-hour on the phone with a board member who insisted on making script changes. It was too late, I told her, the script is done. We have no computer here. She pitched me on it. I told her I didn’t have the equipment. She insisted. Ultimately she and my boss agreed that she could bring in a replacement page. Half an hour. Like I’ve got nothing better to do. I returned to the assembly of the gift bags. I was close to tears although I don’t think it showed.
Four rolls around. No tribute books. I call the printer. He’s sending some other smaller things. But not the tribute book.
Five comes. Sweetie calls me. She’s leaving work. She’s going to help with the audio-visual components of the show. We’re an hour and a half out. Still no tribute books. Sweetie helped my heart quite a bit. I got a little of my mojo back.
Stay tuned for part 2...
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Other Stuff
So, with Libby’s “Not Guilty” plea, it appears that the administration, and the right in general, has sunk its entire nest egg in rope manufacture. Rope that they are using to hang themselves. This gives me some breathing room for other stuff.
Here’s the NK update. I guess he’s retiring. I heard about NK from a co-worker. He’s a big time manager of two of “the greatest actors of their generation” (my quote) as well as some other folks. I asked my co-worker to hook me up and she very graciously did. He spends a lot of time in London so I gave him Constance (I hadn’t finished Sandow or I would have given that to him). He read it, which was very cool, and then he met me and gave me some general feedback. He also gave the contact info for a couple of producers in Britain. I made phone calls and sent emails but nothing came of it. Then I made my mistake. I sent him Sandow without telling him personally. We had discussed the script before I finished it, but I hadn’t gotten his explicit assent to send it over. I told his assistant that I was sending it, but I should have known better. Anyway, that was a couple months ago. I've seen him since then, but he hasn’t mentioned Sandow.
Oh! And I saw him at the theatre one night, and I think he saw me, but I was too chicken to go say “hi.” So, now I hear he’s retiring from management. Should I call and follow up now or what?
The BigEvent at work is looming. Three days. I’m excited. I finally got the script for the program to the Big Time writer who is doing our rewrite. Now if he can get it back in time we’ll be sailing smooth.
My fortune from Empress Pavilion was, “A new work opportunity will avail itself.” What could it be?
And finally some prognostication that will get me thrown one of those secret black site jails... With all the press that the Supreme Court has gotten lately with the death of Chief Rehnquist, Roberts' two nominations, Meirs, and now Alito, the profile of the Court has been raised to a dangerous degree. The Secret Service (or whatever agency performs this function) needs to step up security around the Justices of the Supreme Court. Especially if Alito gets confirmed, the temptation will be too great for potential assassins. The attack could come from either the left or the right, both have plenty of reasons to knock off a Justice. A left-wing nutjob might target Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas (we can only hope – just kidding, ha, ha. You can put that down now…) or even a confirmed Alito to “re-balance” the court. Probably a more likely scenario would be a right-wing nutbar going after Souter (poor David, no respect) or Ginsberg. The reasons are obvious. Can you imagine heading into 2008 with three Bush Supreme Court appointees? (If I disappear in a few days call my congressman!)
One thing to look for with Alito, what are his corporate rulings like? Does he tend to favor corporations over voters or does he side with the people? This will be the silent, but deadly issue of the Roberts Court (Stinky poo!) I’ve heard that Roberts rulings in this area are dismal, tending to favor corporate rights rather than individuals.
Here’s the NK update. I guess he’s retiring. I heard about NK from a co-worker. He’s a big time manager of two of “the greatest actors of their generation” (my quote) as well as some other folks. I asked my co-worker to hook me up and she very graciously did. He spends a lot of time in London so I gave him Constance (I hadn’t finished Sandow or I would have given that to him). He read it, which was very cool, and then he met me and gave me some general feedback. He also gave the contact info for a couple of producers in Britain. I made phone calls and sent emails but nothing came of it. Then I made my mistake. I sent him Sandow without telling him personally. We had discussed the script before I finished it, but I hadn’t gotten his explicit assent to send it over. I told his assistant that I was sending it, but I should have known better. Anyway, that was a couple months ago. I've seen him since then, but he hasn’t mentioned Sandow.
Oh! And I saw him at the theatre one night, and I think he saw me, but I was too chicken to go say “hi.” So, now I hear he’s retiring from management. Should I call and follow up now or what?
The BigEvent at work is looming. Three days. I’m excited. I finally got the script for the program to the Big Time writer who is doing our rewrite. Now if he can get it back in time we’ll be sailing smooth.
My fortune from Empress Pavilion was, “A new work opportunity will avail itself.” What could it be?
And finally some prognostication that will get me thrown one of those secret black site jails... With all the press that the Supreme Court has gotten lately with the death of Chief Rehnquist, Roberts' two nominations, Meirs, and now Alito, the profile of the Court has been raised to a dangerous degree. The Secret Service (or whatever agency performs this function) needs to step up security around the Justices of the Supreme Court. Especially if Alito gets confirmed, the temptation will be too great for potential assassins. The attack could come from either the left or the right, both have plenty of reasons to knock off a Justice. A left-wing nutjob might target Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas (we can only hope – just kidding, ha, ha. You can put that down now…) or even a confirmed Alito to “re-balance” the court. Probably a more likely scenario would be a right-wing nutbar going after Souter (poor David, no respect) or Ginsberg. The reasons are obvious. Can you imagine heading into 2008 with three Bush Supreme Court appointees? (If I disappear in a few days call my congressman!)
One thing to look for with Alito, what are his corporate rulings like? Does he tend to favor corporations over voters or does he side with the people? This will be the silent, but deadly issue of the Roberts Court (Stinky poo!) I’ve heard that Roberts rulings in this area are dismal, tending to favor corporate rights rather than individuals.
Wednesday, November 02, 2005
Black Sites
Listen, you can hear it...
What's that you say?
It's the sound of an administration trying to unring the g-d d-mned bell.
This stuff is just going to keep on coming.
NBC and the Washington Post report that the CIA is detaining, interrogating (and certainly torturing) al-Qaida captives at so-called "Black Sites" in the former Soviet Union. Known to only a few in the administration and to the operatives working there. No oversite.
Doesn't it make you want to vomit? Or cry?
I'm not evil. I don't want my country to be evil either.
What's that you say?
It's the sound of an administration trying to unring the g-d d-mned bell.
This stuff is just going to keep on coming.
NBC and the Washington Post report that the CIA is detaining, interrogating (and certainly torturing) al-Qaida captives at so-called "Black Sites" in the former Soviet Union. Known to only a few in the administration and to the operatives working there. No oversite.
Doesn't it make you want to vomit? Or cry?
I'm not evil. I don't want my country to be evil either.
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