God, I've been thinking when did my Holocaust fascination start and I have to blame those ultra progressive hippie people who taught at my high school. We learned everything about the mass murder and torture of people. First how the American indians were wiped out, then how the Hawaiian people got wiped out, then slavery before the civil war, then how the Japanese were interned during World War 2, then the civil rights movement and Jim Crow laws in the South, then the Holocaust, then the killings happening in South America and my last high school memory, those pits of bodies they discovered in Rwanda, I think or some african country and then of course apartheid in South Africa. Oh yeah, how could I forget, of course the biggest hippie issue of them all, The Vietnam War.

I read my first holocaust book at age 16 and there were no jewish people in my high school. It was what we had to read in history or was it English class. Then I went to hippie liberal college and it was more of the same except this time I was going to school with kids whose grandparents or relatives had numbers tatooed on their skin and were survivors of the Jewish death camps. And I got to hear all about that. I even took courses on the Holocaust because my college offered them at the time and even consider taking Yiddish just to feed my holocaust obsession. Alas, no yiddish but 2 years of russian just in case I wanted to discuss the russian jewish pogroms with someone.

What strange paths your life takes you on sometimes. I guess all this knowledge will come in handy when I write my Elf Girl Chronicles, but who knew at the time.

I'm in a melancholy mood tonight so I'm listening to a Bobby Caldwell cd, which has got sickie love songs like Heart of Mine and Next Time (I Fall). I heard a song of his on the way to work this morning and now I have to play his music.

I wouldn't have known about him at all, except I saw at one of those Embarcadero concerts and much to my surprise, I sort of fell in love with his music. He's a blondie guy who sounds like's black, but he's not as disgusting as Michael Bolton and that fuzzy icky hair of his. Boz Scaggs covered a lot of Caldwell's song and I like him too.

Can you believe this is the kind of music I listened to in high school? Mellow smooth R&B. For some reason, this kind of music fits very well when you live in the tropics. It's lazy and mellow and dreamy and the kind of music you want to hear when you're staring out at the ocean late at night over one too many cocktails. I guess the girl can move away from the Islands but you can never quite get the island stuff out of the girl.

I've been making notes on the Elf People curse and the only thing I can relate it to is the Jewish Holocaust. No wonder I was so fasicnated by the Holocaust and all the stories. The Nazis tried to destroy the jewish people and their culture, enslaving them, separating the children from the adults and sending them to separate camps, separating them from their families, taking away first their right to own property and then to have jobs and then in the end, in their "Final Solution" killing them and burning away their bodies as evidence.

Just when I write this, it makes me cry, and I'm not even jewish. Maybe as someone who had an incarnation where my people were completely destroyed, I totally relate. I don't know.

I think I will model the destruction of the elf people with what happened during the Holocaust. I guess I should be glad that I've read a ton of books on the Holocaust and even went through a period where I wrote nothing by Holocaust poetry. I haven't looked at those poems in years. I think I was in my dark period when I wrote them, when thoughts of slashing my wrists or overdosing on those 40 hits of pharmaceutical speed I carried with me whereever I went used to flood my brain regulary like the river in a tropical country during the rainy season, only my rainy season was never ending.

I should be writing my screenplay tonight. I have 24 pages due on Monday, but I have been incredibly lazy all week. Actually I was out Tuesday, but I could have written on Wednesday or Thursday. Instead I read, farted around, indulged in my sick obsession with playing solitaire. It's like I'm into the frustration of never winning. It mirrors my life right now.

I don't know if I can go back and read my holocaust poetry, nor do I know if I can reread the holocaust literature. I end up crying as I read and it takes forever to read anything.

I have been thinking alot about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but it is hard to think rationally about it when I spent years of my life reading about the jewish holocaust. It makes me wonder if it's happening all over again, except in a very subtle way. There are already reports of anti-semitic attacks in Europe. The press, who can believe them. Chris Matthews from Hard Ball said that Ehud Barak told him that Arafat has lights but he doesn't turn them on because he wants the press and world sympathy. How you can believe in the Palestinian cause when its leader has to resort to trickery like that? If what the Palestinians say is true, then why do they resort to scuh tactics? Where are the hundreds of body in Jenin? I don't believe they even exist. I believe the press is being fooled or more cynically, they are letting themselves be fooled.

And when I hear about this sort of stuff going on, the holocaust pictures and stories flood through my mind and it freaks me out and I cannot help but support the Israeli cause. Those who forget the past are bound to exprerience or repeat it. And I cannot forget the Holocaust. Nor do I suspect can many of the Israelis. Most of the people who survived the Holocaust are dead now but their stories and their memories live on and they do not let us forget.

I've been thinking about my elf girl stories, which I am tentatively calling the Elf Girl Chronicles. Here is the information I've gathered so far. The Elf People lived in Lemuria and were destroyed and enslaved during Atlantean times. A curse was put on them by the Sons of Belial. Actually it was unholy triune of three evil forces, Satan, an Anti-Christ Figure and the Sons of Belial. This makes sense because to defeat the triune godhead of father, son and holy spirit, you need a triune of evil as well. Satan is the god, the anti-christ is the son, and the sons of belial are the holy spirit.

The Elf People lived on the coast next to the Mer People, which makes sense because the Mer people were also cursed. Whatever happened during Atlantean times when all the non-human creatures were destroyed, it was the Elf People and Mer people that were cursed, probably because they aligned themselves since their kingdoms were next to the each other.

But the Elf People knew what was to happen to them, since they had the gift of prophecy, so they set up special schools for the children who would carry on the culture if the adult elves were destroyed. What the Elf People miscalculated was the totality of the curse. They had thought that the children would be spared, but they were wrong.

In this one school, where my elf girl character is attending, there are three teachers. Peetay - a historian, Talluk - a scribe and Rojay - a time keeper. There are other children from the different non-human races attending, but the school is predominantly Elf. One of the teacher is from the Delvic community. Her name is Flota and she is a deva of flowers. Flota teaches how to talk to flowers and gain their knowledge. It is from Flota's world that we now are able to use flower essences as herbal medicine.

The Elf people differ from the human people because they have a 12-strand DNA instead of the human 2-strand DNA. The 12-strand DNA gives the elf people the following qualities; 1) the ability to have visions or clairvoyance 2) the ability to hear prophecy which is clairaudience 3) the ability to know without knowing which is claircognizance 4) the ability to sense psychic vibration in the body or clairsentience and 5) the ability to channel. I'm sure there are more abilities that elf people have, I just have to think about it some more.

The Elf people are short, about 5 ft 7in is the tallest height. Their torsos are shaped differently than humans. Their rib cage goes all around to their back and they have an extra bone on the sides of their body, making their skeletal structure different from that of humans.

I don't have the notes on the curse that destroyed the Elf People's cultures and enslaved them, but I will write them out soon. Suffice it is to say that the curse was of an incredible magnitude. The curse had several layers, most of which had to do prevent the elf people from banding together to fight against their own enslavement. There was no national unity, no financial or property rights and there was also a rupture in the light body template, so when an elf did die, they would not know how to reincarnate back into their original form. It's as if the the curse, by destroying the upper half of the light body template, made an elf forget what he or she looked like. The curse entailed that a human DNA chain be inserted over the elf dna chain, so when an elf reincarnated back into the body, the top half would be human and the bottom half of their light body template would be elf. The reality was that the elf would reincarnate into a human form but would have numerous health problems due to the overlay of the human dna onto of the elf dna. The elf would be human, but still retain some of the elf physical characteristics. Some of the talents like clairaudience and clairsentience would be present in the elf, but with no memory or knowledge of how to use them.

I think the elf girl chronicles will take at least 5 years to write. It's so hard to create a new world. Everything in the world has to be thought of at least explained in physical as well as emotional and spiritual terms. I need to work backwards I think and work on the curse first. The magnitude fo the curse will tell me alot about the Elf People culture.

I did some work with my baseball character Jimmy, and I think I kind of like him. Is that incestous of me? I mean, I'm his creator and all, so in a way I'm like his mummy, so can I be attracted to him? I sort of like that I created a male character that I wouldn't mind having a flingie with. I guess that's better than having a male character you don't really like, although I think at some point in my writing career I will have to create absolutely evil characters that I detest.

My Jimmy guy, is 6 ft 4 in, has brown eyes and is freckled with reddish blonde hair. God, I guess I had to work my current obsession for red haired men into this screenplay somehow. He's a guy-guy, he's very straight forward, shoots from the hip, pretty much says what's on his mind and is huge damned flirt. He doesn't like his women too thin, instead prefering women who are shapely with a nice rack. Jimmy like his women with long hair and he wants them to be soft spoken,. sweet and intelligent and even a little spunky. He's not like alot of guys I meet in the SF Bay Area. Jimmy excudes major masculine energy and he doesn't try to temper himself by being politically correct, in fact he's way not. He's media savvy but we were talking in private so he kind of let loose with what he was saying. He's a guy-guy. He likes women to be women and men to be men and he won't feminize himself for anyone. If people don't like him, he doesn't really care. I think he's secure enough in himself to know that sometimes people talk nonsense and it's not about him.

I asked him what he thought of me and he said I was little too intellectual for his taste but that I was really cute. Thanks Jimmy. He's the kind of guy who goes to strip clubs to have a good time and to drink beer and hang out with the fellas. He was kind of wild in college, but then he settled down and he's been faithful to his wife ever since. He's very secure in his masculinity and kind of likes the fact that other men may find him attractive. He said the guy thing just doesn't do anything for him physically, but then Jimmy admitted that in the back of his mind he sometimes thinks that being with another man might be easier, only because he doesn't understand women very much. All he knows is women like him, but he's kind of clueless as to how a woman thinks.

He knows he has problems with his temper but he says that he doesn't mean to pick fights with the guys on the baseball team. They just don't know when to stop sometimes and he's got to teach them a lesson; especially the young punks on the team.

Jimmy says his brother Michael, who's also in my screenplay, has lived in San Francisco for too long. Michael is in this own male awareness group where they take turns talking with some kind of stick and reaffirm their masculinity or some shit like that. Jimmy said that if Michael needs to reaffirm that he's a man, he should get himself over to a strip club. He hatest that Michael talks like his wife Elise, with all that psycho babble mumbo jumbo talk, but that Mchael's a great guy anyway. Jimmy says he's glad he left San Francisco when he did, otherwise he'd end up as some tree hugger passing some stupid talking stick around every week.

Jimmy likes Van Halen and Motley Crue, although he's now into this song he heard on the radio driving called "Man in a Box" by Alice in Chains. He says he feels like he's a man in a box sometimes and can relate to the song lyrics, plus the song has some great guitar riffs.

I think I need to more character work on Jimmy and find out if he has any secrets, which I'm sure he does. He's a charming kind of guy, so he seems to very good at dodging questions. Then I think I need to do some character work on the Dad character, the wife, and the brother Michael, maybe even the mom. I might just do a little work on Michael wife and the three kids.

It's kind of fun to do character work because then the characters have voices and personalities and they flirt with you, well Jimmy did anyway. But then, I kind of see him as sort of ladies' man anyway. He's a ball player and he's got game, so he's had women hanging all over him all his life. I guess I was just one more. Better yet, I'm the woman telling the story of part of his life. What more could a fictional guy-guy character want?

I saw my friend Marilyn tonight. I haven't seen her since my friend Amy died. I only got to know Marilyn because of Amy, and now that she's dead, I don't really see or hear about Marilyn and her husband very much.

I decided tonight that sometimes I'm so resistant to my life, that my soul partner could probably be sitting right next to me and I'd never know it. Like what if he's not like what you pictured. Amy used to have such a big thing about not wanting to get involved with a man who was low on the evolutionary scale. I used to think she was full of it, but what if she was right. I was talking to this guy I used to have a serious crush on. It's been a long time so I'm over my crush and now we're just friends. Right in the middle of talking to this guy, I realize that this guy is really not smart and not that cultured either. God, that freaked me out because I'd always thought of him as this sophisticated and cultured guy and now I found out that he only seems that way to impress people. It was so shocking. I felt physicall revulsed. The guy likes the symphony because he thought it was a good way to meet a network of people. He didn't like it because he wanted to listen to great classical music plaid live, but for this totally opportunitistic reason.

I can't imagine liking something like art for any other reason than you liked the art. The same thing goes for music, theatre and the opera. It's shocking to think that peope would like this stuff because it's the the thing to do, or to meet people or be snobby or some shit reason like that.

I think it's so unevolved to like a creative thing for any other reason other than the love of the creative thing. But who am I to know what's evolved and what's not evolved? I guess I was just so shocked by this man's admission. You never know about people until you really start to interview them about issues. God, then you find out and you spend the rest of the conversation wishing they hadn't told you their true opinions.

I'm bored with my screenplay. I'm half way through writing it and I just want to finish it and get it over with. I like it but I don't think anyone else will and you know what, I don't care. My baseball son story had to get out and I'm glad it's in a cinematic form, instead of a short story. I just hope I do justice to my Jimmy character. I hope at the end of the screenplay he finds peace when his father dies. He's lucky too, because I'm letting him have peace with his father before he dies. I never got to do that with my dad. Funny thing is, part of me now knows it doesn't make a difference whether you make peace with your parent before they die or years after. The main thing is to make the peace.

Maybe that's the lesson of this story. For years I kept thinking if I had only made peace with my father before he died, maybe my life would have been really different. I now know that I was just making an excuse for not taking charge of my own life. I did make peace with my father's death eventually, but not till three years later and I guess it's still not resolved because here I am still writing about a child and dying father.

I really want to finish my S&M novel, Following in the Dark, and my play, Bare Trees in Winter. These two stories will be my summer projects. Then I want to write my children's story, Missy Dreams of Ducka.

Only then will I be to start working my Elf Girl stories. Dare I take on writing a JRR Tolkien type of story? My stories will be aimed for children 12 - 15, so they will be much simpler. I see them as cross between the Harry Potter stories and the JRR Tolkien stories.

I think to get the right amount of detail, I'm going to have read all the JRR Tolkien stuff, especially his 12 books about middle earth. The Elf Girl stories will not be a quick project, but will probably take years. God, how do you imagine a world like that? Where Elf People have 12-strand DNA instead of 2-strand DNA? How do you imagine a war between the human race and the rest of the creatures that inhabited the earth in Lemurian and Atlantean times?

The crux of the stories will be the school the Elf Girl goes to, along with all the children of non-humans, to develop their powers. The battle scenes will also be important because the Elf Girl will lead the non-human creatures against the humans. And then there's the scenes of her capture and torture by the humans and the humans wiping out the elf kingdom, the fairy kingdom, the wee people kingdom, the dwarf kingdom, the mer people kindgom and the rest of the fantastical creatures of the earth. And how do I depict the human cursing the other races so when they do reincarnate, they always reincarnate as humans? And I forgot, before they curse them and turn everyone into subhumans, they enslave them and use their powers for evil and cause the pole shift, which wipes out all the last remaining traces of the kingdoms of the fantastical races.

I'm just beginnig to get the inklings of these stories, but as long as I have all these other stories unwritten, I cannot start on my new stuff.

I went to a spiritualist church on Franklin at Van Ness today with my englishi friend Eileen. They do John Edwards style readings and I wanted to find out if I would get a message from Amy. When you walk in, you write a question down and if you're lucky one of the mediums will pick your question.

Lucky for me, my question was picked. My question was, how Amy was doing on the other side. The medium said that she was fine and the message from Amy was to be good and kind to my other friends. Not exactly what I thought I might hear, but I was happy to know that she was okay and happy in the spirit world.

I speeded up the timeline for my screenplay since I decided I wanted everyone in class to review it before the class ended. That meant I had to write 15 scenes this week, since if I was a on a five week schedule I would have finished scene 36. My previous schedule had me writing about 10 scenes a week and as of Monday, I was on scene 21. That's alot of scenes.

It was such hard work, especially since I was on a lazy fit on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I just couldn't bring myself to sit down and write. But I started on Friday and wrote three scenes. On Saturday night I wrote six scenes and tonight I just finished writing six scenes. I got so confused with my scenes because I changed my beat sheet and outline so many times that it took me half an hour to figure out at the end, exactly how many scenes I'd written. I've really got to do my outline and beat sheet over.

My scenes seem to be getting better. They're shorter, full or more action and my dialogue I think, is sharper and more concise. I'll find out tomorrow when I go to class. I've still got to rewrite the first father son scene tomorrow, but I can do that on my lunch break tomorrow. I'd like to start with that scene and what follow afterwards to be read in class.

I'm trying to force myself to get used to this critique thing. It's hard as hell since my write ego is so fragile, but maybe I can toughen myself up if I just do it all the time. Does the fear ever go away I wonder? I hope so.

I went to the Dada/Surrealism exhibit at the California Legion of Honor today. I sort of like all that stuff in way, even though some of it incredibly pretentious. The exhibit had the famous toilet bowl, which I've always liked and the rake. It must have been fun to be in the movement in those days, because it all very groundbreaking and new and happening in Paris during the first and second world wars.

That first world war must have been a doozy. There's that one film maker, I think it's Clive Barker, who seems to be obsessed with it. Images from life in the trenches always show up in his movie, even in Gods & Monsters, a movie he was involved in. I think that war, the brutality of it, really drove the european intellectuals insane, but it lead to some of the best artistic movements.

I loved the collages. They made me want to start collaging again. I used to collage every day as a technique to get whatever was in my head and into some physical form. I saw some of collage that even resembled some I did. I think I should get some of my collages framed, especially that one that a friend of mine offered to buy for $50. I think I should have sold it to him, but I didn't want to part with it. Imagine $50 for something I made and he wasn't even that good of a friend and he wasn't tryig to get into my pants either. If I had let him buy it, I could have said I was a paid artist.

At the exhibit I decided to listen to the audio tape and one of the recorded session, the speaker said that Dadaists were kicked out of the communist party for being political incorrect. The Communist party thought that the Dadaists were expressing the consciousness of one individual and not the collective consciousness. Artists must work for the good the collective consciousness and surrender their own individuality.

I had to listen to it twice. No wonder I've started to hate political correctness and can spot it a mile away. Political correctness and its advoacates want us to all think the same like robots, like automatons, like sheep. They want us to be of one consciousness, be absorbed into one big consciousness like The Borg and give up our own inviduality. Political correctness is the enemy of art because art is all about an artist expressing their individual consciousness.

When artists expressed the consciousness of one group, they called in soviet communist art, bad art. Artists in those countries bitterly complained about repression and fled out of the country. Does that mean political correctness has its roots in communism? It would seem so. As an artist, I must fight against political correctness because it is a denial of individual consciousness. I will be not be absorbed into The Borg of Political Correctness.

I like that I think differently, that my life experiences make me different, unique from anyone else on the planet. I refuse to have my own indvidual consciousness changed into some big collective consciousness. It's a total conspiracy by the left, and I live in the area where the conspiracy first started. The great social experiment; more like the great social brainwashing, the great movement to absorb individuals into one big consciousness of the The Borg left and liberal consciousness.

And what's upsetting is I'm a liberal, but even I think what some of the liberals think and have done are incredibly destructive and stupid that I'm ashamed to call myself a liberal sometimes. God, it makes me wonder if all those rightwingers are right in equating the liberal left with communists, especially when they're using a communist mode of the repression of free thinking, like political correctness.

I'm getting to the point if I just detect any form of political correctness in a play, in a move, in something on TV, in something I read, in someone's else thoughts when they speak, I immediately turn off and label the thing spouting the political correctness a zombie, a sheep, somebody too stupid or too lazy or both to think for themselves. I'm bad and I know it. What's ironic is the liberal left complain about how the rest of the country are like sheep following the other side. Well, their own followers are sheep as well because they buy the party line hook line and sinker.

Now whenever I hear PC being uttered anywhere, I'm going to think that the person or the thing has been absorbed into Borg consciousness and you know that the people in the Star Trek world hated the Borg. I think the USA will become like that someday. Everyone will fear the Borg of the Liberal Left. And if we do, it's the liberal left's fault for pushing political correctness the way they do.

Critics complain that TV and movies coming out of Hollywood are boring. Well, I can see why now. Hollywood has been absorbed into Borg consciousness. Hollywood is disgustingly PC. There is no room in Borg consciousness for individuality. The really great movies and TV are coming out of places and people who haven't been absorbed into the Borg like Canada, the UK, Australia and other regions of the US that haven't been absorbed into The Borg. I forgot. Add New York to the list of places that have been absorbed into the Borg or as some there would say, was where Borg consciousness actually started.

I'm in a bad mood now, so I have to change topic. I got a call this morning from this woman who led this seminar that I took last year. I was telling her that I was writng and she told me that she used to teach english and journalism. Marilyn was so nice. She offered to read my stories and help me edit them. I told her I'd be willing to pay her, but she just laughed.

Wow, this is just like they used say in my meditation group. When the student is ready, the master will come. I am at the point now where I could use a good editor and a friend calls me out of the blue and offers to help me edit for free. This is so cool. It makes me think that I won't have to worry about finding resources to publish my work. Perhaps when I'm ready to publish, publishing resources will show up. One can only hope.

I had a session with my spiritual healer/medical intuitive on Friday. She said that she's worked with six other writers and they've all published, so she has total confidence that I will publish soon. She makes a tape of her sesson and I can't wait for the tape. I just got the highlights in a phone call at work and although I wrote it down, it was hard to pay attention and really hear what she had to say. I'm too stressed out at work to really calm down and listen to anybody.

Sessons with her are always so interesting. Since I've been working with her, alot of my physical problems have gone away, but then she is a medical intuitive. Some of the other stuff she says is so far out but then she's told me that working with me is far out, since she's seen things in her session with me, that she's never seen before. I don't think it's a good sign when you freak the spiritual healer/medical intuitve out.

Susan said I'm supposed to work with a certain someone from the past. That man and I have been creeping around the earth since 2.3 million years ago. And I'm like no way. The past is dead, the past is dust and I've finally put that portion of my life to rest once and for all. It freaks me out because I had only recently just come to a point where I was at peace in myself that this man and I will never see other again. I had no desire for the first time in years to contact him and reconnect. I was very happy with leaving the past in the past and moving forward with my life. And now it seems like all that's changed. Susan said that it would be okay to reconnect with him since we were soul mates in a previous life and that I was a part of his past history. I don't think he feels the same way.

I don't care. I'm not gonig to contact him anyway until I'm a successful, money earning writer, which means I may never contact him. Susan said to even wait till I was more successful since this man is totally successful himself. I hate all this and I'm not going to fight it, but I'm not going to encourage it either. He was the one who walked out on me. He should be the one contacting me. It was him that couldn't be friends, that couldn't deal with the fact that someday I might date other men. God, why are men like that? B was the same way. I can't be friends with you without wanting a more serious and physical relationship. What bullshit! It's my scourge - overly romantic men! They are the plague of my existence.

Okay, now I'm in a more rotten mood than before. It's to work on the 24 pages of my screenplay that are due for class on Monday.

I read that column about Marina girls. God, that woman was so condescending. I looked at the list and I could answer yes to bunch of those statements. So what. Does that make me a Marina girl? I don't think so because I never lived in the Marina. But what I think it means is that all young affluent attractive women in their youth have similar qualities.

I can't believe that columnist didn't say if she could have answered yes to any of those statements. Either she's lying to us and herself or she must be one super ugly anal hyper organized person. Whatever.

I read two of my favorite screenplays tonight; American Beauty and Wag the Dog. Afterwards, I'm like thinking what the hell was I thinking when I decided I could write a screenplay. I don't think visually, at least not very well. And to write screenplays, you have to think visually.

A little voice inside of me says that all first screenplays are hard and stupid and bad, really bad. Some people write a screenplay every six weeks and they've been doing it for years and they have yet to sell any of them. And here I am complaining about writing my first one. How spoiled! What a baby I am.

What comes easy to me is the the story ideas and the actual plot and storytelling. I never seem to run out of ideas or stories or plots. I also dont' have a problem findind the voice for my characters, which I attribute to all my actor training. What's hard is actually translating the storytelling, the plot and my characters onto paper. The language trips me up. It's like I can see the movie, I can hear the play and I can hear the story being told, but I just can't get it down on paper.

My poor characters. I want to make them real and believable like dolls, like stuff animals, like a hologram that you can see and touch and hear but you know deep down is not real.

It's true what they say, writng is all about rewriting, then more rewriting and then more rewriting. Nothing by rewriting and even then I don't think you ever get it right. I hate this fact.

I'd stop writing in a heart beat, but I can't get those characters and voices out of my head. They demand to be heard, to be made real, to find life in words on pages. I just wish I could do a faster and better job of creating their world.

It's funny how life imitates art. There was someone in my screenwriting class who told me that it's not a big deal to get sent down to the minors when you're playing pro baseball. I get alot of questions like this since I'm a chick who's who's got the nerve to write a screenplay about a jock boy playing America's favorite pastime, baseball. Interesting how these questions mostly come from women and not from men.

Anyway, what's today's headline. John Rocker, that racist pig pitcher who now plays for the Texas Rangers, gets sent down to Triple A ball or the minor leagues after playing only two weeks of baseball.

Actually, the one nice guy in the class was telling me that I must know alot about baseball and I told him I don't but I know alot of people who are totally into it. Well, that and the fact that I'm a chick who dwells in Jim Rome's jungle alot.

Rome had an interview with baseball commissioner Bud Selig the other day. The guy is one smooth talker. He should try politics one day. Selig talked about the upcoming labor negotiations between the players' union and the owners. Rome kept asking him if there was going to be a strike and he kept dodging the question. Then Selig totally condemned that Forbes article about how much baseball owners really make.

His standard line, which he fed to congress, was the owners were losing money. Oh yeah. Then how come baseball teams can pay such exhorbitant salaries to their players? Case in point, look at the Texas Rangers. Their payroll is phenomenal, not that it does them any good since they've assembled a rag tag team of high priced problem players who aren't even giving the Rangers the number of wins you'd think they should have, given the amount of talent and money they have.

Then Selig went on to say that major league baseball wants to start testing the players for steroid usage. I think baseball is the only sport that doesn't test. Guess that incident between Mike Piazza and Roger Clemens in 2000 didn't fly with alot people. Whatever Clemens was on that night, be it his own intense personality or artificial substances, made him an out of control raging animal.

There was also that talk about how easy it was for the homerun record to fall after so many years and how they're too many players who are bigger than they used to be and hitting more bombs than before and older than before and still playing well. Part of it I think is better medical attention to the players themselves. The advances in sports medicine in the last 10 years have really allowed athletes to stay in condition all year long and if they do get injured, to come back quicker and pretty much in the same shape. Look at Garrison Hearts of the 49ers. The guy is amazing to have come back like that after what would have been a career ending injury.

Then there's the competitiveness and the salaries. I think the athletes are taking care of themselves better because there' s more competition and they're staying in shape all year round and not messing around with their million dollar product, their bodies. There are always exceptions though, like Jeff Kent, but the majority of athletes take care of themselves. They've got to. They've got those big salaries and I don't think teams are stupid enough to not put clauses in their players' contracts about keeping the body in shape.

There's also I think the Tiger Woods phenomenon. He's a golf guy who's totally in weight training and conditioning and look how great he is. I'm sure other athletes are noticing the differences that training and conditioning can make to an athlete and his game.

Then again, there's the players themselves. And alot of them will come out in an interview and hit about steroid usage. Now whether it's just sour grapes or really the truth, no one knows. But as long as they are players willing to hint, there's always going to the suspicion of doped up players. Major league baseball has to test to quell the rumors, but don't look for that to get approval for a long time. The owners are happy because homeruns bring the crowds to the parks and the players are happy because it gives them a bargaining chip in their salary negotiations.

Selig also talked about adding more parity to the league. I'm sure that' s going to go over well with the players and the owners. Can you imagine salary caps in major league baseball? What would teams like the Yankees, the Braves, the Dodgers and the Texas Rangers do. No way is this going to fly. Steinbrenner will fight it tooth and nail and from all the reports, the guy's got alot of clout.

I think major league baseball should have salary caps. It seems to work for the NFL. It took awhile but it seems to be working. What a salary cap will also is make baseball teams rely on their farm systems more for their players. And that can't be too bad. A team like the A's has a great farm system and they're always in the playoffs. In the NFL, they have to recruit well from the college ranks and other sources. The NFL has to get young players because they're cheap and then spend a few years developing them. It only took the 49ers a couple of years to get a young team in shape.

I saw a football game on ESPN the other night and it was football in Europe. What a kick! They had a stat up saying that just last year I think, the NFL contributed over 200 players to the European league. The announcer said that the NFL is looking that European league as a way to test and train their new players, kind of like a farm system since the NFL really doesn't have one in the US.

So I guess until I finish writing and then rewriting my screenplay, it's going to be all baseball all the time. I guess that's not a bad thing. It will be like writing to mood music only this time it's baseball news and baseball games.

I was listening to that Vertical Horizon song on the way from work today. God, I love that song! There's something about "Everything You Want" that is so haunting to me. That was my Ellis song in 1999. Everytime I hear that song I think of him and I wonder why I didn't find him perfect, because he was pretty darn perfect, even more perfect than Brian. Brian had a hell of a temper and would have really hard to live with, him and his nasty tongue lashings, that Virgo shit coming out. But Ellis, he was easygoing and a Gemini, which meant like me he's an air sign.

I told a friend of mine on a plane coming back from Vegas that Ellis was just too perfect and I never had perfect before and it was so scary to think I could have it with him. Not that I don't think we wouldn't have had problems, he was kind of boring but boring in a good way, but with Ellis life would have been nice and easygoing and stress free. I'm sure he's married now. He was so cute and so nice and pretty well off too; any girl's dream come true. Guess not mine.

Anyway, I was listening to this song on the way home from work and I was thinking about my baseball story and it occured to me that my baseball dude guy has to fall in love with his father again. I mean, falling in love and falling out of love, is the same for men and women and I think a child and his or her parents.

Just think about it. You start out totally loving let's say your dad when you're young and then something happens along the way and all of a sudden, your dad becomes this total asshole. And you kind of go on from there thinking he's this total jerk until you get older and then something else happens and you find you want to make up with the guy. I think in order to do that, you're going to have to learn to love him again, not as his son or his daughter, or as a child loving their parent, but as an adult liking another adult. You're going to have to see him for all his faults and assholeness and you're going to have to like him despite all of it. But it's hard because you've still got years of hate and resentment. How do you get over that? How do you cross the huge gigundous gap that's not crept up between you and your dad? And then there's that little child inside of you that's still angry at dad.

How do you resolve all of that? Maybe that's what this screenplay is about for me. Resolving that gap. How do I get my baseball guy to rediscover and refall in love with his dad? I think the way he's going to have to do this is to grow up, to stop being a kid that was hurt all those years ago and become a man, trying to befriend another man.

I think about the words to this song by Vertical Horizon. "He is everything you want, he is everything you need, he is everything inside of you that you wish you could be. He says all the right things, at exactly the right time, but he means nothing to you and you don't know why." My baseball guy has to fall in love with his own dad. What a concept! It's weird, I think my baseball dude has to grow up in order to recover his love for his dad, but in doing so, he becomes a child again, maybe not an innocent child, but an older more wiser child. I'm not sure if this all makes sense, but I think this is what my baseball dude guy wants to do in my story and this was his way of telling me.

It's weird how you when you get older you can become friends with people who you know have qualities you don't necessarily like, but your friends with them anyway and you kind of just learn to live with their bad qualities. You take the bad with the good because you know the person is really nice underneath. But somehow, it's really hard to do the same thing with your mom and dad. It's really hard to take their bad qualities and their good qualities and then decide that they're good people anyway, never mind that they made your childhood and probably are continuing to make your life hell. Maybe it's hard to do with your parents because you have years and years of bad memories. Or maybe because they're your parents and you're like shocked that they were so mean to you because you think parents aren't suppose to behave that way.

If my baseball dude guy wants to fall in love with his dad, he's going to have to grow up pretty fast. I've only got 80 more pages till the end of the story.

Screenwriting class wasn' t that bad today. We read 10 pages of my story out loud and there some good compliments form people, who said my story was starting to gel, that the father/son conflict was still strong, that I was building tension into the scenes. Even the criticisms were what I already thought, my scenes are way to talky and way too long. Julie gave me a good hint on how to add more action to the scene. She also said my dialogue was too speechy, but I remember getting this criticism before with my half finished play, so I know I start out writing speechy and can hone later in a second draft.

Someone in class finished their screeplay in the second week and we had to take it home and read it. I gave the guy 3.5 pages of notes. I hope he doesn't freak out. I guess shouldn't have taken that class on how to be a film critic at UC San Diego, but I did want to be a film critic at that time. I'm like reading this guy's script and I'm already itching to write the preview monologue and I've got the montage of scenes all laid out. But then I told him, and other people agreed, that his script would be rated R for all the nudity scenes.

I'm so exhausted and desperately need to go to bed. I thinik I need to do more character work for the people in my script. I think I also want to read more scripts just to see how other writers have done it. I'm also dying to start rewriting, but I've decided that the best thing for me is write that top notch shittty first draft first. I've edited my pieces before and although the grammar thing is hard for me, I've done really well on edits. I wonder if I'm like one of those people who has to do a gazillion edits. With my luck probably. But I'm not afraid of the rewriting process as I used to be. I know I can tell a good story and I also know that my writiing needs major reworking and editing. I guess I should just feel glad that the words and the stories always come. It doesn't take me long to dip into that well that all writers keep talking about. In fact, most of the time, my stupid well is gushing an overflowing and haunting my thoughts and my dreams.

Speaking of haunting, I am being haunted by my fist love. I saw a Maryland license plate today and HE lives in Maryland. I keep thinking I need to get in touch with him, but honestly I can't deal with a stressful reunion in my life now and not ever. I want the past to stay where it is, in the past. This is such a change for me since I've fantasized over and over and then some about meeting him again. But now I'm like, get out of my life, get out of my thoughts, stay in the past where you belong and stop frickin' haunting me. I want to keep thinking of you as a beautiful 18 year old boy and I don't want the present to destroy that image. Maybe I'm just cranky because I'm so tired. Maybe I'm just getting older and growing up. Maybe I'm just afraid of what meeting my first love will mean to my current life. I don't want change right now. I want things to stay the same. I'm at a point in my life where I'm happy and I'm writing more and I just don't want that to change. It's selfish I know, but I don't care. I am being consumed by writing and I think it's a good thing.

My archives keeps disappearing. This seems to happen periodicaly, but when I republlish them they come back. Not sure why I'm so worried, since I wouldn't be too heart broken if I lost my blog. No, I take that back. I would be just a little pissed because I've invested alot of time writing in this thing, although I know no one is reading it. Ah, the joys of blogging on the Net.

I'm on page 42 of my screenplay and I just finished scene 21. I'm writing total drivel, but Julie says all first drafts are shitty first drafts, so I'm just following what she says and wriitng a top notch totally shitty first draft.

The worst thing about being in this part 2 of screenwriting class is having your screenplay read out loud by people you don't know and don't particularly like. I read a book today called Movies in the Mind, How to Build a Short Story. There's a chapter in the book on critics where the author says "pick your critics carefully and make sure they're trained ... find critics that can actually help you write better ... never say anything about someone else's story unless you yourself could fix it."

Some people in writng classes I've taken love to critique a story but then when you ask them how to make it better, they have no answers. Then there are those others, and they're in every class, every seminar you take, who just talk and having nothing to say. They love to raise their hand and talk, but what comes out of their mouth is nothing. It's like they were taught in school, they just need to talk, never mind that what they're saying is bad BS. Now I don't mind people who talk and who are good at BSing their way into making themselves sound intelligent. But from my own personal experience, they are of BSing well is a lost art. Don't these people hear what they are actually saying? I don't think they do, because if they did, they would be so embarrassed for themselves. But alas, the gift of awarenss is a rare gift indeed.

My problem is I don't talk enough. I don't usually like to say anything unless I have something good to say and I hate critiquing someone else's work unless I can offer them advice on how to make it better. Screenwriting is so new to me that half the time, I'm at a lost as to what to say to anyone.

Five more classes to go. If the screenwriting teacher wasn't so great and if I didn't have as my goal finishing the screenplay by the last class, I wouldn't have taken part 2. I swear to god, this is the last writing class I'll ever take. I said that earlier, but screenwriting was a new genre for me. I'm glad I took the class because there was alot to learn with the formatting, the character development, the beat sheet and stickie notes and then the final outline for screenplays.

Every published author who's ever written a book of writing eventually ends up saying, stop taking writing classes. They're useless and sometimes destructive. They all say just keep writing and keep reading.

Well, I think It's time to take these published authors advice. Just five more classes and then yeah, no more writing classes ever. I hate saying never or ever, because then what always ends up happening is, I do the thing I swore you would never do. So I'm not going to say never or ever. I'm just going to say, I prefer at this time to not take a writing class until such time where I feel I may benefit from being in that kind of environment. I think that sounds better, doesn't it?

Other mundane topics. I still can't decide which Palm to get, either a 505 or a 130. Or should I save the $100 and get a Vx like the on a friend of mine has. Do I really need color and an an place to stick an addon file?

Or now I'm thinking, maybe I should get one of the Palm knock offs like a Handspring Visor or something. I haven't even started researching those options yet.

The only this is certain is I want to spend as little money as possible, just in case I find out like so many of my friends have, that I don't even used the damned thing. I have so many friends who bought the latest and greatest most expensive palm pilots, only to find out later they hated it and missed pen and paper. Maybe they can afford to have a $300 and up little paperweight sitting on their desk, but I can't.

I called LG electronics on Thursday and found out I can upgrade my LG Phenom express to windows ce 2.2. Thank god. I was started to get so depressed about my little toppie. I love the size of it. I can just stick it in a bag and not a big bag either and take it with me to write anywhere. Hell, I've written at movie theaters and even on MUNI. The battery life is better than I thought it would be too. I was at a cafe a couple of weeks ago and I wrote in there for two hours, despite my batteries only being 30%. That's a long time.

I needed to upgrade the toppie so I could surf the net with it when I travel. My stupid ISP only works with windows ce 2.1 and up. I wish I'd thought of these things before I changed my ISPs, but who can plan for these issues. I thought I'd want to buy a real laptop too, and not a baby one. But these baby laptops are so much more convenient to carry around and cheaper too. It's so small, you don't have to worry about it being stolen. I keep in my travel cd holder, which normally hold 48 cds. That's how small it is. The keyboard is about 78% of normal size but I have small hands anyway and don't have a problem typing. Now if only I can upgrade my ISP to the right plan to use my windows CE machine, I'd be set for life. But upgrading my ISP, that's a whole other can of worms that I won't be able to deal with till May 19.

I saw The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams at ACT on Thursday. What's so weird is that there was a loud bunch of older women in the section that I normally sit it in. That middle section of first balcony must be cursed. My section was quiet and it makes such a difference to my mood to have it be quiet and reflective and not like some Saturday at the local village market square. Is that snobby? Why do people have to be so noisy all the time. These women were older and white but god, they were so ghetto! I'm like hello, this isn't your stupid church social, it's the theatre and people want to read the program and be quiet before the play starts. You know these people are not from San Francisco but from some hick yahoo town up north like Napa, Sonoma or Santa Rosa.

I swear to god, it's true when they say that between LA and SF, it's Texas or some version of Tucky as in Kentucky. I've got to remember to change the rest of my season's tickets, so I don't have to sit with the church brigade for every play. There were three russian women sitting next to me and they were talking, but at least they were quiet and I couldn't understand a word they were saying. God, I am such a snob. ACT must be getting desperate to get people to buy their tickets since they're now selling to white ghetto church groups.

I've never seen The Glass Menagerie and I really enjoyed it. I think it's one of William's best plays. When you watch any of his plays, you see first had how many times he's been ripped off by other playwrights and in movies too. He had an opening scene where the character talks to audience and introduces the play. It's like voice overs in the beginning of movies. I've got a voice over in my screenplay. Thank you Tennessee Williams.

The actors playing the parts were very good, especially the mother and the daughter. Actually, I thought there were all quite good. I love how you see the bad parts and good parts of people in his plays. The characters are never all bad. They have their faults but as an audience you see that they're motivated by good intentions.

In acting class, I was taught that all characters want something and that something is usually love. A character will try anything they can to get that love, no matter how ridiculous it is. Tennessee Williams really shows you this in his play. I wonder if I will be ever be able to write great characters like he can. You can't hate the characters, you can try, but he makes it difficult, because they're so damned human.

And universal too. The mother character reminded me of my whiny mother. But aren't all mothers whiny? I also related to the shy freaked out sister character. I think I could have been her if circustances had turned out differently. Whose to say that I'm not her now, all freaked and shy?

I wrote 13 more pages of my screenplay and went from scene 12 to scene 17. I'm supposed to write 21 pages a week so I have 8 more pages to write. I'm seriously tempted to edit, but Julie said to just keep going and edit later. I dare not tell her I write directly by computer. She's a big believer in writing by hand. Most people freak out when I tell them I free write on computer. There is something to be said to writing by hand and I know that. I don't censor myself as much when I write by hand and the words come out faster.

But screenwriting is so format driven that it's easier for me write on my computer than it would be to write by hand and then transcribe and type in later. I went to Borders on Union Square before the play on Thursday to work on the outline of my screenplay. I've changed my outline so many tiimes that I needed to redo my the stickies for my movie. I bought some coffee and sat down and noticed there was a girl in front of me with a beat sheet with her stickies. She was writing her screenplay in Final Draft on a Mac, I think.

It was so strange to see someone else working on a screenplay too and at a place like Borders. I think I might go there and write at night. The cafe is not crowded and if you're lucky, like I was that night, you can sit by one of the windows and look out on Union Square. It's very cool.

That woman's beat sheet and stickies looked so neat. My beat sheet is so messy and full of stickies with my chicken scratch hand writing. Screenwriting is worse or just as worse as acting. Everyone wants to do it. Everyone except me.

Honestly, I think I like writing stories better. I like the visualness of screenwriting. I like how a picture tells a thousand words but because it's visual, you have to assume that your audience knows exactly what you're trying to do. If you've ever read a bunch of movie reviews for the same movie, you know that everyone interprets scenes very differently. As a screenwriter, you have to acceptt that. Not that the same thing doesn't happen in written stories either, but in movies there's more room for ambiguity. I don't know if I like that.

I'm probably the only person in my screenplay class who doesn't want to be a screenplay writer and would rather be a short story writer or a novelist. But then again, I was the only person in my acting class who didn't want to be actor. It's my karma.

But I'm committed to finishing and editing this screenplay and sending it off to be registered. I'm sure it will just wallow away in the script files, but at least I can say I wrote one and I registered it. And that's what important to me right now.

My children's book Missy Dreams of Duck, keeps replaying in my head. I came up with more scenes for the story too. Maybe this means it's ready to be written down. This is going to be a cool story. A young girl is unhappy and wants to run away from home. She wakes up and finds out she's become a duck. How cool is that. Ducks are my favorite creatures. It will be a riot to create a duck world or rather a child's dreams of a duck world, because in the end, my character wakes up and find out it was all a dream. There's a alot of freedom in creating a dreamy duck world. My duckies will talk like humans and behave like humans. In fact, duck society will closely mimic human society with a few exceptions of course for duck species behavior.

You can be so much more imaginative when you write children's and fantasy books. I won't have to agonize about writing character that are so human, you relate. Maybe Tennessee Williams did that easily, but I can't and I don't know if I'll ever be able to. I mean, Tennessee Willaims was a genius. How am I going to write characters as well as he did. I think it's impossible really. Sometimes, I don't know why I even try.

His characters were so multidimensional. They were so human with faults and failings and good qualities all mixed into very messed up people. You alternately despise and relate to all his characters. He had such a gift. And me, what do I have. Just voices in my head that tell me stories, just stories lines that play in my head like movies sometimes. How will I every measure up to him and his portrayal of humanity?

I wonder if writing as a profession will be like my job now, where I spend two days working on one thing, trying to solve one problem, only to find out the problem is unsolvable because I basically wrote the program wrong in the first place and I delivered wrong information to the customer. Only a part of the information is wrong, but it's an important piece of information. I did a check to see how much I was off and it turns out I was off by 5%. That's alot though and probably unacceptable in any other industry except the one I'm in now.

God, I hate making mistakes. I try to be so careful but I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote up this analysis. It sucks too because now the customer wants to see more detail and I can't give out detail without letting them know the original number we submitted was wrong. I told my boss about it and he acted like it was nothing, but I knew he was pissed. I know he's like thinking, I really need to check that girl. I told him I could give the customer the names they wanted but not give them the detail, after all, they didn't ask for it. He agreed so I sent the information off tonight. It's bad customer service, but for me I guess it's I'd better save my ass first customer service.

I've really got to be more careful. I'm lucky to even have a job and my own office to boot. So many people I know are unemployed right now and having a hard time trying to find a job. I'm not exactly thrilled by my job, but I stay put because the job market is so bad right now.

I decided today that I just need to finish my screenplay and be done with it. I have so many other stories to write. I was thinking about the feedback I received in class about my story. I was going to make some changes based on the feedback I heard, but I decided not to. It's my story. I like that my characters are inconsistent. I like how my characters act one way with one person and act a completely different way with someone else. That is real life. I've seen it at work and I've seen it in my own family.

I've seen guys at work act like total dicks in meetings and then call their wives and talk and act all lovey dovey or cower and simper when their wives are reading them the riot act. I'm like, close your door for god's sake, or call your wife where nobody can hear you, because you sound like a total wussy on the phone. I've seen my own brother who's a jerk and half treat people like shit, but totally act like some little boy when my dad scolded him. I've seen my uncle do that too with his dad and he's 50 something and it was kind of sad, to see him talk to like some little boy to his dad.

I want to see that in a movie. I don't care if it's consistent, it's real life. The people in my screenwriting class said that my characters should act consistently throughout the movie. And I was agreeing with them. But today, I'm like, NO WAY! Who the hell acts consistent? No one. I know I don't. If people in class think they act consistently all the time, they're dreaming. And don't tell me that when they're with their parents, they aren't reduced to grade school children. Well I guess if they're not from a dysfunctional family, that maybe they're mature, but not my characters.

The people in my screenplay are like totally dysfunctional, like with a Capital D. Oh well. I don't care. I'm going to write it the way I see life. It's my world, it's my point of view, it's my damned story. Then I'm going to register the damned thing and be done with it. There are other stories that need telling besides this one.

I guess I should be glad because at least I have other stories in other formats to tell. For some people, this might be the only story they have to tell. I think I have at least two more screenplays in my head besides the one I'm writing now. And at least a couple dozen stories to write in either short story, novella or novel format. Then there's that play of mine that I started in 1998 and only just got the ending to a few weeks ago. I know I should finally finish the play and get that over and done with too. God, then there's that novel of mine.

The my love and S&M novel and my screenplay about first love are my story ideas from 1998. Crazy Eddie and the baseball screenplay are story ideas from 1999. I haven't even gotten to the other story ideas from the rest of 1999, not to mention 2000, 2001 and 2002. God, my production is so slow. I think I could be writing 8 hours a day, five days a week, at least until age 65 and still not run out of story ideas. And I think this is a good thing, right?

I think I'm depressed because my allergies keep me up at night and I'm not sleeping well. It's hard to sleep when you can only breathe through your mouth.

I'm also starting to freak out about being a professional writer, because it looks that's the direction I'm going in. I've had a few opportunities before to write for a living, especially when I was doing the PR thing part time. But I've always shied away from having my writing turn into a job. Because I've hated most of my jobs, I didn't want my writing to turn into something I hated.

But if I want to make money at writing, I'm going to have to start treating it like a job and like a profession. I'm going to have to treat writing friends like colleagues instead of friends, which is what writing friends are really. I mean, the only thing you really have in common with your writing friends is your writing, which means they become like work friends, so you have to be professional at all times. After all, one of your writing friends might be your editor one day, you never know.

But I think I'm ahead of my own writing time time table. It usually takes five years for any artist to develop their style or in the case of a writer, their writing voice. I started seriously taking writing classes in 1998, so I've only passed my four year anniversary of writing. I thought I was already on year 5, but I'm not. I still have one more year to develop my writing voice.

Maybe that's what was freaking me out. I thought I was in year 5 of my progress and I wasn't measuring up to where I expected to be with my writing. But I'm only in year 4, which makes total sense because I'm only now discovering my writing voice and my style. I still have a year to perfect all of it.

Thank god I realized this, because I was starting to think that I was seriously behind in my creative development. I'm right where I should be.

This whole screenplay class is stressful. I think I'm in a class with people who seriously want to write screenplays for a living. It's like their chosen profession. And me, I'm just dabbling in it so see what it's like. Everyone in the class has gone out and bought the expensive screenwriting software. Now either money is overflowing out of the pockets, which hardly seems likely or they're really serious.

No wonder my screenwriting class reminds me so much of one of my acting classes. It's because everybody is deadly serious except me. And I'm getting the same reaction too, I really think they're all posers and I don't like them. I don't think they like me either so it's mutual. And what's so ironic is I have yet to hear one story idea that I'd pay $9 to see as a movie. No one in the class is that great of a writer and their storytelling abilities aren't that great either.

I know I can tell a story from my storytelling class, but I'm not sure anyone in the class can. If the can, I haven't see evidence of it yet. Two people are writing stories about teens and one is like that Jessica Alba show on Fox about the school for "altered children". Like how dervivative is that. That's been done before and done very well. I'm such a mean person, aren't I?

I really like everyone in my screenwriting class. They all seem like nice people. I just don't feel very comfortable speaking in that class and I feel kind of bad about that. I know I should contribute more to the class discussions, but honestly I don't really have anything nice to say about anyone's screenplays, so I stay silent.

I know I need to find something I like in each screenplay. A leader in a communications seminar I took said you have to find the gold in what people are saying if you want to communicate with them. I'm going to have start doing that in class and at least find one good thing to say about each person's screenplay. Everybody else in class volunteers their opinions very readily no matter how stupid or dumb the comments seem. I need to figure out a way to do this but not seem vapid. Most of the time, people in class just seem to talk to hear themselves listen and don't seem to really pay attention to what a person's screenplay is actually about. But whatever. At least it sounds like they're giving feedback. Never mind that most of the comments have no substance or weight ... at least they're commenting.

I'm going to bed early tonight. I'm thinking if I stay in bed longer, I might actually get more sleep even if I can't breathe half the time. You know, double the time of actual sleeping. My life is so miserable when I'm sleep deprived!

Still depressed about my writing. Well, I'm either depressed about it or having grandiose delusional dreams about being famous and being on David Letterman's show. I still can't figure out why I'm writing. I don't really even enjoy it that much, despite the fact that when I do sit down to actually do it, the words stream out easily. Everyone who has ever read my writing, had told me to write for a living. Me, I'd rather climb the corporate ladder surely but slowly and get paid shit loads of money. I know how to do the business thing and really well too. And my last job, people really respected me and asked me my opinion all the time. I hated people asking me what to do, but my friend Amy thought it was a sign of respect that people gave so much power to me. I had that at my last job too. My stupid boss kept telling me to watch what I said, because people in the company really valued my opinion.

I hated all the responsibility of those two jobs. I was always on my guard, I didn't trust anyone and I had to be so careful of my behaviour. All that corporate stuff now seems like walk in the park compared to writing. At least in a corporation, I knew how to behave, how to get ahead. With writing, I'm so drowning, not knowing if I'm any good. And then part of me thinks that if it were up to me, none of what I wrote would every be any good, so how can I even trust my own opinion.

I wish there was another way of creative expression that was so easily and readily available to me. But there isn't. Writing is what's there for me. Writing comes naturally and easily to me, never mind the fact that grammatically it's shit.

I wish I had a crystal ball and could look into my future to see if I do keep writing 10 years from now, or is this just another phase I'm going through.

Then there's those stupid damned stories that won't get out of my head. Voices of characters who want me to write down their story and who bug my constantly even when I'm in the shower. Sometimes I feel like I'm being haunted by the spirits of characters looking for a writer who they can tell their story to, a writer who will listen to them and who will just let them babble on forever about their life. I fee like Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost when she found out she really had the gift. It's like every character from here to eternity is camping inside my head, telling their story over and over again, till I get tired of hearing them and finally write it down. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just delusional like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.

Sometimes I wonder if there's a big hole in my head where spirits can slip in and live for quite a long time. Spirits of people I don't even know, have never met and will probably never meet in real life. I don't think all my characters are dead either, but just living their life as best they can, somewhere else.

I don't know if I want this gift. I feel like I've had it all my life, but it's only in the last 5 years that I've let it flourish. I know it's bad karma to turn down a gift, but there's got to be a limit somwhere.

I'm getting a little depressed about my writing and wondering why I'm even doing it. Maybe I need to list all the times people have told me what a good writer I am.

Grade school memories

2 poems of mine were published in the local paper, The Garden Isle. Hardly an accomplishment since I grew up on a rock in the middle of the pacific ocean with a total population of 35,000, but still, I got to see myself in print at an early age.

My fourth grade teaching assistant, who was at my school interning from Chico State University, made us write commercials. He told me I wrote good dialogue. But then again, he also taught us Esperanto, so what does he know.

In my six grade english class, my teacher made us a write a story and then had our stories individually bound and donated them to the school library. I wonder if it's still there.

My sixth grade teacher also made us write our own hawaiian style legends at camp on weekend up in the mountains. My legend was published in the local paper. I'm sure the island folks were thrilled.

High school memories

7th grade english teacher made us write an inclass fantasy story. I wrote a story abou shoes and where shoes go when they die. My cousin, who's six years younger than me, told me my 7th grade english teacher read my story to his class as an example of a good creative story.

At graduatiion, they handed me the English award for my class. I went to small (800) public high school, so I'm not sure what this award really means, other than I did get $100 to spend.

The rest of my life

A press release for a concert I was promoting at Stanford University was published in the campus paper. They printed the release verbatim. It's a university paper, I think they'd print anything.

A press release for a race I was promoting made it to the front page of the Outdoors section of the Chronicle. Finally after two years, they printed something of mine.

I ghost wrote the deacon column in my church monthly newsletter and people told the head deacon, they loved my articles. It's a small church, what can I say.

I wrote up the special brunch menus for my friend's restaurant and people love it. How much can go wrong writing up descriptions of food.

I wrote up a bunch of flyers for the church singles group I joined for awhile. The minister in charge of the group, Dana, loved them, and so did the people in the church. But like I said earlier, it's church people.

I published an article on the ultra marathon race I was promoting in UltraRunning magazine. It's a running magazine, anyone could submit articles.

I did get misquoted in a SF Examiner article on ultramarathoning once, but who the hell cares about ultra marathoning?

My acting teacher, John, who is supposedly this ultra famous acting teache, said I was a good writer. All of friends who have interviewed for acting schools and acting programs here and on the east coast, said that everybody knows John. John taught at ACT for 12 years and he knows Annette Benning and Danny Glover, and is well respected on both coasts in acting circles. But he's an acting director, what does he know?

More church stuff. I wrote a prayer for the people and read it at a service one Sunday. Some nice looking guy who I'd never seen before came up to me afterwards and told me, my prayer really moved me. Then Pam, who was on the worship committee and an editor at Harper Collinss, came up to me and said she really like my prayer and requested a copy for the church files. I was like OH MY GOD. Pam was classmates with Hilary Clinton in college at that Seven Sisters school, whose name I can't remember right now. Pam worked for all the top notch publishing houses in NYC before moving out here. Pam liked my prayer. And Pam is so articulate and well spoken and so east coast in speech and manner. That woman spearks in grammatically correct and perfect sentences at all times. Pam would know wouldn't she? Or is this just because it's a small church?

I wrote and performed a story I'd written called Art is Scary. About 30 people were there, most of whom I didn't know. People loved my performance and three people, two guys and one woman said they loved me story.

And finally, I got a fanmail from someone who'd read my blog and was kind enough to tell me.

I'm not sure if I feel better, but I think I need to keep writing I guess.

Screenplay freakitis is gone now, thank god. Julie, my screenwriting teacher didn't call me till Thursday so I was left to stew in my own juices. I think what was really bugging me was the beginning and ending of my screenplay. Julie said to start later in my original story and leave all the baseball stuff out. But DAMN, I was so attached to all the baseball stuff, I mean after all, it's the story of a baseball player, right? By Wednesday afternoon, I couldn't take it anymore and I took all the baseball scenes out and started the story in the locker room after game 2 of a three game series at Pac Bell Park. Once I did that, the screenplay freakitis went away and I was able to write 10 pages of the screenplay that night.

When Julie finally called me on Thursday, she suggested exactly what I had already done. I guess I just beat her to the criticism.

Screenplay writing is such a trip. First of all, it has to be in this special format and you have to use a courier 12 font, which when printed kind of looks like you typed it yourself on a typewriter instead of a computer. The film industry is very particular about the format, so there's even software programs which you can buy that puts the screenplay into the required format.

I would buy the screenplay software if I thought I would be writing screenplays for the rest of my life, but I don't know that yet. So I cheated and found a free template on the Net. The template has all the macros built in which do all the formatting stuff for you. I downloaded a demo version of the most popular screenwriting software, Final Draft, at work but I think I like the template I have on my pc at home much better. Besides the template was free and you just can't beat free. I think I'm going to check out the full version of the screenwriting software out on Monday at the Academy of Art college, where I take my screenwriting seminar, just to see what the full version is really like. Julie says they have a pc lab there with the software on it.

God, what else? Damned allergies are in full swing right now, which makes me totally miserable. I went to see my kineseologist/homeopathic doctor today and he said he was going to try to up my immune system more so my histamine reaction wouldn't be so bad. I don't think it's working, but all the other stuff he's treated me for has been great.

God, I hate my allergies. I think I'm going back to taking the powder form of aloe vera, which is totally expensive, but so worth it because when I was taking it, my allergic reactions were very minor even in pollen season. I keep wondering when the company that makes the powder form of the aloe vera is going lose their exclusive patent on this product, so I can buy it generically from someone else. I haven't seen it on the Net or in any of the health food stores, so I guess they still own the patent. The stuff is so expensive, but I'm thinking it would so worth it right now if I didn't have to go around with my nose stuffed and snot dripping down my upper lip.

I went to Casual Fridays at the SF Ballet last night and saw program 5. The featured drink was a naked cosmopolitan, which was vodka and white cranberry juice with a lime twist. My friend and I drank three of these and didn't even get a buzz. I guess they forgot to put the vodka in. Next time, I'll get wine. Should have known to get wine, since all the staff was drinking it,

We chatted in line with Evelyn Cisneros, who used to be the premier ballerina with the SF Ballet, before she retired. I loved her in Swan Lake, which I saw a few years ago. She's very pretty and very, very thin. She was so friendly and nice and she chatted to us happily about her 18 month old son. My friend said "ballet tickets $46, chatting with Evelyn Cisneros PRICELSS". Gotta love that mastercard ad!

Went through a thing about my mother on Friday. Just when you think you're over your parents, they come back to haunt you in the most unexpected ways. I was remembering the way my mother was when I was about 5 years old. She was this always on the go passionate woman, totally dedicated to her job and workaholic, perfectionist freak in heels and makeup and hairsprayed hair, who wore her emotions on her sleeve and was totally quick tempered with a sharp tongue that could slice you to ribbons in a minute flat. And me? I was her totally hyperactive child, who was always falling down, getting into scrapes and who was constantly getting into her way and making her late for work. My poor mother though. I think if they had Ridalin in those days and I was on it, my early childhood would have been alot happier, but the term "hyperactive child" didn't even exist yet.

I used to be so afraid of my mom. Being around her was like a stepping into a mine field. I never knew what action of mine would piss her off and it seemed like back then, everything I did made her really angry. I learned to be very careful of what I did and what I said to her, just to have her not yell at me. It's an odd way to live, but as a child I think you easily adapt to all kinds of weird situations and they become normal after awhile.

The thing about my mom came up because I now have three friends in my life who subconsciously reminded me of my early childhood experiences with my mom. All three of them are like her in their own way. I seem to make make them mad by the majority of things I do and say. What's so interetesting though is I don't want what it is I do to piss them off. It's just like it was when I was a child and I couldn't figure my mother's reasons back then either. They're my friends and I love them so dearly, but my relationships with them are sort of strained right now, because I was very resentful of them being agree with me all the time, for seemingly silly things.

But yesterday, I figured out that they were all reminding me of my mother and once I figured that out, the resentments inside me all went away. I think I was subconsciously thinking of my friends as my mom. Strange huh? I was surprised because they're nothing like my mom, but it's the minefield effect that was confusing me. But what' s so cool is that now the strain of the relationship, at least for one of my friends, is gone. At the ballet last night, we had the best time. It was like in the old days, when my friend and I used to do everything together and we just loved being in each other's company. All the strain is gone. I hope with my other two friends, I get the same results.

The things with your parents is funny. When you grow up, you either start to emulate them or if you had teenage rebellion like me, you do everything in opposite to them. Like take my mother for example. She's this passionate, wears her heart on her sleeve, girly type woman who dresses to the nines in ruffles and lace. I'm this buttoned up, closed down, stiff upper lip with a glacier reserve type who wishes she could wear shorts and tshirts for the rest of her life. But then what's totally trippy is that even though I've tried to do everything to rebel against my mom's teachings, at work, not in this job, but in other jobs, I was this on the go, well-dressed, always in heels, makeup and perfume and suits with pearls, workaholic bitch. I became my mother at work! So scary!!!

But when I got this insight yesterday about my mom and me, I realized that I didn't have to rebel against her anymore or freak out because I became her at work. I could pick and choose the best of my mother's traits and get rid of all the crap that I didn't want. When I first realized this however, I freaked out.

Part of my identity was so wrapped around being rebellion against my mom and her teachings and praying to god and every other diety I could think of, that I wouldn't become like her. Losing this mom part of my identity made me feel like I didn't know who I was anymore, and that's not a great feeling to have.

I had similar feelings when I let go pf my resentment about my dad and my relationship with him and his untimely death. I felt the "I don't know who the hell I am feeling" back then too. And it was even scarier the first time, because I distinctly remember feeling like I was in a foreign world for a couple of minutes and the sidewalk was going to open up and swallow me. Losing a big part of your identity is not a pleasant feeling. I had so identified myself as someone who hated her dad, that letting go of the hatred and resentment was like losing this enormous part of myself. I lost my m.o., I guess you could say.

But you know what, that "I don't know the hell I am feeling" passed and was replaced by the joy of realizing I could reinvent myself over again. A brighter, better, happier Brenda!!! What a concept!!!

So, I'm in reinvention mode right now. I want to take the best of what my mother taught me, throw the crap out that I hated and reinvent yet another "brighter, better, happier Brenda". God, my mom was amazing. Everybody loved her, well, everybody loved or totally hated her. There was no inbetween reaction from anybody including the family. My mother was so smart, so determined and such a damned good cook and hostess. That woman knew her jewels too and could spot a fake a mile away. I think I'll get rid of mother quick temperedness, impatience and mine field personality but leave all the fun stuff like her sense of humor, her ability to turn any bad situation around to her own advantage and maybe her ability to deal with men. My mother was a determined flirt, a real southern belle even though she wasn't from the south. Growing up, I watched my mom flirt and charm men and have them eating of her hand in 10 minutes or less. That skill set will come in handy for a few things, I think.

What's definitely so great though, is I think I finally left home and I can now be my own person. I can now be the person, I've always wanted to be because I'm not living my life out of hating my father and my mother and I"m not also not rebelling against either of them either. This is such a weird concept, don't you think?

I'm starting to freak out about writing my screenplay. I'm writing a story from a guy's viewpoint and I'm like, I don't the first thing about being a guy. I finished the outline for my screenplay and handed it to my screenwriting teacher tonight. She's supposed to call me tomorrow night to discuss. YUK! I am so not looking forward to it.

I like my screenplay but I think I have very weird taste in stuff. Nobody likes the stuff I like.

The enormity of my project is really getting to me. 200 pages of a dysfunctional father/son relationship from the son's pont of view. What a trip!!! I don't even know why this story is so important to me. It's not my story. I'm not a son, I'm a daughter. All my friends think I'm trying to therapy out my own father dying and me not being there to say goodbye or make my peace before he died. I made my peace years later, but I guess a part of me thinks would I be any different if had made my peace. This story is my way to find out.

God, I blame my friend Kim for all this. She took me to her company's tailgate party to see the Oakland A's play the SF Giants in Oakland. I was a baseball fan but only because I liked going to Candlestick and sitting in the bleachers on a sunny day and watching a good game of baseball with a bunch of friends and eating lots of hotdogs.

It was Kim who told me about the hot young players on the A's team. How they're all under age 25 and totally cute. They had those great commercials in Oakland, showing the A's jumping up and down on some bed. She was right. There were so cute. And compared to an older team, they looked ever more like little boys playing a grown up game. I kept seeing little boys in little league, which then became very little boys learning to play catch with their fathers.

Then came the 2000 world series. The A's versus the Yankees. Those A's really gave New York a run for their money in that short series. New York would breeze through their games with the Mariners, but with the A's, they had to fight for every game. There were such different teams too. The A's played new metal and new hard rock music in their stadium, music I really like. The Yankees played 70's and 80's music. The A's barely looked like they could shave, while the Yankees, except for Derek Jeter looked positively geriactric.

Nowhere was this age disparity more evident than in game 4 of that series. Barry Zito, the funky and cool pitcher originally from LA, you know the original incense surfer dude, pitched in that game and whacked Yankees by a huge score. During the game, the A's looked like a team right out of the college ranks and the Yankees looked like a team full of fat but professionals athletes biding their time.

Then came the actual world series with the Yankees and the Mets and all the stories of hometown boys finally playing on the team of their childhood or not, as the case often is. I loved the profile of Al Lighter from the Mets He was the good, true and humble baseball player who just always wanted to play for his home team.

Somehow between my crush on all things Oakland A's and hearing all those stories about famous baseball players talking about their father, Playing Catch with Dad.

Even the title is new. I originally called my story "Little League Baseball Dreams" The idea sat on my writing shelf for the longest time and I never finished it. But now in my screenwriting class, the baseball story has morphed into screenplay I'm trying to go wtith the flow and be relaxed about it, but its hard, very hard.

I finished the beat sheet for my screenplay and now I just have to type it up and write the first 10 pages. I'm still deciding about whether to leave all the baseball stuff in there and just start with my character in the locker room after a shitty game. But I like the baseball stuff. Julie, my screenwriting teacher will probaby cut it out anyway. I don't even have a scene just with the character and Pac Bell park, which is part of the reason I wanted to write a baseball story. I wanted a hometown player who now plays on a different team to come to Pac Bell Park and freak out, thinking this park could have been his, if he only stayed put. I might put that scene in yet. If I do that, I think I'll put a scene in act 1, where my character runs into his old little league coach. The purpose of that scene will be reinforce the idea that the ballplayer is pretty damned bummed he's not a part of the team, he rooted for as a child.

I like the idea of Pac Bell Park as symbol for renewal. Certainly, that's the way the ad people for the SF Giants pushed the park during that first year. Baseball, the way it used to be played, in downtown stadium and played by homegrown little leaguers. It's so not like that in professional sports anymore, but hey the marketing people can push the dream, the lie, can't they? Can I help it if I'm going to help to push the lie and use Pac Bell Park and symbol of redemption and renewal for my baseball character? Since I'm writing fiction, I think I can use a lie or two in a story that's all made up.

Walking three miles a day is really hard on my left foot and my left hip. I just walked two today and will be on this schedule for another week to give my left side time to get used to walking again.

I can't wait to get started on my next story, the one I'm calling Texas Dreaming, kind of like California Dreaming, only it's so not. But I like the play on words. I also got an idea for a story about a woman who's about to have a nervous breakdown. I remember writing a story about this in junior high. Another old story coming back to haunt me. Then other story about a woman whose brain is sick, like my friend Amy and in that movie Iris. Maybe if I write about my brain dying, I'll be able to get what Amy went through in those last days. Of course, it's so fictional because a real person with this disease wouldn't be able to write anyway.

I got a whiff of it while walking yesterday. A panicked voice saying, "can't stop, must be keep going, can't stop, can't stop, can't stop, can't ever stop, must keep writing, if I write, I can keep it at bay. I can fight it, I know I can. Damned doctors, what do they know, they can't even cure the common fucking cold. Witch doctors, all witch doctors. Keep writing, don't stop, don't stop." It will be interesting to explore what the panicked voice is trying write about. Portents of my future, maybe? Who knows? They say we're all going to end up with some form of brain degeneerative diseases one day, when we're really old. Maybe it's time to look into to the future, my future to see how bad it's going to get, like my own time machine.

I'm glad Halle Berry and Denzel won, but bummed as all heck that The Lord of the Rings didn't win anymore awards. I thought for sure it would get best picture. The picture has two more installments so there's two more chances to go.

I think a Beautiful Mind got best picture because of all the negative campaigning that went on against it. There were articles in all the papers, even in the NY Times that John Nash was a homosexual and an anti-semitic and then days before the Oscars, they had to report that they weren't true at all. It just reinforces my thought that you can't believe the media anymore. I wonder if the NY Times gets how much their credibility slipped when this incident happened. People probably voted for A Beautiful Mind in protest of all the mud slinging.

I liked that picture. I saw it with a friend and we both walked out of it wondering if we were delusional. It was a feel good movie and I think after 9/11, people want to see movies of a person triumphing in the midst of difficulties. This type of personal heroisem makes people feel that if somebody happens to them, they too will be able to triumph over any adversity. And The Beautiful Mind was about the enemy, the disaster, the calamity within your own heard. I mean how do you fight that? But John Nash did. He willed himself to sanity.

I also think there are more people in this country running around on prozac, prozac derivatives like paxil and other anti-depressants than the media is willing to report on. Seeing someone crazy on screen isn't that far off from real life. I know a few people who are kind of like John Nash. Maybe not as bad as him, but definitely not altogether there. People in droves went to see this movie and I think it's because people related to his craziness. I did and I've never bene on an antidepressant.

On to other topics. For research for my baseball screenplay, I bought a book called Baseball's Greatest Short Stories. Who knew there were that many short stories about baseball. The first story is Casey at Bat, which I seem to remember reading a long time ago in junior high.

What else. I'm walking 45 minutes at work now. Taking my two 15 minute breaks, which I've never done ever, and walking around the neighborhood, which is about a mile. I'm also trying to walk at lunch time. With these three walking breaks, I'm walking three miles, burning 300 calories since you burn 100 calories whether you walk or run one mile, and taking 6,000 steps out the recommened 10,000 steps that the authorities are now recommending everyone to do.

It's nice to be outside and walk and take a break from work. It feels so strange though, since I've never ever taken my breaks at midday or at mid afternoon on my own. The only time I've ever taken breaks is when I've been in jobs where I'm forced to do so or I've been so unhappy or angry at a job that I had to take a break to stay sane and not freak out. But that's been awhile since that's happened. I've always seen people at my job taking a break in the lunchroom, and I've always thought these breaktakers were like factory workers or union people or government workers. But now I'm one of them. It's so my karma to become what I've sort of always despised. I'm sure someone who sees on my walks is despising me now.

Thank god for discussion groups on the Net about how to do things with your computer. I was starting to freak out about transferring files from my little laptop to my desktop. I read one the help boards and someone posted a message saying to get Microsoft's ActiveSnyc. I installed this free utility on my pc and it worked. YEAH!!! I thought I was going to have spend some money on getting a card and card reader, but the ActiveSync transferred my files so fast. I think it helps that I'm not transferring large files but just Word files. Nonetheless, I now feel completely secure in writing on my baby laptop anywhere and then coming home and uploading the files to my desktop.

I have to work on my baseball screenplay beat sheet tonight. I have this beat sheet where I'm supposed to have the location, characters and purpose of each scene in my movie from beginning to end. It's a skeleon, an outline, but I have to do for my screenwriting class before I can get on with writing the screenplay.

This beat sheet method is so odd for me. I usually just write and write till I get to an ending. With the beat sheet, you have to have your ending, two plot points and midpoint first and then fill out the scenes between them. Once you get the beat sheet done, you just have to write out the scenes. I don't know if I can do this either. My screenplay idea got butchered in class and it was recommended that I start the movie 2/3 of the way into the story I had written and do it in real time. I have to get this beat sheet done though if I want to take the second section of the class. I won't be able to write my screenplay until my screenwriting teacher blesses my beat sheet. What a pain! I don't understand why you can't just write and write till you get to an end. But, since this is a new writing genre for me, I'm trying to follow all the rules and use the tools that I've been taught. Whether this obeying of the rules makes a difference to the quality of my stories is still yet to be seen.

Well, I guess there's no way to the other side but through it, especially if you can't get around it or come up with a workaround.