There was a report on the local morning news show about how the SF Bay Area Food Banks are running out of food. I'm sure they did it for dramatic purposes, but the news camera man showed the empty shelves at the Food Bank in San Mateo.

I felt bad. The reason for the empty shelves, the reporter went on, was because the food banks have had to feed more people. One client also remarked that the food boxes were getting smaller and smaller, because there's just not enough food to go around.

This is the kind of stuff that makes a Sunday morning news show that nobody watches, and doesn't make the 6 pm news. There are more and more people in the SF Bay Area who are jobless and can't afford to feed themselves.

These are the issues that the local news commentators should be focusing on, and not on Governor Terminator or Michael Jackson.

It is a crime, in every sense of the word crime, that there are starving people in this very affluent part of the world and no cares enough to report on it very much.

I decided that everytime I go to the store, I'll buy extra cans of food and put the stuff in the food barrels. You know it's a sad sad world when people's basic needs like food are not being taken care of.

There's a definite kind of anger out there, that says government and politicians are not taking care of people's basic needs. It's why someone like Arnie was elected to lead the world's 5th largest economy, because if local politicians are more focused on ideologies instead of luring businesses to the state and the community so they can hire more people, maybe a Hollywood action hero can get the job done.

He does it in the movies, after all. And since most people are so removed from the political ideologies, what's the difference between the movies and politics. It's all the same, isn't it? A fantasy world that the common person doesn't inhabit or exist in.

At least in the movies, the action hero always wins and doesn't get beaten down by nonsensical political rhetoric and government beaurocracy.

I just checked the Nanowrimo site, it's only November 23 but already there are 9 pages of people done with their 50k novel. Unbelievable! I thought the point was to get in the habit of writing a certain amount of words every day, and not speed to the finish. Whatever.

This year my novel writing is going very slowly, but I'm determined to finish. I have all of Thanksgiving weekend to get cranking.

Next month, I was hoping to bring all this Nanowrimo energy into finishing my second draft screenplay, and starting the outline and rewrite of the third and final version.

I want to finish the second draft version just to finish it, and I'll probably register it with the Writer's Guild to see what that process is like. The third and final version will be sent off to that UCLA screenwriting professor review, and then I'll register this version of the screenplay with the Writer's Guild as well.

Then sometime in January or February at the latest, I'll start editing the Nanowrimo novel and rewriting it and then comes the fun job of trying to sell it. I'm scheduling myself to take a bunch of seminars on selling your writing next year.

I went to an early Thanksgiving dinner last night, and already I have turkey and gravy in the fridge.

I made a really yummy maple glazed carrot dish from Bon Appetit. Carrots boiled in butter, with a butter, maple syrup and brown sugar glaze and sprinkled with chopped italian parsley for colour.

Totally heavenly and so darned fattening!

I suppose one thing I am grateful for, if I can be grateful for anything about my writing, is I've never not had a year where I didn't write at least write one story since I started exploring writing as a creative expression in 1998.

I should make a timeline for myself of when my stories were produced to prove to myself that I am somewhat productive.