I think I am so over my job and kind of really dislike it here, because I had to make a comment about the Zel Miller speech in a department meeting especially when one of my cube mates said it was an awful speech. I’m sure I made some enemies with that statement. And I don't really care either. Then the person who made the comment about the awful Zel speech wanted the whole group to go to the lunch, and I decided not to go. I was sure I was going to get cornered on that statement and I didn't want to deal with it. I've been such a bad corporate citizen today.

Some people just take politics so personally. You can’t have a discussion about which political tactics work or not. I don't really like this person anyway, and she's so arrogant about her politics that I just wanted to take her down a bit. Mean, huh? What's ironic is that she was right about the Zel Miller speech.

Of course, the Zel Miller speech was awful. Of course the guy totally twisted the truth about John Kerry’s voting record to make a dramatic point. But that’s not the point. The point is the democrats didn’t have a “Zel Miller” type at their convention, and that was a huge mistake. I don’t know why either, because the media keeps saying that moderate republicans aren’t going to vote for the Shrubmeister. If this is true, why couldn’t the DNC have trotted one out at their convention? Talk about a tactical error on the DNC’s part.

Which brings me to the second point. There wasn’t a rallying the base/red meat speaker at the democratic convention, who has street cred. And no, the Al Sharpton speech doesn’t count because that guy is totally scary.

The saddest thing about the whole Zel Miller incident is that Georgia was the last democratic stronghold in the south, and we now have confirmation that the south has gone totally red and republican. What the heck happened to the south? At one time the south was totally democrat region, and now well, it’s just not.

Of course the funniest thing about the Zel Miller incident was watching him and Chris Matthews get into a nasty verbal fight afterwards, and Matthews like totally freaking out because Miller totally let him have it. Poor Chris … I think the guy was in total shock because he finally met his match, someone who could argue with him toe for toe and then some. Chris usually manages to shout his interviewees down or browbeat them to death. Not Zel Miller though. The old guy was still on fire with that fire and brimstone speech he gave. Go Zel!

You know what the worst thing about not having an office anymore and going back to the cube farm life? You’re forced to listen to your cube mates’ stupid political opinions. It makes me wonder if people use their brain for something other than stuffing food into their faces and going to the bathroom.

Despite what anyone thinks about the content of Zel Miller’s speech at the Republican National Convention, as a peace of political gamemanship the speech was tactically brilliant. Miller’s speech was designed for one purpose and one purpose only, to energize the GOP base. If it scared some people sitting on the fence about the election, then fine. There are very few people sitting in the middle at this point anyway. With less than 70 days before the election, it’s all about getting the troops on the ground excited for the battle ahead. And as someone on Chris Matthew’s Hardball coverage said last night, the GOP are street fighters and have the best troops on the ground willing to fight for their four more years.

They showed their strength with the Florida election debacle in 2000, with Gore’s people not knowing what the heck was really going on with Florida. I have friends that went down from DC to Florida to help count the vote, and they told me horror stories about disorganized the democratic party was down there.

Chris Matthew’s favourite quote is “elections are always local”. And you know what he’s right. It’s about which party has the muscle to get people out there on knock on every door, in every single precinct across the country to get out the vote. With the demos fighting with the greens and independents for their base in every local election across the country, they just don’t have the troops to do it. The democratic party is fractured at the local level. And it’s at the local level that elections are won and lost, because elections are won and lost one vote/one person at a time.

I just have to take at my own city’s politics to see the weakness of the democratic party. I look at New York City where one of out of every five people are democratics, with their republican mayor. And you know what, I hate that I’m a political realist because I can see the future and I don’t really like what I see.

My acting past is coming back to haunt me. I found the following advice about screenwriting on a new website.

Hal Ackerman:
Bob, the most important thing to think about in scene writing (and incidentally my book, Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way, is broken down into 2 sections, The Big Picture, which is about the telling of the story and The Small Picture, which is about scene writing) is that there is one purpose for every scene that we write, and that purpose is not what you think it is -
it's not for the characters to say stuff that you want them to say.
It is to create an arena for the character or character to do everything
that they can to get what they want in that moment.
I call it the WADOOGEE:
And it means:
- WHAT do the characters want?
- What do they DO?
- To GET it?

I call this the character objective, and when the 2 characters in the scene have opposing objectives, then what is created is the life blood of every scene, which is conflict. Think about 2 coyotes and one bone.

This is right out of my actor training, when I could I hear my director who used to teach at ACT screaming at me "what does your character want and what are they prepared to do to get it?" It's like neo-marxism all over again, thinking every damn scene in a play is about the conflict between one person wanting one thing and the other person wanting the exact opposite thing.

And I don't I ever got this concept in acting because the whole time I kept thinking, why does life always have to be about conflict? Why can't two characters want the same thing? And why can't they agree to disagree if they don't?

So I’m kind of mad at my boss right now. We sent a big mailing out to our clients verifying some data and telling them they had until September 2 to notify us if our records were incorrect. My boss’ name was on the letter as the contact, but then she decides on Monday that she’s going take vacation starting today September 1.

I mean, did she not even think our clients wouldn’t find it a little weird that the main contact person on the letter is out of the office two days before the deadline? But I guess my boss had it all figured out because she called me this morning and said I’m not calling all these people on my vacation, and I want you to respond to them.

Who looks kind of unprofessional here, me or her?