Sunday, July 5, 2009
Dreams
I wish I could write. Not like, put words together in a way that makes sense write, but tell a story write. I have always really loved to read and thought that it would somehow translate as I got older into writing, but it hasn't. When I read interviews by authors they talk about how they always had this overwhelming urge to write, how they wrote stories for themselves way before they were ever published authors. I have an urge to read basically all the time but I do not sit and scribble stories in a notebook for myself and never have. I wrote plenty of papers for school and think I am decent at it, but I just don't really have that urge to write when there isn't a deadline or a grade attached to it. Nevertheless I hope that one day that author thing will strike me and that need and ability to create worlds and characters will appear. I would love nothing better than at the end of my life to know that I wrote a few books that people enjoyed reading, that I made a few movies that they enjoyed watching and that maybe one of those things made some kind of positive difference along the way.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Happy Fourth! Now Eat.
Happy Fourth of July everyone! I made some delicious key lime bars (I'm assuming, they're still cooling) which were a combination of a recipe from the Martha Stewart website and from Thursday Night Smackdown. Now I'm off to be a social butterfly and hopefully drink just a liiittle too much at a barbeque. I hope all of you will have an equally pleasant day.
Friday, July 3, 2009
Ding Dong the Witch is - wait, what?
Yay! She's giving up some power! It does make me a little nervous as to what she's got planned though. You know it's not that she suddenly realized she's not qualified or capable.
Adorableness
caI found some old pictures of my cats, and I wanted to share. I have the cutest cats in the world. I don't care what other pet owners think. Not super graceful (they love to lay on their back with their limbs flung out, like what kind of cat does that?) but absolutely loving and gorgeous. And I want to say that they do still have their claws, as I think declawing cats is cruel (though their owners are not, necessarily).
Guinness as a baby
A young Shale
Edited to add : Shale loves to chew on boxes and all sorts of other things. Is this a tooth issue or is she just weird?
Thursday, July 2, 2009
Casting Couch
Whatever happens with the project I'm working on going forward, I'm glad I now have experience casting. I spent the last couple of days explaining over and over to actors (while my voice slowly gave out) what the project is about and answering all their questions. We pitched the film more to them then they pitched themselves to us. I hope the producer found it helpful and we end up actually using some of them in the film. I think we will. In the meantime everyone just cross your fingers that we get financing - the film is on hold until we do.
Which means I am once again looking for another project to pay me.
I don't know what the normal career progression for someone doing film is, or if there is one, but I wonder sometimes if I am missing some crucial element. I have been out of film school for three years now and am still waiting for that magical moment where when one job ends another is lined up to go. It seems like each job involves a torturous amount of resume sending and applying, and there is far too much time in between them. I know plenty of other people in my position but it still gets really frustrating after a while. It does however give me a great deal of time to hone my cooking and tv watching skills. Valuable.
Which means I am once again looking for another project to pay me.
I don't know what the normal career progression for someone doing film is, or if there is one, but I wonder sometimes if I am missing some crucial element. I have been out of film school for three years now and am still waiting for that magical moment where when one job ends another is lined up to go. It seems like each job involves a torturous amount of resume sending and applying, and there is far too much time in between them. I know plenty of other people in my position but it still gets really frustrating after a while. It does however give me a great deal of time to hone my cooking and tv watching skills. Valuable.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Health Insurance Rant
I believe we should have a state/government run health insurance program for EVERYONE in this country. This is what I believe, though I know many people are horrified at the thought.
When the show I worked on went on haitus a few months ago I was briefly left without health insurance, as I could not afford to pay for Cobra. When the stimulus plan kicked in suddenly it became affordable for me, though still my biggest expense other than rent and student loan bills. It was really scary not being covered, because I knew that one minor illness or accident, one hospital or even maybe a doctor's visit, would leave me in debt for years. I don't make a lot of money right now. Hopefully one day I will, but right now I am getting by by budgeting carefully and hoping that nothing goes wrong. Many people are.
I had a family member pass away from cancer a few years ago. It's a devestating disease. Due to the fact he lived in Europe his family was not left with crippling debt or bankruptcy on top of the loss of their loved one. When people get very sick here, they better be covered and they better stay covered because otherwise not only will they be in debt for the rest of their lives, they risk running out of money to even get treated at all, or they get subpar treatment.
And if they recover, if they then lose their coverage for whatever reason good luck ever getting covered again- insurance companies don't want to touch people with a history of serious illness with a ten foot stick. You'd better hope you stay healthy forever!
Add this to the fact that though public education is free (which it should be, by the way) but that if you are sick you're on your own and the system seems really fucked up. One day, down the line, if I have kids, I can teach them to read and teach them history, etc, if I have to. There are books out there to teach ME what I need to teach them. People homeschool all the time.
I cannot learn to administer chemo from a book if someone I love gets sick. I cannot learn to do a triple bypass or how to create antibiotics in my kitchen.
As much as I think free public education is important, I think free healthcare (well, not free, but public since nothing in this world is free) is more important by far. If I had to choose for my family, I would choose health care every time. If you are well enough off your kids probably go to private schools and have private healthcare anyway. If you are not rich, the state should provide both. But you can't fix dead. You can teach someone to read or whatever at any point but you can't bring them back if they die from lack of care.
So why does everyone basically agree that education is a divine right in this country but healthcare isn't? Why are some conservatives horrified at the thought of a government run program? I'm not saying education is not important. I think it's critical. I think without it we would collapse back into the dark ages. I would fight for it to the end. But do people not feel the same way about health care? Why is that somehow our own problem?
I was just at a website that has a lot more facts and data than I do, and it is worth reading about, but do we really need a ton of statistics to understand this? Isn't it common sense?
When the show I worked on went on haitus a few months ago I was briefly left without health insurance, as I could not afford to pay for Cobra. When the stimulus plan kicked in suddenly it became affordable for me, though still my biggest expense other than rent and student loan bills. It was really scary not being covered, because I knew that one minor illness or accident, one hospital or even maybe a doctor's visit, would leave me in debt for years. I don't make a lot of money right now. Hopefully one day I will, but right now I am getting by by budgeting carefully and hoping that nothing goes wrong. Many people are.
I had a family member pass away from cancer a few years ago. It's a devestating disease. Due to the fact he lived in Europe his family was not left with crippling debt or bankruptcy on top of the loss of their loved one. When people get very sick here, they better be covered and they better stay covered because otherwise not only will they be in debt for the rest of their lives, they risk running out of money to even get treated at all, or they get subpar treatment.
And if they recover, if they then lose their coverage for whatever reason good luck ever getting covered again- insurance companies don't want to touch people with a history of serious illness with a ten foot stick. You'd better hope you stay healthy forever!
Add this to the fact that though public education is free (which it should be, by the way) but that if you are sick you're on your own and the system seems really fucked up. One day, down the line, if I have kids, I can teach them to read and teach them history, etc, if I have to. There are books out there to teach ME what I need to teach them. People homeschool all the time.
I cannot learn to administer chemo from a book if someone I love gets sick. I cannot learn to do a triple bypass or how to create antibiotics in my kitchen.
As much as I think free public education is important, I think free healthcare (well, not free, but public since nothing in this world is free) is more important by far. If I had to choose for my family, I would choose health care every time. If you are well enough off your kids probably go to private schools and have private healthcare anyway. If you are not rich, the state should provide both. But you can't fix dead. You can teach someone to read or whatever at any point but you can't bring them back if they die from lack of care.
So why does everyone basically agree that education is a divine right in this country but healthcare isn't? Why are some conservatives horrified at the thought of a government run program? I'm not saying education is not important. I think it's critical. I think without it we would collapse back into the dark ages. I would fight for it to the end. But do people not feel the same way about health care? Why is that somehow our own problem?
I was just at a website that has a lot more facts and data than I do, and it is worth reading about, but do we really need a ton of statistics to understand this? Isn't it common sense?
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