wilderworks

It's wonderful to see how short the journey is from despair to hope. It can happen in a touch, in a word, in a glance. It's almost enough to make one forget how quickly the return trip could be made. Today I got to work late. Alli got a flat tire last week, and her car was in the shop today. She borrowed my car in the morning, to run a few errands, and then intended to take me to work. Of course, somewhere in Century City or Studio City or some other Well Outta Walking Range City -- she locked her keys in the car. I couldn't come and pick her up, because, after all, it was my car. Jared drove out to pick me up, and so, my work day was cut an hour short. Too much time when I look at my bank account, but too little time when I evaluate my mood just prior to that 7:00 PM whistle time. There are new floors at work. They're black tile and already scuffed. It all smells of adhesive and melted plastic. It's hideous and inorganic. And today was frigid and dam

Drastic reinvention is not necessary. That's throwing the baby out with the bath water, tearing down a house because the paint is faded, trashing a car because the windshield's smeared. My problem isn't that there's something wrong with my life. It's quite the opposite. I like my life, I like myself, and so, I'm ready for more. I'm ready to launch. Bring on the next phase. Open the doors and let the bull fight. I've come thousands of miles, have had more jobs in the last five years than most of my father's generation had through their entire lives, I've lived more places than my parents have lived, combined, and I dated more women in NYC than I knew throughout highschool and college. I'm a poor kid from a small town and I'm doing just fine in Los Angeles, even better than I did in Manhattan. Fuck yeah. That's a big deal. I am, for the first time, confident that I can handle whatever life throws me. So, I'm not goin

I have an addiction to thinking about people. Beautiful and bizarre, fascinating and unusual women -- they're particularly good subjects. It's no surprise. I am heterosexual and male. I once wrote about a dream I had. In the dream, there was an Orwellian "Empire" that hunted people by collecting details, collecting secrets, about them. If the Empire collected enough personal information about an individual, they could eliminate that person. Mothers bundled up their children and sent them out into the world, warning them to keep their secrets, warning them to keep their silence, because "agents of the Empire are everywhere." At the time I wrote it, I thought the dream was about how we'd closed ourselves off to one another, how, for fear of giving others a weapon to use against us, we'd constructed walls against affection, how tactics and weaponry became necessary, simply to break through the defenses of others. But recently, I increasingl

I find myself often wishing that people around me would get out of their own way, take down the defenses and allow themselves to be happy. And today I wonder where I'm standing in my own way. What defense, what fear, must I drop, to make the things I desire materialize. I need a psychiatrist to point it out, because there's no one left to see except me. I'm thinking of you/ And think you're/ Not thinking of me/

Thank you all for your support, your votes, and your continuing efforts to drum up votes and support for Misplaced Planet's little $300.00, New Jersey movie, Signal Decay , recently up for consideration on the Sci-Fi Channel / Sundance Channel Exposure Competition , missioned with discovering new filmmaking talent. Unfortunately, despite all your gracious help, we did NOT move forward to the next round. Instead, the prize went to another film. The winning nominee was produced in 2001, by an undiscovered professional television director, and prominently features a well-established entertainment personality, absolutely unknown for his starring rolls in small, unnoticed series like M*A*S*H ,as well as The Dead Zone , which aired on an unrelated, fly-by-night network called The Sci-Fi Channel. The judges of this competition should be very proud of their selection of nominees. One must admire their strict adherence to the noble goal of seeking out new talent. We can only hope that t

My little movie Signal Decay is amongst this week's finalists at the SciFi / Sundance Channel Exposure Competition, and YOUR VOTE decides if we move on! You can vote once on Sci-Fi, and EVERY DAY on Sundance. Please, check it out, vote for Signal Decay if you like Signal Decay the best, and also, tell every human you know to do the same. Family, co-workers, delivery people, numbers randomly selected from a phone book. This is a chance to make a big difference for me and my friends, and it doesn't cost a penny. I'll only be bugging you until FRIDAY NIGHT, when it will be TOO LATE. Go here and vote for SIGNAL DECAY! http://www.scifi.com/exposure http://www.sundancechannel.com/exposure

Here's another vote you should be getting on top of this election day -- if you vote for our movie in the Sundance Channel / Sci-Fi Channel Exposure Contest, you will go to Heaven when you die. Promise. And while you're alive -- it's better than having a sex. Which I very much enjoying having. (I have male.) Go here and vote for Signal Decay . It's a big deal! http://www.scifi.com/exposure And go here EVERDAY and vote for Signal Decay : http://www.sundancechannel.com/exposure THIS WILL ALL END ON FRIDAY!! PLEASE VOTE!! IT COULD MEAN A LOT FOR OUR FUTURE AS HUMAN BEINGS!! Also: Repost this message! Send it to friends and family! If you do, you will be kissed by the object you desire the most at some point in the future. If you do not, your favorite television show will go off the air (eventually). And then you'll be SKINNED ALIVE AND HUNG IN A CLOSET BY A MAN WITH A HOOK. Love, Wilder, Shaun, Benni, Alli, Stirling, Karl, Gabe, Amy, and all of Misplaced Planet from

The physical DVD arrived in the mail this morning. I watched it all through. What a thrilling and terrifying experience. It's so amazing to see it all, but also terrifying to think that people will be seeing it and judging it. I took a few copies over to the bar where I have lunch everyday. Alli was going to stop by to pick them up, but the waitress, Shelly, bought one for herself, and then proceeded to sell three more to regular customers. People I barely know, but see almost everyday at lunch. Industry professionals with long histories. Very nerve wracking. I am horrified at the thought of disappointing them, or looking like a fool. I am not subject to personal embarrassment, but my creative pursuits are always on fragile footing. I want to be doing well, to deserve better, so badly. Anyway, I'll say it again: it's worth the money. It'll make you laugh at least once, or there's something seriously wrong with you. It's something to explore over

It's been a week.  A week of strange changes and vaguely forming possibilities.  There is much that could unfold, or fold back into stagnation.  As such, I appreciate the quiet right now.  I appreciate the time to rest and reflect.  I need a real recharging if I'm to move forward into the months ahead without terror.  So much to do, and so much riding on it.  I depend on a miracle or two. Meanwhile, get your butt a DVD. 

If you haven't heard from me lately, it's probably because I've been locked away in the lab, putting together something special.  And now it's ready.  It's called Transmission from Sedna , and it's a two-disc DVD set, featuring all the short-films I've been working on over the last three years. They're professionally packaged, and the main disc is pressed from a glass master – not burned – which means it's an investment that will last, and last, and last, something you'll hand down generation after generation.  Because DVDs will never go out of style.  Never. On it, you'll find full-resolution versions of all our best shorts, Momentary Engineering , Antebellum , Home Team , Brains!!! , Signal Decay , Just Us League , Home Front , Home Movie , and more. There's over 90 minutes of stuff on the first disc alone, and it's all short and sweet enough to watch while you eat a midnight snack.  There's commentary on most o

I apparently have a strange idea of what's a good way to relax. And I'm not usually a computer nerd, but I'm about to sound like one. I left work a little early today and stopped at Best Buy to get a 120 gig hard drive that they had on sale. Despite a migraine that kept peeking through the clouds of medication, I installed the hard drive and then installed the free beta release candidate of Windows Vista, which won't be available to the general public until first quarter next year. In short, I was quite impressed. It was attractive, responsive, and had a sturdy, quick-footed feeling that Windows usually lacks. It also had a lot of nice new features, and a sidebar full of gadgets that actually beats out the Google sidebar, of which I'm an regular user. I can also say that the integrated search really made finding things easy -- especially programs. No more trying to remember which folder I put the program icon in. Just type a few letters of the program I&

I need to stop reading horoscopes. They make too many promises. Or join an astrological sign that gets a daily dose of "nothing much is gonna happen today."

I will probably just lay in bed and play with my cell phone. Which is not a euphemism for anything.

I am going to get rip-roaring, riotously, ridiculously drunk. I am going to get vengefully drunk. I am going to drink until my ancestors pass out. I have sent out invitations to everyone I know -- join me in a night of old-fashioned, flagrant irresponsibility -- right after I finish work and walk the dog. But they're, to the last, afraid to follow me off this masochistic precipice. I will repel alone into the mouth of the cavern. Tonight, I plan to post the words, "Don't jump! It's not worth it!" on absolutely all the Myspace profiles I can find. It should really confuse people.

I hate to give the impression that I spend my days sulking, but this ridiculous journal has become the place for me when I have some woe to spew. So many of my complaints about life are summarized by that: I have no one to share my troubles with, and that is the whole of my troubles. However, writing has always been soothing to me, and every writer scribbles in hope that it will someday be read by the right person. Another potential companion (the one I mentioned earlier) jumped ship on me this past weekend. I must have done something wrong during the conversation, failed to amuse, because she begged off the call by saying she was going "away." And that was the last I heard of her, despite e-mails and contact attempts. Immediately following that, my closest female friend expressed long-hidden romantic intentions for me, intentions I did not share. If I do not draw a line, I will be stringing her along. I must separate, cause myself pain, in order to avoid her contin

Here comes the heartache and drama.

The Misplaced Planet DVD has gone off to be professionally duplicated. It has six of our short-films on it, along with behind-the-scenes documentaries and commentaries. This fist disc will represent the best of the stuff we've done in the last two years, and I really can't wait to see it. You can check out some samples at the forum. If you haven't already, you should be Misplaced Planet's friend on Myspace . Because that's me. Now, we need to polish off Disc 2 of the set, which will be a bonus for the real fans, and for ourselves. Hopefully, we'll be able to sell enough of these to partially fund the filming of Zaniness Ensues . Anything that reduces the amount of credit-spending is good. As for me, I haven't been getting a lot of writing done, since the design work for the DVD has consumed my time. But I have made a lot of progress on the Zaniness Ensues production. We have Jess Temple ready to play the lead female role of Meredith, and Matt McN

I want to know where you get those friends that people have in romantic comedies. You know, the single-lead's happy-couple-friends, the ones that see their romantic happiness, paired with their sense of friendship, as an imperative to set the single up with someone special. You know, the couple that quietly gets ready for bed, actually thinking about the loneliness of their good friend. I am about to throw a fit. Hold on tight!

My first two years out of college, I wrote five feature-length screenplays. I'd written endless skits, I'd written 21 episodes of television, but I'd never written a feature-length screenplay before. I started writing the first, Intelligence in the last months of college. I finished writing the fifth, A Darkling Plane , in my first months back from Harlem. I thought, if it didn't do the trick, I was probably done. It didn't do the trick. In my third year out of college, I was back home. I traveled around hanging Christmas decorations. I moved to California. And I finished one screenplay, Storybook Park . I felt, if it didn't do the trick, I was probably done. It didn't do the trick. This time, I hit a bump. For two years, I haven't written any new features. For two years, I didn't even start one. I kept tearing up the old scripts, starting on vast revisions that lost steam half-way through. I failed to fix Storybook Park , then I failed

I recently find that I am frequently talking to myself, just slightly aloud, just slightly under my breath. Sometimes, I just mouth the words. This is clearly the beginning of my unraveling. I'm a really, really excited about it.

I wonder if I'd be happier if I wrote more. I wonder if I'd write more if I ate more. I wonder if I'd weigh less if I exercised more. I wonder if I'd have more energy if I exercised more. I wonder if I'd write more if I had more energy. I wonder if I'd be happier if I wrote more. The boredom of work is exhausting me. I can't focus in the face of all that tedium and distraction, mixed in such perfect balance. I went to the free 11:00PM improv comedy jam at the UCB Theater on Monday. Mel, from work, was there, and he got called on stage to perform. Robin Williams was also there, and he was on stage, improvising ridiculously with folks from the neighborhood. It was the most fun I've had in a long time.

I am worn down to the nub. And shortly, it will be two years since I've been in a romantic relationship.

I've been thinking about the moment in every story when the hero makes either a life-altering decision, or has a life-altering realization, or both. The epiphany that allows the hero to change, or motivates them to remain steadfast against the temptation to surrender. Again and again, I find myself dissatisfied with these moments in the stories I tell (and elsewhere). Again and again, I find myself working and reworking and reworking this moment. And I've been thinking, I've been realizing: the more real I am able to make the characters, the more alive, the more difficult it becomes to believe that they'd change, or have a realization that strong, all in a fictionalized, focused moment. Perhaps I do not believe that people have these realizations. Perhaps I too often doubt that people make these hard choices while the time is still ripe. Yet, I refuse to be that cynical. It does not sit well with me, and not only because it would trap my work in art houses, at best,

I've gotten a good bit done over the last week or so. I finished a revision of Zaniness Ensues , my blog codename for the short that I intend to film, my big plan to break in as a writer/director, and I'm pretty happy with it. The old crew seems to approve, and the guys at work also approved, which was a surprise and a relief. I feel very good about it, and as a thank-you, I spent too much time today working on a "Paul Giamatti War Machine" animation. I also finished another segment of the Just Us League Behind the Scenes, though I'm still waiting on interview footage of Benni and Shaun, and also Shaun's brother's video footage. I'm hoping it will fill out the early parts of the day, where I have gaps. While laying around, I worked out a few kinks in my mental outline for the feature-length version of Zaniness Ensues . It will tap into some experiences of my own, and give the story a nice twist. Structurally, I've been thinking a lot abo

Our new short film ( J.U.L ) is up and running at the dvxuser.com contest , HeroFest. Embarrassingly, the forum discussion about it has been consuming more of my time and thought than it should. Which is to say, it's gotten some time and thought. It doesn't deserve any at all. Meanwhile, I've been editing the Behind the Scenes footage for the same, and it's been going slowly. Yes, it's all digitized, which is an achievement. But I've only got about a minute of edited footage, and I'm still waiting on a tape from Shaun's brother. I must be patient. I don't want to go too far before I've seen the footage available on that tape. My method doesn't easily allow for last-minute entries. Things get too tightly interwoven to easily revise. Which is similar to the problem with Zaniness Ensues . Apparently, an inherent problem of the fast-moving, interwoven style that I like so much. A problem I'm going to have to teach myself to solve.

All I can say about today is: it's hot. And tomorrow it might get up several degrees above 100. And, in no way unrelated, I saw "An Unconvenient Truth" today. If you haven't seen it, go. Take everyone you know. Where there justice, this movie would be number one in the world. Then again, if there were justice, the movie would be unnecessary, stating facts that everyone already knows. Despite the heat, I was able to capture more than two-thirds of the Behind the Scenes footage for Just Us League. Unfortunately, it's going to need more to make something coherent. But that's something to worry about tomorrow. Tonight, I see if I can sleep without turning on the A/C.

I'm feeling a little bit better today, mostly because I managed to write a full scene of Ladies & Gentlemen . I did a little at work, a lot at home. I don't know what the cause was, but I hope it had nothing to do with smoking several clove cigarettes on Sunday night. More likely, it has to do with confessing to myself, to the internet, and to my roommate, that things weren't going well with my writing career or private hopes, which I did at the same time I smoked and drank. I guess sometimes, one needs to come to the edge, look over, and be reminded what it looks like over there. Or at least, remember that the brink is always there, and if you really want to, you've given yourself permission to visit it again, without branding yourself a permenant resident. Whatever it may be, I hope I can sustain some energy for at least a few weeks. I hate the 24-hour flu version of productivity, and I seem to be prone to it of late. I need to stop letting days slip awa

I have a terribly virulent strain of writer's block, and it seems like I've had it for months. It seems that way because I have. Since at least December. I'd be willing to start smoking again to crack it open. It's reached its roots and shoots into every nook of my life. For me, the block is never caused by a problem I can't solve. Writer's block is always an inability to find a problem I care to solve. It's always a question of care. A problem of passion. And this year, this year, this year so far, I can't seem to care about writing another screenplay, or another short, or another contest runner-up-ship, or another disappointment. I don't care to meet people, I don't care to date, I don't care to write. I only get excited about paying off my debt. "When you get old, your heart dies." I was fooling with my picture phone and took some photos of myself, quite similar to some I took in Harlem three years ago. I loaded them on

For we are many.

Quite out of the blue today, my manager told me I'm under consideration for a promotion, hopefully a raise. And I hope, a substantial one, since I'm still at starter pay for a QC. Of course, the catch is I'll have to learn to open work orders, and thereby, I'll know how to open jobs, assign jobs to transcriptionists in-house and out, (both of which I recruit, test, and interview), and then process, print, and delivery finished jobs. Meaning, I'll have a hand in every step of the process, excluding sales and billing, the bookends. However, if that could mean a dollar or two more an hour (hoping for too much, I know), it'd be worth extending my stay there. I'm getting so close to paying off my credit-card debts, I feel it in my bones. Barring a tragedy, November or December, my car will be paid off, this laptop and my desktop will be paid off, and my other credit debts will be memories. Sitting on the balcony on break, eyes shut to the sun, I sometim

I have to bite my tongue so that I don't accidentally quit work today. If this almost-week off doesn't reset the system, I'm not long for this position. Meanwhile, I was reading about alcoholics last night, and determined that I'm not an alcoholic. I am, however, a sleep-a-holic. How could anyone sleep only the amount that they need? Who wouldn't want that feeling to just go on, and on, and on?

I have the mood swings and cravings of a pregnant woman. Today I want pretzels for dinner. Thin pretzels. And I'm an "adult," so I'm going to have some.

"Weebles wobble and then, with a subtle sigh, resign themselves to gravity, and sadly, slowly, fall to the ground." I had another vivid dream last night, but I can remember only small bits of it. Jason Schwartzman and I were trying to pitch a film to a producer. It was Schwartzman's idea, and he was bringing me in to back him up. It had something to do with a guy whose dog used to scratch the hardwood floors with his nails. After the dog finally died, the man replaced the floor with ceramic tiles. And yet, the man kept hearing dog sounds. And then, one fateful day, the tiles were scratched. This was very high concept horror, I suppose. This is what Schwartzman wanted me to punch up. The producer got furious with us. His investor, a doctor, had just lost his temper at him and thrown a tantrum in the middle of the hospital. The movie was a no-go. Homosexuality was involved, as were crayons, but I'm not clear on the details. Either way, he was blaming our poo

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."

I had a dream last night that I was getting married. The ceremony was in a big empty auditorium, something like a converted gymnasium, full of long tables and plastic chairs, like a school cafeteria. I'd been there before, but only in dreams, it seems. Everything about the ceremony was half-assed and tossed together. The organist, on a casio keyboard mounted to a portable boom box, kept playing the opening notes of "Here Comes the Bride," over and over and over, but never got to the part where the bride comes. The march went down between tables and chairs. There was no bridal party, and no one gave anyone away. I was marrying Melissa, my girlfriend from high school. She had a white dress. The priest was a young dark-haried woman, and she read her lines from a pamphlet mounted to the podeum for show, and she couldn't quite angle her head enough to read them right. Afterward I sat at the table with Melissa's relatives, two sisters, aunts perhaps, and t

"Life isn't long enough for love and art."

I had a very nice date. She probably didn't. Hi, have we met? I'm an idiot. I felt very cloudy. I'm not sure what I said. I felt like I was losing her attention. I couldn't get her to open up more than once or twice, and yet, I felt rather comfortable with her, looking in her eyes, which is rare. Very rare. I do so much better with women I'm not interested in. When I first got there, the restaurant she'd suggested was closed. So very closed, I imagined it was out of business. This was a prank. I walked up and down the street, in the rain, with my duck-head umbrella, hoping I wasn't getting stood up, almost certain I was. This was a mean prank. I sat in the car listening to NPR. At 8PM, Talk of the Nation started -- the show whose transcripts I spend two hours a day checking for errors. I got out to check for her one last time, and there she was. I closed the door, and locked my keys in the car. Alli earned her keep and brought me the spare set o

I have an image in my mind. It is me, writing. It's strange. I have glasses in it. I'm at a desk, turning over sheets of paper. I think I'm writing in pencil, and the paper has a thick tooth, almost as rough as denim in my mind. I wrote an episode of Darwin's Kids, in college, in a single night, all on paper like that, with a pencil. It was the Jan Term episode. In the vision, I'm not sure what I'm wearing. I don't know what time of day it is, the light is neither blue nor bronze. Not sure where I am. The camera's looking up at such an angle, I can't see the chair or the desk, or anything but the colorlessness of an out-of-focus ceiling. But what's so romantic about this image is... I'm totally absorbed. I'm just writing. How can I get there? How can I shut up the stress, the expectations, the commercial/success imperative? How can I write something passionately, freely, without the critics and the critiques hovering an

Today I'm very excited about getting some potato chips. Here's my plan. One big bag of kettle cooked, hopefully BBQ or jalepeno. Another big bag, Ruffles, ridges, Cheddar Cheese and Sour Cream. I want to eat these with a frosty can of Coke. Sit on my bed and watch West Wing DVDs. I have successfully gotten up before 7:00 AM for three days now. The mornings have been pretty productive, but right now, I'm in agony. I'm staying awake by will power alone. I move by the power of prayer. It seems, just as in high school, my body simply doesn't give a damn how many hours of sleep I got, if I make it move before 9AM, it's not cooperating. It will have its revenge. There's some promise on the dating front, or at least, there's someone who perhaps accidentally got my hopes up. This is promising -- promising to be very disappointing in a slow, sinking disappointment way. Meanwhile, the producer didn't like my proposal for Hell Froze Over , but

After four years of intensive study, I have concluded that all day jobs are bad for me. Once again, this one is killing me. Quickly.  But I cannot escape it, because there aren't going to be any better day jobs than this. There's no place else to explore. Aside from the pay, which could be improved, this is as good as I'm gonna find. Thus, I either slowly tighten until I snap, or I find a way around this immovable object. Each day, I go to work, and by the end of my stay there, my spirit is 100% broken; I just want to go home, drink a few beers, and curl up for sleep. Even when I'm not physically drained, I'm soul tired, uninspired, angry, hopeless, and lonely. So, my plan is this: I'm going to get up early, and try to work for three or four hours every morning, before going to work and having my soul crushed. This is a terrible idea, but terrible ideas are the only ones that seem to materialize in this world, aren't they? We all know, this wil

I've been spending a lot of time with old Darwin's Kids raw footage this week, searching for stuff for our reunion in May, getting ready to patch together some treats for the DVD. And I return to an old state of mind. Four years later? I am quite a pitiful thing. I do not like what I'm doing with my life. I preferred life then. And I don't know how the fuck I can get life to be anything better than this, anything even vaguely similar to what it was then. There is a shortage of resources for doing the things I love, and the jobs that would allow me access to those resources are snatched up by the children of those who have it already, by the connected and well-born. And of course, by the lucky. And of course, by the charming. One of which, I am not. I don't know how to get there from here. I'm out of tricks and schemes. I'm out of ideas. I can't think of anything I want to write, because I have faith in none of it. None of it will get me

Possibly the most ridiculous thing that Gordy said keeps rattling around in my brain. "You really could make it, but you know ... you really could not make it too."  I don't know why it haunts me, depresses me, frustrates me. Perhaps because it frames it as a choice. I could keep writing these dark, risky things that come from my heart, and "be sitting here, in this office - well not this office, I'll have a better office - in that suit ten years from now," or I could fucking figure out some light and fluffy high-concept product to sell... I really feel sick. I finished the short script "The Dead Samaritan" today, and it doesn't work. Which proves a point. A month or more wasted. No one is into it. And for some reason, I'm not even getting e-mail that people are sending to be polite, say something pleasant, and pass on.

I met with Gordy Hoffman concerning Storybook Park . Despite his assertion that the present engine of the story (that is, Baron), needs to be fully excised with a thick rim of healthy skin, he didn't believe that should be my next move. Quite literally, he said I needed to drop all the bullshit, fuck all the short-films, ignore the people who want me to make sci-fi or thrillers, and write a high concept romantic comedy, and get it out there. Which means, drop all the crap... He wasn't overly excited by the Cusp of Aquarius pitch, though I don't believe I did a very good job of pitching it. Frankly, I did a terrible job, because, as always, I haven't yet figured out how to explain it, since I haven't yet figured out how to write it. I sent him an e-mail yesterday with a stripped down pitch for The Jumpers , and I've been allowing myself to think it's a brilliant idea, when boiled down to the core. I hope I'll hear back from him soon, so he can p

Welcome to January 23rd. I hope today's not your birthday. So says Cliff Arnall, a British psychologist who made headlines last year when he unveiled the results of a formula that used weather, debt, time since the holidays and a few other factors to determine the most melancholy day. In Britain, and places like the U.S. Northeast that have roughly similar climates, it's the Monday closest to January 24, Arnall says. I'm starting to feel it too. I thought it was just because I was doing so well at becoming an alcoholic (and becoming an alcoholic has been my most successful goal in years), but it seems that I'm not the only one feeling like a loser this time of year. I wanted to write more, but it's all either perverse or self-pitying. I try to restrain the amount of self-pity I write, and I'd hate to waste perversity on a livejournal entry, when it's much preferred in my actual writing. I am putting in an official request for a woman in my life.

I think, instead of a writer, I'm going to become an alcoholic. I know, I know. It's not as easy as all that. Hell, I've tried before, and failed. The headaches. The expense. But now that I've quit smoking, I somehow learned to like beer. I can drink one rather fast. I can drink two rather fast too. And that's gotta be the first step. I can get myself a little tipsy every night. Easy. I'm watching a lot of Burt Reynolds movies. If I watch enough, soon I'll be able to listen to football on the radio. Eventually, baseball. Then I'll be up to a six pack a night. And I can switch over to the hard stuff without noticing much. I think I'll be better at being an alcoholic than being a writer. I seem to enjoy it more. And it's natural. Failing as a writer leads to a life of disappointing solitude. Disappointing solitude leads to drinking yourself to sleep. And so, the circle of life. My calendar, it says on Friday, "Epipha