The prez debates and pastries with Palin.

I had a dream the other night that I ate donuts with Sarah Palin. It may be that my food cravings have shot up this week (I'm not pregnant), or the suggestion that the donuts symbolized my nihilistic subconscious. You know, maybe she's not even real.

But in this unexisto running mate's first veep speech, at the RNC, she said that her administration would build more nuclear plants. The teleprompter spelled out "new-clear." So clearly, this administration's new message of change is already beginning to resonate and they must get away from the Bushisms. Palin's mostly proven to be an effective speaker so far (never mind her first national interview). "What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick." Cute! And God knows we need a folksy veep who can tell a joke.



But sadly, you will have to wait for the blunderous veep debate on Oct 2, between the wide-eyed governor who doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is and the mostly forgotten Joe Biden, who contradicted his own campaign and misspoke on US history. "How much room do we have for oops?" should be the real question. Hoover, FDR... what's the diff, really? Just a few years and a few important policies. Pssh.

Tonight is the first of three presidential debates if McCain still decides to show up. He already dissed "ugly date" David Letterman this week. But come on, Letterman. Katie Couric is a lot prettier than you are.

Debates may not seem to matter as much as they used to, now that we live in a YouTube age and countless media outlets offering you unfair and unbalanced news from both sides of the coin. Fluff magazines photograph "dreamy Barack" surfing on the beach and local news outlets video McCain buying salsa at a Lee's Summit restaurant. He likes it hot, by the way. Saucy John. But since people are calling this one of the most important races ever, it may surprise you.

1858: Abraham Lincoln v. Stephen Douglas. Well, Abe was really tall and Douglas was like a midget. Obviously we all know how that one turned out. Tall people win every damn time.

When JFK and Tricky Dick squared off on the first televised debate in 1960, JFK showed an energy and youth that an exhausted Nixon could not replicate. Those rubber Nixon masks sure are frightening. Why did you elect scary face in '69?

"Are you better off than you were four years ago?" asked another rubber mask (Ronald Reagan) to Jimmy Carter in 1980 during the most watched debate ever, until possibly tonight. We may hear that same question echoed tonight but instead plug in double the number. It was that debate that invigorated Reagan's campaign and put him on the fast-track to becoming known as the Great Communicator. Maybe we'll see that tonight.

We already know that Obama has proven to be a more effective public speaker but at the same time a less prolific debater during the primaries. That's not to say that McCain is a master debater (heh heh), but until his head pops off like a zit in a fit of rage, his debating ability has proven fairly stable. But with undecided voters hanging in the balance and this week's economic woes (did I mention that I'm really happy I didn't pursue a career in the banking industry? Good thing print journalism will never go away. Oh... Crap.), this could be a very important debate that hopefully doesn't involve pronunciation of "nu-cule-ur." I just need to hear a good discourse with words pronounced correctly. As an American, that's all I want. And I hope it solidifies my vote for my candidate.

So if I have time, I'll be whoring about town to find someone who will let me watch their TV. Of course, I'll advise you to turn off the HD for this one.

Choke: Making saviors into sadists.

If you're going to read this, don't bother. After a couple of pages, you won't want to be here. So forget it.

Go away.
Get out while you're still in one piece.
Save yourself.

I'm kidding. Please keep reading or my universe will implode.

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

Quick warning: If you haven't seen Choke, and if you haven't read Choke and/or have any interest in doing either, then you may want to come back to this later. ***Spoilers, yo.***

After a summer of comic book-heavy blockbusters, silly spoofs, and sequels that should never have been, fall brings an unlikely savior in Choke. But being a Chuck Palahniuk fan, and Choke being my favorite book by him, I may be a bit biased.

With a distinct writing style full of research, non-linear plots, juxtaposed scenes that break without warning, and characters who attempt to break out of social conventions, Chuck Palahniuk books seem like they should become movies.

The only trouble is that major motion picture studios generally don't want to take the gamble on a story about a guy whose intestines get sucked out of a pool while he's masturbating. Or a chronicle about a porn star who attempts to bang 600 dudes in one day. Or a novel about a Messianic sex addict med school dropout with an Oepidus complex who chokes on food to get attention.

But luckily for us Chuck fans, Fox Searchlight picked up Choke for a close-to wide release in the US.

You can't fool people into loving you.

A screenwriter/director's ability to breathe an author's voice into a film, and the use of audio and imagery to enhance the story's overall experience equate to book-to-movie success.

See: The music of the Velvet Underground, Stiff Little Fingers, and Elvis Costello skillfully woven into High Fidelity.

See also: The charisma and sex appeal of Brad Pitt coupled with the instability and unreliable narration of Edward Norton, both as Tyler Durden in Fight Club.

See also: Hallucinogenic colors and distorted figures that give the viewer a stoned reality of Dr. Gonzo and Raoul Duke's trip through Sin City in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Actor, screenwriter, and first-time director Clark Gregg breathes life into Chuck's dry-humored and satirical voice with a beguiling performance by Sam Rockwell, who plays the unlovely but lovable antihero, Victor Mancini. Rockwell seamlessly weaves in and out of the comedic and the dramatic, supported by an equally talented supporting cast in Anjelica Huston, Kelly McDonald and Brad William Henke.

And next to Harold and Kumar's Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Choke is probably the funniest movie I've seen this year -- trumping intended comedies like Tropic Thunder, Fist Foot Way, Pineapple Express, and Step Brothers (all of which I enjoyed). No real knee-slapping moments, but consistently funny, awkward, and offensive moments cater to sick minds like mine. Some of the best parts of the movie happened in the macabre setting of St. Anthony's Hospital between the senile old ladies and Victor, whose Christ-like qualities give them rebirth in their dying stages of life.

You touched my woo-woo.

But where Gregg captures the voices of the characters and the savior idea, he also fails in presenting some of the book's primary themes.

"Subplot" isn't the right word, but it's the first word that comes to mind.

Palahniuk told Gregg to use artistic license and make the film his own, so it doesn't seem fair to compare the two side-by-side. But the other mark of book-to-movie success is in capturing the author's main points.

Please, just show me one thing in this world that is what you think.

In the novel, we hear about coded security announcements in stores, restaurants, other public places. Paging Mr. Amond Silvestiri at an airport means a terrorist with a bomb. Mrs. Pamela Rank-Mensa is a terrorist with a gun. These constant tidbits of information reveal the idea that nothing, no one, is what it appears to be, and also elaborate more on Victor's complicated and nefarious relationship with his mother. The almost completely first-person narration of the film also takes away from the omniscient narrator, another mother/son relational insight. Other themes are not quite revealed as they are in the book, but I'll leave it up to you to figure them out.

But for me, the main place that the movie fell through for me was in its somewhat weak portrayal of Victor's best friend Denny, whose character development in the book is greater than Victor's himself. He starts out as a scrawny, snot-nosed chronic masturbator in the 18th century stocks and ends as a muscled architect with defined goals and a physical mark of his progress. While Victor creates personal saviors by his self-asphyxiation, Denny creates literal building blocks for his future as a recovered addict. Denny's way of "reinventing the world" and overcoming his addiction solidifies the brutal death of Victor's identification as Christ. Sadly, he almost completely disappears behind Victor.

So, as is common, you'll probably enjoy the movie more if you've never read the book if you want to get a good laugh and a quick look into the mind of someone who may be more screwed up than you. And there are a few holes in the overall story. But with the twisted genius creativity of an author like Chuck Palahniuk, you can't always get everything right or cover it all in 84 minutes. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.

Go see it. It comes out Friday. And better yet, read the book. I'll even loan it to you, well, maybe. 3 out of 5 Storm Stars. (Which are like getting coins in the Mushroom Kingdom)

What would Jesus NOT do?

Now...

No one is participating in this group... so... I am just going to turn this into my own personal blog. So if you see that I removed you from having writing abilities, that's why. You can still read, but until I can get people to write then it ain't happenin'.

Plus, I don't even have the time to keep up with this right now. So peace. You'll hear more from me soon enough. Otherwise you can check out my MySpace blog.

And you can RSS me here: http://fragmentedwriters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

"Still humping the American dream."

I haven't put anything here and I don't think anyone is reading this anymore, if they were before. But I'm still posting here. And I think I might just be turning this into my own blog. Hey yo.

A few days ago, millions of Americans tuned in to watch an Illinois senator make a HISTORICAL speech (I just wanted to say historical again, because it wasn't made clear enough last week). He talked about his personal pursuit of the American dream. And the promises he made to ensure that this dream would be more of an attainable reality for Americans after the 8 years of a Bush league that has made it seem impossible.

The American dream means different things to different people. To some, it is having a baby, or buying a house, as I demonstrated before. Or some combo of both. To others, it's just being able to put a hearty dinner on the table for the family each night. It might mean being able to have a good education and a decent shot of skill-related employment, regardless of ethnicity, class position, or anything else. It might mean living well beyond one's means and instead having as much as possible. Slap on some generic Oprah definition and there you have it.

My weekend has been all about a strange local tradition of the American dream. It's now in my stomach. Corn dogs. Corn holes. Kettle korn. Funnel cakes. Whatever is able to be deep fried was, and it went into my belly. This, my friends - this... is the American dream. (And the Taiwanese nightmare.)

In Kansas City, you have three main Labor Day weekend festivals to unofficially mark the end of summer. For $15, you can jaunt to Bonner Springs for the Renaissance Festival (which actually lasts over a month, so skip!) and watch the jugglers and fabulous turkey leg eaters of Canterbury. For $10, dance a jig over to the green fountains at Crown Center for the Irish Fest. Since I'm Irish, I have gone to this before. What I got out of it was a pretty good performance by The Elders, lots of beer that I didn't drink, and green popcorn balls that would've pulled out my root canals if I had anys. Or, for FREE... You can drape Ol' Glory or a Confederate flag around your body and safely slide to Independence to attend the Santa-Cali-Gon Days festival. Which one of these is the most American? I think you can figure this out.

Last year, I dragged my Santa-Cali-virgin friends from corners of the nation as mystic and beautiful as Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Iowa to this great festival. And guess what? They all willingly and excitedly joined me for round two with a couple new additions. Now you think my friends are weird. Well, yeah, you're right. But they're entitled to their own opinions, no matter how flawed they were for listening to me in the first place. Because this is America, damnit. Follow the Asian.

Oh, but yeah. American dream. You see, Santa-Cali-Gon embodies everything I love and hate about this country. Maybe that's too bold of a statement. But I'll explain.

1. Consumerism. If you aren't currently living on an extreme religious compound, you can probably guess that the United States is a consumeristic culture.

a. (Subcategories mean I'm serious) Food. The richest fifth of the world consumes 45% of the world's meat and fish; the poorest fifth consumes 5%. A third of that fifth gathers at Santa-Cali-Gon each year. 25% of the world's meat (and meat byproducts) is consumed on this weekend alone in corn dog consumption. The other 20% is comprised of turkey legs being gnawed off by neighboring Ren Fest attendees as well as other fine meats on a stick.

None of that was true except for the initial 45/5% statement. You believe anything you read? Welcome to the Shelly Spin Zone. Luckily, our media and political coverage isn't like this whatsoever.

I don't know where this unique culture of American festivals and deep fried everythings comes from. There's so much of it. And I can't get enough of it. Actually, I can. It stops after a corn dog, a Pepsi, a handful of kettle korn, and a couple bites of someone else's funnel cake.

b. Possessions. You've grown up hearing that if you have a tough work ethic, you can go far in life and get whatever you want. At Santa-Cali-Gon, this means you can get faux antique crafts enjoyed by women over 60 (my mom included, and probably yours). You can get cowboy hats that are next to blow-up American flag-patterned machine guns. I'm sure you can get trucker hats with a "Git R Dun" emblem on the front. And bumper stickers, belt buckles, window coverings, whatever you want with cute little Rebel flags. Yeah. More Americana. But it's your own slice of the strange and not very tasty pie.

2. A small-town mentality. This fest has been going on for over 30 years. It's held in the Independence Square, a quaint area with the courthouse, the old jail, the ice cream and soda fountain that was Harry Truman's first job. You will more than likely run into oldtimers that will tell you about "The time I used to come up here and toss quarters off the roof of..." Snoozies. And if you're like me, there's always the inevitability that you'll run into someone you once knew from grade school or high school. And since high school will never be the chapter in my memoirs called "The Best of Times," that's not a part I look forward to. If you went to high school with me and are reading this, then you should probably be offended.

3. Cultural diversity dayz. I hear the American dream is all about equal opportunity. The idea that anyone who works hard enough can make it in this highly upwardly mobile society. And if anyone can epitomize that, it was the two white, shirtless, tattooed, areola-pierced men we ran into constantly throughout our travels of the day. Some women should not be allowed to wear midriffs. Some men should not be able to go shirtless. However, at Santa-Cali-Gon, it doesn't matter who you are. You can be shirtless and have barefoot children running amuck. This is America. And as shirtless man 2's back read, "Freedom isn't free" -- an airbrushed tattoo bursting with an American flag and a menacing bald eagle. Then he made some comment about killing Mexicans. Rugged individualism, I guess. Still a part of the dream.

4. Carnival rides! Who doesn't want to ride creepy looking twirling bears in overalls? Enter a building adorned in poorly drawn airbrush art with El Diablo's face near the door? Hop on a ferris wheel designed by an angry tweaker who gets paid in minimum wage and leftover caramel apples? Cheap, fast-paced thrills and absolutely no frills.

You think anyone over the age of 11 wakes up in the morning and says, "I want to work at a fair for the rest of my life!"? That ever-fading definition of the American dream would just tell us that they either aren't working hard enough, or it actually is what they want. I'm sure if they worked hard enough, they could be in Ivy league schools, right?

5. Mullet counting. After about 6 p.m., Independence's finest lets their hair down and gets the party started from the back. As the illustrious John Cougar Mellencamp would say, "Ain't that America?"

I kinda don't even like John Mellencamp. But I didn't want to quote Emily Dickinson again, so this is the next logical step.

"Well there's a young man in a t-shirt
Listening to a rockin' rollin' station
He's got a greasy hair, greasy smile
He says: 'Lord, this must be my destination'
Cuz they told me, when I was younger
Boy, you're gonna be president
But just like everything else, those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went."

I can't see people used to cocktail parties and caviar really into the idea of visiting this fest. I can't see myself really into the idea of visiting an upscale caviar party either. But I would, because I think I could be into caviar. And I'd be rich.

September 2008 news: The "untouchables," the lowest in the Hindu caste ladder, were the last to be rescued in an India flood. Hmm. United States. August 2005 U.S. news: Remember that hurricane and all the backlash from people who didn't have all the money?

So yep. Santa-Cali-Gon is the embodiment of the American dream in all its glory. Or a gross distortion at best. But on a micro scale, isn't that kind of what it's been turned into anyway?

Vote for me. No, don't. But do vote.

Radiohead + Chuck Palahniuk = BFF!

Yes, I am still posting my MySpace blogs on here. To fill up space.

Famous BFFs in history: Laverne and Shirley. Bill and Ted. Lucy and Ethel. Thelma and Louise. Bert and Ernie. Radiohead and Chuck. What?

That's right. Radiohead is writing the score for the film adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk's book Choke - my favorite one by the author (though, I confess, I've only read 5 of his 10 fiction novels so far). This year I've been looking forward to four movies, and this is one of them. The other three: Well, you can guess what one of them was if you've read my other blogs and can deduce the consensus of the rest of the country. The second was the good but-it's-no-Half-Baked stoner action flick, and the other comes out today.

Could this be the best film score written by a popular band of all time?

Well, I don't know. I don't know enough about the combo to tell you. But here are a few film scores I do remember.

- Journey does TRON. Major 80s overload. Take a nerdy 80s movie and pair it with a dorky 80s band, and this is what you get. But if you haven't seen this, prepare to be disappointed or thrilled, depending on your preference. No, you won't get an earful of the mighty Steve Perry falsetto as the light cycles race. The score, like most musical scores, is instrumental. But, if you get past all the cheese of Journey, they are solid musicians. So stop hating, and start believing.

- Queen does FLASH! Speaking of cheese. Now, in contrast to the silent Steve Perry in Tron, you do get an earful of Freddie Mercury throughout Flash. And if you haven't heard the Flash theme song, you are most certainly missing out. Brian May's custom guitar sound goes quite nicely with the whole Flash Gordon saving the world thing, wearing a shirt bearing his name. A narcissistic little guy, but whatever. Added bonus: Nazis. Any good movie needs anti-Nazi sentiment and it gets that much better. For reals.

- Jonny Greenwood does There Will Be Blood. So, the guitarist for Radiohead did the score for this little diddy. I only saw the movie once in theaters - amidst laughter from my inappropriate friends - but the film was full of experimental string-driven performances. Peaks of staccato notes between oil montages and Daniel-Day Lewis' angry greedy man moustaches. Actually, I found this to be a very impressive score. Now I can just imagine how much better it could get with a few Thom Yorke compositions.

-The Dust Brothers do Fight Club. You can't talk about Choke without mentioning Fight Club, I suppose. A fantastical and somewhat repetitious drum beat with an ominous bass behind it seems to set the mood of the dissociative personality disorder-struck character in Tyler Durden, and the single-serving universe he unknowingly creates behind him.

I'm not going to rack my brain to attempt to think of anymore and I'm sure I've left out some of the most obvious ones. But if you can, you're welcome to mention. And I'm talking about scores, not soundtracks. And I didn't include movies like The Wall, or A Hard Day's Night, or anything like that. And of course there are other great scores in film that I won't even go into, because that's a totally different topic.

Either way, my verdict is that this will be a great pairing of a band who continues to create a different feel with each album it releases, and a movie that will undoubtedly garner a cult following as did the last Chuck book that was adapted into film. Perhaps this time even more so, as Chuck is a much better known author today, and most Chuck fans that I know consider this his best book. Hopefully the film will live up to this reputation. I'm not completely sold, but... with what I perceive to be an ambient musical score to set the tone to depict a Oedipal, sex-crazed, med school dropout attention whore who works as a Colonial reenactor... perhaps it will be quite good.

"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction." Victor Mancini, from Choke

-Storm.

The Ostrich and the Goose!

The Ostrich and the Goose!

In the world people live in
never see things on the earth
for what they really are

in the africain plains
there are many sights
The Ostrish is the best sight
tall and gracious in all its might

runs arcoss the plains
never searching the ways
catching a glimps
can leave you in a daze

but what can top that
is that of the golden goose
made of legend
there is one egg on my mind

she is not a goose
a swan she has become
in my eyes ...I hope
she still have gold for me

SB

just another funny thing I wrote

Good girls

When I first met you
You could make vanessa del rio save face
The number of mates youve had are more than a few
I hate you

Ia m not telling you not to be dirty
but now you are president of the bible society
But it seems you like to "flirt"

you use to be the toss up girl
but once you met me
you became the preacher's daughter

Girl lets stop pretending
Good girls are good
Like Lepards and Spots
You can't change PANTIES and HOES


i'm spents

Splendabear

to all the wonderful females out there... do not take this message to heart... take it to your two side whore friend who decided to be a born again virgin. tell them it aint going to work unless they move to antoher state where know one knows them