Saturday, March 29, 2008

"What the...?!"


Purely by accident, I took this shot before I realized squirrel love was alive and well in San Antonio. Sorry Squirrels.

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Breakdowns and Breakthru's

Seem to have been having communication break-downs lately. I guess that's par for the course when working with anyone else besides our self, although even that sometimes. Let's face it, nobody's perfect. Sometimes I wonder how ingrained the DO DO DO mentality is in the American psyche. I bet we don't really even know - like sexism or other isms.

Breakdowns got me thinking about Breakthru's. According to the osho(.com) card, BREAKTHROUGH - "it is the greatest adventure in life to go through a breakdown consciously. It is the greatest risk because there is no guarantee that the breakdown will become a breakthrough...
"The dawn is not far away, but before you can reach the dawn, the dark night has to be passed through. And as the dawn comes closer, the night will become darker."

I am always looking for the dawn.

Ping Pong Paddlewack!

In case anyone was wondering what I do for fun (yes, besides blog4reel!) We've turned my dining room table into a ping pong table. Anyway, ping pong is awesome, or it's sick, as the youngers say:



Wednesday, March 19, 2008

DISGUSTING!

Have you seen this? It's the most flagrant example of greed in our country I think I've ever heard (well besides our government). And I hope the companies will be held liable:

By ADAM GOLDMAN,AP
Posted: 2008-03-19 12:25:49

NEW YORK (March 19) - The mastermind of a scheme to plunder corpses from funeral homes and sell them for millions of dollars pleaded guilty in a deal that could send him to prison for the next five decades.
He talked about how he forged records, including the times of death and the ages of the dead, while also telling the judge he switched blood and tissue samples.

"What he did was wrong," said his defense lawyer, Mario Galluci. "I feel horrible for the victims in this case. There is no excuse for what he did."

Prosecutor Josh Hanshaft said Mastromarino "mutilated the bodies for greed."

Mastromarino was the owner of Biomedical Tissue Services, a New Jersey company that shipped bones, skin and tendons to tissue processors such as Regeneration Technologies Inc., LifeCell Corp. and Tutogen Medical Inc. The bodies came from funeral homes in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and about 10,000 people received tissue supplied by BTS.

Those companies face hundreds of civil lawsuits from people who received the tissue in transplants and from the families of loved ones who had their body parts taken without permission.

Prosecutors said Mastromarino's actions posed a "grave risk" to transplant recipients, and that he showed a "depraved indifference" by shipping body parts that came from people with cancer or other diseases.

Mastromarino reached the plea deal earlier this year, but it nearly fell apart as prosecutors decided they wanted a trial. A judge nixed that plan, however.

Mastromarino will plead guilty to related charges in Philadelphia, lawyer A. Charles Peruto Jr. said Tuesday. The plea will likely come April 4, his scheduled trial date.

Others charged in the BTS case are Chris Aldorasi, Joseph Nicelli and Lee Cruceta. Aldorasi, a cutter, is on trial in Brooklyn. Cruceta has pleaded guilty, and Nicelli, who suffered a head injury, has been removed from the case until he recovers.

During a news conference, Galluci said the companies that accepted those parts should be prosecuted. He said they pressured his client to get more bodies and didn't ask any questions.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Rough Night

So just when i was getting excited about the increase of blog4reel members... one of our members had a FREAK OUT and decided to cancel his account. So I was up till almost 2 am dealing with that. Whoever said doing anything that involves more than 2 people is easy is fu**ed in the head. I'm not saying there are people who say that.. but I do have suspicions. Oh, well. Par for the course. I have to understand that no body on here knows me.. knows my integrity... knows that our intentions are good and fair and creative and fun... like Buddha meets Steven Spielberg (hope I spelled that right). I have to learn to let things go... or i'm going to lose all my hair in the process. And that would not be pretty.

I found something cool today though.... check it out.. it's a revolutionary film project (just like Blog4Reel!)

http://aswarmofangels.com/

Monday, March 17, 2008

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Just Something I Wrote...

Like a child

Learning

To

Love

To trust
To feel
To believe
To move
And walk
And speak
And express yourself
And build things
Build relationships
And houses
And beauty

Until a time

Someone may draw you a picture

That doesn’t look like yours

And for a minute you’re distracted by its ugliness

And forget your own creation

Remember to bring yours back
And revel in it
And explore in it
Expound with it
Explode with it

Remember.

You may not get what you expected
But in the end you’ll get what you believed you would.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Comments and Mammoths or Mammoth Comments

For any of you who might read this blog, do me a HUGE favor and leave comments on the blog4reel site comment link (right underneath my blog on Blogstars strip). I'll probably notice it quicker than the ones on my blog. I just realized there were comments.. and I feel terrible for my delayed replies. Although I am ecstatic that I had comments. So THANK you.

One thing that's come up which I need to address is people's concern that we are going to do unacceptable, filthy rotten things with their blogs, like stealing them or something along those lines. Lawyers write legalize to encompass any possible thing that could come up but let me allay any concerns. We are a legitimate competition and our goal is to discover new beautiful interesting stories. Our goal is to bring these stories to the silver screen, the computer screen, any screen we can find. We want blog4reel to be successful for all involved and we want to do it fairly for all. I will go back and double-check to make sure the rules and regs are cool. But in the meantime, you have my word as a co-creator of blog4reel that nothing will be done to or with someone's blog without their permission or written contract. Thanks for your understanding!

Alright on to more interesting things like film... we saw 10,000 BC over the weekend and I have to say I was sorely disappointed. The story seemed weak and well, a bit confusing. How did they get from snowy-capped mountains (that looked like Taiwan) to the rolling sands of what looked like Egypt? And who were these alien-like draped "gods". They left too many things open for my taste and the ending was a quick fix - again poor story-telling. But I loved the CGI of the mammoths and the saber-toothed tiger and, ok, maybe the lead was a bit of a hottie. I think he's new on the scene and someone worth following. He had a capacity for conveying authentic humor that i enjoyed.

Cable left the house today. Sad. No more addicting reality-tv for me. I guess it's a good thing, but still... goodbye Diddy, goodbye Lauren and Brody, goodbye crazy peeps on just about any and all of these shows. I suppose I'll have to start creating my own drama again. Hmmmm.... something to think about.

Quote of the Day

"Hand me the worms." - Frank Rodriguez

It's just not a sentence you hear very often, so I had to post it cause when I heard it it made me laugh.

Friday, March 7, 2008

Blog4Reel Update

Yes! Yes! Yes! Blog4reel has two Bloggers so far! I feel like a proud parent whose just birthed two babies, not exactly twins but one fairly quickly after the other.. so more like fraternal twins. I am SO excited!!!

The labkids and I are doing all we can to spread the word. I sent out posters to colleges and contacted all the Film Commissions in the country and am working on my film festivals list. We're posting posters all over Austin during SXSW which should be good. Because we can't really afford to have a booth at SXSW (they're $700) they recommended I contact this guy named Fritz who evidently rollerblades around the city putting up posters. Helpful service but he's a super grumpy guy. I hope he doesn't read this but it's true. I, the customer, felt compelled to apologize for taking up his precious time and asking him questions because of how curt he was with me. But I persevered without calling him names and thus Blog4Reel will (hopefully) be the talk of the town thanks to mr. rollerblade himself. Gracias Fritz!

Let's see, what else. I'm am going to singularly let every blogger on the web know about us and the competition. That should take some time. Just a little. :) I really want to take some time out to write this weekend though. I realized the other day that I really do miss writing (fiction). I've started a script based on a short story I wrote called Carnivorous Knowledge (great title, huh?! I luv it). It's going to be a vampire story. I've been spending so much time on B4R that I really haven't had the space to get into a creative writing mood. I need to try though.

I mean I realize that eventually this whole planet will disintegrate, along with every story I've ever written but the pure joy of writing is enough, I guess. Plus, I wonder if these things we think of... these creations, these stories, ideas, fantasies... all these things... if somewhere in the universe they are born because we took the time to create them in our minds. I wonder...

Thanks to my two bloggers! I wish you luck! Happy Friday. I'm off to Margaritaville!

Cloned Meat Polling Results

I am happy to say my experiment with polling was a success... not a huge success, but a success nonetheless.

100% of people said they would NOT eat CLONED MEAT. Granted only 5 people voted, but still.

The poll confirmed my suspicion that people do not want to eat that crap. I mean not that I know for sure that it's crap but it is suspicious and I think that's really the point.

I'm going to do another poll once I decide what to do... I'll think about it. If you have suggestions, leave a comment on the blog4reel blogstar comments link.

Polling is my new thing. I feel like CNN, only smarter.