I love the internet.

I often find myself driving around or otherwise momentarily away from an internet-connected computer, and then I have that thing where I need information! (It’s never useful information, like “I wonder if that plant is poisonous” or “What else do you need to make tortilla soup”. It’s always things like “I wonder who wrote the pilot episode of Futurama. I NEED TO KNOW. NOT KNOWING IS KILLING ME.”)

(Also. Do you get that thing where you’ll be driving around with the radio on and then you’ll sort of, in your mind, reach for your Tivo remote so you can skip back and have the person repeat what they were just saying? And then, for just a second, you’re really discombobulated that you don’t have Tivo in your car? Because I get that ALL THE TIME.)

So! The Internet. It’s full of glorious things like information on how to get to your friend’s house, and soup recipes, etc etc. Also, funny things.

Here are some things on The Internet that strike me as pretty hilarious.

1) Cat Ladies. It’s pictures of ladies with cats, but the cat’s head and the lady’s head have been swapped. I don’t know why it’s funny. But it is.

2) ManBabies. This is exactly the same joke as Cat Ladies: pictures of dudes holding a baby, but the dude’s head and the baby’s head have been swapped. Similarly, I don’t know why it makes me laugh, BUT IT DOES. I really like this one:

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

…which indicates how important respect and insults are to rabbits.

I am such a fruitbasket.

I finished a draft of something recently, and it went like this:

3:47 PM – TYPE “FADE OUT”
3:48 PM – WEIGHT LIFTED, TAKE FULL BREATH FOR FIRST TIME IN DAYS
3:49-3:56 PM – FEEL PRETTY GOOD ABOUT LIFE
3:57 PM – DREAD SETTLES BACK IN.

Isn’t that ridiculous? I felt okay for literally ten minutes before resuming a state of low-grade panic. Such nonsense.

Similarly, I made Naomi read my draft, and I have been having SO MUCH angst about it that I guess I was expecting a lot of criticism and “Wow, this is so terrible, did you have your DOG write this? And you don’t even HAVE A DOG!” and instead she said “I think this is all kinds of fine! I don’t actually have any changes. Were you expecting changes? You have a typo on page 26.”

It was a weird let-down!

And then I was angsting endlessly to poor Friend Kinan about this issue, and she politely reminded me that when I was writing my apocalypse spec, I was also full of angst. And what’s extra lame is that I had forgotten this entirely! Or mis-remembered it. Because I have actually been thinking a lot about how when I wrote my apocalypse spec, I was so cheerful and purposeful and confident, and feeling guilty that I didn’t feel that way now, and Kinan was all “…no. Not really. You were totally crazy and full of angst. I can show you the emails.”

!!!!

Isn’t that odd? I AM SO WEIRD. I’m so weird that I totally forget how weird I am as soon as the moment passes.

Kinan suggested a sign that read RELAX! YOU ARE ALWAYS PANICKING. Which seems like it wouldn’t be reassuring, but… actually, sounds like a pretty great idea.

Further! I need to tell you about rabbits.

So I was reading this website about rabbit-human communication, and I’m not ashamed to say that I read it BACK TO FRONT.

Okay.

So I’m a little ashamed. But I feel certain that you will understand when you see that it contains glorious statements such as the following:

You’ve probably heard that Eskimos have many words for different types of snow, it being so important to their daily lives. Well, rabbits have many expressions that mean, “You’ve offended me,” which indicates how important respect and insults are to rabbits. Disagreements don’t usually require a brawl, but they do typically require that someone get insulted and someone apologize. Since the apology usually just requires some forehead stroking, and maybe a conciliatory raisin, it’s worth trying to get back on your bunny’s good side. If the rabbit is really pissed off, though, you may have to just suffer the humiliation of being shunned. After a while, you’ll be allowed to apologize. An offended rabbit who is not apologized to can hold a grudge or maintain a sulk for many, many days.

-From the R-E-S-P-E-C-T is What My Bun Demands of Me section

Isn’t that wondrous? I warn you that if you click on those links you’ll find yourself reading the entire website, so keep that in mind if you have a lot of work you need to get done later.

Insurgency; Iron Man

“If you’re serious about insurgency…”

There are certain phrases that make me think that whatever follows is going to be a joke. One of these phrases is “If you’re serious about X…”. (See: this comic about globes I have linked to previously.)

It just primes my brain to be ready for HILARIOUSNESS. And then I get really perturbed when no hilariousness follows, like I just can’t quite believe it.

For instance: recently I was reading something about insurgency and counterterrorism, etc. And the person was arguing a point from the perspective of an insurgent, and he said “If you’re serious about insurgency…” and I started laughing, because OBVIOUSLY SOMETHING AWESOME WAS ABOUT TO HAPPEN, like a one-man skit about surly teen insurgents!

But nothing awesome happened. He just talked about improvised explosives for a while.

Is that terrible? Am I a bad person? Sometimes when I’ve been hanging out with a particular person (Naomi) too often, I can’t tell if my sense of humor is wrong or not. Sigh.

(Come on, “If you’re serious about insurgency”? NOTHING? Not even in the insurgent’s dad lecturing him about how he spent ALL THAT MONEY sending him to med school, and now he wants to be an INSURGENT, this is just like that time he was going to be in a ROCK BAND, and his dad bought him an amp and EVERYTHING–)

Also! Iron Man, which I saw a while ago.

You know what my favorite part of Iron Man was? That it opened in a Humvee in Afghanistan, set to Back in Black, and then there was an explosion. RIGHT AWAY! Those are all things I love!

(Not AC/DC specifically. You know what I mean.)

Also! Iron Man featured an INTREPID ASSISTANT. I loved that. I would really love it if there were a show that was about an assistant, and it was kind of pulp-noir (but in a cheerful way) and the assistant solved mysteries! And some of them were pretty serious, like “OH NO, WE MISPLACED A LARGE NUMBER OF MISSILES!” but some of them were like “Someone around town is buying up all available copies of MAXIM MAGAZINE, what does it mean???” and just silly.

The assistant’s boss should be some kind of big-deal criminal attorney. And he would never really notice that his assistant was solving these crimes–

Or! Like, if the boss were some kind of dissolute nobleman who drank a lot of martinis (and it would of course have to be set in the 20s or the 30s) and he had a social secretary who traveled around the world with him. And SECRETLY, the bossguy was a JEWEL THIEF and equally secretly, the secretary was a sleuth! And they were locked in an eternal game of cat and mouse, but neither of them realized!

That would be awesome. Also, I would like it if the dissolute nobleman traveled with some dogs. The secretary would often find herself standing around in hotel lobbies, controlling a brace of Irish wolfhounds or something. (They could help her solve crimes!)

Farmer’s Market Mania

So I like to go to this farmer’s market near my house. It’s on Thursdays. They have all kinds of interesting products! Last week I bought a cheremoya, also (according to google) known as a “custard apple”. Mark Twain APPARENTLY said that it was the finest fruit known to man. How could I resist?

It’s a very odd fruit that tastes like banana crossed with strawberry crossed with pineapple crossed with pear. Also, it has scales! So it looks like it was also crossed with a fish or a dragon or something.

(I’m just saying, my supermarket does not carry fascinating FISH FRUIT.)

I have noticed that farmer’s markets – at least this one – seem to attract Wacky People. Last week there was a very thin Englishman who kept interrogating a mostly-Spanish-speaking farmer about what kind of fertilizer he used on his fruit trees. The Englishman got QUITE ANGRY when no one could figure out what Spanish for “fertilizer” was. He kept saying “I think it’s almost the same word! FERTILIZADO or something! WHY WON’T YOU TELL ME.”

Today, at the same farmer’s market, I witnessed a man get into it with the Frenchman who runs the artisanal bread stand. Because the guy had almost knocked his head on part of the tent, and he felt that this COULD NOT PASS. He kept saying things like “Now, I would never sue, that’s not what I’m saying…”

I don’t know why this place attracts angry men. It’s odd.

After that, I went to the grocery store for a few additional things (I know, you’re fascinated by my shopping habits. JUST WAIT, this is going somewhere.) and while I was standing in line, I saw MODERN BRIDE MAGAZINE. One of the story headline things was:

WEDDING NIGHT SEX: SURPRISE HIM WITH THESE HOT NEW MOVES

???? Is this just me? I’m not married, so maybe I’m wrong about this. But I find that both HILARIOUS and WEIRD. Wouldn’t your brand-new husband be kind of freaked out if you were suddenly like “Oh, honey. Welcome to marriage! I know that today was exhausting, emotionally trying, and so expensive that we’ll be heavily in debt for the next four years, but I was thinking that perhaps you’d like to TWIRL THE LEOPARD with me. I read about it in Modern Bride. See, there’s a diagram. And I brought my own parallel bars!”

Right next to that magazine was one of the sluttier lady ones, possibly Glamour? And one of its headlines was

TOP FIVE SIGNS HE’S CAPABLE OF RAPE

!!!!!!!

Seriously? My goodness.

Conspiracy theorems

It’s sort of sad that when you’re a writer, everything is grist for your own personal brain mill.

I was just reading an article about “Continuity of Government” programs (MARTIAL LAW handbooks, thank you.) and instead of getting all riled up about how this country is turning into some crazy Orwellian fantasy (which I assume is the correct response), I was like:

“Martial law, you say? SECRET GOVERNMENT MEETINGS, you say? CAMPS FULL OF UNDESIRABLES???? WHO OWNS THE RIGHTS TO THIS ARTICLE AND WILL THEY LET ME WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT OF THE SCREENPLAY?”

I have noticed the sort of flip side of this effect when I’m brainstorming action-type scripts: you go back and forth about, for instance, Epic Government Secrets, and you keep thinking “Ugh, a SHADOW GOVERNMENT tracking us all??? Wow, that’s so original. Maybe next my brain can come up with something involving CLONES, because that would be equally fresh and awesome.”

We’re all kind of inoculated against conspiracy theories, I suppose. It must have been so weird in the 70s when themes of paranoia were starting to show up in film and TV, and you could totally pitch an idea like “So there’s this SHADOW GOVERNMENT-!” and people would go “Ooooooh!” instead of “Is this set in Iraq? Because it better not be set in Iraq. Or Afghanistan.”

I can only assume that someday, when the actual shadow government takes over and ships us all off to melon farms where we will labor tirelessly for our new melon-eating alien overlords, we’ll all be totally blase until it’s too late. YEAH YEAH YEAH, SHADOW GOVERNMENT, WHAT ELSE YA GOT? Wait– who’s the guy with the tentacles? Why are there tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? …oh crap.

Also! Here is a graph. It made me laugh. And think of how my friend T., when we worked in the same SUPERCUBE, would explain Mysterious Male Things like how much it freaks you out when someone gives you an amicable back-pat when you’re standing at the urinal.

Oh! And this one. This one is also very good:

OH. One more. (Sorry.) This one makes me laugh because Friend Kinan and I often have to distinguish between regular “ahahahaha”, where you’re just amused, but not actually laughing, and “HA HA HA HA HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAAH!!!!!!!!” where the other person said something so awesome that you had to drop your head down on your desk to recover. It’s like an ARMS RACE of hahahahaha. Sigh.

We might be vanilla but our Labs are chocolate

Naomi made me watch… OKAY. This is going to make me sound like I shill part-time for Big Malt Liquor. But, see, Naomi made me watch this music video for Smirnoff Raw Tea (??? I don’t know, it’s like iced tea with malt liquor..?)

And it was so hilarious I now feel kind of nauseous from laughing and gasping. Also, I really, really, really want to get together with the people who wrote these lyrics. Because I would like them so much, is why.

(I am still not going to buy your boozed-up tea in a can, though. Also, you should know that my one-person focus group has determined that “SMIRNOFF RAW TEA” is the worst name for any product, ever.)

You must watch both the East Coast and West Coast versions. Um, I was going to quote some of the more awesome lines, but I think you should just watch the whole thing.

(But not if you are the kind of person who would be offended by jokes about WASPs driving Saabs or lame Hollywood people with highlights and a pilot deal.)

The one thing that freaks me out about these videos is that the actors in the West Coast clip are basically… making fun of themselves. You know? It’s like one of those bizarre INFINITE CAT things, where they’re LA actors with highlights and Mystic Tans playing LA actors with highlights and Mystic Tans in a way that makes fun of LA actors with highlights and Mystic Tans, but how could you even BE an LA actor with highlights and a Mystic Tan if you had a sense of humor about LA actors with highlights and a Mystic Tan?

THAT IS WHAT I AM SAYING.

Meetings. Insulting people.

Yesterday I went to Manager-Guy’s office to meet with him and the other manager-guy. I told them my BRILLIANT IDEAS and they said things like “Hmmm!” and “Let’s keep thinking about that one.” and “HOLY LORD, ENOUGH WITH THE AGRICULTURAL THEMES ALREADY.”

Meetings, as a writer, proceed thusly: You start out with fifteen minutes of chit-chat. Like, if it were a date, this would be the part where you would say things about your job and where you’re from– you know, the segment where you try to figure out if the other person is crazy and/or boring. And then you switch into the part where you talk about things you would like to write, things that will make the person you’re talking to UNTOLD WADS OF CASH (preferably.)

I am okay at the first part. (I think. If you have met with me and think I’m hideous at it… don’t tell me.) The second part, I am still kind of bad at, in really lame ways. I don’t know why writers are so bad at talking about things we want to write. I personally like to go off on these tangents, like so:

GUY IN MEETING
Cool. So what else are you interested in?

ELANA
Have you ever heard of the Monsanto Corporation?

GUY IN MEETING
…

ELANA
I have a fifteen-minute, rambling, boring lecture about soybeans. If you don’t mind.

GUY IN MEETING
…

ELANA
(horrified realization of own lameness)
…

Other kinds of pitching errors I routinely make include:

ELANA
Okay, so I don’t actually have a plot for this or anything, but I think there’s this guy, he’s like a COMBAT PASTRY CHEF–

And… well. I guess a lot of the errors I make are variants of “Here’s a character or subject I’m interested in, but there’s no story yet”, such as: “I don’t really have a PLOT, but! How do you feel about COD FISHERMEN?”

Now, another writer would probably go “I don’t know, tell me more!” but People You Have Meetings With aren’t writers. So they are pretty clear-eyed about story and plot and unwilling to listen to you talk about migratory patterns of fish for twenty minutes.

So, obviously, I need to work on that. It’s getting better. I imagine that eventually I’ll be a veritable pitching machine! Probably a machine that periodically seizes up, but still.

After the meeting, I went into Manager-Guy’s office, and, AMAZINGLY, had the following conversation:

ELANA
(looks around office, notices movie poster)
Oh, [Movie X]? Did you like that?

MANAGER-GUY
Yes.

ELANA
I thought it was sort of bad. REALLY, you liked it?

MANAGER-GUY
I kind of, you know, found the property. That’s why this writing here is the filmmaker thanking me.

ELANA
(vaporlock)
…

I need some kind of service dog (OR MONKEY) who can go around with me and nudge me when I’m about to do something spectacularly stupid, perhaps.

(Also, he could bark warningly when I have been talking about soybeans for too long, with “too long” being “anything over ten seconds”.)

More on Jack Reacher, cats

This video, of two cats on a treadmill, is strangely hilarious. I think it’s the two-legged jogging by the one cat. What is that? What does he think is happening? Is he trying to get buff for the ladies?

Speaking of LADIES, I was reading more JACK REACHER NOVEL (they seem interchangeable) this weekend. In every book, Jack Reacher spends some private time with a lady. Usually the ladies are a lot younger than he is (although there is no comment on that, no one ever goes “Um, why are you making out with a woman who’s in her early 20s? Aren’t you, like, 43? And a HOBO?”), but in this book, he has relations with a lady who is eight years older than he is. Quite a lot is made of this, with various men taking pains to point out that this lady is still TOTALLY HOT even though she’s OLD.

Also, every time the OLDER WOMAN and Jack Reacher have sex, they hop into the shower. Now I want to go back and see if this happened in all the novels, or if it’s just the older woman who must be immediately washed off.

ARGH I GOT LADY ON ME GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF.

PS (not awesome)

So last night I had a NIGHTMARE (I never have nightmares: I have rambling dreams about hanging out with Australian backpackers in Vienna) about GAS PRICES.

I dreamed that I filled up my car, and it was 310 dollars. And I did that thing where you WAKE UP WITH A START and sit bolt upright and your heart is POUNDING. And I had to walk around our apartment a little to calm down. It was completely ridiculous.

Jack Reacher: sartorial minimalist

This week, I saw a number of amazing things here in beautiful Los Angeles. Here they are:

1) I was driving around Beverly Hills picking up Sprinkles cupcakes (“They’re expensive, so you know they’re good!”) for work when I noticed, in my rearview mirror, a modified Lincoln towncar. Can you visualize a regular, black Lincoln towncar that, in a horrible-yet-hilarious-accident, rolled through a trough of glue and then crashed into a metallic trim factory? It looked kind of menacing. But in a really lame way. Because if you’re going for an air of slightly suppressed vehicular menace, maybe don’t start with a Lincoln towncar. If you know what I’m saying.

Other amazing things about this car included:

Silver decals reading THE CRIMSON GHOST on the sides and THE GHOST on the rear bumper. I felt like it was one of those tests where the word “yellow” is printed in blue, and it tests your reaction speed. You know?

Also, the driver honked his horn whenever he drove past ladies he found attractive. Except the horn was very quiet and subdued, a kind of self-effacing “toot!” sound.

It was BETTER than the time I saw Bishop Don Juan’s interesting car.

I have googled and googled, and there are, shockingly, no pictures of THE CRIMSON GHOST/TOWNCAR on the internet. I curse not having having yelled across traffic if I could please interview the owner about his magnificence.

2) I saw someone get a arrested! I was driving along Olympic on the way home, and suddenly I saw what I assumed to be an episode of, say, Law & Order: Little Ethiopia being filmed. It took me a moment realize that NO, this was REAL LIFE, and that’s why the (alleged) perp looked so pissed off.

3) This weekend we went to breakfast and the table next to us was filled with doctors who hated how modern health care wasn’t making them rich enough. One of the doctors said (he wasn’t being humorous), and I am not making this up or massaging it to be funnier:

“When I have to choose between an anal swab and an EKG, I’m going for the anal swab every time.”

After that, they went on to discuss at length how they could, um, defraud health insurance companies to make more money but MY MENTAL BOGGLING, it was too loud! So I missed most of it.

4) (This isn’t really an amazing thing that happened in Los Angeles, except for in the sense that I live in Los Angeles, and was amazed.)

Have you ever read any of those Jack Reacher novels? They’re about this guy (um, Jack Reacher, yes) who used to be an army MP, but then got kicked out for false reasons (or something) and now he roams America, fighting crime, being stoic, making time with the ladies… what have you.

I was reading one last week. What’s especially interesting to me is that Jack Reacher is a kind of modern-day High Plains Drifter, he’s too MANLY AND TORTURED to stick around, whatever, but he also travels light. REALLY light. He buys clothes, wears them for a few days, and throws them out. That’s it. No man bag. Not even a spare pair of socks! SPARE CLOTHES ARE FOR WEAKLINGS.

I have become kind of obsessed with this. I mean, if you were a girl living in a smallish American town, and some horrible crime transpired (to which you were possibly a witness) and a 6′5″ former soldier rolled into town, and he dazzled you with his silent beating up of people, etc… okay, okay. I can see how you’d be kind of taken in by his charm. BUT. The second and third day you run into him, don’t you notice that he’s wearing the exact same clothes? The second day, you probably just think he woke up kind of late, or forgot to do laundry. But the third, fourth, fifth days… don’t you wonder? Don’t you ever go “So, Jack Reacher, what’s up with your shirt? You always wear the same one. And you don’t seem to own any socks! What’s the deal?”

???

I would want to know.

5) Someone in the office I’m currently working in got very agitated on the phone and yelled “I feel like I’m being passed around like an unwanted hooker!”

Which, you know, made me laugh quite a bit.