The Talent?, The Questions and Colin Farrell's Butt

For the past week or so, I have been having a truly horrifying thought: I may actually be good at screenwriting and I may actually be able to do this for a living. I have a very critical teacher who praised my work very highly and told me it was the best in the class. He said I really have "it". He also read one of my assignments in front of the class the other night. Afterwards, during our break, a girl whose writing I respect very highly congratulated me and said she loved it. The part that I am not telling any of them is how naturally it comes to me. I get an idea, write a brief outline, sit down at the computer and let the characters do the rest of the work. Quite a few times, I have been writing some lines of dialogue that I wasn't even aware I was going to write. 2 of my assignments have taken really unexpected twists that I LITERALLY didn't know were coming until they were on the page. It's weird, thrilling and kinda eerie. Like these characters are communicating THROUGH me.

Another perk of being a Screenwriting Student, I have found out, is getting invited to special screenings. Last night, my friend Momo and I went to an advance screening of Robert Towne's "Ask the Dust" at the Walker Art Center. It was an okay film with interesting characters but a heavy-handed ending. Fans of Colin Farrell's butt (myself included) will be very happy with this film. Afterwards, the Writer/Director answered a lot of really stupid/or pretentious questions from some MCAD students. Momo and I left early because we were both bored to tears.

$.18

That was my raise this year. I won't even notice a difference on my paycheck. And believe me, I am one of the lucky ones! My friend The Anomaly got $.06 and she knows of someone who got $.04. Can you even fucking STAND IT??!! THIS from a company that bragged about RECORD EARNINGS and handed over $22 million to their CEO as a BONUS!! The thing that's got me cracking up is that THIS YEAR they are calling them "merit increases". In other words, I am worth $0.18 more based on my performance this past year. In my opinion, just from staying sane and not going postal ALONE I should have been given a $2 raise. The worst part is, the people they are hiring now are being hired at about $1.25 more per hour than I am getting now. At the rate I am going I will NEVER get where they are. I know someone who has been working there for five years and is making about $1.50 less per hour than me. Oh, this tangled corporate fucking web we weave.

So I'm whining and crying about my $.18 cents, then go to my documentary class and am subjected to "Night and Fog" right after an exhausting analysis of "Triumph of the Will". "Night and Fog" is a half hour long. It is the most brutal, horrific Holocaust documentary I have ever seen. I thought I had seen the worst of the worst images and footage. I was wrong, and I just recently watched a BBC documentary on Auschwitz. I don't know what was the worst part, seeing one of the Jews help a struggling Nazi shut the cattle car from inside, or seeing one of the Allied soldiers gently laying a severed head in a mass grave right after seeing Nazis bulldozing bodies into a pit. Then there are some images I will never forget that I can't even bear to describe here.

Nightmares all night.

WORK IT, WORK IT, WORK IT!!!

Being a general fat-ass, I know (and have known for some time) that I have to get my fat, lazy ass to the gym. I have resolved to do that this year. In accordance with that, I explored my options. I called our local YWCA and checked out my options. I have such awful health insurance this year (basically, don't get sick and we offer this INCREDIBLE Health Savings Account where you can save YOUR money to pay your doctor bills, but if you don't spend it all by the end of the year, we will take it), I figured at the very least PREVENTITIVE health would be the way they were going. They do waive a $79 joiner's fee, but the woman at the Y told me that if you have Blue Cross/Blue Shield and visit the gym 8 times per month, they will reimburse you $20 of the $47/month fee. I thought WOW, now THAT is an incentive to get my lazy butt in there. I called to verify with BCBS that it is a reality. Apparently, The Bank doesn't offer that through their health care programs. Befuddled, I jumped on the website and found the following explanation. Be forewarned, if you are drinking something, you may spit it out in shock at the stunning audacity of the corporate-speak herein. There's a puddle of water on my floor to attest to that. My favorite parts are in bold:

* At the present time, The Bank has decided not to participate in the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota program that offers $20 off monthly dues at the YMCA, Flagship Athletic Club and Northwest Athletic Clubs in Minnesota for a certain level of usage. This program is optional for employers who have self-insured health care programs, such as The Bank. The program cost would need to be paid by The Bank, [because a place that had RECORD EARNINGS, won't even buy office supplies for its employees and routinely gives 5 and 10 cent raises PER YEAR cannot afford it] not Blue Cross.

For 2006, we have chosen to invest in the new Health Assessment program [a survey, website and junk mail] as our major wellness initiative. We believe a good first step toward motivating people to lead healthier lifestyles is to give them information about their current health status, [I know I'm a fucking fat-ass, okay] and provide tools and support [because a survey, website and junk mail is SOO valuable when I am trying to improve my health] to help them take action to reduce health risks and lead a healthier lifestyle. For many people, we believe a more realistic starting point to more exercise may be to go for a free half mile walk once a day [you picked up on the fucking FREE part, right?] rather than a twice weekly fitness club visit, even if subsidized.

The Health Assessment will also give The Bank aggregate data about our employee's health risk areas (we will not have any information about individual employees). This can help us decide where we should focus future wellness intiatives, which could include fitness club incentives, but could also include areas such as diet, smoking or stress [like the stress of working for a fucking cheap-ass company with terrible benefits that gives out 5 and 10 cent raises?].

Ya gotta love and respect the purity of it, right? Maybe they should "focus future wellness initiatives" in giving affordable insurance that actually makes sense to take part in. Our benefits were so atrocious this year, I opted out and have GETTING HIT BY A BUS insurance instead. Otherwise, I would have been paying $75/ month with a $600 deductible, and then pay 20 percent of my doctor's visits after that.

I'm still joining the Y. One way or another. There's a really decent fitness room here at JAS apartments, but the hours really suck and will not work for me most of the time. I am pissed off to find out they have junior high style showers. I would like to go early in the morning before work, but that isn't going to happen if it involves a bit of public nudity every day. I don't even feel comfortable getting naked in front of a mirror, let alone in front of some buff, hot straight guy.