tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63245392011-04-21T16:27:38.741-07:00J. Knight's Public BlogThe public blog of writer J. KnightJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comBlogger421100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1111861466039581562005-03-26T09:56:00.000-08:002005-03-26T10:30:13.643-08:00I know that nobody reads this blog. That's why I stopped writing it for a few months. Well, that and depression over the Election. But even after I wasn't depressed anymore, just bitter, I didn't write anything. Why?The problem is, I'm not serious enough. When I write about a serious subject, I crib most of it from people who are a lot more serious and much better at research than I am. When I Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1103077559057491052004-12-14T18:21:00.000-08:002004-12-14T19:44:31.406-08:00Julie and I divide up the Christmas Ordeal like this:
She gives a crap; I don't.
She shops for the ideal present for each person; I look at something that's on closeout at Target and think, "How many people could I give this piece of junk to?"
I grab some wrapping paper and slap it on each present; she lovingly ties it with ribbon handcrafted by monks in the Middle Ages, adds miscellaneous Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1100290053826755322004-11-12T11:45:00.000-08:002004-11-14T12:06:33.710-08:00Why I Use a Pseudonym, Part 105:
My wife Julie provides flowers for an entity we'll call (disguising the name to protect the guilty) the Connecticut Yacht Club. The club holds an annual gala called, as it's called by every yacht club in North America, "The Commodore's Ball." Julie is doing the flowers, and there will be a lot of them. I know there will be a lot because I was up at 5:00 a.m. to Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1099672205877137132004-11-05T08:16:00.000-08:002004-11-05T13:30:24.523-08:00Did you know that depression makes you stupid? I heard that tidbit on the radio yesterday, and it was mighty reassuring. On November 3, after learning that Bush had been re-elected, I went into a dark, black funk. That afternoon I found myself standing in front of the ATM facing an error message: INCORRECT PASSWORD. For the life of me, I couldn't remember the pin number I've been using for the Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1099432902364373992004-11-02T13:52:00.000-08:002004-11-02T15:51:49.953-08:00I don't know how it's done where you live, but around here the polls are manned almost exclusively by retirees. The average age of a poll worker in Southern California is a-hundred-and-eight.
In this way the system reminds me of jury duty, where people's lives, their freedom, and the interpretation of complex legal issues are decided by twelve people too stupid to get out of jury duty. But I Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1097198195258447942004-10-07T18:10:00.000-07:002004-10-07T18:16:35.256-07:00Now a CIA report has confirmed that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Still, Bush insists that he would do it all again, even knowing that fact. Why? Because, in Bush's words, "[Saddam Hussein] was gaming the system!"
Would Americans have gasped in horror had Bush made this his battle cry at the outset? "Saddam's gaming the system! He's subverting U.N. sanctions! Are we going to let him Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1095710058416317002004-09-20T13:50:00.000-07:002004-09-20T12:55:09.706-07:00Julie and I went to the L.A. County Fair yesterday. We didn't go for fun (which was lucky), but because Julie, a Master Gardener, was giving a series of lectures.
Maybe I'll expand on the experience later, but I'm working on a screenplay for a short film right now and don't have the time. However, I did come up with a succinct summary that I wanted to write down and figured I might as well writeJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1095443481448210522004-09-17T10:16:00.000-07:002004-09-17T11:03:52.896-07:00I was delighted to hear that John Kerry has fired his campaign advisers and put some hard-hitters on staff, particularly James Carville who already has one successful anti-Bush campaign to his credit.
Since we gave them money, we receive regular mailings from the Democratic National Committee asking for more. One mailing really pissed off my wife Julie. She opened up the oversized envelope to Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1094582463643305122004-09-07T11:06:00.000-07:002004-09-17T10:57:56.566-07:00If John Kerry doesn't lose in November, it won't be for lack of trying.
Let's begin with his biggest mistake: Not owning up to his biggest mistake. He voted to give George W. Bush the power to singlehandedly declare war on Iraq. Mistake. It was a mistake almost everyone in Congress made. Bush lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He lied about Iraq posing an imminent threat, he lied Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1091462648809535312004-08-02T09:01:00.000-07:002004-08-02T09:04:08.810-07:00For the record, my article for the L.A. Weekly about how Microsoft screwed me over is now available online here.
Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1091115930944197822004-07-29T08:31:00.000-07:002004-07-29T10:38:55.506-07:00It takes an engineer to do something this vile.
Julie's boss, George, gave us a couple of chaise longues for the back yard. They're wrought iron and heavy as hell, but they have wheels on one end...most of the time. One of the wheels has lost the metal screw-on doobah that holds the wheel on, so that wheel falls off when you move the chair around.
So I took off one of the existing doobahs andJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1090957468328032322004-07-27T12:11:00.000-07:002004-07-29T08:21:00.996-07:00The Democratic National Convention is in full swing! And where is this shindig being held? Why, in Boston, at the FleetCenter, of course!
Wait a minute...did I just say the "FleetCenter?" I know that cities across this great land of ours are building new ballparks and stadiums and convention facilities and naming them after their most generous corporate sponsor, but was Boston so hard up for Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1090365787007510512004-07-20T16:11:00.000-07:002004-07-29T10:49:27.763-07:00I am officially a hate-monger.
I've run several banner ad campaigns through Microsoft's Small Business Center. Everything was fine. Three days ago, however, my relationship with MSBC ground to a spark-throwing halt.
I tried to run this banner, which says "Dump Bush." (I actually think it's a pretty funny banner, so you might want to click the link.) Overnight, my entire campaign Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1087316876849892922004-06-15T08:57:00.000-07:002004-07-29T08:21:58.826-07:00Here's the kind of job I want.
I was reading in the L.A. Times this morning about Michael Eisner's purchase, back in 2001, of the Fox Family Channel from Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch's accountants valued the property at $3 billion, give or take a buck and a half. (They'd purchased it in 1997 for just under $2 billion and the channel was ailing, thereby making it worth an extra billion. No, I don't Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1086721195416952112004-06-08T11:47:00.000-07:002004-06-08T12:44:23.393-07:00Remembering Ronald Reagan
The airwaves are filled today, as they were yesterday, with remembrances of our late 40th President, Ronald Reagan. Almost everyone on the radio and the internet seems to recall Reagan as "the greatest President we ever had" or something close to it.
I remember Ronald Reagan. I remember him as the populizer of "trickle down economics," otherwise known as "Reaganomics,"Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1086192055841170122004-06-02T08:34:00.000-07:002004-06-02T09:00:55.840-07:00Here's why you should never volunteer for anything:
Julie and I started out in dog rescue by offering to foster one, single dog, female, house-trained until the rescue lady, Randee, could find it a home. So we did that a few times, ended up adopting one of our long-term rescues (Treasure, the three-legged wonder), and real quickly we started getting frantic phone calls from Randee.
"I've got Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1084914458342604052004-05-18T13:55:00.000-07:002004-05-18T14:42:19.966-07:00Here's how it goes:
When I was a kid, my dad used to gas up the car. He would drive up to the pump and eager attendants would swarm over the car, filling the tank, washing the windows, checking the oil, airing up the tires. Dad would fork over four or five bucks and drive away, a happy working stiff who'd just been treated like a king.
Those days are long gone.
First came the self-service Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1084317886083955912004-05-11T15:28:00.000-07:002004-05-12T10:53:23.596-07:00My hometown of Wichita, Kansas, recently spent $5.5 million renovating some parks. I don't know how the People In Charge managed to talk 200,000 tight-fisted Midwesterners into forking over that kind of moolah for what has to be considered an "arts project," but they did it. I think it surprised the People In Charge, too. In fact, I happen to have some email correspondence between Parks Director Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1083639116202023752004-05-03T19:25:00.000-07:002004-05-03T20:09:54.716-07:00My computer quit on me last week. The little chip that tells it "you're out of the warranty period" worked perfectly and it died a year-and-a-week after I bought it.
So, I take it to Fry's Electronics and a few days later the technician calls, we have a chat, and he says he'll have it finished in about fifteen or twenty minutes. I kill about an hour and then hop into the truck to drive down the Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1082860209403565062004-04-24T19:05:00.000-07:002004-04-24T19:34:51.530-07:00I generally prefer dogs over people. Unfortunately, the fate of one is intertwined with the other, and we end up in royal messes like this one.
We work with an L.A. dog rescue agency called Lhasa Happy Homes. The owner, Randee, bails small dogs (of any breed) out of animal shelters, paying a fee, gets them whatever medical care they need, paying vets out of her own pocket, and then places them Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1082238400576442032004-04-17T14:36:00.000-07:002004-04-17T14:51:55.610-07:00Welcome to a new feature: J. Knight's Good News for Consumers!
First, just when I thought that soft drink packaging had reached an evolutionary plateau, the Coca-Cola company released its new "Fridge Pack." This box is dynamite in cardboard! Twelve cans, six on top of six, rest in a long, narrow box that opens on the end and dispenses one can at a time. No more tedious wrestling of cans out of Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1081882590916988412004-04-13T11:02:00.000-07:002004-04-13T12:00:26.483-07:00Here's how it goes:
Julie has this weekly job creating floral arrangements for the California Yacht Club.
She used to specialize in dried flowers, also known as "dead flowers." The problem was, dead is dead and the arrangements looked about as good six months later as when they were delivered. Fresh flowers are great because they die in a week and look like hell and people have to buy more.
Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1080700416948650672004-03-30T17:54:00.000-08:002004-03-30T18:46:24.403-08:00Here's how it goes:
Our garage is in the back of our lot, off the alley. The car is in the garage, which is so packed with junk that we have to park the truck out front, on the street.
Julie has a workshop on container gardening to give. She has to load up stuff from the garage into the truck. But the car is in the way. So I'm supposed to move the car out of the garage and drive it around frontJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1080327704550975632004-03-26T10:32:00.000-08:002004-03-26T11:16:50.233-08:00We bought a new barbecue. Natural gas. I hooked it up myself.
Do you really need to read any further?
Actually I'm quite proud of myself on this job. Did you notice how the evening news did not feature an item about an enormous fireball erupting into the sky over Los Angeles yesterday? That was me, not blowing myself up!
I learned a few things, of course, in the process of hooking up the new Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1080095956319048332004-03-23T18:03:00.000-08:002004-03-23T18:49:07.593-08:00Now and again, I feel old. If you define "now and again" as "every friggin' morning."
I just watched the new big-budget remake of Dawn of the Dead, a zombie film. Julie can tell you that I have a soft spot in my brain for zombie films. Start with the classic I Walked With A Zombie, skip to Night of the Living Dead, then fast-forward to Return of the Living Dead and you'll have a concise history Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1079546014440082012004-03-17T08:54:00.000-08:002004-03-17T10:03:06.793-08:00Here's how these things go:
I bought a fire pit at CostCo. $100 seemed like an excellent price for what scientists recognize as the first step on the evolutionary path to television. It was a small unit perfect for our small back yard patio.
I got it home and started piecing it together and an amazing transformation occurred: the unit quadrupled in size from what it had been in the store. Now Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1078886055926657292004-03-09T18:29:00.000-08:002004-03-09T18:38:00.780-08:00Life is funny. It isn't usually ha-ha funny, but it's often weird-and-surprising funny.
Such as...a person can be sitting around bemoaning the fact that he's broke, in debt, his mother-in-law is visiting for a week, his dog is sick, he's in the middle of figuring his taxes and he's out of Scotch, without ever stopping to think: "Well, at least I haven't run over my toe with a trash barrel."
Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1078516107845395832004-03-05T11:29:00.000-08:002004-03-05T11:54:07.420-08:00I'd like to deviate from my usual grousing and griping to celebrate a recent innovation that has enriched my life, particularly my life's fat content.
I love bacon, but what a mess! Gallons of fat wind up splattered all over the stove and suffused throughout the air, and there's that whole pan full of the stuff that you have to dispose of somehow. I would eat a lot more bacon if it weren't such Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1078337087292271702004-03-03T09:41:00.000-08:002004-03-03T10:39:04.670-08:00I'm a Democrat and a pragmatist and I'm voting for John Kerry this November because he has the best chance of beating George W. Bush. But dang it...why does he have to be such a @#*&! politician? I'm thinking we should rename it the "Dithercratic Party."
Kerry, Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and Reverend Al Sharpton debated here in L.A. this week. Edwards was running a distant second to Kerry as they Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1077648559644234152004-02-24T09:43:00.000-08:002004-02-24T10:57:04.060-08:00I can see why gay couples would want to get married. There's something about making that public commitment that helps to build a foundation under a relationship, to help it withstand the tremors of life and the daily stresses that every relationship faces. And it's good to have a legal structure to work within, to help you obtain rights (such as the right to visit your spouse in the hospital, or Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1077582535221092432004-02-23T15:48:00.000-08:002004-02-24T11:39:34.373-08:00Why I'm Voting for Nader in 2004
I was practically giddy with delight when Ralph Nader announced that he would be running for President in 2004. I knew I was feeling giddy because I felt exactly the way I feel every day of my life, especially when I'm talking to the snails in my garden, especially Pookie, my favorite.
I voted for Nader in 2000 because there just wasn't a tinker's doggone-it Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1077295279134348692004-02-20T08:09:00.000-08:002004-02-20T08:53:12.420-08:00I seem to spend a lot of time in the crawlspace.
I hate the crawlspace. The floor is dirt. It's full of spiders (I counted 70 black widow nests on one trip). I have to crawl through it on my belly...hence the name. Floor joists are hard...I should know, I've banged my head on enough of them. After a couple of hours in the crawlspace, I cough up black dirt. I could happily spend the rest of my Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1077064602527497082004-02-17T16:01:00.000-08:002004-02-17T16:39:21.153-08:00I have to say that last week was one of the suckiest for me in many a moon.
Let's start with the good news: I had work. My pals at Disney, Bob Roth and Bill Motz, had hired me to write a Brandy and Mr. Whiskers cartoon. I'd gotten a premise and an outline approved, and they'd given me the go-ahead to write the script. I had a deadline of one week to write something screamingly funny.
Then the Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1076111559076786242004-02-06T15:40:00.000-08:002004-02-06T16:04:58.750-08:00I'm pissed off.
Julie and I foster dogs that have been retrieved from the animal shelter. We hang onto them for a week or two or three until we can find homes for them, working through a rescue group called Lhasa Happy Homes.
So we got two sweet little mutts named Sunny and Rayne. (You can see their pictures on my website at AtomBrain.com). Lhasa Happy Homes has a new owner for both dogs as Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1075587544116732702004-01-31T14:08:00.000-08:002004-01-31T14:23:11.090-08:00I don't know who these people are, but they are dangerous.
They sit at their computers and devise devilishly simple and habit-forming pasttimes that they dangle in front of our eyes like someone trying to distract a puppy from its job of chewing up a shoe by waving an old towel in its face. And we are distracted, our efficiency plummets and the Chinese get one step closer to world dominion.
I'mJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1075134970259161872004-01-26T07:51:00.000-08:002004-01-26T08:43:56.420-08:00I had my first signing for Risen at Dark Delicacies this past weekend. Brian Keene was signing his zombie novel The Rising, and Karen E. Taylor was signing her anthology Fangs and Angel Wings. Turnout was great, Dark Delicacies sold out its stock of Risen (luckily I brought extras), and a bunch of us met at Champs afterwards for burgers and beer.
I look at signings as a social occasion. There's Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1074703326967953682004-01-21T08:12:00.000-08:002004-01-21T08:44:07.733-08:00My wife, Julie, has a new job making floral arrangements for the California Yacht Club. They need two or three huge arrangements every week for the banquet tables and some smaller arrangements, plus orchids for the bathrooms.
The job entails getting up around 5:00 a.m. on Monday mornings and driving downtown to the Los Angeles Flower Market. They actually open at 2:00 a.m., but they have plentyJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1074568744058240282004-01-19T19:13:00.000-08:002004-01-19T19:21:03.076-08:00So far, Anne Lamott's notion of writing five pages or so and then throwing them out seems to be working fine with my next book. Only I wrote about eight pages before throwing them out.
I have to admit, I did zero in on what I wanted to do by writing a bunch of stuff I didn't want to do.
I'm not sure that this is a sustainable way to write a novel, though. Now I'm about ten pages into the next Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1074282911523098962004-01-16T11:33:00.000-08:002004-01-16T11:59:08.466-08:00I've started writing a new book.
Both Risen and the as-yet-unsold Boo were based on screenplays, so I had a roadmap to follow as I wrote the novels. Which brings us to the question, "What's the difference between writing a 'novel' based on a screenplay and writing a 'novelization' of a screenplay?"
Two main things.
First, I wrote the screenplays for both Risen and Boo, and neither screenplay Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1074190702274055552004-01-15T10:03:00.000-08:002004-01-15T10:23:50.733-08:00I'm convinced that the "cause of death" on my toe tag will read, "Death By Misadventure." It won't be cancer or a heart attack that does me in, but something stupid I've done that will quality me for a Darwin Award. So, I avoid adventure whenever possible, knowing that adventure's demented cousin, misadventure, is always lurking in the shadows waiting to take out people like me.
I narrowly Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1074097472255123942004-01-14T08:21:00.000-08:002004-01-14T08:28:48.733-08:00I think I have postpartum depression.
I’ve finished the first draft of my next book and sent it off to a few people for criticism. For several months now my routine has involved working on this book every day. I don’t require too much of myself, a mere page per day minimum, but that one page is non-negotiable. No matter what else I’m doing, I have to write at least a page. It’s a trick I play onJaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6324539.post-1074015483534558362004-01-13T09:36:00.000-08:002004-01-13T09:49:22.233-08:00Family
Someone once said, "Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to let you in." Nothing brings this lesson out like Christmastime.
I know many people go crazy around Christmas buying presents for relatives. It's especially hard when you try to buy family members something as nice as what they usually buy you. Especially when you're a poor writer. Or a cheapskate. Or both.
I Jaroslavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08956895146553586934noreply@blogger.com