Trickery and PVC Pipes

★Wowwie! Who just finished outlining his entire script? This guy! As I’ve mention before I’m working on 2 feature length scripts. Well since I had lots of down time today, I managed to actually FINISH outlining the rest of my “School” script. I’m quite satisfied with myself. Even though I didn’t want it to be a rom-com, it still has a rom-com feel. I don’t mind it so much because it’s not an ordinary rom-com. Now that I’ve got the outline done, I just have to complete the actual script (which has been at 45 pages for a couple of months now.) Go me!

★I filmed an “It gets better” video last week. I haven’t cut yet because the more I think about it, the more I don’t want to cut it and post it. First of all, I filmed it with my cellphone which isn’t the best quality. Secondly, after looking at other people’s videos, I don’t think mine is that interesting. Mine is funny and less serious then everyone else’s (which actually does make it more interesting) but I’m a rambler. I may have Jason film it for me one day. OH! How cool would it be to have my best friends in the video with me? The 5 of us would do an AWESOME video. Kyle and Jason wouldn’t do it though. But still, that’d be awesome!

★I got to go to the movies to see a regular non screener for the first time since seeing the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in August. We went to see Red because the last Friday (I’m pretending today is Friday and I didn’t forget to write out my week ahead of time like I usually do) Dave, Josh and Rich went to see it and the power went out in the middle of the movie. So, AMC told them if they bring their stubs in, they could see a free movie since they were out of their little rain check things. Well I obviously wasn’t there but that didn’t stop me from telling the guy I lost my stub. BOOM! Free movie for me! And for Dave and Rich. Rich lost his stub and Dave didn’t want to forfeit his. Neither did Josh but, they made us show them at least 1 stub. Free movies are the best movies.

★I was tricked into fixing a little old ladies computer by Dave. I thought maybe he offered to pick me up so we could go to the movie and so I could return an XP disc to him but NO, I’d been had. I’d been took! I’d been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! I ended up spending a couple of hours trying to fix his grandmothers computer which led to me reinstalling Windows for her. I got 40 dollars out of the deal and a thank you card. I was really shocked. I didn’t expect to get money out of it. She was sweet.

★On a related note, while Dave was picking me up, he managed to somehow run over a piece of PVC pipe and it get wrapped around his exhaust pipe.

Try to figure this one out. It's a thick piece of plastic and it was IMPOSSIBLE to pull apart despite having a crack in it. Dave eventually had to take a sawzall to it.

Please DO Feed the Trolls.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've spent part of my time talking and having decent lengthy conversations with many "trolls." "But Dancy, why have conversations with some anonymous asshole behind a computer?" The short answer is, I love talking to people. This isn't a new fact about me. I love people and I hate people at the same time. Now these aren't your naked, gem for a belly button trolls, but your "die nigger die" type trolls you see in the comment sections of YouTube and select Facebook groups.

Trolling has been around for as long as the internet has. In the beginning, trolling was a art form used to stir up controversy. It's like going to Glen Becks rally as a raging bible thumper and quoting outrageous things from the bible. You're going to have you're ultra-conservatives who agree and your Libertarians who don't. Thus, causing an argument. But when the people look around, the guy who started the argument is gone. His trolling is done. This is a more general definition of trolling. 

With the advent of YouTube and Facebook, trolling has become less an art form and more of a boredom buster. And, like the Tea Partyers, people took their trolling to the streets. The Tea Party is to politics as Anonymous is to internet. Trolls/Anonymous aren't all bad. They have many goals including the stop of censorship, fear mongering, and idiots on the web. They're a pretty successful bunch. That girl who was dubbed "the puppy thrower" was "caught" just a few days after the video went online. You don't eff with these people.

With the positive, there is of course the negative. There are the trolls who enjoy going to websites, and videos and group pages and saying things like "the fags deserved to die."  These are the trolls I'm interested in. Why? Because these trolls obviously have a reason for spouting their rhetoric and I wanted to find out. Everyone has a story. Even David Berkowitz had a childhood, family and friends. I just like to humanize people. People aren't bad. People just do bad things.  

Here's an example of a conversation I had with Mr. Jerck Meyhoff. It's obviously a pseudonym but you'd be surprised how many people use their regular Facebook accounts to troll.

Now obviously in some case I have to use the trust system to know if these guess are telling the truth. What they do and who they are don't matter to me as much as WHY they do it. So far, I don't think anyone has lied. A few told me to eat a bag of dicks when we first started talking, but once we got the ball rolling, these people were generally very nice and conversational and opened right up like Mr. Meyhoff did. 

(Note: With a little digging, I found the real life versions of a good number of the people I talked to and their stories did indeed match up.) 

I'm going to continue to talk to more trolls and compile everything I've learned into a nice essay that'll probably be a Tuesday post in a few weeks. It's fascinating what I've discovered so far. The trolls are the guys at Best Buy fixing your computer, at Starbucks making your coffee, at the movies taking your tickets in labs working new artificial flavors and even your closest friends.

I can't finish a script!

Last Wednesday, I wrote on Androids Don't Dance that I was going to try HARD and write a spontaneous script in a week. Well, it's much harder then I thought it would be writing a dialog heavy script off the cusp. So, I've given up on the script. I'll rewrite it one day but not the way this one is written. Again, my goal was to write a 140 page script from my head. No planning, no drafting and no backtracking or editing. I decided to compile a bunch of experiences I've had working the night shift at Raymour and Flanigan into one night. But, it just ended up being a disaster. There many be spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes and other mistakes. I didn't bother editing because it was a goal not to. I deleted the last 5 pages and this is the end result.

In the mean time, I'm going to continue writing my 2 feature length scripts and knock out any ideas for shorts I may have. I've been mainly focusing on one about a girl named School. It's sort of like a rom-com but not. I don't want it to turn out to be a rom-com but it looks like it's going there. My second feature length script, "Fredrick, PA,"  takes place in a school over the course of a day. I call this one "my Gus Van Sant script." Back in September, my goal was to have at least one of these done by the end of October. But I can honestly say that I'm not sure I'm going to hit that goal.