My pal Jeff is in town from Germany, and we hung out throughout most of the day. He is the smartest person I know, and was talking about asking Parisians for directions in French, and when they answered him in French, his mind switched to Japanese and wouldn't switch back. He said the same thing happened later with German, and he had to force his mind to remember that they speak French in France. Not a problem I am ever likely to have.*
I was surprised to find out that Big Anklevich didn't hate last night's "Loki" finale as much as I did, but that's okay--I hate it enough for the two of us (and three, if you were alright with it). When Jeff and I had lunch (we went to Tommy's Burger, a place I truly love, but haven't been to since Jeff visited last in November. Either I consider the place sacred, and only want to share it with him, or I just can't justify ten dollars for a burger and fries--you be the judge), he started ranting about how shitty REVENGE OF THE SITH was, and I was surprised by that too. I didn't think there was anybody who disliked that movie more than me.**
Sit-ups Today: 200
Sit-ups In July: 1578
Jeff and I drove around for a while, then went over to his house to watch something, but his niece (who lives there now) was asleep on the couch (so we couldn't watch the movie we'd been planning), and we went downstairs to look at his book collection (he gave away all his books when he moved overseas, and has been buying new ones and carting them to America ever since, and now has as many books as I do--not counting the three boxes full of books he gave me back in 2016). After that, we went and got shakes and talked about spy movies, and then checked out the new library in his town, which I hadn't visited since 2008 or so.
It was really big, but without a lot of books, surprisingly dark, but what they did have was a gargantuan DVD selection--bigger than any I have ever seen. At the library here in town, they have quite a few movies, but they're usually family films or old movies, probably due to the management here. But his town's library actually had a Horror section, if you can fathom that, and it was jam-packed with movies and television, better-stocked than any video store in the 1980s.
For an example of how many movies they stocked--in the Horror section alone--they had four copies of the Willem Dafoe/Robert Pattenson black and white flick THE LIGHTHOUSE. Four.
Push-ups Today: 196
Push-ups In July: 1775
I have gotten very little writing done these last few days, but I don't really care. I worked hard on my story in the days leading up to Jeff's visit, and I don't feel lazy if I only get 300 words today. But so far, unfortunately, I have managed five. Five words. FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE.
Even so, one of my goals for July was to find a title for the story I'm currently writing (well, most days I am). I wasted a few minutes looking over lists of insurance company slogans, and I read through at least a hundred before I realized that what I was looking at wasn't a list of real, existing mottos from insurance commercials, but suggestions on some website where you could use them for your own. No offense, but WTF?
Finally, I found a list of real ones, including their attributions, and I didn't find any that screamed "This is the one for your story, kid!" The best I could find was Humana's slogan, "Guidance When You Need It Most."
I like that quite a bit. It doesn't work entirely for the story (I think "When You Need It Most" is a better title anyway), but I used it in the story, the first time one of these slogans has found its way into the text of the stories. Then I put a line sort of making fun of the line, as I am wont to do. Of course, if I end up calling the story something else, I guess I'll have to swap out the line and the joke. Not long now.
Words Today: 1004
Words In July: 13,557
No comments:
Post a Comment