i before e except after c?

I needed to seize some ancient frequencies and proteins to be efficient with a weird species since their heir, who rode a sleigh in the name of science, studied glaciers.   

Screenplay - The Postman

Below is part of a scene from a short film I am almost done with. A mailman, Edward, is on the cusp of burning out and a soon-to-retire coworker's tragedy pushes him to act.  

EDWARD
You deliver mail for thirty years and after that...

ROGER
Never gonna touch another letter. That’s where everything is going anyway. Direct deposit, email, online banking. Hell, I threw out my checkbook. We don’t need mail anymore. I hate it. I hate the mail

EDWARD
You don’t need it. But I do. I still got sixteen years left. I need to hold out until retirement. 

Olivia nearly flirts with Edward.

OLIVIA
Honey. You too smart to be delivering mail. You’re fancy, creative, you gotta nice smile. Anybody can open a box and put a piece of paper in it. 

EDWARD
Just like that? Quit?

OLIVIA
We all know what you should be doing.

ROGER
What he should do is wait out until retirement. It pays. Medical, dental, vision. Until you die. Forever.  It pays you forever. 

OLIVIA
Alright then. You stick it out honey. You just put that bag on and walk that route. You push lil’ Eddie down, down, down and forget he’s alive. Just a mindless machine, a roving robot that delivers the mail. Go on. You know how to do it. You’ve done it for more than a decade.

EDWARD
You can’t argue the pay or the retirement.

OLIVIA
Can you afford to wait for retirement? Your life will be over by then.

ROGER
Oh leave him alone. Your life begins when you retire, we all know that. We’re not Donald Trump or that Facebook guy. Besides, if that is the deal, why are you still working here?

Olivia smiles because she doesn’t want to have this conversation with an old codger. She winks at him and blows him a kiss.

OLIVIA
You just get cuter and cuter the older you get. 

Jane Austen - like a bawse

The movies made of Jane Austen's novels have the appearance of being sissy or girlish, but she was into life like a lumberjack with a chainsaw. She understood it. Something one of my students said yesterday sparked a memory of one of her quotes and I just had to look it up again. A bit pessimistic, but pretty accurate.  The best part is on the appearance of merit or sense.  We get fooled all the time.  Wisdom is seeing the ruse, removing the facade, calling a spade a spade. 

Which reminds me of Emerson:

and still further:

Cheers.   "Live life and prosper."

Fun With the Suthern accent

Idinit     Errbody    Wudentuv  Ima


Idinit rite there?

Can you innerduce Errbody?

He wudentuv dunnit.

Djyoo go?  Ima go?

Idinit true dat errbody wudntuv gone if it rained?  Ima ask.



Here's a useful site to help speak in a Southern accent. 

The Dice Weren't Loaded

The dice weren’t loaded, but the gun was. He was loaded too. I suffered through his abuse and his stupidity and his poor table manners. I was not going to suffer through anything beyond that: calumny, gesticulations, or folderols of any type . So when he stood up and called me a cheater, I smiled. I decided that one bullet would suffice. I pretended to look him in the eye, yet he thought I was. But I was looking though him, beyond him, trying to figure out how I could convince a judge to let me off, or how I could endure ten-to-fifteen years in prison, or if it would do just to knock the drunk fool over the head.  But I knew that we would end up in the same position again. Him cussin and swingin and mindless.  We had done this a dozen times or so already. We drank a bottle of rye, talked about legends, trumped each others memories of our youth, insulted each other, and he always got riled up and accused someone of cheating. 

He was dumb. He didn’t understand cards or or dice or gambling or money or the universe or life or karma or bank accounts and we never let him in on anything. That was our sinnin’.  We coulda done it, and took care of him so he wouldn’t be broke every time we gambled. Cut him off, or let him win a few. But we played him and took everything he had, every time. Money was scarce for us folk too. 

But ole “Sideburn” was something else. His wallet was afraid of money like a cat’s afraid of water. His wife, or should I say, his woman, and his children suffered. She went a clawing on all our wives complainin’ how they was broke and she had to scrub floors and do everyone’s wash just to feed the children. Sideburn did pay the rent every month, but that was it. He saved the rest for rye and gambling, as if his momma sat him down when he was born and tole him that was what a job was for: pay the rent, buy some booze, and gamble away your money. I felt bad for him. I sure did. But it was time to pull the curtains on this show. 

Call The Police

In Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, one thing Nick Carraway reveals after meeting up with Tom and Daisy Buchanan is that his first instinct is to call the police. This is a great start to any story.   

My first instinct was to call the police.  His smile was too glowing. His eyebrows too congruent. His suit too enlivening .  A normal person would have been at least a bit nervous, but he was still, calm, possessed.   Even though all his attention, all his thoughts, all his existence was on me, he stood there, as casual as an overfed lion, waiting for me to answer without making me feel the least bit worried. 

I was as calm as I could be. There was no conflict, no struggle. He did everything right. There was not one idea needing further explanation, not one word that was rushed, not one arm movement out of place. He even did me the service of averting his eyes and feigning distraction so that I would have some breathing room to decide. He took a step back or to the side, right when I felt that he was getting too close.  I felt free to decide. Instead of pushing me toward his conclusion, he carefully guided me by the hand, the way one does someone’s grandmother down a creaky ramp.  

When conmen or salesmen are too pushy with a conscientious person, they tend to back away.   He made me believe that it was in my best interest and the interest of humanity that I give him all of my savings.  When I said I would have get it to him in three days, he took an over controlled breath and cleared his throat, communicating his disapproval.

He was polished enough to not get frustrated.  Dumb criminals get frustrated. Smart criminals, that is, uncaught criminals, just adjust their plans or move to another target.   Criminals in jail always forgot there was a Plan B.  

I didn’t know if he figured out that I was smarter than I appeared, or that I was just too dumb to understand how good his offer was. He was playing me and he did not know that I enjoyed being played. I liked his maneuvers, his rhetoric, his counters, and that at any time, I could stop the ruse and walk away. But I didn’t.  I fancied his two-hundred percent return, of laying on island beaches forever, of putting the screws to the people seeking money from me.  

I wanted to believe him. I wanted it to work out so that I could spend more time with him.  Maybe it was just to be around someone who was so attentive. Or maybe I wanted to learn his craft.  He was so pleasant. So full of manners and politeness. But a turning, grinding, hiccupping fire was in me: "Call the police. Call the police. 

Tell him you’ll be right back and walk to your car. Or go into some boutique or shop or market, but do not continue talking to him. He already has your home address and your phone number and your bank information. But that is why you need to call the police. He will track you down. He will stay on the prowl.  But if he is in police custody, then he can’t hurt you. And if you can keep him occupied until law enforcement arrives, then he will know that you are too calculating and too cunning, and he will always keep his distance."   

What gave him away was his perfection.  Real people, trustworthy people, honest folk always stop short of polishing out every flaw.   They know their idea is worthy on its merit, even if there are flaws.  But I didn’t call the police. I just stood there, listening.

His only weakness was.....madness

Interesting weaknesses make interesting characters. I decided to make a few character sketches based on a character having only one, peculiar weakness. Here's another one.     


    His only weakness was a crippling madness. It wasn’t with him all the time. Only when he ate certain foods, or didn’t get enough sleep, or if his mother called. He had a low grade madness that never went away, but the crippling madness was random and unreasonable. He would still try to function throughout the day, and it would be okay as long as no one looked at him or spoke about him in low tones to someone else. That drove him mad. 

    The world’s weight was too much. There was too much sadness in the world. There was too much greed and grief. There was happiness and joy around, but the balance was out of proportion and he felt it. It was suffering. He was suffering. He understood how all those people felt.  It was like he could hear their emotion or see their thoughts. Not just the people around him, but people around the entire planet. All people. All humans. All living things, even.  Plants and animals, the trees and the bugs.  

     He knew that all things are just atoms and molecules, vibrating, electrons and protons, whizzing around. They all put out a vibe, an energy, and he could feel it. It wasn’t acute, or sharp, or explosions of feeling, but it was a heaviness like gravity, immense, ineffable, inexorable. He could feel the remnant of a breakup in Stavropol, or a violence in Auckland, or loneliness in San Quentin. All of the emotions of the world, from every individual was vibrating at a certain frequency, which vibrated all the air molecules a bit, and vibrated the ground and the water, which caused a giant cloud of vibration across the planet and he was a giant antenna for it. He was an antenna for humanity’s state of being.  

    It was a wonder that he didn’t medicate, or mediate or end the madness himself. It was too much to bear, but it was borne.  True, there were innumerable positive vibrations going on, but those were part of the normal operating system. The positive was a quiet background noise that was always there. But the negative was impossible.  It lessened when he listed to music on his headphones. Music in the open made him think about it more, feeling it more. But when those cushy leatherish headphones snuggled his ears, closing in his world, he found peace. But he couldn’t hibernate forever. 

    He had encountered a few other people that had this same antenna. The conversations were brief and numbers were never exchanged. They had the same problem he did.   Whenever he met one and figured out that they felt the same thing he did, he would always get a sudden urge of relief. Relief that he was not alone. That he was normal, special even, but not an outsider, or alien or a robot. But that relief was always just a few minutes in length. It made his condition concrete.  Seeing his twin, or mirror in this world, caused more belief, more evidence that this was real and it would not go away if some magic pill was taken or he was electrocuted just right. It was not just some part of schizophrenia or bipolar or ADD. It was real and it didn’t have a name.