I'm Back

So, I'm here. I haven't done anything of note. Actually, I've done many things of note. September has been the busiest, best month of the year. I went to Scotland (amazing beyond words), I went to a con and got to spend the weekend with The Nefarious Catgirl. And I've done all sorts of other things too. I love it.

I'm tired of this. I've had zero ability to write the past month, I've been so busy. I'm working on a piece for ANF, but I fear I won't have it in time for tomorrow's deadline.

Oh, and this month is equally busy. Tomorrow I'm going in for a second table-read of the script, and Saturday we have ~12 hours of shooting planned (he hopes we can do it in 7-8). That's the kind of shooting professionals do. He wants to spend two hours on the car scene alone. So I'll sit in my CRX for 2 hours, pretending I'm driving. Next Saturday we'll have about 5-6 hours of (physically demanding) shooting. Not bad. Up to 18 hours of work for 25 minutes of film, not including the editing. I knew it would be a big workload, but I hadn't considered the ratio. We'll probably shoot 10x as much for the feature. And I get to talk like Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop...for 18 hours. Tomorrow I'm doing psychological preparation: in short, my mental image should be, "I am the King of Shantytown sitting on the most comfortable chair in the world...but I have a thumbtack in my ass and I can't get up." So if I'm an unbearable jerk for the next two weeks, it's because I have to be my character. I admire Anthony Hopkins and (post-Aviator) Leo DiCaprio and Patrick MacGoohan for their acting methods. I believe in becoming the character, so tomorrow I'm spending a day in a prison of my own making: will probably go through some old notebooks and find things that sadden and anger me, and maybe shout invective at myself in the mirror.

Anyway, I am also becoming a giryavik--a user of girya, or kettlebells. I've read one of Pavel's books on the technique, and I'm impressed--not because of any hype, but because of the studies he cites--and from looking at the exercises themselves. I discovered these beasts while in Scotland. Youngest's host-family (of sorts) had a set, and I saw the dad wield one. Pretty amazing stuff. Youngest has since reported that he loves them. So I'll try them. Russian science seems a little less unreliable in some situations than Western science. I mean, look at Tblisi--they've been using bacteriophage therapy since the 1920s. It was prevalent throughout the Soviet Union.

The only way to stop MRSA and the plethora of other superbacteria lies in science almost 100 years old, and only perfected in the Former USSR. As someone who has had non-MRSA staph infections a time or two, I would love to have God's Nanotech (aka, virii) used to kill my bacteria, rather than a week-long battery of Amoxylin and commensurate nausea and yoghurt consumption. Bacteriophages are only now beginning to be approved by the FDA. The problem is that naturally occuring virii are hard to patent, and easy to grow. Low profits for big-pharma. Alas and alack!

Then there's abiotic and deep-oil theory. Russia is drilling far below the surface of the Earth for their vast oil deposits. We're still going pretty shallow. There is no peak-oil, there is only peak-stupidity in the West.

But I digress. Kettlebell exercise makes sense. The science behind it seems solid. 300+ years of results seem solid. At worst, I bought a rather ungainly $50.00 paperweight.

Anyway, I'm doing quite fine. I'm once again quite smitten, and this time much less (but not entirely un) confused. C'est la vie.

We'll see what we shall see.