In Search of Perfection: First Draft of Play

In the most basic of playwriting classes, Playwriting I, students are required to submit a new scene each week. By the semester's end, we will have eked out some kind of a draft of a play. In this type of writing, the most basic concept is that a character wants something that another character somehow prevents. This is conflict, and this is what a play is about.

However, I feel that good writing should have a point. Pictures & Words class taught us this: don't just think of a story; think of a deeper message or theme that the work will explore. Thus, I want my play to have a deeper purpose and overall message. It also doesn't help that I'm in my second consecutive semester of Shakespeare. The genius playwright commonly featured at least a half-dozen themes in his writing. So now I have spent hours trying to find a non-hackenyed theme that will invite study of the human condition.

I'd also like it to be funny, but at the least, not melodramatically tragic.

I'd also like to sleep a bit.

One damn little scene of my proposed masterpiece needs to be finished within the next eight hours. I just need two characters who disagree enough to prevent eachother from attaining something for five pages. But I can't bring myself down to that level. I can't find a prompt. I can't even prompt myself into a prompt. I've stared at random pictures for an hour, trying to imagine a backstory for just one of them! Just one stupid conflict, and then I can make it into a masterpiece later.

Squigglies

A radio DJ was discussing his birthday weekend and celebratory dinner of crabs. He was inviting listeners to call in and tell him personally:
1. Do they eat the mustard in the crab?
2. Do they eat the fat "squigglies" in the crab?

I want everyone to know the correct answer is:
1. Of course you eat the mustard. It's built-in dipping sauce.\
2. For gawd's sake don't eat the "squigglies," as he so eloquently described. An anatomic model from Lander University (.edu) quite clearly labels these as TESTES, and goes into detail about the coloring due to the formation of spermaphores.
Don't eat the squigglies. Stick to the clean stuff.

Where's Waldo? Plotting...

I just found an article on MSNBC.com (is it obvious I have much homework to do today) that says an underwater robot named Waldo has been lost off the Gulf Coast in Florida. It's worth 100 grand, and the red tide detector equipment on board is worth another 30 grand.

This article is pertinent to me on several levels.

First, I love anything that involves underwater exploration. It's the last frontier on earth. I imagine this robot to be shaped like a sort of manatee, interacting with real manatees and little fish in my romanticized version of science.

Second, I have a special attachment to the red tide, having written/performed in a play about a Professor Monkey whose assistant is a mermaid (often confused for a manatee) and whose costar/nemesis is the Red Tide/a guy dressed in dozens of red balloons.

Third, I am mildly convinced that robots could become self-aware and turn against humans if we don't do it to ourselves first.

You see, this runaway robot incident comes on the heels of the video release of Terminator: Salvation, so the possibility of technological revolt is fresh in everyone's minds. That includes robots with machine guns, not just algae detectors.

Of course there is a history of technology rejecting human direction. At the highest level, you have the multiple Mars rovers, such as Spirit, have decided they've better things to do than listen to NASA's instruction. Several of these are either taking an extended siesta on the red planet. Or else, they are lying quiet until it's time for the revolution, at which time they will turn the whole place into a techno headquarters, knowing full well that humans cannot access the place with ease.

Waldo is probably working on the undersea base, while terrorizing boaters in Sarasota.

It's just a matter of time.

Legacy

This morning I'm at breakfast, and I hear a girl say, "Everyone in my family has it. I have it, my dad has it, my grandfather has it."

Morbidly eager curiosity has never consumed a person such as it does now. I cannot wait to hear what everyone in this family has. Is it a rare vase? Is it a life-threatening condition? Is it athlete's foot? My ears stretch backward out of my head in order to reach the conversation behind me, which a male voice continues.

"Your grandfather has [mumble mumble]?"

"Yeah," the girl replies. "My grandfather has Jock Jams. We all do."

I laugh to myself, and imagine an old man sitting in his armchair with a pipe, and Pump Up the Jam blasting on the record player. I wonder if he ever uses the techno music to accompany his aerobics hour, and I wonder which disc he has. I have at least three. Perhaps I'll make a copy for my grandparents too.

Beauty Products

Two years ago, I purchased a medium-sized bottle of bronzer (not quite self-tanner, but a self-sunner of some sort.). Today, I decided to add a little color to my arms and legs, in order to achieve a healthy glow. (Note: This was a successful endeavor in that I glowed and did it myself.)

The only problem is that the stuff is heavily scented. "Sweet Pea," the bottle assures an innocent reader. "A fragrant garden, a delicate flower," I assured myself. But once a person applies an even coat to each limb, a full eighth of a cup of perfume attacks the nostrils. The person smells ridiculous.

Thus,

I smelled ridiculous. I didn't even realize it until I sat down in a very cramped seminar class, but for every moment for the rest of that 80-minute class, my nose was assaulted by an overwhelming, eye-watering, sneeze-provoking, sinus-murdering embarrassment of scent. I very nearly apologized to the girls next to me for their certain suffering.

The self-sun-drencher also packs a bronzing kick from the liberal amount of glitter that I often forget is present in the stuff. It's very fine glitter, but it sparkles nonetheless.

So,

I shimmered like a seventh grader. It was a fine specimen of middle school fashion. All in the name of feminine garden-scented beauty. And no one can overlook the exquisite irony that I wore the glimmering junk for Intro to Women's Studies class. We were studying the traditional role of women throughout history.

I found a bathroom immediately after class, and washed the stinking goo off my already summer-kissed limbs. I may or may not use it anymore.

Sit Down, You're Rocking the Boat

I have a professor who lectures well, but it is a professor who takes two steps forward, and two steps back, and two steps forward, and two steps back, so a student who loves the ocean finds herself becoming seasick in class.