I love the passing of time

We’ve been getting a real kick out of reading through the descriptions for the ABC Family holiday movies for the past few weeks. We’ll hit ‘guide’ on the remote & just read the descriptions out loud and laugh. Give it a try - it’s lots of fun!

I keep telling Jim that he should make a simple website that just lists them off for everyone’s reading pleasure. Or, better still, a ‘Random ABC Family Holiday Movie Synopsis’ website with a button that gives you a new random one to read like popcorn, one after another.

Just overheard co-workers trying to remember the name of a musical stage show that another one of them went to recently. One of them said, “Was it Catcher in the Rye?”

That would make an interesting musical. Someone should try to adapt it. I’d go!

It’s a novel in the form of a found journal, or a series of found journals

It starts with an 8-yo, writing in her first journal. She’ll have lots of starts, but not much follow-through. Lots of ‘Dear Diary, I suppose I should start by introducing myself, since you are going to be my best friend for the rest of my life’ kind of entries, across a series of journals. Some will have a few days worth of entries, some will only have the introduction. Every time a new journal starts, there will be a photo/drawing of the cover of the journal…

It will continue like this throughout her life. Some journals will have only a couple of entries. Some will have a lot of entries, followed by months/years of no entries, then fitful bursts of journaling. So, it will be this sporadic, but soul-searching look at a life, all the way through to the end.

I’d like to be able to go to a website, type in my zipcode and a date, and get a list of everywhere where I can see fireworks on that day, in my area.

Seems like it would be really easy to set up & you could get people to enter their own info, wiki-style.

We love going to the fireworks in the summer. Wish I could do it every weekend…

You know how, when you hear about a movie that you think you’ll like, you can go stick it in your netflix or blockbuster queue, right?

Well, I want the same thing for library books. I want a website where I can queue up books that I’m interested in reading. I want that website to be linked to my local library system’s database. When I’m finished with a book, I want to be able to pop it in my mailbox & have the mailman return it to the library for me. Then, when the librarian checks it in, she sends out the next book available in my queue. If it’s an interlibrary loan book, she could have the librarian at the other library do the shipping.

Now, to find a venture capitalist

We had a RAD kid living with us for a while. Jim & I were talking about her the other night. Remembering how she would go blank when we’d be working with her on her homework & when she had to do word problems. She knew *how* to do all of the different math functions. She knew how to add, subtract, multiply & divide (for the most part), but she had no idea how to decide which one to use in which situation. We would read through the word problem & then ask her what she thought she should do. She would randomly choose numbers from the problem and math functions & put them together for her answer: I should times the people and the time, right? I should add the cows to the bottles?, etc.

And, I got to thinking, it was the same for her with social behaviors, too. She *knew* how to be polite, how to be assertive, how to be independent, how to behave, how to be responsible, how to have fun… She just had no clue *when* to be each of these things. She was just randomly choosing behaviors, or, choosing the ones that might have worked before, or that were fun. But, seldom did she seem to be choosing a behavior because it was the appropriate behavior for the situation. She could get the easy ones (pious in church, for example), because of sheer repetition over the course of her life. But, when faced with something where she hadn’t made repetitive successful choices, she was lost.

I wonder if they are related somehow

Story or screenplay idea that we kick around sometimes…

Imagine that Jesus hadn’t been born until now. No Christianity yet. I’m sure that Judaism would have evolved in some way to fit with modern times.

Now, imagine that Jesus was born now. With the whole virgin birth thing & all of it. How would the message get across? Would it? Would he be seen as a charlatan? A con artist?

Ideas for the virgin birth…
1) Mom is engaged to a devout man & they have agreed to have no sex until marriage, but she’s having an affair (or a one-night stand). She concocts the ‘virgin birth’ thing to explain herself. This one starts with credits rolling over hands of someone opening PG test kit, using it, setting it down on bathroom vanity counter, then, just as the music fades, she picks it up & says ‘Shit’.
2) Mom & fiance are a bit simple. Man with delusions escapes from mental asylum. Tells them he’s god (because he believes he is) & that he wants to impregnate her. Or, he could believe that he has been sent by god to do this. This, of course, could leave the viewers/readers believing that god may have had a hand in it. He would have to tell her, at some point, that god says she will still be a virgin after all of it.

Jesus may not even know that he is special. Or, may not want to be. May be fighting it all along, but the miracles keep on happening, or appearing to happen.

Teenage Jesus - at his parent’s church. He’s supposed to do some kind of fund-raiser thing. He doesn’t want to, so totally goes off on the profiteering in the church & how much it completely sucks.

Bottomless box of wine: He’s living with his girlfriend or with his roommate & roommate’s girlfriend. They have a box of wine in the fridge. Over dinner, he says something disparaging about box wine & insists that he never drinks it. In the ensuing argument, he says something like “I don’t care if you like it. That’s fine with me. I hope it lasts forever for you & that you can drink it every day for the rest of your life. Really. I do.” Someone makes him taste it & he continues to say he doesn’t like it. But, he discovers that he does. And, when no one’s around, he drinks it. And, in order to cover up his little lie, he occasionally buys a new box of wine & throws it in the fridge to replace the old one as he empties it. After a few months, the girlfriend starts to believe that he somehow blessed the box of wine & that it’s lasting forever. She starts to spread the rumor.

More like that… We’re still working on it