MSN is my internet service and has been for more than ten years. Judge me if you will, I like the home page look and feel, even the random beta tests that periodically disturb the design. Everything I want to look at in my few minutes a day on the web is easily accessible and organized in a manner that I'm comfortable with. But sometimes disturbing images and text creep into the otherwise functional homepage. Today is one of those days.
"Housing rescue bill signed. $400,000 for $2367/month fixed. No SSN required."
The above link language, which I am not enabling on this page, appeared right below the market recap on MSN's home page. To me, this advertisement is a little like bleeding a patient dry in some medieval barber chair and then offering to put someone else's blood back in so that he can be bled dry again. Meanwhile, the patient will be dead and the entire city in flames. Vesuvius and Pompeii comes to mind.
We're apparently so far down the road of greed and immediate gratificiation as a culture that even when the very thing that is killing us offers to pay us for the privilege we say "okay" or like the schoolboy getting his undeserved corporal punishement from the sadistic headmaster: "Please sir, may I have another?"
I'd really like to meet the callous SOB who approved that link, although I suspect there's a whole committee of MBA's involved, and have some kind of explanation as to just what they were thinking.
If you don't understand what I'm so upset about, write me. We'll open a dialogue and I'll try to understand your point of view while explaining my own. Meanwhile, I'm closing down my computer for the day and heading off to work, to try and rebuild my 401-k before downsizing in the interest of corporate greed eliminates the job I am so very grateful to have.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Missing In Action
It's enlightening to discover that there are a finite number of hours in the day. My "to do" list usually stretches beyond the time allowed and leaves me feeling inadequate. Most of the things I really love and care about aren't important to other people. This leads to my neglecting them in order to fulfill obligations that I care less about. Somewhere in here is a psychological problem. Perhaps a to-do list needs to be broken down into subcategories: Want to do, Need to do, Need to do now, and Don't ever do are a good start.
On the Want to do list would be the updating of this blog, working on the edit of my screenplay, writing another chapter on my novel in progress, completing a monologue for local theater company, reading, getting more than six hours sleep in a day, going to the gym, and building a cabinet for my home theater components. These are things for me. Selfish things. Things that cause time to stand still and days to pass in joy and leave me exhausted with a real sense of accomplishment.
All the other lists are impositions. Many of the items on them are necessary for survival. Many are not. And therein lies the problem. Having used a dozen or more methods to prioritize and pare out the unnecessary and useless, I still backslide and then whine about it.
"Do or do notl there is no try!" Yoda said. Simple to say, very difficult to do. And another year passes. The novel is unfinished, the screenplay is unedited, the blog hasn't had a post in five months, the local theater company puts on their show MINUS my contribution, and my home theater components languish on top of a trunk while I struggle to fit in six hours of sleep before returning to those other lists.
There's a psychological problem here. Time waits for no man is a lamentable fact. Do. Item 1-Update this blog. DONE!!!
I'll be fifty in June. I look forty and am as fit as a twenty-five year old. I'll be fifty in June.
On the Want to do list would be the updating of this blog, working on the edit of my screenplay, writing another chapter on my novel in progress, completing a monologue for local theater company, reading, getting more than six hours sleep in a day, going to the gym, and building a cabinet for my home theater components. These are things for me. Selfish things. Things that cause time to stand still and days to pass in joy and leave me exhausted with a real sense of accomplishment.
All the other lists are impositions. Many of the items on them are necessary for survival. Many are not. And therein lies the problem. Having used a dozen or more methods to prioritize and pare out the unnecessary and useless, I still backslide and then whine about it.
"Do or do notl there is no try!" Yoda said. Simple to say, very difficult to do. And another year passes. The novel is unfinished, the screenplay is unedited, the blog hasn't had a post in five months, the local theater company puts on their show MINUS my contribution, and my home theater components languish on top of a trunk while I struggle to fit in six hours of sleep before returning to those other lists.
There's a psychological problem here. Time waits for no man is a lamentable fact. Do. Item 1-Update this blog. DONE!!!
I'll be fifty in June. I look forty and am as fit as a twenty-five year old. I'll be fifty in June.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
Upcoming Events and Notations
Two burning issues on my mind today:
1) How to get as many people as possible to attend an important literary event for writers. On Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. A-List mystery writer Deborah Crombie will read and discuss her newly released novel, WHERE MEMORIES LIE, at Barnes & Noble, 5130 E. Broadway, Tucson, AZ 85711.
This Texas native and resident is known for her impeccable research, gripping story lines, and literary skill in the tradition of P.D. James and Agatha Christie. I had the privilege to be part of her writer's group in 2007 and consider that experience one of the most enlightening and rewarding of my entire life.
Besides being a brilliant writer of the British Crime Novel genre, Deb is a personal friend. She's been short-listed for the Edgar Award and her fifth novel, DREAMING OF THE BONES, was voted one of the hundred best mysteries of the century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
Any aspiring writer will find inspiration and insight, as well as humor, warmth, and encouragement from this event. Please plan to attend.
2) Tucson Lifestyle Magazine debuted a book review column this month. It's my very great privilege to write that column. Although I get exposed to hundreds of new titles every month in my role as a bookstore manager, my greatest reading experiences have often come from the recommendations of friends and customers.
Tucson Lifestyle isn't necessarily looking for reviews of the most well known books (i.e. the Oprah picks get plenty of publicity without our help) but for books that are important, informative, entertaining, and might tend to get overlooked by the mainstream. Perhaps you have a favorite author, title, or book that you'd like to share. I'll look at anything. Reply to this post if you have a comment or suggestion for me to consider.
I'm a big believer in writing and reading as the glue that holds the community of intellect together across time. Evolved from the oral tradition of storytelling, the words we write bind the past to the future and provide a foundation to build a better tomorrow on the lessons of today. Won't you join in this endeavor? Let me hear from you!
1) How to get as many people as possible to attend an important literary event for writers. On Tuesday, July 1, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. A-List mystery writer Deborah Crombie will read and discuss her newly released novel, WHERE MEMORIES LIE, at Barnes & Noble, 5130 E. Broadway, Tucson, AZ 85711.
This Texas native and resident is known for her impeccable research, gripping story lines, and literary skill in the tradition of P.D. James and Agatha Christie. I had the privilege to be part of her writer's group in 2007 and consider that experience one of the most enlightening and rewarding of my entire life.
Besides being a brilliant writer of the British Crime Novel genre, Deb is a personal friend. She's been short-listed for the Edgar Award and her fifth novel, DREAMING OF THE BONES, was voted one of the hundred best mysteries of the century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
Any aspiring writer will find inspiration and insight, as well as humor, warmth, and encouragement from this event. Please plan to attend.
2) Tucson Lifestyle Magazine debuted a book review column this month. It's my very great privilege to write that column. Although I get exposed to hundreds of new titles every month in my role as a bookstore manager, my greatest reading experiences have often come from the recommendations of friends and customers.
Tucson Lifestyle isn't necessarily looking for reviews of the most well known books (i.e. the Oprah picks get plenty of publicity without our help) but for books that are important, informative, entertaining, and might tend to get overlooked by the mainstream. Perhaps you have a favorite author, title, or book that you'd like to share. I'll look at anything. Reply to this post if you have a comment or suggestion for me to consider.
I'm a big believer in writing and reading as the glue that holds the community of intellect together across time. Evolved from the oral tradition of storytelling, the words we write bind the past to the future and provide a foundation to build a better tomorrow on the lessons of today. Won't you join in this endeavor? Let me hear from you!
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Two Books YOU Should Read
"Martha Stout, Ph.D. was trained at the famous McLean Psychiatric Hospital and is a practicing psychologist and a clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. She is also the author of The Myth of Sanity. She lives on Cape Ann in Massachusetts."
-----From http://www.bookbrowse.com/
Psychologist Stout has written an informative, enlightening, and practical guide to dealing with the one in twnty-five among us who has no conscience. Click on the link below for more...
http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=1097
"Vincent Bugliosi received his law degree in 1964. In his career at the L.A. County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder is available May 27."
-----From http://www.commondreams.org/
The consummate realist and master at seeing what is actually there rather than what those in power want the viewer to believe, Bugliosi articulates his rage...rage we should all share...at the conduct of our national leadership. Sadly, his words will be catharsis enough for most. But, perhaps there is one out there among the many noble, honest, and true state and federal prosecutors who will demand an accounting. To read a summary, click below...
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/09/8834/
Draw your own conclusions about this post; think freely while you still can.
-----From http://www.bookbrowse.com/
Psychologist Stout has written an informative, enlightening, and practical guide to dealing with the one in twnty-five among us who has no conscience. Click on the link below for more...
http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm?author_number=1097
"Vincent Bugliosi received his law degree in 1964. In his career at the L.A. County District Attorney’s office, he successfully prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony jury trials, including 21 murder convictions without a single loss. His most famous trial, the Charles Manson case, became the basis of his classic, Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true-crime book in publishing history. The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder is available May 27."
-----From http://www.commondreams.org/
The consummate realist and master at seeing what is actually there rather than what those in power want the viewer to believe, Bugliosi articulates his rage...rage we should all share...at the conduct of our national leadership. Sadly, his words will be catharsis enough for most. But, perhaps there is one out there among the many noble, honest, and true state and federal prosecutors who will demand an accounting. To read a summary, click below...
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/09/8834/
Draw your own conclusions about this post; think freely while you still can.
Get that sucker out there and start on the next...
Screenwriting involves months, sometimes years of patient effort. Whether searching for the great idea, writing the script, networking, taking meetings, or enduring the purgatory of production time, the writer will find a seemingly infinite number of obstacles standing between his dreams and reality. That is, until the writer discovers what I will argue is the only true definition of a writer: One who writes.
With my first feature-length script out in the world looking for a home, I've made a conscious effort to keep doing what it is that brought me to screenwriting in the first place -- write. I love to write. I love to see pixels darken in the shape of letters as the sounds in my head become a living document. It's like mining jewels from the brain. Rough or smooth, bright or dull, each word comes out bursting with joy and radiating light into the heart of my soul. There's joy in each draft, scene, sentence, and word. Every slugline, logline, action, narration, dialogue, and shot sends a squirt of happy juice running through my whole being.
Anthony Trollope provides historical inspiration of the strongest kind. His habit, it seems, was to write 2500 words a day, every day, no matter what, while holding down a full-time job as a postmaster. If he finished a novel before his 2500 words were complete, he simply picked up a piece of blank paper and started on the next on. He did this, if my memory serves correctly, for more than 30 years. He wrote. It's inspiring to know this.
In the past 90 days, I think I've figured out what I want from life, and what I'm supposed to do with my life. Writing sits at the center of all of it. I can be a writer, even if I am a working stiff, putting in 40 tough hours at a job. And I can do all the things I most love and tie them to writing...like read, watch movies, study people and issues, form ideas, take walks, sketch, or sit silently in undisciplined repose while thoughts flitter across the bowl of my mind like random birds populating an ever-changing sky.
I'm being self-indulgent in that way, even now. Blogging about writing. Somehow, this feels true.
With my first feature-length script out in the world looking for a home, I've made a conscious effort to keep doing what it is that brought me to screenwriting in the first place -- write. I love to write. I love to see pixels darken in the shape of letters as the sounds in my head become a living document. It's like mining jewels from the brain. Rough or smooth, bright or dull, each word comes out bursting with joy and radiating light into the heart of my soul. There's joy in each draft, scene, sentence, and word. Every slugline, logline, action, narration, dialogue, and shot sends a squirt of happy juice running through my whole being.
Anthony Trollope provides historical inspiration of the strongest kind. His habit, it seems, was to write 2500 words a day, every day, no matter what, while holding down a full-time job as a postmaster. If he finished a novel before his 2500 words were complete, he simply picked up a piece of blank paper and started on the next on. He did this, if my memory serves correctly, for more than 30 years. He wrote. It's inspiring to know this.
In the past 90 days, I think I've figured out what I want from life, and what I'm supposed to do with my life. Writing sits at the center of all of it. I can be a writer, even if I am a working stiff, putting in 40 tough hours at a job. And I can do all the things I most love and tie them to writing...like read, watch movies, study people and issues, form ideas, take walks, sketch, or sit silently in undisciplined repose while thoughts flitter across the bowl of my mind like random birds populating an ever-changing sky.
I'm being self-indulgent in that way, even now. Blogging about writing. Somehow, this feels true.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Lucky Boy Lucky Now On TriggerStreet.com
My New Screenplay, Lucky Boy Lucky, remains available for downloading and review on TriggerStreet.Com. Click on the title of this article to view the script. You will have to create an account in order to view the screenplay, or email me at SLRussell@msn.com and I will upload a .pdf file to you. Lucky Boy Lucky recounts six months in the life of Carlito Faustus, aka Carl, a 25-year-old Adonis, fledgling film actor, and television model. Carl, in the words of his agent, has "the world by the balls" and doesn't "even know it." When an accident leads to the discovery that Carl has cancer, he faces an almost impossible choice. He must undergo medical castration to arrest the cancer, or die.
The story contains the timeless themes of love and luck racing against death, as reflected in the main plotline and two important sub-plots that parallel Carl's journey. The beautiful Kathryn Taylor serves as the unattainable object of Carl's desire, while jealous, ambitious, and equally ravishing beauty Elizabeth-Anne Boleyn selfishly manages his career. After his surgery, Carl finds allies in the strangest of places, including a man called simply "Elder", the informal patriarch of a group of homeless outcasts whose life-lessons may save Carl from himself, or lead to his death. Add in a multi-million dollar lottery jackpot, a lovable mutt named Socrates, and a B-movie horror queen landlady, and Lucky Boy Lucky might be the best new script you'll ever read.
Don't take my word for it. Click on the Trigger Street link contained within the title of this article and read the story for yourself.
Lucky Boy Lucky is a completely original work by writer, poet, and author Stephen L. Russell.
The story contains the timeless themes of love and luck racing against death, as reflected in the main plotline and two important sub-plots that parallel Carl's journey. The beautiful Kathryn Taylor serves as the unattainable object of Carl's desire, while jealous, ambitious, and equally ravishing beauty Elizabeth-Anne Boleyn selfishly manages his career. After his surgery, Carl finds allies in the strangest of places, including a man called simply "Elder", the informal patriarch of a group of homeless outcasts whose life-lessons may save Carl from himself, or lead to his death. Add in a multi-million dollar lottery jackpot, a lovable mutt named Socrates, and a B-movie horror queen landlady, and Lucky Boy Lucky might be the best new script you'll ever read.
Don't take my word for it. Click on the Trigger Street link contained within the title of this article and read the story for yourself.
Lucky Boy Lucky is a completely original work by writer, poet, and author Stephen L. Russell.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
BOOK REVIEW-Learning to Blog for fun and profit
How to Make Money with YOUR BLOG by Duane Forrester and Gavin Powell, ISBN #0-07-150857-0, McGraw-Hill 2008.
Written by two experienced computer professionals, this book's title tells the whole story. Forrester and Powell run a number of "niche" blogs and offer a startup list of commandments, both "to do" and "not to do" for bloggers. Part of the McGraw-Hill Professional series, this brief (224 pps.) text gives a straightforward account of what the authors term "blogonomics".
Search Optimization, Revenue Generation, Blog Management, and an undefined list of useful miscellany provide ample information for starting a blog that, according to the authors, can generate revenue for the owner...significant revenue. However, they also caution that there are no get rich quick schemes for blogging. You have to work at it, which gave this book extra credibility in my mind. There is no big hype, no overblown promise of instant wealth, AND no sales pitch. Just a lot of useful information, carefully edited so that even a novice should be able to work systematically through the text and level the playing field in "monetizing" their blog.
The key point, which is really part of the subtext throughout the book, is that CONTENT + MARKETING SKILL + PERSISTENCE/PATIENCE = RESULTS, i.e. $$$. If you don't produce quality content that attracts readers to your blog, and if you aren't willing to invest the time, energy, and perhaps a bit of capital to develop your niche then save your money. Don't buy the book. But, if you're the kind who loves learning new things and believe that your blog will add value to the overall online community, then I recommend this book as a solid starting point.
What is lacking, and what only time will produce, is testimonials from users of this new text. Logically, the processes described look like they will work, but in the cyber-world, which is in a constant state of reinvention, logic remains consistent only in the bits and bytes of programming languages.
Written by two experienced computer professionals, this book's title tells the whole story. Forrester and Powell run a number of "niche" blogs and offer a startup list of commandments, both "to do" and "not to do" for bloggers. Part of the McGraw-Hill Professional series, this brief (224 pps.) text gives a straightforward account of what the authors term "blogonomics".
Search Optimization, Revenue Generation, Blog Management, and an undefined list of useful miscellany provide ample information for starting a blog that, according to the authors, can generate revenue for the owner...significant revenue. However, they also caution that there are no get rich quick schemes for blogging. You have to work at it, which gave this book extra credibility in my mind. There is no big hype, no overblown promise of instant wealth, AND no sales pitch. Just a lot of useful information, carefully edited so that even a novice should be able to work systematically through the text and level the playing field in "monetizing" their blog.
The key point, which is really part of the subtext throughout the book, is that CONTENT + MARKETING SKILL + PERSISTENCE/PATIENCE = RESULTS, i.e. $$$. If you don't produce quality content that attracts readers to your blog, and if you aren't willing to invest the time, energy, and perhaps a bit of capital to develop your niche then save your money. Don't buy the book. But, if you're the kind who loves learning new things and believe that your blog will add value to the overall online community, then I recommend this book as a solid starting point.
What is lacking, and what only time will produce, is testimonials from users of this new text. Logically, the processes described look like they will work, but in the cyber-world, which is in a constant state of reinvention, logic remains consistent only in the bits and bytes of programming languages.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Welcome to SLRussell Online
Here's where you'll find posts on my favorite passions. Reading, writing, cinema, and poetry dominate my days and thoughts. A spattering of photography, personal finance, and personal development ideas lurk nearby and might become dominant forces here in the days ahead. Health and fitness and interpersonal relationship building also await attention.
Since you're here, feel free to browse. Respond to anything you like. Free speech is encouraged here. That's a good jumping off point for this post. Tell me, what is your personal definition of free speech? If you haven't thought about that, why not?
Since you're here, feel free to browse. Respond to anything you like. Free speech is encouraged here. That's a good jumping off point for this post. Tell me, what is your personal definition of free speech? If you haven't thought about that, why not?
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