Killer whales, killer yuppies, killer cougars and killer Shiba Inus

If this post is supposed to have anything to do with screenwriting, then skip to one of the others. A woman got "killed" by a KILLER whale at SeaWorld in Orlando. It didn't exactly kill her. Instead, the whale drug her by her ponytail into the water and she drowned. So that "killer" part of killer whale came true for the unfortunate female killer whale trainer.

I'm curious whether the whale had some kind of instinctual urge to drown its prey before eating it? If so, then the killer whale probably did want to kill the woman and possibly to eat her after drowning her. I took a minute to look on the internet and can't find an easy answer. It seems like I remember that killer whales do something to seals or sea lions to make them dead and easier to eat. That might be drowning them or maybe just batting them around.

Back when I lived in Chicago, I didn't actually own a car. I would actually ride my bike all the way to Wisconsin, turn around at 50 miles and ride back to Chicago. I did that 100 miles in 5 hours and twenty seconds one day. The goal was under 5 hours, so I tried again the next day and cut almost ten minutes off that time. This was almost all on roads, riding all alone and braving death with every mile. Ask any cyclist about riding 100 miles under five hours, and you should get a respectful response. It's like golfing very well.

The most dangerous risk to a cyclist is the white, killer yuppie. In all my experience as a cyclist and bicycle messenger, yuppies are by far the most dangerous people to the health and well-being of cyclists. Why is that? I'd expound on my opinion of yuppies, but I'm a bit afraid of offending some writer types who tend to be yuppies. I do enough of that when "screenwriters" defend shitty scripts and shitty movies and when they bash Triggerstreet to feel all kinds of sparky.

Female yuppies are only worse. I had some stupid, yuppie woman in San Francisco try to hit me with her car to kill me. I chased her down and parked my bike in front of her car. I don't remember what I said, because I was mostly wishing I had a pistol to shoot her in the face through her windshield. There are killer yuppie women and killer whales. I'd rather get drowned working with killer whales than run over by a killer yuppie. At least I'd make the news.

In April of 2008, this killer cougar managed to travel all the way through Wisconsin to Roscoe Village in the city of Chicago.



This "killer" cougar scared yuppies in Roscoe Village so much that the Chicago police shot and killed it. It did weigh about 120 pounds and was a wild "killer" cougar. Its stomach contained deer that it had caught and eaten on its trip to downtown Chicago. If you know where the Cubs play at Wrigley Field, then that is less than a mile from where this "killer" cougar was shot.

It didn't seem right to me to shoot it. But it was lost and jumping over tall fences and obviously could have killed a Chicago yuppie or two. So the police shot it and killed what is obviously a beautiful animal. A cougar is the same as a mountain lion or a jaguar. It still wasn't right.

Less than a mile from where I live, there was a cougar spotted by a couple people about a month ago. It was surprising how many people were scared for their families, themselves or their pets. A cougar made it all the way through Wisconsin, northern Illinois and almost to Wrigley Field without eating any people and maybe not even any pets. Obviously these "killer" cougars are nocturnal and try very, very hard not to be seen by people.

I talked to a guy who said he thought he saw the cougar. His story actually matched one of the other witnesses in the time and location. Both stated that they were driving home on the same road from a "second shift" job. This guy said he'd shoot it if the cougar came near his house, because he has a toddler in his home. I really thought it was cool just to possibly have such a cool animal near my home.

This is my killer Shiba Inu named Tessa.



Tessa loves pretty much everyone. She loves babies and is especially careful with little kids and babies. She give babies kisses in a manner that makes it pretty obvious that she's trying to be careful with her kisses. She's scared of two of the neighbor's Chihuahuas, because they come running at her all crazy and yipping. She's twelve years old now, and she's about the sweetest most gentle dog I've ever had.

But Tessa is a KILLER. If you saw what she does to muskrats, you would never trust her near any baby or even a cat.



Spazzy the cat has a ritual of pushing her paws into Tessa's stomach for about ten minutes. Then she puts her head on Tessa's butt and goes to sleep.

When Tessa sees a muskrat (aka "bad thing"), she goes into KILLER mode. This isn't a pulling the trainer by her ponytail under the water type of killing. Tessa hates water, but she'll dive into the water to expertly fling the muskrat with her jaws onto shore. Then she circles the poor muskrat and pounces. What follows is really too gory to describe. I only saw the tail end of her first killing of a muskrat and kind of figured it was already dead before she got it. But trust me, she's gotten about ten of them in the past five years. Muskrats trigger some instinctual urge for Tessa to kill the shit out of the poor things.

My sweet little dog becomes a true killer. Maybe it's the same instinctual thing that makes killer whales kill whale trainers, for yuppies to try to kill bike messengers and for cougars to kill deer. Life's a bitch. There's bound to be something around that can kill a person. There might be a cougar within a mile of me right now. Or there might be a human or two who would love to run me over on a bicycle. Who knows? Do you think I might need a pistol?!?

Nixonian ethics with a B&E and missing time tapes

Have you ever thought that someone had been in your home while you weren't there? It's a feeling that I've really only had once. It was more than just a feeling, the burglars left evidence. To write about this will anger the perpetrators of the crime. I know this because of a recent discovery that writing about this event caused great upset to the people who hired the burglars.

Several years ago, I'd been fired from a job for allowing my physician to view a videotape of my workplace. There's quite a story to tell with that, but I'm gonna stick to the burglary and the Nixonian edit job.

I had a lawsuit for health related reasons and the former employer scheduled a deposition. One of those little voices told me to take a rather large box of paperwork with me, and I did put the box in my vehicle. The deposition was scheduled about 45 minutes from Kalamazoo in Battle Creek. This was the first of many red flags.

So I arrived for the deposition that was being done at the office of the company doing the transcription. Second red flag. The corporation flew an attorney in for the day from Pittsburgh. This was the third red flag. The lawsuit didn't merit the extreme expense of the attorney and his travel. Let's just say that the corporation spent many times, probably much more than ten times what it would have cost them to settle the lawsuit.

So the dickweed attorney from Pittsburgh gets started with the deposition. It quickly became apparent that he was doing everything possible to waste time. The deposition lasted something like 4 or 5 hours. Like I said, he was doing everything possible to keep me there as long as possible. That little voice told me that the guy was stalling for something. Plus, he had that guilty look on his face, that hand caught in the cookie jar look.

So I FINALLY get done with the deposition and my urge to jump across the table and crush the maggot attorney's skull. Then I drove the 45 minutes home with my box of documents. But I still knew that they were keeping me there, 45 minutes from home for a reason other than the deposition. When I got home, I found out why.

I had an IBM ThinkPad laptop that was given to me a couple years prior. It had a malfunctioning monitor. If you turned it on, sometimes the screen wouldn't work. So I just had to try it again and again until it stared working normally. When I got home, I really didn't sense anything moved or that the dogs were upset. My laptop was beside my bed on a nightstand. When I turned it on, it wouldn't work (as usual). So I went through the process of messing with it until it worked. When it did start, the display had an error message that the download of the memory from the computer was not complete.

Yep, they'd been in my house to download the memory from the computers. Everything made sense after that. I was glad that I took the box of documents with me. What were they looking for? I think it was mostly to see who I'd been talking to about being fired and other nefarious and corrupt deeds by the corporation. I believe that they were worried about the media becoming involved. Actually the getting fired part is what got me into screenwriting and would probably make quite a movie.

The woman who did the transcription called me over the weekend to clarify some of the words used in my answers. She also told me how unusual the entire situation was. The corporation was paying her top dollar to complete the transcription immediately and on the weekend. There were many other red flags that she expressed in regard to the corporation's attorney and the circumstances of the deposition. Paying for the deposition was probably nothing compared to paying burglars.

One of the things that the corporation and its board of directors had pulled involved tampering with a different transcription. In the process of firing me, the corporation had to have a tape recorded hearing with the union present. When the corporation did a transcription of the audio recording, almost everything said by my union representative was missing. Poof! Gone! There were other changes made to the "official" transcript of the event.

I brought my own digital audio recorder and carried it in my shirt pocket. The union wanted to know what was missing from the official transcript and the corporation responded with bizarre statements about words and deeds on my part that never occurred. My own digital recorder is a bit complicated, and I thought that it hadn't worked. So for several months the corrupt corporation makes numerous bizarre and self-serving statements about what happened in the gaps. At least Nixon just said there were gaps and didn't attempt to fill in the gaps with fraud. There was also a signed and dated affidavit from the corporate hearing officer about what was missing from the audio transcription.

A few months later, I found out that I didn't know how to rewind the recorder. I had the entire investigation on audio. This was prior to the deposition and the breaking and entering. Let's just say that the company and the union both went from corrupt and attempting to be professional to something that was a mutual intent on doing anything to avoid the truth of what happened.

I even went to the board of directors for the corporation with the recording and letters describing the corruption and criminality of what happened. The board of directors included a public university president and a former state governor. I halfway expected that a university president and former state governor would not be party to such corruption. Boy was I wrong. The response from the corporation only reaffirmed the Nixonian ethics and integrity of the board of directors and corporation. It is worth mentioning that the board of directors changed their Code of Ethics and removed their Code of Ethics from public use and view because of their Nixonian ethics and integrity. All because of little old me.

Somewhere in this process, I discovered that the corporation's CEO was scheduled to give a speech on ethics at a major university. How could I possibly sit still and let someone like that speak about ethics when I knew the true nature of the corporation, the CEO and the board of directors? So I sent some correspondence to the president of the university (not the same institution as the member of the board of directors) and key members of the staff for the business school at the university.

A few weeks later, I received a letter from the university. I had been invited to attend the CEO's speech on ethics at the university. Did I go? Hell no! After all the corruption and criminality that the CEO and corporation had been party to, the last thing I was going to do was get involved in something more devious and more criminal and directed towards me. This would have been a long way from Kalamazoo, and I'd have been screwed if something crazy happened to me.

Eventually I settled with the corporation for a paltry amount of money. The union absolutely sold me out to the corporation. The union actually had no problem whatsoever that the hearing transcripts were modified and that perjury had been committed by issuing a completely false signed statement. One thing that I did not do was to sign any sort of non-disclosure agreement. The corporation wanted me to sign something saying I'd never work for them. That was pretty funny. Working for the corporation is right up there on my list of potential employment with being a fluffer for HIV positive porn stars and being Dicktard Cheney's hunting buddy.

The ironic thing is that I actually need to thank the corrupt board of directors and would like to personally thank the corrupt university president and the corrupt former state governor. Seriously, this event was what brought me into screenwriting. Without the corruption of these people, there is almost no way that I would have ever ventured into screenwriting. And I'm actually not bad at coming up with concepts and utilizing the craft of screenwriting to create a competent screenplay. So these corrupt and unethical individuals did me a huge favor and gave me a tremendous gift.

It was my rather brief description of being fired while speaking to cinematographer James Glennon on the telephone that propelled me into screenwriting. Jim thought the Nixonian ethics of the corporation and my attempt to remedy a lethal workplace hazard might make a nice concept for a screenplay. Maybe, maybe not! But it got me to write, and I'm truly very thankful for that.

(It's worth mentioning that the initial problem that caused me to send a videotape of my former place of employment to my physician was eventually repaired and partially resolved. I had to literally beg Michigan's governor Jennifer Granholm to get it done, but she saw the obvious hazards and participated in remedying the most dangerous condition. She did absolutely nothing to remedy other obvious problems or to assist me or recognize me in any way whatsoever. I was lucky that she was governor at the time, because a MIOSHA (Michigan's OSHA) employee told me that there would have been no intervention by the prior Republican governor.)

Bad blacklist scripts

This is the first year the annual blacklist has meant much to me as an aspiring screenwriter. There was a list of scripts that had been passed over by producers and still garnered enough respect to collect votes for the blacklist. Some of these scripts will make it to film and many will not. But why won't they?

Many of this year's blacklist scripts are available on the internet with a bit of scrounging around, and screenwriters salivate at the chance to get a read of what so many producers liked. It's a big chance to learn about what these producers and bigshots in Hollywood are looking for. But is it really? Is that really what a screenwriter should learn?

One of the things that I learned from the 2009 blacklist was that almost all of the screenplays had been passed over by producers for one or more very specific reasons. For three of the scripts that I read, the reasons became painfully obvious. You could almost hear the reason a producer would give, "Yeah, I like it BUT..." Many believe that the screenplays are passed over for minor reasons such as casting or just not working in the genre. Wrong, there are often much larger and more specific reasons. If you got all the producers that voted on the blacklist in one room, they could quickly come up with a consensus on the flaw or flaws for each screenplay.

My read of some of the blacklist scripts was quite an education into how screenwriters ignore or don't recognize those flaws. The comments that I read from other aspiring screenwriters seemed to be more about how much they liked or didn't like the screenplays. What I didn't see and read was an analysis of what a producer would say after "I like it BUT..." Why had these guys and gals passed on what was otherwise a praiseworthy screenplay?

This is exactly the question you should ask yourself when you create a screenplay. Are you writing something that can be very well written and still get that BUT when it makes its way to producers. Aspiring screenwriters should be reading the screenplays from the annual blacklist and trying their best to identify flaws that put the script on the list. Those screenplays all had flaws, and some of them had huge flaws. A few had huge flaws that would almost certainly prevent the success of the screenplay.

As an aspiring screenwriter laying in a bed with a laptop in Kalamazoo, you're probably thinking that I'm just some cynical douchebag. You might be thinking that I don't have the credentials to be criticizing screenplays on the blacklist. I am smart enough not to get into internet battles over the flaws of screenplays from the blacklist or to give a biting example of a specific flaw. You never know when you'll meet an enemy that you made in the past, even up close and personal.

I'm serious about this critical analysis of the blacklist thing. Don't read the blacklist with glowing admiration that may not be deserved. Learn what you can about why each screenplay was passed on numerous times by the same people. The blacklist isn't necessarily a place you want your screenplay to be. There you are again calling me a stupid wannabe hack from Kalamazoo. Maybe you're right, BUT...

Kicking a team player in the face

Many moons ago, I worked for a guy who spouted each and every popular motivational business management phrase in his insane attempt at managing his people. Whatever buzz words flowed his way through the corporate structure became a mantra for months. "Team player", "proactive" and many more. It was always hilarious, because the guy attempted to explain the relevance of these phrases and usually missed any definition that made much sense.

There ought to be a nice phrase for this guy. He had all the hallmarks of the Peter Principle (In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence), but his incompetence was insanity that disguised itself as management. You could almost see his thoughts as he scribbled notes about what to run to his boss with to prove his competence as a manager. It got really sad and quite insane. He tried so damned hard to understand and give examples of how the buzz words were helping the company and his department.

One very specific thing dawned on me later. This guy was exactly what they wanted, a collaborator. They wanted someone willing to do anything to maintain his desperate and pathetic hold on his job, and I do mean ANYTHING. I'm betting his bosses laughed at his pathetic attempts to understand simple buzz words and his examples of how he implemented those plans. While I'm writing this, Stalag 17 is on TCM. This guy is exactly the type of guy that the Nazis needed to perpetrate evil.

There's got to be a word or a cutesy business phrase for this type of person. There should be a cutesy business term just like the Peter Principle for these people. The classic example is Humphrey Bogart tumbling ball bearings in his hand as he loses his mind in a military courtroom. After that scene, Fred McMurray gets liquored up and explains that during peacetime the military runs on guys like Captain Ball Bearings. I believe it was Captain Yellow Stain or something like that in The Caine Mutiny (1954).

The funny thing about this dirtbag was he tried to use one of his "slowguns" to fire me. I wasn't a team player. Team player! He was insane when he made that accusation, cracking up, right at the edge of control. His face quivered, lips trembling, eyes watering. Oh no! NOT A TEAM PLAYER! I wanted to climb over that desk and kick the douchebag right in the face.

This whole rant has something to do with a concept that has been banging around in my head for a screenplay. WWII was the inspiration for movies like Stalag 17, The Cain Mutiny and many more. We've got our own wars today and an economic war being waged within the borders of the US of A. There's likely to be dozens of films as a response to our current wars. Clooney's Up In The Air and Tommy Lee Jones' In The Valley Of Elah are a couple nice examples.

I'd like my screenplay to say something about team players and collaborators. It's The dialogue of characters is banging around in my head. "Team players get bonuses" "Team players are proactive" "Team players don't ask and don't tell"...

I am glad that I didn't kick that dumbass in the face. He got what he deserved and had to find a new team.

Reading "BAD" scripts on Triggerstreet and how to learn from them

After being a member at Triggerstreet for several years, I'm a bit defensive about what negative things might be said about it. How defensive? Let's just say I'm like Sean Penn at a Tea Party/TownHall Meetup in Paducah, Kentucky. Remember Sean Penn when he was married to Madonna? That's me. So watch your mouth or suffer the consequences, Sparky.

This rant isn't to defend the quality of screenplays available on Triggerstreet. That "bad" label can be applied just like you can get away with saying 16 year old kids are bad drivers. Inexperienced and bad kind of go together for many skills. The ability to drive a car on your first try doesn't mean you won't be blasting around the track at Indianapolis someday.

Kevin Spacey uses the metaphor of an elevator being sent back down. I've quoted this several times in defense of Triggerstreet and didn't remember that Kevin used it in discussing the website he founded. I mistakenly believed that it had come from actor, Ben Johnson, but as usual I was wrong. Turns out that the elevator reference actually came from actor Jack Lemmon. But Ben Johnson said something that I really enjoy too but misremembered, I never expected to become a star and was always content to stay two or three rungs down the ladder and last awhile. When I do get a little ahead, I see what I can do to help others.

Here' a photo of Ben Johnson from one of my favorite films, SHANE:


If you become a member at Triggerstreet to download something that you'd like to describe as a "bad" screenplay, I'd prefer that you just stay away. Seriously. Why? It's more than just the shitty karma that you'll bring to Triggerstreet. It's because you don't know what "bad" is in the first place. You can polish a turd and put whipped cream all over it and call it a sundae, but it's shit. However, you could do irreparable harm by labeling a diamond in the rough as "bad" in a review and feel a false sense of superiority in doing so.

Here's the truth about what you encounter at Triggerstreet. If you can understand that the script is a turd or possibly a diamond in the rough and why, you've got a chance to learn something. That means you've grown to understand how to approach screenplays written from different levels of experience and skill. If you can do that, then maybe you can actually learn from reading screenplays of different experience and quality levels.

My own reviews as SRHITE at Triggerstreet tend to be detailed and ruffle a writer's feathers now and then. Some writers don't understand that going into great detail and critical analysis requires an output of time that isn't possible for screenplays of lesser quality. Anything that I think is relevant gets mentioned, if it can somehow make the script better and more marketable. As usual, I can be wrong. I've learned that someone from Hollywood can actually say tell a writer to "send it". Anything I can do to help that writer be successful if that happens is worthwhile.

Some scripts just can't be read with an eye to detail. Maybe at its core the script is absolutely a piece of crap, but maybe not. One of the best scripts I've encountered on Triggerstreet or elsewhere would be considered "bad" by most screenwriters. The writer made the mistake of adding something supernatural to a story that didn't need it. There were other problems with the screenplay, but it had a huge and rough diamond at its core. In a review, I told the writer that I'd love to steal his concept and still have to resist the temptation to do so today. The script disappeared from Triggerstreet, and I'm hoping to one day see that it was polished into the gem it had the potential to be.

Some of the screenplays that are really tough to read tend to have similar problems. A reader can easily become frustrated and label the script as "bad". Like most amateur screenwriters out there, that reader could also tell the writer that he/she will never sell anything or see it even come close to being made into a movie. But maybe you can skim the thing to see what its greatest flaw(s) is/are and identify it/them. Let's say the writer is trying to tell two different stories. If you can see that, then you will know when you make the same mistake. That sounds like learning to me!

I've seen the people who come to Triggerstreet with bad intentions. They're around for a short time and then "poof"...gone! Good riddance. Sometimes they rant on the message board to stir up trouble. Sometimes just to pen a few scathing reviews before posting a polished-turd sundae that is just a piece of shit at its core. In the end, it's all about karma. "BAD" karma.

As for Triggerstreet, I'm in it for the long haul. That means I'll be there as long as they'll have me. Like Ben Johnson, I'll be content to stay two or three rungs down the ladder and last for a while...