The story of Chief White Pigeon (Wahbememe) provides an interesting and useful insight into the Potawatomi people and their leadership up to 1830. Wahbememe and many of the other Potawatomi chiefs were middle-aged men who had been involved in Tecumseh’s Rebellion in 1811 and The War of 1812. These chiefs were neither young nor naive. The advance of white settlers was something that the Potawatomi chiefs knew was unstoppable. Experience in war and travel throughout the Midwest and Canada had created a group of middle-aged chiefs who had seen how white settlers absorbed and divided up land for farming. They had seen other tribes driven west from states to the east. They knew very well how their land would be swallowed up and were trying to prepare the best way possible.
Since Wahbememe was a signer of The Treaty of Greenville in 1795, it can be assumed that he was middle-aged man and most likely in his 50’s at the time of his death around 1830. He also was involved with Tecumseh in Tecumseh’s Rebellion around 1811 and fought on the side of the British in the War of 1812. Military records from the War of 1812 also indicate that Wahbememe was an important Potawatomi chief and leader. He was also a recognized leader of a village, because his unoccupied village was destroyed by American soldiers.
When I researched other Potawatomi chiefs living in villages in southwestern Michigan and northern Indiana, many of these leaders of the Potawatomi people at the time of Wahbememe’s sacrifice were also middle-aged men who had experienced war and fighting in the War of 1812 and Tecumseh’s Rebellion. I chose to focus on several chiefs because of their relevance to the story that I wanted to tell. Those chiefs were Metea, Leopold Pokagon, Menominee and Shipshewana. From the many Potawatomi leaders in the area, those characters were chosen to tell the story in The End of Eden for a variety of reasons.
Chief Metea as a character is particularly intriguing. His intellect, education and experience was so complete that he could speak flawless English and was a skilled orator. From my research, his intellect, leadership skills and oratory skills made for the perfect motivation to have Metea murdered. Metea died following “accidentally” drinking poison that he supposedly mistook for whiskey. If you have read Metea’s eloquent speeches, it quickly becomes apparent that he was a true leader of the Potawatomi who would be difficult to control and especially remove. If anyone out there truly believes that Metea mistook poison for whiskey, I have a sweet bridge for sale up at Mackinaw City. I used my belief that Metea was murdered in the screenplay.
Chief White Pigeon and the other Potawatomi leaders were making the best deals and terms in treaties to stay within their reservations and assimilate with white settlers in the treaties made before 1830. The land that would become the city of White Pigeon was ceded to the government by Wahbememe and other chiefs in the Treaty of 1826 in order to build a government road from Detroit to Chicago. They knew that this road would bring white settlers to the area, and it definitely did just that.
One of the first white settlers to the White Pigeon prairie was Leonard Cutler and his family. Leonard had fought in The War of 1812 and wished to return to the White Pigeon prairie to live. On the family’s trip, Leonard became deathly ill and was saved by the Potawatomi when he arrived. It’s a telling statement on the goodwill of the Potawatomi people that they saved the life of one of the first white settlers to their former lands despite him being a former soldier. This bit of actual history serves as the beginning of the story. In my screenplay, Leonard is not only seeking a new home but is distancing himself from the lure of whiskey because of severe alcoholism. He is saved by Wahbememe himself, Leonard offers to teach Wahbememe and the Potawatomi to use the white man’s agriculture.
I know some may feel this is an insult to a thousand years or more of successful agriculture by the Potawatomi people. That might be true if Leonard hadn’t brought a new and state of the art farm implement for the late 1820’s: the cast iron plow. The iron plow was a huge advancement in agriculture. It allowed for a much more rapid advancement of settlers into the west. A farmer using a cast iron plow in the 1820’s was using state of the art machinery. Soils could be plowed and planted that could never have been tilled before. This is yet another reason that the Potawatomi people faced a sudden influx of settlers in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Wahbememe and the other leaders of the Potawatomi would have definitely been intrigued by the cast iron plow and interested in using every advantage possible to live upon their new reservations.
There is a protagonist priest character, Father Stephen Baden. Father Baden ran the Catholic mission at Niles and sought converts to Catholicism throughout the Potawatomi nation. Chief Leopold Pokagon and Chief Menominee were both converts to Catholicism. Leopold Pokagon and the Potawatomi at Niles used the Catholic mission to successfully sue the government to avoid removal west in the 1830’s. Chief Menominee converted to Catholicism and abided by every treaty he signed as a leader to resist removal. Despite Menominee’s conversion to Catholicism and desire to live on his reservation, federal Indian Agents obtained fraudulently signed treaties that ceded his reservation. Menominee was loaded upon a prison wagon at gunpoint for his trip on The Trail of Death west of the Mississippi River.
I’ve thought about changing the priest character to Father Benjamin M. Petit. Although it wouldn’t be as historically accurate, Father Petit sacrificed his health and his life by accompanying the Potawatomi on the “Trail of Death”. If there is a rewrite, he will most likely take the place of Father Baden as the priest character.
Coming up with the antagonist or “bad guys” didn’t take much historical research. The main antagonist is John Shields Tipton. At a young age, John Tipton’s father and uncle (mother’s brother) were killed by the Cherokee in Tennessee. His second wife’s father, Captain Spier Spencer, was killed fighting Indians in The Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 where Tipton was also a soldier. In addition, even Tipton’s ancestors proclaim that he “was a born Indian hater” and that he “pursued Indian war parties in his early days and lamented in his writings when they escaped”. In his role as a federal Indian Agent, his ancestors state that Tipton “may have at times taken monetary advantage of his position as commissioner of Indian affairs through land dealings and the appointment of friends and relatives to lucrative jobs, he was neither better nor worse than those who served at the time”.
Since Tipton’s father, uncle and father-in-law were all killed fighting Indians and possibly some of them being Potawatomi, any rational person would conclude that a person such as Tipton could not possibly deal impartially as an Indian Agent and that Tipton would be automatically disqualified from such a government position. After securing the job of federal Indian Agent, Tipton served an important role in government efforts to remove the Potawatomi people. He also participated in escorting about 900 Potawatomi people at gunpoint from Indiana to the Mississippi River in 1838 on the “Trail of Death”. His ancestors don’t seem to mention that fact anywhere that I can locate. John Tipton became an easy choice for the number one bad guy of the bunch.
You may wonder how the government could have a character with such contradictory motivations as John Tipton had with the Potawatomi people. Michigan territorial Governor Lewis Cass displayed identical contradictory motives with the Potawatomi people. While Cass negotiated treaties with the Potawatomi that seemed to allow the Potawatomi to live upon their reservations, he also believed firmly in removal of all Indians to lands across the Mississippi River while leading the Potawatomi people to believe otherwise. Lewis Cass was central to implementing the removal policies of president Andrew Jackson. Cass also ran unsuccessfully for president and was pro-slavery utilizing the “Doctrine of Popular Sovereignty”.
Another bad guy/antagonist is Abel C. Pepper. Pepper serves the role in the screenplay as Tipton’s willing lieutenant. In history, Pepper became an Indian Agent too. He followed orders and did everything possible to obtain signed treaties, including bribes, fraud and through the use of whiskey. Pepper also participated in rounding up the Potawatomi people at gunpoint on more than one occasion and lead the Potawatomi people at gunpoint on The Trail of Death. Including him as another antagonist/bad guy was certainly a pleasure.
There are also Potawatomi characters who work in my screenplay as bad guys/antagonists. Pierre Moreau was a French man who married a Potawatomi woman and became a “chief” at the Nottawaseppi reservation. His son, Sauauquette serves as another antagonist. Sauauquette was involved in trading away the Nottawaseppi reservation and is claimed to have boasted of the great sale he had made of the reservation-land owned by the Great Spirit, and that for two quarts of whiskey he would sell the same again should opportunity occur. I could find no known livings relatives of Pierre Moreau or Sauauquette within the Potawatomi people. Sauauquette was murdered before removal west for trading away Potawatomi lands. His grave is on the St. Joseph River in Mendon at a location that I hope to visit one day.
There are also other minor characters based on actual historical characters. Almost all the characters used to tell the story are based on actual characters and events in history. The lives of actual characters and events served to tell the story in The End of Eden. Men who had fought in war less than 20 years earlier come together in the late 1820’s in Michigan. Potawatomi chiefs and people faced an influx of settlers who would rapidly change their landscapes and lives. The history of these characters provided more than enough material for a movie and more than a story about why Wahbememe heroically sacrificed his life for his friends.
Screenplay available as a pdf file at: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h
More to come...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
The Potawatomi people and The End of Eden
About a year ago, I finished a screenplay called THE END OF EDEN based on a Potawatomi chief named Wahbememe or “White Pigeon”. A monument to Chief White Pigeon is located just outside of the Michigan city that bears his name and tells part of what is his story. “In memory of Wahbememe, Chief White Pigeon who about 1830 gave his life to save the settlement at this place”. Then along the base of the monument, “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends”. Chief White Pigeon gave his life by running 150 miles from Detroit to a small settlement that most likely was called Millville to warn the settlers there and then passed away from exhaustion.
Screenplay available as a pdf file at: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h
Chief White Pigeon’s grave sits near the intersection of two former Indian trails that would become US-131 and US-12. I still remember the day that my mother let us skip a day from elementary school for a trip to visit relatives. On that day, we stopped on our trip to visit Chief White Pigeon’s grave. Being about 6 or 7 years old, I distinctly remember staring at the granite monument on that warm spring day and questioning what had motivated this man to run so far that he died. It made enough of an impression on me that I could have told you the basic story of Chief White Pigeon at any time after that day. I’ve passed through that intersection several hundred times and stopped at Chief White Pigeon’s grave at least a dozen times since that motherly inspired day of truancy almost 40 years ago.
More from accident than intention, I became an aspiring screenwriter several years ago. If you want the story of how or why that happened, it’s covered partially in my blog. I can fill you in on the details for anyone wanting to know more. The idea for using Chief White Pigeon's heroic action and his death as the subject matter for a screenplay also came mostly by accident. While searching for some genealogical information on the internet, Wahbememe’s monument kept coming up in searches. Wahbememe popped up often enough to finally get my attention. There it was, a great concept for a movie.
It was in the wee hours of the morning, when I should have been working on a still half-finished screenplay, that my journey into writing The End of Eden began. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to research and learn about Wahbememe, Potawatomi history, Michigan history and the history of the first settlers to southwestern Michigan. Yet nothing that I learned provided the answer to the question I’d asked myself 40 years earlier. I exhausted every historical resource and will most likely never find the answer to the motivation for Wahbememe's heroic trek. What I did find was something much better, the history of the Potawatomi people.
If you read or even skim my screenplay, it’s very important to realize that the basis for the basic story must center on settlers and the local Potawatomi people near what is now called White Pigeon, Michigan. Even without a complete answer to why Wahbememe heroically sacrificed his life 180 years ago, I knew there was more than enough for a screenplay after only a couple hours of research into the Potawatomi people, government officials and Michigan settlers. The best possible motivation for a screenwriter occurred during those first few hours of research. I became angry, offended and really pissed off. One of the most crushing lessons that I’ve had to learn from my life is this: that people in positions of power are far too often corrupt, criminal, unethical, venal, self-serving and duplicitous. And here I was again finding the same bad guys jumping off the pages of history books. Every great movie needs those bad guys(antagonists) and the good guys (protagonists), and it didn’t take long to find amazing examples of both.
More to come tomorrow...
Screenplay available as a pdf file at: http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h
Chief White Pigeon’s grave sits near the intersection of two former Indian trails that would become US-131 and US-12. I still remember the day that my mother let us skip a day from elementary school for a trip to visit relatives. On that day, we stopped on our trip to visit Chief White Pigeon’s grave. Being about 6 or 7 years old, I distinctly remember staring at the granite monument on that warm spring day and questioning what had motivated this man to run so far that he died. It made enough of an impression on me that I could have told you the basic story of Chief White Pigeon at any time after that day. I’ve passed through that intersection several hundred times and stopped at Chief White Pigeon’s grave at least a dozen times since that motherly inspired day of truancy almost 40 years ago.
More from accident than intention, I became an aspiring screenwriter several years ago. If you want the story of how or why that happened, it’s covered partially in my blog. I can fill you in on the details for anyone wanting to know more. The idea for using Chief White Pigeon's heroic action and his death as the subject matter for a screenplay also came mostly by accident. While searching for some genealogical information on the internet, Wahbememe’s monument kept coming up in searches. Wahbememe popped up often enough to finally get my attention. There it was, a great concept for a movie.
It was in the wee hours of the morning, when I should have been working on a still half-finished screenplay, that my journey into writing The End of Eden began. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to research and learn about Wahbememe, Potawatomi history, Michigan history and the history of the first settlers to southwestern Michigan. Yet nothing that I learned provided the answer to the question I’d asked myself 40 years earlier. I exhausted every historical resource and will most likely never find the answer to the motivation for Wahbememe's heroic trek. What I did find was something much better, the history of the Potawatomi people.
If you read or even skim my screenplay, it’s very important to realize that the basis for the basic story must center on settlers and the local Potawatomi people near what is now called White Pigeon, Michigan. Even without a complete answer to why Wahbememe heroically sacrificed his life 180 years ago, I knew there was more than enough for a screenplay after only a couple hours of research into the Potawatomi people, government officials and Michigan settlers. The best possible motivation for a screenwriter occurred during those first few hours of research. I became angry, offended and really pissed off. One of the most crushing lessons that I’ve had to learn from my life is this: that people in positions of power are far too often corrupt, criminal, unethical, venal, self-serving and duplicitous. And here I was again finding the same bad guys jumping off the pages of history books. Every great movie needs those bad guys(antagonists) and the good guys (protagonists), and it didn’t take long to find amazing examples of both.
More to come tomorrow...
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
My next post will be prior to April 1
Last year I wrote a screenplay for film based on the life of a Potawatomi historical chief named Wahbememe or White Pigeon. Before April 1st, I'm planning to write something about what I learned in my research to write the screenplay.
Here is a link to the screenplay through Mediafire. It should allow you to download the screenplay as a pdf file.
http://www.mediafire.com/?rnmjimon25h
Or you can copy and paste this to bring it up:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/rnmjimon25h/J:\THE END OF EDEN V 1TS.pdf
If my blog seems somewhat inactive, that is the reason.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Health insurance provided by corporations is unconstitutional
Health insurance provided by corporations is unconstitutional Based on the recent Supreme Court decision, corporations act as individuals with a distinct identity. Labor executed by a worker is compensated only by payment for that labor from this individual/corporation. These individuals/corporations also have a government sponsored (through tax cuts & subsidies) incentive to provide health insurance to employees.
Because health insurance is not a contractual part of any compensation, the individuals/corporations attain a slaveholder and slave relationship with the employee. This slaveholder and slave relationship also extends to the family members of the employee. This extension to the family of the employee creates a further slavery relationship that creates an undo, illegal and unconstitutional burden on the worker to the individuals/corporations.
Employer provided healthcare by individuals/corporations is a clear violation of the 13th amendment against slavery, because it creates a slaveowner relationship between the individual/corporation employer (slaveowner) and the employee (slave) that also creates a further slave/slaveholder relationship with the employee's family that is also a violation of the 13th Amendment.
The federal government is set to further enhance and expand the slaveholder and slave relationship that exists. When there is no legal or contractual reason for an employee to be provided health insurance by the individual/corporation, the government has created and enhanced the current slave/slaveholder relationship that exists within American corporate and business culture. This extension of the slaveholder and slave relationship by activities of the federal government violates the 13th Amendment to the constitution.
Of course, the slaveholder as the individual/corporation maintains an advantage in an employment relationship that extends beyond rational and ordinary compensation received by the employee and makes the employee a slave. Given the recent Supreme Court decision recognizing the individual identity of corporations as individuals with 1st Amendment rights to influence politics, those individuals clearly cannot be given the rights of a slaveholder as clearly abolished in the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.
I understand that my Constitutional argument is simplistic and dogmatic. I just plain and simply disagree with how, why or where a person chooses to work should affect his/her health or that of his/her family. The Constitution clearly states that is the role of government to "promote the general welfare". The USA should have government provided health care for all citizens.
Because health insurance is not a contractual part of any compensation, the individuals/corporations attain a slaveholder and slave relationship with the employee. This slaveholder and slave relationship also extends to the family members of the employee. This extension to the family of the employee creates a further slavery relationship that creates an undo, illegal and unconstitutional burden on the worker to the individuals/corporations.
Employer provided healthcare by individuals/corporations is a clear violation of the 13th amendment against slavery, because it creates a slaveowner relationship between the individual/corporation employer (slaveowner) and the employee (slave) that also creates a further slave/slaveholder relationship with the employee's family that is also a violation of the 13th Amendment.
The federal government is set to further enhance and expand the slaveholder and slave relationship that exists. When there is no legal or contractual reason for an employee to be provided health insurance by the individual/corporation, the government has created and enhanced the current slave/slaveholder relationship that exists within American corporate and business culture. This extension of the slaveholder and slave relationship by activities of the federal government violates the 13th Amendment to the constitution.
Of course, the slaveholder as the individual/corporation maintains an advantage in an employment relationship that extends beyond rational and ordinary compensation received by the employee and makes the employee a slave. Given the recent Supreme Court decision recognizing the individual identity of corporations as individuals with 1st Amendment rights to influence politics, those individuals clearly cannot be given the rights of a slaveholder as clearly abolished in the 13th Amendment of the Constitution.
I understand that my Constitutional argument is simplistic and dogmatic. I just plain and simply disagree with how, why or where a person chooses to work should affect his/her health or that of his/her family. The Constitution clearly states that is the role of government to "promote the general welfare". The USA should have government provided health care for all citizens.
Friday, March 5, 2010
When a mystery becomes annoying?
If you come here as a screenwriter, there's one thing I'd like to tell you. When you create a mystery in one of your screenplays, make sure that the reader/viewer WANTS TO KNOW the answer to the mystery. I'm not joking in the least bit. It sounds so damned simple, but it isn't at all.
There is a line that you can cross in creating a mystery. And I'm not talking about a mystery genre, but a mystery that can lie within any genre. That line is when you cross into having the reader/viewer NEED TO KNOW. That's right, I don't want to need to know a damned thing. Nothing. If I need to know instead of wanting to know, you've lost me and my genuine interest in a whole lot of what happens.
The inevitable tends to happen when I need to know something in a screenplay or a movie. I really don't give a shit if I know, but you're going to tell me. That's right, tell me. There won't be enough set-up to really care about the mystery or it's way too obvious. Then out comes the stunningly obvious or amazingly boring revelation.
Listing examples of each isn't why I'm writing this. I'm writing this so you don't write something with a revelation to a mystery that will ruin even the remote chance your screenplay has of success. And don't make the excuse that you're writing some direct to DVD thing that doesn't need to be written well. The secret to any successful mystery is making me want to know something rather than needing to know.
If you're a fan of bad movies that routinely have storylines with mysteries that no one cares or wants the answer to, then your chances of success are greatly diminished. Seriously, don't watch shitty movies for inspiration. If your favorite mystery is crushed by the critics, there is a reason. That reason is more than likely that the story didn't actually contain a mystery. It had fallen into needing to know, and that ain't a mystery.
This all brings me to Memento, and the reason that I kind of liked it and have no desire to see it again. Part way through the movie, I lost the desire to want the answers to the mystery. I realized that the bassackwards nature of the movie created the only want to know that there was. If it was told chronologically, I wouldn't give a shit, want to know or have enough desire to know much. Yes, it achieved what it set out to do. ONCE and only once.
Don't write a backasswards steaming turd like Memento. I don't want to see it or read your bassackwards screenplay. And don't rewrite anything else that you admire. The writers of Memento figured out how to make the viewer want to know something because of the bassackwards nature of the film/screenplay. You have to figure out how to make me the reader/viewer want to know in your own way.
Please, do that. Make me want to know the answer to a mystery. Set it up, do it well. I'll thank you and admire you for doing so.
There is a line that you can cross in creating a mystery. And I'm not talking about a mystery genre, but a mystery that can lie within any genre. That line is when you cross into having the reader/viewer NEED TO KNOW. That's right, I don't want to need to know a damned thing. Nothing. If I need to know instead of wanting to know, you've lost me and my genuine interest in a whole lot of what happens.
The inevitable tends to happen when I need to know something in a screenplay or a movie. I really don't give a shit if I know, but you're going to tell me. That's right, tell me. There won't be enough set-up to really care about the mystery or it's way too obvious. Then out comes the stunningly obvious or amazingly boring revelation.
Listing examples of each isn't why I'm writing this. I'm writing this so you don't write something with a revelation to a mystery that will ruin even the remote chance your screenplay has of success. And don't make the excuse that you're writing some direct to DVD thing that doesn't need to be written well. The secret to any successful mystery is making me want to know something rather than needing to know.
If you're a fan of bad movies that routinely have storylines with mysteries that no one cares or wants the answer to, then your chances of success are greatly diminished. Seriously, don't watch shitty movies for inspiration. If your favorite mystery is crushed by the critics, there is a reason. That reason is more than likely that the story didn't actually contain a mystery. It had fallen into needing to know, and that ain't a mystery.
This all brings me to Memento, and the reason that I kind of liked it and have no desire to see it again. Part way through the movie, I lost the desire to want the answers to the mystery. I realized that the bassackwards nature of the movie created the only want to know that there was. If it was told chronologically, I wouldn't give a shit, want to know or have enough desire to know much. Yes, it achieved what it set out to do. ONCE and only once.
Don't write a backasswards steaming turd like Memento. I don't want to see it or read your bassackwards screenplay. And don't rewrite anything else that you admire. The writers of Memento figured out how to make the viewer want to know something because of the bassackwards nature of the film/screenplay. You have to figure out how to make me the reader/viewer want to know in your own way.
Please, do that. Make me want to know the answer to a mystery. Set it up, do it well. I'll thank you and admire you for doing so.
Friday, February 26, 2010
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?!?
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?!?
Friday, February 12, 2010
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.)
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.)
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