Laughing At Other People’s Pain

It’s been a hellish couple of months as my poor neglected blog can attest to.  The normal stresses of life compounded with the last semesters of school have sucked all motivation from me.  Only recently have I rebelled against my inherant nature and decided to act my age.  Yes, you read that right.  In just over a month I will be turning twenty-nine which has sufffciently made me focus on what I have accomplished so far, and what I still want to.  The list is pathetically tilted towards the “non-accomplished” side especially when compared to others.  I have been trying to burn this list ever since I made it and instead focus on what I can control.

“ABBEY and SARAH are strolling through the woods with machetes in hand. “

That’s the sentence I’ve just wrote and it officially starts Script #5.  After finishing up the fourth script I hit the bottom of the well.  The bottom of the dry dry well.  It took a late-twenties life crisis and exhaustion for me to see why.  Obviously, the first reason would be my own lazy ass.  The second would be me forgetting the most important lesson of any good screenwriter.  Research.  I don’t know enough of the cliches or the history to get past a few episodes.  I am addressing this problem now.

My Netflix queue now consists of zombie movies, zombie documentaries, and M*A*S*H seasons 2 through 6.  I will be immersing myself (safely) in to the world of the walking undead.  Roger Ebert’s Little Movie Glossary is on it’s way and my Zombie Survival Guide and Horror Movie Survival Guide are on the coffee table with post-its at the ready.

If you are talking to me and I start launching in to a discussion regarding the variable decay rates of zombies, please humor me.  If I begin to preach that the only government that would survive a zombie apocalypse would be a loose conglomerate of individual leaders who all share a love of Star Trek: The Next Generation, just let me talk.  It’s going to be an adjustment for everyone and if you can support me, then I can write better zombie comedy.

Now I’ll be getting back to laughing at other people’s pain as I enjoy one of my guilty non-researchy pleasures: MXC.