Bollywood lovers get fit in 2009

I love how weight loss has totally become way too "duh" to be a new year's resolution. It's been resolved SO MUCH that it has become unspoken. There's only so many ways you can phrase it. Here are some of my past phrasings:

"I'm going to lose weight in 2003, and get back to my high school size!"
"I'm going to get a HOT BOD in 2004"
"I'm going to get really fit and healthy in 2005!"
"By the end of 2006, I will be able to do a chin up!"
"I'm banning all drive-through food in 2007!"
"Eat great in 2008! Only organic for me!"

So yeah. No 2009 declarations for me. I'm done associating my failure with a whole year. BUT I am not done trying to do all of the above things at the same time and actually impress someone with the results.

Newest fitness obsessions:

#1. My Bollywood Booty workout DVD

I was strolling through Target on a last minute Christmas shopping spree when I saw it there. No F***ing way! I could not believe that someone had combined my love of Indian cinema with my health and fitness goals. I snatched it off the shelf. I was so ecstatic. I called my boyfriend and informed him he was getting me another gift- "but don't worry - it's only $14!"

I was only slightly disappointed that there were no awesomely choreographed dance routines that I could bust out at the next party. But I had to face it - it's a butt workout, not Darren's Bollywood Dance Grooves <<wish that existed!!

I'm out of shape (i.e. 20lbs more than I was in college). This DVD makes me out of breath and sore the next day. And holy SH*$ this lady is sassy. Take a look for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZyTq4Z4NMM

I either want to be this lady, or just steal her eyelashes. This video is a steal on Amazon, though the shipping might bring it up to my Target price.

#2. Starvation - totally getting a bad rap

Though this is very much an offense to people with eating disorders, and everyone going hungry in 3rd world countries, starvation is underrated. I'm not speaking of literal starvation... I'm speaking of American starvation. It's a totally different creature. I guess you could call it "portion control"... but that implies that you just need to reduce everything that you intake into little tiny portions and then you'll be safe.

I personally needed to throw out a bunch of my intake. X it out entirely. No more. Unnecessary.

Of course, being the anti-American hippy that I am, I got this great advice from a book written by an ASIAN. Who better to instruct me in health issues? They've been living longer, and documenting their health studies for THOUSANDS of years. Europeans are celebrating, what... 200 years since the creation of pasteurization?

I got my inspiration from this book - the author is somewhat discredited by the support of leading figures from ....Hollywood. I still give him the benefit of the doubt.

#3. I can ride my bike with no handlebars ~ AND watch TV

When my abs and lats are too sore from shaking my Bollywood booty, I peace out for some nice relaxing cycling. WAY cheaper than a real recumbent bike, this little guy also allows me to make my current bicycle A) useful 365 days a year (otherwise impossible in upstate NY) B) Decorative and C) A conversation piece.



So to sum it up. Resolutions are lame. Purchasing accessories to help with your health and fitness goals is in reality unnecessary, but FUN! Indian cinema is awesome and Chinese zen masters know their sh*%. The end.

Mom called - she says she wants you to blog more

I had to stop my Gmail from forwarding to my Blackberry because of my mother's nagging. Now she wants me to get a Twitter account. Who does she think I am? Does she think I'm still in college or something? I'm way too busy ....working.

On the topic of Blackberries - Handy little things they are. They are helpful. You never have to leave the Internet behind. The let you turn ANY mp3 into a ring tone. That fact in itself makes them more selfless than any phone I've ever met. But you know what's not amazing? Keypad locks. They are so annoying. Why can't my blackberry just KNOW that it's in my pocket, or in the hands of a small child, or under a blanket being laid on by an obese pet?

Wishful thinking. The real question is, why did I delude myself into thinking that my little Pearl was that smart? It certainly got me into a predicament.

After spending the winter holiday with my boyfriend AND his twin brother AS WELL AS everyone we know within 50 miles of our home, I was beginning to get a little testy. There's really only so many days I can handle indoors sharing Christmas joy and holiday spirit with at least two other people. I try constantly to draw the line at the boyfriend, but he is unfortunately a packaged deal.

So after a day of gallivanting with a girlfriend... and my boyfriend and his twin brother. I am absolutely FED UP with banter. I am craving the presence of only one person. Any one person will do (except my boyfriend's twin), as long as it's in the singular. One.

I offer to drive my girlfriend home after one of the boys interjects with a fart noise. I am at my limit. We hop in the car while impressing each other with the fact that we know the words to Hello Dolly (NO the fart noise was NOT justified!). I plunk little Pearly on the dash an pull out of the driveway. Not 30 seconds down the road I unleash a tirade of pent up rage, all directed at my boyfriend's twin.

He can never leave us alone, everyone thinks he's a weirdo, blah blah blah, why can't he live his own life, blah blah blah, mean mean mean, his only girlfriends have been losers, blah blah blah.

My friend interjects playfully, probably trying to lead the conversation in a more lighthearted direction. I will have none of it. I cut her off. "And another thing...!"

In the middle of a story about the twin and a priest my Blackberry screen lights up on the dash. I pick it up. It says that my call to *Boyfriend's Twin* has been disconnected. I don't even flinch. "Thanks a lot for calling and hanging up, man!"

Ten minutes down the road my boyfriend calls. "Hi. Um. Did you just leave a three and a half minute voice mail on *My Twin*'s phone sh%$ talking him the whole time?"

Wha wha whaat? Um... (my mind flashes back to the "call disconnected" message). Yes. Yes, I probably did. What of it? Everyone needs to blow off a little steam sometime?

I guess the people that successfully blow off steam don't usually call the people they're complaining about to document the event.

There was the brief mystery of WHY my phone called him, of all people. But that was explained by my boyfriend, who used my phone to call his brother whilst I was in the mall with my girlfriend. Why not? He'd only spent the whole day with they guy. The whole last 3-4 weeks, actually. But yeah. Go ahead and use my phone to call him.

But I guess there's really no excuse. The god's of cellular were frowning on me and my bitter ways. I made no apologies, because "sorry my phone called you by itself while I just happened to be expressing negative feelings about you" just didn't seem like it would fix anything.

So I am now a member of the key lock club. You know us. The ones making emergency calls while our phones are in our pockets. At least I don't know any 911 operators, so I'm in the clear.

I guess I miss the 'ole blog

Well I was looking at my Amazon.com referral fees and I was thinking "wow - I'm a douche."

So here's a genuine blog post from ME to YOU.

The Two Week Plan

One of my (many) excercize advice books wrote that you have to do something for about 2 weeks to make it a habit, or integral part of your daily lifestyle. I have many things that I am trying to integrate into my life, or make habits out of. Way too many things.

• Writing scripts
• Working out
• Eating right
• Not biting my nails
• Starting a non-profit org

So I've just hung up trying to do it all at once. Because behind all this I have to actually perform my boring-ass job, which hangs like a dark evil cloud over my head. Working on computers, and traveling over 40 hours a week makes everything on the above list 10x harder to accomplish.

I've turned over a new leaf. I'm throwing job hatred out the window (at least... on week six or eight). I've begun with working out. For the next two weeks the only requirements I am setting for myself is to work out. Every day. Go to work, do my job, and work out. I'm not going to fret if I don't think of movie ideas, or learn new vegetarian recipes or whatnot. I am simply going to work, work out, and then play video games and hang out for two weeks.

So far it's awesome.

The point of the experiment is to see if I really continue to have these good habits after the 2 weeks is up. Say, for instance, in the next two week session I decide to focus on screenwriting, every day. Hopefully I will have made working-out such a habit that I keep it up even while I'm focusing on something new.

See me in two weeks.

~ Sore but happy

Happy Birthday Joe

Do it~

Edison sucks

Topsy the Elephant

happy birthday to me

Slinky pee

There's Slinky pee on my movie script notecards that I pulled out the other day. Why not write a movie during the random two hour break in the middle of my endless day? And I read the cards and I enjoyed them and was filled with a renewed self esteem. I write good.

So I left the sprawled over the bed (the cards, that is) and Slinky peed on them (just a tad). As much as I am against my cards getting golden doggy showers, I am not so mad at her. It's someone trying to tell me... ummm... graduate from the notecard stage- You're getting nowhere.

I am a big fan of parentheticals (clearly) and it's nice to know that Dostoesky is too. Read The Idiot.

Baking- like neuroscience

I just baked a chocolate cake (from a box) but got all crazy on it's ass...

I added:
1 cup mashed sweet potatoes I had baked earlier with butter and vanilla
1/3 cup of half and half
2 eggs and
1/2 cup of olive oil (probably unnecessary)

BONUS: I baked it in the still greasy cake pan I had laying around from earlier when I baked the sweet potatoes in butter.

RESULTS: Good chocolate cake. Not so even...grew more in the middle. Very spongy and tasty. Probably could have added some chocolate chips. Then it would have been fantastic.

NEW HYPOTHESIS: If baking is like science then I'm like... Tesla? Haha I WISH.

Springtime Crazies

I was wondering why all the crazy things I've done were in the springtime, and why I feel so whacked out right now. Here's an article that tells me everything I could have guessed (and a few things I couldn't have).

*Spring fever article*

However, this next article is pretty useless. It seems to have been written for A) Very religious people who do not discuss emotions or feelings or B) People who have gone through menopause. It's incredibly clean and uninteresting, discussing the meaning of spring, the reason for spring holidays and traditions, and really centers around instructions for becoming an optimist. What's funny is that I feel least optimistic in the spring. All this cleaning house and thinking of new projects and the future makes me rather grim. I guess I'm just not capturing that "springtime optimism" the way they're directing me.

*Springtime Optimism*

Here's another article that completely leaves hormones and chemicals out of the picture. It gives a very weak (in my opinion) explanation for Springtime tragedies in public schools (shootings and suicides). Now I am just scanning the text right now, but i don't see any mention of a scientific reason for manic depressive behavior. Basically the gist I'm getting is, if you add up all the listed factors (tests, failing grades, graduation, changing relationships, stress of 9/11) you are bound to run into some kids who can't handle it, and will go wacko. They make no mention of chemical changes that occur in the body between winter and summer. Seems like they're leaving out a large factor, considering teenagers bodies are already wacked out as it is.

*Safe Schools and Springtime*

So, apparently not a lot of scientists think that the springtime imbalance is very interesting or worth studying, but I know I'm not the only one who goes through this. Here's one girl's blog, which reads pretty much word for word like one of mine about 4 years ago.

*Young and Fabulous*

My own personal theory about my own personal angst-filled slump that I am just now experiencing is as follows: Raging hormones and springy chemical imbalances cause fitful daydreaming, and an extreme feeling of unrest. My daydreaming about the future is pessimistic whereas my daydreaming about complete and utter fantasy world scenarios is much more fun, though completely not beneficial to anything at all, and therefore comes with a lot of guilt. Guilt makes me depressed. An extreme case of ADHD makes me only fit for daydreaming, and even then sometimes I lose my train of thought. How frustrating! I can't even sit and write something creative or work on plausible ideas. I just want to go for walks, stare at things, and nap. Good thing I start work soon.

Victor Hugo eludes me no more

"Sileto et spera"


Be silent and hope. Latin written over the door of the seigniorial mansion of Tourville. Thanks to THIS BLOG HERE I have finally located the text of my next tattoo. It was translated in a footnote of my old and now lost edition of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and at the time my room was beige (barf) so I used to pencil things in on my walls, out of books and songs. Then we painted the room and years later I was left wishing I were still smart enough to at least have taken a picture of the wall. Oh well. And I was right, the text was nice looking. There are many translations of everything, and trying to put it together myself got me things like "Obticeas et expectas" ... just not as pretty. So wow. My mission is accomplished. $100 or so dollars later and I might have a real nice tat. Where to put it??

Also, mentioning weird coincidences between blog authors, there were definitely some Paul Simon phrases penciled onto my wall, and low and behold the title of the blog I found this on was a line from "Call me Al" (I think)...

or Z.) All of the above

Life Goals-

~Personal~
-Get married
-Pump out some kids
-Have a nice house
-Live in the country
-Visit Iceland
-Master woodcarving
-Have a lot of pets
-Take some yoga classes
-Be very physically fit

~Educational~
-Graduate Highschool (CHECK)
-Go to film school (CHECK)
-Get a Masters degree in *Anthropology/Latin/The Classics
-Learn basic furniture making/ cabinetmaking
-Get film internship/ "BIZ" experience

~Professional~
-Write a movie (that gets made)
-Write a novel
-Direct/Produce award winning short film (any award will do)
-Direct/Produce pointless musical short
-Start a non-profit rural arts organization

"Miles to go before I sleep."

Memorize

I have decided to become a good/better memorizer. The first assignment I'm giving myself is this poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow- because it's easier to start with something that rhymes- and I like him and remember a lot of his poems from back in school... Like for instance....

The Arrow and the Song

I shot an arrow into the air
It fell to earth, I know not where
For so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in it's flight

I breathed a song into the air
It fell to earth, I know not where
For who has sight so keen and strong
That it can follow the flight of a song?

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the arrow still unbroke
And the song, from beginning to end
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Or perhaps this classic

The Pasture Spring

I'm going out to clean the pasture spring
I'll only stop to rake the leaves away
And wait to watch the water clear, I may
I shan't be gone long-
You come too.

I'm going out to fetch the little calf
Standing by the mother, it is so young
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I shan't be gone long-
You come too.

If you've never read these, you don't care... but I remember them from school... quoting them a million times. The good 'ole days.

And now my assignment-

Seaweed

When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with seaweed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,
In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing
Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting
On the desolate, rainy seas; —

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless main;
Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,
All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean
Of the poet's soul, erelong
From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song:

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted
With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian
In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will, and the Endeavor
That forever
Wrestle with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,
Floating waste and desolate; —

Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting
Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.

stealing

The kid next to me was talking about never breathing in New York because of all the germs and he said "I'm like an air camel" ... that made me laugh on the INSIDE so I'm recording it.