Wednesday, May 31

Titters, chuckles, and all-out guffaws

I've been spending a large amount of time in front of the computer. Writing, mostly. And starving, unfortunately. Start-up content takes more time than I originally expected and pays just as little as I had feared. Hopefully the stock options will kick in soon. Of course even if what I currently own and am being paid multiplies-- let's just use an arbitrary large number like, four billion--it would still be zero.

The Motherfucking Zero Rule:

Four billion x Zero = Zero = What I currently am being paid to write these gems

Today's material took a shameful amount of time to find and write -- roughly four hours(!) To my defense the unattractive foreign girl giving me eyes and terrible rap music playing at the coffee shop with free wi-fi threw me off. What respectable coffee shop plays black music? From living black musicians(black and dead being the apparent requisite state to get onto Starbucks' playlists)? All I know is tomorrow I'm going to the place across the street. And they better be playing some familiar shit like Ray Charles or Miles Davis or Billie Holliday--what I like to call "cool black music uncool white people still like". Or at the very least, some John Mayer.

So enough with the babble--here's what I found on Google News for Tuesday, May 30th:

In world news, recently jailed Egyptian activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah has been blogging from behind bars, Wired.com reported Saturday. The 24 year-old Abdel-Fattah, according to sources, has been scribbling messages on slips of paper and sneaking them out of prison. The slips of paper, in turn, have been making their way onto the internet and then around the world.

However, while the courageous Abdel-Fattah has been consistently updating his blog, reports say that he has neglected to keep up with his Facebook messages. In addition to the some 134 new messages he has received and not read, he has also left unchecked 16 new group invitations, 28 new friend requests, and 14 new comments on his wall. Matters have gotten so serious that his wife and blog partner, Manal, has requested that her Facebook relationship status with Abdel-Fattah be changed from “Married to” to “It’s Complicated”.

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In medicine and technology this week, The Korean Times reported that disgraced South Korean researcher Hwang Woo-suk wants to resume his stem cell studies. Hwang, who was dismissed from Seoul National University in January after it was determined that his landmark papers on stem cell research were based on manipulated data, promised, if given another chance, that he would never to lie about his results again, cross his heart and hope to die.

Hwang then guaranteed that, if he was allowed to continue his work, he wouldn’t create an army of evil genetically-engineered superhuman clones, but a benevolent one.

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An exotic theory proposing the existence of an extra fourth spatial dimension, could be tested using a satellite to be launched next year, reports the website NewScience.com. The complicated hypothesis is based on string theory, quantum mechanics, and a whole bunch of other stuff no one understands.

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In celebrity land, The Boston Herald reports that actor Ben Affleck spent his Memorial Day in a Cambridge, Massachusetts hospital after being rushed to the ER for a migraine. Affleck was taken to the hospital around 2:30pm by his wife, actress Jennifer Garner, and released two hours later.

If Affleck was a baseball player he would have been put on the 15-day disabled list with a sprained vagina. Unfortunately he’s just a bad actor working on a big-budget directorial debut and will resume work on that debut sooner than the American public wants. Which is anytime earlier than never.

10 comments:

Harry the Hire said...

Hey yeH,

I don't think you need to change coffee shops. I just reckon there are going to be days when the ha-ha's flow freely and days when they don't. It doesn't matter where you drink your coffee, you'll always have those days when you have to sweat and grind and wrench the ha-ha's from out of your mind like a farmer wrenches the pieces of a dead calf from the womb of a preganant cow.

Not a pretty analogy, but that's what a writing life is all about.

James said...

B, now I'm all self-conscious about how I look as I use the computer. (Do I look smart enough? Mysteriously writer enough?) Thanks a lot.

L, your image of the "bad days" of writing is terrifying. Is it too late to change careers?

Harry the Hire said...

Hey yeH,

Hey, hey, hey Yeh! you will still have the good days, remember. I didn't describe them. Those are the kind of days when you start writing at 6 pm on a cold winter's evening and, when you go to take a break, you look out your window and the sun has come up the next day, you're naked, tired and freeezing your balls off but it took you 12 hours to actually realise this because you were having so much fun elsewhere.

Not so great if you have a day job... but surely the best jobs are the ones where time passes imperceptably - the jobs that give you the kind of energy that means you need no sleep, food, drink or clothing for long stretches of time(writing naked, like surfing naked, is good for the soul).

oh, and remember: you might write a lot of shit some days, but shit is the most efficient type of fertilizer you can find (you produce your own, it's free and it's the most effective way to nurture creativity).

A pessimest would say, "I write shit sometimes and I really suck and should stop writing." An optimist would say, "Even when I write shit it smells like roses." A realist would say, "I certainly write shit sometimes but how else would my talent grow if it wasn't fertilized?"

I've learned to have a lot of appreciation for the amount of shit I write.

Trevor said...

The Facebook thing...hilarious.

I know what you mean about "writing shit and not getting paid", sure the street cred I get from "being published on McSweeneys" is great but it won't pay the bills. Or allow me to get anything other than what's on the dollar menu at Micky D's. Or pay for the gas that I put in my car to drive to Clemson where there is apparently a nutjob loose strangling women in the middle of the summer semester. Or make up for the fact that I'll probably die alone and unloved twenty years down the line when my liver finally gives out and I'm on my last leg (the other one long since a casualty of the diabetes I infliced on myself with my copious soda consumption), crawling in the gutter outside "Late Night with James Yeh" in NYC and begging to be let in..."because I'm a comedy writer!"

Yeah...that's the ticket.

James said...

What is this -- the James Yeh Writing Support Group?!

Bleck!

Harry the Hire said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Harry the Hire said...

Hey yeH,

I think I'm just supporting myself. I'm 36 years old and need all the support I can give... myself. I guess I do it in vicarious ways... by seeming to support others.

I like your style, so there's a plus. You don't suck, there's another plus. You're the only asian-looking southern-born San Fransican-residing person I know. Tripple plus.

Can I say San Francisan? Or is it San Franscisanese? Or San Franciscish?

(I'm also not sure what 'bleck' means and I used to think hipsters were pants women wore that hung low on their hips.)

James said...

It's San Franciscan. Other words for bleck include [cringe!] and "Ack!" Basically its the same feeling you got in your stomach the first time you saw Kevin Federline's "PopoZao" video.

jenneral said...

Hilarious! Especially the Facebook thing. Is the place you are writing for ok with you double-posting their content on your blog?

I'm curious about this new physics testing you post about... have anymore information on it (like what specific theory they are testing)?

Also, I found this excellent post on how to blog and I thought you might enjoy reading and/or commenting on it. Let me know if you have any thoughts on it...

PS. I'm going to Bonnaroo soon and you aren't! *naaaa-na-na-na-na!*

James said...

Jenn, thanks for the kind words. About the publishing of the material on here, I don't really know if it's cool or not. I figure it's one of those things you don't really ask permission for. Plus I'm not getting paid to do it, so...

By the way I hate you and your Bonnaroo trip. Be sure to bring some soap -- not to keep yourself clean, but to keep hippies away.

Of course, B. It's on my list on things to do before I die, right after "have sex with a woman" and before "have picture taken with John Mayer".

And yes, there is no imagination whatsoever necessary to figure out what I'm "packing". Which is heat, baby. Heat.