The Dog's Days Are Numbered

I'm digging these alternate movie posters that keep popping up.

So...I don't know what the fuck I did in a past life to earn all this negative karma, but I'm really ready for the sun to swallow the earth and get this all over with.

My wife's been having a hard time because her father may have the big C again. He once had lung C, and had a lung removed. Now he's really starting to show his age.

So he has to have a biopsy that he doesn't want to have. My wife has basically forced him into taking the pre-operation tests, but then the lung guy wouldn't sign off on the biopsy, so they got put on hold. After 30 days, he'd have to go through all the tests again in order to get the surgery, and he's flatly said he won't do it again.

She's been sweating it, but finally the lung guy signed off so they're getting it done on Valentine's Day.

To fuck with us a little more, our dog has been having a hard time going up and down stairs. We thought...she's 12 years old. Maybe hip dysplasia.

But then she started getting really bad. Not eating. Not able to go up stairs at all. Drinking a lot of water. My wife scoured the internet and it sounded like kidney failure. She took the dog to the vet.

They took a quick look. Said she has a tumor in her uterus. It's apparently causing problems. They'd have to do blood tests to confirm, which would cost like $250. Then if it was confirmed, surgery, that would cost around $1000.

And the thing is, she's old. They say that sometimes surgery doesn't go well for older dogs. The average American Eskimo lives for 12-14 years, so she's already lived to the average. They said the surgery wasn't guaranteed to even work.

And even if she were young, we don't have that kind of money to spend on a pet.

This was Tuesday that she took her to the vet, and she's gone downhill so fast it's crazy. She can't walk at all now. She lays on the floor and has a hard time breathing. My wife laid there all night with her.

And I've never liked this dog much. I haven't hid it. But seeing her like this is brutal, because she's just a stupid animal. She doesn't know what's happening. That she's dying. She wants nothing more than to go outside and run around like she did when she was young. Bark at the other dogs in the neighborhood.

I miss the days when I was 100% sociopathic, but maybe I never was. Out of the three signs, I never tortured animals. Always had a soft spot for them. I'm really hoping she dies quick, because watching her degrade--having to carry her out to try to pee, and carry her back in, watching her puke up all the water she just drank--it's bad.

I feel like every year gets consecutively worse. 2020 is shaping up to be the worst yet.

My best of last year

Better post this before I forget. These are the movies I enjoyed the most last year:

Joker
Spider-man Far From Home
Doctor Sleep
Godzilla King of Monsters
Zombieland Double Tap
Hellboy
Shazam
Brightburn
Anna and the Apocalypse(prolly from 2018, but I just saw it--a new Xmas favorite)
Jojo Rabbit
Ready or Not
Ford V Ferrari

I didn't see Parasite, but I hear it's very good.

Here are the movies that you couldn't pay me to watch again:
Us(it astounds me how many people are putting this on their best of list--the premise is as ludicrous as it gets)
Mandy - So, so boring.
It 2 - First 20 minutes are pretty good, and then it goes off the rails
Glass - Man, this was a giant mis-step from Shyamalan.

Best TV shows
The Boys
House on Haunted Hill
Stranger Things
Witcher was fun

Those are off the top of my head, so I prolly missed some.

Went Back To Cali

That company I work freelance for hit me up last minute and said, "Wanna go to Santa Barbara and film this auction? Make a video of it all?"

I REALLY didn't want to. It would be a nightmare trip. I'd have to carry my camera and gear through the airport. There were no direct flights, so the flight I would take would go via Austin and take 9 hours total--and would drop me at LAX. I'd still have to take a 2.5 hour bus drive to get to Santa Barbara.

But can't really turn down the money so I did it. That bus ride ended up taking 3.5 hours due to traffic, so I was travelling about 13 hours that day.

The auction was fine. I ran around shooting video of everything. They didn't exactly tell me WHAT they want this video to look like, so hopefully I got something they like. The days were very long and I didn't get much sleep, and the final night my legs hurt so much I limped like an old man all the way to my villa. (this hotel, the Ritz Carlton, has a main building, and then like 20 "villas"--it was weird)

When I got home Sunday night, my feet and hands were swollen. I have no idea what that's about, as it's never happened to me before.

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Saw 1917 today. Technically amazing. Visually great--as expected from Roger Deakins. Wasn't phenomenal as far as a movie goes. I think the reliance on the "no cut" stuff hurt it a bit, cuz there's a fuckton of walking.

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Gotta get back to FOC.
Gotta finish an actor's reel for Cutting.
Gotta get on this new video.
Gotta finish that Ttory short script and decide if I wanna shoot it. (I like to be able to shoot these in a weekend, but I don't think that'll be possible here because of how many locations there are)
Those are my priorities. (still have a lot of job applications out, but not hearing much still...)

A New Year -- Can it be worse than last year?

Christmas was the usual. Hit my parents' house--but this year they didn't have turkey. Then to the in-laws, and THEY didn't have turkey. How the fuck can you have Christmas with no turkey?

I was tired as shit, so came home a little earlier than the wife and kid. They stayed and played games.

Hey, did I mention that FINALLY the whole Sprint phone thing is done with? They had referred me to a collection agency, and when I disputed that they owed me the amount, they sent me an invoice as proof that I owed them the amount.

So I went to the Federal Trade Commission online AND the MD Consumer Protection Agency. Filed against both Sprint and the collection agency. Left a detailed account on both--the FTC will actually file with the company and demand a response, which is pretty cool.

Well, a couple of days later I got a response from Sprint Fraud Management. They want me to send them a bunch of shit about the incident. I send them a pretty strongly-worded letter detailing the incident and citing legal statutes about why they can't possibly collect any money or the phones from me.

Took 'em a little while, but they sent me a letter back. It said that they have confirmed that I was a victim of identity fraud. That made me laugh. I am not the victim of identity fraud--Sprint is. They're the idiots that sent almost $2000 worth of phones to an address without a credit card or confirmation about the whole thing.

I just can't figure out WHY somebody did it. Were they going to steal the phones off my porch? Because they could have. The phones weren't signed for, and were left on my porch for about 3 hours.

Anyway, they've closed the whole thing and told the collection agency to clear it.

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Here's a picture of what the cookies look like, Stewie. (I don't put those little nasty wafer candies on them--those are gross. I put red hots or silver balls or the tiny sugar balls. I'd post a pic of my cookies, but I ate them all. I'm now 20 pounds heavier.)

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I finished one story I was writing. It's a bleak thing. I think I mentioned I'm going to try to get published this year. Is it good enough? Who knows. I'm not even sure what genre it is. It doesn't exactly feel like horror, but then again, I read a bunch of short stories in "Best Of" anthologies, and many of them didn't feel like what I'd consider horror.

I'm working on that Ttory script. Also working on finishing some of the other scripts that I've been working on for YEARS. Like, one of them for nearly 15 years.

Still have to get some sort of job. Clearly, movies aren't going to pay for anything any more. I've noticed more and more of my filmmaking friends giving up the dream. There's just no money in it. I've always been good enough to make money, even when they couldn't, but I don't see a viable way any more unless you can get your hands on $250K.

I am actually making more money selling books on A-zon than I am streaming my films. (at $.01 per hour streamed. ) I've taken both Ttorys off of the free list.

I've let go of my imdbpro account, and my Adobe sub is about to go away. Cutting all the fat away...