Yeah, still miss her, damn it. (No comments necessary)

Katherine Lawrence
11 Dec. 1954 - 25 March 2004

The Thing With Feathers

Some birds fly forever, I've heard,
and I've wondered how.

I imagine my arms wide and the moon
full and still waters below. Only trust
in the turning of the world and glide and it
seems a simple thing.

But dawn brings ships and their flocks and
a war in the air. I hear terrible songs and
turn my eyes from the rising sun and beat against
the burning light seeking quiet
in the high reaches of the sky
where stars become possible.

I seek empty paths over ice where the living
are silent and the way is clear, but a chill sinks into my
bones and I am too heavy for the air.

Ancient winds show me other lands, but I am
wingproud and desire my own destinations. There
will be time for every strange country when I am
done with dragons.

But what of the storms?
They come against my wings and are
deaf to weariness or confusion.
The world turns like a rage and I cannot rise above, nor
find the cold peace of quiet lands.

Let me rest a moment, then. Forever is
too long.

------Mark Kreighbaum

We saw LUCY this morning. I liked it a lot. It was an interesting metaphysical movie lightly wrapped in a disguise as an action movie. I admire Scarlett Johansson as an actress and a person. Morgan Freeman is always wonderful, though it wasn't that much of a part for him. Superb production values. Not a perfect movie, but worth seeing.

Yesterday, I took my walk first thing in the morning before the day got too hot. I was on the way back when I heard an insistent, non-stop shrieking that I recognized as belonging to a hawk. But it had the same quality as the young crows that hang out on our back fence and demand to be fed, except that young crows sound like they're quacking. You can't mistake the sound of a hawk, even a young one.

I turned around to hone in on the sound because it wasn't that far away. There were towering pines behind the houses across the street. As I watched, a parent hawk swooped in with something in its talons. I could the young hawk flapping its wings with excitement and the shrieking stopped. Half a minute later, the parent flew off again. The youngster followed, but only a very short distance to the next nearest tree. And a third hawk took off in yet another direction. They have to keep that noisy youngster fed.

Ever have one of those days where Murphy's Law reigned supreme?

And then there are days when it goes beyond screwed to Murphy's Law Squared. Today was one of those days, starting with forgetting my key card, RSA token and key to my desk at work. The gate for entry to the parking lot broke just as I got to it, leaving me stuck there until they could manually raise it. And along with the PITA consequences of forgetting the aforementioned items, the fire alarm went off and all of Zynga dutifully filed outside to mill about on the sidewalks. We thought it was a drill until two fire engines arrived. They got us back inside fairly quickly, but it was overall an annoying and non-productive day.

I'm so shocked and so very, very sad to learn that an old friend, Charles Bryant, passed away of natural causes last weekend. His wife notified me.

Charles aka "Bear" was one of the early friends I made back in the GEnie days, and stayed in good touch with all this time. He was a wonderful, clever and witty man. I'll miss him.

Katherine Lawrence
11 Dec. 1954 - 25 March 2004

The Thing With Feathers

Some birds fly forever, I've heard,
and I've wondered how.

I imagine my arms wide and the moon
full and still waters below. Only trust
in the turning of the world and glide and it
seems a simple thing.

But dawn brings ships and their flocks and
a war in the air. I hear terrible songs and
turn my eyes from the rising sun and beat against
the burning light seeking quiet
in the high reaches of the sky
where stars become possible.

I seek empty paths over ice where the living
are silent and the way is clear, but a chill sinks into my
bones and I am too heavy for the air.

Ancient winds show me other lands, but I am
wingproud and desire my own destinations. There
will be time for every strange country when I am
done with dragons.

But what of the storms?
They come against my wings and are
deaf to weariness or confusion.
The world turns like a rage and I cannot rise above, nor
find the cold peace of quiet lands.

Let me rest a moment, then. Forever is
too long.

------Mark Kreighbaum

Not surprisingly, I’m being inundated with inquiries about the Jem movie. Here’s what I have to say about it.

I’ll answer the obvious and most frequent question first: No, I had no inkling that the movie was being developed or had reached this stage until a couple of days ago. Someone high in the Hasbro PR department thoughtfully reached out to me to let me know about the movie and the impending announcement so that I wouldn’t be blindsided by it. I appreciated that gesture.

That same afternoon, John Chu also reached out and called me and we had a long, wonderful talk. I greatly enjoyed talking with him, sharing our love of Jem, and becoming acquainted.

Many people wonder how I feel about it. I don’t think I can hide that I’m deeply unhappy about being shut out of the project. That no one in the entertainment arm of Hasbro wanted to talk to me, have me write for it, or at the very least consult on it. I wouldn’t be human if that failed to bother me.

My other unhappy observation is that I see two male producers, a male director and a male writer. Where is the female voice? Where is the female perspective? Where are the women?

Now, as far as not bringing me on-board, that’s the reality of franchise IPs. It’s their property, they can do whatever they want with it, and they have no obligations whatsoever to me. Was it a smart decision? You decide.

Finally, I want to say good things about John Chu. He treated me with honesty and respect. He is sincere, passionate, and filled with a desire to make the best Jem movie he can make. He wants to reinvent Jem for a current audience. His take is somewhat different from the approach I wanted to take, but that just means it’s different, not that there’s anything wrong with it. I urge everyone to judge the merits of his work on the result and I hope he delivers us an excellent, truly outrageous movie.

Saturday is errands day and I needed to head down to a pet supply store in Redwood City to get a certain type of cat food. It's also the only place I can get the chicken feed that I use as cat litter. There's an Arco station at the corner where I turn after getting off the freeway and a homeless woman had set herself up there. She had three bull terriers and held a cardboard sign asking for help for herself and her dogs.

I figured since I was going the pet store, I'd pick up a bag of cheap dog food. Unfortunately, this store only stocks the high end, expensive, organic special kinds of food. I asked the woman who usually helps me if they had affordable dog food and explained that it was for a donation. She kindly ran off to the back room and came back with two boxes packed with sample packets of good quality dog food.

I transferred the dozens of packets into a couple of spare Whole Foods shopping bags, pulled into the Arco, and gave them to the woman, who was highly appreciative. I just caught her because she was packing up her shopping cart-home to move on, prodded I suspect by the cops who were there. I gave her some money, too, because hey, if I can help the dogs, I can certainly help the person.

I was in the grocery store doing the week's shopping and I saw a kid about ten or twelve years old. The kid was having an ongoing video conference with her mother who was telling her what to buy. So the kid is there and the mother is who knows where doing the shopping by kid proxy. The kid would say "I don't know what X Product looks like." The mother replies, "Show me." The kid turns the phone to face the shelves so mother can see what's there. And so it went, throughout the store.

I was caught between being amused, bemused and wondering "Why the fuck aren't you there doing the shopping WITH your kid?" and "How is the kid going to get the stuff home?"

I get a big kick out of the fact that the crows leave us presents in exchange for years of giving them peanuts. Their past presents have included: small stones, a bone, a cherry. But the recent crow present was the best: 5 large pieces of dog kibble.