Three Pages Attempt 11

I had a dream that I was at college. This is rare for me because I usually dream about high school or middle school. There was this gray basement area where people could study and there was these rooms off to the right where the students slept. I remember going through some of them because a pair of cute Asian girls went by and I wanted to see where they were...I dunno, roomed at. That's not a word is it? Sheesh, I am in bad form today. I don't want to write at all. I feel like I'm the worst writer whoever lived. I can't make sense of what I wanted to write about with my tooth story. I doubt it will be ready by the time Halloween comes around. This is too hard. I'm going to take a nap instead and go from there. I'd rather be asleep than think about hard stuff like this. My brain isn't ready for this type of difficulty, yet. And I think that's my problem. I try to do too much. What was I thinking trying to write ten books in one series? I have the plan for it, but not the skill. It's like trying to build a house and not knowing how to lay down the foundations. I need to change my brain chemistry and I don't know how to do it. I even sent my story to Claude AI and it pointed out some things that need fixing. This isn't just "cut a word here or there." This is a full rewrite of the entire story. I can barely sympathize with this character too which makes it harder. Oh, and my villain, Dr. Dizel? He's a mess too. I need to write him in with dialogue rather than expostion. Sheesh, this is hard. I'll be back in a bit.

Today hit me hard. I had a drop and felt that angry beehive in my head again. I guess I shouldn't eat so late because that causes me to crash. I need more protien and glucose. I'm scared that I'll hurt someone or myself. The only thing that makes me feel better is that I get to come home and write some more. I've fallen in love with writing these things every day. I need to take the next step in the book The Artist's Way which is to have a few hours to myself each day to treat my inner child. I worry that it's too late for me to learn this kind of writing stuff. If I was younger I wouldn't be in so much despair. But I'm almost middle-aged and I will die someday. Death isn't something that you really think about when you're young. You think about the future, when you're old, you think about the past. I have such sad thoughts. Maybe I should publish them.

There's this thought I had about a show I loved called Futurama. I say "loved" because it has definately fallen on hard times. It's just not as good as it used to be. The first, I want to say, six seasons are really good but after that the magic dried up like a melon in the sun. There's an episode called "A Clone of My Own" which is the tenth episode of season two. It introduces Professor Farnsworth's clone, Cubert. A bratty kid who dismisses all of the professor's inventions and ideas as crazy. In the climax of the episode, he embraces his heritage and helps the gang escape from imprisonment. I'm paraphrasing the episode but the crux of what I wanted to get to was how Cubert reveals that the space ship they use to escape is special because it moves the space around it, not through it. It's a silly way for the group to escape but it works because the story was good and the writing was funny. And that's when I think it's okay to be funny or break reality, it's when it's in the service of a good joke. How is it possible that a ship can be so powerful that it moves the space around it? Who cares, it's funny so it works. Futurama is one of those shows that treads this thin line between funny and purposeful, the same way the first nine seasons of The Simpsons did. But when Futurama becomes too focused on today's politics and problems, it loses it's touch. There's an episode of the current season where the gang travel to lawless land of Doge City to get crypto currency. Now this isn't funny. It's too modern. The episode, titled "How the West was 1010001" is the only thing funny about the episode. It feels like it's just following the character's profiles like in a script. Fry is stupid, Bender is greedy, hijinks ensue. A better example would be the episode "The Problem with Popplers" from season two. Fry, Bender, and Leela are starving after making a long trip and find food on a planet that they are able to sell for a profit. The food, these small balls of meat, turn out to be the young of the warlike inhabitants of Omicron Persei 8. As a side note, the Omicrons are a personal favorite of mine, especially Lrrr, the leader of the planet. The whole episode revolves around whether or not people should eat a sentient weaker species or if it's wrong to eat any kind of animal. An opinion that the show throws a brick at, literally. It's one of my favorite episodes but the debate about eating animals has been around for centuries. But the way Futurama handles it, or not handles it, is funny and clever, especially considering they were eating the children of a species much more powerful than them who is enraged at the humans' actions, which is also funny. But this universal type of debate is a lot more hard-hitting than an episode about current affairs. It's like the show was asking "how would future people handle such a question?" Let's swing the pendulum back and look another bad episode: "Attack of the Killer App." This one has commentary on social media, proper use of apps, and the iphone. Sorry, eyephone. The only thing salvagable from this episode is Fry yelling "Shut up and take my money." Funny, but one good joke doesn't save the whole thirty minutes. The show lampoons how people are always eager to buy the next upgraded product and how we're like zombies under the control of a company. It's just so obviously blatant with it's overall joke. I don't mind making fun of today's subjects, I mean, I love South Park's quick whit. But Futurama always seemed to have broader strokes when it came to commentary. Instead, today it's as if the show is trying to pull the present into the show. Going back to the 1010001 episode, I doubt that cryptocurrency will be present in the year 3000. 

That brings me to my biggest beef with an episode from season seven: "Game of Tones." Fry has the opportunity to see back in the past and relive his life in the year 2000 through dreams. This was supposed to be an emotional episode similar to the one about Fry's dog that waited for him to return a thousand years ago. To sum up the episode, a space ship sends out a loud tone that shatters planets. The gang have to find the ship and stop the sound before the same thing happens to Earth. The ship lands on Earth and Fry notes that the sound the ship is making is familiar. using a device to go through Fry's dreams and determine that he heard the sound the same day that he was frozen and sent to the future. Long story short, Fry become enamored with the idea of reliving his life in the year 1999 but each time he steps into a new scene, he can't go back to the old one. It's like an old projector, you can't go back to the old picture. Fry is able to locate the ship but not before he takes the other's with him on a journey to see what 1999 life was like for him. And this is part of what bothers me about this episode. The show is literally having Fry show his friends something. He's "showing." I don't know why this technology bothers me so much but maybe because of how the episode is structured it makes me disbelieve the tech where the tech in the Clone episode I was willing to forgive. There's also a lot of exposition in this episode as well. Whereas there was an earlier episode, I can't find the title, where the gang go to a remaking of NewYork and the episode SHOWS us how Fry experienced NewYork instead of walking us through his life. I actually found the episode, it's called "The Lesser of Two Evils." Fry and the gang visit a recreation of Old New York which feels more in tune than using a device to go back through someone's memories. I had another beef with this episode but I forgot it, maybe I'll remember next time.