One Piece

I'm at BP gas station purchasing some drinks when I turn around and see this old guy stooped over in the aisles. He's raking his hands over a display of candy bars until his fingers grasp one or two and he shoves them in the inside of his coat pocket. Clumsy and fumbling, he does this routine a few more times. The clerks -who are 3 ft away- seem to take special care to look away but I'm staring directly at the guy, fascinated by this strange game that's playing out. Perhaps the gawking made the old man uncomfortable because then he said loudly to the clerks 'good evening, sirs!' while tucking the items deeper into his pockets. I open my mouth to say something but then I stop...what am I going to say?  Three clerks clearly see this. I slowly walk behind the old man and he puts a few items on the counter and pays for them (but not the candy bars in his jacket). I pause for a moment and look at the clerks and then the old man. All appears to be right with everyone ...

An angel and the devil approach a poor farmer who only has one cow and offer him a choice. The angel says he will give the farmer one new cow, but if he does so he will gift two cows to his neighbor. The devil says he will kill the farmer's only cow, but in return he will kill two cows of his neighbor. The angel and farmer ask him to make a decision. The farmer thinks for a moment, turns to the devil and says 'do I get to eat the cow after you kill it?' Some time passes and the angel and devil come back to the same impoverished farmer who has now is without his beloved cow. The angel says he will transform the farmer into a handsome man but in exchange his neighbor will be twice as good looking. The devil says that the farmer can pick something on his body to destroy and he will do twice the amount of punishment to his neighbor. The farmer turns to the devil and says 'take out my eye.' Some time passes and the angel and devil come back to the same poor, half-blind f...

The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggerated altruism – are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded by hideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that they should be strongly moved by all this.    The emotions of man are stirred more quickly than man’s intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on the function of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirected intentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.  They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor. But this is not a solut...

I attended a Girl Be Heard (http://girlbeheard.org/) event last night for a performance about Human Trafficking. Apparently the 3 major international rackets are 1) arms 2) drugs 3) human enslavement. The enslavement/trafficking is the fastest growing cartel out of the 3, with $32 billion a year to criminal gangs. Human trafficking/slavery is very big in America. Domestic workers are lured here, have their passports taken away, and then forced to work for free (slavery). Kids are kidnapped and shipped around on planes as sex slaves in the open. This happens in every major airport, train stations, and bus stops cause most adults can't put the clues together, the kids can't speak English or are drugged out of their mind, or the kidnapped victim is too scared to say anything cause they're traveling with their perpetrator. One of the event speakers was a girl from NYC who was kidnapped by her elementary school janitor, sold to a pimp, and forced into sex work in East New York. ...

After a patron in a Broadway matinee performance found out I'm a playwright, he asked me how come all the new playwrights only write plays about whacked out families, with the obligatory gay son, and revealed secret? He asked/commented about how boring it was. I was very proud of myself, didn't go on a tirade, didn't scream 'it's cause of mofos like you!!' Instead I sighed a bit under my breath. Do I really want to get into this right now? Sure, why not. In response to his question I said most young writers have a whole menu of plays, but the powers that be -responding to a atrophied, rich, less-adventurous, less-diverse audience- tend to pick from that menu the stories that are comfortable and don't disturb the shrinking gray economics of for-profit theatre. The patron nodded and asked what I just finished and I told him: a docudrama with song/poetry/testimonials about the Killing Fields of Cambodia, and a dark comedy about a group of homeless people being ...

GET WHAT YOU WANT is a monthly list of fellowship, contests, and residencies for playwrights around the country. This is the March 2014 edition. 1. Djerassi Playwriting Fellowship Deadline: April 1st The Carl Djerassi Fellowship in Playwriting was established by scientist and author Carl Djerassi to encourage beginning-to-mid-career playwrights whose work is not only performed, but also has intrinsic literary value. To realize Dr. Djerassi's vision, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Program in Creative Writing annually awards a fellowship to a playwright whose plays can be read and discussed as works on the page as well as performed on the stage. Playwrights whose works have been published as well as performed are especially of interest. Past Djerassi fellows include Dan O'Brien, Michael Weller, Len Jenkin, Sarah Gubbins, Martín Zimmerman, and Elaine Romero. Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing  has an April 1st deadline for its $27,000 Carl Djerassi Fellowship in ...