Prostitution of Dignity

It's hard to post scripts on here..... This is the opening to a script that I REALLY need to finish. It's called "Prostitution of Dignity"

INT. – HENRY’S BEDROOM- EARLY MORNING

An alarm clock is heard, and HENRY slowly wakes up. He mumbles under his breath, and has a disgruntled look on his face. He slowly climbs out of bed, and crosses his small and dirty apartment, to the small bathroom. On his way to the bathroom, he turns off the alarm clock. Henry is at the sink, he washes under his arms, and brushes his teeth. He puts on his uniform, and crosses back to his bed.

VERONICA- his girlfriend, is still sleeping. Henry leans in and gives her a kiss.

HENRY
I love you.

Henry leaves the apartment.

EXT. – STREET – MORNING

Henry is riding his bike to work. He is wearing an extremely loud, multi-colored bike helmet. His uniform makes him look equally pathetic. His eyes are half closed, and he is not paying attention to where he is going. He smacks into a fire hydrant, and falls off his bike. Due to the accident, the bike is no longer rideable.

EXT. – TOLLBOOTH – MORNING

Henry pulls up the broken bike up to the tollbooth. As he reaches the tollbooth, he tries to chain the bike in front of it. He fumbles with the chains, and fights to chain his broken bike. He gets frustrated and throws the bike on the floor. He aggressively throws the chain into the street. He realizes the chain shouldn’t be there, and goes out and gets it.

INT.- TOLLBOOTH – AFTERNOON

Henry is sits in the tollbooth looking extremely bored. He is holding a sharpie, and writing a haiku into a small spiral notebook. Henry begins to read his haiku out loud.

HENRY
Somewhere there is life.
It’s constantly pulled from me.
Somewhere there is hope.

A car filled with teenagers pulls into the tollbooth. Henry puts away his spiral notebook, and goes to attend to the car. The TEENAGE GIRL driving the car hands him the toll money. Henry turns to his register, and counts out her change.

TEENAGE GIRL
Now, that has to be the worst fucking job on the planet.

Henry hears what she says, but doesn’t react. He goes about his business. He hands her the change, and the teenagers laugh at him. They speed away, and Henry pulls out his little spiral notebook, and continues to write.

EXT. – STREET – NIGHT

Henry walks home alone. It is dark, and it begins to rain. He is holding his obnoxious bike helmet in his hand and walking, slowly down the street. Henry’s eyes keep opening and closing. Suddenly, the rain becomes a downpour. While Henry is walking, a car speeds by him, rolling over a giant puddle, and splashes water all over him. Henry sighs, and continues walking soaked and miserable.

INT. – HENRY’S APARTMENT – NIGHT

Veronica is sitting on the couch, eating a TV dinner. The television can be heard. Henry opens the door, and, slowly, makes his way to the kitchen. He drops his helmet on the floor, and kicks it out of the way. He opens the refrigerator, pulls out another TV dinner, and places it into the microwave. Henry slowly makes his way to the couch, and sits next to Veronica.

TELEVISION (OFF-SCREEN)
So, why didn’t you just sell the damn thing?
(canned laughter)

VERONICA
You’re wet.

HENRY
Yeah, it happens.

They hold hands, and closely watch the television. They laugh, as the television shines off of their faces.


INT. – HENRY’S BEDROOM – NIGHT

Veronica and Henry are making love. It is aggressive, yet loving. Once they are done, Henry rolls over and tries to catch his breath. Veronica and Henry lie there looking at the ceiling, and breathing heavily.

HENRY
What time is it?

VERONICA
Almost one-thirty.

HENRY
I should go to bed. I have to get up in four hours.

VERONICA
Yeah. I have things to do tomorrow, too.

HENRY
I love you.

They kiss, roll over, and go to sleep.

INT. – HENRY’S BEDROOM - EARLY MORNING

The sound of the alarm clock is heard, and Henry slowly wakes up. He mumbles under his breath, and has a disgruntled look on his face. He slowly climbs out of bed, and makes his way to the small bathroom in his apartment. On his way to the bathroom he turns off the alarm. He washes under his arms, and begins to brush his teeth. He puts on his uniform, and crosses back to his bed.

Veronica is still sleeping. Henry gives her a kiss.

HENRY
I love you.

Henry leaves the apartment.

EXT. – STREET – MORNING

Henry is walking to work, but he is carrying a closed umbrella.

HENRY (V.O.)
And so, this is how my life goes. Every day, it’s the same stupid thing. Same stupid walk.

INT. – TOLLBOOTH - DAY

Henry is sitting in his tollbooth and writing in his spiral notebook.

HENRY (V.O.) (CONT.)
Same stupid job. Same stupid life.

A car pulls up to Henry’s window. The car has a mother, with a three-year-old in the back seat. The three-year-old laughs at Henry.

HENRY (V.O.) (CONT.)
Sometimes, I just want to jump in front of one of those cars that drive by my window. Or tell the little kid in the back seat, laughing at me, to shut the fuck up. But I won’t. I just go about my life, being as pathetic as anyone could be.

Henry takes the money from the mother, and puts it in his register. The car drives away.

EXT. – STREET – NIGHT

Henry is walking with his umbrella. It begins to rain. Henry goes to open his umbrella, but it opens inside out. He is, again, left standing in the rain.

HENRY (V.O.)
See, I told you my life is pathetic.

October Memories

Monsterfest is playing on AMC, there are jack-o-lanterns on every doorstep, and girls are walking around dressed as schoolgirls, Playboy bunnies, and prostitutes. Yes, it’s my favorite time of the year: Halloween. Every Halloween I bask in the glory of gore, death and anything that goes bump in the night. Who knew?

So, I will admit that my infatuation with Halloween has gotten me in trouble many times. My neighbors don’t always approve of my decoration choices for my front lawn, for instance. Whether it is bloody tombstones, hands crawling out of the ground, or a life-sized Michael Jackson holding a baby.... people just can’t seem to grasp the spirit of my Halloween decor. Once, I hung (fake) severed limbs from the tree in my front yard. Now, personally, I thought they looked beautiful. My neighbors, on the other hand, didn’t think it was very pretty. Apparently, hanging arms and legs from a tree could be “traumatizing” or “make children cry,” so I had to take them down. Fucking kids....

Some of my favorite Halloween costumes that I’ve used over the years include the classic Goth Girl, Britney Spears (a la schoolgirl uniform) with a slashed throat, and the crowd pleaser: a zombie. Sometimes, I’d answer my door to trick-or-treaters and they’d be the ripe age of three or four. It was always very entertaining to watch the kids scream and run away, or turn to their parents and ask what I was. The parents then tried to explain my costumes in the most child friendly/awkward way. In other words, Britney Spears cut herself shaving.... and I would chime in with "cause she's really a man." Oh, how I loved it.

The thing that would always annoy me on Halloween was those jerks that would turn off all the lights in their house, as if to say, “We’re not home. Sorry, no candy here!” How smart are you? If I turn my lights off no one will come and get candy! Whoo hoo! I'm a trickster! Well, I was one of those kids that would get very angry if my candy demand was not met. Let’s just say that old lady McFinigan won’t be turning her lights off on me anymore.

Embrace the Halloween spirit. Watch a horror movie or two, put on a scary mask and play creepy music/Rob Zombie throughout your neighborhood, because we only get this experience once a year. Cherish it. Before you know it, B101 will be playing Christmas music, and you’ll want to drive your car off of a cliff.

Happy Halloween!

Don't take my Pluto away

Oh, dear, sweet Pluto. You are no longer just Pluto; now, you are 134340 Pluto, the largest dwarf planet in the Solar System. It pains my heart to hear this. I love you, Pluto, and if there was something I could do for you, believe me I would. You were my favorite planet. No one knew much about you, and that’s why I liked you. I will hunt down the man that did this to you, and carve the number 134340 into his forehead......if that's what you want me to do.....

I know all of you are laughing at me, thinking,“Why do you care so much about Pluto? He's small, insignificant, and hides away in the back of the solar system.” Well, I do! I do care about Pluto! Whenever there was a science project involving planets I would always chose Pluto. Yes, it was hard to find all the information on the planet. Yes, he wasn't as close as Mars, or as extravagantly blinged out as Saturn. And yes, my mother would yell at me asking why I chose such an arbitrary planet that no one cared about, and she wished I was never born (she actually did that a lot). I didn’t care though. I still did every project on dear, sweet Pluto. I didn’t care that it was smaller than several moons in our system, or that its moon – Charon – was as big as the planet itself. It didn’t bother me that Pluto didn’t completely follow a simple orbit. Pluto was different; Pluto was special! So are you scientists going to sit there and tell me that all of my projects went to waste, and that all of those hours of research have amounted to nothing? Huh? NOTHING! Is that what you’re saying to me?!!?

So now all these scientists are demoting you. Spitting on your name and calling you a “dwarf” planet: an ice dwarf. Now you’re listed with the likes of Ceres, Xena, Orcus, Sedna, Easterbunny and Santa (yes, there are dwarf planets named that.) It's like Pluto has been forced into the worst drag show in San Francisco. How dare the so-called “intelligent” people of the scientific community categorize my favorite planet with these freaks!

Pluto, they’re even saying that Charon isn’t your moon, but another dwarf planet! They want to take away your moon too? What did you do, Pluto? What did you do to deserve this horrible treatment? Was Hitler born there? Is that where Scientology came from? You can tell me!

So, what’s next? What else is science going to ruin for me? Are they going to categorize Johnny Depp as an android or David Hasselhoff as a gnome? I swear to God science, you’re being a total fucking asshole. Leave Pluto alone! Let him be a planet. You know, just because he’s different and mysterious doesn’t mean you have to shun him. I mean, if he’s walking around the solar system listening to his iPod, carrying his MacBook Pro, wearing aviators, and playing with his black fingernails it doesn’t give you the right to put a label on him. Douchebags.

Measure of a Man

I wrote a number of articles for The Collegian, and I found them whilst googling myself (don't judge me). I decided to try and spruce them up a bit, and post them on here. So enjoy.

What exactly is it that measures a man? Would he walk on water? Would he run through fire? Or would he have spikey hair, and little cute mouse ears? I think he would. It takes a lot to turn this pop culture-hating girl into a swooning sing-a-longer. What could possibly turn me into a quivering 13-year-old again? Nothing but the angelic voice of the American Idol runner-up, Clay Aiken.

When people go through my iPod, they often find great musical variety equal to that of a musical genius (or maybe even a god). One might come across a Pink Floyd album or two, all of Muse’s ultimate god-like-ness, Eliot Smith, Eminem, Ours, and Radiohead. People are often confused when they run across Clay Aiken’s Measure of a Man staring them straight in the face. “But, Jo Anna... Clay Aiken sucks. Why would you put him in here with all of this greatness?”

“Silence!” I tell them while shoving my hand straight into their face. Clay Aiken is an amazing talent with a magnificent voice that could make your own mother divorce your father and fall to his whim.

So what is it exactly that drew me to the dark side? Well, I guess you could first and foremost blame television, and FOX's wholesome programming. American Idol took the most talented (and untalented) youth of America, and plastered them onto my screen for me to cheer for (and laugh at). This was a reality television show that would kick off or ultimately kill their career. The second season of the show was when I fell in love with Clay and his homoness. The finale was a heated competition, and Clay Aiken was robbed of the American Idol title by Ruben "I'm a fat ass" Studdard.

I was furious, devastated even. How could Ruben be victorious over the amazing voice of Clay? He was to fat and to black for America to love. I think that the competition was rigged, and I'm still waiting in the wings for an Asian to win American Idol in order to support my race influenced theory. But the joke is on Ruben Studdard now! Clay Aiken has sold millions of records, and has every womanin their 40s grabbing at his sexy lanky body. When he sings “The Way” at his concerts granny panties form a pile at his feet. Hey Studdard, what have you done lately? Nothing! I hate you!

Once Clay came out with the single “Invisible,” I didn’t care how creepy the words “...if I were invisible, I could just watch you in your room,” sounded on the radio. His hypnotic voice sent me right to the record store to pick up Measure of a Man, and I’ve been cooing to it ever since.

I will continue to be moved by such awesome songs like “No More Sad Songs,” “This is the Night” and “I Survived You.” No matter what you think, Clay will always have a place in my heart, regardless of how much of a guilty pleasure he is.

But yes, I think he's a fag.