Feeling fluish

Here in Utah, a cloud of disarray and illness and malcontent has draped itself over the land, like a funeral shroud or smallpox blanket. Half the teenage population has passed into either a sickness or a break-up, and man is it causing chaos. My best friend woke up yesterday covered in mysterious vomit, and it wasn't until seconds later that she realized that vomit was hers, as another bout of now-not-so-mysterious vomit washed over her like a cloud of disarray and illness and malcontent.

Another friend of mine, two friends of mine, actually, broke up. I have not stopped hearing about it. And I don't mind hearing about it, per se, but I wish that broken up people could just go somewhere where nobody is, like Page, Arizona, and just sort through it there. Because I've broken up before, and it's not a pretty sight. Inevitably, you get sick of feeling sorry for yourself, but much after everybody else does. I love my friends. But there's a certain point at which you can't help them, and they so very much want you to.

I've been to Page, Arizona. It's a pretty comforting place.

As for me, I feel fine. I've been working on a screenplay* that I (of course) hope will be made into a movie, all so I can then screen it at the Broadway theatre, and send out special invitations that read, "You Are Cordially Invited to a Special Film Screening of This Movie's Title, a film by Wes Anderson and Brighton C. Metz. Dinner and Cocktails will follow." It's not about getting the movie made, or getting the money for it, of which there is probably none. It's about rubbing this story in your faces.

*The byline of my masthead, I feel I should specify, is meant to be a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the Starbucks hipster screenwriter, perpetually finishing up his work, publicly, so it's obvious that he is in fact a screenwriter, a hipster, and a drinker of high quality coffee from various world locales. My screenplay isn't even sort of done yet.