While this creates all kinds of fun for me (like teaching new writers about why they should learn AP style, why we use just a single space after periods, etc.), it also sets me up for some unplanned exposure to information that can really make a movie (or TV show) not as enjoyable as it should be when I finally make it to the theater. Sometimes it’s a writer’s first time crafting a review, and one of the most common traps that new writers fall into, especially those without much to actually say about the film, is to just write a synopsis of the plot, which is a real downer for the people reading it who want to be surprised by all the twists and turns.

So, it raises a bit of a conundrum, especially considering I’m Blast’s only copy editor. If I have to edit a piece that will unintentionally spoil a movie, TV show, book, etc., what recourse do I have, especially in the age of digital media and a news cycle that doesn’t sleep? Waiting until after I’ve seen it doesn’t always work, as I’m usually the last person to catch a film in theater before it goes into that waiting period to appear on DVD. Personally, I just bite the bullet, edit it, and try to teach the writer to be a little less revealing next time around — with an ever-changing staff, it doesn’t always last, but that’s just the nature of the job, I suppose.

So, what do you do when you have to copy edit spoiler-filled material? Do you grit your teeth and plow through? Do you make a colleague who doesn’t care, or who you don’t care for, edit it instead? Do you wait until you’ve seen it for yourself and let the glaring typos and grammatical errors sit there for all to see until you get around to it?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want to do once I finally graduate, and Ivona and I discussed it yesterday. We’re both feeling like this past winter, during which we got into such boring routines, is not how we envisioned these years of our lives and the first years of our marriage. Yes, we’re intensely happy together, but there’s more to life that we feel we’re missing out on.

So, with that in mind, I’m considering renewing my plans of spending a summer riding a bike around the country, camping out along the way. The plan is to go hashing as many places as we can along the way, and I can’t think of anything better to do to make me feel like I’m alive again. I think the last time I really felt that way was in France.

Anyway, whatever I decide to do next, I know it has to be a big change. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I was supposed to be graduating, and I sort of freaked about the fact that I didn’t have a job lined up, didn’t have any money, felt like I had no prospects, etc. Now that I feel like I have a little more time, I don’t feel the pressure quite as strong as I did before, but it’s still there and I can’t help but be stressed out about it, even if it’s a sort of subconscious, subtle stress. I don’t sit here freaking about it, but it’s always lingering in the back of my mind.

Currently, Ivona and I are searching for not one, but two apartments; one on the Vineyard for the summer so we can work down there, and one in Amherst for the fall; and we’re potentially buying a used car that we found a pretty good deal for. I’m looking forward to that change, of getting out of Amherst, of having some money again, and I feel like I’m sort of sitting here waiting for that to happen. I’m almost looking forward to the insane work schedule (probably going to average 14 hours a day, seven days a week), because I know I do best when I’m constantly moving and doing things. Part of what got me into this rut is sitting around so much and not doing anything. Vicious cycle. I’m in a rut because I’m not doing anything, and I’m not doing anything because I’m in a rut.

Alex and I had a brainstorming session a couple weeks ago to work on a screenplay. We’re developing a story I had very roughly sketched out, coupled with a general theme that has been bothering both of us lately and that Alex pretty neatly summed up with the term “quarter-life crisis.” We’ll see how it goes, if it does, but lately I’ve been more and more thinking that I want to write a version of the story on my own, maybe in book form. It has less to do with my feelings about how a screenplay written with my brother would turn out, because I think we could do some great work together, and more to do with the feeling that I really want to accomplish something on my own. I feel like not many things are turning out the way I want them to, and if I really want to be a writer, I need to take it seriously and do it.

I guess that’s the state of affairs right now in my world. If any of you have some great tip or secret to getting your life back on track, please share.

When people ask me about driving a garbage truck, I usually tell them it’s as bad as it sounds, only worse, and then I pause for a minute as if to think reflectively and tell them “well, once you got used to it, it wasn’t so bad.” Maybe I’m just a fake motherfucker, but I get sick of answering the same questions all the time, so I at least have fun trying to perfect the same responses, or make up ridiculous answers (“No man, I loved that job! I found so many cool things in the trash, and I never had to bring my own lunch, if you know what I mean!”). For the first week, I was miserable and convinced I would quit. During training I was riding around in a residential truck with a Brazilian kid named Ramon who drove like a psychopath and would pretend to be a stupid, uneducated foreigner when dealing with some of the customers (“Yes boss! Sorry boss! Next time better boss!”) while I tried to hold back laughter (he and I had actually gone to high school together and his English was pretty good).

Anyway, between the smell and mess that came with the job, I was sure I wasn’t going to last, but I managed to deal with it. When people say “Oh, man, that must have been terrible,” I often just shrug and say “Yeah, but it was great writing material,” which is largely true, but I never really did anything with it. I do have some notes and images I jotted down while I worked there that I’m particularly fond of that I’ve always wanted to turn into something worthwhile, so in the next few days or weeks I’ll turn those into little vignettes to be posted here, so at least I have them in one place. Some of the characters I worked with there are too good and three-dimensional not to write about, and I had some pretty scary and life-changing experiences as well that warrant attention.

The most prominent image I have of that time and the one I tell most people about is picking up the dumpster of the local Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It was one of the most depressing experiences of my life, repeated every other week.

The first week, I didn’t realize what the ashes were. The next, the cremator came out with his big gloves and tongs carrying a plastic bag. He had a look about him as of pure misery that made me not feel so bad about my limited contact with the co-mingled remains of Spike and Mittens.

On a rainy day, the ashes became wet and sludgy, like a kitty-ash Slushy. It would slide down the metal sides of the dumpster and slop into the soup that had been building up in the hopper.

On windy days, it was like that scene in The Big Lebowski, when they’re spreading the ashes on the cliff and they all blow into his face. After blowing my nose into the shop towels in the truck, I wondered if I could figure out what part of Fluffy I had just gotten a little more intimate than I ever would have liked to with.

As bad as those were, probably the worst was when a corner of the dumpster, which was a small little two-yarder (it was right next to a veterinary clinic I also picked up on alternate weeks – one week was cat and dog shit from the vet clinic, the other the ashes from the MSPCA) got caught on a tree branch when I wasn’t paying attention and dumped ashes all over the ground. The shovel that was pinned to the side of the truck had been broken for a long time, since a dumpster had been knocked out of the truck and almost killed me when it hit the side and shattered it, so I had to scoop up the ashes by hand and put them into the truck.

And that’s when I decided to go back to college!

Stay in school, kids.

(Oh, I remembered just now in my last post I promised kittens and rainbows. Well, I got the kittens, but I owe you some rainbows. My bad.)