Mindburst Hickocks is, minus the occasional deviation from form, a repository of ideas I have had but could not find a use for. They are free for you to take and run with. In fact, please do.

Also, we now feature assignments.

5.24.2009

A line of dialogue for you to use.

"He's a real dick in wolf's clothing."

5.23.2009

It has taken me a long time to get here.

I have, for as long as I can remember, been the unwilling recipient of a few specific adjectives (or descriptive phrases): unique, full of potential, strange, idiotic, and a few others in a similar vein. I reject (and have forever rejected) them all.

However, I have, in the last few days, while watching videos that film students have made and placed on the internet (presumably because they were proud of them) come to accept that I do have a different aesthetic than many (perhaps even the majority of) other people.

Sadly, it is impossible.

You know what would make an amazing film?
An early-career Bill Murray obliviously following and irritating a depressed late-career Bill Murray.

I wish I had the attention span and literary chops to throw down a manifesto proper.

When making a film (or video for the internet, even), it is not important to show life as it is. We all know it. Show life as it happens post-processing; after the brain has finished considering and tainting it. That is what makes the film a necessary step in the storytelling.

5.19.2009

True story.

I drove past a playground today and a bunch of little girls were waving at all the cars, so I honked and waved and they were totally pumped. Yesterday I was messing around on youtube, as one sometimes does, and I discovered the appallingly boring world of tween girls making "the and show". There are a TON of them, and not one of them knows what they're doing. One of the videos I watched a bit of (I could not make it all the way through any of them) featured two girls on a front lawn, presumably to do a half-thought out bit when they are distracted by tenuous and fleeting interlocution with a passing clutch of golf players.

It is stunning how much merely making contact with other people is exciting for young people. Where does that go? How can we harness that? There's so much art to be had in working with strangers.

5.18.2009

A bit of dialogue for you to (fix up and) put in something:

1: So, the marathon you're running is three days long?
2: Not quite. It's three marathons on sequential days. They're a tournament.
1: Won't everyone be too exhausted to run in the second and third race?
2: Sure, yeah. That's part of what makes it hard. The first day we have four marathons with anyone who enters. The top fifty in each race compete on the second day in two marathons of a hundred people, and the top twenty-five in each of those run in the Master Race on the third day.
1: You're calling the final marathon the "Master Race"?
2: Yeah.
1: You might want to rethink that.

5.16.2009

5.13.2009

I said this one time and I stand behind it.

Science: the Religion of Magic.

I have always thought I was prepared.

I assumed that no matter where or when I would be ready to take on a creationist who wants to make arguments against evolution based in "science". If they resorted to faith, I know, I would not be able to argue, as they'd be in an arena I am unequipped to enter. But fake science I am all over.

Joining a gym has provided a few new opportunities for me. For instance, last week I was hit on while naked for the first time ever. A guy ogled me in the shower, and then tried to take me home (while still in the shower, and then again in the locker room). It's an ego-boost to have someone interested in you for your fully exposed body, but also it's a little weird.

Tonight went a tiny step further when, while I was sitting in the steam room the only other guy in there started talking to me and masturbating a little. I looked away to indicate my lack of interest. I think steam rooms are a pretty legit place to pick someone up, so I assumed he was just seeing if I was interested, because he stopped when I didn't respond favorably. There are pretty basic rules of conduct. No reason to get offended unless you indicate lack of interest and a guy persists in automanipulation. After all, if there were naked girls in the steam room and I were in any way comfortable propositioning a strange girl, I'm sure I'd try to pick people up in the steam room, too. There's something tantalizing about being hot and wet and not able to see very far. Maybe not if you're myopic and lost in the everglades.

When I didn't go for the flesh, he switched over to congenial conversation mode, which I am pretty much a sucker for, so we talked about what exercises we do, and then he told me about how if you don't use your leg muscles your body starts to die, which I countered by talking about this totally fantastic article I read the other night about how monkeys have way long toes and we don't and there are a bunch of scientists who think that the only reason our toes would have evolved shorter is so that we can run extreme distances. I think that's great, that we evolved to run all day, and to chase down animals to eat. He sat up and told me that they haven't proven evolution and that's why it's "just a theory".

What? Really? You were just masturbating to see if I was interested in anonymous gay sex and you're a conservative christian? How does that even happen? In my confusion, and also due to my wanting to relax after some exercise (hence the steam room), I didn't jump to my defenses and correct his swapping of the vernacular bastardization of "theory" (which we probably should put an end to) for the much more stringent scientific actual definition of "theory". "Just a theory" doesn't make a thing unproven. "Just a hypothesis" does.

I learned today that I am not always ready to take on the confused. Because sometimes I, myself, am confused.

That sounds like the beginning of a secular sermon. Are there science churches? There ought to be. Where really charismatic people talk about dealing with issues and coping with the world and also science. Neal Degrasse Tyson would be a great minister of science.

Mondays and Thursdays are a dollar a string.

I have been bowling sidearm for years. It's the only way I know how. I'm not a very good bowler. Sometimes my father tries to show me how it's normal to bowl and I can't seem to do it. No matter what I think I do he says I'm still swinging way out to the side.

Last night, between the two strings we bowled, he said to me, "Jim, when you only have a few pins left you seem to have more control." That is because when there're only one or two standing I throw underhand instead of sidearm. I told him this. "Then why don't you just throw underhand all the time?"

My second score was more than twice my first.

5.08.2009

I can not sleep at all tonight.

The thunderstorms are incredible.


It is the kind of a night that makes a man want to make big changes in his life.

5.07.2009

Merely an observation.

Everyone who is in a Wendy's at eleven at night on a Wednesday is in some kind of a situation.

Men who have written one song I enjoy and have a vast catalogue of music I find unlistenable.

1. Rob Thomas
2. Rod Stewart

5.05.2009

Terrifying speculative statistics.

I can pretty confidently assert a hypothesis that nearly every police officer in the country has watched Bruce Willis fire a gun.

5.03.2009

I have discussed this with a few people before, I don't believe it's fully in the public consciousness yet. 

Mix cds are fully as romantic (and take the same mantle) as bouquets of flowers.

Of course, mixtapes were even moreso. But nobody has the required equipment for them anymore.

The cereal is pretty good, though.

"Life" is the most depressing board game.

"I lost the passion for the blog. I am not built for blogging. I am built for intermittent, longer pieces, and successful blogging requires frequent, shorter pieces. YOU should have a blog. Mindburst Hickocks, that's the name of it. GO."
-Jason Michelitch
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