Sunflower Powers Thru

An Exercise in Futility

I wish I would quit taking "assignments" from DueNow.com. I'm not taking on problems. I don't see it that way, except it's somebody else's problem I can make money fixing. It's a challenge of doing academic writing--on academic subjects, and reading and thinking academics again. It's the journey, not the destination. Nevertheless, I keep ending up up the creek without a paddle. It happened again.

So this time I accepted a little bitty one page assignment. That's only 250 words, and it's on Shakespeare--how could that be a problem for me. I love Shakespeare. I enjoy multiple versions and variations on stories, and I've had a run of cinematography lessons of late. Plus, I had four days to complete the assignment.

My client was out-of-touch untill Sunday morning, so I was working on my best intuition. The assignment was to compare (and contrast I found out later) the written anthology printed version of "Othello" with the movie "O" which was done by the guy that did "O Brother Where Art Thou?" (based on the Odyssey, by the way). Compare and contrast movie to play. Piece of cake.

Didn't end up that way exactly. First I couldn't find my college Shakespeare anthology amongst the books on shelves in the house (many boxes of books still in dark and cold garage)--so I went to Half Price Books at 10:30 Friday night and found a version for $3.98. Did I mention this job pays $7.98.

Being unfamiliar with this play--probably didn't study it in school because of the sex and racism--I rented a couple of versions of the movie to watch and read along with. I started with the 1952 version that Orson Welles did that nobody knows about. It's a really good film noir version. It has fast cuts like now, and the language was easier to understand. Of course, Orson Welles played the lead in shoe polish. Something happened after Welles finally got it finished (using his own money to film). It showed in theaters in two cities, and that was it. Welles daughter was responsible for the restoration and rerelease in the 1990s. Excepting that it's in black and white--it's a grand version. Someone ought to sephia tone it, and put some color in the black and white, and then it would be a good as new version. For being old, it was entertaining to watch.

Actually, I rented four videos. I watched only two plus the movie "O" because the accents of the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1990 version wasn't going to help me understand the plot. I watched the Lawrence Fishburne version two times. Another customer at the video store said it was a good movie to watch, as she overhead me explaining my need for multiole copies of "Othello" and "O". I'm not telling what I paid for renting those four movies. Suffice it to say, we calculate that any monetary profit from this venture is no long possible. I spent more than I'll make writing the paper.

But, that's okay. I appreciate opportunities for personal edification. I just spent a bit of my own money to learn new Shakespeare.

I had one of my extended sleeps, and again I don't know why. Well, I had missed one night's sleep, but that's never caused me to sleep an extra day to make up for it. I remember going to bed on Saturday morning, and debating if I should get up out of bed because I like to watch Bugs Bunny and it was about to come on at 8:00 Saturday morning. That was about when I drifted off. I woke up a few times, but went back to sleep.

When I finally woke up and got out of bed, it was 1:00 Sunday afternoon. I still had time to write the paper, but I lost a day unexpectedly. I hate when that happens.

So, I'm watching the Fishburne versiuon, and one of my friends stops by for an hours chat, which was fine because I needed the break. He left my house about 4:30, and I went back to watching movies. It was just before 10 pm when I was ready to write. As usual, I had jotted notes, thinking 250 words wouldn't be hard to come up with.

I wrote 686. I need to learn to write to count better. I thought the extra words probably wouldn't be a problem, but I planned to edit it down.

I check the account as I went through the pages to enter what I'd written. Then I found the note my client left at 5:21 pm. After he emialed me the info I needed, he started working on his paper and he didn't need whatever I was preparing for him. He'd like a credit he said.

So, I went ahead and entered the 686 word essay. I think the client wrote me instead of support. Either that, or support has a really crappy way of telling their freelancers the job is off. It's submitted. Maybe I'll get paid, or maybe I won't.

BUT, as usual, this client's assignment has pointed me in a literary and writing direction, and I'm full of info and ideas about Othello right now. There were 2 DVDs with "O" so I may go watch it now. Then, my next step, is to write something about Othello and/or "O" to post as an essay on my web site.

It's all okay, it's just not the way I planned.