SOCIETY WATCH: HER SISTER'S KEEPER?

TRENTON, N.J. – It started with a party invitation to a 15-year-old girl from some young men she knew. She took her 7-year-old stepsister to an apartment down the street from their home near the New Jersey Statehouse, where the girls had been hanging around outside on a Sunday afternoon. For the younger girl, police say it quickly descended into a horrifying ordeal in which she was gang-raped by as many as seven men as her sister not only watched, but got paid by those who did it.

Sometimes something happens that leaves you speechless. Where words are no longer capable of expressing that feeling that you have, looking into the abyss. And I have reached that point today, reading this story by the AP.

A 15-year-old girl sells her little sister to be raped.

What can you say? What can anybody say about this? How can you sell your own sister (and before somebody points out that it was the step-sister... you best be very quiet now)? How can you give a child to a group of men...

(and how can men, real men, I mean, even consider doing this to a little girl?)

... a child who you grew up with, who is part of your family, who you should protect? How dehumanised do you have to be to even think about this, let alone do it and watch?

This is one of those days when I feel so tired, so very tired.

This is one of those days when I despair.

THE WRITE STUFF: WHY SCREENPLAYS GET DUMBER ALL THE TIME (HERE'S A HINT, IT'S THE "PROFESSIONAL" READERS WHO GET MORE RETARDED BY THE MINUTE)

For those who are wondering why movies (and logically, the screenplay is the beginning of any movie) are getting dumber by the minute, look now further. "Carson Reeves" of the infamous ScriptShadow site is illustrating the point quite nicely. Of course, he thinks he is criticising the screenplay writer, but all he does – as these folks often do – is to show us how incredibly retarded those are who claim the mantle of "professionalism".

What I learned: I’ll start with something technical, since I rarely use this section to do so. I’ve noticed, after reading as many scripts as I have, that when you’re jumping forward in time a lot, simply telling us the current year isn’t enough. Because we don’t remember what the past year you listed was. It was 20 pages ago. So when you write, “1863,” on page 17. Then “1871” on page 32, I don’t know how much time has passed unless I begrudgingly go searching back through the script to find the previous year. A better option, unless the previous year you listed was a few pages ago, is to maybe put in parenthesis “1871 (9 years later).” That way, I immediately know how many years have passed. May seem trivial but it’s a big difference if 2 years have passed as opposed to, say, 7.

Really? Are you kidding me? You are waah-waahing the fact that only the year number is superimposed/written in the script? And your argument is – and this is something that you have to take in, because it is one of the prime example of that type of arrogance that comes from ignorance – that you cannot remember something that fucking happened 15 pages ago? Not 20 pages, Reeves. 15! 15 pages is too much for poor Mr. Reeves' brain.

Let me repeat that: 15 pages is enough that it freezes Mr. Reeves' brain! And this is a guy who has the audacity to offer writers "script notes" for money!

Also, Mr. Reeves is too retarded to calculate. 1871 - 1863 = 8 years.

That's right. 8 years, not 9.

And he has the gall to put this on the writer?

I'm sorry, Mr. Reeves, but while we are at it, would you also like to have some pre-school lego blocks, because that is obviously the intellectual level that you are operating with (and a lot of the agents and managers and "professional" readers as well).

Again, it proves how little respect there is for the profession itself, if idiots and retards cannot be bothered to remember something that happened only 15 pages ago!

And these people are running the asylum, my friends.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.