"The important thing is not to be cured, but to live with one's ailments."

(quote: Abbe Galiani, video: 'Robert McKee' from Adaptation)

Going to not New Orleans now, but the University of Texas where I've been offered a Michener Fellowship . This was unquestionably my favorite program upon application, but its reputation for extreme selectivity kept me from hoping too hard. There are many virtues to the academic program itself, including an opportunity to study screenwriting, but from pragmatism I'm stoked about the stipend. I will not have to work for three years. It's all a kid could ask for, and I can't wait to get working intensively. Full days of writing, like those I could barely wring out of weekends, laid end-to-end.

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I'm waiting for a backlash. And I'm starting to think that Irony has been our generation's sole defense against taking all this technology too seriously. All facebooked out and craving anonymity, a few kids that are already born will have enough. And it won't just be crust-punks and Luddites, but broad swaths of people who just don't care to plug in all their gadgets.

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Don't watch the news. You're not surrounded by crazy people. There are some. Mostly on the television itself. And you're still more likely to die from a flamed-out furnace or a distracted teenager wielding vehicular homicide than shot in the brain by some wild-eyed sniper or blown to bits by post-modern kamikazes. Just laugh for a minute at the hypocrisy and the misunderstanding, the clarity of things when you're disengaged. And then giggle at the thought of utopia. . .People do not want to be free.