About a month ago I got a phone call from my surgeon's office informing me they had a date availble to operate on my right knee. For the past thirty or so days, I've been a little indifferent about it and have paid little attention to the impending scalpel-to-flesh meeting. That's changed a bit today.

Now aware that in less than sixteen hours I'll be sitting in a hospital waiting room, reading a book and waiting for nurses to come and prep me, I'm starting to get a little nervous. I'm not scared that there will be a complication of some kind, or that I won't come out of anesthesia in the correct amount of time and will be locked onto a ventilator for days. I'm worried about how much it's going to hurt once the initial morphine wears off. I'm serious.

And, to top it off, I don't necessarily want them to keep hitting me with morphine or give me a shitload of pain meds. I just want to be able to get out of bed on Wednesday morning and not be in a crippling amount of pain. Although I'm sure it won't be as bad as I'm making it out to be, this is my first time (and, definitely not the last -- or the second last, for that matter) under the knife, I'm not too sure of what to expect.

In the coming weeks I'm going to have a lot of time to myself, laying on my bed. I plan on doing a lot of reading and movie-watching, but I've also instilled in myself a decree to rejuvenate my blogging. I know I've said it before, but, now I actually really do have some time on my hands. This summer has been a particularly busy one. More so than I can remember of any recent summers, and I haven't been spending too much time online. And the time I am spending online tends to be wasted on Facebook instead of here or on Too Real (which is another story altogether, btw).

I'm sure I'll be back here on Wednesday with a post-op report. Hopefully it won't be full of too many drug-addled euphemisms and makes some kind of sense. See you then.

Most of the Western world is aware that China's economy is growing at an incredible pace in almost every sector. One industry they are trying to break into, in a big way, is the automotive industry.

Chrysler announced early last month that they've entered a partnership with Chinese automaker, Chery, to bring low-cost vehicles to the US by 2009. The American giant, who was just spun off by Germany's Daimler Corporation has since named a new CEO, Robert Nardelli, of Home Depot fame shame. It looks like one of the first decisions he will face in his new role, is whether or not to cancel the Chrysler-Chery partnership. It should be noted that this partnership is the first time that any> automaker has signed an agreement to bring Chinese-manufactured automobiles to North America.

Over the past couple of months, Autoblog has posted videos of a couple of Chinese vehicles being crash tested. And failing. Badly. No, really. Horribly. I sure as hell wouldn't want to get in one of these cars, even to back out of my driveway. Or for that matter, to sit in my driveway.

The first, a test of the Brilliance BS6, was posted by Autoblog on June 22, 2007. This is not manufactured by the company Chrysler has signed a deal with. But it's still not good. Take a look for yourself:

On Sunday, however, they posted a video of one of Chery's products, the Amulet (A15), putting on an even worse display of the Chinese company's engineering prowess:

At least the airbag deployed in the Brilliance. If that makes it stateside, there will be outright revolt. Mark my words.

On Tuesday I went under the scalpel and had my ACL reconstructed. When I first got to the hospital at 10:00 am, I pretty much just fell asleep in a hospital bed and waited until 12:45 pm or so to be called to the OR. I made my way down to the OR and laid down on the operating bed.

Having never been in an OR before, this was quite a daunting experience. The amount of stuff in this room really made me wonder whether or not I was coming out alive. While I was being put under anesthetic, I found myself wondering whether or not I was going to come out of my sleep. I mean, I knew I was going to, but I was just a little nervous about it.

I woke up at about 4:30 and don't really remember much about what they told me, seeing as how I was cranked on morphine and whatever else they pumped me full of. It couldn't have been much as I fell asleep again, only to wake up closer to 7:30. They ran through a bunch of questions and statements, which I still don't remember as I was probably still full of way too many drugs.

At the moment I've got a huge splint on my leg that makes it nearly impossible to move. However, if I remember correctly, I should be able to take it off today and start getting a little bit of movement out of my knee. The pain killers I've got are working well, because if I wait an hour or two too long to take one, my knee starts throbbing. Painfully.

I'm not really looking forward to the first couple of weeks of recovery, as apparently they will be the worst. Who knows. All I know is that I am looking forward to being able to walk without worrying about a knee brace, or whether or not my knee will give out.

Six Apart released Movable Type 4 today in what is a radical departure from their previous version, 3.3(5). I will be basing my blog reboot on this software, and have been playing around with the beta a little for the past month or so. It looks very promising and should have a big effect on the blogging world as a whole.

Right now the entire blogosphere is abuzz with the news, and almost everyone is saying good things: TechCrunch has a limited review up; as does O'Reilly Radar and Read/Write Web. Problogger has got the most in-depth look at MT4 that has popped up in Google Reader so far today. Make sure to check them all out.

I'm looking forward to really sinking my teeth into the new platform. Hopefully I can come up with something awesome.

I've discovered some new television shows recently that have been stealing the majority of my television time from old staples. And no less than three of these new findings are from American pay-TV channel Showtime.

I'm still watching a couple of HBO shows, namely Entourage (and reading the excellent blog, Entourage: Let's Blog it Out), Big Love and Flight of the Concords. However, with the recent exodus of The Sopranos and Deadwood and the short-lived run of Rome, HBO is laying the framework for it's quick demise as the number one producer of my television favorites. The massive wait between the fourth and fifth season of The Wire isn't helping their case either.

And Showtime is stepping up to the plate. I started watching Weeds during the first season and enjoyed it immensely. The second season continued the greenthumb goodness and the third season has just begun airing. Another show that I was turned on to by my friend and screenwriting partner Ryan is Californication, a half-hour drama starring David Duchovny as a troubled writer. The first thirty minutes alone was full of more original television than almost all of network television produces during their best premiere week. The third and, probably not final part of the Showtime takeover is Dexter, plotted around a forensic expert who moonlights as a serial killer who targets other serial killers. In a word: kick-fucking-ass!!!

All three above shows need to be checked out by you, in no particular order, then tell me if you think HBO has some work cut out for it.

Also, if you have Movie Central On Demand (as most of you readers are of the Canuckian breed), check out Durham County. It is a six part miniseries about a homicide detective who moves from downtown Toronto to suburban Durham County, directly across the street from his high school nemesis. It is a Canadian production and decidedly spectacular on all accounts. The writing is outstanding and the directing is far beyond anything I've seen from a Canadian production in either film or television. And for housing a mainly Canadian cast, the acting is much, much better than would be expected. Also, according to the Wikipedia article, the "original run" is listed as May 7, 2007 - Present, indicating a second series may be in development. I was not, however, able to back that up anywhere else in the minimal amount of time I spent looking around for corroborating evidence.

It has been a while since I last wrote about screenwriting on this blog. October 14, 2006 to be exact. The reasons for that are actually quite simple. I haven't been doing much of it at all lately. In that last post, I mentioned that Ryan and I had taken a break from rewriting Guardian Angels, Inc., a screenplay that we initially started outlining in early December of 2005 and actually started writing in January 2006. Once we finished the first draft of the script in July or so of that year, we took a month off then rewrote it. Neither of us were happy with that rewrite, so we decided we'd do it again.

Nothing came of it. So since September or so, this script has been laying dormant. Gathering dust and weltering away in our memories. Then, for some reason or another, on July 30 of this year, we just decided to pick it up and start writing it again from scratch. As of right now we are about 45 pages into the third draft and are happy with what we've got down on paper so far.

Having gotten back into the rhythm and habit of writing, I wish we never would have taken the break. Ryan has been smart and actually finished a couple of personal projects, while I just let my writing habit break off and begin to die. It's been evident around here too, obviously.

I'm looking forward to typing THE END, and then going over and polishing/reworking the script, but that will hopefully be the end of writing GAI for the foreseeable future (unless, of course, we sell the sucker). It'll be nice to move on to something else. It has been more than eighteen months, after all.

With the 2008 US Presidential election looming, the internet has been abuzz for quite a few months now. It seems that the Democratic race is down to a two way race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Anyone who's watched these things before though knows that it's not really locked up until after the National Conventions. The Republican ticket won't matter too much because it will take a burlap sack full of miracles from every religion's higher power to retain the White House. I just don't see it happening. Period.

With the social internet making the election one of its primary objectives recently, what with YouTube's YouChoose '08 and the CNN-YouTube debates, the Web 2.0 election is putting the candidates front and center in an increasingly younger demographic. For what could be the first time young people, even from (maybe even especially) outside of the United States, are paying attention and getting informed about who might be running the world's only superpower.

This brings me to Who Would the World Elect?, a website that asks visitors from around the world who they would vote for given the chance. I "voted" for Obama, as has most of the visitors from Canada, and most of the world, it appears, aside from the US who for some twisted reason want Republican Ron Paul to win. Actually, I know why. This website recently hit the Digg front page and sent a couple thousand Ron Paul loving fanboy idiots to the site to vote for him. But I digress.

You should head over and vote, regardless of where you're from.