Author: Sarah "Lusor" Spielberg

An Allegory of a Table

Imagine a square table top, one that a single person can carry. No legs on it, just the top.

A man or a women carries this table top and sets ONE corner on a brick wall that is just high enough to be like a leg.

Another person is very wealthy and they hire a small company to produce a fancy leg for the table and this person adds this to a SECOND corner.

Another person is clever and skilled, makes a leg for the table them self and adds it to the THIRD corner.

The last person to contribute finds a nearby stick on the ground and sets it under the FOURTH corner of the table.

Which corner or person are you, and which do you want to be?

It’s not a trick question, it is an answer for you to ponder. How do you value yourself, and what role is yours that you want to be? Which leg is the strongest, fastest, most valuable? There is no right or wrong answer. This may or may not be key in how you exist in this life you are given. This is just a fictional story. You can add to it too. Maybe you are one who is going to have dinner on this table, or maybe you are the bird that visits the person adding a leg. It’s up to you!

This is an original work. Just thought of it, wrote it out now. Please be honorable and acknowledge my authorship if you quote this elsewhere.

Hollow in the Sky

tic toc
my feet walk

heartbeat
i cross the street

wander left
wanderless
wanderful

I tripped
didn’t fall

last week
is a new day
a new perspective
a new way

peace I fought
anger I thought

But it is clear
newer is nearer
to us all so dearer

new is unbroken

giving to the hollow in the sky.

Well, I didn’t escape writing some poetry after all this morning!

Home

“Home,” said the little donkey on tv. “Why are we here?”

Said the Bull Doggy laying in front of it, “Well, it’s not safe outside.”

Kitty chimes in, “It’s cold, windy, rainy, even some ice. But it is the sickness we are avoiding.”

Birdie says while pacing back and forth on perch, “We’ll be out! We’ll be out again!”

Fishy says while floating in the center of his aquarium, “Noooo worrorrorories. Staying in one safe place a long time isn’t all bad.”

Kids sitting around bored. “Yeah, I want to beat up my sister.”

Sister: “If I were bigger you wouldn’t!”

Brother: “Yes, I still could.”

Iguana: “Hmmm. Don’t bother fighting. Start thinking. What keeps people happy? What makes people work so hard? Why do people smile? Don’t mind me, I’m a friend of Yoda, like the rest of the animals on this planet. We worry too, but we don’t complain. Happy to have food and air to breathe. Humans are entertaining us.”

Party of ants marching to trash can singing: “Don’t worry little fighting humans, we’ll take care of your trash! Stay there lazy on the couch. You may hate us later though, we invite all our extended family for big reunions when the trash isn’t taken out!”

Boy: “Are the animals and insects talking?”

Girl: “Yes, I think they are!”

Birdie: “Use your imagination, you’ll fly further than any bird I know!”

I was just sitting here, and this came to mind. Not intended to be much more, some people write poetry. I was thinking of Dr. Suess and Shel Silverstein but instead of “translating” into their style, I kept it very straightforward. Maybe later I’ll change it up, write it a different way. This is “fresh out of the box”, I just wrote it out, adjusted a couple of words. So much of my work in my lifetime has been handled by many people; if nothing else hundreds of crew, seen by thousands of eyes before the public gets it.

The Snake and the Honey Bee

Just for fun, a story idea just came to mind so I thought I’d just create it as I write it. Too long for a Twitter post, so I jot it here. Why not?

The Snake slithers on the ground, the Honey Bee aloof and pushed around by the wind. The Snake wraps around rocks and moves dirt as it passes under the sky.

The Honey Bee see so many things, like the big snake below.

A flower has dropped on a near by rock that the snake is headed to, just along its path. The Honey Bee sees it and smells the pollen, diving right for it.

The Snake looks up and pauses ever so slightly still moving to the rock, and it spots the Honey Bee.

Focused on the flower, and its mission in life to get pollen and deliver it to the honey comb and colony, the bee just lands down and gets yellow dusted by the flower.

The Snake approaches, slowing down, almost motionless and peers over the edge of the rock, and the Honey Bee just meanders around, methodically getting more and more pollen.

A lightning bolt from the sky breaks the clouds far above and there is a thundering laughter.

A bright light flashes and The Snake is blinded temporarily. It straightens up taller, and taller, now feet above the little rock and the smoking flower. The Honey Bee is not there.

The Snake is ANGRY, beyond ANGRY that it didn’t get the little bee, nor did it get to mess up the flower. It turns around quickly to leave and a BIG BLACK INSECT ARM AND CLAW GRIPS The Snake below its head and holds it in place. The Snake’s eyes reflect a bees’s face in many ways, many angles.

There is a distant thunder and the rain makes the sound of applause.

The body of the snake twitches a few times and goes limp. The BIG INSECT ARM AND BLACK CLAW drops the snake to the ground, dead.

All there remains is the rock, the dead body of the envious killer snake, some wet ashes of the flower, and the big sky above. The rest is for you to make up!

THE END, could always be a new beginning.

(written once, under 10min)

COVID-19 Lockdown Low Budget Eats

I was thinking about it to myself, what are some things that are on the cheap but still good for you and has flavor during these COVID times? In my life I’ve had it in so many different ways; big food, little food, fast food, slow food, out of a can, military ration, NASA ice cream, and of course finest restaurants world-renowned. I’ve eaten around mold, and I’ve eaten some cheese that tasted like mold smells. What to do? I’ve knocked off ants, rescued crackers from roaches making a b-line, I’ve also ordered poetically a fine cut of imported, aged, grass-fed meat to a group of servers, and suggested the layout of the cut on their fine warmed, fragrant plate and the sequence of laying it down.

There are so many cultures around the world that know how to live off of very little. What they have in common are typically high-carbohydrates. Then vegetables and fruits. Finally animal fats. In that order is the pricing and availability to scarcity and cost. It’s far easier to store and create bread, tortillas, rice and noodles/pastas for instance.

On an independent film a few years back, I was sitting with a stunt man specialist in firearms and he was telling me about eating Top Ramen. I said, you know, for a dollar or a few more, you could much higher quality noodles from a Japanese market and have many times more nutrition in every dish.

Track back to a decade or so ago I watched a news story on maybe 60 Minutes about a village so poor they made “cakes” like “pancakes” of dirt and lived off the minerals and whatever else was in the dirt. The children on the program talking about it were alert and smart, not dead heads at all. They had no meat or vegetables. They mixed water and dirt for food. Daily.

I realize people outside of the United States may be reading this, please forgive me as I address the U.S. American audience with this blog post. To write something truly globally with justice, this article would have to be so much longer.

Now that you have my mental notes, USA, here is a short cut way to stay alive without much money.

Get full on little money. Try carbs. These are breads, noodles/pastas, rice. Without needing to spend big money, you can buy cornmeal for muffins and breads too. If you cook, working with flour you can make muffins, pizza dough, breads and more. Dumplings are actually really cheap fill up food!

Stay healthy on a low budget. Make sure you are eating protein. AVOID highly processed meats like bologna and hot dogs, please. You are better off even eating something like Spam. Do you realize you can buy a pound of hamburger and use it in all kinds of carb-based dishes from casseroles to lasagna, to spaghetti and meatballs, hamburgers, or bits on a pizza, tacos. Even cheap hamburger in bulk is still better than fast food hamburgers. It’s really just cheap steak and other areas of a cow chopped finely and pressed out. Don’t like beef? Buy chicken. My experience is that you may get more for your money buying bulk thighs or breasts than buying whole chickens. There is cheap tofu too. Don’t feel like cooking? Eat nuts. Walnuts are very healthy to chow down on, but in quantity not cheap at all. Cheap fresh fish is really great, but beware most fish are contaminated in some way. I don’t suggest eating loads of fish day in and out. Canned tuna is actually very healthy, but not cheap in quantity.

Balanced eating may bring you to the fruits and vegetables section of a market. Cheapest you can do in this area? Lettuce, apples, carrots, celery, oranges, bananas. Grapes? Expensive. You do not even need to eat this stuff every day, and not even in quantity to get loads of benefits.

Seasonings. You do not need to invest in singular spices, I suggest if you are on a budget, buy those big multi-spice/multi-purpose pre-mixed spice containers. You can get away even with just a chicken-type and use it on anything!

Though not the least expensive food, peanut butter is underrated for it’s health value. Same goes for ice cream. If you find yourself starved, malnourished and needing to get on your feet again, I highly suggest buying a quart of decent ice cream and eating that for a couple of days with or without other foods on your menu. With chocolate/cocoa even better for a boost, but your sleeping may be affected.

What can you buy for $20 here in the United States to keep you on your feet for a week? I’m sure homeless people have some ideas. Here are some of mine. Assuming you can drink tap water, I suggest buying bread ($3), meat (a pound of sliced ham and/or turkey $5-8) and a bag of apples($3-5), if you have left over, buy some candy you can suck on or chocolate. More money than this in a week? Buy a few bananas($2-4), granola or oats for cooking($3-6), cheese($2-5). This is not a sustainable amount week after week, but it may get one person through a rough week. Another thing you can do is invest in multivitamins ($8-20), a yogurt now and then($1-2). I’d stay clear of crackers, popcorn, potato chips, strong tasting vegetables—they may make you hungrier or wanting to eat more than you need.

Noodles/pastas and rice are underrated! You can use these with all kinds of meats and sauces, or even just spices and broths. If you are really low on money, do not get hung up on trying to make things taste “correct” or even “familiar”. I suggest even entertaining yourself combining really cheap stuff you wouldn’t normally. It’s an emotional booster to express a change, a creativity even if you are depressed. Remember, there are people on the same planet as you living off of eating dirt and water. I don’t suggest this in the United States and most urban and suburban areas, the ground is likely too contaminated with metals and fertilizers or pesticides.

In all honesty, I haven’t been starving at all lately, but sometimes I’ve been stressed out for weeks on end this year and not wanting to eat much. So in order just to eat something, I have studied prices and foods and eaten minimally.

Hollywood and Our Entertainment

There are a lot of wonderful studios in Hollywood, I sometimes call them “countries” because each has its own parents and children, cultures too. Sometimes we visit each other, even loan-out our people to each other’s productions.

I suggest we remember, “savings”. But don’t force it on people who really want to go. Every member of our industry deserves the right to being a parent or a child if the opportunity presents itself. We are also brothers and sisters. I suggest, we all treat each other with respect. Just like we do our shows. No matter how bad or good. The entertainment industry, and the people in it are family. We are all bonded together to find ways to entertain the world, and of course make a living.

Now a bit of humor! Really, good friends and neighbors. You don’t have to have sex with someone to make a deal. That’s up to you. You could do a hand shake with someone, you know the kind people do sometimes to greet each other. Or make up what you want to. I still recommend you sit at a table with attorneys present, for ALL parties(as in the people involved with the deal) involved. I think it’s kind of sexy to make a deal, especially if there is a lot of money involved. How about you? And hey, don’t be judgmental.. or not too much. We’ve all come from diverse backgrounds, some we are proud of and some we are not. Everyone deserves a chance. Maybe more. Not everyone is suited for the job they are offered. But be smart about the person that is sent to you. They may have more potential than you realize. And if not, think about sending them to someone else they might fit in better with. Be nice, dammit!

Noah and the Flood

I have two ideas that came to my mind the other day and I just couldn’t write them down. Both are complicated.

I decided to read some of Genesis found in both the Christian bible and also the Jewish Torah. I came across the well known story of Noah.

Before I read much, it first came to my mind that there may have been other Noah’s in the past. It may have just been where I was reading about Noah. Then I thought, how could he have lived to be over 900 years old? I think I figured it out, just an idea. If you counted his predecessors and his descendants, the tally may come up to 900 years at the time of Noah’s death. This Noah of the Ark, who had his first sons at the age of 500.

Now if you think of other leaders from other nations and cultures of that past and closer to 1 BC some were counting an individual’s age in the hundreds. For instance a Roman who lived to be 1000+ years old. Some of the wealthy male Romans were known to have more than one wife. Imagine if those woman had multiple children, and their children had children and possibly more. That one Roman man could tally the years of all those lives and call himself having lived 700? 800 years of age. From his birth, to his death.

The other idea I had the other day, was also about Noah’s Ark and the massive flooding all over the Earth. No one I’ve ever known had a real idea as to how it could be possible for such floods to really have existed, other than it stormed a lot.

I have another idea to add to that. The moon controls the water tides on the Earth. If the moon got closer to the Earth, the tides would be more violent. There would be lower low tides and higher high tides. If it, the moon, got close enough, it could possibly move enough waters to places where it could cover a vast landscape, even covering low, maybe high mountains.

As the tides changed, so would the storm action. Now we all know the moon orbits the Earth. The storming might become much more violent, around the whole planet. If the moon were low enough to do this, it may not be able to quickly regain its normal orbit further away, which would mean the stronger tides and storms would last longer than normal.

Here is my idea, that I’ve never seen written of or spoken of in my own lifetime. And I have asked people and read about Noah. It’s a great story. What if, the moon were hit by an asteroid large enough, with enough mass and inertia that its orbit changed? Maybe it is possible the moon got pushed toward Earth long enough for Noah to get his massive flood. I realize that is highly speculative, but what if?

I’ve read somewhere, that there has been massive flooding on Earth before. Maybe many times. And we know the whole moon is covered in craters from asteroid hits. Some of those craters are very large, and appear to be very old.

Here is my last thought on the moon coming closer to the Earth. If it were hit by an asteroid, big enough, fast enough… AND it spun the moon, would it be possible that it could force it even closer because the orbit changed that much? Just an idea. If that were possible, then it could be the face of the moon we see today is not the same one Noah and past peoples saw in their time. I guess I’ll have to read up on that.

August 8, 2022. I found this image on a “dead”(no longer being updated, old) NASA web page. It shows the craters on the moon very well. I actually believe it is occasionally still collecting asteroids and pieces of comets that have been trapped in orbit around the Earth. This could be rock material as well as ice from other places. Still hits hard on the powdered surface.