You gotta learn right and you gotta learn fast. And any man that doesn't want to cooperate, I'll make him wish he had never been born.

For the last week I've been spending my time of two minds: trying to live the life of the mind by fasting for Ramadan and working on a Butterfinger commercial helmed by a pack of halfwits with Ivy League pedigrees. If you were to sum up my week thus far in one word it would be "thankful."

Yes, thankful. I'm thankful that I've got work, such as it is, and thankful that I have a tattoo on my left wrist that quite simply says "patience." Were it not for this tattoo I suspect that I would have walked out of this job today. Aside from the director and the DP I am surrounded by the barely passable. The list of things left undone, half-done, and/or badly done is too long and bereft of any real comedy that I will simply leave it aside for now. To the uninitiated let me say this, I am working with a group of people who work on low budget films because they are unskilled and undisciplined and yet they wonder why they aren't being offered "bigger" jobs. I watched a man set a stand incorrectly and almost drop something mildly painful on our actor only to turn around and lash into someone else about their job performance. I am without an assistant and am doing the work of two while my DIT sits at his computer, back to the set, and plays backgammon and listens to whatever greasy pony-tail hipsters listen to these days. It is uninspiring work but at least I am being paid tomorrow when we're done.

It's weeks like this that make me truly appreciate my usual co-workers, people who, despite all outward appearances, kick ass and take names and know when to shut the fuck up. I want to quit, I want to get off this job, I want to be out in the woods sitting alone, looking for deer. I. Don't. Want. This. Shit.

Yet here I am and it's Ramadan for the first time in years. So far so good, being tested and maintaining even though all around me is mendacity and mediocrity. I do my breathing exercises and take a nap at lunch and forget for thirty lovely minutes that I am in a soundstage inhabited by a pack of braying asses.

You know, I've never eaten a Butterfinger.

Peace out, bitches!