Several years ago I was pretending to be a screenwriter. My junior high school friend was making an actual million+ budget movie and suddenly a universe that seemed unconnected to this one opened up.

I like the way I write but I may be the only one. Nothing surprises me more than coming back to something I’ve written awhile ago and wondering who the fuck it was that put that shit to print. Normally this was because I would drink and the buzz was my muse. But the majority of the time I was in the zone. Anxiety has an interesting side effect. You spend a lot of nights in your thoughts while you wish you were sleeping. Your mind is operating on a higher frequency. The electricity in the air is messing with your wiring. The result is inspiration and creative development to spend the extra juice so your head doesn’t explode. One night, in this state, I came up with Plus/Minus - a screenplay about how opposites attract.

You see, I’m convinced everything has an exact opposite. Light has dark, yes has no, happy has sad, and on has off, etc. This last one is the reason we have computers. (Actually, I should take a tangent and explain the wonders of binary; I’ll describe how our cosmos was made, or so I imagine).

Wikipedia says this about binary:
“Counting in binary is similar to counting in any other number system. Beginning with a single digit, counting proceeds through each symbol, in increasing order. Decimal counting uses the symbols 0 through 9, while binary only uses the symbols 0 and 1”

From this site: “Decimal uses base ten, so that every time a number moves one position to the left in a figure, it increases by a power of ten (eg. 1, 10, 100 etc). Binary, on the other hand, uses base two, so each move to the left increases the value by a power of two (eg. 1, 2, 4 etc). “

Bi = 2. Deci = 10. It’s all making sense now!

Keep this in mind. 1 = On. 0 = Off.
You have 0000. The first 0=8. The second 0=4. The third 0=2. The fourth 0=1.
0001 in binary is 1. Think of it like this: 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 = 1.
0010 in binary is 2. Think of it like this: 0 + 0 + 2 + 0 = 2.
0011 in binary is 3. Think of it like this: 0 + 0 + 2 + 1 = 3.

So what does 1001 equal? 9. Got it? Good.

You’ve used a light switch recently. Did you realize you were turning a 0 into a 1? Look closer at your computer power switch (on the power supply). Notice the 0 and the 1? Which one is on and which is off? Make sense now? Did you know the letters I’m typing right now are combinations of 1’s and 0’s?

I’m almost done with this tangent, because I don’t mean to have you fall asleep. As usual, I’ll be coming back around to my opening paragraph. Trust me, I’m cutting out most of the fat here. But information is power; much like 1 and 0 is what tells a computer CPU which switch to give power to and which one gets nothing. On and off states (a.k.a. 1 and 0) get stored in a “bit”. Memory is made up of smaller bits and bigger bytes. Bit means “Binary Digit”. Is your mind blown yet? Programming is mostly compromised of telling computers what is false and what is true. False = 0. True = 1. The very first program being the one that told a computer how to compute. True = 1. True and False = 2. True and True = 3. Once you’ve got math, all you had to do was figure out how to store the mathematical data and interpret it. Today our monitor, hard drive, network adapter, and CPU combine to store and interpret 0’s and 1’s using powerful sorcery putting you on the internet reading this very sentence. YOUR MIND BETTER BE EXPLODING!

Binary is all about 1 and 0. But, we’re more familiar with Decimal. Humans have 10 fingers. Counting on your fingers is very easy and I’m sure proved very useful as we were evolving since we left the caves. Math and metrics work very well with the number 10. Was this all just a happy coincidence? I think so. I’d like to think Neanderthals only needed to count to 1, and they used their penis to keep score. Women held the 0 in their vagina. But when the man and woman put their 1 and 0 together, they invented binary. The universe took billions of years to come to this conclusion. That’s pretty damn significant if not entirely stupid chance.

Stupid chance was the basis for Plus/Minus. It was about the world’s unluckiest man meeting the world’s luckiest woman and how their love destroys the Earth. Yup, it’s a Sci-fi Rom Com. But it’s also a Tragedy because opposites DO NOT attract. In fact, if two opposites were to share the same space, they would cease to exist. Something cannot be ON and OFF. We’ve kinda been over this. True opposites cancel each other out, or in the case of white and black, become bleak and grey. This last part is almost tempting me to go on about how white is just reflection of light and black is absorbed light, but we should start wrapping this up.

When you’re looking for a mate, you’re not looking for someone who is dumber or uglier than you. In fact, it’s more likely you want someone who could improve upon those qualities in you. Heterosexual women use this when looking for a mate, especially the more they feel they can change a man. But, even if someone looks better than you, that doesn’t mean they are the opposite. While it would be hard to really interpret what an opposite of someone is, odds are if you’ve ever filled out an online dating profile, then the qualities you stated you were looking for in someone were almost exactly describing you. This isn’t ego, but merely how attraction works to build a relationship. Unfortunately, in order for your relationship to work, any qualities that are opposite will have to either go away or be easily kept out. If not, those opposite qualities will translate into abuse, hatred, frustration, etc.

How exciting it would be to see a woman and man with nothing in common find love while the world around them begins combining the positive and the negative. This is the ultimate story of overcoming the odds. The ultimate love story. The ultimate definition of good versus evil. But, I never wrote it. My friend’s movie didn’t get released. He kinda disappeared not long after. I went to work in web development. But I have no regret. I know that out there somewhere is someone living the opposite life of mine, and this screenplay was written.