cheater

I looked around the Internet to find something to blog about tonight because the things I'm doing are not especially interesting to read or write. In my search for the magic post maker, I found a site called Word Beads on Sentence Strings. Basically, the site challenges visitors to string together five given words and any other words to form sentences, paragraphs, limericks, homilies, manifestos, etc., etc. etc. I figured that sounded like a fun way to manufacture a post, so here we are. And here it goes:

I'm playing this game in which I'm supposed to write something using the words stratospheric, empirical, grief, see, and uncommitted.

That wasn't as difficult as I had expected.

I'm grateful for the Mythbusters, who just concluded that it's plausible that elephants are at least somewhat uncomfortable around mice if not scared of them (20).

I did stuff!!!

Okay, not much. But I did do stuff. I finally got in touch with the school and was able to fill out the re-admission application. I think I got things right. But I'm not positive. The form wanted me to pick a major. But I'm not really going to have a major. I'm just going to be working toward a couple of certificates. So I picked the major that matched one of the certificates. I figure that once I get admitted I can then worry about changing things with an advisor.

I wrote a bunch today. . . I guess that's all I have to say about that.

I looked up possible summer jobs/internships because I doubt the paper will have much for me to do during the summer because most of the area sports aren't especially active during that time.

I'm grateful for Whose Line Is It Anyway?, even if they are all reruns now (20).

Spooky

Okay. This is weird. I'm missed a call tonight and didn't recognize the number. So I called it to see who it was and what they wanted. The person I spoke with guessed that maybe it was a wrong number because nobody there had tried to call me. But here's the weird thing. I recognized the last name the woman gave me. It was the same last name as one of the coaches I was unable to get in touch with for work last week. It turns out the person I was talking to was his cousin, who assured me that he did not try to contact me from that number.

I feel the need to spout some platitude about our tiny little planet or interconnectivity or even probablity, but I think we'll all be better off if I just leave it at 'That's weird.'

I'm grateful for our tiny little planet (20).

Clear away the cobwebs. . .

It seems that it's hard for a procrastinator not to procrastinate. Today, I was supposed to start taking care of a few of the things that I should've taken care of by now. But a little bit of sick is still clinging to my throat and lungs, and that was enough for me to go all Little Orphan Annie and start singing about Tomorrow again. Today, I'm not that sick. If I had something already scheduled, I'm nowhere near sick enough that I would have cancelled it. But for some reason, this hint of sick was all I needed to not call about apartments or about school (I never did get a response from the email I sent) or about my work schedule for the week. Apparently a tickley throat and a stuffy nose are also too much to endure writing through. One more day wasted. One less day to do something.

I'm grateful for cream of wheat with raisins (20).

Today in brief

cough
damnit
coughcough
damnit
"mumblemumblemumble"
I'm supposed to meet the baby today
coughcoughcoughcough
fuck, I'm sick
damnit
sleep
tv
sleep
tv
it's too cold
sleep
it's too hot
Do you need a bucket?
tv
tv
tv
shower
tv

By the looks of today, I must be pretty grateful for TV (20).

Word geek

Today marked the end of the Thanksgiving festivities here, and I got a chance to do a bit of writing. While I was writing, I had this strong desire to go back to the beginning so I could stick the word cordiform into a description. My plan for this story was not to go back to fix things until I was finished. But I became obsessed with that word, cordiform. It's a good word. I wanted to use it. And so I went back and put it in there.

Anyway, because this event was probably the most excitement I had today, I figured I'd really excite you all by listing some cool words:

cordiform
visceral
sanguine
gibbous
wizened
bubble
rend
sepia
viscous
sinewy
canopy
pretty
sackbutt
bit
upon
soporific
boondoggle
exhale
ziggurat

Eh. That's enough for now. If this post is as popular as I expect it to be, maybe I'll list more words some other time. Dare to dream people. Dare to dream.

I'm grateful for the Red Wings vs. the Blue Jackets (20).

Nine hours

We played Halo 3 for nine hours tonight. Nine hours. That's a lot of Halo 3. That's a lot of fun. I could make some ultra-nerd reference here, but I think we're all a bit too tired for that. I'm going to bed. Sorry for the crap post. But hey, it least it's short and crappy.

I'm grateful for Halo 3 (20).

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today was like most Thanksgivings. I woke up about a half an hour into the parade. People were already gathered around the TV watching it. Stuff was already cooking. There were donuts and flavored coffee. My interest in the parade barely outlasted my donuts and coffee. People came over. We watched football. More people came over. We watched more football. The kids were cute. I only knocked one of 'em over. All the family that were in town gathered and ate turkey and ham and sweet potato souffle, which has finally usurped our old sweet potato preparation, and stuffing and cranberries and black cherry jello and mashed potatoes and. . . deliciousness. My mom was in the kitchen all day. She'll probably be in agony for a week because of the time she put on that foot of hers. But she's like that. She'll cripple herself for a week to give her family one good day. And it was a good day (20).

'twas the night before Thanksgiving

and all through the house
not a procrastinator was stirring. . .

Seriously. I haven't done shit. I write a little each day. Some days I work. And that's mostly it. I need to consider changing my title, "The Procrastinator Does Very Little, Most of Which is Quite Dull." Catchy. I'm building up these elaborate fantasies of what will happen once I get back into school. I'll ace all of my classes (I probably will). I'll join tons of groups (maybe a couple). I'll meet everyone (even celebrities, somehow). I'll land the most amazing, world-changing, summer internship ever (apparently there's a company that specializes in my awesomeness). But I haven't even heard back from the school yet. I'm not even sure where to begin in my situation. And I'm not doing much of anything now. I'm putting it all off. Once I get back in school. . . Once I get back in school. . . Once I get back in school. . . But last time I was in school, I wasn't the most active. Once I'm out of school. . . Once I'm out of school. . . Once I'm out of school. . . Screw that, dude. Do stuff now. . . Do stuff now. . . Do stuff now. . . Heh, repetition gets a little repetitive after a while.

I'm booked pretty solid for the holiday. Good. I just have to avoid that letdown after everyone leaves.

I'm grateful for pizza (20).

I almost forgot

I was getting ready for bed, thinking about all the sleep I had coming to me, when I realized that I had yet to update my blog. I'm not sure how I forgot to do so because I have the most! exciting! post! EVER! planned for you all. . . Bah. I got nothin'.

I started the process of getting back into school. Weeee!!!

I worked. Wooohooo!!!

I wrote a bunch. Yay!!!

I played some online poker. Woah!!!

I. . . I. . . I gotta start doing more exciting stuff. With all the upcoming family time, I'm sure something more entertaining will happen. I guess it would be kind of hard for it to be less entertaining.

I'm grateful for itty-bitty bottles of wine (20).

No contest

The forces of nature and a fun day stuffing envelopes and entering data at work have conspired against me, and my head just can't compete. I've owed you all a good post for a while now. But I'm not up to it tonight.

I'm grateful for tomorrow (20).

Wheel of fish

Before I get in to my real post, I figure since I complained to the Red Wings about the game yesterday, I should take a moment to thank them for the game today. It was one of the most entertaining hockey games I've seen in quite some time. So thank you, Red Wings. Thank you.

Last night I was having trouble sleeping. To help myself sleep, I turned to something that's helped countless Americans get some shut eye - politics. First I thought about John Edwards and how he would have been so much better than John Kerry in the last presidential election. Then, still unable to sleep, I turned to the other favorite companion of the restless - TV. And out of an odd bit of luck, CNN was running the "highlights" of the debate among the democratic candidates, and John Edwards was talking. Then I listened to him speak and thought, 'Really? I'm not sure this is the guy anymore." His handlers seem to have focusgrouped the personality right out of him.

That's not really why I'm writing though. Why am I writing? Because I was wondering, when did we start using game shows to select our presidential candidates? Because what I was seeing didn't really resemble a debate. The stage was lit up. Everyone was standing behind podiums that looked like they were stolen from the sets of any sketchcomedy show that has ever done a skit about some generic game show. And there was a condescending moderator (Wolf Blitzer) who often seemed to be trying to upstage the candidates a la Alex Trebek.

Why are they even bothering with a debate at this point? Isn't the point of a debate to voice the arguments from opposing sides of a subject? How does that work with eight people who all virtually agree on everything? What is the point? What is the point?

It's even worse when you take into account that every one of the candidates had probably five or six points that their handlers told them they must be sure to make during the debate. But with so many people in the debate, each candidate only got five or six quality sessions behind the mic. So they were going to give the answers that they had, regardless of the question. Why even bother with the questions? Why not just go down the line, "Dude, you have five minutes. Say something." Quit pretending it's a debate.

One thing, I thought, was interesting, however. Wolf Blitzer went down the line and asked every one of the candidates if they would support the democratic nominee, whoever it was, if they weren't nominated. All of them said yes. All of them, that is, except Dennis Kucinich. That feisty little bugger. For some reason, he wasn't willing to sign a blank check endorsing a candidate who's policies he did not know. What a bad Democrat. Doesn't he realize that we're in the middle of an election? In times like these, you must support your leader, even if you don't agree with what he stands for. If you don't, the Republicans will win.

I have to steal my gratitude from elephant tonight: "I'm grateful for the Indians because they fought the turkeys (20)."

An open letter

Dear Red Wings,

That really, really sucked.

Yours truly,

The Procrastinator

P.S. Really? Really?


I'm grateful for Italian (?) spam (20). I knew I liked Italian sausage. But Italian spam too?

Things that are more entertaining than me

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but it seems that recently my blogging ass has been halved, and the quality of this blog seems to be inversely proportional to the number of days passed in NaBloPoMo. So tonight, instead of giving you guys some sorry excuse of a post, I'm gonna give you a bunch of links to Internet stuff that is far more entertaining than I am.

First off, I recommend free rice. This site is great for anyone planning on taking the SAT or GRE or LSAT or pretty much any standardized test. It's a little vocabulary game that gets harder the better you do. But the cool thing is that for every word you get right the site donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

I think probably every one loves sudoku.

Jamelah.net is often quite entertaining. However, lately even she has been phoning it in because of the whole NaBloPoMo thing.

I like to have people read Twain's "The War Prayer" if they haven't yet read it. If you haven't heard, he was a pretty good writer.

Mehen pointed me to this. It's really nailed the breed of nerd that I (and quite a few of you) belong to.

Mitch Hedberg is probably my favorite comedian ever.

I still kinda love St. Vincent.

I'm grateful for the Internet (20).

Silver and gold

Yesterday, IME wrote about America's little problem with premature Christmasification. Seems as though every year we bring out the holly and ivy a few weeks earlier, and now we're spreading holiday cheer all over Halloween. In the past, I've bounced back and forth between loving this trend and loathing it. This year, however, I've decided to transcend judgment and to attempt to delve deep into the American psyche to figure out why such a thing is happening. I think the root of all this prefestivity festiveness is the fact that somewhere in the embarrassing core of all of us we're just plain tacky. Though we would never admit it to an actual human being, we all have a secret weakness for sequins or tinsel or little flashing lights or crazy sweaters with cartoon characters on them or poorly-constructed, plastic replicas of foliage or crude, illuminated sculptures of sacred figures. But deep down, we're all embarrassed by this weakness because we know that such things are tacky and unacceptable. So we restrict ourselves to the holiday season. If we were to display such colorful, sparkly things throughout the entire year, we know we would receive the scorn of friends, neighbors, and delivery people. And since most people are neither eight years old nor stoned, "But it's so shiny!" is not a valid justification. But if we wait until holidays to display our worst, we can just say, "It's for Christmas. Don't you like Christmas? Bill O'Reilly said there was a war against Christmas. What side are you on?" And if that doesn't work, we can always defend the objectionable decorations by saying they belonged to our grandparents. We're not tacky. We're sentimental. Except now that we've had a taste of what it's like to be tacky, we want more of it. So we're gradually extending the Christmas season.

See what you made me do? Tell me to post every day and look what you get. You all should be ashamed of yourselves.

I'm grateful for monkey butt (20).

The power of the Internet

Today I wrote a bunch. Exciting. I know. But good. So instead of another boring post about writing, I'm going to post about writers instead, specifically the Writers' Guild of America (WGA).

I recently read Surrendering America, a well-written post by Toni McGee Causey over at Murderati. Causey points out that this strike threatens to affect us in far greater ways than just missing out on new top ten lists and being left hanging over that cliff that most of today's TV shows like to dangle over. For one, the strike has larger economic implications than one might think. California's economy rivals the economies of most nations. What happens if a key industry in that economic force shuts down for an extended period of time? Additionally, Causey argues that a poor outcome for the writers will give corporations an even tighter stranglehold over all media and what gets heard or seen.

I'm not going to argue for or against either of those points. However, I did get to thinking about the situation, and I've come up with a good solution for the writers.

It seems the major point of contention in the negotiations is over Internet broadcasting. The writers want to be paid when their products are distributed via the Internet, and management says that the profitability of the Internet is too uncertain at this point for them to commit to paying the writers for this form of distribution.

This point of contention is actually the WGA's way out. Internet distribution.

From what I understand, the WGA has the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) and the Teamsters on its side. Combined they have the creative network of the writers, the talent of the actors, and the production of the crew. Add that to the financial resources and connections held by some of the members of these unions, and you've got all you need to make a high quality movie or TV show. The only thing they don't have covered is distribution. Well, YouTube seems to have proven that the Internet means you no longer need corporate backing to reach a very large audience. And Radiohead's recent endeavour of foregoing the record label and the traditional release by distributing its latest album online seems to imply a certain viability to the approach. So why don't all of the unions get together and start making stuff and distributing it online? We all know that Internet distribution is the direction everything seems to be heading right now anyway. So why not just get to it?

Plus, wouldn't it be awesome if the writers, who were told by management that they weren't going to be making money from the Internet, were to turn around and make a lot of money off of the Internet?

So for all of you big Hollywood types who read my blog, get to it.

I'm grateful for anyone who made it through this post to get to the part where I'm grateful (20).

The joy of writing

I didn't go to the yoga class tonight. That's the bad news. I should've gone to yoga class because it would have been good for me with all that inner peace and whatnot. But I didn't go. However, I have a good reason, not really a good reason in the sense that it would get me out of work or jury duty or a midterm. But a good reason in the sense that it was good for me. A step forward. Or is it a step backward? Anyway. . . I was writing and I lost track of the time. I can't remember when that happened to me last. Lately, it seems as though I write with some arbitrary temporal quota. I must write for two hours today. I look at the clock. Ten minutes. Clock. Fifteen minutes. Clock. Are you shittin' me? Close enough. But today I didn't look at the clock once. I just wrote and wrote and wrote. The story is lame and cheesy and unabashedly not important, and I love writing it. It's fun. I think I may have been smiling while writing. Not pacing around scowling and talking to myself. Smiling. I like writing. Who knew?

I'm grateful for being lame and cheesy and unabashedly not important (20).

American, French, German

I recently watched an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher. I'm not sure if it was a current episode or not, but in his now-infamous New Rules bit, Maher's main rule was that we can no longer use the word 'French' like it's a bad word, a synonym for pinkosocialistAmericahater. This rule reminded me of the saying "Pardon my French." People will often say this to excuse themselves for saying something offensive. But all of our best 'offensive' words - damn, shit, fuck, crap, the other 'c' word, etc. - have Germanic roots. So the phrase should be "Pardon my German." We've been hatin' on the French for quite a while now.

I don't know why I wrote that. I need to do more stuff if I'm going to get through this NaBloPoMo. I'm planning on walking-in on a yoga class tomorrow night. I should get something postworthy out of that.

Until then, I leave you with a zen question to meditate upon. Why do all of the actors on Heroes deliver their lines in a stage whisper?

I'm grateful for chocolate milk (20).

The new me

Last night while I was busy not sleeping, I thought about the little dragon story I've been writing, and I decided that the main character needed to be completely different from what I had made him. Different enough that I need to start over. In the past when I've come to such conclusions, I've been devastated. I would get frustrated over having wasted so much time on something that wasn't going to be publishable and then I would stop writing for a week or two. Then I would spend a week or two in denial, trying to keep going with what I had. Then I would stop writing again. And so on. All of this foolishness because of my silly rush to get published. Whatever. Now that I'm writing for myself again, it was no big deal. I just went back to the beginning, a bunch of white space with a flashing cursor, and wrote. I don't know if the new direction I've taken with the story will be better to read, but I'm already having more fun writing it. And right now, I'm trying to get back to having fun while writing. I'll let you know how it works out.

I'm grateful for beef stroganoff (20).

My soundtrack

Last night's Halo 3 encounter was indeed epic. Z-man came to town so we could all be in the same room while playing, and the experience kicked some serious ass. We gathered at a little after five and visited and ate pizza for a while. Then we played until 4:30 in the morning. I'd go into details, but I think that the only readers I have who would be interested in the details were in the room last night. Since I'm too tired and lazy to come up with another topic to post about today, I'm going to steal a meme that hit the blog circuit before I had a blog of my own. Now that I do have a blog, I figure I'll give it a shot. It's pretty fun. If you have a blog and you haven't done it yet, I would recommend that you give it a try as well. Heck, if you don't have a blog, you could still do it and then put your results as a comment on my blog if you want. Anyway, here we go.

My life's movie soundtrack

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button

Opening Credits: "Blue Caravan" - Vienna Teng

Waking Up: "Sanford and Son Theme" - Quincy Jones

First Day At School: "A Little Less 'Sixteen Candles', A Little More 'Touch Me'" - Fall Out Boy

Falling In Love: "A Thousand Miles" - Vanessa Carlton

Fight Song: "Ode to Divorce" - Regina Spektor

Breaking Up: "Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss" - Bloodhound Gang

Prom: "Drain You" - Nirvana

Life Is Good: "Aerials" - System of a Down

Mental Breakdown: "Hero" - Regina Spektor

Driving: "Hey Joe" - Jimi Hendrix Experience

Flashback: "Since U Been Gone" - Kelly Clarkson

Getting Back Together: "I Call That True Love" - Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show

Wedding: "London Beckoned, Songs about Money Written by Machines" - Panic! at the Disco

Paying The Dues: "No One Knows" - Queens of the Stone Age

The Night Before The War: "Janie's Got a Gun" - Aerosmith

Final Battle: "Bye Bye Bye" - *NSYNC

Moment of Triumph: "Rockstar" - Nickelback

Death Scene: "Overkill" - Colin Hay

Funeral Song: "Samson" - Regina Spektor

End Credits: "Digital Love" - Daft Punk

I'm grateful for sleeping in (20).

Preemptive strike

Normally, I wait until the end of the day to post. But tonight we have an epic Halo 3 gathering planned, so I figure I'll do a quick post now in case I'm not up to it later. Not long ago, I ran across Neil Gaiman's blog. I had heard of his writing, but had never read any of it before. But I enjoyed his blog, so I picked up a copy of Stardust, which was recently made into a movie.

So far I'm enjoying it. Though it seems to spit all over some of the more widespread conventions of writing. First off, I'm 42 pages into it, and I don't think I've really gotten to the plot yet. Actually, the protagonist doesn't even show up until page 31. Taking this much time to build up to the plot might not be a big deal in the daunting acreage that is Tolstoy or Proust or, you know, one of those authors that write really long books. But this book comes in at under 250 pages. Usually, when I've read nearly a sixth of the book, I expect to have gotten to the plot or at least to have some inkling as to what the plot will be. But it's still been a decent read.

Second off (hmm, second off doesn't sound right, but I started off with first off and if I use something else I'll have some parallelism issues, stupid English language), he uses a lot of adverbs. If you ever go to a gathering of writers, I would guess that probably 17 out of 18 of them would tell you that you should avoid adverbs whenever possible. This comes from the fact that Stephen King wrote a very good book, On Writing, that every up-and-coming-would-be writer has read because, after all, it is a very good book. In this book, King makes the argument that adverbs should be avoided because more often than not the image the adverb conveys is already implied in the context. Which is a good point. For instance: "He ran quickly." Is the 'quickly' necessary here? Isn't quickness something to be expected of someone running? Etc., etc., etc. . . But Stardust is full of adverbs. If you were allergic to adverbs even the tiniest bit, reading this book might put you in the hospital.

Third off, Gaiman uses ambiguous descriptions like "Her lips were red and perfectly shaped. . ." What do perfectly shaped lips look like? Are they big ol' Angelina Jolie lips or little bitty not Angelina Jolie lips? The generally accepted convention is that if you're describing something, it should actually evoke a clear image of that something.

But I'm not criticizing. I may be praising Gaiman, actually. He's a successful writer and has become one by creating his own style. I admire that. It's something that has been lacking in every gathering of writers I've ever encountered. They will read that Stephen King says to avoid adverbs, and so they avoid adverbs. This other source says not to use vague words like beautiful or ugly, and so they avoid those words. Someone declares, You must avoid passive voice, and hoards of writers do what they can to find avoidance of the use of a passive voice. But I never got the feeling that any of them really stopped to think about why or even if these things should be done. Writing is such a personal thing that I think it's silly to adopt or avoid techniques based solely on what other writers are doing. It's a good reminder for me though. I always forget that. Write for yourself first, then see what people think of it. (I kind of stole that bit from King's claim that the first draft should be written with the door closed and the following drafts should be written with the door open. Isn't it strange how something can seem both ironic and hypocritical at the same time?)

I'm grateful for a night promising sticky grenades, head shots, and exploding warthogs (20).

Jeopardy at work

When I work at the paper, I usually work in the evenings. Because no one from the general public or upper management are likely to come in during those hours, the TV is rarely on the news station that it usually displays during the day. Tonight it was on Jeopardy.

At first, my coworkers kicked ass. They asked all the right questions. I was impressed. And surprised. It's not that I thought the people I work with are stupid. Because I don't. It's just that none of them seemed like big trivia folks. But they were doing so well that I was actually intimidated by them. They obviously were far superior to me. That is, of course, until the contestants moved away from the first category. When the category changed, my coworkers questions became guesses, far-fetched, wrong guesses. I quickly shifted from being surprised by how well my coworkers were doing to being surprised by how poorly a handful of professional writers were doing on a literature category. How could they not know these things? Doesn't everyone know that. . . ah crap. . . I've gone blank. I wanted to drop a couple of names out there and impress you with my vast literary knowledge, but I can't seem to remember what any of the questions were. But I do remember that one of the responses most certainly was not Ernest Hemingway, despite what everyone else guessed.

Sorry I haven't updated much on my progress in doing stuff lately. This week seemed to slip by. In a good sense though, because three of the days were spent with a nice visit. But yeah, I'm not doing as much as I should. Don't give up on me yet. Excitement is coming.

I'm grateful for treadmills that allow me to read a book on blogging while running (3, 17, 20).

A post about posting

With three chapters of a book about blogging under my belt, I'm excited for my readers out there. This blog is going to be awesome. Nono, wait. This blog is going to be awesome. That's better. If the book delivers everything promised by the author, it will be impossible for me not to produce The Blog to End All Blogs. Maybe that needed an exclamation point? . . ! . . No. That would be too much.

To this point, the book has mostly been dedicated to defining blogs and blogterms, explaining briefly the available options for starting a blog, and glimpsing in to the blogger lifestyle. The biggest thing I've taken out of it so far is the idea that blogs should be updated probably a minimum of five times a week. Any large gaps between posts may lead regular readers to give up on checking the blog or to stray to other blogs that add content more consistently (3).

So I want to thank you, readers, for sticking with me through the big blog drought of May and June and July. . . Oh. . . and October. I'm not sure I've earned that sort of dedication, but I'm grateful for it (20).

Not so witty

Today was spent mostly with my niece, nephew, brother-in-law, and a little with my sister. If I were really clever, I'd write a little Haiku about it. But I'm not really clever. Instead, I'll write this blog in list form.

a. It turns out that waking up early, despite having stayed up late, is made considerably less horrible when awakened by a toddler smiling down upon you and smothering you with hugs.

b. If you're a pacer and your nephew thinks it's fun to follow you while you're pacing, then he will laugh quite hysterically if you weave through the clothes racks at Wal-Mart so he can follow you in all sorts of fun loops, figure eights, and zigzags.

c. The mocha from McDonald's (a McMocha?) is farfar better than I expected. I may pick one up on my way home tomorrow.

d. When my brother-in-law left to pick up my niece from preschool, my nephew threw a bit of a tantrum, shouting "Mama, Dada, Lala, Bus," over and over. I figure he was probably listing people he would rather be left alone with - his mother, his father, his sister, and Jerome Bettis.

e. My niece really likes volcanoes now.

f. My nephew really likes cars still.

I'm grateful for today (20).

Run!

I'm at my sister's house again. She and her husband needed a babysitter tonight, and I wanted to visit with the family, so I came to take care of both. I continued my trend of sending the kids screaming from my presence in spectacular fashion. I was upstairs playing with them in their bedrooms when my niece tripped over a toy in the hall and bumped her head. She wanted her daddy to help make her feel better so I took her downstairs to where he was getting ready for work. When I went upstairs to keep an eye on my nephew, I wanted to make sure my niece was all right, so I sat at the top of the stairs to be able to hear what was going on. What did I hear? Thudthumptumble, WAAAAA! If you don't recognize it, that's the sound of my nephew falling down the top two steps and then wailing about it. My production has increased exponentially. Now I can make the second one start crying before the first one has even finished. I guess they were right about that whole practicepracticepractice thing.

I'm grateful for having made it through the night without needing to go to the emergency room (20).

Professional writers?

Has anyone watched Saturday Night Live recently? It's bad. Very, very bad. I watched until partway through the Weekend Update. I had to stop watching when they brought out the kid from Good Burger. He was dressed up like an old lady and doing that bit about how women use Halloween as an excuse to dress up like whores (sexy nurse, sexy kitten, etc.). Am I the only one who has heard that bit from at least three comedians and seen it on at least five shows? I turned off the TV then.

The funniest thing about the show happened a little before the aforementioned disaster. For those of you who haven't heard, The Writers Guild of America, the union for TV and movie writers, is about to go on strike. To show its support for the union, SNL started off Weekend Update with a guy pretending to be a big TV executive. The sketch was very high school, i.e. not clever, not funny. So they had him come out and talk about how TV execs. only make like 20 million a year so they couldn't possibly afford to pay writers any more than the 200,000 average salary that they get now. He then talked about how DVDs cost sixty cents to make and then when they sell them for twenty dollars they end up losing money. Then he went on to say that if they paid the writers more, he wouldn't be able to line his pool with gold. Really witty stuff.

I was slightly offended by this bit, actually. A half-assed, most-likely oversimplified, unfunny parody during a comedy show. Up until this sketch, I had been on the side of the union. As a writer, I'm all for paying writers obscene amounts of money. But everything about this TV exec. satire had me rethinking my position. That is, until I recognized the mindboggling, perfect but undoubtedly unintentional brilliance of the sketch. Pay attention now because I think you'll like this next part. What I saw last night was not just a sketch designed to get people to support the Hollywood writers' campaign for more money. What I saw last night was a poorly written sketch designed to get people to support the Hollywood writers' campaign for more money. That's Mark Twain brilliant right there.

I've come up with a compromise: Management will agree to pay the writers more if the writers will agree to stop sucking so much (I'm looking at you, writers of almost every show I loved last season but now suffer through this season).

I'm grateful for the few remaining good shows (20).

About poker, not running

I was going to blog about running today (a little more than two miles if you were wondering [17]). But then the Spartans lost spectacularly to the school that shall not be named and I was a little grumpy about that and was flipping through the stations to find some mindless fun and I saw that Mean Girls was on. I've already seen the movie and I remember that it was indeed mindless fun. But I couldn't really remember anything else about it. So I watched. And about ten minutes into it I realized it was the kind of movie that doesn't really need one's full attention. So I started playing poker (1). And since I've just finished that session, I've got poker on the mind and I think I'll bore you all with it.

Remember that blogger freeroll I played in a while ago? Well, in order to play in that I had to start a PokerStars account. It seems that they weren't happy with the fact that I didn't have any real money in my account, so on Tuesday they gave me five dollars to play with for two weeks. The problem I have is, does the two week limit include the money that I win? After fourteen days will they take the seven dollars I've won as well as the original five they gave me? If so, they've got a pretty sweet deal going there.

But anyway. I felt like a dick in the session I just finished playing. For those of you who don't know, there are a lot of unspoken rules in the world of poker. Probably one of the biggest rules is not to say anything that might influence the action of a pot that you aren't involved in. Well, someone did just that. I had made a sizable bet and the only player still in the hand with me was taking a long time to decide what he was going to do. While this player was thinking, someone else tried to guess what my hand was. Even though that guess was wrong and probably didn't influence the other player very much, I felt the need to tell this guy that he shouldn't have made that comment. I wasn't rude. I didn't swear or call him names. But I felt like a dick afterward. I don't know why. Rationally, I feel justified. But emotionally, I feel like a dick. Weird, huh?

I'm grateful for Mean Girls (20). It's better than it probably should be.

Here we go

All right. As promised, here's my look into the list. As usual, just hold the cursor over a number if you want to know what the list item is.

1. This item was originally about me thinking I was going to earn a living at poker. Then when I decided that I didn't want to earn a living playing poker, I crossed the item off the list. I've removed the 'seriously' from the 'play poker seriously' that it was because I just want to play poker. If I get good enough to earn some money, cool. If not, I still get to have fun playing poker. . .

2. I've removed the publishing emphasis from this item. I think that I've really struggled with my writing for the past four or five years because toward the beginning of that time is when I started telling people that I was going to be a writer, and I then started writing thinking 'what would a publisher have to say about this?' and 'would my literary theory professor be impressed with how I used this particular device?' Now I want to just write. If I just write and keep writing, I will more than likely produce something that I feel is publishable. When that happens, I'll start worrying about the world of publishing. I know I've made similar claims in the past. But now I'm actually going to stick to it. Right now, I'm writing a story about dragons. I don't know if there's a big market for stories about dragons. I'm sure there aren't a lot of college literature classes discussing stories about dragons. But I want to write a story about dragons. So I am.

3. Number three once was 'start a blog.' I've now changed that to simply 'blog.' That means update the blog, but it also means (to me anyway) learn ways to improve this blog. I've ordered a book on blogging to do just that. Also, since I've broadened the scope of this item, I feel the old number 25 (look up HTML tags to update this blog) fits under the new number 3. So I've removed the old 25 and then bumped all the following items up one slot.

4. Um. . . yeah. . . not so much yet. . .

5. Nope. I'm still not a swimmer.

6. I've changed my focus from earning a black belt to just studying martial arts. This change is actually quite huge because I'm not really firmly rooted in any one location yet. When I was focusing on becoming a black belt, I would tell myself not to bother with a martial arts class because I would probably be moving within a year and all the work I put in toward earning a black belt would be lost and I would have to start all over somewhere else. But now that I just want to study martial arts, I can just take classes (there are two in town that I know of). If I stay long enough to earn a black belt, cool. If not, I'll have a better foundation for when I start at another dojo.

7. Just a minor change on the wording of this. It used to be 'have kids.' See my results for number 4 if you're curious about my progress.

8. I thought I would have accomplished this one by now. I almost did, in a cheating sort of way. I've actually been keeping an eye on rentals in the area. My hope is to get moved out this month. Working at the paper, I'm not making enough money to support myself, but I'm actually committing myself to stay in town for probably the next year at this point, unless a good opportunity arises. In January I'm going to start taking classes. I'll study to get an advertising certificate and a public relations certificate because a lot of the writing jobs that I've seen posted are in communications departments and advertising departments. I think having a year and a half writing for a paper under my belt coupled with those two certificates will help me to get that type of job. Why am I discussing this under my move out item? Because when I start taking classes I'll be able to get financial aid and therefore be able to afford a place to move out to.

9. I've been meaning to volunteer over at my niece's preschool. But it starts very, very early, so I haven't done that yet. I have been getting myself up earlier and earlier, however. I think I should be ready to volunteer pretty soon. I've also been meaning to volunteer for the local non-profit art store. I've been meaning to build houses for low-income families. I've been meaning to. . . stop procrastinating I suppose. Maybe volunteering and finding a place to live will be my main activities this month. I think they should be.

10. There is no good, active verb for practicing yoga that I know of. But that's what I want to do. There's actually a yoga school here in town. Imagine that. The town I used to refer to as hickville, the town where the local paper (my paper) regularly features pictures of slaughtered bucks, the town with auto-parts shop after auto-parts shop but not one decent coffee shop, has a yoga school. I'll contact the school soon (what nation does that remind you of? oh yeah, procrasti-nation).

11. I traveled some during the summer. But not much recently.

12. I changed 'pay the bills' to 'work.' I like my job at the paper. I wish I could work more. But when I'm working I have a good time. I don't know how this job looks as far as long-term considerations are concerned, but I like it for now. It's work. It's experience. It's stuff.

13. Yeah, my nerves still give me some trouble. I have found, however, that the more I do and the more I'm around people, the better my nerves are. I don't get anxious about working or being around people or doing stuff when I've recently been working or been around people or been doing stuff. It's when I've withdrawn from things for a few days that my nerves start to get to me (and also when I have to speak in front of an audience). I realized this during my first few weeks working at the paper. My hours were even sparser back then, and sometimes I would go a week or more between times going to work. I found that it was taking me a long time to get past the nerves of working in a new place because every time I started to build up some comfort by being there, I would forget about that comfort because I would not be there for a week or so. So I think just doing stuff will help my nerves.

14. I changed this one from the whole open mic thing because I don't really want to write a song and sing at open mic. I just want to play guitar. If I feel like writing a song, I will. If a bunch of people are around and there's a guitar and I want to play something, I will. I don't want to be a singer/songwriter. I just want to play the guitar. And I do on most days.

15. I'm not sure what to make of this one. So I left it blank.

16. My head's good. I still have some headaches. But not every day. Not even every week it seems. I don't know what I'm doing, but my head's good.

17. I changed this one from exercise to run. I thought exercise was a little redundant when I already have practice yoga, study martial arts, and learn to swim on the list. But I wanted an item on the list for running because I've started up with that again. I'm not running so I can finish in the top five of a 5k. I'm not running so I can say that I ran five miles in 36 minutes. I'm running because it feels good to run. Right now, I'm running for a half an hour a day. I go about two miles, which is really slow, but I'm enjoying it more than when I wore myself out running two miles in 18 minutes. I'll probably increase the speed gradually. But for now I'm okay with just running slowly.

18. I'm getting to know some of the people at work. But I'm still not meeting people all that much. Right now I'm using the fact that I'm living with my parents as an excuse to not go out and try to meet people. Which is stupid. Which I know.

19. I changed this from 'learn to cook' to simply 'cook.' I know how to cook. I just don't. But I like to eat food that I've cooked far more than I like to eat the food that some teenager has assemblylined next to the frialator.

20. I think I've done better with this item than any other on the list. When I get down on myself, this one makes me feel better.

21. Originally this item was dedicated to getting in touch with piwok. While I do regret not having a list item dedicated entirely to piwok, I realize that there are a lot of people who I need to do a better job of staying in touch with. So number 21 was changed. Sorry, piwok.

22. This used to be 'eliminate mindless distractions.' Not too far in to the process of doing just that, I realized how important mindless distractions can be in moderation. The new version of this item is the actual outcome I was hoping to achieve with the old version.

23. I wasn't sure about keeping this one on the list. Sometimes I do miss performing. But not that much. And sometimes not at all. I don't know if it really deserves to be on the list or not. But what the heck? It's not hurting anybody being here.

24. Yeah. I'm not doing well on this one at all. I had a mouse in my room probably a month ago. I'm certain that the messiness of my room - defined mostly by piles of clothes and a few stacks of paper - was not the cause of this mouse's presence. But I'm also certain that it was indeed my candy wrapper that I saw him dragging toward the gap in the wall.

25. I'm not pacing, I'm just making sure that the carpet is worn down evenly.

26. My writing, my running, this blog, are all challenges to me.

27. Not before number 5.

28. I'm usually pretty good at this one. Usually.

29. Used to be 'Don't shy away from mistakes. Learn from them." I just changed it to something a little less fulghumy.

Okay, that's enough for now. Thanks for reading (20).

Journeyman

No, don't worry, I'm not blogging about that cheesy ripoff of Quantum Leap. As promised, I've given the list some consideration and now it's time for the results:

This country is very goal oriented, very keepyoureyeontheprize. At job interviews, applicants are often asked "Where do you see yourself in five years?" College students are often asked "What are you going to do with the degree once you've earned it?" Heck, we even ask four-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up. Even the predominant faith(s) tell us the reason to lead a good life is to get in to heaven.

Isn't the good life itself enough of a reward for leading one? Does it have to be about the destination? Can't the journey itself be the reward, the purpose? I wonder if that's the thinking behind reincarnation - when someone has lived a worthwhile life she is rewarded by getting to live another one in a more suitable vessel.

So it seems like a lot has been accomplished by the goaloriented. Undoubtedly history books, record books, and museums are packed with souls who've had some grand vision and then followed it to completion. Every journey has a destination. But must the destination be the reason for the journey?

Here's a crude allegory: Ben and Jerry share an apartment next to a park. Through the park is a path that connects the apartment to an ice cream store. Ben wants to go to the ice cream store. Jerry wants to walk on the path. Both of them reach the ice cream store.

All right. At this point it may seem as though I'm building a case for notdoingstuff. I can see that. But it's the opposite. I've gotten a new insight on myself as a person, and it will help me to achieve. I'm not a goal person. I'm a journey person. Whenever I've taken on something as a means to an end, I've failed. The numerous times that I went to college to become this or that ended with me dropping out. Then when I went to college because I wanted to be in college, I earned a degree.

In high school, I wanted to act so I was in some school plays. I wanted to play in band so I played in every band the school had. I enjoyed both of these activities and they both led to further opportunities for me. But when I took music lessons because I wanted to be in better bands and went to an acting school because I wanted to act on TV, I hated it and halfassed it for a bit before quiting.

For me, I think the means has to be the end. I think I will be more productive this way. I enjoy doing things instead of working toward things. I think experiences lead to experiences, opportunities lead to opportunities. If I do stuff, stuff will come.

Bah, all of this was more coherent in my head. It's getting late. I think I'm going to do the actual item-by-item breakdown of the list and how my new take on life will affect the list tomorrow. Bellow I've posted the revised list so it'll be somewhere. But I'll write about it more tomorrow. Maybe I'll be able to explain all of this better then.

I'm grateful for new but not yet fully developed insights (20).

The List, 2.0

1. Play poker
2. Write
3. Blog
4. Learn to kiss
5. Learn to swim
6. Study martial arts
7. Have a family
8. Move out
9. Volunteer
10. Practice yoga
11. Travel
12. Work
13. Fix my nerves
14. Play guitar
15.
16. Take care of my head
17. Run
18. Meet people
19. Cook
20. Be grateful every day
21. Stay in touch
22. Don't waste time
23. Perform
24. Clean
25. Stop pacing
26. Challenge myself
27. Swim with dolphins
28. Consider others
29. Don't be afraid