Genres

I was at Barnes and Noble the other day, browsing for nothing in particular, when a sign caught my eye.  There's a new genre in town, and its large enough to have three huge bookcases to itself.  It's called "Teen Paranormal Romance."

Oooookay, let me state that as a writer myself, I do not understand what goes through these authors' heads. For one thing, what are they hoping to achieve?  Twilight did it: it told a story and then was never heard from again (technically, Miss Meyer's working on a second version of Twilight now, all told from Edward's point of view--but that's beside the point).  To go any further into this genre is to gut it and remove what dignity Dracula has left.  You want a vampire story with REAL vampires?  Read Dracula.  (Another side note: that's what I bought at B&N: Dracula.)  There's a real villain with a real plan and real stuff going down.

It just strikes me as odd that these silly Twilight clingers-on are still around, still writing filth.  The Dracula I bought has footnotes explaining what hundred-letter-words mean.  You won't learn a single new word in Teen Paranormal Romance, unless its a four-letter one.

I'm not even sure what I was trying to prove with this post.  I guess Dracula is more of a thriller or a horror novel, but I'm still miffed at bad authors for making vampires seem like wusses. That certainly was not the intention of Bram Stoker.

I just blew my own mind.  What will this new Twilight book be?  I mean, it's not a prologue or an epilogue, as it runs right alongside Twilight itself.  Maybe it's a sideogue.  Runalongogue.  Othersideofthestoryogue.

I might as well confess that I can't take Dracula seriously at all because the great vampire himself has a white handlebar mustache. 

...

Grassisgreenerontheothersideogue.  Thisiswhathewasthinkingthewholetimeogue.  Whyareyoustillreadingthisogue?  NoseriouslyIdon'tupdatetilnextweekogue.  Handlebarmustachelikeasirogue:

The Quote of the Century

I'm going to keep this post short and sweet.  Firstly, I watched an episode of The Looney Tunes Show the other day.  Secondly, I heard the GREATEST THING EVER while watching.  Allow me to elaborate:

DAFFY DUCK: (To a famous actress whose attention he's trying to procure) COME ON, WHATEVER-YOUR-NAME-IS, POINT YER LOOKIN'-BALLS AT YER FUTURE EX-HUSBAND!

The writers of that show are freakin' geniuses. 

Television is awesome.

The Bieber Noninterference

... That title sounded like a Big Bang Theory title.

AHEM.

Anyway, the reason I've titled this post in such a manner is because I have something to say about Mister Justin Bieber, and I want to say it before the Directioners kill the Beliebers and rage war on the Little Monsters.  I'd list more cheesy fan names, but I can't think of any, and I'm a Maroon 5 person myself.  (Maybe I'm a Marooner ...?)

First off, I am clinging wholeheartedly to the non-side of neutrality here.  While some of my friends would peg me as the leader of Anti-Bieber Force 4427.9 without batting an eye, I want to protect myself from the Beliebers.  They're armed with fancy Believe perfume now, you know.  Scent--heaven forbid.

The first thing I'd like to say is that I'm feeling a little tired of this unnecessary conflict in my life.  I once asked a friend (who shall remain anonymous for his/her own safety) what trait in my personality, that, if removed, would render me the most different than before.  He/she promptly said: "Well, if you were a Belieber, you wouldn't be the same at all."

...

What.

If my opinion toward a certain teen heartthrob is what defines my personality, then something's wrong.  Deeply wrong.

Yes, I think the B-man is overrated.  Yes, I think we need to send Miley Cyrus to Canada to repay them for the epidemic they brought on every 10+ girl (except me) in the country.  Yes, I'd like to set fire to the Bieber section of Claire's just to see how many screaming girls try to put it out.

But, in no way whatsoever do I consider myself an avid pursuer of the destruction of Justin Bieber.  I don't sleep with a hatchet for fear he'll come too close to my territory.  I don't paste pictures of his face onto a dartboard and bide my time scheming his downfall.

So, for any of you who are wondering, I don't hate Justin Bieber.  I hate the worship of him.  He's not a god, and he's most certainly not your future husband.  He's a teen heartthrob, and he's going to marry a famous girl whom he'll divorce and remarry four times before his death.  For those of you who fantasize about your wedding, please keep your sick fantasies to yourself and realize soon that it's not going to happen.

As for One Direction, that is a topic for another day. 

In Exciting Exitementses

(Fast-talking-author's-note: For this post and this post only, you will refer to me as Gollum.)

Is anyone elses excites for the Hobbitses movie?  Come December, you'll find Gollum in a theater against Gollum's will.  Yesssss, Gollum is excites, but the Lord of the Ringses series averaged three and half hourses each.  None can go that long without a bathroom break.  Not only does Gollum hates public restroomses, Gollumses developed a fondness for Gollumses precious pause button.

Anywayses, the writer decide to pay tribute to the Lord of the Ringses movies by writing entire post in Gollum's accent.

Yessss, the upcoming Hobbitses movie has caused some role reversalses in the writerses household.  Normally, writer is the one who drags family to theaterses, but now writerses brother has taken over.  Not only that, writer is now blogging as a creepies, emaciated hobbitses.  And Gollum is youngers now.

(Another fast-talking-author's-note: I cannot go further in that voice.  It strains the brainses)

On another matter, does anyone feel a little deja vu in this matter?  The same thing happened with Star Wars: they made a prologue after making the original trilogy, which now causes a lot of tension among fans.  Which ones are technically "the first"?  Please tell me we aren't going to undergo the same happenings with the Hobbit!  Granted, this time each movie will either have Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit at the front of the title, but it's not much consolation.

And that's all I have to say on the matter.

Just kidding, one more thing: when typing, it's really hard to write like Gollum without Jar-Jar Binks getting in the way.

"Yesss, meesa thinks the Hobbitses movie will be very entertaining!"

The Blogging Process

For those of you who care, care to know, or think knowing will help you care, this is a post about my personal process for blogging and what an average post goes through before arriving online Monday morning.  This will be a detailed step-by-step process, so get your pencils and/or pens out and prepare to do some serious note taking.

STEP ONE: FORMULATE ROUGH IDEA
This generally happens via embarrassing occurrence to/about my person and/or other person who I may/may not know.

STEP TWO: PONDER EMBARRASSING OCCURRENCE
To know it, you must go back and replay it over and over in your head, no matter the personal humiliation it makes you feel.

STEP THREE: LOG ON TO BLOGGER
Easy enough.

STEP FOUR: HIT THE 'NEW POST' BUTTON
If you start feeling a burn in your hand, push on through.

STEP FIVE: TYPE MADLY
Hit keys.

STEP SIX: VIEW COMPLETED FIRST DRAFT
Some straining of the eyes may occur.

STEP SEVEN: DEVELOP WORK ETHIC FOR BACKSPACE BUTTON
It'll thank you later.

STEP EIGHT: HATE STUPID SECOND DRAFT
Second drafts are always the worst: not bad enough to be an obvious work-in-progress, but too awful to read over without initiating a gag reflex.

STEP NINE: KILL IT
I generally use a blowtorch and the red X in the top right corner.  That's left, for you Mac people.

STEP TEN: RESURRECT IT
Preferably with thunder and lightning for special effect.

STEP ELEVEN: MARRY IT
Optional.

STEP TWELVE: BURN IT WITH FIRE
Blogs are known to cause violent mood swings and often influence hardcore love-hate relationships in their owners.

STEP THIRTEEN: SCATTER ASHES IN THE WIND
Maniacal laughter optional.

STEP FOURTEEN: LIVE IN A CARDBOARD BOX FOR THREE DAYS
You'll spend your time not showering and fretting about how close Monday is.

STEP FIFTEEN: RUN BACK WITH A BROOM AND A LOT OF GLUE
If you scattered correctly, unnecessary parts of the dreaded second draft should have gone to the Alps, leaving you with a presentable third draft.

STEP SIXTEEN: REPEAT NEXT WEEK

***

And that's the basic process of how I meet my mandatory deadline. 

In All Honesty

You know those people who are always saying things like "Well, if everyone were honest, life would be better and we'd all be happier"?

Well, I can honestly say that would only lead to chaos and an unnatural amount of exercise for the unfriend button on Facebook.

After all, if we were perfectly honest, social functions would die with a loud hiss.  Just think of the name tags:

HELLO, MY NAME IS
Tyler, and I'd rather watch teen angst movies than be here

HELLO, MY NAME IS
Ian, and I'm a double-dipper so you might want to steer clear of the salsa

HELLO, MY NAME IS
Lana, and I just got out of prison

HELLO, MY NAME IS
Brigit, and I spent the day wiping toxic waste off a laboratory floor

There are some things we just don't want to know and are better left unsaid.  Besides, if we were honest about what the bean dip really tastes like, we wouldn't get invited back.  And if we're not invited back, then we lose our social lives.  And if we lose our social lives, we become pale hermits who spend their time collecting bendy straws or the like.

I'd rather keep my opinions to myself, thank you.

But everyday parties aside, what about the Super Bowl?  Not that people wear name tags to watch the game, but what about when the room splits in two because people are truly honest about which team they are rooting for?  It turns into a food fight with crushed tortilla chips and double-dipped salsa everywhere.

So if you want to live in a world where no one has any friends and name tags take ten minutes to write, start being truly and undoubtedly honest.  I sort of like things how they are, though.

Besides, eventually, we'd get some stupid "Abe Lincoln" award or something for the most honest celebrity.  No, Britney Spears, I don't want to know the details of your nose job, but thanks anyway.

Ear Buds and their many Technical Difficulties

You know those Apple ear buds?  They're okay.  Mine are too big and people can hear what I'm listening to from five feet away. 

Recently, the grey rubber around the speaker of each bud started to peel off (that's how old they are).  After a while, I got sick of it and removed it because I don't want little rubber pieces floating through my ear canals and into my brain.  Not only would that damage my hearing, this blog would inexplicably become dedicated to the scent of rubber.

So the other day, my family and I headed up into the mountains to canoe.  I took my iPod and started fiddling with it at the gas station.  Since the protective rubber, which holds the speakers to the neck, is no longer in place, I can remove the speakers and pull them away from the neck.  This drags the cord through said neck in the process.  I did so out of sheer boredom.

I can honestly tell you the rubber is there for a reason, and a good one at that.  It holds the ear buds together, and keeps all sorts of assorted garbage away from the wires and such contained within the bud.  Garbage like link, dirt, and earwax. 

Needless to say, ear buds go in ears, where earwax is.  I cleaned the inner rim off with a tissue and restored the yellow color to factory-condition Macbook white. 

After fitting the speakers to the necks again, they promptly fell apart in my hands.

A word of wisdom: if you don't have grey rubber to protect your ear buds from imminent decay, earwax does the job just as well.

The Problem with iTunes

After using iTunes for about three or four years, I've decided why it's unappealing to me.  For one thing, when it's just playing in the background, weird songs come up that I would never listen to under normal circumstances.  They're mostly odd instrumentals, Christian pop, and kiddie songs which have been purchased over the last few years.  Most were bought by my brother, but I'll admit I played a part in it, too. 

Another thing I don't like is that it's hard to expand one's library.  I rarely use the iTunes store because I automatically feel stressed when I step inside.  I'm not sure why.  Therefore, I resort to grabbing mp3 tracks off YouTube and importing them to the iTunes library.  That's a long process, though; one must find the song they want, convert it to mp3 format, and then import it to iTunes.  Plus, a lot of videos have copyrights on them which block the converter. 

So, it's a very long process to get an mp3 track into iTunes.

I think I'll stick with Pandora.  That's not to say Pandora is much better, though.  Users only get a limited amount of skips per hour, and every time you skip a song/change station, you must watch an annoying advertisement (Their current fad: dolphins talking about planes).  And, you have no control over what you listen to next, so you can sit there for hours and not hear that one song you want to.

That leaves me with YouTube.  While it's possible to build a playlist of videos that will play automatically, the creation of that playlist is time-consuming and it's hard to find high-quality videos. 

Of course, there's also Playlist, but I'm not going to touch that.  Talk about your user-hating sites.

To sum it up, I don't use iTunes because I wear out the right key on the keyboard skipping bad music, Pandora is annoying, YouTube is time-consuming, and Playlist is garbage.

I have no idea what I was trying to convey with this post, either.

Drunk Driving and Duck Heads

Hello and happy Monday, my followers! 

Despite the late hour, I am determined to keep my Monday schedule at the cost of anything--not that you can fine me if I'm late. For once, I have a good excuse--I was learning to drive.  In fact, I'm fairly completely almost perhaps sure that drinking and driving is illegal.  Driving and drinking, however, will most certainly put one in jail. 

We made posters in class.  My team's was really crappy.  It did what it was supposed to do, though: covered a blank spot on the wall.  Unfortunately, I have to look at that thing the other two days I go in for class.  At least it's not a photo-poster.  That would be painfully ironic.

Moving on to other matters.

The other day, I found some felt in a drawer.  There were two white pieces, each cut into the same circular shape.  I found two pink pieces as well, which were a little smaller but still circular. 

Long story short, I sewed a duck head.  It was originally going to be a neat little doll, but once I sewed on the eyes, I realized it looked nothing like a doll. 

The thing is, I have no more felt to make a body.  So, I think I'll get more and make it a platypus head instead.  I don't want to make wings.  I really don't like wings.  I can't sew them, draw them, or fly with them.  That's disappointing.

So there's a platypus head in my drawer right now.  It's kind of neat, but I bet it's the last thing people expect to find when they open a drawer.  I certainly don't expect to find any kind of head in a drawer. 

I also learned I hate sewing machines.  With a vengeance.

Seven

This is my seventh blog post.  That's pretty good.  Seven is a nice number.  When I logged on to Blogger today, I was my seventh page view.

A few days ago, it occurred to me that I have a pretty spoiled brain.  Not only does it get to do what it loves (mostly writing) for a good chunk of the day, it has its own blog.  Most of the time, blogs belong to people.  This one, however, belongs to a brain.  Mine.

I wonder what it would be like if someone else had my brain for a short period of time.  I don't think they could handle it.  Even I can't handle it.  For one thing, this poor brain-babysitter would have to put up with constant streams of creativeness, most of which manifest themselves in ideas that, if made into movies, would be really horrible movies.  You might make three cents off the movies in my brain.  Maybe less.  Perhaps you'd simply lose money.

These streams of creativity would be interrupted occasionally by dumb quotes, pictures of cows, and the rare "oh my gosh what day is it I've got to update that blog I have on Mondays because that's the deadline I set for myself and I'm not going to change it because I need to keep it because it is a deadline nonetheless and what am I going to blog about this time nothing is happening in my life that's worth blogging about and if I just typed about my stream of consciousness that would be really boring and people would stop reading my blog and that's not good at all and plus my stream of consciousness is probably very long and winding and  bumps into a lot of walls and who would be reading it and why am I still thinking about this I'll just do it Monday" panic attack.

Anyway, so far my brain is welcoming (post 1), enjoys current pop music (post 2), listens to said music on the radio (post 3), likes to draw parallels (post 4), hates posters (post 5), ponders utensils (post 6), and enjoys pointless summaries (post 7; you are here).

You might say I have a reader-welcoming, music-listening, radio-addicted, parallel-drawing, poster-hating, fork-pondering, post-summarizing brain.  Say that ten times fast without taking a breath.

But again, this is my seventh post.  That's an accomplishment.

Were my blog a calendar, it would be a week long.