Category Archives: One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0

Confession: I may be addicted to Twitter

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Anyone else feel like this week was actually two weeks worth of suck crammed into the giant-sized Monday of a mega-sucky week? My car got stuck in my yard because of snow, which is annoying. Some very Howard Dean screaming later and I managed to get snacks. Unfortunately, I had no idea that the Sprecher Hard Root Beer tastes a whole lot like Robitussin. That isn’t what I was hoping for when I made such a purchase.

Welcome to the first Free-For-All Friday, which would have been called Cluster-**** Friday but I want to pretend I have some capacity for classiness. And I have relatives who read my blog occasionally and I’d rather let them live with the understanding I would never use such language ever. Even if I’m fairly certain I’ve dropped my fair share of f-bombs on here in the past.

Today is also another Follow Friday on Twitter. I have more fun with that than I should. Embarrassingly enough, this is probably indicative that I spend too much time social media. Or not enough? Probably not enough, in reality.

Let me just say this much: I may be addicted to Twitter. Please note that I don’t mean to make light of actual, serious addictions, as I have seen their effects firsthand. It’s hyperbole. That said, I consider this to not be such a bad thing. Before I can really go into why it’s good, at least for me, I should probably provide a brief history of my weird approach and eventual sort-of-but-not understanding of Twitter. Continue reading →

Lady Ghostbusters won’t actually ruin your childhood

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Good evening, readers. And people who happened to click a link to this post while trying to scroll on smart phones, tablets, and other touchscreen devices designed for such misclicks. Welcome to the first of undoubtedly many Throwdown Thursdays, which is a thing I came up with instead of making Throwback Thursday happen on my blog. I avoid posting old pictures of myself because they’ve been known to cause irreversible blindness, but if I were into that sort of thing I would post them on whatever day of the damn week I want.

The purpose of Throwdown Thursday posts is to pick a topic–preferably a relatively relevant one–and…basically rant a bit. I can’t justify dolling up the point of these posts when they’re actually just therapeutic venting with a chance someone else might read it.

I’ll admit that I was really torn on tonight’s subject. Commenting on how people being shocked by snow in January is actually the most shocking part of winter was a close front-runner. That changed when I saw the reactions to the cast reveal for the Ghostbusters reboot. It’s like someone filled a garbage bag with highly concentrated crazy, held it over the Internet, and tore it open in response to the news of who would be the leading ladies of this brave new version of a Hollywood treasure. Before I even dare leap into the bulk of me losing my mind over just how ridiculous this non-issue is, let’s take a look at what the problem is. What group of B-list, no-named losers did Paul Feig cobble together for this terrible, sad knock-off again? Continue reading →

Weekly Progress Recap

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I was going to name this day’s entries Wednesday’s Weekly Work Updates, but I would hate myself too much. And so, for now, dies the alliterative titles.

Wednesday’s posts are simple ones, acting more as a kick to my ass to help me get moving a little faster for the remainder of the week (instead of potentially slowing down, of course) instead of a means of being entertaining. Just like all of my other blog posts are something other than a means of entertainment. Zing! I really burned myself there.

My heart’s not in this tonight, as I took a nap that left me feeling like someone pushed me down a cartoonishly tall cliff, complete with many rocks for me to bounce off of.

The Progress So Far

Unnamed Novel-Project – 53/??? pages; 1 new chapter in progress, plenty of editing completed

One Hundred Days of Blogging version 2.0 – What the **** was I thinking?

Things I Need to Focus On

“Cordelia’s” (short story) – Status: Mapped out in a notebook

“Woman Seeks Vampire for Dinner and a Movie” (short story; tentative title) – Status: Locked in my brain-meat

Projects On Hold

The Lodgers (novel) – Started, but trapped in creative Limbo

The Devil Sort of Made Me Do It (novel; tentative title) – Started, but trapped in creative Limbo

[Redacted] – Nope. Nope nope nope. Not telling. Sorry.

Miscellany

Super Deluxe Commented Copy of Joshua Harkin and the Wicked Nightmare King for Lindsey (the best beta-reader the aforementioned book had) – Uh…In progress-ish.

…

I feel like there’s more going on, but I can’t honestly think of it at the moment. Obviously this is ignoring my 45+ hours of work and tendency to take naps on a regular basis.

Ninety-six days remaining.

Something alliterative involving Tuesday

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I haven’t even written a Tuesday post and I already changed my mind on what Tuesday’s posts are going to involve. That sounds like a strong indication of how quickly this misadventure is going to devolve into shenanigans.

To settle this problem, while giving myself enough room to turn Tuesday into a blend of whatever-I-want posts, I’m going to call Tuesday posts Topical Humor Tuesdays for now. Make a note of that for when I invariably change it to something different next week. And the week after. Moving on.

A note added after the post was finished: it turned out more like Tirade Tuesday, but I’m not admitting defeat just yet because there is some topical humor involved (damn it).

Any of you who follow me on Twitter (Anyone? No? Ah well.) are familiar with my tendency to live-tweet things. Sometimes while also some degree of intoxicated. There’s nothing, I’ve found, more enjoyable to drunk live-tweet along with than awards shows, and there’s no award show more fun to drunkenly live-tweet alongside than The Academy Awards (aka The Oscars aka The Awards Show for People Who Can’t Pronounce Names). It’s a huge night for the who’s who of Hollywood, presumably after many weeks of actors and actresses practicing their best I-can’t-believe-I-won faces in the mirror.

No offense meant to Kristen Wiig, a comedy treasure. This just happened to be one of the first results for "surprised celebrity".

No offense meant to Kristen Wiig, a comedy treasure (who, thankfully, will never see this post). This just happened to be one of the first results for “surprised celebrity”.

Continue reading →

And now for Music Mondays

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Better known as day one of me deliberately finding ways to create horrible, cheesy alliterative titles for each day’s over-arching theme. That was the compromise I made with myself to help justify any sort of set organizational system. The more you know?

This is the first of many Mondays in One Hundred Days of Blogging 2.0, and the first of many Music Mondays. This was actually one of the first idea-bits that inspired me to revisit this horrible, painful experience.

Right. Moving along.

Jonathan Coulton is to thank or blame for the inspiration that gradually evolved into this first post. I found myself in need of a new CD in my car. I threw together an assortment of songs from my iTunes library, popped a CD in my laptop, and almost forgot to retrieve it before I left for work.

It turned out to be the antithesis of what I was hoping to end up with, so that’s unfortunate. At least that’s how I felt about it until I got to one track in particular. “Nobody Loves You Like Me” from Jonathan Coulton’s CD Artificial Heart. I’m one of many people who were introduced to Coulton’s music thanks to “Still Alive” at the ending of Portal. I could probably go on about why I think his music, overall, is spectacular, but I really want to focus on Artificial Heart. First: if you’ve not listened to Artificial Heart before, I’d suggest taking a moment to buy it, listen to it, and probably fall in love with it. Continue reading →

The revenge of the return of me self-destructing through writing

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It’s almost a month into the new year. I’m seven chapters and a couple of dreadful, pained paragraphs into chapter eight (because killing a major character is proving more difficult than I’d expected, so that’s regrettable). I’ve also watched three seasons of The Legend of Korra and a whole lot of Parks and Recreation, which is just great for not being productive.

Brianne and I had a delightful conversation about my writing, by which I mean she reminded me to stop focusing on what I haven’t accomplished. There was a specific mention of One Hundred Days of Blogging, the details of which are a bit blurry because I vaguely recall words intermingled with me screaming internally, and then an idea happened. It started as only a couple words, which was enough to lead to it finding a spot in my Miscellaneous Shit Notebook That Deserves a Better Name.

Let me make it perfectly clear that I hate myself so much for the words I’m about to type.  Continue reading →