One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Fourteen

Did I commit to one hundred days of blogging? Or was it one thousand? It feels like it’s going to be a thousand. Feel free to mock me for bitching already.

This is a glorious Tuesday, except for the impressive number of hours that were absolute shit. However, the important bits remained important, and I’m pretty stoked about those. Tonight will be another pop culture-loaded nerd-post, which should be a nice break from my writing posts. Or maybe not.

Tuesday nights are sacred in the Wacky Shack to begin with, and this Tuesday was just full of awesome. And this intro has been dragged out far too long. Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Thirteen

“Happy Monday!” – said no sane person in the history of the planet. What is it about Mondays that make me want to apply a cattle prod to people’s eyeballs? I mean, sure, most people approach Monday with all the charm and cheer of Garfield (or, if you’re feeling a bit surreal, Garfield Without Garfield). That’s probably not helping anyone.

Maybe it’s because a weekly adventure at The Wacky Shack may involve watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, if only because Brianne watches it while chatting with her friends about how bad it is (and other things that actually matter). These shows are a special kind of Hell, and they certainly only contribute to the Monday miasma of shittiness. No, WordPress, I don’t mean skittishness back there. I can’t judge them for their Monday night television choices, because I’ve got plenty of guilty pleasures, too (arguably not nearly as bad as watching The Bachelor or The Bachelorette, but I suppose that’s a bit subjective).

This post has been lurking around in the back of my thoughts for a while, and so I’m going to put it to work. Shameless geekery ahead. Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Twelve

Today’s the first time in a long time I’ve slept in on my day off. I mean actually, properly slept in. Woke up at 10a.m. and everything. As it turns out, my body no longer likes sleeping in, so it was less of a pleasant series of stretches as I woke from my peaceful slumber, and more like me slowly dragging my ass out of bed when I realized I’d definitely slept far too late for my own good.

I miss the days of staying up until 5a.m. for any number of reasons, followed by sleeping until noon. Except not really. I’m full of self-contradicting shit today because it’s almost 1p.m. and I chose writing and breakfast over showering, so I’m probably the most disgusting person alive right now.

As promised, I’m going to write at least twenty short stories for this blogging misadventure I’ve embarked on, and I’d hate to make myself a liar. Before I get too caught up in how happy I am with this story, overall, despite the high chances it still has a couple typos, I need to point out two things.

Thing One – The stories I’m posting here are, in all probability, first drafts with only some polishing from my editing efforts. I miss a lot of my own screw-ups, but this feels like my best option given the time restraints I have imposed upon myself.

Thing Two – In the event I miss a Day of Blogging, I will rest the counter back to Day One, and then sob uncontrollably for at least an hour for being such a complete and utter failure. And because starting over and doing anything for one hundred days sounds like a special kind of Sisyphusian Hell.

Speaking of Hell, here’s today’s post/story. Enjoy, and I apologize for my slightly-more-vulgar-than-usual language (only to my relatives who may be unaware I use such foul words). Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Eleven

Today’s post is certainly cutting it close to the deadline, but I’m mostly okay with that. Probably. Maybe freaking out a little. However, this late posting is partially thanks to going out for ice cream and watching unexpected fireworks, and suddenly I have an unexpected lead-in to the topic I’d wanted to write about.

The Universe works in mysterious ways, while I speak this rhyme of clichés? Yeah. Let’s go ahead and wipe that last sentence from our collective memory. No looking back. Don’t you dare, damn it. Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Ten

Today was a frustrating day, with much potential wasted thanks to a lingering writing funk. The writing funk made a peculiar transition to a different issue, in which I had three short stories fighting for my attention at once. I’ve had this happen before, but I could never quite sort it out on my own. I either let it sort itself out, or I just went without writing for a while.

Forgive the moment of fanboying, but I instead took this opportunity to tweet C. Robert Cargill (best-selling author of Dreams and Shadows and Queen of the Dark Things) and ask him for advice. He’s an author, so I figured 1) he would have some pretty solid wisdom he could impart, and 2) he wouldn’t respond because best-selling authors have more important things to do. And then he responded, and I melted into a shrieking jelly-like blob of star-struck dumbness.

He suggested I write the story most ready to be worked on, and let the other two wait. This story, a mini-series just for this project, happened while I was taking a short drive earlier to try clearing my head a little. It was a lot of fun to write, and I hope it proves fun to read as it was a little out of my comfort zone (the humor is more subdued compared to the fantasy aspects of this piece). It’s only the beginning so far, but I promise there will be more before long. Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Nine

Today has me feeling a bit tired, and I know it’s not entirely from work. I took a nap, which turned into one of those naps so mighty it blocks out any alarm clock sounds. And so I awoke, groggy and slightly hungry, to what should be an evening of writing.

There’s a general malaise about me at the moment. With enough effort, I could probably banish it, but it’s one of those nasty little bastards that just sort of leaves me shrugging my shoulders and feeling generally apathetic. Chief among my complaints is being unable to find a comfortable spot to write in, which sounds a lot like a first-world problem. I briefly considered buying a desk, if only because I’m ready to throw my Surface 2 out the window and call it a night.

All of this complaining has a point. I promise. Two points, really, because it does serve as some small level of venting (which would be going much more easily if my godddamned mouse would stop leaping to places elsewhere on the screen). It also helps me get to the topic, which wasn’t the planned topic, for today’s post. Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Eight

I’m at that point in the summer where I can’t live in the present. Just isn’t happening. My vacation is over a month away, and my focus is fixed on it without possibility of being shifted elsewhere. It’s a real pain in the ass when it comes to being creative, but I’m still finding plenty of energy there. And for work. And for Tweeting. I sure as hell don’t get enough sleep, but I figure that’s an acceptable sacrifice.

My car passed its inspection, and I am tremendously excited and anxious about my impending trip to Chicago. And so this will be one of the (probably many) non-writing posts. Continue reading

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Six

The only appropriate way to read this post is while listening to Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” with your best POGS sitting next to you. That’s right, folks, this is the well-overdo Pokemon celebration post in honor of my 150th and 151st posts.

I got briefly side-tracked by an overwhelming level of stupid that will not be brought up any further in this post. Continue reading

This Week in Misadventures

It’s been a mostly-exciting, somewhat headache-inducing week. Let’s just leap into the actual post. I’m entirely too tired for this early, which is embarrassing, but I want to finish this post before I fall asleep on my Surface 2.

Writing

Do tweets count here? They still don’t, do they? Damn. Ignoring that, there’s “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice”, “Another Starstruck Misfit”, the cannibal story I still haven’t officially named…something else. My brain’s gone a bit soft. I need to get back into setting goals for myself in terms of weekly writing, which sounds mildly suicidal since I’m working on my One Hundred Days of Blogging posts as well. “The Maskmaker’s Apprentice” doesn’t count towards the goal of twenty stories posted, by the way, because I’m apparently challenging myself to write and rewarding myself by making it as punishing as possible. On the plus side, I’ve received so many new commenting readers. Mostly spammers writing comments in Russian, but I’m not too picky when it comes to comments.

I’ve got no particular plans for writing in this coming week, but I might just be lying there. We’ll see.

Reading

So many books, so little time. I’m rereading Let’s Pretend This Never Happened (A Mostly True Memoir), and I picked up The Long Mars. You may be saying “Phil, you buy a lot of books and you should probably read them instead of buying even more books,” to which I say I will never stop buying books. I should, however, get working on reading them. I think a great starting point would be to start over on The Long Earth, move on to The Long War, and then get to The Long Mars. I’m impatiently waiting for Bryan Lee O’Malley’s new graphic novel, Seconds, which sounds like it’ll be a terrific fun read.

Important Miscellany

Car inspection happens this week, which is important for my planned Chicago adventure at the end of August. I’m anxious that something will go horribly wrong, but when am I not? Don’t answer that, anyone. It’ll be the longest road-trip I’ve ever taken, and I’m going solo so it’ll be something else. We’ll see, once all is said and done, what something else turns out to be (good or bad). I’m considering a travel journal to post on here, as there’s still enough time for me to actually plan it out. Or put off planning it and just haphazardly meandering through it like I do with many other things.

The plans for this week include writing, reading, and a little recovering from last week. I’m more excited, I’ll admit, for the week after this one, as I work three days (thanks to a couple leftover paid holidays). Making a trip home to see my family, and I’ll have plenty of time to work on getting some additional writing done. None of which will be spoiled here, of course.

Here’s to a pleasant, hopefully peaceful week for everyone, and remember to keep the Kaiju population under control by getting your Kaiju spayed or neutered.

PS: I’m sorry, but I refuse to see this post linger just beneath five hundred words. Nope. Had to fix that.

One Hundred Days of Blogging – Day Five

It’s Sunday, which means there’s a This Week in Misadventures post around the corner as well. I’d say that’ll be fun. Probably. If nothing else, it’ll offset this business of being awake at 4a.m., which is a time of day only birds and overly-caffeinated college students should experience. I still owe a Pokemon post celebrating my 150th and 151st posts on here, too, but I’ll get to that at some point. Probably.

Today’s topic popped into existence earlier. I had to stop by Walmart, and I encountered two of my favorite drivers. The first was the special sort of jackass who drives diagonals through parking spots to get from point A to point. The other one was someone who parked what I rather unkindly refer to as their compensation truck (the kind of truck that was clearly designed for people who wish to actually pack up everything they own and move it, house and all) over the lines that divided up four parking spots. And that brings me to today’s post topic. Continue reading