The All-Important Identity Crisis

It's that time of year (month/day/whatever) when I get a sudden, unfathomable sense of dread. I seem to get it every few months or seemingly at random, sometimes every other week or so. That time when I'm supposed to decide what I want to do FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. And the answer is always, "I have no idea. Stop asking me. You're freaking me out!"

I don't know if this is leftover lazy teenager syndrome (might be) or if I'm truly freaking out. What do I want to do with my life? I want to create, I know that much. Maybe Graphic Design, Interior Design, Writing, Filmmaking, the sky is the limit or something like that. Maybe I don't need to decide yet. I'm still a baby in the world's eyes. So why do I feel the overwhelming urge to make a decision now? Why do I have a now-or-never, do-or-die attitude? Why can't I just, chillax?

The A Word

As I continue to figure out who I am and where I belong in the world and my purpose in life and whatnot, a particular word keeps popping into my head: Atheist.

I am not an atheist but the fact that this topic comes up in my head every day is interesting to say the least. I do believe in a God, however it's not the traditional Bearded Man on Heaven's Throne image that most people see. My God is invisible. Not a person but more like an energy, a controlling force. I call it God but I could just as easily call it Peanut Butter Sandwich if I wanted to (and if those didn't already exist).

I think that the reason I can't stop thinking about this is that I must be at that age when I stop believing everything my mother believes just because she believes it. I need to make my own decisions and find my own path in life.

I'd already silently declared myself non-Christian. I've also said many times that I'm not atheistic, just areligious. There's just nothing left that I agree with from the traditional church. I stumbled upon this post from Lisa Kerr. Although I've never been in a cult I can't help feeling the same way she does, or the way Anne Rice does for that matter.

But don't get me wrong, anonymous readers, religion isn't a bad thing. Quite the opposite, religion can be a very positive influence on a person's life. And for many people it is. But for me, it just didn't work out. When religion becomes an instrument of torture, meaning scaring people into believing what you believe by threatening an eternity in hell or a knife in the throat, that's when it becomes poisonous, and should be avoided.

I'm sick of the fact that the world's three largest religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) are also the world's most violent. There was a time when even these three groups got along. Why must there be a power struggle? Why must one side think they're are right for the same reasons another side thinks they're wrong? I think they're all worshiping the same God, just arguing over what to call him (or her, or it, or them).

Personally, I don't think there is a Universal Truth. I don't believe in the One True Way to heaven. I don't know if God is real or not. And frankly, I'm not going to worry about it right now. I don't have all the answers, and for now I'm fine with that. I'm just going to live my life the way I feel it should be lived.

But back to my first statement, I don't know why I have such a problem with the word Atheist, but in the Freudian tradition I'll blame my mother. I was raised in an all-Black Baptist church where the services easily pass the three-hour mark and there are constant displays of people, mostly women, passing out because they are consumed with the Holy Ghost.

Every Sunday there was a particular song played, it could've been any song, really, but at some point came a distinctive bass line. That plus the drums and organ led to the traditional Stomping on the Devil portion of church, followed by the long prayer where the pastor and several of the congregation would speak in tongues.

I was once baptized with the evidence of speaking in tongues. It's not a traditional baptism. I was in the youth group of a very prominent TV pastor's church. There was no water, no white clothes or whatever they do when you're baptized. The preacher's assistant placed some Anointing Oil (available at your local grocery store) on my forehead, said some prayers and sort of pushed me down. I looked at the children who had gone before me. They were lying down on the floor and I suppose speaking in tongues. So I did what they did. I was hoping that I would be speaking in tongues too as this would be my Born-Again date. But instead, I fell asleep. I took a cat-nap while I was supposed to be speaking to God in our own special language. (In my defense, I did wake up at 4am just so my mother could drive us all downtown to the mega-church.)

Bottom-line, it did nothing for me. When our family moved again to a closer, predominantly White but still incredibly Baptist church, similar things happened. There was no more speaking in tongues (I'm not sure how that would go over in a contemporary Baptist church), the old Gospel songs were replaced by synthesized violins on Yamaha keyboards and Jesus-themed pop songs and the Holy Ghost seemed to sit on the sidelines, but I felt the same way in the more intimate contemporary Baptist church that I did in the mega-church and in the small, incredibly HOT old-fashioned Baptist church in my grandmother's neighborhood: Nothing. I felt like I was missing out.

I would see people standing up, raising their hands, praising the Lord, knowing the words to the many songs, shouting out choruses of "Hallelujahs" and "Amens" during sermons and I felt...sleepy. Maybe I was too young to feel anything. But the kids in the youth group could feel the Holy Spirit. They would raise their hands, they knew the words to the many songs. Why couldn't I get into it?

I've never felt close to God in church. I've always felt like an outcast. I felt like I was Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. Like everyone had gotten together ahead of time to pull one over on me and see how I reacted. It just never felt real. In fact, the time I felt closest to God I was a hundred miles away from home and nowhere near a church. I was in the 6th grade and my school took a field trip to the Blue Ridge Mountains. On the first night, we all went outside to this giant MLS field-sized area. There was a giant light that provided our only source of illumination. At one point, that giant light turned off and our field guide told us to look up. I did. And for the first time in my life I could see EVERY star in the sky. I could see the Milky Way. I could see everything. There were so many stars in the sky that provided so much light it started to hurt my eyes. It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life.

I can understand how someone could look at the multitude and magnitude of stars in the sky and feel like a speck. To gaze upon the universe for the first time is quite a surreal experience and can make you feel alone and insignificant. But I didn't feel that way. I saw those billions upon billions of stars in the sky and felt protected. I felt like each and every star was looking out for me. I'd never felt so secure and safe before in my life. I said to myself, "This is God." I'd give anything to have that feeling back. Two days later I got my first period so that might've had something to do with all the emotions, but for the first time in my life I felt special. I felt loved. I felt like I mattered.

Yeah, God's in there somewhere.

Success!

Finally! I found a Blogger template that didn't completely mess everything up. That is all. Now back to listening to Jonny Greenwood's "There Will Be Blood" movie score.

Up Late.

I figure I should take advantage of my rampant insomnia by posting to mein blog. I don't know why every time I'm out of school my sleep schedule goes way off what is considered normal. I was so close to going to sleep before midnight and waking up while the time still reads A.M. Oh, well.

Anyway, I think the new fancy pants journal that looks older than time did the trick. I am writing and enjoying it again. (Hooray!) I also found a cheap-o fountain pen at Target that I already love. You see, fountain pens make me feel special. I can say, "I write with a fountain pen" and people say, "Oh wow! How cool." I love Target, too. It's like an upscale Walmart. I figure they sell the same things at the same prices, it just looks nicer at Target.

I'm only on page 4 of my new retro-journal and I've discovered that the longer I write the smaller my handwriting is. This is both good and bad news. Good: The journal will probably last forever. Bad: By the time I reach the end my handwriting will be so small I'll need a microscope to see it. But at least it will be finished. (Hashtag: Silver Lining)

There are many plot points I need to figure out. My novel, still titled The Hartigan War as of today, is rusty and dusty from years of neglect and needs a bit of a scrubbing. So I'm digging out my metaphorical rubber gloves and whipping out the book-scented Pine-Sol and getting to work. (On a side-note I think I might be developing OCD. Thanks a lot, Hoarders.)

Some things I would like to think about before finally getting to sleep:

• Why is the mother in my stories either dead, dying, or evil?
• Why do I call what I'm writing stories instead of novels? It is an aspiring novel after all, right? Right?
• Why does driving at night in an unknown area FREAK ME OUT?
• And most obviously: Why am I not asleep yet?

Perhaps when I wake up (12 hours from now) I shall have an answer to at least one of those.

Nighty night, fellow insomniacs.

Mein Baby

I suppose my invisible audience would like to know more about my current Work-In-Progress, no?

Well, it is called (at the moment) The Hartigan War. It takes place during the American Civil War and centers around the Hartigan family, a vaguely half-Irish, half-French Southern family.

If it weren't currently in the midst of a massive plot overhaul I would tell you things that happen in the beginning like why my main character runs away from home and how he ends up enlisted in the Union army (I still don't know how he joins the Union army), but basically, the main character's name is Adam. His father is a douche and his mother has just died. Adam runs away with a slave named Aria and they head up north to the New York state area. Somehow Adam ends up in the Union Army where he meets a con-artist named Matthew and STUFF happens. I don't know what because I keep changing it.

What I NEED to do is sit down and write. Just write out what comes into my head instead of letting my inner-editor come in and say, "That's no good. Change it. Change it NOW!" I need to tell her to fuck off.

But not to worry, invisible readers, I shall keep you updated on what happens in my novel and how my hands are or are not functioning.

Happy writing!

Camp NaNoWriMo

I was snooping around on the internet when I decided to revisit the NaNoWriMo website, mainly because I was trying to see if my Scrivener coupon was still good. It is. (Note-to-self, it expires in September.) Anyway, I came across the brand spanking new Camp NaNoWriMo website and signed up. Apparently the site is for those who wish to pull a NaNoWriMo in July and August. I guess you pick one or the other, or both. Either way, I've signed up which means I'll be writing a 50,000-word novel in July and/or August.

Oh, crap.

And I'll be writing it by hand as I just bought this really awesome journal from Barnes & Noble that looks 200 years old and fits the context of my story perfectly. My hands already hurt. I wonder if my hand will even be functional by the end of July and/or August. Well, the point of doing NaNoWriMo is pushing yourself towards that finish line. I did just give myself a deadline for my current WIP, currently titled, The Hartigan War (I say 'currently' because as I mentioned in my previous post, this WIP has gone through more name changes/identity crises than I can count). I've been doodling with it for the past 8 years and I've officially announced my deadline for completion at October 31. Just in time for the next NaNoWriMo.

I imagine that by the time I've finished 3 months of handwriting fury the blisters on my left hand will have their own blister babies, complete with condos and tennis courts. And my brain will either be infinitely stronger during this word production marathon, or it will have overheated and melted out of my ears. Either way, by the end of it I should have one steaming pile of NOVEL that I can call my own. Squee.

Let's see how this one goes.

New Blog aka A 3-Post Day (So Far)

I've decided to move all of my posts from the sometimes hard to remember Things That Ransomed My Mind Blogspot to the easier to remember and brand spanking new Is Blog, Yes? Blogspot. Just because.

Again, I'm strangely productive when I should be sleeping.

I Want To Be a Korean Rapper

I have suddenly developed an intense love of Korean hip-hop.

Because of this sudden intense love of K-Pop as it's apparently called, I want to go to South Korea and become a Korean pop star. It shouldn't be THAT hard, right?

In fact, there are a lot of things I want to do right now: I want to redesign my room now that I've found out what a mezzanine is and need one (I don't think my bedroom was designed for a bed). I want a calming space to live in and I so don't have that right now. I hate yellow. My walls are yellow. I hate red. My carpet is red. I hate carpet unless it's extremely cushy. I have carpet that is considerably not cushy. I hate popcorn ceilings. I have popcorn ceilings. My window has a broken pane and was "fixed" with packing tape. The electrical outlets went on strike (except for one scab) and I'm forced to use a surge protector plugged into an extension cord plugged into the kitchen downstairs. It's a ghetto setup for reals.

Part of me just wants to say "screw it" and move out. Far out. Hence the South Korea dreamin'. In fact, I might not actually want to be a Korean rapper. Maybe what I desire is change. I want to get out of this environment and do something cool. I feel like a muggle. I want to hang with the cool, unsupervised kids who have to save the world or something (I didn't read the books, okay?) but instead I'm stuck with that awful family from the first five pages. I want to get to the part where the story picks up. I want excitement!

I am bored to tears with the life I'm living.

And since I can't exactly afford a trip to South Korea at the moment, I must think of other things to do. Like....Like.....Like.....I'll get back to you on that.

Bad Habits Re-Emerge but with some Good News

So what if it's 4am and I haven't gone to sleep yet. I've figured out what's wrong! With my writing, that is. As much as I love my Temple of the Red Velvet Jesus novel, those characters are driving me crazy. But I'm finally in the mood to write again and I'm doing everything I can to stay in that mood. But not with Ryan und Forrest for a while. So I've decided to move back to the first novel I ever started.

This is a novel that has gone through more title and plot changes than I can name. It's completely unrecognizable from it's original version from 2003. Literally the only thing that hasn't changed is the time period. Everything else, from character names, to the characters themselves and the plot is entirely different. I guess that's what happens when you've been working on a story for 8 years. Let's see if I can get this one finished by the decade mark.

Here's to a new-found purpose in das writing. Maybe I can finally get to sleep.

New NHL Format

All right, kiddies. So with the recent loss of my beloved Atlanta Thrashers I can't help but wonder about the other teams now in danger of relocation now that the ball has been officially dropped by our dear friend Gary "No Cookies for you!" Bettman. My suggestion, now that I have no ties to the NHL, is to really shake things up. I say we go on a relocation FRENZY.

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!

So here's the plan:

Toronto Maple Leafs: So what if they're an Original Six team? Their attendance was low last year and their fans get on my nerves, along with their grammatically incorrect team name. I can think of a city that's been hankering for an NHL team for a while. So we take the Maple Leafs and move them West as they become...the Seattle Coffee Beans! In the sense of teams with stereotypical names I believe the Coffee Beans would be a perfect team name. The city of Seattle could even build their venue right by that giant phallic symbol known as the Space Needle! Make it seven? Revert to 6! The best part of it is that the jilted Leafs' fans will now be forced to cheer for the Ottawa Senators. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I hate having to rake the leafs. Damn nature.

NY Islanders: The New York Islanders have had some ownership and attendance issues that I really don't care to go into because I really don't care. So what do we do? Scratch 'em. They, too will be moved west and become --the Kansas City Islanders! That's right, anonymous Isles' players, none of whose names I can think of at the moment, you get to trade in your Canadian brand Northern Yankee beer for some MOOOOONSHIIIIINE! You'll love it. And the fact that a team named the Kansas City Islanders makes no sense at all really fits the NHL philosophy!

So...that's a picture of Long Island?

Colorado Avalanche: Again, feel really bad for the fans in Colorado, but you've got so much to do in Denver, like....skiing and......snowboarding and.......pot or something. Anyway, pack up your g-strings, Matt Duchene! You're moving to VEGAS!!! That's right, the Las Vegas Avalanche. Again, I'm keeping with the trend of names that don't make sense. The major perk for the city is that you don't even have to build a venue. You can just kick Celine Dion out of her place! It's a win-win!

Sure, let's name a team after a natural disaster! At least this one SPARKLES.

LA Kings: The state of California has three (3) NHL franchises. Three! (3!) Do they really need three? (3?) Since San Jose (Sharks) is considerably north of Los Angeles (Kings) and Anaheim (No Longer Mighty Just Regular Ducks) they will stay put. The contest is now between the Kings and Ducks. The Ducks were named after a Disney movie and NO ONE is allowed to argue with Disney, so they will stay and the Kings will jet East. Can you say HARTFORD? That's right! Another city with loyal fans that were so wrongfully snubbed by the NHL. Not to worry, Hartforders. Your suffering ends! Although, we will need a team name more environmentally friendly than Whalers so, once again sticking with nonsensical and quasi-racist team names, you will become the Hartford Comanches! Not only can Hartforders regain the magic of having people know where their city is because they finally have a tourist attraction, they can also enrich their history of the Comanche Indians from where ever they're from. Dual-purpose!

What kind of team wears purple, anyway?

Now, readers, I'm sure you're wondering what with all these cross-country moves how the new divisions will line up. Well, I'll tell you: We're gonna scrap 'em! We are starting all over. In the New and Improved NHL there will be 15 divisions! That's right, 15! Two teams per division and they will play each other 82 times, alternating cities each time. The division leaders will get a playoff spot.

One day's worth of travel in the New NHL

And again, with 15 teams in the playoffs I bet you're wondering how that will work. Well, the first place team will have the luxury of playing themselves in the best-of-7 series in the first round of the playoffs! We will split the team right down the middle. So if the Vancouver Canucks manage to pull off another President's Trophy we can finally split up those freakin' Sedin twins in something other than the NHL All-Star Exhibition I'm Just Here for the MVP Prize Game.

Seriously, they need to stop being so creepy.

My hope is that, since they have that freaky twin thing, they'll keep accidentally passing to each other. No one will score and the games will go on forever because, did I mention, we're getting rid of overtime! So that best-of-7 series could in theory go on forever because no one can score. They'll be playing 24/7 and the season will never end. EVER! Ahhhhhhhh, good times.


Now, all we need to do is get Mr. No Cookies for You on the line and feed him the new business plan. Who's with me?

Long Day: aka This is NOT the end of the movie

When I woke up this morning I decided that I would write all day. I knew I'd been feeling better because for the second day in a row I didn't have that creepy Sleep Paralysis thing (meaning, hopefully, that I am less stressed out). I feel my life is starting to improve, except for the fact that I can't wake up when my alarm goes off to save my life.

Anyway, my plan was to write all day today. That didn't work out. Surprise, surprise. I wrote a few hundred words and diddled around with Scrivener for a while before becoming distracted by the timesuck that is Twitter for the rest of the day.

Then, around 10:15pm I started getting tweets about an upcoming speech. What was going on? Due to the types of people I follow on Twitter (sci-fi geeks, etc.) there were many joke tweets about the end of the world, how there was a meteor hurtling towards Earth, or how we'd made alien contact. But it turned out to be far more important/significant than that: after 10+ years of searching, the US had finally captured and killed Osama bin Laden.

My reaction was typically how I react to anything and everything: That's cool. Now what?

President Obama gave a very beautiful speech (kudos to his speech writer). People gathered outside the White House and the WTC and waved flags while singing God Bless America. Even Phillies fans were chanting USA! USA! during the ninth inning of a tie game versus the Mets.

It felt nice that America could take part in a similar celebration that the Egyptians did when Mubarak stepped down.

But of course, it didn't last. I didn't mind the jokes about Osama bin Laden or even the Osama's Ghost and Osama in Hell Twitter accounts that popped up. Some of the jokes were funny. What bothered me was how quickly and inevitably it turned to Democrats versus Republicans. I found it disgusting how all of a sudden everything became "Obama finished what George W started" "George W couldn't find him but Obama could." In other words, everything became all finger-pointy. And, of course, FoxNews and CNN joined in on it.

But the tweet that inspired this post essentially said that all Muslims were responsible for what happened on 9/11 and how it was "our turn to dance" on the streets after Muslims celebrated our deaths. That kind of thinking is what pisses me off. To say that an entire demographic of people is responsible for an attack of that magnitude is socially irresponsible. To say that all Muslims are responsible for 9/11 is no different from the group of Islamic terrorists who say that all Americans are money-loving heathens who must be destroyed.

You cannot take a group of extremists who happen to be Muslim and then say that ALL Muslims are extremists who want us to die. The terrorists said the same thing and we know how wrong they are, right? So what makes a person think that they can tip the scale to the other side of the Prejudice Board and claim that they're in the right as well. It's extremist thinking and has no place in the world. Least of all my Twitter feed.

Alas, the death of a terrorist does not make racism go away. It does not make terrorism go away. It does not make hatred, or ignorance, or bigamy go away either. If anything, it makes both sides more justified in their beliefs. We should not for one second pretend that Osama bin Laden's death is the end of the movie, that everyone will go home and have tea and cookies and lots of babies and the credits roll and everyone is happy. That's not how the real world works. Bin Laden's death may or may not see Al-Qaeda elevating him to martyr status, further fueling their fight against the US. America has a LOT of work to do now. We're in no position to pack up and go home.

There may be (and probably are) some Islamic extremists who believe that bin Laden's death is further proof of the US's assault on the Islamic way of life. Just as there may be (and probably are) some Americans who believe that bin Laden's death means that we were right and they were wrong and they have no choice but to accept Western-style democracy.

I long for the day where we can all take a Zen-like look at the world. When we look at our wars and all the people who have suffered because of them and let out a big WTF and knock it off. I long for the day when we can all get along because that's what we should've done millennia ago.

The mastermind behind 9/11 may be dead but that doesn't mean that terrorism is dead and we can all live in World Peace. The battle is not over. It isn't over by a long shot.

Back In It

I'm going to pick up on The Temple of the Red Velvet Jesus again. I need to get this finished. So I can be published and awesome and totally non-gloating by rubbing my book in your face.

And screw Script Frenzy. I'm just not feeling the screenwriting thing anymore. Oh, well.

So after I awake. At some point during the day as I will be very busy doing whatever, I will pull out my manuscript and get to work. Not working on it makes me feel unaccomplished and lazy. And if there's anything I hate, it's feeling lazy. (That's right, I'm a *procrastinating* workaholic. Is conflict, yes?)

At this point I'm not entirely sure how my little fledgling novel is going to end up. I've made so many changes (in my head) that I don't know where it's going. But I look forward to finding out.

I blame Twitter for this sudden desire for productivity. Since hockey season (or at least the Thrashers' season) ended I've been following more writers. There are so many writers on Twitter who either have books out or will have them out soon. I want to be one of those. I want to be published. I want to be something.

But first. I need to sleep.

Here's to dreams of publishing.

Lent Update

I know how for some people a Lent promise is more like a New Years' (Year's? Years?) Resolution in that it typically gets a lot of attention for about a week or so then is promptly forgotten. Not so for me.

Even though I have not posted since 14 March, I have not gotten my Lent promise out of my head: to NOT procrastinate.

I must admit. I have been doing a LOT of procrastinating. Take this post for example: I started writing this post about a month ago and have never been able to finish it. And now it is the day before Easter. Technically Lent is over. And I don't feel like I've come anywhere close to accomplishing my goal of not procrastinating. I feel a little like this instead.

So how did my Lent "experiment" go?

MASSIVE EPIC FAIL.

I don't know why I'm such a procrastinator. I don't know why I like to put myself under unnecessary stress. It's a bad habit that, for the sake of my health and sanity, needs to change. I don't know how I'm going to do it but it's something that must be done. If Lent can't cure my procrastinating ways, what can?

What is Lent? AKA: I'm already breaking my promise

According to Wikipedia's Lent page, because it's SOOO accurate:

Lent in the Catholic tradition, is the period of the liturgical year leading up to Easter. Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance, almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And as I stated in my previous post, I'm trying my darndest to give up procrastinating for Lent. How is that going? Not too well.

Last night I pulled an all-nighter staying up until 5am to not just finish, but WRITE my speech about the Mozart Effect (MOZART!!!!!). I put that speech off for so long. I'd know about the speech since the first day of class in January. We were officially handed out the assignment about three weeks ago. I finally started writing it less than 24 hours away from the due date. Despite all of this I did surprisingly well.

I have no idea why I can't just sit down and do the work assigned to me in a reasonable amount of time. I don't know why I become so productive when there's hardly enough time to do the work. I guess I work well under pressure. That might be why I did so well in NaNoWriMo, a competition where you stretch the limits of your creative writing ability.

For NaNoWriMo I got off to a great start, another thing I'm very good at. There was no school, there was nothing else to do, and since both the internet and cable were out there were no distractions. But halfway through November, when the telly came back on and I could do something more besides watching Dr. Wayne Dyer on PBS for six hours, I began goofing off again. Then school started back. I went an entire week without writing a word. And that added up tremendously.

In the last week of NaNoWriMo I was once again in a mad rush. I WANTED THOSE WINNER GOODIES! (Even though I did not yet know what they would be.) Things started working out again, the cable and internet went off again, Dr. Amen and his Brain in Love program came on so much that I had memorized half of the 2-hour program, and I got back to work. I finished at 1:50am the day of the deadline and verified my word count at school. The site sent me this:

Among other things...

This was the biggest project I've ever finished. This was the first time I was ever able to finish anything of real importance for me. I was so proud of myself, despite the fact that by the last day of the 30-day contest, I no longer had the mental capacity to form a complete sentence on paper. My fingers literally locked up over the keyboard every time I tried to type, but I got it done.

Which brings me to the point of this excessive rambling: Procrastination can be a good thing. Procrastinating is what forced me to have to be creative and pull words out of my ass and put them on paper in a mostly comprehensible manner.

But it certainly would've gone a lot better had I just been able to get the words on the paper in the first place.

So come on, Lent. Bring it.

This Was Written to Pass the Bloody Time

Since I randomly decided to brutally overtake my kick-ass yet confusing Blogger template with a much less exciting yet more understandable Blogger template, I thought I might as well post some sort of...post to commemorate said happy, happy occasion.

And since my computer's clock says 12:03am, thus making it not Mardi Gras anymore, I can't say and/or do the things on this blog that I could've done just a mere three minutes ago. Sad timing there...

Anyway, I'm not a particularly religious person (maybe I'll explain why in another post, but given what I wrote on my spanking new About Me page, that most likely won't happen) but I do very much appreciate the time of Lent: where devout Catholics willingly give up something they enjoy, be it a bad habit, or a particular food, or activity, for the sake of proving their devotion and ability to resist temptation. All for the love of the Jesus.

I commend all the hardcore Catholics who can pull off such a feat, which for the normal, undevoted sinner can be as hard keeping their New Year's Resolutions. For those who manage to pull off their Lent promises or whatever they're called: I am truly jealous, thus adding more sin to my pile.

So for the sheer, self-annoyance of it, I, a devout non-Catholic, will give up something for Lent as well. And this one is a doosie, because this is something that pretty much defines my life, and existence. Something that without it, I would feel incomplete. That's right world: I'm giving up PROCRASTINATING.

Just in time for my new About Me page in which I so proudly proclaimed my procrastination. I even hailed myself as a Professional Procrastinator. This will be a true test of faith, self-ability, endurance, and any other trait I don't have but will list here for the sake of listing.

How will I do this? When I have a task, I will do it. I will not make excuses. I will not put it on the back burner and completely forget about it until it's almost too late. I will sit my ass down and work until it's done. Which most likely means I will not be wasting as much time on the internet/staring at telly as before.

Imma duke it out. Let's hope I can pull it off.

And for the record: How is my Resolutions coming?

They isn't...

Maybe this midnight epiphany will change that.

I've got the W and the T, I'm sure that F is around here somewhere. AKA: What to do when betrayed by a corporation

Okay, so my To Do List goes as follows:


Clean my room


Work on my novel revision


Exercise


Fix blog errors


Oh, and save the Atlanta Thrashers organization from their neglectful overlords.


That last one might be a doosie. But for those of you who don't know, The Atlanta Spirit Group, an at one time 9-person group of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and obscenely rich men who ventured out to by the Atlanta Thrashers, Atlanta Hawks, and the operating rights to Phillips Arena, recently admitted that they'd been trying to sell my favorite hockey team for the past 6 years, after denying that rumor profusely.

For quite some time Thrashers fans at Phillips Arena have been subject to scores of Quebecois sporting the now defunct Nordiques jerseys, hoping to snag up a struggling team to add to their collection of hockey memorabilia. The people of Hamilton, Ontario also were hoping to get their frigid Canadian paws on my Thrashers, while all the while, the now 7-man Imperial Senate, I mean Atlanta Spirit, LLC said, "No, we don't want to sell. We don't want to relocate. We want to bring championships to Atlanta and build the Hawks and... what's that other team's name?"


The two main co-conspirators even sent the fans of the Hawks and Thrashers this letter saying things that we now know they didn't mean. Things like "our goals remain the same as when we bought these teams: to bring Stanley Cups and NBA Championships to the fans in Atlanta" and "We dream of being a part of the crowd and the city that rallies with pride around the excitement that comes with being a part of the hometown team" and " have a great New Year". After claiming they didn't want to sell for so long, we suddenly find out on 21 January 2011 that not only did they want to sell the Thrashers, they never wanted the team at all, and they bought the Thrashers simply because they were a "packaged deal" or "easy flip." Talk about a slap to the balls.


It basically read like a form letter, you know: "Dear so-and-so. We really appreciate your support of insert team name here and hope for continued support of insert team name here in the future. I've many times seriously wondered if the Atlanta Spirit realized they own a hockey team. I'm not a basketball fan, but I think they've, for the most part, put far more effort into the Atlanta Hawks than the Atlanta Thrashers. After all, there were never any rumors of the Hawks being sold. Some of the owners went to several Hawks games, not so much the Thrashers, games though.

Three of the Thrashers' caretakers (left to right): Ed Peskowitz, Michael Gearon and Bruce Levenson at a Hawks game, not Thrashers. (Curtis Compton)

Think of it this way: the Atlanta Hawks would be the favorite child, the one who gets a car on their 16th birthday, and the college fund, while the Thrashers would be the neglected child who's lucky to get dinner every night. Or you could think of it like you're going on vacation, you leave your house to the care of dear friends, people you'd trust with anything, and you come back to find your home completely trashed. The Atlanta Spirit has taken a team with a tremendous amount of potential, and made sure that they were run right into the ground. 


But despite the negligence and fraud that I firmly believe the Atlanta Spirit could and perhaps should be charged with in a legal setting, my Thrashers have improved, slightly, despite having the odds stacked tremendously against them.


So to save my beloved Atlanta Thrashers from their negligent overlords, I have devised several plans. Some are as far-fetched as winning the lottery and buying them myself and asking Oprah for the money. Others are much more plausible like getting the fans involved in helping to overthrow the establishment. Hey, it worked in the French Revolution. The Thrashers could be a publicly-owned team like the Green Bay Packers, or they could be turned over to be run by the NHL like the Phoenix Coyotes. I think the NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is on the team's and fan's sides and would love to see hockey thrive in Atlanta, as would the fans. But the thing is we need to get the fans involved, that is if there are any fans left after the Atlanta Spirit has tried their darndest to drive them away.


Bottom line is: The Atlanta Spirit, LLC is a group of Imperial Senators, and I think it's high time they were impeached. Or at least got their name changed to something more reflective of their "business tactics".


Sources include: Jeff Schultz, Bill Tiller (Rawhide), and Kristi E. Swartz

Revision

After finally getting through the read through of my work-in-progress "The Temple of the Red Velvet Jesus", I have decided that I hate how my two main characters meet. The original beginning was that they would meet at some sort of "love yourself" assembly at school. I quickly moved to it being a school assignment in English class, then Sociology class, but now I've decided to go back to an assembly of sorts.

My novel has taken a turn for the dark. And I think that's for the best. I'm not good at writing happy stories. So the new beginning is this:

My main character Ryan has a friend (not invented yet) who kills himself. Ryan is a bitter kid, gloomy, and depressed. It's at some sort of class counseling that Ryan and Forrest meet. The first part just seemed way to sitcom-y for me to continue to use it.

So, in closing: the story just got that much better, that much more focused. The bad news is I have to rewrite the first 40 pages or so just to make it fit. Oh, well. It's for the best.

My 2011 New Years Resolutions

Read 100 books

Live within the strengths of my gifts and talents (Matthew 25:15)

Sing in public

Find a physical activity I love to do and will do often

Organize my life

Graduate and find a real job

Leave the country for at least a week

Finish writing 3 novels and 3 screenplays

Learn to have fun with people

Cut TV viewing way back

Take an acting class

Learn Spanish

Take a dancing class

Go to a Thrashers game

Make 3 short films/music videos

Introduce my mother to healthy foods

Take pride in my appearance

Write 50 songs

Take care of my finances

Learn to play guitar

Help out around the house more

Learn to love and accept myself as I am

Learn to relax

Get published

Self-produce an album

New Years?!

For this New Years I've made resolutions, many of which are the same from last year. I did manage to come through on some of them but for the most part, it was complete failure.

I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of New Year's (or Years', I could never figure that out). They're not really like goals, or even dreams, and for me, resolutions are more about getting around to things I still haven't done yet. It's like a laundry list of goals.

Some of my Resolutions include things like:
Graduate and find a real job
Finish my novel
Read 100 books
Self-produce an album
Learn guitar
Leave the country for at least a week
Learn to relax

The last one will be hard as it is physiologically impossible for me to relax. Anyway, I will update as to my status on my resolutions. I should add, "remembering my resolutions" to my resolutions.

I shall update monthly on my Resolution status or whatever.