I’m rewriting my novel, what do you think?

“Little Mary walked to school one day. She stopped to pick up a pretty daisy for a moment, sniffed it, and continued skipping on her way. “La, la, laaa, la, la-la, la laaa!” She sang.

There was a shadow ahead of her and Little Mary paused in her tracks. “Mr. Bunny!” Mary giggled and ran after Mr. Bunny. She ran over a nearby hill covered in shamrocks.

Can you say shamrocks? Sh- aahhh- mmm- rahh- ks. That’s right!

Then, of course, a giant rock landed on top of her and splattered her to death in a terrible, terrible way.”

—Old Iroquois saying

Last Year: All Hail Patient Joseph, the Step Father of Jesus
| No Comments

I don’t know why I’m surprised

The first answer is always ‘no.’

Last Year: I've seen the same meme three times now. So... why not?
| No Comments

2009

Happy New Year All!

1. Write a novel
2. Write another hundred or so microfictitious stories
3. Ride my bike more often
4. Keep a continuous log of the works you’re reading/have read.
6. Move somewhere cheaper and closer OR get a roommate.
7. Get all A’s.
8. Get a paper accepted at a conference or (cross my fingers) for publication.
9. Write something in philosophy of biology.
10. Solve a crime OR commit one.
11. Transition my life from ‘drama’ to ‘comedy’ without passing ‘tragedy’ or
12. Work on updating the site.
13. Upload everything I worked on from high school onward.
14. Create group blog and see it take off.
15. Not lose more than $200 unnecessarily.
16. Get a camera, laptop, or wacom tablet.
17. Plan ahead, stop being late, but don’t start caring in the process.
18. ________________  You guys fill in the blank.  If anything gets three or more votes, I’ll resolve to do it this year. ¹

Sound good?

1. Remember: “Be less ugly” is not a resolution.  “Try to stop ugglying it up,” however, is.[↩]

Last Year: 2007 pt. 2, 2008
| 1 Comment

2008 Redux

The goal for this year was, of course, to go back over the previous years and work on all the resolutions I never managed to complete.  Here is the annotated list:

1. Go back to Australia… even if I have to sell my blood to do it
   I did it!  From July 17 to August 6 I went back to Oz to visit some old friends!  I had many good times, but I missed my friend Elle, my friend Adriano, and had to miss a philosophy of biology conference in order to do it.  Still: Done and well worth it.
2. Read my weight in books
   Do articles count?  Because otherwise I failed at this one miserably.  I’ll modify it and try again in 2009.
3. Go to at least one concert, one roadtrip, one vacation, one date, move twice, and talk to at least three strangers
   I went to the Magnetic Fields on October 12 with my friends Adelay, Heather, and Russ!
   I drove to Seattle, back to New Mexico, to North Carolina, to DC a few times, and just finished a tour of Pennsylvania!
   I vacationed in Mexico for six weeks and Australia for three!  (Guess which one was much, much cheaper?  Even discounting airfare, too.)
   I went on 1.5 dates with girls I never saw again!  Then, I possibly kissed 3 girls in unrelated events (not in a row, obviously).
   I moved to Seattle in February, back to New Mexico in March, and to North Carolina in August!
   I talk to strangers regularly!  Only I call them my friends.  Also, I don’t really understand why this was ever a resolution.  Maybe I meant something hidden by it back in the day, I don’t remember.
4. Finish the Great American Novel
   Still working on it.  But now I have both ideas and inspiration.  No time, though.
5. Save someone’s life
   I prevented someone from being born, punched a fat person (but didn’t press too many charges), and did an “It’s a Wonderful Life“-style thing for someone.  I also gave great advice and was a pretty good friend to some people.  All told: I’m okay with not doing this one.
6. Buy furniture, even if it’s just a bean bag
   I sleep in a $1000 bed every night.  It is so comfortable!
7. Memorize five more poems, pi, or learn the nations of the world
   I’ll do this later?
8. Paint/fix my car
   I worked on fixing my car and added some minute bits of paint to it.  Sum total: I’ll probably never make it pristine until I try to sell it later.
9. Make a new true friend, but be a good friend to all the old
   Bre, one of the fifth years here, is my BFF Forever (BFFF)!  And I still love all my friends from the past, even if it is very hard to talk to them with any regularity!
10. Probably something having to do with women… or cantaloupe
    Frankly, that sounds kind of gross now that I think back on it.  But everyone loves Pixel for some reason and Pixel feels an odd sense of confidence now, so he wins.  Yey!
11. Produce a comic… or at least paint something
    I did!  I made a bunch!  As soon as I have time and patience and contentment with a job well done, I will make them all fabulous and put them up online.
12. Buff out
    Nope, but then again, I JUST got my bike and gym membership, so… since they were a big part of my original plan, I predict success pretty soon.
13. Get a job
    I tutored in Maths for a while back in March, and it was fun!  But then resolution 14 got in the way and I had to quit.
14. Be a grad student
    This was scary for a little while……  But I DID IT!
15. Sell my car / buy a new one
    I like my car!  I’m hoping it lasts another 120,000 miles!
16. Help my cousin emigrate
    I tried, believe me.  But bureaucracy needs time, you know?  Still: it would have been so complicated for a few months were she here.
17. Write 100 works of necroautobiographical microfiction
    I wrote 4.  But I got a cool program that might help me.
18. _______________ Audience may fill in the blank here.
    You never did!

So I accomplished 12 out of 18.  Of the rest, I still want to do 4.  So I accomplished two thirds of my goals and only still care about two thirds of the rest!

I’d call this year a success.  At least on paper.  How did you do?

Last Year: 2007 Redux
| 1 Comment

2008 Off Paper

At the end of the year, I usually write a post in which I go over the previous year’s resolutions and compare whether I’ve achieved them or not.

Back in 2005, I wrote a post I still think about called “remember when…” in which I recalled the mini-adventures that may or may not have made it onto the blog, but still reminded me of very cool events.

I repeated it in 2006, because that also seemed like another chapter of my life being closed (though, when I get my actual memoirs published, it’ll end with a dinosaur fight rather than a blog post).  I didn’t do it at all in 2007, because all it felt like I did that year was try to get 150 hugs.  I succeeded, but at what cost?  Indeed, I ended up calling this year 2007 pt. 2 because I felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything worth writing in the previous year.

So…  here’s 2008 as I remember it. I’ve also included 2007, but that could really just be summed up as work, travel, hugs, visits, and grad school apps.

• Applications to grad school and the bitter torture of waiting.
• The first death of a friend I’ve had to deal with in my adult life.
• I had blue hair.
• Sadly, people I wanted to respect me got to see it.
• Anson looked like Trotsky.
• I kissed three people I should not have and not a single person I should have. ¹
• I was punched.  In the FACE.  By a fat man.  Sadly, this was still not one of the top three worst days of 2008.
• I had the absolute worst 12-hour period in my life.   I would not wish that day on my worst enemy…. And, because of promises and such, I can never say why to anyone.  Ever.
• I got into Fucking DUKE!
• I moved in with an old, rich lady with very large dogs that would always bark when I came home.
• … and she sort of fell in love with me.
• Skype chats
• E-mail exchanges
• Three months of vacation
• A week away in an awesome mansion
• Visiting T-Rob.
• Living alone
• Going out drinking on weekends with a few good buds.
• Driving, ugh.
• Helping far too many people move.
• Getting to see people that truly matter.
• Meeting Bre, Dre, and the other fabulous people here.
• Getting involved in USP.
• The three-day campout for basketball tickets.
• Dancing.
• Far too many people falling for me.  *sigh*
• Thursday foodin’
• “Spot the Logical Fallacy” parties
• “Buzzword Bingo”
• Helping the blind
• Hurting the deaf
• Tutoring in maths
• Applying to graduate school and feeling miserable doing it.
• Trying to collect hugs.
• Visiting everyone I cared about, worried it would be the last time I’d see any of them.
• Being right about one of them.
• B-ball games
• Drinking coffee just to see a cute girl
• Work ponchos
• Reassessing life again and again
• Being funny again, being creative again, but being unable to dedicate time to it.
• Snowboarding
• Finals
• The scariest presentations of my friggin’ life.
• Finding out I was an introvert in situations where I’m afraid I’ll look foolish.
• Bad sweater parties
• Moving away without telling people: multiple times
• NaNoWriMo, oh no!
• NaBloPoMo times so many months.
• Twitter!
• Visiting exes
• Going camping
• Getting a GPS
• Losing moneys and material goods and not caring
• Magnetic fields
• Tightrope walking with people’s emotions

…  I’m forgetting a thousand things.

1. No offense intended to any of those three, of course.[↩]

| No Comments