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.