November is Here!

So begins the month of novel writing. NaNoWriMo.org is what I'm talking about. Already, I'm about 4,000 words in. I know, exhausting to even contemplate. Imagine how I feel. I still can't see myself being able to produce 50,000 words, much less a coherent story. But so far, so good.
I will be blogging at a minimum during this month. It's going to be hard enough writing a novel with finals and such coming up, so something has to give. I'll update with word counts as I get the chance. Hopefully, the world will have another awesome novel by November 30th!

Halloween Ideas

It's almost Halloween, and I always try and do something different each year. It's hard in Wyoming to trick or treat due to the terrible winds and horrific frost bite brought on by the snow. The weather here punishes anyone who isn't wearing the right costume, and since no one wants to see Dracula with a winter coat on, I've stopped doing that. In the past, I've been a delinquent running around stealing candy from kids, and I've been a dead body laying in the grass waiting for people to come see what I'm made of before I yell and get up. Now I need something new.

I have a few ideas. How about I dress up like Stanley Tucci from The Lovely Bones and ask kids if they want to see my secret room? I don't think anything bad can come from that. At all.

Another idea: I will pretend to be a free lance journalist from Sex Weekly and invite people to my secret room.

Yet Another: I will dress up like someone famous and invite people to my secret room.

Anyways, those are my ideas. Yeah.

Still

It still hasn't snowed. Here's a story. 

Impartial Leg Breaker

The minute can be a long time when you're doing something you aren't used to. Take exercise for instance. Even people who work out a lot don't usually do that much in a single minute. Most people think that the only way to work out is to pump iron for a bit and rest when their muscles start to burn. This is a good way to build strength. But what's strength without endurance? The way to build that is to do lots of reps continuously. A minute is a good place to start. And that minute is long the first time.

            This was how Delo felt the first time he tried to build up some endurance. His muscles were strong from years of strength-training; and that was all good, but he didn't like how quickly he lost steam when tossing bodies around. The weights, which were nothing to him under a few reps, taunted his muscles with burning. They mocked his body with their tiny heft. Don had told him to start with a minute and work up from that. But a minute was already seeming like too much. Maybe he should drop down to 30 seconds. If he didn't impress Chris the next time they went out, it was going to be burning a lot more than right now.

            Delo tried a few more times to reach the one minute mark with his curls, but he fell short again. He decided to stop as his anger increased. A quick shower and some fresh clothes later, Chris called. Shit. Delo threw his coat on and grabbed his baseball bat from behind the door in the hallway. It was a lot sooner than last time. And he was still sore from the workout. God dammit.

            The showdown happened like usual. Chris met him by the pay phone and told him to get in the pickup truck. Delo donned the typical paper bag that blocked out the view of everything around him and Chris told him to try and not count the stops and turns along the way. It was part of being an impartial leg breaker. He wasn't supposed to even know where the beating was going down. It helped if he didn't look very hard at the people he was pulverizing either. The less he knew, the more he could deny if anyone came after him. Delo didn't really understand much of it. Not only was it impossible to not count the stops and turns, but the images of those he struck with his bat were permanently burned into his memory. And who cared if he remembered anything? If someone was determined enough to bother to find out who smashed up their guys, they wouldn't be deterred by his pleas that he didn't know a thing, no matter how sincere those pleas were. So it was a weird job.

            Chris was driving the truck fast tonight. They made exactly seven stops, so they hit at least seven red lights, maybe some stop signs if Chris was being a careful driver, which he probably wasn't. The way the vehicle swayed, Delo counted five right turns and three left, meaning they passed through at least one intersection that was uncontrolled. From where they met, Delo surmised they were heading somewhere downtown. He tried to sit relaxed in his seat with his head back like he was getting some shut eye. He didn't know if Chris was fooled by the act, but Delo never got a talking to, so it was all good so far.

            Finally, the truck started to slow and it made a slight right turn as they probably glided alongside a curb. Delo waited for Chris to tell him it was OK to remove his paper bag.

            "Alright, take that thing off your face before someone thinks you're gonna give me head."

            Delo took the bag off and looked out the window of the truck. They were downtown alright, the tall buildings just a few blocks ahead. The building they were parked in front of was a faceless structure with tinted glass windows and a door with some small white print telling them of some lawyer who worked there. There was an alleyway next to the building and Delo supposed they were going down there to beat someone up.

            "That alley there. Some punks like to hang out down there and we gonna give em something to talk about."

            Chris got out of the truck and grabbed his own baseball bat from the bed. Delo sighed and grabbed his own baseball bat from between his legs.

The March continues

I've been prepping myself for NaNoWriMo by doing both 750words.com and Typetrigger.com. Each requires writing every day. The idea is to get into the habit of writing because writing is like exercise-you get more fit the more you do. Short entry today. Just an update on my march to a novel.

Finally

It's finally getting cold here in Wyoming. About time too. Some people (most people) I know like when the weather is blisteringly hot but I'm not one of them. I have this weird thing where my average body temperature is slightly higher than normal. It doesn't make me feverish or anything but I find any warm temperature uncomfortable. It also means that I find 50 degrees warm. I have the opposite of that vampire effect on people. You know the one, where the girl touches the vampire and gasps because of how cold he is. Well, for me people gasp when they feel how hot I am.

So yes, it's cold now and I'm feeling great about it. It's hard for me to sleep when it's hot, and now maybe I'll stop feeling sleep deprived. All I need now is a bit of snow on the ground and I'll be a happy camper (unless I'm driving).

Too Hot

It's interesting that the heater in my dorm room is turned up to maximum. You'd think that in this economy, the ResLife guys would be saving money by shutting the heaters off. I guess they don't care about us that much after we pay several grand for a room.

I'm not even complaining about the normal heat in the dorms, which is ridiculous without the heaters on. It's so hot, I feel faint every time I go out into the hallway because the temperature drops a good 10 degrees instantly. Isn't it reasonable for me to complain about this? After all, this is a lose-lose situation for everyone. ResLife is pouring immense amounts of money into heating the dorms, and it isn't the least bit cold outside. Seriously, right now it's almost 50 degrees outside. That's balmy for Wyoming, especially in October. I can't sleep when it's hot. Something about being covered in sticky sweat makes it very uncomfortable to be lying on a bed.

We are in the middle of a recession and they have the heaters cranked up to maximum. I know this is a rant, but I had to get it off my chest. Maybe someone from ResLife googling their own name will find this post and do something. Otherwise, I'm going to get heat stroke and become a very rich man suing the school.

A Treatise for Life Alert

I have a theory about Life Alert bracelets. For those of us who don't know what a Life Alert bracelet is; it's a little button that calls the cops. Old ladies use it for when they fall and can't get up. It's a good plan. But they need to market those things to other people too!

I'm a college student. I have no roommates since I had a bad experience with them. What does this mean? It means if I were to fall over and break my back or for some reason suffer a massive heart attack (unlikely but not unheard of in people my age) who would come find me? No one. It's 11 at night and no one is going to come looking for me until tomorrow by the latest. My door is closed and the TV is on. There is plenty of ambient noise to conceal my squeaks of terror if I would happen to fall right now and impale my own throat with a pencil. 

And I'm not the only person alive living alone. We looked at a study in my human lifespan class last year. It shows the many reasons married couples live longer than single people. One of the main reasons? They don't live alone. When the woman falls in the shower and smacks her head on the drain, simultaneously knocking herself out and blocking the water from going down, she starts to drown and can do nothing about it. Her husband comes in the bathroom to use it real quick, and notices his wife doesn't say hi when he calls her name out and he also notices the pooling of water. He rushes in and rescues his wife from her helpless stupor. So what happened here? If the lady had been single, there would have been no husband to rescue her. 

I'm not saying that having a Life Alert bracelet would prevent situations like this. But without one, a situation like this has no out. The single person dies alone. So market bracelets to anyone who's single! We could use them. My floor is littered with books and wires.  

Rappers (Not Rapers)

A lot of people I know think that rapping is not a form of music. What kind of logic is that? Saying that Rap isn't a form of music is like saying that the Bagpipe is not a musical instrument. It is discriminatory to say that Rap can't be music because the don't play guitars and beat on drums. I don't remember seeing guitars in Mozart's line up. They had an entire string section, but no guitars. Why? Because Guitars are an evolution of traditional musical instruments. Before them, it was unheard of to play the strings with your fingers. Now it's uncommon not too.

Rap is music. Not only that, it's the voice of a generation. Rap is a response to society and how they treated blacks. Sure, some of it has devolved into a bunch of party songs about having sex and drinking alcohol, but not all of it is like that. Kid Cudi and Lupe Fiasco are two relatively new players to the game and they are the real deal. Their music is better than most stuff out today.

My point is that one genre of music is no greater than any other. You don't have to love Rap, but to quote many rappers: "Don't hate".

Too Much Literature

I just picked up yet another new book: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. I hear this guy's name everywhere in the English community. He's a legend for having written a book so controversial that it caused the second largest religious faith in the world to issue a death warrant out against him. That book was not Midnight's Children, but it's supposed to be good too.

I have way too many books to read right now. Aside from school, I have about 30 books sitting in my room that I have yet to touch. They include everything from classics (Middlemarch) to Young Adult fiction (Percy Jackson) and everything in between. The Bible, the Quran and the Satanic Bible even managed to get in there. What can I say? I like diversity. I will eventually get around to reading all of these books, and in the mean time I plan on adding to the pot every time I can.

NaNoWrMo

National Novel Writing Month is almost here. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's a contest that begins November 1st and and ends November 30th. To participate (and anyone can) all one has to do is start a fresh novel on the 1st and and finish it in as little time as possible. The only requirement to win is to reach 50,000 words that were only written within the current month of November. Everyone is on the honor's system and everyone can win if they reach the limit in time.

This blog is going to turn into a blow by blow of my time writing that novel to win NaNoWrMo. Hopefully I can write the novel while still dealing with my difficult school work. I'm stoked to start; I've never had so many ideas that I want to start writing about but can't before November 1st. The suspense is killing me. Onward to November!

A Drippy Sink

The sink in my dorm bathroom has been leaking since the beginning of the semester, and probably longer. It started off as a slight drip every few seconds and now it's escalated to a constant thin stream of water. It drips in such a way now that the water doesn't hit the sides of the sink; it just falls straight down the drain and makes a strange, echoing noise as the water bounces around deep down inside the pipe. On top of that, the water coming out of it is hot, so the sink is constantly hot enough to burn the hand if you touch it without thinking. The noise the water makes is loud enough so that it's disquieting while trying to enjoy a good toilet session.

It got me thinking, how long until that stream of water erodes through the pipe down below the sink? I'm no scientist, so for all I know it could take a million years. But suppose the pipe erodes away next week. Will those janitors finally come and try and fix it instead of pretending they can't here it and report it to maintenance? The thought of that water slowly chipping away at the thick pipes that are supposed to contain their mighty foe interests me greatly. Water and time are going to make that sink burst and flood the whole floor.

First things First

I'm going to be famous some day, one way or another. If that sounds ominous, it should. I once read a book (although I can't now recall the name) which said that I should do whatever it takes to get on the front cover of a newspaper before dying. It advises to do something good like win an award or volunteer for a good cause. However, if that doesn't work, it says to do something less admirable. The point is to not die before you get some recognition, because you're a person too. I intend to do just that. One way or another, the world (however small that may be) will know my name and fear it.