Yesterday I went to Daniel's church to see him play guitar. His performance was satisfactory, but in order to see all of it I had to stay through an hour-long intermission, known in churches as a sermon.
The highlight of the general church experience was communion. I had never partaken of Jesus before, or of any other man for that matter, and neither has my family ever exhibited cannibalistic tendencies, but the experience was interesting to me nonetheless. I was sure that the humor inherent in this ritual had been thoroughly exhausted by church-goers across the past two millenia, but wisps of conversation floating past me as I stood in line proved otherwise. I'll reproduce a couple, though it pains me to do so.
"Jesus is OK, but Oreos are way better."
...
"They should make Jesus-flavored Cheez-its."
...
"Have you ever had carbonated Jesus blood? No!? You're missing out man, it's amazing. You should get some, it's only 50 cents a can at Fiesta or you can get 2-liters at Kroger's for a buck sixty nine."
...
"Hey, you! Yea, you! Stop stuffing your face you vulture, this ain't no after-funeral party!"
...
(to the priest) "No thank you, I brought my own."
...
"I'll have a decaf."
And people have the nerve to accuse Christians of being conservative.
I am getting weaker and weaker when it comes to falling asleep through noise. I took a nap today from 8:30PM to 11:00PM and woke up somewhere in the middle because of a sensation both strange and completely ungrounded in reality; the sensation of being late to something. I set myself a safety net, an 11:00PM alarm, and tried to fall back asleep, only to find that I couldn't because Mario was snoring in 7/8, a most irritating time signatue as I have said on other occasions. Luckily, I didn't make the connection with the earlier sleeping disaster, so well described in the previous post, though the similarities were many. Mario stuck to one pace, he refused to change his pattern of raspy sounds despite all my efforts to mind control him into doing so, and he made no indication of ever to stop.
I persisted in trying to fall asleep with a stubbornness unprecedented by my gender, and finally did, only to have a very long and frustrating dream. I dreamt that I was trying to match my mind's and body's various frequencies to Mario's snoring. I know it was a dream because I woke up to my alarm at 11:00PM, and reality-Mario wasn't even in his bed, much less snoring. Instead, I heard the familiar rustle outside - reality-Mario was stuffing his face with Cheez-its.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
DO NOT OPEN
Please don't read any further. Your very soul is in danger.
You asked for it.
Today I was woken up at 7:30AM by Satan's sermon taking place only feet away. Our downstairs' neighbor's apartment bore the heart of evil in its belly.
How did I know it was Satan? Judge for yourself. The following clips are samples of what we heard at 7:30AM. We, because I woke up Mario when I could no longer stand what the sound was doing to me - about 15 seconds after first hearing it.
WARNING - DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS IF YOU'RE SUSCEPTIBLE TO SATAN, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR KILLING YOURSELF AND EVERYONE IN A TWELVE MILE RADIUS.
Do not open
Definitely do not open
Note: if you want to get the full effect, loop it for forty minutes. But don't say I didn't warn you.
I recorded this like a true reporter - half naked, holding my computer with microphone attached right outside the enemy's door. But to be honest, I didn't feel in much more danger than while just listening.
The entire twenty minutes before that, I was hysterical, and slowly helping Mario achieve the same plane of hilarity. We could not understand a single word in this non-repeating mantra, but we knew it was implanting hideous impulses in our psyches. The remaining unsubjugated neurons in our minds yearned more than anything to wake up Daniel so that he could banish it to Hell, but alas, we were not strong enough.
We were certain, like we had never been certain of anything in our lives, that this sound was accompanied by virgins being sacrificed, or at least goats. And we were also certain that we would be doing something very similar within the next hour. We could practically taste the subliminal messages and post-hypnotic suggestions buried in the thing. Mario claimed it made want to him murder everyone in a twelve mile radius. I was filled with the completely irrational and inexplicable desire to be more than twelve miles away.
As of now, the sound has ceased. I don't know if it's divine intervention or something else that stopped it, but as of several minutes, it has been replaced by the jolliest Indian songs I've ever heard. They're probably still instructing me to gouge out my eyeballs and set Mario on fire, but at least they're pleasant to the ears.
On a related note, here's a related note:
Shrek was on the other day and Mario and I spent some time figuring out how dragons and the laws of physics could coincide in one universe. We mentally co-engineered a dragon, and found that it's not altogether unbelievable for them to exist. We started with the premise that dragons need really big wings as compared with birds. A dragon that's really a magnified bird would never work. This is because mass increases roughly cubically with respect to a dragon's radius. However, this premise was quickly dropped because we didn't want out dragons to look retarded. We decided instead that dragons would have to be really really light. To ensure a low density, we filled them with steaming hot air, because everyone knows hot air rises. When we were done, it turned out that dragons float like Hindenbergs, and they flap their wings only if they want to get down from the sky. If you chop off a dragon's wings, it zooms away into outer space at escape velocity. And that also explains why there are no more dragons.
You asked for it.
Today I was woken up at 7:30AM by Satan's sermon taking place only feet away. Our downstairs' neighbor's apartment bore the heart of evil in its belly.
How did I know it was Satan? Judge for yourself. The following clips are samples of what we heard at 7:30AM. We, because I woke up Mario when I could no longer stand what the sound was doing to me - about 15 seconds after first hearing it.
WARNING - DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS IF YOU'RE SUSCEPTIBLE TO SATAN, OR IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR KILLING YOURSELF AND EVERYONE IN A TWELVE MILE RADIUS.
Do not open
Definitely do not open
Note: if you want to get the full effect, loop it for forty minutes. But don't say I didn't warn you.
I recorded this like a true reporter - half naked, holding my computer with microphone attached right outside the enemy's door. But to be honest, I didn't feel in much more danger than while just listening.
The entire twenty minutes before that, I was hysterical, and slowly helping Mario achieve the same plane of hilarity. We could not understand a single word in this non-repeating mantra, but we knew it was implanting hideous impulses in our psyches. The remaining unsubjugated neurons in our minds yearned more than anything to wake up Daniel so that he could banish it to Hell, but alas, we were not strong enough.
We were certain, like we had never been certain of anything in our lives, that this sound was accompanied by virgins being sacrificed, or at least goats. And we were also certain that we would be doing something very similar within the next hour. We could practically taste the subliminal messages and post-hypnotic suggestions buried in the thing. Mario claimed it made want to him murder everyone in a twelve mile radius. I was filled with the completely irrational and inexplicable desire to be more than twelve miles away.
As of now, the sound has ceased. I don't know if it's divine intervention or something else that stopped it, but as of several minutes, it has been replaced by the jolliest Indian songs I've ever heard. They're probably still instructing me to gouge out my eyeballs and set Mario on fire, but at least they're pleasant to the ears.
On a related note, here's a related note:
Shrek was on the other day and Mario and I spent some time figuring out how dragons and the laws of physics could coincide in one universe. We mentally co-engineered a dragon, and found that it's not altogether unbelievable for them to exist. We started with the premise that dragons need really big wings as compared with birds. A dragon that's really a magnified bird would never work. This is because mass increases roughly cubically with respect to a dragon's radius. However, this premise was quickly dropped because we didn't want out dragons to look retarded. We decided instead that dragons would have to be really really light. To ensure a low density, we filled them with steaming hot air, because everyone knows hot air rises. When we were done, it turned out that dragons float like Hindenbergs, and they flap their wings only if they want to get down from the sky. If you chop off a dragon's wings, it zooms away into outer space at escape velocity. And that also explains why there are no more dragons.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Hot hot hot
Today I popped my "do something stupid and burn yourself" cherry. I had long figured I was immune because Mario averages three burns a week, making him a sort of lightning rod. My optimism didn't save me.
I'm afraid to say my burn was up to the stupidity standards Mario has set. His typical story is: "I opened the oven to get the chicken out and when I pulled out the pan with my bare hands, it burned me. How was I supposed to know it was hot?" To which I normally respond with a condescending laugh and a deprecating joke. Well my story merits the same treatment. Good thing Mario's asleep and doesn't read this blog.
I boiled myself some water for tea, made the tea, picked up the cup, and forgot about it somewhere on the way to setting it down on the dining room table. This is the hazard of trusting your body to your autopilot; sometimes, even he gets fancy. I realized I was in trouble just as I finished a complex dance move with my cup-bearing hand, and saw the liquid in the cup splash all over my first three fingers. There was instantly lots of pain, and for quite a while, especially since I didn't:
1. Drop the cup and run to the faucet to put out the six-inch flames on my hand.
2. Scream like a girl. Everyone knows this alleviates even the worst pain. This is why when a woman is screaming in the delivery room, you shouldn't panic. As long as she keeps screaming, she's as good as under general anaesthesia.
3. Put my hand up to my earlobe as Chun would have me do - according to her, earlobes are natural refrigerators; they absorb heat like a firstborn does your savings account. Well in this case, I would have ended up with a big blister instead of a face.
Instead I stood there and let the pain feast on my stupidity. Only when the water in the cup became completely placid did I put the cup down and do some of the aforementioned items.
I am reasonably sure this was a fluke, and that the next burn victim will again be Mario. Of course no one knows for sure but the burn gods. I'll be crossing the fingers I have left.
I'm afraid to say my burn was up to the stupidity standards Mario has set. His typical story is: "I opened the oven to get the chicken out and when I pulled out the pan with my bare hands, it burned me. How was I supposed to know it was hot?" To which I normally respond with a condescending laugh and a deprecating joke. Well my story merits the same treatment. Good thing Mario's asleep and doesn't read this blog.
I boiled myself some water for tea, made the tea, picked up the cup, and forgot about it somewhere on the way to setting it down on the dining room table. This is the hazard of trusting your body to your autopilot; sometimes, even he gets fancy. I realized I was in trouble just as I finished a complex dance move with my cup-bearing hand, and saw the liquid in the cup splash all over my first three fingers. There was instantly lots of pain, and for quite a while, especially since I didn't:
1. Drop the cup and run to the faucet to put out the six-inch flames on my hand.
2. Scream like a girl. Everyone knows this alleviates even the worst pain. This is why when a woman is screaming in the delivery room, you shouldn't panic. As long as she keeps screaming, she's as good as under general anaesthesia.
3. Put my hand up to my earlobe as Chun would have me do - according to her, earlobes are natural refrigerators; they absorb heat like a firstborn does your savings account. Well in this case, I would have ended up with a big blister instead of a face.
Instead I stood there and let the pain feast on my stupidity. Only when the water in the cup became completely placid did I put the cup down and do some of the aforementioned items.
I am reasonably sure this was a fluke, and that the next burn victim will again be Mario. Of course no one knows for sure but the burn gods. I'll be crossing the fingers I have left.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
For laymen's eyes only
I was helping Franco a bit with his math homework today. He's in a class that shatters all records for lack of applications. I said on the previous post that my college experience was generally useless. Well, this class is to my college experience as my college experience is to Manswers. Somewhere between useless factorial and worthless to the good-for-nothingth power.
They learn about different sets of numbers, and how those sets are defined. These are not even interesting sets, like numbers that turn into letters when flipped upside down, enabling one to type dirty words in a calculator. They're boring numbers with "properties," a favorite word among nerds. About the only thing interesting about them are their names, and even here, interesting is a hyperbole of a hyperbole.
Lucky, deficient, perfect, happy, hungry, sociable, vampire, narcissistic, powerful, aspiring, abundant, odious, and the list goes on.
And then, as I read this list, I began to feel myself getting more and more nauseous. For it had dawned on me that this list was indeed important, and in a way I had never dreamed. Reading these silly words, I came to a horrifying and now seemingly obvious conclusion. This is a conspiracy spearheaded by mathematicians!
Psh, you may say. What's their purpose? Well I'll tell you. To turn our everyday conversations into math-talk. Given fifty years, we'll all be talking in equations with about as much awareness as we currently have for curse words. And then, once we're all talking math and not English and Chinese, we won't be able to distinguish nerds from jocks, the bullies from the bullied. It will be an apocalypse.
The clues to this conspiracy are everywhere, but we've been blinded by our disdain for those four-eyed evil-smelling geniuses. Mathematicians have been working up to this step for thousands of years without raising a hair of suspicion until now, on this blog. Has no one except me noticed that mathematicians use letters even more than numbers? The governments of most countries (minus New Zealand) are very lax in this respect. Mathematicians are almost outside the law. But now they've gone far enough. I can't even say I'm hungry in the privacy of my own quarter of an apartment without sounding like a nerd. I say we get our languages back from the nerds. Numbers for nerds, letters for laymen. Who's with me?
They learn about different sets of numbers, and how those sets are defined. These are not even interesting sets, like numbers that turn into letters when flipped upside down, enabling one to type dirty words in a calculator. They're boring numbers with "properties," a favorite word among nerds. About the only thing interesting about them are their names, and even here, interesting is a hyperbole of a hyperbole.
Lucky, deficient, perfect, happy, hungry, sociable, vampire, narcissistic, powerful, aspiring, abundant, odious, and the list goes on.
And then, as I read this list, I began to feel myself getting more and more nauseous. For it had dawned on me that this list was indeed important, and in a way I had never dreamed. Reading these silly words, I came to a horrifying and now seemingly obvious conclusion. This is a conspiracy spearheaded by mathematicians!
Psh, you may say. What's their purpose? Well I'll tell you. To turn our everyday conversations into math-talk. Given fifty years, we'll all be talking in equations with about as much awareness as we currently have for curse words. And then, once we're all talking math and not English and Chinese, we won't be able to distinguish nerds from jocks, the bullies from the bullied. It will be an apocalypse.
The clues to this conspiracy are everywhere, but we've been blinded by our disdain for those four-eyed evil-smelling geniuses. Mathematicians have been working up to this step for thousands of years without raising a hair of suspicion until now, on this blog. Has no one except me noticed that mathematicians use letters even more than numbers? The governments of most countries (minus New Zealand) are very lax in this respect. Mathematicians are almost outside the law. But now they've gone far enough. I can't even say I'm hungry in the privacy of my own quarter of an apartment without sounding like a nerd. I say we get our languages back from the nerds. Numbers for nerds, letters for laymen. Who's with me?
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Sugar
The last couple days have proved that it is possible to survive eating only sugar. I don't mean sustain oneself and not starve. I mean eat Tootsie Rolls for breakfast, pudding for dinner, and a 60%-40% Tootsie-Roll-to-pudding split for brunch, lunch and 2nd lunch, AND (this is the important part) not die or lose more than four teeth a day. I have accomplished this feat singlehandedly and have not even felt any side effects, though I wouldn't recommend it to the average weakling. The only hard part of this most worthy endeavor is getting Tootsie Rolls into your mouth when your arm and head are shaking at different frequencies.
Yesterday introduced me to a wonderful new show - Manswers. "You've got questions, we've got MANSWERS!" In one half hour session with Manswers, I learned invaluable street smarts. I now know three ways to survive a tiger attack, how tiny my bikini can be without getting me arrested, how much more the average pimp is making than I am, what set of sexual preferences makes a girl easier to get into bed, and why chickens and humans have identical tastes in women. Compare this to what I learned in four years of college - that it's only a temporary respite before you need to get a job, and I think we can agree America needs to rethink the education system.
I've been learning some Led Zeppelin songs lately. It's tremendous fun. It's also a bit like putting on glasses that flip your perception of left and right and then running around the house at top speed, but applied to rhythm instead of vision. I've realized now how relatively sane most rock/metal bands' music is when it comes to time signature. 4/4 time, 3/4, 9/8, even 7/8 are manageable when the whole song sticks to one or two, but in Zeppelin songs, you're liable to have measures thrown in seemingly at random with half a beat missing, or an extra three. And then, when you're back in 4/4 and you think it's smooth sailing, you get taken again. They mercilessly throw you a 9/8 riff over that 4/4 and your brain-fingers connection melts right down. Awesome.
...
We just went to Starbucks again. This time we planned out the whole operation and the result was a resounding success. We managed to spend somewhere between twelve and thirteen dollars from Mario's giftcard on two drinks and two scones. This is quite an achievement when you consider that twenty five dollars feeds the two of us for a week.
Yesterday introduced me to a wonderful new show - Manswers. "You've got questions, we've got MANSWERS!" In one half hour session with Manswers, I learned invaluable street smarts. I now know three ways to survive a tiger attack, how tiny my bikini can be without getting me arrested, how much more the average pimp is making than I am, what set of sexual preferences makes a girl easier to get into bed, and why chickens and humans have identical tastes in women. Compare this to what I learned in four years of college - that it's only a temporary respite before you need to get a job, and I think we can agree America needs to rethink the education system.
I've been learning some Led Zeppelin songs lately. It's tremendous fun. It's also a bit like putting on glasses that flip your perception of left and right and then running around the house at top speed, but applied to rhythm instead of vision. I've realized now how relatively sane most rock/metal bands' music is when it comes to time signature. 4/4 time, 3/4, 9/8, even 7/8 are manageable when the whole song sticks to one or two, but in Zeppelin songs, you're liable to have measures thrown in seemingly at random with half a beat missing, or an extra three. And then, when you're back in 4/4 and you think it's smooth sailing, you get taken again. They mercilessly throw you a 9/8 riff over that 4/4 and your brain-fingers connection melts right down. Awesome.
...
We just went to Starbucks again. This time we planned out the whole operation and the result was a resounding success. We managed to spend somewhere between twelve and thirteen dollars from Mario's giftcard on two drinks and two scones. This is quite an achievement when you consider that twenty five dollars feeds the two of us for a week.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
(mis)adventures
I received a complaint yesterday. Apparently my most recent entry was more depressing than a bag of drowned kittens. I didn't think so, but my subconscious must have taken it personally. It rebounded today with an optimistic dream, knowing full well I'd tell it here. You get to hear it first, before it is shamelessly converted into word-mass for my novel.
I'm somewhere off in nondescript-setting land. The dream isn't really visual in any way. I'm listening to a Queen song I haven't heard before. It's important to note hrtr that I pretty much worship Queen. So I'm listening to the song for a while. It changes pace several times in that sexy Bohemian Rhapsody kind of way. Very enjoyable. And then, all of a sudden I'm hearing something very familiar. It takes me a moment, and then I realize I'm hearing one of my own songs, but sung by Freddie Mercury. And here I'm faced with a choice. I could get depressed, because there's nothing more depressing than taking a good song out of the bank. I definitely consider mourning the loss for a second, but then another idea occurs to me. "Hey!" I think. "This means my song kicks ass!" And on that happy note, the dream ended, at least I don't remember anything else. And no, I have no idea which one of my songs it was. It being kickass doesn't really narrow the search down.
Yesterday, Mario and I went to Starbucks. We looked up all the Starbucks in our area and found one that was open till eleven, because it was already ten when Mario got back from work. I even called a couple (so you can appreciate the effort). Having found it, we left the apartment in a hurry.
So we're in the car, we've driven out of the apartment complex, and we need to make our first decision - right or left. That's when we realize we forgot to do one insignficant little thing. We never wrote down the coordinates or phone number. In fact, neither of us remembers a single piece of information that would aid in the search.
Being optimists, we decide to drive around for a while. We roll down our windows. We think maybe we can pick up the scent of overpriced-ness. Our optimism lasts about ten minutes.
Then Mario has the brilliant idea of using On-Star. On-Star is a ghetto version of the GPS monitor+screen that's so generously contributing to the further mental retardation of America. You press a button, the car places a phone call, you tell the operator where you want to go, and they send directions to your car. Anyway, we use On-Star, and it takes us pretty much back to our apartment. Apparently there's a Starbucks in the next-door Kroger. Feeling most triumphant, we march into Kroger's only to find that we're about three hours too late. This wasn't the lucky Starbucks after all. After that we gave up and went home.
This reminded both of us of another of our many failures, one that took place sophomore year of college. We had decided to go to Costco. We were really excited about it for some reason. I think we were under the illusion, or rather delusion, that Costco is a magical place where pennies are still worth something - specifically vast amounts of food. We got ready, we took our biggest suitcases, and walked bravely out of Next House (our dormitory), dragging them behind us. We only went about thirty meters. We realized neither of us had a Costco card at twenty meters, the other ten were by inertia. Then we stopped and turned around without another word. We were each still willing to go, provided that the other would buy a card, and the resounding "No Way!" was palpable without us having to prompt each other.
I'm somewhere off in nondescript-setting land. The dream isn't really visual in any way. I'm listening to a Queen song I haven't heard before. It's important to note hrtr that I pretty much worship Queen. So I'm listening to the song for a while. It changes pace several times in that sexy Bohemian Rhapsody kind of way. Very enjoyable. And then, all of a sudden I'm hearing something very familiar. It takes me a moment, and then I realize I'm hearing one of my own songs, but sung by Freddie Mercury. And here I'm faced with a choice. I could get depressed, because there's nothing more depressing than taking a good song out of the bank. I definitely consider mourning the loss for a second, but then another idea occurs to me. "Hey!" I think. "This means my song kicks ass!" And on that happy note, the dream ended, at least I don't remember anything else. And no, I have no idea which one of my songs it was. It being kickass doesn't really narrow the search down.
Yesterday, Mario and I went to Starbucks. We looked up all the Starbucks in our area and found one that was open till eleven, because it was already ten when Mario got back from work. I even called a couple (so you can appreciate the effort). Having found it, we left the apartment in a hurry.
So we're in the car, we've driven out of the apartment complex, and we need to make our first decision - right or left. That's when we realize we forgot to do one insignficant little thing. We never wrote down the coordinates or phone number. In fact, neither of us remembers a single piece of information that would aid in the search.
Being optimists, we decide to drive around for a while. We roll down our windows. We think maybe we can pick up the scent of overpriced-ness. Our optimism lasts about ten minutes.
Then Mario has the brilliant idea of using On-Star. On-Star is a ghetto version of the GPS monitor+screen that's so generously contributing to the further mental retardation of America. You press a button, the car places a phone call, you tell the operator where you want to go, and they send directions to your car. Anyway, we use On-Star, and it takes us pretty much back to our apartment. Apparently there's a Starbucks in the next-door Kroger. Feeling most triumphant, we march into Kroger's only to find that we're about three hours too late. This wasn't the lucky Starbucks after all. After that we gave up and went home.
This reminded both of us of another of our many failures, one that took place sophomore year of college. We had decided to go to Costco. We were really excited about it for some reason. I think we were under the illusion, or rather delusion, that Costco is a magical place where pennies are still worth something - specifically vast amounts of food. We got ready, we took our biggest suitcases, and walked bravely out of Next House (our dormitory), dragging them behind us. We only went about thirty meters. We realized neither of us had a Costco card at twenty meters, the other ten were by inertia. Then we stopped and turned around without another word. We were each still willing to go, provided that the other would buy a card, and the resounding "No Way!" was palpable without us having to prompt each other.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Your easy life
So National Novel Writing Month is steadily chugging along. I've been keeping to a pace of ~1666 words a day in an unprecedented feat of anti-procrastination. Yes, I feel very ashamed. No, you can't leave judgmental comments, I'm under enough stress as it is. For those of you who haven't already read it in Scientific American, it has recently been discovered that the pain of childbirth is like popping zit when compared to creating a novel. So it's been hard to force myself to procrastinate, as much as I would love to.
Because judging anyone is heavy on the psyche, and because I claim to care about others' well-being, I will help you not to judge me. I will justify my betrayal of the technique so fundamental to success in school, college, the workplace, testing of oddly shaped lumps in the breast or under the armpit...well maybe not the last one. You see, I'm up against a formidable enemy - the cold vice-like hand of fear. There's a fundamental quality that separates this project from past ones. This quality is the voluntary nature of the undertaking. I am not doing this project for a grade. I am not doing because my fat boss is breathing down my neck. I am certainly not doing it because my personality demands a high degree of planned action. I'm doing it because I'm a badass, and doing it will scream my badassness (short for bodaciousness) to the world. I'm doing it because every word that brings me closer to meeting the deadline makes my enemies weep bitter tears of envy and defeat. And...I'm doing it because I care.
Now normally, the word "care," when used by a male and not preceded by a negation, raises suspicions of high estrogen levels, homosexuality, or homosexuality. It is common courtesy to follow up a statement involving the word "care" with "Did you mean scare?" as in:
"I love caring for old people."
"Did you say care or scare?"
"Umm...scare, of course. Ha! Caring for old people, that's for sissies. I scare for them. They pay well to scare their own. Extra, if you cause a heartattack."
The exception is when "care" is uttered by a badass, in which case the world takes it in stride without a second thought. This is that case.
Caring is the procrastinator's nightmare. For those of you amateurs who think procrastinating is easy, try investing some personal interest and you'll quickly find yourself slipping. Caring about a project makes procrastinating feel like you're holding in number one: for a short while it's bearable, and then you get to thinking that if you don't go now, you may never go again. Or, for those of you with tubes taking care of your urine I/O, it's like not sleeping for more than forty eight consecutive hours: you experience an acute lack of will-power. You brain says to you: "Come on, just go to sleep for a little while, and try this experiment tomorrow. Really, there's all the time in the world to try this another time. Listen to me! I'm so convincing!" And you give in, unless you're Jesus Christ or a donkey.
That is my situation. Daily, I dip below the threshold of will-power necessary for fueling procrastination, and I give in and write another 1666 words. Once I do, I feel guilty. It's a hellish existence. Prometheus had it easy.
Because judging anyone is heavy on the psyche, and because I claim to care about others' well-being, I will help you not to judge me. I will justify my betrayal of the technique so fundamental to success in school, college, the workplace, testing of oddly shaped lumps in the breast or under the armpit...well maybe not the last one. You see, I'm up against a formidable enemy - the cold vice-like hand of fear. There's a fundamental quality that separates this project from past ones. This quality is the voluntary nature of the undertaking. I am not doing this project for a grade. I am not doing because my fat boss is breathing down my neck. I am certainly not doing it because my personality demands a high degree of planned action. I'm doing it because I'm a badass, and doing it will scream my badassness (short for bodaciousness) to the world. I'm doing it because every word that brings me closer to meeting the deadline makes my enemies weep bitter tears of envy and defeat. And...I'm doing it because I care.
Now normally, the word "care," when used by a male and not preceded by a negation, raises suspicions of high estrogen levels, homosexuality, or homosexuality. It is common courtesy to follow up a statement involving the word "care" with "Did you mean scare?" as in:
"I love caring for old people."
"Did you say care or scare?"
"Umm...scare, of course. Ha! Caring for old people, that's for sissies. I scare for them. They pay well to scare their own. Extra, if you cause a heartattack."
The exception is when "care" is uttered by a badass, in which case the world takes it in stride without a second thought. This is that case.
Caring is the procrastinator's nightmare. For those of you amateurs who think procrastinating is easy, try investing some personal interest and you'll quickly find yourself slipping. Caring about a project makes procrastinating feel like you're holding in number one: for a short while it's bearable, and then you get to thinking that if you don't go now, you may never go again. Or, for those of you with tubes taking care of your urine I/O, it's like not sleeping for more than forty eight consecutive hours: you experience an acute lack of will-power. You brain says to you: "Come on, just go to sleep for a little while, and try this experiment tomorrow. Really, there's all the time in the world to try this another time. Listen to me! I'm so convincing!" And you give in, unless you're Jesus Christ or a donkey.
That is my situation. Daily, I dip below the threshold of will-power necessary for fueling procrastination, and I give in and write another 1666 words. Once I do, I feel guilty. It's a hellish existence. Prometheus had it easy.
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