With my final year of school about to touch down in T minus two weeks and counting, I've suddenly decided to get things done. Or maybe I'm just waking up from a long, lazy summer of un-productivity and sloth.

Today I put up the Original Poetry section of my site. I can't suppress my natural urge to edit even a copy/paste job. I'm a natural born editor. Damn. I don't know how I'm going to get through the Original Fiction. Thank God there's only a whole one fic to post.

Speaking of original stuff, I'm going to submit a short story to a popular magazine in hopes of winning the cash prize. No other reason. Young whores might as well learn the trade early on, right? Right. Of course, I still have to write the story...

In other news, since getting my motorcycle permit I've been looking around at rides other than the 150cc Sym that is my principal 2-wheel transport. The 250 Yamaha Star has caught my eye, but I doubt I'll be shelling out the cash for it in times like these, even though it's not too pricey. I've got more important things to focus on...like saving instead of spending. Nnnrrrrhhh.

I'm reading 1984, which was never a part of my high school curriculum. I've got a running list of classics to read and this happens to be one of them. It's not Stephen King, but at least it's something.

I never realized what a big fan I'd become of Stephen King until today, when I picked up a fat paperback of short stories at the store. This recent fanship is something I've acquired over the past year or so; I think it may have been The Mist that set it off since I keep coming back to reread it. I admire King's storytelling narrative and the seemingly trivial descriptions that in the end lend so much to the moods he creates. I know King's not for everybody, but his stuff really speaks to me. I find myself attempting to emulate his storytelling style in my own fiction, and maybe one day find the right formula for success in the process.

Another thing that puts King high on my Win list is his scathing remark about Stephenie Meyer's writing skills (or lack of them). HAHA.

Anyway. The first story I read in this new book I got, and coincidentally the first story listed, was Dolan's Cadillac. I confess with some amount of shame that I would have gone for this story regardless of its placement because of the upcoming film adaptation starring Wes Bentley, who has more or less become my patron saint of writing. (Why? I don't know. But there is an eerie relationship between my recent Ghost Rider fanship, which resulted in my fascination with Bentley, which happened to coincide with my Stephen King fanship, which happened to result in a lot of dark fiction starring Blackheart. There's a pattern emerging but, as usual, I can't see it.)

In any case, I'm a little worried that Dolan's Cadillac will end up as big a flop as The Mist. (I've already read the reviews and they aren't kind.) I can't really picture Bentley playing the balding 40-something Robinson, nor can I picture the director(s) being able to portray the degree of suffering for the sake of revenge and the psychology of obsession. I guess this is why book-to-film adaptations rarely get it right. I'm also worried about Wes these days. He seems to be doing a lot of low-grade horror-porn type flicks or weird indie-type stuff that doesn't even make it to theaters. I get this sick feeling in my stomach whenever I look at him, and that makes me wonder.

Last night I had the good fortune of catching Neil Gaiman's Stardust on one of the movie channels. I was iffy about it at first, but by the end it had woven itself into a very charming story filled with fantastic characters. The plot seemed a bit hurried (naturally, seeing as how it's impossible to cram every literary detail into 120 minutes) , and I know that films rarely do their books justice, so I'm planning to add Stardust to my To Read List. There's always room on my bookshelf for one more fairy tale. They're my favorite.

Thinking about changing my major. Again. Schools, too. My potential occupation field doesn't seem very promising. I just need something I can do until I publish my first book and garner the hatred of the world like my hero, Stephenie Meyer. In any case, graduating from tech school sounds so much more badass than a state college.

Started reading another Clive Cussler novel, Plague Ship. I inherited it from a cock-up of duplicate birthday gifts. As formulaic and predictable as they are, the dude knows how cultivate suspense and action. The sheer volume of his work is pretty admirable, too. And at least I can understand what the hell is going on, unlike my last experience with a Cormac McArrghy novella. Won't go down that Road again.

Ahh. Dinnertime. Everything is well.

I got so tanked on New Years Eve I just now regained full sobriety. I probably forgot everything I've learned in college for the past two semesters. I did a quick mathematical assessment just now and sure enough, the only thing I could remembered correctly was the Pythagorean Theorem. The quadratic equation was just not happening. At least not correctly.

I arrived home today to find a package on my desk. It was the Ghost Rider film novelization that I paid a whopping $0.75 for on Amazon.com. To my profound shock, a brief flipping-through of the book revealed that it was actually better written than the movie, even with the cringe-inducing typos and grammatical errors that the editors at . . . POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc . . . didn't catch. All of this dreary mass of epic literary FAIL just serves to be another incentive for me to get off my ass and publish something. Because if this shit sells, my shit could sell, too.

On a totally random note, I want to write an Encyclopedia Dramatica article about my friend's roommate. He's a classic case of a poorly-socialized, monobrowed, Stargate SG1 and Battlestar Galactica fanboy with bad hygiene and revolting living habits that will keep him a virgin until he's well into his thirties. He's ED fodder. His roommate concurs.

 
Pay off some credit card debt, and spend the rest on PCP. No wait. I'll spend the rest on books. My Amazon wish list is a mile long. I get higher on books anyway. Yeah. So that's my answer. Debt and books. My god I'm dull.

I. I got back from Florida A-OK, minus the bedsores on my buttcheeks from driving nonstop for hours on end without the luxury of mobility. It's actually quite uncomfortable, but I couldn't help but laugh uncontrollably as I was putting the bandaids on my ass this morning.

II. The college got tired of waiting for me to pick up the scholarship check I hadn't realized I'd received, so they mailed it to me. I opened it at work today and promptly died. I had to be resuscitated by our IT guy. 

III. I'm going to attend the University of Wyoming to go for my bachelor's in geology, because a) I fucking hate Atlanta and the state of Georgia in general, and b) there are a whole lot of NO PEOPLE there. Not that I hate people. I just don't want to be around them. Oh, and Yellowstone's there too. And the supervolcano immediately under it. I want to be there when it blows half the earth off.

IV. I think I'm finally going to be able to afford a new computer setup because of point no. 2 up there. Which is great, because I'm stuck on this pathetic 30-gig dinosaur laptop from 2004 with the letters wearing off the keyboard. I might actually be able to start with the video editing hobby. Ooh lawd!

V. I don't know about this new movie The Ruins, which looked interesting in the adverts, so I read the book and while the book is a mildly-entertaining-but-mostly-gory survival story with frustratingly clueless characters and a vaguely-interesting botanical villian whose scientific mysteries are never explained, I did enjoy the German guy's part. But overall, I'd pass. At least the book. I imagine the movie is cringe-inducingly awful if they went by the book. I guess I've been spoiled by Michael Crichton's ultra-fact-saturated techno-thrillers where the characters are always scientists who discover through superior intelligence how to defeat their enemies. The Ruins was just like reading about a bunch of flies trapped in a jar and inevitably dying. OK, I'm being unfair. Maybe the jar was close the edge of the countertop.

So I think I really fucking hate my German 2 class. We, meaning all eight of us, have no instructor. Just an in-class "driller". We're part of this new "self-assisted language learning" program. Basically we teach ourselves. Study the material for homework, then go in and have conversations with the driller, who is a native speaker. So I'm paying tuition for something I've pretty much been doing on my own the whole fucking time. Oh yeah. And the text book. $198.00. DO NOT WANT.

On the other hand, I'm really excited about my PhysEd class. The pool shall be MINE.

I'm hoping tomorrow the rest of my classes shape up better than the ones I had today. Dropping German is really tempting. I'd get Friday off.

I've also begun my raping and pillaging of the library's best sellers shelf. This could be hazardous to my academics. But what the hell. So are relationships, but I'm doing that too.

Sometime earlier this month I bought Stephen King's novella The Mist. I'd wanted to read it before my mind was corupted by the movie. Ate it whole in less than 24 hours. A couple nights ago I bought a copy of Michael Crichton's Next. Hadn't heard about it or seen it until then, and I bought it solely on the principle that Crichton's books have never disappointed me. Now on the final few chapters, I still have yet to be disappointed. Unfortunately, all of this great reading has come at a price. Namely homework, including a past-due assignment from 2 weeks ago that I have yet to complete, and to which my general attitude is a hearty Skwisgaarian "pffffft".

skwisgaarian 
\skwis-'gär-ē-ən\
adjective
: of, relating to, or according with the social, psychological, musical or linguistic mannerisms and behaviors of Swedish guitar legend Skwisgaar Skwigelf

I hate being between fanfics. I feel so burnt out and useless. I really want to finish up old fics, but I know that as soon as I do that a really really good Metal idea is going to hit me and I'll be off on a tangent again.

I am, fortunately, a person who has never suffered Writer's Block. But I do suffer from Fandom Block.