I stepped into the elevator earlier this week, after the whole Monday morning roach fiasco, and a couple of ladies got on as well.
One of the ladies gasped, and I looked around to try and discern what the source of her alarm was. I saw what looked like a giant roach in the floor of the elevator in front of her, its little antenna waving. I gasped as well, prepared to cling to the nearest tall person and climb my way up to their face.
“What’s wrong?” One of the ladies asked.
“I forgot my purse upstairs!”
“Oh no!”
I looked at the roach and I realized it was just a giant fuzzy ball of lint. I tried to yawn gaspily to make it seem like I had just been tired.
These questions are search terms through which people find and click through to my site. I will endeavor to answer them to the best of my knowledge.
1. Why do I hear a knock in the bathroom door? Because you’ve been in there for over two hours now, and people are beginning to worry.
2. dreaming about being the last person left Is natural and healthy.
3. drend pa fuk mom I… I don’t know.
4. flesh literally ripped Reasons why you should suck it up and see a doctor.
5. i don’t care because i’m alex and i am awesome Fantastic.
6. live sexyes fuck piony I’ve never known anyone else to have strong feelings on the subject of peonies, but apparently some people do.
7. what food can i fuck? No.
8. sexy food names In light of the previous question, a host of unsettling contexts come to mind.
9. is alex awesome?
Yes.
10. i love you, alex. i really do he whispered People who speak in the third person are a little creepy.
11. lily allen – not fair discus I can’t speak from personal experience, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard about Lily cheating at discus throwing.
12. oh no the bathroom door is locked I just like that someone typed this into a search engine, found my site, and clicked a link to discover insights and tips on what to do in this situation.
13. sexy things you should not do See #7 and #8.
14. who was the smartest god? The verdict is out, but again, I am entertained that I’m seemingly the authority on this subject.
Have you ever gotten the kind of angry that is so multifaceted, it can’t be directed at any one specific person or thing, (not fairly) and you can’t stop being angry or be objective about it?
Instead, you find yourself going around the house, wandering with a purpose of finding someone worthy of a strong glare or a kick. Something to somehow siphon off the rage surging inside of you. You go into the kitchen, ready to eat the shit out of something, with your teeth, but you are too enraged to be hungry, and you slam the refrigerator door harder than necessary. You prowl into the bathroom to take a shower or maybe peruse your selection of soaps, but relaxation holds little appeal when what you really want to do is destroy something that someone you hate loves.
You ponder who is most deserving of your ire, but this is unsatisfying, because at your core, you are not that cruel or malicious of a person, and you know too well that your rage is so potent and vicious it can destroy whole cities when unleashed upon mere mortals. No, you have a responsibility to remain calm. Patience is not just a virtue, it is the true path to vengeance and life satisfaction. With time, all slights will be repaid many times over.
So you are faced with a dilemma. With nothing around to kick or set on fire, nothing beloved to destroy that belongs to imagined mortal enemies, what is a person to do? How to diffuse this pent up rage so that you can enjoy life again without a foul expression of contempt forever etched into your face?
Puppies. Lots and lots of puppies doing silly, puppy things:
I will not bore you with tales of delirious revelry and joy, so instead of discussing my vacation last week, I will tell you about my first day back at work. I returned to work somewhat rested and only mildly cranky, which is really saying something. Without people and events to complain about and whiskey to drink away my pain, my days had been surprisingly open and I had accomplished a great deal, and grown a little as a person. This is what vacations are supposed to do, but the irony is that no one experiences these effects until after they’ve reached adulthood. This entirely defeats the purpose because everyone knows that grown ups are too Set in Their Ways to change, and consequently, vacations are both wasted on the young and old alike, but for opposite reasons.
I’m not about to complain too bitterly about them, though, because I rode on a fucking boat swing in the shape of a dragon that almost flipped over. And it was amazing.
Anyway, I returned to work today to discover several things:
1) My boss presented me with a piece of paper that had all kinds of chaotic writing scribbled all over it.
“what is this?” i asked him, intending for it to be a rhetorical question.
“this is your schedule for September,” he told me, pointing to a complex mathematical formula that had too many triangles and not enough whole numbers.
“it looks like the deranged scribbling of a madman.” i said, citing the peculiar goat doodles he’d made at the corners.
“yes.”
2) We are being invaded by cockroaches, and they are growing bold. One of them challenged a coworker to a foot race in the hallway while wearing a tiny vest and a top hat. Another had taken up residence in one of the offices, and had the audacity to scuttle away when someone asked him to leave whilst holding a phone book.
3) We have an abundance of bright blue cupcakes, because (I’ve been assured) they are made out of actual smurfs (not imitation smurfs). And the sprinkles are, apparently, smurf brains. Smurfs taste really good.
Recently, a rumor has been spreading that before I began my current job, I was a merchant marine. Between cussing like a sailor, my grizzled and half-crazy glare, and the smell of sea salt on my person, (new shampoo from Lush), I’m embracing this rumor and running with it. Check out some of these vintage posters:
They so accurately reflect my work ethic. I plan on peppering these slogans into my work emails.
I'm a professional web designer in Philadelphia, PA. I live with my totally excellent
manfriend in a beautiful apartment. I love to
cook, discuss
web design, and analyze
marketing, amongst other things.
Want to know more?
You're writing a book? For real?
Yes. It's a crazy undertaking, but no one else is going to write it, which certainly puts a somewhat flattering amount of pressure on me to commit the words to page.
What is the percentage based off of?
A completely arbitrary number: 54,000, which is a hybrid of the standard novel 50k word count coupled with the average number of words per chapter in J.K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book when coupled with the outline for chapters in my book. It's math... but it's made up math.
Why does the wordcount/percentage fluxuate?
I do a LOT of rewriting. Recently, I began writing the book from scratch, with strong notes, taking a lot of the work I'd already done verbatim, or using it as an outline to flesh out from. Consequently, the word count is not entirely accurate as a full account of everything written, but a literal inventory of the number of words in current chapters of the current incarnation of the book.
That's insane. How the hell do you manage to do that much work?
I literally think about this project all the time. I have to consciously stop thinking about it and literally deprive myself of paper and computers for designated periods of time (like my friend's wedding, as a perfect for instance) in order to shut off, but the rest of the time it's nearly impossible. When I'm too burnt out to think about the books anymore, I zone out by looking at real estate and IKEA furniture. No, I am totally not joking. Did you know that Minneapolis is enjoying a fusion of industrial chic mixed with upscale country living as an interior decorating trend? It's bizarre.
Do you have a deadline set?
Yes and no. I try to get a certain amount of writing done per week, but requiring a set word count or a hard date would be unfair at this point, simply because it's not about that. For me, it's about the process, enjoying writing the story as it comes. That being said, my goal is to have the book complete in its first draft form by the end of the year.
Will you try to get it published?
Probably. Right now, it's enough simply to be writing a book, but if I do complete it which looks pretty likely at this point, it would be silly not to try and get it published.
What's the book about?
Adventure, magic, time travel, love, friendship, loneliness, piracy, witches, and which dragons have the worst breath, regionally.
Why do you keep blogging about your book?
Mostly because it's what's on my mind right now. It's hard not to talk about it, or writing, or other stories I've been interested in, be they great television shows or books I've read. There are so many wonderfully talented writers (both of screen and page) that I admire and think about when creating my own characters and stories.
What will you do if you don't get published?
Keep trying, probably, but I'm not that concerned about it at this point.
What will you do if you do get published and make it really, really big?
Hey, anything's possible. While a part of me has always been wary of celebrity, I'm sure that if I make it really, really big I'll figure something out. My bucket list of things to do if I win the lottery, or make a fortune somehow is pretty much the same as the one if I didn't. I want a nice place to live, I want to redecorate our bedroom, and I'd like to get a dog. It would be nice to have some extra cash to pay off loans a little faster, and maybe travel a bit.
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