Things I Learned While in the Midst of a Hellacious Writer’s Block…

I haven’t posted much to the blog lately, and it’s not because I’ve been writing like crazy in other forums. I just haven’t been writing at all. Nothing. Period. And as much as I’d like to blame my writer’s block on stress at my non-blogging-job-that-actually-pays-me or maybe something wacky in my personal life, neither would be the case. I just seem to be trapped in some inexplicable state that leads me to stare longingly at a blinking cursor on a computer screen, hoping that words magically appear.

But the words don’t magically appear, and then I have to engage in some classic avoidance behavior. So now that I’m forcing myself to sit back down at the computer and write something, anything, I’ll give a full report on what I learned today while I was avoiding trying to write:

1. Everything on my IPod sucks. Everything.

Remember how Bruce Springsteen once sang about “fifty-seven channels and nothing on”? That’s pretty much how I feel about my iPod right now. Music usually helps me write, but not today. I have nearly one-thousand songs on my iPod and I’ve wasted at least three hours today fast-forwarding through my shuffled tracks to the point that I think my thumb fell off ten minutes ago and I just didn’t feel it. All the while, I’m hoping for that one magic song that will shake me out of my writing lethargy. Even the Dave Matthews Band, who have helped me conquer writer’s block on several occasions going all the way back to that Long Dark Night of the Soul otherwise known as Writing My Dissertation, are letting me down today, so I know I’m at condition critical.

But wait–it gets worse, because I also discovered over two hours this afternoon that…

2. The Delta Force may be one of the shittiest movies ever made.

 Yes, you read that right. The Delta Force. Staring Chuck Norris. And also starring Lee Marvin and Martin Balsam and Shelly Winters and a whole bunch of other people who should have known better but were apparently looking for a paycheck back in 1986. 

Brief plot synopsis: Flight is hijacked by Palestinian terrorists. Plane lands in Lebanon. Women and children are released. Men are held hostage in Beirut. The Delta Force is called in to rescue the hostages. Lee Marvin barks orders, Chuck Norris kicks ass, hundreds of Arabs die violently while only one Delta Force soldier is killed, the American hostages are rescued and everyone sings “God Bless America” at the end.

The Delta Force is just the kind of movie that I find incredibly icky yet still end up surrendering two hours of my life to for the simple reason that said movie stars Chuck Norris. The same icky-but-fascinating principle also applies to marathons of Walker, Texas Ranger on the Hallmark Channel, the common denominator being, of course, Chuck Norris. So I’ll just go ahead and admit it–I’ll watch anything Chuck Norris does, because it’s bound to be chock full of roundhouse kicks, worthless dialogue, and an over-the-top “Yay America! Testosterone rules!” message. His oeuvre is so against everything I stand for as a human being that the only recourse I have is to laugh hysterically at his awesome ass-kickingness.

However, the two most unintentionally hilarious moments in the movie weren’t courtesy of Chuck Norris. The first occurs when Rat Packer Joey Bishop, as one of the hostages, looks out the window of the school where they are being held and describes visiting Beirut twenty years before, telling his fellow captives that it was “the Las Vegas of the Middle East.” And no, I wasn’t particularly laughing at the fact that a real-life Rat Packer was making a Vegas reference while in character. I was laughing at the fact that he made the reference while looking out a window. Looking out a window that was at street level where anyone could see him. Did I mention that he was being held hostage? Yes?

The second unintentionally funny moment for me was a continuity screw-up that I noticed isn’t listed on IMDB. After the hostages have been rescued, they return to the hijacked plane for a flight to Israel. Nearly every seat is filled with a rescued male hostage, which would be impossible since there were a whole bunch of women and children sitting in those seats who were released from the flight when the terrorists forced it to land. Not to mention the fact that as all the hostages were taking up the seats, the Delta Force guys would have had to stand up for the entire flight, and you know if there had been a flight attendant on board, no one was gonna get away with that.

So, yeah–The Delta Force was two hours of my life that I’m not getting back, and two hours of my life that I could have spent writing a screenplay that was vastly superior to The Delta Force. But I didn’t (or couldn’t). And apparently I hadn’t yet reached my testosterone quotient for the day because I started flipping channels and discovered that…

3. NBC is now airing wrestling on Saturday nights.

I’m not kidding. Wrestling. And I’m not talking Greco-Roman wrestling here. I’m talking about the kind of wrestling where the first twenty minutes of the match is taken up with guys walking around the ring trying to whip the crowd into a frenzy by glaring at them and flexing their muscles. The kind of wrestling that finds guys likely named Rocky or Bubba sitting in the crowd wearing the faces of their favorite warriors on black t-shirts. The kind of wrestling that some people (not me) think is every bit as real as Greco-Roman wrestling rather than some sort of carefully choreographed entertainment spectacle. In fact, they may actually think Greco-Roman wrestling is less real, seeing as how that kind of wrestling is just guys rolling around on the floor in tights, which is just kind of weird and lame and possibly gay (again, this opinion is not my opinion).

Seeing as Chuck Norris was not involved, I watched approximately five minutes of this monstrosity–just long enough to see some guy sporting questionable facial hair and wearing what appeared to be a wet suit give a body slam to some other guy who, frankly, looked just like the first guy, only without the wet suit and the striped chin hair. Yawn.

All this male aggression left me a little hungry, so I wandered into the kitchen where I learned that…

4. Oh my f–king God, I’m a human garbage disposal.

In my effort to avoid going back upstairs to my office to face that infernal blinking cursor and the blank page on which it resides, I managed to somehow ingest the entire contents of my kitchen. I’ll spare you the cataloging of what I ate for the simple reason that not only might you throw up, but I might also throw up if I have to live it all over again in print. And right now, I’m trying desperately to avoid that scene at the end of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Burp.

And so I certainly didn’t learn The Meaning of Life in my day of avoiding my computer, but I was reminded of the fact that I will do absolutely anything to shirk writing when I find that the muse isn’t with me on a particular day.

Tomorrow, I’ll be left with weed-eating and scrubbing toilets. I pray that the muse returns, although I’ll have nothing left in the kitchen to feed her if she does.

…But People Who Say “Soda” Are Smarter and Better Looking

I wish I’d had access to this map (click on the smaller United States icon to pull up the larger map) when I was in college and all of my friends from northern Illinois were making fun of me for saying “soda” instead of “pop.” Then I would have had some evidence to point to and say “See? Almost the entire eastern half of Missouri says ’soda’–I can’t help it.” I also can’t help but disagree with the study’s conclusion–that’s a fallacy if I ever heard one .

And besides “Pepsi,” what the hell would fall into the “other” category? “Carbonated, occasionally caffeinated beverage”? “Fizzy sweet stuff”? Any ideas?

So Maybe I’m Not Trapped in the Body of a Ninety Year Old…

I tend to do weird things when I have writer’s block and access to the Interwebs. Tonight, I was feeling kind of down because I hadn’t posted to the blog since Friday and couldn’t think of anything to write. And I haven’t done any work this weekend on either Novel #1 or Novel #2, so my shame spiral was spinning ever more quickly downward. But then I stumbled upon one of those websites that purports to tell you your real age–”real age” being your biological age based on health and living habits–and suddenly everything turned around.

Because lo and behold, despite my aches and pains and allergies and general grumpiness about the world and everything in it most days, I’m a full two years younger biologically than I am chronologically. Add this to the fact that people tell me that I look like I’m fifteen (which I guess is a compliment but I don’t know–is it a good thing to look like a fifteen year old these days? Oh, hell–I’ll take it), and apparently I must be doing something right.

Does this site have any medical credibility whatsoever? Frankly, I don’t know. Nor do I particularly care, because according to them, I’ve just snatched two years back from the jaws of death! So yea for me! I’m already calculating ways to get myself down to being biologically twenty-five by the end of the summer (with an ass to match, hopefully). By Christmas, I hope to be back in third grade.

Seriously though, this test did a pretty good job of telling me a bunch of things I already know about my life and then boiling it down to that big fat number none of us can escape–age. I know my diet consists of not enough fruit and too much chocolate. I know that when I’m at work, walking from my desk to the bathroom doesn’t really count as exercise. I know that French fries, no matter how much I try to will them to be so, are not a food group. And, yes, I know I need to see an allergist–apparently, not controlling my allergies was one of those things that prevented my biological age from being even lower. Who knew allergies can actually age you? Bring on the shots–stat!

But what I was happy to see was that some of my Nervous Nelly behaviors–such as not using my cell phone while driving and only driving a few miles over the speed limit–may actually be lengthening my life (and if speeding while talking on a cell phone really does shorten one’s life, then I know a few people who should have died years ago. Seriously. I mean, half the people driving in New York City should have a biological age of 4,786 just based on these two categories alone.). And, apparently, having a wide circle of friends and a happy marriage contribute to a long life as well, although considering as I was taking the test for myself I was mentally answering the questions for several of my friends and guessing what their scores would be, I would venture that my social circle will be much smaller in about fifteen years as all of my friends will be dead.

So knowing that I’m really, deep, deep down inside two years younger than I thought I was isn’t going to help me sell Novel #1 or finish Novel #2, and it isn’t going to help me make this blog any more interesting, nor will it landscape the jungle mascarading as my lawn, finish the projects I have sitting on my work calendar for this week, or clean my house. But right now, on a Sunday night when I’m sitting around bummed at the end of another weekend of non-accomplishment, the discovery of my newfound youth is no small victory, and tonight I’ll go to bed happy (which should lower my age by at least another few months).