Awesome

Apparently there is a NPR Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me blog. Check it out, there is a link to the right in my blog list. NICE!!!

New Posts, Different Blog

I posted 3 parts of a new story on my writing blog mikewritingstuff.blogspot.com. Its called Agent M: Sales Associate. You can find Part 1-3 by looking at the handy Tag list on the right hand side of the screen. Also check out my old story Possessor. Tell me what you think!

Stuff To Listen To

Are you bored with what you've been listening to? I have a few suggestions that I've enjoyed lately.

Music

-The All American Rejects "When The World Comes Down"
It's catchy as heck and very pop but it also has different ideas and a bit of an over produced "Indie" feel to it which I thoroughly enjoy









-Never Shout Never "Me & My Uke"
An emo kid playing catchy heartfelt summer romance songs on a Ukulele. It just feels good to listen to though admittedly I feel slightly guilty enjoying this stuff.

Podcasts
(btw these podcasts are all free on itunes or on respective websites)

-How Stuff Works: Stuff You Should Know
This is a podcast about how just about ANYTHING works. I have listened to podcasts about such random subjects as Bhutan's G.N.P.(Gross National Happiness!!!), Japanese War Stragglers, Muppets, the Necronomicon, body armor, exploding lakes, geocaching, body farms, the Ig Nobel Prizes, Twinkies, carbon capture and so so much more.

The nice thing about this podcast is that each episode's subject is based on real research that staff writers for howstuffworks.com so what you're hearing is likely true.

Hosts Chuck and Josh have great chemistry that's very entertaining to listen to. The podcast is unscripted so you hear many random tangents that are also very interesting to hear. Many pop culture references or even other subjects that make you want to look them up. Very interesting.

-NPR: Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me!
This is a radio news quiz about current events. It has a host(Peter Sagal), announcer(Carl Kassell), and a panel of guests(varies but some regulars are Tom Bodett, Amy Dickinson, Mo Rocca, and Paula Poundstone). They usually have some of the main news stories and many of the smaller, funnier stories.
A portion of the show brings in famous guests and has included Leonard Nimoy, Stephen Colbert, Carrie Fisher, Paula Deen, and Rep. Aaron Schock(who is a freaking congressman at the age of 28. Impressive).

Strange as it seems this is my preferred avenue for news. I like the teeny snippets of information. If I'm not interested in one piece of news they'll move on pretty quickly. And the stuff I AM interested in I can just go look up for further information. Also, though NPR is typically a pretty liberal/leftist news distributer, Wait, Wait... tends to make fun of people pretty equally across the board.

There others but these are just a few I think deserve attention. If anyone has anything I should listen to, please let me know.

p.s. I posted this post and checked it out and the spacing is really weird so I apologize for that. I hate the translation from the writing to the actual finished product. NEVER the same... sigh.

Ants

Today was rather rainy. I went to Miri's parents house to get something out of the suburban. It was parked near the garage. At that house the driveway by the garage fills with water when it rains. As I was walking past I noticed several floating supposed dirt piles. At closer glance they were clusters of ants locked together floating around in the water. The ones on the bottom were dead or at least not moving and the ones on top were moving slightly as I guess they didn't really want to move. In the middle on top I noticed several white spots. I'm guessing these were either baby ant eggs or they were the queen ants.
I think the tunnels got flooded and so the ants grabbed their queen and latched together to form a makeshift body boat and stuck the queen on top. Really cool.

Writing And The Fulfillment Of Dreams

I've been writing pretty consistently for about a week now. My goal is to write 500 words per day. I heard about it from an interview with Corey Doctorow(who's name automatically makes people take him seriously. It's like having a name like Steve Importanteducatedintellectual) and that is how he wrote Little Brother.
Doing this is not nearly as hard as I thought it would be and I've been doing well with it and then one day I had a ton of inspiration and wrote over 1500 words. And since then I haven't written. It's only been two days that I've missed so I still have a buffer for one more lazy day but I wish I hadn't given up this lead.
One of the biggest things you should know about my writing is that I have to visualize the story and the characters before I can write a scene. Once I've figured out where the story is going I can write it. But I have to have time to just think about it and work it out in my head. I usually do this at work because I have lots of alone time. But lately I haven't been thinking about it because I think of other stuff (school, work, having kids, my marriage, money, family, Texas, Arizona, Utah...) and I just don't have time. It's put a really big dent in my work.

The "fulfillment of dreams" part of the title comes from the fact that I truly feel I was born to be an artist. A writer more specifically. They say that everyone was good at something in the premortal life and I think that creating new ideas and things was mine. Yeah...

That was cheesy

Why does it always (poop) on me? Is it cause I lied when I was seventeen?

Yeah I know. I took a little artistic liberty in my interpretation of that lyric. But it's okay. Just relax. It's under control. I promise.

So life seemed to finally be settling out. I have a job, Miri is making more money at her job, we're finally getting a feasible income meaning we can start doing stuff we have been, of necessity, neglecting... And then today I had a terrible day at work.
I got like 5 and 1/2 hours of sleep and then I was late to work and my nose was running all day and I started feeling really sick. Like maybe the flu sick. Nooooooo good. So when I got off I crashed and slept for 2 or 3 hours. When I woke up I was feeling better but Miri had had a rough day so we were just talking about it and then it turned into a really long conversation. And I realized that we have some HUGE obstacles ahead of us. Like it's going to take years to overcome some of this stuff. And my feeling of stability and stableness was only a temporary facade of peace.
I'll put it this way: We are stranded on an island in the middle of the pacific. We know the general direction of land and civilization but it's a long way off. We've been on the island for a while and were just starting to run out of food but we somehow made a sea worthy dingy. Now we just have to hop in, get past the massive waves of the beach and head towards the sun rising. And it's a big ocean.
I feel a little hopeless at times but I am determined. There is nothing else I can do but just press on. And so we begin our journey with very little but maybe just enough to get by with. Who knows? Maybe we'll get picked up by a cruise liner! But I'm not going to count on it. Iron determination is all I have right now. Pray we'll see land someday...

(painting found on this website)

Picture

Miri made me wear my hat like this and take a picture thinking I looked cute but like fag. What I actually look like is a fire hydrant. Funny how these things work...

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