Daily Archives: March 3, 2015

Mar 03 2015
1 Comment
Uncategorized

Additional Scenarios – Will They Stop the One Day a Post Challenge?

As my 3.5 regular followers know, I’m doing a one post a day challenge.

The other day, I discussed some scenarios and explained how they will not prevent me from following through on my commitment to post once a day.

In case you missed it.

I’ve considered some further scenarios:

QUESTION – The zombie apocalypse breaks out.  A walker is sitting in your office chair, using your computer, surfing the net and playing Candy Crush.  Surely you will concede that it would not be worth it to risk your life in order to make a post?

ANSWER – I concede nothing.  I will grab one of the action figures on my bookshelf, jam it into the zombie’s brain, and will not only clear a path to my computer, but also vindicate myself for being a grown man who collects action figures.  Two birds with one stone.

QUESTION:  You are put into a straight jacket, tied up with ropes and chains, dangled upside down by your feet in an iron safe, and tossed off a helicopter into the ocean.

ANSWER:  You’re talking about a typical Tuesday for me, son.  First, I dislocate my shoulder ala Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon.  I too have a shoulder injury from Vietnam.  Sidenote:  Do not go to Vietnamese Disneyworld, they have zero ride safety.  At least I think it was Vietnamese Disneyworld.  Maybe it was just a guy in a mouse suit with a couple of lousy rides.

Anyway.  The shoulder trick allows me to slide out of the strait jacket.  I then either pick the locks attached to the ropes and chains, or I just flex my muscles and bust them all off.  I’m pretty sure I’ll go with the latter.

Finally, I roundhouse kick the safe door open, swim to the surface, then fist fight a shark until I force him into a state of submission, from which point I ride him like an aquatic horse back to the mainland, where I find an Internet cafe and post.

QUESTION:  Terrible snow storm.  Power is knocked out.  We’re talking fifty feet of snow.

ANSWER:  I keep a set of skis at the ready for just this situation.  Like a prairie dog or other burrowing rodent, I will dig my way to the surface, dragging the skis behind me as they will be tied to my belt.  I will then ski hundreds of miles if necessary until I find a computerized device that will allow me to post.

QUESTION:  You are hit by a bus and put into a full body cast.  Every inch of your body is completely and hopelessly immobilized.

ANSWER:  I’ve already discussed this situation with area hospitals.  I will hold a pencil in my mouth, and a nurse will move an iPad around, poking the letters I desire up against the pencil.  Those posts will be poorly edited and grossly misspelled, but they will still count.

QUESTION:  A gypsy curses you.  The curse?  If you post, you will drop dead.  Therefore, by posting, you in effect, will ruin the rest of your challenge, because you’ll be dead, and ergo, won’t be able to post for the rest of the year.

ANSWER:  Damn, you’re good.  First, I’ve scribbled a year’s worth of posts down.  I wrote them with lemon juice so they aren’t visible unless run under a black light.  I have left instructions to my team of attorneys to hire an intern who will continue to post on my behalf for the rest of the year.

Alternatively, I will apologize to the gypsy for whatever slight I made in her direction, for gypsies usually don’t curse people for shits and giggles.  My charm and wit will surely get me off the hook, leaving me fit as a fiddle and able to post for the rest of the year.

QUESTION:  You have failed to post…

ANSWER:  Impossible!

QUESTION:  Just concede for purposes of this hypothetical that you failed to post.

ANSWER:  I concede nothing.

QUESTION:  It is a given that you did not post on a day.  That’s it.  You’re done.  There’s no way to undo that.

ANSWER:  I’ve already thought of it.  First, I will have my body cryogenically preserved, leaving strict instructions that I am only to be thawed out on the day time  travel is invented.  I will then use said time traveling invention to return to the day in question and enter a post.

QUESTION:  Even if doing so changes the very fabric of space and time?  Suppose, for example, it was predestined that you would not post.  Maybe you post something that infuriates one of your 3.5 readers to the point that they become a mad scientist and turn us all into a race of hybrid mutant half-people, half horses.

ANSWER:  Then we spend all eternity as centaurs, man!  I MADE A PROMISE TO MY 3.5 READERS!

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Mar 03 2015
7 Comments
Writing

One Year of Bookshelf Battle

It’s been a whole year.  As the old saying goes, “time flies when you’re having fun.”

As my 3.5 readers are aware from reading about my first attempt at a novel, I was bitten by the writing bug at a young age.  That bite resurfaced big time in college, when I wrote a humor column for my school newspaper.

I remember walking through a dorm one day and seeing a column I wrote cut out of the paper and posted on a random student’s door.  Wow.  A person liked my writing enough to hang it up.  I was hooked.  I was going to be a superstar.  My major book deal (in my mind) was coming any day now.  I figured I’d better get my Academy Award for Best Screenplay speech written.

Then life, as it does, moved on.  Realities settled in.  I was just a kid from Podunk, Nowhere.  The idea that I’d get scooped up by some big agent seemed about as likely as me getting abducted by aliens (which my correspondent tells me they don’t officially do anymore).

Bills needed to be paid.  Life needed to be lived, and it didn’t wait for me to write a novel.  It kept happening all around me.

I can’t say I have a bad life.  In fact, in many ways, if my life stays as is right now, it wouldn’t be so bad.

But I have for awhile wondered what would have happened had I kept up with my writing.

It’s funny how the mind works.  As a youngster, I assumed if I remained a writer I’d end up a homeless hobo selling oranges on a freeway offramp.  As a, well, I won’t say old but slightly older person, I assume had I remained a writer I’d be penning scripts of the latest Hollywood blockbuster by now.

My mind is a place where there’s rarely a happy medium.

I wish the story of how this blog started was better than this, but here it goes.  I was sitting in a Taco Bell parking lot, having lunch, because, you know, I’m a big health nut and pre-fabricated tacos are full of essential vitamins and minerals, and it hit me.

It was a voice telling me:

Stop wishing you’d been a writer.  You aren’t old.  You aren’t dead.  The technology exists.  If you want to be a writer, then be a writer.

That voice was my inner monologue, but for purposes of making this story awesome, let’s pretend it was a unicorn.  Unicorns are often spotted at Taco Bell.

I went home that night and bookshelfbattle.com was born.  A year later I have 650 or so wordpress followers, 3300 twitter followers, a magical bookshelf where book characters come alive in small, bookshelf sized versions of themselves, and an alien who writes for free.

Sometimes I even review a book.

It would be really great if one day this all turns into a multi-million dollar career that leaves me rich, famous, and the object of jealousy induced slap and tickle fights between Scarlett Johannson and Charlize Theron over who gets to have me, but at the very least, I don’t have to feel bad about not being a writer anymore.

At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.

Thank you for those of you who have been cheering me on from the beginning and also to those who are just joining in.  I’m not sure what next year will bring, but this year, I’m posting once a day for 365 days so stick around.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

P.S. that fight over who gets me would be – “No!  You get to have him!  No!  I don’t want him, you get him!”

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,