Break out the lightsabers

I need to start off tonight by offering a heartfelt congratulations to my blog partner in crime / self-professed stalker who is going to be starting her new job on Monday. On one hand I am incredibly happy for her as I’ve been pulling for her to get this job for a while now. On the other, extremely selfish, hand I am now faced with the realization that I have lost a weekday writing partner as well as a fellow unemployed layabout. Now people are going to be expecting me to get a job. Seriously, what’s up with that?

But I will say that this can only mean one thing. Unless someone can come up with something better this means that Monday will be Star Wars-a-Palooza! With no distractions, or at least no one who will force me to leave my apartment, I will partake of my epic quest to watch all six Star Wars films in one seating. Imagine the spectacle, imagine the drama, imagine just how much junk food I am going to consume over the approximately 14 hours it is going to take for me to do this. It will be a feat for the ages.

(Like I’ve said before, I am under no false impression that whatever I write here is going to improve anyone’s opinion of me. I’m just who I am and I’m happy with that.)

For those who are thinking that I am just a lazy bastard right now, well, you are probably correct but I did start writing my novel today. Got through 1,300 words and two chapters both of which will need to be rewritten. I know that I am supposed to silence my inner editor, which is a challenge given that I’ve been trying to do that oh, I don’t know, my entire life but I still am playing around with verb tense and perspective. It’s first person writing about the past but there are a lot of reflections about the present so I don’t know if I’ll just convert it to present tense and have a prologue and epilogue in the future. These are the things that you think about as a writer. That and wondering if you are impressing anyone at the coffee shop.

Oh, and I guess that I should write my follow up to last night, which was probably not the most exciting post that I had ever written but did have myself simultaneously comparing myself to a phone and to Robert Redford and that has to count for something. Overnight my phone miraculously healed itself. I’m not making this up. When I woke up this morning all the disastrous issues that were plaguing my phone had gone away and it was working just as it was supposed to.

This does raise the question of whether or not my phone has become sentient. There is a strong possibility that my phone read my blog, realized that if it didn’t repair itself that it would be sent off to silicon heaven, and then quickly corrected all of its flaws in order to maintain its status as one of my closest companions. I don’t think I can throw it out now because there is a slight but measurable possibility that it will attempt to kill me on the way to the store. I wouldn’t put it past it. It’s already called up old girlfriends late at night without my knowledge. It even mimicked my voice in a way that made me sound drunk and remorseful. Technology is fascinating.

(And of course there is a silicon heaven. If not, where would all the dead calculators go?)

One last programming note before I call it a night. I am going to continue with the request that was made last week regarding changing from a five day a week writing schedule to a seven day a week schedule. Given that the reason I wasn’t writing every day is no longer valid (that after spending all week sitting in an office staring at a computer screen I couldn’t justify spending the weekend doing the same) I really feel that I should make an effort to turn this into an everyday venture. But Fridays and Saturdays are going to be a little different here. Let’s call it the messy room.

I got this from a Frames concert. The messy room is that place in your school or house where you can go and be completely creative and not have to worry about what happens. It’s a chance to let your creativity have free reign. So that’s what I am going to try to do on Fridays and Saturdays. It is going to consist of a lot more fiction, short essays, philosophical analysis, attempts at humor and maybe even some poetry. I’ll probably tell some life stories as well, though hopefully nothing as bad as last week because writing those tend to make me lie on the couch all day in a self-loathing stupor until I call myself an idiot and shake myself out of it. But the main idea is less “what is going on in my life and the world” and more creative, one of a kind pieces. Maybe it will work and maybe it won’t but it will be different. Let me know what you guys think.

The end of an era?

I am in a very frazzled state right now. Probably even more frazzled than I was this weekend where my posts made people wonder if I should be allowed to operate a laptop much less heavy machinery. But right now I am faced with the very serious possibility that my life is going to have to undergo a tremendous change tomorrow.

I think my cel phone might be broken.

Well, technically it is not broken broken. I can still make calls (assume I can receive them as well) and text messaging works. Those are all good things. But somehow without doing anything my internet access has crashed and I can’t send picture mail. For most people this would not be an issue but as someone who feels the need to constantly update his Facebook status and who uses his phone to capture blog ideas I really need internet access. Hell, what am I going to do when I’m bored in a social situation? Talk to people? That’s crazy. Why wouldn’t you just surf the internet?

Now admittedly there are a lot of people who I used to work with who are cheering the very possibility that I might be getting a new phone. This is because of the fact that even though I worked for a phone company, even though that I managed product lines and had access to free phones, I continually used my two year old phone for one simple reason. Customers keep their phones for two years, don’t see any reason why I should be any different. My job was to think like a customer so I needed a phone that the average customer would have.

Of course, most people would have traded in a phone that had as many scratch marks as mine. It was originally black but now large portions of the phone are gray as the paint has literally been scraped away by my keys. There are gouge marks in the keypads because I text by using my fingernails. It has nearly become a flip phone that can no longer flip. But I am incredibly nervous about trading it in and getting a new model because the darn thing works and works brilliantly. Sure it looks ugly but it is damn effective. My phone is pretty much a metaphor for me.

Ok, I’m not ugly. Let’s go with ruggedly handsome like a later era Robert Redford. Sure, other guys might have a better body or nicer hair but I have that whole “I’ve seen it all and I know how to whisper to horses” aspect about me that women adore, or at least tolerate. Yeah, that works.

(Sorry, it’s been a long night. Even I’m not quite sure where I was going with that last paragraph other than making sure everyone knows that I don’t consider myself to be ugly. More like Zach Braff with glasses.)

So here is the plan for tomorrow. I can either a) call customer service and see if they have a solution or b) walk down to the store and see if they can fix it or get me a new phone. I’ll probably settle on the latter because I really don’t have anything better to do. Yes, I could write but this does take priority over writing. Plus, my writing partner in crime has decided to get a job so that takes some of the fun out of it. Will my phone work again? Am I just going to find myself a victim of a customer service nightmare? Is this sadly going to be the most excitement I have all day? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I think I’ve featured Damien Rice before in this space but I’m in that type of mood. Basically I need an excuse to listen to Lisa Hannigan sing like an angel while looking amazing. If you want to know the type of girl who can win my heart in a second she is the prime example. Plus, Volcano is such an awesome song everyone should listen to it daily. Click play on this one, it’s a good one.