Turkey Day and Black Friday: The Aftermath

I know, I know. I'm up during normal hours. But don't fret. The zombie apocalypse hasn't come yet, and I'm not being forced to stay awake and on the move-- lest the undead devour my succulent flesh. Yet.

Instead, I'm awake because Thanksgiving and Black Friday have seriously done a number on my sleep schedule. You see, since I work at Spencer's, I had some odd working hours on Black Friday: 3 a.m. to 8 a.m. Normally this wouldn't have affected me. I'd have just slept in until five p.m. the night before, and I would've been fine. The problem was: I couldn't do that since had Thanksgiving dinner that evening, so I had to be up by at least noon.

                                           via igourmet.com

Plenty of tryptophan  for your late-night drive to work.

I still would've been fine if this was it. I'd have come home and gone to bed at nine in the morning, woken up at three or four, and all would've been well. But no. My friends and I had an all-day video game party planned for Friday. I went straight from work to there and didn't wind up at home until two in the morning. For those of you keeping score, that's 38 hours straight with no sleep, and five of them were work hours.

I don't even remember much of the gaming party. It's one giant blur of animated blood and violence, people shouting the word "noob," and me dying a lot because I was too tired to play. I eventually got my second wind and woke up enough to play an RPG (Eternal Sonata) for a few hours. That game, despite it's cutesy-wutesy appearance, is actually incredible. I highly recommend it to any fan of RPG games.

                                                           via wikipedia

Yes, there's a rainbow on the cover. It's a good game. I promise.

My sleep schedule still hasn't returned to normal. You see, I went to bed on Friday night and had to get up at 6 a.m. for work the next day. And when I got home, I still couldn't go to bed because we had people over at the house for my brother's birthday. Then, my brother insisted that we spend the night at my cousin's house as part of his birthday celebration. We got to playing video games, and I didn't get to go to bed until 6 a.m. 

Let's stop and check the score again. That's 38 hours with no sleep, then 4 hours of sleep, then another 24 with none. That's almost three days with only 4 hours of sleep. To say that I was exhausted was an understatement. My brother went home that night, but my cousin asked me to stay another night. Another whirlwind of pixilated death and destruction later, and my head hit the pillow at nine in the morning.

This brought the grand total to 9 hours of sleep in 4 1/2 days until I could finally get a decent night's rest.

To my surprise, I woke up at ten in the morning the next day and couldn't sleep any more. Even stranger, I got tired around ten or eleven at night, like a normal person. I've gone on like this for a couple days, and I hate it. After eleven, it becomes difficult to concentrate on even the most menial tasks without nodding off.

                                              via HolyTaco.com

I decided to put my new-found, wakeful morning hours to the most productive use imaginable: watching movies. I don't know if I was still groggy or if the morning sun had baked my brain with its devil rays, but Snakes on a Plane actually seemed like a decent movie. Perhaps it was so bad that it was good. 

The greatest line in that movie, as I'm sure many of you know is when the TV version tries to dub over Samuel L. Jackson's "motherfuckings" with other word's that begin with -m and -f. For example, "Enough is enough! I've had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane," becomes:

"I've had it with these monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday to Friday plane!"

Seriously, who would ever think that's what he's actually saying? Did they just get lazy from all the dubbing they had to do (Samuel Jackson swears A LOT) and say, "Screw it. Just pick words that start with those letters. That'll work."

But above all, the funniest thing about that movie is seeing Samuel Jackson hold a snake up by it's neck and try to identify it to a biologist over the phone. What an immense amount of snake knowledge he possesses.

                                                                   via howstuffworks.com
It appears to have murder-fending scales on its mostly-fuchsia body.

The Spencer's Chronicles 2: Laser Lights, Tiger Blood, and Salvia

First, I apologize for not writing for a little while. I got caught up in working on that article for Cracked four days ago, and I just realized it was Tuesday. Also, who's Sapphire, and why is her name tattooed on my ass?

Anyway, I was working at Spencer's the other day when my friend Wes and I noticed something rather peculiar: one of the laser lights has a warning on it not to look directly into the laser... but that's not the weird part. It's the placement. Let me show you a picture I took of the warning label:

Warning: Do not look directly into the-- AAAHH! MY RETINAS!!

I can't tell if the person who decided on this location for the label was playing a sick joke or assumed that people would enough sense to not look at the front of the laser device when the lasers are on. But, if that was the case, why put the warning there at all?

Saturday was also the day that our supply of tiger blood energy potions expired. I'm sure you all remember the Charlie Sheen debacle-- right? Well energy drink companies decided to cash in on that by making tiger blood energy drinks, and putting them in IV-pouch shaped containers.

                                                   via candyhero.com

To be perfectly honest, I prefer the Adonis DNA.

So, Wes did what he always does when things like that expire: taste it and dump the rest down the break room toilet  when he confirms that it tastes horrible. The only problem about doing that with this particular product was the effect it had on the toilet: the appearance that someone had explosive, bloody diarrhea  and forgot to flush.

It stained the toilet for three days.

Shortly thereafter, the phone rang and another guy who works there, Chris, answered. from what he told Wes and I later, the conversation went like this:

Caller: Do you sell salvia?

Chris: Salvia? Is that some sort of clothing line or something?

Caller: No. It's a plant. You smoke it.

Chris: No. We don't sell that here. *Abrupt hangup*

Afterward, when the three of us were talking about it (and done making fun of Chris for not knowing what salvia was) we were unanimously stumped as to why someone would think they could buy it at Spencer's.

Pictured: Definitely not clothing.

And now I must bid you adieu, for the sun is coming up, and if I don't retreat to my cavern, I will burst into a ball of flame. Or the sun will damage my retinas or something. God knows that laser damaged them enough.

Writing is Hard. Not Writing is Harder.

Ladies and gentlemen, this may surprise you, but I am a writer. I know, I know. You were under the impression that I just beamed my thoughts straight from my head to the computer, but unfortunately, I write them down. I compose them into tangible and logical trains of thought, with sentence structure, nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Sometimes I throw in the occasional semi-colon; sometimes I don't. Nonetheless, I am a writer, and I hope you can forgive me.

Today, I lounged around the house with one purpose in mind: churning out an article for cracked.com. This often leads to a lot of stress. The editors for Cracked push their writers and can be quite picky. This is a good thing, since it ensures that the content they publish is always of the highest quality. It may prove to also be a bad thing though because after so much banging my head against the wall, I'll either have to shell out a lot of money to repair my walls or induce severe cerebral hemorrhaging.

                                                                               via wall designs.net

And the cost of repairs to my walls will be extensive.

Despite all of that, writing for Cracked is a pleasure. It's one of the most friendly environments for a writer to learn in, and I learn every day. If you submit your work to a writing journal or magazine, you could wait three to six months just to receive a fill in the blank rejection notice. At Cracked, you receive personal feedback from the editors on a weekly basis. Sometimes more often. Plus, rather than be sodomized when submitting work to writing journals,  the Cracked editors only verbally sodomize you. (David Wong, please don't vaporize me for that joke He can do that you know. With his mind). In all seriousness though, the editors are fantastic. And comedy wizards. My fellow writers are the nicest people in the world. And everyone in the community wants everyone else to succeed.

A wise writer once told me "You've got to cut yourself open and bleed on the page. That will give your words power." I tried this once, but I couldn't tell how powerful my words were. It was hard to read through all of the blood. Did I not say the right chant to Sithis or something? But he was right. Sometimes the words just pour out of you like blood from an open wound, or to be less morbid, like water from a river. Other day's there's a drought, or you have a clotting problem (You should really see a doctor about that. It's nasty business).

Earlier today, the words just kept coming. I was a finely-tuned writing machine. I punched those words out of my head like Liu Kang punches hearts out of his enemies.

 

                                                            via GamingBolt.com

Pictured: The writing process.

But then, when I sat down to work on my blog, the words stopped coming. I'm having trouble formulating this very sentence. Seriously, I revised that sentence three times. If I didn't flapjack, revise my sentence bacon, they would be almost water-buffalo to understand. I'm going to stop now before I hurt somebody with the wildly irresponsible way I'm flinging these words around. Someone could put an eye out is what I'm saying.

Let me close by saying what you've already read in the title: writing is hard, but not writing is harder. It's one of the only things that make my life worth living. The sense of fulfillment I get when I complete something... not to mention when someone actually likes it... That feeling is indescribable. And I hope you can all feel it someday- in whatever it is that gives you purpose. Find that something and strive toward it. Punch hearts out of people's chests-- figuratively of course, and never lose sight of what you love and the people who helped you along the way.

And just one last thing: a tip for the aspiring writers out there. Caffeine is your friend.

                                                                               via msn.com

The nectar of the Gods.