April 2009

Just turned in my last column for the Oklahoma Daily. I am sure I will miss it, but right now I am content with that body of work and ready to move on to new things.

I’m taking a break from politics, for sure. I need to wait until there is actually debate in the political arena as opposed to theatrical screaming. I am aware that I may never write politics again, but I am okay with this. Oh well.

So I finished copyediting on the book last night at about one. I have a conclusion essay to write, and the changes to enter, and then it will be done. It is not exactly what I set out to write, but it is what ended up being written. I am happy with it.

I may have a chance to talk with a Christian fiction editor today. I haven’t written any Christian fiction (yet), but hey, a foot in the door is a foot in the door.

On a non-related note, I have a gremlin in my house. It is stealing all my stuff. I have recently lost: two albums I’m supposed to review, my retainers (yes, I feel like an eighth grader), and several other minor things.

Hopefully this gremlin is chased off by rain. We’ve gotten what must be about three to six inches of rain over the past eight hours. The intersection of Lindsey and Elm had a foot and a half of water in it that I needed to bike through. It was awesome.

Also, WordPress needs to get a better handle on spam. I have 572 spam comments right now. This is ridiculous.

That’s right. I finished the first draft of my as-yet-untitled book of essays last night at about midnight. It’s 139 pages long or something like that. I am thoroughly proud. I have to go through and edit the junk out of it (literally) and add in some shorter, more humorous essays, and then I’ll be able to start shipping it out to publishing houses with letters attached. Or, I guess, agents. Cause that’s how this works now. Meh. Business.

So, I’m messing around on LinkedIn. I stumble across the “People you might know” box, and right there, staring me in the face, is the name of Jan Peter Balkenende. Under his name, it says “Prime Minister at Netherlands.”

I think to myself, “Self, does Netherlands have more than one prime minister? Or am I one click away from the prime minister of the Netherlands?”

So I promptly did what is becoming second nature: looked him up on Wikipedia. Lo and behold, I found out that there is only one prime minister of Netherlands. I could be LinkedIn friends with the prime minister of Netherlands.

I’m not sure why LinkedIn thinks I might know him (as I can’t see any logical reason why it would think that), but it thrilled my soul anyway.

Interesting sidenote that my roommate pointed out: what is the prime minister of the Netherlands doing on LinkedIn? Job hunting?

Between finishing the first draft of my book of essays, writing papers for class, and trying to keep up with Independent Clauses, I haven’t even thought about writing stuff on here. I did do a lot of things worth writing about, but (alas) I don’t have time to write about them now. Instead, I’m going to go hear Chuck Klosterman speak. Oh yes. I am excited.

Somebody at NYU is about to get fired. How do I know? Well, you can’t go around sending acceptance letters to 489 people who didn’t get into NYU grad school, even if it’s an April Fool’s Joke.

I’d like to know the number of restraining orders that person is going to have against him from irate people. I guarantee you that some people were already drinking to their success when their Blackberrys chimed with a second e-mail from NYU saying “Sorry, we failed in telling you that you failed.”

Then the drinking inevitably went from victory drinks to “drinking away the sorrow” in nothing flat. Like seriously; nothing goes zero to sixty faster than the disappointment over vanquished hopes.

I would run if I were the dude who sent out the e-mails. They blamed it on a clerical error, but I’ve been around long enough to know that means “we don’t want to admit that John with the long hair in accounting did this, and he’s going to be sacked as soon as I finish this announcement.”

I went to a renaissance fair today. I realized that if I ever have writer’s block, all I need to do is hit up a gathering of this type and I will be instantly cured. I saw kings, pirates, vikings, Romans, Spaniards, video gamers, Twilight fans, pixies, fairies, archers, brawlers, camels, and swordsmen; those were just the people in costume. The people-watching was even better. I picked up some useful phrases to describe people out of the people I saw today: “vaguely Asian,” “a chinless neck that leads straight to the mouth,” and “more sunburns than a renaissance fair.”

This last one was impossible to miss: there were so many pasty white people who looked like they hadn’t been outside in months (to their possible credit, the last few months were winter, but still). I can only imagine the ferocious burning feeling that they are fighting right now as the day comes to a close.

Also, I was surprised at the absurd amount of consumerism. I didn’t buy anything, but it seemed like the whole purpose of the fair’s existence was to sell merch. Maybe it is…maybe I’m behind on the times.

Either way, it was quite the experience.

So, I’ve been working on getting my internet presence up-to-speed. I’m trying to connect LinkedIn, Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Independent Clauses, God In the Van, and Once Found Letters. It’s more difficult than it seems, because GITV is personal, IC is collective, and OFL is co-authored. LinkedIn and Facebook are personal, while Twitter and Myspace are all business. But all of them are parts of me that I would like to display.

I think I need to make a weekly chart and mark which days I will check which social media. I occasionally feel more like a slave to my online presence than I feel like its master.

Oh well, back to work. IC’s Myspace is calling my name. Maybe I’ll make a Twitter about it.