Cold Open

I actually don’t know what a “cold open” is, but it seemed like a fitting title for this blog. As some of you may know, I have been kicking around a few ideas for some novels, but haven’t done any writing yet. I’ve been doing some light research, but something happened recently and I have been inspired to write at least this opening scene.

Hope you like it. Please let me know what you think.

“Shit,” Sarah spat as she turned to get her bearings. The first wave had surprised her, but she dived under that onrushing wall of water with ease. She poked her head above the surface just in time to see a larger wave looming, ready to deliver its destructive cargo upon her lithe frame.

The ocean mocked her attempt to escape the second round of play as the wave crashed, driving Sarah into the sand before scooping her up as a child would a bug. Desperate for air, she squeezed her eyes closed as the wave propelled her back toward the earth, tumbling her head over heels twice before she was able to scramble to the surface.

She tore in a gasping breath and a mouthful of seawater as she kicked hard for the shore only thirty yards away. As if the ocean itself were out to get her, an alien riptide held her in place, sapping her strength as she swam as hard as she could.

Another wave broke behind her, its roaring exhalation of laughter reminding her that she was nothing but a plaything to the vast and powerful ocean. She exhaled her thanks into the misty air as whitewash surged around her, the wave dissipating. That one, at least, had failed to assault her, even pushed her toward the shore for a few fleeting moments before the current returned to impede her.

She squinted in confusion, giving up on her furious overhand strokes for a moment. She had been coming to this secluded stretch of sand since learning to swim sixteen years ago, and this was the first time the current was even noticeable to her. Still gulping down breaths, she shook her head as she thought of a new approach. She was able to touch the ocean floor with her toes—one of the reasons she liked this particular beach was that it didn’t get too deep too fast—so she decided to try a half-hopping, half-swimming plan.

She advanced a few yards before the current picked up its pace, again stalling her. She struggled to regain her momentum as the familiar wet wheeze of a building wave boomed all around her. The current pulled harder as water rushed from around her to welcome and join the next mountainous upsurge.

In her twenty-six years of life, she had never been in mortal danger, almost never in real danger at all. She had always been able to keep herself out of harm’s way with a combination of dexterity, unfailing intuition, and no qualms about lying through a flirtatious smile, but it seemed none of those would help her now. Out of options, she swallowed her terror with a burning breath, forcing her fatigued body under the surface in a futile attempt to swim through the twenty-foot breaker.

Hello!

Hey there Mr. Blog, long time, no write. I’ve missed you more than usual lately, so here is a tasty entry for you.

The WSOP is over, and with it goes my job. I was reporting for pokerpages.com throughout the series and had a pretty good time, met some cool people, felt like I learned a lot about poker. There were obviously some things that I didn’t like about it, and I’ve never been one to hold back, but I’ll just say that the hours were long and the events felt like a big grind toward the end. The Main Event was obviously fun and exciting, but I can only handle so many low buy-in no-limit donkaments that are impossible to write about early due to the fact that the field is comprised of nobodies. Also, NLH is extremely boring. I’ll take mixed games or pot-limit Omaha any day.

As I said, my job ended with the WSOP, so I’m back on the market (unbelievable, I know. Don’t everyone get up at the same time). I got my second letter of rejection in the mail today. It was a curious letter from UNLV regarding a job I almost forgot applying for in the football recruiting department. I am supposedly going to be contacted by some other places for jobs I sent resumes to a while back as they start their interview processes this month, but I’m not going to get my hopes up. I also applied to a PR firm in San Francisco which a friend suggested. It seems like it’s right up my alley as they appear to do a lot of gaming-related things, so my fingers are crossed despite not wanting to get my hopes up. I really want to get into public relations or corporate communications as I find newswriting somewhat boring, and my internship at Kalco really piqued my interest in the way the two are so crucial to a company’s success.

Then there’s Upper Deck. My great friend Matt is two or three weeks into his dream job with them and listening to him tell me about it really gnaws at me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely happy for him and I don’t even want to do the same thing he is doing for them, but it would be a dream come true for me to work for a company that is involved with gaming (especially card games, obviously). I have been playing card games since I was 10, when my dad bought me some Revised Magic boosters, and video games since the age of 4, when all the kids got a Nintendo. Ah, to be able to continue living the dream while actually being able to eat. These student loans aren’t going away anytime soon, either.

Speaking of living the dream, DMF Boston was kind of a bust for me. I go into every WoW tournament looking to win, and anything else is a disappointment. Funny I should say that when I have won exactly one big prize tournament in my career: Tanaris Realm Open. Yeah, I know, thanks, shut it . I’ve made it to the semifinals of last year’s NACC and DMF Anaheim, which Tim took down, but I still expect to take home the gold when I go to these things. I’m not sure if that’s confidence, cockiness or conceit, but I feel like I’m one of the favorites to top 8 every time, especially at these multi-format tournaments with tons of (notverygood) players. Typically our problem is not having a good constructed deck, but I think our Boston Jonas deck was the best version, and I have a pretty spicy one brewed up for NACC. Hopefully things don’t backfire, but if they do, DMF Indy is limited. Enough thinking about backup plans, just watch out for Tim, Niles and I. It’s going to be a bloodbath one way or another.

The average level of understanding in the masses of WoW TCG astounds me. You know the guy who Millstones you on your upkeep on the off chance that it mills a specific card? Yeah, most of these people probably do that. We played 4x Warmaul Champion quests in our Jonas deck in Boston and afterward there was a fairly long thread on the forums about how it is a bad quest because you can mill win conditions. Sure, you might mill something important, but it’s more likely that you will fill your yard with good stuff. There is a critical mass of said good stuff in the deck for a reason, and the faster it gets where it needs to be, the better. Read the inanity here: http://entertainment.upperdeck.com/WOW/COMMUNITY/forums/thread/1804103.aspx if you feel like facepalming. Hopefully we can get the Cakedraft Masters WoW site up soon so we can actually educate people.

I had dinner and hung out with my sister tonight. So nice seeing her. I wish we talked more often than we do.

Glenn and I have entered into a prob bet over the writing of our individual books. Whoever finishes first gets the foreword to their book written by the other as a public admission of defeat. He has a huge lead on me, I’m sure, as I wrote a little, but got devoured in NACC preparation. It’ll be fun, anyway, and I have always been interested in story-writing. I’ll keep you updated.
My car has been acting weird lately. A couple of weeks ago Niles and I were on our way to meet Brian and company at the park for some basketball, but my car shut down on the freeway, so we pulled over and let it chill out. It started up pretty soon after and we were back on the road, but it shut down again shortly after as I tried to get it up to speed. When it came back to life, we decided to turn back for home. I obviously should have taken it to the shop the very next day, but I decided to hold off and see what happened. It behaved for the next few days, but then I noticed the RPM gauge dropping off when I was around 70 mph. It didn’t shut off, but I did take it in the next day, only to be told it was behaving fine in the garage, and that mine was the third card that had a problem like that. It seems that the insane heat is vapor-locking things under the hood, since its 120 outside and probably around 200 inside. Christian even told me he had a similar problem in the past and that I should change my battery, since it fixed his issue. Not sure if that will work, but I’ll gladly try it for the low price of one generic battery. If only I weren’t such a complete blank when it comes to cars. I can’t even drive them well, but I’m Asian so give me a break.

We have finally arrived at one of my favorite topics to write about: Sports. I typically pull no punches, so here we go, in order of whatever comes to my mind.

Rashard Lewis — I hated you before, and I hate you even more now. You somehow convinced Orlando to give you a ridiculously inflated contract for what wasn’t that great a career with Seattle, assisted in beating the incredibly soft Cavs to win the Eastern Conference, and now you are busted for PEDs. Congratulations and thank  you for giving my original dislike of you more credibility. At least you were smart enough to give the generic “didn’t know what was in it” answer.

Prince Fielder — What the hell were you thinking? You got plunked in one fat thigh and you knew it was coming (or should have known, but I don’t want to give the kid’s intelligence too much credit) after Manny got nailed. What kind of a crybaby do you have to be to try to break into the opposing locker room to do… what, exactly? Fight? Maybe you were just trying to make a scene since you’re some kind of primadonna? In that case, congratulations on a job well done. Not to be excused in this is baseball’s habit of warning and ejecting pitchers for beanballs that may or may not have been intentional. Listen, if your star player takes one in the back, you better believe there will be some retaliation. When I pitched, I enjoyed putting a fastball in some kid’s earhole as nothing more than a message. I even broke some fingers, but that’s baseball. You can’t take away a team’s right to protect its players, and I applaud Russ Martin for implying that the bean was intentional. Also, let’s be honest here. Fielder is about 200 lbs overweight and it probably wouldn’t even have hurt if he wasn’t. Stop being a child, if that’s possible.

Tom Brady — I like your style. Whoever your public relations team is, keep up the good work. Get those preseason reps in.

Michael Crabtree — Hopefully your cousin is just running his mouth and you aren’t going to actually re-enter the draft, but fire your cousin anyway. He’s clearly an idiot if that’s what he thinks is best for you.

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz — Who didn’t see this coming? Like I said, I don’t care about the steroid era, but people who thought these guys were clean must be out of their minds. There’s a lot to be said for a guy improving over his career, but Ortiz’s rise from nobody to superstar was pretty unusual, wasn’t it? And Manny? Well, let’s just remember that he played with Juan Gonzalez in Cleveland. Raise your hand if you think he was clean.

The List — I wish it would just be full released already. It’s complete b.s. that the New York Times gets to string out the players on this supposedly confidential list of players who took PEDs back when baseball was trying to see what was up. First of all, releasing any names is absolutely unethical if the players were told it was confidential. Second, firing off a name or two every few months when you run out of things to write is not good journalism, it’s scummy. If you’re going to release a name, give out all of them. Instead of hoarding the names and collecting every time you feel the need to spark controversy, run them all out there, get EVERYONE in trouble, and let the whole thing go away. This could drag on for years, and I for one hope it does not. I also think it’s ridiculous that the guys who are writing about the players on the list are being applauded for their excellent investigative journalism. F that. Stop being scumbags.

Eli Manning — Wow. Congratulations on the huge contract. I don’t think there’s a soul alive who thinks you should be the highest paid quarterback in the league, considering your aren’t even the best quarterback in your family. There are a bunch of guys better than Eli, but don’t have rings, so way to make that paper. If there’s anything to be taken from this, it’s that athletes make far too much money for something that isn’t important at all in the grand scheme of things. Also, good luck without Plaxico this year.

This bad boy is almost 2,000 words, so I’m done. Drop me a comment if you feel the urge.

Never Fear

This entry is simply to congratulate one of my oldest and dearest friends, Matt Dunn. He is getting ready to move to California and take the job of his dreams.

A note to everyone: You can do anything if you want it bad enough. Just ask Matt.

Congratulations and best wishes, buddy.

Matty The Squid

Matt  “y The Squid” Dunn <> Dreamcatcher

It’s snowing.

That’s how I feel, at least. I was so excited to come home for a bit because all of these people that I wanted to hang out with were saying, “Oh my gosh! You’re coming home! We have to hang out!”

Obviously I’m not going to kold them. If someone wants to hang out with me then I we either are friends, or I must have been/must be relatively personable to them, if not outright friendly. I’m not sure if this is true in reality, but the way I perceive things, it’s easy to see when I like or dislike someone just by my body language and choice of words (if any). I can probably fake the funk with the best of them, but if I don’t care, then I don’t care.

So these people who got all my happy hopes up and made all these pseudo-plans with me have, so far, completely flaked. It’s one thing to be like, “Hey, I’m kind of busy, but I’ll try to make time for an old friend.” It’s another to say, “Hey, I’m off this week, let’s go do something,” and then follow through with no calls, no answers, no replies. To that and those people, here’s a hearty fuck you. I don’t care if you are or were my friend, but it’s pretty uncool to run that play. If you don’t want to hang out with me, don’t run the omgurhomeican’twaittohangoutwithyou!!11 play, just tell me you’re busy with school or work or some other lie that I’ll let slide or don’t say anything about hanging. I’m bored to death here and I don’t enjoy being a yo-yo.

Thankfully, the gang (you know who you are) has been meeting weekly for bowling nights (tonight!), and it’s been a blast to hang out with my old roommates and friends again. While I may be cold and/or shy to people I don’t know or don’t care for, it’s pretty hard for me to not love someone who is on the “inside,” and I enjoy every second of their company. And thank you, Gail, for being basically the nuts as a friend.

I think what cuts me the deepest is the fact that one or two of the people who I was so looking forward to seeing know me well (and vice-versa if this sentence was structured correctly), has/have so far joined the crowd I’m currently bitching about. I’d appreciate a call, you know, ever (and you know who you are, if you’re reading this, I’m sure (not that anyone does)).

Not much I can do about the situation(s), though. I’m not about to force people to hang out with me. I may be a loser, but I’m not going to  beg, despite what this entry may sound like. I’m just calling you all out.

Anyways, it’s time for me to go roll some ninepins. Later.

Irony?

Isn’t it scary when you have a song stuck in your head and when you turn the radio on it’s playing? It just happened to me with Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls and Pandora. I don’t really know why it was in my head, but what a strange coincidence.

This got me to thinking of other weird or ironic situations.

The day I went to the clinic to get my busted finger checked out in Las Vegas, I saw a seagull chillin’ in the middle of Maryland Parkway. A seagull. In the desert.

What the?

That poor little dude must have popped his nonexistent bird pants when he realized that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Once when I was hopping a plane to somewhere, there was a tall white woman in a two-piece bikini in the McCarran International Airport security check line. I think she used the standard, “What happens in Vegas…” or “It’s Vegas, baby!” (I hate when people say this, by the way. I know it’s Vegas. I live here.) to defend herself.

Weird.

People are generally bad at spelling and grammar, but some are especially bad at homonyms. It appalls me that anyone with a college degree… no, scratch that. It appalls me that anyone older than 16 can’t spell common words correctly. Your and you’re are not hard to distinguish. Neither are to and too. There, their and they’re are taught right after the alphabet. What is the problem, people? I’m a spelling Nazi because someone has to tell you that you’re wrong or you’ll never re-learn something you should already know.

I’m tilting myself thinking about some of this stuff, so I’m just going to post this. Comment anything you find applies. Bye!

Fourteenth best road trip ever!

I haven’t been blogging lately because I injured myself again. I think Niles’ nicknames “Glass Dane” and “Black Lotus” are very fitting. I got injured a lot during my time playing organized sports as well. Maybe I just go too hard (that’s what she said?), this time fracturing the tip of my finger where the tendon holds it straight while going for a rebound in a basketball game with my friends. It’s called Mallet Finger. Seriously.

So I have a splint on my left ring finger that makes it more than awkward to type. I am developing some terrible typing habits because of this crutch and I hope it doesn’t affect me after I get it off (don’t have an actual timeline to stop using it). Okay, it’s really only one bad habit: Sliding my pinky over to hit the keys that my ring finger should hit.

Five of us – Tim, Niles, Jason, Eric and I – are on the long road to Perdition, or San Francisco in this case. We decided to take Tim’s (Lori’s) 4-Runner after I suggested that someone sit in the back like I (and I’m sure millions of others) used to do as a little kid in my dad’s Buick station wagon. Tim snap-vetoed the idea, stating legal and safety issues, but as it became apparent that there wasn’t enough room for four fatties and one non-fatty (not me) to fit in the seats, someone had to go to the back.

We Tetris-ed the baggage so that there was enough room for one person to sit with their legs stretched out and Niles climbed in. I quickly pointed out that if anyone was going to be sardined in the back, it shouldn’t be the lone Mexican in our crew.

Fittingly, I’m now writing this in the back of the sweet Toyota as we cruise past Buffalo Bill’s and Whiskey Pete’s. I figure this little nook will be comfortable for about 3-3.5 hours before I need to switch, which is less than half of the 8.5ish hours to our destination.

Darkmoon Faire San Francisco Mateo is this weekend and Tim, Niles and I are looking to repeat our California DMF success. The problem is that this time the format is constructed and World of Warcraft constructed is neither fun nor interesting, so we don’t practice much or as efficiently as we do for limited (excluding my cold 5-1 on draft day at NAC). Luckily, previous WoW limited formats were not complex at all, and my default plan of playing a decent curve topped by a slew of 5/5s+ and some removal is almost always good enough. People are so bad at the game (and at most games and things, myself notwithstanding), that it’s not very hard to capitalize on a bad attack or other mistake, making a 5/5 more than good enough when they fall behind.

As I was saying, constructed is the worst. I don’t like any of the decks in any of the formats I’ve ever played (aside from Gorebelly solo from the first Nats where I lost playing for Top 8). Constructed WoW is the most miserable grind imaginable. The worst part is, because of the open format in which all the cards are legal (no rotations yet, unfortunately), there are a wide range of viable-to-semi-viable decks, making it impossible to find a deck that beats everything and causing some matchups to be impossible to win. Frustrating, at best.

Fell asleep for a while back there, traded places with Eric who later did the same with Jason, and eventually we got to our sweet Tim-provided hotel in San Francisco around 3:30a.m. We woke up around noon and went downtown to get the dim sum Tim had suggested. I would put that place in the “top tree” (shouts to Niles, Big Jose and all you mongoloids who don’t speak English “good”) of dim sum places I have been to. The food was good and not as greasy as expected, which is always a plus.

Tim dropped us off at the site while he went to hang out with his grandparents and I farted around for a while before losing to Matt Markoff in an iPod draft that was pretty stacked as it also included DMF Champion Tim Rivera. I drafted the sickest deck ever with 3x Rensarth Shadowsun and 3x Twin Spire Ruins plus a Zip and a bunch of butts to burn with. Almost forgot to mention the third pick Bloodseeker I received. You know the one. It’s that insane bow that Jan Palys managed to “open” at Anaheim and I never had a Snipe for. Markoff ripped my hand apart with discard and eventually beat me down with some random blue dudes before doing the same to Tim in the finals. Matt had the worst deck of the three of us, but it just goes to show how good Priest is in the format. Anyone who poo-pooed me saying so earlier was and maybe still is uninformed. Hardly matters now, however, as Blood of the Gladiator is about to arrive.

I vacillated between a bunch of decks as the format solidified into Mage control, Black Ice and Kilzin. I eventually decided to go with Vorna as I couldn’t get the Varanis deck to win against the aggressive decks and Vorna tears up Black Ice. I did manage to beat a Slow deck, but it wasn’t very good. I lost to the totem deck as I never had the Nether Fracture for Myriam and he always had the Earth Shock for my Invisibility. Nice card, that Myriam Starcaller. Really.

I also lost to some stupid 4x Storm Shock Kilzin draw when I gassed up with Invocation against my questless, creatureless opponent. I decided to drop at 3-2 and play in the sealed minis qualifier but I opened a pile of crap with Thangal sitting on top of it. I feel like I outplayed all of my opponents, but my pieces were just poop so I couldn’t really get damage through without Thangal. I managed to get blown out by Tim’s Bolvar-led squad before crushing some duder[sic] and then losing to another sick team of Elendril (probably my favorite normal piece at this point), Phadalus and some mage. His guys hit hard and had a lot of armor in the wrong spots for me, so I was all-in on Thangal, since my Tidehunter and Mojo Mender Jana weren’t really able to break through their defense. Unfortunately, I got Earth Shocked once on Shadow Word: Pain I needed to land it on tick 5 and again when I needed to Starfire a guy out. I guess not knowing the cards is an excuse for the first one, but the second one was kind of win-win for me since it kept Phadalus from blowing the guts out of my dudes for while longer (at the cost of Thangal doing nothing for while).

Did a feature match on Sunday, but my busted finger really hurt after that and I had a headache from a cold I had picked up over the weekend (my lone prize), so I stopped. They probably wouldn’t pay me or pay me enough anyway.

Something is wrong with my A key. It feels different from the rest of them. I don’t know how to describe it but it is really annoying me at the moment. It kind of feels higher and harder to press than the rest of the keys. I hope it’s not really bad because I don’t want to send it back to Dell. I love my laptop!

We drove back late-ish on Sunday night and I passed out in the back of the truck again before trading with Eric hours later. Tim couldn’t make it all the way, so Niles drove back and I kept him company up front to the glorious light of The Venture Bros. We got back to LV around 7:00a.m. and that’s where this story of failure ends.

Next up: I’m going home for a couple of months, so I’m sure I’ll have something to talk about from sunny, boring Hawaii.

Peace.

Sports Rant

I was talking to Niles (my roomate) about steroids and how I don’t give a you-know-what who used them in the steroid era when Alex Rodriguez’s name came up. I was probably the one who did it and I claimed that I was sure he had used steroids. This was about a month ago, before any of the current stuff about him came out.

Look at the guy. You don’t come up as a skinny shortstop and turn into the Incredible Hulk without steroids. You turn into David Eckstein or Michael Young (good name, btw) and you definitely don’t put up A-Roid numbers. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy. He’s the best baseball player I’m ever going to see play and will probably go down as one of the best of all time if the detractors can get off the three years of doing steroid tip. Like I said, I personally don’t care one bit about whether or not a player used steroids in the “steroid era.” Some of baseball’s heroes have done way worse things. Murder, drugs, alcoholism, you name it, someone’s done it, yet Pete Rose — another one of the game’s greatest players and one of my favorites — will never get into the Hall of Fame because he gambled on the game.

Speaking of Mr. Rose, I randomly met him one day as my dad and I were walking through Caesar’s Palace. It was one of those times that you forget easily but always brings a smile to your face when you are reminded of them. Granted, he basically couldn’t care less about me, but he shook my hand and said something I don’t remember anymore, but it was still Pete Rose.

Back to reality.

This past football season may have been the most miserable in recent memory. My team, the Eagles — and for those of you who care, I grew up liking Randall Cunningham, so despite being from Hawaii where we have no sports teams worth mentioning, I am an Eagles fan. Same goes for the Oakland Athletics since I liked Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire when I was a kid — were favored to win the division and go to the Super Bowl, but obviously couldn’t put it together for basically the entire season. There were the typical flashes of greatness, but on the whole they were inconsistent and, as usual, struggle in big games.

The New York Giants somehow got written off in favor of the clearly inferior Eagles and decided to show up as the season’s Patriots, steamrolling people until they decided to stop playing or got hurt. The Patriots’ season was obviously a dead end when Tom Brady went down in week two, but they still managed to put up an admirable 11 wins on their way to being the first 11-win team to miss the playoffs. Cassel is the real deal, as I said when Brady went down, and he managed to prove it as the season went on. He recently was franchised by the team to the tune of $15 million or something absurd. Who wouldn’t want to be a backup quarterback in the NFL?

There was some stupid water pill scandal in the middle of the year involving Deuce McCallister and the Minnesota Williams’ but that’s another thing I could care less about. I bring this up because they were supposed to get suspended for longer than a game or whatever they got, but a Minnesota judge threw the case out. GO VIKINGS!

I kind of hope my favorite player and still one the best quarterbacks in the league goes to the Vikes next year. They have a lot of pieces in place and are really only missing a qb.

On the subject of scandals and Donny Mac, anyone who made fun of the guy for not knowing about ties in regular season games needs to shut it. The only reason you as a fan would have known that there were ties is because your team was involved in one in relatively recent history, you get a giant nerd boner about rules, or you’re faking it. It’s not really Donovan’s job to know that there are ties involved. He gets paid to throw the ball all over the field and sometimes run around, which we does every year with All-Pro numbers.

So I said that I don’t care about steroids and all that stuff, and I really dont, but I’m glad that Barry Bonds is out of baseball. That guy was quite an asshole and he shouldn’t be surprised that nobody wants to sign him. I think he was an awesome player, but he has no legs anymore and nobody wants to bring in a figure as unliked as he is. The fact that he and his agent want to file some kind of lawsuit against baseball for colluding to keep him unsigned is hilarious. It’s a sign that he’s nowhere near the same player, that’s all.

Speaking of unsigned players, Manny Ramirez really needs to sign something with the Dodgers soon. He’s one of those guys who probably have nothing left after baseball (at least I can’t see him doing anything else), so in true Julio Franco style, he’ll play until he’s 80. At this point it seems like he is looking for a 32-year deal worth $640 million or something based on the offers his crew has rejected. He’s not going to get a long-term deal at age 37 or 38, and he’s not going to get more money than the best player in baseball, so there’s not point in him holding out. I don’t get it, but I’m not Scott Boras.

Getting close to 1,000 words, so I’m going to cut it off here. I’d like to hear anyone’s thoughts on any of this.

Bye!

The Dawn Arrives

It’s 2:03a.m. in my cold Las Vegas room and dawn is a few hours off, but I can’t hold out any longer. I know, I know, my room probably isn’t the only place that’s cold in Las Vegas, but it’s where I am and I wanted to be semi-dramatic, so shut it.

I started this blog at the beginning of the year intent on filling it in with some pre-2009 storytelling, but 700 words into my first blog I realized that it would be a boring piece to not only read, but to finish writing. I gave up with the MLA format research paper and decided to give the short version here. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a wordy son of a bitch, but I’ll try to keep this blog readable to any poor soul who stumbles across it.

Anyone who knows me also likely knows that I tend to put off things that don’t produce some kind of income, but I’ve been inspired to write by a few sources.

The first is Gail’s handiwork at itsagailthing.com. See you in a few weeks G!

The second source of inspiration (not taking anything away from Gail, but a close second), is the best show on any medium: Californication. As a writer who isn’t writing anything, Agent Fox Mulder is forced to find his muse in a sea of “pointless pussy.” Duchovny is mastery incarnate in this show and I see a lot of myself in his character’s character and path. If you haven’t watched this show yet, get on it. I devoured season one in about one full sitting. Seriously, watch it. In other news, Battlestar Galactica is back on!

Third, some people tell me or have told me that I am actually good at this writing thing, so I’d like to continue doing it before I forget how to. Use it or lose it, right?

Fourth and maybe last, I have had a lot of things in my craw of late. Most of it has to do with sports, but some of it is just life observations and thoughts in general.

If you aren’t satisfied with this introductory issue, feel free to return it for a full refund, minus shipping and handling. If you are satisfied, condolences.

Later.