An Introduction

Well, here it is the resolution to enter into 2012. I’m about a month late, but I figured that better late than never right. One thing that I wanted to resolve for 2012, when it comes to my writing is that I don’t want it to be overly wordy, so I’ll cut to the chase. I can’t always promise that in the future.

I wanted to start a blog. I feel as a writer it should be the necessary stepping stone to make myself more computer savy as well as make me feel like I’m part of the 21^st century. Let’s face it; blogging has taken over that ancient form known as letter writing. I thought it would feel more traditional to go the journalism route, but all they keep saying is that journalism is dead.

I…most of the sentences I write will start with that one solitary word, so try to get accustomed to it. Oh yeah, so I did start out as a journalist, not a successful one, but success is something else that has a slow pulse in my scope of vision, much like journalism, so it would figure that I would gravitate to them.

 It felt like I had a pretty good leg up there for a while when I first started as a journalist. I was mostly writing about comic books. I would be interviewing different creators that I secretly wanted to be, but I figured that it was a start. It was to be the precursor to a career as a novelist that was supposed to bring more books deals, adaptations and the cool life of a Hollywood producer. I could see myself now in a white pants suit with a chrome vest, complete with a stogie and deep chalice of bourbon.  Completing the picture was a blond and a brunette on each arm. The blond would massage my feet; the brunette would polish my aviator sun glasses.  I would be looking at a pool I would probably never swim in with the California hills leading to the horizon.  

Yeah right, I’m far too much of a New Yorker for that. Naturally this isn’t the way the story went, no matter how much of a taste I seemed to have for the tacky. I was a natural born story teller and being a journalist was the start of my foot wedging the door open. It closed shortly after when the economy fell. Still clinging onto the traditional manners of publishing success, I decided that I would write a book and try to get it published. Needless to say that after three years I indeed have a book- several actually- in several stages of production. Aside from other smaller projects - I self publish my own comics books, and then there are all the Dr. Seuss rip- off poems that I write for my mother. It’s clear I still have a ways to go.

This leads me to this blog. I figured what could it hurt really? And to the fives and tens of people out there who have clicked on this site by accident, I wanted to let you know that I thought a blog would be a good way of making me be more consistent and accountable for my writing. Sometimes, the shorter pieces help keep us more productive as opposed to tackling the Great American Novel, which I hope to write sometime, only mine will probably have a zombie hooker or two on top of some inappropriate touching and all out blasphemy (can’t get any more American than that).  I’m rambling again.

One piece of feedback that has trickled down throughout my desire to write about far off worlds and mystical realms populated with many Howardesque heroes, is this interest in my own real, flesh and blood, boring life. I could be telling people about how I created stories about obsessive aliens in love with holograms or lonely teenagers who sacrifice themselves to schoolmate vampires to be popular, all of which get a raised eyebrow. It isn’t until I start talking about life growing up on a farm or dare I say - my family - that I start to get engaged listeners.

 “You see, I think your real life is more interesting,” my brother would always say.

 If we can’t know the future, and all we have is today, and we are supposed to forget the past, I figured I would need to capitalize on the present. Over the years, I’ve become much more of a skeptic, so when the shit hits the fan for me, I always turn my head up a bit and ask for safety, which is a given, but if there were ever a prayer that I repeat more than saying grace, it is this: God, at least make it interesting.

So, that’s what I hope to do with this blog. Make it interesting. As a student who admires all things weird the way that the E Channel admires all things stupid, I decided to try and inform my true fan base (so mom and dad read closely) of all the peculiar things that I come across. To make it easier, I even decided to give it a ranking system. 

Each blog entry will have a peculiar rating. The “P’s” below denote the levels of peculiarity that I would equate each entry to. Although the bizarre is interesting, I also hope to introduce readers to new places and things sort of an Eat, Pray, Love on the budget of subway ride in NYC. Most will get 3 PPPs because it is the most positive sounding one. Of course that depends on whether or not you are a David Lynch fan, which I am.

 Love your life and hopefully you will find mine peculiar enough to enjoy.  

 Rating System

P – Peculiar like watching public urination.
PP – Peculiar like watching a bum lick himself clean.
PPP – Peculiar like finding a winning lottery ticket in the middle of a tornado.
PPPP – Peculiar like seeing David Lynch’s head exploding… and this is what the splatter looks like.