wow.

I'd write more, but my brain hasn't really been functioning correctly all week; it's tired.

There are about three songs I might be able to finish tomorrow we'll see which one things work out for.

Does anyone know of any good free video editing software? Windows movie maker seems to be lacking a bunch of features like properly syncing video and sound.

I like cliffhangers.

One of the wholistically least pleasurable activities of every day life is talking on the phone. It always feels kind of like biting into a chunk of cold, solidified bacon grease. You gotta enjoy the little things, and one of the little things I enjoy sometimes is not having a cellphone, because that way, I don't have to talk to anybody on it.

-marlon

Thing a week:

1. friday deadlines
2.suggested usage of random topic generator
4. wordpress, tumblr, blogger, youtube? uh, I'll wing it.
3.suggested usage of vlogbrother weekly topics
4.completing previously started songs is allowed.

do you remember the times

sometimes there are times where time goes by too fast.
this is one of those times.
and I'm very very sleepy.

Why no, I didn't blog yesterday.

But if I ever had a good reason¹, this was it.

This is a prime example of why I love improvisation so much and basically never really plan anything.

**spoiler alert** NOTHING GOES ACCORDING TO PLANS

John Green is one of my all-time favorite authors, he's written books like Paper Towns, An Abundance of Katherines, Looking for Alaska, and one third of Let It Snow, which, by the fact the fact that they are all, by nature, novels, by genre, young adult, and look that way, seem like crap I wouldn't want to read, but I found out with great reluctance that his books are both, hilarious, thought-provoking, and educational² all of which include nerdy teens, illegal drinking, and road trips as major plot points at some time or another. He also has a sometimes equally hilarious,thought-provoking, and educational collaborative weblog with his brother Hank³ that includes nerdy adults, drinking things that are not normally considered drinkable, and not-surprisingly enough, roadtrips as, you know, major plot points.

One of my sisters learned about him from some unknown source and introduced him to me and my other sister, I introduced him to my best friend Mike, and Mike and I collaboratively introduced him to our friend Hannah. (Yes, I'm pretty sure this backstory is completely necessary)

He recently completed and published half of a book called Will Grayson Will Grayson the other half of which was written by the same David Levithan that helped write Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. As you may have guessed John Green's half is titled Will Grayson while David Levithan's half is titled Will Grayson. And they, to promote their new book are doing a book tour that stopped in "the LA area" for the Marlese Newyear (yesterday) even though they don't know anything about The Marlese Newyear. Obviously we (I and my John Green loving contemporaries) consider this the perfect set up for a 22nd annual Marlonic New Year celebration. Unfortunately at the same time Mike had the much more important airforce graduation of his closest sibling to go to in Te-has, so it was just to be me, my two sisters and Hannah.

So, we check John Green's website it says he's going to be in La mesa at 6pm, we're like "Cool, that's not far" so we print out directions to the Costa Mesa library and leave the AV at 3:30. On the way to pick up Hannah, we get gas, some sausage biscuits and some Arizona Iced Tea Rx Energy. We get to Hannah's at about 5 and realize A. John Green lied when he said he'd be in the LA area because it's actually in the San Diego area. B. Costa Mesa and La Mesa are not, in fact the same place, and C.La Mesa is about 60 miles south of Costa Mesa we only have an hour to get there, it's rush hour and we're still only in Sherman Oaks about 30 miles north of that. So we' realize the book signing will be over by the time we get down there so we decide to do something else for the day, my options were as follows: the beach, some random mall, wander around sherman oaks, Palm Springs, and other random California towns with nothing but old people on some kind of half-hearted scavenger hunt idea my sister came up with.

Now, for one, I'm either a woman nor a hommosexual. Going and window shopping at the mall couldn't possibly interest me.

For two, I hate the beach. I mean I can theoretically enjoy any location with the right people, but there's something wrong with going to your least favorite location on your birthday. I know is sounds weird here on the West Coast, but it's true. I hate the beach, people ask me all the time what I hate about the beach and usually I could answer "You know at you like about the beach? That." I hate the ocean, the waves, the sand, the kelp, most of the people in bathing suits, I definitely hate the smell, the sounds the weather, the way the air feels, the way the air tastes, how the horizon and the ski just kind of mesh together, and I've never encountered jellyfish, but I really, really hate the concept. It's like a Lewis Carroll poem, actually.

For three the scavenger hunt sounded shady as eff,

The sister who drove and suggested the scavenger hunt thought it would be a good idea to utter the words "I have a full tank of gas so we can pretty much go where ever, plus this energy drink's got me down for just about anything." So we looked at a map for guidance. Some locations had some interesting names but none so much as Chocolate Mountain.

1.I HAVEN'T before now
2.both!
3.Both him and his brother Hank and gay.

My only aim is to move forward.

Ok, so here's the deal, boggerites. You may have noticed by now, that I love setting goals I can't complete and starting projects I will inevitably fail, SO I'M BOUT TO DO ANOTHER ONE.

Um, I sort of accidentally wrote this song about zombies from the perspective of a zombie very briefly before I realized zombies were becoming the new big thing. Then all of a sudden, two years later I hear people covering this other song (none of whom actually said it was a cover) written from the perspective of a zombie that it turns out was written a year before I wrote mine, by a guy who's considerably more famous, making me feel completely unoriginal.

So I look up this Jonathan Coulton guy to see what his deal is and I find out his music is pretty decent and he did this songwriting project called "Thing a Week" where he started in September or something and wrote/arranged a song every week for 52 weeks.

I figured since A. Now that I know who he is and we've both written songs from the perspective of zombies, came first, and we both write not-completely-serious songs, I'm bound to look like I'm copying him to someone anyway. B. I've been "writing" songs for 3 years and I've only completed 9 (although I've arranged at least twice that many) and C. I need to get in the swing of writing more, I'd do it too.

And since my personal New Year starts Friday, I'm going to start then. Hopefully I'll have a mic by then.

Turns out blogger won't let me upload audio, but tumblr will. I just don't want to use tumblr because you can't comment on tumblr blogs. I'm gonna check wordpress and see if they'll let me do the audio deal. then we'll see where to go from there

-I swear I'll finish that stupid potato man story before the end of the month.

http://theycallmemarlon.tumblr.com/

Titles

I've always had sort of an obsession with the night sky, I don't know why. Maybe everyone does. Sometimes I used to think I saw shooting stars but it turned out to actually be light reflecting off of spiderwebs as I walked by.

Tonight I'm going to watch my fourth or fifth meteor shower ever.

hopefully

One cant help but think there's something magical about celestial phenomena, but sometimes you look into the sky at night and it's so beautiful there's nothing you could possibly wish for, it just feels like you already have everything. But I wouldn't mind getting something actually useful from my parents on my birthday.

-Marlon

I have officially decided

I want a novelty baritone ukulele.

I didn't any ukulele for a while because everyone who plays guitar and then learns how to play the "quirky alternate instrument" picks the ukulele, but I had a fascinating dream.

Also, I have an addiction to new instruments.

-Marlon

You know what's worse than not blogging for a while?

Only posting blogs about how you haven't blogged in a while.

So I still need to watch die hard, I have the whole frikkin tertalogy just sitting on my desk. Haven't watched a one.

You know what I did do? I turned in an essay for the first time since 2007!! Proud of myself? Extremely proud of myself! It makes me feel like I have a future and whatnot.

I think about the future a lot; I have to, I'm a procrastinator. I don't want to say I get worried, because I don't but kindof concerned sometimes. Does that make any sense? I don't know.

Who has a story to finish?
-Marlon

Failblogz0rz

I am filled with shame
So I'm writing this haiku
I'm sorry, Blogger

-I swear I'll treat you better

What up?

this is a blog for today. I'm doing other stuff right now, but I have to keep with the deadline, I can't have only 28 points, that's like, February status. I'll conclude my story tomorrow.

I have lots of stuff to do now.

schoolschoolschool

What?

So I just realized that the stories will be ending as soon as they get back to their original owners, which is tomorrow, which makes me sad. Oh well here's the second-to-last chapter of Mandog's story.

"Life isn't always fair" my parents would tell me, well you don't even have to be living anymore to be screwed over; my name is Derrick Safferfrack, and I've been dead for five years now. I guess to learn about the situation I'm in I should probably tell you how I got where I am now. Back when I had my own body I was led an underwhelming life. I worked from nine to five, and my "hobby" was to sit on the computer every night wishing there was more to life. Twenty-seven years of doing the least possible and hoping for more and in one day I was wishing I could have all of that back.

It was Autumn. And Thursday. I hated Thursdays. And honestly I hated Autumn. It was the calm before winter and the cool after the summer months. It was so... bland. It reminded me of myself. And I hated it for that. So on this particular Thursday, there was an accident. No I wasn't involved, but it would still change my life. Chilesia. That was her name and she was the most beautiful woman in the world. Or at least at Aunt Jemima High. I taught there, as she was a TA working on her teaching degree. She has the most lovely ebony skin and perfect hair. I loved her the day I met her. So the accident. One day while I worked at my computer (I spent most of my time playing Galaxy of Space Quest, even at work) I heard an explosion outside. It was Chilesia.... oh god.... Little did I know, that following this tragedy in less than 24 hours would be my own death....

Death itself was quick and uneventful by large; it was the afterward that I was unprepared for. You imagine heaven and hell, but it's something so grand by comparison there is no way to describe it. I was in what appeared to be a large and infinite warehouse, it was completely empty aside from the other dozen or so people near enough to see. The others were walking all in the same direction, almost as if they had somewhere they needed to go. I tried to walk over to the nearest. A woman--Chilesia! she would be here somewhere--but as I attempted to draw closer I was stopped. My mind flooded with the command and my body tensed. That's when I first met one of the Custodians. It appeared from the unending ceiling and it was a hovering robotic creation at seemed to be humanoid only it ended at the waist. It was holding a tablet or pad of sorts.

"You have been processed. Disturbance of the others cannot be tolerated. Return to your directive."

"No. Dammit! I have not been 'processed.' What's going on here?"

The bot slowed and swung back around to look at me. It looked from me to his pad and then back to me, before pecking at the pad's surface.

"I am un-qualified to assess this. I am afraid that you do not exist."


There's something about that phrase, "you do not exist". You'd think, if someone didn't exist no one would waste their time telling them they don't exist; there would be no one to tell. Yet here it floated saying the exact phrase and here I stood baffled.

"I'm sorry, something doesn't add up here. I think you said I don't exist but tha--"

"You do not exist."

"How is that possible?"

"When man was given upgrade number 5974a, it included a soul that provided benefits such as enhanced toolmaking, verbal interface, and heightened critical analysis, among others; it was 75% more efficient. The new soul was more resource intensive than we would have liked and unfortunately we have not yet developed the hardware to keep up. As a result the functional period of the body was shortened, it became weaker, less durable and began to grow significantly less hair, while the soul was able to last billions of years longer."

"What does this have to do with me not existing?"

"Well, after this was discovered, a system was made to sort, monitor and regulate soul installation. This process, however is not 100% efficient, some souls, like you tend to accidentally slip into circulation without any serial numbers or records and for all intents and purposes don't exist. It happens approximately 4 or 5 times a millennium. You can tell by the size of the building this used to happen with much more frequency," That must have been the robot's idea of a joke "These souls can only be located after their bodies stop working and this facility has been constructed to sort, dismantle, recycle, and recirculate you all as properly documented souls."

It was scary at first, the though of my soul being taken apart and having those parts be used to make other souls with legitimate serial numbers, and how I would never be me again, but then I considered my life, how it had been and maybe being recycled was the best way to go.

Then it got scary again so I decided to escape.

From the desk of Admiral Stanley.

Steven Blizsinski was a normal fellow. He lived a normal life in an everyday situation. Except when he went to Thermastelya. It was a magical place that was, sadly, inside one of Steven's socks. He had found it doing something rather uncouth with a sock and felt something oddly cold. When he looked he was pulled inside to this magic world. The odd thing was, everyone inside this world, everyone was an object that in the normal world was inanimate, like clothes or furniture. Steve's best friend from Thermastelya was a cardigan named Chuck. The two of them had a great adventures all the time. One day however that all changed...


Steven Blizsinski and Chuck where having a normal day in and everyday fashion. At first nothing was extraordinary in Thermastelya. The duo had just spent the afternoon sneaking into homes and unpairing Sock children, for this was the type of adventures that Steven Blizsinski and Chuck enjoyed the most. Afterwhich, they returned to Chuck's Drier, but something was off. Chuck started to sneeze. Steven Blizsinski had never seen a cardigan sneeze before, it never occurred to him that cardigan's had noses or eyes or even souls--this however was a magical world, and Steven Blizsinski sometimes failed to actually acknowledge this. And Chuck continued to sneeze, which struck him as odd as he didn't realize that he could sneeze either. Discovering the root of the problem Steven Blizsinski quickly realized that there was cat hairs on everything in the Drier.

Steven Blizinski was not a fan of generalizations, but he knew cat hairs, as a whole, are no good, they're mischievous, immature, they certainly don't think before they act and they will follow anyone with a crazy enough idea. "Hey, do you think you can crawl out of my friend's, uh, nose, or fibers or whatever? He's kind of allergic, oddly enough." The cat hairs' reply was completely unintelligible, just a mesh of high-pitched garbles. They all spoke at once and none of them said exactly the same thing and the giggled relentlessly throughout. The main gist seemed to be that they found their little prank hilarious and they weren't leaving until they get completely bored. The strangest thing about cat hairs is although they're easily distracted, they can spend a frighteningly long time getting a kick out of the same old jokes.

So I get minus one point.

I swear, I was busy like all of yesterday, but rules are rules, man, and I follow the rules. and now here comes another blog of another story by another Admiral.

And then I have homework to do.

A story from Myerific

It was cold down on the surface. With the scientists still asleep, Jim Fozan was roused awake by the wind. He couldn't seem to adjust to the sound of the howling. He couldn't place why it upset him, but it didn't seem to phase the rest of the expedition. So, he wasn't about to start complaining, he did, however, miss the comfort of his bed. His bed and his wife. He missed her too; well, most of the time. She stayed on Terra. Ember had always hated the idea of space; he lived for space.
The rest of the expedition was largely a civilian group, aside from himself and Jones. All they were concerned with was that the Tablets were on this planet, after a century of research and the code had just been broken, it had to be here; they hoped at least. And they mamaged to convience the Government that this was indeed the case.
If he was supposed to protect these scientists, it'd be nice if they would actually listen.


The next morning, Fozan paced the extra chamber of the spaceship teporarily designated as the scientists' work room using every ounce of his strength to keep himself shaking some sense into Ferdinand Bemok, one of the leading scientists, an energetic and frail-looking man who apparently needed this expedition to earn his doctorate in xenoplanetary archaeology.
"So you're saying these tablets could literally be anywhere in the largest continent on this planet?"
"Yes"
"And this continent is thirty-million square miles of canyon, rainforrest and desert?"
"Yup"
"And it just so happens that there are about four trillion animal species living there with their own specialized ways of giving you an agonizing death."
"Affirmative."
"And we're just jumping in."
Ferdinand looked up from his stack of papers.
"You know, Foz,"
"Don't call me Foz."
"On the planet I come from, we have balls -- the men at least -- and because of those, we don't worry about a few obstacles, we leap over them. Like men."
"Look, we're not having this conversation because I'm worried about a fer gigantic poisonous rodents, sentient plants or the occasional hurricane-force wind, it's because we've been here for a week and you're only just now telling me how much you don't know. I have a good feeling there's more you're not telling me and keeping secrets from me can and will jeopardize the success of this mission and, you know, the future of your balls."
"Hey, man you're going to have to take that up with Dr. Fitzgerald, he's the archaeological supervisor. For all I know, he told you everything." The insincerity in his voice made Fozan's fingers involuntarily curl into fists. Before he could say more, Fozan heard the muffled sounds of an assistant screaming from the next room and Jones saying something about a stolen canole and calling someone a "pigfucker" or something to that effect.

About the previous post

I and my good friends Kaptain Zorro, Admiral Stanley and Monsieur Toaster (links larer?) are doing this thing where we blog every day in April. Also we're doing this thing where we each write a paragraph of a story and rotate stories.

That was mine. I think the title shall be Salt, because I like nonsequiturs.


here we go, lets do this thang.

-I say thang because I'm black.

--Marlon.

Storrypassin

I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave. I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave. I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave."Ever sit home and wonder to yourself--" I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave. "if you had a gun to your head," I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave."what are the limits of what you would do and what you wouldn't?" I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave."Well I hope this was on your list of hypothetical scenarios" EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN IS A BLUR . I wake up, I put on my overalls and hat, grab my sack of potatoes, and leave."Because we don't have a lot of time." I don't know what this person thinks; I'm nobody, I've never helped anyone with anything, I have no skills, I'm just a potato man.

Family

I've noticed, in my household, cakes and pies will be brought home and go for days at a tome without being touched unless I do it first.

One thing I've learned in my nearly 22 years of living is my family tends to make a lot decisions of various magnitudes without ever actually telling me. I think maybe one of my parents has developed some sort of enemy that puts them endanger of being poisoned by deserts and the rest of my family unanimously voted me to be the tester.

I'm pretty sure, if one day I eat a slice of cake and become terminally ill the next morning, my tombstone will read only this:

"Here lies Marlon Barnes, he served his purpose well."

Oh yeah!

I forgot to mention, the comedy show was not horrible. Not fantastic. also, not horrible.

They seemed to really like three of my five or six songs.

And maybe you noticed the band-aids on my fingers from yesterday's post, TOTALLY cut 'em up on mah git-strings. . . on, like, song number two.


what else is there to talk about? I should be doing homework.

So basically my day consists of

Nerding out on pokemon.

Playing the bongos.

Pokenerding out again.

I feel like I'm in seventh grade again.

except in seventh grade the only instrument I played was my penis¹

-Marlon.

1.Who am I kidding? I didn't hit puberty 'till I was 17.

but you know what I did hit? Pogs²

2.No, I wan't cool enough to play pogs either

m.

.thelookofdistress.

okokok

It's gonna be go time in like 4 hours.

I'm cool with that, I'm fine.

I SAID I'M FINE, MAN!!!

-Marlon

Grr..

You know what I hate, blogger?

Insecurity. People need to start liking themselves, girls especially.

Also, I think we need to stop raising them to believe their most important quality is their beauty.

It's too subjective, too intractable, too fleeting, and too inconsequential.


...Not that I think it doesn't matter at all,
-Marlon

I'm going to admit this.

I'm scared.

I'm really scared.

I realize that being scared has never helped me --or, arguably, anyone--and is, for all intents and purposes useless, but here I stand.

You know, I think it's because, for the majority of my life, I've been able to pretty accurately gauge how much I'll enjoy something before I do it -and I'm not talking some self-fulfilled prophecy crap, I've got it down to a science, to a mathematical friggin equation- and through that knowledge been able to plan my possible reactions and whatnot to maximize the pleasurably of the experience. Wow, long sentences. I like knowing (to reasonable extents) what's going to happen before it does (or that is, knowing the situation I'm in), I like planning, I REALLY do; in fact, it makes NO sense why I love improvisation so much and why I'm so bad at chess. This time, I have NO idea what I'm getting into and it worries me.

Here's some backstory:

I've given some people the impression I'm a funny guy through some appearances at an open mic night, whatever. So one of these people was like, "Hey I put together this Monday night comedy show because people in our community need activities and entertainment and whathaveyou. How would you like to be in it?" So I with my pathological compulsion to take anything thrown at me/ addiction to new experiences say "ffffuokay"

So here I go to a show with comedians who think up jokes and write them down and practice them as a guy who improvises songs on guitar. Just me. Alone. On stage. With God knows how many people. Really the dynamic of working with other people changes the flow dramatically.

The outcome all depends on the audience and whatever mental state I'm in at the time, it's not even a coin toss, it's like throwing a handful of 20-sided dice.

I hope it's a big audience, small ones worry me.

-Deep Breaths Marlon

DAY 2 is always the hardest (exclidung the last few)

I have some stuff I want to write about, but I may not be able to before midnight so here's three sentences for the quota. I actually sort of forgot what it was I wanted to write about but I remember the strong urge to write, it's one of those ideas you¹ get in the shower that sort of disappears when you get out regardless of how passionate you were at the time. Um, refrigderator.


-Marlon


1. I

PHEW

Praise God in all his eternal mercy!

That essay wasn't due today. I don't know about you, but I feel good, man!

There is still hope for me.

In other news: I don't feel like leaving my bed today, but I want to. If that makes sense. . .


-Marlon needs to work his way back up to full-length blogs.