My hair was so much shorter then.

And now I'm starting a new project challenging myself to increase my "English class skills"

Blog Every Day in April.

It was started by Young Adult author Maureen Johnson in 2009 and changed to Blog Every Day in August for this year, nonetheless I've already committed to starting and so I WILL¹! Tomorrow it starts, maybe I'll succeed, maybe I won't maybe I'll gain some valuable skills in the process. Who knows?

I guess I'll lay down some rules for myself that my fellow participants may or may not choose to follow.

I.The span from midnight to 11:59pm is a day and that day's blog must be posted within that time frame.

II. Every day a blog gets posted will count as one point, if more than one blog is posted per day, no extra points will be rewarded. Total points will be calculated at the end of the month for a score out of 30. ²

III. Every blog must be at least 3 sentences long. If three, one-sentence blogs are posted within a day, they may count as one point.

IV. Blogs may be about any subject.

That's all I got.

-Marlon

1.I take my commitment to beginings way more seriously than my commitment to endings.

2. Consider a reward/penalty system for perticipants with the highest/lowest scores.

Any Decent Title Would Be a Spoiler

I saw it coming.

You saw it coming.

My family and every English teacher I ever had saw it coming.

I failed the second half of this month's Challengavaganza. Failed like a failing failure from failsville.

I know how it happened, I waited too ling to choose a book, and I got distracted and then I picked THe Sun Also Rises [in my pants] and then I had other stuff I needed to do, and other stuff I didn't need to do but I did anyway and now I'm a failure which means...

the first half of the month will have to be from the dreaded Fail List.

Fail List
1.Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
2.Twilight Saga - Stephanie Meyer
3.Plagues and Peoples - William Mcneill
4.Faerwell to Manzanar -Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston
5.Hiroshima - forgot author, sorry.
6.A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickins
7.Ceremony- Leslie Marmon Silko
8.Cry, the Beloved Country- Alan Paton

Now, as the rules go, there's no reward for completing a punishment, there's no punishment for not completing a reward, and there's no reward for completing a reward.

No official rule has been made for failing a book from the fail list. [my vote fully goes for no punishment for not completing a punishment since the whole point of the fail books is they're difficult to complete] I'm open to your votes.

In my humble opinion, a non-book punishment punishment for failing a fail would be best to avoid a long, horrible chain of failures that would no doubt make me swear off reading actual books for many more years.

So, yeah,

1. Votes for which book (just one book if part of a series) I should read for the punishment

2. Votes for punishment-punishments (if any at all)

3. and Should I start also making video parts to the Challenge compilation?

--next book starts tomorrow.

Tests show

Marlon fails at serious conversations.

Stupid questions: check

saying "yeah" way too many times: check

feeling utterly useless: all over that shit like bread on butter.

You know.

You know you're growing up when you pull one of those pre-packaged ice cream cones out of the box and saying "oh...that was bigger than I expected"¹

You know you're growing up when you forget what your least favorite ice cream flavor is until after you bite into it and think "I started it, I might as well finish"

You know you're still a kid when you decide to use a doughnut chaser for you nasty chocolate ice cream.



-Whachu kno about dat


1. That's what she said.

Panera Blog (again)

"I promise you,
This book kicks
Twilight's ass
DFTBA
-M"

(Looking For Alaska in WaldenBooks on K and 10th St. west)

One if the most tense and exhilarating moments of my life¹



Everyone should keep jumper cables in their car, It seems like every time I see one stopped on the side of the road I wish I knew more about cars so I can swoop in be a hero.²

As I arrived at Panera ( I recently learned that means bakery) I saw a man that may or may not have been naked³ trying to start a car with a dead battery; I asked, neither of us had jumper cables. I awkwardly walked away. The one time I know what's wrong with a car and how to fix it, no dice.

There's no music this time.

There's a girl in front of me who ha a breast cancer awareness shirt that says "I love my big ta-tas" I almost lolled. 50% because those breast cancer awareness things always remind me of North Carolina State University.⁵

I was going to write about books and Kanye West today, we'll see how that turns out later.⁴

-M

1. It was better than 'Nam

2. It's even more childish than it sounds.

3. If I had known this before hand, I assure you, I wouldn't have walked up. luckily, he didn't get out of his car.

4. Click on it.

5. *Spoiler alert* I finished No Exit and I think people are overreacting about the VMAs just because there was nothing notable about the show but Kanye's crazy and Lady Gaga's crazy.

Reflection on the Challengavaganza's First Seven Days

I don't know a lot about what exactly makes writing good, or funny, or captivating, and I don't know the formula to word sequences that pull a reader's eyes across a page without them putting forth much effort, but I know that whatever it is, things like Paper Towns, and The Brothers Karamazov have it, and American Gods (no offense to the man who suggested it to me) did not.

I mean, I started American Gods with high hopes because it's frikkin Neil Gaiman and who doesn't love Neil Gaiman and Stardust was certainly awesome plus, Coraline, I didn't see it but jeez it looked interesting...but it took, like, 5 tedious days to get through the first ten pages. Luckily, an awesome friend suggested reading "No Exit" first and I'm extremely susceptible to the suggestions of those participating in the Challenge. (Yay, one act plays!)

To kill time between then and when I could go to the school library(today) and check it out. I started reading The Brothers Karamazov and ten pages of that breezed by in minutes and were accompanied by clear and present laughter at points which I found weird. Really weird.

The question is, what does an existentialist, 19^th century Russian writer with no awards and no notable movie adaptations have that a 21^st century rock star of literature with scores of awards and like ten films with his name on them doesn't?

I leave you with a non sequitur, yet very true statement.

-My favorite things are beginnings.

P.S. I like "No Exit" so far.

Next Tuesday will be time to begin The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume I: The Pox Party.


(day one can be found here: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=8822520&blogId=508370549 )

Nobody reads this blog but,

Just in case...

I also posted this on facebook and myspace.

Ok, it's not that I'm conceding that I actually need to actually read actual books instead of reading about books or listening to people talk about in order to live a full and enriched life (or assert my intellectual superiority).

I have a strict policy of not retracting statements except in the most dire circumstances. (there are a few small loopholes that will not be discussed at the moment)


It is that I would like to witness examples of various writing styles as they are applied to storytelling situations.

um, et cetera.

So what I'm going to do is apply a self-challenge of reading at least two books a month for 12 months starting next month (September 1^st).

I will call it Marlon's Mind-Exploding ≥24 Book Challengavaganza!


What I need from you, if you would be so kind, is to suggest to me any book (or as many books as) you want to be read within this time. Any book, regardless of how long it is, whether or not you think I'll like it, whether or not you think I've read it before (assume I haven't), or whether or not you think I'l quit 25% of the way through the book (I might, but I'll try not to)

Also, my plan is to somehow document this and make it interesting.

-Let's go, if you want it you can get it, let me know...