Cnstrn'd Writing

(Crossposted)

This is a list of items I hope to do every day. If I fail at any particular item, it’s okay, because there are many items on this list and I just want to do most of them:

• Run 5k
• Write microfiction for 20 minutes
• Write one sentence
• Write e-mails for 10 minutes
• Read RSS feeds for no more than 20 minutes
• See people for social reasons for 10 minutes
• Not drink alcohol (Sunday thru Thursday)
• Call someone
• Work on a personal project (podcast/video) for 10 minutes
• Read/write for my dissertation for 20 minutes

* How much time things will take
* How much time I have available
* How funny I am
* How much something will affect me emotionally
* How tall I am
* How pregnant ladies are
* How much hugging is appropriate
* How people will take the silly thoughts that come out of my mouth
* How clear my thoughts are
* How near places are
* How much or how little of a social life I want
* How happy I am

I would say that more than 50% of the population is better than me at…

• Dancing
• Flexibility
• Women and Relationships
• Sports and sports trivia
• Staying uninjured
• Music
• Non-Internet, non-1990s pop culture
• Fashion
• Car repair and car types
• Major purchases
• Avoiding paradoxes while time traveling or manipulating reality¹

1. I need to work on this one [↩]

Whenever I imagine a sequel that should not be made, I always imagine the title will be “[movie title]: [greater amount of movie title]” or “[movie title] 2: Electric Boogaloo.” Try it with any of the movies on this list:

• Fair Game: the Valerie Plame story
• Titanic
• Philadelphia
• The Sixth Sense
• The Passion of the Christ
• Love Story*
• Ghost
• Armageddon
• All the President’s Men
• Amadeus
• Apollo 13
• Dr. Strangelove
• Groundhog Day
• Donnie Brasco
• Hamlet(*)
• Les Miserables
• Schindler’s List
• 12 Angry Men
• A Walk to Remember
• Where the Red Fern Grows
• 2012
• The Last Airbender
• Shrek*

*Asterisk indicates movies for which sequel has been made… and it was totally inappropriate.

• Whiskey, a revolver, a blank page with the title “Reasons not to commit suicide” and nothing else
• A dartboard in which a picture of you is the target
• Nude self-mural
• Monitors to the secret cameras in your house
• A portal to another dimension
• Enya fan letters
• Nazi paraphernalia
• Many bodies of your friend’s clones
• Human body parts in the refrigerator
• Children locked in the cellar (not their own)
• A fifteen-foot-tall tarantula
• Vivisected squirrels
• Molten lava
• A perfect replica of your 7-year-old bedroom complete with the stuffed bodies of your childhood pets
• A prototype copy of an S&M version of a Wii game
• Empty, but for a blood-stained mattress with chains at each end and a camera on a tripod pointing at it¹

1. You have my friend Daniel to thank for this image. [↩]

• cut self on daisy
• thimble on too tight
• jabbed eye with monocle
• underwear chafe
• reached too hard for the mayonnaise jar
• slipped in the tub
• hernia while on toilet
• tripped on a tulip
• knelt on a barbie doll
• poked head with bobby pin
• bouncy castle collapse
• drowned in the ball pit
• too much darn lace
• improperly tied shoelaces
• cried too hard

• skinny dipping with hammerhead sharks
• fighting a grizzly bear
• marathon lovemaking
• climbing mount everest
• Mixed Martial Arts
• Volunteer for someone shooting an apple off my head
• weight lifting
• war
• crime fighting
• prison shanking
• seppuku sword too dull
• motorcycle accident
• fighting a forest fire
• lion taming accident
• twelve-hour erection
• saving small children from a collapsing building
• jumping in front of a bullet to save a loved one
• poisoned by the Iron Chef
• hiccup while sword swallowing
• botched self-immolation
• firework in the face
• too much flexing

Age: 25.  Money in Bank Account: $861.25.  Amount in debt:  >$7,000.  Amount others owe me: >$1000. Yearly Income: $23,000-26,000.  Rent: $700. Amount accumulating interest: $240.  Books in personal library: 125.  Books stolen from library counted in my library books:  58.  Alcohol in my house: >$400. Height in centimeters: 178.  Weight in kilograms: 82. BMI:  25.5.  Hair color according to an inaccurate picture:  #34555f.  States visited: 36.   Car’s Mileage:  135,000.  Cars owned: 2.  Years in school: 17.  Years to go: >3.  New Years Resolutions broken so far this year: 2.  Countries visited: 10.  Web sites: 3.  Twitter profiles: 2.

Stories in the works: 3. No. of Woot! Shirts: 8. Liters of blood donated: 3. Liters of blood left to donate to feel good about myself: 4. Times arrested: 1. Times released: 1. Friends I can count on in a time of need: ≥7.

Rather than the current specialty system, where people train on certain types of ailments, often localized to age range and body part, I can think of many other ways to subdivide medicine. Here are the worst:

• Alphabetically: “Oh, I can give you the Measles and Mumps shot, but I’m not really competent to mess with Rubella.”
• By date of discovery: “I may just be a specialist in early colonial medicine, but I really think we should amputate. Drink some rum, I’m going to go borrow a hacksaw.”
• By ethnicity: “I’m sorry, I’m only trained in Pacific Islanders. I hear treating broken bones is similar for your group, but I’m just not comfortable with seeing you.”
• By non-lawlike, non projectable predicates: “Listen, I know all my training was before 2000 and all of my work has been after, but you really just look orellow to me, not yorange. So it can’t be jaundice…”

My friend Jack thinks that smoking is non-negotiable. Even if someone was the girl of his dreams in every other respect, if she smoked he wouldn’t be interested. I have quite other things that matter more to me:

1. Has to be born a woman¹
2. Has to presently identify as a woman
3. Has to be trustworthy
4. Cannot be a member of my immediate family
5. Cannot be bipolar or have other personality disorders
6. Must not be a drug or alcohol addict²
7. Cannot be a serial killer
8. Must not weigh more than me
9. Must not be much taller than me
10. Relatively disease free (Should not have HerpeAIDS or anything similar)
11. Cannot have slept with my brother/friend before me
12. Cannot have dated a bro (as in good friends)
13. Must have a compatible sense of humor
14. Must not have a really, really annoying voice
15. Needs to be between 18 and 38
16. Has to have ambition, goals, or desires
17. Cannot be boring

1. Although, I suppose I’ve never encountered someone that wasn’t, so who knows? [↩]
2. or anything comparable [↩]