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By Tgreen, October 22, 2010 1:58 pm

Hello and welcome to Happy Friday!, the weekly blog post that actually appears on a schedule so random that the odds of it actually appearing on a Friday are somehow even worse than 1 in 7.

This week Apple CEO announced record profits for the last quarter, saw the price of Apple shares go above $300, unveiled 2 new MacBook Air models, gave a sneak peek at the next version of the Mac OS, and then met with President Obama to discuss the economy and technology. And he did it all while maintaining one of the top 5 best farms in Farmville.

About the only thing Jobs didn’t do was head on up to his secret base on the moon. Or did he?

This week the Vatican announced that Homer Simpson is, in fact, Catholic, which makes sense because why wouldn’t Homer belong to a religion where they give out free wine every week? Though mostly I think the Vatican announced this just to fuck with the next Dan Brown novel.

It’s good the Vatican cleared this up, because this is exactly the kind of important issue Catholics the world over want the Church to spend time on.

Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione died this week. To honor his memory, men of a certain age will be flying at half mast this weekend.

Former President George W Bush indicated this week that he sees not privatizing Social Security as the biggest failure of his eight years in office. This is a surprising choice, since it doesn’t even make most people’s Top 100 list of his biggest failures.

I guess maybe he considers his second biggest failure to be not finding enough reasons to give speeches while wearing a flight suit. And his third not being awesome enough.

Radio host Rush Limbaugh this week spent some time talking about pictures of President Obama that made the President, in Limbaugh’s words, look “demonic”. Left unsaid was whether the demonic Obama in any way resembled whatever demon Limbaugh signed his soul away to in exchange for the big radio ratings and the gigantic bad of Oxycontin he used to have delivered to the house every month.

New research shows that the popular story of the Mayan calendar predicting the end of the world on December 12, 2012 may actually be based on a miscalculation. According to the latest calculations, the world won’t end on December 12, 2012 but will actually end on whatever day the New York Jets appear closest to winning a Super Bowl game.

It was announced this week that President Obama will be appearing on the cable show Mythbusters. Given the way things have gone for him since he got elected, the only way he could appear on a more unfortunately-titled show would be if he was a guest on something like Hooray For The Bestest President Ever Who Has Saved The World And Made The Universe Better For Us All, Yay!, and for better or worse, FOX News canceled that show as soon as Bush left office.

This week Sony announced it’s finally stopping production of the cassette Walkman, once someone realized the calendar hanging in the production factory was left over from 1987.

In a new memoir by a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it was revealed this week that during the Clinton presidency, the codes required to launch a nuclear strike were actually misplaced for several months. Though the most logical conclusion to draw is that Hillary was holding on to them in case Bill got out of line again after the whole Monica fiasco.

Scientists revealed this week that they’ve observed the oldest object in the universe. To do this, they tuned their television to CNN at 9PM Eastern time and there it was, conducting an interview with Snooki.

In other science news, NASA recently unveiled the results of last year’s experiment to find water on the moon, and it turns out there’s a lot more ice and water up there than previously believed. Almost enough, in fact, to serve up cocktails to any aliens drawn here by this…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOVc4TMjHpk

Millions of TV viewers in the NYC area have been missing out on entertainment and sports programming since FOX pulled its channels from Cablevision due to a payment dispute. Picking a side in a conflict like this is kind of like trying to decide who to root for in a fight between the guy who raped you in the prison shower and the guy who shanked you in the prison cafeteria. In other words, you’re screwed no matter who wins.

Fast food mecca McDonald’s recently announce that it’s bringing back the McRib to most of its locations for a limited time starting in November. They’re so excited they’re working on a huge advertising push to make sure everyone has a chance to sample the processed pork sandwich. Of course, when you’re trying so hard to advertise, there’s always a chance you’re gonna burn through some bad ideas before you get to the winning one, as you can see here in…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Rejected McDonald’s McRib slogans:
10. McRib: Those rumors that it tastes just like Soylent Green are totally untrue and slanderous!
9. McRib: We devised a whole Man vs Food challenge around it that got rejected because it didn’t meet the “Food” criteria!
8. McRib: Now at least 87% mouse-carcass-free, give or take a couple of percentage points!
7. McRib: Each McRib grown organically in a lab in Brazil’s rainforest!
6. McRib: Buy one today or we bring back the Shamrock Shake!
5. McRib: The McRib’s special meat is even more special than the special sauce in the Big Mac!
4. McRib: Have It Your Way, as long as your way involves throwing a whole pig into a blender!
3. McRib: Buy two; it’s the tastiest murder/suicide method around!
2. McRib: You can’t handle the truth!
1. McRib: Guess who’s cornered the market on pig anus again!

And that’s all we have time for this week. Until next time, stop eating all the candy you bought to hand out to trick-or-treaters, put the finishing touches on that “The Situation” costume you’re planning to wear, accept the fact that just because you want a scary Halloween lawn doesn’t mean you can bury grandpa out there, and, most importantly, have a Happy Friday!

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By Tgreen, October 13, 2010 4:41 pm

If you’ve ever read this blog before, you’ve probably seen some mention or other to National Novel Writing Month, the writing “competition” that asks you to write a 50,000-word novel in the month of November. I put the word competition in quotes because this isn’t a contest with a fabulous cash prize and it’s not some kind of writing fight club (though if it was that last one, I probably wouldn’t be able to talk about it anyway, but it’s not). Sure, there are tens of thousands of other writers out there doing the same thing all month, but the only one you’re in competition with for NaNoWriMo is yourself.

On one hand, this is good, because you know yourself pretty well and you know how quickly you fold under pressure, so you should be easy to beat in any kind of competition. Especially one that doesn’t involve running or throwing. But on the other hand, it’s bad, because you know yourself pretty well and you know how quickly you fold under pressure, so you should be easy to beat in any kind of competition. Maybe looking at this as a you v. you battle royale isn’t the best way to go about it. You’ll have yourself psyched out before you even write a word, and if you can’t write your first word, you’re never gonna make it to word 50,000.

It might be best to just drop the word competition completely. It’s not a competition. It’s a task. A difficult one, because those 50,000 words won’t write themselves (believe me, I’ve tried to make that happen and it never does), but not an impossible one. Hell, I’ve done it 3 times already. Got 2 actual books out of it, and 1 that had more than enough words but never quite made it to the end of the story. None of this work was any good, and I’d probably have to shoot anyone who tried to read any of it, but at the end of each month I at least felt like I’d accomplished something with my writing, and that feeling doesn’t happen too often anymore.

All of that said, as November 2010 approached, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try again. Even if I didn’t remember how tough it was to do this last year while holding down a full-time job, I could read about it in the blog archives. Plus, I just tried something very similar with Script Frenzy this past April (another one where I wrote the pages but didn’t finish the story) so maybe another marathon of writing wasn’t what I needed. And if that wasn’t enough, I could recall the 2 times when I didn’t reach the goal. Didn’t come anywhere close, in fact. Those times I got my ass kicked by the month of November more thoroughly than the Cleveland Browns do every year, and it wasn’t a feeling I was in any hurry to recapture. I figured I’d just not think about it and see what would happen on November 1. I’d either write 2,000 words that day or I wouldn’t, and however that went down would dictate the next 30 days. A simple solution, I thought.

Then I realized that even if I hadn’t consciously decided what I was going to do, somewhere in the back of my brain I’d already made a decision. You see, about a month or so ago I stopped reading fiction. I didn’t stop reading. I still read magazines, and the biography I’ve got as an iBook on my iPad, and I still dragged books along on my daily commute, but they were all nonfiction. And the only time I eliminate fiction from the equation entirely is when I’m doing a big writing project. I used to think I did this because I didn’t want to accidentally swipe from whatever I was currently reading while writing. And maybe this was true on some level. But over the years I had to finally admit that the real reason I didn’t like to read fiction while writing it was because reading stories that were better than mine (which is basically all of them) just knocks the legs out from under me and makes it nearly impossible for me to finish what I’ve started.

(Sidebar: You may recall the post I made over the summer about Catch-22. I still haven’t started rereading that book for both reasons outlined above. I hold the book in so much regard that it would intimidate me enough to make me quit writing by November 5 or so. Plus, there aren’t too many parts of that book I don’t want to steal, so reading it while writing would probably be a horrible idea. It probably won’t be until early next year that I get to crack it open again.)

Long story short (as if), it appears that I’ll be trying to write a novel in November. Even though the little part of my brain that has made this decision may also be the one in charge of Jack Daniels consumption, road trip menus and career planning and therefore never has my best interests at heart, I’m gonna put it in charge and see what happens. And of course, this blog will document the whole ugly process in more detail than last time, because I don’t want to be the only one suffering. In other words, if you hated last November, after another 2 weeks it might be best if you don’t check back again until December 1. No idea which part of my brain will be posting to the blog on that day, but maybe it’ll be able to write a decent joke.

I mean, the law of averages says that’ll happen eventually, right? Why not December 1?

T “writing fool” green

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By Tgreen, October 8, 2010 1:08 pm

Hello and welcome to Happy Thursday!, the blog post that apparently doesn’t care what day it is anymore and will show up whenever the hell it pleases. Kind of like that creepy ex you used to have, except with less liquor and crying.

But not that much less. And now, on to the news…

Drinking a little alcohol during pregnancy is okay for many women, according to a new study commissioned by the Association to Create More NASCAR Fans.

Doctors are working on a new chart to help pregnant women drink safely under these new guidelines. The chart will show how many drinks you can drink before you give birth to, say, a George W. Bush, or how many more you’d have to drink to give birth to a Sarah Palin, or how many more you’d have to drink before you could give birth to the next winner of CBS’s Big Brother.

One of the Pope’s scientists said this week that he would look forward getting the chance to baptize an intelligent extraterrestrial being. Left out of that equation is the fact that if the extraterrestrial was intelligent enough to speak, it would probably have to decline the baptism on the grounds that it’s already a practicing Scientologist. Though if it was really an intelligent alien, it would’ve turned right around once it picked up on this:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOVc4TMjHpk

That story does make me wonder about the guy it quotes, though. “Pope’s scientist” sounds about as likely a position as “Hitler’s rabbi,” doesn’t it? I mean, it’s not like the Church and science have ever friended each other on Facebook, you know.

In an attempt to separate itself from the liberal-leaning cable TV network, MSNBC.com is considering changing its name. Top choice so far? WedontevenknowKeithOlbermann.com.

In a new NBA Jam video game for the Wii, there’s apparently an unlockable team of Democrats, featuring President Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore, as well as a team of Republicans that includes George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, John McCain and Dick Cheney. The game’s creators say that you can create matchups between any combination of players and politicians, but they add that the game box will include a warning about how not to hold the Wii controller if you’re playing as Bill Clinton, for what they term “obvious reasons.”

In sports news, in Game 1 of the National League Division Series, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay threw only the second no-hitter in postseason play against the Cincinnati Reds. But it’s not all bad news, Reds fans. On the bright side, Pete Rose won a couple of bucks on the game.

And in other sports news, it was recently reported that at this year’s Commonwealth Games, being hosted in India, they’re using large monkeys to police the event areas to keep out smaller monkeys. Which seems like a good idea until you consider that the only reason the smaller monkeys were even there is because they were being used to keep out weasels, who’d originally been brought in to keep out cockroaches, who were only there in the first place to keep away New York Jets fans. And that’s kind of ironic because as it turns out, if the large monkeys get out of hand, the only way to get rid of them is to turn some horny, liquored-up New York Jets fans on them.

Of course, you have to wonder who thought it was a good idea to put the monkeys in charge of security in the first place, as this closed-circuit footage from the Commonwealth Games shows…

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyKTAyPcnPg

In religion news, a recent study showed that on a 32-question test about religion, atheists and agnostics scored better than religious believers did, with Roman Catholics doing the worst. Which just goes to prove you don’t need book learnin’ to hate on the gays.

The Wall Street Journal this week reported rumors that Apple has begun work on its next iPhone, possibly to be called the iPhone 5. This, of course, is the journalistic equivalent to reporting rumors that the sun will come up tomorrow. Here’s another hot tech tip for you, WSJ: Apple’s also working on the iPhone 6 and probably has some notes written down for iPhone 7 and 8. You guys can quote me on that. You’re welcome.

In New York City this week, the MTA increased mass transit fares by 17%. But in an attempt to make sure they provide something extra to their customers, the MTA announced that it will also be increasing subway delays, garbled station announcements, and in-car deodorant failures by the same 17%.

A story in The Nation claims that former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, whose anti-illegal-immigrant stand defined his show for many years, actually employed illegal aliens himself at his horse farm. Dobbs said in response that if there were illegal aliens working on his farm, he didn’t hire them and he didn’t know about it, but he immediately began building a 30′ tall fence around his property to prevent the illegals from ever working for him again.

This week UPS announced it would be hiring 50,000 temp workers for the upcoming holiday season, which ultimately creates 100,000 jobs. 50,000 UPS jobs, and 50,000 brown-shirt-manufacturing jobs, which is good, because the latter industry is still trying to recover from its 1945 collapse.

This week marked the start of the MLB playoffs, which is an exciting time if your team is still playing October baseball, and a big sports void if you root for the Mets or the Pirates or the Cubs or the Angels or any of the other teams that are usually parked in front of the TV by this part of the season. So what if you are one of those unlucky fans without a team in the playoffs? Is there anything you can do to ease the sting of another lost season? Of course there is, as you’ll see when you check out…

Tgreen’s Top Ten Things A Baseball Fan Can Do To Avoid The MLB Playoffs:
10. Buy the latest Strat-O-Matic, put together a team of the best, most exclusive players, beat up on your friends’ teams (aka “pulling a Yankees”)
9. Introduce yourself to those small humans wandering around your house who’ve been calling you “daddy” since April
8. Rent the DVD set that covers the last time your team won a World Series and watch that over an over (Cubs fans, you’re gonna have to rent the teletype)
7. Buy a 6-pack, hunker down in front of the TV, and yell at the officiating on Dancing With The Stars
6. Tune in to the start of the NHL season (fans of the Rangers, Islanders, Coyotes or Ducks might want to skip this one just to avoid the same problem in April)
5. Call your doctor and tell him you don’t need the full strength cholesterol medicine anymore since you won’t be eating 3 hot dogs a day again until next Spring
4. Use the extra time to make your best “Wait ’til Next Year!” t-shirt design ever
3. Flip over to the NASCAR Chase, since you don’t really care about that either but at least you might see a car crash
2. Head on down to the theater to see Katherine Heigl in Life As We Kno oh wait, it’s already out on DVD
1. Have you met the NFL?

And that’s all we have time for this week. Be sure to come back next time for an official Happy Friday!, though I can’t guarantee what day of the week it’ll turn up.

T “ape shall never kill ape” green