why does every other douchebag writer have to exist?

Whoooh.

Nothing like having your writing style under a microscope. I took the dive and decided to submit a few things I've done to Cracked.com. I really don't know why. Maybe I'm on coke. Maybe trace amounts of crack-cocaine are seeping into the water and I don't know it. Although we did just live through a third-world boil order here that was lifted, leaving me to assume that the water is, indeed, okay. Maybe I'm ingesting it through food or coffee---someone is spiking my intake.

Anyway.

I did get two responses from people who weren't even moderators or editors making a few suggestions on my pitch. I guess there's a certain way to pitch your material in a particular forum on the site, and then the editors go through every single one and decide which ones go into the "possible" basket and narrow down from that basket which ones will get a final go-ahead to write an article. That's just to write an article!

I didn't really do it right and my reaction to their reaction was one of immediate joy instantaneously followed by a plunge of discouragement. These sick freaks just know wayyy too much about whatever the hell is going on in between thousands of pages of forums. It's like the assprints on their computer chairs don't register whatsoever at all in their minds.

But they do tell you, rather nicely, how to reroute or edit your pitch as a friendly suggestion. I have only to wisely and for uppity-ly say: I already published it on a for-free blogging site, fool! Where else would anyone in the world contribute to the cesspool of internet and think they're pretty clever, dumbfacks! Haw-haww!


Guess who's a douchebaggy, dumbass loser wannabe writer on there, too?

Several months ago, I signed up for a Cracked forum user name and stalled on submitting anything because it was all kind of overwhelming. Then with the unfolding of taking a risk today evolving into an assessment and reaction to a mere pitch, it's left me feeling a little discouraged.

There is just so much info and forums to rifle through of how and when to make a proper pitch on their site, how high is too high when you jump, and how to position your balls if you had any. (Which I don't.)

There are straight out guidelines that border on college syllabus; and then there are ALL... the motherfuckers who really think they're something, pitching as many constipated turds of backwards assfucking ideas.

And even though my article pitch about the deep, passionate, hot-blooded Mexican ways of life is wayyyyy more better (and more classy) than half of the crap on there, I do stand corrected in the light that even the featured, fully published articles on the site's main page are still kind of stupid sometimes. (Oh yes I did. I said "more better." Suck it.)

I apologize to my moderate readers for my foul language. Whoever I pretend them to be.

I just finished an Irish article, but it wasn't in list form, so I scratched the idea of running a pitch for that. Then when I went to go check the forums (oh, God, the time spent trying to make sure you have nothing like the other thousands of countless pitches, articles, and trying-too-hard dickwads!...) didn'tcha know it: my searches turned up a whole bunch of Irish articles already done. I'm not even a dickwad I can be proud of. I'm a dickwad at the bottom of the totem pole of dickwads. Eeeeegh.

Can't wait to work on something else. Maybe a series of Cinco de Mayo pieces. Or Top 5 Reasons It Sucks To Work Your Way Through Cracked.com.

>>>>message truncated due to broiled monkey dysfunction<<<<<

close to heart

I want to take today's opportunity to talk about chance.

Yes, folks, that's right, you heard it right here on the Rambling Mexiwegian Network. Today we're going to be talking about the debate on chance. Can it be controlled or is it out of our control?

Let's think about it while I talk about some other things. Yeah. Just put it on the back burner, there, k? 

Wait.

Waaaiiit...

Waaaaiiiitt... an-nd..

Done.

Okay.

I tricked you.

Because I'm stalling. The previous 76 words (not including this paragraph and considering I counted the contractions as a single word, in addition to the "k" at the end of the third "paragraph") have nothing to do with what I'm really wanting to blog out today. Those 76 took longer to write than it did to read them because they're not even related to what I'm wanting to focus on. Usually, that is the case with writing, hey? It takes longer to do than to read. 

Well. Duh. But this time I mean exceptionally so because I am stalling.

I am stalling because I know exactly what I want to write about today, but I don't know if I can muster up the finger muscle to commit the words to the air, into time and space, into the universe.

I am stalling because I am aware that I have used writing in the past in negative ways, and I'm not just talking about rambly, incoherent, or emotional blog entries, but in letters to people. I'm talking about the contemplating of how I, in the past, could use my smarts to put people in their place--or--at least state MY position because x, y, or z person had to know what that was. Sometimes with reason, sometimes less so, many time jumping the gun, and at least almost always having to get that "one little dig" in, no matter the commencing tone. 

I wonder if other writers have done this. I wonder if other writers have tarnished relationships with people because of this mode of expression. I would bet not. I would bet that no one has the effed up capacity I do to actually go through with using words as a weapon of class destruction.

Let me amend that. Had. Had that capacity. As in, once upon a time. As in "il etait un fois..."

Okay, okay, let's not bullshit ourselves entirely, here. I still have that capacity, but I'm too tired for it. I am ashamed of it. And it totally negates where my heart and mind truly are at. Today my words and emails have taken on an entirely difference personality overhaul, but they're not quite there yet. 

I would like to stand up, like an addict or a cancer survivor might do, and say I have been 6 months sober/clean/in remission, but I can't. I can't. My writing has gotten me in trouble as recently as.... well, as recently as a year ago. (That's if I consider I stand by what I've said in communications since then.) (And I do, minus one name.) And, as any addict/survivor could say, the thought never really leaves you, it's just how you decide to deal with it.

To be honest, I've gotten less-than-praiseworthy feedback in even shorter time than that, but there does come a point in one's life where she knows for herself that she doesn't have to apologize for shit.

Which is quite the difference from before.

I guess I have just been using this little thing of gray matter between my ears called the brain a little differently, a little more, a lot more, and I know that all the shit I was trying to communicate before needed a better and steady outlet, not an emotionally-hopped-up one. Really, though I am still reeling with disgust, regret, contempt, and fatigue at this particular summary area of my actions, and all of the energy it took to be that... vindictive and overly apologetic at the same time. 

After a while, a person like that either goes down in flames, exploding in a hot, bi-polar mess of anger and regret or they be cool, like me, and just drop it, stick the hands in the pocket and move on.

I kid.

The price I have paid to learn this lesson is far too dear.

I need to write more

I need to write more. I need to be prolific. If I simply just wait for ideas to strike me, then I am consequently losing all that un-inspired time doing nothing. So I will write a little bit every day, methinks.

I have a friend who is a music teacher who also teaches English. Before the semester change, she was working on this project with her classes about writing a novel per week. It was less about quality of content than it is about encouraging the flow and volume of words stuck in the constipated imaginations of her students to flow incrementally easier from their brains.

I really liked it. So I thought I would give it a try. Just write and write until my creative juices are flowing and maybe some day be good enough to even enter the bowels of the literary world.

Man, I'm on a real potty-mouth tangent here.

I used to think whipping up a blog entry was my version of a real writer doing real commentary, but I've known, realized, and now really, really RE-realized it takes more than that to whip up anything worth reading.

Besides delivery, timing, style, mechanics, grammar, and all THAT hullabaloo, there is research. And no, I'm not talking about the obvious fields in which a writer had better have his facts backed up with reliable sources.

I'm talking about the kinds of details that, even when you think you know it all, even when you think you are more of an expert on any particular subject than most other people, you don't know. Little details that make you realize you still have to do that research. Case in point, my Mexicans Kick Ass thing I did.

I started this out of being inspired by this article (which actually had started with this article,) wanting to write in that style, with that kind of flare, but also that much "factuality" to it. Now, putting the stamp of truth on something that is clearly only perception, you have to be willing to take a stand that perception is truth, that it's your truth, and you have to go about setting that up.

You also have to take risks that expose you. Let me change that. I would have to take risks that exposed me. You can do whatever you want. I don't want to be naked in front a bunch of people! Once upon a time I had worked so hard to be a cool, impenetrable fortress of good guy laughey laugh!

Only I was never a guy and I was sooooo phucking miserable then!

Anyway, tangent aside, I knew with some weight of surety that I was the only one around me who knew and talked and thought and lived and breathed such a Mexican upbringing as I had, with a dad who read everything he could get his hands on about Aztecs culture; and fused this into every aspect of my childhood with all of this education (still showing us how to take pride in our own country.)

It was because I hadn't realized in the beginning just how very focused an upbringing it was that, when I did, it became instantaneously imperative to write about it. But when I sat down and started at it, I found I had to do lots and lots more research just to get things like numbers, figure out percentages (Amy Math!!), and double check that I did, indeed, have my facts straight.