This Is A Little Embarrassing

I haven’t blogged since last year.

Oops.

Well, I’ll have you random inter-people know that I’m starting a fairly writing intensive project on the 1st of April, and plan to blog about it every week, on the Sunday.

So we’ll see how well that goes.

The writing project, by the way, is suspiciously similar to Script Frenzy because it is. April 1st to 30th. 100 pages of script.

…We shall see.

Hopefully, you are as excited as I am when you hear that potential script is about zombies in medieval France.

I thought so.

Well then. Until next time.

PS: This is short because this is filler, to get me back in the blogging mood and to tide people over until Sunday.

Where Are You?

Chances are, if you’re reading this, you do not live in my city.

I don’t, and can’t, hold it against you. There are only 3 million people in Toronto, and I’m pretty sure that only a handful of people read this anyways. This is not your fault.

My location has damned me on many occasions. Thanks to the internet — Twitter, specifically — I have a lot of friends where I am not. At the very least, acquaintances. All over the world. Different parts of Canada, East & West coasts of America, the weird middly part of America, the UK, probably someone else in Europe, and even Oz, Land of Backwards Toilets and Marsupials.

Those places are not here. They are quite not here. But one day, I will be there. One day soon.

I have a wanderlust that grows within me each day. I’ve only been to America 4 times (San Diego, Ft. Lauderdale, and New York), but the travel bug bit me hard, then paralyzed me and crawled down my throat, laying its eggs in my insestinal tract.

Here’s the thing, though. I am not rich. There is no way I’ll be able to travel to everywhere you folks reside. So that’s where you come in.

In the comments below, make known the city in which you dwell, if you enjoy the city, WHY you enjoy the city if you do, and whether you’d desire my company there. Spread this around, re-tweet this, re-blog it, link to it, anything. I want to be directed.

Also. If you *are* in the Toronto area and you’re reading this: Cool. How’s it going? We should hang out.

Next week, I might be more interesting.

Until next time.

Well Shit: An accidental hiatus

I haven’t actually written anything in two weeks. I have officially failed you loyal readers that I don’t have.

Ah well. I’m sorry. Won’t happen again.

So, late last night, I was discussing songwriting with a friend. I’ve been playing instruments for 4 years, and have become somewhat skilled on the ukulele, bass guitar, and acoistic guitar. That said, I’ve only ever written two songs. One is about a unicorn forest, the other is about Nathan Fillion. They’re OK.

While talking with this friend, he could not believe that I was not writing songs. I’m a writer! I told him the truth: Songwriting to me is writing about songs. He told me to roll with it. I did.

THE SONGWRITING SONG
Lyrics by Daniel Sos

This is the intro verse
And it’s pretty chill
This might be a sign that this is a happy song
G chord
Is your home base
Never stray too far from it.

E chord
is like a sign
That points you write into the chorus

Chorus
This is the song writing song
come on sing along
or not
maybe you don’t want to
You could learn a thousand songs and play
them all but you’ll never find your but
the song writing song
Will help you play your song!

That was the chorus
It is pretty swell
You can come back to it once you finish the verse
The verse
is what we’re doing now
the lyric change
So they aren’t so easy
The e chord
a familiar face
it’s leading you right into the chorus

[chorus]

This is the bridge
it’s optional
optional
A friend of mine said Bminor
was a god bridge chord
Use a bridge to give your song
a litte variety
iety
They’re over quick, so now we transition

[solo over chorus]

The final verse
It’s a tearful one
it means your song is almost over.
to summarize
intro chorus verse bridge end
oh, one last thing
play the chorus twice right now!

[chorus x2]

end!

So that was the Songwriting Song. Hope you enjoy it. Comment, link to my blog, tell your friends and companions. Anything helps.

Until next time.

Not Quite Overdue

OK, since it’s officially the lasy day I can post this before my week schedule is broken, here goes.

For the past week my life has been OK. I’m gonna start with Friday and work my way to today.

Friday: I wake up and IT’S MY BIRTHDAY! I was fairly excited about that. Many of my friends (most of them on Twitter) congratulated me and showered me with praise, which isn’t a terrible thing to wake up to, I’ve realized. Spent the evening surrounded by family and friends, enjoying myself immensely. Ate cake. Went to sleep. That was fun.

Saturday: I wake up and meander over to my father’s house. He’s waiting for me, and he gives me an iPhone 4! That was immensely cool. We did some cleaning, and some friends came over. We watched Shaun of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, and played some video games. So that was also pretty fun.

Sunday and Monday: The holiday weekend. It was Thanksgiving, so I spent a lot of time on Sunday and Monday just being thankful for all my friends, all my acquaintances, my shinies, my musical tastes, everything. I’m still thankful that I’m alive and breathing, and not consumed with depression. It’s become a weird slimy coating rather than sponging in. Still not good. But better!

See? I’m totally happy right now. No, I’m not just opening my eyes really wide. Happy.

Anyways.

Tuesday: Back to school. Nothing interesting happened on Tuesday. I watched Glee and Caprica. Glee and Caprica good. Yeah, Wednesday wasn’t really interesting, and I’m starting to realize that neither is this blog entry. Uhh….

Wednesday: It doesn’t get really interesting until the evening, so I’ll skip to there. I get home, and on the kitchen table is a gigantic box addressed to me. I cut the tape, open the flaps, and staring me in the face was The Complete Battlestar Galactica, and the first season of Caprica! Oh my god that was amazing. I’ve enjoyed Caprica, and am still enjoying it, and I just started watching Battlestar Galactica, and I’m loving that too. I’ll be reviewing Caprica and BSG on this blog, too, as soon as I get around to it. Maybe next week?

It was pretty exciting. I was excited.

Thursday: Another exciting evening. Same scenario as Wednesday, smaller box. I open it up – a Cthulhu! Made of lavender wool. This beautiful creation comes to me from Ruth, who is also known as Cthulhu Chick on occasion. She makes these cuddly monstrosities, and made this one special for me! I love it.

Meet Zane.

After the auspicious arrival of Zane, I thought it was high time to purchase my #CrafterBirthday items. If you’re new here, #CrafterBirthday was my way of helping the homemade community, as well as myself, by buying homemade items from my favourite crafters. Unfortunately, I was not able to make purchases from everyone, but I was able to procure:

• A Pumpkin Spice Whipped-Up Sugar Scrub and a Boba Fett Soap from Kylee Lane!
• A Mystery Block soap and a Mighty Monarch soap from Lesley at GeekSoap!
• A Tardi-soap and a Mana Bar soap from Jessica at GeekyClean!
• An OMG BOOKS shirt from 2 amazingly creative people, Ruth and Jess!
• A red, blue and black plaid cowl from Pip Robins! (this item used to say “sold” because I had bought it. I love when my decisions affect things.)
• Finally, a caffeine-molecule-printed bag from Lyndsay at Dragon ChowDice Bags! It’s not on the site, because I bought it.

So that’s how I spent my Thursday. Hopefully all this stuff will be coming very soon.

Friday: Went to my grandfather’s 80th birthday party. He’s healthy and happy, and is winning a fight against cancer! It’s all very nice.

All throughout the week, there have been times of badness, depression, etc. But you know what? Those times get less numerous every day, and that’s good.

My life isn’t that bad. Which is good.

If you’d like to see anything on my blog next week, let me know in the comments.

Until next time.

Procrastination

I had to write this for class. It was fun to do, kind of. Hope to you like it?

Writing prose for a contest about “words into actions” is ridiculously ironic. I’d just like to start with that.
It has taken me a long time to go from idly musing about this on the streetcar home to actually putting this into writing, which is even more ironic, and you’ll learn why.
The focus of this writing sample is procrastination and writer’s block. At its root, procrastination is the inability to turn words into action. Let’s look at this more.
As a hyper-active teenage geek with lots of free time and nothing to do, I think a lot, and I do a lot of things for a very short time. At the moment I have 5 unfinished songs, a half-completed Dutch lesson, an unopened Mandarin lesson, a list of TV shows to watch, a list of books to read, a list of video-games to play, an unopened CD, plans to start a pillow-sheet making company, an unwritten writing obligation, a novel-writing contest looming, and, of course, this. In my defence, I’ve made an effort on at least half of these projects. Some of them I’ve even worked on for more than a day. Some for more than a week! That’s impressive.
But in the end, all these projects (or most of them, anyway) fall to procrastination. I lose interest, and, having a typical attention span for someone of my age, this happens remarkably quickly. What’s more is that I am perfectly capable of recognizing this trend. I am so comfortable in my procrastination that I can move from a failed project (say, knitting decorative leg-warmers) to another project, equally doomed for failure (making ninja stars), and be completely OK with that. I don’t even think that these projects are going to succeed any more. I hope I can find the initiative to do some of my better ones, but a lot of these are just doomed from the start, and I know that.
The problem here is that in this one habit, I am not unique. The majority of students at most public schools are chronic procrastinators (I don’t have many sources or concrete statistics – I was too lazy to find them), and it is affecting schools as a result. Many teachers have introduced a “cut-off date” in addition to the due-date of an assignment, which is the latest a project will be accepted. Even so, many students attempt to hand in assignments after that, and some teachers let them.
This ends up being incredibly counter-productive in adult life. Many people of the ‘me generation (it should be called the ‘meh’ generation, partly to do with apathy and partly to do with a lack of awareness in spelling.)’ will be unprepared to enter the workforce, to pay bills, to shop, to clean. I’m kind of worried about it myself. As aware of the problem as I am, I can’t be bothered to fix it.
Wikipedia’s article on procrastination (It was the first result and I was lazy) says that it comes in 2 forms – relaxed and nervous. Relaxed procrastination is where no work is ever done, and no work is ever worried about. From the perspective of a relaxed procrastinator, no work was ever given, so there is no problem. I can relate, insofar as I have forgotten entire classes on more than one occasion. On the other hand, a nervous procrastinator is fully aware of his or her workload, and it scares them silly. They are so paralyzed by fear that they cannot bring themselves to work. I can also relate there, as I’m usually in that state. Neither of these things is good, and neither of them breeds good work habits.
Really, now that I’m nearing the home stretch, I’m feeling good about this (though I did spell ‘stretch’ wrong the first time). Maybe what people need isn’t a lot of projects, maybe it’s just the sense of accomplishment from one? Maybe? Interesting.
I’ll think about it later.

By the way, I’m going to be doing an awesome post-birthday post to accompany the tweets that go with it. And a Caprica review.

Don’t Be Angry

Usually I post every week. I’ve been essentially good at that.

Right now, however, I can’t think of anything to write.

Yep.

So this is my post.

I’ve been watching Caprica, I guess. It’s pretty good.

Don’t hurt me.

For Nathan ~ “Fillion”

About 30 minutes or so ago, Nathan Fillion mentioned that he wanted a theme song. So I wrote him one. Enjoy!

Fillion by Daniel Sos
composed on ukulele, where it sounds best.

E———————-C
He drove head-first into the Black
G————-D
To save his crew and his space ship

(chord progression continues)

He jumped on to a moving van
And pushed a girl into garbage

He stuck his thumb in Xander’s eye
Now he’s solving crime’s with Stana Katic

Is there anything he can’t do?
…. Probably not!

(chorus)

E——-C——-D
Fillion! Totally awesome!
Fillion! Canadian dream!
Fillion! His first name is Nathan!
Fillion! Bam said the lady, yeah!

(solo over E C G D, 8 bars)

(verse)

He’s double rainbow all the way
He ain’t afraid to do the weird stuff

He was a gynecologist
I didn’t really watch One Life to Live!

He’s gorram shiny!
But I can’t think of anything to say in Mandarin.

(chorus x2)

C————–D—–E
Bam said the lady, yeah!
Bam said the lady, yeah!
Bam said the lady, yeah!

(let last chord ring)

I hope you liked it. For a short version, use the first verse and the ending chorus part.

Thank you.