Tag Archives: writer’s block

The Anti-Bucket List

The greatest thing just happened to my writers block! I have to confess to you faithful readers that sometimes even I have absolutely nothing to say to anyone about anything. In the mornings when I sit here with my coffee, I manage to come up with something as I become more awake. In the evenings when I sit here with my wine, it just doesn’t come easy. So tonight, (and this isn’t the first time I tried this) I went to google to try to find generic blog ideas that I could effectively steal, and make my own for the sake of fulfilling this dreaded self imposed blog quota of one per week. You would be amazed to find out how completely useless this exercise is. It’s bloggers giving other bloggers ideas, but they’re not really ideas, they’re just a shitty set of suggestions about how to blog like….”Write about what you know”…. and…. “Talk about what you’re passionate about”….. I know that assholes!!!! I need a specific concrete idea like “Write about the time a seagull pooped on your shoulder”.

Then I found an actual blog that had actual blog ideas. 50 of them. Some of them weren’t half bad. I chose the Anti-Bucket list which is things I would never do in my lifetime. That’s easy. There’s lots of those, but how do I narrow it down to the most important or interesting ones? I went to http://www.bucketlist.org so that I could find out what some of the most popular bucket list items are, and now I’m going to spend the rest of the evening discrediting them and making fun of them.

1. Learn Archery

At first I thought this said Learn Anarchy which I thought would be fun, but I don’t think I will ever learn archery. I tried it in high school one time. I just remember my gym teacher saying “Keep your elbow straight”, and me saying “IT IS STRAIGHT!!!!!” It went on and on like that.

2. Buy the person behind me a coffee.

One of my pet peeves is people who use the phrase ‘Pay it forward’. They blog about it, they use it in their Facebook updates, they love to be in love with the idea of making the world a better place. Here’s an idea…. Just do what you’re supposed to do in each situation. No more, no less. If everyone does that, the universe will all fall into place. While you’re inside buying a stranger coffee, you’re probably double parked outside. Get a grip.

3. Bungee Jump

No thanks. Plummeting to my death only to not die (providing the equipment works) does absolutely nothing for me. Pure foolishness.

4. Go on an African Lion Safari.

No thanks. Sweating it up in the jungle with a bunch of predators who may or may not eat me depending on my luck does not sound appealing. I’m happy to look at pictures.

5. Collect a jar of dirt from every State.

Then what?

6. Swim with a Whale-Shark

Ummm no.

7. Have a mud fight.

Why on earth would I want to have a mud fight? I don’t like mud, and I don’t like to fight. I would like to have the opposite of a mud fight. What is the opposite of a mud fight? I believe it is eating croissants inside.

8. Attend a Masquerade Ball

I hope I’m never invited to one. I just feel like it’s way too much effort for the way I like to party.

9. Strap a Rocket to a Merry-Go-Round

That’s just stupid.

10. Paint a Mural

You wouldn’t want to see that mural. I can’t even draw stick figures well. It would be stick figures on the mural though. They’d be doing all kinds of random things. Kindergarten kids would do a better job. I think murals are fantastic, but you won’t see me create one.

Well that was a fun exercise. I have to admit, there were some pretty good ideas on that site, and I was hard pressed to find 10 I didn’t want to do, but if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s not wanting to do things 🙂


Travelaudacity

So this post is supposed to be a travel rant. I just want to say this. I am loopy on cold medication. Oh I know… put that up there with the rest of the excuses for either writing a bad blog or wanting to get extreme credit for writing a good blog, like…..There’s something in my eye, my dog keeps humping my leg, I’m stuck in a snow bank, too many creditors are calling my home at once, I have plantar fasciitis, my coffee maker is broken, I have writer’s block, I don’t speak English, I’m at work, my humidifier is making the room to humid, I’m drunk, my Ipod keeps playing the Pet Shop Boys, my baby is drooling on my face, last night’s pork was overcooked, they might have used asbestos during the construction of my parent’s house, I have emotional problems, there’s a jolly rancher stuck to the couch cushion, I have kidney stones, my life sucks and I’m too depressed to write, my life’s amazing and now I have nothing compelling to write about, I have a stain on my new shirt, I’m being held back in life because my pre-school teacher never believed in me, I have a hang nail on the ring finger equivalent of my toes, I wanna go outside and play, the gym that I’ve never been to wants me to come in for a fitness assessment….. today!!!!!! All this and I still managed to get a blog off??? That’s damn near heroic!! OK, this is getting out of hand. Let me start over.

Travelaudacity is supposed to be like travelocity, but since I’m trying to tell you bad things about travelling, I put audacity instead of ocity, but then I wasn’t sure if you’d get it, so I’m explaining it, but then if I have to explain it, it probably wasn’t worth saying, but if it was worth saying, and you did get the ‘wordplay’, then I’ve probably completely ruined it by explaining it, and I should have just shown confidence in it (because I have this thing about combining two concepts in the same word like “Blintrog” which was the first blog I ever wrote, and it was like an Intro and a Blog, but I combined the two to make Blintrog… get it???), but I don’t know if this concept was strong enough, and I feel insecure about it, and when I’m insecure, I overexplain. NOT TO MENTION when I looked up the spelling of audacity, I noticed that one of the definitions was the willingness to take bold risks which is actually a pretty cool personality trait, but I of course was referring to the definition that indicated rude or disrespectful behaviour, just in case you weren’t 100% clear about what Travelaudacity was supposed to be about. OK, this is getting out of hand. Let me start over.

I had to fly on Delta Airlines last week. I wanted to bring a bag. A real bag, like luggage. Not just a carry-on. Not a full-on suitcase disguised as a carry-on either which (if I didn’t just say it in a recent blog) is the most obnoxious thing going. I wanted to check a bag. This costs $25. I know it used to be free back in the day, but that’s not my rant. (Although it could be my rant because if they didn’t charge $25, then more people would check their bags, and then they wouldn’t stuff them into overhead compartments, and then dislodge a plastic thingy when they tried to get it out, and nearly poke my friggin eye out). I just wanted to let you my faithful readers know that when you pay $25 to check a bag with Delta, they give you what’s called an ‘excessive baggage’ ticket. I was gone for 5 (turned into 7 because of snow storm) days, and I brought one suitcase. I don’t think that is ‘excessive’. If I brought 4 suitcases, then you can give me an excessive baggage ticket, but one suitcase for a 5 days??? Not excessive. I would say it’s the ‘appropriate baggage’. I would have liked to get an ‘appropriate baggage’ ticket from Delta.

Have you ever booked travel and noticed that a connecting flight is generally cheaper than a direct flight? I’ve had this explained to me by numerous people and I still can’t wrap my head around it. I’m no genius!! Argue it all you want…..(No seriously I’d love to have the argument with you where you try to convince me that I’m a genius, and I humbly try to talk you down like ‘no no… not a genius…’ please, can we do that argument next time I see you?) but I do know a tiny bit about business. I’m not going to oversell how much I know about it, but most of my adult life, I’ve been involved in business on some level with varying degrees of success peppered with wildly high levels of failure. All that being said, HOW THE FUCK CAN RIDING ON 2 AIRPLANES BE CHEAPER THAN RIDING ON 1 AIRPLANE???? There are roughly double the costs. Double the employees, double the fuel, double the mechanics making sure it’s running smoothly, double the flight attendants, double the bits and bites, double the pilots, double the guys that take our ‘excessive baggage’ from one plane and put it on another. There’s no way you can tell me that the costs of having me take a connecting flight is cheaper than me taking a direct flight (when one is available). I think that’s why some of these airlines are struggling. They fail to comprehend the basic mathematics behind their business. They should be encouraging people to take direct flights!! Do you know how much time and energy they waste on re-booking passengers that miss their connectors?? The stupidity of it all amazes me continuously.

Happy Travels!