I had a strange experience a few days ago. I had a bad headache before bed so I took a dose of Tylenol PM. The headache went away after an hour, and I began to fall asleep. Normally, when I go to bed after taking any kind of sleep aid, I’ll almost immediately start having a strange and sometimes lucid dream.

This time, I kept having these strange shocks or jolts in my head every time I would drift off to sleep. It even caused me to jerk my arm involuntarily. Then, when I tried to sleep yet again, I immediately had a dream where my brain was shutting down, I couldn’t move, and my breathing was slowing dramatically. The experience is my best guess of what dying actually feels like; it felt incredibly real. I forced myself to stay awake for hours until the drug had seemed to run its course.

Like most people, I’ve experienced myoclonic or hypnic jerks, but what recently happened is what Google seems to describe as sleep paralysis, though I don’t recall being attacked by demons or aliens. It only lasted a few seconds, but I would prefer that it does not happen again. kthx.

Can I get an explanation from the many medical professionals who follow my blog closely?

It’s NOT A TOOMA.

Today while working on my super-secret writing project, I had a flash back to my creative writing classes in college. All of them were workshop-based — meaning, each student wrote something and the next few weeks were spent critiquing each story as a class. If the author was given a chance to introduce or explain his work before the onslaught of criticism had begun, nine times out of 10 you’d hear “I didn’t spend much time editing,” or “My computer crashed and had to write this at the last minute”; basically, some sort of qualifier to say that the story you’re about to discuss is not the writer’s best work; in fact, it’s his worst.

Of course, his intentions are clear: If he tells everyone that he is a better writer than what is reflected in the piece in question, perhaps the critics will go easier on him or tell him it certainly doesn’t look like the result of subpar effort. It generally works. Regardless, most amateur critics (students and new writers) won’t be the right kind of ruthless when the author is sitting in the room.

For my readers who are serious about writing and are enrolled in a workshop-oriented writing class this semester, I have some advice for you that your teacher may or may not condone: Before you submit that story to your teacher and classmates, post that shit on the Internet.

I’m not talking about a Facebook note just so Mom and your stupid friends can ooh and aah over your flowery words. I don’t even mean a writing forum; I mean an anonymous forum full of Joe Smiths who are not inhibited by natural cowardice. For starters, they’ll be pissed that you decided to be an attention whore with your lame, amateur crap. The ones who really had a bad day will read it and critique it. If all you get is a brushoff, or if you actually get nothing but praise, then post it somewhere else full of even angrier Internet junkies. Then the fun starts.

It probably won’t make you happy unless you’re thick skinned. I certainly wasn’t born with thick skin, and I am guilty of playing the “I didn’t spend a lot of time on this story” sympathy card. For someone who wants an audience beyond his own hard drive, this practice is useless. So, someone suggested I try the Internet thing, to participate in workshops with other writers online, where the arrogance is uncensored and the fear of confrontation is gone — I took it a step further by taking the non-writer Internet route I described above.

The method is pretty hit or miss, but it serves the purpose of getting your work brutally destroyed by someone who took the time to read it with that very goal in mind. Normal people, who you should be targeting as your readers, don’t like inflated language, and that’s what normally comes from creative writers in college.

If your anonymous, angry critics have read a few books in their time, they will respond to your stilted writing and pseudo-poetic dialogue by telling you how boring it is and that it has no place on their short list of things they have time to read on the crapper, the elliptical, or in a waiting room. If you’re not utterly devastated by those ruthless critiques, you will learn something.

Naturally thin skin takes a long time to harden, but at least in the mean time you can come to understand that people are giving you critiques on a story that belongs to you, which means you can choose which suggestions to incorporate into your next draft, or which critiques to take to heart. Obviously, it will take common sense and skill to sort out the good critiques from the misguided ones. Remember to take a second or third look at the ones you loudly announce to be misguided while fighting that knot in your stomach.

Nowadays, if I even feel compelled to qualify my request for critiques at all, I would rather tell people to be brutal and see what comes out of that. It’s an advantage of Internet critiques: you don’t have to look your victim in the face. The most jolting critiques are often the ones that, if considered, will absolutely improve the story.

I heard about all of this second-hand, so it’ll be better if I tell this story with quotes from sources with clearer facts. To start, here’s a local news story that ran when the videos of a kid and his brother terrorizing and harming the family cat first surfaced:

In a disgusting case of animal abuse, a cat being abused was filmed by the culprits and posted on YouTube. A teenaged boy slammed a cat against a wall and repeatedly struck it. It was a hot topic on the internet all day Sunday and bloggers think it happened in Lawton.

Among the thousands of posts on the internet, commenters pointed to Lawton as the source after it was posted this weekend. The user name and information, along with other information on the internet pointed to a teen here in Texoma. Posts from all over to country asked people to call 7News, and plenty did. Due to it’s graphic nature, much of the video was edited for this story.

The teenager - who calls himself “Timmy” entered a bathroom that he called his laboratory. Inside the shower was a cat which the boy picked up by its neck and slammed against the wall and floor before beating it with his fists. The attack continued for more than a minute.

YouTube removed the video Sunday afternoon and disabled the user’s account - but not before it was seen about 30,000 times. Local authorities confirm that they are investigating the video, and Lawton Police say the Comanche County Sheriff’s Department is investigating. Sheriff Kenny Stradley has been shown the video.

And then, anonymous members of a message board caught wind of this story. They decided to take action. (note: I won’t use the name of this message board because they have a tendency to self-google and dive-bomb sites that mention then. But we’ll just say it rhymes with “floor plan”)

Encyclopedia dramatica, the most reliable source of epic wins/fails on the Internet, summarizes:

Just in case you have been living under a rock the past few days, on the 15th of February, 2009, Kenny “The Animal Abuser” Glenn, is a 14-year-old soon to be anally-raped juvie prisoner, who posted videos on YouTube of himself abusing his cat Dusty. When it came to [forum name removed]’s attention that some loser dipshit was abusing a cat, it took the internet superheroes less than 24 hours for to identify, locate and dispatch the Party Van over to pick the sick little fuck up along with his equally useless brother Weston.  Since being epically thrown into the partyvan at the hands and frothing mouths of /b/tardseverywhere, Kenny and his brother will both face charges by the IRL mods of Comanche County. Both bitches are now facing charges of animal abuse and will soon find out if they will be joining Bubba in the big house.

So, in a nutshell, some kid and his brother, thinking their black ski masks made them anonymous, posted videos of themselves abusing the family cat. People were outraged, and when a few viewers figured out where the videos were filmed, the anonymous world of typically useless Internet forums took the case, found out the kids’ names and address, and notified the authorities. Going further, several Web sites were created to show all the kids’ information, including names, address, school, photos of them, names and photos of their parents and grandfather, myspace information, etc. — and if the authorities don’t bring enough justice, the Internet knows where the kids live. If you want the details of this story, Google is generous with them. You can even watch the cat-abuse videos, which I’ve seen and will not link here.

Despite the fact that on any given day the “anons” of such message boards are generally caustic to the innocent (I’ve seen multiple stories of message board members chastising people who claim to be planning a suicide, and actually follow through with it), it’s somewhat nice to know that such a destructive power can at least be used both ways.

Was the backlash too harsh, though? Not only did the anonymous members give the kids’ information to local authorities, but they also posted their information for all to see, which reportedly resulted in death threats and pranks played on the family, day and night. Given this, some might argue that there’s a reason we have a justice system that specifies minimum and maximum penalties for various crimes.

While most biased pet owners, including myself, might want to see this kid and his brother endure mental and physical misery indefinitely, perhaps the Internet has taken its vigilance a little too far — and more in the name of entertainment rather than justice. After all, this same brand of anti-cat abuse anons, crawling in the darkest corners of the Internet, will also laugh about the Holocaust and applaud school shootings.

Either way, the moral of the story coincides with a previous blog post I made; you are only anonymous on the Internet if no one cares what you’re doing.

Who has heard of the book, “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing“? It’s written by Evan Marshall, an author, a former editor, and a current independent literary agent. It was released more than 10 years ago and seems to have sparked some controversy, mostly among writers. I blindly bought it when I was 14 and thought I was ready to write a novel. I don’t even know if I read the whole thing back then or if I just read a few sections and jumped into the writing (and stopped about 3,000 words in).

For those writers who’ve never heard of it, want to be published in the mass market sector, and have trouble with the mechanics of keeping your plot and subplots organized and controlling the overall pace of your story, read on.
The Marshall Plan is very specific. It doesn’t tell you how to brainstorm or keep your creativity going; rather, it tells you how to plan and plot the idea you already have. In addition, it essentially lays out a formula for you regarding subplots, characters, and POV.

In the Marshall Plan, you’re writing a third-person limited omniscient narrative that involves one lead character, an opposition, a confidant, and a romantic involvement (optional). Depending on the length of your novel, you might also incorporate additonal characters.

There is literally a chart in the book that tells you, based on the target word count of your book, how many scenes you must plot, how many of your characters must have a subplot, and how many scenes are alotted to each character’s subplot.

To start, your lead must have a separate but relevant subplot. Then, the chart will tell you how many other characters also need a subplot that’s separate from the main storyline but still somehow ties into and affects the lead character’s path to reaching his story goal.

For example, a 100,000 word novel will have 80 scenes and need 4 additional character subplots, with approximately 11 of the 80 scenes devoted to each non-lead character. 

The plan offers a guideline for when each character storyline should begin (for example, start your first subplot at scene 5, then your next one at scene 8, etc., and make sure you don’t wait too long to resume each character’s subplot as you move along.)

With these Marshall-mandated character subplots, that means your story switches viewpoints — the narrator jumps out of the head of your lead character and into the head of your confidant, or romantic involvement, etc. in the scenes that are devoted to their respective subplots.

And each character must have a story goal. Your lead character must always achieve his story goal. So should your confidant because his story goal is help your lead accomplish the main story goal. The romatic involvement, if you have one, has to end up with your lead. Your opposition must always fail. Obviously, not all books have a happy ending, but Marshall explains that happy endings sell better than ugly ones, so his plan calls for the former.

Marshall also provides a template to plot scenes, and he separates the scenes into two different types: Action and Reaction. In Action scenes, a character carries out a decision he’s made that will contribute to achieving his story goal, and it results in a failure. Then, depending on the severity of the failure, it can be followed by a Reaction scene, where your character reacts to the failure both emotionally and rationally before deciding on another course of action. Then, you guessed it, switch to Action scene again. Marshall says, however, that non-lead character subplots should not go directly from Action to Reaction; there should be scenes in between to build the suspense before going back to that subplot.

I found The Marshall Plan among some other old books last week and started reading it again as I was developing ideas for a novel. I’ve read half of it so far. The book also discusses forms of writing, as well as querying agents, but I haven’t read that far. If I remember correctly, though, Marshall says that your story starts with a crisis (which establishes your lead’s story goal) and the plot must contain 2 or 3 (he gives an exact number) surprises or moments of hopelessness, scenes where the plot has taken a dramatic turn or it seems to be the end of the line, and the lead character will not be able to achieve his story goal.

If any of you aspiring or seasoned writers had the patience to read the above, I’d like to know what your thoughts are on the “Marshall Plan.” In the book, he does say that there’s more than one way to write a novel, but that the plan in his book is proven effective for getting an agent and, subsequently, a publisher.

Personally, I’ve found a lot of it to be useful. In the beginning, he lays out a long list of genres and sub-genres and tells the reader that a novel must fit into one of those genres, which got my brain working right off the bat.

Despite the disgust many writers feel about the idea of a person reducing an art form to a formula, I do think there’s a lot of truth to what he says, IF getting a publisher is your goal, and for any impatient (me), inexperienced novelist (me) who has a tendency either to see the big picture and ignore the details (me) or come up with scenes without addressing a coherent plot (again, me), this kind of structure is an effective way to make sure your beginning and ending share a middle that won’t bore your readers. It’s a plan to use as an anchor, though I can’t see myself obeying every word of it.

• I bought a book called “The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing”  about 10 years ago and decided to reread it recently.
• Marshall’s plan involves very specific plot and character formulas, including how many subplots and how much of the book should be devoted to each subplot.
• It might be too formulaic, stifling, and shocking to the creative types, but I can be scatterbrained when fiction writing, and the book is helping me keep my ideas moving.
• I doubt I will follow the book’s exact plan.
• Ever read it? What do you think of it?

I’m excited to announce that Fanta Orange Zero is acceptable enough to replace its sugary counterpart. That is all.

I think I’ve said this before either in a blog or an article, but I, among millions of other men, don’t like Valentine’s Day. Yes, it’s a commercialized holiday that targets the weakness of all women (attention) and centers on the idea of guilt-driven spending or the hyperawareness of being single, as if being single means being alone.

But that’s not really why it bothers me. It’s the expectation. The holiday is no longer about love (if it ever was); it’s about the spectacle or the tangible satisfaction. Flowers, candy, a card, and dinner. Those are the basics, the bread and butter. If boytoy doesn’t have these things to offer on that fateful anti-climactic day, he has screwed up. What’s worse is how any deviation from her silent expectations on Valentine’s Day completely negates his merit as a companion. She’s actually more efficient than our U.S. judicial system, giving absolutely no trial or consideration to outside circumstances.

Valentine’s Day works the same way hurricane planning works in Baton Rouge. It’s expected that a hurricane in the gulf with a somewhat pessimistic projected path requires residents to buy food, water, batteries, and gas. With Gustav being the exception, we always overprepare simply because someone else is; thus, any skeptical preparers are easily swept up into the frenzy of everyone else making sure they’re taking care of themselves and their family just as much as the next guy. I was guilty of it, too, and ended up with quite a lot of leftover food to donate even after Gustav left an upperdecker in our city.

We see the generic Valentine racks at Wal-Mart and grocery stores, which gives us a general idea of what to start with. Restaurants around town start putting out ads and signs for Valentine’s Day reservations, which reminds us of that other staple we must incorporate into the plans. Facebook now tells us what everyone else is planning, online surveys show us what women expect or wish their significant others would do, and women compare notes each year. After all, some guys insist on setting the curve with love letters, romantic weekend retreats, songs, jewelry, and cliches masked only by a woman’s superficial desire to one-up her friends. So, the girls get together and exchange full after-action reports and review lessons learned in preparation for next year — but by preparation, I mean raising those silent expectations for even greater disappointment.

The object of Valentine’s Day is for couples to coordinate a show so that other couples don’t judge them. Even if no one ever asks what you did or what you gave each other on Valentine’s Day, you’ll always have the satisfaction that you would have a solid answer if anyone ever asks. That is what’s important, because if you aren’t better than every other couple, you just aren’t in love at all.

Before the guys feel empowered or the girls start whining, I’ll end this post with a quote from my wife: “The truth is that it is important to girls. And in a relationship where there is love, both partners should try to understand what the other one enjoys. In other words, you don’t have to like Valentine’s Day, but you should at least respect your girl and quit complaining about it … you pretty much have to do what she wants anyway. Girls are experts at guilt and suppressing anger and letting it explode the next time you forget to throw your clothes in the hamper. Also, ultimately, she determines whether or not you have to sleep on the couch at night.  So, you know what? You have to deal with it no matter what; you might as well have a smile on your face.”

/argument

Dane Cook syndrome. I’m calling it that because it’s the best example I can conjure from my brain, which lacks even an average amount of pop culture knowledge.

In case you don’t know who Demetri Martin is, he’s currently one of my favorite comedians. He’s contributed to The Daily Show and Conan O’Brien, and he’s got a few specials on DVD, including “These are Jokes,” “Demetri Martin: Person” and “Invite Them Up” (not necessarily in that order).

They’re funny. The jokes are original. So far.

Remember when Dane Cook was funny? No? Well, take my word for it; the first time I saw him was on a Comedy Central Presents special, and he was good — funny enough to entice me to acquire his other stuff.

Just like you pick up on the flaws of a movie the more you watch it, Dane Cook becomes increasingly aggravating the more you see him on TV. You start to realize that his zany antics on stage require solid content; otherwise, he’s just a douche. And now that he seems to be out of good jokes, he’s a douche. His downfall was too much exposure. Two or three specials seems to be the threshold of funny for most comedians — more if you can release them further apart. Is Dane Cook even popular with frat boys anymore?

Anyway, the point is that Demetri Martin already peaked. Unfortunately, Comedy Central did a poor job at projecting Martin’s popularity and began producing a weekly 30-minute show for him after it had been proven that viewers love him. Hey, it worked with Dave Chappelle, right?

The show premiered last night, though, and it was mediocre. It’s a combination of sketch comedy and stand-up, with each episode centering on one theme or “important thing.” Last night’s episode was about time, so every joke/sketch was loosely based on the importance of timing. If you watched it, recall the sketch with Demetri and a woman protraying actors trying to get through an emotional scene. That was the funniest part of the show. The rest of it was just OK — the jokes were still in Demetri’s style (visual aids, music, and deadpan one-liners), but they were a little watered down, likely for the sake of making sure the show doesn’t quickly plummet from genius to sad (insert multiple examples here).

I won’t completely judge a show by its pilot, and I’d like to see the series succeed and stay funny like Chappelle did. However, realistically it won’t. Demetri Martin strikes me as the type of comedian who, though a great writer and so far a talented comedian, will eventually run out of on-screen charisma — even if the content doesn’t suffer. I made this projection last night when I noticed Martin smiling and chuckling at some of his own jokes.

Comedy Central has a history of throwing 10 shows on the air and keeping one around. The ones that primarily rely on stand-up comedians usually fail (The Root of All Evil, Shorties Watching Shorties, Dr. Katz, Crank Yankers, Make Me Laugh), though it seems few shows last more than a few seasons on Comedy Central anyway.

During the show last night, I saw a preview for a new Comedy Central series called “Krod Mandoon” — I’m saying it here and now: 5 episodes, 6 tops.

In any case, watch Important Things with Demetri Martin and join me in giving it a chance. The next one is Wednesday at 9:30 p.m. CST.

Everyone, this is Chris Cole. He is a singer/songwriter from Baton Rouge, currently attending LSU.

I got the opportunity to meet him at his show last week as he was playing a show at The Magnolia Cafe in St. Franz-ville.

From the likes of Marc Broussard and Benjy Davis Project, Chris Cole is the new up and coming local artists in the Baton Rouge area!

Holy crap, okay so I had this long blog posted as a review of the show but something happened to it and I can only find half of it, and to top that off it is no longer on my DVR list. So, poopers.

However, the Grammys went very, very well!

And the news I’m sure EVERYONE is more concerned with other than Robert Plant and Coldplay sweeping the Grammys is the fact that Chris Brown beat the ever living crap out of Rihanna.

I’m not so sure that their engagement is still on and I won’t be surprised if it is called off.

Apparently, Chris Brown lost his temper and beat Rihanna. According to witnesses, he choked her till she was unconscious. Rihanna suffered bite marks on her hands and other parts of her body and contusions to her head.

I’m wondering what the hell happened! For me, this is very upsetting because I adore Chris Brown, but now I just feel awkward listening to his music. And poor Rihanna, she is incredible.

Wrigley’s Double Mint Gum dropped Chris Brown as their spokesman. Hmms. . .

Well, it’s not why I’M fat. I just like to eat, but most of the stuff on this site is pretty disgusting.

Here are some selected pictures from the nauseating gallery.

The corndog pizza.

Makes Taco Bell look like health food.That's bacon acting as a taco shell, by the way.

100 patties, 100 slices of cheese. At least three weeks' worth of calories.

With foods like these being produced and consumed, why were we ever picking on McDonald’s for having a supersize option? Local restaurants that pride themselves in having massive portions and eating contests are worse, and they don’t have to post nutrition facts anywhere.

I think we should have a man vs. food-style competition in Baton Rouge — get a team together and see how many of the big burgers we can eat at Times Grill or George’s.