Thursday, June 24, 2004

PROVOCATIVE PROCRASTINATION

One of the reasons I started writing here was so that I would get into the practice of writing everyday, and maybe even come to enjoy it! I would probably enjoy it more if I didn't have this mental governor that keeps me in line, so to speak, by causing tremendous self castigation when I fail to do so. I am the same way about exercise. I do it five days a week and most of the time I fucking hate it. Even though I feel so much better and stronger because I do. I came into this world a master procrastinator. My whole life I have always waited till the last minute to get stuff done and I have suffered the anxiety and drama created by waiting until the very last second.

In school when I had a huge paper due I would do all the reading and research, but I wouldn't actually sit down to write the damn thing until the night before. Once I wrote all night and then went to school in my pajamas to turn it in - this is what happens when you return to college "later in life" - you don't have to participate in the fashion Olympics. You can also date your professors, but that's another story for another time. So I'd type up the paper the night before and turn in the first draft and get an A. If I was getting Bs or Cs I probably would've been motivated to do it differently. But I got As and so I never developed the kind of focus and discipline that I need right now.

Hence this exercise in writing everyday, and although I have done it, I am still a supreme fiddle-farter. This may be due to the fact that currently I have nothing to keep me on task, e.g. a deadline by which work must be completed, or a big, fat paycheck. And I'm not one who responds to manufactured deadlines or even the tempation of a fine dining experience (shout out to Sal - thanks for trying), although usually that works with me. I am wrestling with that demon procrastination and sometimes it wins.

Like today.

The new issue of Entertainment Weekly arrived and inside was a blurb about this blog. Supposedly it is being written by a celebrity who claims to be a big swinging dick of an actor - my words, not theirs - who is privy to all kinds of Jugo de Hollywood. He is pseudonymously known as Rance. Entertainment Weekly "slogged through" the entries - their words, not mine - and they speculate that it may be one of the following hot shots: George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Ben Affleck or Owen Wilson.

So this morning I perused the site myself and I'm kind of leaning toward "hairy psychotic guy who lives in his mother's basement drinking his own urine" - his words, not mine. This is mostly because of his knowledge of the anti-psychotic medication Seroquel mentioned more than once in his posts, as is the allusion to the fact that he might just be a guy who is sitting in his mother's basement voraciously consuming all the entertainment magazines and Tivoing Access Hollywood and Entertainment Tonight so that he can talk the talk. Of course, I am cynical and not so willing to suspend my disbelief because this is, afterall, the internet where crazies abound.

Regardless, this guy, hairy psychotic, or fabu A-lister is a very good writer. He clearly loves languages and exhibits a facile way with the big ass vocabulary words. I find myself wondering if he uses them in conversation and it makes my heart go pitty-pat. If I were ever to meet a man who could toss off words like pedant, vitriol and nihilistic, casually and in the correct context I think I would do him in the parking lot. He writes in long, run on sentences (similar to my own) which are descriptive and endearing at the same time. Sometimes you can tell that he's been drinking when he gets creative with the spelling, e.g. discretion as disgression. He throws out challenges to those who comment like "what would you do if you were made the head of Fox Studios for one day" and the responses that were posted were quite good, so he's attracted at least a semi-literate comment box group of blog stalkers.

At any rate he is my current provacative procrastination destination and I am totally crushing on him. This fact alone tilts the scales in the direction of hairy, psychotic, Seroquel taking, basement dweller - because history has shown that my picker is pretty fucked up. So actually he could be an actor - you'd have to be crazy to fall for one of them!

Either way - he's good entertainment.

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