Randal Graves from Clerks vs. Lindsey Graham, Whose Last Name Should Also Be Graves, Hint, Hint, Wink, Wink (Rest in Piss, Loser)

 

Public Speaking

***PUBLIC SPEAKING***

Even though I did standup comedy and stage acting as a teenager, I can say with one hundred percent certainty that I can’t stand public speaking. Being nervous and forgetting my lines in front of that many people? Forget it, buddy. It wouldn’t be so bad if I could read from a script the entire time, but then I’m sacrificing that all-important eye contact with my audience. Also without a prepared script, I’m left having to fill time with other topics that I haven’t rehearsed. But as much as I can’t stand public speaking, it’s clear to me after watching one of Jenna Moreci’s You Tube videos that I’ll have to do it if I want to be a successful indie author.

Giving interviews, giving lectures, and recording my own online videos are all part of an author’s platform growth. Not only do I have to swallow my pride and do these things, but I have to sound confident too. In the words of Vince Lombardi, confidence is contagious, so is lack of confidence. If I stutter and stammer over my words, it’s going to stick out like a nun at a porn convention. This is especially noticeable at every job interview I’ve ever conducted. I’d speak in a quiet voice and take time to think about my answers. Not good!

So in order to get myself together long enough for an introvert’s worst nightmare, I’ve come up with my own gimmick for these events. Because I have a prescription for Xanax and they’re taken on an as-needed basis, I’m going to bring two pills and a bottle of water with me to every speech and swallow said pills in front of the audience. This is my own special way of telling them, “You did this to me!” without actually going berserk. Once the chill pills wash over me, I’ll probably sound like I just woke up from a nap, but that’s probably better than sounding like I’m terrified.

If the Xanax gimmick sounds a little suspicious to you, it shouldn’t. If something calms you down and makes you perform better in front of a crowd, why question it? I would never drink alcohol myself because of the way it turns otherwise normal people into rowdy assholes. But then you have people who drink before a performance and seem perfectly rational onstage. I don’t know what it is about booze that makes people courageous, but if it works for you and you don’t sound like a total douche, bottoms up. I wouldn’t recommend the hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. I’d be okay with marijuana, but that’s not really considered “hardcore”.

Shit, there are a lot of things people do in order to relax in front of an audience. When Kevin Smith was filming Clerks, the guy who played Randal, Jeff Anderson, would chew gum throughout the movie because it evens him out. Studies have shown that chewing gum is calming because it triggers the same part of the brain as eating. If you need further proof that eating is a calming and joyful experience, look at the size of my belly. If chewing gum helps Jeff Anderson get through his job, more power to him. I’ll even give him a giant wad of Bubbleicious Mondo (if they still sell that).

The easy solution to sounding confident in front of an audience would be to rehearse your lines over and over again. But rehearsing your lines and actually producing them to a crowd are two completely different animals. You could sound like a million bucks in front of a mirror, but with tens of thousands of people judging you with their eyes? Jesus fuck! It’s part of the reason why I wouldn’t want to be a rock star even though I fantasize about singing onstage almost every day. Rock stars tend to be extroverts while authors such as myself are hardcore introverts.

So now that I’ve revealed to the world that I’m calming myself down with Xanax before a big speech, all that’s left is to book some appearances where I’d have to engage the public. Unfortunately, I’m not famous enough to warrant an in-person interview, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make You Tube videos. I have a digital camera, so it’s not like I’m starving for the right technology. What I am starving for is the right topic to discuss. Sure, I could just talk about writing like I am now, but what specifically? These topics have to be carefully chosen and preferably ones where I’m an expert. What am I an expert in? Eh, I’ll figure it out eventually, just not right now.

Leaving the comfort zone is hard for a lot of people (myself included), but it’s a necessary step in becoming successful in the writing industry (or any other industry for that matter). The comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there. I’ve been resisting this truth for far too long. I’ve always figured that sacrificing comfort wasn’t worth it in the end because whatever I did would be a bad decision anyways. Even though I now have a degree and an education, I consider going to WWU a bad decision because of the loneliness and scrutiny I experienced. I left the comfort zone and paid the price. If one of my readers would like to try and convince me to leave my comfort zone and make some You Tube videos, I’d be willing to listen. If not, that’s cool too. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***AMERICAN DARKNESS 3***

Yesterday was one hell of a productive day for me. Not only did I write “Escape From Kentucky” and entered it into the WSS contest for that week, but I did a bunch of other things as well whether it was drawing Walt Magnus, reading my Kelly Carlin book, or even doing the laundry. Let’s keep the momentum going for a story called “Food Stomp”, which goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1.      Rollin O’Neil, Mentally Disabled Food Stamp User

2.      Mike Wolf, Robber

3.      Rachelle Daley, Robber

PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.

SYNOPSIS: Mike and Rachelle wait until a Fudd Meyers grocery store closes and break in to rob it. The dark morning ensures they have no human obstacles, or at least they think so. Rollin keeps appearing out of nowhere like a ghost in an attempt to talk Mike and Rachelle out of robbing Fudd Meyers and making the store’s prices go up.

OOC: It’s easy to tell that this synopsis was written a long time ago, judging from how fucking short it is.

***QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“If you want to find out who your friends are, sink the ship. The first ones to jump are not your friends.”

-Marilyn Manson-

Sarah Tonin

NAME: Sarah Tonin
AGE: 23
OCCUPATION: Rebel Clown
CANON: The Macaroni & Ownage Project


The canon Macaroni & Ownage Project should sound familiar to anybody who read Makoto Lionheart’s profile. If you haven’t read it, go read it now on my Deviant Art account, Good Reads blog, or Garrison’s Library. You have to do some serious excavation to find it, but I’m not repeating everything I said about the canon in that profile. All you need to know that the MOP is a group of Juggalo-like clowns who rebel against a religious king named Rajim Kane and his demon giant Broken Soul.

One of the rebels for the cause is Sarah Tonin. Go ahead and laugh at the obvious pun, because that’s what was intended. I wanted a name that was a play on words for serotonin, the chemical in the brain that registers euphoria. Sarah, the actual character this word is based on, is anything but euphoric. In fact, she’s bat shit crazy and she’s carrying a wooden staff: not a good combination. People worry about the mentally ill obtaining guns and they should. But what you should really worry about is Sarah Tonin carrying a fucking staff. She can split your skull like a coconut, crack your ribs like crab legs, and blow out your knees to where you have to crawl from point A to point B.

Sarah doesn’t show much of her wild personality in the beginning of the movie script. In fact, she stays quiet while the other two surviving clowns, Lee Murdock and Makoto Lionheart, are constantly at each other’s throats. It’s when the three clowns join a martial arts tournament that things really begin to heat up. Sarah loses to a capoeira fighter named Sonny Fu in the quarterfinals and because she’s a sore loser, she beats the shit out of him in the locker room area. But here’s the million dollar question: though Sarah is the prime suspect in Sonny Fu’s hospitalization, is she really to be held responsible or should we take into account that she has multiple personalities as a result of a traumatic past?

Sarah eventually has to face the music when she takes a nap in the woods and finds herself in a different world brought on by psychosis, where she has to fight two warriors named Rowan Z and X King. The two warriors beat the shit out of her until she learns how to control her psychotic mind and returns the favor. She then wakes up from her traumatic nightmare when Lee and Makoto shake her body into consciousness. The whole thing was a fucking dream. Before you scream Deus Ex Machina, you have to know that Sarah Tonin might not have woken up from that dream. She could have died in her sleep and that would be the end of her. Yikes!

This whole time, Sarah, Lee, and Makoto have been traveling to an ancient temple where they were going to seek counseling from a clown sage, who supposedly has the answers on how to defeat Broken Soul. I say supposedly, because the sage’s advice sounds like a bunch of gibberish and jargon. When Broken Soul finally arrives, the three have no idea how to interpret the advice and Lee Murdock gets stepped on while trying to save Makoto’s life. The battle ends when a fourth clown, who was crucified by Rajim Kane, arrives to interpret the sage’s answer: just be your disgusting and creepy selves. Apparently, that advice was good enough for the nameless clown, Lee, and Makoto to finish the job and put an end to Rajim Kane’s reign of terror.

Does this sound like a credible story to you? Maybe after a few tweaks here and there, it could have been something great. But my money is on the fact that anything I’ve written before 2013 is beyond repair due to my lack of reading experience and unwillingness to listen to the critics who are trying to help me. So now Miss Tonin is in the unemployment line of my imagination. And yes, she will keep her name Sarah Tonin despite the fact that it’s an obvious punch line.

If you think Sarah Tonin’s name is a joke, listen to this. In my WIP psychological fantasy novel Watch You Burn, Mario Bryan’s ex-girlfriend is named Terri. For the longest time, she hasn’t been assigned a last name…until now. Her last name is…Bull. If you’re going to call her Terri Bullshit, you’ve got the wrong punch line I mind. Just Terri Bull will be good enough. Now say her full name really fast and you get…”terrible”! Hahahahaha! Oh, that’s so funny! But trust me, Terri Bull and Sarah Tonin have nothing in common with each other. One of them is a crazy bitch who will beat you to death with a wooden stick…and the other is a rebel clown.

　

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“Look, I don’t mind people snickering at the stupid uniform I have to wear, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some self-righteous lucky turd come over here and treat me and Dante like we’re a couple of fucking porch monkeys!”

-Randal Graves from “Clerks II”-