The Return of the Idiot Or: Retail Therapy

 

Man, I don't even know if people still do BLOGS anymore. Do people even still write down thoughts and share them to strangers on the Internet? That's what TikTok is, right? (I also have a TikTok, I literally joined TikTok the day it was supposedly going away and was lucky enough not to uninstall it from my phone. Anyway, follow me there!)

But I never hear about BLOGS anymore. It's so old fashioned. People don't READ anymore. 

Well, maybe it's time to restart a blog because I've always been late to popular trends. YOLO!

I honestly haven't thought about this blog in years but lately I been thinking about writing. More specifically, MY writing. You see, I'm working on a book. I've been writing this since 2018, maybe 2019. Not continually, just off and on during those years. Middle of 2024 I decided it was high time I get the fucking thing published so I willed myself to sit down and write the rest of it. And on Christmas Day 2024, I wrote the final paragraph and broke down crying. It was fucking finished. 

But now the hard part starts. I have to get it edited. Then looked at. And edit some more. And edit even more after that. The part writers don't tell you about when it comes to writing is all the fucking editing. Sure, writers will hold their snifters of brandy (someone is gonna come into my comments and say "the B is capitalized" and I would argue I'm not holding a snifter of 90s R&B singer Brandy) and tell you how easy writing is, you're just putting words to paper. Or computer screen. Whatever. And people sit at their feet, looking up at them, and go "Gosh golly, Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Writer, tell me more!" and they twirl their artist who sang "The Boy is Mine" and reflect on the "process". 

"I had notecards! I made an outline! I knew the Act 3 twist before MY CHARACTERS DID!"

"Oooh!! Your characters!"

Writers LOVE talking about their characters as if they were their BFF's in high school.

My characters are caricatures of people I know in real life and most of those people sucked. They can burn in hell for all I care. Also, they're dumbasses, they're gonna be surprised by the Act 3 twist with the rest of you. 

Also their author is a dumbass, so even HE didn't see it coming. 

I already forgot where I was going with this...

Oh right. Editing. 

My book needed to be edited. Now I'm gonna skip over all of this as I tell you this story cause honestly, I'm over it and I'm tried of thinking about it. Essentially, I heard some less than stellar feedback and I had a mental breakdown. It wasn't that I can't take bad news or handle criticism, I totally can. It was how I was told and the exact words I was told. But I fell into a depressive state. I cancelled almost all of my podcasts, did the ones I "had to do", and basically just laid on my couch and watched Season 3 of Reacher until I was out of episodes, then I watched 90s music videos and listened to R.E.M and Smashing Pumpkins on repeat for about two weeks. 

Highly recommend Season 3 of Reacher by the way.

Thankfully, another person I asked to look at my book cheered me up, said some things that made me feel better, and my funk was starting to lift. Another thing that made me feel better was I started reading Stephen King's book on writing called On Writing. Clever title. And he made me feel 95% better. He basically told me there was nothing wrong with what I've written. And the important part was no matter the feedback, KEEP WRITING!

He actually said, and I quote:

"If you write, someone will try to make you feel lousy about it, that's all."

And that's when I realized there's always going to be people who'll make me feel lousy about my writing. And to that, I shall quote another source of inspiration, the 311 song "All Mixed Up":

"Fuck the naysayers, they don't mean a thing."

I plan on having that tattooed on me really soon.

For the sake of moving on and because anytime I talk about this, someone takes it personally, my point is I'm starting to feel better but I also needed to assure myself I'm not a shitty writer. I'm no Ernest Hemingway or the song writer for 311 or even Stephen King, but I'm not a shitty writer. Maybe I just have my OWN style of writing. And anytime you present something that's new and different, people get scared and angry and try to suppress it. So the book lives on! Thanks Stephen King, the guy from 311, and my friend. 

I'm now inspired to kickstart this blog again. A reboot if you will. 2025 is full of reboots. Why not a blog? Again, not sure people blog anymore, but whatever. Let's do this shit! And the first thing I'm going to talk about (well second thing, the first was my whole book/editing ordeal) is how buying shit makes me feel better.

I'm not the only person, I know. It's called "retail therapy". People are in a bad mood so they go shopping and buy shit until they feel better. I don't know what other people shop for, clothes or dishes or washing machines maybe, but I like to go to Half Price Books!

Half Price Books, in the off chance you don't have one in your town, is a second hand store that sells mostly books (it's NOT just a clever name) but also DVDs, records, CDs, even old ass magazines. For a short spell I worked there in 2018 (maybe when I started my book?) and while stocking stuff, I literally found a user manual for a 1986 Oldsmobile. They sell everything. It's my most favorite store, I can spend hours in there. 

In order to get over this latest bout of depression, I took a trip to one recently. I had an afternoon to myself and decided "fuck it why not". And I bought some stuff. And now I'm going to share what I bought. 

In no particular order-

Douglas Adams is one of my favorite authors. I plan on re-reading the Hitchhiker Guide series at some point. But until I do, I got The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, a Dirk Gently novel. Dirk Gently was another popular series Adams started but only got two books written about him. Dirk Gently is a "holistic detective". I read these when I was a teenager and I forget what that means exactly. He uses herbal teas to solve mysteries? Probably not. Anyway, I look forward to revisiting this.

I said during my two week downward spiral I was watching Reacher. I thought it was high time I read at least one of the books. I tried to do them in order and apparently it's easier to do a 1000 piece Jigsaw puzzle of a black void than figure out the order to read these books. So I just grabbed a random one. Hopefully I'm not too confused.

Ahh, Sue Grafton, Kinsey Millhone, and I go WAY back. I read most of these when I was a teenager but never finished. So early 2010's I restarted and got stopped around H. I think it was H. The plot description didn't sound familiar. Also I didn't realize until I got home I never bought J. I'm sure it was there. Anyway, these are fun. And Kinsey and Me I've never read and supposedly full of short stories so I'm looking forward to those. 

Quick interlude! Since I worked there, I can decode something for you! In case you need to know. See on the sticker, the date 12-12-24? That's the date it was put out on the shelf. Not necessarily when the book arrived AT the store. The process goes (at least when I worked there) was you sell them your books, they give you a nickel for it, you sigh and go "I guess", and leave the store. They then take those books, put them on a counter until there's no room. Then they move to a rolling cart which is given to whoever the newest employee is at that time, and they are then tasked in scanning the books, the system tells them how much it is on various used book sites, including eBay, and comes up with a average price. The new employee then hits PRINT STICKER and places that sticker on said book. Then they put the newly priced books BACK on a counter where someone else then puts them out on the shelf. I'm telling you all this so you can know how long something was there. Also, the longer the item sits on the shelf, the more likely it'll get moved to clearance. So if you plan it right, if there's something that might be too expensive for you, you can hide it somewhere and then come back two weeks later and move it from that hiding space. Then return a week later and it'll most likely be in clearance for 2 bucks. 

Or you can just steal it. There's no cameras in their stores.

I remember seeing this movie in theaters and not hating it. I thought about it a month or so ago and thought a revisit might be in order. 

Everything I said about Vantage Point also applies to White House Down. I mean EVERYTHING. 

The reason I LOVE Half Price Books is I stumble upon movies I've never heard of that sounds very interesting. Half of my DVD collection is full of movies I've discovered this way. This is some body swap horror movie with Heather Graham that was from 2024? It was never in theaters, that I can tell, and no idea if it was just a direct to streaming or what. But I like Heather Graham, body swapping, and horror so let's check it out!

I also may bring back (again) my Horror Thursday's posts, where I write a horror movie review on Thursdays. This may be my first candidate.

And finally, I ended up with two copies of Stephen King's Danse Macabre. It's a weird story on how I ended up with two copies that'll take too long to get into here (no I didn't previously owned it, prior to the day I made this trip, I owned 0 copies of this book and ended the day with 2. I'm telling you, its a weird story, let's just leave it alone) but I got this because my pal Lackey gave me a good idea for a podcast that involves this book and I'm taking that idea and running with it. Also, King's On Writing is putting me in a mood for some more of his non-fiction. This will do, pig. This will do.

I just want to share my bookmark cause it's hilarious. It's from Paperback Paradise. Go get your own. 

And that's everything I bought at Half Price Books. Armed with all this stuff I felt 100% better and got over my funk. I'm also now doing this and I feel oddly at peace with everything. I'm going to continue working on my book. I'm going to keep making my art my way. And I will, indeed, fuck the naysayers. Because they don't mean a thing.

-Jason