Sometimes I’ll be driving, eating breakfast, or conducting any other random activity when a terrible movie idea will pop into my head. I’m going to start writing them down and putting them on the internet because I like to dwell on my own stupidity from time to time.

To start things off, I’ve got an original romantic comedy that’ll just KILL at the box office. You’ll get that wordplay in a second! | Read the rest of this entry …

My brain thinks the semester is over already and has shut down on me. This is a problem because I have a paper due tomorrow. The funny thing is that I’ve got an outline and everything so this paper should write itself but it just won’t come at all. So, yeah. Yet again, I will finish the semester out by pulling a completely unnecessary all-nighter. HOORAY.

I’m going to go Christmas shopping this weekend. I’m trying not to give gift cards anymore because when you give someone one of those, you’re pretty much just saying:

Hey I don’t like you enough to take the time to find you a gift but I feel obligated to give you something. I’m also thoughtless enough that I think it’s totally cool to trap you into a purchase at a store that you may or may not like or simply may or may not need something from at the moment.

Seriously, gift cards are annoying and borderline insulting.

I feel like the whole grad school application process is never going to end. People tell me waiting to hear back is worse, but I think they’re full of shit. There’s nothing I can do once the applications are in, so there’s no pressure. There’s always something I could tweak, rewrite, reposition, etc. beforehand, though, so I’m constantly stressing about it. I can’t fucking wait to be done.

And I’ll almost be mad if I get accepted by my first choice (William & Mary) because that’ll mean all of the work and cash I put into the other schools’ apps will have been a waste. It costs over $100 per application counting the application fee, transcript costs, GRE score reporting, postage, etc., so it’s a little painful to think that it could all be for nothing. I also hate asking people for stuff and you need to get at least three professors to send recommendation letters to each school. It’s annoying as shit to have to ask them to do shit like that with the holidays and all. If I ever become a professor, I’m going to avoid that shit like the plague.

I haven’t read comics in over two months now and while I’m excited to finally have the time to get caught up, I’ve become pretty accustomed to not reading comics. There’s a good chance I’m going to drop the weekly habit altogether. I prefer trades to single issues anyway, so it’s something to think about.

Tales of Vesperia is an awesome RPG that I highly recommend you purchase if you’ve got a 360. You should also get Netflix if you’ve got a 360, because streaming shit straight to your TV 10 seconds after you decided you wanted to watch it is pretty much the greatest thing ever.

Okay I’m out of random thoughts. I’m going to drive home and try to write the remaining 7.5 out of 8 pages. Yeah, only 5 hours of work for a half a page that I’ll probably end up throwing out. I’m that good.

I have done exactly zero Christmas shopping and I’m likely going to be one of those douches out on December 23, desperately looking for gifts that won’t suck balls (and failing to find them, no doubt).

I have a shitload of grad school apps still to go and I’m fucking tired of it. I’ll honestly almost be mad if I get into my first choice just because that’ll mean all of the extra effort (and cash - like $700) was a waste.

I have a bunch of finals to do or prepare for this weekend and I’m fucking tired of those too.

The upside is that when all of this shit is done I’ll finally be able to catch up on the comics, TV, movies, and social obligations I’ve been neglecting for the past three months.

…until next semester, when I again have to ignore everything that isn’t school.

Rivers Cuomo’s new album, Alone II, which came out today, is fucking rad. That is all.

Longest title ever.

Keith Giffen and John Rogers did something really special with Blue Beetle - and their follow-up acts have been pretty good as well. I can’t blame DC, though. People apparently weren’t buying the book and that’s a real shame. I really hate losing good stories because my fellow consumers suck and only want to read stuff they can’t understand like G-MO’s horseshit.

And the first person that tells me that I can get my fill of Blue Beetle from Teen Titans is going to get skullfucked by a buffalo because Sean McKeever forgot how to write comics. Hey, you know everything people like about the Teen Titans? Let’s throw that out and just kill characters every two seconds. I guess all that time writing Spider-Man loves Mary Jane created a retard bloodlust or something. Too bad he couldn’t transfer to Teen Titans ANY of the understanding of the teenage psyche he displayed in Spidey Hearts MJ.

Honestly, I’m not the biggest fan of even Geoff Johns’ version of the Teen Titans, either, since he pretty much threw out years of character background so he could shoehorn Superboy and Impulse into “Kid Superman” and “Kid Flash” roles. People who’ve only ever read Teen Titans instead of those characters’ solo books or Young Justice would have no clue that Superboy has tactile telekinesis or that Impulse, err sorry, Kid Flash, could send out speed force scouts, which were basically temporary clones of himself that he used for surveillance, carrying messages, getting take-out, etc.

That’s actually the best and worst thing about Geoff Johns’ style. He is probably the one working writer today that really gets how to take the best out of the Golden and Silver Ages and make it work in modern comics. Unfortunately, the best of the Golden and Silver Ages is sometimes not as good as what he replaced, especially in the case of the Titans. I can forgive him that, though, because he gave me a stellar run on The Flash and JSA along with classics like Green Lantern: Rebirth, 52, and the soon-to-come and likely instant-classic Flash: Rebirth.

I figure maybe some of you guys might be interested in what it is that keeps me so busy these days, so I’m posting the introduction from my ROUGH draft. Seriously, it’s rough so you can nitpick if you want, but I probably already know where my clunkier prose is and I definitely know about the rather repetitive part at the end. Also, keep in mind that history papers tend to be a little on the dry side, though I think I’ve done a decent job of minimizing that. | Read the rest of this entry …

Some people have e-mailed me asking what I did to prepare for the GRE. I neglected everything else in my life for one, but I also used the following:

Barron’s Essential Words for the GRE - This is exactly what it sounds like. It contains 800 words that appear frequently on the GRE and 300 roots that will help you determine the meanings of words that may not have made the list.

The Princeton Review’s Cracking the GRE: 2009 Edition - This covers the strategies you need to master to take the GRE. It’ll teach you the proper way to take the test - from eliminating answer choices to explaining what mathematical concepts you’ll need to know to constructing your written responses and a shitload more. I got the one with the DVD because it had some video tutorials - which were helpful if only as a break from reading.

ETS (the people that develop and administer the test) published the last book, Practicing to take the GRE General Test 10th Edition. The test-taking advice and strategies in the book mostly suck and what little that doesn’t is generally available on ETS’s website. The reason you should consider buying it is that it comes with a ton of sample test sections, which are great practice.

You should also download ETS’s Powerprep software, which has some great practice sets as well as two full sample tests. The best thing about the software is that it is built exactly like the actual testing software will be, so you can familiarize yourself with the feel of it.

You should also google search for GRE tips, especially mathematical concepts that you might need reinforcement on, as the Princeton Review book does sometimes glaze over shit like you should just know it already. On top of that, there are tons of practice questions and whatnot available.

If anyone has any more specific questions or whatever, feel free to e-mail me, and I’ll be glad to answer them, though I doubt I’ll be able to help you if these resources can’t.

This is pretty much just becoming my Nerdy McNerdington school blag at this point, but that’s because: 1. school’s absolutely dominating my time these days and 2. I am a Nerdy McNerdington.

For those of you who don’t know (and the more I think about it, the more I realize that’s pretty much 99% of my tiny audience), I’m trying to get admitted to a PhD program for American history next fall. This is not the kind of decision you make like six months before applications are due, so naturally that’s exactly how I did it.

I’d say the biggest obstacle to my admission was the GRE, which is like the SAT on steroids, crack, methamphetamines, and a 36 pack of redbull. I was honestly scared of the test and put it off until the very last possible chance to take it, which was of course retarded because if I had done poorly, I’d have been screwed. Luckily, I did pretty damn well. The max scores are 800 Verbal, 800 Math, and 6 writing. I scored 720 on the Verbal, 640 on the Math, and though I haven’t gotten the writing back yet, I’m pretty confident that I rocked that shit and got at least a 5. It was a tremendous relief when I saw my scores - which you get immediately after the test if you take the computer version. Honestly, though, I think the best part is that I NEVER have to do math again.

I visited the College of WIlliam & Mary this week. I’m very much a Northerner, so my concept of everywhere south of Delaware has generally been a scene out of Deliverance, but I’m happy to say that Virginia was actually really nice. Even in the shitty rain on Tuesday, I was awed by the beauty of W&M’s campus. I met with the professor I’m hoping will advise my dissertation and I think it went quite well. I would be extremely happy to get in and honestly, W&M is my #1 choice right now. Even if I got in somewhere ridiculous like Harvard or University of Chicago, I’d have to think hard and long before eschewing W&M.

I haven’t made much a ton of progress on my senior thesis recently, which is starting to get a little unnerving because the first draft is due November 24. On top of that, I’m using it as my writing sample for my graduate school applications, the first of which is due December 5. The pressure is starting to build, the time is starting to dwindle, and I’m wasting my time writing this shitty fucking blag. I am a fucking retard.

Oh, and I’m finally getting the fuck out of retail. I hadn’t been to work in a couple of weeks and last saturday, while driving in, something just snapped and I realized that I just couldn’t take it anymore. My first order of business upon entering the store was putting my two weeks in. That probably felt even better than getting good GRE scores.

So I’m doing my big senior seminar paper on the Great Epizootic of 1872. It’s a time consuming endeavor to say the least. It’s really interesting and far more important than people realize. When I finish the project, I’ll post a link to it (I’d post it here, but it’s probably getting published by an academic foundation I contacted in the course of my research).

Aside from that, I’ve been WORKING for the MAN a lot. Three jobs. It sucks. I’ve got some blag ideas I’m kicking around (mostly I’m working on a love letter to Darwyn Cooke about New Frontier) and hopefully I’ll post some stuff soon.

FYI I can’t stop listening to this random youtube girl’s song.

Seriously, the greatest song ever is Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations.

I cannot fucking wait to meet Darwyn Cooke at Baltimore Comicon. I’m even going to take my Absolute New Frontier out of my house to get him to sign it. By the way, if anyone but Darwyn Cooke comes near it, I’ll fucking chop their head off. Fair warning.

I find that I write on this thing a lot more when I’m busy, which I really haven’t been all summer, so with the new semester officially underway and all, I expect I’ll write more soon.