Maybe a deadline will help. Or a gun to the head. Or a smack to the head.

Okay, let's try this.

*holds up right hand*

I solemnly swear I will send my betas a finished novel by New Year's Day.

(Yeah, let's see how this works out as encouragement to write. I can write a book in four months. Hell, I wrote half of one in one month, for fuck's sake. I just need to break through this fucking writer's block, is all. *headdesk*)

The first time I saw it, I screamed, and not in a good way.

Dear TWoP,

I'm not going back to your site until you get that terrifying ad for Celebrity Rap Superstar with Perez Hilton off your front page. He's revolting enough to look at when he's NOT trying to do that while wearing a hideous blue and pink hoodie.

It's also particularly annoying to see that ad right next to one for the same show featuring Tone Loc -- you know, a man who actually CAN rap. And who isn't dangerous to my gag reflex to look at. And who isn't a repugnant human being. And who doesn't cause the heavy stench of moldy cheese to waft from my computer when I go to your website.

Sincerely,

Me

Welcome to my life.

I decide to stop on the way home from Borders (tried to write, failed miserably, wibbled in the car) to pick up a six-pack of Smirnoff Grape. So I stop at the beer store two towns over on the way back, walk in the front door, and almost walk right into my brother, standing at the register paying for his pizza.

We had to have stood there for about thirty whole seconds all, o.O.

I really must have been out of it because I'm the idiot who parked right next to my mother's car, the one with the impossible-to-miss vanity plate, and didn't even notice. Heh.

Wait, seriously?

After dinner my brother and I were alone in the kitchen and the conversation turned to celebrities we'd met. (Which ... well, hell, I never meet anyone, my list is restricted to DragonCon attendees and writers with LJs.) It all started with the Owen Wilson thing because our aunt used to know him in college, and led into her going to Steve Carell's wedding (and my grandpa claiming he convinced Nancy Walls not to give up on acting, which I totally believe coming from him), and then my brother blurts out, "I once had chicken wings with Vin Diesel."

To which I went, "Wait ... what?"

Apparently the story goes a little like this:

Our high school used to organize a school trip every year that pretty much anyone from ninth grade to senior year could go on -- they stopped for a while because they caught students smoking pot in a hotel room, which, idiots -- and one year Bryan went with them when they went to Arizona. On the way back everybody was going to a restaurant in the airport while they waited for their plane, but Bryan decided he wanted to go to another place a few stores down because they sold wings.

So he goes into this place, gets himself some wings and a table, and settles in. He's the only customer in the place, and after a few minutes this guy comes up and says, "Mind if I sit here?", since the place was empty and they were both alone. So they sat there and shot the shit for a little while -- the introductions supposedly went like this:

Bryan: Hi, I'm Bryan.
Vin Diesel: Hi, I'm --
Bryan: Yeah, you REALLY don't need to introduce yourself.

-- and then Bryan was like, "Okay, well, I've got to go meet the other people from my school." And then he left.

Now, I'm torn. On one hand ... he had WINGS with VIN DIESEL and never bothered to mention it before? Come ON. But on the other hand, he's a really crappy liar. And it's not like he wouldn't know Vin Diesel when he saw him. And he doesn't flip out around famous people.

So the mental image of my brother eating buffalo wings with Vin Diesel is now ingrained in my brain.