Breached 1000 votes!

Vote! Vote! Vote Again!

As many of you know, I am applying for the Sam-E blogging position and the first round is based off votes. At the end of voting (which I believe is either at the end of this month or one week after that), the 20 people with the most votes will move on to the next round. Currently I think I am about 3-400 behind the bottom person of the top 20, but they already had a good amount of votes when I signed up, so I'm catching up to them for sure. The 'vote daily' has been both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you can vote daily!  On the other hand, so can everyone else's supporters, and I can get a lot of people to vote for me, but the question is, can I get a lot of people to continue voting? It feels like everyday I'm starting fresh. For example, I might get 500 people to vote for me today, but then I need to re-convince them to vote for me tomorrow.

At the end of the day, I think I'm doing well and I can only continue to do well with you alls' help. The good news is that the next round is a combination of votes and editor's pick. ANNND it's a video comp, which should be fun. You get to see me act a fool on camera for a job and if that's not incentive to vote, I don't know what is.

Clicking this link will help cure world hunger.

Suite101.com writer.

Hey guys. Some of you might have heard of Suite101.com, or maybe have read an article or two on there unknowingly. Either way, it's a site where people write articles under just about any category. You have to apply to be a writer and--while I'm not sure how tight their screening process is--I applied and was allowed to join. Now, these articles are different than what I'm used to writing. Here, I can be free-flowing, off the top of the dome, just tell it like it is. But there, these are actual, legit, articles with editors and people that seem to take it seriously. You can't just post things reflecting your own thoughts. They actually have to hold weight and be credible and all that jazz. Found, right?

Either way, Suite101 gets much more traffic than this blog does and people seem to be making money off it, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. My plan right now is to post movie, books, and television show reviews. Maybe as time goes on I'll start posting more news-ish articles, or maybe even informative ones on a topic I like, but right now I'm sticking to something safe and that continually gives me something to write about without having to search for it (the TV is right in my room and the movie theatre is right down the street).

Without further ado, here are the two articles I've written so far. One is a review on Law Abiding Citizen and the other is a review on Fox's new show, Modern Family. Let me know what you think, any advice you may have to be successful at Suite101, and look out for another blog post at Scribophile tomorrow.

Law Abiding Citizen: A Review

Review: Modern Family, 'The Incident'

-Justin C. Key

Dream Journal: 9/11 part 2

I had a pretty vivid/coherent dream last night. By this, I mean it actually made sense. There weren't too many trippy dream elements.

I was in Washington, DC, walking home with one of my friends. I forget what we were out doing, but it was early in the morning. Anyway, we passed by a view of the capitol (which isn't hard to do, you can see see it from almost anywhere) and it was blown to shit! No, more accurately, it was stills standing but it looked like someone had put a big diagonal scar through it, similar to the Twin Towers before they fell.

We rushed home and, of course, it was all over the news. Apparently a terrorist had sent a scud missle all the way from over seas and hit the capitol overnight. They had videos of the impact and I remember that they kept showing it again and again and again (ok, so here's the trippy dream part, I just remembered: on the news report it said that when they found the terrorist he was being rescued by his 15-pound daughter...then later I thought maybe it was 15-pound cat...?).

I think that was about it. I remember asking if this means that they could sent a nuclear weapon over here and one of my knowledgeable friends said no for some reason that I believed. Nonetheless it's been a while since 9/11 (weird how the time has gone by and weird that there are a generation of people now how can talk and walk and think and do math problems who did not exist yet on that fateful day) and if people out there still hate America (which I'm sure they do), it's just a matter of time....

Blogging gig at Scribophile.

I recently applied for and nabbed a blogging gig at Scribophile.com, a growing site about writing and literature where you can go to talk about your favorite books, your life as a writer, or to get peer feedback on your works. The site recently (to my understanding) had one main blogger and the owner (Alex) just hired two newbies, me being one of them of course. The great thing (besides getting a little piece of change for what I do anyway) is that the owner wants the posts to be informal, fun pieces and I'm definitely down for that. Also, I started a blog to start getting my name out there so that I can better sell myself when I finally do seek publication (time should be coming around soon, cross your fingers) and this allows me to tap in an already established (and still growing) audience.

My first post there is about combating writer's block and my next post will be about the importance of reading and how to fit it into your busy schedule. I'll be posting weekly, every Wednesday.

You can check the first post here (and feel free to comment. oh, and check out the site, too. definitely worth it):

http://www.scribophile.com/blog/writers-block-the-what-if-method/

Cross-Country Trip: Day 2: The Long Road

Day 2 was all about driving. The open road. Putting the pedal to the medal. Getting from point A to B and whatever other phrases you can think of. I think Day 2 was when I drove the whole day. I opted to do it, and at first Johanna laughed at my request, but I figured I needed driving practice time in and I was starting to enjoy going 90 on those long stretches of nothing-road.

The plan was to drive all day to the Mt. Rushmore area and find a hotel there so we could go and visit first thing in the morning. So far, so good. Only thing was we slept til about 10 a.m. and were lethargic in getting our day started. But we finally got a move on, packed up, and checked out.

Remember I mentioned the toll charges? Well, my Tom-Tom has a feature to avoid the toll lanes so we decided to try it out. It made for an interesting morning. About 30 minutes into the trip we realized that the roads we were on all looked like they hadn't been paved since afros were in style. We were officially in the backroads of America and I started thinking stuff like 'hmm, we could probably find a little farm that sells bunny rabbits on this road.' I was a little worried about the wear and tear on my car (consistently, about every 30 or so miles there was a sign that said 'bump' which should have said 'HOLY SHIT, SLOW DOWN!'), but the change in scenery was worth it. It was the kind of setting you think of when you hear of Little House on the Prairie (minus the racism) or what you see in those cheesy commercials where people are running through meadows.

Nevertheless, it was agreed that from now on we'd just pay the damn toll. But, luckily, all the tolls were behind us anyway.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. We listened to The Shack by William P. Young (first time author, but doesn't he just sound like he should be famous?) on audiotape along the way. I had already listened to it (which reminds me, I should post a review of it...also a post about audiotapes...ding ding ding, ideas!), but it was Johanna's first time. Without going much into it, it's basically the story of a father who loses his daughter to a serial killer and a struggling faith in God. Interesting, to say the least. But, again, we'll return to that later.

Another notable thing is that we stopped at a shop in Minnesota. It was a colorful store with quilts and dolls and hats and all kinds of other randoms. I didn't see this myself, but Johanna told me inside that she ran across an Omish man and they continued to stare eachother like they couldn't believe what they were seeing. I guess he'd never seen a real life black person and Johanna a real life Omish (or maybe she'd never seen an Omish intrigued by a black person). either way, I immediately remembered that M&M commercial where they meet Santa:

We got into Rushmore territory pretty late and discovered that we should have booked a hotel ahead of time: all of them seemed to be full for the weekend. We finally found this place with a room for 49 bucks. The cheapness was kind of scary, but it was a room and the Yelp comments weren't too bad. Either way, we had a place to rest our heads. And we'd need it, because the next day we were Mt. Rushmore and Yellowstone bound.

-Justin C. Key

Dream Journal #2

Just napped--hard--for about an hour. The main dream I can't really remember, but I think it was some kind of nightmare. Then there was this weird period of trying to get up and had 3 rapid succession dreams.

First I remember being in the bed and seeing ants crawling down the walls in waves. I remember when I would turn on the light (from the bed--how, I don't know), they'd kind of thin out, but when I turned the light back off, they just swarmed harder.

Then I thought I was getting up. This consisted of me thinking I was sliding my legs off the bed, slowly, and trying to push myself up. I felt like my body was very heavy and hard to move, which I thought was just a result of heavy sleep. I even remember checking my computer.

Then I was back in dreamworld just like that and for some reason I was driving to the edge of a dock and almost forgot to break and slid to a stop right before going over the edge.

It was weird how the dreams came so close to eachother. It was like treading water, only badly, and my head kept dipping beneath the surface. I wish I could remember that original dream. I also slept for a lot less time than it felt like.

Good Mood Gig Talent Search

Hello all. So, in my search for opportunities to get my writing out there, I ran into this little gem. http://www.sam-e.com/job/profile/305

Basically, it's a job that has you posting one post per day about how you sustain your good mood. The first round is based solely off of votes and I think they want to see who is good at utilizing social media. So, please, vote for me. And you can vote once per day, so keep returning!

Also, this explains that good mood sticker on the side, just in case anyone was wondering.

-Justin C. Key