By Daniel Polansky

Posted on December 12, 2014 in Hodderscape Advent with tags Daniel Polansky

Daniel Polansky, author of Those Above, filled his time with many bizarre and unusual, and sometimes mundane, things just to put off writing this list.

1. Lost Four Games of Online Chess

You know you’re going to lost the fourth game. No one loses three games and then wins the fourth one. Why am I still playing? I have work I need to do.

2. Watched Episode of 30 Rock

Yes, I’ve seen it before. And you know what? Still funny. I keep it on in the background while I play online chess.

3. Lost Fifth Game of Online Chess

Damn it.

4. Freaked Out About Career

As a writer, most of my time is spent deciding whether I should go to law school. Not all of the time. Lots of time, though. If for some reason I had to give a break down of my day to day schedule for, say, billing purposes or whatever, it would get a line.

5. Logged On To Twitter, Failed to Tweet

Why am I so bad at this? There are a lot of people on twitter, it doesn’t seem possible they can all be smarter than me. Everything I can think of tweeting is either 1) entirely self serving 2) profane, potentially libelous or 3) over the character limit.

6. Wrote Three Entries, Deleted Two

Not that the third one was so good either, but I couldn’t go back to an entirely empty page.

7. Read Single Longform Journalism Essay

Why doesn’t this feel like real reading? If I spend and hour reading a novel, I feel good about myself, but if I spend and hour reading something online, my eyes kind of hurt and I feel like I just finished eating a box of donuts. Is it just looking at the screen? Anyway, ten thousand words about global warming crammed into my mental maw. How much should I be worried about global warming, given that it doesn’t seem like I can do anything about it. Because the answer at the moment is, extremely.

8. Tried to Remember the Name of that Music Video from the Early Nineties with Hippies spitting Gibberish, and the White Dreadlock Guys playing Records and there is a Wise Indian Chief and, like, a Boy turning into an Angel

It’s this one…

Unbelievable, right? The lead singer in this band is the most sincere person ever. You’re welcome.

 9. Read Fifty Pages in Faulkner

Thirty pages, at least. Thirty pages of Faulkner feels like fifty pages of anything else. Actually, thirty pages of Faulkner feels like a couple of hundred pages of a lot of author authors. The problem with reading Faulkner (which is what I’ve been doing this month), is that he’s got such a strong voice that you start unconsciously mimicking him, what with long run on sentences and use of local slang and OH MY GOD IM DOING IT RIGHT NOW.

10. Looked at Picture of Brazil I have on Wall; Thought of Brazil

Brazil is awesome. It’s warm, first of all, mostly, which New York is not right now. And everyone is really friendly and they dance super well, and they’re all good looking. I don’t dance really but it’s hard not to tap your feet when that rhythm gets going, especially with a few drinks in you. Maybe I could swing a trip in February? February is a good time to get the hell out of the northern hemisphere.

11.Contemplated Wisdom of Blog Topic

Is this even a good idea? It’s awfully meta. Maybe I should just do twelve books I liked this year or something. Everybody likes books. Would I have to find Amazon links? Would I have to embed those links? How does one embed something? Why, in retrospect, did I not demand the earliest possible day to do this list? I pity the poor bastard who has 23. That’s going to be a fun thing to add to the pre-Christmas rush. Maybe the person who ends up writing it will be Jewish. Then again, I’m Jewish, I still have things to do for Christmas.

12. Remembered Deadline; Typed Rapidly

That’s twelve, right?