Four Realistic New Year's Resolutions You Should Make This Year

The year 2015 is almost upon us - a phrase that will make me feel incredibly old when I look back on this post in a few years' time - and that means it's time to make the traditional and dreaded New Year's Resolution. Every year, we make vague, nebulous promises to better ourselves, and since we're all shitty in the exact same ways, I can already predict what your New Year's resolutions are going to be. Unless you're the sort of person who starts every morning by snorting a line of protein powder off a barbell, you're going to resolve to lose the small-child-sized lump of blubber you've been carrying around on your stomach, and finally get in shape. If you don't get to work each morning by sliding down a novelty firepole to your desk at a funky tech startup, you're probably going to resolve to spend less time with your face buried in your phone. Every single one of us is a procrastinating shithead, so we're going to resolve to finish the project/masterpiece/Great American Novel we've been working on. And you know what?

It has to stop.

Cut this shit out.

Resolutions are such flimsy promises that it's socially acceptable to pledge yourself to a life of vegan dieting, yoga and sobriety on January 1st, and then spend January 2nd passed out in front of Netflix with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and the sad remains of an entire cheesecake squished into the other. No more. This year, let's make some more interesting resolutions. Creative resolutions. Resolutions we can actually keep. Resolutions like:

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Getting Back on Track

If you've been following my blog with feverish dedication this past year (as all of you should be), you might have noticed that my posting schedule has been a little bit erratic lately.

This is why.

In the past three months, I've been busy applying for graduate school, attempting to not flunk out of my final year of university, pimping out my writing brilliance for Cracked.com, and spending some time with a particularly persistent group of rabid admirers who refer to themselves as my friends. Sometimes, blogging just had to wait.

0

Over-Analyzing "Black Widow": Why You Should Never Order a Sandwich From Iggy Azalea

I watched a music video the other day.

This music video, to be exact. 

Despite my valiant attempts to sequester myself in a musical cocoon of early-2000s pop punk and my dad's old Cat Stevens albums, I sometimes hear contemporary pop songs in my day-to-day life. And since pop songs are the neurological equivalent of crack cocaine, sometimes those songs bounce around in my frontal lobes for a while until I cave in and look them up on YouTube.

0

Happy Birthday to This Blog!

One year ago this week, I put up the very first post on janelcomeau.ca.

Hooray!

To celebrate a full year of successful and mostly-continuous blogging, I'm going to spend this post looking back on the last 52 weeks of snarkiness, Disney analysis and non sequitur images. 

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My First Publication!

For the past year, if you clicked the "Publications" tab of my page, you'd see a trite little message that went something like:

I'm flattered that you think I'm good enough to be published, but I'm afraid I don't have anything to put here just yet. 

Well, I'm pleased to announce that, as of today, that message is no more. After much nagging from my regular readers to check out this whole 'Write For Cracked" thing, I've finally had an article accepted by Cracked.com!

Boo yeah.

I don't have a lot of details for you at the moment - I don't know when, exactly, the article will be published, and I don't know what title they will choose to publish it under. What I do know is that it's about historic figures who did things right out of horror movies, and that you should start frantically refreshing Cracked sometime around Halloween. 

Thanks to everyone who told me to send in an article! I'll post a link to it when it goes live.

1

My Week at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Part 2

Last week, I posted about the first half of my week at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Since no one could ever possibly get tired of my literary vacation photos, enjoy another full page of writing exercises, bad bar selfies, and pictures of mountains!

Like this one.

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My Week at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Part 1

As I've mentioned a few times before on this blog, last spring I won my first writing award. The prize was a full scholarship to the September Writing with Style workshop at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Those of you who know how to work a calendar may have noticed that we're already halfway through September, and, sadly, my time at the Banff Centre is already at an end.

Since I wasn't allowed to stuff all you into my suitcase and drag you onto the Greyhound to Banff with me, I will be detailing my literary-tastic week here, in painstaking detail. Starting with:

Saturday

Those of you who find me fascinating enough to check up on each and every week will know that I spent most of the first Saturday sitting on a Greyhound bus. If you were to hop in a car and drive directly from my street to the front doors of the Banff Centre, it'd be almost exactly a four-hour journey, but thanks to Greyhound's unceasing dedication to late departures and random detours down rural cowpaths, the journey by bus takes a total of eight hours. Using the Edmonton Greyhound station means you even get to take a field trip into the most economically and socially bankrupt cesspit of Edmonton, where you can spend the hour before your departure trying to figure out which patrons of the station A&W are travelers, and which ones are prostitutes taking Uncle Burger breaks. (HINT: none of those people are travelers. Hope you wiped that seat off with bleach.)

Chariot of champions.

So after spending the better part of my day clutching my messenger bag to my chest and praying that whoever sat next to me would have minimal facial sores, the bus finally turned up into the mountains and dropped me off in Banff, before continuing on its way to Vancouver. This was it. I was on my own, with three pieces of luggage, half a novel manuscript, and absolutely no idea where to go.

0

Technical Difficulties

I've been meaning to post about my experiences at the Banff Centre for Writers, but I'm having some computer and camera issues. Check back next week!

Rest assured, I've got a team of experts on the case.

0

On the Road to Banff

Today's the big day.

Some time ago, I wrote about winning the Darren Zenko Memorial Prize in Creative Writing. For those of you who are allergic to hot links, the award is given out each year at my university to the most outstanding student in a creative writing class, as determined by a jury of writing professors who were clearly drunk that day.

Booze is the only thing that drowns out the stupid questions of undergraduate students.

I've been counting down the days until the Writing with Style Workshop to begin, and my basic ability to keep track of days of the year has finally paid off - it starts tonight! I will be spending the next week workshopping the first chapter of my newest novel with Alison Pick, an award-winning Canadian author whose books you should be reading, like, right now.

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Three School Supplies You Actually Need in University

Remember the school supply lists you got in Elementary school?

These things.

When I was a kid, we got a painstakingly detailed school supply list from approximately 1978 sent home with us each year, with instructions to purchase every single thing on it. This was an exercise in futility, of course, because by the end of each year the only school supply I'd be using was a chewed-up pencil stub I'd rescued off the hallway floor. Nevertheless, we had to make a big show of gathering up the items from the backs of closets and the front shelves of department stores. After all, if you showed up with a 4" binder instead of a 3.5" binder, you might as well have brought a skinned gopher carcass to school. The other students would gather around you with a documentary camera, playing soft Sarah MacLachlan music in the background as they pleaded for viewers to please donate, so that this unfortunate child could finally get some proper school supplies.

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How to Write the GRE Exam (And Not Die)

Last week, I wrote one of the scariest exams any undergraduate student will ever face.

This bad boy.

For those of you who didn't give up most of the freedom of your 20s in exchange for disapproving sighs from a thesis supervisor, the Graduate Record Exam is a four-hour exercise in misery that determines whether or not a particular student is clever enough to move on to graduate programs. Some graduate programs don't require this beast of an entrance exam, but since people who work in admissions departments apparently feed on human misery, the test is being expanded each year to encompass every subject you could ever hope to study at a post-undergraduate level. It's international, too, to if you think you can make a daring escape to the universities of Tanzania or Botswana, you are sadly mistaken. 

9

Study Break

I write a big, scary exam on August 19th, so I'm taking these next two weeks off from blogging to study. See you on the 23rd, lovelies.

Trust me, you're not missing much.

0

How to Bake a Cake With a Minivan

A few weeks ago, my boyfriend turned 24 and I wanted to bake him a cake.

Oh, no, I didn't bake this gorgeous cake. His name's not even Bailey.

My boyfriend is the Nerd King of the Super-Nerds, and I wanted to commemorate his birthday by presenting him with an edible celebration of his nerdiness. Last year, I managed to cobble together cake, Oreo crumbs and green icing into a Minecraft cube cake, and I really wanted to top myself. 

That's when I made the mistake of going on Pinterest. 

2

The 10 Fanciest Mustaches in Literature

This week, I'm that special combination of overheated and busy that leads to short blog posts. 

But at least there are ten fine-ass mustaches to stare at. 

10. Charles Dickens

You might say that I had some 'Great Expectations' for this writer's mustache.

4

Every Plot Summary Sounds Stupid (or, Why You Never Ask a Writer What Their Story is About)

I write books. I've finished one novel, I've got several others languishing in various stages of completion on my computer, and I technically have a published nonfiction book that I wrote but am never, ever allowed to name on this blog because that's how ghostwriting contracts work.

Despite the name, ghostwriting involves surprisingly few ghosts.

For most of my friends, acquaintances and rabid stalkers, I'm the only book-writing person they know. I don't blame them at all for being curious about it. I get it, it's a weird thing to do with your spare time. So I try to answer any questions as best I can. I can give an an explanation of the traditional publishing process. I admit to some of the not-so-pleasant realities of writing for money. I spread the word about online writing contests I have benefited from. I share all of my biggest writing triumphs and how I achieved them.

There's just one question I won't answer.

"What is your novel about?"

2

On Vacation

Everyone needs a break from time to time. I'm taking one now. See you in two weeks, bitches.

Peace out. Wait, do people still say that?

0

Let's Talk About Bad Book Reviews

I read a lot of writers' blogs.

I'm watching you.

Now, all the blogs I follow are filled with wonderful, original, witty insights about life and writing and publishing and love and hiding bodies in the woods in the middle of the night, but there are a few topics that tend to come up again and again on writers' blogs.

One of those topics is bad book reviews.

Summed up in this photo.

For the non-writers or new writers in my audience, let me summarize the debate real quick: Most authors who want to earn enough money from their books to afford a life that doesn't involve eating canned dog food under a bridge have to sell their books online. Now, with so many books screaming for attention on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo (which we're pretending is a real book retailer, so its feelings don't get hurt), you need a way to show consumers that your book is not a piece of 400-ply toilet paper. The way you do that is through book reviews. If your epic fantasy opus has tons and tons of glowing reviews, readers who stumble on your book are more likely to buy it so they can see what everyone is raving about. On the flipside, if a prospective reader stumbles on your book and finds nothing but people expressing their sympathies for the trees that had to die to print your epic fantasy turd/novel, chances are, they aren't going to spend their hard-earned money on your book. 

Book reviews affect sales. For fledgling authors, they can make or break your writing career. Obviously, this leads to some problems. 

Mr. Tickles was devastated to find a one-star review of his Amish BDSM dragon fantasy novel.

Different writers cope with bad reviews in different ways. 

Lately, it seems like many of them are not coping well. 

If you ever get bored enough to start following writing news, you'll notice that every few weeks, someone posts an article wherein an author refers to her bad reviews as 'bullying'. It's not just indie authors who are crying foul at poor reviews, either - big names like Anne Rice are getting in on the action. The author will claim that the bad reviews are unfair and undeserved. She will stomp her feet and claim that no one who worked so hard to write a book should ever be slapped with a one-star review. She will cry that she's being picked on, or singled out to be the sole recipient of a string of lousy reviews. If she's really on a roll, she'll even claim that these terrible reviews are being purposely written to ruin her sales; she might even decide that a rival author is behind the attack, talking fans into leaving terrible reviews to thin out the competition. 

Pictured: your greatest author rival, dreaming up that brilliant scheme.

To that end, I'm noticing some authors coming forward with solutions for the bad review crisis. Some of them post templates and criterion for reviews, to make sure that any bad reviews are fully justified. Some authors have specifically requested that readers send negative reviews to them as private messages, and avoid posting them publicly. Many authors will even personally reply to all negative reviews, disputing the reviewer's claims and arguing for a better review. If you spend enough time creeping through forums for writers and authors, you'll eventually stumble across debates about how best to deal with bad reviews, and debates about whether or not any of those bad-review-busting tactics are justified.

Here's my input: they're not. All of these attempts to 'deal with' bad reviews are complete horseshit, for three very good reasons:

1. Publishing is a business.

Your book is your baby. I know. I've written one, with another on the way. It's hard to take criticism on something you've worked so damn hard on, especially if the person giving the critique isn't an experienced writer themselves. And when your book is still in its unpublished infancy, yes, your feelings as an author should be considered. You are an artist looking for help to improve your work - anyone who gives relentlessly vicious criticism of a writer's unpublished work is just being cruel. A good beta reader can be harsh, but they should also be encouraging, offering suggestions for how the author can improve - even if that suggestion amounts to "learn to stop murdering the English language and get back to me". There is a big difference between giving much-needed honest feedback and being cruel for the sake of tearing the writer down. Writers are people with feelings, and it takes a lot of courage to let other people criticize your work.

Eat your book and write a new one. Just trust me, it'll help.

Consideration for your feelings stops the moment your book is published.

An unpublished manuscript is purely a work of art - the only benefit the author gets from it is personal satisfaction and self-expression. A published book is still a work of art... but it's also a product. If you want people to give you some of the money they earned from their hard lives of llama-rearing and drug-muling, just for the privilege of reading your book, then you have lost the right to silence your critics.

Searching for this image definitely put me on some kind of watch list.

Book reviews on websites like Amazon and Goodreads serve one main purpose: they help prospective readers decide whether or not they want to read your book. That's it. On a site like Amazon that deals with a wide variety of eclectic and balls-out-insane household goods, a book review isn't much different from a review for a toaster, or a 1000-pack of Jesus wafers. It lets customers know whether or not their money would be well-spent on that product. Sure, it also provides feedback for an author about her skills, and lets her know what sort of things she should work on for the next book, but that's just a side perk. I once wrote a detailed review of a William Faulkner novel, but unless I go dig him up and read my review to his remains, he isn't going to hear my advice, much less use it for a future novel. The only people who benefit from my review are the people who are contemplating purchasing an 80-year-old novel about people building a coffin for a sick old lady.

Turns out, Faulkner and his mustache don't give a fuck what I think.

Book reviews are a big part of the business, and if you expect to make money from your craft, you need to suck it up and deal with the not-so-flattering comments. No one steps up to defend J.K Rowling or Cormac McCarthy or Neil Gaiman's feelings when a negative review is posted. They're expected to deal with it; they're professional authors, and it's part of the job. If you're exchanging your written work for money, that makes you a professional author too, and the same rules apply. If you want to go from "pizza-faced thirteen year old writing shockingly depraved Calvin and Hobbes erotic fanfiction in the basement" to "poised, dignified master of the written word", you need to hold yourself to the same standards that big-name authors do. Hiding, intercepting or otherwise silencing your critics is censorship. It's dishonest. You are trying to trick readers out of their money by deceiving them into believing that your book is getting only positive reception. The review system doesn't work if your prospective readers are being sheltered from some of your honest reviews. And filtering out those bad reviews can reflect especially poorly on you, because...

2. It steals the spotlight from your book. 

If you are a published author, one of your biggest goals is getting people to read your book. You want people to buy it. You want people to discuss it. You want people to blog about it and Tweet about it and mention it on whatever other online invasions of privacy are passing for social networks these days. Yes, many authors have hopped on the bandwagon of blogging, tweeting and photographing the mundane details of their fast-paced and action-packed lives, but they have one goal in mind: to direct you to their website, so that you might discover, purchase, and read their books.

Above: every author ever.

Oscar Wilde was an interesting, eccentric character, but if it wasn't for his writing, he'd be just another forgotten dead Irishman who spent time in a hard labour camp for being gay. Stephen King fought and prevailed in an incredible battle against addiction, but the world would never know about it if he hadn't sold approximately 17 billion books. Rudyard Kipling isn't "old white racist dude who happened to have wrote a book or something", he's "renowned author of The Jungle Book, and also maybe sorta racist". Your books come first, and all the other neat shit you've done comes afterwards. 

Maintaining such a glorious mustache is the real White Man's Burden.

But when authors pour all of their time and energy into fighting back against bad reviews, they cease to be 'Writersaurus Rex, author of Alien Biker Babes in Space', and instead become 'Writersaurus Rex, that guy who complains about bad book reviews all the time'. 

He's just frustrated from typing with his tiny, ridiculous hands. 

There have been a few writers who've stepped forward in the past few years to complain about their bad reviews, or complain that they're being 'victimized' or 'bullied' by negative reviews. The results are always the same. All of their search engine traffic gets hijacked by news stories about their plight, burying their personal blogs, Amazon pages and Goodreads profiles. Five-star reviews start pouring in from sympathetic readers who want to help the author combat those nasty reviews, and one-star reviews trickle in from trolls who want to get a rise out of the author. Either way, it's all about the author. No one is actually reading the book, or purchasing it, or discussing it, or sharing it, or ripping all the pages out of it to make jaunty paper hats. It's not about the book at all, and when everyone gets bored of the hype, the author is left with a mess of fake reviews and few, if any, new readers. It doesn't get you any further ahead, especially when you consider...

3. Bad reviews are inevitable. 

You can't please everybody.

Even this dog is disappointed in you.

Every book gets bad reviews. A Game of Thrones has bad reviews. The Road has bad reviews. The Hobbit has bad reviews. Every book you've ever enjoyed, cried with, laughed at, or set on fire in the backyard has bad reviews. Because ultimately, a review is about how much you personally enjoyed a book. One person may think a character is the greatest achievement of fiction since humans started painting stories on cave walls, and another person may think the same character is a waste of breath and ink. I would personally construct a time machine to go back in time and worship at the altar of Kurt Vonnegut's glorious faux-hippie mustache, but not everyone agrees with me.

People who hate Kurt Vonnegut are stupid and wrong. All sorts of people are stupid and wrong. So, yes, you're going to see book reviews that are unfair, or uneducated, or out-and-out cruel. I have a hipster friend who seems to get off on writing pretentious, pedantic reviews that put down popular books for being 'patriarchal' or 'hegemonic' while praising the obscure, underground, sixteen-copies-run-off-on-Mom's-pri+nter publications she enjoys. To each their own. Some people are dicks, and some people are dickish dicks made of smaller dicks that curl up every night in their hairy dick nests to vomit dicks into the dick mouths of their screeching dick offspring. 

Case in point. 

Here's the thing to keep in mind, though. No one reading that review is inclined to think any less of the book, or of the girl who wrote it. The only person who looks bad is the reviewer herself. Thoughtful, intelligent, well-deserved criticism may make people reconsider buying your books. Pointless name-calling will not. If most of your book reviews are positive, a few people expressing their distaste is not going to 'undo' all of those great reviews; scathing one-star reviews like the one posted above account for just 1% of The Diary of a Young Girl's reviews, and they have yet to make any real impact on its success or popularity. 

And if the majority of your reviews are negative? Your readers just might be onto something - consider editing the next book more carefully. 

Step One: Buy a shitload of red pens. 

Either way, there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with bad reviews. Throwing a hissy fit is the wrong way. Next time you read a bad review and feel yourself coiling into an emotional knot, step away from the computer. Put down your smartphone. Get yourself a hot cup of coffee, dump that shit out, because seriously, who takes comfort from coffee, and go get yourself a whole bunch of wine. Boxed or bottled, your choice. Then you need to curl up with a good book, or a favourite movie, and give yourself a moment to relax. Sleep on it. 

And when you feel better, you fire that computer back up and you get right back to writing. Because fuck those bad reviews. They can't stop you. 

1

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Who's Most Prolific of Them All?

So a little while ago, I came across this article. For those of you who have a pathological fear of hotlinks, the article discusses the fact that the Game of Thrones producers are going to have to start pulling wacky Hodor adventures out of their collective butts to keep the show running, because they are about to run out of book. The show's fifth season will encompass both the fourth and fifth novels - because the fourth book is completely filled with brand new identical white guys to memorize, and the fifth book takes place concurrently - with the sixth novel not expected to come out in time for the filming of season six. This means the writers are going to have to take the few things they've been told about the series ending and magic up ten episodes.

Spoiler Alert: Winter isn't the only thing that's going to come.

Of course, George R R. Martin's notoriously slow writing isn't news; in an interview I sat in on with Lena Headey and Peter Dinklage, the Lannister actors mentioned that the author has been all but banned from the set, because the time he spent there was hindering the already-glacial progress on his books. Just how slow does George Raymond Richard Martin write? Somewhere between 240 and 356 words per day, using a metric that the article's author Walt Hickey calls 'final words written per day'.

0

Overanalyzing The Hunger Games: Three Things That Should Have Made it into the Movie

Before I go any further, let me say one non-snarky thing: Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, is a seriously cool lady.

Yeah, she knows she's rocking it.

If you watched the Hunger Games movies and noticed that they weren't desecrated, weeping, bodice-ripping, zombie-riddled shadows of their book selves, you have Suzanne Collins to thank for that. Unlike most authors, who step aside once the ink on their movies deals has dried to stand in a corner with their hands over their ears screaming "STOP RUINING MY MASTERPIECE OH GOD", Suzanne Collins has had an incredible amount of influence on the movie adaptations of her books.

Because she wrote them.

3

Dear America, I Want to Buy Your Sh*t

Dear America,

Yes, you.

I want to buy your shit. 

Seriously. That's it. I want to take the Canadian dollars I have earned from my long, hard hours of hunting moose and applying Avril Lavigne's eyeliner, and exchange them for beautiful, cheap American goods. It's consumerism at its finest, and oh boy, do I want to partake.

1

Overanalyzing Divergent: We Need to Talk About Allegiant

I love dystopian teen novels.

Yes. Oh, yes. 

The rest of the world is getting sick of the dystopian fantasy genre by now, but I still wake up every morning eager to read about teen angst, forced caste systems and cartoonishly sinister governments, mostly because I live in a mayonnaise-white suburb with no post-apocalyptic biker gangs to speak of, and the only corrupt authority figures are the officials down at city hall who make us pay by the bag for garbage pickup. The crumbling ruins of a once-great city are a welcome escape. So when I heard about the Divergent trilogy, I disregarded the mixed reviews I'd heard and went out to get my hands on a copy of the books.

2

So There's This Man Named John...

So there's this man named John, and he runs the only flower shop in his town. All the people in town go to John's flower shop for everything; they turn to him for all their weddings, funerals, engagement parties, birthdays, apologies, Valentine's days, anniversaries and proms. His shop has flourished since the day it opened, and he's managed to make a comfortable living for himself.

Then one day, that all changes. Brother Anthony, a local man of the cloth, opens his own flower store to earn a little extra money for a new belfry. Of course, all the local churchgoing people feel obligated to shop at Brother Anthony's flower shop instead of John's, and sure enough, John's sales start to decline. Pretty soon, things start to look grim for John; his business is losing money, and he knows that if things don't change soon, he won't have enough money to pay his bills and keep the flower shop open.

So John tries desperately to turn things around. He lowers his prices, but a few days later, he gets word that Brother Anthony has dropped his own prices to match him. He gets in new, exotic stock, but of course, Brother Anthony does the exact same thing. Finally, John walks down to the rival flower shop and begs Brother Anthony to close his doors before John is ruined. The Brother sympathizes, but he isn't willing to budge until the belfry is paid for. 

0

Overanalyzing Game of Thrones: Why I'm Not Celebrating the Purple Wedding

A few weeks ago, something happened on Game of Thrones.

Even if you haven't seen it, you know somebody died.

Since people who freely post Game of Thrones spoilers deserve to languish in the lower circles of hell normally reserved for those people who post Facebook updates about their bowel movements and scream at innocent cashiers to feel alive, I'm giving you fair warning. If you haven't seen Game of Thrones season 4, eipsode 2, there be spoilers ahead.

0

5 Reasons Why Dragon Age: Origins is Still the Best Fantasy Game of All Time

I play a lot of video games. Seriously. It hinges on a pathological condition at this point. But in all the time I've spent glued to a keyboard or console, I've yet to find a video game that can hold a candle to Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins.

Spoilers ahead. Although seriously, people, it came out in 2009.

Unfair bias of living near Bioware's Edmonton headquarters aside, I've never found a game that can match Dragon Age: Origins, not in the entire five years since its release. Don't go thinking I'm some hopeless fangirl with life-sized effigies of Morrigan resting on my Bioware shrine, either; there are five very good reasons why this is still the best fantasy game you'll ever play.

2

Overanalyzing Oculus: How to Survive a Haunted Mirror

I recently went to see the new "haunted mirrors killed my family" horror film, Oculus.

If you care about the outcome of mediocre horror movies, turn back now.

Now, let's get something straight here. I don't go into horror movies expecting to be blown away by their rich plots and subtle character development. I'm really just in it to watch unknown blonde actresses get startled by no-budget ghosts with hastily shat-out flimsy backstories. If I can make it to the end of the movie with at least a general idea of what's going on and why everyone is dead, I'm pretty much content. 

35

How I Accidentally Met C3PO: A Magical Comic Con Adventure

Every year, I attend the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo in Calgary, Alberta.

This. I attend this. 

For those of you who aren't familiar with the event, the Calgary Comic Con is a sweaty, writhing, costumed festival of panels, bootleg Walking Dead merchandise, celebrity geek royalty, unknown comic artists and tens of thousands of starry-eyed and socially graceless nerds flocking to Calgary's BMO centre like they're making a religious pilgrimage in a spandex Batman costume. In other words, it's pretty much the closest you can get to heaven. 

2

5 Things I've Learned This Year

This Thursday, I will sit down and write the last exam of my fourth year of university. Before you take out your wallet to send me fistfuls of congratulatory graduation cash, settle down - I might have completed a bachelor's degree worth of courses, but since I changed my program halfway through, I've got one more year to go. Some might call this the 'five year plan' method of getting through university. If you're not into borrowing terms from communist dictators, you can call it the 'scenic route' through university. Either way, the point is that I've now completed many years of school.

Don't worry, I've been studying diligently the whole time. 

So at the end of this year, after 8 months of school, 10 courses, $7000 in tuition, countless nights of exploring the dark depths of the internet when I should have been studying and some of the best memories I've ever had, you might be surprised to hear that I think I might have learned something. In fact, I learned a few things, and I happen to be just kind enough to share them. 

So if you have no desire to trace my exact steps through the past year to learn what I've learned, try to appreciate these five pieces of immense wisdom:

2

21 More of the Strangest Books I've Ever Seen

A few weeks ago, I didn't have the time to write a proper post with actual words, and so I put together a collection of some of the craziest books I ever came across in my three years as a library employee. You lot rewarded me by making it my most popular post ever. This week, I've got far too many exams to write a real post, and since I'm not one to argue with operant conditioning, this week I present to you 21 more of the strangest books I've ever seen.

As you go through this list, keep in mind that these aren't weird little vanity publications cluttering up the dusty corners of Amazon. These are real, actual books that real, actual editors approved and sold to real, actual people.

The first step is to bleach your hair that special shade of 90's blond and steal your dad's old sweater.

 Because you never know when someone will nuke the family ranch.

Just in case the first edition didn't quite cut it for you.

The real joke is that these books made the author more money than you'll ever see.

Apparently there is no audience too small to warrant a book deal.

Finally, a book for the lesbian horse on your Christmas list.

If your poo is telling you things, I think it's time to get the professionals.

If someone walks in on you doing these, just tell them it's a sex thing. Less embarrassing.

The natural sequel to 'The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands'.

Step One: Float away on a giant door while your love interest freezes to death.

I'm not usually a fan of pseudonyms, but sometimes they're a good idea.

This is wrong for entirely different reasons.

The first and only thing I would force my teenage offspring to read.

Alternate title: How to get checked into a rest home at the age of 52.

People have been making origami sperm since ancient times? Really?

That sounds like a challenge.

How creepy this book is depends entirely on who's holding it.

If I ever had children, I would bring a copy of this to all their therapy appointments.

My dog is too dumb to learn 'sit', I can't see this working out.

Welcome to your new life of fucking Elmer's Glue and cantaloupes.

Keep an eye out for the sequel: Being Ashamed of Hair in Funny Places

So to all of my aspiring author friends out there who are struggling to get published: keep at it. Because apparently, they'll publish just about anything. 

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