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by Russ Nickel | November 17, 2011 · 10:45 pm

We’d Like to Have Award with You

As you’ll note, especially now that I’m about to point it out, today is a Thursday, which, according to the Mayan calendar, is not a Tuesday. It has been decided that Thursdays shall henceforth be known as the days upon which either, in the rare event that visionary and heartthrob Sam has enough free time, he’ll compose something of great insight and profundity concerning the human condition, or, barring that, I’ll write some sort of gibberish held to a far lower standard than my Tuesday posts. For example, that last sentence was extremely long and unintelligible.

Most likely, we won’t post anything at all. We’re trying to keep you on your toes in an effort to appear unpredictable in that suave, unpredictable-but-I-like-it sort of way.

The reason I’m posting today is because, drum roll, Reasonably Ludicrous got its first ever blog award! For those of you who don’t know, a blog award is like chain mail, only, because everyone in the blogosphere is supportive past the point of sanity, it’s fueled not by fear of being smitten (such a cute past participle) by unseen forces should you fail to perpetuate it, but rather by the common desire to pay it forward, or share the love, as it were.

The self-propagating award we received is known as the 7×7, which is, coincidentally, the hamburger I always order at In-N-Out. The lovely (at least in my dreams), cat-adoring, never-been-kissed, bad-guy-fixated Jess over at Love The Bad Guy has, in her beneficence, presented us this award all the way from down under. If I could tunnel her my gratitude in person, I would, but my arms are a little tired, so I’ll have to settle for simply posting my thanks.

An award! Do you believe it? No matter how intangible, no matter how many strings come attached, I’m ecstatic! Any sort of validation sets my buns ablaze. Thanks, Jess!

Now, as for the award itself, it looks a little something like this:

Ah, the delicious patties of praise, lettuce of laudation, tomatoes of tribute, and grease of glory! This particular commendation requires the receiver to answer 7 pre-determined non-questions and then pass the award on to up to 7 other deserving blogs, thus proving that blog awards, like viruses, meet at least 2 of high school biology’s requirements for life. And now, without further gibbering, I present to you the answers to those seemingly unanswerable questions.

Most Beautiful Post. I’ll have to go with our most recent post, Rich People Are Scary, because that has a naked pic of me in it. It took a lot of cajoling, pleading, and bribery, but Sam eventually agreed to portray me much more beautifully than is strictly accurate.
Most Popular Post. Well, I could say Oops, I Got an English Degree because it has so many comments that it now takes a long time to load on my slow computer, but since the non-question doesn’t specify, I’ll claim that the most popular post hasn’t happened yet. I’m an optimist at heart, and it wouldn’t be right to think we’d already reached our peak. The best is yet to come. Just you wait.
Most Controversial Post. I don’t even want to bring this one up. It was so controversial that I took it down almost immediately, and I’m pretty sure I successfully forced everyone who’d seen it to sign non-disclosure agreements. That was a close call.
Most Helpful Post. Hyper-Sam and the Infinite Potential, no question. Because of this post, I can now take solace in the fact that somewhere in the twisted multiverse we call home, there’s a version of me who’s done it all right. Great work, Hyper-Russ. And if you ever find a way to communicate with me, let me know how that three-way with Amber Heard and Olivia Wilde went.
Most Surprisingly Successful Post. If I had to pick, I think it would be that time I started a brand-new blog with one of my best friends. We posted it online, went to bed, and when I woke up, we’d gotten thousands of hits and hundreds of comments. That was pretty surprising, I suppose.
Most Underrated Post. Uh. You guys are all so awesome. You give us such great feedback all the time. I’m beyond happy. I never expected this blog to do so well, and our success thus far is beyond my wildest dreams. If anything, all the posts are overrated.
Most Pride-Worthy Post. As a writer, I’m convinced that everything I create requires vast quantities of revision and am still utterly baffled as to why anyone pays any attention to the words I scratch into the surface of the blogosphere.

So there ya have it. Now it’s my turn, my turn to spread the joy and the burden, the excitement and the obligation. Here’s hoping the blogs I choose plaster that sexy burger on their pages and tell us a little bit about themselves.

Peas & Cougars. Another blog whose banner cracks me up, Peas & Cougars never ceases to delight with its ceaselessly delightful drawings of simplicity and expressiveness. She’s got a great sense of humor and satirizes those things in life we all relate to…in picture form!
Live. Nerd. Repeat. Home to a half-crazed madman who spends his time playing video games, casting spells, contemplating the end of humanity, and then writing about it, this blog will sate your desire to learn more about the rare and elusive were-beaver, and his artistic representations will send you into fits of giddiness.
The Snarkist. Started just this month, The Snarkist is filled with sarcastic and amusing observations on the joys and terrors of society, from sock monkeys to vanity plates. Entertaining in its derision, it’s also written by a girl from one of my English classes, and I would have really liked to hook up with her, but right after we started hitting it off, she studied abroad in Oxford. What’s that all about? Anyway, maybe giving her an award will get me in her good graces in case we ever run into each other later.

Phew. I think that’s about it. This blog award stuff is tough. Did I do ok?

UPDATE: Live. Nerd. Repeat. was Freshly Pressed mere hours after receiving this prestigious award. Coincidence? I think not! Well actually, it’s almost certainly a coincidence, but I can take satisfaction in knowing that WordPress itself agrees with me when I say it’s a fantastic blog.

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Tagged as Awards, Blog, Bloggeriffic, Blogging, Chain Mail, Comedy, Food, Humor

by Russ Nickel | October 4, 2011 · 4:43 pm

Oops, I Got an English Degree!

This morning, I woke up to a horrible realization. Actually, that happens pretty much every morning, the realization being that I’m awake and no longer in the blissful world of dreams.

But on this fateful day, I came to recognize a much more devastating truth: I had spent four years of my life studying English.

You’d think kids who get into Stanford would be smart enough not to pursue their dreams, but I’ve always been quixotic (and as an English major, I can tell you that word’s based on a character…from a book!), so I studied what I loved, future be damned! My parents, idealistic saps that they are, actually encouraged me towards this! They said, “Russ, you can do anything if you put your mind to it!” Can you believe that?

So I kept at it. I enjoyed my major, and I’ve never been one to deny myself any desire, no matter how whimsical or potentially hazardous.

And it was just so easy. Wait until the final paper is assigned, read (or skim) a single book, then write an eight page treatise on the main character’s Oedipus complex. How could I turn that down?

Unfortunately, it just so happens that people in “real life” expect you to have these pesky things called “skills,” and for some reason, nobody mentioned them to me until it was too late. All my computer science friends had these amazing resumés, and I didn’t have an iota of work experience. I assured prospective employers of my vast intellect and chronicled all the fantasy books I’d read, but still I didn’t receive a single call from any of the companies to which I’d applied. Didn’t they see how well I’d praised myself? Didn’t they understand how my comprehensive knowledge of potential post-apocalyptic scenarios could come in handy?

Suddenly it’s graduation and all my friends have moved to San Francisco and New York to do important work, so obviously I have to pretend that I have my life together too. I decided to take a year off to “find myself” and “work on my writing.” They seemed like good excuses at the time, but then it turned out that finding myself was hard to do when there was so much good TV on, and working on my writing was nigh impossible when you end up joining a fraternity that’s always throwing booze and women at you (not that I succeeded with the women). When I was working toward my degree, I didn’t mind the distractions, but now I was starting to realize that without an outside force giving me a series of easily attainable goals, I had developed some sort of weird conscience/guilt complex that made me feel horrible about myself.

It was terrible! Before this year, I’d always loved myself (heck, somebody had to!), but now my life was a travesty of my ill-formed childhood plans. I was supposed to be a multi-billion-dollar writer person who lived on the moon.

Sure, living in San Luis Obispo is nice, but it’s no the moon. Now, I could blame the lack of lunar accommodations on the government, but there was no excuse for the unearned billions. Clearly, I had to start doing something that would get me paid, or laid, or anything really. And with that, we’ve returned to the head of this ouroboros* of a conundrum: I have a degree in English. Where could I find people crazy enough to pay me for that?

*It’s a thing.

And then it hit me: the internet!

There are plenty of people who make money on the internet, right–plenty of people who are (presumably) a lot less “qualified” than I am? If they can earn a living by remorselessly spewing out their life stories and pointless observations, why shouldn’t I? Why shouldn’t I enter this modern-day gladiatorial ring and battle my fellow English majors for the love of the wealthy masses. After all, it’s up to us to stave off the ennui of conquering the known world, and if we’re good enough, somebody might pay us.

On the web, everyone can put themselves up for examination, and if they’re pretty or funny or ugly enough, never have to do any real work. And in the end, isn’t avoiding real work what being an English major is all about? That’s why I’ve started blogging. Even if I can’t achieve anything real, I might at least become internet famous. So here goes. This is my blog and my chance to show my parents that their money wasn’t wasted, or that it wasn’t quite as wasted as they previously thought, and that I’m not quite as wasted as I was five minutes ago. Funny how that works.