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deniigi · 6 years ago

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Hello! Just about to sit down and read your newest fic, so excited about it! I had a question for you (you very well may have answered this already, so sorry in advance!), but do you have advice for writing? Advice in terms of getting start, plotting out stories, helping get the creative juices flowing? I have all these ideas but seem to lack the drive to get things written out. I know the best advice is to just write, but I'm having a horrible time starting. What do you do in those moments?

Hello my dear!

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you. The lord has blessed me with a head cold and ruined all my plans of productivity for the day, so I can finally answer this ask! I’ll talk a little bit about both how to get started with a story and then some little things that help me motivate myself.

I have started a tag for writing advice here: http://deniigi.tumblr.com/tagged/writing-advice

This is going to be a long post, sorry mobile users.

I am going to preface all of this with the understanding that I am technically a professional writer in terms of like, a handful of ways, but I have absolutely zero training in creative writing, so take everything I say with a grain of salt!

So, I personally find that, on the whole, that psychological hurdle of getting started comes a lot from the anticipation of the kind of response a story will get (how many hits, how many comments, how many kudos) in addition to a bit of anxiety or fear over theloss of sustained interest in that story (by yourself and/or by your audience). I find that this can be alleviated by really, truly internalizing the understanding that you are allowed to write your work however you damn please, for whoever you damn please.

There will be work you write for others, and there will be work you write for yourself. Not all work needs to be published; sometimes, it is really nice to just write shit for yourself; it is a plus for humanity if you decide to share it with others, but you do not have to do that.

Furthermore, I would like to present you with this:

This is what my current folder for under fire looks like. And you might notice that there are almost always multiple drafts per chapter. Yes, I did in fact rewrite chapter four 5 fucking times, you bet your ass I did. And I’m not ashamed of it. I think the story is better for it. And that’s the important thing here: you do not need to produce a perfect draft the first time around. You will not produce that perfect draft. Accept this. Embrace this. Embrace it and your cat at the same time to really ingrain it as a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Liberate yourself from the pressure of needing to produce the perfect, most right draft and you may find starting the piece overall to be a much easier, more pleasant experience.

And along with this beautiful, uplifting spiritual advice, I also bring a practical thought: when it comes to getting started, a lot of times, people feel like they need to set the stage, yadda yadda yadda. Ha. No. Fuck that.

That’s a surefire way to bore the shit out of yourself. Start right in the middle of a scene that captivates you if that’s what you want to write. It’s a free platform. No one’s gonna arrest you if you stick Spiderman upside down in trash first thing. They might even applaud you actually, because you didn’t make them slog through some of that ‘It was the evening of the 25th and it was cold out in the streets” bullshit we all learned from Dickens.

Alright. Now let’s talk about actually getting started making words appear on paper.

So, from my knowledge there are generally two ways that folks write creatively. You have what I’m going to call the planners and then you what I’m going to call the monsters (I call them this entirely affectionately, I’m sure there’s a better word for these folks, but I don’t have it atm, all I have is a headcold). Planners are folks who sit down and work out their major plot points, who write outlines, and who create the scaffolding of their work before they set out on their magical journey. I think of these folks as architects.

And then you have the monsters and these are those fuckers who just sit down and write stream of consciously like the heathens all our high school teachers tried to teach us not to be.

I am both a planner and a monster. And a lot of that depends on the length of work I’m going for. I have never in my life planned a one-shot, for example. I just attack that as it is. I follow my heart, if you will. But when it comes to longer chaptered fics, I really do think that some outlining is super helpful.

You might find it useful for one-shots, though, I dunno. Maybe give it a try and see what happens?

The two main fics I’ve done proper outlines for are Inimitable and under fire and I actually find outlining to be immensely helpful in psyching me up to write the story (I go through and re-read my outlines when I start to lose interest or diverge too much from the plot outlined there in the actual writing. 9 times out of 10, re-reading gets me stupid excited to write all over again) and it also helps me keep momentum going throughout the plot.

Here’s a pic of some pages of under fire’s outline.

Physically writing the work is really important for me because it forces me to only put down key points/feelings/ideas I want to include, whereas typing gives me far too much room to get lost/distracted by extraneous detail. And since my handwriting is a teacher’s worst nightmare and I cross out shit and write huge with emotion, I’ll give you a little bit of what the middle page here says:

Miles-

there’s something thrumming

vibrating in his ears wherever he goes

-closes his eyes and somehow enters blackness- emptyness (Stranger Things style)

beat

“help.”

–BACK - everything is gone

closing his eyes doesn’t bring the space back

–it makes him panic. He doesn’t know why. His heart is pounding. He’s sweating He has a horrible feeling of doom.

beat

its gone.

he goes home anxiously. Pretends everything is normal.

his neck crawls

So basically it’s less of a formal outline and more of a collection of stream of consciousness feelings and screenplay directions which I’ll flesh out in the actual story.

Personally, I love writing these kinds of things because they get me pumped for the story I’m about to tell. I get to write out the key scenes and work through all the hard parts first, and then, while I’m writing, I work through the little fun details and banter and I have to write to figure out how we get from one scene to the next and I love the challenge of having to fit those pieces together. I very rarely stick strictly to my outline, (as anyone who is currently reading under fire can tell you right now), but I do try to stick to the main plot points in it and my writing is certainly better for it.

So yes. Outlining is very good, but it is even better when you do it to some kind of music. I listened to What’s Up Danger from the Into the Spiderverse soundtrack on repeat while I wrote this outline to kind of transfer some of the relentless pace conveyed in that song to the piece’s plot.

I highly recommend using music to set the mood of your piece while/before you write a piece of any length. It helps get you in the right headspace (excited or somber or angry) to write. You need emotion to write creatively. You can’t just make that happen sometimes; you need a little help.

A couple other things which might help:

1. Leave your house or the space you’re normally in. Go to a cafe and find a nice corner and have a think and a try in there. Sometimes moving to a different space helps you escape cyclical thinking patterns.

2. Write what you want to read. Don’t bother writing for other peoples’ interests; that’ll just bore the shit out of you all over again.

3. Find an atmospheric mood sound to listen to on Youtube or smth (I personally like Rain on a Car Windshield for slightly somber fics, but you might be into ocean storms or dripping caves or whatever).

4. Heat your feet. I don’t know why but I am entirely unproductive when my feet are cold. Maybe this one is me-specific, but whatevs. Heat the feets!

5. If you’re still having trouble just sitting down and pounding the story out, that’s okay! Maybe it’s not ready to be written yet. Maybe you’re not in the right headspace yet. Sometimes that’s just how it is. One story makes its way out in like, a hour, and the next one takes like, months to finally be written. We all work at different paces. We all write for different reasons.

It might help to figure out why you want to write a story before you write it. Like, if its for attention, it’s gonna be hard as hell. But if there’s an idea that you feel like is important or if there’s a mood you’re trying to work yourself into or out of, then that might be a little easier. For example, I wrote a piece called make it work which is about Fogs finding his motivation to be a lawyer and fight for justice when Kavanaugh was confirmed and I felt super helpless in the face of our present justice system. That story kind of wrote itself and it needed to be written, I feel, not just for me, but for others who were feeling just as helpless.

Writing is catharsis in that way. Maybe you just need to find out what you need to wring out of your soul.

Sorry that got very metaphysical. But I do want to stress that getting started and ending a story are the hardest parts of writing them, so you are definitely not alone if you feel like you’re ramming your head into a wall here.

I hope something here helps you, my dear!

#fic #writing advice #fanfiction #managingmischiefsince1988

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devilsadvocate007 · 5 years ago

Text

Facebook Posts July 2010 - December 2010

4th July 2010

The illusion that everybody's opinion matters has created a society in which stupidity must be considered just as seriously as brilliance. Gone are the days where stupid people weren't allowed to talk while big people were talking. Now they have their own facebook pages.... On the bright side, we no longer have to rely on television for entertainment

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10th July 2010

♫ Just gonna stand there and watch me burn....well that's alright because I like the way it hurts......Just gonna stand there and hear me cry....well that's alright because I love the way you lie...♫ - ‘Love the way you lie’, Rihanna ft. Eminem

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14th July 2010

If there's no such thing as no such thing, then there is such a thing as no such thing, which means that there really is no such thing as no such thing.

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15th July 2010

Bad?: So I was standing next to a fat girl and I turned to her and said "moo". At first she started to cuss and call me names and tell me about my mother. I quietly said "moo" again without lifting my gaze. This time she started screaming and clawing at me. For the last time...I said "moo". She stopped and looked at me, then after a minute of silence she said "father?"

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25th July 2010

You know you're doing something wrong when your fiancée tells you "I'd rather be his whore than your wife"... ♥ Titanic

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30th July 2010

You ever meet someone so dumb that you think they're up to something? "What?....no....what you playing at?....wait.....you're serious?"

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5th August 2010

The 1st tao of Jarid: {For all those in a relationship...the sentence "It doesn't matter anymore, I have a man, I'm gonna let loose" is not acceptable unless you're talking about a party or sex.}

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6th August 2010

I know I'm not the only person that finds irony in the fact that the guy that recently beat the JAMAICAN Bolt, is called Mr. Gay. lol "Gay shocks Bolt in Stockholm" is the Headline....So what did we learn? U can run from gays all u want my Jamaican brethren, but it'll catch up with you eventually...

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15th August 2010

Life is too short to waste on people who don't realize how awesome you are. I knew an awesome person who never followed the crowd or did what was 'expected'. She's gone now, but I can say she lived her life the way she wanted to, surrounded by people she liked who definitely liked her. When my time comes, I want someone to say the same about me. So fuck off and thank you.

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17th August 2010

Can someone explain to me how purposely doing something that makes your guy friends happy and like u, but at the same time leaves ur woman unhappy and unsatisfied, isn't gay? "Bow cat" it would seem is the opposite of "battyman"....not synonymous.

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20th August 2010

"Ur like a giant fucking cock blocking robot developed in a secret government lab or something" - Zombieland (lmao)

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21st August 2010

♫ That's alright, thats ok....g'on head believe what ur home girls say...a nigga like me drink alotta liquor, meet alotta bitches, take alotta pictures....I might break bread with 1 or 2 strippers, but that don't mean u gotta pull my zipper...thinkin that I dicked down the whole town, even tho I got dick to go round ♫ - ‘Smell yo dick’, Kay Luv

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22nd August 2010

♫ You say its my fault, ok then I'll go...its better to know...how theres nobody to argue with...cuz im not home...dont care who ur with....dont call my phone...or did u forget...u know you're wrong...I'm gone....and you're all alone....hearing your own damn...eh echo eh echo ♫ - ‘Echo’, Gorilla Zoe

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8th September 2010

♫ A penny for my thoughts, oh no I'll sell them for a dollar, They're worth so much more after I'm a goner, And maybe then you'll hear the words I been singin', Funny when your dead how people start listenin'...If I die young ♫ - ‘If I die young’, The Band Perry

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10th September 2010

The tao of Jarid: "Facebook is not a place to publish things you wish to remain private. By its very nature, anything put on here voluntarily is for people to notice, see, and by extension comment or ask about. Getting defensive when asked about something YOU put up in the public domain makes no sense."

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11th September 2010

The tao of Jarid: "Women treat the male gene pool like a real pool. They all jump in and splash around the shallow end in their youth...then wade out to the deeper end as they get older."

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15th September 2010

“Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar [violin] to a gorilla.” - Jim Bishop

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17th September 2010

Taxi driver on the way home today: "You see men? Especially young men like you? You need to eat raw foods. Lemme tell u the other night I was with my gf and no matter WHAT position I put her in...me deya fight fi cum! FIRST time me haffu TRY cum. All when me done, cocky stiff stiff"

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22nd September 2010

Birthdays on facebook are really opportunities for people that never speak to you to subtly say "I care! Don't delete me! Look how I wrote on ur wall!" lol

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23rd September 2010

The tao of Jarid: The lawyer most people know is the American lawyer. That's why lawyers have a bad name. Caribbean lawyers are nothing like their American counterparts (the laws and practices here are vastly different). People should remember that before they band all "lawyers" together.

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23rd September 2010

Listen, I understand that having a BB means that u can talk to anyone at anytime for free, but seriously...10 grown ppl sitting in a room engrossed in their phones not speaking to each other, is ridiculous. What happend to common courtesy, what happened to meeting new people and saying hi to a stranger? Sheesh. U remind me of little kids in church playing their gameboys.

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26th September 2010

U know what I hate? The fact that hypocrisy is so prevalent. Any time you see someone stand up and strongly take a stand against something...9/10 times they do it. If they vehemently denounce homosexuals, 9/10 times, they're sleeping with little boys. Its SO common now, that I never want to take a strong stand against anything, lest ppl think I secretly do it. Chupz.

The tao of Jarid: For those of you who believe that "no means no, but unconscious means yes".....a prison cell awaits.

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28th September 2010

The legal way of saying “nigga stole my bike”: “ A human being of the male gender wth black pigmentation on his skin appears 2 have acquired without my consent my 2-wheeled, non-motorized private and/or recreational transportation, also known as "bike", and appears 2 have driven away with said 2-wheeled, non-motorized private and/or recreational transportation, despite my attempt of chasing the said human being, completely ignoring my request 2 give sed item bk” - username iani103. Man, I love my profession.

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1st October 2010

I think women should develop the same "fuck it" mechanism guys have. If there's a baby in the house crying for hours on end...what you will not find is a man around. Y? Cuz we can't fix it and its driving us crazy, so we roll out and go by Tony's house to watch football, i.e. fuk it. More women should do that instead of staying in the stress and snapping and shaking their babies to death or driving them into a river.

The tao of Jarid: Facebook should have a 'WHO CARES?!?' button....and make my page immune to it.

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2nd October 2010

The tao of Jarid: The more "LMAO"s and "LOLOLOL"s your status contains, the less funny the actual subject matter is. Contrary to popular belief, nothing gets funnier the more you laugh at it by yourself.

Grown men's fascination with penitentiary pussy confuses me... Sex with it = go to prison. What's the problem? Where's the option? All I see is "Sex with prison". No thanks. That's like the "option" 'get in this dark van so I can drive u to my abandoned cabin in the woods or I shoot you'. All I should be hearing is *gunshot*.

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4th October 2010

The tao of Jarid: Drama vampires are not cool. While the rest of us need food and water to live, these creatures survive solely off drama and other people viewing it. The only effective way to deal with them is to block and delete them from everything. If you can't see their drama, they weaken and die. True story.

“I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen. Yes, I said I kissed a girl. But I didn’t say I kissed a girl while f-ing a crucifix.” - Katy Perry (on why she dislikes Lady Gaga’s music video for ‘Alejandro’)

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5th October 2010

"This is my facade of civility; do not mistake for complacency, for once this veil is taken down, you'll see a vicious turn around...of all you grew to know and love...the hand lying beneath the glove.... An animal living in a shell. A beast who's come to raise all hell."

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6th October 2010

The tao of Jarid: Forget CNN, BBC or any other news organisation....nowhere else are world issues more discussed than on YouTube's comments section

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8th October 2010

You are one person, out of 7 billion people, on one planet, out of 8 planets, in one solar system out of a hundred billion solar systems, in one galaxy out of a hundred billion galaxies.......you are ENORMOUSLY insignificant, and don't let facebook ever make you forget that. [De-motivational Speech for the day]

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11th October 2010

Anybody remember when they FIRST came on fb YEARS ago? How it used to be? How Fb made hi5 look like the social networking ghetto? It was so clean and neat and classy. "Jarid Hewlett", likes, interests, lil about myself. Send ur friends who u havent seen since primary school messages. It was a magical innocent time. Why did you people have to rape facebook? Why?

Now? as NC17 says, no more "Jarid Hewlett", we have "Jarid fuckspussyallday Hewlett", we have "What kind of telly tubby would u have sex with?" quizzes, we have people fighting over who their baby's daddy is for the world to see. (Btw when did this shit become acceptable? Not knowing which guy ejaculated inside and impregnated you is something people used to be ashamed of and settle in private...why is it cool to broadcast this now?), we have break ups where guys blatantly put their numbers under "X is no longer in a relationship"..... What happened to CLASS??? I understand they don't teach that in school, but they bloody well should. No one comes on fb to keep in touch with people anymore. And the ones that do, spend 20% of their total fb time doing that. The rest of us laugh or bow our heads in sadness at the ridiculous shit people post. I'm black and I hate racists and racism, but goddamn it....sometimes, as much as I hate to admit it.....I see where they're coming from. <sigh>

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15th October 2010

♫ We're going out tonight...to kick out every light, take anything we want, drink everything in sight, we're going till the world stops turning while we burn it to the ground tonight! ♫ - ‘Burn it to the ground’, Nickelback

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21st October 2010

The tao: Men get bitter, just as women do. The difference is, a bitter woman will say "fuck men" and never have sex again. A bitter man will say "fuck women" and do just that.

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26th October 2010

The tao: "All inclusive" does not mean "free cheap rum and vodka with juice". Stop the false advertising.

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27th October 2010

The tao: Having high standards doesn't necessarily exempt you from whoredom. While we all agree that having low to no standards makes one a ho, having high, meaningless standards makes one a ho too. "I only sleep with guys that drive BMWs" is a high standard. It is not a substantive standard.

♫ And who do you think you are? Running round leaving scars....Collecting your jar of hearts, tearing love apart........You’re gonna catch a cold, from the ice inside your soul.........So don’t come back for me, who do you think you are? ♫ - ‘Jar of Hearts’, Christina Perri

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28th October 2010

"Labour all de way"? "UPP all de way?".....come on, man. I'm "all the way" with whoever makes Antigua a better country. Politics has come to mean arbitrary following of a party that makes your immediate life better regardless of the long term. Don't even get me started on 'patriotism'.

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31st October 2010

The tao: He who is slow to anger gets annoyed the longest.

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1st November 2010

♫....you just hurt my goddamn feelings, and that was the last one I had ♫ - ‘Here we go’, Eminem

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2nd November 2010

Lawyer talk: My Lord, my client was not anywhere near the building when the window was broken, and if he was, he did not break the window, and if he did break the window, he did so by accident, and if he didn't break it by accident, it wasn't the complainant's window, and if it was their window, it was their fault for putting it where my client throws stones.

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8th November 2010

Mr. Kartel, you sir, have lied to me.....apparently women do not want a man whose "buddy long like a thousand match stick line up"....apparently that hurts and more than 90% of it will be outside anyway. You have misled me sir, and I demand an apology.

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10th November 2010

On a serious note.....which do you think is more "loving" and less "heartless"? (Option A) Being in a relationship and cheating gratuitously on your significant other? Or (Option B) breaking up with your significant other who probably didn't see it coming, because you want to sleep with someone else?

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11th November 2010

The tao: No one really sees anything. Everyone thinks they see something. I might think I see a pudgy, ugly woman, you might think you see a curvy goddess. Who knows whats actually there...The difference between sane and insane people is that insane people are just a little more creative with what they think they see....and nothing can change their mind.

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14th November 2010

The tao: If someone tells you something you don't understand, don't repeat it. It might have been wisdom when they told you...but after your brain is done with it, there's a high chance it comes back out as crap.

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15th November 2010

"You're Cuban AND Jamaican?? That's a really.....illegal mix, lol. So you speak Spanish and bloodclaat?" - Mike Yard (*dead*)

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17th November 2010

The tao: One should never let emotions get in the way of reality. Sometimes people just don't appreciate you no matter how you feel about them. That's ok. Someone does.

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19th November 2010

♫ Well I'm a poet to some, a regular modern day Shakespeare.....Jesus Christ, the King of these latter day saints here ♫ - ‘Renegade’, Jay-Z & Eminem

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25th November 2010

The tao: Whenever you think "don't let a good thing pass you by"....remember that many things are only good now BECAUSE you let them pass you by at first. Don't be afraid to let go.

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26th November 2010

"If my wanting to see you was on a scale of 1-10.....I'd still say no". It takes a while to fully appreciate just how horrible this statement is.

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27th November 2010

U know what I just realized..?..The first time I listened to the Marshall Mathers LP was on *cassette*...in my * Walkman*....that Michael Henry had copied for me.....I'm gonna reserve my rocking chair in the old folks home from now, see...

The tao: Stop saying "I'm just me". Everyone is just them. If you choose to be someone who tries to be like other people, that's still who you are. You are just a personalityless ninny, but it's still who YOU are. You can't ever be anything else but you. "I'm just me" is like saying "I breathe oxygen". No shit.

♫ Me start da day wit a flask, cranberry an ice inna glass....satellite can't find me me lost....buy me own liquor cuz me a me own boss....drink fi drunk dat me endorse....OH ♫ - ‘Rum & Red Bull’, Beenie Man &Future Fambo

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30th November 2010

Seriously....if I read one more comment under a political story with someone urging people to "wake up", I'm going to slap somebody. I always find it fascinating that politics turns otherwise sensible people into jackasses. "Belief is the enemy of reality".

Lesbians have life so easy.....girls are very gay normally, lol. Dressing in front of each other, dancing up with one another, feeling up one another etc.....you could pretty much spend ur whole life being a lesbian and no one would ever know once u lie every now and again about some boy u find hot.

"The fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us and not because they think we can keep secrets," - US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. If that's not gangsta, I dunno what is...

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2nd December 2010

♫ I love my life....none a we don't know wey tomorrow might bring cuz the future deh hours away...so me go live my life today...me ah live my life today...so lowe me mek me talk what me want fi talk, me have nuff fi say...so me go live my life today...me ah go live my life today ♫ - ‘I love my life’, Demarco

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7th December 2010

The tao: Never overestimate the power of friendship.

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9th December 2010

♫ De boy ketch me a stamp up him gyal postcard....want arrest me but....him anna sarge....he nah stop tell me how him a camouflage....never voice ya hear from him vocal cord because.....a we mek nuff man start drink Guinness ♫ - ‘A we’, Hawkeye

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11th December 2010

The tao: The next time someone you thought you mattered to lets you down, always remember that its not their fault you don't have better friends.

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17th December 2010

Men beware: "Your mouth says no, but your eyes say yes" will never ever stand up in court.

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19th December 2010

The tao: Stop bitching about the 'true meaning' of Christmas. People like presents. Deal with it.

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21st December 2010

The tao: Put on a jamaican accent and include "bloodclaat" or "bumboclaat" and any sentence becomes five times funnier. E.g. "Where are u going, u unhygienic homosexual?" "Yow, a where dis dutty skin, yellow teet, shitty draws BUMBOCLAAT battybwoy a go?" Same message. Five times funnier.

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25th December 2010

The tao: "I have a boyfriend".........."Babes....you can have ALL the boyfriends you want...not "a", not "some".....ALL.....me still want u". - This conversation will always go like this. Saying you have a boyfriend is not a substitute for saying no.

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30th December 2010

New year new me! "Are u getting a sex change?" What? no..... "Are you changing careers?" Um..no.. "Are you radically overhauling your entire personality?" Not really... "Shut up and sit down"

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