Back to school ... sort of

So after about a month at my new job, I was approached by my boss and told about an online "continuing education" class offered by the Poynter Institute about how to write better headlines. He urged me to apply for it, and said that if I were accepted my employer would foot the bill.

My initial feeling was, "Oh great. I suck so bad at writing headlines that I was the one singled out among all the people who work here as the best candidate for this class. Fantastic." But instead of being such a pessimist, I decided to look on the bright side and view it as an opportunity to improve my skills - because let's face it, I do indeed suck at writing headlines. I just thought I was doing a better job at hiding it. Apparently not.

It's not entirely my fault though. You see, because I decided to enroll in a completely worthless major (magazines) I never was trained at all in how to write headlines, how to lay out a page, or how to do pretty much anything except write crappy old-lady stories about gardening and landscaping. Well - I guess it technically is my fault for enrolling in that major.

Anywho - I've been busy the past three weeks with my online headline-writing class, and it's been a good experience. I now have slightly more confidence in my ability to tone down the suck-factor of the headlines that I write. I can even spot suckiness in other people's headlines and then change them so that they're better. I still have one week left to go in my class, and now we're going to learn how to write those clever headlines you always see that rely on wordplay. FYI - most of those ones suck horrendously because people fall all over themselves trying to make stupid puns that don't make a whole lot of sense.

How long do I have to work out?

Well, I've been working out regularly for almost two months now, and I can see why extremely obese people just say screw it and get their stomachs stapled.

Damn, it's a lot of work. I thought that after this long I'd have six-pack abs and toned muscles - and flabby arms and thighs would be a thing of the past. Well, I was wrong. Maybe I just need to start taking steroids like those cool baseball players. It's too hard to look good naturally. OK, not really. Baseball players are gross - and so are overly muscular people, especially overly muscular females. If only I could banish the flabby arms - that's really all I want. Is that so much to ask? Time will tell...

A friendly wager

I bet $5 in an office pool that Brokeback Mountain is going to sweep pretty much every category at the Academy Awards. I've never seen it, in fact I've never seen any of the movies that were nominated in any category. But something tells me it's going to win. And that something is a Web site I used to "help" me in my Oscar pool predictions - it was basically a list of Oscar predictions from a panel of movie experts. I've got a good feeling about it ... I think I'm going to go all the way.

And, since I have so much money riding on Brokeback Mountain, I decided that I should go see it for myself. Unfortunately, as many of you may be aware, South Dakota is one truly whacked out, conservative state. We've been making headlines a lot lately due to our newly passed ban on all forms of abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. But I digress.

My point is that only about two people in this state would ever in a million years even consider going to a movie like Brokeback Mountain. I'm one of them, and I've yet to meet the other one, but he/she has to be out there. In any case, I'll be attending the movie by myself, so hopefully I don't get arrested by the South Dakota Thought Police (incidentally, they also tried to pass a measure that would overview what the state universities are teaching and penalize liberal professors in effort to make sure that they're presenting "balanced" political worldviews.)

On a side note, I saw another Oscar contender, "Walk the Line," last night, and it was good. I really liked it, and I never really liked country music or had a particular affection for Johnny Cash before. But of course when I got home, I rushed to iTunes to download a bunch of his songs. So if you haven't seen it, you should.