Tuesday, June 30, 2009
 

Day Four of our vacation extravaganza started at about 4:45 AM for me. Sort of. I woke up at 4:45, but I stayed in bed and stared at the wall for two hours. So, to some degree I guess the day really didn't start until nearly 7:00. I'm really becoming a slacker.
 

Monday, June 29, 2009
 

This morning started at about 5:45 AM, because I'm just such a slacker, what with sleeping in so late these days.

Sleep -- I suck at it.
 

Sunday, June 28, 2009
 

Ahhh…. Can you smell it? That, my friends, is the sweet smell of "Day One the Second," known to some folks of lesser understanding about how vacations work as "Day Two of Vacation."
 

Saturday, June 27, 2009

"Day one of vacation." To many, there are few sweeter words than these. "Sun", "fun", "relaxation", "enjoyment" – to some people, these words are often considered to be synonymous with the phrase "Day one of vacation".

This was written for the [Fiction] Friday   prompt on June 19, 2009 which was:  "(your character) closed his/her eyes, took a deep breath and jumped."

This was written for the [Fiction] Friday   prompt on March 20, 2009 which was:  "A dentist is stabbed while waiting in line at the movies."

So, I've long held that despite being male, I am just one of the girls.  Lacking any real evidence of this, though, I've been forced to use more anecdotal facts to try to persuade the non-believers among my various acquaintances that this is, in fact, true. However, it seems that my distaste for monster trucks, my lack of interest in barbecuing and the unnatural-to-some number of female friends I've had throughout my life (about 90% of my friends have been female over the years)  is not really a confirmation of my membership in the Just-One-of-the-Girls Club of America .

Well, now I have proof.

As evidence that I am, in fact, just one of the girls, I present the Gender Analyzer for blogs.  The Gender Analyzer is meant to help you, the reader of any given blog, to determine the gender of the author of a blog.  I do not know the mechanism it uses, but I am assuming that a lot of science and psychology have gone into figuring out what words men use and what words women use when writing. And science, of course, cannot be argued with, especially when it is coupled with psychology.

The Theory

I, Lousy Writer 13, being male, am nonetheless just one of the girls

The Science

So, I have three blogs.  Here are the results when I run them through the Gender Analyzer:

• This blog (http://lousywriter13.livejournal.com), when analyzed, has strong indicators that the author is, in fact, a woman (95% score).
• My pig sentences (http://mypigsentences.wordpress.com), when analyzed, comes up as being likely to have been written by a woman (60% score).
• When I expand all of the posts out to their entirety on my fiction blog (http://thirteenthdimension.wordpress.com), it comes up as being gender-neutral, but a slightly higher possibility of having been written by a woman (51% score).
• When I leave Thirteenth Dimension broken up by the more/cut tags, it comes up as being gender-neutral but possibly written by a male(57% score)

So, my blogs, when read in their entirety, appear to be written by a woman. 

The Psychology

I suppose that I'm conflicted by this.  At least sort of.  I mean, I've always just been one of the girls and I have no problem with that at all... but at the same time, having some computer program give me cold, hard scientific evidence that I may not be a real man feels like it changes things. I mean, seriously – I do like the power tools and lawn equipment that "real men" like (assuming that real men are into rechargeable, battery-powered lawn mowers and weed-whackers) so where does this computer program get off calling me a woman?

So, now I'm left wondering if I should just officially change my penname on the blogosphere to "Roberta," which was the name all the women in my wife's all-female dorm at college called me, or if I just need to put some more cursing, fighting and pyrotechnics into my writing, just to prove that I am, in fact, a man.

I don't know what the answer is, but I do know that I can't argue with science and this is clearly science. I also know that anything found on the internet must be a true and accurate portrayal of the universe, so clearly that proves that I am, truly, just one of the girls.

This was written for the [Fiction] Friday   prompt on March 20, 2009.

This was written for the [Fiction] Friday  prompt on March 13, 2009.

This was written for the [Fiction] Friday  prompt on March 6, 2009.

I saw this and I am... dumbfounded.  I wonder if the original post in this thread is legitimate or not.  But some of the answers are quite funny, even going so far as to provide mathematical equations for determining weight.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vistahardware/thread/720108ee-0a9c-4090-b62d-bbd5cb1a7605
 

Since I've been pretty much tied to my spot on the couch or chair for the past week as it has hurt marginally less to sit than to do anything else, I've been able to read a few books.  I figured I would share my impressions with you about these books in case you might wish to borrow and/or obtain them for yourself.

This was written for the [Fiction] Friday  prompt on January 2, 2009:  write about a New Year’s resolution that’s broken in the first 24 hours