Plasma is a Fully Ionized Gas of Low Density. And First Follow Friday!

Loves,

I don't know what the title of this blog post means. All I know is it relates to me newest scheme: plasma.

I feel like perhaps quitting KFC was not my best decision to date. The good news is I don't have an illegitimate child to support or rent to pay. Bad news is that I still have to buy books for cowledge and probably just for myself because I love books and buy them even when I need to save money just because they're my favorite thing. Good news is that one of my favorite people from cowledge told me about this great thing called DONATING PLASMA.

Bad news again, apparently if you update your employment status on facebook to Plasma Donater at CSL Plasma Center, everyone judges you. Here's the thing. Friend of mine is a petite gal and the paying of the plasma goes according to size. She got $70 for one hit. I am bigger than her, but not that big because I lost weight. Too bad I'm not morbidly obese anymore or else I would probably be

Yeah, as if you haven't heard enough of that on the radio. Anyway, you can donate twice a week and at $70+ a hit that's like $140 a week. That isn't bad for summer income. However, this is illogical and frowned upon or so I'm told. Apparently, I am doing what crackheads often do to get money for crack. Well guess what? Crack isn't the cheapest thing around so if this practice can support that then it can support a poor cowledge kid's last two months before school starts. That's when I become a WRITING ASSISTANT. I wrote it in all caps, because I think it's kind of fancy. Fancier than donating plasma.

I once had coffee with a lovely boy and he told me those majoring in creative fields (he was an art major) aren't doomed to unemployment, but have to come about a job... creatively. I think that donating plasma is a creative job hobby way of attaining quick cash. Please stop judging me.

Also, I think donating plasma is even fancier than donating sperm, which I also considered although maybe not because it's actually very difficult to donate sperm. Not... physically... but with like paperwork and steps and the like.

So what do you think? Should I just do it once? Don't do it at all? Do it twice a week and buy books for school and probably for recreational reading, because I'm me and who are we kidding?

Let me know in the comments!

Also, I found another scheme a new way to get followers and made friends! Here is my Follow Friday stamp of approval as made available by http://www.parajunkee.com/

Started a new book today too! Other Voices, Other Rooms. My first Capote. Anyone already read it? Thoughts?

Whata cutie.

Thanks for reading,
Nick

Big Boys Don't Cry, But I Lost Weight So I'm Not That Big and I Can Cry

Loves,

Here's the thing. Today I went out for sushi with a handful of my girls. I call them "my girls" because you can't have them. You see, as much as this may astound, I Boo Radley'ed my way through high school and when  the police told me to stop luring wise-beyond-their-years children with yarn or whatever in tree nooks, I shrank even farther into myself. That was a joke. I have never had trouble with the police. It wasn't until my girls came along and lured me from my seclusion with shots of vodka and friendship like I had never experienced that I really started to embrace the sass and crass attitude that keeps you reading. You can thank them or file a complaint with them if you think I'm obnoxious. So, I go to sushi with three of them today (five girls total) and the toughest of them told me I was a man, because I finished my sushi before everyone else. Really, I finished it first because I ordered the least amount due to my liking of the feeling when smaller amounts of fabric begin to fit around my waist and thighs and calves and ankles in addition to my torso and arms and blah blah blah.

It was nice to feel manly, so I didn't let her in on the truth. That whole rant was kind of pointless because it doesn't have much to do with the rest of the post, except that I like talking about my girls. If this were a novel, I would have to eliminate that section even though I like it so much. That's what the editors and agents say. So that's what you have to do. Sorry if you don't like that, but tough luck. Good thing this is a blog and I can do whatever the fuck I want, which includes swearing to/at Sarah Dessen readers and petunia planters.

I included the above to merge into the topic of me not being all that masculine when it comes to reading books. Listen, I cry a lot. Maybe not when Grandma died, because she was old and decrepit and senile and I saw pictures of her on a tire swing when she and my Grandpa first got married and she was smiling really big and was not eating cat food, but I do cry when I read. I eat my sushi the fastest, though, so it's okay.

Did I just connect the two topics? Bow down. No don't. Just comment and follow.

Below are the last three books I read and guess what? I cried during each of them and upon finishing each one I sat staring at a wall blinking out tears. How about you suck my dick?

Sorry about that last part, sometimes masculinity gets defensive about femininity, which I find even more insecure than crying in the first place so how about you don't suck my dick.     

My Last Three Reads:

"It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn't, and we weren't."

Mysterious Skin is about two boys that experience the same tragedy, but embrace it in very different ways. One substitutes the event with alien abduction while the other turns to prostitution. Told from varying viewpoints, the novel is intimate and then immobilizing. Every voice is casual enough to the point of believably, but it is a subtle casualty that is quite hard to pull off. A lot of times an author tries to sound like a teenager and says things "rad" or "wicked" too often and creates these pseudo-indie, factory made representations of teens that aren't teens at all. Never create teenagers; create humans that happen to be in the 13-19 age bracket. Author Scott Heim understands this. Who he brings to us are not characters, but real people. He didn't puppeteer for Neil or Brian, but simply gave them to us as they existed. I cried because I made friends with these boys and then I went through the motions of their sordid pasts with them as they came to accept it and look for resolve.

"Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve."

The Perks of Being a Wallflower was a book I avoided. It was published by MTV and reeked of "no one understands me so I stay on the outskirts of social existence" blah blah blah aka my high school years. I don't know why I finally picked it up but I did and I'm glad. It's about a boy with mental issues and social issues and that's about it. He's one of the most likable and naive characters I have encountered and while his voice is very simple, that simplicity is what makes it stagger to poignancy. I cried because it made me understand what someone told me once and I can't tell you want that something was because this is my blog and not theirs so it would be rude of me to blab all their secrets. I'll make it up by telling a secret of mine: I have been in trouble with the police. Ask me about it in the comments.

"Dade Kincaid is not afraid of the things of which the world is made."

The Vast Fields of Ordinary did not strike me dumb like Mysterious Skin and The Perks of Being a Wallflower did. It crept up on me. At first I didn't sympathize with the main character, because he seemed a bit too whinny and woe is me blah blah blah, but then came a strange changing. Dade seemed to realize I wasn't connecting with him and sought to win me over, which was sweet of him and successful. The plot is simple: boy comes to terms with being gay during his last summer before college. It made me cry, because it showed to me my age and waning youth. It made me want to back-peddle into the JuneJulyAugust years so I could change them to make them all nostalgic with tire swings and playground vandalism and teen romance, but I cannot trade in my nights of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes and too much junk food and not enough friends. I realized what Dade did, that everything recesses gradually and then suddenly. It's all far away now and back-peddling only makes the bike go forward at a slower pace.

Thanks for reading,
Nick 

Pants and Bowls.

Loves,

I boiled in my bed-sheets all last night, worried about going in that damn KFC after all that you're not a good chicken bucketer hubbub. Then I jumped up in bed and the cat hated that, but oh well because when you have an epiphany you jump up in bed. The epiphany was this: I'll quit. And I did. SO, no longer will I don that too small hat or walk two and a half miles in those blister educing ,slip-resistant, eye sores of work shoes. Gone are my days of trying to appease the girl with all the names of her two week boyfriends tattooed on her neck and forearms and probably other places that are hidden by that flouncy red polo. With God Myself (yay atheism) as my witness, I will never scoop coleslaw into styrofoam cups again.


Today is a good day, because of the above and because of all the other things I am going to tell you. I bought a pair of black pants that did not fit two weeks ago. They would not even button. Now they button. Still snug, but they're getting there. It makes me feel dumb for being so happy about that. Yay I can wear less fabric around my waist and thighs and calves and ankles. Party circa '99. I used to really believe in embracing vanity. I mean, it was a bad idea to put me in a room with a mirror because I would probably end up looking in it for a fat minute. Now I think that's kind of gross. I'm still happy those pants fit though, so maybe my attachment to self-image isn't all gone, just cooling.

Today is also a good day because I found my bowl and the green lighter I used to get it going on the last days of being a college freshie. That made me nostalgic. I hate nostalgia, but not really. I hate it because it makes all productivity stop and I end up just sprawled out on the bed listening to Patrick Watson's The Great Escape on repeat. I love it for the same reason.

So I guess now you know I smoke pot. Sorry if you were hoping I didn't. Do bloggers smoke pot? Is that allowed? I bet Sarah Dessen gets baked. She gets roasted and then goes and writes all those depressing books about girls doing coke and getting beat by their boyfriends. Oh, coke. Oh, boyfriends.

Please realize there's a guy under all this sass. I think Kathy Griffin and I share a similar fate. We're both crass and brass, but there was that one episode of Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D-List where Jay Leno made her cry. Sometimes that happens to me too. I'll probably get mushy in posts later on, but this is like our second date and I'm not going to do that to you just yet. LOOKS LIKE YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO FOLLOW ME. CLICK. THE. BUTTON.


Thanks for reading,
Nick

Follow Me and I'll Give You Money, Sex, and Fame

Just kidding. How about you follow me and give me money? Better yet, how about a nice offer for representation?

Well, I guess if I am going to gain any followers I'm just gonna have to do it the old fashion way: whit, sass, and occasional moments of frailty. I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Nick Sawatsky. Saw-At-Sky. That's fun, huh? I am sixteen eighteen twenty years old. Wowee, I had a harder time admitting to that than I did admitting I'm gay, which I am. Both in the happy sense and in the lemme hop on a dude sense. Was that too vulgar? Do people who read blogs dislike vulgarity? I feel like most blogs are about reading Sarah Dessen books or planting petunias. Actually, I watched an episode of 16 and Pregnant once and the pregnant sixteen year old had a blog all about being a pregnant sixteen year old. Do maternity stores sell prom dresses? Talk about vulgar.

Okay. More about me. I'm a starving novelist. Seriously. I'm starving. I barely eat anything. I once weighed in at 293 pounds. That was in August 2010. Since then I have dropped that shit like it hot. I dropped around 150 130 110 100 pounds of that mess. I guess it's because I did it the "right" way with "healthy food" (read: horribly bland and gross and man do I want an ice cream cake)  and elliptical/stationary bike love making. Sometimes I wish I was rich and glamorous like Lindsay Lohan so I could just snort my way to my ideal figure, but I don't have the dough for that.

I don't have the dough, because I am a Creative Writing major at Hiram College and kind of work at KFC. I say "kind of", because today my boss sat me down and made me sign my name at the bottom of a paragraph that described in detail what a horrendous worker I am. I guess it's a warning, but listen, I ain't even mad. Actually, I'm kind of sad. Who can't properly pack orders of fried chicken? Maybe it's because all the chemicals have warped the drumsticks to look like breasts and the thighs to look like my grease ridden future as a fast food manager instead of a lauded author. That kind of shit distracts a guy. Only good news, since I'm probably kicking that extra crispy bucket soon, I won't ever have to update my facebook employment section to "Manager at KFC." Is that even allowed? I feel like KFC managers shouldn't be allowed on facebook. Or the internet. Or the earth. So since that's out of the way, I guess I'll be homeless.

OR NOT. Because I am writing a novel. Guess what? You can't say you're writing a novel without sounding like a pretentious douche-bag. Go on, try it.

"I'm writing a novel," says my followers that do not exist.
"Oh, you sound like a douche. Keep following me, please," says Nick.

Alas, it's true. Saying "alas" will also make you sound like a douche. I am writing a novel. MY SECOND NOVEL TO BE PRECISE. This is because my first novel was a haphazard conundrum of dog guinea pig shit. Guinea pig shit is worse because it's small and unnoticeable. No one really pays attention to it. And that was novel #1. Your first novel will be guinea pig shit too. Well maybe not, but probably. However, in your desperate attempts to sell your gp poop to God The Devil literary agents, you will get schooled. You will learn the publishing industry inside and out. You will learn about writing being rewriting and criticism circles and query letters and publishing contracts and advances and ARCs and loathing towards all others that get their manuscripts turned into actual books. Hell, keep reading this blog. I might just tell you a thing or two about what I've learned, but I'm mostly here to be sassy and sarcastic so head over to guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog for the serious stuff.

I'm hungry so I'm going to go eat that nothing I've been looking forward to. Leave me comments. Follow me. Please. I'm a very nice boy that loves to read and also loves his mother.

Cliff notes: Nick Saw-At-Sky = Gay, used to be fat, KFC hate, writing book, literary agents, loves books and mom.

In the future I plan to blog about books, writing, losing weight, and the monotony of my life. Be there or be square.