3

The More Stories You Have That Start With "I Was Hanging Out With My Cousins," the Trashier You Probably Are

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It was actually a buddy of mine who first came up with this theory, and I was shocked by how immediately I agreed with it, and how consistently I'd recognized the trend in life. I grew up in an area that always seemed to teeter between middle and lower-middle class. As is the case with most neighborhoods like that, the bordering towns and areas were upper class and slightly wealthier on one side and distinctly lower class and much shittier on the other. And I noticed without exception that, if someone started most of their anecdotes with "My cousins and I" or "I was hangin' out with my cousins" or "Down at the shack where my financially unfortunate cousins live," you could tell instantly whether they came from the wealthier neighborhood or the poorer neighborhood (especially that third one).

2

The Amount of Awards Shows You Watch Is Directly Related to the Amount of Friends You Don't Have

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Did you know that there are other televised awards shows beyond the Oscars, Tonys, Emmys and Golden Globes? Did you know that some awards shows are aired not on one of the major networks, but on channels like TNT and Spike? You didn't? Oh. Well, kudos on all of the friends you probably have.

It's true. If you watched a ton of awards shows one year -- not in a party, and not in an ironic way (whatever that means) -- you most likely spent a lot of time alone. I know this because for the first year I lived in Los Angeles, I didn't have any friends, and you better believe that I watched the shit out of every single awards show.

BET.com

Can you pick a BET award out of a lineup? Because I fucking can.

1

The More You Talk About the Book You're Writing, The Less You've Written

If someone tells you that they're writing a book (even and especially if you didn't ask), ask them a lot of questions. They'll have a lot of answers for you. Answers about the plot, a few characters, maybe even some sample dialogue. Ask them a few more questions, and get really specific when you do. When you get through with all of the "idea" questions, ask them how many pages it is so far, or how they've found time to write it. I guarantee you that in your lengthy conversation about this random person's book, eventually you'll hear something that sounds sort of like, "Well, I don't actually have, like, chapters or anything yet. I mostly just have notes. I mean, the book is written, it's just in my head. But if you're asking to see a paragraph of it, then no, very much no."

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"I've got an outline, though. What's that? Oh, yes, it's also just in my head."

I'm sure you know people like that. They've got their screenplay or novel or pilot that they're "working on," but really they just want to tell someone about it, and they think that's the same thing as writing. Meanwhile, I guarantee you that you've got a friend or two who actually are writing a book or graphic novel, and they just haven't mentioned it.

Robert Brockway's the perfect example. He's a coworker of mine. We have lunch together sometimes. He comes to my fancy parties. He sits literally six feet away from me. He started self-publishing an e-book a few days ago and last week was the first time I'd ever heard about it. He wrote an entire novel, built a website for it and stayed quiet about the whole thing. I see him almost every day! How did he do that?! Meanwhile, random strangers have spoken 50,000 words to me about a book for which none have been written.

My Best Guess:

Writing books is really hard. Talking about them is so, so easy (fun, too!).

Also, that's a move that dumb, lazy people use to trick themselves. I know because I've been a dumb, lazy person in the past (I've whittled it down to just dumb now). Whenever I wanted to write a book or play or sketch, I would convince myself that talking about it would motivate me to do it. If I just tell my friend all about the awesome movie I'm going to write, I'll finally have an excuse to write it, because he'll be waiting for it. Yes! But that's just a stall, I was just deluding myself.

Also, and I can't stress this enough, not writing is so much easier than writing.

Daniel O'Brien is Cracked.com's Senior Writer (ladies), and he had a fifth entry planned but ditched it because, yo, not-writing is way easy (other lazy people).

For more from Dan, check out 5 Terrible Situations for the Socially Awkward Man and Hey, Let's Fix The Internet.