Workouts and their wonderful effect on the brain

Novelists should work out constantly.

No, seriously! I want to see all potential novelists get health lectures. No junk food! Take long walks! Work the weight set!

Working out, exercising, eating right... these things don't just extend your life and give you strength. They clear your mind. They get your mind running at 100% of optimal. They give you a huge creative rush. This is what they should be teaching in schools. It's a great way to crack a case of writer's block. It's a great way to get your day going. You don't need a gym or anything. I'll give you a hundred exercise to kick your butt you can do in your own home, without any special equipment.

In other news, it turns out pointing and saying bang is discriminatory or obscene. Who knew? Apparently the professor wanted to talk about guns, gun control, and whether violence breeds violence. He wanted his students to think. So he started this discussion, pointed at one and said bang. Presumably to demonstrate something. Maybe how easy it is to kill with a gun? It says that subsequently another student pointed at him and said bang, demonstrating that if you armed the kids at school, something of this magnitude couldn't happen. (although the idea of a classroom debate when all the kids are packing heat makes me sweat...)

Well. Freedom of speech has been dead a long time. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

I'm going to write a lot today about selling your soul to the devil. Although I think too much is made of those big decisions, those epiphanies. It's the little decisions and moments that drive us forward. The song Sympathy for the Devil, by the Stones, lays it out like this: I shouted out,/Who killed the kennedys? /When after all/It was you and me. The message? We all want to know who the bad guy is when we put ourselves forth as the bad guys a long time ago without realizing it. Our little decisions caused the big problems. We wonder why there's a war in Iraq, but every single American is complicit there. Did you think our way of life, from the Coke bottle to the car, could survive? Did you think the entire idea of all men being created equal could survive without wars?

So it's a compelling thing to write about. Hopefully I can get my obligatory 1,500 words today.