Who do I still think I am??

This one's about, ohhhh, nothing to see here.

30DBC PROMPT: "What do you do when there is nothing to do?"

What's up folks? Judging by the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  forum, it looks like some people felt a little displaced by the lack of a prompt for the better part of Monday. Normally the day's prompt rolls in around midnight (Eastern Standard Time, or WDC time, or my time...reader's choice), but today it looks like it didn't come down 'til after 2pm. Didn't bother me much, because I spent most of last night and all of today not having internet access at all. I didn't even notice until after my internet was restored and I glanced at the forum briefly to copy the prompt, and saw a bunch of messages about it. Man, that sucks...I don't know who I feel worse for, Emily , or everyone else that couldn't wait to sink their keyboard letters into whatever Wildcard Monday would bring for them.

All of that means is that in an odd twist of irony, I actually had nothing to do. I mean, there's plenty I could have done, but I took Nothing for $500, Alex, and the answer was Night by Elie Wiesel. If your question was "What book did you read today", then I guess you're a winner. I gave up on trying to reconnect to the internet after about fifty attempts...I suppose if I were really that hard-up for something to do, I probably could've kept track of the actual times the Wi-Fi signal rejected me. There isn't much worse a feeling than seeing multiple local areas you can get some internet from, only to be told by your laptop that you can't connect right now, and then being diverted back to the screen with all the hotspots begging you to join them again. It's taunting, I tell you...the internet's such a bully.

So anyway, about this prompt...(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNcM4YjzgHY) what do I do when there's nothing to do? I'll tell you what...nothing. That's the right answer, isn't it? Ain't nothin' to do, so I ain't doin' nothin' (my spell-check is about to explode after that sentence). Boom...done. End of entry.

Only, not quite. If I were to look just a little deeper into this prompt, I would see that it's an offshoot of prompts related to boredom, waiting, and patience. And we did cover patience last week, did we not? [*Editor's note:"This one's about the gifted and the patience." ] Now, we can't be having prompts about the same things every week [*Editor's note: Offer not valid on Sundays.], right? So I'm gonna go with boredom, and see what kinda trouble I can get into with that [*Editor's note: Boredom can be both a direct and indirect cause of trouble in many areas.].

Some people can do well with nothing to, well, do. I don't. I hate waiting. I hate lines. I hate not being occupied by something besides whatever's going on in my head. I need diversions and schemes and tactical alliances and methods of minor destruction. I have to be prepared for anything at any given moment. I need to always know what time it is and what the three best exit strategies are wherever I am. There are times for whys, and times for why nots...and when there's nothing to do the first thing to do is figure out which moment fits the bill.

And more often than not, you'll catch me makin' faces (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAY27NU1Jog). I tend to think not in thoughts or sentences, but in conversations...all parties involved. And I can get animated with the hand gestures when I speak, so when I'm thinking about the conversations going through my head and I'm speaking I'm picturing my hands moving, and my eyes tend to reflect that. While my pupils are speaking for my fingers, I start mouthing personal answers from my side of the conversation. So if I'm really deep in thought because my physical and/or mental presence is left to its own unoccupied devices, then yes, I do look like I'm slightly batshit-insanely keeping myself company. It doesn't happen often, but it's happened enough for me to have taken note of it (although not enough to stop my mind from wandering aimlessly).

So if you see me on the street and it looks like there's a fistfight going on between my ears that my lips are guest-refereeing, it's cool; you should probably gently prod whom or whatever's causing any delays in what it is I want to be doing and tell them to not keep me waiting much longer, because "he looks kinda crazy, and it's best that we get him outta here as soon as we can because I think he's starting to scare people". [*Editor's note: And that's exactly my point; if you're scared of me you'll leave, which means I get my needs tended to that much quicker. Evil genius wins again! ]

BCF PROMPT: "What’s your learning style? Do you prefer learning in a group and in an interactive setting? Or one-on-one? Do you retain information best through lectures, or visuals, or simply by reading books?"

Quite the multi-faceted prompt from the "Blogging Circle of Friends Prompt Forum"  compared to the "nothin' 'bout nothin'-ness" of the 30DBC's portion of Monday afternoon Mondayisticism. I shall tackle it the only way I know how: *raises a finger in the air triumphantly*...wait, ummm, how??

I don't mind group-learnin' stuff, but I'd rather learn on my own. People can become distractions; or, perhaps better said, I distract people. I'm much better off gathering new information when there isn't an audience to entertain. However, here's where it gets complicated: I'm not one to study. I can't just read a book and know how to do things; I need to be shown once or twice (the nice thing about that is once I know what I'm doing, I prefer to be left the eff-bombs [*Editor's note: Yes, I went plural there, as an emphasis on how strongly I feel about it.] alone). Don't tell me how to plant a garden; show me. Don't play me the song; let's sing it. Don't tell me to read pages 137-145 about revolution; let's go get them countries!

I always had terrible study habits. When you got passable grades, it kinda muted the point. I got what I needed outta class, and that was it. If I tried reading after school, I usually distracted myself into other, more fun, things. Pointless things, most likely. Others strived for wild successes that were often beyond their scope of attainability, while I was content meeting requirements and doing the bare minimum (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cg-6wbETtbo).

I imagine having to learn in today's computer-based environments would present their own unique sets of challenges...everything's so internet-driven these days and maybe to an extent that would be beneficial, but the temptation to do other things online at the same time would be so much greater than just trying to watch tv or listen to the radio while doing homework. And I know what you kids are thinking...what's a radio?? See, it's this thing with a knob, and...now, you see how this distraction thing works with me?

So I don't know if I actually have a defined "learning style", unless this prompt is meant to be some kind of weird social experiment where we outline specific scenarios and the information is disseminated by a third party that separates us into one of three different groups based on how we responded and uses more of a generalized approach rather than personalized analysis. You know, like those quizzes in Cosmo about your perfect mate and if you choose mostly B's then you're bound to marry your crush who is also a D-list high school celebrity...something like that.

I probably should've left the house this afternoon and randomly made faces at strangers instead of carrying on with this prompt. Oh well...I'll know better next time I've got nothing else to do. [*Editor's note: Back to the top. ]

MUSICAL BREAK!!

I try not to get bored, but sometimes I can't help it. There aren't many things uglier than the sight of me talking to myself when there's nothing else to do and nobody around to do it with.

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

19: I like informational lists as a means to kill a few minutes just as much as the next guy, but I think the internet has simultaneously outdone itself and reached strikingly sad lows pertaining to content when you find yourself reading this: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ailbhemalone/signs-youre-in-a-relationship-with-hummus?b... (and for the record, I absolutely enjoyed the article, but really Buzzfeed? Seriously?? [*Editor's note: I personally would also like to contest #18, because if you have fingers then you're never short of anything to dip in your hummus.]). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpecF_JfdtQ

I know that Night is barely 100 pages long, and I know what it's about (and no, it was never on any of my mandatory reading lists growing up, so don't pull that card), but nobody ruin the ending for me, ok? I'm, like 70-some pages in, and I'm gonna try to go to bed early tonight, which is just a convenient way of saying I'm lazy and I'm not gonna feel like finishing it later.

Hey! Only another month or so before pitchers and catchers report for spring training! Seems like as good as any other time to remind you all that my favorite baseball team is the lowly resurgent New York Mets, although it has been said that I may actually hate the New York Yankees more than I like the Mets. And since there hasn't been much baseball news to discuss as of late, may I throw it out there that Alex Rodriguez deserves every second and more of his 162 (plus playoffs) game suspension from MLB (http://espn.go.com/new-york/mlb/story/_/id/10288864/alex-rodriguez-arbitrator-an...)? Between that and the Hall Of Fame voting scandal (http://deadspin.com/dan-le-batard-loses-hall-of-fame-vote-suspended-from-b-14980...) last week, baseball needs to do something to feel good about itself. However, I don't think this is it: http://deadspin.com/ok-i-just-fucking-give-up-i-cant-do-this-anymore-i-150054697....

And that's another Monday in the books y'all. Let's hope I can get this posted, edited and Tweeted before the internet decides to leave me scrambling to figure out what exactly it is I do do when there's nothing else to do. Peace, I've got people skills, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!