how to create a citybuoy blog post (or how I became the poster boy for emo)

Step 1: Choose a theme. Feel free to choose from the following. They’ve gotten me through the last few hundred posts.

1. You are extremely unhappy with your love life because
1. You are dating someone who is emotionally unavailable.
2. You are dating someone who is in love with someone else.
3. Your ex keeps haunting your dreams.
4. You are dating someone who is generally fucked up (but you lahvett)
2. You are extremely unhappy with how your life turned out because
1. Your mother/father/brother/sister/how do you brush your teeth? is emotionally unsupportive.
2. You were never able to reach for your dreams.
3. You are crippled with the past and how things were easier then.
4. You have writers block and your stories are starting to haunt you.
5. You feel fat/stupid/ugly/all of the above.
3. You are extremely unhappy in general because
1. The world is out to get you.
2. Nothing goes your way.
3. Nobody loves you.
4. Even you hate yourself.

Step 2: Establishing shots. Always use your current surrounding (this is also why *where* you write is very important). Now make the scene darker. Now imagine that it’s raining. Now imagine that you’re balled up in a little corner with your arms around your knees and you’re rocking gently back and forth. You there yet? Good. Now describe small details before “zooming out” to the bigger ones. In other words, write like an ant.

Step 3: Conversing conversationally. Make your characters talk. Use a lot of adjectives in your dialogue. Use a lot of adverbs in your attributions. When you can’t think of any lines, feel free to borrow from movies or songs. I promise you. No one will even notice. Also, try putting two physical things and one metaphorical thing in the same sentence (eg. I handed him my bag, my coat, and all the love my little heart could give.) They’ll be shitting rainbows on your serial comma.

Step 4: Emotional equivalent of an a-bomb. Many thanks to ןıuǝ oɟ ɟןıƃɥʇ for coining the term. Think of a really sappy line. Now add the following:

1. Mozzarella
2. Cheddar
3. Feta
4. Brie
5. Camembert
6. Edam
7. Monterey jack
8. Parmesan
9. That quezo de bola from two Christmases ago.

Note: Position these carefully. They’re best placed in unsuspecting paragraphs.

Step 5: Who you calling an idiom? Each post needs at least one idiom. Not only will this make you look smart, it will also make the plot easier to contain since most idioms have a pretty long back story anyway. For more information, click here.

Step 7: Write the tragic ending. Short version: you always end up alone. Bonus points if you have any of the following in the final paragraph:

1. An epiphany.
2. A renewed sense of optimism.
3. A reworked version of the lead sentence (also known as the Taylor Swift final chorus).
4. Emotional equivalent of an a-bomb.
5. An open question (This rocks the foshizzle out of your comments page. It gives people something to say other than “nice story” or “I love the structure of this post.”)

Step 8: Kudakan. Tie the whole thing together using media.

1. Locate a melancholy picture. When all else fails, go to deviantART and search for the word “sad” under “Photography.”
2. Lomofy the shit out of that picture. Rotate, crop and scale to 620 x 220.
3. Choose a song. Anything by an angry/depressing singer-songwriter will do. If all else fails, Google your theme with the word “lyrics” and feast on the first search results page.
4. Use the following code to post the picture and embed the song:

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td background="PICTURE URL" colspan="2" height="220" width="620"></td></tr><tr><td align="left" height="24" valign="bottom" width="570"><embed allowscriptaccess="sameDomain" bgcolor="#ffffff" class="citybuoy" flashvars="titles=ARTIST - TITLE&soundFile=MP3 URL" height="24" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="PLAYER URL" style="height: 24px; width: 580px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="580" wmode="transparent"></embed></td><td height="35" width="50"><img align="right" height="35" src="ALBUM ART URL" width="35" /></td></tr></tbody></table>

Let's try it!!!

night swim

“Why is this lake salty?” he asked. His teeth chattered while he spoke. Truth is, I’d done all I could to avoid him. It’s in these dreams I have of him where his memory refuses to die. And so although my waking life is rid of him, my dreams have always held him every night since the day he left.

“Let’s go for a swim,” I said hurriedly, my breath fogging up from the cold. In this dream, we are at the lake house where I first dared to call him my own. I unbuttoned my shirt and stripped to my underwear.

“It’s freezing,” he wistfully retorts, his puny arms shivering. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“With us, are there ever any good ideas?” He took off his shirt and lay on the grass by the lake. I sat down beside him, feeling the dampness of the earth seeping through my nakedness. He continued to strip and made neat piles of our clothing. I glanced as he removed his underwear, feeling my erection snake from underneath. I took his hand and under the moonlight in the shrill cold of that November night, we went into the water.

I held his face, my hands fumbling through his dark eyes, his sharp nose, his crooked mouth. I ran my fingers through his hair like a comb. As we kissed, I began to push his head down the water. We both knew what was coming.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked just before his mouth disappeared into the water.

“Because I need to keep living. Because I want to give myself fully to my new lover. Because your memory still haunts me when I sleep.”

“Then let go,” he said and so I did. He submerged his head under the water on his own. I could still see his under the haunting moonlight, telling me he understood why I needed to kill him. A few moments later, he let out a few bubbles. Then I saw a flash of panic in his eyes. One more thing, they said and it was clear he wasn’t going without a fight. I placed both hands on his head again. He flinched a little as he tried to make his way back up. His arms and legs waved frantically underwater. I firmly pressed both down on his head. I felt his claws hard on my body. I knew for sure he’d taken some of my flesh under his nails.

When he’d left, I emerged from the water and walked back to where we left our clothes. I put on my pants, lit a cigarette and prayed the worst was over. I fished out a flask from his back pocket and after taking a swig, I poured the rest of the vodka on his clothes. I flicked my cigarette into the pile and watched the whole thing burn.

“Why is this lake salty?” he asked. His teeth chattered while we spoke. We are at the lake house where I first dared to call him my own.

In the pale moonlight, under the roof of stars, in the water that held both our beating hearts, I whispered my response. “Because we’re swimming in all the tears I couldn’t cry for you.”

I’ve done many things in my life. I’ve reached many highs and survived countless lows. On lonely nights when I wake up from nightmares of him, drenched in sweat, tears and regrets, I often wonder if we ever truly forget.

♫: Alanis Morissette | 8 Easy Steps (2002)
Photo: sad / pixlr.com

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The Emo Blogger's Happy Blogging Challenge: Vanity

• ןıuǝ oɟ ɟןıƃɥʇ: Vanity, A Series
• citybuoy: how to create a citybuoy blog post (or how I became the poster boy for emo)