Fuck!

Okay so there’s this word of mouth campaign happening to pimp out the 2009 Nissan Cube in the way of a contest called Hypercube which I learned about from my friend Steph a few days ago who linked me to the contest’s Twitter account, @thehypercube. Enough links for ya in that run on sentence? Good because it’s a contest to promote the Cube (which I’m capitalizing even though Nissan doesn’t because it doesn’t stand out if I don’t) creatively by word of mouth and I have every intention of doing my best to at least make the top 500 applicants because as you all know, I’m, well, creative, but also beginning the baby steps into immersion therapy for my agoraphobia with the final goal to be able to drive again and it would pretty much make my life to win this adorable little car. Plus, if I had my own car, especially one that meets my criteria like the Cube does, maybe it would speed up the process.

Here’s what it looks like for those too lazy to click the damn link:

Anyway, from what I understand you’re supposed to sign up on the Hypercube website, which I did, then interact with the guy doing all the twittering, which I did and promote the contest until you’re sent further instructions, which I’m doing now. These instructions are apparently on how to create a profile on the Hypercube website and from what I understand, they will be choosing the top 500 contenders based on how creative these profiles are.

I have no idea what to expect from these profiles and I hope to god that they’re not html or CSS based “creativity” because if they are, I’m royally screwed.

Anyway, the reason for my “Fuck!” is because @thehypercube asked all of his followers today to describe themselves in one word and I tweeted back with my standard “Awesome.” I mean, I own the domain SunnyIsAwesome.com, it’s just what comes to mind. But in thinking about it afterward I thought “Fuck! I should have said ZENNISH!” because first of all, it’s a hell of a lot more creative and I totally made it up and second of all, it’s a pretty good description of me these days. Not totally zen, not freaking out, but zennish. If you’d like the history of the word, I’ll gladly tell you, but I’d rather move onto other things as this post is going to end up being long enough.

So, my grand plan for winning this contest is to simply be myself and do what I do and hope it all works out.

Many people so far are starting Facebook groups that are like, “Help So & So Win a Car!” which makes me laugh because that’s neither creative nor very good advertising on its own, which is essentially what the ad agency doing this wants us to do. I mean holy crap, at least put the product’s name in your title and list a few of its unique selling points such as its MP3 player compatibility, Bluetooth capabilities, or the crazy option to add SHAG CARPET to your dashboard. (For real!) I mean seriously, check this thing out, the more I look at it, the more I love it. And I’m not just saying that for the contest’s sake.

But I guess it’s not nice to pick on the competition, so that’s the last thing I have to say about them. I was just surprised at how many people jumped on the Facebook bandwagon, but I guess I shouldn’t have been.

Speaking of Facebook though, here’s linkage to my fan page for those who weren’t around the day I made it because come to think of it, I’m fairly certain I haven’t mentioned it since then. And while I’m throwing around all these links, feel free to add me on Twitter as well or friend me on Live Journal and allow me to welcome you to Sunnyland in advance – it’s a crazy place. :o)

Onto other things…

I’ve added a new page to this site, which you’ll find in the top left corner called “Playlist“. In the 8 year existence of SunnyCrittenden.com and my Live Journal blog, music has always played a big part in things as I’m either posting about it or telling the world what I’m listening to or promoting bands I love.

Last week I found a website called PlayList.com that allows you to make playlists, many of them, that you can then embed on just about any site using their player. It is my intention to create playlists every now & then and just keep adding them to the “Playlist” page. For example, “Your Best Friend Turned Out To Be a Useless Twat” playlist or  “Music To Listen To Rather Than Cutting Off Your Boyfriend’s Penis”. Y’know, fun stuff!

Between that and Blip.fm, I think I’ve got the music angle pretty much covered and I hope you enjoy one or the other or even both! (Although I’m sure there will be a lot of cross-over between the two.)

The other thing I’ve done site-wise is that I’ve updated my links, which isn’t all that exciting, I know, but check ‘em out anyway because I’ve added a few that I think some of you will be interested in and deleted a few I’m not. In the same vein, if you go to any sites you think I’d be interested, let me know. I’ve been going to the same sites every single day for the past 10 years or so and some of them are getting pretty lame or flat out dying and I’m looking to broaden my internet horizons. Send links to Sunny@SunnyCrittenden.com and for the love of kittens don’t send me a link to your website unless you think it’s genuinely really really good.

And finally, my last bit of news…I’ve re-opened and will be re-examining CammityJane.

No idea what I’m talking about? Read on.

As some of you already know, in August of 2006, I decided to try my hand at writing fiction via a blog on Live Journal called CammityJane. The idea was that it wasn’t just a story, it was a fictional girl’s blog and should it ever get published, that would be how I would want it published – again, like a blog. I mean, hey, they publish diaries in diary format, do they not? So why not a blog?

Some people at first didn’t understand the concept of the fictional blog and didn’t realize it was me who was writing it and were quite upset by what this fictional girl was “going through”. While comical now, at the time I was pretty horrified and had to write a disclaimer in the blog’s user info.

Over the next year or so, CammityJane gathered about 100 followers, who all had opinions on where the story should go next, some solicited, some not, and sometimes I would break out of character in a friends only post to make a poll asking their opinions, making it sort of like a “choose your own adventure” story.

One day, however, I became frustrated with the whole project, deemed my writing crap and decided to throw it all away, because again, as some of you may know, I’m prone to impulses like that. Blake begged me to at least print off one hard copy, so I did, and then without warning I just deleted the entire blog. Forever.

Or so I thought.

A few nights ago I was talking with a new, and very dear to me, writer friend named Marylin who you probably don’t know now but she’s talented and I suspect one day you will. So we were talking and I mentioned how I consider myself equal parts writer, artist and muse and somehow I got onto the topic of writing and publishing and things I’d done in the past and CammityJane came up. As I was talking about it, I got thinking, y’know…why in the hell DID I throw a tantrum and delete that? And Marylin agreed because she said it was something she’d want to read now and so I thought some more about it and decided that because approximately half of my audience at this point has been “new” within the last 3 years, there’s potentially a whole new audience for CammityJane should I decide to go through all the trouble to resurrect her.

And when I say trouble, I mean trouble. Live Journal permanently deletes deleted journals 30 days after you delete one. (Could I say “delete” any more in that sentence?) Furthermore, they only purge their old usernames every few years or so, so even when you delete a journal, it’s often next to impossible to get the same name again when making a new one.

Also, as I discovered, when an old name HAS been purged from Live Journal’s system, you can’t just create a new journal with that name, you have to create a journal with some other name, THEN purchase a “rename token” for $15 American dollars and change the name that way.

Well, I happened to have a spare Live Journal account kicking around which once served a purpose (job interview – long story) but not anymore, so I went through and wiped that journal clean, then renamed it “CammityJane” and made it a paid account so I’d be able to post polls. Unfortunately, this cost me $40 American dollars that I don’t really have to spare, so if anyone would like to donate to cover those costs, that would be awesome and you can do so on the front page of this site.

Anyway, since I’m going to have to manually type out each entry again and there are some logistics to work out, it’s going to take me a while to get the whole thing set up and then I’m not sure, exactly, how I’m going to roll out the entries. I think, to give new people the same experience as others had originally, I’m going to post the entries with the same distance between them as they were originally made, but I’m not going to be finicky about the dates. (Jane’s story started in August, for example, but I’ll be starting her story, with August weather, in March or April. See what I mean?) I also have to work out some other logistics to do with the character’s age, as she has, unfortunately, aged during the past 3 years, which is unchangeable due to a major event in her life that sets the stage for the entire story.

SO, I have a lot to think about there.

One of my issues with Jane’s story, which lead me to become so frustrated to begin with, was that I simply had more characters than I did story. But, if you follow my site or my Live Journal at all, you’ll know that very very soon I’m going to be starting immersion therapy for my agoraphobia and I plan on going for many “thinking walks”, as did my literary inspiration Virginia Woolf, to figure those things out. And if I can’t figure them out, I ask for help. Either way, this time around, I fully intend to finish the story and make is as chewy as possible.

Also, I doubt any of the original readers will notice, but there will inevitably be some editing that happens as I type out each new entry but I think that’s only natural and as I said, certain details of who Jane, the character, is are going to have to be changed due to her aging 3 years while she sat in a folder on Blake’s desk. (I was so disgusted by the whole thing I made him save the copy if he thought it was “so good”.)

So I guess that’s really all to say about CammityJane at this point. I’m not totally sure when it’s going to start up again, only that it’s going to be “soon” and since it’s on Live Journal and there are interactive bits to the experience, I would suggest that if you don’t have a Live Journal, you should maybe sign up for one now, which you can do, for free, at http://www.livejournal.com

Once you’ve done that, add http://cammityjane.livejournal.com to your friends list and I’ll add you back in return. With the exception of perhaps an introduction post saying a lot of what I just said here, any time I break character, it will be in a friends only post, so if you want to participate in Jane’s fate or any of the other characters’, it is imperative that you be on my friends list and can see these posts.

So that’s the CammityJane project. I hope you all come along for the ride!

And with that, I’m off to paint.