Donald Trump, 45th President of the United States, pictured here after getting struck by a bird while on a roller coaster.

Welcome, “friends”, to yet another State of the Blog Address! I’m your host, Tom Writesaboutstuff, and I’m here to cram a bunch of words into your eyeballs.

I’m going to do things a little different today, and by that I mean I’m going to bitch and moan unrelentingly. You see, longtime fans of my stupid website that no one knows about (especially you, who isn’t reading this at all), I’ve hit a bit of a slump. A flump. A spump. An ambivalence, if you will. On one hand, this website means a tremendous amount to me and I’d love nothing more than to keep it active. On the other hand, keeping it active feels like homework at the moment. I’m finding it difficult to get enthusiastic about keeping up with the content that I want to write about. For every movie, TV show, and book I consume, that’s another post to write. And while at one point this was very exciting to me, I’m finding myself sifting through a small backlog of posts that need to be finished.

You may not have noticed, loyal imaginary reader, because I still keep churning out the content on a near-daily basis. This is because I’ve literally done so much writing that I have finished article upon finished article upon finished article on the backburner. I’m talking nearly 100 finished articles just waiting to be dropped. This may sound insane to people who aren’t me, but I have this compulsion to drop only one article on any given day. Obviously, my frequent prolificity and my ability to write up to 3,000 words a day has caused me to be quite ahead over the last few years. It’s a nice buffer for times like this when I just don’t feel like I have it in me to write.

Where are my roadblocks? Allow me to go over it all in mind-numbing detail that only I could possibly care about. This is all a behind the scenes exclusive!

Movies

Working on this website got me back into watching movies, an activity I was never thrilled about in my adult life until I got ambitious and started cataloging my movie-watching via blogging. As of this writing, I’ve posted 50 movie articles and I currently have 35 on the backburner. That may not sound like much, but that’s more movies than I watched in the ’00s and ’10s combined, easily. Considering I started Flicked Off! in 2022, that’s fairly frequent for my own standards. That’s about a movie every 1.2 weeks.

My hang up here is twofold. First, I made the mistake of including a movie synopsis section, and while I try to make it somewhat humorous, those are an absolute chore to write. It’s always the last thing I do, and unless I’m in a unique mood, I tend to dread it. This is all supposed to be fun, and that is not very fun. Second, sometimes I just don’t have much to say about a movie. Take Say Anything, for example. I watched this movie for the first time in June, and you’ll most likely see it posted in about nine months to a year. I’ve watched two other movies since with full write-ups, and I don’t really know what to write about with respect to this LOVELY John Cusack and Ione Skye romantic romp. Sure, it’s good, it holds up really well, John Cusack isn’t at all creep even by 2024 standards, the two have wonderful chemistry, and the criminal father side plot is an interesting take on the understanding, trusting father on the surface who just wants his daughter to be happy. Other than that, I don’t know what else to say. And maybe in another mood I can could come up with a trillion things to yammer on about, like platonic female friendships or the shitty Peter Gabriel song blasting out of Cusack’s boombox. But right now my MUSE just isn’t there.

I still want to watch movies, though. It’s quite a conundrum.

TV

Joe Biden pictured rubbing two dementia-addled brain cells together trying to figure out where he left his colostomy bag.

Through the Idiot Glass is easier for me because all I have to do is ramble incoherently about a full season of a TV show. I barely even have to talk about it! I just write stuff like “Tony Soprano is a dummy” or “The Smoke Monster is sexy” and coast for the rest of the post! No complaints here.

I’m making some progress on the Fantasy/Sci-Fi Diaries, having about eight episodes of X-Files on the backburner. I also started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, so expect to see those episodes pop up soon! Buffy has taken a backseat for now since Season 1 is so atrocious and hard to get through. Expect features for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Angel, Farscape, Babylon 5, Stargate SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Supernatural once I learn how to stop time at my will and/or learn to sleep for only 15 minutes per day.

Another TV idea I have: Suffering through every episode of Zombie Simpsons (Seasons 9 – present). I don’t have time for this until my kids leave for college.

Comics

Comic books are not a problem at all right now, especially since I write them as I read them. It makes it super easy and fun to boot! I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of reading comic books in this fashion.

Other features like Stripcreatin’, Cruisin’ Thru Calvin & Hobbes, and Manga Cum Loudly are tougher to get motivated to work on. It doesn’t help that I absolutely hate manga and, even though I love to hate-write about it, it’s not enough for me to dedicate an hour during my busy days anymore. Hopefully I can free up some time somewhere along the line for these features, because they are fun to write when I’m in the right mood.

Music

Ha! Dead in the fucking water. Considering that this blog was originally going to be called “Tom Writes About Music”, and considering that I have an earbud blasting tunes in my brain for literally 14 hours a day, it’s amazing to me that I don’t care enough to write about any of it right now. The biggest blow is Newer Release Roundup, a feature I put a lot of time into during the beginning that is now a desolate wasteland. I’m just not listening to much new music these days. Am I finally getting old? Fuck.

In an attempt to repent for my sins, I’m revamping Metallurgical Evaluation and AudioBiography. The former will allow me to write about metal in a relatively low-pressure environment, and the latter will allow me to write about everything else in a relatively low-pressure environment. I really hope I can put some work into these two features sooner rather than later.

Other than that? Pfffft.

Other Stuff

John Adams pictured in 1790 before roller coasters and colostomy bags existed, unfortunately.

Stand-Up Deep Dive is my second-newest feature and it has really bolstered my motivation to write like none other! Here’s what I do: I take an hour-long walk while listening to CARLOS MENCIA jibber-jabber in my ears and I take extensive notes. So I’m laughing uproariously in public and I’m staying healthy to boot! When I can’t get something on audio, I’ll watch the special on my favorite streaming service. It’s a slam dunk idea, and I need more new ideas like this to keep my ass writing.

Playing with Myself will be my attempt at tackling some solo RPG journaling games. Ironsworn, Starforged, Thousand Year Old Vampire, and 23,000 others! Seriously, there are a lot of solo RPGs out there. Eventually I’ll try a solo campaign of Dungeons & Dragons, but first I’ll need to punch my balls sixty times in preparation.

Dear Journal is miserably barren lately. I wish I could write more about random shit, but I’m simply not getting the inspiration to plop down 1,000 words about paper clips or Estonian elections. I would love to write in Dear Journal constantly, but it’s just not happening right now.

My Earthbound playthrough project started last November and stopped around January. I’ve written up eight chapters that are ready to post, but I want to get more progress under my belt before I start dropping them on you, the unsuspecting public! This is really fun to do, but I just simply don’t have time to really put the effort into it.

Here’s What Would Be Fucking Awesome

My biggest influence with respect to online satire is Something Awful, so I’ve spent a better part of the last 24 years of my life trying to emulate their front page in my own way. Making money off this site would be great, but it ain’t happening. So, ideally, I would just need to get rich enough to stay home and write for no profit while my wife spends all her weekdays toiling in the salt mines.

OR, barring that, some A.I. robots need to hire me to post two articles per day, every day. I’d pump this bitch so full of content that it would be overflowing like Mount Saint Helens, killing everyone in its pyroclastic path. And I’d have plenty of time to do everything I want to do and then some.

A man can dream. And by “man” I mean me, which is weird because I’ve never felt like a man in my life.

Thanks for reading! Until next time, keep watching the skies!