PapaSeanski

Photo by Yaraaa

It happens to all of us. We sit down, take out a blank piece of paper, and then we stare.

And then we stare some more.

You have an essay to write. The odds are stacked against you. It’s you vs. the paper and pen. You fight desperately to finish your first sentence, but the pen immediately puts you in a headlock while the paper gives you an atomic wedgie. You get tossed out the ring, and have to spend the next few hours recovering from the ill effects of atomic wedgie radiation.

But what if you had Hulk Hogan as your tag-team partner? With Hulk nation on your side, you could choke that pen into submission while Hulk body slams the paper. Here are some ways to tag Hulk into the writing ring with you.

Get Hulk Hogan to write for you. For about 50,000 dollars and up, you can get Hulk Hogan to come and personally write your essay, do your homework, or just stare down your teacher until you get an A+. Try to get Hulk to stare down the teacher so that you can just hand in Hulkamania bandanas for future assignments. If you are writing a blog, get Hulk’s signature and copy it to the bottom of all your posts. Hulk Hogan’s signature will lift your writing over his bald head, and throw it into awesomeness.

Photo by Cirofono

Buy a Hulk Hogan action figure. It’s rare, but sometimes I come up just 20 bucks short of the 50,000 needed to book Hogan. My 30 page research paper on the history of peanut butter is no where near done and Hulk is no where in sight. The next best thing is to have my Hulk Hogan action figure pin my paper down for a 3 count, or until it begs for mercy, whichever comes first. After my Hulk action figure pounds those annoying wide margins down to size, I can step in and finish the job. Keep the action figure where it is visible to the paper and pencil at all times so you don’t waste the stare down power of Hulk’s mustache.

Photo by cyancey

Always use a No. 2 pencil or banana. Using any other writing device implies ambiguity as to who is No. 1. If you are truly going to conquer your fear of writing, you must be large and in charge. Writing with a No. 2 pencil means you understand the basic laws of physics, and abide by the hierarchical nature of the universe.

Hulk Hogan and tag-team partner (you). = Numero uno.

All writing tasks = Numero dos.

Break a pencil in half. Pencils and other writing utensils are not protected by the Geneva Convention so you are free to maim, torture, and kill as you please. If a pencil is uncooperative, get Hulk Hogan to break it in half or do it yourself. Leave the broken graphite remains nearby. The other pens and pencils in the vicinity will know their destiny if they resist making beautiful sentences.

Photo by zhurnaly

Wear wrestling tights. Don’t expect to get in the writing ring with Hulk with just your pajamas and expect to win. Dress like you came to wrestle and write. That means no Spider-Man underwear or CareBear socks. And don’t think writing in a suit and tie will make you feel like a professional writer. I have never heard more bologni in my life. All that does is make it easier for someone to take you by that leash around your neck and toss you into a garbage can. Instead wear bright neon tights, so you are harder to grab by your opponent.

Photo by Courtney Nash

Listen to your theme song. I’ve read propaganda on other blogs and websites that say you should listen to music to boost your creative rocket ship into space. This is not true. You need a theme song that will give your writing topics the heebie jeebies. You need an anthem that will make consonants and vowels assemble themselves into words out of fear. Be careful what you pick. Listening to the Knight Rider theme song would be acceptable, but playing any of David Hasselhoff’s attempts at music will banish you to wackville.

Make a wrestling ring. Some people say that you should organize a work space if want to be more productive. That may be true if you want to churn out meaningless excel spreadsheets all day for your supervisor. But if you want to conquer your fear of writing, then you have to make a battlefield, not a cubicle. You can’t expect Hulk Hogan to help you much in an office or cubicle anyway. You need a wrestling ring. Where do you think the Declaration of Independence was written? In a wrestling ring.

Photo by emme-dk

Get to the point. More is not always better. There is no need to fill up page after page of fluff. Hulk Hogan hates fluff. Why be scared to write 10 pages of crap when you can just write a Hulk Hogan quote at the top of the page. Think about it from the reader’s perspective. Would you rather sift through paragraph after paragraph until to find a sentence worth reading, or would you rather have Hulk Hogan bring the heat with just a stomp or two. Write like you are hitting someone over the head with a chair when the referee not looking. Don’t write like you are trying to tickle Tickle Me Elmo to death.

“The Glow” is a mythical state of pure awesomeness that is attained when you reach the pinnacle of your field of study, preferably Kung Fu. The glow gives you supernatural powers that allow you do defeat B-movie villains with the ease and comfort of a lazy boy chair. Your body will glow bright colors while corny theme music plays in the background, further humiliating your arch enemy.

Achieving the glow is no easy task. Up till now, only two people have attained this state of consciousness, Bruce Lee and Bruce Leeroy. But don’t worry; we will break down exactly what it takes to get the glow.

Photo by Tom@HK

Change your first name to Bruce. As I said before, only two people have reached the final level of hotness, and they were both named Bruce. If you want to maximize your chances of getting the glow, you should keep with tradition and stick with the name Bruce. If that name really bothers you, then you will have to make up some hot Kung Fu sounding name that is worthy enough of having the glow. Any derivative of Bruce Lee will work. If not, use your own name and choose a random animal for your last name that starts with the same letter.

Like…Peter Panda
Larry Llama
Tommy Tiger

Remember. You aren’t reinventing yourself. You are just letting the world know that you have vast reserves of hotness stored inside you, waiting to be tapped.

Have random arrows shot at you while training. It is not enough just to train furiously for years until you exhaust all your master’s tips and tricks. Random arrows must be shot at you while you practice your field of study. Whether you are painting, figure skating, or building a bridge, you must skillfully weave out of the way of random deadly arrows and karate chop them in half as they whizz by you. Why? Because it looks hot.

Photo by LondonBrad

Watch movie clips of Bruce Lee to achieve greatness. It has been scientifically documented that watching Bruce Lee movies will transfer photons of hotness to you through osmosis. Bruce Lee movies have an unlimited amount of awesomeness packed into each frame. So, in order to keep the universe in equilibrium, high concentrations of awesomeness must diffuse to areas of lower concentrations of awesomeness (i.e. anything that is not Bruce Lee). Make it your duty to find these clips, and soak in the hotness that radiates from these classics like Bruce Leeroy did.

Let’s follow Bruce Leeroy’s timeline.

In 1964, Bruce Leeroy was born.

In 1968, Bruce Leeroy saw his idol, Bruce Lee. “My Interest in martial arts began at the age of four while watching Kato [Bruce Lee] on television in ‘The Green Hornet’” - Taimak aka Bruce Leeroy

In 1985, Bruce Leeroy achieves the coveted ‘glow’ while defeating Sho’nuff.

So basically,

Born on whatever date —–> Watch Bruce Lee ——> Acquire glow.

Photo by Anahita

Find an arch enemy. Tell me that little kid isn’t looking for his first arch enemy! TELL ME!!!

After years of training for your goal learning a new language, writing a book, or hosting your own TV show, you need someone to jump kick in the end. No journey is complete until you pulverize someone’s chest with your foot. Don’t pretend like there is a shortage of villains in your town. You can find your nemesis at the local DMV, because all evil villains have to drive. You can also check in the frozen food section of the supermarket, where all the cold-hearted dirtbags hang out.

However, you can’t just defeat any old enemy that walks out your grandma’s bingo game. That wouldn’t be hot. You need you give your enemy a title that will instill terror through nursing homes across the world like….

Sho’nuff, the Shogun of Harlem.
Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds.
Pierre, the French Tickler.
Gargamel, the Smurf Slayer.

Find an Asian master that speaks only in proverbs. Yes. He or she must be Asian, because that’s the unfailing Hollywood formula. Your master must constantly drop nuggets of knowledge on you, and speak in cryptic, fortune cookie, sentences that must be deciphered by you while performing a meaningless task. Communicating to you in haiku would also be acceptable.

For example, Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid was a great master.

Van Damme had Xian Chow in Kickboxer.

Mr. Miyagi is another great one. Yes, I said Mr. Miyagi twice because anyone who can teach Ralph Macchio to fight deserves a double mention.

Also, if you are Asian, you can’t have an Asian master train you. In case Hollywood makes a movie, you must overcome some kind of racial tension on the way to glowing nirvana. The best example of this is the movie Cool Runnings where a Jamaican bobsled team was trained by champion Caucasian, John Candy.

I’ve been painting a picture of the Incredible Hulk on a t-shirt for a while now. I’m almost done, but I feel like the painting is always looking back at me saying something like,

“Fix this, fix that.”
“That color looks off.”
“The proportions aren’t right.”
“Add more shadows.”

I know it’s not really the painting that’s too picky and unsatisfied; It’s me. All my artwork goes through the same hyper-scrutiny. No drawing is ever good enough, and so, a lot of my work goes unfinished. Before this painting, I can’t remember the last time I drew anything, let alone produce a finished work. Even though the Hulk isn’t coming out the way I want him to, I’m determined to get him finished.

We forget how easily we all produced works of art for our parents in kindergarten. We drew a house and a happy sun in the sky in 2 minutes flat, and showed the drawing off like it was being displayed in a museum. Sometimes those days seem too long ago. Over time, we learn to beat ourselves down, and count ourselves out. We learn to pick ourselves apart and let everything eat up our creativity.

No more of that crappy thinking. While bringing the Hulk to life, I learned a few things.

1. Remember what you have done! A lot of confidence can be gained from remembering past work that you are proud of. If you are fortunate enough to have an old work of art, hang it up. If you have an old research paper, reread it. Maybe last month you wrote a funny email. Dig it up. If you can’t think of anything, ask your friends. Sometimes we are blind to our greatest accomplishments. You might be surprised what other people appreciate about you.

2. Don’t try to impress others! Sometimes it is easy to get caught up on what others may think of your work. If you try to conform to everyone else then you will lose your own unique voice. Being unique is what makes your work appeal to others in the first place. There will always be people who don’t like your work. There’s nothing you can do about that. Just be you.

3. Relax! You aren’t performing heart surgery. Take a chill pill. Have some fun with what you are doing. You don’t have to separate focus and determination from having a little fun.

4. Take breaks! If you are getting bored with your project, take a short break and come back to it with a refreshed mindset. Your project won’t get up and walk away on its own. Pinky promise.

5. Don’t work when you are hungry! This is especially true when painting the Hulk, because he always looks hungry. Don’t starve yourself for the sake of getting something done faster. Your brain is supposed to feed you ideas, not your stomach.

Ok, time for dinner. Want to see the Hulk shirt I made? Stay tuned.

Image by Tedsblog