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Raven's Log
Stardate: 7.31.04
Only 38 more shopping days til my birthday.
Sorry I've been away so long, but pneumonia and laziness wait for no man. My birthday is September 8th and now that I have a P.O. box (it is Door 457, 3232 Cobb Parkway, Atlanta, GA 30339), I'll be expecting gifts, lots of gifts, I mean tons of gifts. In fact, whoever sends the best gift will receive a free gift from me and no, it won't be the clap. Nude photos are not mandatory but encouraged.
Now to cover some odds and ends. The A/V club is for you to respond to, don't wait for me. I'll chime in if something intrigues me, or at the end or possibly not at all. I want to know what you think. I already know what I think. How else am I gonna get you to drink the Kool-Aid if I don't know which of your thoughts I have to change? Our next A/V selection you can either purchase it or go to Barnes and Noble and read it for free or you can choose to do C). none of the above. I do not believe the library will carry it and that is because they do not carry trade paperbacks. This month's selection is Hellblazer: Original Sins. It contains the first 9 issues of the Hellblazer comic. I believe we should start the discussion on August 10th.
Next. the reason I won't take money orders for auctions is because hypothetically, you could bid and win, claim you sent a money order and six weeks later, no nothing. Then I have to go and find a second place guy, but the buzz on the item is already gone. With PayPal, pay is immediate. so PayPal only. However, anything in the Store can be bought by money order. Also, if you happen to have something you'd like to have personally autographed, you can send 20 dollars plus shipping and handling through PayPal or money order with your item and I will sign it as you wish. Unless you want me to sign it as Raven instead of as you wish. Hardee har har. Do not send anything monstrously big because you know how I hate being inconvenienced.
As far as my opinion on 'Conversations with God' goes, this is my choice for spirituality, because I can't believe that if God is perfect then the other religions are accurate. Mind you, this is just my opinion, but if God is perfect, which I think we can all agree He is, He wouldn't be vengeful, wrathful, prideful, righteous, etcetera. because those are not the traits of a perfect being. Besides every other religion is too exclusive and most religions only allow those in that religion go to heaven; it doesn't seem fair. It also doesn't seem to make any sense to me because that means if one religion is right, then all the others are wrong and I just can't see that big a percentage of people not getting to go to heaven because their style of worship doesnt fit in the exclusionary guidelines of this supposedly "one right religion." I have other arguments of course. Take Christianity for example. It says in Deuteronomy that if your son doesn't obey you, to take him down to the village square, get all the villagers and throw rocks at him til he's dead. Oddly enough, that doesn't work for me. Another example is I think most of us can agree that God gave us free will. However, in Sodom and Gomorrah, because man shows wickedness, God destroyed man and the city. So if he gives you free will, but then you make the wrong choice with your free will and he destroys you, then it's not free will. Hey, maybe Neale Donald Walsh, author of 'Conversations with God,' is wrong, a charlatan and a fraud and maybe the Christians are right or the Jews or the Buddhists or the Muslims or the Mormons or the agnostics or the atheists or the Druids or the Flat Earth Society or the Dutch or whoever; then I'll be sad, because the optimist in me wants it to be how he's written. No hell, no getting it wrong. Just heaven waiting for all.
More odds and ends. Giving 100%: I always get miffed when fans go, "oh, he didn't give 100%." How the fuck do you know? The boys work their balls off; you may not like the match, but that doesn't mean they are dogging it. Maybe they're not working the same as they did a different night, but there may be extenuating circumstances. Injuries, travel, personal problems, etc. Hell, an unresponsive crowd will suck the life out of a match. To wrestlers who know how to work and listen to the crowd, if you fans give nothing, it's hard to give back. We feed off your emotions, and, in turn, play off your emotion; taking matches to levels that can't be approached by ignoring the crowd. A lot of young guys today don't listen to the crowds; They just set up all their spots in the back and do them exactly as scripted regardless of whether or not the fans are booing the babyface, cheering the heel or ignoring everything they see. And what some of you may consider lazy, i.e. matches that are not nonstop acrobatics fests: like working the crowd, backpedaling, gaga, selling, etc. is still working. In fact, it's a much harder skill to master than just nonstop spot spot spot. In fact, many, if not most, people prefer a little drama with their match. It's just a percentage of the so-called smart fans who think it's laziness. For example, some fan was writing on the forum (and everyone is entitled to their opinion and I encourage people to voice their own views even if they're contrary to mine) that he thought that a match of mine, which I believe was in England, was a huge letdown because he thought I was being lazy and that I let down the British fans. Actually, I was working as hard as I possibly could because of the overwhelming outpouring of emotion they gave me. I was telling my opponent, CM Punk, after the match that we actually did too much. He asked why and I said because the crowd volume peaked two-thirds of the way through, not at the finish. In a perfect match, crowd reactions will peak at the finish. The reason for this was because I wanted to give the British fans as much as I possibly could because of the overwhelming response they gave me. Because of their responses and the fact that I prefer calling matches in the ring that the story we were telling would have been more effective in two-thirds of the time, but I wanted to give them as much as I could and overshot what I believed would have been the best possible match. Interesting, huh? A longer match that should've been a little shorter. Time has nothing to do with quality, but you can't blame me for wanting to give more. So it shows how much that schmuck knows. Hey, I can call him a schmuck if he can call me lazy. Hey, I respect his right to his opinion, yet I have no idea why he thought I was dogging it. Maybe he was just trying to stir the mud or get a reaction from me. Whatever. I'm not responding to him because I'm mad, I'm responding because it's a point about wrestling that I think should be brought up. I bring it up because A) it's interesting B) it's informative to you fans and C) I respect how hard my fellow workers perform. However, if he thought I was being lazy maybe I'm just not the worker he believes me to be.
Anyhoo, I'm back from my pneumonia, still waiting for lazy ass Vandenberg to write a guest column, I just won 490 bucks playing No Limit Texas Hold-Em in only my 3rd time ever playing and the clock is ticking. Do your birthday gift shopping my little ravenites, ravenettes, bird people, malcontents and degenerates.
I've decided against registering at Tiffany's this year.
P.S. As far as selling stuff on auctions just to make money, let me remind you that I am putting away for my future cuz there are no pensions in wrestling. However, if it was just about making money and not trying to sell interesting and unique stuff people would enjoy, then I would sell ten times the crap each week. I wouldn't put any thought into it at all and I would just find any ol' item that sold and sell it again and again and again and over and over. I try to be creative and original, ask Vic. He's all like, "just sell this or that," and I won't because its only partly about money. There have been weeks I haven't sold shit just because I couldn't come up with anything original enough or a one of a kindish. I believe the only repeats are promo notes, but I equate that on a lesser scale to a musician's song lyrics. Hell, if I could buy me some of Robert Plant's old Zeppelin song lyrics, I'd have that shit framed up and hung up right next to my expensively framed giant Zeppelin poster.
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