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I am irresistible to hot, young, horny women. I learned this last night while I was setting up Dead Rooster’s new MySpace page. Before I knew it I had invitations from four incredibly hot girls wanting to be my friend, because—you know—super hot girls have nothing better to do on a Saturday night than sit at home with a computer and desperately search for The Dead Rooster MySpace page.

One of them, calling herself Tina, referred to me as “Sweetie,” and just wanted to let me know there was a devastating wardrobe malfunction in the hot tub while splashing around with her girlfriends. Somehow, they all wound-up naked, and since they were wet, had to dry themselves off by jumping up-and-down on a trampoline in slow-motion. The whole thing was mysteriously caught on camera and I should watch the video right away before Tina’s dad finds out and spanks her raw with a cat o’ nine tails (I’m guessing that will be tomorrow’s video).

I delete these types of friend requests right away because, as I’ve explained in the past, I know it’s really some overly-sweaty bald guy named Frank who probably doesn’t even have a hot tub or a trampoline.

So, I unchecked the “Dating” and “Serious Relationship” boxes and haven’t had another “friend request” since. In fact, as I write this, the only friend I’ve got on there is “Tom,” the dopey generic friend they automatically give everyone when they sign-up (hmm, maybe Tom is actually a hot, young, horny woman).

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So, I’m wandering around the internet, checking out my blogroll, when I came across a post by my good friend, Don Lewis. Apparently, his heart is still filled with joy from a few months ago when I lovingly tagged him with a “meme.”

For those that don’t know, a “meme” is the blog version of a chain letter. Most bloggers, such as Don, absolutely love them and no matter how many times you tag them, can’t seem to get enough of them. I, on the other hand, am not too fond of them and try to avoid them as much as possible—actually, to be more precise: I hate them.

Anyway, I’m surfing along and see that I have been tagged by Don and I immediately say out loud, “A two-pronged barbeque fork, right in the eye!” I don’t know why I said those exact words; it doesn’t even make a whole lot of sense, except that it probably communicates, better than anything else I could come up with, my exact sentiments toward blog memes.

Since Don is such a good friend of mine, and since I did tag him with one once, I feel obligated to do this just one more time. I will NOT be passing it on though. I just refuse to promote these horrible things any more.

Here are the rules (which will apply to no one, since I am not passing this vile memerick on):

• Link the person(s) who tagged you
• Mention the rules on your blog
• Tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
• Tag 6 following bloggers by linking them [*Note: I am not doing this]
• Leave a comment on each of the tagged bloggers’ blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged [*Note: since I’m not following the previous rule, it doesn’t make sense to follow this one either]

Here are six unspectacular quirks of mine:

1. I hate meme tags. I hate these things more than I hate Captain Trips.
2. I want to kill Don Lewis. I’ve always wanted to kill him, but now that he has tagged me, all systems go!
3. I believe meme tags are the work of the same infant-sacrificing, devil worshiping cult that invented Good & Plenty Candies.
4. I love fluffy kittens. There is almost nothing I’d rather do than play with kittens—except maybe kill Don Lewis.
5. I am mechanically inclined, but hate working on anything mechanical. I am about to replace the “Clutch Release Cylinder” on my truck. I am dreading it, but I am not going to pay an illiterate chimpanzee ten times the cost of the part to turn two bolts—and, probably do it wrong.
6. I don’t sleep. Haha! Sleep is for losers. I get maybe five-hours on a good night. Maybe.

Ok, maybe I went a little over-the-top with the “Kill Don” stuff. Actually, he is probably the funniest guy on the internet and all-of-you should pay a visit to his blog. Don was the first guy to acknowledge me as a humor blogger and did a nice little write-up when I was just starting out. That really meant a lot to me.

I’ve contemplated the idea of someday meeting him in person, but am terrified that I might literally die of laughter. I’m SERIOUS! Sometimes, even his short comments and message-board posts are so funny I need oxygen. So, you can imagine how funny his blog posts are.

His blog is called, It’s a Funny Thing. Give him a visit and tell him I said, “Hello.” He’ll probably know what it means… It means, hello, but maybe he’ll mistakenly read something sinister into it.

Photo credit: Picatostes

Captain Trips is the name given to the fictional super-flu virus in Stephen King’s novel, The Stand. In the novel, this flu, which originated as a biological weapon that got away, is so treacherous that it wipes out nearly the entire world’s population aside from a few thousand people. These people are then forced to choose between “good” and “evil” and the two sides eventually face off in an epic battle to determine which side inherits the earth.

Although Captain Trips has absolutely nothing to do with writers block, I am mentioning it here for two reasons:

1. I am currently in the grip of a violent flu bug that is so devastating that I am wondering if Captain Trips might not be fictional after all.
2. It gives me a near legitimate reason to use the cool words, “Captain Trips” in the title of this post.

Think of this as my way of saying I feel far too horrible today to write anything resembling humor, so I’m going to go with something informative and hope you guys won’t ditch me forever.

As most of you already know, writer’s block is that horrible feeling you get when you try to write but for some unknown reason you just can’t.

I must confess that I, the Dead Rooster Extraordinaire, rarely suffer from any significant form of writer’s block. I used to think I was just lucky, but yesterday I received an email from Gary Bencivenga that opened my eyes to the secret. The truth is, I’m not lucky—it’s just that I’ve been doing something correctly in my approach to writing that a lot of people apparently skip.

While reading Gary’s email newsletter, which is geared toward writing effective direct-response ad copy, I was struck by the following line:

“…‘writer’s block’ is just a symptom of a rather easily cured malady—”LRS,” or Lazy Research Syndrome.”

This is it! This is the secret I’ve always had but couldn’t explain! I have always done a lot of research, even for the stuff that wouldn’t seem to require any at all. For instance, my recent post, The Spastic Dance of the Black Widow Spider Slayer, was based upon events that physically happened to me and therefore should have been a simple matter of writing them down. But, I STILL did research on black widow spiders and golf clubs before I did any writing.

Gary also wrote that John Caples, the legendary copywriter, once advised him to gather seven times more interesting information than he could possibly use.

That might be a little extreme, but I think gathering more information than you think you’ll need is sound advice.

The next time you find yourself in a writer’s block situation, go do some research on the subject you’re attempting to write about and see if you don’t find it much easier to get words on paper when you come back. I’ll bet you do.

Try it out and let me know how it works for you.

Right now, I’m going back to bed and sleeping-off this horrible nightmare of a sickness.