Sunday, April 4, 2004

I've discovered my spam-filtering software likes to--at extremely random and erratic intervals--blot out useful e-mails and blacklist people I'd actually want to correspond to. How and why it does this is still a mystery, (although, if I have to throw out a theory, I'd say "remote alien mind-control experiment." Or maybe God just hates me. Who knows?) Anyway, if you've been trying to get in touch with me for a long time and I haven't written an answer to you, it MAY NOT be because I'm a lazy cow, it may just be that I can't get your letters. If that's the case, you might want to e-mail me using a different e-mail address and see what happens. (If nothing happens then yes, I AM a lazy cow. Deal with it...)

Now, I suppose you're all wondering how I did with my job interview. Well, it was... pretty sucky. I headed out for the print shop I was to interview at, got lost, then found the place ONLY to discover it had moved to another city twice the distance away (and had forgotten to update its listing in the Yellow Pages). I call the print shop, reschedule the interview, and learn once I get there that they want me to replace someone who's already working there whom they sneakily want to get rid of. (The told the kid whose job I was jockeying for that I was here to interview for a customer service position. How nice.) Anyway, the interview is pretty short. A few questions, and then I'm being shuffled towards the door. Granted, the people running the print shop had an emergency on their hands when I came in, so I can understand their need to be brief, but they didn't even look at my portfolio. Not until I offered to show it to them. (They looked through it, but only out of a sense of politeness, I fear.)

I dunno. I can't say I have much in the way of prospects down here, although, admittedly, I haven't been searching for all that long. We'll see what happens between now and Easter.

Y'know, the palmetto bugs were bad enough, but now I have the cats who live in this house dragging dead mice into my room (2 of them, in the last two days) and eating my food when my back is turned. Yikes. (Oh well, it's more THEIR house than it is mine, so I guess I can't raise too much of a ruckus over it. Not that I'd have any energy to DO any ruckus-raising after this week. Oy...)

Wednesday, March 31, 2004

I'll have the first job interview I've had since coming to North Carolina tomorrow. (Yeesh. Just try diagramming that sentence. It's a good thing I'm not applying for a job as an English professor.) I'll be interviewing for a job at a local print shop. Hopefully, this will be one of them nice, semi-professional, sit-down-at-your-own-computer and be treated with a modicum of respect type jobs, and not one of those Kinko's-y, imagine-what-it-would-be-like-if-McDonald's-ran-a-print-shop-only-it-gave-its-employees-more-work-and-paid-them-less-money type jobs. We'll see.

I am TRYING to fit into the social scene here. Really, I am. Tonight, I made a game attempt to show up at UNC's weekly Otaku Club meeting, but was thwarted by a bone-chilling rain and a lack of available, on-campus parking space. While I was there on campus, I couldn't help but notice a large number of students wandering around the campus wearing dark clothing and yammering on their cellphones. I didn't pay them much mind UNTIL THESE IDIOTS STEPPED OUT IN FRONT OF MY CAR WITHOUT EVEN NOTICING I WAS THERE. Helloooo. Stupid kid with the phone in your ear, I'm driving a CAR. A 2000 lb. hunk of steel-plated machinery with pointy corners and the capacity to deal your brittle, fleshy carcass serious damage at even the slowest of speeds. Might I suggest you tear that obnoxious bleeping contraption away from your self-important ear and watch where you're fucking going? Sheesh.

Oh, the palmetto bugs haven't pulled anything on me as of late, but I know this is only the calm before the storm. Them buggers ain't fooling me...Unh-uh....I'll be ready for 'em......Yep...Yessir....

Monday, March 29, 2004

Anime Detour was this past weekend. It was the first anime con ever to be held in the state of Minnesota and, were I not now trying to carve out some sort of existence for myself 1200 miles away, I would surely have attended it. (Fun factoid: the event was indirectly responsible for the crashing of my car last July, which happened while I was on my way an AnimeDetour planning meeting. Of course, it was my own stupidity and my inability to navigate one-way streets which was directly responsible for the crashing of my car, so I can't pin TOO much blame on the organizers of the event, as much as I'd like to be able to.)

I would have liked to have gone to AnimeDetour--it being a milestone of anime fandom and a fun event, no doubt. Still, the North Carolina Renaissance Faire I attended this past weekend was a pleasant diversion (made all the more pleasant by the warm, breezy spring weather common 'round these parts during this time of year.) There were plenty of merchants and shiny wares up for sale at reasonable prices, although me and my friends--most of them fellow unemployedniks--found ourselves relegated to windowshopping (or to it's outdoorsy, window-less, pseudo-medieval equivalent.) In spite of my poverty, I managed to score myself a Celtic necklace, a paper parasol and a peacock feather. And I managed to get out of the house for a few hours, which is a GOOD thing, as my skin is now so waxen from under-exposure that I'm starting to become transparent. Soon, I'll look like the guy from that "Operation" board game and when THAT happens, the chances of my engaging in any sort of meaningful social interaction from then on in will be nil. (Although I might be able to make good money renting myself out to anatomy classes as a 3-D torso model.)

Speaking of meaningful social interaction, there's an Otaku Club in this area, over at UNC. As it's an organized group with an established hierarchy, I find myself both greatly intimidated by it AND hesitant to join it. I suppose I'd find sitting at home by myself watching anime videos infinitely easier than trying to carve out a niche for myself in the collective consciousness of a group of total strangers who just happen to share one of my interests. Unfortunately, I don't have a TV, and so watching anime with strangers is pretty much my only structured, reliable access to the genre for the moment. (For the record, I have been to ONE meeting of the club, and everyone I met there seems to be very nice. In fact, I only found ONE thing at fault with the club and it wasn't its people, it was its insistence at showing only ONE episode of a series per week. While I'll admit that you may have more room for variety with this type of viewing schedule, it DOES take you an ungodly amount of time to view an entire series. (This is especially true if the series you're watching contains several season's worth of episodes. Want this club to show Marmalade Boy or Fushigi Yuugi? If you want any chance of seeing the ending, you'd better hope you're a freshman when the series begins.) I dunno. I got used to a two-episode-count-per-week showing during my years at SCSU, and there was plenty of schedule-fudging allowed if the last episode of the week happened to end with a really bad cliffhanger. But no such thing down here. I'm spoiled, I guess. I can only hope I don't whine about it too much-- either here or at any future club meetings I may attend...That is, IF I decide to attend any future meetings. Thus far, the only thing the club is showing that I find worth watching is The Twelve Kingdoms. They're also currently showing the final episodes to Last Exile, but seeing as how I don't want to see the END of that series before I've had the chance to see the beginning of it, I have to duck out whenever it's on, -- thanks to the club's glacial viewing schedule, I'll have to be doing this for the next several weeks. (What? You believed me when I said I wasn't going to whine about that? Ha! FOOLS!) Ahem.... Anyway, there's not much else on the club's viewing schedule that's worth turning up for--there's a series about vampires which has an engaging storyline but more recycled animation than a Filmation production, and there's this show about garbage collectors. IN SPAAACE! (Yawn. Go see Magnetic Rose if you want to see a show about space-faring garbage-men that's handled well and unboring-ly. Unboring-ly. Is that even a word?)

Oh, I re-edited some of my entries in my Elfwood Gallery so you should be able to see my new stuff now. (And comment on it if you seem so inclined.)

And now.... I have to go. There's a scratching sound coming from the direction of my bathroom which I PRAY AND HOPE is not a contingent of palmetto bugs organizing themselves to launch the next phase of their Top Secret Operation: Make Pale Chubby Yankee Girl Wet Her Pants in Terror. Too bad I wasn't able to afford that spiked mace I saw in a weapon vendor's booth yesterday at the RenFaire. It sure would come in handy right about now...)

Thursday, March 25, 2004

I had my first run-in with a palmetto bug tonight. Palmetto bugs are apparently a big thing down in this area of the country, a fact I was sort of aware of when I moved down here, but it was not until tonight when I came to learn just how formidable these creatures are. They are to the insect world what Godzilla is to the world of rubber reptiles. Had the writers of the Book of Revelations known about them, they surely would have edged out those pussy old scorpion-tailed locusts as the chief torturers of mankind. These steel-winged, armor-plated flying lozenges of DOOM are everywhere. EVERYWHERE! And yet people seem to think it's alright to go about their business in the midst of these exoskeletoned abominations from the fiery bowels of Hell. I suppose I can live with that, even if I AM a card-carrying Entomophobic who can't get within 20 yards of an insect without screaming and throwing myself on the floor in writhing paroxysms of fear....

I'm coming to realize now that I MAY not enjoy the summer down here as much as I thought I would...

Oh, the funnest moment of the evening? Waiting patiently, with fists and teeth clenched, for my friend Kate to kill the aforementioned palmetto bug and then being told afterwards that I should lighten up because "it was only a small one." Great. That made me feel SO much better. (You mind if I seal myself in plastic, roll around in some insecticide and sit in the back of my closet for the next few months? You don't? Great. I'm good, then.)

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

I created a new format for my weblog as a sort of informal commemoration of my new surroundings. Said new surroundings are nice enough; North Carolina certainly is a pretty state, filled with all sorts of bizarre and colorful fauna (which sort of remind me of those weird, plastic-looking plants frequently growing on alien worlds in old Star Trek reruns. Only stranger.) Moving from Mid-March Minnesota to Mid-March North Carolina is a lot like traveling to another world-- A warm world. A world with flowers and history and gajillion-year-old buildings and fashionably dressed people begging by the side of the highway. Yup. That's right folks. The people here actually dress up to beg. It's like I'm living in some Bizarro universe where the rich people panhandle by the side of the road and the poorer classes tool around in Lexuses and BMW's. (I have never SEEN so many luxury cars in one area in all my life-- I suspect there must be some sort of spontaneous generator nearby spitting them out a'la those monster generators in Gauntlet. If that's so, I sure wish I knew where it was located so I could get myself a nicer ride--I'm afraid after five days of rain-soaked, mountainous travel and two weeks of zipping around a strange city with roads that would make lasagna noodles look straight and even by comparison, my old Cutlass Oldes isn't running all that well. Never mind the fact that it looks like a hideously dented and deformed duckling amidst all these streamlined, chrome-plated swans.)

One thing I would like to know, though: Why the hell are there so many Volvos around here? Status symbols or not, them things are UG-OL-EE. MY car laughs at them--that's how dorky they look...

Oh, the image to the left is a detail from my latest tarot card: The Princess of Wands



The wands suit is supposed to represent liveliness and creativity, energy and optimism, which are things I'm finding myself in short supply of right now. (Although I WAS able to finish two more pages of my chronically under-updated Elder Star Comic this week, which my collaborator, da Queen of Swardz was nice enough to post for me. Thanks also to Webmaster Joe for compressing the panels and for his HTML-wrangling.) Re-reading it now, my updating rantie for the comic seems even more whiny and filled with self-recrimination than it usually is. (I hadn't thought such a thing possible, really.) Under my whining, you'll see a donate button on the bottom of the ES main page. As you've probably already guessed, it's purpose there is to give people who like the comic and who want to show their support for it, an outlet for doing so on a tangible, physical level. (Of course, you could just come over to mine and Queenie's houses and give us both sensual, full-body massages, but I think you'll find the donate button to be a more viable ---and, for YOU, much more pleasant--option.)