Well This Blows

There was a scheduled blogger outage this evening, so I decided to catch up with other blogs while I waited. I thought I had a decent post in mind and was worried that it would get eaten, as others have after scheduled outages. So I went cruising around and totally forgot my post. And now I've lost my writing impulse as well. Oh well, there's always tomorrow or later tonight, even if I can't post from home yet.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Terrifying Tuesday Edition!

Helob finally ate one of the little violinsts! I happened to glance over at him/her/it/bird/spider and she/he/it/bird/spider snatched up a cricket that wandered too close. Sweet success for me and sweet succulent secretions for him/her/it/bird/spider. Hopefully, fear will keep the rest of the string section in line.

Summer Expedition Plans?

My quartermaster just waltzed into my writing den and proposed a schedule that included planning sessions for a possible return to the land of buckthorn and honey weiss. I nearly cane-whipped Auswald for interrupting my thoughts. The sheer audacity of the man! I was betwixt a plot and a nap, nearly finished with a rough draft of my next novel, prior to the typing stage and he barges in all a-flutter over schedules and time tables! It's my expedition, is it not? It shall leave when I say and not a moment earlier nor later.

I should not be too hard on Auswald, his disturbance brought some fond memories to the forefront of my cognition and for that I shall have a sumptuous dinner made that he will serve me and enjoy most fragrant lovelies and an abundance of pungence. This meal will sate me and serve to enhance his savoring of whatever broth and noodles the cook prepares for the staff. I suppose I should have Auswald perform an inventory of the expedition's equipment and oil my armaments. I shall retire to my den and begun anew with my memoirs.

My Life is a Constant Veil of Tears, Post-Modern Tears

I've been reading through the archive of Pictures for Sad Children, catching up on comics I've missed or forgotten since disconnecting the internets from my apartment. This comic about bugs in the flour reminded me of an incident from two summers ago. I was over at my brother's watering our tomatoes while he was off on a vacation. I stuck around to watch some tv and eat some of his food. The only food he had was crackers and mustard, so I ate some crackers with mustard. I got thirsty after eating most of the crackers in one package and went to get some water. I came back to the couch to find little black bugs crawling all over the crackers. I had previously thought the little black dots were part of the cracker. I was wrong, and horribly so. I drank as much water as I could and hoped that the bugs weren't toxic. I shoved the crackers in the freezer to kill the bugs, and also in the hopes that maybe my brother would eat them and therefore get some measure of revenge upon him for leaving me bugged crackers. He had not intended to leave any food for me at all, so I guess the joke was on me.

I nearly barfed all over the Metro on the way home, but held it together. I guess I've matured, or maybe just gotten dumber.

On Africa trip, pope displays complete lack of regard for health issues

From Yahoo news:

YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Condoms are not the answer to Africa's fight against HIV, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent. He also said that pigs fly. It was the pope's first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

The pope also said that he is a dumbass.

In similar news, the AIDS/HIV prevalence rate in the District of Columbia is estimated at 3%. An epidemic is quantified as a 1% infection/prevalence rate, according the to the Washington Post article I read yesterday. So it's a severe epidemic in the city. I somehow doubt that U.S. Representative who held up the D.C. budget a few years back over a program that would have promoted condom use is losing any sleep over this serious problem.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: The Cricket Farmer's Spider

I spaketh and I delivereth...on my own fucking schedule, so go eat a cobag, or read on, if you like tales of large, hairy, arachnids and their complex relationships with their caregivers and life-essence providerers.

Some writers have written about the eternal nights and the depths of the human soul which they encounter while exploring said nights. I write not of such nights, nor am I lucky enough to experience such lovely, lonely nights on a regular basis. I write of nights filled with the sweet, dulcet tunes of creatures unfortunate enough to be birthed into a world of captivity and fear. they live their sad, short lives in constant dread of the moment of pain and poison which suddenly ends their miserable excuse for an existence. I write, of course, of the crickets that have hatched in my tarantula's terrarium.

These are the evolutionary equivalent of veteran soldiers. They are the spawn of crickets smart or lucky enough to have lied long enough to breed and lay eggs in the strata of my cohabitant's domain. I am amazed and bedazzled by the mere presence of unpaid-for crickets in my fanged roommate's portion of our small efficiency. She's quite and always pays the bills on time, so I count myself among the lucky few in the District. Back to the crickets.

I have counted more than seven of the little bastards in there with her. The first three that reached edible stage were eaten with a quickness, mostly likely due to the extended and involuntary, totally accidentally enforced, starvation of last Autumn. Also, they were the first to sing and chirp.

As one local stand up comedian remarked last summer at Live Humans, "it must suck to be a cricket violinist, because you know you'll never be as good as an Asian." All I can say is this, if I were an Asian violinist, I would hope, pray and practice so that I would not become prey. I have not heard much about Chinese tarantulas but I will admit to the great and species-wide fear we should all be fearing at the implication that there are arachnids preying on violinists of any region.

There are more circkets than I can count in Helob's terrarium than I can currently count due to my deificient lack of marking equipment and motivation. I think I counted somewhere between eleven and eighteen musicians of various tonnage. Currently, there are only one or two denizens capable of producing ear-splitting decibels and violations of my REM-pattern. I would blame my recent lack of worthy Celebrity Dream Cameo's but the one brilliant remaining dream of such quality is still in draft form among other languishing blog posts. I can not fairly blame the crickets for this because I am a huge slacker. I can blame them for thinking that my alarm is blaring at dawn, when it was clearly set for 11. I wish she would just harvest the life juice out of these six-legged bastards and be done with it.

Regarding the predator in discussion, she remains calm in the face of immanent financial ruin. She may have lost all her stock and options, but she's still got some living crickets and a slow metabolism. The second crop of crickets to reach singing age have recently begun inflicting their special brand of insomnilent torture upon me. I sincerely hope Helob either experiences a growth spurt and the incipient pangs, or gets bored with this version of Tchaikoveranskhovenonovachight's Third Symphony in A Major, Night Terrors alternate universe version. I would vastly prefer if she would just consume all the goddamn grass that grows and chirrips in her vastness.

I will state for the internetian record that there is very sparse irony at searching for the allowed variations of the word insomnia at 6:43 am on Sunday morning.

Who watched the Watchmen? I did.

I read the graphic novel in the fall for the first time and I thought it was pretty damn good. I liked the thoroughness of the novel, even if I didn't think all of the asides and endnotes, or frontnotes, were necessary to the plot. I enjoyed the heck out of it and figured that a significant portion would be cut to make the movie. I don't really have a problem with cutting things for movie adaptations, so long as the directers or producers don't cut characters or plot points that I think are essential. There is basically no way to make an adaptation without cuts, unless you're the BBC and are shooting for a four hour miniseries, so these should be expected. After reading the novel, I had a short think about the cuts I would make, were I making the movie, and I am surprised to say that I was almost right. However, I was not surprised nor was I disappointed by what was cut.

I heard some guy complaining about it as we all filed out, and he compared it to the Harry Potter movies in the list of shitty adaptations. This was a tremendous overreaction. The Potter movies have cut scenes and extended others in a display of poor judgment and changed crucial dialogue. This guy seemed to want a literal transfer of written word and panel to the screen, and I don't expect or want that. If I wanted to see a movie like that, I would just read the book again. The director has a creative vision, usually, and you are watching their team's interpretation of the book or graphic novel. If you accept that, you might find yourself enjoying Watchmen as well.

As a movie, it is extremely entertaining but surprisingly slow at times. The characters were excellent, especially Rohrschach, though Silk Spectre II was perhaps the least excellent. Rohrschach had to be brilliant or the entire movie would have fallen apart. I don't want to spoil anything else, except to say that I thought the changes were fine (unlike the end of The Two Towers) and the movie was great overall. This feels like a pretty limp review but I don't want to give away anything for those who haven't seen it (unlike teh l4m3 and his Battlestar Galactica spoilage). Worth the bullshit of the modern movie theater experience.

I should say that I found the sex scene to be a little ridiculous. The entire theater was laughing at it and that is kinda the point but it lasted long enough to be almost uncomfortable.

Watchmen

I'm going to see that in a few hours. Hopefully, it is at least mildly interesting. I heard that some reviewers claimed that it didn't have enough action, to which I can only respond with "duh."

New Music for Pinko Punko

Mastodon seems to be taking the Rush route. A full stage show for an album about "wormholes, the spirit realm, an early-20th-century Russian Orthodox sect and Rasputin" sounds like just the ticket to get Pinko Punko and pals out of the house and bring this country out of the economic doldrums! Heavy metal prog rock will save us all.

But seriously, I'll have to buy this for my brother's cousin-in-law. He liked 2006's Blood Mountain and I need to maintain my rep.

The Genius Recommends: Advice for the Recently Free

I just received word that even more of my fans are now enjoying the freedom to look for new (employment/early retirement/unreasonable termination/unseasonable free time/ways to entertain the children/reasons not to purchase fireams). Since I have been seeking satisfactory employment for the last ten months without success, I thought I would share my obviously excellent experience at finding a new source of funding outside the family. These items are meaninglessly numbered and quite possibly meaningless in general, but hopefully you'll pick up something useful or at least smirk mirthlessly at my problems. As other people always say about me, if you can't do something right, try and serve as an example for others.

Item 1: Do Not Wallow
When enjoying the early stages of unemployment/freedom, it can be easy to sink into a cycle of self-pity and doubt. You just got fired, so obviously you must suck at the work you had been doing for 2/20/200 years, right? Not so much. Remind yourself that shit sucks right now and you need to get over your anger at your old company's decision and get cracking at finding a new job so you can go back to spending eight to twelve hours a day being miserable under fluorescent lighting. Take two days to feel shitty and angry, maybe get drunk or whatever, but that's it. Two days of wallowing is enough, you big baby.

Item 2: Log-ins, Log-ins, Log-ins
Unless you're some sort of fucking mega-star in your field, people probably won't know you. If you are some sort of mega-star, fuck off because you're ruining it for everyone else. In order for people to learn about you, you've got to get out there. In the good old days, you could keep up your attendance at the neighborhood happy hours over at Jimmy and Diane's. These days, it means creating profiles all over the goddam internet. Career Builder, Monster, Linked-In, (Local High Profile Newspaper), etc, etc, etc. Go the extra forty miles on these things, too. Really clog up the tubes with tales of your daring and dynamism at the workplace. Remember that time you saved that dude from OD'ing on correction fluid? Or the time you had two interns in the copy room? Well, maybe you leave those out. You may be thinking "But Genius, I'm a certified paper pusher with two degrees and several references and recommendations! Why would I need to go to all this trouble?" Here's the thing: someone at your targeted company will be searching the internet for information about you. Some HR flunky will be asked to "see what's out there about this guy/gal." Make sure that what's out there is positive and helpful to these people. They're already HR, so they're not too bright, so help them out.

Item 3: SCHMOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOZE
If you want to continue working in your former field, call everyone you know that is still working in the field. Chat them up, renew your acquaintance, and straight up ask them if they have any intel for you. This is not a time to be shy, or feel conflicted about using social contacts for personal gain. Remember that dude from (Other Department) who got a job at (Competing Company)? Call that guy, see how he likes the place, and if he will forward your information. That woman you got a business card from at that trade show? Call her, too. Be upfront about why you are calling and what you need from them. Listen to them, if they have inside info about the company that they are willing to share, be willing to listen. As for how to determine what you need from them, see Item 4.

Item 4: Research AKA Stalking
The internet is a wonderful land, full of opportunity and information. Did I mention that it's full of information? Cuz it's FULL OF INFORMATION. Unless you're a creep who specializes in digging out secret addresses of Myspace kids, you will probably be surprised at the sheer amount of stuff you can find out by searching for stuff like "KBR/Halliburton HR Staff List" or something similar. You need to be a frigging subject matter expert on any company that you are serious about making a run on. When contacting your people, you don't want to ask them to just kick your resume over to HR with a note, you want to be as precise as possible. "Please send this over to Mr. Wilmington in HR and I thought that Mrs. Jenkins in Drafting and Design would also appreciate it." If your contact is willing to put you forward in this way, you are already up on Johnny Pearlywhites at the interview.

Item 5: Appearance
As much as I don't hate to say it: appearance counts. True story: I was working at a public agency in San Francisco, conducting a survey of employers and their trouble filling positions. One woman at a large firm really wanted to vent about how hard it was to find qualified people who could also remember to comb their hair more than once a week and be bothered to tuck in their shirts. You can have a glowing resume and be everything they need and want, but if you smell or have shitty, ugly teeth, you're fucked. Think about it: how much harder does someone have to work at being liked if they don't take care of their person? You're already unemployed, so you've got the time to quit smoking, start a work-out routine, and dye those teeth. As fucked up as it is, a good looking person with a nice smile will go farther than the person who rocks the scruff and went to the British School of Dentistry. This also ties in with Item 1: Do Not Wallow. If you've been thinking about dropping a few pounds, or maybe padded out those quads, delts, and biceps, you've got the time and you'll have more energy. If you're married or in a relationship, s/he will appreciate this as well, and I doubt I need to explain how that appreciation will be shown.

Item 6: Branch the Fuck Out
You just got shitcanned at your job auditing banks, and now you're not even sure you want to continue in that field, maybe because you have a soul and a conscience. What the hell should you do with yourself? Maybe you can explore your artsy side because you sure loved that one drawing class twenty years ago, but that probably had more to do with the models than any talent. So what the hell should you do? Branch the fuck out. Think about ways you can apply your skills and experience in some way you hadn't been before, as a private accountant or corporate auditor or whatever, I don't really know exactly. Be flexible of mind and it will come to you. Read lots, and talk to other professionals. Maybe there is work for an accountant tracking transaction reports for a law firm. Chances are that if your former company is experiencing financial woes, your entire industry is, so you might have to venture outside that industry to find a new water cooler to stand over and discuss last night's Lost.

Item 7: Training
You've got plenty of free time now, don't waste it leveling another character so you can go raid Mordor six times a week. Go back and refresh your skills with training courses, or learn some new skills that complement your experience and can help you with that idea you had about branching out, as we discussed previously. Most job training expenses are tax right offs, but you definitely want to talk to an expert about that before claiming anything with the IRS.

Item 8: Don't Listen To Me
I was unemployed for eight fucking months before I got a job waiting fucking tables! Why the fuck are you listening to me? Talk to a professional career counselor.

Binge Blogging?

Or binge drinking? Having done the latter rather a lot last week, maybe we can expect the former this week. Motivation often comes in the form of pretty women.

If You Aren't Reading This Comic, You're a Cobag

I am the very model of a modern Gungun General,
I've information vegetable, dinosaur, and mineral;
I know the Queens of Naboo, and I led the fights historical,
From Tatooine to Coruscant, in order categorical.

I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters Senatorial;
I understand accoutrements, both simple and sartorial,
Regarding eating humans I am teeming with a lot o' news -
With many cheerful facts about the flavour of those nice Naboos.

Yes, I know this is a joke about a musical. I can appreciate that other people might not share my views, and I can even change mine on occasion. This is not one of them however, as I still find most musicals to be brain-melting.

Vacation?

So I slashed open a finger on a broken bottle at work on Wednesday. I'll have more time to blog now that I am not working for the next ten to fourteen days. Bottles don't break the way they do in the movies, but a bloody mess of a hand is even scarier than a bottle shard in a bar fight. Or so I'm told. It's a good thing I know how to type with my left hand.

Um.

SHUT UP.

Still Tired

I've got an amazing Celebrity Dream Cameo in the works, but I keep oversleeping and getting to the library too late to finish more than a few decent lines. It's hilarious, political, tarantular, and drug-induced. Pretty much the perfect snooze.

In other promised and probably undelivered posts, "Totally Tarantula Tuesday: The Cricket Farmer's Spider" is coming soon.

Also, I have a Genius Niece now. So that's cool.

A Free Friday

Hey, what do you know? I have a free night tonight. Coincidentally, tonight is also a friend's brithday and another friend's last day in town. Unfortunately, I can't split myself, so I have to choose one friend over another. Since one friend wants to go to my place of work and drink there, my hands are tied in this decision as I am not allowed to drink at my place of work on off nights.

Have fun, Katie.

Will Made Manifest?

Last night, I remarked that DC had not seen any snow yet this winter. We received about an inch while I slept.

You know what else I haven't seen yet this winter? Piles of twenty dollar bills in my apartment. I'm calling in sick and going back to bed right now.

Report From Consumers in the Field

I received these images from one of my brothers and an associate in consumption. Be warned that the images you are about to view are delicious in the extreme and may result in the sudden craving of 44 inch diameter doughnuts or fractal fritters.




I think I just ate 1500 calories by looking at these photos. Time to hit the gym. And by gym, I mean comfy chair and Battlestar Galactica season 4 DVDs.

Dued

My sister in law is having contractions. So that's neat I guess, since she's due like now or somewhen. Anyway, most recent cool thing my nephew was overheard saying was a John McCain quote:

"WHERE ARE YOU, MISTER PUDDLES!?"

I would link to the proper video, but this computer doe snot have an updated flash player and it's not my comp, so oh well.

Out of the Inaugural Mess

Quick show of hands: how many of the inauguration tourists didn't try to go to the Brickskeller for beer and a meal?

Holy crap, I'm tired and I only worked one double shift. What a pansy my slothy ass has turned into over the last eight months of unemployment.

Weeds? I'm in the frigging Savanna

"Let me know before you get too far in the weeds," the manager said to me last night. I was dealing with my third, fourth, and fifth group of 15 to 20 on a night that should have been quiet.
"Too late, I'm on safari in darkest Africa, man," I responded.
"Shit."