My Interview, Questions by Johnny Logic

Ambitions
1. Whatever happened to your comic book collaboration with Michelle? Have you ever considered collaborating with Matt on a comic?

The comic collaboration was supposed to be with Michelle, Matt, and Mario. (I never realized that they're all "M" names until just now. Jeez.) The book was going to be about three interconnecting stories for at least six issues, two drawn by each artist and each artist's story focused on one character. My job was to plot each book with a page, or less, of text and then I'd work with the artist to do the dialogue when we got to that point. Two and a half years ago, Matt, Michelle, and I got together and hammered out the basic characters and the world they lived in. About two years ago Matt, Michelle, and I met and talked about the three artists' sketches of the characters and I'd written sort of detailed plots for the first three issues so they'd be able to work on a comic and when we met next, we could see what'd been done. About eighteen months ago we all met and only Michelle had actual pages penciled and had thumbnails plotting all the pages of her issue, Matt had some more sketches and a couple of thumbnails, and Mario had a few more sketches; at that time I gave them all my basic plots for the next three issues and some reference material for drawing. That Thanksgiving, Mario, Michelle, and I got together and talked about the business end and I learned that neither one of them had done anything extra. (Mario had just had his kid and Michelle figured she could slow down because the other two had done squat.) Since then, Matt has sort of quit; Mario occasionally calls or e-mails, but still hasn't worked on anything; and Michelle and I have sort of talked about just the two of us trying to do six issues for the character that was going to be her focus.

That's pretty much where we are. Michelle has some pages and thumbnails. I have print outs of all the sketches that had been e-mailed between us. I still have my notes and plots. And I don't think anything is going to be done.

Michelle's working of getting her architecture license, or something like that, so that's what she needs to focus on. Matt is being Matt and sometimes other things. And Mario's probably being a family man supporting his wife and son.

Me? I'd love to see this thing happen, but I can't draw a bean, so I can't do this on my own.

2. I know that you have written fan fiction—is there any chance of us seeing it? What was the plot?
Other than the fan fiction story based on Queenie's Punks stories, I haven't really written any fan fiction. I've read way more than I'd like to admit to. (And for the record, I prefer the hetero slash stuff, if the regular slash gets too into the squishy details, I just don't find myself reading it, I skim. Actually, I like the stuff that does the sort off "boots scene" love stuff better than any slash. I'm there to read a story about characters I like, if I want sex scene after sex scene there are other websites that have much better written jerk material.) If I ever said that I've written fan fiction, I was lying. I really haven't.

I wrote the beginnings of a Star Trek: Voyager spec script a long time ago. I think I got the teaser and the first act or two and then plotted the rest. I know it's posted here, but I don't want to look it up right now. That script I started writing to send to Paramount, but I didn't finish it and the show ended and then I never finished it, but often wished I had.

I also plotted script for how I would have started the sixth season of Gilmore Girls and wrote the teaser out and, I think, a few lines from the first act, but nothing more.

And that's all the fan fiction I've written. In a notebook there are some ideas for stories based on the Harry Potter stuff, but taking place in the USA wondering what sort of an impact Voldemort had across the Atlantic and how the wizards of the US are different from the British wizards. I have an idea that'd take place in the Marvel Universe about a young woman who doesn't want to register with the government and how she tries to hide herself. And then there are the obligatory Star Trek stories that rattle around in my brain.

Will you get to read any of them? I doubt it. Since they're not written and who knows if they ever actually will. If they are, though, they'll probably be posted as a Fiction Friday.

3. As an eighteen year old, what did you imagine yourself and your friends doing ten years from then? Does this question depress you as much as it does me?
When I was eighteen years old, I didn't imagine myself ten years down the line. I knew what I was going to school to learn, but I never pictured myself actually working. Even when I figured out that engineering wasn't the path for me, I still didn't really have a picture of myself in the future. Well, I sort of did: I was older, balder, and fatter, but nothing else. There were the occasional flashes of fame and fortune and hot, sweaty love, but I knew those were only dreams.

Friends, though, I thought I had some idea for a few of them. You, I was sure, would have your PhD and be teaching at a university slowly becoming cynical about the laziness and listlessness of your students and wishing that you could just focus on your research. Many, I thought would go on to much more creative endeavors than they did. One turned out exactly as I feared. And then there are those who I don't know how they turned out, but wish I did.

Sometimes it saddens me that my friends aren't necessarily as successful as I wish they were, but maybe they will be one day.

Entertainments
4. I love getting recommendations from you, so what are your top ten television series?
(First, thanks. I sometimes think that people ignore things I recommend until someone else says they're good or I physically force the DVDs or books on them. That tires me.)

This is an impossible question for me to answer, in the way it's stated.

I don't like doing top ten lists; that's so limiting and, I think, sort of demeaning to the people reading them, as if they can't figure out that if I list my favorite things they have to know which I like better than the other so they can find the BEST. It's especially hard when things may be similar in form, but so different in content. I don't think that's right.

Another reason is because me just rattling off my favorite shows will be full of many tried and true shows that nearly everyone likes. How many more lists do we need that have I Love Lucy and All in the Family on them? Sure, those shows are probably the two most brilliant and influential and funny sit-coms ever, but should I go on about them here? I don't know. Yeah, they're two of my favorite shows, but it seems like they'd end up on a lot of top ten lists. Or what about my love of Star Trek, even the crappy ones, or Buffy, or the new Battlestar Galactica, do I need to expound upon those? Or even the drastically under-watched Freaks and Geeks or Firefly or My So Called Life that everyone now seems to have watched? I don't think that would be worth anyone's time unless I go well into the details of why I like them.

So, what I'm going to do is list some shows from the more recent past that I can't get enough of and rank them in three categories: Shows That Weren't Watched, Shows That Didn't Find An Audience, and Shows that Made It.

Shows That Weren't Watched:
Popular.
It was, sort of, about two girls, one blonde cheerleader and the other brunette geek goddess, who were forced to live together. What it really was was a scathing satire of the teen dramas that were once all over TV. The first season, it started out seeming like a normal teen soap, but its satire quickly moved into the scripts building to the season finale that had all the finale clichés you've ever seen. It's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. The second season wasn't so good. It seems like the network decided it didn't was the comedy as much as the overwrought melodrama that's found in most teen soaps. Still, I like this show a lot and think more people would enjoy it, especially the first season, if they tried it out, too.

Grosse Pointe.
Like Popular, it's a satire of the teen drama genre, but it's a behind-the-scenes sit-com of a teen soap rather than pretending to be one. The premise basically is that the way things are among the cast and crew behind-the-scene is more like high school than the high school drama these people are working on. I also like seeing the difference between the characters on the show and the actors who are playing the character, which makes me want to know what the actors playing the actors are like in real life.

Wonderfalls.
I don't get what's wrong with the world that this show only aired four episodes. You bastards out there have to get with it. What's wrong with people?!... That's enough of that.

Shows That Didn't Find An Audience
Arrested Development.
I have to admit that for as much as I watch them and try, I don't understand people. People say they want something new and different, but when it comes, they don't go with it. Or maybe people were uncomfortable with the way that this show took the family sit-com type and decided to build it around a family of narcissists who were much more concerned with money than with each other, even though they kept on saying, "Family first." Me, I thought this show was brilliant. From the narrator to the odd bits of self awareness to the quirky characters to the running gags, there isn't an episode that doesn't make me laugh.

Everwood.
I don't think I've ever watched a show that had more heart than Everwood. Sure, some times it sank into the depths of angst, but most of the time it carefully balanced itself between the sweet and sour that shows can fall into. It was the story about a distant father moving his kids to a small town after their mother died. It was about a family trying to become a family. It was about the adults as much as it was about the kids. The producers actually came up with true reasons that brilliant kids wouldn't go to top schools. They weren't afraid to let the emotions be honest. And while I think that the series finale was too pat for such a rich and complex show, it was nice that they had the opportunity to end it rather than leave it hanging. The worst thing about this show is that only the first season's on DVD. When can I get the other three? Hell, if all of Roswell can be put out, this show deserves it. Oh, and even though it had four seasons I say it didn't find an audience because after it's second year, it was always on the bubble as to whether or not it would come back the next year because it's audience, although loyal, was on the smallish side, even for the WB.

Veronica Mars.
The first season was as close to perfect as I've ever seen. There is not a crappy episode in the bunch. The second season was less focused, but it had enough really good episodes to more than balance out the not so good ones. I still haven't seen the third season, but I'm sure it's good. I like me some spunky, modern Nancy Drew, which is who Veronica Mars was. And the supporting cast was so strong that I thought if they ever wanted to do an episode where Veronica was missing, they could have pulled it off. Not that I'd have wanted that to happen.

Shows That Made It
Gilmore Girls.
Fast paced, sharp dialogue was the reason I started watching this show. Well, the dialogue and Lauren Graham, who delivered so much of the dialogue. Back when the show started there were rumors that Aaron Sorkin was really the creator because the words popped like they did on The West Wing. He didn't, though, but it's a nice comparison for the show about a mother and daughter who were as much friends as they were anything else. All fans will agree that there were five excellent season of this show. Many will say that it went way off track during the sixth, I wouldn't, though. I saw that sixth as taking a deeper look at the relationship between mother and daughter and how similar they are. Most would say they lost their spunk. I'd say the spunk was always a cover and the other fans didn't pay attention to what the characters were really like. Most would tell me, politely, to fuck myself. I didn't see the seventh season, but I know how it started, and it didn't start happily. Still, the first six are some of the best hours TV has produced.

King of the Hill.
While The Simpsons and Family Guy started out at a slower pace, they quickly became more and more frantic until it got to the point that the beginning of the episodes didn't have anything to do with the end. King of the Hill has, to me, always seemed proud how it could take its time to tell a story. I like the pacing. I like the confused relationship that Hank and Bobby have. I like Dale's love for his son who isn't really his son. I like Bill's insecurity. I like Peggy's over confidence. It's one of the few cartoons out there that seems more character driven than plot driven because the characters are so well realized. All in a quiet town in Texas.

South Park.
Often crude, sometimes mean, but always funny. I don't really know what else to say about this show. I like it. The animation's pretty awful, but that's the point. The kids are sometimes way to smart to be kids, but I can get over that. It has scenes that are amazing, like Cartman riding an ostrich in the future surrounded by otters riding their own ostriches. It's willing to call bullshit on religion, the best example was when the boys started a church to save the souls of the kids and Cartman stared asking for money so he could get $10,000,000. Cartman is one of the most brilliant evil little bastards ever.

Farscape.
Some may have a problem with me labeling this show that it "made it," because it was cut off after a cliffhanger, but it had four seasons and a miniseries to tie everything up. Sure, the miniseries felt like it was 13 episodes worth of plot in four hours, but how's that any different than Serenity? Anyway, this is a show that I really like because of the insane science fiction, like the worms that brush your teeth, and it's willingness to make pop culture jokes. How often does the hero on a spaceship get to make a crack about Star Wars? Not often enough, in my opinion. Then there are the wonderful special effects, I'm still always impressed with the starburst effect, beautiful. Oh, and Muppets. There are Muppets. Sure, Rigel looks like a puppet, most of the time, but practical puppets are so much better for the actor to act with. The other major puppet star, Pilot, hardly looks like one; he's brilliant. And the alien make-up, by the Henson Company, is outstanding. Only Michael Westmore comes close to them, but he rarely has the mandate to use prosthetics with gears and motors.

5. What are your favorite nonfiction books?
Well, I don't really read nonfiction. Ever. I have some books on myths, but are those considered nonfiction? I don't think they are.

I've read some memoirs and biographies, but not many and I was rarely satisfied when I finished them. Do those count? If they do, then I'll choose Dancing Barefoot, by Wil Wheaton. It only has four stories and it only has a hundred and some odd pages, but I liked it a lot.

Nonfiction doesn't often tell stories. People may use them to make arguments, but no matter how good the writing is the books always seem to be broken into points. They read like: Here's what I think; Here are a bunch of chapters that support what I think and hopefully help you to think what I think; Here's why those things should have made you think the way I thought. I fought against that form of writing in college and I'm not a fan of reading it.

I bet, though, that if I picked up a book of essays that analyzed a TV show I liked, I could get into it. Like something about feminism and Buffy or the metaphysics of Star Trek. I'd rather buy a novel, though.

Beliefs
6. Are you an agnostic? If so, are you an agnostic about Zeus and the Easter bunny as well? Why, or why not?
I'd consider myself an agnostic, yes. No so much because I want to save my ass in the end, but because I'd really like to be able to believe that there was real magic in the universe. Sure, science does and shows some amazing things, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to think things into existence?

While I try not to limit my agnosticism to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim singular God, I am not an agnostic toward the Easter Bunny. If there are fuzzy creatures like the platypus and the echidna out there that can lay eggs, why not something that looks like a rabbit? Really, though, my agnosticism, toward beings, has to do with gods and such. Beings that are supposed to be omnipotent and omnipresent. Higher than us. And, in fact, looking at how messed up and chaotic our world can be, I think the idea of a pantheon of petty, asshole gods, like the Greek or Egyptian or Norse gods were, interfering with people makes more sense than one God doing it to us. I think I could only really believe in the one God theory if I took It as the clockwork type, who built the universe and let it go while It went off to do something else and occasionally comes back to see what's going on, but doesn't really care about it.

7. You have seemed pretty jaded this political cycle. Is there anything that would make you give a monkey's tit about it? What would your ideal presidential candidate look like?
I've been pretty jaded about the last several political cycles. I just don't have the idealism that I once had about our process. It really started at the 2000 election. It wasn't because Bush got the presidency because the Supreme Court decided to over rule Florida law and stop the recounts. No, my problem was how all sorts of people suddenly started to think they were politically aware.

I was in a basic writing class in college and we had to write an essay that explained something, anything. Over half the class wanted to write essays explaining how the Electoral College worked. Why did they want to use that as a topic? Because they were shocked that the President of the USA wasn't actually voted into office by the popular vote. These were students at a university, ranging from first to fourth year students, who had just learned about the Electoral College! The first time I remember hearing about the Electoral College was in fifth grade. I didn't understand how it worked until my civics class in eighth grade, but I definitely knew how the popular vote was turned into electoral votes which actually elected the president by the end of that school year. And it clicked, these people are the reason that morons and criminals get elected all the time and if most of the electorate is that dumb, how could I be surprised anymore?

The recall election here in California was the next thing that pushed me deeper into my pit of political cynicism. Recalls are to boot people who commit crimes out of office. It was not a crime to let failing business fail and die and therefore have less tax money. Yes, the deficit was large, but that's not a crime. I don't care who anyone voted for on that ballot to replace the governor, I care that more than 60% of the people voted to recall an elected official who just happened to be the man in charge during an economic slump. Even if there was a recall on the governator for the $15 billion dollar deficit, which I believe was the number that we had back then, the state's running now, I'd vote no, because he didn't commit any crime but being stupid, and that's not a good enough crime.

I guess the only way I'd really care is if I thought the average person voted based on more than sound bites, more than a smile, more than a slogan, and more than because the other choice is worse. I'd like to know that the average voter would read the slogan "Change We Can Believe In" and wonder how wanting to build more fences and increase patrols along the border is a change that we should believe in. I'd like to know that the average voter would ask if all the oil company contributions have something to do with why she's been such a staunch supporter of the war. I'd like the average voter to get "The Straight Talk Express" to actually talk straight and explain why a man who pushed for campaign finance reform no longer wants matching funds so his campaign doesn't have to deal with the restrictions he helped to create.

None of that's going to happen, is it?

As for my ideal presidential candidate... well, my candidate would have to be absolutely candid with the people. My candidate would be willing to admit that taxes are necessary to the nation we have. My candidate would forcefully speak out against the military spending. My candidate would be realistic about the bullshit war on terror and admit that there's no good way to deal with the shit this administration got us into. My candidate would say that the best way to stop illegal immigration is to help build up the economies of the Central and South American nations rather than keep then under the heel of the US. My candidate would admit that the only way to save Social Security is to make it so that all Social Security funds are only used for Social Security and not a place for the Representatives and Senators to dip into when ever they want to build bridges to nowhere. My candidate would want to rebuild the USA's reputation in the world and use that to bring about a more peaceful world. My ideal candidate would never be able to be a candidate. He or she probably wouldn't get enough money to even enter one primary.

Sad News, Everybody

Gary Gygax died this morning.

I thank him, and his co-creator, for the hours and hours of fun I've had with my friends over the years. And even though I'm not playing, I think I'll roll some dice in his honor tonight to say good-bye.

F*cking Who?

Okay, I have to preface this by telling you that I would never endorse anything that has anything to do with Jimmy Kimmel unless it's really funny. That said, I offer up:

I'm F*cking Matt Damon
-and-
I'm F*cking Ben Affleck

I hope that one day I can buy the songs for myPod.

My Interview, Questions by Heels

1) If you could be doing anything for a job right now, regardless of education or perceived skill, what would it be?
Right now, at this point in my life, I'd like to be a studio musician for my day job and in the evening I paint and draw what ever I want and occasionally sell something.

2) With your current education and skill-set, honestly- what do you WANT to do with yourself? Stop evading this question!
If I had the money, or knew a person with money who I completely trusted, and thought I could get good people to work for me, I'd like to open a genre book store. The novels would be science fiction and fantasy and horror, only. I'd sell comic books of all varieties, trying to sweep those novel readers into comics as well. And there'd probably be some Dungeons and Dragons and other D20 stuff there. No Magic or Pokémon or other CCGs in my store. I’d only sell things that involve some sort of storytelling.

Since I don’t have the money and I get scared just thinking about owning a store, it’s not going to happen soon, if at all.

Sometimes I still want to write for a living, but I don’t think I have some of the basic skills -- mainly structure stuff and a lack of discipline, resolve, self control (you pick the word) -- to pull it off even in a part time capacity.

So, given the education, skills, and money that I HAVE right now, I don’t know.

3) What is your absolute favorite comic strip and "graphic novel" ever? Why?
Favorite COMIC STRIP (Which I’m declaring as funnies that appear in the paper or most online comics.): Calvin and Hobbes. It’s just the best. It’s funny and at times poignant. It bounced from gag-a-day to storylines with an ease most creators are jealous of. It examined the imagination of kids better than nearly anything out there. It wasn’t afraid to show parents getting angry with their son and it wasn’t afraid to show how much they loved him. It dealt with the confusion of having a crush and the odd desire to be liked by everyone even though you’re most happy when you can just be yourself with honesty and humor.

Favorite "GRAPHIC NOVEL" (Which I’m declaring everything else comicy.): It’s so easy to give an answer that’s obvious, like Watchmen or Marvels or Bone or Fables or something like those, but, honestly, my favorite is The Tick; the first stuff done by Ben Edlund. It has nearly everything I like -- superheroes, science-fiction, ninjas, a spy, a samurai, aliens, a monolith, a chainsaw wielding madman, a man eating cow, good, evil -- and mocks it all! It’s pure fun. You’ve seen the cartoon, take that and make it a little more adult (Tick asks Arthur if he’s "funny" and when Arthur says "no" they go out and get some "manly" beers) and you have fun for nearly the whole family in some slick art. Plus, that’s basically me in the moth suit, so that makes me happy.

4) Do you want to get married and have kids someday?
Sometimes I do want to get married and have kids, yeah. Sometimes I ache I want those things so much. To find someone I want to spend the rest of my life with who is always willing to spend the rest of her life with me and then spawn kids who could grow up and live a bit through their discoveries often seems wonderful.

Other times kids seem like too much but wanting to be with someone who wants to be with me would be perfect.

Most of the time, I don’t. I don’t because that much trust and intimacy, from me and from someone toward me, scares me.

5) When you first went into college, it was for engineering. Do you ever wish you could go back and stay with that?
Once in a while I wish I had because I’d be making a lot more money, but those moments are very rare. I spoke with my professors and learned what the competition is like out there in the industry and I would have been miserable. I would have had to depend on other people to get their part done so I could complete my part and if they were late I’d be the one, or one of many, who’d have to eat the loss of time or force the next person to be running late. If I’d done that, I’d probably have gotten an ulcer before I turned 28.

6) Would you ever want to go back to school? What would you study?
No, I do not want to go back to school. I do not want to do the cramming and the paper writing. I do not want to put up with the other students and the teachers who are so wrapped up in their own projects that they don’t want to give you any time. I don’t want to do that.

Just because I don’t want to do it now, doesn’t mean that I won’t in the future.

If I did, I’d either start over, sort of, and study film and theater stuff or I’d get my Masters in literature or writing. The main problem is, what would I do with a Masters?

7) You asked it of me, so... What draws you to sci-fi, fantasy, and other fiction of the sort?
I like the imagination. I like how the stories can be allegories for events in our life. I like how the out of time settings can give the themes a new relationship to what’s happening now even if the story was written almost a century ago. I like the sense of hope so many of sci-fi and fantasy stories provide and I like the way that other sci-fi and fantasy stories are willing to let everything collapse into Hell, sometimes literally. In science fiction and fantasy there can be stories that are romping adventures through time and space or there can be stories that are quiet, in one place in one day when nothing but regular life happens.

I like the sense of wonder I get from these genres from the character who think of it as their normal day to day business.

8) Where did your comic strip go? Did I miss its retirement party?
It stopped being fun, so I stopped doing it.

Hell, I think that’s exactly what I wrote under the last one that I posted. If I didn’t, I should have because that’s what happened.

Most are still online. Check out this link they should be there. I did two years worth, I think, but some were removed because I used other people’s art a couple of times. Oops.

9) Do you really want to move back to Cowtown, or is it actually that you want to get away from where you are, regardless of the end location?
Okay, a big part of moving is to get away from here, yeah, but I like Cowtown. I like many of the people. I like how it’s not too far for a day trip to SF if I want to go to a show. I like that there are three theaters that do plays. Much of my family live there. I’m more comfortable with the small(er) town setting that I am in any sort of city. There’s real nature there. In the winter snow falls and skiing is really close, if you have the time and money. And most people there want to get on with their lives rather than try to impress other people with stuff (although the more city-folk who move there the less this is true).

I'm not a large or even medium-sized city person, so I'd like to move some where that the town or city's population is less than 20,000.

In some ways Cowtown bothers me, but for the most part, it's home.

10) What qualities attract you to a girl? (You don't have to answer this one if you're uncomfortable.)
One of the main things that attract me to girls/women, in a general way, is that I rarely feel a sense of competitiveness from them. With most guys they immediately want to set up a pecking order, of some sort, and using brain or brawn or whatever set about trying to prove that they are your better. With girls, probably because I’m not female myself, I don’t get that. I don’t like to be competitive, and that probably one of the reasons I’m usually more comfortable around them.

In a more romantic (for lack of a better word) way, I like women who can challenge me so that I want to learn and grow and stretch out into areas I hadn’t before. I like girls who are smart, funny, and honest and are (or at least act) comfortable with who they are and don’t change much when they’re alone, with me, or in a group of twenty. I like girls who smile easily and can laugh at their foibles as easily as they can laugh at mine. And confident women, I like confidence, too.

Also, there are the physical features. Shining eyes and a nice smile on a sweet face are good. I like a variety of body types because it’s not so much the shape of the woman (although that does come into account) as the way she carries herself that makes her attractive.

11) What are YOUR favorite cookies? Favorite food of any sort?
My first thought when it comes to favorite cookies are peanut butter cookies, but when I eat peanut butter cookies I’m always a little disappointed. They’re usually too dry and don’t taste enough like peanut butter, for me.

Ginger snaps and the minty chocolate one that the Girl Scouts sell run neck and neck in the favorite category. (And unlike some *cough* I don’t have to be the one that makes them.) They’re both so different and leave my mouth feeling fresh and I like the way they pop when my teeth go through the cookie.

As for other foods, I’m not that picky. I really like good Thai. The stuff that’s not greasy that’s spicy and a bit sweet. That’s always good.

But maybe fresh, warm sourdough even beats that. The smell, the texture, the crunch of the crust -- fresh sourdough is like a feast for all senses.

12) Wonder Woman vs. Big Barda- who wins?
In the comics universe there’d be a misunderstanding and they’d fight for a bit before they figure out that they were being manipulated by the villain and then they’d work together to crush a common enemy.

In a fight to the death, or unconsciousness, Big Barda’d win. Barda would win because Wonder Woman wouldn’t be willing to start out fighting her strongest, Barda would. Those early hits that Barda got in at the beginning wouldn’t seem to do anything at first, but they’d make Wonder Woman wear out just a little faster than Barda. Plus, Barda has a freakin’ Mega-rod. What can a lasso that forces people to tell the truth do against a freakin’ Mega-rod? Nothing, that’s what. In the end Barda would be bruised, bloodied, and broken, but she’d be the one standing.

13) What the hell should I do with the 10 grapefruits currently residing on my kitchen counter?
For me, there are only two things to be done with so many grapefruits:
1. Candy them.
2. Let them get nice and soft and then hurl them at the house of someone you don’t like.

14) How do you feel about your muzzer? Just kidding! Actually, IF you have kids someday, how many would you want to have (we'll just say that, for our purposes, your partner is cool with whatever)?
I like my muzzer. She’s weird and funny. And every now and then she still wonders how that guy makes doughnuts.

If I had kids, two seems like the best number. Life evens out with me and my wife and our kids. The kids would always have each other. They could be friends if everything goes well, and if it doesn’t at least they always have family if my wife and I die unexpectedly in a plane crash or something.

15) If you were given enough money to live comfortably for a year, but you had to write a book that would be published in that time, what kind of book would you write?
If I had the money and a comfortable place to live and the dedication to write a book, I’d write this book, although it feels more like it’d be novella length, that I’ve had buzzing around in my head for a many years now. (I actually mention it in a very early post on my blog.)

It’s fiction and it’s more bitter than sweet. The main characters are a high school student, his teacher, and his teacher’s wife. I’d use a devise at the beginning of each chapter that’d be what the wife says in her therapy sessions and spin that out into the action of the regular chapters, sort of.

I know the basic beginning of the book and I’m absolutely sure of the last word right now. The middle is very sketchy, though.

But if I had the means, that’s what I’d write.

16) Do you want to travel? Where? Why?
I want to travel everywhere. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s also true.

First, I’d travel through Europe, though. It’s the place that’s full of the history of my history. It’s where my family came from and it, arguably, sprung the most influential cultures that our planet has ever seen. I’d have to go to England and Italy and Greece, but I also want to see and experience France and Germany and Russia and Turkey and Spain. There’s so much in Europe.

17) If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be? (Name the movie!!)
"I'd have good strong roots in a town like Mt. Rose, a solid Christian trunk, and long, leafy branches to provide shade for handicapped kids on a hot summer day."
(I remembered the movie, but I had to look up the quote. Thanks IMDB!)

If you want a real answer, I’d be the kind that people leave alone. Probably something out in the middle of nowhere, like those oaks that live at really high altitudes. I wouldn’t want to live at long as those do, though.

18) Do you honestly like musicals? I mean, really? WHY?!
Yes, I honestly like musicals. Really. I do. If you want me to, I'll look through myPod and tell you how many musical soundtracks I own and how many I have to listen to because I "borrowed" the music from my dad.

Musicals are another form of fantasy. People don't (or rarely) break into song out on the street in real life, right? But in musicals, they do. Not only do people randomly (sort of) break out into song, but when others are around, they all know the words and they all agree on the music. And even when there are conflicting words and conflicting music, the two sounds meld together into something that sounds beautiful and is more powerful than the either tune was separately.

You've seen Amadeus, right? There's a scene in that where Mozart is explaining a part of his opera that starts as a solo and grows into a duet and grows and grows and even with more people singing, it's always music. That's something that I like, even though it doesn't happen in many American musicals. There's a song in Sondheim’s A Little Night Music where there are three people singing at the same time and one of my favorite things to do is try to focus on one voice at a time, to pick out that one character's words, then switch to another character and then the other and then let the three work together to create something else entirely.

Musicals create a sort of an ideal world, too. Characters who hate each other will sing at opposite ends of the stage, but they're using the same music and singing in harmony. Lovers are linked, not only through their desire for each other, but through the songs that they sing for one another.

Also, it's fun to sing along with the sound tracks. Unlike most albums out there, musical soundtracks have all these songs that, much of the time, tell a part of the story and even if they don't tell a narrative, listening them in order often do a good job of showing a character's emotional arc during the story. How often do you get that when you buy a regular album?

I must admit, though, I'm not so much into the dancing. Sometime it can be kind of fun -- the fighting in West Side Story, or the way Harold Hill uses it to seduce River City's people -- but most of the time it feels like filler to me, an excuse to pay a choreographer. I like the music and words a lot more. I'm sure there are people who are just the opposite

19) Buffy Summers- Hot or Not? How about Faith? Or are you more a Fred kind of guy?
Buffy and Faith are both hot, but I’m way more of a Fred kind of guy.

Buffy’s too afraid of not being liked. She’s too afraid of not getting attention when she’s part of a crowd. (Even when she was invisible, she called attention to herself.) Also, she seems comfortable around people, but she never seems to be comfortable with herself, she's always second guessing who she is and any time she comes back to Slayer, she curls up and tries to deny it.

Faith is scary, plain and simple. I’d always be afraid that I’d piss her off and she’d knock my head off.

Fred’s the type of girl who I’d want to be better for. I’d want to learn about what she knows so we could talk about it. ('Course, the Illiyra/Fred thing would bring me right back to the Faith answer.) Fred started out uncomfortable around people, that was after being stuck in a demon dimension for years where she was basically cattle, she got more comfortable around other, but she always seemed to be comfortable with and confident about herself. She also has one of the greatest smiles of all the women who appear in the Buffyverse, except for, maybe, Jasmine.

20) What thing that you have done in your life are you most proud of?
Nothing. I have done nothing that I am proud of, let alone most proud of. Also, I haven't done anything that I'm disappointed in, so that's okay.

21) Can I stop asking questions now, because thinking them up is hurting my brain! MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STAAAHHHHHPP!!!!!!
Sure, you can stop, if you want to.

Strike Watch '08 Begins Here!

There's an "information" union meeting today. Mostly, they're going to tell us that this next contract, our current one is up in June, will be really hard to get since the state is predicting a $15 billion shortfall. Odds are, I think, that we won't get a cost of living increase this year if we get a new contract at all.

Will we strike or even get a strike vote this year? I doubt it. The state isn't going to be pulling in enough cash to cover its ass in June because of all the fucked-up loans that were given to people when they bought houses in the last year. I think our union will quickly come to a compromise that keeps the status quo and promise that in two years they'll come back strong and the majority of the members will vote that that's a good idea.

At least they're serving lunch. Sure, the party platters of cold cuts and the rolls won't be worth the $45 I put into the union each month, but it's something.

Surgery 2: The Day After Yesterday

Spoke with my mom about forty-five minutes ago. She's sounding fine. In fact, she sounds pretty much like she always does. She said she's feeling pretty great. Her back doesn't hurt at all. She can lay down and roll over and get out of bed without her back hurting. (Her stomach hurts where they cut her open and stitched her up.) The doctor told her that if she lived closer he'd let her go home today, but since my parents don't live close they're probably staying only one more night.

No Garfield

Some days, this and this, or hell all of them, is where I think my life is going.

Heels

The questions have now been answered.

Read, please.

Surgery

Well, my mom went in for her back surgery about fifteen minutes ago. If all goes well, she'll be out in forty-five to seventy-five minutes ago. When I spoke with her yesterday morning she told me they were getting to her spine by going through the front. I wonder how they're going to pin the intestines back?

Fiction Friday #30

Tuesday came too fast after I talked to Karen's mother. It was like after I spoke with her on the phone I sneezed and suddenly I found myself outside of the campus pub. It sat off near a field of wheat or corn or whatever crop was being studied at that. I guess the builder wanted to be able to pretend that it was a pub in some country village because it was built to look like those house in the pictures of Stratford-Upon-Avon, all support beams showing through plaster with a high peaked roof. It was pretty nice, until you turned around to see the giant block of concrete that was the history department or got hit by some jackass on a bicycle. That was life on campus, though.

The Pub, which was the name some clever student or alumni named it thirty or forty years ago after a drunken trip to England or Scotland or Ireland gave it, was the place to eat on campus, if you had money. Most of the staff went there if they didn't brown bag it or didn't want to go out into the town. There were always small groups of teacher gathering for lunch or an early dinner or a drink after a meeting, whispering about how they were going to rise up in revolt and destroy the dean of their college. It was also where all the students who were totally funded from home ate when they lived in the dorms. Those people used their meal plans to get water, soda, and chips from the dining hall then used their "emergency" credit cards to take their friends and themselves out for all meals and many of them headed down to The Pub.

Inside the place was clean, but a little dark, for my taste. There was a long, polished, wood bar to the back, tables set up for two or four on the floor, and booths that were comfortable for six but could cram in ten or twelve were along the walls. Spread out around the floor were, what I assumed were, support beams that were sometimes hard to dodge sober, and were nearly impossible to miss drunk. Behind the bar and on any part of the wall that wasn't a window were pictures of famous people who had come to campus; any that were taken after The Pub was built were taken inside. My favorites were the candid pictures of people drinking, talking, laughing, smoking, writing, or staring wistfully out the window; too many of them were posed to make the bar and the subject look good, but they all struck me as unreal.

The Tuesday I met Karen's mom was a warm and sunny one after a weeks worth of wind, clouds, and rain, and we were meeting at eleven, so there weren't many people in there. I saw some professors huddled around a table whispering. Some guy sat at the bar with some really dark drink, wearing spectacles, and writing in a note book. And the bored bar tender stared out the windows probably wondering if heading out to toss a Frisbee around was worth getting fired over. And there was a waitress standing in the door to the kitchen blowing purple bubbles.

The waitress spotted me and started to come over. I mouthed to her, and flailed my arms a bit, that I was meeting someone and wanted to take a quick look. She shrugged, but still walked toward where I stood. I poked around the place and saw that there wasn't anyone else there. She asked me how many and then told me to pick where I wanted to sit. I choose a booth with a window.

She left me with two menus then brought me some water and left. I fiddled with my fork and knife, remembering how I used to use them as an airplane when I was a kid. I unfolded then refolded the paper napkin the fork and knife had been rolled in, and then sort of pushed it around the table. I wished that I brought my backpack with me; at least then the waiting wouldn't have been wasted time.

After dividing the contents of a sugar packet five times, I a woman clear her throat. I looked up to see Karen's mom looking a lot like I remembered her. She was pretty, but not beautiful, like Karen was. She was strong, built like a fortress. She was tall, taller than me. She had wide shoulders and comparatively narrow hips. She stood like she was waiting for someone to try to push her over just so she could prove she couldn't be. Her hair was cut short and she always seemed to have a little frown around her lips, but she may have just disapproved of me.

I tried to stand and caught my gut on the table. I sat down, hard, gasping for breath.

"Leopold," she said sitting down.

"Mrs. Mayreux." I nodded and offered my hand. "Can you call me Leo?" I asked. "My mom only introduces me as Leopold because it makes me blush."

"Only if you call me Sonya, Leo." She said, shaking my hand. "You're old enough to call me Sonya now."

Suprise Song

You know what song always surprises me with how good it is when it shuffles its way around on myPod?

"Eternal Flame" by The Bangles.

WonderCon 2008

WonderCon starts tomorrow. I'll be there Saturday and Sunday. (Originally it was just going to be on Saturday with Wings, but then I saw that Bill Willingham and the inker for the book, Steve Leialoha, are going to be doing a Fables Forum on Sunday and since I'm not going to be at San Diego this year I knew I couldn't miss this one.)

I must admit that I wasn't very excited about going earlier this week. I planned to go, sure, but I just wasn't getting the butterflies in my stomach. Today, I did. I'm pretty damn excited. I'm going to go to a bunch of panels. I'm going to ask some questions and hopefully get some answers. I'm going to buy some books that I'd normally wait to buy when APE comes around, but this year APE is in November instead of late March/early April (I really miss when it was the first convention of the year for California), and I don't want to wait. I'm going to get some comics signed. I'm going to wonder why anyone would want the autograph of the guy who played the Boba Fett as a kid in Attack of the Clones, or an equally odd "star." I'll probably gawk at Noell Niel and Chase Masterson. And I may see Kristen Bell in person, but I probably won't her panel since it's not about Veronica Mars or Fanboys; sure, Veronica Mars will be brought up, but it's not the same without the possibility of Enrico Colantoni being there, too.

I'm excited. It's been a while since I've been excited.

My Healthy Breakfast

Peanut butter cookies and a cup of milk.

You?

New Header Quote!

So we beat off, pistons through a cylinder, locked endelessly without a release.
----F. Shot Fucksgerald
The Great Orgasmby

I feel like a dick.*

*You have to read the comments.

Okay...

So, I didn't care for the questions Heels was asked during her part of The Great Interview Experiment. She challenged me to ask her questions. (It's a little unfair since I've known her for a very, VERY long time. Still the woman who interviewed her should have read Heels's blog before asking questions to get to know her and her interests rather than sticking to general questions.)

I wrote her my questions. I await hers for me. We shall see.

In then Out

12:48
Tenish minutes before I leave for the day. It's not a recovery from coming back to work thing, it's more of a therapy thing.

I haven't written about this much, so I'll explain.

In the last quarter of last year, I signed myself up to go see a therapist (he turned out to be a LCSW, not an analrapist, for those Arrested Development fans). He encouraged me to do this group thing to help with my social anxiety problems because I really don't want to take drugs. I have enough things I have to remember to do each day.

I went to the pre-meeting thing where they sort of talk about anxiety and the general ways it affects people. You know, stuff I learned on my own years ago.

From there I was put in a four week "group" thing (which lasted six weeks because of Christmas and New Year's Day) that started several weeks later. It was mixed with general anxiety people and social anxiety people. And I was very uncomfortable with aspects of it.

Today, six weeks after the last other thing, the actual social anxiety group starts. I'm not ready for the level of trust I'm suppose to put into these people I've had trouble not sharing the things that the other people have said in the group with all of you. I haven't broken that trust, yet, but how can I be sure that husbands and wives aren't sharing things that the people in the group say to their spouses?

That bothers me. Hell, it bothers me thinking that the PhD guy might be talking about something I, or one of the others, said to a colleague.

Fiction Friday #29

The laugh felt good. Sort of like we were when we were in junior high. Just friends out to have a good time. The feeling didn't last long, though. It vanished and we both sort of turned to the TV and focused on the movie.

We watched the rest of it without talking to each other. Occasionally, I'd talk to the characters, a bad habit I have when I watch anything I've seen before, and Karen, who hadn't seen the move, would turn to me and look like she might want to cut out my voice box. As the movie ended, with Mumford listening to the police officer talk about his problems, there was a knock at the door. It was Jer with some Indian food.

There was lots of food, but it wasn't for me. Indian never sat well with me. I'd eat and enjoy as I ate, but twenty minutes later my stomach would start to roll around on my intestines and the rest of the night would be miserable. So, when they started to pick and choose their first dishes, I slipped away and into my room.

From then on things around the apartment were a little better. Karen and I didn't go out of our way to hang out together, but we also didn't play silent treatment with on another. When I needed a glass and she was in the way, I'd ask instead of squeezing around her to get it myself. In the hall, neither of us ducked out of the way when we saw the other. "Nice day," I'd say and she'd say "I suppose. How's school?" "Oh, you know," I'd say, "sometimes good and sometimes bad." "Yeah," she'd say, "kind of like the rest of life." and we'd go about our business.

Jer seemed happier about all this. Karen stayed over more and I could tell he wanted to give her a key so she could come all the time. Maybe he even wanted to know if she could move in with us. From what I over heard, life in her house wasn't getting any easier. Some of the girls, I heard, had started bringing over guys and then they'd try to get Karen drunk enough so she'd forget about Jer and jump in the guys' laps and then into bed. I doubt it worked because I don't think Karen would have told Jer about it if it had. Jer didn't ask me about Karen moving in, though. She still had her room at the house and we had our apartment.

About four weeks after Karen and I had our pissing contest, I got a phone call from her mother asking me to go to meet her for lunch the next Tuesday, on campus. Apparently, Karen's dad was touring some lecture about his new book and had been invited to the university to give it. She said me that it'd just be her, not him, at lunch and it'd be her treat.

I said I'd be there, of course. I had to. She was friends with my parents. If I didn't, I'd never hear the end of it.

Away

Out until Wednesday.

How will I survive without you?

Ultra-Tuesday

Only five minutes to write about today's elections...

Oh, that's right, I don't give a monkey's tit about today's election.

That was easy.

Odd Book Meme

Still, I'm always up for a meme about books.

Johnny Logic tagged me.

The Rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. (No cheating!)
2. Find Page 123.
3. Find the first 5 sentences.
4. Post the next 3 sentences.
5. Tag 5 people.

The nearest book:

• Star Trek Titan: Sword of Damocles

Page 123, first 3 sentences *after* the first 5 sentences:

"What do you think, Chris?"

There it was: recommendation time. For an awful moment she had the sense of all the member s of Titan's crew somehow looking in on her, listening intently, and judging how she answered.

And since I'm somewhat early on this meme, I'm actually going to tag people:

• Choochoo
• Geewits
• Jazz
• The Mooooooooo
• Purplehobbit

Enjoy!

Hourly Comic '08

Fiction Friday #28

I couldn't sleep when I got back to my room. I was too wound up. The way Jer blamed me for the yelling really upset me. It wasn't my fault. I wasn't the one being stubborn. Is it really too much for a guy to want to pee in the toilette in his bathroom in the apartment where he pays for half the rent? I didn't think so.

I couldn't sleep, but I couldn't leave my room, either, they hadn't left yet. I wasn't going out there where I'd have to put up with smug looks from Karen because Jer was on her side. So I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling and obsessing until I heard the front door close.

Immediately, I poked my head out of my door and heard the deadbolt lock.

I was alone. Not that it meant anything. It wasn't even eight o'clock yet. On a Sunday. I should have been sleeping. All normal people would still be asleep and I would have been one of them if everything had gone right.

I threw myself down on the couch and turned the TV on. I flipped through the channels. Lots of church guys asking people to send in money, a few news shows, and a rerun of everyone's favorite Borrowers rip-off, The Littles. That's where I left it.

Eventually, I got up and got some breakfast, a couple of Jer's Hot Pockets, then into the shower. I left for work after noon and Jer still hadn't come back from church.

Work was all about me shelving books at the main branch of the county library. We opened at two and I kept shelving through my whole shift. I was lucky to have the job, though. It's not many students, especially undergrad students, to get a paying job where they want to end up. Yes, I was one of the few and the insane who planned to go into the library sciences as an undergrad. I wanted to spend my days surrounded by books and help people find something worth reading. And I couldn't wait to get my degree and gain a section of a library to rule over like a despot. Not a book out of place, not a penny from my budget unspent, not an unsatisfied member of the public. Those were my goals.

My shift ended at five and I got back to the apartment the door was locked and the lights were off. It didn't look like Jer had been back at all. I settled myself down on the couch and turned on the TV. After a bit of flipping, I stopped on Mumford, slumped low, put my feet on the coffee table, and settled myself for the rest of the movie.

Fifteen minutes later, I heard the door rattle. The deadbolt snapped open. I muted the TV and turned to watch, ready to really apologize to Jer for being an ass that morning. The door was pushed open as soon as the knob was unlocked and in stepped Karen, wearing the dress that, I assumed, she wore to church and carrying her heeled shoes in her hand.

"Oh," I said.

"Yeah," she said, closing the door.

"You should really knock," I said.

"Jer gave me his keys," she said, jingling them. "I figured it'd be okay. I wasn't going to stand outside while he went to pick up some food."

"Still should have knocked." I frowned.

"Sure, yeah. Next time. I will."

I turned back to the TV and was about to turn up the sound when Karen asked, "What's that?"

"A movie," I said.

"I know that." She sat down on the other end of the couch. "What's the movie?"

"Mumford."

"The one with that guy from Chasing Amy?"

"He's one of the guys," I said and hit mute so I could hear it.

Karen put her shoes on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch. She always reminded me of a cat when she relaxed. First she pushed her back into the couch and stretched it. Then she stretched her arms out to her fingers. Next came her legs out to her toes. Finally, her body went limp. She'd relaxed like this since we were both little kids being dragged by our parents to annoying dinner parties put on by the stuffy people at the university where they worked.

I laughed a little when she finally settled.

"What?" she asked.

"It's just... Well, you still stretch like you used to," I said.

She smiled, "Some things never change, huh?"

I watched her watch the TV. "Karen, why'd you go to church this morning?"

"What?"

"Church, why'd you go? You used to hate it. You used to be proud at how much you pissed your grandma off when you wouldn't go with her on holidays. What's up? Do you believe in that stuff now?"

She looked toward me, but not at me, and frowned, "It's the girls I live with."

I waited.

"There all Afro American Studies, right?"

I nodded.

"Well, and it's nuts, I know, they don't like me dating a white guy."

"Shit," I said.

"I know," she said, shaking her head. "I over heard a couple of the girls talking and one said that the only good thing she had to say about Jer was that he wasn't Mexican."

"Shit," I said, again.

"Yeah, that's why I Jer doesn't spend the night at my place." She sighed, "So, I go to their church to make them happier and make living there easier. I thought they were all going to shit themselves when they saw Jer with me this morning."

We both laughed.

Dead or Dying

I moved my MySpace bile blogs over here because I'm killing my account there. I'm also killing my Friendster account and my Facebook account.

In time, I may rejoin one or all of them, but that won't happen until I actually think there's a use for them.

Grin-bell

Tomorrow is Hourly Comic Day. Last year I did it and I'm pretty sure I'll be doing it this year, too. Not sure if I'll be make four panels per hour or the more common two. I guess we'll see.

There are two houses, on the block where I live, that have been for sale since Christmas. Yesterday, on my way to the apartment, I walked by them and grabbed one of the fliers that the realtors (There are two of them, but for some reason the fucking spell check keeps insisting I write "realtor's." Stupid spell checker.) posted to see what's going on. Well, they're each listed for $429,000. Sure they've been refurbished, but they're not very big and only sort of have a yard. Besides, it's not like I'm going to buy a house here, I really don't want to live here for a long chunk of my life, I'm just tired of paying rent. I'd feel better if the money I spend each month went toward making something mine rather than paying people for the privilege of living in a building that they own. While I probably wouldn't feel great paying a mortgage and insurance each month and proper taxes each year, I think I'd like that better than rent.

South Park is what's been on my TV a lot in the past two weeks. I bought the seasons I was missing, so I went back and started it from the first so I could see everything, including the movie.

Should have mentioned this earlier, but a couple of weeks ago, a friend sent me a bootleg copy of the first three episodes of Pushing Daisies. That show is great. I really liked the first episode, but when it got to the point in the second episode where Olive sings to herself, and sort of to Digby, "Hopelessly Devoted" and keeps getting interrupted by people and then singing again, I knew it was a show created for me, or at least people like me. I also liked, from the second episode, when Jim Dale, the narrator, says that "when the scientist got home he remembered the girl's sweater a little tighter and her hair a more vibrant shade of red, but the smile he got just right" (I'm paraphrasing here. I couldn't find the actual quote online, so here's hoping I remember it correctly.) I go all squishy inside. Yeah, the show's a keeper and since I didn't get to start watching it from the beginning, like I did with Wonderfalls, it'll probably get picked up for a second season, if it hasn't already.

In other news, lots of Eustace Tilleys. The ones that I like include:
Dorian Gray
News Print
Heavy Metal (At least it makes me think of something that may have come out of Heavy Metal magazine, back in the day, probably really before my day, even.)
Subway
Card
Hoody

Scattered Pictures

I've found it hard to concentrate on reading. I think I've only read four books (including this and this, which aren't very hard, but are entirely interesting and fun, and she owns a Sphynx) since Christmas. Maybe it's just long narratives. I haven't had problems with a comic or two before I go to sleep.

Went and watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street last night. It was the second time. Yes, I know the play's better, but I liked the movie, a lot. The songs are great and the actors are marvelous and the blood flows and squirts and sprays and I enjoy every minute of it. Sure, I'm sad that Turpin's turn at singing "Johanna" wasn't included, but it wasn't enough to make me not enjoy the movie. One other thing, Helena Bonham Carter has appeared in every Burton movie since the horror that was Planet of the Apes, I'd like to say that it has something to do with the fact that they have two kids, but it's hard to confirm that because she's such a spectacular actor.

At break time I've been staying at my desk. Sometimes I do work. Sometimes I screw around on the 'net. Sometimes I stare into the corner just trying not to think.

There's stew thawing in my fridge. It's probably not very thawed, yet, and I don't want to put a block of ice in the microwave, I'd rather wait until it's mostly thawed. I made the stew more than a week ago; I made a lot of stew thinking that my brother was going to be sleeping at my place, he didn't. There are two or three more things of it in the freezer. I'll probably thaw them out next month.

Work keeps building stupid upon stupid. First we stated the bullshit "prepping" of the files at the beginning of the month. Last week, we started "prepping" the DEU files and learned that they "prepping" is based on date, so any DEU rating that was done after September 1st of last year is supposed to be "prepped" for scanning (We still haven't seen the scanners and no one, in our office at least, has been shown how they work. Hell, we were told that there wouldn't even be a monitor for the scanners, so we can't see what we're doing.), even if the rating is in a file that won't be scanned. Last Friday, a guy came in to look around an tell us how we're not up to the proper ADA standards, so some chairs and a table have been removed and we all now have to police the lawyer to make sure they don't block the door or the place where a wheelchair may be at some point in the future and people are not longer allowed to work outside the door, to keep the noise down out there. We're already having problems with this stuff, but it won't be addressed because we're moving downstairs in a few months where there will be a whole new set of problems that won't be addressed because we're only staying there for a few months because the remodel will be done and we'll be back up here with a whole new set of problems that we'll have to work out to go along with the problems that aren't being addressed now.

I've been walking at lunch, when it hasn't been raining. I just go around the corner, past the post office, and stay on that sidewalk, by a hospital, for a half hour before turning on the next block and the next, which bring me right back to the road this building is on. It's not an exciting or interesting walk, but it's not about being exciting or interesting, it's about getting away from the place I work physically since I haven't been able to do it mentally on my lunch hour. myPod plays random music on the walk and I try to focus on that.

In nine days I'm going to Cowtown for a long weekend. Hopefully my car won't break so I can actually have good time rather than being Mr. Grump the whole time.

So very, very tired...

First Album

Instructions:
1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your first album.



The picture came from here.

I actually found this meme on Friday over here, but I don't have any good software or fonts at work so I did it at my apartment over the weekend to get it right.

Edit: Heels did one on Friday, but she has good software at work.

Fiction Friday #27

"Ewww," I said.

"That's disgusting," Karen said through the door.

"She's right," I said, nodding toward her voice.

"Stay out of this, Karen," Said Jer. "Unless you're going to let him in to use the toilette."

She snorted, "He's not coming in here."

"Then keep out of this," he said. He turned to me, I couldn't see his face clearly in the dark of the hall, and said, "Go and use the sink in the kitchen."

"Man, we put dishes in there," I said, giving the door a little push to see if I could catch Karen off guard. The door didn't move.

"It's all pipes, man. Haven't you ever peed in the shower?"

"That's different," I said. The shower washes everything down it."

"We wash dishes in there."

I scoffed, "We?"

"You. Fine," he said.

"That's right."

"I'll do dishes later. And make sure to clean out the sink, okay?"

"Fine," I said, taking my weight off of the door so it could slam shut with a surprised Karen on the other side.

"Son of a bitch," she said.

I smiled and let go of the door knob. "How do I get up high enough to aim for the sink?" I asked Jer. "I don't want to get the counter or anything."

He sighed, "You get a chair. And if you don't like that idea you grab one of the dirty glasses or a bowl or a pot or something. Jesus, just go."

He gave me a little push and I left. As I walked down the hall toward the living room, I heard a tapping. I turned and saw him knocking on the door, probably talking to Karen, trying to settle her down, telling her that I was the one who was wrong. He was on her side, I just knew it. He was telling her that everything was my fault, that I should have been more sensitive to her needs rather than my over stuffed bladder.

I hated Jer the entire time I pissed in the pot he boiled pasta in the night before, which I promised myself I'd never use again. At least Karen had an excuse for acting the way she had; she was a bitch. She couldn't help being the person she was. Jer, on the other hand, had been my friend since we were both freshmen trapped in rooms with shithead roommates. Jer's thought it was his right to kick Jer out at two in the morning so he could have sex. Mine was a freak who had night terrors. We had been united in our misery and turned it into a long friendship. The best friendship I'd ever had. The best he'd had, too.

I finished up in the pot and though about "accidentally" spilling some on the counter so he'd be stuck with the smell while he cleaned up. I thought better of that idea, though, because I knew I'd be smelling it all day long because if, and that was quite an if, Jer did the dishes he wasn't going to get to them until much later in the day. I poured my piss carefully into the sink then took the spray thing and rinsed the sink the best I could and did the same to the pot I used, which I then filled with hot water and added some soap so it could have a nice, long soak.

Jer came around the corner into the kitchen as I finished up. He wore slacks, a white button shirt and had a tie hanging loosely around his neck. He sat on one of the chairs around the table to put on his shoes.

"Leo," he said, setting one shoe on the table, "what you did this morning really sucked."

"It wasn't my fault," I said, sounding more whiney than I wanted.

"I know," he said, "but it wasn't all her fault."

"It was, too." I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall.

"No, it wasn't." He finished tying the first shoe and picked the other up off the table and pointed it at me. "You didn't have to be such an asshole. You could have waited. You could have figured out the sink thing for yourself."

"Yeah, but--"

"I'm not saying that she was right." He finished the second shoe and stood up to tie his tie. "She could have let you in and waited a minute for you to go and be done with it. Hell, she should have. You didn't have to turn it into some third grade yelling match at six on a Sunday morning. You should have been the mature one and waited."

I stood there, my mouth opening and closing like a landed trout and thought, bros before hoes, man, bros before hoes. Jer didn't see me, though. He was having trouble with his tie.

"I'm going with Karen to church," he said, looping the tail around and around the rest of the tie. "After, we're going to breakfast. She might come back with me after. I don't know."

"Give it to me," I said. He handed it over and I put it around my neck. "How long do you want it?"

He showed me and I started tying.

"You guys can't go around ignoring each other," he said. "It just screws everything up, makes it worse. I'd rather you guys have lots of little arguments than blow up early in the morning once a month."

I finished up, yanked the tie over my head, and handed it to him.

"Thanks," he said.

"Yeah," I said and headed around the corner. The bathroom door was still closed.

It's 4:15 in the PM...

...and all day I've been reminding myself that I choose to be here.

It doesn't make me feel better. It just reminds me why I work at a horribly boring job that doesn't require much brain power to do with people I would never choose to spend time with in the "real" world and a supervisor who is in a stupid hat that makes me thinK of Six from Blossom even though though it was probably Blossom herself who actually wore the hats, but I alway preferred Six, and who doesn't seem to understand that those who are, pardon the cliché, self motivated don't need the same sort of supervision as those who aren't.

Yet, I still force myself to remember that I choose to be here.

*sigh*

Fiction Friday #26

After that, there was hardly a day that I didn't see Karen. At first, we were... pleasant to each other, pleasant in only the way two people who won't speak can be. I acknowledged her existence, but wouldn't talk. I'd go around her in the kitchen to grab a plate or a glass rather than ask her to hand me one. If I saw her in the hall, I'd duck into my room or the bathroom until she was safely in Jer's room. She'd do the same, carefully dodging me so we wouldn't have to speak.

The pleasantness disintegrated early one Sunday morning, about six weeks after the first night. I had to pee, but she was in the bathroom. I had to go, really go. I drank an entire ultra-huge Slurpee before I went to bed and I'd held off as long as possible. I tapped on the door. (To this day I swear I was gentle, but when Karen tells the story it's like I swung a sledgehammer and tried to break the door down.)

She hollered through the door, "I getting ready for church."

"Why?" I asked, trying to stay polite. I still had to pee, but bothering her seemed more important. "You never believed in that bullshit before. What changed?"

"Fuck you, Leo," she said.

"How much longer?" I asked.

"As long as it takes."

"I'm not just gonna stand here and piss myself, you know."

"Yeah, what are you gonna do?"

I twisted the knob and gave the door a little push. She slammed into it, forcing the door shut. She couldn't lock it, though; I still had the knob turned. I pushed back.

"Let me in," I yelled, holding the knob with both hands, "I have to pee."

"Wait until I'm through," she yelled back.

"Who knows how long you'll be. I'll only be a minute."

"Yeah, and then the whole place will smell like piss."

"Fuck you!" I shouted.

"You had your chance, but your gun went off before you even got a look at the target!"

I nearly pissed myself at that. My ears got hot and I wanted to kick the door down, push her into the tub, and use the goddamn toilette. I didn't, though. I kept my hands firmly on the door knob and started taking deep breaths. I counted them. At fifteen I felt calm enough to speak again.

"Karen," I said, "please let me in so I can use the bathroom."

"No."

"Please? I've been waited a long time before I knocked on the door."

"No!"

"Karen!"

"NO!"

I pushed, the door opened a crack. She pushed back, the crack started to close. I pushed again and the crack sort of wavered. Nothing was gained and nothing was lost when she started to push back again.

"KAREN!"

"NOOOOOOO!"

"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?" asked Jer from behind me.

"She's hogging the bathroom," I said, pushing.

"He's a shithead who won't leave me alone," she said, pushing back.

"I have to pee," I said pushing again.

"Tell him he'll get the bathroom when I'm done," she said, pushing back again.

"Leo, if you break that door, you're paying for it," Jer said.

"HA!" we heard Karen say through the door.

"You're paying for it, too, Karen," he said.

"HA! HA!" I said.

"Leo, can't you use the sink in the kitchen?" he asked.

Movies

I'm going to see that movie Cloverfield tomorrow or Saturday.

Sure, I'm curious about this monster thing, but that's not the main reason I'm going.

I'm really going to watch the Star Trek teaser.

Advice My Grandpa Gave Me Before I Turned 10

"Learn to enjoy drinking warm beer, that way other people won't drink as much of your beer."

How to Rationalize Like a Comic Book Fan

Or What the Hell Happened to Captain Atom?

Why did Captain Atom decide to take over the multiverse?

What led him down the path from superhero to super villain?

Who corrupted him?

When did the turn happen?

Where was point of no return from good to evil?

How did it all happen?

I've been asking myself these questions since before the beginning of Countdown. I knew from the solicits that he'd be turning bad. I knew that he was going to raise an army out of the 52 universes which he'd use to take over the entire multiverse. And so I've wondered, why?

Captain Atom, in the DC universe at least, started out as a man, Captain Nathanial Adam, out of time. He was a military man in the sixties who had some problems and got to decide to spend years in prison or be stuffed into an egg made out of some alien alloy while bombs were exploded outside the egg to test the alloy's strength. While I would pick prison, he picked the alien egg. The bombs exploded and everything disappeared. Years later Adam re-appeared with the alloy grafted to his skin and the ability to tap into and manipulate the Quantum Field. (Don't think about the science, please. You'll only hurt yourself.) Obviously, the military wanted to use him to get good press, so he did and eventually became a real hero, not just a military shill, and eventually led the European team of the Justice League International.

Captain Atom fought Monarch (a former hero who went bad when his future self came back in time and killed his partner, who he was in love with, which sent his present day self into wacoville and caused him to kill his future self and then put on his future self's armor and go to kill all the superheroes) and they went on a wacky trip through time, with only Atom ending up back in the present. From there, after some (a lot) of time in the background, he formed an "extreme" Justice League team, fought "extreme" Wonder Twins, and even an "extreme" quantum clone of himself. Then he spent more time off the page until he sacrificed himself by flying a giant robot in the shape of the Composite Superman into a gigantic meteor made up of kryptonite. He blew up, saving the day, and dying.

Except he didn't die, he was blow into another universe. The Wildstorm comics universe. There he found an Earth full of superheroes who scared the regular people as much as, but often more than, the super villains and alien invaders who are waging war on the backwater world known as Earth. Atom gets frustrated and almost becomes as frightening as the heroes of the Wildstorm Earth, but he doesn't. He clings to his ideals and morals. He refuses to kill. He tries to convince regular folks he won't hurt them. He helps a young woman come to terms with the god-like powers she received because of the way he broke through the universal barriers. He does good and in the end he's sent back to DC's New Earth to a city that was blown up by a giant creature full of bizarre chemicals being dropped on the city, cracked and leaking radiation, which forces him into a coma.

Eventually, he's discovered being used to help breed government meta-humans, still in a coma and leaking massive amounts of radiation, by heroes called the Atomic Knights. They take him away and to keep him from going critical and blowing up the city even worse, the put him in Monarch's armor and wake him up. He's kind of angry when he wakes up and sort of blows up what's left of the destroyed city and anyone or anything left there.

After that, he's seen in Countdown recruiting alternate heroes and villains and already having a large army of normal people hidden in the bleed. He's decided to force his brand of order on the 52 universes.

I thought that Countdown would have explained this change in him by now. It hasn't.

In Countdown to Final Crisis #17 they claim to give Monarch origin in the back-up. I expected them to explain the change in Atom there. Here's what they said:

To prevent further catastrophe caused by the quantum energies seeping from Captain Aton's Damaged skin, the Atomic Knights sealed him within the recovered armor of Monarch.
His abilities enhanced but his control overwhelmed, Captain Aton became the very thing he feared and fought on that alternate Earth.
He Repaid the Knights' kindness by destroying what little remained of Blüdhaven before embracing his future as the one true Monarch...

The origin didn't explain anything, but it did remind me of the story of the armor. So I pulled out the books where it was introduced the event that crossed the annuals put out in 1991, Armageddon 2001.

Monarch's armor was built sometime in the future and had the ability to absorb nearly infinite amounts of energy, but it came back in time where the original owner was killed by his past self. His past self was a superhero named Hawk, an agent of the Lords of Chaos, who was part of a team built to balance Order and Chaos with Dove, an agent of the Lords of Order. Dove was killed by Monarch. Without her to help balance him, Hawk got mad, embraced the chaos and killed his future self. Angry and nutso, Hawk became Monarch and decided to kill all the superheroes and impose order, which is a stupid thing to do for an agent of Chaos. Of course, he was defeated (by Captain Atom, the man who was originally going to be Monarch, but didn't, due to the story leaking to the comic "press" of the day, BBSes).

A few years, our time, later, Monarch showed up again and declared that he now understood: without Dove, he was also the embodiment of Order and his power was increased and called himself Extant, a guy with an omega on his chest because, you know, he's come to end it all, and he ditches the armor.

And there, there's my answer:

To absorb the power from the Lords of Order, Monarch had to give up some of the power from the Lords of Chaos. He couldn't keep all of one and just take more of the other into his body, so what happened to the Chaos power? It was absorbed by the armor! So when Captain Atom, a hero of science, was crammed into the armor, the Chaos was too strong for him, especially since the Lords have left (or were killed or stomped by the Spectre or punched out of existence) the Chaos trapped in the armor is all there is in the universe. It just overwhelmed Captain Atom and drove him as mad as, or madder than, Hawk was when Hawk watched his future self kill Dove and then killed his future self. Hawk was created to hold and use the powers of Chaos, Captain Atom was not.

When I figured that out, I felt better, even if it's complete and utter horse shit. Still won't stop me from asking about it at WonderCon in February, though.

Fiction Friday #25

"When?" he asked.

"High school," I said.

Jer looked over at Karen. She nodded again.

"High school?" he said to himself. Then he spoke to me, "Does that mean she's..." He let it drift off.

I pushed my hair off my forehead and said, "Yeah. This is her. This is Karen."

"Oh," he said, looking at her again, this time not so cow-eyed.

"What," she said to me, "have you told him?"

"The truth," I said, leveling my eyes to hers.

"'The truth,'" she said, mocking me by making her voice higher. "You wouldn't know the truth if it crawled out of your belly button and said, 'Fuck me, I'm the truth!'"

"Yeah, sure," I said and turned to walk to my room. I wanted to let them handle whatever was going on between them.

Jer grabbed my arm, "Where're you going?"

"To my room. I don't have to deal with this." I shook his hand off of me.

Karen leaned her butt onto the back of the chair she had been sitting on and let out a long sigh. "What now?" she asked.

Jer sat on the floor, looked at me, then at her. He shrugged and looked down at his arms, which were crossed on his chest. I wondered if he was about to cry.

"What, 'What now?'" I asked Karen. "I don't get it."

"You," she pointed to me. "Him," she pointed to Jer. "Me," she pointed to herself.

"Fuck me," I said.

She grinned an evil grin at me, "Only with a chainsaw."

"Look," I said, ignoring her as best I could, "this doesn't have anything to do with me. Jer," -- He looked up at me, tears in his eyes. -- "we were bullshitting, bitching about exes. We were playing, one upping each other. How'd I know three years later you'd see her and bring her home with you?"

He looked away from me.

"And you," I turned back to Karen, "give him a fucking chance. He's not me." I paused. She didn't say anything; she just frowned. "Hell, I'm not who I was. I'm a totally new kind of jackass."

Karen smiled a little.

That's when I left. I didn't go to my room. I walked back the way I came in and out. I hurried down the stairs after I pulled the door shut and hopped on the first bus that came around the corner. It didn't matter where I was going, just as long as I was gone.

Nearly four years after we spent hours screaming at each other, almost four since I'd even seen her, and when I saw her all those old emotions came back. All the pain I felt because of what she said and because of what I wanted to do. As if no time had passed at all. If I'd stayed, I would have started again. Maybe she would have been mature enough to not fight back, but I doubted it. She always had a quicker temper than I did, than most people did. Her temper was one of the things that made her so much fun to be around; it made her more unpredictable and exciting.

So, we probably would have fought. This time in front of an audience, Jer. He didn't need to see that anymore than I needed to go through it. Besides, he'd been building her up for so long, it would have been awful to just show him her worst side. Besides, I knew, deep down, that she wasn't the horrible bitch I'd made her out to be. I didn't know who she was at all anymore.

She was, though, even more beautiful than she had been in high school. She was rounder, fuller, still dark and glistening. When she smiled when we were kids, it dazzled me, now it would probably knock me unconscious. I could see how she caught his eye. Couple her looks with the deadly sharp wit she's always had, and Jer had no chance.

I rode the bus for long enough to lose track of time. I thought about what had happened at my apartment. I thought about what happened between me and Karen then and now. I thought about who I was now compared to then. It all just rolled around and around in my head always looping back on itself.

Eventually, I wanted off. I didn't want to go back home, but I knew I couldn't sit on the bus all night long, it's run had to come to an end some time. A bar seemed like the right place to go for the night. Who wouldn't want to get drunk after seeing someone like Karen again? Bars have to close sometime. They may stay open late, but late wasn't all night long. Denny's, though, stayed open all night long.

I transferred twice to get onto the line to Denny’s; I wouldn't have had to transfer at all if I went to a bar. Still, Denny's was a better place. I hadn't dropped off my backpack, so I still had all the books I'd taken to school. Unfortunately, they weren't the books for the next day's classes; still it was something else to focus on.

I bought a never ending coffee and slowly, through the night, bought food and worked my way through a few weeks worth of homework. I left around five so I could get to the first bus of the morning. Once again I transferred twice and, in time, ended up across the street in front of my apartment.

I stood there wondering if I really wanted to go in. Did I want to know what Jer and Karen had decided? Which outcome would make me happiest? I knew what would make my life easiest, at least after Jer settled down to his normal routine.

I stood there wondering and the door opened and Karen came down the stairs. I don't think she saw me, but if she had, she would have seen me clutching my stomach, as if I'd just been punched.

Fiction Friday #24

The first time it was real weird between Karen and me was when we sort of met in college.

Jer, my then roommate and best friend who I met my first year, his second, of college, was all excited when he got home the first day of the new semester. The only thing he talked about all night was some brilliant, dark eyed, dark haired, mahogany skinned beauty he'd met in his American lit class. Unlike most students, she was already asking the professor tough questions. She asked questions about the syllabus, pressing the prof for specifics instead of putting up with his vague outline of exactly what the required reading for the course was; who in their right mind wanted to buy a copy of Moby-Dick only to have to read select passages so they could compare and contrast those passages with a short story, "Bartleby, the Schr1vner," from the class reader.

For five weeks, each day he had that class, he came home talking about her. She said this about the story we read today. She busted the teacher when he mixed up something Emerson wrote with something Thoreau wrote. She flicks her hair back with a quick motion of her head. She makes the air around her smell like vanilla. Of course, in all that time, he never spoke to her. He just listened and pined.

Then they read Huck Finn, a book that Jer had hated since he was in junior high because of the ending. All the time he was reading it at home he bitched about the book to me, but he read it from beginning to end anyway. On the day the class talked about the ending, the prof talked about how it was a brilliant portrayal of how the reconstruction of the South failed after the Civil War and how Twain was pulling the book back from the serious place it had reached to the comedy it began with to show how the USA achieved no change at all after Reconstruction had ended. Jer, in his mild way, flipped out at the teacher and said that the ending sucked. Out of the whole class the only the Dark Girl, as we'd come to call her around our apartment, sided with Jer, the rest either rehashed what the prof said or sat silent.

After that class, and pretty much being called dumb by the prof, full of rage and adrenaline, Jer and the Dark Girl finally spoke. She even came home with them so they could keep talking. When I got there, I heard the muffled voices and didn't want to get in the way so I tried to sneak off to my room. It didn't work. The voices had stopped and Jer was in the entry way before I could lock up.

"Guess who I have here?" Jer asked, smiling.

"Jesus, the guy who sells stolen hubcaps," I said.

"No," he said. "She's here."

"Who?"

"The girl from my lit class."

"Her?" I paused. "How?"

"Come and meet her." He pulled my arm so I was in front of him and then pushed me into the living room.

She was sitting in a chair so her back was to me. Her hair was impossibly black, Jer was right about that.

"I want you two to meet."

She stood up, turned around, the smile she had turned to a look of horror.

"This is Karen," Jer said to me. "Karen, this is--"

"Leo," she said with disgust.

"Shit," I said my heart trying to fall into my scrotum while my balls tried to climb up to my throat.

Karen had dated in high school during our junior year and most of our senior year, then stupid happened. I wouldn't lie to her, but she didn't want the truth about certain thing (even though she'd ask about them). So I told her something that hurt her and she said something that hurt me and it went back and forth and back and forth for a while until she was crying to hard she couldn't talk anymore and I was so angry that I wanted to throw her through a window and started to cry at that thought. Soon after, I couldn't remember who started what or even when, but I was tired of her and she was tired of me and things just ended. From then on, we just didn't speak. Our friends sort of ignored us for a while and then she seemed to recover faster and started to be fun Karen before I became fun Leo, so they drifted off toward her more than to me. Not that I blamed them, she always was more fun than I was.

She was also the first person who I almost had sex with, but didn't quite make it. She was the first girl, besides family or medical people, to see me naked. She was the first girl who was naked with me. We must have looked odd, her in her beautiful, deep brown skin gleaming in the light, and me standing there in my earthworm colored flesh, blotchy with red as my body flushed. She was the first who really let me explore her body and she was the first who explored mine. But when she stroked me as I was kissing and touching her and I burst in her hand, the experiment was over. After that, we fooled around and worked on each other until we came, but we never got that close to actual sex again.

Before we broke up, we had both chosen to go to the same college, thinking we'd be in love forever. Afterward, I know I seriously thought about not going to school at all, but I figured the odds of me running into her on a campus with twenty thousand people seemed low, so I wasn't going to stop my plans because of her. I never saw her until there, until the day my roommate invited her over to our apartment, where she just glared at me.

As she looked me over, with a deep frown on her face, she was probably remembering every horrible thing I had ever said to her or done to her and trying to figure out if anyone who was a friend of mine was worth anything at all.

"You know each other?" Jer asked, looking between us.

"We went to high school together," I said, trying to look like I wasn't looking at Karen.

She frowned deeper.

"And we sort of dated. For a while," I said.

"Is that true?" he asked her.

She nodded.

"Shit," he said.

A Softer World

If you don't read A Softer World once a week, what the hell is wrong with you?

There Was No Party on Saturday

Feels like a long time since I've blogged, but I put something up on Friday and I actually wrote a few paragraphs on Thursday. So, it hasn't even been a week. Feels it, though.

I'm really extra sick of my job.

I think I've written about how at the end of each month I box up files that were ordered from storage and then ship them back to the record's center. I didn't do it at the end of December because of my back. I want to let it get a long rest before I start lugging boxes full of files around again. I talked to SMSN about it and she said she'd take care of it. Yesterday, AOAC came up to me and asked about the files and I said she should go ask SMSN about them and she, AOAC, told me that it didn't matter, she'd work around the files.

I rolled my eyes and didn't do a thing about it.

Why? Well, it's not my responsibility and I'm tired of doing extra things that aren't my responsibility.

I know that's not the way to get "ahead," but where I work, me doing extra stuff is taken for granted and not appreciated. Hell, I was responsible enough to tell SMSN weeks in advance that she'd have to find someone else to send the files off. Weeks! I guess she didn't take care of it since it hasn't been done. I bet that once she hears about it, she'll be surprised that I didn't remind her that she said she had it taken care of even though she didn't. I am expected to let her know things like this, no one else is.

That post I wrote last Thursday about responsibility, yeah it had to do with her and the other people who are supposed to be in charge not doing their job, but me doing their job.

See, late in November some guys came to do some wiring through the floor. Shelves had to be moved. Most were empty and we were going to be moving to a different office in December, so it was a good start to that. Well, the wiring didn't get done that day and the move didn't happen, but the shelves were never put back. We didn't have much room back in November for new files on the few shelves left, by the end of December, the last few shelves were filled to bursting. Last Thursday, I got sick of it, so I readjusted where the files were and told SMSN that we need the other shelves back since we're now not moving until sometime between March and August. (That's as specific as they can get.) She wanted me to take care of it. She wanted me to get the shelves and put them back. She wanted me to put everything back just the way it was before. I wanted to throw her out a window.

On top of that, we're doing this pointless preparation to our files for scanning on scanners that they won't let us see into a computer program that isn't finished being created yet. And everyone comes to me for advice. I was given the same bullshit instructions that they were. I attended the same bullshit meetings that they did. I heard the same bullshit answers they heard. I received no training like they did and they come to me for answers that if they don't have I don't have. And then one of the judges decided to tell all the attorneys he saw yesterday that if they have any questions about what they can do to help that they should speak with me. With! Me!

The only think that I know for certain is that the fucking purple paper goes on top of the prepped work! That's not fucking much!

The thing that bothers me the most is that when I tell people that I don't know, that I don't have an answer for them, they hover over my desk with a little smile, like they thing I'm shitting them! If I knew, I'd tell you!

GL Test

Like the lady said, it was bound to happen.

Which Power Ring would come to you?

You are an exemplar of hope.You have a place in the Blue Lantern Corps. We exist to fill the universe with hope against the dark times ahead. The universe needs you.
Take this quiz!

Quizilla | Join | Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code

That's the ring I would have chosen, if it hadn't chosen me.

Responsibility.

I don't want to be the fucking adult. I don't want to be the one who's responsible for the bullshit of other people.

It's one of the reasons I don't want to be a parent.

It's the main reason I don't want to be a supervisor over more than two or three people. Ever. I don't want to constantly nag the shit-heads who don't do their work to get it done, but since my job performance is dependent on theirs, I'd have to because I don't want to look like a shit-head because of some other asshole.

All I want to be is responsible for myself and my tiny, insignificant place in this universe. If I fuck up, then it's me who gets fucked up the worst. My fuck-ups may effect other people, but not so badly that they can't recover and move on with their part.

I hate depending on others to get their shit together so that I can move on. I hate it!

FUCK!