Current Ramblings
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Okay, let's see...
I've got the AC in my car working.
I've got a bag of stuff to bring for friends.
I've got my camera batteries charged up.
I've got the rent check ready to go in the box on the way out.
I've got the special T-shirt I made.
I've got plenty of Asacol, plus psuedoephedrine-free sinus medicine and my nightly vitamins.
I've got a handful of absentee art entries.
I've got a notebook for writing down contact information so all the contest winners and auction people can get their stuff, and it's got tabs by subject.
I've got five copies of the art room schedule.
I've got a back-up CD of all the art show, contest, and auction forms in case the ones Malin printed spontaneously combust.
I've got to get to bed.
posted@12:24 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
posted@3:12 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, July 26, 2004
On top of finding out I would need another $500 in repairs to my car to get my air conditioning working, and being told I'm pretty much not going to get this second promotion I was trying for at work (also that my co-workers hate me and I should be on Ritalin) , Friday also marked the loss of my title at work as Queen of the Fictions. I would like to think that this was, like my loss of comics, not because of failings on my part, but Friday was bad enough already without asking about that. Instead, I have now been put in charge of Young Adults and...Religion. While I have been known to read the occasional J.K. Rowling or Eoin Colfer, I haven't read a religious book since sating my curiosity as to what this "Left Behind" business was about. (And learning it was about writing to the lowest common denominator. I had more challenging reading assignments in junior high.)
I always kinda dreaded the idea of getting stuck with Religion. It's not that I have anything against religion itself. Conceptually, it's fine, and I find the non-Christian stuff especially interesting in a "Let's learn about other cultures!" way. But it's the hate stuff that always bothered me. The fact that there even is a book called "Is The Homosexual My Neighbor?" is kind of appalling. Or one I discovered today, "Who Is My Enemy?", which tells you how to draw homosexuals, "militant feminists", and even (Gasp!) liberals into your church so you can convince them to stop having sex with other men, putting on shoes and leaving the kitchen, and voting for Kerry, respectively. Okay, so I find this sort of stuff a little insulting.
But I started running it today, and it wasn't really so bad. Most of it was pretty innocent. My main lingering concern is being a heathen in the section. When I ran fiction, if I apologetically expressed to a customer a lack of knowledge of Nora Roberts aside from what I learned while stocking, that customer was unlikely to get upset or try desperately to convert me to reading Nora Roberts. I wonder if any of my predecessors have been proselytized to for a lack of deeper knowledge of the subject matter. Though I guess it's not really that much different from working any other part of the store, or any other store, for that matter. I've been invited to churches or asked if I know that Jesus loves me while working almost as many times as I've been awkwardly hit on by extremely creepy men. I'll manage.
posted@11:18 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, July 25, 2004
Last night I dreamed that I wanted to give everyone I work with little gifts, but all I had to give was untranslated manga and capsule toys. I think this sums up how I'm feeling about work right now pretty much perfectly. I want to give something, but what I have to give is neither understood nor most of all wanted. And what is wanted, I don't seem to have. I have a pretty uncanny ability to dream perfect metaphors sometimes.
posted@9:59 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Thursday, July 22, 2004
The Good: I got free passes to IMAX Spider-Man 2 tonight.
The Bad: The $100 I spent to get the AC in my car recharged yesterday seems to have kept me in sweet illicit coolness for all of one day. I go in at 8AM tomorrow to see if they can figure out why it stopped working.
The Ugly: I'm crampy, and I can't take anything proper for it because ibuprofen will apparently upset my UC.
posted@11:06 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
I have far too many My Little Ponies.
posted@7:20 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, July 19, 2004
Mother a' God, don't these people have better things to do!? Though I admit I'm wary of any information not only posted to AICN, but also posted in 36-point lavender font.
posted@11:40 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Sunday, July 18, 2004
What the trailers for the new Will Smith sci-fi flick "I, Robot" really make me want to see, more than the movie itself, is a movie based on Asimov's "The Caves of Steel". I just reread that and its two direct sequals (as opposed to all the other stuff that it was also linked to) a few months ago, and I couldn't help thinking what a great basis for a movie it would be. Admittedly, the people writing "I, Robot" seemed to think so, too, since the plot is essentially the same detective story with a seemingly impossible robot murder of a human, just without the android partner and cranked up several notches on the action scale. I guess maybe they figured if they paid Asimov's estate just enough to use the name of one of his books, maybe they wouldn't sue them for halfway stealing the plot of another. I'll probably see it when it hits the dollar theater, though. I'm a sucker.
Sunday nights are the most boring time for the internet. Lots of sites don't update on weekends, and even the big corporate news sites seem nearly comatose. Fortunately it's one of the best Adult Swim nights, so that makes up for it a little. I'll probably be heading over to the Evil Empire Supercenter later tonight to pick up the makings for a Mini-Con logo shirt to wear at OTFCC, though how much use I get out of it will depend on whether we have shiny staff shirts this year.
posted@9:58 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Last night was an important step in my life as a geek: I learned how to play Magic: The Gathering. There are perfectly good reasons I never got into it when it first came out, those being 1) I spent all my money on toys and comic books, and 2) All my stupid high school nerd friends had shitloads more money than I did anyway, even if I didn't spend it all on toys and comics, so they bought all the good cards and it would have been pointless for me to even try to compete. The idea that I could have asked my parents to maybe buy me some cards every so often so I could be cool is almost as laughable as they idea of asking them to buy me some clothes to make me cool. At 14 I had to buy all my own Pearl Jam T-shirts. You know, on weeks when there wasn't any new TF:G2 stuff out so I had spare cash.
So residual teen angst aside, I picked up some Mirrodin decks and boosters that somebody had sold my store and Steve-o was kind and patient enough to teach me how to play. (This was, naturally, after driving around most of the west side of Columbus and determining that there were no toys or comics for me to spend that money on. Not that they cost much after my discount.) I suppose the Mirrodin expansion was as good a place as any for me to step in, what with being themed around a metal world with lots of mechanical creatures. I lost both games, of course, but that was only to be expected. Steve-o had these elves that kept popping up that were protected against artifacts, and all my creatures were also artifacts. Also, it was the first time I had played ever, and he's been playing for years. But just you watch, one day I'm gonna win one! Maybe when Graham brings some of his cards from his parents' place. He said he loses a lot.
Now I just need to learn to play D&D and I will be fulfilled.
posted@1:01 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
I want to be Graham's Aunt Susan:
As further proof that I can find just about any toy if I put my mind to it, today at Meijer I got ahold of the very popular and sadly short-packed movie Doc Ock figure that I've been angsting for since I finally saw Spider-Man 2. Now I have to dig out my Spider-Man from the first movie for him to beat up on. For my next trick, I will be picking up the Transformers Battle in a Box set for all the non-Midwest #wiigii!ers.
posted@10:59 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments
The box of tea I bought home from England doesn't have any instructions on it like the tea I buy here. Presumably if you don't know how to make tea they send you out of the fucking country like you deserve. It's really good, just simple Sainsbury's Red Label, but I shouldn't have it too often because the caffene's bad for the ol' colitis. Not that that stopped me from saying "YES MORE PLEASE" every time someone offered me tea while I was there.
Today I got started in earnest on that pile of books I brought home and read through The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It's narrated by a teenager with Asperger's syndrome who finds a neighbor's dog murdered while on a night-time stroll and takes it upon himself to solve the crime, managing on the way to uncover complexities in his life that he had never known were there. His autism makes for a facinating window through which to view the flaws and anguish of the adults in his life, which affect him in ways he is unable to understand. It's a fairly short book and a quick read, and definitely worth a summer's afternoon hiding in air conditioning.
Oooo, Graham's to the first Mr. Freeze episode on his Batman: TAS DVD. I loves me some Mr. Freeze.
posted@12:40 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, July 12, 2004
My new car stereo needs an "Emo" setting.
I find myself overwhelmed with entertainment options lately, and like a computer trying to run too many tasks at once, it causes me to freeze up and do little more than stare at a slowly scrolling IRC window all evening. In light of my haul from England, both from book shops and Graham's Aunt Susan, who has the best house in the whole world, I have put myself on hiatus from buying any more books until I've finished more of the ones I already own. It doesn't help that I already had a backlog of books I hadn't read before I left; working at a used book shop with a really good discount will do that to a person. I should spend more of my time working through that backlog and less staring at this computer screen, but then I also have all those games I should play and those DVDs I really should watch at some point, having shelled out $20 or so for them and all, and I really need to edit up some of my pictures so I can get them online, and maybe there's something more to read on AlterNet.org, or by some miracle Warabi has updated with more illustrated episode reviews and not more picutres of Transformers Armada and Energon characters as hot anime chicks. So I just sit here surfing when I could be doing things that will reduce my backlog. I just took an hour's break to read another chapter of the ass-kicked old copy of A People's History of the United States I've been working on for weeks (having taken about a week off to read Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I really liked). So I guess what I'm trying to say is, if I'm not around much, if I'm not updating much, bear with me. I've got a lot of work to do.
posted@1:09 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Tuesday, July 06, 2004
Okay, who's gonna buy this with me?
I saw this new generation of Tamagotchis when I was in England, and while I was chomping at the bit to snag one, even at £12, I didn't wanna spend my pounds on something I could buy in dollars - and probably less of them - when I got home. I am an unapologetic gadget whore; I still have three old Tamagotchis and a Digimon in a box somewhere. But back in those days I had Sketch around to fight with my Digimon. I'm going to have to hope for dirty one-night-stands for breeding. Or I'll just have to buy two. Who am I fooling? I'll totally end up buying two.
posted@1:40 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments
Monday, July 05, 2004
Questioning of electronic voting machines goes mainstream.
I'm off tomorrow and Wednesday, so hopefully I'll have some England content up soon. Though I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow and I'm driving to Dayton for a Kerry rally Wednesday. But hopefully I'll have time to put a least a few of my 150 or so pictures up.
posted@12:22 PM by:Trixter: 0 comments