Remiel

( Small talk. Breaking the ice. Whatever you call it, it's definitely a learned skill, and it's definitely one that I don't have. )

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

Hamlet, act III sc. 1

I like Obama. I really do. I didn't vote for him (I voted for McCain, probably the one Republican I would have voted for), but I'm glad Obama's President and am excited about what he represents.

The true test of his political longevity and gravitas, however, will be if he can turn his back on the far left fringe elements of his party and reach out to the conservatives, to Christians, to rural and middle America. So far, early signs seem promising.

I'm far more of a dog person than a cat person, but this story might brighten the day of people like seraphbriar.

It has come to my attention recently that virtually everyone I know, including people five and six years my junior, make more money than I do. This has led to one of those "What-the-fuck" moments. I mean, it's not like I have an easy job. It's not like when I was driving for Pizza Hut and I could turn my brain off and go into autopilot. The customers who call in (and they do so endlessly) are calling because they have a problem. Something isn't working, and more times than not I'm the only one in the world that can help them solve it. Sometimes I have no idea what the fuck is going on, and that's when it's a scramble to pore through the often useless reference materials and cryptic databases for some sort of possible clue before the customer loses patience and yells at me. I deal with a lot of high tech stuff, man.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but the gist of it is that I believe one's salary should be commensurate with how stressful one's job is, and I have been stressed out quite a lot lately. Granted, I'm not in danger of risking actual physical harm (unless you count carpal tunnel), but, nevertheless, I have come to the conclusion that either I have the worst salary negotiation skills in the entire fucking world, or it's seriously time to re-evaluate my life. Seriously.

/angst

On a completely related note, I'm going to start a meme. What would you do if you didn't have to worry about money? Or, in other words, if you could retire tomorrow, what would you do with your life? Here's what I would do:

1. I would pay goodbyebartleby to draw a daily webcomic. Or I would pay her to draw Chibi Zombies as a manga, and then I would publish that sucker. I would insist on retaining creative input rights, though, because I'm no one's sugar daddy.

2. I would learn how to cook. SRSLY.

3. I would spend at least an hour a day doing some form of exercise.

4. I would join some sort of charity, like Habitat for Humanity or the Braille Institute. I would only work part-time, though, because I wouldn't want to turn it into a full-time job.

5. But mostly, I would play lots and lots of video games.

I'm not usually one to follow memes. In fact, in the small, backwoods West Virginia town where I grew up, I am known as totahatanka shanka, or "he who is not usually one to follow memes." Somewhere in Nigeria, there is a dictator with buckets and buckets of money, unable to spend any of it because I didn't give him access to an American savings account. In a Californian hospital, an eight-year-old girl named Brandy lies dying because I didn't bother to forward her email to everybody on my friends list. Because of me, personally, God has killed hundreds of puppies and kittens. Those brave few of you who actually read this drivel have no idea what my favorite music is, what my interests are, or what I secretly think about you, you tiresome fools.

Nevertheless, barhaven's meme of awesomely awesome female characters is a meme that I can actually get behind without having a small part of me die inside. So, without further ado, here it is--

( Fuck You, She's Awesome: The Top Ten Female Characters Known to Modern Geekdom. )

This past weekend, goodbyebartleby, my old nemesis--the Myrna Minkoff to my Ignatius J. Reilly--persuaded me to watch "Teeth", a film about a girl who... well, about a girl who possesses a...well, let's just call it an "unusual biological adaptation".

( My Anti-Feminist Tirade Continues Behind the Cut... )

I consider myself a conservative, and I have liked McCain since 2000, when he ran against Bush in the primaries, but Barack Obama is very, very hard to dislike. His speech today--in response to revelations of controversial statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his "spiritual advisor"--was, I thought, exactly what it should be.

( The full transcript of the Mar 18 speech )

( Two Heroes-themed motivational posters )

Inspired by barhaven.

A killer amoeba, living in a lake, encounters a young boy who's just going swimming with his family. It enters his nostrils, latches on to his olfactory nerve, and from there attacks his brain tissue. It literally eats away at his brain cells until he dies.

Sounds like a horror movie, doesn't it?
But it's absolutely true.

First day of voluntary unemployment. Item number one on the docket: organize porn collection.

Hey, it's important to have priorities.

Aside: Deadbeat roommate still jobless, still stiffing me on the rent. Must. Restrain. Urge. To Kill. In addition, he has taken up smoking again, even though said activity has caused him previous lung-related ailments and he does not currently have medical insurance. Well, I ain't covering for his stupid ass when he has to go to the hospital because his lungs start swelling up again.

jdevil_76, if you're still interested in looking over my resume, can you shoot me a quick email to remiel@adelphia.net? I'm not sure if I have your email address.

That goes for anybody who is willing to do me a favor by glancing over my resume and offering suggestions and advice. I figure if I get enough suggestions, I can fuse them all together, kind of like Captain Planet, transforming my mild-mannered resume into some sort of Super Resume.

Oh, and seraphbriar, I miss you too. =) Hope you're doing well.

jdevil_76, what do you think about this?

So on the way home from work yesterday, I decided to tune in to NPR and see what they were saying about the May Day protest march. (For those of you who don't know, I'm referring to the pro-immigration protests that occured yesterday in several cities around the country.)

Being NPR, I fully expected them to be pro-immigrant, since that is typically a liberal or leftist position.  What was surprising, however, was exactly how extreme their positions were.

The illegal immigrants were represented as oppressed and brutalized victims of a ruthless American economy which created the conditions of poverty which made them want to illegally immigrate to America in the first place.  Several times they were referred to as "modern-day slaves."  America was labelled as an imperialistic, colonialist monster that "raped" the economies of smaller third-world nations.  At other times, they called the US "the land of broken promises."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing.  I would expect this tripe from something like Air America, but NPR?  I had only listened for about five minutes before I started thinking to myself, countdown to comparison to Hitler or Nazis in 3...2...1...

And sure enough, just like I expected, the word "fascist" was rolled out to refer to the current administration.

Unable to stomach the garbage I was hearing any longer, I switched back to the Larry Elder show.

So I have a couple of online addictions. The first is kdice, a multiplayer Risk-type game. It can be maddeningly frustrating sometimes when your luck turns sour, but it's still fun overall.

The second is iSketch, basically Pictionary, but online. It's online Pictionary! It's pretty fun. If anyone ever wants to play and I'm online, shoot me an IM. My IM name is WalterCupcake (don't ask).

Happy birthday, seraphbriar!!!

I usually despise memes. Despise them! But the opportunity to be interviewed by goodbyebartleby was too good to pass up; and now I must play by the rules, lest the mindless gods of LiveJournal smite me.

01. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me."

02. I respond by asking you five questions of a very intimate and creepily personal nature. Or not so creepy/personal. If I don't know you they'll probably be generic.

03. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.

04. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.

05. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

-----

Questions from goodbyebartleby:

1. If you could have sex with anyone on the planet, consequence-free, whom would you bang?

Wow.

Rather than say something that's only going to get my horny ass in trouble, let me just take a page from Trent Reznor's book and say EVERYONE in the FUCKING WORLD.

Except for kids, though, because that's just wrong. And everyone over 50, because ewww.

2. Same question as above, but now you must choose an RP character, yours or someone else's. Male or female. Human or inhuman!

Hrm, I have to pick just one? There are a number of characters I could put on that list, but I would have to say that dubious honor goes to Midnight Sakkran. The woman is a sex machine!

3. If you inherited two million dollars and, as whatshisname was giving it to you aliens landed on the planet and announced they would be blowing it up in two days' time, what would you do?

I would give it away. As cheesy as it sounds, that's really what I would do. I think I would try to gather up as many poor people as I could and serve them all a really good meal before aliens blew up the earth. I would try to reunite fathers with sons, mothers with daughters, wives with husbands, etc. And I would pay for one extremely obese girl to have liposuction surgery, so she would get the chance to feel good about herself just one time before she died.

4. What is the single greatest song you've ever heard?

That's a tough one to answer, because I don't really have a favorite. And, if I do, chances are it wasn't the same song I would have chosen five years ago, and it most likely wouldn't be the same song I'd choose five years from now.

My favorite song all through college was Alphaville's "Forever Young". Does that count?

5. Do you believe in an afterlife?

As much as I'd like to, no, I don't. I'm not sure what happens to us when we die, but I'm fairly positive that all the major religions have got it wrong. Maybe our spirit energy goes back to the Lifespring, or whatever. Maybe we get recycled as another life form. Maybe we just cease to exist altogether. Of one thing I am certain, and it's that life is all about shit happening, and happening for no fucking reason. If there is any sort of divine plan, it's beyond all humanly comprehension.

...I don't want my last LJ entry to be about WoW, dammit.

Lessons learned for 2007:

Never take for granted the people who love you, even if that love is not of a form that you might perhaps wish for.

You don't know what you have until it's gone.

( Gaming Blues: Final Fantasy XII, Guild Wars, and World of Warcraft )

It finally happened.

( The World of Warcraft finally got me. )