No Touch Monkey!

Sorry for the constant posts about work. When you're under employed for 9 months, your focus tends to shift quite a bit.

By the time you read this I'll have 7 straight days in the office, with the strong possibility of going 14 maybe 21. I know for certain I'll be putting in a full 8 on July 4. These guys are under a tight deadline and they've already been going for 14 days themselves. One might say they are slightly stressed. There is lots of open grumbling about having to knock out 4 boat line catalogs plus collateral material in a month.

Me, I'm happy that I'm actually being paid to be somewhere on a weekend instead of having the expectation that I'm going to be there because the client demands it.

Graphic Artists totally get the hose, again and again. It's the pay off for getting to wear shorts, and flip flops to the office. And it's not like they're working on high concept design. That's a rarity. In most cases it's least common denominator, disposable crap. Which is sad, because there are a lot of good ideas out there.

That said, I'm feeling good about the job I'm doing, and the feedback has been positive. It's low-level nitpicky stuff, like dropping in copy and formatting it, image hunting and copy corrections, but I'm totally on target and working smart.

I was scheduled to call Xplane on Friday and find out if I made it to the next round of the application process. After 2.5 weeks of nail biting and hoping, I didn't learn anything new because I never got through to HR. She wasn't at her desk when I called and she didn't return my message. Who knows what was going on behind the scenes, she could have been totally swamped. The downside is that the position I'm applying for has been pulled from their website. In my wild dreams it's because they're holding it for me. If not, I'm still very interested in entering the dialog of Visual Thinking and will pursue my own avenues of exploration on that topic.

Anyway it's late, I gotta snooze because I have to be at the office at 9. The cool part is, they spring for lunch.

Labels: work

My friends Woensdag and Dr. J are having a baby today.

Prior to birth it was decided if a boy that he would be named Malcolm...last name Reynolds

But she's a girl: Sophie Marie Reynolds-Speer by Cesarian

I'll let Dr. J tell the story:
"After starting pitocin at about 9:00 AM, Woensdag fought the hard battle and was in active labor for over 9 hours, before she decided to get an epidural (to everyone's relief). After that, Woensdag continued for as long as she could, but little Sophie was having a little difficulty recovering from the contractions, and it was decided that a cesarian section was necessary. Fortunately the cesarian went well, and once Sophie was visible it was clear that the procedure was necessary -- the umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around her neck twice, and it was so short that she would have never made it out of the canal via a natural birth. So 3 cheers for medical science! Everyone is doing well -- there are just two very hungry ladies in the room now. "

Stolen outright from Kurt Vonnegut:

Hello, Sophie. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, Sophie, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, Sophie—God damn it, you've got to be kind."

Hmmmm. This means a new tag. "Friends"

Labels: Friends

"Known for wild-eyed live shows and a sound that fuses everything from ska to hip-hop, The Cat Empire has become one of the most popular bands in Australia, releasing best-selling albums and even touring the continent in support of James Brown in 2004."

Link to the listening

I've mentioned them here before, and I'm trying to spread the word. I stumbled on this NPR thing today by accident when I accidentally found that the NPR : Greyboy Allstars: Invigorated and Invigorating were on a week prior.

Remember. Internet Radio is Muito Importante, so get on it and call your Senators.

ST. CHARLES, Mo., June 25 (UPI) -- A Missouri couple's pet monkey is back home after five days on the lam thanks to an alert motorist and a well-placed sandwich.

Tobi, a capuchin monkey, escaped last Tuesday from Earl and Shirley Wipfler's place in St. Charles and had the run of the area until late Sunday when Paul Corley spotted the wayward monkey perched on a fence.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch said Corley, who had been driving around diligently looking for Tobi, called the Wipflers with the news. They arrived at the scene with a cage and a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich and watched as a hungry Tobi scampered back to her human pals.

Shirley Wipfler told the newspaper Tobi was "ecstatic" to be home.

A sandwich ending > bullet or car ending.

Call your senators and representatives today if you haven't already done it. And let them know how you feel.

Savenetradio.org

Mine are on the fence and it pisses me off, but call anyway and let your voice be heard.

Ok, after one day on the job as a test run, I got the 3 week temp gig (for now). My only qualifying question was, "Do you know how to put a folder on the desktop?" When I answered yes, that cinched the deal.

I'm doing work for a company that does marketing for a boat company, and I'm working as Dude Friday. Whatever they need me to do, I'm there to help pick up the slack, and today was easy. Rename a bunch of image files to standard, make contact sheets of the images and scan some slides.

A List
Because the air miles on a credit card we no longer use was going to expire soon, we took advantage of "free" magaines. Here is a huge list of magazines that now come to our house, most of them being complete wastes of paper.

Time
Stuff
Maxim
Travel and Leisure Golf
Elle
Lucky
Elle Decor
Entertainment Weekly
Scientific American (new)
Radar
Blender
Wired
Acoustic Guitar (gift subscription)

Actually, more magazines than we know what to do with. I was going to rate them based on first opening them, but I'm not going to bother. Like I said, most are crap and get a cursory look at best, but I'm happy to be getting wired after many years of not reading it.

Labels: junk

So I think I found a place that I'd like to work. It's a company called XPLANE. It appears have the qualities I'm looking for in a company, including a mental component that really appeals to me. I used my extra time in the past week digging through one of their .pdf work samples, relearning Flash and rearranging dozens of free-floating vector objects to create an animation that I hope I get to show someone at the company. I had a phone interview a couple of weeks ago. I'll find out next Friday if I made it to the next round where I may get the opportunity, and if I don't make it, I'll send it in to HR as a last ditch effort to get the gig.

The Better Flash Movie (click image)



The lower resolution, but sharable YouTube

Labels: The Cap'n, work, Worth your time

I got a call this morning from a former coworker. She had a line on a temp gig that paid some much needed big bucks. So I spoke to the Creative Director and it was a go for Monday. 3 weeks, 3 grand minimum (pre-tax), with lots of opportunity for extra hours.

After an unreturned called to the Project Manager, when I tried again she told me that they would need me and that they had bad experience with temps. YOINK!

I told her that it seems like many agencies are having temps come in for a few days to see if they work out, and that I could come in to "audition" and then they could tell me with no harm done...she said she'd get back to me.

5:50pm she calls, "Can you come in tomorrow or Sunday?" Unfortunately I'm going out of town this weekend so I can't, can you call me Monday?

"Maybe if they don't get the work done."

So there we are.

Tomorrow I'll post the project I've been working on in my spare time for the past few weeks. Hopefull another kind of audition.

Labels: work

My GI is back on-line and I feel pretty good if a little tired. I'm back at work on my project and Ale is back at work though still off.

Babies, little germ reservoirs. I'm certain that love is an evolutionary trait designed to stop us from strangling the little bastards and take the time to nurture them. But not YOURS Woensdag, I'm sure yours will be a little angel (even though he/she looks like Pennywise on the ultrasound).

Labels: Nothing to see here folks-move along

If your child is puking from a stomach virus, don't take him to a fucking party to infect everyone. There are 5 known people who were sick yesterday and today. And on top of that, apparently the child was sick until Sunday when many of the guests attended (not me) a party in sickboys honor.

From the bottom of my large intestine, thanks. I haven't been sick in over a year, it's nice to be reminded what living death feels like.

Labels: Aww Man

Ultimately, this film will most likely piss off any American who watches it. Those who are dead-set on hating everything Michael Moore releases will be infuriated by his trademark style of re-arranging of events to fit his position.sicko.jpg There are going to be those who will attempt to stop the distribution of the film because of his trip to Cuba, where he succeeds in providing an entourage of people in dire need of health care with access to Cuban doctors. Others will find his pointed statements about Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of funds from the medical lobbyists to be an assault on a beloved Democratic icon. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum though, it would be hard to ignore the truth at the heart of this film, that truth being there is something decidedly fucked up about the health care industry in this country. While this film proposes no solutions, it does most assuredly provide a point of entry into a debate that will not go away until people stop making money at the expense of the health of others.

Dowload it Here


Note: You will need to download a bittorrent client: Azureus:Java BitTorrent Client - Download to watch it, but you should do it today.

Labels: The Man, Worth your time, WTF

What does "Sick as a dog." actually mean? Most dogs I see are full of vitality and energy.

That said, both Alessandra and I are suffering from either the flu or food poisoning. About 3 hours after I started to get sick yesterday, Ale got it and man do we feel horrible. She's home from work today, we slept like shit last night, and she was puking and I was crapping it was quite a sorry scene.

It's a little better today, but we still havent really eaten yet and can hardly keep the liquids down.

Stupid germs and disease. If I were a of a different mind, I would say that Earth was designed specifically for bacteria and virii.

Labels: Too Much Information

Bleh, I think I feel food poisoning coming on, I don't feel so hot.

Anyway, I'm overdue for a post. Last week our neighbor's sister/cousin/aunt/whatever came over to their house for a bbq and brought along her pet chickens, which let us know that there are folks who keep them as pets. My friend Sky has as rooster as a pet but it is a result of working for animal rescue and finding one in North St. Louis (Ghetto). He says that the rooster is friendly and likes the company of humans, but I didn't know people really sought them out. This woman is training them to be therapy animals for "special needs kids".



Extraordinary Chickens

She said that they shit all over the place (the chickens, not the kids), but you can buy diapers for them.

She has young Japanese Bantams, which will take a diaper quite well.

So Ale and I handled them and said they were cute. We were offered ownership, but we don't want to deal with crappers.

This reminds me, we dog sat this weekend for my brother-in-law's mix lab-thingy, and while adorable and friendly, was way too high maintenance for me. Ale cleaned up all of the poop in the back yard, but goddamn! what stinky logs. I almost puked with just a whiff.

Anyway, I spent all day yesterday and today working on a animation I'd like to present to this place I want to work for (if I make it past round one), so I was getting reacquainted with Flash as well as the principles of animation and design. Now I'm going to do some reading on visual language so I can get the concepts down in order to carry my end of a conversation.

That's it for now...Ugh. Cat...do NOT knead my belly!

Sorry for lack of quality posts. It's been a busy week. 3 job interviews and 2 days working across town at a chemical company producing bottle and package lables in a digial mill. The people were nice and my eye was good, but the work is mindcrushingly dull and piles up quickly in large stacks. I may have a regular temp gig there.

They also had a Flavia machine there which really flipped my lid. The coffee wasn't as good as my favorite local joint, or the stuff I make at home, but it's damn better than Starfuck's and/or regular office coffee. So lets just say, for a change, office coffee didn't 't suck. Also the Creative Teams office DJ had a stellar playlist (until he played Fergie and Nelly as a joke). Too bad the work is very mentally draining. Oh well, it still pays.

I'm going to work this weekend on a Flash movie for the dream gig animating their work, so if/when they call me in a few weeks, I'll have something cool to show why they should hire me.

Labels: work

Have you ever been to Missouri? It's like an ingrown hair on America's 'taint'.

Daily Show 6/12/07

Yes Sam you are correct. And it's the first time I actually laughed at a sentence with the word "taint" in it.

Labels: Ahahahahaha, Media

At least I hope so...it contains Green Tea! I picked up a box of these today when Alessandra caught me cleansing my dome with hand sanitizer (wow that sounds dirtier than it really was). To my defense though, the sanitizer did contain vitamin D and some other moisturizing crap to stop me from frying my scalp.

Deja Who We went to a wedding yesterday for my friend Rock n Roll Larry. There was a woman there named Amy who I had never met before but was totally familiar. After trying for 1/2 an hour to work it out and getting to know her, we realized we had nobody in common (other than she was in my cousin's HS graduating class) and that we must have traveled around the same city circle for years without ever meeting. She called me and Ale "St. Louis Strangers." but I like the term Deja Who.

Labels: Too Much Information

Whoosh! On Friday I made contact with a company I'd really like to work for. It would be a job that stimulates me, allows greater creativity and gives me the opportunity to expand both my skill set and conceptual thinking.

I scheduled a meeting today for 4pm and spent a few hours yesterday boning up on the company and it's lingo, and most of the day today putting together my career story and mind map.

The phone call was about 30-40 minutes, and I hope it went well. Now I'm totally wound up and mildly apprehensive. I won't know if I made it to the next level for nearly 3 weeks when I do my follow up.

Sure it's a job worth waiting for, but it's going to be a loooooong wait.

Labels: work

It's a beautiful night in the park, clear and cool. Down the hill is a colorful western town set. Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing Beatrice and Benedick are arguing.

Suddenly off to the left, from a distance of 1/2 mile comes the throbbing beat of live Disco Music. People are visibly squirming (myself included), the spell of the theater is crashed rudely.

Shortly after that, from the right, comes the barking of seals from the zoo. OW! OW! OW!

It was both humorous and totally annoying.

Labels: Things and Stuff

Still no embed clicky here

When I first hear this, I think in maybe 80-81, I didn't know what to make of it. I thought it was some weird shit.

I can't help but notice how tight the song is. You wouldn't think to listen to it that it was live.

Ale is right...More Cowbell! Watch all hell break loose at the end of the song.

Labels: Newwwww Wave

Embedding not allowed, clicky title.

Labels: Newwwww Wave, Worth your time

Bah! I deleted the body of the article. If you want to read it, click the title. It was just a filler post anyway.

I'm still looking for a job, and am spending my time these past few days looking at websites to get ideas for mine. Honestly, most work I've seen looks like ass. I know my limits, I don't want a crappy looking site, so I may enter an arrangement with a designer. She gives me a design for me, and I build her a site for her. I have a meeting on Friday that may be a job interview, and maybe some temp work lined up elsewhere. I did see a place this morning that is looking for a production artist, a really cool place that looks like it was made for me. So I made a phone call this morning, and emailed...nothing, maybe I'll try back (bah! still not around).

So that's about it, just a filler post. Nothing to report here personally, nor any thing for me to bite yet.

Stay Tuned.

Labels: The Man

It's taken a while for me to consume enough media to make it worth my while to post my opinions about it, so bear with me if some of it is dated.

Movie-Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End. Was flashy, had its moments amongst the noise, but mostly just kind of there. Alessandra is very clever and she couldn't follow the story. Me, I had sort of already read "reviews" which detailed much of the story, but I still resent a movie that needs someone to explain the what the fuck I just saw. C-

TV- So rerun season is finally here and is going to last until January or February for my favorite shows. I suppose this is a good thing because I really hate when Fall Premieres arrive and you immediately start with the new episode/rerun loop due to the Holidays. But I digress.

Heroes: For a show that had a strong season with lots of WTF moments the Season 1 arc had an amazingly lame payoff. You know it's bad when the Executive Producer says "Yes, we know Peter can fly, but we'd like you to overlook that little plot hole and maintain that suspension of disbelief." C+

LOST: The opposite of Heroes. It started out lame and ended with me saying "Holy Shit!" even though most of my peers saw the big twist coming, I say it's because they spent too much time reading interviews with writers and creators. I was looking for weirdness and I didn't see it. A

Veronica Mars: I freely admit that I was watching a show about a teenage girl detective. It had good writing, clever dialog and an intricate story arc. Unfortunately, it was too serial for tv and as a result turned off new viewers before they could get involved. The subsequent mini arc plotlines, and retooling for the CWs demographics was the killer for the series which was canceled. The final episode set up a new arc for a season that won't happen. Not to mention in the past few episodes they had gone very heavy on product placement to the point of the characters actually holding discussions about said product. It was so nauseating that the creator Rob Thomas inserted a throwaway line for a character to call Thomas himself a whore immediately following one such placement. THAT was amusing. B

Sometime this month the Thomas is going to pitch the concept of moving Veronica into the future 4 years and putting her in the FBI Academy. I'd like to see that.

Books-Due to my love of the computer, my reading has been reduced to the Crapper and the bathtub on Shaving Day. So I had been sort of slothing through my books, and the instance of Catch 22, not even finishing. However, I can post opinions about two.

The Man in the High Castle By Phillip K. Dick. Androids Dream of Nazis and Tojo Winning WWII A very well written book, and was well deserving of the 1962 Hugo Award. While today, the concept of the Alternate History is rather passé unless done right, back in '62 it must have been a real mindblower. Still though, the book is lyrical in it's prose, and the characters connect on the same level as those seen in today's LOST; Dick also presents concepts which turn even Alt.history into a crazy mirror maze. Suppose in Alt.history world, the denizens were reading an alternative history "novel" where Germany and Japan lost WWII? Yeah buddy. I can't recommend this book enough. A

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Macguire . I'm not much of a Wizard of Oz guy. I've seen it maybe once or twice in it's entirety since my parents got divorced back the early 70s. I did read the book though a few years ago because Robert Heinlein references it all the time, and I wanted to read the source material, which was surprisingly good. Last year, the Wicked Broadway musical came through town, and I had seen the book for years in the SF/Fantasy section of the bookstore, so I grabbed a copy at a book fair and put off reading it until this past week.

Wow! Talk about an exercise in world building...Macguire populates Oz with 3 different religions, political upheaval, social ills, mythology, sex, philosophy and characters with genuine emotions. As I was reading I could mentally feel the solidity of Oz, and when I finished the book, I thought to myself, "Man, I am so going to have to ponder what I just read, then read it again." Plus I was emotionally moved the same way I was when I finished The Time Traveler's Wife. A+ I'd like to see the musical, but I am disappointed that learn that it has a distinctly happy ending vs the reader's choice one of the book.

Labels: Media

A message to friends. Alessandra's dad is having open heart surgery today. So please send your good will/positive healing vibes and/or prayers his way.

Thanks.

UpdateSurgery is completed and was successful. Cesar is now in intensive care and on a breathing machine for a bit. They will turn it off later and see how he does on his own. The first 12 hours are critical.

Labels: personal