two kinds of ice cream

I seem to have done it.

I seem to have found work that will actually be fun, and pay ridiculously good money. The circus thing today went phenomenally well; I got to teach kids diabolo, plate-spinning, and juggling, and the director is really excited to hire me. So I'll be doing shows and leading workshops in schools all over New York. Unfortunately, 50% or more of these shows will be in the NYC/Long Island area, which is, significantly, Not Ulster County.

In fact, its really fucking far from Ulster County. If my parents didn't already live in Westchester (45 min or so from the National Circus Project home base) taking this job would be unthinkable. As it is, it will probably mean spending most of my time either at the Familial Residence or sleeping in the NCP building (they have international guest performers, and apparently have several guest rooms and showers for people who need to stay in the area for up to a week) between days of a show. Fortunately I've never had a sense of one particular place as "home" and so I should be fine.

On the topic of things I've never had... this also means I might suddenly have A Lot of Money. And I need to decide what to do with that. Savings account? Tattoos? Gas-efficient motorcycle for all this commuting? First I suppose there are loans to pay off. Ick.

Well that's the life update. I'll be back in Port Ewen tomorrow probably, where I have a drawing tablet and can get back to the image a day plan. I really like doing that, and keeping creative/nonsensical postings forthcoming here. I don't claim they're all good, or worth reading. That's not the point. The point is to create at all, because discipline is not a skill I put a lot of points in when I was making this character.

Baffling. Waffling.

old habits

played a lot of WoW today. More than I meant to, as always. Self-discipline is my downfall. Given endless hours in a day, freed from the office, I cower from more than a few hours of juggling practice and end up tanking heroic dungeons and farming materials to get fire resistance plate armor to tank the Flames of Azzinoth.

...awesome.

WoW is not the problem. If it wasn't WoW I'd be reading graphic novels, or torrenting massive archives of Bruce Willis movies and tentacle porn, or updating this. The problem, as usual, is that I'm afraid to look myself in the eye and say "I'm going to do my best at this, and I'm not going to fail." And that's the only way I'm going to get to keep this circus job.

I always hated people who used musical quotes in their blog, but good ol Eminem's Lose Yourself came on in the car the other day when I was driving, and the words he told me were the god given truth. This is the chance to "seize everything I ever wanted" and I'm gonna be pissed if I just let it slip by.

Post is getting on toward "too long; didn't read". No more whining.

There are days when I shouldn't even post these

McShaman

I have somehow become addicted to the Japanese Ronald McDonald insanity video. Couple that with a long Friday of unemployment, and this is what we get. I'm probably ripping off American Gods... but I never read it:




she slurps the air and ice at the bottom of her Mountain Dew™
and paints on another coat of watery ketchup lipstick.
Totem aspects must be observed after all.
She grounds her will, drawing on and merging with
billions and billons served.
The candle bursts to life,
and she's lovin it.

neckties in the morning

I am once again unemployed. The feeling of quitting a job at will is a good one. My supervisors and I were having regular tense discussions about my database projects and the viability of working at home... the kind of discussion where everyone throws in a "heh" after every other line because without them an observer might think you were really angry at each other. To quote Neil Diamond, nine to five ain't takin' me where I'm bound. My hair is purple again, and I've got rent paid through next month. I'd rather wait tables two nights a week (making as much money as Americorps was paying me) and sit cackling on a street corner with a deck of Tarot cards and a bucket of glass.

But I may not have to. In a few weeks I've gotten me a provisional position with the National Circus Project, teaching kids circus skills in elementary schools. I like kids, I like the circus, and I like being done with work by 3 o clock. There is also a lot of money to be made in it. Hopefully everything will work out like it should and I'll have the perfect job; to forward this goal I'm devoting a lot of time this week to really buckling down and getting good at all those monkey skills I never quite got. Queue montage. I really do feel like I'm training for the championship.

As an addendum to this, and inspired by dear MPM, I'll probably be fucking up my sleep schedule just to see what works. I've noticed I get really sleepy around 3 pm; it was one of the things that made office life so impossible. So I think I'll be taking a nap around then for an hour, staying up until 4 or so, then sleeping til 7 or 9. One thing office/retail work has taught me is that I really do enjoy waking up early. So while I'm not trying anything as extreme as the Dymaxion schedule, I'll be playing around trying to find what gives me the most productive hours while still letting me feel rested and earning me that satisfying "going to bed" feeling at night.

today's hastily-created drawing (completely unrelated to the post, unlike yesterday's)

Sundown

and through those shattered streets I walked,
my batteries running grimly down as flesh fought to reclaim what technology had taken from it.
skin sloughs over subdermal titanium, scar tissue from insertion clumped in ridges healed and torn and healed again.
These eyes of mine, $5 million dollar eyes, scan restlessly for the inevitable, and I drag my feet forward, the slick trail of blood and engine fluid (shouldn't we have made them the same word by now) as forgotten and irrelevant as everything else behind me.
The scuff of a boot in the shadows is what tips me off; all the sensory augs I've got and its my ears, all-natural and God-given, functional but for the years of damage done by hammering gunfire, that let me know the bastards are there.
Five of them stumble out of the building, and the shrieking starts, wet-throated guttural wrath, choked on bile and foam. The hydraulics where my biceps used to be scream to life to match them, groaning for want of oil as they lift the four-foot barrel of the Piper up to sing its favorite song. I shrug the belt off my shoulders; it crashes to the ground in a slinking ammunition coil, stirring gray dust and forlorn newspaper shreddings. The Piper plays its keening pitch, gathering higher toward the minor key of twenty-five rounds per second. The others start to dance, ripped into jerking marionette frenzy by the joyful overture of violence before falling backward finally to slump in their already-congealed deathblood. The gun's neural linkup sends its software message down, <"stop;"> and the finger twitch release sends the whirring whine slowly to sleep. I pick up the belt and sling it back.

Motherfucking zombies.

opportunity knocks?

So. I just got an email from the national circus project saying they're interested in an interview. Progress toward a life I want! Huzzah! Let the conditional, preliminary good news ring out over hill and dale, echoing off the mountain peaks and causing tumultuous avalanches of furious unwarranted optimism! And let these rumbling snowy warlords wakened wrath rain upon the heads of the tiny nesting chickens, counted long before they hatch.

no rly... this is cool. I wants it.

pining for apples

I dread going to work tomorrow, and there's no reason for it. I'm giving a presentation on Food Webs to a class in Beacon. Important people in Suits will be there watching, and will be deciding whether or not to give Scenic Hudson a grant based on what they see. It will probably be a lot of fun. But still I just don't want to drive into the office.

Today I didn't go in, because I woke up and discovered my car wouldn't start. Jumper cables failed; Triple-A was called. And now the car starts, and all's right with the world. I could have gone in for the afternoon. I did not. Why? I have no idea.

I just want to do things like THIS with my days.

heft not thy woofer

Westward! he said, and with that they were off. The highway hummed by outside the window of the onrushing autobeast, the sound of speed lulled to a soothing audio gel that barely reached their ears over the exhalant coo of the air conditioner. The world was traversed unnoticed in a blur; they were a gliding puck on the air hockey table of the desert.

Franz poked the dog. "Dog" he observed, "you have not many teeth left."
"It is true" the dog replied, "for I have gnawed and known a great many things in this world, and the time for teeth has come and gone. Now is the time to pool myself at feet and look soulfully toward the world of tomorrow."
"How will you eat, Dog, if you have no means of chewing?" Franz asked. For a long time the dog did not answer. Then it yawned, stretched its haunches, and erupted in a five-tone shower of whimsy that quivered the heavens and compelled the very sun to resonance. Franz looked upon it, blinded by the elegant catastrophe, and wept, understanding at last why his mother never let him have sweets.

The board room meeting would have to be delayed. Another stanza was not forthcoming.

tiny graphical nothings

I'm trying out the theory that if I make myself produce something regularly, even if it's not high quality, it will get easier to produce more things. So I'm doing a daily image, viewable at vaguelyamazing.com/warren/daily. The one I just did looks like
this.

on misbehavior

Yesterday I was teaching a group of 6th graders about the perils of point- and non-point pollution by pouring kool-aid, chocolate, and vegetable oil on a topographical plastic watershed model and Doc-Holidaying two spray bottles over it in a torrential simulated "rain storm" to wash the sludgy crap down into the river. Midway through, one of the little students, his mind apparently having reached an educational breaking point for the day, decided to pour one of my bottles of Sludge Mixture™ onto the floor. He was scolded by his teacher, and escorted out of the room. Ten minutes later, he was back. That was that; nothing further will ever haunt that child as a repercussion for his crime. It made me think, "damn. I wish I'd been aware how little it meant to be a wretched, screaming, disobedient creature in elementary school. You can't get away with shit like that in the real world."

I realized later that I was lying... that you CAN get away with most anything in the real world, and you'll just be given a strange look, called an asshole, or asked to leave the establishment and never trouble them with your business again. It's an important lesson to remember... it's ok to do the weird stuff.

I've edited this twice trying to figure out exactly what I mean. Forget it. Going to bed. Have to be up early for work. Woohoo.

it haas begunnn

It is not clear at this time what will be put into this space. It is only clear that I am copycatting. Other folks have been starting blogs left and right, and I'm just jumpin' on the old bandwagon. I'm frankly not sure I deserve a blog right now. People who do interesting things keep blogs; otherwise there's no point in keeping one. The reason one puts something up on the internet is to stand up on the table in the proverbial bar of life and yell, "Everybody look at me!"

That is the statement made by authorship of a blog.

But any drunken fool can stand up and yell "everybody look at me!" Trick is, you'd better be a fucking entertaining drunken fool to deserve it. You'd better be naked but for three species of Atlantic crab strapped strategically to your groin, each trained to whistle the Macarena in a different octave of pleasing harmony, if you want to keep people's attention. Elsewise you'll be ignored, and asked to leave.

My point is... I don't know what exactly I am yelling about yet. Time will tell. I'll try to be a worthy yeller.