Long-overdue News Ramble

I haven’t bothered to write out what’s been going on recently. For the most part, I can’t excuse myself by saying that I’ve been busy; while plenty has happened, I’ve spent days upon days sitting at home. In fact, I have to step back and look at the last few months in a different perspective to realize that anything has happened at all, or that time has even passed.

This update comes at the request of Mary, who wanted to read about it despite being present and complicit in all of the events of my life. Possible reasons for this request include:

1. She has amnesia, but is embarrassed to tell me.


2. …


3. Actually, that’s the only reason I can come up with.

Back in November, I bought a new Dell Inspiron B130 laptop. While a computer is an extravagant purchase for someone in my financial situation, such a purchase was made necessary by the fact that a) I go to school on the Intertron, and b) my computer melted. Luckily, this was around Black Friday and we were able to take advantage of the rash of massive price cuts that takes place in that period.

In order to offset the cost of a computer, plus all of the troublesome eating and driving I do all the time (not to mention fucking tuition—more on that later!) I have been trying to secure employment. But, as it turns out, libraries only want to hire people who are qualified to work in them. It would make much more sense for them to hire untrained applicants, but only once, and only me. I tried to help them out by writing that in red at the top of my resume, right next to the information about how pleasant I smell. That goes to show you just how closely managers read resumes that come in. Shameful.

I don’t just need money; I am also required to gain a certain amount of library experience as a requirement of the UNT library school program. Therefore, because I couldn’t sell my services to anyone, I agreed to give it away and set up a practicum at Rice’s Digital Media Center. As far as indentured servitude goes, it’s a pretty attractive deal.

But! But there’s a problem. As I discovered the other day, UNT treats the practicum as a 3-hour course. And charges tuition thusly. I won’t go into further detail about this, as I’m sure anyone reading can understand my emotional state after almost being tricked into paying to work.

Following Mary’s logical advice, I dropped the course. I will still work at the DMC as planned, but as a self-governed ‘internship’ rather than a UNT practicum. It’s good experience anyway, and it may help me find a real job. In fact, it had fucking better, because I’m still going to need to fulfill that requirement for school somehow. But I couldn’t take the practicum option without absolutely exhausting all other possibilities, so I am giving myself more time to find a job. If my pride was hurt (or, more accurately, my shame was increased) by not being able to find a paying job, then having to actually pay a third party for the privilege of working for no money is exactly the kind of thing that would drive me to drink—if I liked drinking, or could afford it.

I do have the possibility of good news regarding job prospects, although I usually don’t like to talk about jobs I’ve applied for out of fear of invoking the cruel Jinx and waking it from its dark slumber deep within the molten core. I applied for a job blogging for DS Fanboy and Wii Fanboy, which are affiliates of Joystiq. I made it through the first round of cuts, anyway! Getting this job won’t help my library career much, but it will help feed my habitation addiction. Also I don’t need to mention that writing about games is my dream job—the one I couldn’t go to school for and can’t count on enough to stake my whole future on. If I get this job, it will be huge. I’ll manage the whole working-while-in-library school thing. It’ll be worth it to change pretty much everything about how I feel about myself. But now I’m getting light years ahead of myself. I’m not getting my hopes up too much.

On the subject of game blogging, have you checked out 20xxgames recently? I’ve recently changed my routine and started posting things that may not be ass.

I’ll end this post by giving a shout-out to my boo Mary, who is driving back home right now from volunteering as a tutor for elementary-school kids. I look forward to reading about the unexplained explosion in elementary-school test scores in inner-city Houston schools.

Our 2 ½ year anniversary was the 10th. No, I don’t know how she stands me either. But I hope she continues to for a long time.