AMAZING STORIES of having a lot of shit going on!

In our last installment, we learned about my awesome new job. Well, that continues, and continues to be awesome, and thanks to the randomness of Internet memes, I am quantifiably awesome at it. Here's why: last week, I wrote a story about some dumb-looking boxart for a reissue of Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Well, some Digg user thought it was pretty hilarious and posted a link to it on Digg. This is a fairly common occurrence, although I get totally flattered whenever somebody does it (the secret, however, is that the Diggers are using my link as a reference to share the material, and they aren't really interested in my writeup at all. They probably found it on our site first, is all.) But this time... well, here. See if you can spot the day that Digg users got interested in my story.



I love that picture. This event was a significant ego boost, which is to say that I have an ego now.

Hey, remember when I couldn't get a job? And I had to take a free one? Yeah, those days are over. Since I wrote my last post, I have:

1. Taken the holy-fuck-awesome blogging job
2. Turned down a job with the Houston Public Library (another first!)
3. Started and completed the internship at the Rice Digital Media Center, and
4. Gone completely fucking nuts
1. Continued taking full-time school, to the surprise of my library school colleagues
2. Taken another fucking job for some reason

ccdYes, full-time school and blogging is not enough. I spent long enough with no job, now I want them all apparently. Well, sort of. I took a job as an Archives Intern with Rice's library because it was a very good opportunity in a field that apparently doesn't have any opportunities, and because I eventually want to make enough money that I can buy stuff with it, and because I had already turned down one job that same day and felt guilty about it.

The last three weeks, I have worked from 9 in the morning until at least 3AM, with breaks only to eat, go to the bathroom and drive from home to school and back. All of my classes had midterm tests and projects that I had to work on, and I've been writing around five posts a day, which can take (me) a long time. I'm completely worn out, and I have no free time.

In a way, it's good. It lets me know that I'm not lazy, which comes as a total shock to me. But in other, less noble ways, it sucks ass to work all the time seriously I just want to go to dinner or play some Elite Beat Agents what the shit.

It's tapering off now. Midterms are over, so I just have two jobs and regular school. Last night Mary and I played Super Mario World, and today I went to Gamecrazy to get my Street Fighter III: Third Strike disc buffed so I could eBay it. It was nice to go do stuff. Of course, my Dreamcast died when I came back, but I don't want to talk about that.

Today, despite having a shitload of blogging to do for the morning, I decided to take a break and write this blog post. Hi blog friends! Sorry I haven't been updating you guys!

library update post #1

In my second semester of library school, not even a year away from (hopefully) a career in libraries, I’m finally learning some shit about library science. I’m finally just now understanding what some of the stuff is that people are talking about. I haven’t actually spent much time hanging out in the library, so there’s a whole bunch of shit that I just don’t understand about libraries. Like, I’m finally learning what a reference librarian does. All I knew from talking to librarians and library students last semester was that being a reference librarian makes you very proud of yourself. It took me taking a class about reference to figure out what the damn job is.

The cool thing is that reference requires these skills:

1. Knowing a bunch of stuff.


2. Knowing how to look stuff up.


3. Customer service.

Another sign that I’m starting to get it: as I’ve been searching the many e-journal databases for the piles upon piles of assigned readings given to me, I’ve also found some that I want to read. I barely found anything in linguistics that I could read, much less develop a personal interest in.

It is nice to be making measurable progress in school. Also it is nice to know that I won’t be clueless forever and have a chance at being a maybe okay librarian.

I'm also starting to want to post library-science-related things, which I will do separately from this purely personal update

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.