Bruno is now at the bottom!!

Jerksblog!

Date-Based Archive Sad sad sad!

Wesley Willis has died! I heard about it on NPR of all places. This makes me quite sad. I should have at least tried to see him in concert.

Rock over London, Rock over Chicago. Rock on, Wesley Willis, where ever you are.

Posted by erin at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)

Date-Based Archive Got the job!

I found a part-time job!! Hooray!

It consists of working one or two days a week for some super-rich grad student as a personal assistant. She lives in a two-floor apartment with a river view by herself when she's not going to Yale. What a life! I think she does photography or something. I'll probably refer to her on my blog as "My Employer" or "My Employeress" or something like that.

Also yesterday I went out drinking to Antarctica, which is a great bar on Canal Street at Spring street, which is in Tribeca and not Chinatown. It is near a 1/9 stop. Sort of. I made the mistake of going to Franklin street and wandering around in the wrong direction with my drinking buddy until finally I relented and called information to find the place.

The drinks there are the same price as elsewhere in the city, but THREE TIMES AS LARGE. A gin and tonic comes in a big beer glass, not a dinky little cup. Turns out a white Russian at Antarctica is like a frigging milk shake, it's so big.

Also every day from 5-11 if you have the name of the day you drink for free. Yesterday's name was Cathleen. I was disappointed to find out I'd missed Erin Day, which was August 4th. None of your names are coming up - I checked.

Posted by erin at 04:20 PM | Comments (4)

Date-Based Archive Shoujoucon Report

Last Saturday I attended Shoujoucon, the northeast convention of girls' themed anime and manga. My friend Lauren went with me, but not N., as he figured he wouldn't enjoy it. He was probably correct.

Lauren is a casual anime fan and had never been to a con before. She had a good time. I also had a pretty good time, although I've been to better cons before.

Mostly the video programming was crap, although it was not scraping the bottom of the bucket completely, they were showing titles like "Trouble Chocolate" and "Fancy La La" - easily two of the worst anime series I've ever seen. In fact, they cancelled something I wanted to watch and replaced it with Fancy La La.

So we ended up watching an hour of AMV's, a handful of which I'd seen at Otakon and Yuricon already. Much like Yuricon, there were an unhealthy number of AMV's cut from Utena The Movie.

Next we watched two episodes of The Twelve Kingdoms, which seemed pretty good. It was about a schoolgirl transported to a fantasy realm in order to solve their problems (others in that genre include Inu-Yasha, Magic Night Rayearth, and Escaflowne). There were a lot of magical animals, like in Inu-Yasha, but everything was much darker and scarier. It seemed like a decent show, something I'd like to see more of.

Then Lauren and I watched about 5 hours of "Gravitation," which is a Yaoi (gay) series centering on the life of a struggling J-pop band called "Bad Luck" (which lent itself to some killer puns, such as "Bad Luck is on the rise!") and their favorite band "Nittle Grasper," and some rival band at the same record company. The protagonist falls in love with an award winning novelist who is possibly the coolest guy ever, and also the world's biggest jerk. The series is by CLAMP, so there's plenty of bishonen with hair falling into their eyes.

Somehow, the show was not crap. It was not the best series ever, but it was never boring. Despite being somewhat like a soap opera, it managed to be compelling to watch. The flamingly gay protagonist who ought to be annoying is somehow sweet and a sypathetic character. I don't know how they managed that.

The really odd thing about the show, and watching it in a room full of girls who oohed and aaahed and sighed at everything cute, was that it kind of exploded the myth that guys want to see lesbians making out but that girls don't want to see hot guys making out. All the sex in the series was handeled tastefully, with kissing and falling off screen, and at each of these scenes, the audience squealed with delight.

I had no idea...

Posted by erin at 01:57 PM | Comments (1)

Date-Based Archive Super Lucky Fun Go-Playing News! (long life!)

Today I got to play a real live game of Go against Dan!

Kerry taught us all how to play, and provided a magnetic Go set. It was really fun and I learned a lot! Kerry was an excellent Go teacher and Dan put up a good fight. But I beat him by 18.5 moku, by playing a good defense game. We didn't play on the whole board, though, just 9x9.

I can't wait to play more!

Posted by erin at 01:17 AM | Comments (2)

Date-Based Archive Tales of the Blackout

…because you’re all so curious about what happened to me.

So I’m at my internship at about 4:30 when the lights in the lab get a little brighter. Then they go back to normal. Then, all the computers power down, but somehow, the lightbulbs flicker on and off in some kind of brownout for about 15 minutes.

My fellow employees proceed with the design meeting, where the director stamps his approval and/or makes suggestion to the designer’s designs. Meanwhile, some guy with a walkman is filling us in about how the power’s going out everywhere, including Detroit. After the meeting work is cancelled and we all part ways.

ALONG WITH EVERYONE ELSE IN NEW YORK. I’ve never seen the streets so crowded, not even after September 11th. I had 108 blocks to walk and I wasn’t really looking forward to walking it with everyone else in the city, so I took a route through Central Park.

I walked up 4th Ave., then veered over to 5th Avenue and followed it up to the park on 57th street. It took longer than it should have, due to the massive crowding. It’s one thing to pass people on the streets on a normal day, but with the power out it’s kind of crazy. I had no real patience for people talking on their cell phones, or tourists walking really slow talking to each other, or the flocks of people with Mr. Softy ice cream. (I hate you so much Mr. Softy!! Change your frigging songs!! I’m soooo sick of Barnacle Bill the goddamn sailor!!!)

I bought a bottle of water a few cents cheaper than marked (no tax!) sold out of the doorway of a deli on Union Square and stopped by a couple of temping hot dog stands. The last hot dog sold to the customer in front of me at the first two stands – but at the third one I triumphed, and consumed some kind of sausage!! I got the last one! Then I ate some of the Otakon cookies I had been planning to take to Sam’s.

At that point, though, I was in the park. I cannot stress enough how pleasant the park was. For the most part, it was an ordinary day in Central Park, with people jogging and roller-blading and taking their kids out and seeing a show at Summer Stage. Apparently it’s the park’s 150th anniversary this year.

I passed most of the park’s major landmarks, including some I’d never been to before. I walked through the Zoo, which was closed, and past the boat pond and the lake and the Alice in Wonderland statue, and the Bow Bridge – did you know there are decent public restrooms near the fountain? I didn’t – and then I walked behind the Metropolitan Museum and around the Reservoir as the sun began to set. By then I felt downright pleasant. My feet didn’t hurt like I thought they might. It was a really nice day.

When I got far enough north I made a mistake and hit some kind of maintenance area. Then I had to take a main road, which I had hoped to avoid. When I finally got into Harlem, the mood on the streets was jubilant. People were outdoors and having fun. There were barbeques – it was like a big block party.

I wanted to join in… but less so after I climbed 10 flights of unlighted stairs. Then I didn’t really leave the apartment, for fear of facing the stairs again. No one was home except the cat, so I found my two candles and lit them, then sat in the window listening to the radio on my walkman and eating cereal to try and use up the milk until N. and J. got home.

Out the window I could see tiny lights from other people’s candles in their windows. I also watched a guy with a flashlight guard a store. Some cops set up red flares around the intersection to guide cars, since it’s a pretty heavy traffic area. Busses kept running, still massively crowded at 9pm.

There were lights on Columbia’s campus, as the hospital has it’s own generator and there are some experiments going on that require containment or else they explode. Not all of the campus was powered though, and apparently J. did something amazing that involved a bunch of guys holding flashlights huddled around a laptop with only two hours left on its battery. They had to read something from some schematics that were only on a CD-ROM which some guy had taped to the top of his desk drawer in case of an emergency. I think what they were doing involved third party routers and getting Columbia's website back online, despite a distinct lack of the internet at the time.

I couldn’t sleep much during the night. Our apartment was just too hot and stuffy. It’s not terribly well ventilated. Since you can’t control the heat in the winter, the bedrooms become hot and stuffy then as well. I tossed and turned a lot.

That was about it. I ate some ice cream, which held up OK overnight. Our power came back on at 6:30am, and people outside clapped and cheered.

N. went to work on Friday, taking a cab. I called the studio, but the phone beeped funny after a few rings. I don’t think anyone showed up. N. regretted going in to his office when none of his lawyers bothered to show up, and, as the only secretary around, he had to help dozens of other, meaner lawyers. I pointed out to him that his lawyers were all absent on 9-11-2002 as well, and he’d gone in then, too, but he had forgotten that incident entirely.

J. was also called into work, despite his attempts to take the day off. So I was home alone, again. I watched some anime. Then, I cooked a curry dip for cauliflower that was neither spectacular nor spicy and attempted to make Naan. The Naan came out in dense biscuits that tasted like Naan. It was odd.

And that was it.

Posted by erin at 02:10 PM | Comments (3)

Date-Based Archive Breaking My Blog

I've taken Bruno off the site. I gave the strip a long time to improve, but nothing happened. Then it became Lil' Bruno or whatever. So Rick's long-standing wish is finally granted.

I'm sure you all want to read my blackout story. It's coming up soon. But not right this minute, I have to edit it.

Meanwhile I'm enjoying my internship quite a bit. My old job was really bringing me down. Working here makes me feel as if I'd been wandering in a desert for the past two years. I feel like a lot of other crappy metaphors, too. But I'm not going to go on about them here.

I hope to find a part-time job soon. I've gone on some interviews, but nothing seems too promising. Finding a part-time job is almost worst than finding a normal job, since the number of part-time openings is small.

Posted by erin at 04:30 PM | Comments (5)

Date-Based Archive

Excuse me, but you all need to go to http://strindbergandhelium.com and watch the four brilliant animated shorts about morose Swedish playwright August Strindberg and his pink, upbeat sidekick Helium.

Posted by erin at 02:13 AM | Comments (5)

Date-Based Archive Pardon Our Dust; Erin is being renovated.

Everyone keeps asking me what's been going on lately, and I have had very little time to respond. Finally, I can come up with something.

OK, first of all, it took three weeks to move into N.'s apartment. N. hauled boxes on the subway every day after work in order to avoid his building's moving-in fee. It was a long and torturous process which I helped with from time to time. Jay also lended a hand with some of the bigger stuff.

After that I began baking cookies for Otakon. I have no reasonable explanation for this, but I tried many sugar cookie recipies over my two and half weeks of unemployment, and at least two frosting recipies. I have pictures of said cookies, but I haven't downloaded the drivers yet to unload the camera.

My internship on Kids Next Door started unexpectedly the day before Otakon. That's where I am now - at the internship. I haven't found a part-time job to supplement my meager stipend-ed income yet, so keep your eyes peeled.

The internship and cooking dinner most nights have kept me very busy in the past week - that, and going to Otakon - so I haven't had time to unpack, let alone update my blog.

Otakon was a lot of fun, but the video programming was not very good compared to last year, which was disappointing to say the least. It was, however, extremely well attended, with something like 10,000 pre-registered attendees and maybe an equal number of at-con-registrations. That's about 20,000, which is apparently a lot bigger than even the biggest sci-fi cons.

The subject line of this post refers to the growing feeling I have that I am changing my life. I've lost 45 pounds and a really crappy job. I kind of feel like I'm on the re-bound, jobwise. I don't have to be all bitter and forlorn as an intern here. The work is enjoyable and interesting. The people are reasonably intelligent and friendly. They're even somewhat dorky. It's a strange thing to have to get over the bad feelings leftover from my last job.

Today, I saw a midget break-dancing in the Times Square subway station.

Posted by erin at 01:29 PM | Comments (9)

Date-Based Archive Video Game Pitch

I'm going to make a million dollars.

I thought of this idea for a video game while we were perusing Hal's high school yearbook on Friday night.

In the video game, you play Jimi Hendrix. The year is 1966 and you're just about to become a rockstar. Suddenly an evil time-travelling mad scientist steals your lyric notebook! You must then steal his time machine and travel into the future, where you can recover your lyrics only by searching through old high school yearbooks you find in people's homes. You must avoid getting caught by the police (and homeowners) as you struggle to find the words to all your songs.

Posted by erin at 03:06 PM | Comments (18)

Date-Based Archive Sorry, kid

So I’ve joined an addition campaign outside of our D&D group. It’s a Call of Cthulhu campaign run by some of N.’s friends who live in Jersey. The players range from the very experienced to those who have never gamed before.

Each of have created two characters, one to play and one to keep on stand-by for when our primary character inevitably dies. My character is a kid detective, a Harriet-the-Spy type. I don’t really like Harriet the Spy, or the Scooby Gang, or Nancy Drew, so I figure I won’t mind so much when she snuffs it.

Our first session was a module from the book that would get the characters to meet each other. We had some trouble, since the players had picked really wide-ranging characters from different walks of life. All of our characters are members of a social club that explore the occult from an academic standpoint. You’d think that this would bring us together… but you’d be wrong.

My character immediately volunteered to investigate a haunted house, as per the plot of the game, and I arranged to work with another character I’d met. But I couldn’t meet with the real estate agent who was hiring investigators until after I got out of school that afternoon, so in the meantime, the other character whom I’d arranged to work with beforehand stole the case. Then he went to my detective agency and left a note, which said the following two words:

Sorry, kid.

Way to bring the party together! Goddamn! I got burned! I called him and had to bribe my way into the case. But still! Damnit!

Nevertheless, the game was a lot of fun and went really well. Surprisingly, it was a laugh a minute with plenty of in-game, in-character humor.

Posted by erin at 01:17 PM | Comments (0)