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Date-Based Archive Jobs and Senior Prom, a brief comparison

So after nearly a year of being an intern, three job openings have presented themselves. Not one, not two, but three.

This is worse than the time I ended up with three dates to prom senior year. I'll explain later.

Here's a run-down of the jobs I might be eligible for:

Production Name	Einsteins	Pinky	Turtles
Job Length	3 years	1-2 years	10 months
Benefits	after year 1	Maybe the whole time	No
Expected pay	Probably good	Dunno	OK
People I Know working there	Yes, tons	Dunno	A few
When does it start?	mid-August	early August?	As soon as next week.
What does the position entail?	Undecided as of yet.	Not known.	Nothing artsy.
Location	30 minutes away	15 minutes away	25 minutes away

I had been hoping for some time to get a job on project Einstein, but the producers were somewhat lukewarm. When I heard about the Turtles thing I decided to interview. That went really well, but I suspect that they might know that I might want to work on Einsteins. One guy at my current job wants me to work on Pinky. I'm not exactly sure why, but I know it has something to do with staying in a creative position.

So its hard to make a decision when I don't know the salary for two out of three of these things. I don't want to take the Turtles thing if it means only working for 10 months instead of 3 years. I don't want to work on Turtles then quit, because I'll seem like a jerk.

In fact, I might seem like a jerk by just turning it down now. I got the interview because a coworker's sister works on Turtles. I'm worried they'll both be mad at me if I don't take the job.

The animation industry in New York is so small that pissing off one or two people could prove to be a fatal mistake. Well, not literally fatal, but you know...

What does this have to do with prom? Allow me to explain...

My junior year I asked a sophomore who I thought was cute to prom. We'll call the sophomore Celdrix, obviously not his real name. Celdrix turned me down, saying something about not having enough money to rent a car (WTF?!) but mumbling that he did want to go, and next year maybe... I replied sarcastically "Riiiight... next year."

And I forgot about that incident until the next year. That year Celdrix had a class with me. He spent the whole year throwing paper wads at me (like spitless spitwads) and making fun of me and being generally juvenile. When prom rolled around he asked, "So we're going to prom, right?"

Good god no! He made fun of me all year, and then he expected to take me to prom?!

I had other plans. I thought Andy (that is his real name) and I ought to go to prom. He was friends with my group of friends and had no prom date. So I asked Andy. He turned me down in this manner:

ME: What do you mean no?!

ANDY: Well, I'm going to ask Jill again.

ME: What do you mean "again"?

ANDY: Jill already turned me down, but I think I can convince her.

ME: How many times has she turned you down so far?

ANDY: Four.

Jill had actually been "turning Andy down" and not just for prom, since the fourth grade. I knew she wouldn't go to prom with him, so I kept trying to convince Andy to stop being an idiot.

Meanwhile I had to find another date just in case. So I asked Jeff (I don't remember if that's his real name or not - maybe?) who was in a class I had and didn't have a girlfriend. He also said no, but claimed he would "think about it". So I went back to badgering Andy.

Prom rapidly approached, and Celdrix was pretty convinced we were going. Then Jeff recanted and said yes, then Andy came to his senses and said yes.

I went to Andy and he turned out to be the worst date ever. He slammed the restaurant door in my face, asked the waitress if she'd "washed her hands" and demanded we dance closer together than I was comfortable with (and said so in a rather lude way). Then he tried to grab my ass during the official prom photo!

Andy was the worst prom date ever! Later he turned out to be gay. Then he dated a girl and denied being gay. Then they broke up and he admitted maybe he was bi. Then he disappeared off the face of the earth. But that's not the point.

The point is, I chose Andy because he was my friend. He was the more familiar, that thus "safer" choice, but prom turned out to suck. Einsteins is the safest job choice where I can stay close to my friends and a company I already know quite well. However, that doesn't meant that the project might not totally suck and be a disaster.

Posted by erin at 04:36 PM | Comments (6)

Date-Based Archive AnimeNext and Other Stuff

Alright, look, it's not like I haven't been doing anything lately and thus haven't had anything to blog about - rather, I've been so busy that I haven't had any time to blog. This seems to be the way of things.

I've been installing crap on my new computer and downloading things to fill up its stuff. I've crashed it a few times already, ripping scratched CD's into iTunes. Ah, iTunes.

I've been playing a lot of Go at Go meet-ups and Go Club and such. I've started reading the second Go problem book in hopes to someday beat KL in a match.

I've been learning Japanese from Tetsuya. I have all the hirogana and katakana memorized and I'm starting on kanji. My Japanese vocabulary is about literally one dozen words now.

On Saturday I went to AnimeNext with N. We had a good time after waiting in the 2-3 hour registration line. I hoped to get there about 9:00, (in Jersey) so naturally I got up at like 7:30 and we finally got out the door at 9:15, in order to take the 10:40 bus out of Port Authority, because there was no 2/3 train to our stop that weekend and only one bus per hour to Jersey and I DON'T EVEN WANT TO TALK ABOUT the bus ride.

The point is we saw some good stuff, including "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex" and "Nana; 7 of 7" which seemed to be written by Hal and Rick, and some decent AMVs, and the most excellent fan-dub "Voltron, Hell Bent for Leather" which was from 1992. We also watched the more famous fan-dub "Evangelion: Re: Death". By the end of the day we felt we got our admission's worth - even if there was no apparent con security at all.

And also the age of attendees had dropped. Last year at the 5 anime cons I attended N. was shocked to find that the age of anime con attendees had dropped by about 10 years in his 10 year absence from the con scene. Last year the cons we went to were populated with high school and college kids - the average age being about 4 or 5 years younger than me. At AnimeNext the average age was about 14 or 15. In the words of one CPM guy, "It's because Middle School rules!"

There was even a yellow bus full of 8th graders on what appeared to be a school-sponsored trip. Seriously, WTF?!

I can't imagine my parents shelling out the cash to take me to an anime con. A Star Trek con, maybe, but how did these 12-year-olds get their parents to choke up $120 for the hotel + $30 or more for admission + the god knows how many $$$ of DVDs and stuffed animals and crap they'd end up buying?! I mean, yes, N. was attending cons at 13, but he was scamming rides from high schoolers and paying his admission by being a Magic The Gathering middle-man...!!

Anyway on Sunday it was Eugene's birthday and we hung with the Columbia crowd who N. hasn't seen in ages, including more people with letter names like Q and the BSD. Eugene's friends were all delightfully knowledgeable about anime, and also passionate about their (albeit, 3rd ed.) D&D game. It was like some weird parallel universe of friends. Two bits of wisdom came out of this:

BSD: All D&D games start off like Record of the Lodoss Wars and end up like Slayers.

* * * * *

Q: Scrapped Princess was so promising until you hit the second disc.

Eugene: Oh my god, it's like my life has hit the second disc!

Posted by erin at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)

Date-Based Archive Four Things in New York

A coworker of N.'s once made the incredibly wise observation that there are four things... four parts of every person's life in New York. These things are:

1. Your Health
2. Your Housing
3. Your Finances (and/or Employment)
4. Your Love Life

These are the four basic things - and what one must know about living in New York (although this may apply to other places, too) - is that you can only have three of the things on the list going well for you at any given time.

If you live in a great apartment and have a terrific girlfriend and you're totally healthy, you might be unemployed or in debt. If your finances are fine and your love life is great and you haven't got a cold, then surely your roommates are going to start trouble. If your co-op apartment totally rules and you just paid off your credit card and you're getting married soon, surely you're about to catch the cancer.

I'm thankfully getting over this hacking cough I've had all week, but my finances are on shaky grounds, thanks to the whole working-two-days-a-week gig. Hopefully soon, though, I'll have a new job (with the same company).

Posted by erin at 12:55 AM | Comments (1)

Date-Based Archive Five Things You Can Say to End a Conversation with Me

1. I won't watch anything in black and white or with subtitles.
2. All cartoons are stupid (and/or for kids).
3. I hate the Simpsons (exception: the speaker raised overseas, although this rule excludes most English-speaking countries.)
4. I don't own a television.
5. Have you asked Jesus into your heart?

Notes:

1. - My dad has said this before, but I keep speaking to him, indicating that these rules may apply only on a per-conversation basis.

2. - If all cartoons are for kids, you better let your kids watch Beavis and Butthead as well as all of Ralph Bakshi's works. Not all cartoons are stupid, but it is entirely possible the speaker has never seen an intelligent cartoon. The statement "I only like old Warner Brother cartoons" (implying Bugs Bunny stuff only), is also very damning. There's a whole range of cartoons beyond Warner Brothers.

3. - alt. statement "I've never seen Star Wars." I suppose maybe you've seen Indiana Jones, but if you've never even seen Star Wars once it becomes immediately more difficult for me to identify with the speaker on a base level.

4. - If you don't own a television, how can you rent movies? Do you only see them in the theater? Do you live in a third world country? I realize television is largely vile and evil, and I kind of admire people who don't own a TV, but since I work for television, my existence starts to become less valid the more I talk to such a person. (Exception: The speaker watches a communal television, etc.)

5. - I think it's OK for other people to be fundamental Christians or what have you, that's their business. But asking me such a question, in earnest, pretty much guarentees an abbrieviated conversation to follow.

Posted by erin at 03:32 PM | Comments (4)

Date-Based Archive Laughing Out Loud My Ass

I can't help but notice lately that a lot of young people (notably high school students)
seem to over-use "lol" in their emails. On a mailing list I'm on, someone named "Kier" (probably age 18) used "lol" twice in a recent email. More alarmingly few weeks ago I received email from a younger cousin of mine (age 13) who used "lol" in nearly every other line.

Here is where Kier is laughing out loud:

On Wed, 9 Jun 2004, Kierendral wrote:

> Just in case, I do qualify, lol, here's the info:

[snip]

> So uh, take your pic I guess, lol?

I'm dying to know if Kier actually laughed out loud - twice - while writing this email.

I'd also like to see a webcam of my cousin laughing out loud nearly non-stop while emailing me, because frankly, his emails are not that
funny.

I suppose it is possible that "lol" long ago took on some new meaning in the English language, no longer implying laughter at all, but rather, "lol" became a standard grammatical construct in email to imply... something... something that I'm not sure what it means and may or may not be connected to mirth at all.

Posted by erin at 03:13 PM | Comments (4)

Date-Based Archive WHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

I am typing this entry from my spankin' new Powerbook G4. It's great. It's got a fast processor and a DVD burner. The screen is 12-inch.

Wheeeeeeee... I have mounted my old computer and am copying over some files... SOON, SOON I will back up these files. Then I will download some new software. Then I'll learn how to make AMV's.

And next, you ask?! WORLD DOMINATION. Expect no less.

Sorry for the lack of enteries lately. I've been busy with work and like. What news? Wirschen has a pet lion and my dad is working with the Amish. This may some like some strange code, but it is the truth.

Posted by erin at 12:22 AM | Comments (1)