I'm Not A Chooser, So I MIght As Well Be A Beggar

Productivity levels were about normal today (which is to say nearly non-existent), though I should mention that it took me until noon to build up even enough ambition to take a shower.
I didn’t find any jobs to apply for, but I did sign up for a résumé-writing class at that outplacement career center on Monday morning.
On the Heroic Portraits front, I got permission from Wendy Potter to post this portrait I made of her…



… in the Gallery, and to use other pictures she has on her MySpace page as portrait material. Given that she’s often dressed as fantasy characters, she makes for a good resource because part of the work is already done.
On other art fronts, I added a bunch of new products to my Zazzle gallery, so follow the link on the right, check them out and maybe buy something, if you’re into that sort of thing (which, clearly, you’re not, nor is anyone else, as in the 4 years that I’ve had the account with Zazzle I’ve only made two sales, totaling $3.80).
There haven’t been any developments on the squirrel front. Last time I checked the trap it was empty, but on the other hand I haven’t been hearing any scurrying going on either.
Last night when I was talking to Eric and expressed my concerns about the future. He said, “Don’t worry. You know what the Finns say: Troubles are only temporary; eventually you’ll die.”
Of course, they also say “Hard work cures all ills,” and I’ve never really taken that one to heart.
You may have noticed that I’ve added a little PayPal begging bowl on the right. Make of it what you will, though I would say that begging is a venerable profession. Just ask Buddha, or St. Francis.
And if you’ve got a few grand just lying around and don’t know what to do with it, I just want to point out that you have an option available to you.
Speaking of begging, it had been my intention to have a housewarming party in the near-future or near-past, but the layoff kind of put a damper on the idea.
Kathleen had suggested that I should still have one, but make it pot luck and to ask for donations to the “Help Jon Keep His House/Move Somewhere After He Loses His House” fund.
I think I’ll restrict my requests for donations to the PayPal link, but I would still like to have a housewarming party. I’m not really thrilled about the pot luck idea, simply because it seems tacky to ask people to bring their own food, but on the other hand, the last time I threw any sort of party (for my birthday a few years back), it was a little on the pricey side.
So I put the question out there to the handful of people reading this who would likely be guests at a housewarming party: would you mind doing pot luck?
The other problem with the housewarming party is an overall lack of available seating. Back when I was actually employed, I had planned to attend to that problem by picking up some new furniture. Now that’s not really an option.
Would asking people to bring their own food and their own chairs be the height of tackiness? I’m thinking yes, but the idea is out there, if anyone wants to throw in his or her two cents on the subject.

A Milestone?

Thanks to Brian putting in a plug for it on his blog, Heroic Portraits saw another surge in traffic.
In fact, for the first time ever, Heroic Portraits and Threshold achieved parity in the number of hits for one day (Threshold usually has more, by virtue of always having some). I guess you could call that a milestone, if the numbers weren’t so pathetically small.
I spent much of today working on a portrait for the gallery. The picture was pretty involved, so it took a little more work than most. I haven’t run it past the person used in the portrait yet, so I don’t want to post it here.
Beyond working on the picture, applying for a couple more jobs, and talking to my mom, I really didn’t do much today.
Last week I was thinking about my friend Eric, so I decided to give him a call, but I got his machine.
Tonight he called me back. It’s been a while since we talked, so hearing from him made me happy.
Then it made me sad, as I really miss his dumb ass.
But things seem to be going well for him. He’s settled into the whole husband and father thing, and has moved up in the world at his job.
He’s a luthier, which means that he builds guitars. Specifically, he builds Paul Reed Smith Guitars and is now working on their “private stock” orders, custom-built guitars that can cost as much as $35, 000.
Last time we talked I recommended that he seek out The Venture Bros., and tonight he informed me that he’s bought seasons one and two on DVD and is extremely grateful that I told him about the show, as both he and his wife love it.
He also, of course, expressed his sympathies about the layoff, and echoed the notion that I’ll be okay because I’m smart.
Early in the day my uncanny psychic powers predicted which episode of The Simpsons would be on (Bart has a vision of the future in which Lisa is President), and I also performed a new trick. All day long I had the song Near You Always by Jewel stuck in my head. At some point while flipping through the HD channels I stopped on PBS and there was Jewel, on stage, performing Near You Always.
It was pretty freaky, but it made me wonder why I can’t have useful moments of psychic insight (or encounter more interesting coincidences).
And that’s pretty much been my day.

At Least It's Not Bats In My Belfry

So I was sitting at the computer minding my own business, as, after all, I have no one else’s business to mind, when I heard an odd noise.
I didn’t think much of it, as there was a moving truck at the house across the street and it seemed likely that the noise was coming from the movers’ activities.
Then I heard something else that definitely sounded like it was coming from inside the house.
I checked all of the rooms but didn’t see anything amiss.
After the third or fourth time it became clear that the noises were coming from the attic.
So I went up, flashlight in one hand, broom in the other, and sure enough I spotted a squirrel crouched in the back corner amid the insulation.
I knew that little son of a bitch was going to be trouble when I spotted him in the backyard last week after he’d knocked over the garbage can in my shed (from which he had stolen some dryer lint like some furry version of Burt Reynolds in Striptease).
So I went online to find the best way to deal with it.
It seems that a live trap is the best way to catch one, as poison will just lead to a dead squirrel in some unreachable area stinking up the place, and if a rat trap doesn’t catch it it’ll learn to avoid the trap.
So I headed off to Home Depot and asked the nearest goober where the traps were. When I said, “I have a squirrel in my attic,” he responded, “That ain’t good.”
Oh, really goober? Because I was thinking that it was fucking grand. You couldn’t tell by the way I was looking for a trap to either capture or kill the damn thing?
Okay, that’s unfairly hostile on my part, and naturally I didn’t actually say any of that, but when you’ve spent as much time working in technical support-related jobs as I have, you learn a lot about how much havoc a squirrel can wreak on things like your Internet connection.
He didn’t think they sold live traps and suggested that I try mothballs, though my research on the subject had indicated that mothballs do nothing to deter squirrels.
Eventually, though, he spotted the live traps on the bottom shelf and we found one that actually had a picture of a squirrel on it.
For the sheer hell of it, and because it certainly couldn’t hurt anything, I also bought some mothballs, which I’ve carpetbombed the attic with.
When last I checked the trap was still empty, and the mothballs hadn’t chased it away, as I could hear it skittering around.
Assuming that the trap gets sprung at some point, the question becomes what to do with it.
Apparently some squirrels that have been caught and then released in the wild have returned from a distance of more than 25 miles (and presumably returns that much wiser for the experience and knows to avoid the trap).
As I said to the goober at Home Depot, I have no qualms about killing the thing.
That is to say, I would have no qualms about using a lethal trap if what I’d read hadn’t suggested that such a method was ineffective.
But actually personally killing it? That’s another matter all together.
And then there’s the matter of finding where it got in and sealing that off.
*Sigh*

Okay, Now You People Are Just Getting Weird

Latest celebrity bra size-related search:

kitty's bra size on gunsmoke

The woman has been dead for nearly 20 years...what possible reason could you have for wanting to know the bra size of a dead woman?
For the last goddamn time: I don't know the bra size of any celebrity (except Jessica Alba, thanks to someone selling a bra she wore in Sin City on eBay - it's 34 B), and you don't stand to gain anything by learning a celebrity's bra size.
Just throttle back on the creepy obsessiveness already.

Making The Time

Now that I’ve moved down a couple of posts, Heroic Portraits isn’t getting any traffic from The Absorbascon.
Of course, it’s not like it really matters, as the hits I was getting didn’t drum up any business.
(Despite what follows in this entry, I have actually been doing some work towards upgrading the site, such as looking through tutorials on generating Flash-based sites, and working on some new pictures.)
Today found me once again failing to stick to my new schedule.
This was due in no small part to the fact that I didn’t wake up until nearly 10, a point at which, per my schedule, I should have already had breakfast, showered, and spent some time dicking around.
Yes, that’s right; I built “dicking around” time into my schedule.
In doing so I followed the wisdom of Carl Brutananadilewski of Aqua Teen Hunger Force: “I don’t have all day to jack around. I mean, I do that; I make the time.”
Of course, I don’t follow Carl’s example by peeing into an empty coffee can, though given the environmentally hostile nature of my forty year old toilets, maybe I should. After all, when you conserve water by peeing in a can all day and then just flushing it all at once, you save a lot of water, which is good for the environment, and make those tree-hugger chicks moist as a result.
Okay, too many ATHF references, I guess.
Once I did get up, I extended the dicking around time considerably, then finally showered and ventured out into the world. I went to Super Target to pick up a few sundries, including a cheap ($6) phone to put in my office, as that’s where I spend most of my time, so I might as well have a phone nearby to make it that much easier to answer all the phone calls I’m not getting from prospective employers.
(And to answer the call I am getting from a fax machine with a blocked number every morning)
I actually put the new phone in the kitchen and brought the kitchen phone to the office, as it has a caller ID display, and isn’t really working that well as a wall phone, since I broke the clip for the battery cover when I was putting in the batteries, so now the cover is held in place by tape, and, when vertical, comes loose and interferes with the ability of the handset to rest on the base. That’s not an issue when it’s lying flat as a desk phone.
Anyway, after Super Target I went to the McDonald’s drive through to get lunch, as I figured that playing their Monopoly game is probably at least as effective a way of trying to secure an income as applying for jobs.
In that regard I was mistaken, as there was no game piece included on my drink or my fries.
Oh well.
(For he record, though, I did actually apply for several jobs today.)
And that’s pretty much been my day up to now.

Loneliness And Blown Minds

As most people who know me are aware, I am by nature a solitary person.
Okay, reclusive might be a better way of putting it, but either way, the fact is that not only am I accustomed to being alone, I pretty much prefer it.
It’s not that I never get lonely – I do – or don’t enjoy spending time with other people, but spending the majority of my time without any other company isn’t exactly a hardship.
Ever since I’ve moved into my new place, which is considerably larger – and emptier – than anywhere else I’ve lived, and especially now that I’m spending even more time alone, I’m finding that the occasional moments of loneliness are becoming a lot more frequent and a lot less momentary.
I suspect that this explains why, of late, I’ve become fairly active in the comments threads on various blogs and Web sites, as it serves as a means of reaching out and connecting with people without having to, you know, actually connect with people.
After all, people are the primary reason I prefer to be alone.
Speaking of people that I actually like spending time with, today was new comics day. After hitting the comic shop, Scott and I tried out what looks to be the last new place to eat at, a Chinese restaurant. Looks like we’ll have to start cycling our way through the restaurants again.
The Chinese place had an item on the menu that, from the description, was very much like the shredded pork with dry bean curd that I like but can’t find at most places, so I ordered it.
What I got was nothing like shredded pork with dry bean curd, and I’m not entirely certain that it was even what I ordered. It wasn’t bad, exactly, just sort of weird, and it made me envious of Scott’s sesame chicken, which is what I was going to order before I saw the pork meal.
Oh well.
I put in a half-hearted attempt at following the schedule that I wrote up for myself, but the results were, unsurprisingly, less productive than I might have hoped.
I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

You Just Blew My Mind Department:
I’ve been watching the new version of the Bionic Woman, and so far it’s been decent.
The star, actress Michelle Ryan, is from the UK (and is HOT), but does such a remarkably convincing American accent that, had it not been for her IMDb entry, I would have had no idea that she was not a native.
The other night I saw a movie in which she was speaking with her native accent, which seemed kind of weird.
Then on tonight’s episode she was undercover as a British woman.
So she was a Briton playing an American pretending to be a Briton.
Whoa!
It’s like the episode of Beavis and Butthead when Butthead does an impression of Beavis that sounded exactly like what it was; Butthead doing an impression of Beavis. What made it so impressive – and paradoxical – was that creator Mike Judge provided the voices for both Beavis and Butthead.
So he was doing the voice of one character impersonating the voice of another character that he does the voice for, and he made it sound like an impression rather than the actual voice.
Again, whoa!
In any case, on Bionic Woman there were a few little gags about her Britishness, with people saying things like “I hope you can do a decent British accent” and “Wow, you do a really good British accent,” and there was another bit when she was “staying in character” when talking to someone she works with and speaking in the accent, stating, when asked about it, “I’m a method actor.”
I got the impression that it was a relief for her to be able to just talk naturally.
Like the co-worker she was talking to, I would be fine with her always talking with the accent, because it was extremely sexy.
Oddly enough, actress Anna Friel of Pushing Daisies, which I watched before Bionic Woman, is another UK-born actress pretending to be an American (or possibly a Canadian; it’s kind of unclear on the show), whom I just discovered is British after watching a movie with her in it speaking with a British accent.
Wednesday nights are like a regular British Invasion.
A sexy British invasion.

Getting Oriented

Not much new today. No new job leads, no contact about the previous leads.
I did go in for the orientation with the outplacement service that AOL is springing for.
There wer lots of familiar faces there, though only one person I actually knew.
The whole thing was basically a rundown of the services they offer, most of which I’ll take advantage of, I guess.
A lot of the stuff they offer can be accessed online, which is cool.
One guy got a laugh by asking if it costs AOL more money based on how many of their services we take advantage of, but apparently it’s all paid for already.
After I got out of the orientation I found that I had a voicemail from Kathleen letting me know that she’d stopped by to drop off something for me to give to Scott tomorrow and asking me to call her back.
I did so and got her voicemail. Later, when I was at home, I came upstairs to the office to find that she’d called me back.
She was calling to give me the number of someone she knows who needs to have a basic Web site built, which I could do.
I gave him a call but got his machine.
Apart from my mom calling – immediately after I’d hung up from calling the guy who needs the site – to find out how the orientation dealie went, pretty much nothing else happened.

Funk Week Spillover Or Best Buy + Strippers = The Ultimate Frustration?

So I haven’t managed to fully shake off the Funk Week vibe, as I must confess that the fact that I haven’t heard anything more on last week’s job leads has got me a little down.
I know, I still have time, and there’s no point in getting discouraged already, but, as I mentioned, the uncertainty that goes with being jobless – particularly when you’ve just bought a house – can be nerve wracking.
Under the theory of “a watched pot never boils,” and because I needed various toiletries and some groceries, I headed out into the world to kill some time in the hopes that when I got home there would be some news.
Of course there wasn’t.
People who have never been to a strip club often say things like, “I would think that it would be more frustrating than anything else,” especially in regards to lap dances.
To them I would suggest that the act of seeing naked women gyrating on a stage is its own reward (and that it also helps to be drunk). As for lap dances, they certainly can be frustrating but, when done well, they have their own unique appeal, which, in many ways is actually aided by the frustration. After all, much of the thrill of, well, anything comes from the anticipation more than anything else.
Think of lap dances as being like Christmas morning, without any of the Christmas afternoon letdown.
Or something.
In any case, after having gone there to kill more time after I’d finished at Wal-Mart, I can tell you that going to Best Buy when you’re unemployed and you don’t really know where your future income may – or may not – be coming from is infinitely more frustrating than a trip to a strip club.
In any case, now I’m home and I need to try to force myself into putting all of the extra time I now have to productive use, but there’s a lot of inertia to have to overcome.
In yesterday’s account of my day I neglected to mention that when I got back from my walk I actually met one of my neighbors. She seemed like a nice enough lady.
Tomorrow I have to go to an orientation for the outplacement service that’s part of my severance package. Hopefully using their resources will help me to get a little more activity on the job front.

Sturdiwheat Done Dirt Cheap Department:
Last year when I first moved to Leesburg I was pleased to discover that Super Target sold Sturdiwheat pancake mix, which is made in Red Wing, MN, the town I once lived in. It’s pretty much the best pancake mix I’ve ever encountered, and making pancakes with it is simplicity itself, as it’s a “just add water” mix.
Today I did my grocery shopping at Super Target specifically for the purposes of picking up some Sturdiwheat. Alas, it appears that I’m the only person in Leesburg who appreciated it, as they no longer stock it.
*Sigh*
(And yes, I see that I can order it online at their site, but I would much rather be able to pick it up at the store.)

Family Guy Deleted Scene

Caught this on Adult Swim last night:

Funk Week Continues

Dream interpretation has, I guess, fallen out of favor in the field of psychoanalysis, but if it were still a standard practice, I would be able to contribute the following to the collective knowledge: when you’re dreaming that you’re walking downtown somewhere on a Sunday afternoon looking for a store that’s open so that you can use the bathroom, it means that it’s time to get your lazy ass out of bed because you need to pee.
I made this breakthrough this morning at a point roughly two hours after I would normally get up.
After I did get up, I realized that there really wasn’t that much of a point in doing so, but, even though Funk Week isn’t quite over, I don’t want to fall into the trap of sleeping my day away, as that’s a sure sign of giving in to depression, which I have no interest in doing.
Eventually, after eating lunch, I took a shower and went for a walk.
Shortly after I got home Kathleen called to inform me that she would be stopping by to drop of my Wonderfalls DVD set, which she and Brian borrowed quite some time ago.
I’m glad, as ever since they borrowed it I find myself thinking, “I should watch an episode or two of Wonderfalls…oh, right.”
And that’s pretty much all that’s happened today.
Thanks to Scipio posting a link, Heroic Portraits has been getting quite a few hits, though no one has been impressed enough by what’s there to actually place an order for one.
As I was telling Kathleen, it’s a shame that I don’t have a) more talent and b) more drive (and for that matter, money), as I’ve had a lot of ideas for developing Heroic Portraits into an actual business.
But alas, I don’t have those things, and so it is what it is.
In any case, there’s really nothing much to write about today, so I’ll bring this entry to a close.
(Oh, and in response to the influx of traffic coming in due to TLC running a Real Estate Pros marathon, I don’t know if Ginger and Richard are dating, nor do I have any nude/bikini pictures of Ginger. )