Not much to report
Aug. 30th, 2003 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
womzillaJust checking in.
Work:
I had two job interviews this week. The second one was expected, and was with a children's book club in Manhattan. I almost certainly can do the work the job requires, which is mostly editorial-office work and a lot of reading children's books to participate in the selection of the 20% or so of submissions that the club will offer to its members. While I suspect they will find other applicants who are less overqualified and have more of a background in kiddie lit, it's something I would find enjoyable. I haven't heard back about this one.
The earlier interview was a surprise; someone called me up based on my resume posting on Monster.com, and we had an instant interview for half an hour or so. Although we both agreed that I was probably qualified for the job, my job experience was not quite a perfect fit--the company produces console video games, and my background is the related but separate world of computer games. The interviewer e-mailed me the next day to tell me that they'd gone with a candidate with video game experience, which didn't surprise me in the slightest. Ah, well.
In the last two weeks, I made a moderate chunk of change writing things: I wrote four pieces for Games Magazine's annual "Games 100" list of the 100 most interesting boardgames of the last year or two, and I wrote jacket copy for a forthcoming novel from Tor Books. These are more similar than they might seem at first glance; both of them require distilling a complex work down into a very small number of words which convey the essence of the work in such a way as to make someone interested in buying it.
When the Tor editorial staff get back from Worldcon, I expect I'll write some more jacket copy. It was actually fun, and pays decently well.
Games:
Gaming this week was very pleasant. The highlights were: Marchands d'empire, a surprisingly good free boardgame which one of my group printed out and assembled; Bohnanza, the already classic game of bean farming, which I don't play nearly often enough; and Intrigue, a game which makes Diplomacy look like an exercise in honesty, but with more laughs. We started that last game way too late--we started at 12:30, and even if it had only taken 45 minutes (which is what the person teaching it to us said it would take) it would have run a little late, but in fact it took over 90 minutes.
Comics:
This month's Diamond Previews had a number of very interesting things listed. Heaven's War is a graphic novel (from Image, of all places) about the supernatural battle between Alistair Crowley and the Inklings for the fate of the world; art by Michael Gaydos, who also draws one of Marvel's best titles, Alias. Drawn and Quarterly is soliciting a new Joe Sacco Bosnia book, The Fixer, which recommends itself. A new company, Chaos Society, has (what I think is the first English version of) Paths of the Damned, a graphic novel set in the world of Glorantha, the vastly interesting fantasy world created by Greg Stafford and elaborated in various board-, computer-, and role-playing games over the last thirty years (eg., Dragon Pass, King of Dragon Pass, and Runequest, respectively).
Also, something like ten years after it was first solicited, Fantagraphics is releasing Cats Don't Exist, a collection of short pieces by a South American cartoonist called Jis. I've only read the title story (when it was reprinted in a Fantagraphics anthology in the early 1990s), but that story is so amazingly brilliant that I can recommend the book without hesitation.
All of these are due out in November; I can confidently predict that all of them will be late, but if you want them, you might want to ask your local comics shop about them now.
This might be the first month in which I've added more Image books to my pull list than Marvels or DCs (or, for that matter, than Marvel and DC combined).
Pets:
The full rundown on the ratties can be found at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nellorat's page, but the short version is that Isabella is, apparently, completely recovered from her near-fatal bout of pneumonia and Apollo is now on a more intense antibiotic to try to knock out his lingering mycoplasm respiratory infection. Rufus, our oldest male rat, has been moved into the Boy Tower with his two sons and Apollo, because we think he'll be happier and healthier living with other rats, and, after a few rough days of adjustment and domination fights, he seems to be taking to it moderately well. Felix, our black rat, is now in my study, and I should have him out as I write this. Ah, that's better.
Courageous has gone 21 days since her last steroid shot. This is a good thing; she was getting them every 16 days. However, the interval between her two previous shots was only 8 days, so it's likely that she's mostly benefiting from an abnormally high dose. On the other hand, she's now been through two week-long treatments of interferon, so maybe that's doing her some good after all.
TV:
Nellorat and I have been tremendously enjoying watching the first season of The West Wing courtesy of Bravo. It does confirm my suspicions that the show has gotten more explicit in its center-left politics--Avedon Carol once complained that the only political positions which were explored in any detail were the right-wing ones, which I think was true because the show assumed that you understood and agreed with liberal positions. The show takes it for granted, for instance, that it is a good idea to provide welfare for poor people, that marijuana laws are risible and should be ignored, and that it's bad to execute innocent people, which are not, currently, positions that the right wing is willing to grant. Amazing how far to the right that American politics has shifted, that the last point is not universally accepted.
Gary the Rat is better than it has any right to be; it's as dry and cerebral as a slapstick cartoon about a lawyer transformed into a 6' tall rat can be. (Well, except for the dreadful "exterminator" character, who brings the show to a crashing halt every time he comes on-screen. The show would be better off without him,) We're more ambivalent about Stripperella, which mostly manages to be a good superhero/secret agent parody but whichbumps and grinds too much weak humor out of the stripper portion of the stories. Lots of good meta- humor, including, in one episode, a surprisingly funny homage to Batman: The Movie.
The new Ren and Stimpy, though, is akin to drinking the last swig of a large bottle of soda which ten diseased felons have drunk from. Ah, well; you can't go home again.
Other stuff:
We're cleaning the house, some. Nothing earth-shaking, just trying to make it less of a cluttered crap-hole.
I guess that's the fair and balanced report for now.
Work:
I had two job interviews this week. The second one was expected, and was with a children's book club in Manhattan. I almost certainly can do the work the job requires, which is mostly editorial-office work and a lot of reading children's books to participate in the selection of the 20% or so of submissions that the club will offer to its members. While I suspect they will find other applicants who are less overqualified and have more of a background in kiddie lit, it's something I would find enjoyable. I haven't heard back about this one.
The earlier interview was a surprise; someone called me up based on my resume posting on Monster.com, and we had an instant interview for half an hour or so. Although we both agreed that I was probably qualified for the job, my job experience was not quite a perfect fit--the company produces console video games, and my background is the related but separate world of computer games. The interviewer e-mailed me the next day to tell me that they'd gone with a candidate with video game experience, which didn't surprise me in the slightest. Ah, well.
In the last two weeks, I made a moderate chunk of change writing things: I wrote four pieces for Games Magazine's annual "Games 100" list of the 100 most interesting boardgames of the last year or two, and I wrote jacket copy for a forthcoming novel from Tor Books. These are more similar than they might seem at first glance; both of them require distilling a complex work down into a very small number of words which convey the essence of the work in such a way as to make someone interested in buying it.
When the Tor editorial staff get back from Worldcon, I expect I'll write some more jacket copy. It was actually fun, and pays decently well.
Games:
Gaming this week was very pleasant. The highlights were: Marchands d'empire, a surprisingly good free boardgame which one of my group printed out and assembled; Bohnanza, the already classic game of bean farming, which I don't play nearly often enough; and Intrigue, a game which makes Diplomacy look like an exercise in honesty, but with more laughs. We started that last game way too late--we started at 12:30, and even if it had only taken 45 minutes (which is what the person teaching it to us said it would take) it would have run a little late, but in fact it took over 90 minutes.
Comics:
This month's Diamond Previews had a number of very interesting things listed. Heaven's War is a graphic novel (from Image, of all places) about the supernatural battle between Alistair Crowley and the Inklings for the fate of the world; art by Michael Gaydos, who also draws one of Marvel's best titles, Alias. Drawn and Quarterly is soliciting a new Joe Sacco Bosnia book, The Fixer, which recommends itself. A new company, Chaos Society, has (what I think is the first English version of) Paths of the Damned, a graphic novel set in the world of Glorantha, the vastly interesting fantasy world created by Greg Stafford and elaborated in various board-, computer-, and role-playing games over the last thirty years (eg., Dragon Pass, King of Dragon Pass, and Runequest, respectively).
Also, something like ten years after it was first solicited, Fantagraphics is releasing Cats Don't Exist, a collection of short pieces by a South American cartoonist called Jis. I've only read the title story (when it was reprinted in a Fantagraphics anthology in the early 1990s), but that story is so amazingly brilliant that I can recommend the book without hesitation.
All of these are due out in November; I can confidently predict that all of them will be late, but if you want them, you might want to ask your local comics shop about them now.
This might be the first month in which I've added more Image books to my pull list than Marvels or DCs (or, for that matter, than Marvel and DC combined).
Pets:
The full rundown on the ratties can be found at
nellorat's page, but the short version is that Isabella is, apparently, completely recovered from her near-fatal bout of pneumonia and Apollo is now on a more intense antibiotic to try to knock out his lingering mycoplasm respiratory infection. Rufus, our oldest male rat, has been moved into the Boy Tower with his two sons and Apollo, because we think he'll be happier and healthier living with other rats, and, after a few rough days of adjustment and domination fights, he seems to be taking to it moderately well. Felix, our black rat, is now in my study, and I should have him out as I write this. Ah, that's better.Courageous has gone 21 days since her last steroid shot. This is a good thing; she was getting them every 16 days. However, the interval between her two previous shots was only 8 days, so it's likely that she's mostly benefiting from an abnormally high dose. On the other hand, she's now been through two week-long treatments of interferon, so maybe that's doing her some good after all.
TV:
Nellorat and I have been tremendously enjoying watching the first season of The West Wing courtesy of Bravo. It does confirm my suspicions that the show has gotten more explicit in its center-left politics--Avedon Carol once complained that the only political positions which were explored in any detail were the right-wing ones, which I think was true because the show assumed that you understood and agreed with liberal positions. The show takes it for granted, for instance, that it is a good idea to provide welfare for poor people, that marijuana laws are risible and should be ignored, and that it's bad to execute innocent people, which are not, currently, positions that the right wing is willing to grant. Amazing how far to the right that American politics has shifted, that the last point is not universally accepted.
Gary the Rat is better than it has any right to be; it's as dry and cerebral as a slapstick cartoon about a lawyer transformed into a 6' tall rat can be. (Well, except for the dreadful "exterminator" character, who brings the show to a crashing halt every time he comes on-screen. The show would be better off without him,) We're more ambivalent about Stripperella, which mostly manages to be a good superhero/secret agent parody but which
The new Ren and Stimpy, though, is akin to drinking the last swig of a large bottle of soda which ten diseased felons have drunk from. Ah, well; you can't go home again.
Other stuff:
We're cleaning the house, some. Nothing earth-shaking, just trying to make it less of a cluttered crap-hole.
I guess that's the fair and balanced report for now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-08-30 07:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-08-31 12:41 am (UTC)A job I had early in my work life may have been the ultimate in that: writing annotations for library catalog cards. Write two--three at most--sentences that tell the reader whether this is the book that will meet his/her needs.