The Butcherhouse

"I hate my job." The four most universal words that were ever uttered or typed. But alas, my feelings have progressed from a bearable "hate" to an unbearable, and so I must begin the arduous process of pretending to be a good little fucking worker while ramping up my search for a less demoralizing method of paying the rent.

Meanwhile, we're doing double time on the wedding prep... and we've got to find a new place to live by August 15th...

Just a side-project, I'm working on a play called "The Butcherhouse Chronicles", set in a high school -- ruminating on Columbine, horror films, unrequited love, and the general sense of madness I feel in the air. I would really love it if I could get it up in some form or another by around Halloween. Which would mean I'd have to finish it some time before then.

I honestly feel that if I didn't have my writing as an outlet way back in high school, I could have very well gone out in a Columbine-esque tragedy.

But now I am an old man.

I need a vacation. I beg of you.

The Search for King Gorneesh

When I was fourteen, I made a little stop-motion animated short using a bunch of odd toys I had, including this curiously obscure Star Wars figure who served as the protagonist of my short:



In my film, his name was "The Cat". But 13 years later, I dug up the old short and grew curious about who that action figure really was...

Using the magic of the Internet, I did a search on the action figure. Not knowing where that old plastic thing is any longer, I could only work from the video footage that I'd shot. I looked through exhaustive Internet documentation of people's old school Star Wars action figure collections -- there are a shitload of obscure action figures from the Star Wars universe -- but somehow I managed to find my guy...

Amidst his family of Endor inhabitants. My action figure had been no mere background extra. He had been a King.

King Gorneesh!

Leader of the "dangerous, thieving, dim-witted" Duloks, so says the official Star Wars site.

What's more, I found out that my man had been a major character in the Saturday morning cartoon (forgotten) classic "EWOKS":

The hero of my story had been a dim-witted villain in the Star Wars universe.

What can we learn from all this? Well, it seems that a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands, which makes the Internet a gorgeous clockwork orange. Plump and juicy and queer.


P.S. Today happens to be the birthday of my childhood dog, who was featured in that short I made when I was 14. His name was "Lucky". He passed away in 1998. If he were alive today, he'd be 17. (Or 119, in dog years.)

Better Than Joy Luck Club

Go see Better Luck Tomorrow!

I could tick off the problems with it -- it's not a perfect film, but it's left a stronger impression on me than any other "Asian American" film I've seen yet. (Which admittedly isn't saying much, but it has left an impact.)

Just go. There's some really good shit in there. If you want my criticisms, you can e-mail me. Right now, I don't want to contribute any negative chatter about the film to the WWW.

Support Justin Lin now... and support Me eventually...

Credit Protection Fee

Found this "Credit Protection Fee" on my MBNA Mastercard statement. It's actually been on there for a while, I just didn't feel like dealing with the hassle of tussling with the credit card company...

I feel sorry for the people who have to man those phones. The courtesy callers. They train those fuckers to never take "no" as an answer. Arm them with a dozen different rebuttals, just to keep you on the line. When I get a call like that, I usually just cut them off, say "I'm not interested", then hang up before they can respond. I feel it's more humane. I'm going to ultimately say "no", anyway -- they shouldn't waste their delivery on me...

Anyway, I was bracing myself for the worst. I'd done a quick search on handy Internet for "Credit Protection Fee" and "MBNA" and I read this horror story account, so I was readying for a war...

First thing, I called one of the MBNA numbers listed on the statement, 1-800-346-3178. Went through the touch-tone menus till I was asked to punch in the 4 digit code for the disputed charge (5001). The recorded message stated that this service could NOT be cancelled through MBNA and I had to call a DIFFERENT number (1-877-406-3742) in order to cancel it, and if things weren't resolved *then*, I'd have to call the MBNA hotline again give them the date I tried to cancel and yaddayaddayadda...

Called that 2nd number this morn. Got this sweet-sounding young woman who tried to chat it up with me. (I'm sure ALL the calls they get are people trying to cancel this service.) When I gave her my address, she tried to chat about the weather in Brooklyn. I cut to the chase. She went into this long spiel about, "Are you aware that this service blah blah blah... [five minutes later]... so do you want to reconsider?"

What the credit protection does is, if you theoretically get sick and can't pay bills for a while, it'll "freeze" your monthly payments for up to something like 24 months.

"No," I says.

And what do you know?, she did it! Without any further arm-wrestling...

Anyway, I post this overlong story just in case somebody *else* does a search for "MBNA" and "credit protection fee" and wants to read about someone's experience. Yes, it's a bit of a pain in the ass, but you'll save so much money canceling the fucking thing. Please call now.

all my violence...

my attempts to change SOME manner of the way this godforsaken blog looks dash upon the rocks of futility. i collect my gray matter for another day... forgive me...

i'm in illustrator class at work, today through thursday. finally, some useful training...

writing. focused on writing. focused on writing my way out of the ghetto. i know i have the raw talent. but "winning" this game is all about focus and application. there are a lot of massively talented people who will never make it because they don't make their own opportunities. i know it sounds like self-help masturbation, but i've been dead-set on this since i was a kid.

wedding looms... so much to do... so many things to keep an eye trained on...

:-P

I am dirt poor!