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June 28, 2003
Secret Message #10: Power In Numbers
Tiny announcement: Some of you know that I'm finally offering mugs for sale. If you're thinking about buying a few, you should also know that Cafepress is having a special until July 15.
If you've read my online journal for a while, you know that I sometimes hide "Easter Eggs" on my site. I've put up another one today, and the first one to find it gets one of my prints. You'll know which print I'll send you if you've found the egg.
Posted by April at 11:59 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 27, 2003
Lost Wisdom
A clean cut Beach Boy song on the radio prompted H.E. to wax didactic about songwriter Brian Wilson's not so clean cut ways. As with everything, H.E. was a knowledge cornucopia of the Beach Boy's pharmacopoeia, but especially so because he'd met the man, and the man in his later wisdom told him that he couldn't recall the years of his life during his heaviest drug use. Years! Wilson would be shown a photo of himself and others, and he could not for the life of him remember the who, what, where, when, why or how of the event.
I can't imagine losing that much of my life to oblivion, being that out of control, that out of it, on purpose, for so very long and for no health reasons whatsoever. Whoever determined that being blind drunk or high or stoned was fun? I honestly don't get it.
The only time I remember ever being high and completely drugged, I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled out. They hit me with some laughing gas to relax me, and before I knew it I was giggly and chatty and not at all afraid that four big honking pieces of my bone matter were soon to be ripped out of my mouth by the roots. I couldn't figure out why everything was so funny; it just was. Never mind that the oral surgeon's tools looked like they belonged in a dungeon or a torture chamber somewhere, and never mind that his face and the face of his assistant looming over me as my vision slowly blurred reminded me somewhat of the eerie accounts made by those who claim to have been abducted and operated upon by aliens—not my friendly pink snouted aliens, mind you, but those scary, skinny big-black-eyed gray ones.
Then the serious drugs hit me, and I went from watching their alien faces loom closer to watching their alien faces move away, for no apparent reason and with no apparent "in between." I had the entire contents of Bob Vila's toolbox in my mouth as I lay there, and I looked from the oral surgeon to the assistant, and back to the oral surgeon again.
"So when are you going to start pulling them out?" I asked rather groggily.
"I've already pulled them out," he said. "You're all done."
"No, I'm not. You haven't even started."
"Oh, no, I'm already finished. Check it out for yourself, if you like. I've got pieces of your wisdom teeth here."
Hmmm... I was never so skeptical of anything in my entire life as I was then. I mean, the man had just drugged me and left a little Hoover vacuum cleaner in my mouth. There was no fucking way (and yes, I used the F word, I was that skeptical) that he could be finished. I was absolutely certain the man was putting me on or outright lying to me.
In my doubt, I felt around my mouth with my tongue and was horrified to find pieces of flesh and bone floating around in there. Three of my wisdom teeth were pulled out cleanly before they ever had a chance to surface, so the flesh in those spots were stitched closed. My fourth wisdom tooth, however, had emerged long before the operation, so when he pulled that out, he had to leave a gaping, bleeding hole, and it was in that hole that I could feel all the truly gory stuff. From that, I was partly convinced that he did, in fact, do some work in there, but I was pretty certain that whatever he did, he left the job unfinished.
"You're not done," I insisted. "You left some tooth parts in there!"
"Nah," he said. "You'll be fine." And I couldn't really say anything to that because I wasn't sure of anything. I hadn't really been "there" to make sure he did his job right. I was paranoid and suspicious, skeptical and confused. Where did my time and wisdom teeth go? I'd been drugged, so I couldn't be sure. For all I knew, he could have taken my liver and kidneys, too.
That was just hours in my day. I can't imagine living years in that way. If I did, well....
I wouldn't have Kodak Moments to share.
Posted by April at 11:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 26, 2003
All I Have To Do Is Dream
Apparently I giggle when I sleep. Tense with a headache and too exhausted to do much else, I fell asleep while getting my neck massaged and ended up time traveling again. This time I went a mere two hours into the future with my friends to attend a dinner party, and as we waited for the food we watched a gray-striped kitten hang upside down from a ceiling fan like some circus performer. I giggled myself half-awake at the kitten's antics and suddenly heard an amused voice intrude:
"Even asleep, you're the most entertaining woman I've ever been with."
This is not necessarily a compliment since, apparently, I also fart in my sleep—which we all know can be very entertaining.
But anyway, I allowed myself to wake up a little more to ask for an explanation and was treated to a description of my sleeping habits—how I talk about things that don't make sense, how I snore like the cat, and how upset I get if anyone I know does anything bad in one of my dreams.
"Don't you ever jump off the balcony again. You nearly scared me to death, and I had to call 911!"
"No, you didn't."
"Yes, I did. You weren't moving!"
"No, you didn't, you freak. You were dreaming. Remember? My jumping off the balcony and your calling 911—it was all a dream."
"Yeah, but still! Don't you ever jump off the balcony like that again."
Exasperated sigh. "Yes, dear."
Anyway, it seems that one can have lengthy conversations with me while I'm asleep. The conversations make absolutely no sense to those awake, but I can always be counted on to respond as though everything was perfectly normal. I have never in my life gone so far as calling someone in the middle of the night to argue with them while sleeping, but I'm almost certain I've had some interesting heart-to-hearts. Makes me glad I don't sleepwalk. I can just imagine the sort of trouble I'd get myself into if I did that on top of everything else.
"Don't you ever jump off the balcony again. You nearly scared me to death, and I had to call 911!"
"No, you didn't. You were flying down to my time machine so you could invent the baseball bat before I could, weren't you."
"What? What in the hell are you talking about?"
"Just let the poor cat do her tricks on the ceiling fan, why don't you? Dinner won't be ready for another two minutes."
"Oh, God. You're asleep again, aren't you?"
"Want to see me fly?"
"Ohhhh, man."
Yeah, definitely. Thank God I don't sleepwalk.
Posted by April at 11:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 24, 2003
It's Your Turn To Help Me With Photoshop
You've seen my tutorial for making fire in Photoshop, and you would see one for making water as well... if I could only remember how I created this graphic:
I did this from a blank canvas in Photoshop some two years ago and unfortunately failed to take notes before flattening the file; all I remember is that I used the Chrome filter at some point and a bunch of other standard Photoshop filters, but for the most part the technique is lost to me.
If you can figure out exactly how I did this, can duplicate it reasonably closely and tell me how you did it, I promise to keep sharing my own Photoshop tips and tricks.
Posted by April at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2003
How To Make Celtic Knots, the Quick and Easy Way
Osculate me. I'm a Celtic nut.
I've mentioned before my little penchant for making Celtic knots in Adobe Illustrator, and after I developed my own little way of making them I decided to look up other ways. I found a tutorial by Marc and Shelly Wallace, one by Christian Mercat, another by Yvonne and Stephen Hughes, and even a small collection of tutorials over at Craytech.
Frankly, all of the tutorials I found online make the art of Celtic knot design a pain in the ass. I'm a lazy artist—always have been, always will—so I constantly look for easier ways to do things, and it looked like I already had the easiest way to make Celtic knots: my way.
I know that not everyone has Adobe Illustrator, so the following tutorial shows how to make Celtic knots by hand, the quick and easy way. All you need is a highlighter pen, a black ink pen, paper, and some idea how you want your knots to look.
Preparation: Think about the knot design you're going to draw. I would suggest looking at existing Celtic knotwork and studying the flow of each line as it weaves onto itself and onto intersecting lines. Don't worry yet about the over-under patterns that are normally part of the design; we'll get to that later. All you really have to worry about is that at each intersection, you should only have one crossing, where the lines radiate outward in no more than four directions. Here are samples of good and bad crossings:
Step one: On a clean sheet of paper, draw the basic lines of your Celtic knot using a highlighter pen. In my example, you see a one-line design.
Bear in mind that Celtic knots have an over-under pattern; if you follow a single line on an existing design, you'll notice that each intersection alternates between going over what it intersects and going under what it intersects. The same rule applies when it intersects itself—over itself, then under itself, then over, then under. If you've drawn all your intersections correctly and you strictly follow the alternating over-under pattern, the whole thing should come out all right.
Step two: Start at one end of the design and trace a section of the line using a black ink pen. For the purposes of this tutorial, a section of line begins and ends where the line goes under in any crossing, so when you trace the line, you draw across just one intersection. (Imagine a pedestrian walking along the sidewalk of a street from one intersection to another, crossing just one other intersecting street, so that he walks two full blocks, on both sides of the street along which he is walking.)
Step three: Trace the next section, drawing across that same intersection at which you stopped when tracing the first section.
Step four: Trace the next section in the same manner.
Step five: Keep tracing until you've traced every edge of line, and voila, your Celtic knotwork is complete.
Ridiculously easy, wasn't it?
Update 2003.06.21: Seems I'm not the only one who has thought of making Celtic knots this way. Jo Edkins already has a tutorial that uses similar techniques.
Posted by April at 11:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2003
Survey Questions From A To Z
My cousin Zee, the movie star, can beat up your cousin Zee, the nobody. Last year my good friend Janine sent me one of those chain letter e-mail forward things that either promise undying puppy love or eternal blue-ball celibacy, one that listed a lot of personal questions and her own answers to each of them. I was supposed to replace her answers with mine and send it back to her, as well as to a whole new list of people who could provide their own answers, true or false; the purpose, I'm sure, was to find out more about the people who participate. Well, Zee was one of those to whom I sent this because I really wanted to know more about the cousin who, I remembered, once measured her boobs with a wooden ruler while she was on her hands and knees (Hey, Zee! Do you remember that?), and here, posted with her permission, are the answers she sent me:
- Living arrangement?
Husband and boyfriend agree to alternate nights based on a previously agreed upon schedule. - What book are you reading now?
Well, I was reading Who Moved My Cheese, but someone moved it and now I can't find it. - What's on your mouse pad?
My mouse doesn't use pads, she uses tampons. - Favorite board game?
Operation. I get to use the skills I learn from ER and First Watch. - Favorite magazines?
The kind where you say you read it for the article but you're actually snickering at the pics. - Babies?
Grilled with a hearty BBQ sauce. - Favorite sound?
When annoying people stop talking to take a breath. - Worst feeling in the world?
When he rubs you this way, not THAT way. - What is the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning?
"God damn you, I said GET OFF me!!" - Favorite color?
Shoe imprint black in the seat of your pants. - How many rings before you answer the phone?
One. Preferably 2 carat, non-cubic-zirconia. - Future child's name?
I will affectionately call him or her "Booboo" since we don't plan on having anymore. - What is most important in life?
To be able to laugh, especially at another's expense. - Favorite foods?
I'm partial to Family Feud. - Chocolate or vanilla?
I don't like flavored panties. They itch. - Do you like to drive fast?
Yes. Then smoke a fatty afterward. - Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
Yes, I'm SO into taxidermy. - Storms—cool or scary?
Geo Storms SUCK! No leg room at all!! - If you could meet one person dead or alive, who would it be?
Anna Nicole Smith. I would prefer her dead. - Favorite alcoholic drink?
Yes. - What is your zodiac sign?
"Turn left at Uranus." - Do you eat the stems of broccoli?
Only if they're clean shaven. - If you could have one job in the world, what would it be?
I'm torn between two...Hand Job would be Matt Damon...Blow Job would be Ben Affleck. - If you dyed your hair, what color would you pick?
Not into dying my hair. I prefer Brazilians. - Have you ever been in love?
Yes. Especially when they pay me right away. - Is the glass half empty or half full?
Who the fuck cares? Get me another beer!! - Favorite movies?
Any that encourage audience participation, like Rocky Horror or, well, porn. - Do you type with your fingers on the right keys?
No, only on the left keys. - What's under your bed?
Evidence. - Favorite sport to watch?
Nascar, so that I can count the mullets. - Say one nice thing about the person who sent this to you:
She doesn't suck, that I know of. But you might ask her boyfriend...
I'm telling you. I have the best cousins in the world.
Posted by April at 11:11 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2003
Bad [WD Assignment] From My Writing Past #8: March 29, 1992
Over 10 years ago, I subscribed to Writer's Digest, and I would sometimes enter their monthly contest. The assignment for March in 1992 was to write a short piece in which the first sentence dictates how the next sentences begin. For instance, the second sentence starts with the second word in the first sentence; the third sentence starts with the third word in the first sentence; the fourth sentence starts with the fourth word in the first sentence, etc. The catch? The piece had to tell a coherent story at the same time.
Anyway, here is what I wrote:
There he was, looking like an idiot. He stared at his hand, the ground, then the few people around him, all with a frown on his face. Was this ever easy or what?
"Looking for something?" I asked him, and I laughed as his brows shot up, his head turning this way and that. "Like it or not, you won't find it," I taunted. An ugly expression came over his face, but I only laughed harder at his expense. Idiot that he was, I thought, as he continued to search for me and the wallet that he lost, he would never know that he'd just been a victim of an invisible pickpocket.
It's short and sweet but oh so fun! Feel free to try your own hand at the writing assignment.
Posted by April at 10:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 15, 2003
Unfinished Melody for Righteous Fathers
I began composing a poem for Father's Day and midstream decided against it. For some reason, I simply got bored and decided to work on a commission instead. If you'd like to finish the poem for me, you can:
Our father, who farts in our den, Hallowed be thy game. By halftime come, Thy will be done. The score is zip to seven. Give us this day our daily beer And give us backstage passes...
Oh, and many apologies for my poor Catholic upbringing.
Posted by April at 09:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 13, 2003
Me and the Boys #4: Bill
Friday the 13th reminds me of Bill. When the school year ended for a lot of students this past month, and when I spied a group of kids on their way to their senior proms, I was reminded of Bill. Just the other day, when I posted comment number 91 on Dooce's announcement and comment number 13 on Jimbo's poem, I was yet again reminded of Bill.
Seems like this is the perfect time to write about him.
Bill was in my high school class of 1991, but I didn't know he existed until the very last days of my senior year. He was in my calculus class, quietly sitting at the far left side in front of the room. At six feet three inches tall, he towered lankily over everyone, yet I never noticed him. I was too busy trying not to laugh at some football player's antics and trying not to worry about falling behind in my calculus homework due to cheer practice.
Yeah... I know about all those stereotypes that pop up in your head at the mention of smart lanky kids, football players and cheerleaders. It totally wasn't like that. It usually never is.
High school can be a painful place for people, as it was for me at times. Being involved allowed me to have a lot of acquaintances, but I didn't have any true friends. My self-esteem was nonexsitent, and I truly did feel ugly and ignored. How could I not? For the homecoming dance, because no one asked me, I went with another girl from my squad; I wore a little black dress, she wore a dashing white tux, and I'm sure people had strange, suggestive things to say about that. For the Valentine's ball, because no one asked me soon enough, my friends had me go with a boy whose girlfriend was somehow forbidden to go to the dance with him, and to add to my humiliation, I spent much of that night feeling ill with heartburn and gas pains. How romantic.
And for prom?
No one asked me to the prom, and the one or two guys I asked either already had a date or was too broke to go; even when I offered to pay for everything, the one who was broke turned me down. It all wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't have my heart set on going and if I didn't already buy my shoes and get my dress made (what a hopeless case!). But there it was. I had no date.
On the last full school day before the prom, the one chance that I had to get a date, I ended up crying my eyes out over it, and it felt like the whole school was a witness to my despair. Suddenly, everyone was offering to help me find a date, even as the day was swiftly slipping by. Even my teachers assured me of their help. Pathetic, isn't it?
Then, during one of my afternoon periods, I was pulled out of class by a girl I'd seen but never knew personally and brought to a counselor's office. Apparently, the counselor had been asking around among the students if they knew anyone tall, dark, and handsome who would want to go to the prom with me. The ultimate humiliation, I kid you not. The girl and her friend had evidently suggested Bill, and I could not for the life of me figure out who this Bill character was. Not that it mattered, the counselor determined that Bill should be my date. He set us up somehow, and later, before I knew it, I was on the phone with Bill making arrangements and trying to get to know him a little better.
It was Bill who told me that we were in the same calculus class. He also told me that he knew who I was, noticed me early on, in fact. And later, when he felt a little more comfortable speaking with me (I was trying my damnedest to put him at ease), he even confided to having had a little crush on me.
That settled it. I set out to make our prom date the best date he'd ever had.
Bill was shy, and so was I, but because he was the one in A.P. Physics and I was the one in Varsity Cheerleading, I figured it was up to me to help him relax and have fun. I turned on the charm that I didn't even know I had, and I soon had him joking and laughing with me on the phone.
For prom night, our plan was a group date—dinner with my friends at a fancy seafood restaurant where we all had reservations, then off to the prom. My friends, unfortunately, were space cadets, and on the way to the restaurant, they went in the other direction, got totally lost, and never made it to the original destination. Bill and I, on the other hand, made a good team. He drove, I navigated, and with plenty of time to spare, we made it to the restaurant on my friends' half-assed directions. We found ourselves waiting for them in vain, but we chatted during that time, and Bill came out of his shell more and more.
We ended up not having dinner and went straight to the prom, where I seemed to take the lead in most things—getting our picture taken, finding some seats, continuing our conversation, and making Bill dance. He told me that he wasn't a dancer, that he couldn't dance, that he looked like a dorky white man trying to dance, and I told him with my brightest smile, "Dance anyway. No one really cares. All you're meant to do is move your body and have fun." And somehow, I got him dancing.
I really think he had a lot of fun, too. When I thought he'd had enough, I made a move towards our seats, but he actually stopped me and asked me for another dance. I was happily surprised. After that, the date only got better and better. I was so set on putting him at ease, I completely forgot about my own uneasiness, and when he was completely at ease, he revealed the truly beautiful side of him—his perverted sense of weird and wacky humor. I don't remember if we stayed until the end of the prom; I think we did. All I remember is going to a late-night restaurant afterwards to eat, we were so starved for food, and we laughed uproariously in our booth (at what, I don't remember). Then we went to his house so we could change into casual clothes and so that he could play me some of his favorite music (Somebody by Depeche Mode), and we went driving along the empty streets at breakneck speeds, chatting away into the wee hours of the morning about everything and nothing.
It was sometime about seven in the morning when our date officially ended, and from then on we were great friends. Or at least I thought so.
We lived at opposite ends of town (he'd been bussed to my neighborhood school for its magnet programs and its aviation/aeronautics class), but we often talked on the phone for hours on end. He asked me out every time we talked, but I would shyly decline because as effervescent as I was during our first date, I really was a complete social case around guys if there was even a hint of romance involved. Bless Bill; he wasn't fazed by it at all. He happily told me that he would ask me out 13 times... because 13 (his birthdate) was his lucky number.
But we never did go out on that second date. I went out for a submarine sandwich with him once, and I was totally ill at ease. I knew he wanted to develop our relationship into something more than friendship, and that knowledge gave me cold feet. For reasons I won't get into, issues I've had to deal with since childhood, I couldn't allow myself to think of him that way. I liked him too much, and he was the best friend I'd had in a long, long while.
So... he went off to college in the northern part of California, while I stayed at home to go to college in the southern part of California. We kept in touch by e-mail and by post mail—long and wacky, funny letters that were free and uninhibited, rife with inside jokes, doodles, and craziness. He told me about all the house DJing and dancing he was getting into, this man who once professed that he was too dorky and white to dance, and he sent me tapes filled with his favorite songs.
He was growing, evolving, and I wasn't. He was learning to relax and have fun, and while I might have been the first person to tell him to relax and have fun, I wasn't relaxing and having fun myself. Instead, I was dealing with my demons and finding myself in the grip of angry hormones and emotional anxieties, dealing with monsters that I didn't even know were there.
And a few years later, when Bill and I made plans to go to Disneyland with his college friends and to meet up with my online friends, I went from being the easygoing charming cheerleader who accompanied him to the prom... to being a cold, hard, angry bitch who treated him and his friends abominably for no reason other than it was a trip met with hardships in finding a room and disappointment for me in not spending enough time with my online friends. For the entire trip home, the tension in my car was thick enough to choke someone; no one wanted to upset me any more than I already was.
This was all before Bill left the country to teach English in China, and I never heard from him again. Not even after I sent him a card with an apology. Then again, when I consider how I behaved, I don't blame him. It's my fault and my loss, and my biggest regret in all of this is that I lost him as a friend.
So Bill... if you're out there, this one's for you.
Posted by April at 11:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 12, 2003
If You Could, What Would You
If you could type anything you wanted in the Google search form, what would you type? I typed "if you could" "what would you" and came up with some interesting questions:
- What would you plant if you could only plant 7 flowers?
- If you could relive your life over again, what would you change?
- If you could have an author (or two) over for dinner, what would you serve for dinner?
- If you could be a bird, what would you choose to be?
- What would you say if you could make a call to God?
- If you could change the storyline of any RPG, which RPG would you choose and what would you change?
- If you could be invisible for a day, what would you do?
- What would you give if you could choose anything and who would you give it to?
- What would you do if you could be miniaturised?
- If you could change anything about your sport, what would you change?
- If you could be reincarnated, who or what would you come back as?
- If you could write a Dune novel, what would you write about?
- If you could observe one event from history (but not affect its outcome) what would you choose?
- If you could design a floor plan what would you change?
- and the list goes on...
I was surprised to find so many of these. It never before occurred to me how often the phrases "if you could" and "what would you" show up in the same question, usually a question asked during an in-depth interview, in a personality quiz, or as an ice breaker in a close conversational round. It's as though the pairing up of the phrases in any query automatically requires the responding person to reveal something more about his psyche, his character, and his very soul.
It's been said that character is what we do when no one is looking. Aristotle said it better: "We are what we repeatedly do."
But what if we haven't had the chance to make certain choices in life and do something to reveal our character? Well, we have the "if you could - what would you" question. It's not the same, but it's close if we're honest. And we convince ourselves that through such a question we can gain a better understanding of the person providing a truthful answer.
So I have to ask:
If you could ask or answer any question, asked by or posed to anyone, what would you ask or say?
Posted by April at 09:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 10, 2003
Job Joss #1: How Not To Treat Your Genius
Once upon a time, I worked at some regional sales office in a not so distant land. They made me take a timed IQ test before they hired me, and when they checked my answers, the big boss was deeply and genuinely impressed. He sliced his hand in the air above his head and said with a noticeable undercurrent of excitement, "You scored really, really high, and I mean really, REALLY high!" He even used the word "genius" in the same breath; I impressed him that much.
Naturally, they made me an offer I couldn't refuse, due to my desperation, and had me working for them right away, answering the phones at the front of the office as some kind of glorified receptionist cum secretary, for a salary considerably less than I had originally set out to get. It was the dream job of every genius.
My official title was office coordinator, and I supported about a dozen sales guys and several other sales support staff members in the office. Not only did I answer the phones for everyone; I took dictation and typed up letters; I wrote up meeting agendas and notes; I filled out expense reports and invoices; I put together bound presentation books, sales contracts, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, how-to manuals and estimates; I filed papers, and I made travel arrangements; I entered sales data into the database, and I did all the faxing. I ordered all the office supplies, and I provided all the inhouse computer tech support. Mind you, the average secretary might do all this work for 3-5 people at the most; I did all this for 15 people, and I did it all with a smile. On top of all this, I managed to make a few suggestions to the corporate office and do a bit of extra work because of a couple of character flaws I like to call "enthusiasm" and "eagerness to please."
Needless to say, I was a wonder woman.
I killed myself working because I had my eye on the sales coordinator position, which would have paid at least 50% more and meant that I didn't have to answer the phones quite so much. It would also have allowed me to afford a move closer to work, cutting out the two hours of commuting a day. Anyway, I figured I was a shoe-in because I was already doing the work with the sales contracts, and if they hired me, they wouldn't have to train someone else to do the job.
Some genius I turned out to be; it was never in the stars.
My immediate supervisor was Milly Ganabitch. That really isn't her name, but for the purposes of this entry we'll call her Milly Ganabitch. She was the typical conservative soccer mom type who drove a monster SUV for all on-road adventures to the supermarket. Even with her severe accent, she managed to climb her way to the top, thanks to nepotism and marrying well. Totally irrelevant fact: H.E. met her once and asked me later about the yardstick up her rectum, which I truly didn't see at the time.
Well, I was on pretty good terms with Milly, who liked me infinitely better than the girl I replaced, a girl who for some reason couldn't do even a third of the work that I could, go figure. So I confided a lot in Milly. I told her, you know, I love the work and all, but it's getting to be a bit of a strain. Couldn't we hire someone full time to take over the phones and filing? I was taking in 40-50, maybe even 70, calls a day, and the pile of documents that needed filing was growing faster than I could handle.
Well okay, Milly conceded, how about a part-time assistant?
So we got a part-time assistant, and she was great. Wonderful. Truly, truly wonderful. She was as efficient and as fastidious as I was, and I absolutely adored her. The only problem was that she was in the office maybe twice a week for a couple of hours, which did nothing to make a dent in my growing pile of work.
Again, I went to Milly. Please, I need some help. I can't do this on my own.
Milly reassured me. I've been fighting for your cause with the corporate office, April. It's not in our budget right now, but I'm arguing your case.
Nothing came out of it in the end, but I was all gratitude at her promise. Thank you, Milly. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you! I imagined moving easily into the sales coordinator position while someone else took over my office coordinator position.
As if she could read my mind and my ambitions, Milly gravely took me aside and talked down the sales coordinator position. It's really not what you think it is, she told me. She saw it as being on the same level as the office coordinator, and being so smart, I wouldn't really like it. No, really.
She said everything she could to talk me out of wanting the sales coordinator job.
Hm, I thought. I could decide for myself, couldn't I? Besides, the extra pay would really help. In the meantime, I worked so hard that I don't think I had much of an ass left at the end of the day; I worked it off daily and completely.
Then one day, they hired a sales coordinator. She was well dressed, well spoken, and really very nice. I found out later that she indeed got 50% more than I did, but she had far more experience in number crunching and sales support. Okay, I smothered my disappointment in smiles and helped to train her, only to find out right away that she was as slow to learn as molasses on a cold day.
There is just one thing I cannot stand in the work place, and that is working under someone who's clearly not cut out for the job. I had to take time out of my extremely busy day to help this woman grasp the very basics of her role, basics that I had simply picked up and ran with, before she came along. When I simply couldn't take the time, Milly herself stepped in and trained her. When even that proved fruitless, they had a couple of women from the corporate office fly by and train her as well. Heck, they even had online classes for her, too.
Through all this, I was growing more and more bitter and resentful. This new hire was getting paid more to do a job that everyone in the world was helping her to do, and here I was, poor as a pauper, still struggling to find help with mine. She lasted a month before she finally quit, defeated, and in that month my work had fallen more and more behind because of all the time I spent picking up after her. My going to Milly for help obviously didn't work, so I e-mailed the corporate office about my need for help with the phones, a move which later bit me in the ass that I worked off so diligently.
On that fateful day, right before my long-awaited vacation and right after I took care of an emergency, Milly called me into her office for a talk. It began rather calmly, though severely, with implied blame coolly laid at my feet for the emergency which shouldn't have happened but couldn't be helped because I was totally overworked. Suddenly, she brought up the e-mail that I'd sent to the corporate office, which somehow had made its way back to her via the big boss, and she blamed me for that, too.
Why? I don't know.
Milly said my e-mail made our office look bad, when really, all I wanted was a little more help. Genius or not, I can only do so much in a day, and I can only take so many false promises before I take things into my own hands and do something.
Needless to say, she was not happy with the e-mail I sent and found it reason enough to call me backstabber. Yes, backstabber! Completely out of the blue. I was in total shock over the accusation, and I could feel all the adrenaline in my body surge. My skin turned hot with my outrage, and to my utter dismay, I burst into tears. I tried to make her understand how overworked and how underpaid I was, how in addition to my commute the amount of work was killing me slowly, day by day. It might have been better if the work wasn't so mindless, so mind-numbing, so insanely common and laborious. Anybody could have done that job—or rather, any three people off the street could have done that job—and here I was, the big boss's genius, dying to do creative stuff, dying to help out with the corporate web site, dying to help out with the company newsletter and marketing materials. Here I was, made to do demeaning secretary work, made to train a highly paid incompetent to do a job no one would give me, and made to work three times harder than anyone should ever have to.
What did Milly have to say? "Whose fault is that?" she asked. The fault, she told me, was my own.
Bitch.
I tried to take my case to the big boss, the one who once called me genius, but with him being somehow related to Milly, it was a hopeless venture. I was told, in not so many words, to forget the "backstabber" comment and move on, to kiss and make up, to be, as before, tirelessly hardworking and openly friendly with Milly.
"I'm sorry," I told him, "but I can't do that." And I was instantly called all kinds of ungrateful. After all the things they've done for me, I had the gall to behave in such a way? I had to laugh at their absurdity.
So I finally left, less than one year after I took the job. I remember leaving an enormous pile of work behind, work that had doubled and tripled because of my recent vacation, work that Milly would have had to take over until they hired someone. And I later heard from a friend who worked in the same building that they had to hire three full-time people to replace me, the knowledge of which truly gratified me and helped me live a happily ever after.
They say genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, but that job was far too much perspiration for my taste. I'm so glad I left.
Posted by April at 11:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 08, 2003
Something's Been Bugging Me
I want to do a comic strip. Just a little mini-series of a comic strip, mind you, but a comic strip just the same. A cartoon rendition of characters living out their lives, except that while I have a pretty good grasp at what the characters might be like, I still can't decide on what to call the series. And so I can't begin working on it yet.
I know that it will be set in New York city, though I've never really been there myself. The main character, a millipede, she will be fanatically into shoes, and I dare say she will have quite the shoe collection, enough to make Imelda Marcos jealous beyond belief. "I've got over 2000 pairs!" she will boast in her writing... because, of course, this millipede will be a writer who writes for a living.
Then there's the ladybug, whom everyone calls Red for obvious reasons. She appears every inch a lady, but she's a little tomboyish and doesn't actually care for most lady-like things. As we all know, ladybugs aren't necessarily female, and with that in mind, I'll make her more wry than most people would expect from a ladybug. And thanks to my fondness for alliteration, I'll also make her a ladybug lawyer.
The butterfly, on the other hand, is soft and pretty and very ladylike. She is all sweetness and light, and really, the prettiest of the bunch, though a bit flighty and far too pink and delicate in nature. She'll be the sort who always thinks about what's proper and right. She will wrinkle her little bug-like nose at anything crude or distasteful. I can't, for the life of me, figure out what she does for a living, though.
The black widow? Totally all legs and dangerously seductive. She seduces all of her dates to her lair, promptly devours them, with absolutely no shame whatsoever, and is always eager for more. She, of course, will have all the witty lines of a sexual nature, and she will always wear that sly, all-knowing look about her, as though she were enjoying some secret joke. Sounds like the perfect sort for PR, no?
And that about sums up the main characters in my comic strip. An odd bunch, I'll admit, but a more close group of friends you will never find. I wonder if I'll have enough material there to create more than a handful of panels. I can't imagine such a series lasting for above a few weeks, not to mention months or years. And still, there is that trouble with the title. But for the title, I could start drawing.
I mean, what do you call such a motley group of characters living in New York? Hm...?
Okay, I think I got it. How about this:
Insects and the City
Good title, eh? I hope no one's done anything like that yet. It's the most original idea I've ever had.
Posted by April at 05:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 06, 2003
The Choice
I sometimes imagine that right before the noses, eyes, breasts and biceps are passed out among the born-to-be souls, some God's assistant, who looks remarkably like Anne of Green Gables, asks: "Which would you rather be: divinely beautiful, dazzlingly clever, or angelically good?"
Tough choice.
I don't think I would have been granted divine beauty, even if I'd asked for it. All divine beauties have shapely noses, and I'm part Filipino, so the laws of genetics dictate that I have no nose. It's true. I read a strange little Filipino folk tale once about the giving out of gifts by the creators to the newly created creatures of the earth—wings for the birds, tails for the monkeys, hooves for the bison, etc. According to the tale, the Filipinos were so slow to get in line for the gift of noses that by the time they made it to the front, the only noses they could get were made of soft mud. Hence, the mushy bridgeless noses. I kid you not. I truly wish that I could find that tale online so I could link to it, but I haven't been able to find even a hint of it on the web.
Now dazzling cleverness is something I might have been able to pull off, if I weren't such an airhead sometimes. I've mentioned before how clever H.E. can be, but half the time his jokes simply fly over my head because I just don't get it. If I were dazzlingly clever, I would never hear H.E. laughingly tell me, "Why don't you call 1-800-explain-a-joke?" And if I were dazzlingly clever, I would never forget to post an entry on those days that I'm supposed to. So I think it's safe to assume that I was not awarded the dazzling cleverness gift right before I was born—which of course happened yesterday.
And I don't think I would ever have chosen to be angelically good because being angelically good is rather boring. It means never being angry or impatient, never being frustrated, never complaining about or getting exasperated over the incompetence and ignorance of idiotic fools. Angelically good people are always forgiving liars, thieves, and murderers, even when the forgiveness doesn't do them any good and in fact only encourages the bad behavior, because to the angelically good people everyone else is also angelically good... though they'll admit that some may have made some merely "bad judgment calls." Angelically good people also don't ever eat junk food. Ever. And that's just a crying shame.
So... being part-Filipina, I can only guess that I was late to the line of gifts and was asked quite another question altogether: "Which would you rather be: passingly cute in a mushy nose way, clever at times while airheaded most of the time, or impatiently whiny for such a goodie-two-shoes?"
I'm still wondering what choice I made.
Posted by April at 11:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 03, 2003
Photoshop Tips and Tricks #2: Fire
I came up with this trick while playing with Photoshop filters, and since I don't use plug-ins or have the latest version of Photoshop, this came in pretty handy for me. Who knows? It might come in handy for you, too.
- Create a New file. [Ctrl-N/Command-N]
- Render Clouds. [Filter > Render > Clouds]
- Distort using Ocean Ripple. [Filter > Distort > Ocean Ripple]
- Duplicate layer. [Layer > Duplicate Layer]
- Stylize the top layer with Glowing Edges. [Filter > Stylize > Glowing Edges]
- Set the layer mode to Screen. [See drop-down menu in the Layers Palette]
- Merge the layer Down with the one right below it. [Ctrl-E/Command-E]
- Colorize with red and increase contrast.
- Adjust Hue/Saturation, Colorize with a reddish hue. [Ctrl-U/Command-U, make sure Colorize is checked and Saturation is set to at least 45]
- Adjust Curves to increase contrast. [Ctrl-M/Command-M, lighten the highlights and darken the shadows]
(what your curve should look like)
- Duplicate layer.
- Adjust Hue/Saturation to make the top layer yellowish. [Slide the Hue option until you get yellow tones.]
- Set layer mode to Lighten.
- Merge layers down.
- Duplicate layer.
- Use Plastic Wrap filter on top layer. [Filter > Artistic > Plastic Wrap]
- Set layer mode to Overlay
And voila, you have fire!
Posted by April at 11:35 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 02, 2003
Scarred For Life #3: Tug of War With Jennifer
I didn't like my friend Jennifer much. I didn't like that she did all the talking in a phone conversation, and I didn't like that she was my best friend Glenda's "other" best friend. I always felt like I was in some kind of tug of war with her, always trying for a bigger piece of the conversation pie, always trying for a bigger piece of Glenda's attention. Little did I know that I would ever get burned in such a tug of war.
One weekend, my friends and I went to a block party and decided to participate in some of the party games. We entered a dance contest and bought some raffle tickets, and we teamed up to play an actual tug of war.
So there I was holding the rope in a line of my friends. Our opponents were a bunch of neighborhood boys, and we were determined not to lose to them. Jennifer took her place in front of me, and we all began to tug.
I still remember the thickness of the rope and the haphazard way I held on to it. Somehow I had managed to get my index finger above it, on the same side as my thumb, instead of below it, on the same side with the rest of my fingers.
And somehow Jennifer managed to hold the rope just a little above where my own hands held it.
We all pulled and pulled, gripping with all our might and putting all our weight into it in our attempt to win. I could feel a little bit of friction as the rope slipped a little beneath my hands, so I held on tighter and pulled. So did the others. So did Jennifer.
Only, she had her hands over mine, which meant that my index finger was between her hands and the rope.
More gripping. More pulling. Lots of grunting. Lots of rope slipping from our fingers, burning our skin. I'm almost certain that everyone on our team wanted to let go and lose gracefully. I know I did. I wanted to let go of the rope and forget the whole game. You've got to hand it to Jennifer, though. She was determined to win, and she held on to that rope as though her life depended on it, and she pulled and pulled.
Easy for her to do. She still had her hands over mine.
So there I was feeling the burn of the rope as it slipped through my fingers and wanting desperately to let go, and there she was blithely holding on, trapping my own hands and not feeling the burn at all because she was using my hands as her gloves.
I was too much in pain and in panic to tell her, "Let go of my hands, girl, you're killing me!" The best I could do was, "Aaaauuuugggghhhh!!!!"
Burn, burn, stinging burn. I was about ready to kick her, I was so desperate, but I figured if I continued to pull, we could win and get this whole thing over with. It didn't help. She only held on tighter as the rope continued to slip between my burning fingers, and I was trapped for good. We were losing, and it seemed like ages before we all finally let it go.
I was never so relieved to give up and lose!
Jennifer seemed really proud of herself though for all the effort she made. Me, I was staring at my index finger, where a great big giant chunk of flesh was gouged out from one side of it. Gouged out! At least half an inch wide, burned away by the once slipping rope. It was sickly pale at first, so ghostly white that it was scary. Then red spots began to form quickly-growing pinpricks against the white, and the whole thing became pink, then red with blood. I gaped at it as it went from numb to mind-numbingly painful, and somehow I managed not to faint, and I asked someone for a bandage of some sort.
I showed all of my friends the damage, but Jennifer didn't seem to feel any responsibility or remorse—at least, not enough for my taste. I spent the rest of the day feeling bitterness and resentment over the whole thing, along with the pain. And I continued to feel bitterness and resentment over the years as I continued to lose Glenda to her.
To this day I still have the scar, a white pucker of flesh on the side of my right index finger. If you run your finger against it, you can even feel a slight bump along the skin.
I'm kind of glad I have it though. It still reminds me of Jennifer, who died very young from cancer and left a painful gouge in Glenda's loving, mourning heart. It also reminds me not to get into petty tugs of war with my friends over conversations and the attention of other friends.
Or into block party tugs of war, for that matter.
But you already knew that.
Posted by April at 11:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 01, 2003
Name That Tune #1: 24 Jump Street
No less than two nights ago, two dozen crooks broke and entered into my house. I tried to escape, but they caught me and assaulted me with repeated blows to my skull, using a heavy wooden object.
"What do you want?!" I cried, but they only chanted instructions at me to turn around, to touch the ground, to do the high kicks, and to do the splits.
Not only that, but they kept mistaking me for some Spanish lady or some Chinese dancer, I don't know. And at the end of the night, I was dog tired from all that jumping around.
What an awful night!
Posted by April at 11:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack