I have another interview on Monday. Supertemporary job really low pay, but right now I'll take anything.

This morning we went to my favorite museum on the planet, the American Museum of Natural History. I've probably been there about twenty times or so, but what made today's trip kind of interesting was that we were with Josh who had not only never been to the AMNH, but he confessed that he'd never been to any museum in which dinosaurs were on display. We were there for about two hours but that wasn't enough time to see it all.
One thing someone pointed out to me a few years back was a surprisingly racist element to the Museum, namely what they call the "Culture Halls." They include art and information about the lives of American Indians, African peoples, Asian peoples, etc. The European people's are noticably absent, probably because their artwork is across town at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The AMNH treats them respectfully, but why are the cultural artifacts of Europeans in the art museum while your browner people are featured alongside stuffed monkeys and dinosaur bones in the "natural" history museum? In a way it's kind of a moot point since the Culture Halls are easily the dullest sections, and I suspect most people only see them when they're trying to find the bathroom.
Anyway, one new cool exhibit they had was the terribly named but very entertaining Extreme Mammals! exhibit (http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/extrememammals/) which features a lot of prehistoric craziness. I've become a lot more interested in creatures from that era ever since I saw the excellent Walking With Prehistoric Beasts "documentary." So many of the creatures seem like insane versions or rough drafts for the more familiar animals of today.



Anyway, if you're visiting NYC the AMNH is a must-see.

Tags: nerds, science
Current Mood: sick
Current Music: "Psycho" by Elvis Costello

Whether I want to go to Texas or not, looks like I'm stuck here. No job in Texas if I go back, Snoqualmie Pass has snowed over. Par for the course in 2009, the Universe blocks what I want.

Making a commitment to stay at least the winter.

( Random doodles )

I hope my specific examples below don't come off as picking on people. (No really! Really!!)


The question in the subject header came up twice yesterday about different stories ("Guts" and "A&P") and also came up last week. I described the events of Stephen King's New Yorker story Premium Harmony to la_nausicaa and she asked what the point of that story could actually be. (That said, she liked "Guts", but then she read that one and only heard about "Premium Harmony.") She's also a school psychologist in training and said to me over email, "but it is interesting. do you have any idea how ashamed most kids are about masturbating. this totally normalizes that. it is like a public health advertisement: masturbating is normal and ok. just be careful, li'l dude," when I wondered if assigning "Guts" would just accelerate the usual gossip and rumors about a teacher's personal life that is such valuable currency to students.

And then there was the Escape Pod podcast of my novelette The Uncanny Valley and the now-traditional searching for and failing to find the point common to the listener forums for that site, and when a friend proofread my story forthcoming in Phantom (yeah yeah, it's been forthcoming for a while but this time it really really is coming out next week, so I'm told) she concluded her queries and requests for changes with, "Well, that was utterly pointless."

So, you know, I'm curious about this idea of what the point of stories should be. At first I was wondering if "What's the point of that story?" is just another way of saying, "I was grossed out!" but as we've seen stories like "A&P" are called pointless, and some people who ask after the point of Gross Story #1 like Gross Story #2 just fine. I wondered if confusion was also an issue—someone who finds a story confusing may suspect that there is a point that they just happened to miss (and that it's the story's fault). But then again "A&P" isn't confusing. It isn't even all that boring. I kinda liked it when I was first assigned it, though any drama it had has long since been sucked out of me by repeated assignments.

(Aside, I was thanked last weekend at WFC for "That of Which We Speak When We Speak of the Unspeakable" because at least one person interpreted the story as the first new thing to be said about "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" in a loooong time.)

Of course, plenty of people find "A&P" boring and feel it is plotless, which also ties into the idea of confusing stories (whose plots cannot be followed) being pointless.

So sometimes a pointless story is a story that grosses out the reader, confuses the reader, or bores the reader. Each seems to be a burden. There's an expectation of enjoyment (and I presume enlightenment given the search for a "point") that is crushed somehow.

So what kind of points do stories with points have? Do people pick up a magazine or a collection and think to themselves, "Oh boy, am I gonna get a brain full of points tonight, baby!" Is a point something even sought after or only missed when it appears to be gone? Do writers sit down with a point to prove when they write a story...and don't many people object to being "preached" to? Of course, in that last case people often don't feel preached to if they already agree with the writer's point, but even that isn't universal. A libertarian acquaintance of mine told me that he can't read L. Niel Smith at all these days because the deck is so obviously stacked in favor of libertarianism that the political explorations aren't sophisticated enough for him. "I find myself arguing against my own politics!" he said, and then he described throwing a book across the room.

(That's another thing I still wonder about. I can't be bothered to dig up the link, but I did ask a few years ago if people really do that and as it turns out, people do! One day I'm going to start doing that with pizza slices I don't like. California will never be the same!)

So what do you all think? What's the point of stories? Can you think of some stories that have made good points, or that are good and pointless? Let the world know!

So, Bobby the Barbarian spends most of his childhood in The Realm with the other kids that Dungeon Master kidnapped. He's a young kid, only eight, and befriends Uni the Unicorn. We only see three years of his adventures in the series.

So, after spending a ton of time in the Realm, we can assume the kids went home, including Bobby. After spending so much time with a Unicorn and spending time with mythical creatures such as dragons, faeries and...well...faerie dragons, Bobby grows up with a real interest in the occult. Unfortuantely, being with a bunch of kids, he never really grows up, maintaining his childlike qualities as he gets older.

Eventually, he gets into college, studying parapsychology with a couple of friends, in hopes of getting a taste of the Realm he grew up in. And in his time, he does meet up with a good many etherial things.

Becuase Bobby grew up to be...Bobby Ray Stantz of the Real Ghostbusters.

And Slimer? Ghost of Uni.

Trying to figure out what's the right thing to do, and coming up blank.

is now up.

AND we're back!

the short is everything is fine, I lost a few high res comics, and gained a new hard drive, logic board, and CS4 suite.

The long: after everything was said and done, and some hardware was replaced, it was recommended that something in my software was also causing the bad mojo. I had to manually reinstall everything, and in that process, get a new copy of adobe CS4 creative suite. I did, and it's great. it's taken me a bit to reconstruct everything. Because the initial backup was bunk, I had to restore data from the second backup, which I don't get as often. I lost 14 strips, which eventually I'll have to re-draw. but it could have been a lot worse.  
Morals of the story are:
1. hard drives fail and applications are occasionally screwy.
2. back up your shit
3. getting with mac with Applecare is a smart smart move. 
4. All of you are very patient. 


it's good to be back on the drawing board again. 

more later. 

So. What's going on in your messed up life right now, Jenn?

Lemme tell ya.

About a month ago I got two large donations of $400 each. I'd hit my goal of finally being able to go home, and began making plans for it. At the time, I was planning to leave on November 4th, but suddenly I was called in for an interview with a good company.

The job interviewing ended up being an incredibly long drawn out process. At first there was a phone interview that went oddly. I'd put in for a job for tech support, but was being told that it was a job for web design. Which was okay, I could do both. The interview ended oddly, and I was pretty sure I'd not gotten the job. Lo and behold, I get an application to send in, as well as an aptitude test a few days later.

The aptitude test was insane. INCREDIBLY long.and took me two days to finish. The math part of it (MATH?!) got to a point where I just randomly clicked whatever I thought the answer was. Again, I wasn't to sure I was going to get the job And after almost a week, they called to let me know I had an interview.

The interview went incredibly well. The job wasn't web design, but tech support, which made me more condifende. The interview lasted two hours and was really in depth. I left there feeling like a million bucks.

Then came the background checks, and reference requests. At that point, and with the encouragement of a friend, I did something I shouldn't have done.

I got comfortable.

I began getting comfortable in the idea I would stay and have a good job in a few weeks. I changed my plans to "I'll leave when I get a NO from the job, but that won't happen, I'm a shoe in." I spent money a little more liberally.

Then a week went by with no contact. The one time I talked to them, they hung up on me. I became incredibly worried and depressed, the first of the emotional whiplash I'd experience that day. I waited all day Thursday for a call, and none came. So I took a shower, and they called while I was in. It was all staticky, and I couldn't hear a thing, but I felt all it could be was I Got the Job. I was happy as hell, but cautious (Whiplash 2).

The next day, I got a call frmo the job. I didn't get it. After almost three weeks, I didn't get the job. My references were great, my background check was clean, my interviews were tremendous...but they went with someone who had a background in their specific industry.

And that's when it all fell down for me. (Whiplash 3).

I'm angry. I'm angry and depressed. This has led to so many problems in my life, and my living situation and constant yo-yoing.

I need to call my former workplace and see if they have any jobs coming up. If the answer is NO, I'll be staying here. There's no reason to go back to Texas and get stuck in the same situation I am here, minus $500. If the answer is YES or I don't hear back from them, I'm going.

The reason I'm going on an "I Don't Know" response is, it's getting VERY late in the season, and the passes are beginning to snow over. If I don't leave soon, I'll be stuck here till Spring breaks (I can drive in snow, but the passes are dangerous, and the truck really isn't made for that kind of driving).

So that's the state of the Jenn....

My family used to do this when I was a kid. We'd upturn a glass and write letters on pieces of paper placed around the table. For some reason we'd often get dead POWs from WWII. I think that we do is channel memories from either within ourselves, or from a "cosmic repository". I think the dead are dead, but that doesn't mean  that i don't miss them.

Tags: writer's block