The Goldfish's Logbook

The last few days in the office have been mind-numbingly dull and slow. Since I'm kinda in limbo till the drilling starts, they've just been giving me the busy work that no one else wants to do, like auditing thousands of records for typos and errors. I actually took it seriously the first couple days and made a huge dent in it, then I realized it was an endless quest so I started sandbagging and just read manga online instead.
( rambling about manga )
Rather than continuing with my manga reading, I was sent out into the field to work. Weeee! Finally, after months of being an office slave, I got to see the sun! I was so glad to be out of there. Today I got sent to the Pig Launcher site, which I'd only first heard about a few days ago. I can't show you actual pictures of it, for security reasons, so you'll have to settle for this artist's depiction. And while I was there, I saw an EXTERNAL combustion engine. I didn't even know those things really existed, like platypuses or Santa or G-spots. CAPSLOCK does not begin to describe how LOUD, NOISY, SMOKY, GREASY, and BLACK it was. It shook the earth. It was AWESOME. It baptized me in oil. (For the record, I'm not frowning. I'm squinting, because I'm still not used to the SUN. I even got sun-burnt! Yay!)
So that was the bit of interesting stuff for today. Tomorrow will be even better because one of our senior engineers is leaving the project. What does that mean? Going-away BARBECUE!!!! Sweet! Real food! I'm getting hungry already, just thinking about it! (Or maybe it's 'cause I haven't had dinner yet!) (Fucking parentheses, enough already!)

( 11. Character you'd be best friends with )

I dunno. It came over me like a spell. I spent most of the day indoors, playing video games, but as soon as I got outside, into the sun, around people, I just got all twitchy and skittish and whatnot. And maybe a little paranoid. It was pretty damned crowded at that Cici's I went to for lunch, with all the rugrats running around. I was all, "What the hell? You people need to stop breeding!" I wondered, if I grabbed one of those shorties and hid it, how long would it take for the parents to notice they were gone? Two minutes at least, I think. And in my opinion, there should be a weight limit at any buffet restaurant. If you weigh over a certain amount, then you should not be allowed into an all-you-can-eat buffet. For your own good. Honestly, there were some land whales there.
I went to Barnes & Noble (another one) to look for Yotsuba #5. No luck. And I gave up on re-doing my Spartan cosplay. Only after I'd bought fabric and stuff did I look at the reference picture (duh) and came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be able to get all the stuff I needed in time, nor did I feel like busting my ass to make a ghetto version.
It kinda pisses me off that people are using 4chan to bitch about Oni-con. I didn't go to Oni-con, so I have no personal stake in the outcome of that event. But I assume that the anons on 4chan probably include some people I know and I like to think that my friends aren't so juvenile and petty. But apparently we Texan cosplayers are little whiny bitches that snipe at each other's backs. That's what pisses me off. Everyone's so lovey-dovey and supportive in person, only to badmouth one another as soon as they can get away with it. Crap like this continually has me wonder if I'm getting too old for this cosplay crowd.
So uh, yeah, this is what happens when I sleep in. It's 1 am and I'm still not tired. That "Hard Candy" movie came on just as I was bedding down for the night. I had kinda wanted to see it as the premise seemed interesting, but . . . it turned out to be kinda mediocre.

I'm gonna try and go to bed now, but I make no promises. Just three more days till I get to go home! WOOO!

9:00 - Ha ha ha. Ah, it's funny. I tend to talk to myself. Alot. Not in a crazy way, like I've got voices in my head or anything like that; I just think out loud, that's all. Though sometimes I get into arguments with myself and to the casual observer I might look a little nutty when I'm doing that. "No, fuck YOU!" Heh heh. I try to be careful not to let people catch me doing that, but often I'm so wrapped up in my own dialogue that I'm not aware of what I look like, talking and gesturing to myself. Sometimes they'll ask me why I talk to myself so much. My go-to answer, although a bit rude, is, "Because it's the only way to have an intelligent conversation around here!" All of which leads me to wonder, do I talk to myself because I'm alone, or do people leave me alone because I talk to myself? Ha ha ha.

10:30 - Ah, I'm having too much fun today. The job is getting close to being finished so the final clean-up crew has come in to tidy up the site and get it ready for Wal-Mart to move into. Since it's all cleaning stuff, the crew is mostly women. They're just a bunch of tourists to me, like a group of kids on a field trip, with their matching blue shirts and whatnot.
The funny thing I saw just now was one woman who was going to each porta-potty on the job site. She'd open the door, look inside, and then close the door and go to the next one. I guess she was trying to find a "nice" one. Ha ha ha. They're all more or less nasty, with tons of graffiti on the walls. The johns were clean when we got em, but after a year of being used by a hundred or so Mexicans . . . well, use your imagination. I don't know whose idea it was to give them all Sharpie markers, but it wasn't a good idea. I wondered which toilet would be up to her standards. The one with the cartoon woman wearing nothing but a sombrero? The port-a-potty of Picasso penises, perhaps? The mega-racist Sani-Can? Ah, but she can only choose one!

11:30 - "Where do you want to eat?"
"Somewhere close and not slow."
"There's Subway and Thundercloud, that's about it."
"Mmm, there's also a Wendy's, but that's kinda far."
"I'm tired of fucking burgers anyways."
" . . . Burger fucker!"

14:00 - This month's Discover (my favorite science magazine) had an article about the 25 greatest science books of all time. I figure, "Hell, maybe it's about time I read a book that doesn't have pictures in it." So during my lunch break I went to Barnes & Noble with the intention of buying #1 on the list, "The Voyage of the Beagle," by Charles Darwin. I had $17 in my pocket, enough for a book and lunch, I figured. But on my way to the science section, I passed by the manga section (coincidence? I think not) and noticed Genshiken #7 is on the shelf (only a month late). The one where Ohno-san turns the club into a cosplay cult! Yay! But uh-oh. What's it gonna be? Science or manga? Who will win out? The nerd or the otaku? Tough choice. Guess which one I bought . . . . Ha ha. Trick question! I bought both! But I read Genshiken first. (And now I'm really hungry.)

FIGHT!


( Genshiken opinion )