Man, that new job is hectic as hell -- I hardly had time to even check my e-mail, let alone write any blog entries. If I'd known it was going to be this bad, I would've asked for more than my old salary! It's crazy.

Speaking of crazy:

The 26-year-old elephant Ibala went into labor. But her contractions lessened. A veterinarian induced labor. But an ultrasound determined the calf had died. It could take up to a year for the elephant to deliver the dead calf.

A year to deliver a corpse? That's just nasty. I think I will write a story about it. Anyway, you can read the entire news report here.

And now I've got to get to bed so I can be up in three hours. Ja!

Yep -- the final run of bookstore Hot Flashes begins with Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #38. If the tone of this one's a little too friendly for you, don't worry... you'll get your share of assholes and freaks before we're done here.

And now I'm off to bed... gotta be up at 5AM. I'll probably be back with POSTS FROM WORK tomorrow -- got my remote access account set up and everything. And don't forget to read my anthropological observations and analysis of nerd behavior, mmmkay? Ja!

So yesterday I worked my first shift at one of my two new jobs -- in addition to resuming my Mon-Fri position back at the local community college, I took a job clerking on Saturdays at the local comic shop. Interesting experience so far. I've worked two other retail positions in the past -- at the bookstore for the past 10 months or so and at KB Toys in the summer of 2000 -- but those were both major chains and, as such, everything was pretty technologically up to date. If someone paid with a credit card, you swiped it and that was it. At the bookstore, if someone paid with a check, you scanned it through the register and the check was processed electronically, such that we actually gave the now void check back to the customer because it wasn't necessary to keep it.

This comic shop, however, is still pretty much in the dark ages of retail, which means calling the credit card companies and punching in merchant ID numbers and waiting for approval codes and the like. And I'm really kind of surprised that not even the inventory is done via a database -- the computer we had in '88 could've handled that sort of thing -- but it's very much a paper and pen and highlighter kind of place. Weird. (more...)

Yep! Fiction comes to Scary-Crayon with "Two Minutes on the Metro", a short piece I wrote like over a year ago and wanted to do something with. So give it a read and let me know what you think!

Fun fact: The images used to add a bit of color to the visual presentation are actually photos of the TMNT Sewer Lair playset (in which Donatello utilizes an abandoned subway car for his workshop), with various filters applied to them in my graphics editor. Keen!

So yeah, enjoy the story! Leave comments, send e-mails. Aaaand... ja!

If you ever eat cheese puffs from a bowl, be sure to wash that bowl thoroughly before using it for cereal. I didn't, and right now I taste cheese puffs in my milk. It's weird.

Expect to see that combination again in a Scary-Crayon Random Lunch someday.

Oh, and here's a link from Skeletoncrew that was too hilarious not to pass on -- AbstinenceOnly.com. It's not work safe, but it sure is funny!