asiaoddhours

I feel like I've cheated, I've actually never read any of his books.

Apologies to everybody wanting to see more art or productivity; I forgot how much of a timesink moving really is.

Hi everybody who watched me from the friending meme!  Thank you again for doing so.  I thought I'd reward you with some stuff I did lately!

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 My auction in gulf_aid_now .  I'm making curry tonight!  And I got my new monitor: 20 inches, HD capability, better brightness, and only $100.  

My dean of libraries sent out a message Wednesday, saying that our library system's budget was going to be cut next year.

They're cutting 3.1 million dollars (for the first pass at this -- we will also likely be cutting for the fiscal year after it too). 2/3 of it will come from our budget to buy new books (2 mil). The other 1/3 will be.... staffing. Most of it won't be made up by not filling positions or by folks retiring.

We had a meeting yesterday afternoon that went into greater detail about how this downsizing business is going to go. Basically, everybody who isn't tenured faculty is up for the axe, and the first people to go will find that out by August 31 (because you have to give non-tenured faculty a year's notice to find a job). All the cuts are going to be based on function, not evaluations or anything of the like. While my library is very small (16-17 people, tops), there are a couple of us running around who work in the same department.

I happen to be 1 of 2 people working reference. I've been working there longer, and all my evaluations have been very good. So. This is the part where I'll have a slightly better idea in the next 2-3 months if it's safe to feel confident I'll still have a job in a year. :/ On the one hand, while it'd be nice to know I was secure, it also means that my coworker might not be, and that somehow feels worse. :/ She just got away a year ago from a really, really horrible boss, so for this kind of doom announcement to come reigning down, it isn't very confidence filling. 

In a secondary infuriating aspect of this, I found out yesterday we'd employed a guy for a year who lied through his teeth on his resume, and nobody thought to check, our dean makes 200k and scoffs at the idea of taking a voluntary paycut, and our basketball coach is going to get a raise to the tune of having a $1.4 million dollar salary. :/

I-I-I-I think I'll just be over here in a corner now, wanting to hide. Being an adult has never sucked so much.

So BP sent out emails that make it blatantly obvious they didn't care about proper safety measures, in lieu of saving money. I for one am routinely shocked that Halliburton, you know, that Halliburton, actually look like the lesser of the two evils in this, and still continues to be!  Good job BP, I have managed to avoid buying your products most of my life, and I feel I shall continue to do so.  Tony Hayward, for your callous douchebaggery, I hope you are knee'd by a hippie.  Ironically, 10 years ago, it was the oil industry who came up with some of the safety measures BP was supposed to abide, to prevent another spill of this caliber from ever happening again.  What's also crazy?  Cutting the funding to research how deepwater wells would behave in spills, which I don't know, would have likely kept the damn thing from leaking for 2 bloody months.

I swear these days it's just like a new flavor of clusterfuck every couple of weeks.  I wouldn't be surprised if next week a bolt of lightning strikes the oil, while a hurricane pushes the water ashore, leaving Gulf Coast residents scrambling for ways to outrun waves of fire.


And then years later, it will be a movie by James Cameron, in 3-D.

So Fullmetal Alchemist's last chapter came out tonight.  And.... and... you guys....














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I-I-I am crying like a baby I am so happy and sad at the same time.  Everything turned out so well but at the same time, I am so sad it's over, even if the ending still leaves me so relieved for the characters.  My one quibble is goddammit Roy Mustang you never kissed Hawkeye ONCE.  FFFFFFFFFFF.

Published again in the SFRA Review! 

 Hope Larson, lady comics-maker, makes a great interview about the lack of variety in mainstream comics and how the industry on the whole does not do much to attract the ladies.

Most logical people take all the points she makes in stride, and understand that the points brought up in the article are from a survey.

However, because it's the internet, the comments quickly erode from people either calmly agreeing or disagreeing with points to full blown 'you're being sexist, because you want comics just for GIRLS!',  'silly girls, hypersexualization is prevalent in everything, you shouldn't bitch about comics', 'if it doesn't cater to your tastes, don't read it', 'girls naturally prefer things like dolls and sparkly things', 'girls say they don't want romance comics, but the Twilight comic sold 60,000 copies in its first week!', 'male characters have been raped more than female ones in comics!' or, my personal favorite, 'I want comics to be about strong women... but I'm scared of going into a comic shop!!'.  

Look, I love comics, I do.  Why?  Because when comics really strive for it, there is a wonderful amount of variety.  Blankets, Stitches, Persepolis, Hellboy, Invincible, Nextwave, Y, The Last Man, Runaways, Love and Rockets, Maus, Power Up and Scott Pilgrim?  All comics!  That is amazing to me.  They're all visually different from each other, with different stories, different themes, lengths, formats, etc.  Yet they're all the same medium.  Sometimes I don't think the comics industry realizes what it already has, and then when it does, it uses it as a reason to ignore what it's still lacking.  And frankly, in an age where they're dealing with a shrinking audience, technology is shifting away from the pulp and more digital, and people are using that digital world as a way to start their own stories from scratch, Marvel, DC, I hate to tell you, but you're quickly becoming very ruddy stupid to ignore girls and their demands.  If you want girls other than the Twi-hards to give you money, start making comics direct more towards us and sticking with it.