links n' stuff

Spending a lot of time these days looking for housing and applying for jobs; once those two issues are settled, I will definitely feel more settled, as well. I've found several good leads on both fronts; I'm actually about to leave to check out a house with an available room. I will keep you updated, of course.

On the job front: I actually have a couple jobs at the moment, but neither of them are consistent enough for my tastes; I would prefer to have some thing or things that I could count on from week to week to pay the bills, and then be able to use the sporadic work I do for WASSER to pad my bank account.

What's that you say? What's your second job??? Well. I've been a bit loathe to bring it up. I applied for it on sort of a whim, got it quickly, and have yet to actually do anything for it. On the plus side, it's a writing gig. On the minus side, well... it's a bit, shall we say, morally questionable. No, I'm not working on ad campaigns for Big Oil, or planting apologist propaganda for the NRA in chat rooms... but I am writing "custom essays" for college students. Or I will be, if I ever take a project. The company's official stance is that they (we, I guess... sigh) write these essays "only for research purposes." Uh-huh. In my defense, this type of writing is probably the one I'm best at, I actually really enjoy writing essays like this, and it's good practice. When I'm a famous author this will be my equivalent of David Mamet writing for Penthouse Forum.

Speaking of the NRA, thought this was interesting:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6665285.stm

See, this is what happens in a country where an isolated teenager with a history of mental illness can't just get his hands on semi-automatic handguns; I think we can all agree that, while six kids stabbed and two dead is a horrible tragedy, 30 dead and countless more injured is far, far worse. But hey, for all anyone knew he was buying those guns to shoot water rats...

Some more writing news: I published a little piece in an online community called Helium: http://www.helium.com/tm/322490/walter-isaacsons-biography-albert.

Helium seems to be a cross between wikipedia and American Idol. People write articles about the same topic, and then other members vote on which are the best. There's some revenue-sharing in there eventually, or so they say. As you can see, nobody has stepped up to challenge The Pope on that new Einstein bio.

I'm planning to write some more on this site, just for practice and to see where it goes. I'll send links.

And finally; if you haven't seen this kid yet, I highly recommend it:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ronaldjenkees

This guy is a hero on so many levels. You see him, and you listen to him talk, and you want to laugh and cry all at once—if you're like me, you're expecting him to break out the "dueling banjos" riff on his casio. But then he starts playing, and you're like, "holy crap! He's good!" I predict that the people who will most appreciate this kid are my good buddy Capn. Surly, and my Uncle Homer.

Another benefit is that, if you check out his Rocky riffs, you can also re-watch the almost unbelievably homo-erotic training montage from Rocky III. I can't decide what my favorite part is: when they're working on Stallion's footwork in front of the mirror, only Apollo's behind him and he keeps nervously glancing over his shoulder; Apollo's Dark Side of the Moon tank-top and "oh-ho-ho ho... very nice"s; the ending, where they honest-to-god frolic in the surf together and share the most awkward hug in cinematic history... seriously, what's not to love?