Sdtrk: ‘Your daddy’s car’ by The Divine comedy

As stated before, I don’t really plan on ever writing very much about my job on ‘Shouting etc etc’, cos it’s a hideous and dreadful position; however, yesterday’s workday stood out a bit, mainly due to its going-out-of-its-way-to-be-noticeable stupidity.

I work the first shift at a telemarketing fundraising place, which means I go in Monday – Friday, from 10am to 2pm. (Save your envy, I’m only getting paid $8 per hour.) On my shift, there are roughly 40 employees present, all doing the same bollocks I’m doing; calling churls in a couple of states, and requesting donations. Ever since Thanksgiving, though, the donations are down to a trickle, as people are obviously concentrating on buying gifts, giving to other charitable organisations and whatnot.

So over the course of the day, the two supervisors are walking up and down the aisles, loudly exhorting people to ‘speak up’ and ‘get strapped in’ and ‘knuckle down’ and other would-be motivational bullshit, but as anyone with a brain knows, all the loud talking in the world really won’t make a lick of difference, as it’s ultimately down to the person on the other end of the phone to decide whether or not they fire off a cheque or money order. Now, round the third hour of our day, our supervisor George — the fat surly one with a complete lack of a personality — goes up to the cubicles of several employees and speaks with them semi-privately. Shortly after, those employees collectively punch out and leave. It turned out that those particular employees hadn’t had a sale in a little over three hours, so they were sent home. The Fat Angel of Death merely passed by my doorway, as I had just gotten my first sale of the day fifteen minutes before then.

Now, maybe it’s just me, but does that not seem a little.. fucking stupid? Wouldn’t it make more sense to keep more employees in their seats in the hopes that they might get a donation, as opposed to having less people on the phones, and decreasing your chances? It’s the exact opposite of buying a mess of lottery tickets. That whole event struck me as being contra-productive at best, and petulant & childish at worst. Such a lovely work environment, I’m tellin’ yer.

I’d also just like to add that today, I wore my black cardigan with the HAL 9000 patch on it, and not one, but two coworkers, on two separate occasions, asked me what that patch was about. *grits teeth* Of course, in my mind, I’m screaming ‘have you never fucking seen “2001”??’ but then, I work in a place where more than a couple of people are into hip-hop. And when I say ‘more than a couple’, I mean ‘ninety-nine per cent’. Trying to explain something ‘artsy’ like ‘2001’ to these people is like.. well, I don’t want to say anything along the lines of ‘pearls before swine’, but you can’t say it doesn’t fit

Sdtrk: ‘Fallin’ in love’ by American spring

See, Veach? See what you’ve started??

Go handcraft your own magazine cover! Like you’re doing anything else with your time.
By the way, Veach; I’m looking at those questions you asked me last month, concerning Synthetiks and whatnot. Those’ll be answered in a week or so, as final exams are looming ominously on the horizon..

*I recall reading an article in a magazine somewhere a number of years ago, where the author mentioned that they were writing an article on MS Word. They had typed in the name ‘Condé Nast’, and the spellchecker had suggested ‘nasty condo’. I laughed

Sdtrk: ‘Eleanor put your boots on’ by Franz Ferdinand

Yes, the title’s a pathetic grasp at something or other, you’ll have to excuse me.

Remember my mention of 4woods’ new A.I.NEO series? Well, the esteemed Ta-bo-san of ‘Ta-bo’s Kisekae dataroom’ has a new report up. Actually he’s got several reports on her up. The man certainly goes the distance. 🙂
Remember; if you can’t read Japanese, break out that Babelfish, and savvy Firefox users will already know about the lovely Translation panel extension..

And as I’ve just now sussed how to effectively use YouSendIt to my own twisted ends, I now present to you a brief .avi file of the Robot station MC version of Actroid-chan waving to her adoring crowds. The file will be up for seven days, so grab it immediatement. Hooray for YouSendIt!
DOWNLOAD: Actroid-chan waving (link has expired)

And on a completely unrelated note, I bought new pillows last night. It’s amazing what wonders the humble pillow can do for one’s sleeping

Sdtrk: ‘Ashes to ashes’ by David Bowie

Just a brief notice to inform all and sundry that Sidore-chan’s Flickr account has had two new photoshoots uploaded, ‘Velveteen bodice’, and ‘Skirt & crop’.
We’ve already run into a bottleneck with Flickr; if you have the basic account, it’ll only allow you to create three sets. You can upload as many pics as you wish, but you can only group them into three sets, which is just ridiculous. You get what you pay for, I suppose, but we do apologise for the inconvenience..
This just fills me with more of a burning fervor to start working on redesigning ‘Kitten with a Whip!’ Well, not so much burning, really; it’s more of a smoulder. But it’s a pretty damn hot smoulder.

Nevertheless, enjoy the photos! Leave a tasteful and/or witty comment, as Shi-chan loves receiving tasteful and/or witty comments

Sdtrk: ‘Laid’ by James

Anyone that knows me at all knows that I love squirrels. They’re cute, and comical, and, err, cute. But after reading this.. now I’m not so sure.

Russian squirrel pack ‘kills dog’

Squirrels have bitten to death a stray dog which was barking at them in a Russian park, local media report.

Passers-by were too late to stop the attack by the black squirrels in a village in the far east, which reportedly lasted about a minute.

They are said to have scampered off at the sight of humans, some carrying pieces of flesh.

A pine cone shortage may have led the squirrels to seek other food sources, although scientists are sceptical.

The attack was reported in parkland in the centre of Lazo, a village in the Maritime Territory, and was witnessed by three local people.

A “big” stray dog was nosing about the trees and barking at squirrels hiding in branches overhead when a number of them suddenly descended and attacked, reports say.

“They literally gutted the dog,” local journalist Anastasia Trubitsina told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

“When they saw the men, they scattered in different directions, taking pieces of their kill away with them.”

Mikhail Tiyunov, a scientist in the region, said it was the first he had ever heard of such an attack.

While squirrels without sources of protein might attack birds’ nests, he said, the idea of them chewing a dog to death was “absurd”.

“If it really happened, things must be pretty bad in our forests,” he added.

Komosmolskaya Pravda notes that in a previous incident this autumn chipmunks terrorised cats in a part of the territory.

A Lazo man who called himself only Mikhalich said there had been “no pine cones at all” in the local forests this year.

“The little beasts are agitated because they have nothing to eat,” he added.

I am rendered speechless. If we cannot even trust our squirrels, what are we, as a nation, to do?
Well, so far it’s only Russia that has to worry about this. Nevertheless! Let us pray that these tree-dwelling ‘sharks of the woods’ don’t commandeer an ocean-going vessel, thereby bringing their ravenous hunger to our shores, or the shores of our neighbours. Cos once these squirrels have tasted blood, they’ll be like adorable little revenants, mark my words..

Squirrels! Who expects a pack of squirrels to eat a dog? Fuck it. The human race is doooooomed

Sdtrk: ‘Deep down’ by Christy

I just feel that I have to step in here and add, without any trace of self-aggrandising whatsoever, that ‘Shouting etc etc’ began covering this, y’know, months ago. Just so you know.
This blog truly is ‘slicing edge’, as the kids say! Or is it ‘chopping edge’? I’ve no idea.

Robot or Human? Here’s ACTROID (link to article on Akihabara News)

Roger that, and drooling now

Sdtrk: ‘Surfboard’ by Antonio Carlos Jobim

This Saturday past, before the lads and I took part in our usual parade of Britcoms/kaiju films/yakuza serials/horrible music video viewing, Derek and I headed out to Japan book center over in Livonia. Japan book center, or JBC as we know it, has been a shop that I and my anime-lovin’ friends have repeatedly patronised for roughly 17 years. A nondescript store in the back corner of a strip mall, it was our source for anime magazines such as Animage, Shonen Jump, Terebi magazine, and Animedia. It was also a treasure trove of Japanese films and programmes recorded via satellite. They had all types of genres there, but we usually gravitated towards the anime. And back before Derek and I started hanging out in extant, my best friend Sean and I would motor the 15 miles out there every single month in all sorts of weather, in order to obtain the latest issue of Newtype — keep in mind that not only was this years before the domestic anime explosion, but Newtype didn’t even have an English language version back then.

The shop was run by a middle-aged Japanese lady who knew rudimentary English, and whenever she wasn’t behind the counter or restocking the shelves, she was usually seen with her pair of small white dogs, who functioned like overactive, furry proximity alarms. You’d open JBC’s door, and thirty feet away, those dogs would begin incessantly leaping and yipping behind the counter. The other owner was a man we knew as Jii-san (Grandad), a kindly gentleman who appeared to be somewhat late-middle-aged. As I’d stated before, since Derek, Sean and I et al were shopping there regularly before people in the States knew what anime was, we kinda stood out, and he always recognised us. He knew what we were pretty much after, and always let us know when the latest shipments of whatever magazine would be arriving, or when such-and-such videotape of whatever film or Tv series would be ready. All in all, a nice bloke.

Derek and his roommate Dave both had yearly subscriptions to various magazines at JBC, which was one of the great features that Jii-san offered. Go up there, fill out a form, make a down payment, and Jii-san would set aside a copy of whatever magazine every month in a special pile just for you. Back in October, Derek was telling me that he was at the shop, paying for one of his subscriptions, and the clerks more or less told him to not worry about it and to keep his money, which struck him as not only strange, but somewhat foreboding. Now, over the course of the past year or two, Jii-san and.. the lady.. were up at JBC less and less, and a new couple of clerks were staffing — a bloke and a lass in their twenties, who both looked as if they belonged on the set of ‘Kamen rider 555‘ — and we all didn’t give it much thought, apart from ‘Jii-san is getting older, and these are probably going to be his sucessors at the shop’. Red flags definitely went up, however, as Derek reported that he’d gone back there after work a couple of weeks later, and the store was closed at 5pm on a weekday.
‘Jii-san’s dead, he’s probably dead’, Derek said, in the way that a person says something whilst simultaneously not wanting to believe that it may possibly be true.
‘SHUT UP SHUT UP’, was my well-thought-out response.