Jesse Hajicek

( What's up with that? )

Please don't ask to be added if you only know me through my comics or stories. I love you for reading them, but the place to talk about those is riverside_hq. This is my personal space, and I'll only add those who know me personally.

Ooooh I'm so excited! *dances around* Bear with me if I'm a little disorganized, I'm just too hyped to make sense!

'The God Eaters' is now available in print!

I know it took forever and ever, there were a zillion confusions and delays, but it's finally ready! It's listed in 'Books in Print' and can be ordered by any bookstore!

Here's the Lulu link. It's cheapest there, but because I marked the content as 'mature', you have to be logged in and set your 'preferred content access level' to 'mature' before you can see it. This is a pain, but if you want the best price, go ahead and set up an account. They don't spam.

Here are some other links where you can find it:

Powell's Books (I love these guys.)
Barnes & Noble
Amazon

Or, of course, you could ask your local bookstore to order it for you. ^_^

I'm sorry it's so expensive; Lulu's base price is over $13 a copy. The trade paperback is good quality, though. It's a hefty brick, too; you could beat somebody up with it. :D

Thanks so much for being so patient, everyone, and I hope you enjoy having GE on paper!

This had me laughing out loud. And if you haven't heard of this guy already (I'm aware I'm late on the bandwagon) check him out. He's hilarious, and occasionally really profound. I seem to recall that Real Live Preacher, my favorite blogger in the universe, has linked to him at least once. If you've ever worked in the food industry, Waiter Rant is a must-read.

I've done my time in the food industry. Lemme see...

( My foodservice tales: )

Anyone who's been following 'Summerlands': I'm posting it in riverside_hq from now on.

Index post: http://gomichan.livejournal.com/185409.html

Latest post: http://community.livejournal.com/riverside_hq/132774.html

Thanks for reading. ^_^

Whoever logged onto my server as 'Milolovesya' in order to send me cryptic tells: it was sorta cute until you logged out without identifying yourself. I was willing to play along for a few minutes, but I don't appreciate having days to ponder the question of whether this is someone I know being funny, or some creepy stalker kook who's going to hound me and my guildies until we have to bring in a GM, or something in between -- say, someone who thinks I'm there to pay attention to them, rather than play the game.

I don't like surprises.

So, long story short, identify yourself and talk like a real person or I'll put you on ignore. Thank you, drive through.

WoW icon geekery and tempura yams temporarily suffice to distract me from the slow, gentle disintegration of my mind. Itadakimasu!

I am a fearless bandit hunter. I fearlessly hunt bandits. I kill them and take their cheese.

Stop laughing.

AND WE ARE NOT ALL VIOLENT ALCOHOLICS.
IT'S JUST ME.
I SWEAR.

Allcu for the win.

Oh, and the post he was responding to the posting of (/grammarsoup):

Only Chinese Canadians are allowed to dress up like ninjas! Cultural exchange is bad, yo. Because some people don't fully understand the cultures they enjoy. Liking sushi without taking a degree in Asian Studies (Asian, not Japanese, because certain Chinese Canadians want to be included) is a form of racism.

Uh-huh. All the obvious things about leprechauns and Nanjing have already been said, so I'll just leave it at that.

You know, once upon a time, some friends and I had a thing called the Mutt Club. We met weekly at the New Horizons restaurant in Minneapolis, which was ostensibly Chinese but had things on the menu like hash browns and, I seem to recall, tacos, which made it the perfect venue. The original point of the Mutt Club was to form a group that could oppose racism without perpetrating it. We had observed that the only approaches we'd ever seen were, on one hand, the "My group is oppressed because white people are evil oppressors! Down with Whitey!" and, on the other, "I'm a proud member of the White Race, you mudbloods! Pheer my confederate flag!" (I am, of course, exaggerating for effect.)

We were probably drunk when we came to the realization that there is no such thing as a 'white race', nor, for the most part, any 'racially pure' individuals at all. Race is a continuum, not a binary. And that this meant we should get together at New Ho and eat eggs and shoot the shit until they kicked us out. I can say with certainty that I wasn't stoned, because I'm allergic; I can't speak for anyone else.

Anyway, we never really achieved anything but talk, and most of that was off topic. We engaged in no activism whatsoever. We weren't activist types. It seems to me that those who really excel at activism prefer to see things in terms of Good vs. Evil, Us vs. Them, which polarization was precisely the opposite of what we meant to demonstrate. But I still kinda wish we'd staged a march or something. We could've marched down Lake, holding steaming mugs of coffee and nonsensical signs, chattering merrily. Just to Lyndale and back. They'd have held our tab open that long.

Twas recently pointed out to me that HSFC (Have Some Fucking Class) is quite a handy potential internet acronym. I can think of a number of places where it would be even more expressive than STFU. Or, naturally, the heinous TL;DR, which says more about the commenter than the post.

I went out with Spider. I am full of sushi. I wanted to be asleep hours ago, but I made myself stay up to take my meds at what I want to be my regular meds-taking hour. Now I zonk.

Seebs got me Corel Painter 9!

Digital watercolor, yo.

I am in love with my tablet again. Thus the not answering people. Will get to that, really.

Here's the skinny on that 'email tax' panic that's been floating around. Clue courtesy of seebs.

Misinformation memes do us all a disservice by wasting our time and attention, sapping our emotional energy, and ultimately training us to be apathetic. If you ever feel a cause is important enough to spread the word about, be sure to include links to reputable, informed sources so people can check out the background on it themselves. And if you're going to be calling for some action, such as petitions, be sure that action is correctly targeted and effective. For instance, I've seen people urging their friends to petition AOL; AOL is a for-profit corporation, folks. Those don't respond to petitions. There is absolutely no point in petitioning them. Use some common sense.

( TMI )

An awesome meme by ravenblack:

If you were intending to buy a Red Wing engineer boots for US$110.00, you could instead buy:

two hundred and ninety-four cigarettes one fortieth of a real human skeleton twenty-eight hand buzzers two hundred and ninety-seven litres of unleaded gasoline (in America) one hundred and forty-six packets of itching powder two cast-iron woks seven kung-fu lessons thirteen litres of Red Bull energy drink fifty-one cups of coffee from a café one third of an entry-level desktop computer

What are you thinking of buying?

I might buy for UK pounds sterlingCanadian dollarsAustralian dollarsEurosUS dollars

Thanks to the perspective provided by this delightful generator, I've decided to go with the boots. As soon as Seebs gets paid. I really hope my shoes hold together until then. The right sole is cracked right across.

... What's that? Buy the boots with my OWN money? Hahahahahahaha! What money? *sigh*

I need to get out of Frogtown.

How am I supposed to work when every time I get in the groove some screeching, rumbling truck or some moronic teenager trying to deafen himself with his car stereo or some shrill woman tirading at her boyfriend snaps me out of it? Maybe I'm too white, maybe I'm too suburban, but I persist in thinking that making that much noise is FUCKING RUDE. This neighborhood doesn't feel lively and vital, it feels chaotic and trashy. Why can't these people shut the fuck up? Ever? For one fucking second? What's wrong with everybody?

I want to start a neighborhood renewal project, and I'm going to call it STFU. I'll print posters and buttons and everything. I'll even have a little checklist.

Hey Neighbor!

Are you the one whose car stereo rattles windows as you drive by? SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Are you the one who parks outside his friends house and honks the horn instead of walking twenty feet to the door and knocking? SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Are you the one who has a screaming fight with your sig-other at the bus stop and stomps off down the block still shrieking obscenities at the top of your lungs? SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Are you the one who runs your gas-powered leaf blower at 9 on a Sunday morning? SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Are you the one who roars up and down Western in your beat-up Mustang with the glass-pack muffler all night? SHUT THE FUCK UP!

Are you the one who lets your children set off firecrackers for hour after hour in the middle of the night? GET OUT THERE AND SHUT THEM THE FUCK UP BEFORE I DO IT FOR YOU!

And to all the other noisy, thoughtless, selfish people who make this neighborhood such a shithole: Christ, what is WRONG with you people? HAVE SOME FUCKING CLASS.

THANK you.

Oh yeah, I'm totally gonna do it.

I'm certainly not the first person to point it out, but I've been thinking about it lately: have you noticed how froth-mouthed ranters, illogical podium-bangers, and smug small-minded jackasses seem to make converts at an alarming rate, while sane and reasonable people are unable to inject sanity or reason into discussions that lack them? Time and time again, the voice of reason goes unreported by the press and passes into undeserved obscurity, while outrageously faulty logic and outright lies are treated like balanced political discourse.

The reason for this is pretty clear. Well, reasons, plural. Lemme break it down:

1. Hysteria is more interesting than calm. Everyone wants to watch the drama. It's hard to make drama while being reasonable.

2. Black-or-white, all-or-nothing concepts are easy; ambiguity is hard. This means that the idiots have a natural appeal, because they're willing to chop big chunks of reality out of their arguments -- or invent supporting data if they don't have it -- in order to package their views in easy-to-swallow absolutist terms.

3. People are tired. This is a corollary to #2. Note that I don't say people are lazy. No, in fact people are surprisingly hardworking and sincere. They would very much like to understand. But most folks are already exhausted from their everyday routine. They don't have the energy to do their own research, even if they knew how. This means that the loudest, simplest message is the only one they have headroom for.

4. People are numb. I learned this one from Dan Savage. In Skipping Toward Gomorrah, he observed that the force which draws people toward gambling (and, illustrated but unstated, toward other vices) was not greed, but the need to feel something intense, something real, even if it's the crushing blow of a big loss at the blackjack table. The moral-outrage peddlers provide that; reasonable voices don't.

5. People make themselves feel bigger by belittling others. They make themselves feel accepted by marginalizing others. They make themselves feel secure by eroding the security of others. This is a basic primate dominance tactic. We all saw it in its simplest form on the playground; then we outgrew it; then we resurrected it and applied it to politics.


I believe these five observations explain what's going on in American politics right now. What they don't do is tell us how to respond. I, too, am frustrated that no matter how much evidence we discover of lies, hypocrisy, corruption, or foolishness among them, the hystericrats continue to win elections on platforms of hate, fear, and nonsense. But now I understand why: corrupt, lying hypocrites serve the public need better than straight-shooters do. The public does not demand straight-shooting. In fact, they reject it if it interferes with their needs for simplicity, drama, and primate-dominance-exclusionary-tactics.

So what can a reasonable person do against this dynamic? I dunno, man. I'm as stumped as you are. Maybe we can play the rules against each other. Tired folks can get tired of drama too, no matter how entertaining it is. People can feel superior to someone whose argument has holes you could drive a UN weapons inspection convoy through, provided it's presented in a properly entertaining, sufficiently (I hate to say it) belittling manner. Folks like Dan Savage and Jon Stewart have this down. Gotta give props to PJ O'Rourke on that front too; however rarely I agree with his general position, he does score points with humor and fairly solid arguments rather than hysteria.

I'm pretty tired right now, so I may well be talking out my ass. I know every time anyone posts anything remotely political, there's a flood of discussion in the comment threads, and a 50% chance of wank-war. So let me just mention this in advance: discuss all you want, but I'm not going to go to the mat for my opinion in some battle of wits with you. I'm thinking out loud, not running for office.

The sin of Sodom was, in fact, a lynch mob. I suspect the reason Lot offered his daughters was to point out to the mob how insane they were being, not because he thought it was okay for the girls to get gangbanged. Not that I try to make the OT make sense. Thank God I'm not a literalist. Literally.

...

If Dan Savage were any hotter, I'd have to read his books with oven mitts on.

...

Seebs said something adorably raunchy in the car today, and I made a mental note to jot it down here for the amusement of all, but that was hours ago. It's gone now.

...

It's a gorgeous day, and I've been drinking sweet iced tea all night; I think I'd better go walk off the caffeine-and-sugar buzz. Lately I've been testing the unwritten rule that says people with headphones are Not Really Here. So far, no one's attempted to interact with me while I had them on. If this streak holds, I might actually start to enjoy walking a mile or two a day, like I used to when I was aggressive and self-centered enough to actually scare off people who dared to, for instance, ask me the time or try to bum a cigarette.

...

Oh yeah, I remember what Seebs said. I was laughing at him for catching a frisbee-golf disc with his hand and hurting himself; those things are heavy and hard and have sharpish edges, they're designed to hit inanimate objects, not your hand. Catching them is stupid. "Stupid, but macho," said the Seebs. "While you in some ways resemble people who like macho..."

"Empirically... no," I drawled, glancing at his nerdy bishitude. "I have enough macho for the both of us."

The conversation turned to other topics. Some time later, he was nerving himself up to try unfamiliar foodstuffs, which is a real bungee-jump for an Aspie. I told him he could borrow some of my macho if that would help.

"I'll give it back to you later," he said in a campy sort of flirty way. I, of course, cracked up. Rah, in the back seat, didn't hear, and demanded what was so funny while Seebs and I laughed our asses off.

And yet, written down, it isn't all that funny. I guess the reason it amuses me so much is because we're such caricatures of ourselves sometimes. I like us. ^_______^

My aunt Gail, my dad's little sister, lives in Duluth. She has a cat named Poontang. She's been a hairdresser, a piercer, a cab driver, all kinds of interesting things. She gave me my first piercings, way back when. I talked to her on the phone the other day, and she told me she's never met Seebs.

That's so weird. I know I've seen her a few times in the last twelve years. Somehow, it seems, Seebs was never with me when I did. So I must remember to take him with me to Duluth to hang with her sometimes. Most relatives, you visit, not hang with. With Gail, you hang.

Cool chick icon for the cool aunt. I can't believe she's never met Seebs!

I just had the coolest ever dream.

Luka and Rain and I were driving around this landscape of unbelievably beautiful spring scenery and taking pictures. That's all it was. Scene after scene of incredible gorgeousness -- apple blossoms drifting across a dew-silver meadow in dawn mist, etcetera -- interspersed with mild witticisms and cameraderie, if you'll excuse the pun. It was mostly my job to drive the car, and Rain always got deep into conversation with the locals when she went to ask if we could cross their property, but Luka was getting the most incredible photos. I took only one photo, borrowing Luka's camera to do so: the corner of a gray clapboard house, with a window, the window half-covered with slat blinds, and the drawstring for the blinds blowing in the breeze. It was supposed to be a study in right angles set off by that one not-straight line of the blowing string.

I'll never know how it came out.

Well, now it's time to get to work shading the update. Wow, that's a lot of pages. This is gonna take me a while.

Find your Celestial Choir


Wrote six pages of 'Death's Lieutenant'. Not my best writing day ever, but not bad. I'm still waiting for the happy pills to put my muse to sleep, but for now they've just convinced him to take a break from setting things on fire and come into the office for a half-day.

Oh, I didn't tell you about the happy pills? I'm back on meds. A half-dose this time, to see if maybe that'll help without turning me into a happy stupid marshmallow. I'm pinning a lot of hopes on this. Off meds, I'm too scattered and freaky to have any discipline; on a full dose, I was too apathetic. Discipline is very important to me. I know that sounds laughable to anyone who knows me, since I never have any. Or rather, any that people can see. Because time is weird for me, I can only be disciplined on a very short time scale.

I can't, for instance, regulate my diet, since I can never remember when I last ate or what it was, what's in the fridge, when to go grocery shopping, what I need to put on the list, etc., and I freak out at the crowds of cranky mothers and spastic children that occupy the grocery store. I have the willpower in any given moment to eat what's good for me, eat small portions, or even -- should it be necessary -- function on little to no food for days. (Note that I don't think the latter is a good idea, just that I've sometimes had to.) But since it's not real bright to eat nothing but a green salad and a piece of toast when you suspect your last meal was thirty-six hours ago and you can reasonably expect to forget food for another twenty-four, I tend to eat big meals instead. Usually fast food, since someone else always offers to bring me a burger before I realize I'm hungry. Thus my metabolism is always in famine shutdown mode, and all I give it is crap.

If I could remember just a little more, and freak out just a little less, I could get a handle on that. Frankly, I like veggies more than beef, and fish more than cheese, and fruit more than ice cream. It's just a little more effort; harder to shop for, doesn't keep as long, and can't generally be had at fast food places or cheap restaurants.

I know I have the potential for impressive discipline. I can keep silent when most people would scream, I can play drill sergeant when most people would run like bitches, I can climb mountains with two bum knees, I can hold my temper when I'm seeing red. But I can't keep the simplest daily routine together because time is chopped into random chunks all sproinging around on rubber bands. So. Trying the low dose. If that doesn't work... I don't know what I'll do, but I'll think of something.

Zen-monkery is looking more tempting with each passing year, but I don't think they'd let me keep a Seebs for purposes of sexors. :D

Seebs: Are you made of bubblegum?
Me: No, I'm not.
Seebs: Color and texture, yes. Flavor not so much. Two out of three -- statistically, you're probably made of bubblegum.
Me: I'm not made of bubblegum. Please stop chewing on me.
Seebs: *nom nom nom*
Me: Okay, you discovered my secret, I'm made of bubblegum.
Seebs: I knew it.