So, anyway. Here’s a thing.

—

He stared ahead, trying to make sense of the blank, dull wall in front of him. He reached out and touched it tentatively, as if it might be intensely hot or electrified. But it was neither. It was quite nothing, in fact, aside from roughly the same temperature as the room. The wall was smooth and bare and held no evidence as to the fact he’d just come through it.

Only moments ago he’d been racing through the palace at the top of the mountain, the artifact intended to save the entire kingdom held under his arm with precious care. He had placed it onto the Altar of Hope, creating a brilliant explosion of color and light, eradicating the misshapen army of the Underneath once and for all. But that was moments ago.

Now he was on his bedroom floor, surprisingly dry (it had been raining in the palace, you see) and no longer smelling like ammonia from the blood of the fearcats he’d slain. He was just…there. And confused.

He tried to stand up, but his legs wobbled. He braced himself on the bed, remembering doing very much the same some time ago when the Randarg had floored him with its great hammer (before he realized the Randarg’s weakness behind its ears and dispatched it, naturally). But here the walls didn’t glow with the light of a million luminescent beetles. Here the walls were painted off-white and didn’t seem to writhe when stared at. Here the walls were just walls.

Finally on his feet, he stood in the center of the room, taking it in. It all felt incorrectly normal. He was sure he’d been in the kingdom for years of planning and fighting and saving the world. But everything here, in what should feel like home, seemed exactly the same as when he’d left. He picked up the cell phone he’d left on his nightstand and saw the charge was full and he’d missed no calls. He tossed it gently onto the bed as he’d so recently tossed the small Fair Duchess down from the Little Towers to her freedom waiting below. He had, right?

After a quick walkthrough of his unimpressive apartment, he returned to the wall he had crawled through as he slipped out before the celebrations could begin and he was to be named king. He dropped to his knees and pressed his ear against it, waiting to hear the whoops and hollers of freedom that mark the death of oppression. He heard the washer and dryer running in the apartment next door.

Only briefly did the thought come to him that perhaps he’d made it all up. That his overtaxed brain had simply disengaged for a while and he’d either hallucinated or dreamed everything. But he looked at his hands, which felt stronger. He felt prouder, more accomplished. The feel of the Steady Armor on his back and the grip of the Darksword burning his hands before his pure intentions cooled its heat. He remembered it all. Every victory, every loss. He remembered his tears soaking into his coarse beard scruff when the queen fell to her death and the anger that followed. He could recall everything. What it was, how it felt and how each step forward had changed him.

But the wall didn’t remember. Or his clothes. Or the fact he no longer had any beard scruff to speak of. He stood in the middle of his adventureless room for a long time, listening and waiting. But all he heard was the sound of the air conditioning unit clicking on and off. And he was apparently waiting for nothing.

He laid himself across his bed, on top of the covers. Staring at the ceiling (and not the multicolored stars and near planets of the kingdom), he realized he had truly returned. That everything had certainly happened and that all he’d felt and learned and suffered was as true as anything can be. And yet somehow it hadn’t. He had returned from nowhere stronger and better and smarter and sadder.

Again he regarded the ceiling. Folding his hands across his chest, he quietly spoke to it.

“So what happens now?”

—

b

A friend was having an art show at a local bistro, so I attended to be supportive, have a couple drinks and for lack of anything else to do. While there, I ran into Diana, a former coworker from my days working at Borders. I mentioned my sob-story about having been fired and she (amusingly tipsy from martinis) told me about National Hotline Services, her current employer. Saying they were looking for part-time employees, she gave me the number and had me call. I did and was granted an interview.

I went to 620 Kenmore Avenue for the first time later that week. It’s an unimpressive brick building with office space and one apartment on the ground floor and four apartments above. The office was split, having housed a dentist on one side and psychiatrists’ office on the other (I think). There’s an alley to the side and a small five-car parking lot around back. Forgettable at first glance, you can pass by without really ever noticing it. I even had trouble finding it when I went there, not sure that was it. It didn’t look like an office. There wasn’t even an outside sign explaining its purpose. It was just there.

I had a very bizarre interview with Diana and another employee named Mike McKenna. I say it was bizarre because the interview had no higher-ups. Diana did HR, but the bosses didn’t deem an interview for part-time answering service work worth their attention. I answered their questions amusingly and honestly. When asked to name someone who inspired me, I mentioned Kevin Smith as I was impressed with how he turned an idea and some credit cards into a movie-maker’s dream empire. This was a good move as McKenna, a New Jersian, was also a Kevin Smith fan. We talked for a while, joked for a while and in the end I had the job. I was essentially an operator for the answering service part of the business a few hours a week.

It wasn’t long before I moved on to full-time work at NHS. I upgraded to full-time operator for both corporate compliance hotline calls and the answering service. Eventually I pointed out that the posters could use some work. I fired up Photoshop and came up with something new. My importance was cemented. Over the next few years, I found myself creating new roles for myself in the company. I worked on new posters, helped build an all-new website, made friends. I was present for site visits with clients, meetings with the owner/president and made myself important to NHS. A big part of it. I went every day to 620 Kenmore Avenue feeling more and more in touch with it every day as it became more and more a part of my life. A life that was changing every year.

During the next few years, I saw the birth of my son, the death of my father and the sad fade of my marriage. When the wife and I decided things wouldn’t work out, I moved into one of the apartments above the office where my son lived with me every other week. The building became a literal home. At around that time, David moved in to one of the apartments in the building as well. We spent some time being confused and crazy and enjoying a little to much what it was like to be free of obligations and being tied down. Eventually I began dating one of the other tenants and David met Meggie, whom he would later marry and create the adorable Lex.

My relationship failed and I moved to an apartment a few blocks away for the sake of distance. I still found myself at the building for work and spending time with David and Meggie, who moved into my old apartment. The old relationship was revived and failed again, so I was there from time to time for that. My new place never felt like home. In the two years I wound up being there, I never finished unpacking. It was uncomfortable and didn’t fit. But it was what I needed at the time.

Even after I left NHS, I still had reasons to be at the building. As I said, David and Meggie still lived there. I still visited the office with a good deal of regularity as my friends continued to work there. I began dating a former co-worker who also eventually moved into the building. Around the middle of 2009, it was announced that NHS’s current owners had sold the company and would be shutting down the office at 620 Kenmore Avenue. I was working in northern VA then and spending much less time around the building. But I still made a point to visit. After all, David, Meggie and my girlfriend still lived there. When I started working in town again at the end of 2009, I was able to spend a little more time there with everyone. That building, while empty in the office, was still full of my life as it had been for almost 8 years.

David and Meggie are moving out at the end of the month. And the girlfriend doesn’t want to be the girlfriend anymore. So it occurred to me yesterday that after so long, I would no longer have a reason to go to 620 Kenmore Avenue when June rolls around.

I moved around a lot as a kid, so I never grew attachments to places. There’s no one place I can point to and say “That was my childhood home. That’s where I grew up.” When I help David and Meggie move in a few weeks and walk away from that building for what may well be the last time, it will weigh on me. But it’s a small town. I’ll go by there from time to time, probably on one of the long walks I find myself taking of late. And down the road I’ll be able to point to that building and say “That was the home of my young adulthood. As much as I have, I grew up there.”

I first ventured into the world of Twitter in early February 2007. While I can no longer access those initial, tentative tweets, I assume they were insightful statements about the world around us and current events, not just an informal list of when I was hungry or needed to go to the bathroom.

Since that time, I’ve posted over 5,200 pieces of wisdom. I’m no math expert, but that comes out to an average of 230 posts a day for the last three years. That’s a lot of Twittery. That’s dozens of dozens of hours I’ve devoted to observations and quips and photos of ducks. String all that time together and I may well have lost an entire year of my life pecking away at my keyboard and greasing up the touchscreen on my iPhone.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that you’re welcome. There’s a lot of sacrifice involved there. In fact, I’ve more than once considered outsourcing my Twittering. I even tried it for a while, but the creepy little man I hired to follow me around tweeting my important thoughts and events mainly just typed things like “HE HAZ NO PAAAANTS” or “HEY R U LOL?”. I had to let him go. I also had to let him get slapped by my hand.

At least I’m not expected to deal with inane trending and tracking for my Twitter feed. No, I leave that up to the professionals at sites like tweetstats.com. That’s how I learn facts like how my Tweet Density is greatest around Noon on Sundays BUT NOT SATURDAYS because then I tweet the most around 6PM. I also don’t tweet much at 5 AM in general. My top words used are apparently know, thats, time, good and going. This is likely because of a six month experiment in stand-up comedy style tweets that I did, all ending in “then you know THAT’S a good time to get going.” For instance, “When you set her cat’s fur on fire, you know THAT’S a good time to get going.” That experiment went about as far as my previous real world experiment, rockets powered by actual rocks. That is to say, it didn’t go very far.

How will Twitter be viewed in the future? Will subsequent generations view this as the beginning of an age of unprecedented access to information or the dawning of never-before-seen global self-involvement. Who cares? Listen, Twitter isn’t about yesterday or tomorrow or an hour from now or an hour ago. Twitter is about the moment and Twitter is about me, dammit. I’m not here to reply to your musings or retweet your attempts at jokes. I’m on Twitter to give you an up-to-the-very-second account of my minutiae and actions. Sandwich I just ate? Ham and cheese. Times gone to the bathroom today? 9 (back off, it was a cleansing day).

Twitter is about me, just like it is for 5 million other users.

Anywho, the point of this ramblefest is not to bore you with science. The point is to let you know that I miss you, Dear Visitor. I miss saying things to you and having you read them and chuckle or cry. I miss your comments like “OMG LAME” or “needs more laughing” or “DRAW PICTURE ON COMPUTER”. Basically, I miss your attention. I intend to win it back. So I’m going to start writing here every week with accompanying illustrations (sorely lacking from this post, but you haven’t made your intellectual attention down payment yet). Here are some pictures I drew on a whiteboard to celebrate the new year:

This is not a promise or vow or guarantee. I just want to start posting here every Monday. I hope that you will check back weekly and should I slip or stumble or entirely forget about you, I hope that you’ll forgive me and check in later in the week or four to twelve times a day until something new posts. Each week I’ll talk about something different that may or may not have anything to do with me (next week, for instance, will in theory be about Twitter, but will mostly be about me using Twitter).

Slap me up into your RSS feed reader thingy or follow my Twitter feed and I’ll let you know when the new frivolities begin. Including this, I expect to have 52 shiny little blogicles by the end of 2010. It’s nice to think that as I settle into my hover chair deep in the moon hole, I can look back and think “I did it. I really, really did it.” Then I will snicker. “Moon hole.”

b

For instance, I recently did an illustration showcasing the new Blambot font Squiznor. It is this:

I’ve also done things like this here Boba Fett:

That’s it for now! Just wanted to get more current. Be sure to follow me on Twitter if you want to get immediate updates from the Awesome Factory.

b

Quick rundown of stuff that’s going on in my world:

• I started a new job with the Meals On Wheels Association of America, at which I’m a Director (full title pending). It’s very exciting and has been a great experience so far.
• I’m still coloring the Flobots webcomic, which is also a great experience. I’m having to learn new techniques and such in a hurry since it updates three times a week.
• I did some more design stuff for Tereu Tereu, a band that has a new album coming out soon. I’m not involved in the album art, but they are doing a limited run CD thing that I did the sleeve work for.

There’s probably more, but I can’t think of anything right now.

How are you? What are you up to?

b

Milestones and Political Apathy
I’ve heard a lot of nonsense this week about how people are making too big a deal about Obama being the first black president. Most of it comes from the naive viewpoint that his race is ideally irrelevant and how any progressive nation should just view him as a person and not an African-American. That’s all well and good, but blowing off a milestone of this magnitude is more a response to not wanting to deal with the sociopolitical structure of our nation.

From this point forward, since this particular die has been cast, race becomes a non-issue in politics. This doesn’t signal a perfect America or the end of racism. This isn’t a shining moment because suddenly butterflies are erupting from cotton candy cloud. But it’s important. Obama’s election is the moment in which change begins to happen, but not just the kind he built his platform around. Every child’s history book going forward will suddenly show possibility and hope. A type of equality that changes the protocol of 232 years of American politics.

I didn’t vote for Obama because he was black. And despite insistence to the contrary, most people didn’t. While I don’t agree with everything Obama stands for, I felt he was the most qualified candidate for the position and stood a better change of leading us closer to an America I’m more interested in living in. I’m glad he won on those grounds alone. For the actual campaign and election, I couldn’t care less what color he was. But now that he stands as our first black president, that should be recognized and celebrated. Obama’s election is a milestone. Pretending it’s not is apathetic and showcases a lack of understanding of the very structure of America and the struggles it has taken to even to get to this point.

That being said…

Prop 8 And Backwards Motion
I have yet to see a compelling reason for California Proposition 8, which was actually listed on the ballot as Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. We have actually been through an election in which a proposition designed to eliminate rights was approved. This is horrifying, Stone Age thinking.

Step away from the actual issue for a moment. I’ll get to that shortly. Let’s look at the fact that this amendment proposal was put out to strip away a right that had already been granted. On a civil rights level, this is a social atrocity. Rights have been taken away and people were okay with it. At this point, let’s take away minority voting rights. Why not? What’s the difference? Let’s get some racial segregation going again, too. I’m sure minorities pose just as much of a threat to the organizations who backed Prop 8 as those horrible, society-threatening gays do. Rights were taken away. Rights. How does that happen in 2008? We’re never going to get the flying cars and sassy robot maids that The Jetsons promised us if we keep moving backwards.

A lot of the pressure for Prop 8 came from religious groups who feel same-sex unions threaten the sanctity of marriage and the very foundation of society (like the state of Massachusetts, which has broken down and completely stopped working since legalizing gay marriage in 2004). What it really comes down to is a threat to their way of belief and there’s a feeling that their sense of society will crash down around them if two people of the same gender marry. The ability for religious groups to back an initiative to affect state legislature is frightening. As a citizen, you may think that gay people doing their gay thing is icky or whatever, but what purpose is served by not letting them have the same basic rights as you? What’s the harm in marriage being an institution between two people, not two people of opposing genders?

I will actively and openly listen to opinions on either side of this issue. I will not accept answers that deal with the religious nature of marriage because they are irrelevant. A lot of weddings happen in churches, but you’re not married until your local government signs off on it. I will not accept answers that involve homosexuality as “wrong” or a “sin” because believe what you will…sinners get married all the time. I need a valid, rational, secular argument on the other side of this because until I get one or until this situation is resolved, I am angry and will actively seek ways to turn the tide.

Any takers?

b

David and I got off work at 6:00 PM and went to represent, civic-duty style. After voting, we went back to David’s, where I got to work setting up our own little situation room area. It was the perfect setup as we could see David’s gigantic TV perfectly for election results and there was enough room for his computer, my laptop, and my Cintiq (the fancy drawing tablet I use). Here’s basically what it looked like:

Yes, I was drinking coffee out of a Tigger cup. You’ll be okay.

I’d gotten everything pretty well set up by 7ish when I received a phone call from Carmen, who was on the side of the interstate with a flat tire. She was only a few exits down and David and I jumped into action. By 7:45, we were back at the apartment, greasy hands pounding away at our respective keyboards in preparation for the big event.

The first hour was a blur. Between catching up on prep time lost to our being Nascar-efficient tire-changing badasses and the election results that were already cascading in, it actually got a little stressful. I was still figuring out formatting quirks as comments started coming in, so we responded to those as quickly as we could. We got some decent traffic according to our tracking thingy, so I’m happy about that. If we do something like this again, I’m not going to leave all the formatting stuff to myself, as it got a bit frustrating while I was trying to do my retarded drawings and load in David’s tidbits at the same time.

When they called the election for Barack Obama at 11PM our time, we were rather surprised. We’d intended to go on for at least another hour or two. The 11PM update reflected our genuine shock at how quickly everything happened. In retrospect, we probably should have said something about McCain’s gracious concession speech and Obama’s powerful acceptance, but we were kind of tired.

We ate pizza, consumed a lot of Diet Coke (and eventually I had coffee) and had a grand time overall. David made a good point part-way through in that neither of us were even paying attention to the race or rooting for anyone, we were just wrapped up in the absurd nonsense we were producing. And after all, isn’t that what election night is all about?

Well, no…I guess not. But it was for us. Election 2008, mothercrunkers. We…were there.

b

It will be an interesting evening of facts, truths, factual truths, and truthful facts. Just keeping hitting your little refresh button from time to time and see more of our knowledge nuggets rolling in as the night progresses.

THESE STORIES ARE TRUE.

b

David and I started the whole Tank and Sniper thing while playing various first-person shooters like Call of Duty 4 and the Halo games. It was clear in our playing that we had completely different approaches when it came to attack. David, like some sort of ‘roid-raged monkey, would go charging into battle, guns blazing and arms waving around. I swear there were times he had already stomped through an entire level and handed the enemies their faces before the rounds even started.

I, on the other hand, have a more conservative (wussy) approach. I’m the guy on the hilltop picking people off with a sniper rifle or handgun or grenade. I’m a lot better at attacking from a distance than David, who would rather run up and shove the bullets directly into people’s skulls. I have the patience it takes to snipe, where he does not.

Thus was born Tank and Sniper. I don’t remember what game we were playing when we coined it, but it’s been an ongoing joke for some time. We actually started referring to each other by those names. Not over XBox Live or anything…THAT would be absurd. Just across the living room from one another.

“Good job, Tank.”
“Thanks, Sniper.”
“Let’s go get a burrito.”
“Awesome.”

b