http://search.deviantart.com/?q=by:Tutankhamun&section=today deviantART RSS for by:Tutankhamun en-us Copyright 2009, deviantART.com Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:22:41 PST deviantART.com http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss http://s.deviantart.com/minish/widgets/apple-touch-icon-precomposed.png http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/28841507/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/28841507/ Wed, 09 Dec 2009 09:13:26 PST
Anyway, I'm tremendously proud of myself for putting together my first animated short. You see, just six or eight months ago I was wondering if I would *ever* realize my dream of being an animator. I can illustrate sequential stories (a.k.a. comics, storyboards)and write scripts no problem, but time and opportunity to learn a basic program like Macromedia Flash (pre-Adobe versions) still eluded me. What made it finally possible was a combination of getting my work computer upgraded enough to handle the software's requirements, and then finding some online tutorials. Simple stuff, really, but sometimes the littlest things make the biggest difference.

So please click over and enjoy my latest milestone, making its debut here on DA. Hopefully you'll get a huge laugh out of it. Make sure your sound is turned on, btw.

And for those of you that are regular readers of mine, first of all thank you! Secondly, in the event that any of you guys read or save older journal posts, I'm going to be going through some of those, so don't be alarmed. Anything I cut will be saved to my jump drive, so consider it 'available upon request'.

I've also got some photos of things to add later. But in the meantime, try to stay optimistic this holiday season. Remember, the best is yet to come!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/28139932/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/28139932/ Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:52:26 PST
Been hard at work to get my book finished, and my goal is to have a completed manuscript of FOLLOWING THE SUN: A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO EGYPTIAN RELIGION by the end of the calendar year. Early next year I'll start shopping around for a publisher. I've actually had to give myself a break for a few days lately because I've been at it so non-stop.

Thinking back over the first ten months of this year, I've gotten so much done already: a comic book issue completed and printed, four more prints, got a movie poster design of mine printed up (it's really something to see your work blown up to poster-size), the final installment of the Roommate Manga, three different works registered to the Writers' Guild...I could go on. And there's still two months left to go this year!

One little thing that I just finished I'm quite proud of, for the technical victory it represents more than the finished art. I just uploaded my first three-second piece of Flash Animation to my Gallery, so check it out. The visuals are crude, though I'm proud of the Decepticon symbol itself because I drew it using Flash tools and a mouse, rather than my handy little Wacom.

Working on animation is also forcing me to look around on the Internet not only to find tutorials for Flash but also to see what other tools are out there. I'm finding that a lot of ideas I'd had about doing traditional-style animation and having people in far-flung places all being part of a studio are shared by other animators who are already doing it. This is encouraging because it means there's a whole lot out there that I can still learn and try on my own. And I'm sharing this with my DA watchers (my ' peeps', as I like to call you guys) because it means that you guys can try it too. I just got turned on to a really awesome site called toonboom.com that has some free learning trials of their software, which is professional-grade; put it this way, when I can incorporate Golden Age Productions hopefully early next year, this software will be on my company wish list! So go check out their free trial versions, use it to toy with your own stuff, and eventually we could all use the Pro version to do some other work. No harm in checking it out!

And I'm still going to promote our voice-actor friends for the upcoming INUYASHA stuff where possible. I stumbled across one last signed Sesshomaru print in my inventory, and that will be going up on eBay along with a blurb about contacting Viz to keep the same English voice cast. It may sound like I'm just promotion-crazy about these sorts of things, but without promotion a lot of things in that business just don't get done. To think of it another way, videos don't go viral unless everybody tells their friends about it and links it to them. That's "show biz" as well!

So tally ho!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/27777496/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/27777496/ Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:54:26 PDT
Well, Daryn had the presence of mind to ask Dave about the new "Inuyasha" series coming up. And here you have it, straight from the youkai's mouth! David Kaye said he would LOVE to do more "Inuyasha" episodes, because it was a great gig and fun to do. He hasn't heard anything on it yet, but if he gets contacted again he'd be happy to do it.

So, all you fellow raving, Fluffy-craving Sesshie fans--because you know I'm right there among you!--we can have him back doing Sesshomaru, all we gotta do is speak up! Not only that, but I told Dave I would rally as many other fans as I could, and he said that would be GREAT. We have his blessing!!! So come on, let's pester the hell out of Viz and Ocean Group, and tell them that if David Kaye isn't doing Sesshomaru's voice for the English version then they will FACE OUR WRATH!!!!

I will be posting links to places to go in the comments to this journal, so check back here periodically. Do it for Sesshomaru!!!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26872691/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26872691/ Fri, 28 Aug 2009 09:20:45 PDT
Got that feeling a few minutes ago, and if you're an Inuyasha fan and CERTAINLY if you're a Sesshie fan, you'll need to pay attention to this one.

As you may know, they're doing new episodes of Inuyasha in Japan and so it's only a matter of time before they hit our shores in English. Great news! Right? Well, there's just one problem.

You see, our dear voice of Sesshomaru, David 'Ate-Too-Much-Tourist-Food-in-Louisiana' Kaye, is now living in Los Angeles. Recording for Inuyasha is done in his former home of Vancouver, B.C., Canada. So guess who might not be there to record all that wonderful new material for Sesshomaru?
This sticks out in my brain as so *wrong*, I have to reiterate it: GUESS WHO MIGHT NOT BE THERE TO RECORD FOR SESSHOMARU?!?!?!?!?!

The very idea that somebody else's English voice could come out of Sesshomaru's mouth is simply heartbreaking to me. But I refuse to cry on plush Sesshomaru's pelt in silence! So I am hereby calling upon every Sesshie fan within sight of this journal to join me! Here's what you can do:

-David Kaye has a website, [link], from which you should be able to email him. (I did, that's how I first got ahold of him in '03!) Go there, email him, and tell him how much it would mean to you if he reprised his role as Sesshomaru! He didn't know how much of an impact his character had until I gave him my essay this summer; but he's read it, and every bit of fan mail he gets from you guys will simply back up the message!

-He had a publicist in Vancouver through whom I sent several packages. I will check and make sure he's still with Hollywords Publicity, and I will post that address here as well. (I would now, but it's in my files at home, so I have to look it up.) Bug him electronically and via snail mail!

-He also has some 500-odd friends on Facebook, so if you happen to be on there his username is David Hope Kaye. A little bird told you this!

Remember, the least we can do is try. Sesshomaru is such a great character just as he is, he's certainly worth the effort!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26526916/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26526916/ Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:31:17 PDT
I may have gone into "Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen" ready to shred it apart, but this weekend I went in to see "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra" toting a mental blender set on 'high'. To put it another way, a friend of mine called during dinner prior to the movie and I told her I was about to indulge in 'train-wreck syndrome' by going to see it. As hideously maladapted as the live-action adapted Transformers have been--the few exceptions being covered in my review of "Revenge of the Fallen"--I was convinced that a live-action rendition of Hasbro's companion 1980's toy and cartoon line would be equally grotesque.
Boy, was I surprised.
For starters, "G.I. Joe" has something that the (lovingly nicknamed) Bay-Formers movies miss like a rainstorm in Death Valley: plot AND suspense. I actually did not know what was going to happen next as the movie went along. Sure, the premise still asks for a good bit of suspended disbelief; if America's military-industrial complex can't equip its soldiers with newer body armor, how in the world could they afford a secret training base in the Sahara, complete with multiple levels and underwater courses? But then again, it wouldn't be the first time that taxpayers have unknowingly footed the bill for something outlandishly high-tech (think the Stealth Bomber). Other bits of technological wizardry in "G.I. Joe" represent either a fantastic elaboration of ideas already in development, such as the nanomites; or else were a flight of pure imagination that was at least visually appealing, such as the underwater M.A.R.S. base or the unnecessary-but-fun-to-watch sequence to weaponize a nanomite warhead. When I heard that the same director for the "Mummy" franchise was doing "G.I. Joe", I was more than a little skeptical. But to his credit, "Rise of Cobra" managed to present plenty of action that was still enjoyable to watch, furthered the story and didn't devolve into clutter being thrown at the screen, a' la Bay-Formers.
I have to give "Rise of Cobra" another unexpected high mark in its translation of classic concepts and characters. Frankly, I could only wish that Bay-Formers had done so well, but unfortunately that crew still can't figure out how to treat robots as real *characters* instead of just walking, talking special effects. The "G.I. Joe" filmmakers, by contrast, knew they were dealing with human characters that had to be made believable. While this new incarnation does take some liberties, especially with the Baroness, it manages to weave those liberties in well enough that discussing them is more akin to comparing the pros and cons of different intepretations of Batman, as opposed to a point-by-point list of where the filmmakers screwed up (as in the aforementioned property). Rival ninjas Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes were handled with true grace, Duke and Scarlett had more depth than I was expecting, Zartan was made both fairly believable and fun--how many people realized they were seeing him at the President's desk at film's end?--and Destro's backstory was used to great effect as the major plot thrust. Canon elements such as the sexual tension between Destro and the Baroness, phrases like "Knowing is half the battle" and even "Yo, Joe!" were incorporated deftly into the story. I came away from this movie with the distinct sense that its writers genuinely cared about the original property--again, unlike the vultures clustered around Transformers. "Rise of Cobra" even managed to use an element from that god-awful 1986 G.I. Joe movie by making Cobra Commander a scientist. I kept guessing who the partially-masked evil scientist working with Destro/James McLellan was. 'Is that Cobra Commander? No, it must be Dr. Mindbender!' I, like probably much of the Gen-Xers in the audience, was kept off-balance about his identity until the very end of the movie. When he finally donned a full face mask and announced himself as Cobra Commander, I wanted to cheer but was too busy catching my breath. And while I can reluctantly admit that the Darth Vader-esque voice seems to work for the dear Commander, I still miss the acidic rasp he originally had through Chris Latta, and rue the apparent fact that nobody has the *cajones* to try to pull it off today. As my viewing partner and partner-in-crime Daryn said, to hear the Commander say, "Sssssitizens of the world!" would be 'like Christmas for me'.
The only characterization quibble I have, as alluded to previously, was with the Baroness. In the original cartoon and comic she was a spoiled European heiress with a Zsa Zsa Gabor accent thick enough to serve on Chinet, so I can appreciate the filmmakers wanting to move away from something that cliche'd an... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26359738/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26359738/ Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:21:02 PDT
Just click on over the the Writers' Guild - West at [link] and click to view their "Angle On" video. They have an interview with a senior writer from "Saving Grace" who has some tremendous insights on 'the biz'. Oh yeah, and there are plenty of other helpful links and FAQs and things on the site if you nose around.

I've actually got some stuff I need to get registered with them. I'm also back to work on my book project, which also tends to involve reading other material for comparison--some of it very good and stimulating, some of it a running comedy of the ridiculous.

On that note, I have a link I'd like to share because it's that laugh out loud pathetic. But first, I must ask: is anyone up for some good MST3K or other vicious parodying action? If so, I can hook you up....

And on that note, I must away for the time being. Stay Deviant, my friends...!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26231252/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/26231252/ Tue, 28 Jul 2009 11:08:04 PDT
IF I HEAR ONE MORE G@!%AMNED PERSON SAY HOW MUCH THEY LOVE THE FOOD IN SOUTH LOUISIANA, I WILL F%$^ING DISEMBOWEL THEM. --and:

IF I HEAR ONE MORE PERSON WHOOP AND HOLLER ABOUT NEW ORLEANS THE "PARTY CITY", I WILL RIP THEIR MOTHERF&*KING THROAT OUT WITH MY TEETH AND *THEN* DISEMBOWEL THEM.

It's bad enough that I got a fresh dose of wacko Cajun prejudice against my native north Louisiana this weekend when it was announced that Mechacon is moving to New Orleans next year. On top of that, today I learned that some of my illustrious classmates from Louisiana School want our 15-Year reunion to be in New Orleans and not Natchitoches, LA, which only *just so happens* to be where we all went to school for two years...! This is salt on a fresh bleeding wound. I'll put it this way, I'm having some highly un-Buddhist thoughts right now about fresh hurricanes and finishing what Katrina started.

Oh yeah, and Louisiana food. That supposedly wonderful Cajun cuisine that every non-native has to rave about. You know what? It's all fried or fattening and likely to kill you if you live on it. And if you're not used to it, it'll make you sick and put you out of commission to the point where your tourist-y ass can't get out of bed and go visit with your friends(*ahem*David Kaye*ahem*). There's too many carbs in it, and if you order something with crawfish in it you're going to get ripped off because there won't be enough protein to do you any good unless you just get a pound of boiled crawfish. And even then, it better be fresh and hot or it's going to suck and be too hard to peel. You want real Cajun food? Go to somebody's house. There are homemade dishes you won't find in a pansy-ass restaurant like Prejean's because they can't be mass-produced. The only way to get catfish court-buillion (said "COO-be-yonn") or real red beans and sausage is to know somebody who can cook it.

And you know what? I can cook that kind of stuff, but at this point I'd have to be bribed real damn well to do it. Because the attitudes I got this weekend and the episodes of epic tourist fail have reminded me of all those times I got told by snotty-ass south Louisianians that I was a "damn Yankee" (I have ancestors who were Confederate OFFICERS, f&^k you very much!!!!) and that I "don't know how to eat" or that I'm "not a real Cajun" (hello?! My last name is "LaBorde"!!!!!) just because I was born and raised in Shreveport. Screw you, South Louisiana. Screw you with a Unicron-sized dildo. When global warming makes your precious I-10 the new coastline, you'll have two choices: move your drunken, illiterate certifiable asses up here to *gasp!* north Louisiana, or go jump in the frikking Gulf of Mexico.

Either way, I don't care.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/25653482/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/25653482/ Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:21:49 PDT
Several reviewers have already accused this movie of having no plot. Let me clarify: this movie has some *plot*, just no *suspense*. We figured out, through several different characters' explanations, everything that remained to unfold with at least a half-hour left to go in the film. There were no surprise twists close to the end, no additional revelations to have the audience wondering, "*Now* what?" This fault lies obviously with the writers, who seemed to make no effort to keep any story elements hidden and deliberately string the audience along. Consider a film's amount of plot as falling within a spectrum: popcorn fluff like the first "Transformers" and "Independence Day" are at the lowest end, while an example of the absolute highest end would be the "Bourne" trilogy (which has you guessing until the end of the third film). "Revenge of the Fallen" would be in the lower middle of this spectrum; which, again, is still an improvement over the last one.

Plot in "Revenge" is stalled by another factor, specifically its *pacing*. It took forever for the story to build momentum--almost as bad as in director Michael Bay's god-awful earlier film, "Independence Day", which spent almost an hour just on exposition. I bet that as much as a half-hour of "Revenge of the Fallen" could have been shaved off had the battle sequences not been so bloated with stock, *slow-motion-running-punching-or-transforming, closeup-of-person-screaming, explosion-with-bass-effects* footage. I kept wanting to say, "That's nice, Mikey, now put down your toys and finish telling your story".

Which brings me to the issue of special effects. We have to stop judging movies based on the quality of their special effects, because those effects are no longer "special". The last truly groundbreaking visual effects came in the 1999 "Matrix" film, and ironically were made with more traditional camera techniques than computer imagery. So to revel in "ooh, wow, check out these nifty CGI transformation sequences"--or conversely, to carp on robots moving with gymnastic agility as not looking "real"--is no longer a valid argument. Ten years ago, when the technology was still being perfected, it would have been a more relevant complaint. But for better or worse, the blending of live and CGI elements we have in "Transformers" and "Revenge" is now commonplace rather than exceptional; this would be a good time for filmmakers to rediscover those traditional virtues of editing, creatively staging, and storytelling with imagery as well as words. The technology has been mastered, now filmmakers need to master its utilization.

That being said, I think this film also proved why the looking-down-the-nose prejudice of CGI versus traditional animation is utterly baseless. Remember those repetitive, drawn-out transformation sequences from animated classics like "Voltron", the original "Transformers", and many others? Remember how 'cheesy' we called them as we got older? Well, they live on in "Revenge of the Fallen". In fact, all of the vagaries present in the original Transformers' conversion sequences have been reincarnated in "Revenge". Some sequences were quick--one or two seemed almost nonexistent--while others were prolonged just to show off the 'ooh neat' factor, and there were inconsistencies between the various transformations. I've studied examples from the original cel-animated characters in order to map out their transforming sequences step by step for my own art; I saw some of the same deliberate shortcuts and shortfalls in "Revenge" as I did in the original 1986 movie. Which ultimately proves that, no matter what medium or technology is used, the human artist's capability is still what makes or breaks the final animation. And again, it illustrates why effect sequences should be treated as a component, not the focal point, of a film.

From this point on, if you want to avoid spoilers, I advise averting thine eyes!

Certain elements of "Revenge" did show tremendous potential. The feline Decepticon Ravage, for example, was spot-on. I wholeheartedly nominate him as the best translation of a G1 character to live action in either film, and frankly, he needed more screen time. More opportunities for him to slink behind enemy lines, hack into the humans' computer systems, or generally wreak covert havoc would have be fun and creepy and great. Also fun and creepy was when Megatron pinned down Sam Wi... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/25199292/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/25199292/ Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:15:07 PDT
It's good to keep certain topics fresh. Occasionally adding something new to the discussion keeps it interesting to talk about it. That's a polite way of explaining this rant, anyway; I could just as easily say, "Boy, will you guys get a load of THIS crap!" And I think that's a good segue for my most recent Internet gleanings having to do with a certain group of Kemetic Idiots(tm)....
Keep in mind, generally I try to avoid digging through their cyber-effluvia. But not long ago I had some folks stumble across old posts from my usual virtual haunts and ask me a few questions about my rantings. To better answer them, I went digging around on Google--let me emphasize, it's not hard to find this stuff if you know what keywords to use--and I found some shite that was new even to me. And this was some Grade-A stuff, too, because some of it I *still* can't stop boggling over, even two or three weeks later! Eyeball-bleeding and facepalming of this magnitude must be shared. So join me, if you will, in a virtual tour of Kemetic Captain Howdy Theater (my apologies to Dee Snider)...
Have you ever wondered what Kemetics of the 'orthodox' persuasion do for group services? Well, let's start out with some pictures from a 'Bast retreat' they did a few years ago. I'm switching the order of these two pics, but you have to get the setup for this:
First, their ceremonial procession, complete with U.S. flag and their temple banner. WHY a U.S. flag...?! And even better, they take care to strew sand in front of it! What the HELL, y'all...?! See for yourself:
[link]
And the procession has already made a special place ready for their leader person. Get the caption--this is the 'royal pavilion'. Complete with patio furniture! I kid you not:
[link]
Here's another shot with said 'avilion' in the background. Come on, guys, if it's supposed to be a royal tent, at least decorate the damn thing with a traditional cobra pattern across the top, something! Here again:
[link]
Now let's check a couple of shots from an Aset Luminous (a.k.a. Brilliant Isis) festival they did to roughly coincide with July 4th one year. I wonder why they did it around Independence Day? Maybe it was so they could legally do this:
[link] --Ooh, ooh, ooh! I wanna honor Isis/Aset by playing with sparklers!!!!
Here was their main shrine for the event. Now, I'll cut them some slack (SOME) and say yeah, if you're trying to launch tealight candles on the water in a suburban neighborhood and all you can round up are kiddie pools, sometimes you gotta just make do. (Doesn't anybody have friends--or make friends--who have an inground pool?) But why are you putting the statue and offerings on the ground, of all places? If you could round up a 'royal pavilion', surely somebody could produce a 'holy picnic table'?
[link]
But that's slightly more dignified than their Horus/Heru 'Empowerment' workshop. This is how they honored Horus (who, BTW, has no major historical connection to the god Shu, unlike their captions suggest):
[link] --Yeah, nothing more authentic Egyptian than flying a freaking KITE...
And while we're at it, doesn't this guy look like he should have been on "Bowling for Columbine"?
[link]
While we're at it, this is from another shrine dedication ritual. Is it just me, or does this guy look like a lost extra from "The Mummy"...?
[link]
(A more serious quibble with this picture, I know what his garb is meant to copy, but lose the collar. Egyptian priests didn't wear jewellry in any of the depictions I've seen, which number quite a few by now. They dressed very plainly and conservatively, and bead collars were too much of a fashion statement.)
Their biggest holiday is New Year's, though, and they pull out all the stops for those retreats. Every retreat includes a presentation of gifts for their pharaoh-person; don't take my word for it, check the galleries! This one guy decided to serenade her:
http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/25012309/ Fri, 29 May 2009 09:43:28 PDT
Well, Louisianime was rather craptacular, but that's why I have aforementioned boring jobs. What's more of a win for me is that I picked up some hopefully fruitful advice on scanning and cleanup for future artwork, and that my batch of prints came out wonderfully. Can't wait to show Dave all of his characters come July!

I also just picked up two more things for cons yesterday. I had printed two one-foot-wide by two-foot-tall display boards with Horus and Seth, a la EYE OF HORUS, on them. They look fricking AWESOME. The kind of technology they have available now is incredible, these things were printed right onto plastic and they're waterproof! And even the Indigo digital press that my original prints were done on in 2001 is now outdated, they have better-resolution printers they use now. It's amazing.

My next big project is to finish Issue Two, which I've given myself...*checks calendar*...just shy of two months to do. It's bound to be a rush toward the end, but I'm looking forward to the results!

I really want to push this project because the more I learn about marketing something small, like my own manga, the more ammunition and experience I'll have one day when I can do something big and pitch an animated series. That's still my ultimate goal, and EYE OF HORUS is just the tip of that iceberg. I see myself as a bit like Starscream in that regard (Lauren, Haley, whatever you're thinking, don't say it! )-- determined to usurp the idiots and take over the world, I'm just not going to telegraph it so blatantly. Instead we'll blind-side 'em and storm the gates!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/24373895/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/24373895/ Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:55:20 PDT
Aside from the regular job(s), cleaning up for yet another random apartment inspection, being absolutely bored to tears with the local Wiccan coven (that's worthy of its own discussion elsewhere, though) and having three different sewing projects on my couch...! I'm also getting ready for the start of summer convention season.

First is Louisianime early next month. Then comes Mechacon, which I'm actually looking forward to more than Anime-fest (which had always been my high point of the year) because I will get the fantastic early birthday treat of hanging out with my favorite voice-over peep, David Kaye. (' Peeps'...it's such a ridiculous, but useful, word.)
And then of course is A-Fest. I don't suppose I could luck out and get the voice of Treize at one show and the voice of Zechs at the next...! But it's worth suggesting to the organizers, since Brian Drummond is also in "Death Note" which would make him "current" again! One can always hope.

The season will finish off with the local Pagan Pride Day, and I'll be sure to have plenty of new goodies to sell for that event. But in terms of preparation, I treat it separately because it doesn't require a batch of prints.

THE PRINTS...my Gods, the prints! Once I log out of here I'll be straight off to work coloring my first one, and I have several left to draw! Wish me luck, because getting the time to draw is tougher now than it ever has been. And I need it because I want to do something really special for Treize and for Sesshomaru, something to outdo all my previous work. I won't need "a little energon, and a lot of luck", but I *will* need a little inspiration and a lot of time.

Luck won't hurt either, though.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/23644426/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/23644426/ Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:24:25 PDT

I just found out yesterday that our favorite youkai's English voice actor, Mr. David Kaye himself, is going to be at Mechacon 5 in Lafayette this summer. (Check it out at [link].) And it's the weekend before my birthday, too, Happy Birthday to Me!!!

(And to think, I just sent him a king cake for Mardi Gras last month...!)

Needless to say, I'm going to be suffering periodic bouts of SPONTANEOUS GLEE from now until then, with a worsening condition as July rolls around!

I'm going to 'celebrate' by working on some new pages for the Roommate Manga (a doujinshi really, but either way) since it deals with his characters specifically. I'm hoping to have a deluxe edition ready for the show! I might also do a *very limited* run of a new Sesshomaru design--so I'll have to draw something new and cool of him--but that's still tentative. Feedback is encouraged! I also need to do something of his version of Optimus from TF: Animated, although that too will be a limited run. (I still think of Dave as BW Megatron when it comes to Transformers, dammit...!)

I have other big plans for this summer that might happily coincide with this, but I will elaborate further later on. I'm determined to make 2009 a banner year!

And now, I'm off to go home and snuffle on my Sesshomaru plushie in the vain hopes of getting the fangirl hyperness out of my system before the end of July!!!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/23002893/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/23002893/ Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:34:35 PST [link] has a decent article on them.) And those wacky Eckankar guys are sweet, friendly and engaging as only cult members can be.
(You can read about Eckankar at [link])

What really got me, though, and irritated me to such a high degree that it's taken me this long to finally overcome my contempt enough to write about it, was all the "armchair experts" on Egyptian religion whose first statements to me were some variation of "Did you know that...?" Hey, which one of us put up a whole freaking BOOTH on the subject, huh?!?!? Do I just look like a neophyte because I'm not old and wrinkly, and have only stopped being carded in the last couple of years?! I don't know if these offenders--and it was mostly middle-aged guys who'd converted to non-Christian religions and probably weren't clean and sober through the entirety of the 1970's--were just trying to start a conversation, or if they assumed I'm dumber than (I hope!) I look. But it happened with such an incredible regularity over the course of one day that I have to vent. Caught in the moment, I was polite and let them have their say. After all, I was there basically as the sole representative of an entire ancient culture's values and beliefs, and I was not about to make the Egyptians or me look like an ass. (Unlike the creepy white guy at the Hindu table, but he's another segue entirely.) But now that I'm not in the role of representative, I shall turn to my cherished medium of blogging/venting and regale my readers with the smartass answers I wish I could have retorted with. I'll start with the single most common statement...

STUPID QUESTION No. 1: "Did you know that ancient Egypt had the first monotheism?"

WISHFUL ANSWER, Version A: "Nohhh, really?! I've been reading and researching ancient Egypt for twenty years [yes, really!], been to five different museum exhibits--including one titled "Amarna: Egypt's Place in the Sun" that dealt with Atonism!--and even corresponded with a couple of PhD's in the field, and I never knew that Atonism, which is still controversial but generally considered to be early monotheism, came from ancient Egypt! Wow, who'd have guessed?!?!"

WISHFUL ANSWER, Version B: "And what's your freaking point?!?!? Don't tell me that you, along with every other namby-pamby esoteric religion that claims to hold a 'secret, original truth' (*ahem*Rosicrucianism, Sufism, Eckankar, etc. etc.,*ahem*) somehow trace your lineage, whether in whole or in part, back to the Pharaoh Akhenaton? Come ON. When the Amarna period ended, Akhenaton's religion disappeared under the sands until modern scholars found remnants in the 1800's. Can I see a day when Neo-Atonism becomes a legitimate new religion? Absolutely. In the meantime, have there been plenty of people since the early, 19th-century days of Egyptology who have totally misunderstood and misrepresented the Aton Revolution? You bet your ass they have. And that is to be discussed in a section of my book.

To tangent for just a moment, I'm really irritated by these "lumper" religions. Everything had to come from one primeval source, to them, so naturally whatever they preach is the closest and most orthodox version! Give me a break. Do you really think that, if all the myriad different religions in this world had one primeval source, that we'd be so varied and in many cases opposed to each other now? At least the Baha'i guys are looking forward in saying that religions are separate now but should come together in unity (which is why they put on World Religion Day). Like them, I see humanity as moving toward common truths that we did not realize in antiquity--however, I don't think all religions should merge. I like the Dalai Lama's assessment that there are six billion people on the planet, so there should be six billion different faiths. Now, back to the rest of the goofy statements I heard...

STUPID QUESTION No. 2: "Did you know that hieroglyphics and other forms of ancient writing cannot be translated correctly into... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/22301651/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/22301651/ Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:24:48 PST
What's got me feeling upbeat after an otherwise lousy month is that I've made some hella-progress on my website. The Egyptian site is up to date and up to snuff, after much work and re-work. Now if I can just get it back on an ad-free space! (That's for '09...) If you're so inclined, the URL is [link]

But the BIG victory for me is getting to update my main Transformers site, VOICES OF CYBERTRON. Some of you guys will be familiar with its original printed form; whether you own any issues of VOC or not, though, you'll definitely want to see what I've done with the web version. I've added some more images, including color versions of pictures that originally went with one of the essays, and links to a couple of images here on DA. I've added another article from the 1980's titled "War Toys on the March"--this thing was hysterical when we first ran it in 2000, but it's even funnier now. And I've got more stuff planned for the coming year, so be sure to bookmark Voices of Cybertron! You can find it at: [link]

I've also got dealer space for two conventions paid for, got one left to finish reserving and a local pagan festival that I should be able to do this year since it shouldn't conflict with Mechacon. Here's hoping that, after all the confusion and chaos of this year, 2009 will be the year to forge ahead!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/21676811/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/21676811/ Wed, 26 Nov 2008 08:22:18 PST Anywho, I wrote this up last holiday season and figured it would be fun, appropriate reading. Enjoy!

8<--------------------------------
Feeling Charitable this Season? Keep Some Things in Mind...
I've lived in government-subsidized housing for the past ten years. It's certainly not a 'badge of honor' in many people's eyes, but it is definitely a unique vantage point from which to observe how society behaves toward the less fortunate. I've seen what comes in those Christmas gift bags from the Salvation Army (travel toothbrushes and pictures of Jesus, oh boy,) and I know that yes, government-issued cheese really is that good. But, having received donations of canned goods from friends, family members and others, I've learned that sometimes you actually need to look a gift horse in the mouth. Otherwise, you might end up really sick.
Consider the case of my close friend (who shall remain anonymous) and her two grocery bags full of food. She and her mother cleaned out their pantries to give some food to their local food bank, but since my fiance' and I were on a tight budget, she offered to bring them to us instead. The gift was certainly appreciated, and we made several meals out of her donation. However, somewhere along the way I noticed an expiration date on a canned good or a pack of mix. Keep in mind that I was reading this label in early 2007--the expiration date read 2003. I checked a few more canned goods; several also had expiration dates of 2003 and 2004, respectively. If you consider that most canned soups, vegetables and gravies have a shelf life of one or two years, this meant the items in question had to have been bought in 2001 or 2002!
This kind of situation has two possible motivations, but one common and very innocuous beginning. Something gets bought from the canned food aisle and put in a cupboard. Maybe it was purchased on a whim; maybe the buyer's tastes changed after that particular item was bought; or maybe they just stocked up on something and one extra can got pushed to the back of the cupboard. But for whatever reason, there it sits on a shelf for a couple of years, never used. The process repeats a few times in the interim. Then the annual season of giving sounds its call, and prompts a kitchen cleaning. These old cans of food are suddenly discovered, and rather than feel wasteful for throwing away something they surely won't eat, people pass them on to a food bank. We all know the old saying, "beggars can't be choosers", right?
That's my kinder reconstruction of events. I know that many people are indeed genuinely concerned about those who have less, such as my friend and her mother, who probably don't even realize how old the foods are that they donate. Most people don't read labels as thoroughly as I do, either. But that leaves the other motivation, and the other group of people. These individuals go through life wearing figurative blinders, and don't even bother to think about the ilk that live in a lower tax bracket or, worse, depend on programs supported by what taxes their betters can't get out of. The only time these blessed upper-middle-class patriots think about the poor is when they vote to curtail social programs, then feel guilty afterwards and drop coins into a red bucket outside the mall. For those people, donating expired canned goods is a better salve on the conscience than just throwing old food away.
Whatever the intention or lack thereof, the end result is that less fortunate people can end up with food that isn't really safe for them to eat. And, having a better education and way with a keyboard than many others in my position, I consider it my duty to speak out on all of our behalf. This is one social problem that is easily solved. It involves only the most minimal of sacrifices: a few moments of time, and maybe a few dollars at the store. If you plan to donate canned goods this holiday season, then by all means, do go through your pantry and look at all of your wares. But check for expiration dates on all of your goods: if something has a date that's expired, throw it away. If it has no date, it's probably still good, but be thorough; some dates get stamped on the bottom, on the sides, or sometimes crimped onto the end of a packet. If you end up with nothing to spare at the end of your cleaning, just get an extra can or two of something you normally buy and donate that instead. The meaning at that point is much more personal, more truly generous. Instead of just saying, "here, have this," it says, "I like this, I hope you do, too." At that point, you are indeed being a friend to the poor.
So remember this holiday season: Before you donate, check the XP date.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/21000907/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/21000907/ Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:20:14 PDT
I suppose you can call me bi-faith, for lack of a better description. I practice Nichiren Buddhism (which is a Japanese school) and Egyptian paganism in parallel to one another. Typically when asked, though, I claim the Buddhist part because it's more established and socially acceptable. I would compare it to the famed New Orleans native Marie Laveau; she was a practicing Catholic but also a Voudoo priestess, and found no conflict between the two faiths. But Catholicism was more accepted in the 1800's, so you can bet which answer she always gave officially.

Here's where the problem comes in. People know just enough about Buddhism to make some basic assumptions, not all of which are true; this morning being a case in point. My coworker was complaining about a religious spam email another coworker sent both of us, and commented, "Well, you're Buddhist, so it doesn't bother you. They accept all religions." For one, /thank you/ for just /telling/ me how I'm expected to practice, I really needed /someone else/ to direct me...!!! And another thing--

DON'T ASSUME THAT BEING BUDDHIST MEANS HAVING NO OPINIONS!

Because, bottom line, that just ain't true. I'm still human.

Buddhist practice aims to seek Enlightenment. And it acknowledges that everyone seeks, and finally comes to understand, Enlightenment differently. To delve a little deeper, Enlightenment is an intrinsic understanding of a greater level of consciousness, where all boundaries of everyday existence--young, old, male, female, even 'me' and 'you'--are irrelevant and it is possible to grasp the inherent connection between all phenomena in the Universe. From what I've come to understand of it, this idea is both liberating and frightening, because it means you have to be willing to shed even your basic understanding of 'self', realizing that some of your most dearly-held truths are shaped by circumstances and are not absolute. That's probably where most popular conceptions about "attachments" and Buddhists somehow being spaced-out peaceniks with no opinions about anything comes from.

Ah, but here's the thing: in its quest to destroy illusions, Buddhism also acknowledges that most of us AREN'T ENLIGHTENED YET. Buddhism also cherishes balance, which means--among many things--that while it's good to study and meditate to understand Buddha-nature, in the meantime you have to live your life. How are you going to understand the meaning of something without experiencing it? Eat meat and be attached to your sense of self, just understand that it's still your own concept and subject to change.
That also means--ta-dah!--having opinions is okay too. As long as they're informed, reasonable opinions, it's allowed. And guess what? I'm not the only Buddhist who has opinions! There are lots of them out there!

(And while sarcasm is technically one of the 108 defilements of Buddhism, I couldn't make that point very well without using some here. Another example of balance.)

Beyond that, yes the ostentatious display of Christian religiousity does irritate me. I'm a Buddhist, but I can acknowledge that I have emotional baggage just like every other human does. Between going to a Catholic school run by psycho-penguin nuns trying to convince first-graders of the 'evils of abortion', then later being an impoverished Catholic at a junior high dominated by overpriveledged Protestant kids all in the process of becoming "born-again Christians" (like your first birth is that out of date at 13!), and then the final insult, being blackballed for "witchcraft" because I taught a bunch of kids in a Bible-Belt community some ancient history that didn't involve the Old Testament...yeah, I have my opinions about Christianity. That dissatisfaction is one of the reasons I am Buddhist, and Egyptian pagan, in fact. That's a part of my story, and part of my own quest for eventual Enlightenment. And having those opinions is my right as a human being.

So please don't assume otherwise.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/20755614/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/20755614/ Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:10:48 PDT
That was Hollywood. In the real world, both of 'em would be scrambling on Capital Hill to get support for this bailout plan right now.

I'll admit it: I'm watching this whole Wall Street meltdown with an intense feeling of shadenfreude. The timing of this whole thing couldn't have been more classic. Here we are, right before an election, and our financial system is in such a pickle that the government has to get involved to "unclog the markets"--yet Washington itself is paralyzed because of upcoming elections! Isn't this beautiful? For once, the government actually fears who it should--us, the voters! I say, let Wall Street burn.

I've read what some analysts are saying: people don't understand the ramifications of this crisis, and that if credit markets freeze up then jobs will be lost and loans for cars, houses and college will be impossible to get. Well, I have news for these folks--it's hard for a lot of ordinary people to get these things now. February must be too long ago for most people to remember, but I recall an article on the front page of USA Today back then that described how more and more Americans had to use credit cards to pay for daily expenses. Until I started working this spring, Daryn and I were in the same boat. Guess what, folks, when you have to use a credit card for a necessity, you're living outside of your means. Period. And that's exactly what a lot of Americans are doing now--not just bum recent-college-grads and 'liberal ilk' like myself and Daryn, but even supposedly 'respectable' red-state SUV-driving Americans. That veneer of smug affluence that so many of my 'betters', socioeconomically speaking, had wrapped themselves up in is about to be shattered and I say BRING IT.

Reagan, Shrub, and everyone who ever supported their insane economic ideas has it wrong. This is not a 'trickle-down' economy, it is a trickle-UP economy. It starts at the bottom and works its way up. People on blessed "Main Street" started biting off more than they could chew, putting themselves in greater and greater debt so they could make a show of living the American Dream. All those subprime mortgages bear witness to this American Obsession with materialism. Now the money's gone on precious Main Street, and that's why there's no hot air left to inflate Wall Street. It's a culture of greed, right out of Michael Douglas' character's speech, so is it any wonder that Bush and the Feds, the real fat cats, are only interested in saving themselves? I bet the Commander in Thief was hoping all this would come crashing down after he got out of office and could retire to his Retardo Ranch in Texas--wouldn't be his first miscalculation...

And while I'm slamming all of the people and ideologies that frankly are in desperate need of it, let me add one other thought: in light of this meltdown on the stock market, do we REALLY want to privatize Social Security like Bush wanted to do in 2000 and 2004? Do we REALLY WANT to put the money we'll depend on when we become old or disabled--that so many elderly and disabled depend on already--at stake when it could be mismanaged so badly? If people are stupid enough to forget about what's going on right now, mark my words, I will be sure to voice a resounding reminder! Those who forget, as the saying goes, are surely doomed to repeat.

Let the blue chips fall where they may. Solutions to this crisis have to start where the problem did--from the bottom up.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/20421754/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/20421754/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:53:57 PDT
Well, as one might imagine, most of last month was a bit thrown by 'teh dramaz' with the Kemetic Idiots. I've found some interesting links, dirt, and even a couple of protest groups of sorts, so at least I know I'm not alone in my indignation. Now I can relax a bit and get back to important stuff, hopefully.

I could use a nice Transformer-y break. Will need to build one for myself. In the interim, work is tedious, my apartment is slowly getting cleaner, and I'm seeing a chiropractor which is helping me feel way better.

I'll get there!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/19935811/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/19935811/ Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:09:45 PDT
Saturday afternoon I got a call from my friend Sah (I think I've mentioned her before, check my journals "I'm Starting a New Religion, Care to Join?" and "Finally Back!") She was right outside of Joliet, IL and headed back down south following the annual Kemetic Idiots (bka Kemetic Orthodoxy) retreat. I was honestly a bit surprised she went, but she did. She sounded rather worked up, and wanted to stop back at our place and talk about what had happened there.

Just to bring everyone up to speed, she has a couple of different disabilities and a heart condition. For a bit over a year, she's been using a service dog, which has benefited her greatly. Max has even alerted her to oncoming cardiac situations--and, just an FYI, a cardiac alert dog is a legitimate and vital type of service animal. Service dogs are covered under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and are legally allowed anywhere except an operating room.

Last year she skipped the annual KO retreat because they objected to her bringing Max, her service dog, with her. That was blatant discrimination, but she let it slide. She told them she would be bringing the dog with her next year (being '08), so they needed to account for him. Fair warning.

Well, this year they told her that Max would not be allowed to any of the services being held on the second floor of their center. (My "Finally Back" journal should have links to pictures IIRC.) So she missed virtually EVERY service they held--this was OUTRIGHT discrimination. She suffered a panic attack and several crying spells throughout the weeklong retreat. Can we say, "pain and suffering", boys and girls? This is illegal!!!!

Over the weekend we've informally counseled her, and before she headed home I dug up some advocacy resources for her. She's willing to pursue legal advice on the matter this time, and to protect that avenue I won't discuss that part of things any further. But I'm taking the opportunity to tell every one I know that might give a whoop in Hades about it what's going on. There are a lot of shady groups and cults that manage to skirt the law, speed across the thin ice and evade being caught. But this is open discrimination against someone with a disability, and this is America, folks. Miss Phony Pharaoh can pretend to be in ancient Egypt all she wants, but the ADA begs to differ. And if she really took to heart the faith of the people she claims to be emulating, she'd be gracious and generous and welcome Sah and Max without hesitation.

And come to find out, this kind of behavior has been going on for years! Sah told us that she's been a member for eleven years, and has never been promoted beyond the level of junior priestess. There are people who haven't been around nearly as long that have been promoted considerably higher. Meanwhile, she even got kicked out for a year once, all because she called Anubis a "dork" on one of their IRC chats. Excuse me?!?! Flippant and irreverent the comment may be, but I know Sah--and so should these idiots. She makes comments like that just to be funny, and it's also part of her disorder. Technically, that too is a form of discrimination against her disability. And that notwithstanding, how would any of you guys like to be benched for a year because of a stupid comment? Screw that!

If the Kemetic Orthodoxy/House of Netjer will do this to a member with a disability, what qualms would they have about abusing anyone else? They're nothing but bullies, led by a she-bully with a God complex. Nobody is really safe with them. If you know anybody interested in the Egyptian path, if you care about them at all, warn them about these people. It will save them a lot of heartache, at the very least.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/19426288/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/19426288/ Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:58:32 PDT I should probably be taking advantage of the fact that my coworker across the way from me is busy and not talking my ear off, and be working some more on the lesson plans I'm trying to finish, but oh well. Get back to that in a minute!
Working a full-time job--actually, now I'm working two jobs, which goes a long way toward accounting for my fatigue and brain fuzz... Anyway, you get into such a totally different frame of mind. I'm trying to gear up for Mechacon, which is much harder given the limits I have on time available to draw and work. It's harder to get back into that 'convention' frame of mind when you're doing the 8-5 grind. Granted, I'm also adding to my plate by working on a big shindig for Egyptian New Year this weekend. That's something else I did not have a year ago, was people in the immediate area game for celebrating with me.
I've got a lot of things now that I did not have last year, and with the extra money I've been able to start saving toward building some big projects. I do hate being so tired all the sime, though. I keep telling myself that my goal is to get back to where I can sleep as much as I need and go on road trips like I used to, and money won't be an issue anymore. It's just going to be hard work getting from here to there!
As for the economy issues that are all over the news, I'm a bit cynical on that. I think all those people driving like assholes in their oversized SUV's and living in expensive houses that they apparently couldn't afford anyway are just having to learn the hard way to live within their means. Suddenly me driving an older Japanese-model car and living in an apartment doesn't seem so dowdy, does it? At least my crap is paid for. And yeah, we have some bills to pay off, but at least we won't be adding new ones just because we can.
Well, I gotta run along. Happy Egyptian New Year (this Friday 7/18)to everyone! I'll post more work soon...

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/18643601/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/18643601/ Tue, 03 Jun 2008 11:33:19 PDT
Actually, I'm slipping in time to do it at work--supposed to be working on several different things, and I'm switching back and forth from them. But as I've learned, I was hired to do a job but paid to be distracted. Go figure!

Don't have much in the way of TF art to share as yet, but I hope to change that at some point. I need to take pictures of Skywarp the Plushie, his wings are almost done. I do have some Egyptian art from awhile back that I need to post. Will be doing so in a few minutes.

In the meantime, I'm going to paste over an excerpt from my blog on Myspace--yes, I'm on Myspace, it's smarmy, I know. It's a networking tool. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago I spun off a hopefully-entertaining rant full of links to insane photos, all about one of my
favorite occasional topics of opining. Have fun!

8<----------
I was exhausted yesterday after driving all night the night before, [this was after seeing The Police in concert in Houston] so I surfed through stuff I knew was obnoxious just to keep awake at the office. And man, some of the ridiculousness you find when you do a Google image search and just type in "Kemetic"...!

(quick aside--for some genuine fun, do a Google web search and enter "Find Chuck Norris"; then click "I'm feeling lucky". You will laugh...)

Anyway, back to the stupidity. DISCLAIMER: I know I'm about to rip on somebody else dressed in a Pharaoh outfit, even as my icon here has me in my own Pharaoh outfit. [My icon on Myspace has me in my pharaoh outift, some of you guys have seen it. My page is at [link] But, aside from the flippant comment that I make it look WAY better than she does, there's a big difference between myself and the dork I'm about to provide links to. You see me in this picture taken at BotCon, a Transformers convention. Nothing religious about it whatsoever. You'll see me at anime shows in it, too. And if you've ever seen my booth banner for Tut's Toys, (or my website, [link] or my ebay store of the same name,) you can see that I'm basically dressed up as my mascot.

Now check out this picture from the Kemetic Orthodoxy's photo gallery of their New Year's retreat. (This is Egyptian New Year, so it's in the summertime.) Part of their ceremonies, which they're rather tight-lipped about to outsiders, involves listening to this chick who's their "Pharaoh"--oh, excuse, me, they prefer /Nisut/, which means 'king'--give blessings and pronouncements:

[link] --dork portrait...

[link] --more dorks listening to their "pharaoh"...

[link] --perhaps most frightening of all, one of these dorks has procreated and is raising their spawn in dorkdom. And somehow this chubby broad in a souvenir headdress is a holy woman fit to give people blessings? Get the f--k out of here. Don't walk, run.

Sadly, a friend of mine is in this ridiculous cult mockery of Egyptian religion. She's the one whose service dog was not allowed into their retreat last year, but she won't sue them over it. And she should. Anyway, here's my pal. I really do feel bad for her, but she's with these craptards by choice....

[link] --we call her 'Sah' for short.

There are a lot of other photos in their gallery of various craptardedness. I'll cut them a slight break on their shrines and just accuse them of lacking creativity or taste, and that they really shouldn't harp Wiccans so hard when their own shrines don't look much different aside from the Egyptian theme. I'll save the more detailed critique for my book that I'm writing.
8<---------------

Added comment: Another problem with their shrines is that I know this group has some talented artists, my friend Sah included, among their membership. She makes statues of Anubis and Sakhmet, yet none of her work is in any of the group's official shrines. They don't do enough to support their members' artistic achievements, unless it manages to aggrandize their 'nisut' in the process. And I know there are lots of artists here; wouldn't that make you guys mad?


Anyway, that's some of the topic of discussion as of late. I'll have more stuff soon, or as soon as I can. Meantime, be noncomformist! Relax and take life easy! Later...

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/17427331/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/17427331/ Thu, 20 Mar 2008 14:11:37 PDT
Gas prices are up, food prices are up, still no Democratic front-runner and Wall Street is in massive denial about that "r" word. And if you guys are like me, you're probably busy scrambling to work (or look for work) and make ends meet. It's a tough world out there.

Last week was especially tough, because I had to be there for my two brothers as they buried another high school/college friend. Their friend Austin had gone to high school with both of them and was Jean Paul's college roommate for a year; he'd come to our place a couple of times, and Daryn even helped Jean clean up after he came into the dorm room drunk one night, yakked all over the floor and then passed out on his bed! (Word to the wise, don't ever do screwdrivers and Reese's Pieces.) Sadly, Austin met his demise on Sunday, March 9 when he tried to pass somebody on a back road doing about 100mph and lost control of his car. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt, and alcohol may have been involved. This is the third friend that either of my brothers have had to bid farewell since 2004.

The really sad and ironic part is that Austin died seven years TO THE DAY after he and Jean Paul walked away from a wreck that totalled Jean's pickup. That day Jean insisted that Austin wear a seat belt, which helped save both of their bacons. If only Austin could've had another Jiminy Cricket with him two weeks ago.

So I guess the mood around here right now is a bit grim but determined. I technically have one job right now, but it's not enough hours so I'm looking for an additional one. I haven't been able to mess around on Flash any more lately, but recently I've been trying to illustrate some more pages for my manga, "Eye of Horus"; maybe come summertime I can have Issue Two complete. I'm also working on a book on Egyptian religious practices, both ancient and modern. That's something I've been writing and researching off-and-on since September. I'd love to have something publishable by the end of the year, but we'll see how that goes. AND, I've got a couple of other sideline projects I rotate between in addition to those! I guess I just respond to stress by trying to bury myself in work. Something's gotta crack sooner or later...long as it's not me, we can call it progress.

I do have some more artwork, I just need to upload it at some point. It's coming! In the meantime, I just want to say thank you to all my friends out there in Deviant Land. A lot of you guys I've met in person, and for those I haven't, I would love to one day so we can trade hugs in real time! I'm grateful for all of you, and I hope for nothing but the best for all of you. I often wonder what will be said of our era in the distant future; we'll never know, but I can at least say from this end that there are those of us who struggled together, conspired together, cried together...for better or for worse, this world is ours and we're doing the best we can to make it in it.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/16302803/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/16302803/ Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:07:48 PST Anyway, hope everyone's doing well or at least up to no good. I'll post more later!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/15834550/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/15834550/ Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:07:42 PST Last Wednesday morning Daryn and I attended funeral services for Capt. Cartize Durham, a helicopter pilot in the US Air Force. If you recall hearing about a Black Hawk helicopter crash in Aviano, Italy before Thanksgiving, he was one of the soldiers who went down with it.
I'd known Cartize since second grade.
Most of the kids I went to school with from elementary school, through junior high and into the first half of high school, I could care less about. Very few of them stick out in my memory anymore. I was always getting picked on at school because I was smart, or because I was poor /and/ smart, (that just doesn't happen where I grew up,) or because I was wierd. But Cartize was one of the few kids that didn't pick on me. He was always good-humored and funny. His nickname was "Buckeye", which the teachers never seemed to like, maybe because it sounded too much like "Buckwheat". (And Cartize was black, so that would've had too much of a negative connotation..!) They were always getting his name wrong, too--they'd say it "Car-teez" or "Car-zee", when it's actually "Car-tez". But through it all, he kept his trademark smile that everyone still remembers.
One of my favorite stories about him was when we did a couple of school plays in fifth grade. At the beginning of the school year, which was 1987, we did one about the Constitution and he played George Washington. I played Benjamin Franklin, and we all had our socks pulled up in imitation of 18th-century fashion--the audience got a great laugh out of that. But come spring, we had to do a play about 'saying "no" to drugs'. (Remember, this was way before the "Dare" program a lot of schools do now; this was part of the whole Nancy Reagan "Just Say No!" campaign that started it all.) We practiced for what felt like hours. And hours. The whole school was going to see this thing. Well, Cartize had this one particular monologue that ended with, "Say no to drugs!". We were all tired and restless by this rehearsal. Cartize got up to the microphone and went through the whole thing, something something something--"Say yes to drugs!" The rest of us on stage choked back our snickers. Cartize didn't even realize he'd flubbed until he was walking back to his spot onstage and one of the teachers called out, "Uh...Cartize...do that line again!" We lost it at that point. All of us just howled, him included. But ever the trooper, he stepped back to the mike and ran through his monologue again (after we stopped laughing,) and finished with an emphatic "Say NO to drugs!" I don't think any of us looked at our dialogue the same way again!
Junior high and high school were fairly nondescript. He went on to play football and participate in Junior ROTC. I didn't find out until the day of his funeral that his family had a lot of problems, and that his mom had to raise him and his siblings by herself; I knew because of the grade school we went to that we both came from less affluent families, but he was never one of those kids that did badly or had problems at school 'because of a poor home environment'. I left the high school we went to after my sophomore year, when I was accepted to the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts. I figured I would hear about Cartize again one day; my guess was he'd get drafted by a major football team and play for the NFL.
Skip ahead another several years, to 2001. I'd graduated from Louisiana Tech and Daryn was finishing his masters. My younger brother Jean-Paul was starting his freshman year at Tech, majoring in engineering and trying out for an elite color guard in Air Force ROTC. He hadn't been in school but for a couple of weeks when he told me, "Hey, Sharon, do you remember a Mr. Durham..?" I did immediately. Turns out, Cartize had joined the Army for several years, was finally going to college on the G.I. Bill, and had switched to Air Force. He was in ROTC along with my brother, and when they met he recognized the last name and asked about me. Shortly afterward I got to introduce him to Daryn, and we saw him several times over the next couple of years. Jean-Paul really struggled with his course load and the demanding schedule for ROTC, but Cartize sort of took him underwing. He would run with Jean-Paul in the mornings and help him keep pace; one day Jean got heat exhaustion and Cartize brought him water, making sure he was feeling well enough to get to class and walking with him across campus.
Often Daryn would go with Jean to his dorm room to help him study, and Cartize's dorm was just a few doors down. Daryn says his most prominent memories of Cartize were of him standing in his doorway, wearing boxers, a t-shirt and flip-flops, c... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/15507779/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/15507779/ Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:50:05 PST
I finally finished a script the first of this month which I had been working on, in between bouts of real life, for the past decade. It's done! And printed! It's a Transformers script, but it will not see the Internet. I'm sorry to disappoint a lot of fellow fans and friends, but I want to protect the intellectual property as I intend to one day pitch the movie script to Hasbro! I'm willing to do readings for friends who drop by in person, though.

Trying to get back to work on a book I've just recently undertaken, but that's getting shuffled around with other RL things. Hoping to do some more artwork as well. I keep myself too busy...

Meantime, epyonrose had a really cool idea to see how well networking goes here on dA. Check out her journal on "A dA game" to see how it's played. Support your fellow deviant artists!

I'll probably be doing another memorial piece soon. If you happened to catch the news and saw about the Black Hawk helicopter that went down in Italy, my classmate from elementary school was on it. He was a really nice guy; a lot of kids in grade school and junior high picked on me, but Cartize never did. The last I saw of him was when he graduated from Louisiana Tech a couple of years ago and got his commission in the Air Force. He was off to California to train to fly helicopters. The world is missing a piece without him.

Anyway, I hope to be back here again soon posting new art. See you then!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/15001940/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/15001940/ Wed, 10 Oct 2007 14:51:32 PDT
DISCLAIMER NUMBER TWO: If you're involved or associated with the Kemetic Orthodoxy/House of Netjer, Per Ankh or any other so-called 'Kemetic Traditional' group, I'm about to piss you off. Hit your 'back' button now or forever hold your peace.

With that out of the way...

I must be a pretty spiritual person, although I don't always express it. It's not exactly something I think I 'wear on my sleeve', per se, but spirituality is a defining part of my life. I was raised a Catholic, and sincerely believed in it until everything in my life got rather violently rearranged about nine years ago. What helped me finally end that dismal chapter of my life was converting to a sect of Buddhism known as Nichiren Buddhism (you can learn more about it at nichiren-shu.org.). But I've long held a sort of affinity for the way the ancient Egyptians believed. I started looking for a group to share that interest with about mid-2005, when I joined the message boards for a group that a friend of mine belongs to. It's called the House of Netjer, and they have their own small 501(c) organization called the Kemetic Orthodoxy. The word "Kemetic" is basically a 50-dollar word for "Egyptian", coming from the ancient Egyptian word for their country, "Kemet".

Well, I started trying to participate in threads and ask about their membership. You see, in order to join you have to take a 'beginner course' and then their group leader--who's basically styled herself a modern pharaoh, she uses kingly titles that are posted on their homepage and members refer to her with an Egyptian word for "Her Majesty"!--does a divination with you over Internet chat and arrives upon your "parent" divinity. That didn't sit really well with me from the start, because I already know who my spiritual entourage is and I don't need anybody to tell me that. Besides, they wouldn't count who my "father" is: it's Tutankhamun, but he's not "a god who could have created my soul" so they wouldn't recognize him anyway. (Nevermind the fact that ancient pharaohs were deified upon their deaths and prayed to like saints for everything from mundane issues to conceiving a child.) And I've done enough historical research on my own that I'd like to try one day to see how much of a bachelor's in Egyptology I could clep out of. What would a 'beginner course' tell me that I don't already know?

That wasn't what royally pissed me off about the House of Netjer and inspire me to re-dub them the Kemetic Idiocy, however. That happened when I posted, following my friend's suggestion, about the manga I'm working on called "Eye of Horus". (I've got a character image from it in my gallery, but need to load some more art for it here.) The story is based on the classic myth of Horus and Set, where Horus avenges his father Osiris's murder against his evil uncle Set. Historically, this myth first gained widespread appeal about the 5th Dynasty (some 2,000 years B.C.) and remained popular throughout Egypt's history until the advent of Christianity. Pick up any book on Egyptian mythology and you'll read about this Myth of Kingship. So in Issue Two of my manga, Horus himself recaps the story to the young heroine. I posted the recap, curious to see what people thought of it.

The reaction I got infuriated me. Some utter retard "Set kid" (being a member whose "parent Name" was Set) and a self-proclaimed member of the "Set Defense League" responded with his own version of the myth which had no factual basis in archaeological record WHATSOEVER. His friends on the board responded with snickering remarks about his misspellings, and they totally ignored my posts. I felt as though my intelligence had been completely insulted, and nobody stepped in to defend me. If this group is supposedly run by people with degrees in Egyptology, then why the hell are they supporting completely erroneous information?! And as if that wasn't enough, you go to their "glossary of gods" and it describes Set as "not a god of evil, but of forceful, necessary change." I'm sorry, but that is complete BULLSHIT. Pick up a f@#king scholarly book on the subject sometime. End of story.

My friend made apologies on one hand but kept asking me to 'give them another chance', but when I posted there this May and suggested they moderate their boards they got completely uppity: 'How dare you, a newbie, tell us how to run our boards?' So I mentally put them on my per... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/14976797/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/14976797/ Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:42:45 PDT October seems to be a very creative month for me. My burst of activity from last year ended up saving my bacon this spring and allowing me to get things done this year! To explain...
When I got my computer upgraded this spring--right before we moved, not a recommended idea!--I had to have my hard drive backed up twice and my entire OS upgraded. (Blackmailed some computer geeks into giving me XP for FREE! Teach them to arbitrarily "upgrade" me to Windows ME...! ) In the process, I lost a lot of old text files that were saved as .wri documents. As in, all my Transformer essays, character profiles, a couple of short stories...everything except a script I have in Works. Practically everything else evaporated, gone from my hard drive.
But all was not lost! You see, last year I made hard copies of everything I had. My intention was to make something worthy of a production bible, which I've happened to see one of at BotCon '98. That move saved the whole project. All I needed to do was transcribe all of my printed documents, one by one. Not an easy task, but one I kept at bit by bit all summer. This weekend I transcribed the last story missing. All that remains is to check over one essay and copy another one from my fanzine, VOICES OF CYBERTRON.
I've been trying to finish up a few uncompleted tasks that got left lying around over the spring and summer. No sense in starting new work while old things are left undone.
The one thing to complicate all of this glorious progress has been unfortunately entirely beyond my control. I spent most of last week with Daryn at his office, ferrying him around to run work errands because his car was on the fritz. (Again...frickin' Buick drives me crazy.) I really hate his office. Their intentions and mission statement are noble--helping the disabled move forward in society--but the problem is that a lot of handicapped people treat caretakers like slaves. The ones that work at Daryn's office treat me like I'm invisible, like /untermensch/. The only ones who treat me with any dignity are Kat, his blind coworker who's sweet and funny, and two of the ladies who work in payroll and accounting and are just loveably crazy. The rest of them can just go to hell. They're getting ready for a big Open House later this month, and I plan to fix myself a big plate of food and split. They can celebrate their self-righteous slave-driving assery without me.
Daryn is not like that--if he were, I wouldn't still be around with him. And I haven't asked him to treat me to things in compensation because that would basically be spending funds that go to both of us already, and are a bit tight right now. (Got a new cell phone plan last month for both of us, and Daryn has discovered a pernicious little thing called "overages"...!)
I've been meaning to write another entry here and textually unload some things that have pissed me off, in a forum where the folks in question aren't moderating or at least dominating the show. But that will have to come later. Maybe this week I'll luck out and get to post it then. Til then!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/14603097/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/14603097/ Wed, 12 Sep 2007 12:51:33 PDT Hopefully soon I'll be caught back up enough to post some cool thoughts and whatnot. But in the meantime, I figured I would put a different journal entry up since July was awhile back now. Hope everyone is doing well, keeping it real...talk again soon!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13782902/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13782902/ Wed, 18 Jul 2007 14:11:14 PDT ....Well, if you celebrate on the ancient Egyptian calendar, that is.
The Egyptians marked the new year when the Nile river began its annual flood, which coincided with the astronomical event of Sirius, the Dog Star, rising above the horizon shortly before dawn. Nowadays it rises on August 1, which is when a lot of Neo-Kemeticists celebrate the new year, but I've been observing it as July 18 since I was, like, twelve.... That would have been the day that those events occurred during classical Egyptian history.
So how did they celebrate? Well, it was a civil and religious holiday, so everyone from the pharaoh down to the common people probably held religious observances; paying respects at temples, leaving offerings for the dead... But they also drank and partied (not much different from New Year's today!). The Egyptians believed a drunken state brought one closer to the gods and the spirit realm, so it was not looked upon as a degenerate state like we do. (They also didn't have distilled liquors, either, so it took more to get drunk...!) On New Year's they also drank red beer, in observance of the myth of Sakhmet. She was a lion goddess, often seen as an aspect of Hathor, who was Ra's enforcer. According to one sacred text, when mankind became rebellious she was sent to punish them. Sakhmet became so zealous in her bloodbath that humans would be annihilated, so to make her stop the gods filled a lake with red-colored beer. Thinking it was blood, Sakhmet drank the whole damn thing and passed out cold. Thus humanity was saved. So, instead of green beer on Saint Patty's Day, they drank red beer at New Year's.
I've been working off and on to write up a page detailing the Egyptian New Year for my website, but that's been slow going. Something to finish this year!
Looking back on this point a year ago, I've done a lot and made a lot of improvements in my life. I'm just busy as hell now... But I hope to have covered even more ground by this time next year!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13696805/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13696805/ Wed, 11 Jul 2007 14:41:17 PDT Nobody's heard from me here throughout June because June has been a wierd month. July isn't much better. So far, I've had my car break down and need repairs twice--all that routine maintenance that Megatron could squeak by without doing back in small-town Ruston had finally caught up with us after moving to the big city. My first younger brother moved, and we had to help him pack up some of his collectibles. My mother has decided she wants to move and get a better job, so I got a bunch of crap dropped on me that I'm trying to get rid of. Her live-in is a psycho jackass and I had to step between him and my kid brother who was being threatened; be damned if I'm going to stand there and let anyone threaten to beat my little brother, who's had back surgery and has two rods in his back. Insert the name of Decepticon badass, and I'd stand up to them before I let something happen to my little brothers.
Oh, and did I mention that when my car broke down the first time, a State Trooper showed up to help and then our neighbor who works with Daryn thought I got arrested....?
I'm trying to get things smoothed back out to normal, or at least what I would like to see pass for normal! This weekend we attended a Buddhist ceremony in Houston, which was awesome. And in two weeks we fly to Philly to see the TUTANKHAMUN AND THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE PHARAOHS exhibit! W00T!
Hopefully I will have something nifty to post for Egyptian New Year, which is next week.

In the meantime, I've got a question for all the fellow Sesshie fans! What number of the Inuyasha manga in English picks up after the series ends? I need to know before Otakon so I can ask a friend to look for copies for me! I've unfortunately gotten a few spoilers, but I want to read what happens (especially for Sesshomaru) myself! Thanks in advance for anyone who can help with that info!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13138039/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13138039/ Tue, 29 May 2007 12:41:45 PDT
You ever hear that old wives' tale about how, if you find a baby bird that's fallen out of its nest, you should never pick it up because the mother will smell human on it and abandon it? I have witnessed proof to the contrary with my own eyes!
You see, it's like Wild Kingdom around the bank building Daryn works in. There are all sort of songbirds, crows; even a mated pair of vultures that the office workers nicknamed Sweetie and Tweetie. (I would've gone for Ozzy and Sharon myself, but hey...) And last week, we saw a fledgling mockingbird on the sidewalk leading to the building.
We were concerned about the traffic in the area being this poor bird's downfall, so I managed to catch him and take him home. This birdie was pretty well fledged--he had pinfeathers on his wings and starting to grow on his tail. I looked up what to feed him and got a little eyedropper...but this little birdie would not eat. He turned his beak away every time, like a spoiled little kid. He'd chirp and raise hell, and could hop all over the box I gave him. But no food. So, after putting him to bed for the night by putting a blanket over his box, we got up the next morning and decided to bring him back.
I took him out and set him in the brush next to the tree his old nest had been in...and it wasn't even three minutes before Momma mockingbird showed back up. He gaped and opened his mouth for her to feed him, no problem! And I watched her stuff food in his mouth three times. So, moral of the story, if you have to extend a helping hand to save a birdie, do so. Birds go by sight and sound more than smell, and when they see their little ones or hear them call, it won't matter that you had to pick them up and give them a boost.
But watch out for momma mockingbirds! They will divebomb your ass. I have to hand it to the one at the bank building, she's a fierce little bird and will screech at people to stay away. It was hilarious watching her puff up and try to rush Sweetie and Tweetie--they just looked over at her like it was nothing! Crazy birds.

Been updating my website, and other things... I'll also have to rant about an Egyptian forum that pissed me off (again) this weekend. But I'm saving that for later.

Hope with me my scanner drivers get in soon so I can get back to doing artwork!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13063382/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/13063382/ Wed, 23 May 2007 13:22:01 PDT Remember back in October when I wrote in here about having a creative burst, and I updated and organized all my Transformer writings? It's a good thing I did, because when I got my computer upgraded to XP last month it wiped a BUNCH of files. As in, all my character profiles, several story outlines, a couple of ENTIRE short stories...! Had I not kept hard copies of everything, I would have lost several years' worth of work. As it is, I'm just transcribing a bunch of stuff. Whee....
That, and I'm having to learn a newer version of Photoshop and a new Web builder. That's a little disorienting, to say the least.
Otherwise, been wicked busy. Taking Daryn to work and back...alternately teaching him more driving and taking his car to the shop...fielding phone calls from everyone in the world(!!!) and trying to stay on top of eBay. But our new apartment is starting to look really homey and I'm enjoying having space finally. Now if Daryn will stop turning down the thermostat without telling me! O_O
I even managed to observe an ancient Egyptian holiday this weekend. Early to mid-May was when the Egyptians from around Thebes would celebrate the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, which was sort of like a cross between Easter and All Souls' Day. I have a page for it somewhere on my website, but cannot get the link to work for whatever reason... Either way, I've got a little shrine set up in my study, now that I have the room, so I left offerings of wine, bread and chocolate for Tutankhamun. I may post more on that later, depending on what other things I get done.
That's all for the moment, hopefully I'll be back soon!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/12667116/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/12667116/ Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:13:46 PDT This has been a really hectic month, needless to say. Packing, unpacking, not finding things because you packed them...anyone who's moved knows the drill! And on top of that, I got my computer
upgraded right before we moved, which involved reformatting the
system. And THEN they had to update me to Windoze Millenium without asking--if you're sitting there snickering or going, "I'm
sorry," you should! Win-Me SUCKS! I had to drive all the way back
to Ruston last week to blackmail them into giving me XP. (And that's
exactly what it took to get them to do it for me, too. They left a
bootleg disk in my drive and I used it as leverage...!)
So now my system is up and running better than ever. And when I get our framed movie posters back, they'll be better than ever as well, although it was a most unpleasant chain of events that started that... You see, my detestable sperm donor decided to stick his nose in things and help us move--nevermind the fact that he's never visited me the entire 9 years I lived in Ruston, and I told him he wasn't needed. So, he shows up, rushes everyone in the process of moving, and grabs several of our framed Star Wars and Transformers movie posters to load them up. Even though Daryn's mom and I wrapped them carefully, 4 of the 5 still ended up with shattered glass, which I didn't find until days later. My father is very lucky that none of the posters themselves were damaged, or there would have been blood!
Well, the story doesn't end there. Re-framing posters is not cheap. But since Randy (my father) was the one who broke them, I was going to see to it he reimbursed me for getting them fixed. We toted them back to Ruston to the custom frame guy who did them in the first place, and got a receipt which I then brought to Randy's shop. You'll have to forgive me, the subsequent events are so disgusting to me that I'm just going to cut and paste from an email where I managed to recount what transpired...
Letting his little whore of a secretary, Miss Debbie, know I was coming was probably the first problem. I have no idea what she told my dad, but when he showed up in his office he didn't even acknowledge me at first. When he finally did, it was to basically demand what I wanted. I started to calmly explain what happened, and he just exploded. He started screaming so loud that Daryn could hear him through the front door and in the parking lot, obscenities and all. My dad offered to go half on the bill (keep in mind, he hasn't even seen the receipt yet, so the amount isn't even in question right now) and I said fine. Then he started railing about how he took out time and money to help us move (nevermind the fact that Daryn's mom spent money on a trailer and lunch for everyone, my dad just used his cabinet trailer and work truck). I reminded him, "You didn't have to"...and he got even more irate. He demanded the receipt and my key to his house. I gave him both, he wrote a check, handed it to me (still ranting and cursing at the top of his lungs) and told me he never wanted to see me again. Get this, then he said, "That boy better rise up outta his wheelchair and take care of you." I said, "He's been doing that for eight years, Dad," to which he said nothing.
As if that wasn't enough, I got back in my car and paused a moment to look for something, and he stuck his head out of the door and started waving, "Bye! Bye"!
He's also since cancelled my cellphone--not that it did much good to begin with, Nextel is the worst wireless company on the damn planet. But the asshole had better watch out, he has Type II diabetes that he doesn't take care of, has to take 20 units of insulin a night and three other medicines. He's gonna be real damn lonely when he ends up in the hospital. And Miss Debbie is destined to have one of her damn voodoo hexes backfire on her (more so than they already have).
So, that's the long and short of it. I'll be back to posting artwork and such pretty soon. But I wanted to at least let everyone know I'm back, and extend my thanks for all the comments and favs in the interim!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/12130268/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/12130268/ Sat, 10 Mar 2007 11:27:11 PST Good news is, it's a two-bedroom place for a really good rate with lots of closet space. Drawbacks are, it's waaaaay outside the city limits and we still won't have a washer/dryer or dishwasher. Argh. But we've pretty much figured out, the "perfect handicapped accessible apartment" either doesn't exist or is already taken.
So, we'll be moving next weekend! I've already gotten a bunch of things packed and will be working on packing up more this weekend.
And I'm going to work my two brothers like bitches!
I can also tell it's springtime, because I'm contending with allergy-related sinus trouble and such. Pollen is evil...
In any case, I don't know what kind of a layover I'll be looking at with the Internet access, but I can say that come Friday of this coming week I'll be inaccessible via cyberspace. So if I don't get back to you before then, I'll talk with ya toward the end of the month!
See you again soon, peace out!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11824104/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11824104/ Thu, 15 Feb 2007 01:22:49 PST
Beforehand, I'd paced off the dimensions of our current domicile using some yarn--things can look bigger or smaller than they really are, but I figured having a 'surveyor's chord' of sorts might help give us a concrete idea, just in case. It's a good thing I did that!

I had Daryn hold one end of the string while I unrolled the rest...and I stopped at the other wall with yarn left. In other words, the apartment we looked at was SMALLER than the one we live in NOW. We didn't think that was possible!

I guess the figures for square footage can be misleading. Things like kitchen space and closets all count towards that figure, but you can't exactly live in a closet--well, unless you're in that apartment we looked at! Sheesh.

So, it's back to the drawing board. I gotta admit, this whole process of looking for someplace handicapped-accessible that isn't outrageously overpriced or smaller than a hole in the wall is very difficult and quite stymying. But, we've got some more places we can look up. Cross our fingers!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11728737/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11728737/ Wed, 07 Feb 2007 21:55:17 PST
On Monday we get to look at an apartment. I know ahead of time that it has around 100 square feet more than our current apartment--if you recall a little geometry, that amounts to ten extra feet in either direction!!! And amenities like a dishwasher and washer/dryer hookups that we currently lack. I'm hoping this will work out, because then we'll really be moving up in the world!

Another thing I'm really looking forward to is possibly having a porch area. For the last nine years (more if you count dorm rooms, then it would be 13!) I've lived in a unit facing into a hallway and the only way to see the world outside was to peek out a window. I couldn't grow any outdoor plants; couldn't experiment with a small grill or a chiminea (those things look cool, btw); even if I wanted to see how cold it was outside, I'd have to throw shoes on and walk all the way down a hall. Hopefully soon I can just open my own front door!

I've done a little more sewing on my own two plushie Seekers. They'll still be awhile before they're done, but it's nice to be making a bit more progress. I'm even doing a little more artwork. The eBaying is still markedly slower--I've sold a couple of things really cheap just to get them out of here so I won't have to pack them. But hopefully being in a bigger city means more places I can look for neat things to list online. Or at the very least, I can have a spot to put all my current inventory that will be more out-of-the-way.

So, it's getting better. Oh yeah, and because this is Louisiana and early February, spring is on the way. Before the climate changes due to global warming, it used to be more like late Feb-early March, but for the last ten years or so you could throw on shorts half the days of the month of February. And to think there are retards in this country that think this is all a liberal hoax!

Either way, onward and upward!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11527042/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11527042/ Mon, 22 Jan 2007 07:34:34 PST
But since New Year's it's been one crazy thing after another. We had a cat in the apartment for four days (and Daryn is highly allergic!), I had a blowout on the Interstate--at least I got four new tires off my dad--and I'm just barely back to sleeping during the night again.

Right now what I really feel like venting about is eBay business. I went from being able to pay for all my monthly expenses last month and have a little left over, to probably making less than fifty bucks this month. (My student loan and car insurance each month total more than triple that.) I guess what really sticks in my craw is that my autographed artwork and handmade stuff is getting passed over repeatedly, despite me marking them down. I listed a Starscream pillow head plushie a second time for just twenty dollars, it had three watchers, and NO bids. What gives?! > I guess what really makes me angry is that I feel like, despite my best efforts to make neat fan-friendly items that are inexpensive but still account for all the hard work I put into them, suddenly everyone will watch them but nobody will bite. This on top of my Xmas cash tapping out entirely too early, leaving me short on the computer upgrade I'd planned. I'm through with substitute teaching--THROUGH, if I can manage it then I will never do it again another day in my LIFE--and I need to look for some other kind of job now. On the plus side, Daryn's gotten a job offer and they want to help us move to Shreveport, LA, but there again we have no idea what the timetable for that will be and when we finally do move it will be on NO money. This totally sucks.

I guess my DA journal is the one place I can really rave and get emo about things. I need it right now, too, Daryn had to talk me out of chunking the pattern drawings for an Arcee plush somebody asked me to make, just out of sheer frustration. That's something else, I will never make another Seeker plushie for anyone other than me, ever, ever, EVER. EVER!!!! They take so much time to make, but nobody who would want one can pay what they would really be worth in the labor alone. And frankly, I need the cash too much to waste time on something that won't pay me. So the only other Starscream I make will be for me. In the meantime, I have some Jetstream parts and parts for another original Seeker of mine that will probably lay around until I can get enough wind back in my sails to finish them up. I'd like to hug on Jetstream, but right now I'm so mad I just couldn't bring myself to pick up a needle and thread, despite having several ready and sticking in one arm of my couch.

Ugh. I just don't know what else to say.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11020408/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/11020408/ Sun, 10 Dec 2006 17:35:44 PST I've been a bit anti-social since Thanksgiving, I must admit. I just decided that Daryn and I needed time to recover, so quite often I'll unplug the phone past a certain time at night. I even switched off AIM--my apologies to my AIM buddies, but I just needed the time to re-focus and rest. I'll try to get back to everyone soon. The net result of this is that I got some things listed and sold online, and I've gotten to where I sleep at night and am up during the day. I've even gotten some more writing and artwork done. It's slow and steady headway, here's hoping I can keep it up.
Thanksgiving went fairly smoothly, in spite of being over at my dad's place--I'd have never imagined going back there in a million years, but my kid brother asked me to save Turkey Day for them. Had I not gone over and cooked, they would've ended up with store-bought dinner or buffet. But apparently my dad was still raving about how good my turkey was days afterward. My mad cooking skills strike again!
Christmas, though, I must admit I'm not really looking forward to. For one, being an ex-Christian I just don't buy into the 'reason for the season' hype. But I'm also an extreme cynic when it comes to the topic of 'family' and generally think parents are evil unless proven otherwise. (I know there are some parents on my watchlist here, you guys are 'proven otherwise'. ) My philosophy is that, once you're out on your own, you have the right to sit your butt at home and make parents visit you for the holidays, especially if they're divorced.
But, when you have a significant other, ideals like that go out the window. Case in point, this Xmas coming up. Last year I was so sick of the bulls$!t with my family--their Xmas eve tirades are part of what made me want to leave the time zone and never come back--I told Daryn we could switch and go to his family's this year. Much as I'd rather just stay home or even invite my brothers over for the holiday, I still have to stick with what I said earlier. It's tough not giving a flying flip about your parents when your other half still does about theirs, especially because they'll quickly remind you how much you hate your family if you start to balk at the idea of going 'over the river and through the woods to Grandma's'. It's like you suddenly become the Uberfiend just because you refuse to be taken advantage of in the name of a holiday.
Well, I guess until New Year's I'll be an Uberfiend in cognito--meaning I'll fake this as best I can but I still have serious misgivings. Wish me luck, I could be back here venting about another crappy Christmas in a couple of weeks.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/10643728/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/10643728/ Tue, 07 Nov 2006 02:37:05 PST
I should probably stop complaining, though. Halloween was pretty fun, even though we invited my brother's girlfriend to visit and she showed up an hour late and high with her pot-head friend in tow. O_O I used to think all those commercials about marijuana smokers were exaggerating--they're not. These two would have forgotten their minds had those not been intangible objects to begin with! At least they paid for dinner at El Jarrito's...

I showed up at said Mexican place in my Pharaoh regalia, and the servers there asked, "?Azteca?" (They thought I was dressed as an Aztec apparently.) I learned the Spanish word for "Egyptian", and said, "No, una reina Egypcio". One of the servers there, Oswaldo, likes to horse around with Daryn and asked him why he wasn't dressed as an Egyptian king to match me! That was pretty funny.

The pumpkin I posted here was something I actually carved late on Halloween night, and once Daryn and I lit it we sat around watching it and talking until almost dawn. He kept trying to analyze the pumpkin carving and suggest ways to do a better one...dude! Save that for next year! I just wanted to enjoy what was there.... I did, though.

So now I'm trying to keep up with some eBay auctions and get back to an even keel. Whatever the hell that is!

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/10418960/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/10418960/ Tue, 17 Oct 2006 01:28:41 PDT I'm starting to feel like this is some kind of cyclical conundrum I'm stuck in, because it's October again and I'm back where I was for the last two or three Octobers; broke, a little stressed, trying to figure out how to get out of this fricking loop. AnimeFest wasn't as good this year as it has been in the past, but I did come away with a little money I'd like to put toward a pilgrimage to visit Pharaoh Tutankhamun's exhibit while he's in Chicago. Problem is, it's not quite enough to cover the full trip and I'll probably end up having to spend some of it to pay bills like my insurance and student loan. I get so near, yet remain so far away.
Daryn's gotten a lot of good things his way; a new titanium wheelchair, the last of some upgrades to his car's hand controls and adaptive stuff so he can drive it--I hope to get him his license this month. We also got some new clothes for him so he can go to a job fair and try to become gainfully employed.
And what am I doing? ...... Not substitute teaching, despite still being on the list and calling Choudrant High at the start of the school year to remind them of such. My eBay sales have been sporadic; I'm hoping the Sesshie card I sold tonight will start a trend for the better. (I'm really thankful for one lady who bought a bunch of Gundam prints from me last month, that covered two bills!) I applied at the Lowe's in this area and have tried pestering the college schoolmate of mine who works there, but I think she's flaked out on me. I feel like I just haven't been able to catch much of a break. I wasn't even able to sleep really well for a long while, probably because of the 20-year-old mattress of ours causing the horrible cricks and pinched nerves in my shoulders and neck. FINALLY I broke down and bought (on a credit card, like practically everything else this month) a memory foam pad for the mattress and a new pillow--now I'm finally able to sleep! Just not enough...
What's kept me from toppling over the edge into complete depression has been my Transformers writing. I hadn't done any in a long while, but thankfully I seem to have hit a vein and so I'm following it as far as it'll take me. I've updated and organized character profiles and scribbled notes for story outlines, and even started a binder for Daryn and all of his work. The first half of the overall TF timeline I have is actually his story ideas, though the actual writing will inevitably fall to me. If I can keep this up and get some of the stuff that bridges his work and mine pounded out, then maybe I can get some of the 'prequel work' formally written out for the first time in the ten years since he came up with it! All I have are some general outlines and a couple of character descriptions at the moment.
It's been my dream since 1992 to write the next animated TF series that follows where G1 left off. Now thanks to Daryn that plan also encompasses the 'origin story' before the G1 series (all the things that were alluded to in the post-Movie series, for those who've watched it).
I have two binders' worth of work, which I'm basically trying to organize like a production bible--way back in 1998 I was lucky enough to be able to thumb through an original series bible for the G1 pre-Movie series. I got a lot done toward that end this weekend, though I still have a long way to go.
Oh, while I'm at it, one quick plug: [link]
This is a brand-new page on my site. Follow Starscream's directions and make your voice heard! (And feel free to surf the rest of Voices of Cybertron, I'm adding lots of cool stuff there!)
All this work isn't paying me a dime or getting me any closer to out of Ruston. But it's what sustains me at this moment, and that's pretty damn important.

]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9778136/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9778136/ Sat, 19 Aug 2006 01:24:03 PDT

Well, last weekend was Mechacon 2, an anime and Transformers convention in Lafayette, LA. I'll write up a Mechacon report, once I've finished recovering! That was a party! And I have one more con to go, come Labor Day weekend I'll be in Dallas for AnimeFest. I'm hoping that will be a great show, it certainly has been the last couple of years.
It will also mean summer is almost over! This one has been hot and miserable. I still plan to move out west, and I hope to do so before the start of summer next year. But I'm going to take my time and not make myself crazy in the interim...
A big thank you to all the folks I met at Mechacon who've added me to their friends list! Welcome to the gang!

Hopefully I'll have much to add soon. Till then! ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9471772/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9471772/ Sun, 23 Jul 2006 19:57:49 PDT It started on Monday actually. I started training for a job doing what you could call field sales--going door-to-door to businesses and setting appointments to do demonstrations. I started to figure out pretty quickly, this is NOT me. In fact, I need to go back on Monster.com and revise my search parameters to exclude sales; who wants to work for commissions, which is a feast-or-famine deal to begin with, being an Evil Salesperson (tm)? Because face it, to most people salesmen (or women) are evil. You can see it in their reactions, it's creepy.
Well, this didn't last long at all because the temperature topped 100 degrees all last week; I was out in the heat most of the day Monday, and by the end of it I had a pretty bad case of heat exhaustion. I don't quite know how bad, but Daryn said later that he was really worried. And I felt sick all night, too...when you get really dehydrated, it gets harder to maintain an even body temperature and you get cold, then hot, then cold again... Took me a couple of days to get better.

But over the course of healing, some things seemed to change. First of all, I called my manager people and told them I was resigning from that position. Being perpetual salespeople, they tried to talk me out of it, but I stayed firm. And I realized, I've been so wrapped up in trying to get a high-paying job and move Daryn and I out of state that I was driving myself mad. Not only was I letting people and situations get to me, I was losing sight of a lot of things as well. But I felt so much better mentally as I got better physically. I noticed how good it felt to wake up next to Daryn and know that I didn't have to go anywhere; I decided that yes, we will move out of here, but not before we're both ready. (That means when Daryn has his driver's license, among other things, and when we've saved up more money.) I'm happy to be well, happy to have free time right now and I'm trying to keep up a positive outlook. I'm also trying to shed some of the expectations I'd had of myself that were making me so crazy.

And, a friend of mine will be over next weekend, so I'll have company on my birthday. That's another fortunate turn, I'll be able to spend the day in the company of friends.

So, things are looking up! Big hugs and good feelings for everyone! ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9317844/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9317844/ Sun, 09 Jul 2006 03:30:23 PDT

Ever since I was twelve or so I've always tried to do something to celebrate Egyptian New Year's Day. And since it's in the middle of the year on our Western calendar, it seems like a good time to take stock of how the year is going. What's gone well? What's gone bad? What would you like to work on for the rest of this year? How would you like things to be different this time next "Wepet Renpet"?

I think I'm actually better off this time than I was last year. I have an eBay business--it may be going slow, but it's turned out more than I managed last year. I have a plan for where I want to move and I'm saving up for it. Daryn's closer to getting his driver's license and I'm really happy for him about it. My resolution to get out of Ruston, LA before the end of 2006 still hasn't changed. I'm still cooling my heels for the summer, something I'd rather not be doing, but I at least have plans. (Waspinator has plans...!)

Okay, guys, your turn! Anybody have a resolution they're still working on? Anybody have a new one they want to make for the Egyptian New Year? I encourage everyone to weigh in and add theirs in the comments, and I'll paste them on my Temple of Tutankhamun webpage ([link]). And Happy Egyptian New Year for everyone! ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9216513/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/9216513/ Thu, 29 Jun 2006 01:02:12 PDT
At the beginning of the month, I got a call from the AFLAC (yes, the duck people) office in Albuquerque, NM. They wanted to schedule an interview. Great! I scheduled one for the 23rd. Then, about a week before I was supposed to go, I got a call from the AFLAC office here in Ruston. It seems they also got my resume from Monster, and penciled me in for an interview the next day. Seemed like things were really looking up! So it seemed...
I put my plush Starscream up on eBay, hoping he could help me garner some money for the trip. I really didn't want to put an entire trip on Daryn's credit card, especially when there was no guarantee it would net me anything. I also didn't have much money in my Paypal reserves, and Sesshomaru's revenue pretty much dried up this month owing to convention season. (Anime fans are more likely to be saving money for shows instead of shopping on eBay.) I swear, I must have driven myself mad that ten days while Plushiescream was up. I realized after at least a hundred hits and no bids that nobody would manage the $300 I was hoping to get for him, so I dropped the reserve. That only helped some. His final price turned out to be less than a C note. After all that hard work I'd put into him, that was a real disappointment. I have one more that I've made plus a Skywarp that's almost done; those two will go with me to Mechacon and Animefest, and if they don't sell there...hell, I don't know. Probably keep Skywarp and whore Starscream out for another pittance. Got plans for my own personal set of Seeker plushies (including another Starscream) anyway.
That's not the end of the escapade that has been June! Around that same time interval I also had to get in my wretched father's face just to get him to pay a medical bill I got under his employ and keep myself out of collections. That was a distasteful experience, suffice it to say that even the voice of Sesshomaru knows how lousy my father is.
And LAST weekend, my kid brother--who has moved down to DeRidder, Louisiana and has a job--called us to help him move his truck. The lucky little troutsniffer has a company truck now, and he wanted to move his personal truck from his job site back to his apartment. I'll come out and say it right now, I officially censure my own decision to say yes. I want that Saturday back at the end of my life. Come to find out when we got there, he COULD have waited until the next work week and gotten his boss to help him--but no! He probably just wanted to see us again, but the f$%!ing kid needs to branch out and get some FRIENDS. Leave us the hell alone....!
Only good thing to come out of that day is this moral: Always leave a little something for the Money Buddha. If you see one at a Chinese restaurant or other establishment, leave him a few cents even if no one else has (which I ended up doing). Hotei, the Money Buddha a.k.a. the Laughing Buddha a.k.a. MIROKU (yes, that is the Japanese name of a Buddha/Bodhisattva) could get you out of a jam in return; in my case, it was a would-be ticket for doing 51 in a 35 mph zone at two in the morning trying to get home. Whew!
And, as you might have seen coming, I had to totally cancel my trip to NM. That was going to be my vacation. Sank that battleship....
Then, come to find out, dear Mr. Kaye will be at Ikasucon in Cincinnati, OH two weeks before my birthday. And I don't have the funds to go right now.
The final aggravating end to this month is that I've been trying to call back the local AFLAC office to attempt to schedule a second interview and get the process going so I can start work as an Independent Sales Agent. If I could do that, I could start earning money here and transfer out west--but so far the reprobate at the Ruston office has not been available and not returned my calls. That really pisses me off because it would be potentially some very good money.
At this point, my plan is this:
1) Keep harassing the hell out of the local AFLAC people... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8773624/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8773624/ Sun, 14 May 2006 23:28:27 PDT
I didn't make as much money on eBay over the course of spring that I was hoping to; granted, I can't lie, the powwow in Natchez took out a lot of what I had saved. But I'm hoping to plop a big-ticket item or two online and make up some change come next month.
This summer I plan at least one road trip, although it won't be the mega-journey to Canada I'd been hoping for at the start of the year. Instead, I do intend to go to Chicago to see the King Tut exhibit. I hope that will be the last time I travel east of the Mississippi River for a long, long time. Everything east of there is so boring!
Afterwards I'm bound for New Mexico. I expect to have to visit once or twice to interview or apartment-hunt, but if I have my way then I'll have myself and Daryn moved there by the end of the year. And I'm not telling my family when I move. My DA readers will know before they do!
If I'm not out west for my birthday, which is the last day of July, then I'll have to think of some other way to drop out of sight for the day. Last year's was miserable. and I vow it will be the last time I have such a rotten birthday. You'd have to ask me for details, but I don't intend to spend another such day crying on Sesshomaru's pelt.
Here comes summer, and here goes. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8495745/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8495745/ Mon, 17 Apr 2006 03:16:03 PDT Bit of background detail first; I have a plushie of Sesshomaru that I made myself back in early '04. As you might imagine, he gets a lot of love! But he is forbidden on the bed unless we have company over sleeping on his couch...Tutami the plush female Transformer won't have him in her space without good reason. (Is anyone starting to think I'm certifiable yet, having territorial handmade plushies around the house? ) So about two months ago when my kid brother was over last, Sesshomaru spent the night on my pillow. (And yes, with brushable hair made of embroidery thread, he does get bed head!) He must have really made himself at home...
Sheerly for dramatic purposes, I'll share Daryn's dream first. He actually had his the night after mine. He dreamed that he was in the middle of the forest somehow, wheelchair and all, and who should arrive but Sesshomaru and entourage. Sesshie knew him right away and let him come along. Daryn insisted on pushing his chair, but wasn't making much progress over the rough, uneven ground. Sesshomaru decided this was getting nowhere fast, so he picked up Daryn and plopped him on Ah-Oon (the horses) and put the wheelchair behind him. Then he took him to a therapuetic hot spring. Daryn's dreams always blow me away because he can sit there and describe incredible details; the morning after dreaming this he could tell me about how Sesshomaru's pelt behaves in the water, and that it doesn't even seem to get wet when submerged. Rin helped herself into the hot spring but Jaken stayed out because he would get too hot. Meanwhile Sesshomaru helps Daryn stand in the water (which Daryn can do in a pool, we used to do this as a form of therapy) and walk around in a part with a smooth, rocky bottom. He was even able to help Daryn stretch out--something that's always an issue when someone has cerebral palsy because their muscles tend to get spastic--because the hot water helped him completely relax. When it came time to climb out of the hot spring, something had to be done because Sesshomaru had basically cut Daryn out of his normal clothes with his claws; so he wrapped him up in his kimono top and basically went topless, draping his armor next to the wheelchair on Ah-Oon's back. (Is this driving anyone else crazy yet? ) Sesshie then took the motley entourage to a kimono maker who was basically his personal tailor. Daryn could see a kimono being made for Rin, and was fitted for one of his own. I'd've probably eaten my own left arm off just listening to this and going nuts, but Daryn described seeing another kimono in the shop that was patterned just like Sesshomaru's with the exception of being blue with white printing instead of white with red prints. That one was meant for me.
How Daryn manages to have mad detailed dreams like this, I don't have the first clue. But it certainly seems like he was "adopted" in that one!
Mine was interesting in its own right, though. It's probably what kept me from being envious hearing Daryn's account, since I had this the night before.
Well, actually, it must have been sometime in the early morning that I dreamed this. I found myself in a feudal Japanese village. I was in a hut that had no door covering, and outside the villagers began screaming and running away in terror. A demon was coming, they wailed. But I saw the approaching figure silhouetted black in the doorway and wasn't afraid at all. "Lord Sesshomaru!" I called happily (probably sounding a bit like Rin in tone...) He heard me and stepped inside. He'd been holding Toukijin, but must have sheathed it upon hearing me because the next thing I knew I was in his arms (arm?). Details aren't very clear in a lot of my dreams, but the sensation of being in his embrace was, quite frankly, very real. I had my back against him, and as he leaned close to my ear I could hear him whisper something to me. "Come back to me soon," he said.
Next thing I knew, I woke up. It was daylight and the alarm was about to go off. And who should be nestled next to me on the pillow like he owned the place?
I couldn't help but wonder about that d... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8379664/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8379664/ Thu, 06 Apr 2006 00:31:18 PDT

It started at 2AM Saturday morning when the phone rang. Guess who? The cockroach, a.k.a. my kid brother. He was having yet another girlfriend crisis, and "needed" to talk to Daryn. Worse, he "needed" Daryn's company the next day, and we were supposed to be meeting with our friend for the powwow! Well, some people have wondered aloud if Daryn is trying to qualify for sainthood, because he agreed to let Jean come pick him up and spend the day over at my dad's place (dad was headed out of town). Our spur-of-the-moment change in plans was for me to go to Natchez, MS myself and stay the night with our pal Tammy. Jean-boy would take Daryn home and stay the night with him in case Daryn needed anything.

Unlike some people, *I* make a plan and stick to it!!! That morning I headed down to Natchez, Tammy and I made a day of it and that afternoon I called to check on Daryn. I figured he'd be in Bossier with Jean-boy, right? Wrong! The little trout-sniffer never showed up. Daryn called him a couple of times and woke him up each time--it seems the kid was so busy crying his eyes out or trying to call his girlfriend or whatever that he didn't sleep that night and felt dizzy and sick that morning. I think he may have crawled his lousy carcass out of bed sometime that afternoon, instead of going to get Daryn before lunch!

Daryn said I didn't have to come home, but I did anyway. It was the principle of the matter. I got us up early again the next morning so we could all finish the powwow together. That meant another tank of gas for Megatron (my car) and dinner for us in Monroe that night, so it was a somewhat expensive weekend. We finally crawled in bed around two-ish...and I got called to substitute teach about four and a half hours later.

I don't know if Daryn would be in this list or not, he's a rather patient soul, but the list of folks now thirsting for my brother's blood includes:
Myself
Tammy
Sesshomaru

His girlfriend finally broke up with him last weekend. So that Sunday she toted his boxed-up junk to my place, and I get to play courier and bring it back to him. I'm not even going to get into the sixty-year-old heirloom St. Christopher's medal he gave to his girlfriend that has now made its way to my Buddhist altar. That would be a rant unto itself....

I have MSN Yellow Pages for Albuquerque, New Mexico open in another window. I know when I've had enough... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8193144/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/8193144/ Fri, 17 Mar 2006 22:35:43 PST

In any case, life is currently random busy silly happenings. Looking forward very much to a powwow next weekend, doing some pretty good business on eBay and hoping to stash as much money away as I can. I realize I'm in kind of an odd situation right now because I want to save up for an uber road trip this summer, but any money I save could also go toward a nest egg to move us with. I'd like to save for both...decisions, decisions! Well, more like, reality! Go away! I've had more than enough already...

Maybe I'm just under a lot of pressure to do more to get us enough income to move out of Section 8 housing. I'll confess, I haven't done a whole lot of job-hunting in this Deity-forsaken area because I doubt I'd find anything. I'm too educated to mumble in a loudspeaker at Taco Bell but too inexperienced to get ridiculously paid to sit behind a computer and too 'heathen' to teach kids in the same town where I live (which is why I teach in Choudrant instead). I'm just very thankful for my success on eBay and for those poor hick kids in Choudrant...

I need to keep digging and try to find some cheap land somewhere in the mountains in New Mexico. And figure out what the hell my SAT scores were again so I can sell eggs for ridiculous money to parents who want another genius G&T lab rat for a kid.

Anyway, if I can just hang in there until next weekend when I can relax and get out of the apartment awhile, things will be better. Wish me luck! ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7957808/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7957808/ Mon, 20 Feb 2006 22:30:22 PST Then we had the cockroach move in...
My kid brother graduates in a little less than a week by now. But, a couple of weeks ago, he was incredibly behind on his classwork in his engineering classes and was freaking out because of it.
Now, I'll say it right now, keeping us up until four in the morning trying to disassemble our toilet a week or so previously didn't help his ass. (Uhh, pun not intended. ) I certainly wasn't thrilled to have a frickin' sander going at one in the morning! But between goofy shenanigans like that and wasting time on the phone with his girlfriend or mom and just plain sleeping through s#!t, he needed a taskmaster rather badly.
Which is where we came in.
So for the next week and a half, his dirty socks and books were scattered across our living room floor; our dining table (really just a card table from Wal-Mart) became his laptop table; our fridge became overrun with bottled Cokes and Sprites (I've been trying to keep Daryn and I more healthy and only have a six-pack of mini-Cokes in the fridge at a given time); and we had to feed him every now and again. And when we didn't feed him, he subsisted on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (he bought his own supplies) and wonders why he's gaining weight!
Here's another idea of annoying crap he would do. I had a dish towel on the kitchenette counter, and as he fixed himself another sandwich he picked up the towel and wiped his mouth with it! I fussed at him and told him to put it in the dirty clothes.
Then we spilled a bit of water on the floor--and without thinking, he just grabbed the other dish towel I had on the fridge door handle and dropped in onto the dirty floor, pushing it around with his foot!
His insane hours made it harder for me to substitute teach--I did it sleep-depped a couple of times, and actually had to pass one day because I'd been up all night--and I must have gotten so exhausted by the end of it that I caught a nasty cold. But was that enough grounds to throw him out yet?
Nope.
Daryn finally came down with the cold I did, and decided that we better kick the cockroach out before he got sick too and couldn't keep working on his homework anymore.
So, Daryn's Valentine's Day present to me was to have my kid brother out of our apartment. Took us both being sick for him to do it...but at least our apartment is ours again.
I hope the kid doesn't come back! Ever! And I want to move out of this time zone!
Anyway. I need to work on my essay about Sesshomaru, and why I can appreciate him because I have little brothers too. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7436311/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7436311/ Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:52:46 PST This started out as if I were watching a new Inu-Yasha movie. So of course the title mutt was in it (sorry, I'm partial to his older brother, ) but so was Sesshomaru and his entourage. I remember watching Rin say "SIT" and it worked on Inu-yasha, which made me laugh... Sesshie seemed to sound a little different at first so I remember stopping to try and read the playbill and make sure that David Kaye was still Sesshomaru's voice; I guess this was something that reached even into my subconscious brain because I know Dave, and have flatly insisted to friends before that we watch the third Inu-Yasha movie dubbed to support my voice actor friends!
Well, this is a dream so naturally logic takes very large breaks in sequence. And now I'm IN the action. But here's where it takes another departure from natural progression--

Suddenly we're on a space station full of Gundams.

I could see some Gundams from "Wing" that I recognized, like Sandrock and Heavyarms, plus a few that I didn't recognize. At first I was thinking, 'youkai and Gundams, merry Christmas to me!' and hoping that Zechs would show up somewhere...although I think it occurred to me even then that introducing him to Sesshomaru would be surreal in the very least!
Well, my reverie was interrupted when I somehow realized that this was not a freedom-fighting, colony-defending assemblage of Gundams. These were military superweapons--rather like some of the older UC Gundam series, or else Gundam Seed--and worse, they were being piloted by soldiers who realized they had unwanted guests.
I saw Sesshomaru step forward and put a hand on Toukijin. My money would NOT be on Sesshie in a fight with a mobile suit! I told him that he'd never win that way, but I had a different idea...namely, boosting an unmanned Gundam. Good thing he has that nifty leap-anywhere ability, otherwise we'd've had hell climbing up there! So the two of us are crammed in a Gundam cockpit--not that I minded! Don't ask me how his spiky armor didn't get in the way, I don't know. But I distinctly recall being nestled quite comfortably in his lap, and strapping us in to the Gundam cockpit.
Then we had what I could only call a classic convention of fiction; the evil military commander of the space station, who vaguely resembled either a military commander from Full Metal Alchemist or possibly another Gundam series, stepped out and basically announced that we were caught. It was useless to try piloting a Gundam, he explained, because it was beyond any ordinary human's capability. I think I said something in response, and again in classic fictional convention he decided the hangar full of military people would find it amusing to watch us try.
I distinctly remember telling Sesshomaru, "You've got to be my legs." It was up to him to control the Gundam's movement while I worked the targeting systems. Again, do NOT ask me how a fuedal Japanese nature spirit can figure out how to work the sticks on a futuristic mobile suit (unless his 'roommate' Treize had been giving him lessons!). But sure enough, I could feel the 'toom, toom' of this immense suit's feet moving beneath us.
Meanwhile, I could see through the display the arms, which had a small rotary gatling gun on each forearm. (Rather like Heavyarms' only smaller.) I found the trigger for each one, and with a satisfied grin began to pepper the group of other Gundams with machine gun fire. With Sesshomaru's demon reflexes and me handling the heavy artillery, this was going to get interesting.

And then the g@#d!nmed phone rang.
To add insult to injury, it was a wrong number!!!!!

For a minute I settled deeper under the covers, hoping maybe I could get back to sleep and finish where we left off--I remember thinking, "If that thing had a beam saber, I'd put it in the suit's right hand and tell Sesshomaru 'You know what to do'!"

But alas, no go. Daryn was up, and I had to get up. Damn it all. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7341947/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7341947/ Sun, 18 Dec 2005 02:34:38 PST
First off, I'm going to wish everyone a Happy Holiday Season! I know there's a lot of conservative backlash going around right now about "Merry Christmas", but hey--that little thing called a "Melting Pot"? America? Just saying "Happy Holidays" encompasses everybody, including Christians celebrating Christmas, so what's wrong with it? Anyway.

Been making a little money selling off some of my convention merchandise on eBay, so I'm happy and the bills are paid for the month. Can't go wrong there!

Working on a Xmas card using some concept art from my slowly growing portfolio, will post that here when it's done.

Bought a senet board off eBay last month; it's an ancient Egyptian board game, though of course this one was made recently and the rules have been reconstructed from archaeological records. It's actually quite the fun game! And the board is actually a box with a little drawer for the peices. I may hornswaggle my brothers into helping me make one or two on our own, because I bet people would dig them. Great way to spend a couple of hours and keep yourself and a friend in suspense...

Anyway, be cool everyone. Peace out. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7145907/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7145907/ Sat, 26 Nov 2005 01:48:05 PST I decided to wear a t-shirt I picked up at a powwow; it pictures Geronimo and some of his Apache warriors toting rifles with the caption, "Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism Since 1492". (Love the joke...) I also wore my bone pipe bead choker, which was a gift from my good friend Tammy, who is of Chickasaw descent.
Since I started trying to learn more about my Cherokee ancestry last year, I guess you can say I've become more aware of certain things. For one, have you ever noticed that Thanksgiving decorations picture turkeys and Pilgrims, but hardly ever Indians? Sometimes in school plays they have kids make paper bag vests and dress as Indians, but not that often. Yet, if it weren't for the native Americans of the New England region, we'd have no Thanksgiving!
Tammy told us a long while ago that some Indians today look on Squanto, the historical figure who helped the Puritan settlers learn to adapt to their surroundings and survive the harsh New England winters, as a traitor to our kind. Personally, I think that judgement is rather harsh. None of the Iroquois tribes at that time had any idea what was in store for them as Europeans established themselves in the New World. (In fact, the Cherokee and British established formal relations and the Cherokee assisted them during the Revolution, which came back to haunt them after Britain lost.) Furthermore, native Americans believe in the Universal Circle--yes, a 'circle of life'--in which all things are part. Everyone is related through this circle, which is why Indians are known for adopting people as family. In fact, Tammy is 'big sis' to Daryn and I. Based on those beliefs, Squanto had to have felt that he was helping his fellow beings by teaching the Puritans how to live off the land. His intentions had to have been honorable; had the New England tribes known what the Puritans' ultimate intentions were, they probably would have assembled a war party and wiped them off the continent!
It's easy to regret generosity when the recipient answers with cruelty or hard feelings. But the fact remains that your own kindness will remain with you in good karma. I've had to learn that in the past for myself...
As I'm sure those Indians who first dealt with the Puritans did too. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7014399/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/7014399/ Fri, 11 Nov 2005 00:28:53 PST
Lately I've been working on a portfolio for animation, something I'm really hopeful for. I basically need some landscapes, drawings of people and animals from life, some original character models and the like. The biggest peice would be a short animated work, which I'll need to upgrade my computer for and gank Macromedia Flash and Adobe Aftereffects. You guys can help by promoting my prints and other stuff for sale! Go to [link] to check 'em out!

Hopefully as I get some stuff completed and scanned I'll be able to upload it here so you guys can peruse it.

Other than that, trying not to stay up late and sleep late...starting to slip a little, I slept in this afternoon. Thought for those of you in the US with me who'll be celebrating Thanksgiving:

"Sure, you can trust the government--ask any Indian..."

Peace out! ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6781807/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6781807/ Sun, 16 Oct 2005 09:24:18 PDT First of all; yes, I have been in two different cults at different points in my life. Maybe I better lay the disclaimer down now, if you or somebody you know is in a group I'm about to name, don't get riled. Taking it personally doesn't help...
In college I was in Amway for awhile. Amway classifies as a commercial cult--theirs is the dogma of greed, but only the higher members make any real money. The rank and file members instead are pressured to recruit as many new members as they can, buy products and motivational tapes and go to seminars *ad nauseum*. My fiance and I dropped out because there wasn't any real money to be made in buying paper towels in bulk from ourselves.
Then in 2002 I joined what I thought was a simple lay Buddhist organization called Soka Gakkai International. Little did I know they are basically the Japanese equivelent of the Moonies. I didn't find out they were listed as a dangerous cult until spring 2004, when I found an independent group of Nichiren Buddhists online, many of whom were ex-SGI members. From there I learned a whole wealth of information about cults, enough to give a talk about it at my old high school this April.
First of all, having been involved in a cult doesn't make you a sucker. It doesn't mean you're gullible or lacking sense. In fact, what defines a group as a cult is not what they BELIEVE, but what they DO, and one of the hallmarks of a cult is deception, paired with an obsession for recruiting more members. For example, I noticed while in SGI that they held several "public interest meetings" in my area that were supposed to be about Buddhism, but were really just recruitment drives for the organization, which always was discussed before Buddhism itself. Most people aren't particularly well-versed in any sect of Buddhism, so how would they know the difference?
You can learn a lot more about groups that are considered cults by going to [link] and searching their alphabetical list. You can also go to the homepage, surf around and learn basic characteristics of mind-controlling cult groups. At some point I plan to put into webpage form the talk I gave at Louisiana School, but until then freedomofmind is a great place to look around and learn.
As for the groups in the news. I should clarify now, not every organized religion is a cult. No matter how much somebody, (myself included,) may disagree with the Roman Catholic Church or Pentecostals or whatever church, just because they're an established religion and even one that considers itself the "only true" faith doesn't automatically make them a cult. Conversely, saying that a given group under suspicion (such as SGI) is not a cult because, "oh, all religions are cults" is just a cop-out.
There is a listing for the Mormon church on freedom of mind, but they fall in the 'dubious' category. Newsweek has a rather glowing review of them in this week's issue; but there are some polygamist hold-outs in backwoods Utah that I think would fall into the category of dangerous, controlling cults, even if the main church doesn't.
The other group I noticed in the headlines is the Nation of Islam, which held another "Million Man March" on Washington and criticized the federal government for neglecting victims of Hurricane Katrina. The group leader called for donations to a fund supposed to help Katrina victims--but, as a Louisiana resident I urge people, tell everyone they know, DO NOT CONTRIBUTE to ANY such fund unless you know EXACTLY WHERE the money goes! A quick look through articles under the Nation of Islam listing on freedom of mind confirmed that the NoI leader, Louis Farrakhan, has already bilked members to support his own lavish lifestyle. We Louisianians have already had that happen to us once, don't let cult groups take advantage of us again!
Was Washington negligent, even racist in the Katrina aftermath? Absolutely. Do I think, as Farrakhan is reported to have claimed privately, that levees were bombed? Hell, no. (And Jesse Jackson has no clue what went on, either, insinuating that barges broke a levee.) What doomed New Orleans was poor planning and improper construction, which still counts as negligence. But anyway, that's my own pet soap box...
It's easy to think th... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6665210/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6665210/ Mon, 03 Oct 2005 02:53:09 PDT
I should probably post my BotCon report here, plus the longer and more updated version of my Katrina rant. The state's issued a spending freeze until the jack@$$es in Washington finally give us more money, which cuts programs like Vocational Rehabilitation Services. Anyway. It's all in the rant...

Only problem with downtime from conventions is that I end up sleeping all day and staying up all night. It's not healthy, I know, but it's the best way to get stuff done online sometimes.

Wondering if I'll be watching the sun come up today... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6480785/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6480785/ Sun, 11 Sep 2005 20:39:57 PDT But yes, I am a native Louisianian, born and raised in the northern part of the state. If you're geographically inclined, grab a map and look for Shreveport. My hometown of Bossier City is right acrosss the Red River from it. (BTW, it's actually pronounced "bo-zher".)
Thankfully, the one great-aunt I had living in the New Orleans area evacuated to my great-grandmother's farm before the storm. Mine and Daryn's college friends from N.O. also made it out. We finally got in touch with one friend, Allan, via cellphone a week after everything happened. He's currently in Houston, Texas. It was good hearing from him.

There are some issues pertaining to this tragedy that I think are best explained by a native, though.
First of all, several news shows and Discovery Channel documentaries discussed coastal erosion. Perhaps the disaster in New Orleans will finally bring this issue, once viewed as a local problem by those who even knew about it, into the national and even international spotlight. You see, the state of Louisiana is relatively small; you can drive from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to our border with Arkansas in about six hours. But historically we had more miles of shoreline than any other state in the union; those many miles of shoreline took the form of barrier islands and marshy inlets that wove in and out, forming a brackish water barrier that kept south Louisiana safe from potential storm surge of the kind that hit New Orleans.
Notice, however, that I said "had". When it was discovered that Louisiana's marshes were steadily disappearing into the ocean, the problem was treated like any other environmental issue--relegated to nature magazine articles (like /Louisiana Conservationist/) and Congressional "pork barrel projects". I can remember in the early 90's reading about Christmas tree drives, where people collected live trees after Christmas to be cleaned of tinsel and dumped into the waters off the coast of our barrier islands, a modestly economical attempt to stem the tide of erosion. When the White House refused to grant funding for state projects time and again, and when projections about the rate of marsh loss were branded as "alarmist", what else could we do?
The same was also true of levee projects. Louisiana is reputed to have the best levee system in the country; but our Senators and Representatives have been practically begging for more money to keep them in repair for years now. Again, funding was denied by those who thought it was all in the name of "pork barrel politics", meaning a way of shoring up political support without yielding any real results.
Well, Washington, here are your results: devastation, loss of life, and a repair bill that far and away outstrips the money we Louisianians asked for to keep our shores and levees strong. Good spending decisions, ladies and gentlemen.

Yes, Louisiana politics have a legendary reputation for corruption. But as a voting resident, I can tell you about two figures who've been in the news who are NOT to be written off as mere crooks: Governor Kathleen Blanco and Senator Mary Landrieu. Yes, they're both women and both Democrats. They also both competed in heated runoff campaigns against Republican opponents who had support but no real qualifications. I shudder to think how this natural disaster would be handled locally had the other people won.
But did you know that, earlier this very same summer, Governor Blanco asked for more funding for coastal restoration and was turned down by Mr. Bush? She invited him personally to come and tour the shrinking wetlands he dismissed as less important than the 'war on terror'. I bet his P.R. people don't want anyone recalling that incident.
In the end, Senator Landrieu and our other lawmaking representatives worked a clause into the Energy Bill that allowed for more funding than originally proposed by the White House. Here's hoping that trend increases, for the sake of everything located south of Interstate 10.
Incidentally, Daryn and I have driven across south Louisiana along I-10 a few times before. The geography is wholly unique. There's a stretch of marsh called the Atchafalaya ("a-CHAFF-a-LAI-uh") Basin, where the Interstate becomes a bridge almost thirty miles long. Underneath is swamp, and the tops of the trees are almost level with the roadway. I'd like to point out that terrain around New Orleans, especially around Lake Ponchartrain, is very similar.
Well, Daryn and I noted to ourselves that should the other 'alarmist' predictions about global warming come true and sea levels rise, I-10 will probably become the new coastline--if it stays above water. Can you imagine the impact of having to evacuate even MORE people out of their homes? Do y... ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6268934/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6268934/ Fri, 19 Aug 2005 08:08:48 PDT
I'm sick of the obstinate contention that gay and lesbian marriages somehow destroy the sanctity of marriage and undermine the fabric of American society. Logically, it would be called a "straw man" fallacy. If right-wingers and Christian fundamentalists want to stop the unravelling of said fabric, I have some other issues they should look at first before grabbing their torches and pitchforks and going on yet another witchhunt.
First of all, statistically every marriage stands a 1 in 2 shot of ending in divorce. Would you take a flight on a plane that had a 50-50 shot of crashing? Probably not. But 1 in every 2 marriages--that's (supposedly) wholesome, heterosexual marriages--go down in flames, destroying people's finances, emotions, and to say nothing of the psyches of any children involved. Why doesn't anyone lead a crusade to stem the divorce rate? Why doesn't the government support more counseling for children of divorced parents, and marriage therapists for couples in strife? Since when is it a greater affront to God for a gay or lesbian couple to marry than it is for a heterosexual couple to break a supposedly sacred vow? Here's another fun question: how many anti-homosexual legislators are violating a sacred covenant by cheating, hmmm?
But then again, the government doesn't honor all marriages that are heterosexual anyway. Did you know that, if you are handicapped and supported on SSI (Social Security Income,) that money gets taken away the moment you marry an able-bodied person--even if they're unemployed or on minimum wage? Yet, if you marry another handicapped person on SSI, you both keep your government pittance. Frankly, that's the federal government's way of discriminating against the disabled and trying to keep them from mingling with the public at large.
In conclusion, then, not all marriages are considered sacred, not by the people who are screaming the loudest about its 'sanctity'. Only 'perfect' Christians with 'perfect' bodies and 'perfect' ideals have marriages 'honored by God'. Does that sound familiar to anyone besides me? Remember, the Nazis thought they were being good Christians too. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6136483/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/6136483/ Thu, 04 Aug 2005 21:25:52 PDT I guess I better warn people now: when I offer opinions they're likely to offend somebody. If you're politically correct or sensitive, better jump ship.
Her findings weren't surprising to me. Women who try to "have it all" end up shorting one side or the other; either they neglect their kids or their careers suffer. Or they do like my mom, and play homemaker for a dozen years then decide they have to "find themselves", go back to school and get a divorce. Yet one more reason why I choose not to procreate.
What actually got me a little peeved, though, was the blithe acceptance of an outdated standard for career success: a college degree. All the women surveyed had either graduate degrees or "high honors" bachellaureate degrees. Well, I guess my lousy art degree wouldn't count for one of those, just because my grades depended upon the snot-nosed opinions of art professors.
For the record, I graduated from a college prep high school that accepted only the top 1% of kids in the state. I got an outstanding student scholarship and chose art as my major because I wanted to challenge my skills. But the biggest thing I've learned is that today, in the 21st century, college degrees don't mean d!@k. I can't find a 'steady job with a nice pension', and neither can my fiance' with a masters degree. All us Gen Xers who are accused of being 'lazy', actually can't find work because the Baby Boomers have all the jobs. And those same Boomers are working into their retirement years, so many fields probably won't open up until the Baby Boomers finally earn back enough money to retire or die, whichever comes first.
I would tell any academically gifted kid I met today to find a way to make money online, or start their own RL business. Don't expect to get good work, our parents took it all. ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/5919872/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/5919872/ Wed, 13 Jul 2005 03:19:22 PDT
...Actually, I'd love it if I got lots of visitors checking out my work. Go ahead! Tell a friend!

...and beware! ]]> ~Tutankhamun http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/5267501/ http://Tutankhamun.deviantart.com/journal/5267501/ Wed, 04 May 2005 17:45:53 PDT ~Tutankhamun