Chaos Attraction

Stealing From The Rich, Giving To The Poor

2020-07-27, 10:39 p.m.

The painters are now painting the patio area. Very weird to hear guys chatting away out there. It's like both creepy stalker and "so close, and yet so far." At least they stopped blaring the music during the time I had to train people. They left the paper up overnight, so I guess Sneezy McCoughsalot is locked in! Muahahahah!

Today's morning meeting:
(a) Lioness announced that she went to a party with a sushi chef and 30 people. "30 people inside a house?!" "They were spaced out." And now we're back to the 2 week wait for her. (I found out later this was Former Coworker Sarah's sister throwing said party, so she was at it too.)
(b) Also Lioness: "I raised my children, my husband's children, and now my son's children." It never ends.
(c) New employee did an outside movie night and outside BBQ.
(d) Boss's kid's growth on his jaw isn't malignant, so it's not cancer. Whew. "They found vegetable matter in his jawbone." Whaaaa? They're getting a second opinion biopsy.
(e) Another coworker I haven't nicknamed bought a house and has been having issues with her predictably shitty landlord. There's a moldy toilet in there they reported, and when the plumber said it needed to be replaced along with the linoleum, the landlady got a second opinion and got a guy to say it was just "discoloration." Coworker's response: "I didn't know discoloration GREW." Now that they're moving out, there's all kinds of arguing. Also, the garbage disposal has been broken for the last six months and the sink doesn't drain. OH GOD. I had fruit flies after a few DAYS of that shit, I can't imagine the grossness of six months. This lady makes my management look GOOD.

Other than that, it was a quiet day, thank gawd. I will probably be in trouble tomorrow for not doing THE EMAILS, but my primary job is having Busy Day today and I NEED to be doing that, y'all.

There is some kind of similar-office online conference on Wednesday that we are all being forced to go to, but only for one session apiece due to workload. I would have been more excited about this except that my office enemy is going. Now I can't even speak in the thing. Not that I was likely to speak up, mind you, but it's not an option now. And they have restrictions on who's speaking anyway, so fuck it. I strongly suspect that the one I signed up for is going to turn into a gripe session regarding international clientele and the joys of mail, which is why I was into it. But...who knows.

They also sent out a list of all the participants and most people are using very full titles and writing out exactly what they do. I just write "assistant" and the bare minimum whenever anyone asks. I started doing this because whenever they make 20something people in a room introduce themselves and what they do, it takes forever, you forget all of that crap, and who cares. But written out it looked pretty...oh, whatever. New employee was all "I'm filling this out on my second day!"


Today's Comic-Con: (Disclaimer: sometimes I had time to take notes, sometimes I did not.)

Videos I watched but can't think of a darned thing to say about them:

* "Crazy" Talk: Mental Health, Pop Culture, and the Pandemic, Entertainment is Female: a Conversation with Hollywood Executives.
* League of Extraordinary Scientists and Engineers: More Science in Your Fiction: Notable moments: (a) Jasmine the dancing rocket scientist who shows off her painted flute and flute case, (b) a kid bringing in his Lego space station, (c) the girl with Leia buns.
* Farscape:...To Be Continued. "We're living in sci-fi right now." "Black Mirror." Lani Tupu also showed off paintings and had had no idea it had been five months since his last job. The moderator is....wearing a weird captain's hat? It looks radioactive green? There is, of course, a dog sighting.

Zombies and Coronavirus: Planning For The Next Big Outbreak: What blew me away in this one was Max Brooks, calling the current pandemic a "generational plague" and saying that if this had happened 40 years ago when we had people in charge who remembered polio and plagues from before....we don't have that gut fear about it. "Hear that sound? That is the sound of failure." If you can't make the average American understand it, everyone's failed, and that's the problem. He talked about how the arts/Walt Disney were involved in WW2, because how do you make America understand why we fight? "It's all hands on deck in the mask communication department." "Even when we were all kids, we had Schoolhouse Rock." "If we don't bridge the gap, nothing you do will save us." Wow.

How to Create Your Own Novel: Hosted by adorable twins! Being all twinny! I love it! Also, look, two human beings on the same camera! That's two of them at Comic-Con! I am crushing on them both.
Todd McCaffrey pointed out that it's a bit harder to get started when your mother is a famous writer, and he had to get dragooned into writing. Rebecca Moesta mentioned the lab in my hometown having a book club and I was all, (a) she's from my town, and (b) they had a book club there?! She mentions that "we invited the great Kevin J. Anderson to come to our group" and she was surprised to find out that he's a "snot nosed kid, 5 years younger than me," and she was infuriated. His secret was that he finished things. So she got to know him and other authors.... Oh, btw, I just looked at her Wikipedia and she's MARRIED to him now. She didn't mention that bit! Also, he worked at the lab too. (And they appear to be on different bookcases...I mean computers.)

They talked about ADD--"Squirrel!" Brianna but not Brittany has ADD? "The world is becoming sci-fi! Or at least it seems that way." -the twins. "Remember when there were iPods?" "We're punk kids." Anyway, they had some learning disability issues growing up and "we were convinced that we were the most stupid twins in the history of humanity." They didn't realize why people didn't see them as a sophisticated author at the age of 12. "Social media is one big Comic-Con."
They talked about dictation, since most of them in this panel use it. Brittany went blind a few years ago, Brianna is still sighted. They all talked about how it works and how reading aloud improves it. Brittany said dyslexia used to be her biggest problem, but now that she can't see, who cares?
"See, it won't be a twin fight, although that would make for a much more interesting panel." -Brianna.
Kevin has his cat sleeping right behind him and it's adorable. "Yeti's very concerned about the state of the world right now." I guess Brittany isn't totally blind because she can see him wiggling positions. She talked about going blind and if you get any pages at all done right now, you're doing good. Brianna was all to Brittany, "you can't write now because you're LITERALLY in a hospital" back in the day. But they could create and dream, just do something.
Brianna: "I've been doing some really bad paintings." Brittany: "They're actually really good." Brianna: "Thank you. I've apparently been doing some not-so-bad paintings." Todd: "Says the blind girl!" Brittany: "I've got 10 percent in one eye! Sometimes! It moves around." Brianna: "You take the compliments where you can get 'em!" Brittany: "I like your paintings too, Todd!"

Cosplay - The Spice of Life!!! It pays off to find all this change in your couch cushions! Okay, seriously, it talks about cheap vs. good and how to make costumes without sewing by finding things, learning skills, trading with people, etc.


Robin Hood rehearsal: Now we have to film it by the end of mid-August, sigh. New schedule is out for that. I got a loooooot of detailed emails about technical crap and costumes that are boggling my brain.

Tom and and Ann quit out of nowhere today--what's with that?--but replacements have already been dubbed in. Morgan who worked on sets for Coney Island is in for Tom and Brunette Sarah will be the other extra lady with me. She should definitely be more lively. I don't like to critique someone I don't even know very well, but Ann was...very still? So that should be fine.

Brunette Sarah found some kinds of settings to change Zoom that involves turning off any noise-blocking anything so that your music will play without static or whatever. However, I'm not sure how that's going to go if say, a neighbor gets noisy.

Basically tonight's debates were over sound and copyright, as Linda now wants to throw some random Robin Hood video in and Jason and I were all "you are gonna get busted for that," which led to "can we just avoid YouTube and do whatever we want and keep it private?" Uh....I think it would be limiting us and our fun/silly original production to have to add that as a concern, personally, but not my decision. Sigh. I also suggested using public domain drawings of poor starving Normans since we don't exactly have the cast to act that out. Who knows there.

Quotes:

"There he is in his easy chair, I love it." -Linda on Jason

(After a lot of debate over whether or not there is a hissing noise at someone's house, Bridget's phone rings) " Well, we know what that was." -me

"I'm not important in this." -Cameron as she's having sound issues.

"Are you talking?" "Apparently not." -Bridget and Cameron after she reboots.

"We'll do a high five!" -Elizabeth on the kiss scene.

"Hat envy." -Cameron on Morgan's actual RH hat with big feather.

"Once more with feeling!" -Cameron getting guys to yell.

"Clearly we're not going to be able to set these cubes in order....that's okay...." -Linda

"Magic sword!" -Cameron as Friar Tuck's sword disappears.
"It looks like you're about to cut off your ear, but that's part of the fun!" -Me
"That's not a sword, that's a sword!" -Me to Morgan's GIANT sword.
"You know, I think I know what Suzanne's attracted to: that giant sword." -Me "

"Just think, last summer they were sisters, this year they're in love." -me on Cameron and Elizabeth now playing a couple.

"I think I'm going to be projecting forest on to my shirt and hat and things." -Cameron on if she gets a green screen.

"It's funny, I keep hearing all this background noise and I can't see anybody." -Linda

Trying to argue to not use copyrighted things: "We don't have to worry about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor...of theater...." -me

I got an email from Morgan afterwards wanting to talk about getting flirty when we can't get next to each other on Zoom. It's a good thing the script spells out who goes for who, I guess. Then I spent like an hour writing back to Linda about costumes and green screen.


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