Doldrum Epherema

I haven’t written anything lately, as I’ve been a bit lost in the pre-holiday unemployed blues. I haven’t written any letters, blog posts, and haven’t worked on any creative projects. It’s one of those times where you have to boot yourself in the ass, get out of your depression, and do something…but I no longer seem to be limber enough for any self-ass-kicking.  :)

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In Warcraft, I’ve been doing some lackadasical preparation for the expansion, and dodging raids. The current guild that I am in would raid every night if possible. Since we cleared Sunwell on Wednesday, there is only old content left. Personally, I would rather slit my throat than go clear Mt. Hyjal again (disenchanting everything along the way, even with alts in the raid), but I seem to be in the minority.

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I really, really miss Warhammer, and EVE. :(

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I was very much enjoying Fable 2 until our XBox died. Meh. I tend to experience a lot of console games vicariously, in that once you’ve watched someone play through most of the game, little desire to play through myself remains. But I really, really wanted to play Fable 2, so I started an evil character in contrast to Miz’ good one.

It’s a gorgeous game. I love so much about it. The dog is wonderful, the environments are lovely, the starting sequence is well done, and the dialogue with the villagers that you meet is very funny. But you know what?  It’s hard being evil, making choices that adversely affect the people that you come in contact with. I felt bad all the time.  :)  Plus, it makes it much harder to get anyone to flirt with you when you’re bad.  (Although, that probably wasn’t helped by my tendency to hit the wrong button when I was trying to flirt, causing me to start waving my great bloody sword around and scaring the bejeezus out of everyone.) Great fun, and although the XBox will be fixed in a few weeks, we’ll be in WotLK then.

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I got quite angry last night with someone from an employment agency who had called regarding agency and ecommerce project management positions in this area (supposedly). During the conversation, I responded that I’d been sent jobspecs for some very good jobs, but they were all in Cambridge, London, etc., and were too far away to consider. The woman asked for the names of the companies who were hiring, I declined to give them, and it soon became obvious that they were using candidates as lead generation. Employment agencies are scum, I hated them as an employer, and I hate them more now.

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I read something interesting this morning about Robert Heinlein. I’d loved his books as a teen, but the later ones were, well, very different than you would expect a hardnosed ex-military guy to write. They were (mostly) great, don’t get me wrong, but they were quite different than his early work.

…Towards the end of his career, RAH’s novels got very long, very meandering, explicitly sexual, and very weird. Turned out, he had a tumor that was blocking the flow of blood to his brain (really!) and after it was removed, his fiction (and, reportedly, his personality) really changed again.

I have no idea if this is true, but it is interesting.