Lepus Lepidus

To close the issue yesterday, a quick round of drinks was suggested. One of our interns was in the office and, having recently turned 21, we wanted him to join us. He resisted, saying he had to get going. When he interviewed, he was kinda stoked to find that two ex-GamePro staffers worked at OXM now, because he read GP when he was younger. So to try to twist his arm, I said “Let me put it this way…Air Hendrix and Dan Elektro want to have a drink with you!”

It wasn’t intended to come out all self-important, but in retrospect, that almost certainly sounded ridiculously arrogant. I thought he’d find it funny. Nobody really did. And, except for a few message boards that I simply can’t change the usernames on, I never refer to myself as Dan Elektro anymore, and haven’t for years. I’m really happy to be writing under my own name. So when I played that card, sounded like a self-important jerk, and he still didn’t come for drinks, I just felt like a douchebag.

One lemon drop and one kamikaze later, I still regretted it.

I have become a connoisseur of energy drinks. As such, I have four cans of this stuff on my desk. Haven’t tried it yet but I’m planning to for an upcoming article. I intentionally bought extra just because I feared something like this might happen.

What kind of world do we live in where you can’t buy drinks named after and intentionally marketed as illegal, life-destroying drugs?

Four and a half years later after my seminal review of the Toastmaster T75R Classic Cool Steel 2-Slice Toaster, I’ve still got a perfect record. Amazon’s most discerning members have awarded me 39 out of 39 helpful votes.

That’s right, bitches. I’m your new motherfucking toaster review god.

Because ship week + aching ankle + Friday night gig + Saturday birthday party + Sunday gig + Monday freelance assignment deadline means that might be the first chance I get to rest!

Did I mention Kat says she knows what she wants for her birthday: To hit level 40. How? When? This weekend kinda sucks.

In the meantime, I’m playing around with Twitter.

Gas truck went boom early this morning, leaving in its wake a collapsed highway and massive incovenience in the already traffic-snarled Bay Area. Thankfully nobody was killed, but there’s a reason they call it the MacArthur Maze to begin with.

And by interesting I mean kinda bad. Layoffs are never good news, and Future US had to tighten its belt this week. It was a wholesale house-cleaning in the music department in NYC, unfortunately (dammit, Guitar One was much improved), but we are going to lose one of our designers to a design pool, which may work better long term, but it’s still a personal loss. Our staff is very well balanced and our efficiency over the last few issues has actually been improving, so this kind of change is bad.

Seeing friends like PC Gamer AD Joe Mitch leave the building is strange. Seven years at a company and then, poof, you’re gone. And while I still have my suspicious theories about why Kat was not selected for one of the design openings that she’s applied for since the demise of Scrapbook Answers, I now wonder if she’s better off. It’s stupid to blog about your workplace because even if you’re just blowing off steam, it will come back to bite you in the ass, so the less said about that situation, the better. In any case, she’s interviewed for that other job now and hopes are high, but we’re at that stage where all you can do is hope that her work speaks for itself.

Meanwhile, I could not be more creatively fulfilled at work. Every issue is a great challenge and I finally feel equipped to meet it. This is sweeter because I was away from it, so now I really see this as a golden second chance and I want to make the most of it. Everybody wants a job; I wanted this job for a long time and I’m savoring the work now that I’m doing it. I’m happy, even as the company goes through another tough time. So it’s a strange imbalance.

I feel like the guy enjoying the waterslide while the rest of the amusement park is on fire.