Tomorrow I’m going up to Vermont for a few days. My cousin is getting married. It should be pretty fun; how can a wedding not be fun, right? The only thing I’m not looking forward to is the 10 hour drive (it should be much less, but with my parents driving…) and staying in a hotel room with my parents. I absolutely loathe road trips with my family. My parents are the noisiest, gassiest sleepers ever, and sharing a hotel room with them is beyond painful. You can actually feel the vibrations in the air to the snoring and tooth-grinding. It always starts right when I’m about to fall asleep; just as I’m drifting off into hallucinationville, this blood-curdlingly horrible noise goes ripping through my skull. I swear my heart stops temporarily when I hear it… the scariest noise I know.

They’ll be pretty pissed off when someone tells them about this post. Oh well…

Work at the Japan Society has been going really well. I even get to do a little design; I’m working on a brochure for a tour of Japan (which, interestingly enough, includes Kanazawa!) and I’m having a good time doing that, as well as various other things. I’m still painting for Dog Soul Publishing as well. I really wanted to get a lot of work done for Dog Soul this weekend, however this wedding is putting a cap on the amount of work I can do… so I’ll have to really kick butt next week to make up for it.

So now I’m just watching Starship Troopers and putting off packing. I know the wedding will be fine, but I’m just not in the mood to go driving for a whole weekend.

Today I finally created a MySpace account — something of which I am not at all proud. Part of the reason why I’ve been holding out joining the site is because everyone I know is already part of it, and people keep bugging me to join. That may be a dumb reason to refuse, but at the same time it’s a dumb reason to join just to keep in touch with people you already know. Aside from that, I already have a website which I pay for and is a lot more powerful, and I sure as hell am not going to devote as much or more time to an ad-filled community site which only lets me do so much with my space. The number one reason that prevented me from joining for so long was that I’m sick and tired of filling out the same retarded information for everything on the internet. I gave in and finally registered for the New York Times online today, too (another thing of which I am not proud). Forcing people to give email addresses, passwords, filling out their mothers’ maiden names, favorite pets, first schools, and so forth is a horrible way to do business, and since most people use the same passwords (and since all companies ask for the same mandatory “secret questions”), every site you register at makes the internet a less secure place for you. I’ve joined so many of these community sites over the years and I’m really sick of filling out profiles, registering email addresses (which I know means that I’m just signing up for spam), uploading photos, writing profile introductions that are set up to be really crappy personal ads, and then being asked to spam everyone in my address book to get them to join too.

In fact, the only reason I finally joined was because my friend sent me a link to a club that had photos and a huge list of Asian horror films (which I really love), and the only way I could view the photos was to join. Just like the only way I could read the story today about the Oneida’s influence on early America was to register with the New York Times.

It brings up a question, not only of internet security, but of morality. Is it really fair for every company to ask people to surrender so much personal information for a free product? At places like Best Buy I’ve been asked for my phone number and my zip code just for buying a DVD. Pizza places ask for your address and phone number even when you place a take-out order. And every time you put your email address on a form that says ‘optional,’ there’s always a few paragraphs of fine print explaining that they’ll sell your email address to companies, which you’ll have the option to remove yourself from later.

We live in a time when the world is becoming increasingly less tolerant of proprietary formats (for example, Massachusetts just passed a law requiring the state to move to open format documents instead of Microsoft Office documents by 2007), but people still have no choice but to sign up and register for just about everything. We need the AIM, MSN, and Yahoo messengers just to keep in touch with our friends. Companies are trying to force us to install their various toolbars and portals… how many times do we have to say, “No, I don’t want to set my homepage to www.msn.com”? We have iTunes, Windows Media Player, RealPlayer all trying to make themselves our default media player and force us to use only their proprietary filetype. We can’t read more than one onlnie news source without giving out our email address…

We can only hope open formats will start to catch on, and other companies start to lighten up and allow us to have information without forcing us to give up information in return.

It turns out I did get the Japan job! So my hopes in that other post were confirmed. W00t!

As a matter of fact, the problem was on my end. Apparantly my matthewmeyer.net email was malfunctioning and stopped forwarding to my gmail, which is what I normally use. What’s even weird is that I had some company’s forwarders set up at my site instead of my own… very strange. I wonder if they got mine in exchange?

Well it should all be working again. I can’t wait to start working now! W00t! So happy!

I can’t believe it’s already halfway through September. Time really does fly! Actually, I’m having a good time so maybe that helps. Even though I’m not recieving a salary, I am working hard on art, and having a lot of fun with D&D and games in my spare time. I’m looking at other art jobs to do after this one gets done (which may yet be a while), so in the art field I’m not too worried about employment. What does suck employment-wise is that the art jobs I’m doing pay very little, and only after all the work is done… so it’s not a reliable source of income. That means that I still have to find a part-time job to earn a little cash while I work at being a starving artist. I’ve only had a couple of job interviews since graduating, mostly due to the fact that I was going to Vancouver in August so it didn’t make a lot of sense to look for jobs before then, and right now I’m working so hard on my art that I haven’t even had time to look for other jobs.

It’s been over a week since the interview, and I still haven’t heard back from the Japan group about the job I interviewed for. My emails to them are unanswered (I chose email over phone because they prefered email for just about everything else), so I’m assuming that’s a sign that I didn’t get the job. I’m actually only slightly upset about not getting the job; what stinks more is not being told that I didn’t get the job. What I’ve noticed is that every place that has ever rejected my application has done so without notifying me. I’m wondering if this is normal business practice, or if I’m just unlucky. I would understand it from big places that revieve too many applications to respond to each person, but I’ve been in a lot of situations where it was down to me and a handful or people (in this case, one other person), yet still no phonecall or anything telling me I didn’t get the job. That’s probably the worst thing about not getting a job… Rejection isn’t so hard to take; it’s not knowing and being ignored as if you weren’t worth a response that starts to grate on the nerves. But I’m not at that stage yet — it’s a real nice group of people there, so there’s a possibily that they just have been really busy. Hopefully I’ll still hear back from them one way or another.

I went to a bonfire last night and my hair still smells like burnt wood. Mmm! How can you not love that smell!?

You may have heard of the proposed Libertarian migration to New Hampshire… well, here is something scary: the “Christian Exodus” to South Carolina.

http://www.fox21.com/Global/story.asp?S=3592505&nav=2KPpc7ZV

The sick thing is that they’re calling it an exodus. From what, exactly, are they escaping? Oh well, maybe it will reduce the numbers of extremist Christians in the other states, and ultimately weaken their position in the government. Hopefully…

Well I’m watching Jon Stewart’s “Evolution Schmevolution” series on the Daily Show this week, but I’ve had this window open for about an hour and half without writing… and I’ve done this almost every day this week without writing anything. But man, this show is great… better than the Daily show normally is.

Recently I’ve been painting and drawing a lot, especially working on digital paintings. Also, I’ve been going nuts with Google Earth. If you know me, you probably know Google Earth already as well, but if you don’t have it, I suggest you pick up your butt and download it. It’s one of the best pieces of software I’ve ever played with. It gets a 10 both on the fun scale, and on the usefulness scale. I’ve used it to find driving directions faster than ever before, plus to get a visual of the place I’m heading to so I won’t miss it. I’ve used it to scout out restaurants, hobby stores, and recreation. I’ve gone sightseeing all over the world, explored historical sites, and revisited places I’ve lived in and traveled to. I’m also starting to use it as my address book.

Holy crap this show is hilarious. If only people who actually believed in creationism were the people who watch the Daily Show…

One more aside, before I forget it: September 19th is Talk Like A Pirate Day. This Monday, make sure you shiver yer timbers and avast yer mateys.

I bought a few board games recently, too. Mutiny, by Fantasy Flight Games, is one that I’ve played before and really loved, so it was great to introduce it to my friends. They liked it as well, so I expect quite a bit of pirating, especially this Monday. Civilization: The Board Game by Eagle Games is another new purchase. I only got to play one game so far, and it was great. I’m starting to like board games much more than computer games, so having a good rotation of various games keeps things fun.

Hehe, they just brought up the existence of the scrotum with the Intelligent Design theorist… if you have BT, try to find this week’s Daily Show, you’ll be thoroughly entertained. (Okay, last plug, I promise.)

So, Vancouver. I haven’t written anything about it yet, but that’s just because I don’t want to do it injustice. I had such a great time. What was really interesting about the trip overall was that it was like being back in Japan. Not just because I was with Frances for a month, but because Vancouver is practically an Asian country. The whole time I was there I must have seen only about… 2 white people other than myself. As for English, I only heard it when I was *really* lucky, or when someone was directly talking to me (and even then, it was Chinese about 55% of the time).

Vancouver is a beautiful city. It’s green everywhere; hardly any polution. Even the bad parts of town look almost as good as the good parts of other cities I’ve been to. There’s so much good Asian food, which could be expected, and the mountains just outside of the city are gorgeous. The weather is perfect too; it gets hot in the summer and cold in the winter, but never too hot or too cold. The sun is hot and the air is cool, so it’s perfect weather to be outside. I’d love to live there some day.

Just a quick overview of what I did: paintball, climbed a mountain, hiked through a forest, visited a bird sanctuary, saw a whole lot of movies, played DDR, did purikura, visited the US a couple times, looked at apartments, and went to all sorts of restaurants. I also did a lot of drawing for a job I’m working on.

So that’s my short overview of Vancouver. It was a great month and I can’t wait to go back.

Alright, that’s enough of an update for now. I’m trying to break out of Summer mode, but having a hard time shedding the laziness… so I’ll try to post more, but we’ll see what happens.

Well I did manage to go to the cherry tree event afterall. It was fun. I mulched and pruned and shovels and wheelbarrowed and all the good stuff. It was a good way for lazy me to get some exercise, and I got to meet new people and see some old friends from the Japan club.

Then I got home and found out the worst had happened. The lovebirds attacked Igor while I was gone. Guido is a nasty bird and likes to bite feet… and Igor is usually quick enough and careful enough to avoid him. But Igor’s foot was all bloody and purple and swollen, and his feathers were matted with blood. Poor bird! :’(

I spent 3 hours in the emergency room with Igor, and thankfully it wasn’t a serious wound. Just a very messy one. He should be fine, I’m told, and didn’t need any antibiotics (thanks goodness, since the bill was already $97). So I’m just going to keep an eye on him for a few days to make sure he recovers and stops limping. Poor bird.