Ten Gents

Today's entry theme: Ten gents walk into a bar. One guy says "Word play." 8 of them don't say a thing because they don't get it. The other 1 doesn't say a thing because he gets it.


First to bat, MY NAIL FINALLY FELL OFF!!!!!!!! Last Friday. If you don't know why it fell off, then read my earlier Kanga posts. Contrary to popular belief, parts of my body do not dismantle often. Here's a picture of when Blacky was still attached:

Not a close up for your satisfaction.
THEN!

THEN! I actually got a picture of it as it was falling off! AMAZING, RIGHT?!

My nail FLYING OFF MY FINGER!
I had too much fun with that.

I also have awweeesomely gruesome pictures of my finger (the "awe" kind of awesome, not the awesome kind of awesome, nor the "aww" kind of awesome) that I decided to centaur censor from your fragile consternation. But if you are an exception with toughness like a dozer of bulls and WANT to see my ante-naked, gross finger (in different stages), just send me a message with the subject of "Eh? Des Borus!?". I'd be honored.

(It it just me or was that last paragraph sorta confusing to read? Mmm probably just me.) (Also, "Des Borus" has no meaning whatsoever. Made it up. "Eh", however is a word commonly found in Canada.)

OH I forgot to tell the story of how it came off:

I was opening a car door and it got caught on something and fell off. Didn't hurt. Then uh... I ran... over to my desk and took a picture of it as it was still in the air.

WOWOW ironically, when I was around 5yizo, I slammed a car door on my thumb and a couples weeks later that nail came off! (P.S. A thumb is a finger. We have 10 fingers. Get over it.)

Twas also funny cuz this nail fell off on my first day of work!

Work?

Yeah!

I work as a "Student Production Assistant", and if you were following me on Twitter WHICH I KNOW YOU WERE YOU GOOD PERSON, you'd have known my first day was last Friday!

Company: CSUF Distance Education... something like that. They're in charge of the online classes on the Fullerton website.

Job Description: Convert VHS's into DVDs, upload DVDs onto a computer, edit some movies with Adobe Premiere, help film some videos (documentation stuff, not really movies), work on some Adobe Flash projects.

Not Job Description: Help little kids with homework. MUAHAHAHHA YAAAAY!

This job is SO choice, especially since it's right next to CSUFullerton! I also get to play around with almost every single Adobe program on my down time! Isn't this job RIGHT ON THE MONEY for me?! Oh, hah, literally.

I mean it when I say I feel really lucky to have this job.

I also mean it when I say that Obama does not deserve a Nobel Piece Prize for showing "good effort and incredible promise..!". Sorry for coming out of nowhere with this, but I'm just SAYIN. He didn't do jack diddly squat! Well okay, he did a couple things, such as not look gross without a shirt, but I just wanted to use "jack diddly squat" in a sentence.

Don't read me wrong, I have nothing against the Obamers as a person. I actually don't have a lot of stuff against people (other than my body up against yours WHAOSPONTANEOUSPICKUPLINEBUTNOTREALLY?!), maybe I just avoid certain people before I get to know how awful they really are. I'm looking at you, Bruce Banner. But I don't wanna talk about meeting people right now! No! I want to uh-... oh wait. Yeah actually I sorta do.

I enjoy meeting people, ...or rather knowing people. People at school, specifically. I think the reason I like going to Fullerton now is because I know people. Not a lot, just a few, but that's all I need. In a swarm of unfamiliar faces, it's so nice to recognize a friend. I thought of this a couple weeks ago when I was walking around with my art class to draw parts of the campus. I saw someone I had met earlier, and I felt immediately comforted. I waved "hi" and talked a little bit.

The second, incredibly ironic thing is that her name was Whitney. Wow, didn't realize that until just now! How cool. So many small things to just keep me going! For example, one of the little things I enjoy about college is walking up and down stairs. Especially the basementy kind. It's sort of hard to explain why I like it, especially since it's all kinds of tiring when my class is on the 5th floor, but I do, I enjoy it. Right now, anyway.

It's these minor *happenings* that make all the difference for me. A few weeks ago I had to fill up a few pages of my sketchbook for class. I decided to go draw something I liked on Flickr (a first) and I came out with this.

And by-golly-sons-of-George, I was so proud of it! I was surprised at how... GOOD it turned out! It was supposed to be an insignificant drawing to fill up these pages, like all the faces I drew back in the Whitney days which always looked like some webble katch on acid. HAHA obscure reference. (But not really, there's not such thing as a "webble katch" because I made it up. That's how bad my drawings were, though. They were unreal bad.) But this, THIS, looked like the girl in the picture. It looked like a real person.

After that sketch, I couldn't draw on the page anymore as to not ruin my graphite baby. (Yes, using "graphite baby" in a sentence automatically makes you an artsy geek.)

Earlier, I didn't understand why my previous sketchbooks were filled with ambiguous shapes ranging from stick figures to turds. I thought I was just a blahblah drawer who was only decent at cartoons. And then this happened. THIS single drawing has turned my mentality around. It inspires me to draw more. That's a first - inspiring myself.

Now I look forward to drawing from Flickr almost every day (as long as I'm not lazy and or tired). Now YOU should look forward to when I'm gonna post all my other sketches! It shall be nice, and you shall like it.

Ah...

Art is great.

Yeah.

This blog is great.

Also, I am grateful for my job.

Another gear grinding issue, why is "greatful" not a word? Can Webster PLEASE just synonymize it with "grateful"!? Do you realize how many essays teachers will have to recall for false grammatical errors?? But I do have to applaud the English language for housing "synonymize" as a real word (despite blogspot's redline naysay). Good move. If language were playing chess, I believe that would result in a "check". Legalize "grateful" to make it a "checkmate" now.

DINGAHINGADARGA another confusing paragraph.

Ah well. You should go sleep. You're probably reading this in the middle of the night. If not, go take a nap. Catch up on your beauty sleep. You deserve it.

The Desks Have Turned

Remember how I said I got that job? At that (Johnny) Quest Learning Center? The one where I had to teach kids how to draw comics? Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth graders? Four hours a week? Each day is an hour? Scared to death? Do you remember? Ah you probably don't. But if you do, I'm here to tell you... TODAY WAS MY FIRST DAY!

HOORAY! Little kids' minds are now mine for the molding.

Today I had lil' 5th and 6th graders to deal with. I started my class with standard teacher stuff such as a summary of the class along with a review of my classroom rules. Yes, I made up my own classroom rules. Yknow, I think I've always liked the idea teaching... not only do I get to spread my knowledge to eager scouts (hah), but I also get to say to my past teachers, "THIS IS HOW IT'S DONE!". I also get to appear knowledgeably superior.

I realized that the whole hour I was in the room with the slightly routy bunch was very... analogous to actual Comiclub meetings that I have at Whitney. There were only a few minor differences.

Comiclub -VS- Comic Class

No word combos: Yeah, big ol' high school students can understand what Comiclub means (despite people asking it as "Commi" Class), but small youn' element kids? Would they GET "Comiclass"? What if they read it as "Com Iclass"? Or "Comicle Ass"? OR WHAT IF they just didn't get it all?! Actually they'd probably get it, but for professional purposes, I seperated the words. Because I'm OH SO professional.

HYPER ACTIVITY: Quest is sorta set up like a jail: the kids can travel throughout the building, but THEY CANNOT LEAVE. They also have their meals there, presumably eating gruel... sandwiches, gruel omelette's. Nothing but gruel. Plus, they can eat their own hair. These kids are at Quest all day, so they can get pretty restless... and hyper. At Whitney, we're usually just really tired... and dead, almost zombie-like.

I have to write on the white board: I suck at writing at the white board.

Powah: For Comiclub, it's difficult to order people around dictatorally (dictatidly? dictatationally? dictatorly? dictatadorkalelly.) because I don't have much authority. At Quest? Easy peasy. In the beginning of class, a kid picked up a chair for whatever reason and I was all "HEY... put that down..." and SHAZAM HE DID! Okay, I could probably do that at Whitney too, but still; these kids, to some extent, fear me. HAHA okay, not really FEAR me, but I have the power to threaten them with time outs and calls home. If the classroom were a boat, it would be a dictatorship - I am the captain.

Sos yeahs! First day of being a teacher was really not that bad. My favorite part of the hour was when I asked "Who likes drawing?", and almost everyone raised their hand. That made everything A LOT easier because the kids will be more willing to work. Although I dunno what I'll do with those who don't like drawing. JUST REMEMBER KEVIN, they're more afraid of you than you are of them.

The best part of this whole thing is my teacher name: I have them call me "Mr. K". MUAHAHA, IS THAT MYSTERIOUS OR WHAT?! Very super hero-esque if I do say so myself.

Joblessless

'ALLO! I thought I'd write my first official post right now. "Why?" you ask, "Why in God's mighty foot would you take the time to post something on your brand new blog when no one, not even yo pet fish who died many years ago on your birthday, even KNOWS about it?!". That, my friend is a very good, if not odd sounding, question! And, I have very good answers.

Answer One: Why not!
Answer Two: People can still read this once I put the link in my profile.
Answer Three: There was a moment today when I was like "OH MAN, I GOTTA BLOG THIS!". Well, I didn't say "blog" cuz I'm not really used to this whole blog stuff. This is nooby bloggy stuff.

YUP! So here's my story:

I was sitting in my room minding my own business WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN GODZILLA ATE ME AHHH! Okay that's not my story. I lied. Or just kidding. But if you ever want something exciting to happen in your stories, just throw Godzilla in there. BAM! EXCITEMENT! Now that I have your attention here's my real story!:

I needed a job for the summer. Yesterday I tried for this one tutoring place, it's called Enopi, aka "Honors Academy". When I called, a lady picked up and I asked for a position. I had worked there last summer, correcting papers and helping wee lads with some work, so I figure I could get the same job. What followed after my inquiring went something like this:

"Oh, oh... too late... who is this?"
"Kevin Lam? I worked here last year"
"Oh..."
"I'm Mrs. Lam's son?"
"Oh... Oh Kevin Lam! How is your mom?"
"Oh she's good!"
"Oh that's good, tell her I said 'hi'"
"Okay."
"Okay... sorry, too late..."
"Oh-..."
"Okay, bye."

I hung up kind of speechless. I had no idea what happened. I thought we were going to discuss me and my dilemma of being jobless, but all I got was a "too late..". I sat there as my mom beat me up with words while I beat myself up in my mind for waiting so late to call them. (MY MOM DID NOT PHYSICALLY BEAT ME UP. Actually she didn't even really yell at me, she was just like "Keviiiiin, this is what you get when we don't nag you. You procrastinate." That's the gist of what she said, and I guess to a certain extent, she is right. BUT NOT ALL DA WAY RIGHT! Anyway, on with my story.)

Blah blah, graduation yay so happy for alumni...
Side note: 6-17/08, 8:06pm, I am officially a high school senior. suhnap.

The following day, I'm working on this thing called a "blog", which I still call a Kanga YAY! It was late afternoon when my mom comes to the doorway of my room and GODZILLA BITES HER HEAD OFF!!! But not really. She says to me "You have a job for the summer!.". "Oh???" I reply. She explains that she talked to her boss about my sister and I teaching at the tutoring place that my mom works at, Quest. (YES THAT EXPLAINS THOSE BLUE BAGS...) Her boss liked the idea and WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM I'm hired!

"What in God's hairy beard will you be teaching?!" you ask? Well what can I teach, other than... COMIC BOOKS?!?! [Godzilla: "GASP!.. -bites his own head off-"] Yeah, my mom pitched the idea that I could teach a bunch of little element school kids how to make comic books! She used the fact that I made the Comiclubook for Comiclub during school as a support. She said her boss liked the idea! HOT DOG! COMICLUB 2.0!! I still get interviewed tomorrow, though.

I'm reading this book called "Your Career in Animation: How to Survive and Thrive" (David Levy) that teaches readers how to... survive and thrive in the animation industry, and getting this job really reminds me of the animation career (well, what I know about it). I just finished reading about how I need lots of connections, and I scanned through some tips for pitching your ideas at an interview. Now I have to convince a guy named "Johnny" that I have what it takes to teach this off the wall class. Oh, and I will alright.

HOLD THE PHONE. A man named "Johnny"? Working at a place called "Quest"? Now tell me that this Johnny Quest coincidence is MORE than just coincidence. HAHAHA...

...and that's my story! As long as I nail that interview tomorrow, my promised job will continue to be promised! I shall be an employed man. An employed manly man.

Huh, this is a lot different than writing in my Kanga. I'll talk about that more in another post. Right now I should start saying my byee- OH MY GOSH, HEADLESS GODZILLA CHEWED OFF MY HA-...