Oh Lordy, I’m tired. My new job at Harper Collins is going splendidly (how about reading children’s and YA books and playing in Powerpoint and Photoshop all day? And making spreadsheets of sales figures for HC and the companies it distributes. Ehem.), but I do tend to forget how much energy it takes maintaining a 9-5 job. Plus, It’s an hour commute there and a little over an hour back.
However, I am managing to juggle it, at least. I may be tired now, but I actually left at 5 am and 6 am my first two days so I could work on “Jeannie Carmini” before work and worked on it again during my hour lunch. I find it impossible to do creative work afterwards because I go home and crash, but I’m tossing around the idea of taking up an offer to work in the same building as the Deep 6 studios. It’s on my way home from work, it should be only $150 a month, and I find it a heck of a lot easier to work when I’m tired when I’m out, than to get home tired and hear my comfy bed and laptop calling me.
So “Jeannie Carnini” is going slowly now, but at least it’s still going, and steadily. I think because I enjoy my job, I’m not watching the clock and therefore have the joy still left in my heart throughout the day.
And seriously? I LOVE MY JOB. This is just a three-week temp job, but if they don’t ask me back right away or hire me full time, I plan on going to Human Resources and asking if they have any positions available. I get to look at book sales figures all day (I know. Only *I* would find that amazing), the pay is AMAZING (considering the most I’ve ever been paid for a 9-5 job was $10/hr because Austinites are CHEAP), and IT’S IN PUBLISHING. If I were offered any other 9-5 type job in New York … this would be the place I’d first pick.
And of course, once I get my second paycheck, I’m immediately singing up for a letterpress class at The Center For Book Arts.
It’s almost $600 for the class, but … letterpress is a beautiful art form. I don’t know why more printers don’t switch to gravure plates (printing plates that have raised text/illustrations so they leave an impression on the paper), considering they’re so much cheaper to make now, and WAY easier. A little UV light and BOOM! Photopolymer plate! Which taken care of properly will last indefinitely.
Offset printing, however, uses lithographic plates, which uses a thin layer of oil to create the image, so that’s why they don’t leave indents in the paper, and I hate it. I also want to mix my own inks instead of being limited to stupid CMYK halftones for color reproductions. Mixing a color directly makes it vibrant and ALIVE. And “Jeannie Carmini” is going to be either two or three color anyway (I’m thinking brown, yellow, red/pink), so it’s not like there will be any screening involved.
I also want a foot-operated platen press. ;_; OMG. IT’S LOVE. I’ve been drawing designs throughout the day of how to make my own from more readily accessible materials.
But I digress. I like my job. And I’m actually feeling good about the book I’m working on. Life is good.
On another note, I was looking at my click-throughs, and found the response at bottom of this post entertaining to read: http://comicsworthreading.com/2010/01/12/lea-franco-makes-comic-about-slur/
I’m not a particularly PC person. I use words like “retarded” and “gay” and “queer”, but I’ve always used them in more of a … playful way? They’re words that have come to have colorful meanings with subtle differences dependent upon inflection and situation. I mean, I’m queer. But I also use “queer” to mean “odd in a fun, quizzical” way. I say “retarded” to mean someone who is ignorant. And I use “gay” to mean “retardedly stupid”. Dan Savage of Savage Love (it’s a cynical, brilliantly funny sex advice column for the uninitiated, btw) had a whole rant about this word, and it’s a common thread throughout his podcasts of people who call him up offended that he’d “dare” use them and that somehow he’s single-handedly bringing down the whole of American Society by using them.
I’ve never used any of these words as a slur because well … I don’t use slurs because they’re disrespectful and ignorant. But I still use them with their alternate meanings. I’m not trying to insult anybody or show my superiority. Like I’d never call someone a “nigger” (I refuse to use an asterick for that word, btw, because it has too much power as it is, and being afraid to say something in demonstration is the same as showing highschoolers how to put on condoms by having a banana but no condom), and there’s no other double, subtle meaning to it, so there’s no reason for me to ever use it (except in rhetorical demonstration, of course).
Some words are purely racist/sexist/etc slurs. But some words have subtle double meanings, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t be allowed to use that alternate meaning. It doesn’t make me ignorant. If anything, it makes me MORE literate because I understand the humor of the double meaning and know how to use it in ways that fit the context. It’s like dancing on a pile of knives: it can be safe and fun and exhilarating as long as you step the right way.
I also know people who use FAR worse words in funny, humorous ways that make even me cringe. But I let them have their way because oh my gosh, I’m smart enough to realize their intent is not of malice or ignorance, but of making a new word out of something old. It’s the intent and not the words themselves that hold power. Just watch one of Sarah Palin’s many speeches someday if you don’t believe me. They have some of the most foul-intent hate-speech of any politician I’ve ever heard. But she never says it directly. She never uses the WORDS. But her intent behind simple language that typically relay more gentle meanings, make her one of the most horrific people I know. Of course, that’s why she scares me. Because some people hear only the words, see them as sunshine and roses, and then don’t wonder later why they’re up on The Daily Show as Hatechild of the Week.
But that’s just my two-cents.
(edit) I should probably also mention that my mother’s step-sister has Down’s Syndrome and my mom makes “retarded” jokes ALL. THE. TIME. Matt thinks people who have mentally handicapped kids or relatives get a pass for getting offended about the use of this particular word, but then why does my mom do it? She loves her sister. I’ve never heard her say anything with insulting or cruel intent about her. Perhaps, then, she just has a sense of humor? Because my mom is one of the nicest, most considerate people I know.
