Reading: THE MAGICIAN by W. Somerset Maugham
Music: Tom Wait's "Swordfish Trombone"
TV/Movie: The Family Guy DVD collection
Link o' the Day: Og - Son of Fire.

And welcome back. I took Sunday night off from journal writing in order to catch up on some other writing. Work progresses, that's all I'm willing to say. It's bad mojo to talk too much about works-in-progress. But tonight was somewhat productive, and I got some freelance work done as well. Overall I can go to work with a clear conscience.

The trials and tribulations at the old day job continue and its spurred me to give this advice, like it or not. If you ever have to give work to a typesetter, please, please PLEASE make sure that it's your final copy. Sure, we can handle some line edits here and there, but there is nothing quite so teeth-gnashingly frustrating as spending three hours on a complex form only to be told, "Oh, trash that file. The customer sent new copy that he wants to replace the old file."

Aargh.

Okay, I get paid either way and the client gets charged--and it shouldn't mean anything to me, but that's three hours of something I put together going down the drain. It's soul-sickening. And it makes all the other work pile up higher as I get more and more behind schedule. If I cared more about my day job this would really worry me.

My freelance clients don't do this to me. They have more sense and more of a need for economy. They can't afford to have me do a job all over again from scratch, so they have the impetus to prepare their materials correctly.

Okay, rant-mode off.

Despite having to work this weekend, it was a very nice weekend. Pretty Maggie and I, among other things, visited Wal*Mart to pick up some odds and ends and somehow or another I found myself in the DVD section holding, clutching, a copy of the Season 1&2 DVD set of The Family Guy. Now I don't know what other people think of this series, but I'm a big fan (or was until they cancelled it). Maybe because it was set in Rhode Island, or maybe because the humor was pretty offbeat. Sure, some was tasteless and really pushed the limits of what can be shown on network TV, but much of it was pretty subtle. So I've been in Family Guy heaven watching a bunch of episodes I never got onto VHS and it got me to thinking about another favorite animated series--The Critic starring Jon Lovitz as Jay "It Stinks!" Sherman--film critic extra-hefty.

This show was also full of subtle, witty, intelligent humor which is why it was likely cancelled not by just one network, but two. It had a run on CBS and Fox, and now, I understand, has a run on one of the cable stations.. Cartoon Network I think. There were only about 24 episodes, so I don't expect that to last too long. In any case, because the Internet has _everything_, I found a guy offering some rather inexpensive copies of the entire series. (My tapes were destroyed by vindictive VCRs over the years).

God bless the Internet!

Apartment purging will continue this week. I tackle the kitchen and the closets this weekend. Wish me luck.

And because it wouldn't be a journal entry without a link of the day--today I offer up Og - Son of Fire. These were a collection of stories by Irving Crump about a prehistoric boy. Here's the intro to the first story:

Og, a cave boy of half a million years ago, is separated from his tribe by a volcanic eruption. Two wolf cubs huddle near him, but he doesn't kill them, for he smells cooked meat for the first time, a band of horses trapped and burned by the fire. Og and the cubs eat, and he is delighted by the new taste. He explores the valley and captures fire on a stick by touching it to lava. Thrilled with himself, he plays with his fire until interrupted by a giant mammoth, which chases the boy and wolf cubs into a cleft in the ground. They are safe! But suddenly the crack starts to close on them...

Enjoy!