Via: http://staysonpaper.livejournal.com/328281.html

My profession would be: Cowboy astronaut princess writer. Possibly on loan to the A-Team.

My spouse would be: Winnowill from Elfquest, Takhisis from the Dragonlance books, or Lilith from Cheers. Alternatively an Asimov-ian sexy robot woman.

My car would be: A motorcycle or a horse or a jetpack. Well, I guess one out of 3 ain't bad.

My house would be: Extremely modernist with lots of clean empty white space with splashes of vivid color. Also it'd have to be somewhat rural, but super high tech and have a stream running through it. Skylights mandatory.

My best friend would be: An Artificial Intelligence. Probably named Jessamine. Though possibly Floyd from Planetfall and Stationfall.

My backyard would be: Wooded and scenic but with space for the helicopter landing pad and a guest house for my parents.

Every meal would include: Spam and green beans followed by ice cream.

My children's names would be: Illyana, Rebecca, and Infinity.

I'd make my Mom comfortable and see she has good medical care. Probably move here closer to me.
I'd get my cat back from Cincinnati. I'd get some glasses. I'd get a new bike. I'd have some surgery, I'd travel. I'd learn how to get better at helping people.

When last we left our hero, he had relocated to the China Hill neighborhood of Oakland and was working retail selling phoned for a Sprint Preferred Retailer. Well, in short order the job revealed itself to be something between a scam and a trainwreck of drama. Rampant homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, petty larceny and customer fraud were the order of the day, there. The situation there is so bad - and so well known - that I've had people from Sprint Corporate suggest I quit ASAP so as to not get caught up in anything when the outlet crashes and burns. There's also the fact, that despite working 40-40 hrs per week due to expenses and such, I'm poorer than I was while working freelance in Bloomington.

And I've made no secret that I was living on just enough to survive out there, nothing more.

All that became super complicated when, due to a comedy of errors, I was running an errand for work on the clock when I wrecked my bike. The bike only has minor damage and in the great scheme of things so do I -- sprained ankle, sprained knee, damaged ACL, concussion, etc. But it was enough to end up out of work for a few weeks and while workman's comp is covering some things, my already catastrophic financial situation has gotten worse.

And while I continue to job hunt for anything, the work situation has gotten worse as I ended up spilling the beans to corporate about the problems resulting in a crackdown from corporate which resulted in -- the other white guy who works there getting the blame for "snitching" from the staff. It's a giant hole of scams, lies, scummy behaviour and drama. And I dearly wish I was exaggerating.

So tomorrow I have 2 doctor's appointments (one for workman's comp to see if they will release me back to work, and one for other stuff) followed by a job interview and Wednesday, I may or may not return to work. I'm praying that I'm not allowed back to work - because in a perfect world I'll get that other job and never have to return to the really ridiculous and unconscionable working environment. Because the idea of going back has started triggering panic attacks.

The things we do to eat and not be homeless.

Other than the possibility of getting this other job and hanging out occasionally with friends, life and the associated outlooks are getting pretty bleak. I came out here to get out of debt -- but I wracked more up. I have a tonne of repairs to my bike that I can't afford and my one shining light is a better class of retail job. I feel like I've backslid into bad old days that I've struggled for the better part of a decade to escape. But I'm trying to not dwell on that notion.

The tl;dr of it is this: Wrecked motorcycle, job is a crapjob the likes of which I have never experienced, leg hurts. Need new job like a fish needs water. Might not survive.

I've tried to do a legitimate update re: the current state of my life ever since I got here. But it's hard to really do a good update - my information dumps soon turn into self-indulgent whine fests.

It's amazingly beautiful out here. I'm often stunned by the lovely scene I get to watch as I work out my window with clouds climbing over the hills and the sun almost-always shining. The weather is wonderful and once I got over my sheer unadulterated paralyzing terror of water, I even have come to dig the beautiful sights by - and over - the bay as well.

I've been to wine country, I've been all around the bay. I've met Grant Morrison(and more importantly, talked STARMAN with James Robinson) and had all sorts of crazy food. There was a mini Bloomington reunion at the GAMESAVE expo and it's been great to see old friends and make some new ones out here.

The motorcycling weather is amazing, too. It feels like you could just get out there and ride forever. AND EVERYONE RIDES! I've met more awesome beautiful people on bikes here than I can believe. Saturday morning all-you-can-eat Waffle brunch with the bikers is wonderful.

I'm living in a co-op that I'm sub-subletting a room out of and thanks to a clash of personalities it is really, really uncomfortable. The landlord is... well, rather than demonize her, I'll simply say that we instantly hit it off on the wrong foot. It would be nice to have a villain but largely, she is simply a person who I really don't like and who feels the same about me. However, due to the person I'm subletting from coming back from NY early, I now find myself with no place to live after the 23rd. Which is a problem.

The bigger problem is that I hate it here. I'm absolutely miserable. As much as I've loathed being stuck in BFE for so long, everything is so big and fast and loud out here that my little anxiety-ridden mind can't process it. But now I'm trapped - which makes things worse, as you might imagine. I can't afford to go back to Bloomington and find a new apartment and rebuild my life out there. I *should* have followed my heart and gone to my 2nd home of New Orleans, but well... I felt I needed adventure.

And the adventure of getting out here WAS great. I'd not trade that trip through desert and over mountains for anything. Nor would I trade the great moments of being here.

But I'm so miserable. In a house where I'm not welcome in a city I'm terrified of, with far too few friends. Meanwhile my cat - my best friend - is at my Sister's in Cincinnati and my Mom keeps getting worse. I talk to her every day, but she remembers who I am less and less.

I hate it here. I could go into all the whys and wherefores and why I'm miserable but it would just get whiny and I need to try and avoid that. Bottom line is that I'm trapped in a place I hate.

I should have listened to James Carville when he told me to move to NOLA. Nola is the only place I can remember that I've gone to and it felt like home.

But that's not really an option now.

I want to go home. I really want things to be the way they were before I dismantled my life to go on this ridiculous adventure. I want to be somewhere safe before my limited ability to cope is gone for good.

And I don't know how to accomplish any of that. At this point, everything just hurts. I want to wake up from this nightmare I've gotten myself into.

That's the real update from California.

Kizuna: Fiction for Japan has just released on Amazon in ebook form (with print and other formats to come soon). I highly recommend picking up a copy - and not just because I'm in it. 75 authors from 11 countries makes this a bargain at twice the price - with proceeds going to charity.

Also, you know... I'm in it - so I am sort of biased on that point. But so are a lot of other fantastic authors.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005GFID4O/

March 11, 2011 - Three prefectures in northeastern Japan are devastated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, and a massive tsunami that takes the lives of nearly 30,000 people.

April 2011 - 75 authors from 11 countries came together to collaborate on a mixed-genre anthology of short stories to benefit the orphans of the disaster-stricken Tohoku area. Ninety percent of which is all original work written for this book.
Horror, humor, human drama, science fiction, fantasy, absurdist, bizarro, weird, new wave, bugpunk, Cthulhu, Sherlock Holmes, historical fiction, and more.

Complete author list (in index order): Katherine Govier, Ken Asamatsu, Lee Pletzers, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., S.A. Gambino, Michael Allen Rose, Nickolas Furr, Garrett Cook, Touya Tachihara, Jess Gulbranson, Alvin Pang, Robert M. Price, Kevin Lovelace, Junichi Ashikawa, Dan Ryan, Adam Joffrain, Moxie Mezcal, Andersen Prunty, L. Christopher Bird, Minoru Inaba, Richard Wright, Kirk Marshall, Davide Mana, Show Tomono, Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Christene Britton-Jones, Philip Overby, Yuusuke Tokita, David Agranoff, Bradley Sands, Naohiko Kitahara, Michael John Grist, Edmund Colell, Trent Zelazny, Riri Shimada, Made in DNA, Glynn Barrass, Fulvio Gatti, Nirnara, Melissa J White, Fumihiko Iino, Curt Seubert, Elizabeth Black, John F. Rice, Hiroshi Yamamoto, Volker Baetz, Andrew Freudenberg, Terrie Czechowski, Lucía González Lavado, Mie Takase, Stephen A. North, Ran Cartwright, Ukyou Kodachi, Danilo Arona, David Naughton-Shires, John Shirley, Jonathan Moon, Tadashi Ohta, Richard Salter, Midori Tateyama, Grant Wamack, Massimo Soumaré, Yufuko Senoh, Berry Sizemore, Ash Lomen, Adam Breckenridge, Yasumi Kobayashi, Jason Wuchenich, Ryuto Hijiri, Vittorio Catani, Joji Hayashi, Kevin David Anderson, Tamao Kanroji, Michael Moorcock, and Shinya Gaku.

So, California.

2400 miles cross-country by motorcycle later...

It's where I'm living.

Weird to think I've been here a hair over a month.

So, the short update: Living in a lovely vegetarian co-op in Oakland - at least until the person I'm sub-subletting from gets back later this month. The job and apartment hunts have both gone miserably - so I'd be lying if I said that wasn't stressful. The weather is gorgeous, with pushy clouds and temperatures ranging from "the AC is off" to "the AC got turned up a little".

Pretty much my life revolves around doing as much contract work as I can manage (not nearly enough) and putting out more resumes. With brief moments of heading out for dinner/movies/games with the locals or stuff like tonight's Grant Morrison shindig at Isotope.

California is like a goddamned foreign country.

So, if you know of any work out here, let me know.

Yes.

We celebrate our freedom to stomp on the rights and freedoms of other nations. We celebrate our freedom while Corporations has more rights than citizens. We celebrate our freedoms while the Patriot Act gets extended. We celebrate our freedom while heroes rot in solitary confinement. We celebrate our freedom while the world burns.

And I celebrate my freedom to say these things without getting blackbagged. So, at least we've got that much going on.

Good morning!

Thursday: Put bike in shop, finish packing. Clean.
Friday: Drinks and possibly Dot Dot Dot...
Saturday: Take Tybalt back to Cincinnati. Eat more Skyline.
Sunday: Final stuff, then make at least St. Louis.

Monday 5/16: Shpongle!
Tuesday 5/17 Giving a short talk on running.
Wednesday 5/18: Shpongle in Louisville
Wednesday 5/25 Drive to Madison, Wisconsin after work.
Thursday 5/26 Wiscon!
Friday 5/27 Wiscon some more!
Saturday 5/28 Wiscon yet again!
Panelist on: Human Cyborg or Just Another Robot
Moderator on: The Future's Here, Just Not Evenly Distributed
Sunday 5/29 The final Wisconing!
Panelist on: Killing the Internet
Thursday 6/2: Midnight Show of X-Men 1st Class
Friday 6/3 Last day in Bloomington. Hand cat off to sitter - if I still have one -, make sure apartment is ready to hand off. Going away party/Dot Dot Dot at the 'bird?
Saturday 6/4. Drive west on motorcycle with a backpack.