Sporadic Manifestations

That is an apt description of both my postings and my income of late.

I keep getting checks in the mail of a few hundred dollars at a time for work I’d done and completely forgotten about. These checks always seem to come in just as I say, “Well, that’s it, the bank account is nearly empty,” and keep me going for another couple of miserly weeks. Thank God for videogames, novels and DVD extras, great ways to kill days at a time without having to go out and spend frightening amounts of money…

There probably aren’t going to be much in the way of postings for the next little bit because A) not much is happening, and B) To prepare for the eventual release of Final Fantasy X-2 later in the year, my nostalgia kicked in and booted up Final Fantasy X, ostensibly just to view the ending cinemas one more time… and of course I realized, “Hey, I didn’t play this game to death the first time around and get EVERY single ultimate weapon for EVERY single character and get EVERY single one of them up to max level and win EVERY single trophy in the Blitzball tournaments… so now guess what I’m doin’?!?

My GOD… I’d forgotten how beautiful this game looked…

So between trying to crank out a minimum of 2-3 pages per day on Serial Jen (Up in the 20s! Whoo! Hope it it doesn’t get up into the 90s like the last one…) and then retreating to the Cave to summon Aeons, play Blitzball and generall try to ogle Lulu’s cleavage when she bends down for her “victory pose” after winning a fight, things are wonderfully, blessedly quiet and routine. Aside from the fact that each day is one of financial uncertainty, this is more or less the life I’d always hoped to live, minus the book tour and plasma TV home theatre set up. Everything else is pretty much there though; the girlfriend, the cat, the writing, the games and the movies. I want for very little except a little more financial stability, although, the more I think about it, the more I realize it means the end to this incredibly pleasant lifestyle (IE, full time job equals 8 hours in the office, 5 days a week, or, success with the book means more pressure to write regularly, only now with editors hounding me…_) and so I’m trying to get as much mileage as I can outta’ this before Change, as it always, cheekily, reliably does, goes ahead and fucks up something that was working out just fine, thank you very much…

Who Would’a Thunk It?

I don’t fucking believe this one. This just happened this evening while making a cigarette run to the 7-11. I looked casually at the shelves, and saw what I thought was a pretty hip, stylish looking geek/gaming mag. Closer inspection revealed that it wasn’t one of the familiar gaming mags I know from the U.S. or U.K., but something actually produced HERE. What bowled me over even more was that it’s GOOD! My God, it’s ACTUALLY GOOD! No grammar errors willy nilly, no spelling errors, and the writers actually seem to be able to live up to that title!

The magazine itself is called Playworks and has only been in circulation since November. I was caught by this particular cover right here for Final Fantasy X-2. After flipping through it and actually laughing in all the right places (Their Mean Letters Responses section by Dr. 1-Up… God, I wish I’d written that abortion joke…) I felt compelled to write them and beg for a job. I did that about three hours ago, barraging them with everything from my agent’s website to the my mention in the National Book Development Council of Singapore’s website as a “Singapore Writer” (Yes, they’ve already co-opted me, the sneaky bastards…) some of my online articles, like the one written for Upload magazine, and last, but not least, but pseudo review of Suikoden III that was posted right here in this very blog. Two hours ago they wrote back asking me for my contact details. That stunned me, since the e-mail was sent off at about 11 pm local time, but I guess someone must’ve been burning the midnight oil over there to get the next issue out, so I guess all I can do now is wait. Still, writing for a gaming mag would be a ton of fun for a while, and might even potentially lead to possible avenues of exploitation for Geek Life…

I’m getting entirely too mercenary for my own good these days…

Right, back to Final Fantasy X… See you all in a couple of weeks…

Stupid Blitzball tournaments… I don’t even like Blitzball…