And the blood flows black...

The contest has ended, and sadly I did not make Finalist. Thanks to everyone who spent time supporting my film, especially those who blogged or twittered it! I'm not a big networking type on the internet, so I have a distinct disadvantage in contests that involve voting like this. I did at least get a laptop! My film is entirely out of the running now though, so I suppose I get to sit back and wait for what I did earn to come my way.

Wow, over a thousand views this morning, and I've only been promoting this since Monday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRlfltwXq-8

Remember you can vote daily! Or check out youtube.com/hp and see all the other entries if you haven't yet! Lets keep the votes coming to get to the Finalist phase which is next week!

WOOHOO! Come check out my film!

I made a film for the www.youtube.com/hp You-on-You contest, which was a contest to create a minute long film telling the story of "you" without showing your face! The contest has been split into six weeks of separate periods of entry, with judges going through each week to pick their top 20 videos and placing them as Semi-Finalists to be voted on, while the rest go to Community Awards voting.

Announced this morning, my video is a Semi-Finalist for Week 5 of the contest! You can check it out and vote for it right here by clicking on the green thumbs-up in the banner ad that appears a few seconds in!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRlfltwXq-8

You can also bookmark the page and vote for it DAILY! Another way to see it is to visit the contest site, click on "View + Vote", and look through the 20 Semi-Finalists for "Write it Like a Seagull"! Please, feel free to journal, blog, facebook, or Twitter about this! The more votes I get, the closer I get to Finalist! If I get to Finalist, it's another round of voting to go after the Grand Prize! The Grand Prize is $40,000, which will both replace my totalled car, and let me get the Master's degree I'd like to go for!

By being announced a Semi-Finalist I have won an HP Artist's Edition laptop! It's a show of the judges' support, so lets go all the way to the end! We can do this!

I'm going. Crashing in a friend's hotel room.

So unless some catastrophic failure or success happens, I'll be there.

My car has been totalled based upon a technicality: The repairs to fix it are several hundred dollars past what it's worth if it were in excellent condition. The car being only in fair condition, I don't have any idea what that makes it worth aside from "a lot less".

I'm not sure what the insurance company will be offering us for it.

I know it's been forever since I posted here. There's a chance people may see it a bit more easily than me calling all those who would have reason to be concerned.

At about 1PM earlier today I made it home after leaving Broomfield where I was visiting friends at 9PM the previous night. On my way home I was hoping the worst thing that would happen would be the unfortunate detour through the exceedingly creepy town that is Whalsenburg at night in Colorado (I'd be worried about offending people from there, but judging by the look of the town at night, they're probably too busy shanking teenagers who got lost to care about this journal), but instead much worse happened.

At about 1:20AM, as I was exiting Raton, NM, I hit a deer while driving somewhere around 80MPH, though the whole event happened in a very fast series of seeing the deer as soon as it got in range of my headlights (there was traffic coming from the opposite direction, so highbeams were not an option), slamming on my brakes, honking my horn, swerving to try and avoid it, realizing there was no way I could avoid it, and then slamming my foot back on the gas because, and this is your important safety tip of the day, when a collision with a large animal like a deer is absolutely unavoidable, you accelerate so it is more likely that the animal will be thrown from your vehicle instead of dragged under it, and so it is more likely that the animal will be killed instantly or die much more quickly rather than take slightly lighter injuries that would prolong its suffering.

I have no idea what happened to the deer. There were no lights on my side of the road except for my car's, and after hitting the deer, I was one set of lights left because it just destroyed the front passenger side of my car. Despite how bad the event was, it generally went as well as it possibly could've. I ended up solidly hitting the deer, which is unfortunate, but it was the rear half of the deer on the passenger side and it rolled off the fender without damaging the windshield of the roof. In reality, deer attacks can be fatal because the deer's hooves (or horns, if it's a stag, this one wasn't) can come crashing through the windshield and cause severe trauma to passengers inside. The car was almost drivable, but broken parts rubbing against the passenger side tire kept me from being able to go anywhere without popping a wheel. No leaks, no weird sounds as the engine runs though. As long as the frame isn't bent, the damage should be easily repaired.

I may have sustained minor whiplash injuries. Shortly afterwards, I was greeting by this hot ache that went up from the top ligaments of my right shoulder, along the side of my neck and up into the right side of my head. It's understandable...Slamming into a deer with my little car at that speed jerked me around a bit. As the event was happening, I did have this brief moment of clarity where I thought to myself, "If I were driving a truck, I'd be having venison for dinner."

I was able to call my insurance company and arrange a tow that came at 3AM. A police officer found me shortly after the accident and took a report for me, and came to check on me every half hour or so while I was waiting for the tow truck. Despite that I was south of Raton, the towing service actually brought my car and I back to Trinidad, CO, and left my car in their lot until their shop opened, and left me at the 24-hour Wal-Mart until their other driver got in to get my car, and pick me up for the tow all the way to Albuquerque. I was dropped off at the Wal-Mart at 4AM and had to wait until about 8:15AM to get picked up. We arrived at the body shop where my car is currently receiving an estimate at noon, my sister picked me up and I got home at 1PM.

I'm cleared by my vehicle insurance to see a doctor, so we'll be able to schedule an appointment tomorrow to check for and treat any whiplash type trauma I may have gotten.

I'm kindof shocked that I don't feel terrible about killing a deer (the deer by now is most certainly coyote food), but I think that's because I'm still reeling from the fact that the moment I saw the deer on the road I knew I could've died as well, and I'm quite grateful that didn't happen.

So I have my new Acer screen that's 24" and 1080p...I've discovered it makes my graphics card cry on intense games. Hell, even on WoW I've turned down a few settings.

Beforehand, my graphics card was all, "Pff! 1024x768? Sure, baby! Bring it! I'll detail everything for you! Go on, you can play Call of Duty 4 on FULL DETAIL! We'll rock!"

Now it pretty much says, "Whoa, man. Just -whoa- man. Lets hold back, okay? Lets just take a deep breath and--listen...Just pick one thing. Just pick one thing! Super draw distance? Okay, take that! Or intense texture detail? I can rock that too! Detailed models? All right. But only ONE of those things. Don't make me think about two, because, man, that's a whole lot of stuff across that big screen."

So now I'm looking at new graphics cards. There's some 1GB ones for just $10 more than the fancier 512mb ones, designed for HD connections and monitors, as well as blu-ray drives (once I get a blu-ray drive)!

Oh, and my parents got me new art pens and drawing pads for Christmas. Which makes me cry, because I didn't ask for those for Christmas, which means they got all confused because they have no clue what I want--and it was worse this year because I don't know what I want, and my mom just must've looked for something that said "Christmas list" and had my name on that from a previous year and gone with that. I'm trying not to use pens and paper AT ALL, and I don't want to have to shell out a bunch of money for a new scanner, so I have no idea what to use these for.

Fuck, right now as I think of this I'm just getting all panicky. I mean, what do I do? I have a literal /pile/ of drawing pads that aren't even a quarter full in one of my boxes. I bought a whole bunch of pens on my own in the past year that have mainly been used for labeling CDs and filling out unemployment forms. Then I get these two whole boxes of pens and two drawing books, and I'm just thinking, "...the hell?" I feel bad, because they were just trying, but I also feel just...not listened to.

On top of that, they drove out here to help me bring my stuff back to Albuquerque, but they brought the truck instead of the SUV. I specifically said, "Bring the SUV, because I don't have /anything/ suited to being outside in a truck under a tarp."

At this point, absolutely NOTHING has gone right with the actual process of this move. It's been a month of fucking misery. At least I'm glad to see my folks again.

EDIT: Okay, so I'm overreacting. It occurred to me that my best friend who was planning to come down and spend Christmas with us sent my family a new art portfolio case as my present. It's really to hold all my old stuff, and my mother still probably did look up one of my old lists, but with that sitting at the house it makes sense to go out and buy some new art supplies.

I just want to be alone for a couple days. I want the chance to not have people around me unless I invite them over. I want to be able to wake up when I want to, and go to bed when I want to without the worry of inconveniencing people.

I'm at my sister's house right now. I was so looking forward to several days of just taking care of the dogs. But the road she and her husband were going to take got snowed in, so they stayed here. So I still haven't had a full day alone since the end of November.

On top of that, I'm in an uncomfortable kitchen chair, and will have to take apart my computer at the end of tomorrow, and with my sister and brother-in-law around I've felt too self-conscious to draw anything on my tablet. My normal methods of "relaxation" no longer feel normal, or relaxing right now, but all my books, games, and movies are in boxes, and have been since the end of November. I don't even have a sketchbook out right now, though if I did do anything there it's not like I could scan it anyway.

I just want Christmas to be over, so I can get to Albuquerque, get my stuff together and unpacked, take a large dose of cough syrup and spend a few days doing nothing with no one. It's not that this has made the month any more difficult than it has been so far, I just haven't had any way to relieve the stress whatsoever.

Due to my decision to move away, I'm tossing a going-away party on the 20th. Be sure to contact me privately if you'd like the details!

It's time for a vacation.

It's really funny, my professors said to me when I told them I was moving out to LA, "Think of it as a really long vacation. Things may not work out, but do it for the fun of trying, and if you find you hate it, go, because you don't deserve to live miserably."

Well, despite the wonderful times that I've had with friends out here, overall it's been miserable. The victories I've had have been cherished, but small. The difficulties I've had have been great, and despite that I've tried so hard to overcome them, I've had yet another job interview which was just a scam, which puts them at numbers I can't even count. The worst of all, it was such a scam it was in some douchebag's apartment. I didn't even go. I stopped outside the apartment building, looked at it, called him, and nearly literally asked, "WTF?" I was as polite as possible, but generally I think the guy was insulted, and he deserved it. I think what insulted him was he thought himself a salesman, and I burnt his pitch right in front of him.

And I'm sick of it. I'm sitting here getting scammed, not earning savings, constantly worrying about everything, and having nearly nothing I can do about it. Jobs? In LA? HA!

I'm going back to my parent's house in New Mexico. I'll live rent free for a while and build up some savings. It's time to rethink some things. I think I'll go for a Master's degree, and I'm not even sure it'll be in theatre/film.

I see fantastic work coming out of new places all the time. I have the knowledge and ability to go beyond the scope of an actor, and since LA doesn't have the resources to go even reach the scope of an underpaid retail employee, it's time to take what I can and find ways to go further.

Just as long as I don't settle, and I always work to go further.

So I went to this job interview at this magic shop/theatre all the way up in Santa Monica today, only to be ambushed by what felt like a very passive-aggressive attitude towards actors.

"We need you to work Thursdays through Sundays."
"But you're an actor..."
"So what happens when you get an audition on Thursday and you're working from 11-6?"
"We don't have enough people to cover for other people."
"You know you'll want to go to your audition. We don't want you to be unhappy."
"Yes, we definitely don't want you to be unhappy."
"But we can't afford to have you missing work because we don't have enough people."
"And good actors go to their auditions. If you don't, you'll be unhappy."
"And we don't want you to leave after just a few months because you're unhappy."

This went around in circles for about fifteen minutes. It's fucked up my WHOLE day (aside from Prop 8 passing in California. Worthless garbage-heap of a state...), and I don't know what to think. I finally log in (just as I write this) to discover I have an e-mail saying they're DEFINITELY considering me for a position and to talk to them after I go see a free show at their place on Saturday. It would be good news, but to be honest, I don't really feel welcome after the tone they took on with me for 15 minutes before suddenly becoming cheery people again. Now I don't think I'll be miserable because of the work, I'll be miserable because I don't trust them.

It's really...I don't know. It's like this whole week is attempting to prove to me that things can go well and still be bad. Obama got elected (Yay!) but Prop. 8 in California passed. Now I got a job interview where apparently they're strongly considering me (I've heard that before), but they really showed a side I don't feel secure with.

So apparently a paper from my tax return got lost. It's no biggy, I got my return when I was supposed to, but the IRS wants a signature on this paper for their records. However, to finish it up, I need a copy of my return, and I can't seem to find mine. In the letter they sent me, they gave me a phone number to call in case I had lost my copy though.

However, when calling that number, I discovered that for one of the most hated and despised beauracracies that anyone can think of, they really just aren't TRYING to fix that image at all. In fact, they might not care. In fact, as I sit on hold for 20 minutes listening to the same 60 seconds of the Swan Lake symphony on repeat, I'm pretty sure the only thing they're trying to do is encourage it. It's obvious there's a number of people who give FUCK-ALL to whatever task they're working on at the IRS, stick their thumbs up their ass when they're done and smile about it. And /I'm/ the one out of a job.

So I actually got called in for work today. I'm going to try to do my best to burn through passing out the flyers so I can get back home and find a real job.

So at this new job, it's basically set your own hours. You tell them when you want to work, and tell them when you don't. What you do after a night of working, basically, is let them know your availability for the next day.

So after my training, I called in like I was supposed to, told them how many passes I gave away, and said, "And I'm available for tomorrow, Saturday." And no one called. So I call today, and the guy who's there said, "Oh, well, I didn't know you /wanted/ to work...I just knew you were available." So I tell him I've got all these passes left, and he says, "Oh, we've already got people there today, it's kindof a reward thing for recruiters (because it's an A-list film), but we can send you to...Burbank..." Which I declined, because that's no where NEAR my audition today, which was right by where I'd be giving out the original passes...

But I couldn't believe that..."Oh, I didn't know you wanted to work..." No, asshole, I don't want to work, not after these lovely impressions. I just want to use you for what cash I can make and move on to something reliable and less spacey. How's that? Typical salesmen at this company. They're lost considering the product, not the people that it's for.

Went to training tonight...

Worked basically 4-5 hours...

Turns out it's just like the face painting job.

So...

The job search continues.



















I hate salesman and people.

EDIT: I like my friend, Matt's, comment:
"Did you give away all your tickets?"
"No."
"But they're free!"
"People don't trust free things."
Free things aren't worth paying for, after all.

EDIT AGAIN:
After looking at my numbers again, I was there around 4 hours, it's hard to tell because I didn't keep track of when the training advice stopped and the actual attempts at recruiting again, and I gave out 48 passes. Now, I was told it would take about 8 hours to give out 100, so that is actually on track. But there was a certain misery to the job...I'll still need to see what my paycheck gives me, and see what more days of work are like. I'm not fucking working from 7PM to 11 again. And since I'll be working alone the next time I work, I'm not going to even pretend to put on that salesman schtick like I did tonight. It makes me sick. It makes me physically ill. My stomach starts to turn, and I start to get a migraine when I have to put on that fake song-and-dance bullshit. I hate it when people do it to me, I hate doing it to other people. I hate the way people start to behave outside of work when they do that bullshit for a living. The guy hiring me doing it made me feel sick and worried all week till tonight, it made me feel worried THROUGH tonight even though, now that I triplecheck, I supposedly did okay, and it's going to continue making me feel sick until I get paid.

In fact, I really don't know how long I can tolerate this. Even if the pay is good, I think I'll have to find a second job. I'd rather get paid less than simply feel terrified and ill all the time.

God, I should've been in bed an hour ago. Fifth fucking day where I can't sleep.

So I got to spend some 6 hours in a car today for a total of 2 hours of 'activity', an hour and a half of that being waiting for a 30 second audition. The other half hour being for that reality TV thing I was so psyched out for.

I thought it'd be great. A reality TV show about actors, where they show the steps and struggle to become a working actor, preferably from both sides, interviewing actors and agents, showing things as they occurred, most likely with the producers connecting them with people so you have guaranteed content to post. It'd be unique, I think.

But this was less a reality show, and more a documentary (there is a difference). And normally documentaries are there to raise awareness of an issue. This was here to...entertain. And the big kicker is for all the effort I'd be putting into it, I wouldn't get paid. I wouldn't get a dime, I wouldn't get to keep my footage, and I wouldn't even get a fucking gas stipend for making a 2 hour trip every week.

--We interrupt this journal to present a new discovery: Kraft Mac-n-Cheese not only has noodles that cook extremely quickly and becom extra mushy, but the cheese powder, despite being 90% preservatives, will eventually go bad. Do not consider Kraft Mac-n-Chees non-perishable. Now back to the original journal presentation--

So what DO I get? Well, I get "exposure" as a struggling actor. Keep in mind, no real acting would be seen, just me being upset or happy over various tragedies and victories. And what do the producers get? A sweet HD Cable channel buyout. You'd think they could at least hook me up with some auditions, help me jump through some hoops to get an agent, something! But no! They get money off my life, and I contribute to the problem of reality television taking money out of the industry without honestly putting any into it.

FUCK. THAT. NOISE.

Really, I feel genuinely insulted.

Well, I got hired at the place. That doesn't really say much to me though. I imagine this job goes through a substantial amount of turnover, what with how they say they intend for it to basically be a temporary job for people in the film/theatre industry.

I have no rose colored glasses, I know that the pay may be shitty to start. While this job COULD be all that and a box of chocolates, I know it most likely won't be. But I also know how events promotions works, so I imagine I can do this, and make this work. My training is tentatively scheduled for Friday. Here's hoping this is what I could use, if not what I need.

What have I got to lose, right?

So tomorrow I have a job interview in the afternoon for a position as a movie screening recruiter. Now what this job is, essentially, is standing outside a theatre passing out those flyers that say, "Admit two to screening for ____ on ____ at ____." And basically what I do is ask, "Hey, you like these types of movies? You free on this date? Why don't you take a free ticket?" and that's it. It's similar to house papering, though you focus a little more on finding people who are guaranteed to like it rather than just show up.

The job pays based upon the number of people who show up that you handed tickets to. I need to find out how they count the tickets, so there's a form of accountability I can go back for with every paycheck so they can't just say, "Oh, yeah, not that many people showed up," should anything ever look fishy. It pays about $7 per person to show up to start. Now, they say it takes about 8 hours to hand out 100 tickets, and that of that hundred, 15-25 people will show up. So that's about $105+ before taxes, which SOUNDS like a good deal, but I don't know.

I'll probably pick it up and just see how it goes. Now, the last time I had a job at Disneyland, I was spending my lunch breaks crying on the Disneyland backlot after seeing my paycheck. That job was the result of a desperate bitch just out-and-out lying to me. "Oh, sure, you'll have lines ALL DAY, and the fast days will make up for the slow days." Yeah, no. This guy may be yanking my chain too. It may turn out it's a lot harder to pass out 100 tickets in eight hours than you'd think. But here's the catch, I've papered houses before. I know there's general statistics of however many tickets you had out, X amount of people will most likely come back. This is a little more detailed than papering houses, but that was the one thing I was asking him about, "On average, what amount of people do you find attending for the amounts of tickets you hand out?" The statistic he gave me was for every 100 tickets, most likely given out over an 8 hour period, 15-25 people will show up.

So that means $105+/day on average, which puts it at $525+ per week (all before taxes, mind you), which means that when I don't have anything else going, I'll be able to start earning SAVINGS (OMG! SAVINGS!), get trips back home, and eventually get myself some HD monitors and things like that.

So tune in throughout the week for the thrilling conclusion. Will it be:

Pak's Perfect Part-time Profession Profits Prolificly!

OR

Swindling Salesman Snag a Steal a Second Time-Around?

http://www.richmann.com/StanislavPetrov.htm

Taken from BeachFox on FA.

So it's looking like October-December and even onward could be a terrible season. I don't know. I'm looking into things, but it's hard. There are details I can't really go into right now, but the job search is murdur. I'm starting to look at options further away, which could mean four hours of round trip traffic if I stay here, otherwise I might consider moving further up towards Hollywood, which means dealing with all the worry of finding an earthquake safe building.

It would also be difficult to find an apartment as equally as awesome as this one, but the advantages of living here are starting to become inappropriate for the advantages I need to keep life moving forward.

And for fuck's sake, I don't want to have to spend any time in New Mexico with my family, even if it's rent free while I work and save up every penny to move back out here and try again. I don't want to exchange long drives in slow traffic for long drives through foothills to get to any sembelance of situation, the only one being a pathetic city with a high, violent crime rate and me having to deal with the fact that there's not really career opportunities for me there, though I could do some film work, there's also the problem that I have on friend out there, and he's more of a friend of a friend, and I don't know if he lives there still.

And then I go and do silly things. Like try to pack a hookah bowl to relax, and have one of the cheap, hot coals I have splinter and burn my rug. Luckily they're technically gifts...Lucky I don't technically have a damage deposit either. Doesn't mean I'm not kicking myself over it. Oh, god, so many big decisions to be made in such a short timeframe...

I'll figure something out. Hopefully it will be amazing.