Okay, right is right - I've been gone for way too long without any notice, and I owe you guys an explanation. Here it comes. But I warn you, it is long and cruel and might prove dangerous to your mental health:
I've got a job.
There it is. I said it. Scary, isn't it? What here follows is an account of my current labor situation. A long, whiny, angsty account.
Y'see, for reasons I will return to later, I rather needed to make a lot of money this fall. And despite the current economic boom around here and the abundance of available jobs it has brought with it, I've had a surprisingly hard time finding something - mostly of course because I'm a) not doing telemarketing, b) not doing night shifts and c) not available after new year's. Yeah, I'm picky. So, I searched around for a month or so, taking odd jobs for a substitute bureau (primarily a mailman job that I actually liked quite a lot and spent most of week 39 on), but obviously, I didn't make enough money, so I had to get SOMETHING steady. And then I got this job.
Now, I wouldn't hold it below my employers to google my name and find this, so (apart from giggling at their hypothetical bewilderment at why my name shows up on a webcomic site about insects and robots) I'm not going to state specifically where I work. Instead, I will give the place a pseudonym, and one that fits it. So: Since last Monday, I've been selling bread and pastries to ungrateful customers at the goddamn super. Yes, a supermarket. I really have sunk that low.
"So what," you might say, "isn't selling stuff at a super the kind of brainless, unexhausting job that feels like a breeze compared to school? The kind where once you get home, you can relax and not think about the job at all?". Well, yeah, it is. Apart from memorizing the names and cashier codes of all the bread and cakes we sell, the job demands so little of my brain that I suppose the only reason why it can't be handled by robots is that that would probably scare the customers. However, that doesn't mean that the job isn't exhausting as hell. I don't know how many of you have worked retail, but I can tell you this: When it's 2 PM and you've been working for 8 hours straight - since 6 bloody AM - and you've had a constant line of at least 10 impatient, complaining customers all wanting 5 &%#¤ minihotdogs (which you have to make sure are baked at regular intervals) AND for every 5 customers there's someone who wants something difficult, like 6 Sarah Bernard pies, 3 sliced rye breads, or two cups of coffee AND you're technically supposed to keep the shop stocked and clean while serving all those customers AND you're only two people (three on weekends) manning the store - then you don't feel very unexhausted or ready to draw when you get home. You feel more like going to bed and sleeping for 12 hours, yet you don't do that because you're too lazy to brush your teeth, so instead you zombie away, reading nonsense on TVtropes or somewhere and end up not getting enough sleep anyway. Yeah, that's pretty much what my week has been like.
So, that accounts for a good deal of my absence from these quarters, right? But wait, there's more! The OTHER half of the blame for my not-here-ness, however, lays, as you guys should know by now that it ALWAYS does this time of the year, on cosplay. Yes, once again, Fried Deer and I are trying to finish our cospay in time for J-popcon, once again we are hopefully, inexcusably behind schedule, and this year, we've even promised eachother to make it AWESOME, which just makes the time pressure worse. Oh well.
The short end of a long story is that, as it is, I don't see exactly when I will have time to do the comic this month. And that sucks. If the goddamn super stops sucking and cosplay goes smoothly, I will do it, but otherwise, uhm... Well, I'll keep you updated on what happens from now on, at least. Also, I have some non-A.N.T material that I might be able to put up as filler until November.
Finally, I'd just like to thank every single one of you who congratulated me on my birthday (which was really nice, BTW) or just stuck around the comic for the last few pathetic months: You are awesome and the best readers I could hope to have, and I am really, really, really sorry that I can't give you the amount of silly robot-insect-yuri-airhead-action you deserve. And because you are so awesome and geeky, I've posted a piece of useless tecnobabble (okay, biobabble) in the forums for you to read, comment on, tear apart or frown upon. It's just a little thing I wrote a few weeks ago (when I wasn't quite as pressed on time as I am now but still had a hard time drawing the next page - because it's stupid, that's what it is!) and nothing as good as a real update, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway.
That was all for now - I promise it won't be this long until my next post here...
To finish off, some random observations/news/fillery things:
1) I HAVE MARKERS! Yes, after three years of wanting some, I finally bought my first set of Copic markers (with a gift certificate I got for my birthday, of course - I'm broke, after all). Obviously, I went for the ciao brand (the cheaper, smaller, less über versions of normal Copics), and I now own a whoppin' set of 18, specifically chosen to fit the color schemes of A.N.T characters. Marker drawings forthcoming as soon as I make some.
2) I ALSO HAVE CONTACTS! ... And I suck at using them. Sticking a finger into my own eye is apparently one of those things i just can't do. I'll stick with glasses.
3) Once again, the Ungdomshuset situation is (maybe) going somewhere.Or, at least, the media are finally talking about it again, after a thoroughly awesome non-violent event this weekend. Here's hoping it leads to something. (I was even in a demonstration today!)
