GradProle

I'm desperately seeking ways to keep my mind pleasantly occupied at work, because my current job is not making use of it. So, I turned to the site that many readers (if I have any readers) have probably already heard about, ThinkGeek.com. A couple of products had me skeptical at first, then very enthusiastic and eager to get my hands on them: Acrobots and PixelBlocks. The Acrobots are tiny figures with magnetic feet and hands that can be posed all sorts of ways. PixelBlocks are a set of small, translucent, colorful Lego-like interlocking cubes. The photos show them made into free-standing 2D figures such as video game sprites (Mario, Mega Man, et. al.) and 3D figures and tiny buildings. These look like the coolest micro-toys ever. I could fiddle with them safely one block at a time while doing my repetitive job. I think I'll start with a $10 250-piece set of blocks (available on the PixelBlocks homepage) to make sure I like them first. A thousand might be awesome, but I have my anemic gradprole budget to consider. The other pieces I'm thinking of adding to work are a few more sets of art and travel photo postcards. I paper clip together two origami cubes (which I construct) to make a slit between them. I then use that slit to prop a postcard for display. If I get enough of these going I'll have a decent backdrop, then I add a couple of Acrobots, some PixelBlock characters and buildings and I might have a funky cubicle town worth looking at. I have no baby photos (since I have no babies) or any other photos, and Care Bears, Disney, and even Hello Kitty seriously are not gonna cut it for me. Homestar Runner and StrongBad are the only characters I can think of that are worthy of appearing in  my  cubicle. I'll probably try to construct them from those PixelBlocks... now there's a way to get through a day...

I am coming through to check on this periodically, but I am very busy at the end of the school semester right now, so I might not come up with any full-blown posts for a couple of weeks. I don't think anyone is really looking at this yet, but I figured I'd say this just in case.

I just found a tool that may be a free solution to one of my annoying problems. For almost my whole life I have wanted to make some animated cartoons, but the amount of labor and the supplies needed were always too daunting for me. Photo Story 3 might be a good interim solution for me while I'm in my gradprole stage. I'll post about how it works out for me and if it really works, you should see some of the results on this blog soon. 

If anyone is looking, I do apologize. I should have gotten this thing more organized before taking it live. In the meantime, I did find at least one person who has figured out the Vox thing and has a thriving little community going on. I added her to my neighborhood. 

    I guess instead of fiddling around some more, I'll finally start explaining what I mean by "gradproles". One trait that many of us gradproles share is a (hopefully) temporary form of poverty. Many of us may have grown up spoiled. Our parents gave us everything we needed and many things we wanted. That may not be the case for some gradproles, I'm sure. You can comment to tell me if I'm wrong. I bet that almost all of us, though, whether we grew up with silver spoons or not, were expecting something better after graduating from college.  We did not expect to end up joining the ranks of the proletariat, or proles. At least not for any extended period of time. I'll explain my own situation further in future posts, but the short version is: my Bachelor's degree is in Fine Arts (that is, painting, drawing, etc.). That may tell many of you a lot already. So, here I am, making less than $30K at a dull job, surrounded by high school grads that get on my nerves all day long talking about stupid stuff. My solution is to go to grad school, get trained for a real professional job in accounting and kiss this hellhole goodbye. That solution is in progress right now, I'm in school in the evenings. But I still have to suffer for about 2 more years. I have to stay with the company I work for because they are paying for my tuition. I can transfer within the company but I haven't found any appropriate positions in my city even though I check the job postings daily.
    All this artificially induced poverty can be stressful, even downright depressing. I went through a mild bout of depression back in 2004 when I had 2 jobs, including one at UPS that started at 3 in the morning. I just thought about that time again when I found this page through Seed Magazine. The page is a joke, but seriously, if someone had given me a million dollars at that time I would have snapped right out of that depression. What finally got me out of depression is I got a regular 7:30 AM to 4:30 PM job, and after another year, with a little assistance from my mom and by deferring my student loans while in school, I was able to cut down to just one job. So anyway, my obvious point is, money goes a very long way toward securing a gradprole's happiness and sanity. I guess I'll end up posting about it frequently.

What movie did you expect would be terrible, but was actually really good?

    "The 40-Year-Old Virgin". I took a gander at that title on the marquee for Circle Centre mall in downtown Indianapolis and thought, "Wow, that's stupid. Who'd watch that?" It sounded too pathetic, maybe even mean-spirited. That was before the Apatow phenomenon had occured, of course. The rest is history. I've gone on since then to see others he has contributed to, "Knocked Up" and "Superbad", both hilarious, and also "Little Miss Sunshine" with Steve Carell, all pretty much on the basis of seeing that one movie.
    "Napoleon Dynamite" is another one I thought would suck more than it did, but it's not quite as strong as "Virgin". I get more references from it for jokes with friends, though.