this blog is titled, "ron complains about his life for a change"

hello and welcome to Happy Magic Blog Afterdinner Time. My name is Ron and I am goign to share this special time with you right now and tell you about some things in my life which are fun to whine about. So please pull up a McShake and some french fries, smother them with ketchup (the McShake too), take off your shoes and buckle in for some good bloggity goodness.

Well it is thursday night and i am here at my office in santa ana. it is the end of a long day, following a long week and beofre that a long month/few months. Okay I guess the length of things is well established at this point. I have been sitting around all day long making little rooftop elements and doodads, it's been great fun. Actually I do enjoy doing that stuff, I suppose maybe that means there's something a little wrong with me or I have been steadily unearthing the autistic layers of my brain, or something, but there you have it.

Work is going alright. I don't really wanna talk about it right now, it's been sort of frustrating. I spend too much time here and I am at a point where I am both very thankful to be working at a place like this and at the same time getting really tired of the videogame industry. I think I need some more positive reinforcement beyond just seeing my wallet get slightly fatter every so often (which is usually immediately depleted as I chip away at my debt).. I need some pat on the back or something, I dunno. I think I am pretty good at what I do, but I work in an industry that favors superficiality over, uh, tremendously bizarre aesthetic.. or something.. anyway the point is it's business for $$$ over personal gratification (well, for us grunts anyway) no matter where you are or who you are working for I suppose. Anyway I tend to flip flop on my feeling on the whole general shebang so I won't linger on bitching about it at length (...it's true, I swear!) I guess no matter what I did for a living, I'd take issue with the politics of it, that's the kind of guy I am. I am still waiting for a golden age whose day is past, I suppose.

So I have an ant problem, I have mentioned this before. Honestly I see ants crawling all over my desk all day long. I can look down and see like 4 or five of them at any given time, walking on my keyboard, my mousepad, up the side of my monitor. Yeah it used to be fucking revolting but it's almost become sort of cute by now. I love pulling them off of my arms, wrists, and pants. I don't want to think about the ones which are probably crawling near my orifices. Apologies to Salvatore Dali. This would all be well and good if i was a slob but i am really not, there's a couple of empty water bottles on my desk that that's it really. Our office is just infested with ants - I need to buy some serious ant traps and just obliterate the whole colony. DIE you little fuckers! (waiting for the ironic part where i see ants crawling across the screen over the word "ants" which i'd just typed)

I am no stranger to ant infestation. I am forgetting if i have memorialized my Anty Past in my blog before, and since myspace blog tools are anemic to say the least, I will assume I've not gone off on it - if so, chalk this up to a rerun (hey it is summertime). I remember living in the valley during one particularly hot summer. And then - the ants came. They came by the dozens, the hundreds, the thousands.. I can't count. There was this thick long line leading into the house from the back door, a line comprised completely of ants coming to and going fro. We called it "the Ants 405". You could smash as many of them as you wanted, but it wouldn't matter, they'd just keep coming, as ants do. Over the carcasses of their fallen bretheren, it would not matter. PROGRESS-- EXPLORE!! SEARCH!!! CONTINUE!! ADVANCE!! They'd got all over the house. Again let me say that I was not a slob and we didn't have a messy house or food lying around (Well, besides the dog dish). But the ants where everywhere. I would wake up in the morning and there'd be several ants crushed under my back from when I was sleeping. I'd pick up my alarm clock and ants would be walking all in and out of it. I'd open the fridge and there'd be ants in EVERYTHING. And even the freezer.. I would put a glass under the ice depositor thingy and ice cubes with frozen dead ants would come out. I opened the freezer and there'd just be these big balls of dead frozen ants clumped together inside. Yup, so.. pretty gross.

We had a hot tub. I mentioned the tub beofre, I am sure.. it was Pam Anderson's manager's tub. Or something. Anyway we'd routinely clena it (as one has to) - there was a huge ant colony inside the motor housing. I opened up the housing for whatever reason and more ants then I had ever seen in my life just came streaming out.. we put some water or something in the housing and they all fled. It was like a moving sea of blackness, for like 15 minutes.

So. Yeah. Ants. There you have it. I am making myself feel itchy now.

I am tired. I have been working all hours lately and little else - my social life has withered up and died, essentially. I am not too happy about that, but you can't have it all.. It will be back, anyway. And I have doen my share of partying and hanging out I suppose. But, yeah, it's taking a toll on me lately. It's colored my mood and got me kind of down - I can't really moan about it too much 'cause the whole point of it all is "get a job, keep a job!" these days, and that's usually a tough thing to do in my life it seems. Oh, I like it, at the end of the day - things are never stagnant, there's always tons of new shit to learn, new rhythms to adjust to, new technology and technique to conquer and coexist with, new politics to finagle - things are not dull and dreary. It's just tiring, and as I get older it wears me down a little more as the years pass. In the recent years I would counter it with some excessive party-heartying, but the times are frowning on the continuing of that lifestyle for a number of reasons, and so I have to stick to the straight-and-narrow. Yeah, that's fine too, and I feel like a good american and consumer - I fill my tank, i eat my carbs, I flush my toilet, i pay my bills. But where I'd usually had this feeling of "inevitably building towards something greater," I feel like my ignorance and naivete is giving way to desire for security, stability, and steadiness (bless those acronyms) and rather than mess with the world on a daily basis, I just want to make it thru the weeks and keep my head above water and my S together.

Yeah, so... I need a little vacation. An honest, worry-free time in my life where I can just chill and not sweat the immediate future and just plunk down and relax for five freakin' minutes. I need a solid weekend where my only concern is finding a decen tparking spot on the beach, and if there is enough suntan lotion in my bag so i won't look like a lobster at the end of the day. I want to lie down on my couch and marvel at how comfortably soft it is without slipping immediately into slumber-mode 'cause i am worn down from making myself nuts with overblown neuroses. I want to look at my life and my work and my society and put it into a manageable schedule for all it's elements, how much it will all cost and how much time I will spend on it and how many more miles my car will be able to sustain me as we power thru it all together before i need to take out a new loan for a newer uglier ride.

i think the only solution is to buy a convertible, at this point.. skin cancer or no skin cancer..!