The quest to rebuild my comics collection continues, with the second shipment arriving today from up north. Where the first one brought me complete sets of Steve Englehart’s work on AVENGERS, CAPTAIN MARVEL, and the INCREDIBLE HULK, today’s box brought me Englehart’s fine BATMAN stories, and a lot of Steve Gerber stuff… a few issues of SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL (featuring her origin, and the origins of Mandrill and Nekra), another couple of odd issues of CREATURES ON THE LOOSE featuring THONGOR, WARRIOR OF LOST LEMURIA, three issues of the old oversized black and white DEADLY HANDS OF KUNG FU magazine featuring Englehart stories of Shang Chi, Master of Kung Fu (which stories included the origin of Midnight, a recurring Englehart villain later seen in AVENGERS), and, most importantly, a complete set of Steve Gerber’s MAN-THING issues, from ADVENTURE INTO FEAR #11 through the last Gerber issue of MAN-THING’s own self titled series, and yes, yes, yes, including five issues of Alan Moore’s favorite inadvertent bit of salacious comic book humor, GIANT SIZE MAN-THING.

So I’ve been reading all day long, on and off, when I wasn’t napping.

Nobody called me today in outrage over the e-pop that was probably on everybody’s screens when they got to work this morning, but that don’t mean a thing. The acid test will be tomorrow, when I walk into work. Nearly anything could happen, from nothing (if people simply didn’t bother reading it) to me being hauled into our H.R. director’s office and fired for sexual harassment (if the e-pop got anyone in upper management curious enough to pull the entire string of e-pops between me and Mary, and they question Mary and she rats me out and caves enough to pressure to make a complaint against me).

Those are, as far as I can tell, the extreme opposite ends of the spectrum of possibility. Most probable is that I’ll take some teasing about it, which will be annoying but tolerable.

My new next door neighbor Annie knocked on my door last night and I wound up going over to her side of the duplex we both share for a few hours and chatting. It turns out she doesn’t have a boyfriend and has never had one, according to her. She says she doesn’t know how to deal with boys at all, because apparently she was very fat in high school. I suppose this means I could move in on her, but I’d feel awfully predatory doing it, and while she’s attractive enough (a bit stocky, but definitely cute), I’d only be using her out of loneliness… which isn’t worthy of her or me. I do find her physically attractive and wouldn’t be at all ashamed to be seen in public with her (I know, that’s shallow, but Here At The End Of All Things, we strive for honesty as a substitute for character), but, on the other hand, I’ve never been wild about the idea of training a virgin, and she strikes me as being probably reasonably inhibited. I spent six years with one deeply inhibited woman who was too young for me (according to everyone else); I don’t need another relationship like that.

All of this sound swell of me, of course; but if Annie threw herself at me the way Mary has been, I’d probably boff her anyway. Fortunately, Annie seems much too shy and, well, as I’ve mentioned, inhibited, to do that… and I’m definitely not going to make a pass first.

I loaned her the first season of Buffy, though, so that may improve her mind slightly. ::grin::

September 12 2004

Well, someone from where I work has found my blog page. Therefore, I've removed it from where it was and I guess I'll just vent over here instead. Whether or not I'll ever give anyone this particular URL I can't at this moment say. Writing for no audience is a lot like not writing at all... but... every time I let other people read the stuff I write, good things happen, but bad things happen as well.

I guess that's as good a description of real life as any, but still, I could use fewer bad things in my life, and that definitely includes people I work with stumbling across the webpage where I write more or less honestly about people I work with.

On work: honestly, there isn't much to say, so let's say it at length. Hurricane Ivan has everyone here running scared, and at work, what they're scared of is yet another day or two at the start of the week with the call center closed. So my boss is having an overtime party tomorrow. I'v decided I'm not going, which she says is fine, nobody is required to show up, but she also says she doesn't have favorites and she doesn't hold grudges, so you see what a liar she is. I imagine it will be one more black mark against me when I don't show up, but well, that's the life.

One of the new girls on my team at work has been sending 'fuck me' signals to me like a supernova putting out hard radiation. She's very nice, she's just turned 19, she's a tad immature but quite sweet and bright and seems to enjoy reading and apparently likes me and seems to have a sense of humor and she doesn't drink and she weighs about 350 lbs, I'm guessing, and all of this is just peachy, because it means I now get to once more experience that peculiarly male guilt trip that comes from not wanting to date someone based on nothing other than their physicality.

I swear, the wattage she was pouring into the 'please take me now' signal tonight had me perilously close to just ordering her to her knees (and I think she might have gone, too, since for several hours we were alone in the back room), but well, I'm REALLY not attracted to her physically, so I'd have just felt rotten about it afterward and it wouldn't have been at all good for or nice to her. However, at one point she and I were exchanging mildly flirtatious e-pops while answering customer email, and my e-pop screen froze up so I had to restart it, and although I swear to God I re-typed and sent the e-pop I'd been trying to send just to her, in fact, it somehow went out to the ENTIRE FUCKING FLOOR.

Fortunately, it wasn't dirty, or even scandalous, but it was kind of personal, which made it embarrassing. More fortunately, it went out after 7 on a Saturday night, when very few people are still there. However, a lot of people leave their e-pops up and running when they leave for the night, so they end up with a stack of e-pop messages when they log in again the next day, and that particular message is going to be in there.

So I'm praying for a power failure to shut down all the computers on the floor, so that stack of e-pops will be lost. And probably won't get one, drat the luck. Even a little one.

Mary, the girl I was talking to (the one sending all the high voltage signals) is, as I’ve mentioned, actually quite bright; she came up with the idea that she and I had been playing 'book quote trivia' and I had accidentally sent out a book quote to the entire floor. I messaged that explanation out to all users, and maybe people will buy it, or, you know, just not care (that seems most likely)... but still, it was embarrassing. And potentially even more so, come Monday, if that e-pop is still sitting out there on various computer screens waiting to be read...

I suppose I could write about movies I’ve watched lately, but hell, I already know my opinions about them, and no one else is going to read any of this, so why bother?

I’m tired, so I think I’ll go to bed.