Pressure, pressure, pressure.

I told myself that I would get a blog post out once a day. It’s good for the ol’ writing skills and fun for search engines looking for new content. But here I am with 10–scratch that–9 minutes to midnight with nothing to show for it. What was the delay? A video game. Meh, what the hell? Let’s talk video games.

So, I am a PC gamer, but by no means do I consider myself to be elite in any way. Scratch that, too. I kind of do feel elite, actually. Elite compared to a console gamer, anyway. You think about it. I consider PC gamers as the muscle car builders of the gaming world. I can customize every nuance of my machine, tweaking this or that to finely tune my rig into a pixel pounding machine. Throw in hacks, mods and user-made patches and it’s hard for me to consider ever being any other kind of gamer as my main role.

With that said, I still respect consoles and console gamers. In fact, when I can afford it, I will definitely invest some cash in a Wii and then migrate to the other machines.

Bleh, I’ve got more on this topic, but it’s midnight and that’s all I could muster in the time allotted.

As a copywriter, I spend the majority of my day staring at a monitor, typing stuff. Unfortunately, my job still hasn’t gotten me the ergonomic keyboard tray that I asked for like four months ago, but that’s another story. Anyway, ever since I took down my old sites, I’ve been working feverishly to get this one up and running and working the way I want it to. I’d forgotten the joys of Web development and the unending torment of developing for one browser type (Mozilla) only to have the site break for another browser type (IE). Woohoo! In this manner, I am effectively staring at a computer almost every waking moment. Coming home is like having another job, I’m telling you.

So I’m about to hit the hay, but I know it’s gonna be fitful because for whatever reason I have this weird 5 pixel (or so) margin on the bottom of my page when you view my site through Internet Explorer. I have no idea how that got there. They only way for me to remedy it is to remove that black strip that runs across the bottom, but I don’t want to. Nor should I have to! So if any passing readers should know the answer, by all means, send it along.

With that out of the way, no doubt you’ve heard something or another about the crazy fires Southern California is having and how all the Malibu mansions are going up in smoke. The problems are further compounded by the Santa Ana winds blowing down from the mountains. The other day, it was so windy that the tops of 50-foot tall trees were bending horizontal and you couldn’t see clearly for more than half a mile because of the dirt flying through the air. And, lucky me, my apartment complex is flanked by two dirt fields. I went outside to enjoy my patio furniture and found this:

Now all I need is for it to rain and have the wind stir everything up nicely in my patio into a thick, mud tempura batter.

And in case you were wondering, I was the one who drew the face in the dirt.

Just a quick thought before I crash.

You know, I never really saw myself in advertising. I’ve always figured that if I had to do it or if I just found myself in that profession that I’d be able to handle it, but it wasn’t anything that I “looked forward to.” Today, my view has changed.

In the past few months at my current job, I’ve pretty much just stuck to what I’m told to do. By and large, I still do that, but today the owner of the company proposed a spur-of-the-moment project and gave us an end-of-day deadline. As the Web site search engine optimization (SEO) copywriter, it’s sometimes difficult for me to see the end product for my project since it’s so huge. What amazed me about today’s project was being able to see all of the facets of our marketing department coming together to create something greater than its parts. Graphics chopped up pictures. My boss branded everything. And I provided the words. Then we gave our Web developer the goods to make it live Online. Along the way, we ran into snags and snafus and we were pressed to creatively find workarounds while still staying within the vision of the company owner.

I’m pretty beat after today’s craziness.

But I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

So I was at the movies today, watching 30 Days of Night (read my review, by the way) and I saw the trailer for the next Japanese horror import, One Missed Call. This time around, we’re supposed to afraid of our cell phones. The way it works, from what I can glean from the preview, is that your phone rings with a strange ring tone. That means that mp3 of your favorite clubbing song that everyone else finds annoying will be replaced by a few upbeat chimes. Since you won’t pick up (who does these days when you don’t recognize the number? [unless you have Death as a contact]) the caller leaves a voicemail. When you check the voicemail, it’s yourself…dying. Or maybe it’s the last thing you say before you die. Or maybe it’s the last thing someone close to you says before they die. I don’t know.

What I do know is that Japan really has the market cornered on making people afraid of common things. Don’t watch this videotape or you’ll die! Don’t read that email, it came from a dead person! Don’t answer the phone, it’s a bill collector!

And his name is Death and you owe him your life!

Now that I think about it, the real horror is the knowledge of dying. I guess it’s alright if I’m walking down the street and a safe falls on my head and lights out, but what if Death called me up a week early just to screw with me?

“Hey there, René.”

“Oh hey, Death, I was just on my way out.”

“Yeah, sorry to bother you, but I just thought you should know that a safe is going to fall on your head pretty soon.”

“…What?”

“Just thought you should know. How’s the fam?”

I don’t know about you, but my next few days would definitely be horrible.

Star Wars fans can rejoice! Looks like George Lucas is bringing the Star Wars universe to television. Don’t expect to see any major characters from the films, however, since the plot is planned to focus on minor characters. Cameos by major characters has not been ruled out though. Supposedly, the show will be similar to Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones series.

This is just the sort of thing that SW fans need to continue the war with Star Trek fanboys. Still, I’m worried about how it’ll all turn out, considering that Lucas plans on writing the entire first season himself and then handing off the writing responsibilities to staff writers. I wasn’t too impressed with how the prequel trilogy turned out, writing-wise. In any event, this could eventually lead to more Star Wars films and even the possibility of Lucas opening up the license to independent writers.

When I watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I couldn’t help but think that that was how the Star Wars trilogy should have been treated: with respect. Now that Lucas is getting older, perhaps he will turn the mantel over to the throngs of rabid fans that maintain the original vision he seems to have lost.