Sorry, bee tee dubs, that the open thread names have gotten so boring. Given how infrequently the Khan is indulging us over at the mothership (he’s a Khan… the motherhorse?), I realized it might be easier to make sure people know just which thread they’re looking for/at.
In other news, it’s yours….
Standard FYI clause: I generally wait about 2 hours after Ta-Nehisi would typically open a thread (roughly noon, EST, back when such a thing was typical…!), and if none is forthcoming, I put one up here.
*PS: Welcome to my week!
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012I feel like sticking my head in the toilet might be easier and more productive than cold-emailing editors and asking them to give me a job please. I am so fucking terrible at this. How did I even end up for a year being a writer? God, this industry. I am not dude enough to demand others pay attention to me when there are other good folks out there.
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012job hunting is frustrating, especially when it feels like begging and scraping on bended knee. How are you faring otherwise?
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012In the morning I’m okay and by lunchtime I’m ready to cry. So, about what I expected, really.
It’s only been a couple of days. I won’t hit full-time despair for a while yet. I’m just bummed about potentially losing the whole career, the contacts, and all that. I need like an hour of self-pity a day and right now is it.
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012I had my phone interview today with the private college. With luck they will follow up with a face-to-face interview. But that’s all I can do much: send out the resumes, hope for a call. I’ve been lucky this year in that I’ve had 5 different libraries interview me, more than ever before, so things are picking up. And with the part-time job I’ve got now (more will-call, actually) with luck my hireability (it’s not a word? pity) value has gone up…
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012I’m really glad for you you’ve at least got something part-time going on.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012In the morning I’m okay and by lunchtime I’m ready to cry.
I see you got the memo about keeping to a schedule while job hunting.
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012I’ve started working out, too, for both physical and mental health reasons. But I am pretty sure this is actually going to lead to my legs falling off, shortly.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012Well if that’s going to be the case, thank God you have Guybrush fighting off the Empire in your stead.
#TwitterReferences
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012For me the feeling is always: “Why on earth am I having to prove myself? Again? You won’t care, and this will just be me looking like an idiot trying to put lipstick on a sow’s ear. Or make a purse out of a pig. You’ll think I’m a moron. *SEND*…”
Or in other words: I feel you my sister, and I am so sorry. I wish I had a magazine and could hire you as my games gal. Man alive do I wish that.
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012But if you can’t do this I NEVER WILL.
You HAVE TO. For all us nobodys who never even get glanced at twice by gawker or buzzfeed or anyone.
Nora Munro
/ November 28, 2012What anibundel said. And also, we’re all here, rooting for you. We believe in you.
efgoldman
/ November 28, 2012Jeebus. No pressure or anything.
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012I was raised my a Jewish mother. All I know is how to pressure and guilt while making it all about me. Where I come from that’s called “love.”
watson42
/ November 28, 2012I feel you. Job hunting really freaking sucks.
Darth Thulhu
/ November 28, 2012You became a (non-employed) writer by having insightful things to say and a blog on which to say it.
You became an (employed) writer when some people with a deadline-slathered job to offer were smart enough to recognize your talent, and you were driven enough to leap for their brass ring and hit a whole armada of mandatory content deadlines to feed their relentless machine.
You may ultimately cease being a (full-time paid staff) writer, not wishing to continue relentlessly feeding that grind. Regardless of the excellence of your ME3: Omega review and related skills, you may face a job market where the grind inherently exceeds the joy, which would force you to either freelance part-time, become an independent entrepeneur, or move to hobby posting while having other employment to pay the bills.
Regardless, you will remain a writer. A good one. Depending on what compromises and opportunities are available in the market, you may not be a full-time, benefits-earning, status-bearing paid editor for a famous site, but you will always be a good writer.
I can only encourage you to pursue the writing that fired up and enlivened your blog, and that necessarily comprised a much smaller fraction of your writing for Kotaku. Regardless of whether or not you can make a paying career out of such writing, self-employed or freelance or corporate, it has been (and will hopefully continue to be) a positive and powerful addition to the discourse.
Best of luck in your hunt. May you find the joy you deserve.
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012you are lovely and fab and thank you.
xantcha
/ November 28, 2012Haven’t posted here before, but just wanted to add that you are one of the authors whose work I seek out regularly (both on the blog and on Kotaku). Looking for jobs is the worst (I recall making a spreadsheet to try to determine the winner of the “Quickest Rejection Note” contest for myself), but those who love quality games writing are keeping their fingers crossed in support. Good luck!
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012you are also lovely and fab, and thank you too!
lasslisa
/ November 28, 2012True for me too – I go and check on the original blog pretty regularly and the only Kotaku page I visit is the one with your posts on it. There may be a lot of talented folks out there but you’ve got your own little fanbase.
Gonzai55
/ November 28, 2012Because Trayvon Martin just wasn’t enough…
http://jacksonville.com/news/crime/2012-11-28/story/attorney-suspect-teens-death-says-client-saw-shotgun-shot-self-defense
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012that’s been up on the FB site for TNC affiliates as well. I personally don’t want to go charging into this issue while the investigation is ongoing, but I do wanna agree with the others who’ve pointed out 1) the guy fled the scene rather than wait for cops, 2) other witnesses are not reporting any sign of a shotgun in the car, 3) who in their right f-cking minds still pulls a gun out and starts shooting when a shotgun is already on display? You get a gut-full of lead doing that even before you get the gun out of your holster, moran.
Gonzai55
/ November 28, 2012Heck, I want to know who drives their car over to another car to complain about the music. Sane people bite their lip and move on, they don’t pick fights, esp over something that trivial. Given that the guy was coming from a wedding, I wonder how drunk he was.
SWNC
/ November 28, 2012Seriously. Loud music coming from cars is part of life.
koolaide
/ November 28, 2012I know, right. Who complains about a car’s music when you’re in a public parking lot? And a gas station? You’re there for what, 5 minutes tops?
taylor16
/ November 28, 2012Who does that? Drunk douchebags trying to impress the women they’re with with their irresistible manliness. “Watch me go yell at these punks and put them in their place!”
Sigh.
koolaide
/ November 28, 2012A big thank you for all the kind “find those keys” thoughts the mini-Horde sent out yesterday. This morning my mom arrived at her desk & the keys were sitting on her keyboard. You guys rock. Srsly. You have powers.
Ok, what really happened was that the night janitor found them two nights ago. But he didn’t know whose they were until last night. Once he found out she was the person missing keys, voila, he put them on her keyboard.
Yay for night janitors!
Captain_Button
/ November 28, 2012Just so long as she didn’t have to promise him her firstborn if she can’t guess his name.
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012don’t look at me, I’m using my powers to beg the good Lord for the winning PowerBall numbers tonight…
SWNC
/ November 28, 2012Yay!
koolaide
/ November 28, 2012mini-thread jack –> imo, you & your husband didn’t miss much by not going to the reunion. There was very little food (a few hors d’oeuvres) which was annoying given the $$.
SWNC
/ November 28, 2012I’ll be sure to pass that along. For that kind of money, I’d have expected a nice proper meal, not just nibbles.
Darth Thulhu
/ November 28, 2012Never doubt the power of (crossed facial tentacles).
koolaide
/ November 28, 2012I learned from yesterday–I read “tentacles” as “tentacles” on the first try today. Unlike yesterday when, well, um, I misread “tentacles” for a different body part.
Darth Thulhu
/ November 28, 2012Crossing *those* facial appendages would be rather wince-inducing. I’ll stick to crossing the facial tentacles : )
Bob Jones' Neighbor
/ November 28, 2012Watch it! He’s a Ballchinian!
David L
/ November 28, 2012Grumble. Dear web site for the place I’m going to lunch: Why let me start an online order for a location that doesn’t yet have online ordering enabled? That’s some seriously lousy interface design.
Captain_Button
/ November 28, 2012Umm, isn’t it technically Wednesday?
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012(Shhh.)
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012*snort*
YES.
Fixing nao.
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012It’s the part of the year where we don’t count the days, we count the holidays.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012“Technically.”
Oh, Captain_Button, if Mal were not already my Captain, you would be my favorite Captain ever.
Captain_Button
/ November 28, 2012S’okay I’ll rise to hear the bells anyway.
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012The Muppets were on The Voice Last night, and it was the best thing on a reality show ever in the history of things.
http://anibundel.wordpress.com/
In response I wrote a thing that begged the universe to reboot The Muppet Show.
And then I posted the new Hobbit clip and the new Dr Who Poster.
At 4pm we will discuss Kate Middleton’s new haircut.
plus there’s the stuff from yesterday ICYMI.
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012OMG GUYS EMILY WAS JUST NAME CHECKED AT THE DISH:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/what-greater-israel-means.html
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012Jinx! ; )
koolaide
/ November 28, 2012I’ve long stopped reading Sullivan but I’ll give him a page view for linking to our most excellent hostess.
Nora Munro
/ November 28, 2012Yay Emily!
Darth Thulhu
/ November 28, 2012Not just name-checked, but twice-linked and explicitly called out (along with the others at Open Zion) as “on fire”.
Woot!
And well-deserved!
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012Here’s a nice thing that was pointed out to me by Benjamin The Ass on the Twitters and Andy Hall and Bookwoman right here on the blog:
“On Open Zion, which is on a hot streak right now, Emily Hauser sighs…” http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/11/what-greater-israel-means.html
Darth Thulhu
/ November 28, 2012Again: Woot!
When does the truck full of cashy monees back up to your place?
Gonzai55
/ November 28, 2012Oh, and for those of us who haven’t head-desked enough today, the Republicans named their committee chairs and surprise! Every one of them is a white man. Clueless, thy name is Republican.
Darth Thulhu
/ November 28, 2012To be fair, they appoint within the pool they have to work with, and there isn’t much else on hand to choose … almost like they don’t prioritize such candidacies.
Captain_Button
/ November 28, 2012The motheryurt, I think.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012No, no, it has to be mobile: The motheryurt would travel on the motherhorse as ridden by the Khan across the Seas of Grass that are the Steppe!
horse :: ship
Motherhorse it is.
Nora Munro
/ November 28, 2012But yurts ARE mobile. They break down into nearly nothing and can be packed on a couple of camels or a really good yak and moved anywhere on the steppes. And you can set them up again in maybe an hour (probably less if you’re actually a Central-Asian-steppes dweller and have some experience with being a pastoral nomad).
There are also images of yurts-on-carts from the 12th and 13th centuries — they were built especially for nobles (especially khans). Ger-tereg I think is what they were called. Hitch up the oxen and get moving!
(Also, if we’re being strictly Mongolian about it, it’s ger, not yurt. Yurt is all Turkic instead of Ural-Altaic).
Kate Cox (@KCoxDC)
/ November 28, 2012You wrote this comment so I didn’t have to. <3
koolaide
/ November 28, 2012Agree.
And there’s the whole thing where a ship carries a lot of people and a horse only 2 at most. which, to my mind, makes Horse :: Ship NOT accurate.
efgoldman
/ November 28, 2012… can be packed on a couple of camels or a really good yak and moved anywhere on the steppes.
I don’t think Emily would be able to keep even a half-assed yak; not in Chicago, anyway.
Wasn’t the yak a Soviet-era airplane? A bomber or fighter? Where’s The Raven when we need him?
Nora Munro
/ November 28, 2012I admit, I rather miss the Talking Bird.
Wikipedia tells me that the Yakovlev Yak-52 (Як-52) is a Soviet primary trainer aircraft which first flew in 1976 and is still being produced in Romania.
It is, from the pictures, not a large aircraft but it looks big enough to carry the properly stowed components of a ger.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012BUT THE YURT/GER ISN’T THE THING DOING THE MOVING.
Nora Munro
/ November 29, 2012It is if it’s a ger-tereg! Unless you have some requirement that a yurt-on-a-cart somehow be self-moving, in which case, you need some kind of old Soviet diesel warwagon that the residents of Mongolia have kept going with baling twine and some shamanic rituals.
Which is totally not as cool as a yak cart. Just sayin’.
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012My cousin and a writer I know both sent me a link to this videoclip/audio of a woman calling about deer crossing signs. I dunno if it’s been brought up before among us Horders, so I’ll share (again if needed). You need to listen the whole way through.
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012As a follow-up, the radio station did get back in touch with the lady a few days later, and apparently someone was able to explain to her WHO those signs were meant for…
Captain_Button
/ November 28, 2012Emily twittered: RT @ASE: Tom Ricks just told me @HuffPostLive that our wide-ranging conversation was “the most sane 1 he’d had in days”
An appeal for sanity:
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012But my mind’s not that tiny. When it goes out, it takes the whole room with it.
doginajacket
/ November 28, 2012Emily, there is a photo album waiting for you on Facebook.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012I tried to look via the link you sent and FB denied me access, & as I am an ignoramus, I have no idea why! I’ll try again.
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012Ah HA! I went through the group rather than with the link, and all is well. Such wonderful pup pics! : )
PS I particularly like the one w/ the bone!
doginajacket
/ November 28, 2012Yay!
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012On second thought, deleting and taking this to email, since one doesn’t want to kick up trouble! xo
anibundel
/ November 28, 2012Does anyone know why I’m having an Amy Pond spike?
Not complaining, just confused!
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012Amy Pond is spiking you? She *is* the flirtatious sort…
caoil
/ November 28, 2012*sigh*
Messed up the collar on my shirt last night, so now I have to figure out if it’s more time-saving to take the stitches out and redo, or to just tidy up my previous shirt’s seams/hems and wear that instead. I’d best decide soon or else this afternoon off work will have been pointless!
caoil
/ November 28, 2012I am also a dummy who is now short 2 yards of both kinds of silk I need for the elf dress, because I didn’t calculate both sides of the sleeves. Who does that? Erg.
Nora Munro
/ November 28, 2012Me. I have done that. I have done an assortment of other really dumb things with sewing and knitting, too.
caoil
/ November 28, 2012*high-five*
So now I’ve had to spend an extra $30 to have the remaining yards sent express mail. A marvellously expensive lesson, to be sure.
Nora Munro
/ November 28, 2012The expensive lessons do stick well, though.
efgoldman
/ November 28, 2012My youngest and way most favorite sister-in-law and her guy (of 20+ years – I keep yelling at them to get married for financial reasons) just adopted a puppy to replace their old French bulldog mix they lost a year or two ago.
Its half Jack Russell and half Rat Terrier.
Do you think they will get any peace at all, ever?
Paul Wartenberg
/ November 28, 2012if they have a baby, which the puppy will bond to as a protector and watchful eye.
efgoldman
/ November 28, 2012No chance, they made a conscious decision years ago, and have long since aged-out.
wearyvoter
/ November 28, 2012Late evening greetings from down here in the prairie.
wearyvoter
/ November 28, 2012If November ends without a certain thing happening, meno will have finally paused. (Keeping confetti and party horns on standby.)
emilylhauser
/ November 28, 2012/empathy fingers crossed