I’m fairly certain that just a couple days ago before when this blog was supposed to go up, I had some decently entertaining stories to tell. I’m sorry to say I can’t for the life of me think of what they could have been. It’s possible that it’s because I’m really tired and my brain is not currently functioning at full capacity. This happens a lot to me these days. It’s because I maintain a strange sleeping schedule, which causes me to have a routinely frakked up schedule on the weekends, tends not to help to keep me from staying up all night and sleeping during the day for the rest of the week, which all in all just causes trouble when there’s anything that happens that means that I have to be up and somewhere during the day… ever… which, of course, I do… often…

Today was one of those days. Technically, I didn’t HAVE to get up. But I felt I should. And wanted to. Kind of. See, for many, many summers since sometime when I was a teenager (say around… 14 or 15 years old or so), I’ve spent a large portion of my summers helping with Vacation Bible School, both at my church and on the road. It’s actually been awhile since it was really at it’s peak (around ‘99 to ‘03 or so, it wasn’t unusual for us to have six or so total VBS’s in the summer), but still… it makes up for a decent chunk of my life and a lot of really great and memorable experiences (including, I might add, the birth of Moonshine that plays a role in LDCB). And though it’s been a few years since we’ve had as many VBS’s at one time, I’ve mostly maintained pretty active and involved, and ultimately, it was also one of the advantages of working at the LRC: that I had a relatively easy time clearing my schedule when I needed/wanted to.

This summer is different, and not just because I have a new job, though that’s the biggest reason. And that’s okay. It’s not like anything’s going to fall apart without me. And I’ve been dragging my feet on them a little over the past few anyway. But when I found out (at church on Sunday night; somehow it completely escaped me before then that it was happening) that they were doing a VBS this week, I figured I oughtta go for at least the one day that I could: Thursday. So I did.

I suppose this story isn’t really going anywhere…. Hmmm… Well, it’s the explanation for why I’m tired tonight. Last night I intended to get to sleep BEFORE five or six in the morning so that I could have a halfway-decent night’s sleep before getting up to be at the church building at 10:30. It SORT of worked… I got to bed last night at about 4:30. Having shucked off the blog and the comic till Friday (this is the blog, obviously, and the comic is already up if you haven’t noticed), I probably could have and should have gotten to bed sooner than that, but… Oh well…

So…… um….. then I found five dollars…

I am happy that I managed to get what I promised up on the site this week. Good on me for that. It means that the chocobo that I’m raising on FFXI got a wee bit neglected, but oh well. Speaking of FF, I got the Anniversary Edition of the original Final Fantasy on the PSP on Wednesday. It’s nice. I like it. It will probably not come as a surprise to any who know of my love for 8-bit Theatre that I made a party of a Fighter (Warrior), Black Mage, Thief, and Red Mage. I also now have FF Tactics for the PSP reserved. Yay! And as you can tell from the comic, the anticipation for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is beginning to get to me. Just three weeks away. With my big reread of the series still in the early part of GoF, that leaves me with about a week for each of the remaining books before the last. If I get time, and feel so inclined, I’ll probably end up writing an in-depth discussion on Harry Potter and my theories for the final book on myspace… I don’t know why, but I figure myspace is the place for that blog.

Let’s see… maybe I oughtta wrap this up before I end up rambling on aimlessly forever (of course, if I did that, who knows how many five dollar bills I would end up finding!). I did promise an update on LDCB… Sadly, I can’t report that it’ll be coming too soon. Due to scheduling conflicts and Fouth of July vacations and what-not, we can’t really get much done until after the holiday. I am doing my best to get it to you as soon as possible though. It should be SOMETIME in July, but I can’t say for sure for anything more specific than that. I’ll do this for you, though: Whenever Episode 10 does come out, I’ll have the second Volume 1 blooper reel up for you within two weeks after that. I’d give it to you now but then that would leave out potential Ep. 10 bloopers… but you’ll have that to look forward to too…

But then: what am I thinking?! As much as I know we all want Episode 10, we all also know that July brings us Harry Potter as already mentioned, and best of all, Nathan’s visit. And while I know not all of you necessarily know Nathan (which is to say the few strangers that visit the site, plus a couple of known entities that just haven’t met him), those who do look forward to Nathan’s comings like little else. Seriously: I learned long ago that if you want to get people to come to a party, all you have to do is tell them that Nathan will be there. Even if it’s a lie, they’ll come in flocks in hopes of seeing and talking to him. Which is why I always promise Nathan… even if he’s not going to be there (when he’s not there, I typically try to cast a Special Guest Nathan, though in the past, this usually just turned out to be an inanimate object or picture of some kind).

So that’s the story… Time to stop writing now… Bye.

So I probably should have written this last night while I was still mostly awake, but I ended up going to Denny’s with JAZZnea at 1:30 in the morning instead. It was great fun, and we ended up with a brand new inside joke that is responsible for the title of this blog… And no, I’m not at this time sharing what the joke is. It’s also, in a way, responsible for my new voice mail message which is sure to confuse all who try to call me. And last but not least, JAZZnea and I now know what our weapons of choice will be if ever confronted with a situation in which we must do physical combat using video game consoles. JAZZnea will be using the Wii, whereas I shall choose the Gamecube. And I will simply hope that our opponents do not utilize the very heavy X-Box 360 despite the fact that JAZZnea insists she could knock it out the air with the Wii’s nunchuck…

So that’s life. Work is going all right. I plan on blogging about it and my future plans more over on myspace, but for here, I’m doing a different blog. And per usual, it’s primarily concerned with what’s to come and when it should be expected here on ydk. Adventures of Ak continues regularly, so I won’t bother going into that too much apart from a plea to please vote for us at the various webcomic ranking sites we’re listed on, and also: please feel free to tell me what you think about the comic in the forums or through at email or a comment to this blog; whatever. I’d like to hear feedback whenever you have it. What you like, what you don’t, and why that is. It’s all good. I want to hear it.

Then, there’s LDCB. Of course, Episode 9 premiered a few weeks back. I’ve heard good responses. It was evidently well-received. Episode 10 is on the way, albeit a little slowly now that my schedule is so messed up. But it should still be here, hopefully by the end of June, and if not then, then beginning of July. Yes, we’ll be going on a hiatus with LDCB after Episode 10, but I want to assure you that the hiatus won’t be quite as bad as it sounds. For one thing, even during the hiatus, we still have a few LDCB videos to give you, including the second set of bloopers from Volume 1 of LDCB! Also, one of the other good things about the hiatus is that I plan on shooting ALL  of Volume 2 during this time. The reason this is good news for fans of LDCB is that it means the scheduling of Volume 2 is going to be A LOT more regular than how Volume 1 was aired. No more gaping months in between episodes (barring some terrible calamity/act of God, that is, that might prevent episodes from going up, knock on wood). Instead, when Volume 2 begins (the plan is: November, as part of our one year anniversary celebration), new episodes will hit the site every two weeks, generally speaking, with a little break somewhere in the middle for Christmas and the LDCB’s 2nd Christmas Special!!! So I think that’s something to look forward to. It should really be nice for it to run so regularly, especially since the plot is really going to heat up in Volume 2.

And finally: we come to talk about Legends of Az. The fact of the matter is: Legends of Az is closer and dearer to my heart than anything else on the site. And yet, it’s also the one that sufferes the most neglect due to a busy schedule. As a result, I’ve decided that in order to continue LoA, I’m going to have to do more to MAKE time for it in the schedule. This is important to point out to you because it’s going to mean more weeks like this one where we have fewer updates in the week. These weeks won’t be every week, and I’ll space them out a bit so they don’t come all at once, but every now and again at least, for the time being, we’ll eventually hit a week that I’m trying to devote to things like LoA. So… just for your information.

For those of you who also read my blog on myspace, there will be another one on there within a couple days (hopefully), concerning some important matters. And for everyone: there will be a new comic tomorrow! Yay! Till then, see ya’!

So I guess I need to blog… I never seem to be in the mood to blog when I finally get around to being able to blog lately. But I shall do my best anyway…

 So I guess I’m starting to get used to my new schedule, although I’m still less than ultra-fond of it. Last week was rough, but we managed to get done what needed to get done for the site while working, and this week looks even more manageable without a new episode to edit and the pictures for the comics already drawn and the words already written… it just leaves coloring and putting it all together… so all in all: this week is looking decent, site-wise. I may even be able to successfully pull of some Legends of Az again FINALLY! … which means that there’s not really much to report to you about the site itself… so I guess I’ll tell you more about my job…

The thing that keeps me going back to it is the promise of money. If I didn’t need the money, it’s nothing I would care to be doing. But it’s not that bad either. At least not most of the time. It varies depending on what day it is, how long the shift is, and how deep into the shift I am. So I’ll start by telling you about Saturday morning… On Saturday morning, I work from midnight to 8 AM. This shift is in competition with my Sunday shift for the one I dislike the most, but I’m really not sure which one irks me more. It’s not really an easy shift. Eight hours at that time on Saturday morning is just hard. It starts out okay. I usually watch television on DVD with my sister and brother-in-law on Friday night (leave me alone if you want to make fun of me for having no life - I’m aware, and am okay with it). Lately, we’ve been watching Doctor Who, which has seemed like a good show to watch prior to working because it just puts me in a really good mood. I don’t know what it is, but after watching Doctor Who, I’m just generally cheerier, and more excitable, and so that helps me to remain positive while I make my rounds at work… for about two or three (at the max) hours… after that, it wears off, I start to get tired, aches and pains that had time to get better over my nonwork between Wednesday night and Saturday morning start to reassert themselves… and all this just ends up leading to an ill-tempered BJ. And while that’s bad enough, what actually annoys me most about Saturday morning is that the business opens on Saturday morning. And I have to deal with people. And I don’t like having to deal with people. Seriously: who gets up at the crack of dawn on a freakin’ Saturday morning and rushes on over to the scrap metal place before it even opens at 8 because they’re just THAT eager to sell some metal… From what I’ve seen so far, I can tell you they’re not really people I care to be dealing with… Of all the people who would come through the LRC when I was working there, there would occasionally be one or two people that… well, let’s just say they were bad enough to bring the whole job down… those are the sorts of people who get up at the crack of dawn on a Saturday and rush on over to sell some metal… So that’s what I don’t like about Saturday morning…

Which is why in some ways, Sunday morning is the most ideal shift for me. It’s the shift where the business isn’t open at all, and I shouldn’t have to come into direct contact with anyone. Problem is: not only is it on Sunday morning, making me miss church (which puts me into a foul enough mood already), but it’s a 12-hour shift… which is just a very, very long time. Now, if anyone can entertain themselves for 12 hours, it’s me. But still… Twelve hours of making those rounds every hour through the mud and the aches and the pains and the blisters and…. everything… It’s grueling, my friends. And I do NOT look forward to it.

The weekend in general is exacerbated by the fact that I have to work extra hard to get enough sleep in between shifts to be able to survive. On Thursday night, I try to stay up even later than normal so that I can sleep most of the day on Friday, but it still leads to getting tired at around the same times during my shift on Saturday morning, just out of routine. After I get off on Saturday morning, I go home and sleep until about four or five when I get up, eat, watch a little TV, and then go back to sleep for good measure (because if I didn’t, then Sunday as a whole would be even harder than it is). That extra couple of hours of sleep on Saturday night seem to make Sunday morning easier than Saturday morning, but by the end of it, I’m still a whole lot of crap on legs, and after a meal, I crash into bed on Sunday afternoon. I try to get three-hour increments of sleep… because it just works well that way… But three hours is as much as I can get on Sunday afternoon so that I can get up for church on Sunday evening. And I’ve found that although I liked the idea of evening services being at 5 when they moved it there years back, all of a sudden, I wish it were at 6 again… but oh well… I believe that it is the extra bit of sleep on Saturday night that allows me to make it through the rest of Sunday with just three hours on Sunday afternoon. So I make it and I go to church, and I stay up - albeit tired - for the remainder of Sunday night…

Monday through Wednesday, I work only 6 and a half hours. Which is entirely manageable. I don’t have as many complaints about those hours… Although I’m not terribly fond of the cleaning lady that comes in those nights. And the fact that she’s coming kind of tends to plague me all night because she comes at totally random times. There’s no telling when she’ll be there. So despite the fact that I don’t particularly like her, I feel bad if she shows up while I’m all the way on the other side of the grounds on rounds because I have to hustle back and open the gate for her… but since there’s no telling when she’ll actually get there on any given night, there’s not really anything else I can do. So that irks me. But oh well…

And that’s my week… I don’t really like it, but I pull through by thinking about putting the money toward buying cameras and a new computer and the editing system, and all that. Because with those things are my future, and if I can just bear through the job for long enough then… I just have to bear through it long enough… or win the lottery that one time that I play if I ever get around to doing that… *sigh*

Traz Productions and youdontknow.net (YDK) would like to announce the ninth installment of the web series The Life and Deaths of Cooter Brown (LDCB)!

LDCB tells the story of the professional wrestler wannabe and intelligence-challenged Cooter Brown. Somehow, he finds himself at the center of a twistedly complicated plot to end his life. Targeted by his own best friend, the deadly hit man known as Joe Killa, and the elusive Mr. Mister, Cooter will have to face these obstacles and more if he hopes to get to the bottom of it all. Though the bigger question may be: What does any of this have to do with the Moonshine Massacre and the mysterious deaths of over thirty people?! Or perhaps even the bigger question: Will Cooter even be smart enough to learn the truth before whoever is trying to kill him finally succeeds?

This fictional series was begun in November 2006 by Ben Hartsburg, “The Director”. Originally a revision of a college class project, LDCB has taken on a life of it’s own. Ben enlists the acting talents of several friends and family members, with very enjoyable results! Full of comedy and drama, LDCB provides something for everyone.

In Episode Nine: “First and Last”, we learn more about the fledgling hit man, Boyd Valentine, who is also Cooter’s best friend. This episode is also the first in the series to feature a musical score, courtesy of the great folks at Twenty Twelve Records. The song “Symphony of my Life” by 2012 is woven throughout the series, adding to the suspense with it’s entrancing sound.

You can check out this newest episode at the YDK - LDCB website. To here more of the amazing creations of 2012, check out their PureVolume site.

The tenth episode of the series will be released sometime in the summer, wrapping up the first season of LDCB. But the series is far from over! Be sure to stay tuned with YDK for that episode, as well as the premier of season two, scheduled to begin sometime in the fall.

Last but not least, YDK is searching for local talent to be featured in future episodes of LDCB (as well as added to episodes which have already been released). If you or your band would like to contribute music to be featured in the movies, email x.l.i.i@hotmail.com.

*This blog was originally posted in the MyNews section of NewsOK.com. You can see that article here.*