What do I do all day?

2008-06-03T09:48:00.000-07:00

The gig with Fun Publications writing/drawing for Transformers in an official capacity is a lot of fun. It fulfils a lot of my creative urges, and looks to only expand. But it’s not (yet) enough to support financially. So I have the day job. What is the day job?

I am paid to hate, as a friend once put it.

I work for a major phone book publisher's online division, working on QA. It is my job to look at "storefronts", little template-made mini-webpages companies pay us to make for them, with tracking numbers to keep track of how many people call the company through the storefront, etc etc... and then, before the site goes "live", I go in and find everything wrong with it and bitch.

Usually it's simple spelling issues. Or a missing "a" or "the", misused punctuation. A good chunk of the time is stuff on the customers' order forms that didn't make it online for one reason or another, like what forms of payment they accept, formatting issues, and the like, and seeing where the info vanished… was it not added on our end or theirs? And there's been a good amount of discovering holes in the comparatively new system being used to transmit the information to the different divisions (these things are actually made in another branch in another part of the country), streamlining the process, etc. Normal stuff that will slip through and needs doing.

But then there's the ones that really make my day. The sentences where you sit back and wonder if the writer is ESL. If they actually stopped and looked at what they wrote and checked to see if it sounded like something a human being would say out loud... or even of the implications of what they wrote even if they are grammatically correct and technically true. The stuff that makes us and the company we’re advertising look bad.

For example. What’s wrong with this sentence? This is from a storefront advertising a nursing home…

“Many of the programs meet the residents’ physical, mental, social, religious and recreational needs.”

If you said “That’s saying there’s a sizable fraction of their programs that don’t meet the residents’ needs!”, give yourself a cookie. Great advertising, isn’t it? “Yeah, maybe your Grammie will be okay here. We oughtta have something that’ll work for her. Hell, who knows?”

Or try this, from a pet funeral service and crematory…

“We have provided individual care personalized for your pet for over 25 years.”

For my pet? But I’ve only had this cat for four years! “That’s it, Fluffy. We’re just waiting for you to die. We’ve been preparing for your specific death twenty years before you were born. Mwuuuuhahahahahahahahah!”

It took some time and a lot of arguing, but I managed to at least get them largely away from “unassertive advertising”, or as I like to call it, “have some goddamn balls”. Wishy-washy language. This actually appeared on a storefront for a law firm…

“We have professionally dealt with many family-related and domestic issues, which may include spousal abuse, adoption, child abuse…”

May include? May?! What, do I have to guess which of those you’ve actually dealt with? Don’t be coy with me when I’m trying to keep someone from beating my kid, you asshole. If I’m looking for a lawyer, I want a different kind of asshole, someone with some stones. An assertive, tenacious pit bull. I want someone with the kind of confidence and drive to sell custom premium belt buckles. That last part is not a joke. Check out the slogan this belt buckle company sent for their storefront…

“The Revolution is at Hand!”

All right, mister belt buckle man. You have piqued my interest. Now, let’s hear the pitch. (This is, verbatim, what the customer sent us.)

“…is a revolutionary movement in style. We have transformed the belt buckle, a clothing accessory that has changed little over the decades, into a revolutionary statement about you.”

Damn. My hat is off to you. That’s selling a damn product right there. That’s confidence. I wish you all the best of luck in your endeavors. (But I don’t need a belt buckle.)

Of course, not everything screwy with a storefront is the storefront-builder’s doing. Sometimes the customer wants stuff that… well, try this one out for a Christian academy, and this is verbatim from the order form they sent…

“…shapes the minds, hearts, and bodies of its students and instills in them the wisdom, knowledge, and servant leadership required to succeed in today's dynamic and changing world.”

Does that read sinister to anyone else? It’s honestly all good right up until we hit “servant leadership”. Just plain “leadership” is fine. But “servant leadership”? Gives off a real “hail Jesus and pass the ammo” vibe. It doesn’t help that I had to add to the QA sheet “add bullets” for one section. Yeah, it’s “bullets” as in “bullet point markers”, but still. Unsettling coincidence, and I have to let it go. But I can laugh. Nervously, but laugh nonetheless.

This is what I do for eight or nine or ten hours a day.

Yet you know what? Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the fighting and the occasional urge to take a pillowcase full of bar soap on a road trip to the place where these get made… I’m quite happy at this job. It pays great, and I’ve done far worse for far less. It’s a good office with good people in it, and I’m good with sticking with it. It’s something that needs to be done, a need that will never go away as long as the company offers the storefront service, and they’re going to need someone who knows the process and the steps and can train the ever-constant flow of temp workers that will come in and out. I’m willing.

At least until writing about and drawing robots doing terrible things to each other starts rilly paying.

What the hell am I doing here?

2008-06-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Saturday, I finally stepped onto deviantArt.

And today... it's the blogs.

Congratulations, me. I'm one of seventy jillion!

So who is me? Currently, writer and illustrator for Fun Publications, for the official Hasbro Transformers Collectors' Club, co-writing prose stories with co-conspirator Trent Troop on "The New World", "Wreckers Finale", "Force of Habit" (available in the free section for all to read!), the Axiom Nexus tales... writer of a load of Mini-Con bios, illustrator for stories, bios, and the bio cards for the bio cards of the box-set toys for the last two years' BotCons.

Also writer of several strategy guides for BradyGames, for titles like MegaMan, Kingdom Hearts, and Transformers.

I want Mike Meyers beaten within an inch of his life... on the other side, I mean.

More as it enters my skull.

King Weasel Bloguctions

What do I do all day?

What the hell am I doing here?