Participating in help_japan

Like several others on my list, I'm participating in the help_japan auctions. I have the following two auctions up:

One knitted item of your choice (scarf, socks, hat, or shawl if more than $50): Auction here
An amigurumi doll: Auction here

This kicked my rear into gear regarding what I owed pip25 from last year's auction, and I now have the last third of his story written. Just need to connect the two halves together and have it betaed.

Objects in lots and lots of motion

On a whim just now, I pulled up my LiveJournal entries from 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit. One of the things that struck me was the massive amount of chaos that surrounded that time in New Orleans and how the Japanese are reacting differently now. Things in New Orleans dissolved into total anarchy then. In stories and images coming from Japan, the grief is very apparent -- but so is the stoicism, calm and orderly manner of the Japanese people. There hasn't been a single story about looting, murder or anything like that. Instead, you have people like Gilbert Gottfried being insensitive toward the plight and folks complaining that they haven't gotten their One Piece streams.

Yeah, this is headdesk worthy.

I am very tired, and I'm grateful to have the next two days off. Like with Katrina, there's just a huge overload of photos, stories and the like coming out of Japan. Add to that the massive amount of social media that wasn't there five and a half years ago. I spent an hour earlier in my shift going through hundreds of images on the Associated Press wire looking for stuff for my front page tomorrow. They range from a woman cradling her cat at a shelter to a seawall crumbled in on itself, the hand of a victim just barely visible among the wreckage. Photos like that hurt the most.

So tomorrow I'm going to do my best to stay away from the news and work on other stuff. I used Lendle to borrow a copy of The Hunger Games and have read the first seven chapters. It's really good thus far, and I'm glad I've finally gotten around to reading it. If the rest of the book is as strong as the beginning, I'll go ahead and use some of my Amazon gift card to get the trilogy. I also have some Namesake work to do and my poor, abandoned freelance work that got pushed aside when all of the news began flowing in last week. I also have the last touches for the fanbook and Pip's story, both of which need to be finished by the time I start the charity auction work for help_japan.

I'm pretty excited about some of the Namesake work I've done lately. In addition to some kickass pages, I've added a page that links to some of the public domain works referenced in Namesake and redesigned the cast page. I just need to add the images in for the cast page. I've also talked with Isa about going ahead and filing for a business tax ID for the future store and the like. Because taxes are vastly cheaper here than Montreal, we're basing it out of the U.S.

I just realized I haven't had an off day since last Monday. Yeah, that'll kill the brain cells alright.