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Rest in Peace, Croc Hunter. You will be missed.

For those of you who haven't heard, Steve "The Crocodile Hunter" Irwin was apparently killed this morning by a string ray. No, this isn't a joke, I'm dead serious. (No pun intended.) I thought it was a put-on too, until I read the article in the BBC News. I think all of us were wondering whether or not it would be one of the dangerous animals he liked to mess with that would finally bring him down, and now we know. I never would have guessed a sting ray, though...

Now, to the entry. As many of you know, I am officially no longer working for the Anchor Blue company, and my last day at KB Toys is tomorrow. I plan to celebrate such a momentous occasion by posting the book excerpt that I promised. Hopefully that all goes off without a hitch, but you never know. It is me. I still haven't posted that Snakes on a Plane comic I promised you guys.

As much as I love to stay away from typical emo posts, this is going to be a little rough. I had thought I was going to post the book preview today, but there are other things that must be said.

First of all, my laptop is no more. Poor Fightgar's motherboard finally crapped out on me, and the damned thing won't even charge anymore. I'm going to have to find someone who can take out the hard drive and transfer my files out so that I don't lose them. Then there is the question of what I am to do in Scotland. I'm kind of lost without a working computer. Fightgar picked a really bad time to do this. Right now, I need all the money I can get for Scotland, so naturally, the money for a solution would have to come from my folks.

It's hard enough asking my parents for the money for a new computer considering they are in the process of building a new house and would have a hard time paying for repairs or a new computer. This is without the added pressure of the awkwardness between me and my mother since last night.

I've known for a while that my mother is aware of my not being a virgin anymore, but there was never any cause for us to talk about it. We could usually avoid the subject and not get into a fight about it. Unfortunately for me, last night, said touchy subject just happened to arise in the conversation. I won't go into details...let's just say my mother has a startlingly subtle and remarkably uncanny way of making you feel like a horrible person when you do something that she doesn't approve of. When we got home last night, I went up to my room and cried, and attempted to avoid her the rest of the night. This morning, I saw her and I could tell she had been crying, and on the way to pick up my car we barely spoke a word to each other. Little did I know that, upon hearing that my laptop was out of commission, her first response would be, "Well, we'd better get you a new one quick." We have ordered a new computer. The bad news is that it's a Dell so this one could go out just as quick as my last one, but when I get back to the OC I plan to start a new computer fund, maybe to get an Alienware laptop or something else really cool. Still, I'm relieved that I didn't get some huge lecture about money and sex and how I'm such a disappointment these days. She made some vague reference to how she's always wanted a laptop so she was ordering it for her, which kind of makes no sense, considering that when I told her I might be able to borrow a friend's computer while abroad, her response was, "Well, you'll need a computer in the spring anyway, but this computer had better last at least a year." Maybe that story isn't as sad as it was originally going to be.

I keep coughing and I can't get the itch in my throat to go away. This blows.

RANDOM THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Have you ever noticed how kids try to be subtle to get what they want, and fail miserably in the process? I don't mean they fail in getting what they want...in fact, often times, their "subtlety" proves fruitful. It's just that--to me at least--it's really annoying/funny. You know, like how kids see something they want in a store and say something like, "Boy, it would be really great if I had that!" or something. Or like yesterday at KB, when a kid came up to the counter with his Star Wars toy, and his mom and sister stopped for a few seconds to check out a display we had in front of the counter. The boy responded to this with a very loud, very forced sigh, a pause to see if it did any good, another loud, forced sigh, and then, "Oh, great, we're gonna be here like ten minutes now," and finally, a fake laugh to make it seem like he had meant the previous statement as a joke, I guess because he would get in trouble if he was really being that snotty to his mom and his sister. Given his acting job, I'm thankful for his sake that his mom wasn't paying attention.