Most of my friends are cartoon characters.

Work is busy lately, and so is that cartoon project. I don't seem to have any time to myself anymore, let alone to work on Untapped. I've pretty much decided to go back to Los Angeles and succeed or starve, so I need to finish the first episode of that cartoon as fast as possible. We've recorded The Highly Effective Theme Song (which doesn't even make an appearance until the second episode), and I'm very happy with it. It's possibly the best song I've ever written, musically speaking. It builds appropriately, tells a story, and pays off with a catchy chorus. It might even be funny...I'm not sure. I've heard it too many times to tell.

Besides the song, we are working in the second scene of the cartoon and just had to do a major backtrack. I was lipsynching one of the characters and realized that I couldn't turn his head to the right. I asked Ivan, my partner and lead animator, about this, and he said he already knew about the problem. The character was created incorrectly, but he was planning to fix it in later scenes. I asked him how we were going to have our character have an entire conversation with a girl to his left when he can only face the right. He told me that his eyes can move and that's it. That just wasn't going to be good enough. The character couldn't just look through the side of his head at people. He'd seem creepier than he's supposed to. We had to redraw the character...and by "we" I mean "he", because I don't know what I'm doing. All I know is taht characters should be able to look to their right and their left. It's kind of essential.

While working last night, Ivan's new wife poked her head in the room to say hi. She then looked at me and said, "Joel, you haven't accepted me as your friend, yet." Whoa! What an intense and forward thing to say! My brain started flying trying to figure out how to handle this situation. I mean, Ivan and I were friends before he met her, and then I moved to California while they started their relationship. Now I'm back, and Ivan and I spend a lot of time working on this project while she goes to nursing school. It's true that we don't really hang out together, but it's not like she gives the impression that she wants to, and she definitely doesn't show any interest in our cartoon. Maybe I do seem stand-offish, though. I suppose that I could try to be more friendly when she's around or something.

"What do you mean?" I replied with the utmost delicacy.

"On Myspace," she said. "I sent you a friend request."