How you know you're not living right: two of your nieces come up to you at a wedding. One asks "Hey, weren't you on Jeopardy like Uncle John was?"

The other asks "Uncle Chicken, are you going to the HYDE concert in Anaheim? Oh my GOD, he's so cute!"

My life is weird, and will stay weird until the day I die--and I'm willing to bet that there'll be some strange circumstances around my death, too. I don't know, maybe it'll be linked to organized crime, or people will never find my body, starting rumors that I'm secretly buried under third base at Pac Bell SBC AT&T Pac Bell Park, or in the foundation of some new UC Berkeley facility. Maybe I'll die under the massive pile of anime crap I've been accumulating since I was sixteen.

But anyway, it won't come close to the surreality of my family relations these days.

See, my family has always known me as "Ga," the quiet, nerdy one in the family (well, okay, one of the quiet, nerdy ones). Their recent discovery of the side of me known as "Dom" is a shock to them. In a recent trip to Tahoe, I overheard a conversation where they discussed stories they'd heard about me outside of the family circle, like how my cousin said that when I was at my job interview, I was a completely different person than she was used to.

Or, to put it in another cousin's words, "There's the Ga we know, and then there's Dom, who signs tits."

Now, before I go any further, I'd like to clarify one thing. I don't sign tits. I signed one, ever, and it ain't happenin' again. So that statement really should be "and then there's Dom, who signed a tit once and found the experience rather distasteful."

But anyway, the point remains--I've kept the MT side of my life and the family side of my life almost entirely separate, with the biggest anomaly being one dark, dark incident at Anime Expo which involved a cousin, his friend's copy of the MegaTokyo book, and a complete lack of eye contact.

Now they know, and not only do they know, my cousin's wedding on Saturday (note that I've referenced four entirely different cousins in this rant--I have 18, so if there is any cousin overlap, I'll tell you) was marked with a conversation with a fifth cousin about the recent eBay auctions, in which Fred's sketches went for a sizable amount. That produced the following conversation:

"Dude, sell out. *pause, grab an in-law* Hey, Burns, tell Ga what to do. If people are willing to spend that much money on pencil sketches, how about you give them an original? It's not ripping them off if they're willing to pay that much for it!"

"My advice to you is: sell out. Trust me, work doesn't get any more fun as you get older."

There was a lot of swearing in that conversation that I've omitted, but there was a lot of alcohol involved that I've omitted too, so I guess it's fairly even.

So, in conclusion, my family is awesome, even though they occasionally make me realize the folly of my existence by asking me to translate their J-rock magazines for them (yeah, this has happened too, to the same niece that was mentioned at the beginning). But I still don't think anyone would be willing to buy an SGD strip. I mean, Fred already overpays for them--meaning that he pays for them at all.