Wednesday, September 28, 2005
  Return to the Forbidden Planet
The Blackfriars shared Shakespeare's lost rock-opera with us tonight: Return to the Forbidden Planet. You're probably wondering what that's all about. Well, there's really know easy way to describe it. This adaptation of the Tempest takes place on a starship seemingly built from the leftover parts of every Hard Rock Cafe in the universe. The introduction begins with The Intergalatic Starship Albatross and ends in an awkward three-person translation of Gorgen threats toward cell phone users. It only gets better from there.
This production, like the last one, was done with seating on the left and right stage, turning center stage into a thrust stage. There were almost as few props as yesterday's Richard. Musical Instruments were also control panels, weapons, and anything else they needed be at the time. The 24 songs are cleverly integrated with the lines of Shakespeare's text. Many, many jabs at Sci-fi and the bard are also thrown in. When the audience discovers that the creatures attacking the ship are manifestations of Prospero's own mind, they are warned to "beware the ids that march." Iambics are part of the ship diagnostic. Etc. The whole trip is hilarious, made moreso by the serious roles I previously saw these actors in. It was a great night, and I can't wait to see this troupe back next year.
Which broaches on a more bitter subject. Student attendance is fair at best for these things. It's really not making the money to keep itself afloat. So I'm banging the drum across campus trying to see where I can rattle a little support from. I'm sure you'll hear much more on that as it progresses.
 
Comments:
Chris...I am enjoying your blog..the vow of silence by the friend is particularly interesting. What a challenge!

Hope all is well with you.
Love,
Suzie
 
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  For all my liberal readers out there...


Days until Bush leaves office.


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Grab your own copy here.

 
  "you want me to do what?"
So the MSU paper asked me to write an opinion article. I ignored the impulse to share my opinion on the paper and agreed to write something for them. After all, 500 words is nothing.
So I'm typing merrily along on an expanded version of that Shakespeare Festival quip that I posted ealier, and I just freeze up. I just can't figure out how to say what I'm wanting to say. I can barely remember what it was I wanted to say. And then I reread and realize I've said nothing.
I went into this intense re-edit of my meager 300 words, chopped them back down to 170ish, then wrote again. Stopped. Reread. Revised. I've torn it apart 4 times now. My angle's just not there.
I remember now why I opted out of the journalism major. Disdain for the corporations was only half of it. I'm a chicken when it comes to seeing my words finalized in print.
 
  I just can't imagine how...
A friend of mine is taking a vow of silence for the next month. Here are the details:

VOW OF SILENCE disclaimer:

Friends:

I thought I would list the provisions of my regimin for the time of Oct.3rd - Nov.3rd. I will be involved in an intensely utilitarian mission and must be understood by those that interact with me.

Lets get into the details:

PERSONAL REPOSIBILITIES:::
1) I cannot speak for one month. This includes humming, grunts, claps, sounds of any kind that may transfer information.
2) I may answer YES/NO questions. I achieve this by pointing upwards for YES and down for NO.
3) When I point to my left hand I am saying "IGNORE ME" This isn't an invitiation for rudeness, what it means is that I am probably thinking about something that is not a topic of conversation amidst the group. This signal gives me the ability to reflect on the social setting without having to meet an obligation to contribute. (((THIS hand gesture I retain to use any time I want.)))
4) I may only use YES/NO answers on AIM (or related messaging software), but I may present facts such as time and place. For example: "Andrew, I will be over at 10 for Adult Swim"
5) I will continue to post in my Livejournal, and will respond in-depth to comments.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF MY FRIENDS:::
1) Do not attempt to trick me out of silence. There may be times when I will slip a word in a conversation, but this is viewed as failure in my eyes. Trying to enhance my mistakes will not be appriciated.
2) Do not repeatedly reflect on my silence. For example "I can't believe you are still being quiet after so and so happened..."
3) Take the initiative. I will not insert my opinion about what chanel we should watch, or what place we should go eat at. So it is up to you to make decisions. I can reflect on YES/NO questions.
4) Please keep questions to a minimum. However, I would like to be consulted on decisions that would cause the group to drive somewhere.

ALSO ON THE LIST:

-October 3rd, DAY 60 of my diet, will be the day after my Birthday. I turn 23 on October 2nd.
-I will institute a vow of celebacy which entails absolutely no sexual thoughts. This will last till Nov. 3rd wherethen I will decide to continue it.
-I will start a 2 week trial on drinking only water.
-Daily Bible study, starting with the New Testiment will begin in the days prior to and leading up to DAY 60.


EXCEPTIONS:
1) I may only break my silence for Classroom situations (for example: my teaching class, needing clarification on a lecture, or being asked a question.) My Instructors are informed about the vow and will adjust accordingly.
2) I may speak at my Mothers wedding. (October 11th)
3) I may speak in case of extreme emergencies.

THE GOAL:::

I. Greater Discipline
II. Greater and more enriched World Understanding
III. Attaining Wisdom and "Second Sight"
IV. The Greater Good.


All I can say is good luck. It seems like it'll be quite a journey.
 
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
  Richard III
It's the Fifth Murray State Shakespeare Festival, and for once I'm right in the middle of it. I hate to say that I haven't been much before, but I haven't. Our festival charges for everything because it's funded by next-to-nothing. I'm perfectly willing to donate to help it survive, but there's many students who feel differently about their hard-earned dollars.
They're missing out.
The Blackfriars Stage Company takes a pretty traditional approach to shakespeare. To imitate the thrust stage the company set up chairs on either side of Lovett's massive stage. I was on the front row there, right by the actors. It was amazing.
Richard III is a pretty lengthy play, so cuts were made. There were a couple of awkward transitions where someone not familiar with the play may feel a little left out of the intrigue, but not so many that it detracted from the experience. Richard was not overly-crippled, he just had a "withered arm" that was kept close to his side. Only 11 actors were used to cover the 30-something parts. This alone won my awe. The costuming, of course, served to set the characters apart. While it seemed everyone's attire was fairly muted and of similar cut, repeated appearances showed that some were associated with gold, others blue, depending on the scene. I'm not sure how much of this was intentional, but it certainly served to offset some confusion the multiple costume changes could have caused.
In short, if you're from Murray and didn't go, you missed out. Much Ado About Nothing is tomorrow, and Return to the Forbidden Planet (the Tempest as a Rock Opera) is tomorrow night. Go see one of them!
 
Sunday, September 25, 2005
  the Muse and I... part... eh. whatever.
I sat down to write, and couldn't think of what to say.
Not to blog. I know that verb makes so many of you cringe, but I still like to distinctify it. I don't want to blog. I want to write.
But for a month now I've felt like the Muse has dumped me. I don't know. Maybe she's just on a fling. But I'm getting tired of waiting.
So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm here to chatter, but I know I'm going to have to get up the nerve to go back there, to really dive into my writing and just do it once more.
I guess I'll stop whining about it now.
 
  crazy
I think I've been running late for a week now.
First, after a highly stressful week of classes (another failed quiz, another set of clueless looks, and another 10 terms I don't understand), I agreed to go to Nashville this weekend with Tiff. More specifically, I was going to escape into the little cabin in the woods she has at the park she works in.
Wonderful. Escape.
Somehow or another, Tristan gets to talking about how cool it would be to go off to some park somewhere and draw a bunch of nature things for his class. Filled with concern for possibly the only guy to have a week worse than my own, I invite him. Kinda without asking Tiff, but we got that cleared up.
Then we have Ian. Ian's my other Clark College buddy, and has a girl he likes down in Nashville. Ian also lives in our room, and generally goes everywhere with us.
Ian will NOT fit in the car with our stuff.
Naturally, I come up with the easy solution: "Lets leave before he notices."
As soon as we agreed on this, I opened the door to see Ian preparing to knock.
D'oh.
A little awkwardness later, the situation was smoothed out and I was feeling pretty guilty about leaving Ian, but pretty glad to be leaving Murray.
In Nashville we settle in, eat lots of food, watch a little anime, and generally have a nice time. I ignore most of my homework until today, and as a result have said more words quoted from Shakespeare than not. Tristan was pretty amused as Tiff and I read the fourth act of Richard III aloud on the way back.
Anyway, here I am, still 12 sonnets and 1 act behind on my Shakespeare, and Monday's coming up quick. Mondays are my worst days, with 4PM, 5PM, and 9PM meetings on top of my two worst classes. I don't think I'll sleep much, but Tuesday is only 1/2 as bad. There's one class on Tuesday, even if it is the one I'd rather see cancelled.
I think I'm just doomed to be behind until January. I can either take sanity breaks and keep part of my mind, or go crazy and watch everything fly together around me.
I think I've opted for crazy.
 
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
  Oktoberfest is coming
linky
and no, I'm not still in Comp class.
...
I'm in Tech Writing now :D
 
  Advanced Composition
So it looks like I've finally found a time of day that I can write here.
Composition Class.
Don't worry. It's not like I'm breaking any rules. The teacher is up there sifting through our papers while we "free write."
I thought it was all over with 101. How wrong I was.
The little bit you got on here a few minutes ago was today's reflection. We'll be doing these regularly, I'm told. Weekly reflections, written on a computer, with no one over my shoulder to see what I'm doing with them? Sounds like blogging in class to me.
 
  Freshman Election Time
SGA elections are here again. The freshmen posters are out, and the voting booths “opened” on the website today. To most upperclassmen, and perhaps to more of the freshmen than we’d like to admit, it’s just another Tuesday. But to 15 ambitious freshmen, it’s the climax of a nerve-wracking blitz to the first step of their Student Government career.
I met one of these freshmen a month ago. His name escapes me, but his credentials aren’t so easy to forget. He chaired the national committee of High School SGA presidents. He intends to do the same thing four years from now by becoming president of the Board of Student Body Presidents.
My freshman year, 2002, I was surrounded by the Freshmen campaigns. I wasn’t running, but all my friends were. The massive wooden signs seemed to fight for space around the bridge to the Residence Halls. One or two made bold approaches to the Curris Center, only to be quietly removed after penalties and warnings were written to the candidate. The day before elections, two candidates produced T-shirts encouraging their peers to vote. People stood up in class and mentioned the election. On voting day, I was asked at least 5 times if I had voted yet.
All four 2005-2006 Senate executive officers ran for freshman senator their freshman year. Only one, Emily Just, got it. The others went to Freshman Council, with Emily as their chair. I can only imagine how awkward that would be at first. Obviously, though, they worked well together. Most of them are still working together today. I became Clark College’s Senate Representative shortly after these elections, and sat on Senate with Emily, the Freshman Senator.
The 2002 Freshman Council brought about the birth of “Hail Racers,” a yellow-clad wave of cheering students that filled a section of the RSEC for every basketball game. Hail Racers only lasted another year before dwindling out to a few die-hard fans, but the experience of organizing it and preparing for every game gave everyone a taste of what Student Government can be like. Once I was a senator, I spent afternoons talking with Emily and found myself in that sea of screaming fans on occasion.
I wonder sometimes if “real” government is anything like the Student Government. Campaign caps prevent us from pouring excess money into the race. All candidates agree on the same “do’s and don’ts” for some things. Others are set in stone. What really seems to set the SGA apart, though, is the ease at which one can find a niche. Senate has always had a reputation as being mostly Greek. RCA may be (or sometimes see themselves as) a little outcast from the rest of the Student Government Body. But if you’re really out to get involved, you can. I did. I’ve served on Senate for four years, always in that non-Greek minority. I’ve become RCA president, despite the fact that I’ve sat on Senate for four years and never once on RCA. I’m not saying it’s easy. Politics is never easy. But to those who want to get involved, it is available.
This morning I walked by 5 wooden signs, each marked with a name I didn’t know. The signs have been moving a little closer to the bridge each day, pushing the invisible line written on a form all the candidates signed. The polls are open, and somewhere 15 freshmen are wondering how many of their peers were listening.
 
Comments:
I liked the Bush Banner.

Kids can have both fun and learning at one Spot.
Holiday in Cornwall
 
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Sunday, September 11, 2005
  Temerity
Today's word of the day is "temerity." The OED defines temerity as "Foolhardy disregard of danger; recklessness." I prefer the princeton definition: "fearless daring."

Gasguy uses this word like a pro in his latest post
 
Comments:
hey, it's India. check out gasguy's latest couple of posts. he is leaving the gas station & has got a job as a teacher, hasn't said when. Post about maria is fun too.
got my own blog as well, check me out. heh.
http://glasshoppr.blogspot.com/
yes its a bad pun on the old KungFu series, got called grasshoppah by couple of people at work when i got married to your dad & started using Hopper as last name..
 
hey, check out gasguy's latest couple of posts. he is leaving the gas station & has got a job as a teacher, hasn't said when. Post about maria is fun too.
got my own blog too, check me out. heh.
http://glasshoppr.blogspot.com/
 
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Saturday, September 10, 2005
  Dawn
     For the first time in 9 months I’m watching the sun rise over Murray.  Like the last time I saw it, I’m awake because Tiffany’s on her way to a biology trip. Unlike last time, I find myself unable to go back to sleep.  I’ve been watching the growing light outside with bittersweet thoughts.  It’s beautiful.  Everything’s beautiful in Murray, except my grades and the girls who shouldn’t wear tube tops but do anyway.  The sunrise brings out the little rabbit that lives outside my window.  I think the big one got eaten.  He was about the size of a basketball.  I probably would have ate him if I could have found a way to cook him without having to go through the whole killing / skinning process.  
     Wow.  I may not be able to sleep, but reading over those words again makes me wonder how awake I really am.  Tiffany came down here to get her bread around 5:30.  All the cooking supplies live in my room.  Tiff says it’s because I have the nice, long countertop to cook on.  I wonder if it’s because she got tired of cleaning all the cooking supplies out of her carpet.  Anyway, they’re all here with me, so when she got in around midnight last night and asked “where’s my bread for tomorrow?” we had a cooking blitz down here that resulted in enough ingredients spilling into the carpet that the next spilled drink might rise up into a loaf of Rye.  Twenty minutes later a dough-blob was spinning around in the bread machine, 6 inches of the advised 3-foot radius of the machine were clear, and I went back to bed.  When we fished Tiff’s loaf of bread out this morning, it was one inch thick and the consistency of a brick
     Apparently the fast-loaf recipe doesn’t work if you don’t have fast yeast.
     Live and learn.
     This is the first time in a while I’ve had a chance to sit down and write anything. I really dislike that aspect of college. I’d like to say this won’t be a pattern, but it probably will be.  I always have Saturdays.
     I’ve read 2 chapters in my Asimov book since getting back up here, and those were both done at a loss to the copy of Flowers for Algernon that I’m supposed to be reading for the Clark College Book Club (yeah, I’m that geeky).  On the other hand, I’ve trudged through the Odyssey and the Iliad, and gotten to enjoy 5 of the Canterbury Tales.  We’re diving right into Victorian and Romantic poetry in Lit to 1760, so I won’t be enjoying my reading much longer.  On the other hand, once we get out of the crazy-dead-Greeks section in Honors Humanities, we hit the Middle Ages again, and I’ve got a head start!
     The sun has now made it all the way up.  I don’t think I’m making it back to sleep.
     We have an ALS run starting in a couple of hours.  I haven’t decided if I’m running or helping hand out water.  I guess it depends on how much help they have and how coordinated I’m feeling.  By then my scant 5 hours rest may be feeling much worse.  This afternoon I’m also meeting with the Residential College Association advisor about “ways to improve my meeting.”  This whole president thing is taking a little more adjustment than I had imagined.  I’m really not organized enough for it on my own, I’m having to work on that a lot.  I miss Liz’s palm pilot :(.  
     Yesterday I had lunch with a pack of Morehead State execs (Provost, VP, Asst. Provost, etc.) who came to scope out our Residential College system.  Our Vice President of Student Affairs didn’t throw a brick at my head, so I guess I did ok.  
     I think I’m about ready to nap before the ALS Run.  I’ll talk to you again in my next free moment.
 
Monday, September 05, 2005
  Yesterday's Entry
     I had hoped to have a little Walden Pond experience this weekend, but Friday Night I was too creeped out, and tonight Tiffany’s Cat wants to make sure that these hands don’t tippity-tap across the computer without her help.  So far I’ve attempted to write a scene twice without getting more than three lines completed.  I gave her a sock to attack in the other room and hope that can keep her occupied until I finish this.
     School has been much worse for my writing than I had imagined.  Other than a brief four page story for a friend, I haven’t written a thing.  My own projects are stagnating, again.  How ironic!  The Creative Writing major (or minor) can’t find time to write!  
     Well, that weekend hasn’t changed that much.  I have a little bit tapping around my brain right now that I’m going to do instead of finishing my advanced composition homework.  Comp’s not due until Tuesday, usually my muses fly away after a few hours.
      Katze’s afraid of my speakers.  I don’t guess she’s really been around music all that much, certainly not around a subwoofer.  Maybe the quiet songs (yes, I listen to quiet music with a sub) will soothe her into sleepiness.  They’re working for me.  
Time to write before I lose it.
******
It’s like Christmas today!  I finally got the brains to let Winamp search my whole computer for music, rather than just my meager “my music” folder it’s been using, and I have over 2000 tracks now! All legally acquired, too.  I either bought the CD then added it for my own reference, downloaded through post-lawsuits Napster, or it is music that was free to begin with (like <a href= http://www.ocremix.com> OCRemix</a>).  I don’t think the music’s really soothing Tiffany’s cat, but it is keeping her from running up and attacking my hands as I type.  That’ll have to do.
Tiff told me once that Katze listens to the Eagles.  I just played it and she went right to sleep.  Bizarre.




 
Thursday, September 01, 2005
  Attack of the Quizes!
Which Evil Naruto Character would I be?
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Who would you be?
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You are Kakashi
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So, I'm conflicted. OK. Enough of that.
 
Welcome to the vacuum in which my various thoughts emerge, fight, and ultimately sink once more into obscurity.

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Location: Nashville/Murray, TN/KY, United States

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