Quotable Nick

"I'm gonna go out for a smoke because, unlike Kate Bosworth, I'm no quitter."
-Nick

World AIDS Day

It's World AIDS Day. Are you wearing red? How about (RED)?

Nick and I saw The Fountain and Casino Royal today. I'll share my thoughts latermaybe.

Any Post

I am the reason for the Universe, though not the cause.

NOTES:
I'm still plowing through video from Beyond Belief. I'm on session five right now. Very interesting. I loved Ann Druyan's remarks at the end of session four, but I think the man to whom she was responding was a ringer ;). Carolyn Porco gave one of my favorite presentations and made the fascinating point that we all know what death is like: it's just like before we were born.

DNA's Downside

We can only become what we are able to be.

The Word of Dog

New Scientist: Science is interesting and if you don't agree, you can fuck off.

I love you, Rich

Turkey Wrap(up)

Wednesday
I flew Home on Wednesday. Brittany and I saw Borat. She didn't much care for it.

Thursday
The family piled in the car and drove to Kansas City Missouri to see my Dad's brother's family. They have three children: Alison (my age), Josh (my sister's age) and Baily (three years younger still). Alison visited us four-odd years ago and we hadn't seen the others for a long time. They are all very old. Aunt Carole made a fine Thanksgiving diner and we retired to play Frisbee and pool. It's a fun bunch.

Friday
Alison and I did the crossword in a local paper (we finished). We played Mario Cart and pool and more Frisbee (which spellcheck is telling me ought to be capitalized. I never knew). We had diner at a great local pizeria. Kansas City has a quaint little Main St. area. Then it was back to the house for more pool and some movies. Forty Year Old Virgin lasted a few minutes before the old folks found it too inappropriate. The Nightmare Before Christmas was next and I had forgotten how short a movie it is. After that, I finally got my way and Vertigo was put on. That is a long movie.

Saturday
Six hour drive back home. Brittany came over late and we yucked and talked into the wee hours.

Sunday
Back to NY. The Gym was closed. Waaa! Rehearsal was tedious in the extreme. Afterward, I stayed up until five watching video from the Beyond Belief conference which was Nov 5-7.

Monday
I woke up at 2:30 and was late for 2pm rehearsal. No one noticed. I have 7-10 rehearsal in an hour and I'm writing this blog post instead of going to the gym. I'll have to go after rehearsal. That's bad because the gym closes at 11, but good because there won't be so many people there.

An Occasion on the 26th of Nov

Today marks a year of uninterrupted follicle growth on my head.

Catastrophe!

I was in a hurry yesterday and I needed some serious calcium. I popped into a university shop and found a single bottle in the fridge, labeled only "Milk." It looked good to me. Well, while waiting for the subway, I cracked open this beverage and discovered, to my utter shock, it was whole! Worse still, I liked it!!!

Today, catastrophe! I am at the dining hall, cup in hand, facing the milk machine. I have a choice: skim or whole. Both are available, both are fresh. My hand moves to the "Whole" lever, filling my cup to the brim. I drink it all. I am ashamed.

I don't know when - or if - I will return to skim, but I am confident of one thing: An old man will look back on the tatters of his ruined life and recognize this as the very moment which began the downward spiral.

"Things that make you big" for 500!

Working out is a lot like masturbating: you look at sexy people while performing a repetitive motion that makes you feel both good and sticky.

H2O

A man is wandering in the desert of the apocalypse when he comes across a machine. He says, "Do you have any water?" The machine replies, "No, but I am waiting for the Culligan man." The man asks, "Is the Culligan man coming soon?" and the machine tells him, "Very," so the man sits down to wait. The next day, the man dies from dehydration. Some billion years later, after the Universe has ended, God is walking through Heaven when he comes across the machine. God says, "Do you have any faith?" The machine replies, "No, but I am waiting for the Culligan man." God asks, "Are you sure he is coming?" and the machine tells God, "Very." Some eternities later, after Heaven has ended, the machine is walking through Chaos when it comes across a blue jacket and hat. The machine dons the clothing and Chaos says, "Hey Culligan Man!"

The moral of the story: Machines don't get thirsty.
Further reading: Transhumanism and the dilemmas of space travel.

No Title

A perfect human world is a world without humans.

Dems in Da House

And apparently in the Senate too. And then I heard Rummie was out, and I did a happy dance!

Blogiversary

Happy anniversary blog! A year ago today, Phil Martin was kicked out of studio, Sherin had a birthday, I jacked off and did laundry, and Manos Hands of Fate was enjoyed by all.

Today, I skipped a class to take a nap, Sherin had a birthday, and the country voted. Maybe I'll jerk off in a bit.

This year has been up and down for me and I've blogged through it all. Reading over old posts, I vividly remember certain things and have no recollection of others. Through good or bad, the blog encourages me to remember, provokes me to write, and incentivises interesting, blog-worthy behavior. Its a resource I will further cherish with each passing year. If you don't already, may I recommend you give this blogging thing a go. Let me know if you do: lunchtimemama at gmail dot com. What are you up to? What do you think? What are you? Do something worth blogging about!

As for the next year, I've got some great stuff coming up. More antidotes, epithets, poems, pearls of ignorance and turds of wisdom. I've also got a project in the works for you, dear reader, that should be done around next May. There's another thing that I hope to tell you about sooner. December-ish. Look for it all in the year to come. I'll see you there.

"We're not looking for the best, we're looking for the famousest."

Wonder

I don't fully understand the psycho-socio mechanism by which the gym is always packed on Friday nights. Whatever. Last night was amazing. I first thought $10 was too steep for a fund-raiser party, but it was the most fun I've had in a long damn time. Yeah. It was just awesome.

"I don't believe it's selfish to eat defenseless shell fish." -NOFX

Goood

Some poops are bad. Some are good. That one was very good!

Boo!

I don't think Halloween in New York is actually fun until you've done about a pound of blow. I'm not actually having fun.

Today was probably the best weather we'll have for the rest of '06. That was nice. Halloween was always my favorite holiday, but the joy has been lost on me these past three years. Maybe I haven't hit the right parties. Maybe I don't have the right friends. Maybe I ain't found the right costume. Maybe I should wear a costume. Next year.

Candy corn is my favorite candy and I had a helluva time finding some today. I tried Upstien, Downstien, Duane Reade, K-Mart. Finally I found some Indian Corn at another DR. To my surprise and disgust, Indian Candy Corn tastes different from the regular kind. Chocolaty. New York never has the things you need. Like fun.


You're not really my friend unless I periodically fantasize about sex with you.
-Lies

Ma

Mommy showed up to see my movement project. Yeah!

Ask not what your blog can do for you...

Rarely do I ask more of you, dear reader, than to consider this, or imagine that, or seance for the summoning of so-and-so, but today I make an exception. The new version of Ubuntu was just released. I'd really like it if you gave it a try. I know an OS installation can be a big deal, so I understand if you want to pass on this one, but be aware that the next version of Ubuntu (slated for release April 19th) will not be optional. You either make the switch or you say goodbye to our friendship. You have until April.

But if you think you'd like to try Ubuntu now, here's some persuasion:

• Ubuntu is totally free: no cost, no license. It is a gift to you from the penguin god.
• You can keep Windows around and choose if you want to use Windows or Ubuntu every time you start your computer.
• Installation is dead easy:
• Go to www.ubuntu.com.
• Download 6.10 for the desktop (if you're familiar with bittorrent, defiantly use that for the download).
• Burn the image. You'll need something like Nero or DaemonTools (the latter is free).
• Pop the CD in and restart.
• Behold! You're running Ubuntu! To permanently install it, click the "Install" icon on the desktop. When the installation is done, you can toss the CD.
• That's it!
• After you've installed Ubuntu, you probably want to install EasyUbuntu. That takes care of things like audio/video codecs, browser plugins, and other things that don't come pre-installed with Ubuntu for legal reasons.
• What "Just works" in Ubuntu:
• Surf the web
  
• Check your email
• Instant message
• Create and edit MS Office documents (Word et al)
• Listen to your music
• Rip and burn CDs
• Sync your iPod
• Connect your digital camera
  
• Watch videos
• And more
• Caveats:
• You can't listen to music you've bought on iTunes (blame DRM)
• Not all PC games are available for Linux (keep that Windows install around).
• That's everything that comes to mind.

If you decide to install, be sure to backup your files, bookmarks, etc. Put them on a data CD or DVD or an external hard drive.

If you have any questions, there is a great Ubuntu community ready and willing to help. I'm also more than happy to lend a hand. Send any questions you have and I'll do my best to answer:
lunchtimemama at gmail dot com.

FLOSS daily.

If you want to get into heaven...

Firefox 2

www.mozilla.com

Yeah!

Styroferno

The 9th ring of hell is filled with packing peanuts.

Haiku For You

Little turds splashing,
So happy in the toilet;
I don't want to flush.

Huzzah!

Tomorrow, code that I've written will go out to millions of people. Or rather, my patch has been committed for the 0.11.2 release of Banshee. OK, so it's not really a big deal at all. But it's my first committed patch, so it's special.

Existence is preferable to the alternative.

Falsifiability is God

Human understanding is not absolute. Truth is. If our belief in a geocentric solar system is pitted against the fact of a heliocentric solar system, heliocentricity remains true, despite our belief to the contrary. Truth also trumps human ignorance. If we know nothing of a planet orbiting another sun, it's existence remains true despite our unawareness. And indeed, on most matters we are ignorant.

Human observation, while imperfect, can provide reasonable evidence of truth. Evidence successfully obtained through repeatable experimentation can be said to be "true" to a certain extent (significant figures, error, etc.).

Given these circumstances, we are very likely to often find evidence contrary to or beyond the scope of our understandings. And indeed we often do.

Science is based solely on evidence. Science is necessarily falsifiable. All scientific theories seek to be disproved by evidence. Theories are modified, discarded, and created to fit our changing corpus of evidence. Thusly through science we learn via trial-and-error.

Religion is based solely on divine documents. Religion is necessarily unfalsifiable. All religions rely on the absolute and exclusive truth of their doctrine. When presented with contradictory evidence, a religion must (a) reject the evidence, (b) concede the absolute authority of its religious documents, (c) admit to "human error" or "metaphor" in its religious documents. In each of those situations:
A) The religion's point of view appears ever more absurd as humanity's talent for observation improves and contrary evidence mounts.
B) The religion violates the fundamental tenant of unfalsifiability and becomes completely defunct.
C) The religion calls into question all of its doctrine. How is one to know what is correctly interpreted and what is not and how does one know with what confidence a particular doctrine is interpreted and on whose authority are such things to be believed.

And indeed religions often face contrary evidence.

There are multiple religions which claim truth at the falsehood of all other religions. None of these religions holds a majority of the human population among their believers. No religion can therefor claim authority by belief ("it is believed, therefor it is true") because by that logic, all religions are made wrong by the disbelief in any one religion by a majority of humanity. Most religions possess supposedly divine documents. No evidence exists of these documents' divinity and all are of decidedly un-divine authorship (human). No religion can therefor claim authority by divine document since all religions claim that authority with equal evidence ("we say so").

Religion is therefor a most absurd means by which to discover truth. Science is, at least, a start.

Multiplicity

I share a birthday with Shakespeare and it's the date that he allegedly died too. I've imagined for some years now that I will enjoy my final birthday, fall asleep, and wake up in an afterlife populated exclusively by mes of different ages, each of who's final memory is the celebration of their most recent birthday. A copy of me from every April 23rd will be there: 1986, 1996, 2006, ... ? And we would live together forever. Certain rules would be decided: the tending of the perpetual infants, the minding of the eternally young, the dissemination of life story, cooking, cleaning, and of course, sex - or perhaps masturbation is the more appropriate term. It would certainly be a Hell rather than a Heaven: I am far too in love with myself to ever enjoy the company of other mes.

I've been playing Psychonauts. It is really amazing. If you have any interest in video games whatsoever, you must check it out! You can try the demo on Steam if you're so inclined.

"I am the milkman. My milk is delicious."

PAF

The gym is better than friends
The gym is a lot better looking than your friends, the gym is available anytime you are (until 11), and at the gym, you're free to engage in as little human interaction as you please.

The gym is destroying my soul
If some rehearsal or other prohibits attendance, the withdrawal consumes my psyche. I'm going to have to miss on Friday again. Send help!

All hail the great and terrible GYM!

When talking to myself, I address myself in the first person plural pronoun, "we."
"We know full well..."
"We really ought to..."
"We must burn..."
Who else is in here with me?

Five signs you hit rock bottom a while ago

1. You can't quite place the source of your apartment's sweaty reek.
2. You skip class to avoid turning in homework that isn't even due.
   
3. You're suite mate doesn't offer to share the skank week he's so obviously smoking in there.
4. "Buy Soap!" has rolled over six daily to-do lists.
5. You're eating cereal with a fork.

à la 5ives

Q

Would the world be better if we held our thoughts to the same moral standard that we hold our behaviors?

Ding Dong!

Sex Goddess of my life, Jade Jackson, paid me a compliment today. Yeah, I'm totally gonna masturbate about it.

"Life begins at ejaculation."

Pre-Order Now!

My next book is coming out in December (exact release date pending). I'll let you know when you can find it on bookshelves. Be sure to check it out. It's called:

Bestseller

The Modern Art of Titling Non-Fiction Books With a Single,
Punchy Word and Then Finding the Perfect Long-Winded Sub-Title
to Go Along With It and also Some Ironic and Self-Referential
Wit and Some Dick Jokes Too
by Scott Peterson

Durdenism

You are further noise.

Vid ee oh

Democracy + tvRSS = Die, television!

In related news, Google bought YouTube. I exploded.

You can't emphasis Beef!

Orson Welles, bless us with your peas!

War is always relevant.

Identity Misplacement

The pants I'm wearing don't have any pockets. I asked Kyle to keep my wallet in his bag during class today. Kyle left. I don't have a wallet.

Silver Lining

Girl on her cellphone in the elevator:
So she calls me today and asks if I'll help clean up and I'm like, "Clean up what?" and she's like, "All the puke" and I guess I had like thrown up all over her apartment which I totally don't remember at all. . . Yeah, I must have totally blacked out before that happened, which I guess is actually kind of really great because I only remember the good stuff!

Locked in the bunker

I barely left my room this weekend. I've been working on my latest computer project and the current phase is extremely tedious. Briefly:

Intro:
I'm guessing that you, dear reader, are either using Windows or OSX. Well, there's a third thing called Linux. Linux is FREE. It's free both as in speech and as in beer. That is to say, it doesn't cost any money and it's not proprietary/copyrighted/licensed/restricted/closed-source. The problem is, it's not as good. But that's starting to change. There's a new type of Linux called Ubuntu. Ubuntu is fully functional and very easy to use. It's not quite ready to take over the world (e.g., I'm not going to recommend it to my mom yet), but it's getting close. I've been using Ubuntu for about a month now and I'm not looking back.


Problem:
I use iTunes on Windows and when I moved to Ubuntu, I wanted a familiar interface for my music. Linux has a number of iTunes-clones for organizing and playing music. The app I settled on is called Banshee. It imported my music collection just fine, but certain information that I had in iTunes (song ratings, play counts, play lists, &c.) is kept inside of iTunes and therefore wasn't brought into Banshee. Since iTunes is a popular music player, I imagine other first-time Linux users will have this problem too.


Project:
I'm writing a plugin for Banshee that will dig that information out of iTunes an merge it into Banshee. If all goes well, the plugin will import the following:

• Song ratings
• Play count
• Last played
• Playlists
• Smart playlists
• Podcast subscriptions
  

Luckily, iTunes makes available an XML file with most of that info. Here's an excerpt from the file (emphasis mine):

<key>Name</key><string>Stacey's Mom</string>
<key>Genre</key><string>Rock/Pop</string>
<key>Size</key><integer>7995139</integer>
<key>Total Time</key><integer>198844</integer>
<key>Track Number</key><integer>3</integer>
<key>Track Count</key><integer>16</integer>
<key>Play Count</key><integer>77</integer>
<key>Play Date</key><integer>3242496736</integer>
<key>Rating</key><integer>100</integer>

As you can see, the information we're looking for is very easy to find. I've listened to Stacey's Mom 77 times and it has a rating of 100 (5 stars). Right now, my plugin does a fine job of importing ratings, play counts, last played, and playlists. The next step is to handle smart playlists. Here's where it gets tricky. While the XML data is very easy to read, smart playlists are encoded in binary: 1's and 0's. Here is part of a smart playlist:

00000000 00000000 00000000 00010010 00000000
01000010 00000000 01100101 00000000 01101110
00000000 00100000 00000000 01000110 00000000
01101111 00000000 01101100 00000000 01100100
00000000 01110011 01010011 01001100 01110011

That is decidedly more difficult to interpret. Enter the I-haven't-left-my-room-in-two-days factor. So I've spent the last 48 hours creating smart playlists in iTunes and analyzing the bytes that come out. I'm making good headway and it's only a matter of time before I have all of the bits figured out, but the tedium does wear on me.

Thankfully, I've discovered a new distraction: DEFCON! It's a charming little game about global thermonuclear warfare. It's easy to learn and loads of fun and best of all, you can play the whole game for free (the demo just limits the number of opponents you can have). New York City is a common target for ICBMs, so maybe it's best that I stay inside.

Awk! Toe-bur

Rabbit rabbit!

"Look at my poofy pants one more time and I kill you, muthafucka!" - William Shakespeare

Lucifer

We will one day tell our grandchildren of such a thing as night
And of a world on which there only ever shone a single sun.

ThursSeptTwenEight

• So much FOOOD that I had to eat. HAD TO!
• If my comp sci class were any slower, I'd be un-learning.
• I saw Christo and Jeanne-Claude having dinner here.
  

If you don't have talent, have beauty, and if you don't have beauty, have kids.

<3

I love narcissists.

Linguistic Epiphanies

I realized today the root of the word singularity.

I'm not clever enough to think of a title for this post

We are all mean, but some of us are clever.

Praise Be!

The laundry. It is done.

...

There is no reason not to legalize all recreational drugs.

Death Rattle

My dinner this evening consisted of two Silver Spur hamburgers. The meal was equivalent to eleven helpings of Grade A beef and the decision will likely cost me a day from the end of my life. I can hear old Scott's death rattle now: "If I only hadn't had those two hamburgers!"

A Good Day

Today was a good day. I. . .

• Polished off a poem
• Worked on a project
• Left for the gym just as the fire alarm went off
• where I had a great time
• And then a great sandwhich
• and then I more or less slept.
• More or less.

The Poem:
I would ______ you if I had a verb to spare.
My longing;judging;expecting associates have an expectation of me
And my fellow friends of blaming;masturbating;destroying need my company.
The tomfoolers want blatherers and violators require admirers
And my prior engagements to praying;pissing;repenting;begging commit me somewhat beyond my availability.
Were it but for my heavy spending of fearing, I would devote a bit of it to us, my dear.
I would fear our lack of predicate.
As it stands, my poverty of language leaves me somewhat indebted of ideas and expression.
All I can afford you is a punctuation mark or two.
;!

Reasons Why

1. Sex with you is a poor imitation of masturbation.
2. I'm drowning in the sea of your ineptitudes.
3. I don't do tofu.
   

The Best Sentence in the English Language

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. [1]

(Untitled)

Marriage is so pre-9/11.

Sidewalk Urges

One of my more violent urges is to throw the pedestrian in front of me to the ground while screaming, "Move your fucking ass you tourist turd!" I often have this urge. About 20 times a day.

?

A Utopia is a world in which no new questions are asked.

FYI

If you fell into a bottomless pit on Earth, your body would reach relativistic speeds after 35 days. Unfortunately you would be dead from dehydration by day 6, at the latest.

.

I'm always yawning and moaning and stretching and groaning andohgodifeelsoold

There are Two Constants:

Entropy and Chaos.

Aug 28

Old New York. Back again. I was surprised to find I'd missed the Big Apple. I'm more or less all moved in, but those CollegeBoxes fuckers have fucked their shit up again. I've got a box belonging to another Scott Peterson and I can only assume he has the one I'm missing. Errr!

I've started the Bible. I'll let you know what I think when I'm done.

Last night we (roommate-Nick, Leia and I) went to Limerick and found a gaggle of geriatric women bustin' their movies at Sunday night karaoke. Well I wasn't about to let that opportunity pass me by, so I got out on that dance floor and started shakin' my thang. I'll tell ya, those geese sure could dance.

Classes start in a week.

The glass is half full of air.

Movies to Which I am Looking Forward

Children of Men




The Fountain




The Science of Sleep

Requiem for the Recently Departed

The Solar System Today
A Haiku

Mercury Venus
Earth Mars Jupiter Saturn
Uranus Neptune

Etymology for President!

Venereal: The Latin adjective form of Venus - God of Love.

Adjective references to the planet use the neologism Venusian.

Eltit

What you want and what you get haven't loved each other since you were two. They separated for eight months before getting a divorce and now they only speak on holidays. But it's not your fault.

July 24, 06

AHHH!HH!H!HH!H!!!111!!!!1!!1

I just got the ALL-TIME-HIGH-SCORE on pinball. Wore yet, I was this close to getting a MILLION MORE for a total of 9.5 mill.

DAMN YOU SANTA!

Noon:30 on Friday

These days I have far less lint in my belly button than usual.

July 16

I've been unclenching my teeth a lot lately.

More from the Front Lines of 12 July

An Epiphany: The Pacific Ocean is so named for being pacific.

July 12 - Day 7,385

Played Prey all day. Grade-D story, poor animation, laughable voice acting, but damn the game is fun. And gorgeous to boot.

I delight in greek tragidies, except when they are my own.

BUTT SEX!

This week I'm teaching middle school kids at the Eastview theater camp. In my group of rising 9th graders, there is a kid named Brandon. Brandon is well on the road to tranny-hood. He wears makeup and girls cloths and he makes a rather hot chick. Anyhow, each class (there are four: acting, singing, dance and tech) plays the name game so the teachers can learn everyone's name. There are many variations on the name game, but my favorite flavor is: "Hi, I'm [name] and I like [verb that starts with the same letter as name]." For example, "Hi, I'm Scott and I like swingdancing [begin swingdancing]." Now you try!

At the end of the day, all of the teachers congregate and discuss how things went. I was sitting next to Kevin. Kate (on the choir staff) was mentioning a small issue that came up during the name game. They were playing noun rules ("Hi, I'm [name] and I like [noun with same letter]") and the game came 'round to Brandon: "Hi I'm Brandon and I like boys." Then some jackass kid made a comment under his breathe. "Well Kate," I said to Kate, "that's why you should play verb rules. Then you're good unless he has the balls to say, 'I'm Brandon and I like butt sex' and starts thrusting." Then, as we're all cracking up, Kevin doubles over to reveal little six-year-old Casy sitting opposite in the circle, previously obscured by Kevin's huge head. Oops.

"Uh, hey Casy."
"Hi."
"You're cool, right Casy?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah ya are."

I am a force of corruption.

Sat, June 10

I'm doing lots of cave tours. Theater camp starts next week. "The Omen" sucked more balls than a Taiwanese hooker on speed. I have a new obsession: South Park.

Fri, 6/2

A behavioral observation: during the frequent discussion with my father over my lack of summer employment, I rarely have a leg of dignity on which to stand. Without any personal power, I defer my arguments to what I consider to be the stainless deity of Logic. For instance:

Dad: "You understand that your employment this summer determines your financial situation next year."
I nod
Dad: "And you know that you won't have any money for making purchases or paying your cellphone bill."
Me: "Dad, your first statement was completely accurate: 'employment determines financial situation.' But in your second statement you blindly assume that (1) Subway won't call me back, (2) the money I make at the caves will be entirely trivial, and (3) I won't find any other work. If you have such a casual ability to prophesy the coming three and a half months, you should be making quite a bit more than you do."

In this situation, my dad is mostly right and I am ashamed, so I assault the minutia of language.

Also, Half-Life 2: Episode One is so kick-ass, I almost peed.

Friday, May 12

The universe is amazing not when it is complex, but when it is simple.

Monday, May 8

• Steve and I drank a gallon of milk and ate a dozen doughnuts*. Uuuuuuuuu. We no feel so good.
• I've rummaging through my head, sifting for adjectives, but I can't seem to find any which do Oblivion justice. The game is spiff!
  

*They were free!

Moving Back

• John K. and I watched MI3. Phillip-Seymor Hoffman is sohoho evil, it's awesome (p.s., I didn't know Kevin Spacy was the new Lex Luther. WOW am I psyched for that!).
• So I stayed up all night not-packing, and then started packing at six thirty in the morning. Who says you can't pack all of your Earthly belongings in two hours?
• Well, the storage company (College Boxes) shows up, takes my contract, says they'll be back in a few minuets for the boxes, and then leaves without my shit. WHAT THE SHIT?! I practically shit a brick. My very kind suitemate agreed to hand the stuff over to those CB shitters since I had to catch my flight (which he did and all worked out well, except for the shittiness of everything).
• I shleped half of my worldly goods to the airport.
  
• In order to check three bags, one must pay an additional $80. Give me an S! Give me an H! [...]

• I have 3 minute of memory from the three hour flight.
• HOME! Dance, fools!
• Bravo! was very good, particularly the jazz band, as always they are.

What I'm noticing these days: Logos, fonts, typefaces.

5/4

This incredible paper is due to-morrow/day and I haven't gotten a wink of sleep. Perhaps you don't appreciate the state of my standing in this class. It is terrible! On an unrelated note, my attention span these days is total shit. I entirely blame tabs in Firefox. Incidentally, if you're not using Firefox, I seriously don't want to know you.

5/01

So, we finished our final performance of Cloud Nine today, which brings an end to my second year of studio. I have no conclusions. The kids hit Limerick's afterward and I found the whole party very uncomfortable.

I have a new pedestration game. I imagine being where I am looking, looking at myself walking. I envision what the world looks like to the people I pass: what do they notice, where do they look, who do they see (me?) and what's of interest behind my back. I also sometimes pick a spot across the street or atop a building or within a vehicle and wonder how the view is from there.

4/21

• StrawberryFest!
• My sister is the state champion in story telling!
  

Recently

• I've been lazy.
• I've watched Bullshit!
• I've thought about how lazy I've been.

"Naked people are their own reward." -Penn Jillete

Monday, April 3

• When God pours rain on my inept selection of wardrobe and my thong sandals give the blisters on my feet a hellava tickle, I find it best to think of the starving AIDS children in Africa.
• I raged all day.

"I bet Romeo marries his Juliet. They have a baby and make lots of friends, that's probably the way the play ends!" - Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical

Sunday, April 2

• I woke up at Tiffs around 2:30 (she was still asleep) and headed home.
• I flounced about.
• I beheld the Once is Never Enough musical review at Adler. It was capital fun.
  
• I then slunk into Been So Long during intermission. Oh my lord! Clare directed five wonderful forth years in a fantastic production. Franklin was actually in both the musical review and Been So Long. He is lovely. Molly and Kate (whom I barely know) were piss awesome and Alex - really the only cast member with whom I am acquainted - was present also. Nick made five.
• I glew home, and so ended my day.

Tuesday, March 28

• Hey class. I'm late. Whacha gonna do about it?
• Side project.
• Gym.
• Soup & Burger & 2 cartons of milk.
• Plotting and Scheming.
• Daily Show.
• Happy.
• Sleepy.

It is better to have beauty than to be beautiful.

Monday, March 27

• Another rehearsal, more blocking.
• Early gym.
• A relaxing evening with:

• Reading.
• Fake news.
• Music.
• Riya.

Poetry is the art of failing to define love. Good poetry fails with grace. Bad poetry fails oppositely.

Sunday, March 26

• Another proto-project.
• A student production took my language away.

Lion: My God, my children murder children.
God: Yes.

Saturday, March 25

• Stuff stuff.
• Gym gym.
  
• Guen's birthday party. I had a uniformly great time.
  

I'm not happy, but I am awake.

Friday, March 24

• My big day off!
• Strolled about town, reading.
• Watched some public domain flicks: Nosferatu, Reefer Madness, and Plan 9 From Outer Space (dear God).
• Began work on a proto-project involving streaming Internet video.
• Saw Thank You For Smoking.
• Saw Cruel Intentions.
• Slept.

Guen figured out my straight edge: I've just got a superiority complex.

Thurday, March 23

• 11:50: People who wake up after noon are losers.
• 12:00: Wowzers! My back hurts.
• 1:00: Hey, a use for my yoga mat.
• 2:00: Class. MEH!
• 5:00: Phirst phood of the day. I'm phucking starving!
• 8:00: Guess I'm not going to the gym.
• 9:10: Guess I am.
• 12:00: More phood.
• We'll see: I simply can't keep awake another second. PLOP!

"Live clipboard" fascinates and excites me.

Wednesday, March 22

• Great day at studio, Steph's class stood out (had a great contact improv with Argun).
• First real rehearsal with Jimmy.
• Got my iPod replaced.
• Spring is here: my suitemate and his girlfriend have been fucking (loudly) on and off for five hours. The stamina amazes me.

Note: I've got a new feed link on the left. That feed will contain every post regarding my personal life, be it from this or any other blog, Flickr, Zooomr, you name it. If you get this site through a feed reader (and why not!), be sure to use that feed, not the hipolsoc.blogspot.com one.

Tuesday, March 21

• Class.
• Ideas.
• Gym.
• Internet.

Happy Equonox!

Monday, March 20

• The second year conservatory kids did their poetry projects. One chick's pendulous boobies were wiggling around all during her piece and Lex and I could hardly keep ourselves together. I don't think I've laughed so hard in years.
• Rehearsals for Cloud Nine began on a fine foot. The readthrough went fine, sans Stacy as it was.
• I spent the whole rest of the night photocopying my face and dicking around in Second Life (I made a working copy of my script).

I forgot.

Sunday, March 19

• It turns out Laura is the All Time Universal Champion of Pinball. Who knew?
• The flight was fine.
• As was the SuperShuttle.
• While eating dinner, I recognized a girl from Flickr. We chatted for a bit. How nice.
• Gymed a skosh.
• SPRING CLEANING!

Smelling is not so good a sense as touching.

Saturday, March 18

• I got the JACKPOT in pinball. Take that dad!
• Mom made cookies.
• We went to get milk and movie and pizza.
• Dad won chess (gotta give him something).
• Steve came over during Momento.
• He and I made off to Krispy Kreme.
• We pursued town and I revealed my trade secret.
• Back home.

"Only if it's worth blogging about."

Saturday, March 11

• Went to go see the sis at Speech tournament.
• Took some pics (see Flickr).
• She didn't break.
• In fact, only one person from EV is going on to Nats.
• Went to Brittany's house for some TV.
• Went home for some computer.
• Went to bed for some book.

Friday, March 10

Our story begins innocently enough:

• Bade my studiomates goodbye.
• Hopped the SuperShuttle to LGA.
• Our driver divined his way through foreboding Astorian byways, but we made it all right.
  

At this point, things make a turn for the worse:

• No sooner does the boarding process begin, than they remove everyone from the plane and we sit once again at terminal ten.
• We wait and wait while I fall asleep.
• I finally awake to the PA announcement that this whole section of the airport must be evacuated. Yeah.
• When a few thousand people try to make it through one door, it takes more than Metamucil to get shit moving again. The funniest moment came when a disembodied voice addressed the gridlocked throngs with the message, "Folks, we need everyone to please get out of the terminal right now." That gave all of us a good chuckle.
• I really wish I'd gotten that doosey, but this slightly less amusing clip will have to suffice:

• It wasn't long before the bomb dogs arrived. As before, I missed the really good shot (this time of the crazy bomb dog scamp'rin' all over the place):

• I eventually made it on the plane and, from there, home. Always fun!
  

Tuesday, March 7

• I rot, or so I feel.
• Prepared a birthday gift.
• Memor
• Plotted and Schemed.
• ized.

My bag is lost, my chair is broke; surely this is the end of me.

Monday, March 6

• Mental health day.
• Read and watched Call of Cthulhu. The HPLHS did a bangup job.
• It's been a few weeks coming: this OS install is no longer tenable.
• Re-install from 1:30 AM to 6:20. Fuuuuuuuuuun. (Some pics are up)

How much I sweat in the weight room is not a function of my own physical activity, but the number of other people working out.

Th23

• Class was cancelled.
• I read.
• I saw the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane dance company. It was transforming.
• I stayed up later than I should have.

Social moralities are relative; individual moralities are absolute.

W22

• "Scenes are not performances." I am referring to the two person scenes we prepare and present in studio and I am, of course, lying. When one performs one's work for the class and the instructor, it is part process and part production. For each part, one judges the showing by a different set of criteria. As process, one recognizes shortcomings, acknowledges accomplishments, gains understanding, and (usually) achieves progress. As production, one suffers another judgment which has little - if anything - to do with reality. A scene is either "good" or "shit" on the whim of one's humors, audience reaction, and, above all, teacher praise. While the former judgment is the objectively valid of the two, it is the latter that assaults one's piece of mind at bedtime. By every logical system of observation, my work has steadily improved over the last three and a half semesters. Logic notwithstanding, I have felt my most successful work thus far to have been "The Real Thing" which Scarlet and I performed this time last year. That changed today. With historically brief preparation, Patrick's and my "The Importance of Being Earnest" is the new gold standard in ego stimulation.
• We repeated the Crucible and it is now lain to rest. At last.
• Poor roommate is terribly ill again.
• Gymnasium.
• I intended to go to bed early, but plans change.

I'm a picker. Nits, buggers, scabs; I pick.

T21

• Waking can sometimes be a joyous, gentle transition from peaceful void to sensual reality. Today it was not.
• One does much walking in New York. I probably average an hour or more of walking the streets in a day. Podcasts - God bless them - fill the time nicely, but when one is all out, one must invent more creative methods of amusement. Enter the Imitate-Other-Peoples'-Walks game. It is a game to be played alone and is ideal for young actors training in the art of human observation. I will skip the description of the rules and share an anecdote from my game today. I passed a man with a stiff limp in his right leg on 2nd and 17th. I adopted the limp for some blocks, imagining the cause of my malady (army, accident, defect, disease) and I was trucking along pretty well for a fellow with a hindrance, when I passed a man without any legs. I dropped my limp with guilt.
• "The Politics of portraiture" continues to demonstrate its bullshitiness.
• "721 Broadway" is both the address and the title of the building that headquarters the Tisch School of the Arts. It is strange for the building of an art school to bear so utilitarian a name, but the business school had a previous claim to "Tisch Hall." Seven Twenty One is an attractive, well-equipped facility with 12 floors. It is the high level of decor that further emphasized the anomaly of floor #9. When Chrissy suggested we conduct our Crucible rehearsal on the ninth, I imagined some wonderland of sound-proofed, climate controlled rehearsal studios of which I was unaware. Instead I stepped from the elevator into a destitute, deserted, half-demolished Twilight-Zone-esk dimension of trash and exposed insulation. It was as though a single floor from some abandoned building were wedged into the middle of our high-tech tower of tasteful lighting and Ikea furniture. How truely bizarre. Interestingly, there were two or three other groups of actors rehearsing elsewhere amongst the rubble (I assume from a few glimspes that they were actors; they might actually have been angry, drug dealing squatters). After failing to open a number of locked rooms, we came upon the doors without any doorknobs. A small and relatively uncluttered room proved a fine practice space and we had a productive time. I must return some day soon to this Bermuda-Triangle-Like paradox to take some serious pictures. Until then, I can only hope this Creepy Narnia respects my wishes and STAYS THEY HELL OUT OF MY DREAMS!
• Despite two semesters of groupmatesmanship, Pat and I have never had a scene together. So you can imagine our glee last Wednesday when Jimmy paired us up for The Importance of Being Earnest. In fact, it was so great, we totally forgot about it! The three day weekend came and went with nary a thought to the scene slated for the coming Day of Wednes. It wasn't until today that a fuzzy little memory ticked the backs of my eyeballs. "Oh Fuck!" I may have said. I called Pat immediately and discovered that he had rehearsal until 9. Since another scene scheduled for that day had already canceled, there was no way we could pull out. With script in hand, I trek down to Water St. at 9pm for the cram jam of a lifetime. Well, suffice to say, it was crazy. We cut a third of the lines, drilled the remaining dialouge, watched the Daily Show, ate hotdogs, ran lines some more, paced up and down, took turns on and off book, ran the lines more, until, by 1:40, all of my brains had leaked out through my ears. I crashed on Pat's couch with the script under my pillow. How will this fadge?!
  

Beauty is youth.

The Three Day Weekend

I've spent most of my three day weekend embarking on a new project. It involves subways and computers. I went through the arduous task of setting up a server and reacquainted myself with PHP and MySQL. I've hacked together a nice little website that uses Google Maps to display the location of every subway station in NYC and which trains stop where. That's not a terribly special achievement: there are already sites out there with such info (in fact, I bummed the whole data set from someone else - though getting their data into MySQL involved a brief detour into Python). The cool thing I've done is add the ability to overlay the route of each train. So, for the red 1 train, you can see a red line showing the train's entire path, not just the stations where it stops. The code-writing has been slow and steady (as it always is for me) but fun. The Google Maps API is a joy and, despite a lack of forethought and some atrocious naming conventions, I've build a nice, flexible system. The site lives on my machine, so it's only up when I'm on and running the server. Feel lucky? See if it's up. If it's not, try again later.

F17

A pretty standard day with all of the usual suspects:

• Studio.
• Meals.
• Sleepiness.
• Greater-than-usual joy.
• Only mild sadness.
• Gym.
• Computer.
• Pictures.
• Music.
• Humor.
• News.

"If you're feeling sinister, go off and see your minister." - Belle And Sebastian

Th16

• Missing Crucible rehearsals seems to be a chronic problem for me. I feigned illness to excuse my absence. Is it an evil thing?
• I made my glorious return to Realism vs. Naturalism.
• I've got a great new idea, but it requires a meter wheel. My search for one was fruitless.
• Gym gym.

Saddam says, "Vote for gravity, or else!"

W15

• The alarm when off. It was 9, but I was still so tired. I gambled a snuggle back into bed.
• Oops. Spider-sense went off at 11:20 and I made my mad dash for 11:30 studio class.
• Beating teacher to class was all that mattered. Success.
• Pat did his monologue: Mercutio.
• Lunch comes right after V&S and I used that half-hour to run home for my costume.
• Made it back, suited up, ran the scene (a repeat of "A Woman of No Importance" for Jimmy's scene study class), and apologized for forgetting our Crucible rehearsal that was suppose to happen over the lunch break.
• Today was our Reprise Day for Jimmy (every scene goes for the second time), and what a class is was! Some of the best performances I've seen from my classmates, across the board. No one sucked it up, and some - like Chrissy - made major strides. Jimmy was a gas, as always, and Stacy and I reached a very satisfying climax to our scene partnership. (Pics from class are on Flickr)
  
• We ran five scenes and still finished early, so I took the hour to get pizza (I woke too late for breakfast and I used lunchtime to fetch my cloths) from the great pizza place that everyone keeps talking about (I forget the name and I can't find it on Google). Stac joined me.
• The pizzas are oblong and they have sea salt as a condiment. Stacy and I had a lovely talk while I wolfed down the delicious pie (it really was great!).
• Don finished out the day with one very complex scene and then we blew that joint.
• Patrick treated me to a burger at the Silver Spurs (that one is in Google) as a thank-you for fixing his computer on Monday.
• I had a great time at the gym.
• I got home just in time to apply for mixed sex housing before the midnight deadline. I'm living with Nick N., Alexis, and Antonietta.
• The End.

The best work of your life is a most frightening thing. It means you can never do anything less.

T14

• Happy Valentine's Day!
• I'm back (see post below).
• I wandered all over town taking pictures (Check 'em on Flickr).
• I did a film student's "TV Project." It was a scene from That 70's Show. It was a good time. I'll post video if I can (it'll be a few weeks).
• Got home and uploaded my photos to Flickr. I exceeded the 200 photos you get with a free account, so I popped for Pro status. Which means everyone better damn well better look at these pictures!
• This meant that I couldn't hit the gym. I'll recover.
• That's about it for V-Day. It feels good to be back.

Valentine's Day

A funny thing happened on the way to the blog. A long story made short, I was called upon by the world governments to save Planet Earth from the evil menace of a Martian Death Rocket. Just when I had hacked the alien computer system and snuck a nuclear device deep within the vessel of doom, a Zombie Robot Wizard Nazi King resurrected from a race of six-thousand-year-old Egyptian God-Aliens popped out, wielding a Photon Sword and a Time Scepter. Needless to say, I thought I was SOL, but then I remembered the magical enchanted amulet given to me by the Virgin Elven Princess Queen Bride as a thank-you for boning her out of her mind. I bartered the amulet for drugs and the Zombie Robot Wizard Nazi King and I smoked some bowls, fucked some hoes, and killed some Jews (we had a list) until the sun rose over the smoldering ashes of a decimated Planet Earth. Then we sang about giving his car a paint job, knitted a quilt for Boo Radley, and snuck into the mountains for gay sadomasochistic butt sex. Some days later, I was thumbing through my positive AIDS test results with my prosthetic arm when I remembered, OH MY GOODNESS, I'VE NEGLECTED MY BLOG! I waited until Valentine's Day to break it off with Lester (that's the Zombie King's name) and here am I: ready, willing, and reporting for duty!

LET THE BLOGGING RESUME!!!