the circus is keeping me busy, and there's not much to tell. I don't have my scanner or my graphics tablet, so the daily drawings have stopped too. This is a tragic state of affairs, and as soon as I can remedy it (by buying a new graphics pen) it shall be remedied. In the meantime, it's high time for an update.
I am learning. This week I'm paired with this guy who doesn't talk at all in his act. Which means I had to MC an entire 45-minute show, and do all the talking acts (including club and ball juggling). My patter is about as fresh as the cancerous muskrat that fell into the well three weeks ago. But it's mostly good enough for the younglings, and I'm learning what I need to improve.
I want to do a fire sword fight. Ricky, I'm talking to you. We need to get flamingswordfights.gay off the ground and into the airy dew-speckled dreamSky.
I tried to buy food today. That is to say, I succeeded in buying food, brought it home to Clown Haüs, and discovered that there is no room in the refrigerator. There is a towering, haphazardly stacked cityscape of leftovers that brings to mind a cyberpunk neo-York slum, complete with unexplained colorful oozes and territorial scrawl unintelligably Sharpied on the walls. There are three containers of cucumber dip. When I try to comprehend this or its possible explanations, my neocortex simply shuts down.
Neeeeoooocorrrteeeexx.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
There are no visual words in this.
Sheldon DeLoach had never played basketball before. Nevertheless, he stepped onto the court prepared to do his best, and confident that he could succeed at anything he put his mind to and eager to defend his honor in the heartless arena of before-school one-on-one.
Martel Guapo had also never played basketball before. But he had a name that meant "the Handsome Hammer," which is really difficult to top. The bets were taken, the court arranged.
The ball went up. It should have come down and been snatched by the grubby, unskilled fingers of one of the two boys, launching a riveting game of fumbling, rolling basketball in the 7 am mists. The other kids should have cheered as the hopeless lads bungled shot after painfully easy shot. All this and more would have unfolded that day, if only Martel Guapo had closed the garden gate.
Alas, Martel Guapo had not closed the garden gate, and so had been followed all the way down to the school by the enormous lizard who had taken up residence beside his mother's parsley. Thus, as the ball came down it was snatched not by Sheldon and not by Martel, but rather by a joyful airborne predatory reptile. The beast sailed across the court, hit the ground, and savaged the rubbery sphere in ways that would almost certainly have traumatized the surrounding middle-schoolers had the ball possessed innards, guts, or other such gore-covered tasties. The carnivore lizard, who had been expecting no less, was quite put out.
Children screamed. The lizard panicked. These events, as they continued, formed what a Thinking Person might call a positive feedback loop. Sheldon DeLoach did so in his head -he was an intelligent lad- as he watched children and lizard whip one another into an elaborate frenzy of shrieking and flailing adolescent/reptilian abandon. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone that the panicking lizard dropped the ball and ran.
What did come as a surprise, particularly to a certain Marian Brubbles, who held the second clarinet seat in the middle school band, was that the lizard dropped the ball and ran toward her. It hit her at the knee-caps, and sent her face-first into the asphalt before vanishing into the woods. She chipped a tooth, and after the full story came out later that day, vowed never to speak to Martel Guapo again. Had there been no lizard incident that day, things might have turned out differently between them. In fact I can say with the greatest assurance that they would have lived happily ever after, somewhere in the Netherlands. But they will never know.
And that is why basketball has been banned from the county of Hamshap since 1987.
Martel Guapo had also never played basketball before. But he had a name that meant "the Handsome Hammer," which is really difficult to top. The bets were taken, the court arranged.
The ball went up. It should have come down and been snatched by the grubby, unskilled fingers of one of the two boys, launching a riveting game of fumbling, rolling basketball in the 7 am mists. The other kids should have cheered as the hopeless lads bungled shot after painfully easy shot. All this and more would have unfolded that day, if only Martel Guapo had closed the garden gate.
Alas, Martel Guapo had not closed the garden gate, and so had been followed all the way down to the school by the enormous lizard who had taken up residence beside his mother's parsley. Thus, as the ball came down it was snatched not by Sheldon and not by Martel, but rather by a joyful airborne predatory reptile. The beast sailed across the court, hit the ground, and savaged the rubbery sphere in ways that would almost certainly have traumatized the surrounding middle-schoolers had the ball possessed innards, guts, or other such gore-covered tasties. The carnivore lizard, who had been expecting no less, was quite put out.
Children screamed. The lizard panicked. These events, as they continued, formed what a Thinking Person might call a positive feedback loop. Sheldon DeLoach did so in his head -he was an intelligent lad- as he watched children and lizard whip one another into an elaborate frenzy of shrieking and flailing adolescent/reptilian abandon. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone that the panicking lizard dropped the ball and ran.
What did come as a surprise, particularly to a certain Marian Brubbles, who held the second clarinet seat in the middle school band, was that the lizard dropped the ball and ran toward her. It hit her at the knee-caps, and sent her face-first into the asphalt before vanishing into the woods. She chipped a tooth, and after the full story came out later that day, vowed never to speak to Martel Guapo again. Had there been no lizard incident that day, things might have turned out differently between them. In fact I can say with the greatest assurance that they would have lived happily ever after, somewhere in the Netherlands. But they will never know.
And that is why basketball has been banned from the county of Hamshap since 1987.
Monday, March 17, 2008
snakes driven from ireland
Ricky had the stupendous idea of watching Boondock Saints and drinking Guinness. It went well. I would rather have been covered in green body paint and surrounded by celebratory naked people with lots of piercings, but we can't have everything, now can we?
I can't seem to get .swf files to embed properly, so this madness too will have to be linked. The nonsense that can be accomplished within 10 minutes of sitting down at the computer never ceases to amaze.
I can't seem to get .swf files to embed properly, so this madness too will have to be linked. The nonsense that can be accomplished within 10 minutes of sitting down at the computer never ceases to amaze.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
hambone. bone from a ham.
First week of the circus job:
I have to get a lot better at a lot of things, a lot fast. But I basically knew that. It's like I'll be putting on a Barefoot Monkey show every week, with only one other person. That means there's no reliance on lines of choreographed moves to fall back on, just patter, music, and dazzling arrays of circus savvy. I've got to expand(refine) my music library, get at least a few acts solidly choreographed, memorized and performable, and of course learn to teach and control a gym full of 80 or more screaming children.
And it's that last part that's the hardest. All the circus skills are things that need to be personally taught, and yet my job is to teach five different grade levels five different skill levels, tailored to their cognitive and motor development, culminating in a show put on by the fifth-graders at the end of the week. I have to make a show, with discrete acts and spotlighting every kid in the fifth grade, in five days. Really challenging, but really rewarding when you pull it off.
The biggest difference between this and anything else I've ever done: you can't miss a day. Calling in sick, or really bungling a week, or even an act, can make a huge difference for these kids. I'll be putting these things together every week, but they only get to do it once, and most of them are incredibly excited to get the chance do spin a diabolo (or whatever) in front of their parents.
Thankfully the company doesn't completely throw me in unprepared. They're professionals, and they're only pairing me with people who've been in the business for a while, so they can pick up the slack while I learn the ropes. Ha. Two rope metaphors in one sentence. Continuity reigns!
The bottom line is this: its a professional performance job, and a professional teaching job, and I'm not QUITE qualified for either. But I'm being given the chance to work my ass off and get there, to work with international-level performers and getter done. I'm incredibly lucky to have landed it.
I have to get a lot better at a lot of things, a lot fast. But I basically knew that. It's like I'll be putting on a Barefoot Monkey show every week, with only one other person. That means there's no reliance on lines of choreographed moves to fall back on, just patter, music, and dazzling arrays of circus savvy. I've got to expand(refine) my music library, get at least a few acts solidly choreographed, memorized and performable, and of course learn to teach and control a gym full of 80 or more screaming children.
And it's that last part that's the hardest. All the circus skills are things that need to be personally taught, and yet my job is to teach five different grade levels five different skill levels, tailored to their cognitive and motor development, culminating in a show put on by the fifth-graders at the end of the week. I have to make a show, with discrete acts and spotlighting every kid in the fifth grade, in five days. Really challenging, but really rewarding when you pull it off.
The biggest difference between this and anything else I've ever done: you can't miss a day. Calling in sick, or really bungling a week, or even an act, can make a huge difference for these kids. I'll be putting these things together every week, but they only get to do it once, and most of them are incredibly excited to get the chance do spin a diabolo (or whatever) in front of their parents.
Thankfully the company doesn't completely throw me in unprepared. They're professionals, and they're only pairing me with people who've been in the business for a while, so they can pick up the slack while I learn the ropes. Ha. Two rope metaphors in one sentence. Continuity reigns!
The bottom line is this: its a professional performance job, and a professional teaching job, and I'm not QUITE qualified for either. But I'm being given the chance to work my ass off and get there, to work with international-level performers and getter done. I'm incredibly lucky to have landed it.
Friday, March 7, 2008
media platform
Most of us have no idea what is inside our pillows. We never look; we will never see what's in there. We will never even consider it. We trust that there is some sort of foamy faux-birdStuff substance on which we rest our heads, but there could be anything, as long as its texture kept up the illusion and it never strayed far enough from our scripted Pillow Expectancy Parameters to warrant attention from our conscious parts. Every night you sleep on something whose innards you do not know the color of. Whose innards' color you do not know. Then again I suppose I don't know the color of most of my own innards, and I get along pretty much alright. Still. Astounding some of the things we never think about. There are so many completely irrelevant, show-stoppingly useless things that one could think about if one chose to, but which are so stupendously unworthy of any cognitive attention that even thinking about their stupendous unworthiness is a waste of perfectly good neural traffic. This is getting recursive. Time to move on.
I have done all of my crappy five-minute image-a-days in photoshoop, with the drawing tablet, and I realized I need to stop doing that all the time. Drawing there has a very specific look to it, and it's hard to draw well on a tablet or, god forbid, a mouse (see exhibit A, below). Pencil sketches are fun, and they feel more satisfying to do. I don't claim to be a good artist, but I do draw BETTER on paper than on a tablet.
exhibit A (mouse-drawn)
I miss having parties.
I have done all of my crappy five-minute image-a-days in photoshoop, with the drawing tablet, and I realized I need to stop doing that all the time. Drawing there has a very specific look to it, and it's hard to draw well on a tablet or, god forbid, a mouse (see exhibit A, below). Pencil sketches are fun, and they feel more satisfying to do. I don't claim to be a good artist, but I do draw BETTER on paper than on a tablet.
exhibit A (mouse-drawn)
I miss having parties.
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
wenus
god I hate that fucking word. Who the hell calls the skin on your elbow your wenus? Seriously who the fuck thought that up? I'd like to stuff ham under his skin and leave him out for a pack of starved dachshunds with crow-bars and sand paper. Of course, I wouldn't starve them myself. Who starves a dachshund? They're adorable little vacant-eyed balls of uncomprehending love. If someone's starving them, I'll punch the sick bastard. Right in the wenus.
And why doesn't the dishwasher ever clean that last goddamn bowl in the back row? FURIOUS
I shaved Hillary Clinton's head and put it in a robot. Why? Because this is America, and we're allowed to do that kind of thing here. God bless it.
Not that I have anything against the lady. I'm pro-Obama, but that has more to do with xkcd's endorsement of him than any real awareness. God dammit, I'm a fucking politics-linking blogger. I'm gonna go introduce a fork to my cornea and/or wenus. Fuck.
And why doesn't the dishwasher ever clean that last goddamn bowl in the back row? FURIOUS
I shaved Hillary Clinton's head and put it in a robot. Why? Because this is America, and we're allowed to do that kind of thing here. God bless it.
Not that I have anything against the lady. I'm pro-Obama, but that has more to do with xkcd's endorsement of him than any real awareness. God dammit, I'm a fucking politics-linking blogger. I'm gonna go introduce a fork to my cornea and/or wenus. Fuck.
dressup time
This doesn't really... CAN'T really have explanation. You can click the clothes to move them.
Here we are in the wee hours of the morning again, and I'm torn as usual. On the one (rational) hand, there's the desire for that really satisfying feeling of curling up under an unreasonably large pile of blankets and going away for several hours. On the other hand, I'm completely awake, and enjoying being productive. If only I can find some way to force this feeling of productivity during the day. Maybe it's isolation that does it, other people having gone to bed. Or maybe some sense that the day is done and I can do whatever I want now... I definitely have a psychological work-delaying mechanism that keeps me putting off useful things through the day with the logic of "if I have fun now, I'll still have time to do the work later" that inevitably leads to me NOT doing work and NOT enjoying the procrastinative fun because of the looming snowballing pile of responsibility I'm so vigorously ignoring.
And so I end up in the wee hours, making bizarre little flash beasties. Clickyclicky. (same link as above)
Here we are in the wee hours of the morning again, and I'm torn as usual. On the one (rational) hand, there's the desire for that really satisfying feeling of curling up under an unreasonably large pile of blankets and going away for several hours. On the other hand, I'm completely awake, and enjoying being productive. If only I can find some way to force this feeling of productivity during the day. Maybe it's isolation that does it, other people having gone to bed. Or maybe some sense that the day is done and I can do whatever I want now... I definitely have a psychological work-delaying mechanism that keeps me putting off useful things through the day with the logic of "if I have fun now, I'll still have time to do the work later" that inevitably leads to me NOT doing work and NOT enjoying the procrastinative fun because of the looming snowballing pile of responsibility I'm so vigorously ignoring.
And so I end up in the wee hours, making bizarre little flash beasties. Clickyclicky. (same link as above)
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
licking blenderblades: safe? sanitary?
I have a tablet again, and I'm not doing anything with it. With it or anything else. A bright and creative future may come in the nearlybies, but she is not here yet. Yes... yes, I still suck at things.
Water tension is neat; I will always be hypnotized by watching a liquid refuse to leave its container and snake over the brim and down the side of a cup when you hold it at just the right angle. Welcome back to third grade science. As the hours get later my mental age gets smaller, evidently.
Watching my google ads change is an enjoyable pastime, and a whole new reason to update this monstrosity. Honduras! Unmentionable buboes! Republican primary candidates for the liberation of jamFetus07! Walk the walk google wordSnatchers; for my talking is stuperfundous inevitable.
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