Author: Brendan

March 6, 2003 /

I kind of forgot to mention this, but I’m in Virginia. SETC again, and the 24-Hour Playfest again, and I’ve just finished the third draft of my play, which is pretty close to final. I’m an hour early, which may mean that (end-of-the-world joke of your choice).

I’ve got enough caffeine in me to power a small country for a week, so I need to be doing something or I’ll be fidgeting and bothering the senior playwright who’s going over my piece right now: thus the entry. I’m as nervous as I was last year, because there’s no safety net. Doing comedy is hard, but writing tragedy is harder, and I think I wrote a tragedy. Or at least something that hurts.

Tony called me out last year for only writing comedy; he said he thought I had it in me to write deeper, darker stuff. I don’t believe my comedies have any less depth just because their tone is different, but the challenge irked me anyway. They do that. So this year I wrote something with a bite to it. It’s the play I couldn’t write fall term, and if you were around you know what that means, and if you read the play you might figure it out.

Or you might not. I have to edit now, I think. I don’t want the ending to feel tagged on, especially because it wasn’t.

Weird, Weird Spam Roundup!

March 3, 2003 /
  • From the Department of Xtra Ultimate Hyperbole +3!!!

    Break Walls Apart With Your > Big Big Shaft!

    Like everybody else, I’ve been getting these for a long time, and I think they’re either starting to lose it or are realizing that the content of the subject has very little to do with whether somebody accidentally clicks through. Or maybe I’m giving them too much credit, and they just believe their own marketing.

  • From the Land Where Escape Sequences Run Free

    I'm not even going to try to reproduce this.

    The content of this one was mostly an image with a SRC tag that was, again, almost entirely escape sequences; it was followed by a couple .edu URLs, neither of which exist. This reminds me of an old book about spaceships I had when I was a kid, which featured some paintings of “inexplicable salvage” at the end–imaginary empty craft that had been found floating between star systems. This is like one of those: a lonely voyager, adrift, incomprehensible, its purpose forever lost to us.

  • From the ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha Guerilla Marketing Group

    This one’s a little different. The content makes me pretty sure it’s spam, but for some reason–to foil antispam software, I guess–it includes a chunk of well-known (to me) fiction at the end. For the record, it worked; this is the only piece of junk that’s gotten through unscathed to my xorph@xorph account since I installed SpamAssassin.

    From: Feel Younger
    Subject: Strengthen your immune system

    Now – Powerful Anti-Aging Breakthrough

    Claim….Ýours….Nów
    As_seen on Oprah, ÇNN, CßS, and_NBC
    Free Óne Months’s Supply
    Feel Better, Look Yonger, Lose Weight_Nów

    I want to have more energy in the new year

    Say good by from us, show me.

    “Pages one and two [of Zaphod’s presidential speech] had been salvaged by a Damogran Frond Crested Eagle and had already become incorporated into an extraordinary new form of nest which the eagle had invented. It was constructed largely of papier mache and it was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of it. The Damogran Frond Crested Eagle had heard of the notion of survival of the species but wanted no truck with it.”

    Candidate dozed off during interview.

February 28, 2003 /

In the past thirty-six hours, Jon has received offers of a) admission and b) large wads of cash from UNCG and Wake Forest, and thus I felt it incumbent on me to buy him steak tonight. (He got t-bone, I had fillet; I ordered mine medium rare, the bloodiest I’ve ever had it, and I think I can feel myself going over to the dark side.)

It’s a great feeling, being proud, buying someone expensive food because they really deserve it. I’m glad I have this group of friends, because I think I’m going to get to do it pretty often.

February 24, 2003 /

Louisville: Hands cuffed behind his back, fifty years old, two white cops, one black man, twelve bullets, and you know, I can’t stand it when people get uppity over every little thing, honestly, but what? What?

February 17, 2003 /

“Y’know, your journal… you’re gonna be able to look back on it and have this collection of deep thoughts and significant events. I’m gonna be able to look back on mine and see ‘boogers are funny. I’m tired.’

And y’know, I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

–Stephen

That’s pretty accurate, actually, except I don’t think the stuff in here is terribly deep, and I’ve left out some significant events because I didn’t think they were interesting. Sometimes I wish I had more of the comic impulse that makes Stephen’s blog such a great read. Y’know, more booger jokes.

I guess I do significant events, though. Today ten years ago my dad died.

I pretend not to place great importance on round numbers, though this kind of gives that the lie. It’ll really be a more significant number next year, as that’ll be the anniversary that marks half my life without him; I was eleven. Mom’s probably going to be moving out of Richmond this summer, maybe down to our family land in Casey County, maybe not. All three of her children will be in college, a statistically ridiculous idea for a single mother and a teacher that she made happen anyway. 1993 was a very bad year; 2003 is shaping up to be something glorious.

All I have time to write about, lately, is big things and being tired. I want to try and remember the stupid little funny parts. My dad bought me my first Calvin and Hobbes book; he would have appreciated the boogers.

February 14, 2003 /

I’m so tired it should be visible: there should be waves of it rising off me, distorting the air like our old wood-burning stove.

Last night was the second and last public performance of The Laramie Project. The Fellowship of One, the group of (mostly, and oddly, black) local pastors who have been trying to stop us from doing the play at the high school, were in attendance. They’ve never been uncivil, but their arguments at such venues as the DHS parents’ meeting have consisted mostly of things like

Pastor: The play promotes a homosexual lifestyle.
Teacher: The play doesn’t promote any such thing. It shows viewpoints from all sides, including Christian values like mercy and forgiveness, and it shows what happens to people when a crime forces them to confront the issue of prejudice in their community. This is why we’re teaching it as part of our curriculum during Black History Month.
Pastor: The play promotes a homosexual lifestyle!

Last night, they left after the second act. Jeff, our director, ran out after them and asked what they’d thought of the show. Only one of them would speak to him, but what he said was

“This is a play about not hating people. You’ve made your point.”

We did it. We did it right.

Exhaustion, and triumph, and a ring around the moon.

February 12, 2003 /

Collective effervescence.

We’ve started the play, and it’s perfect, raw, gorgeous, exactly everything we wanted it to be.

Afterwards, I walked to the gas station to buy more caffeine (the presentation has yet to be done). I had a flower in my backpack from Deb, and was listening to a Duncan Sheik song, of all things, and I could see the whole scope of it: how last year was home, and this year is setting out away from it. How and why I’ve done what I’ve done, here. How this is the biggest year I’ve ever lived.

February 7, 2003 /

Via Crummy comes a site with screen caps from a bootleg Asian DVD of The Two Towers, glorious subtitles included. A lot of them are just random, but these five are better than anything I could have come up with. The top left one’s a Unix nerd joke. The bottom right one is, somehow, going to be my new desktop wallpaper.

root toast I say toast
sister love