performance 3 - just got in….
Monday, April 3rd, 2006I’m tired.
mainly because I lost the lower PVC support during the performance
and did most ofthe show standing….
the crowd was lively,
and would quite frequently react by talking to the characters
(which almost had me cracking up….. right before the death scene, too)
this was, however, not without its down elements…
one of our cast members totaled his car on the way here
(he and his passenger were both OK)
also had a fun time getting our new crankstands to work with our
old t-bars and new fresnels…
definitely need to get new t-bars…..
more L8R
Tags: Religion, tagsTry Not To (Try Not To (Try Too Hard))
Monday, March 27th, 2006Tags: Politics, Religion, tagsSo suppose you are looking to meet someone, and happen to find yourself alone in a restaurant near someone, also alone, you are overwhelmingly attracted to. If you were a non-human animal in such a situation, you would initiate a simple approach, and mutual sniffing and body language would immediately signal to you, politely and without fanfare or embarrassment, whether the object of your affection was interested or not. As a human, when you approach, your body and face are already signaling your interest, and the body and face of the object of your affection are signaling a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ right back. Before you say a word, the decision is already made. So, assuming that (thanks to our dulled human senses and the miracles of modern perfumery) you can’t ‘read’ that decision, it really doesn’t matter what you say. You don’t have to try hard, or try not to try too hard, you don’t have to try at all. Just be yourself and do what you want to do — it won’t change the outcome.
In the years before AIDS, many of us learned this astonishing lesson, and it wasn’t because people were more promiscuous then. We just learned that not trying worked, night after night.
Same with your sales pitch to a co-worker or customer. Communicate the idea as clearly as you can, as simply as you can. Your use of media doesn’t matter, the arguments don’t matter. The listener will have decided ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within a couple of minutes, maybe even less, based on ancient baggage in their brain that you have absolutely no impact on. You don’t have to try at all — it won’t make any difference. If you lie brilliantly, you might dishonestly get a ‘yes’, but how long before it gets found out and turns into a no, leaving you to pick up the mess behind the bridge you’ve now burned?
So trying not to try not to try too hard gets reduced to just not trying and being yourself. You can’t keep up the pretense of being anyone else for long, and, unless you work on a stage for a living, it won’t get you anywhere anyway.
Pressure Builds Over Plight of Afghan Christian
Friday, March 24th, 2006Tags: Politics, Religion, tagsThe government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, accustomed to warm receptions in Western capitals, is coming under growing outside pressure over the trial of a Christian facing a possible death sentence for converting from Islam.
Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif ) said he had written a letter to Karzai: “In a country where soldiers from all faiths, including Christianity, are dying in defense of your government, I find it outrageous that Mr. Rahman is being prosecuted and facing the death penalty for converting to Christianity, which he did 16 years ago before your government even existed.”
MMORPG food for thought…..
Wednesday, March 1st, 2006What are the lessons of MMORPGs today?
Interesting article, full of wonderful snippets:
Intelligent beings who have civilizations and languages of their own
are generally evil and should be slain.
Killing is the only real way to gain people’s admiration.
Well, you can make stuff too, but you won’t earn the same kind of admiration.
In fact, there are only two kinds of admiration in the world,
and they can be quantified.
There are no governments. Thus there are no laws.
Instead, there are laws of physics.There are gods, and they are capricious,
and have way way more than ten commandments.
Nobody knows how many because everyone clicked past them.
but what really intrigued me was this posted comment:
>>Death doesn’t really sting. Nerf, however, is incredibly painful.
That’s the problem with ressurection.
And it’s the reason why I never really understood
why we should worship a certain carpenter.
When you get a full exp res, your “sacrifice†means nothing.
Hell, I’d be willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of mankind
if I knew that I would be back three days later.
now I could go on about how the ‘Net causes us
to overly abstract things and presents us , at times,
with a nearly godlike ability to custom config damn near anything
to the dictates of our increasingly fickle-to the-point-of-being-neurotic
boson-sized attention spans, but…
i’m thinking he has a point… if that’s all there is to it…
but then again, this might be a case of an incongruity
between words and actual action - happens a lot in the human species…
3 days to resurrect -
17,280x longer than a 15-second MMORPG resurrection….
and the death would be real,
involving excruciating amounts of pain
(both median nerves severed by steel spikes)
and, in the end, dying of asphyxiation…
even if I knew I’d regenerate in 72 hrs,
there’s no way I’d go through all that crap…
not for an intellectual exercise,
or for a rose-tinted romantic ideal (a la Les Miz)
if I deeply loved the person,
I might think about doing it -
no guarantees, though……
Boycott the Amish? (or what boycotters could learn from acting class)
Friday, February 24th, 2006Uncott.org: Battling Bogus Boycotts
The Amish are considered an icon of peaceful and old fashioned values, which is why one animal rights group apparently believes they can get mileage out of portraying them as evil.
Set in the heart of picturesque Pennsylvania Dutch country, a large component of Lancaster County’s economy is tourism, as people flock to see the Amish and Mennonite communities that call the area home. According to the group Last Chance For Animals, Lancaster County is also the puppy mill capital of the East Coast. They’re asking tourists to take their dollars elsewhere and have even put up a highway billboard to shame the county.
No information as to whether the Amish are predominantly responsible,
just a cyber-savvy campaign against people they know can’t defend against it…
Boycotts, unless they’re well thought out, are usually counter-productive -
and even when they are, they have a lower shelf life because of a problem
that crops up in acting class - the problem of playing a negative intention.
Playing a negative intention is when you’re trying to not do something.
The problem lies in the question “So, what am I doing?”
Without a specific something else to do,
the goal of not doing something becomes harder to achieve,
much less maintain for any resonable duration…
less than stellar review, even more web stuff, and powerball
Saturday, February 11th, 2006got my mid-year review…. less than stellar -
mostly about incidents of rudeness and/or lateness…
did 2 out of the 4 pages I needed for mB website
will have to take Lumiere (the 15″ TiPB) to work….
maybe I can finish stuff up out in the bookstore after closing….
sigh…
Mom’s getting 4 powerball tickets for me -
I picked the 5 most frequently picked numbers since 1997
in combo with the 2 most frequently picked powerball numbers
(I know it’s normally a tax on ignorance of probability theory,
but @ $100M, it’s worth a shot….
anyway….
L8R
Tags: Religion, tagsmore web work….
Friday, February 10th, 2006just got a ton of images for the mB website,
and I have to picturefy and prettify the booking related pages by the weekend’s end,
so that all our potential booking venues can get what they need
to sell the show to their respective committees…
here’s our poster:
Religion, tags
Quixote Novel
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005
What a ride home…
Friday, December 2nd, 2005right as I finished the last post (I was on the 20 bus home at the time)
I hear this disagreement between an African American guy
(jeans and Timbs - Sam’s Club Badge)
and this 20ish girl art school student.
The source of the disagreement was apparently the guy’s
incessantly unwanted attempts to chat her up.
Her rebuffals were instantly taken as racism
(since he was obviously otherwise irresistible - not).
He left a few times, only to return each time and continue pressing.
This continues, the girl is near tears,
and I’m pulling my briefcase strap over my shoulder -
and then he moves in towards her to press his confrontation further…
I shoot out of my seat, into the aisle, and head right for him.
Read the rest of this entry »
