Lately I've been writing like I'm going to live forever.
"That's an interesting thought. ... That'd be interesting to write about. ... I could probably write something really cool about it. ... If it was Wednesday, I think I'd post about that. ... But I won't. ... Because it's not Wednesday. ... Or something."
I've been using my computer less, on a related note.
Whatever it is inside me that gives me the need to write, totally gets off on being withholding. Too busy humping the legs of compliments and giving puppy-dog eyes over my readers' shoulders to realize that I've been reading a lot, and there's a lot of stuff to read, and none of it is mine anymore because I'm reading so much that I don't write.
Right.
I had a moment of weakness, where I enjoyed the thought of wanting to write about something. I thought about reflecting on my summer and comparing myself to where I was two years ago before I left for college my freshman year. I didn't even have to write it to get the pleasure out of it. Instead of masturbating, I have waking wet dreams on command. My arm's getting less work. Can't push a pen very well with a weak arm.
Writing used to be an embodiment of the life. A sacred stakeholder in uncertainty. It was my muse and my ruse. What do you want to be? they'd ask. A writer, so that I can write, I say. And then I remembered that Mark Twain wrote poetry and I thought "nuts, I don't do that." I am a one-weaponed warrior. While others boast arsenals of broadswords and sniper rifles and shurikens, I call myself a fighter holding an unblemished flail.
I'm here for the biggest and most important semester of my life. It's like the fifth sequel to a movie series about the biggest and most important semester of my life. It keeps getting bigger, being more important.
I worked my first day at Jimmy John's on Monday. Which included the following exchange:
Sara: Do you have the sandwiches memorized?
Me: No (sound of me dropping a tier in her mind). ... (I pick up a menu.)
Sara: Yeah, you typically won't have time to read the menu during your shift.
Me: Right.
Sara: I mean we consider that pretty much something to do on your own time.
Me: Oh, okay. (I fold the menu to put it in my pocket for later.)
Sara: Did you not get a menu when they hired you?
Me: Oh, um, well do you mean, like the sandwich study guide thing?
Sara: Did you get a packet? I'll show you-
Me: Yeah, no yeah, I got one of those.
Sara: Okay.
Me: ...
Sara: So.
Me: ?
Sara: It's just, those menus are really expensive.
Me: Oh, right. My bad. ... (Puts menu in pocket)
Sara's a manager, obviously. Vote for Jimmy.
After work I turned in my first article on the Illinois volleyball team. Writing it felt like working out for the first time in months. Finishing it felt like finishing my final set on eight reps instead of 10, because it was as many as I could do. I'm weak. I'm tired.
I'm back.
--Eliot Sill
Showing posts with label My Eyes Hurt Terribly From The Effort It Takes To Exist. Show all posts
Showing posts with label My Eyes Hurt Terribly From The Effort It Takes To Exist. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Nick - Fifty Improvisers In A Room
I spent all weekend in Indianapolis at CIT, College Improv Tournament, with DeBono. Fifteen teams showed up to compete (although I missed three of them) and a ton of different forms and techniques and interesting peoples were present.
I could write a whole post about how awesome that was and how much I love doing improv and how awesome all the people there were, but that's been done. Instead, I'm going to write about some of the funnier problems encountered when you have that many improvisors in the same room.
I don't know how many of you have been to an improv practice before. (Probably, like, half of you, if my readership is a reflection of my friend base.) But one thing that plagues every improv team everywhere is that improvisers just can't focus for that long.
As the contest was starting, Keith, our incredibly talented and friendly host, attempted to explain the rules in a 30 minute meeting. He tried really hard to be entertaining and keep everybody interested, but about 15 minutes in, he said, "Any questions?"
One girl shouted, "Are you single!?"
That was it. Focus lost.
The meeting never really got back on track after that point. Poor Keith.
Every improviser thinks that they are hilarious. Sometimes this plays out at the expense of others. Also, I admit that I am more guilty of this than almost anyone else.
In our hotel room, Simeon and I shared one of the beds while Kimi and Clare shared the other. Our first order of business was to give Clare the wrong room number and then sit around and giggle.
That night, Kimi tried as hard as possible to make Clare as uncomfortable as possible by forcibly spooning with her.
Our masterpiece was a plan to have Kimi start crying as Clare was almost asleep, while Simeon and I would pretend to be sleeping.
I spent the whole weekend watching people trying to be funny, but Clare's reaction to Kimi made me laugh harder than anything else all weekend. Prank calls were made. We convinced someone to jump in a pool. Good times all around.
Improvisers, as fearless as we can be, are generally deficient in social skills. One conversation occurring at the after party began with someone asking, "Do you work in Indianapolis?"
The response was, "Why, yes! I'm the mayor."
Conversation over.
Beyond that kind of cringe-inducing miscommunication, most improv conversations go like this:
"You you do improv? I do improv!! You go to college? I go to college!! We have so much in common!"
Comedy is a subjective thing. It's very difficult to judge. Especially when you have long form, short form, and musical teams all competing in the same bracket.
Feelings get hurt. Accusations get thrown around. Judges can be biased towards a particular form or a particular team.
I don't really care much about the competitive aspect the way it's done here, but some people take that shit seriously.
The hotel room that we hung out in after the show got a lot of noise complaints.
Also they got yelled at by a naked guy.
True story.
Oh god. Sleep. It's currently Sunday night, and the last time I got more than 4 hours of sleep at a time was Thursday night.
I took a series of 2 ninety-minute naps over the course of the weekend, and Saturday night I got a solid 4 hours of sleeping in after laughing at Clare for most of the night.
Speaking of, I'm feeling kind of dizzy. It's 7:30pm, but this seems like as good a time as any to call it a day.
-Nick.
EDIT: I just remembered another problem that someone mentioned to me as he shuffled through the pile of coats, looking for his own.
"So many damn peacoats," He muttered.
I could write a whole post about how awesome that was and how much I love doing improv and how awesome all the people there were, but that's been done. Instead, I'm going to write about some of the funnier problems encountered when you have that many improvisors in the same room.
Focusing Is Hard
I don't know how many of you have been to an improv practice before. (Probably, like, half of you, if my readership is a reflection of my friend base.) But one thing that plagues every improv team everywhere is that improvisers just can't focus for that long.
As the contest was starting, Keith, our incredibly talented and friendly host, attempted to explain the rules in a 30 minute meeting. He tried really hard to be entertaining and keep everybody interested, but about 15 minutes in, he said, "Any questions?"
One girl shouted, "Are you single!?"
That was it. Focus lost.
The meeting never really got back on track after that point. Poor Keith.
Practical Jokes
Every improviser thinks that they are hilarious. Sometimes this plays out at the expense of others. Also, I admit that I am more guilty of this than almost anyone else.
In our hotel room, Simeon and I shared one of the beds while Kimi and Clare shared the other. Our first order of business was to give Clare the wrong room number and then sit around and giggle.
That night, Kimi tried as hard as possible to make Clare as uncomfortable as possible by forcibly spooning with her.
Our masterpiece was a plan to have Kimi start crying as Clare was almost asleep, while Simeon and I would pretend to be sleeping.
I spent the whole weekend watching people trying to be funny, but Clare's reaction to Kimi made me laugh harder than anything else all weekend. Prank calls were made. We convinced someone to jump in a pool. Good times all around.
We Can't Hold A Normal Conversation
Improvisers, as fearless as we can be, are generally deficient in social skills. One conversation occurring at the after party began with someone asking, "Do you work in Indianapolis?"
The response was, "Why, yes! I'm the mayor."
Conversation over.
Beyond that kind of cringe-inducing miscommunication, most improv conversations go like this:
"You you do improv? I do improv!! You go to college? I go to college!! We have so much in common!"
Judging Comedy Sucks
Comedy is a subjective thing. It's very difficult to judge. Especially when you have long form, short form, and musical teams all competing in the same bracket.
Feelings get hurt. Accusations get thrown around. Judges can be biased towards a particular form or a particular team.
I don't really care much about the competitive aspect the way it's done here, but some people take that shit seriously.
We're Loud And We Love Ourselves
The hotel room that we hung out in after the show got a lot of noise complaints.
Also they got yelled at by a naked guy.
True story.
Sleep
Oh god. Sleep. It's currently Sunday night, and the last time I got more than 4 hours of sleep at a time was Thursday night.
I took a series of 2 ninety-minute naps over the course of the weekend, and Saturday night I got a solid 4 hours of sleeping in after laughing at Clare for most of the night.
Speaking of, I'm feeling kind of dizzy. It's 7:30pm, but this seems like as good a time as any to call it a day.
-Nick.
EDIT: I just remembered another problem that someone mentioned to me as he shuffled through the pile of coats, looking for his own.
"So many damn peacoats," He muttered.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Robert - My Abysmal Day
An antithesis to Conor's Perfect Day
I wake up at 4:00 am to a bloody nose. In my semiconscious state I imagine this is a runny nose acting up, so my semiconscious hand simply wipes it away from my nose and tries to go back to sleep. This process continues for about two full minutes before I furiously stumble around to find a Kleenex and notice that I've covered my bed in blood. It looks like the horse scene from the Godfather. I change my sheets and go back to bed.
At 6:00, I am having dreams. I have a strange one about having to take care of a tiger and a cheetah in a residential neighborhood. The tiger is nice to pet, but he keeps nibbling at me and I think he really just wants to eat me. Later on I have a dream where I'm trying to see if I remember how to pee. The good news is I can. I change my sheets again.
I wake up a third time, and I'm sick. I have a stuffy nose so bad I have to breathe through my mouth, a runny nose, a phlegm-driven chest cough, a headache, muscle fatigue, and leg cramps. Worst of all, two new extremely confusing symptoms arrive. Through no fault or injury of my own, my shoulder suddenly is in horrible pain the entire day, and each time I cough a searing pain shoots through it for a few moments. The second is uncontrollable burping, all day.
I put clothes on and proceed to happily log on to the Blackboard website to drop Plant Science 2075: Environmental Horticulture. Yeah, right? At the last moment I remember I signed up for that class two months ago because it's a science requirement. Motherfucker. I go to class.
After class, I spend a couple of hours job searching. It is bitterly cold, and the sky is a dreary gray cloud of death, just like yesterday and the 5 days before that. Here are the places I apply: Papa Johns, Pickleman's, Jimmy John's, Gumby's Pizza, Dominoes. Papa Johns and Dominoes are the ones that are hiring. Soon I will likely be spending my nights until 4:30 am running errands for a tall, purse-lipped, rail-shaped 50 year old with a high school freshman moustache. This man doesn't seem to have washed his blue uniform in days. He also looks like he's covered in a thin film of dust, leading me to believe he hasn't really moved much in that time period, either.
I return back home to my apartment. In the apartment adjacent to me my healthy friends are having a party. They tell me I look horrible and that the light makes the bags under my eyes look even bigger. The WiFi I always piggyback is down, and our ethernet cable magically has decided not to work in my laptop anymore, so I cannot access the documents I need to read for class. Good. It is also too late to get food and I have no food in the apartment except Oats and Honey bars and I am too poor to order delivery. Guess I'm not eating tonight. I eat an Oats and Honey bar so I don't die.
It is bedtime now, I guess. I go into my room. It appears that a stranger has sexed on my bed and left the cleanup towels strewn about my things. I sleep in Jimmy's bed tonight.
I wake up at 4:00 am to a bloody nose. In my semiconscious state I imagine this is a runny nose acting up, so my semiconscious hand simply wipes it away from my nose and tries to go back to sleep. This process continues for about two full minutes before I furiously stumble around to find a Kleenex and notice that I've covered my bed in blood. It looks like the horse scene from the Godfather. I change my sheets and go back to bed.
At 6:00, I am having dreams. I have a strange one about having to take care of a tiger and a cheetah in a residential neighborhood. The tiger is nice to pet, but he keeps nibbling at me and I think he really just wants to eat me. Later on I have a dream where I'm trying to see if I remember how to pee. The good news is I can. I change my sheets again.
I wake up a third time, and I'm sick. I have a stuffy nose so bad I have to breathe through my mouth, a runny nose, a phlegm-driven chest cough, a headache, muscle fatigue, and leg cramps. Worst of all, two new extremely confusing symptoms arrive. Through no fault or injury of my own, my shoulder suddenly is in horrible pain the entire day, and each time I cough a searing pain shoots through it for a few moments. The second is uncontrollable burping, all day.
I put clothes on and proceed to happily log on to the Blackboard website to drop Plant Science 2075: Environmental Horticulture. Yeah, right? At the last moment I remember I signed up for that class two months ago because it's a science requirement. Motherfucker. I go to class.
After class, I spend a couple of hours job searching. It is bitterly cold, and the sky is a dreary gray cloud of death, just like yesterday and the 5 days before that. Here are the places I apply: Papa Johns, Pickleman's, Jimmy John's, Gumby's Pizza, Dominoes. Papa Johns and Dominoes are the ones that are hiring. Soon I will likely be spending my nights until 4:30 am running errands for a tall, purse-lipped, rail-shaped 50 year old with a high school freshman moustache. This man doesn't seem to have washed his blue uniform in days. He also looks like he's covered in a thin film of dust, leading me to believe he hasn't really moved much in that time period, either.
I return back home to my apartment. In the apartment adjacent to me my healthy friends are having a party. They tell me I look horrible and that the light makes the bags under my eyes look even bigger. The WiFi I always piggyback is down, and our ethernet cable magically has decided not to work in my laptop anymore, so I cannot access the documents I need to read for class. Good. It is also too late to get food and I have no food in the apartment except Oats and Honey bars and I am too poor to order delivery. Guess I'm not eating tonight. I eat an Oats and Honey bar so I don't die.
It is bedtime now, I guess. I go into my room. It appears that a stranger has sexed on my bed and left the cleanup towels strewn about my things. I sleep in Jimmy's bed tonight.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Conor - I Fell Asleep For A Little Bit While Writing This
Mom. Don't read this. And if you do, don't call me afterwards, complaining. C'mon Mom. I'm an adult. I can handle this.
Hey there guys. Sorry if I worried you there for a bit. I'm fine. A little tired, but fine. I haaaaven't gotten a lot of sleep this week due to schoolwork, ultimate, work, et.-
Fuuuuck. It should be noted that originally the name of this post was "there's actually a really good chance that I'll fall asleep while writing this" but after finishing the sentence fragment I woke up to find a couple dozen w's behind the sentence. Yikes.
Oh god and now it's Saturday and I'm awake. Oh god. Not even joking, this all happened naturally.
Guys, sleep is hard. Sleep is difficult and hard, and I will react to this like I react to most challenges. By backing down and just acting like I never really wanted it at all.
So I've been running on very little sleep as of late. It bothers me how well I've been able to manage, honestly. I'll be running on two or three hours of sleep but I'll still have enough energy to get back until 3 or 4 AM the next night so I can get two or three hours of sleep again. I don't even have a lack of energy on the Ultimate field or anything like that (it's sad but true, if my lack of sleep started affecting Ultimate I'd probably change my life appropriately), all I do is whine more. And I whined a lot to begin with.
I work at Pickleman's now. Pickleman's is a nice place filled with nice people. I like my job a lot more than I like a lot my classes, which is why I'm continuing to work it, even though I don't have time for my 19 hours of classes as is and Pickleman's schedules me for a midnight to close shift on Wednesdays even though I have 8:30 classes everyday. See this is what I meant I just never stop whining.
I've been playing some sick Ultimate. My cuts are impeccable and I've been working on my style, which is 90% of the game.
Started a new file on Final Fantasy VII, because I wanted to feel nostalgic and miss Brian Malone and Eliot Sill and be really glad I'm nowhere near Nicholas Dietrich.
I bought these red bro shorts and I'm wearing them ironically but how long can you wear something ironically before you're just wearing something.
I'm currently sitting in a Jazz Combo rehearsal. We meet from 9 to noon, Saturday mornings. Why. Whyyyyyyy.
Three songs I've been listening to a lot.
The last song off of Wilco's new album. It's long, extremely repetitive, and really pretty. On my way to class the other day I was sortof freaking out because I was unprepared for an exam and I had only gotten 2 or 3 hours of sleep, and I used this song to calm myself down.
Don't don't don't watch this video. It will make you dislike the song, and while he is super dumb for having made this video, Owen Pallett doesn't deserve your resentment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itt0rALeHE8&ob=av2e
Do watch this video. She's number two on my list, second only to Tina Fey.
Have a good week guys. Sorry.
Hey there guys. Sorry if I worried you there for a bit. I'm fine. A little tired, but fine. I haaaaven't gotten a lot of sleep this week due to schoolwork, ultimate, work, et.-
Fuuuuck. It should be noted that originally the name of this post was "there's actually a really good chance that I'll fall asleep while writing this" but after finishing the sentence fragment I woke up to find a couple dozen w's behind the sentence. Yikes.
Oh god and now it's Saturday and I'm awake. Oh god. Not even joking, this all happened naturally.
Guys, sleep is hard. Sleep is difficult and hard, and I will react to this like I react to most challenges. By backing down and just acting like I never really wanted it at all.
So I've been running on very little sleep as of late. It bothers me how well I've been able to manage, honestly. I'll be running on two or three hours of sleep but I'll still have enough energy to get back until 3 or 4 AM the next night so I can get two or three hours of sleep again. I don't even have a lack of energy on the Ultimate field or anything like that (it's sad but true, if my lack of sleep started affecting Ultimate I'd probably change my life appropriately), all I do is whine more. And I whined a lot to begin with.
I work at Pickleman's now. Pickleman's is a nice place filled with nice people. I like my job a lot more than I like a lot my classes, which is why I'm continuing to work it, even though I don't have time for my 19 hours of classes as is and Pickleman's schedules me for a midnight to close shift on Wednesdays even though I have 8:30 classes everyday. See this is what I meant I just never stop whining.
I've been playing some sick Ultimate. My cuts are impeccable and I've been working on my style, which is 90% of the game.
Started a new file on Final Fantasy VII, because I wanted to feel nostalgic and miss Brian Malone and Eliot Sill and be really glad I'm nowhere near Nicholas Dietrich.
I bought these red bro shorts and I'm wearing them ironically but how long can you wear something ironically before you're just wearing something.
I'm currently sitting in a Jazz Combo rehearsal. We meet from 9 to noon, Saturday mornings. Why. Whyyyyyyy.
Three songs I've been listening to a lot.
The last song off of Wilco's new album. It's long, extremely repetitive, and really pretty. On my way to class the other day I was sortof freaking out because I was unprepared for an exam and I had only gotten 2 or 3 hours of sleep, and I used this song to calm myself down.
Don't don't don't watch this video. It will make you dislike the song, and while he is super dumb for having made this video, Owen Pallett doesn't deserve your resentment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itt0rALeHE8&ob=av2e
Do watch this video. She's number two on my list, second only to Tina Fey.
Have a good week guys. Sorry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)