Green Unicorns and the Flu

The last few days I've been suffering from being sick, probably from some new strain of the flu. The worst was on Thursday, where I threw up everything I ate. I ate four slices of bread, 4 eggs and some orange juice. None of that stayed down, leaving me with a net foodage of nothing.

I don't get sick often, which is why this was such a surprise. Also, I had taken a flu shot earlier, which is why I'm geussing this was a new strain. Also, it was very late in the flu season. I remember back when I was in elementary school it seemed my family would get it almost every year, but I haven't had it for like, 10 years. I point the blame for this case of the flu at a particular close friend of mine, who shall remain unnamed.

So, at this point you are probably wondering what I mean by "Green Unicorn". Here is a chronology of my flu experience (very approximated):

10 am Thursday - Threw up clear liquid

10 - 12 Thursday - Slept?

12 - 3 pm? - Made two slices of toast. Ate slowly over the next 3 hours, while watching the George Lucas director's cut of THX 1183. I had to stop several times to throw up the toast.

3 - 5 - ?

5 - 7 - Made a nice big dinner of two slices of toast and four eggs. The eggs were somewhere between scrambled and sunnyside up. In this period of the symptom, I was beginning to enter the stage of delirious hilarity and neediness. Being sick and effectively alone in my house, I was unfilled. I was also starting to sort of imagine and hallucinate, and I was beginning to feel cold. Wow, I need to work on my writing.

7 - 9 - I began to watch Spinal Tap with the commentary, which turned out to be the bandmembers in character. I was delighted that they kept the mockumentary facade, and that they managed to keep thier characters and voices after 20+ years.

9 pm - Threw up everything I just ate. At this point I reached a new high in humour for what was going on. I appeared that despite my acute attempts to eat, I would not be allowed to do so. I then proceeded upstairs to sleep off the flu.

10 pm - 10 am. This was a blurry period, where the Green Unicorn comes in. at 10 am I woke up, apparently better. I still have a headache, which is either from the flu still, or playing Rag Doll Kung Fu for the past few hours.

In the blurry period, I remember being very cold (which means I had a fever, if you've read your body manual). I know somebody, well more so am aware of them, that overdosed on ecstasy and had their brain overheat because they passed out and nobody looked after him. I changed position in my bed every ten minutes throughout the night, and I always had the nagging thought that my brain would overheat. I had visualizations of the Divergence Theorem and Heat Conduction equations from MATH 227 and PHYS 231. Not only that, but in my delirious half awake/half asleep state my brain began to wander and repeat itself. I found myself trapped in thoughts I couldn't escape, like things I had forgotten to do or people still talking to me. This has to me in the past whenever I've visited a new, fast-paced place and been forced to do a routine for a long period of time, usually school or minimum-wage jobs. I get mentally stuck in it, and being a frequent insomniac does not help.

I devised the green unicorn to get rid of these thoughts. What is something I am not likely going to think of, but isn't too abstract so as to be unimaginable? A Unicorn. What is the least likely colour for a unicorn to be? Green. Its not magical or natural.

Whenever I entered a routine thought-pattern in my flu-driven delirium, I would call in The Green Unicorn, which would tear up the fabric of what I was picturing, and then EXPLODE, leaving my mind blissfully empty. It wouldn't actually break up a wall of the scene where I was, it would literally roll it up like a carpet as it charged through.

I'm going to use this now on to destroy or alter dreams I don't like, I suppose until it becomes so commonless place as to be dilute, but then I'll invent something else.

Notes in the Margin

I tend to get bored in class alot. When this happens, I get bored. In Thermodynamics (MECH 330), which I took last year I doodled in the margins. I decided to finally scan all these and put them in the blog. This was really my only source of entertainment in the class.

This is the story of the doodles...


I believe this first one is really heady, it has something to do with wormholes or "branes", depending on which theory you subscribe to. No further comment really.



I think this was supposed to be a guitar.


Another incomplete picture. Sometimes the fun does have to stop and I actually have to pay attention.


At some point in the past I looked through alot of old early 20th Century political cartoons, which have the odd habit of labelling everything blatently. I find this hilarious and a little insulting. Unfortunately, this pattern is still continued today.


This comes from a joke between Jeff Colden and I. Imagine a Tyrannosaurus Rex attempting foreplay...


This started out as an idea courtesy of Strong Bad - Lil' Brudda. I elaborated on it.


I put a lightning bolt on all my tests. Its a sign of male virility.


This is just a long margin. No explanation neccesary.


This needs no explanation.


I have no idea where this comes from, but it leads to the next idea.


This is based on an old cliche. See if you can guess what it is. Also, I ran out of room on the page.


Making fun of Atlas Shrugged, and Dali, and Socialism. I'm such a poser Communist.


I think these fish are actually called Hooker Fish. Either way, I have a booklight that looks like the light that they hang off the front of thier head. Unfortunately my newly shorn hair does not provide much purchase.


?


The upper part is actually a legit note. The lower part is me trying to make an ambigrammatic logo for the Improv Show. This is shortly after I read Angels and Demons. Notice that the p and h match up nicely.


Woo hoo. I just watched Narnia. I hate child actors. I'm off now, to do something more physical.

What's wrong with me?

I'm been looking for a good time to write for a while, and now it is.

Lately, as I've achieved the goal of making my life more dynamic, I'm doing more interpersonally. Fuck the foreplay...I saw two people today I've hurt, recently. I don't understand - I'm not Catholic but I have the wierdest guilt complex. One of my earliest coherent memories is of offending a kid in a wheelchair during a skit. His name was Kyle. I still feels pangs whenever I bring that up to myself.

I am and will always be a perfectionist. Not the good type - I'm afraid to do things that I will fuck up. So what is wrong with me? Everybody has personality disorders, but what is a disorder?

Guilt is the worst feeling ever. Which is, of course why I have it so often. It seems like I get caught up in dwelling about the past and am paralyzed. The fact that I'm writing this is very telling, isn't it?

Also, I'm a narcissist. Let's be honest. I crave attention, which is why I am constantly on stage. When I can't get attention from others, I masturbate for it. Which is why I'm writing this.

I overthink things. This also comes from the onstage thing. I constantly think of drama, trying to be cute or what I would look like from an audience perspective. I feel like I'm going through life in third person, never actually in the moment, with the exception of when I get dumbed down with alcohol, pot, or some other overwhelming sense, like tiredness or my horrible libido.

Also, once I have something, I don't respect it. I know a friend of mine, who would hang with me and a few people years ago, but then sort of advanced onto other things, then barely acknowledges us. Maybe its a Darwinist thing. But I feel like that, building shitty bridges. Am I afraid of committing? I'm so afraid of missing a moment or whatever. FEAR, thats my problem. My consumption of information and experience and everything else is so voracious that I can't taste shit. I'm all numb. I wake up and am tired constantly. I want to be like Jesus and go off into the forest and learn without a reason. I want to have children to have someone to give to, yet not be in the position to give them less than what they deserve. I want to be perfect and useful to everyone that I meet and at the same time be myself and start that revolution that I've been talking about.

That's a long list.

For anyone out there, I want to say I'm sorry but maybe I should stop. I'm being indecisive. I won't say sorry for anything specific except that - I'm sorry for being me.

T-T-Torontofied

So, I went crazy and had to leave Kingston, so I decided to get together with friends from high school and have a quasi-reunion in Toronto. Where did we go to high school? Kingston. Whatever. First, allow me to introduce to players:

Myself


Cheryl, a film student at Humber and friend from high school improv


Kate (left) from high school improv too, now in the Improv Show with me. Caitlin (right), exclusively dates men who are profiled in magazines.


Dave (left) my token black friend and hetero life-mate. He's at Geulph now and studies Biological Chemistry or something, also did high school improv with me. Sandy (right) is another friend from LCVI, goes to Mac, not sure what she studies.


So that's who went. We all met in downtown Toronto Friday night, and headed to Cheryl's house.

This is the girls on the subway. You might not recognize Sandy there on the right - she hasn't applied make-up yet. I am not in the picture.

Man, isn't it cool how all these pictures are tagged with the time? I can like, relive the night down to the minute.

Anyway, after dropping excessive luggage off at Cheryl's, we started to get tired from lack of alcohol...

...so we decided to head to the nearest bar and get drunk. I, for the first time ever, ordered an entire pitcher of Guinness with Dave. I've never seen that before. Needless to say, it dissapeared quickly. We also discovered that Kate's hair moves over to the front of her face when her body decides its time for her to stop drinking:


Later, we saw a poster for some kid that was addicted to heroin.


So we got home, and fell asleep drunk. Thank fucking god Cheryl knows (somewhat) her way around the transit system.

SATURDAY

So next morning, based on the fact that estrogen out-numbered testosterone on this trip, we went to the mall. Also, it snowed, which we had never seen before in our lives.


Dave and I wandered aimlessly while the girls "shopped" or whatever, and we had lunch at the rainforest cafe. Our bill is below.


Then, I put on some women's clothing and did some model shots.


While walking back to the bus at some point my bus token fell into something I can only describe as a mixture of dog feces and gum that was caked onto the already-dirty tile with a mixture of hot, cold and big-city indifference. I am probably seriously infected with something. Ignoring that, here is me and Kate on the bus. I am taller because I am sitting on some sort of child seat.


We then to Bad Dog Theatre to see some long form improv, which was sweet. The poster for it is the leftmost one in the picture below. I don't know why we aren't doing this at the improv show yet, its amazing.


So then, we got the urge, again to get outrageously drunk. We proceeded to do so at Green Room, this really hard to find bar in Toronto. I think this is because it is meant for actual Torontonians that want to avoid people like us, which is of course why we went there.

Amazingly, it was pretty sweet, and I think I shall refer to it as my Toronto Hangout from now on. Dave is trying to impersonate Jesus in this picture, but fucked up.

Some of Cheryl's filming friends were there is well. I can't remember the name of the guy in the middle, I just know he drives race cars in India, his dad works for Bollywood, and once he punched Greg Luce in the face. Oh man.


So we got really drunk really fast. I drank two pitchers in two hours, which isn't Olympian, but made me drunk. Here is a picture of us somewhere after we got lost on the subways home.


The next day was mostly a wasted recovery day. We had breakfast at McDonald's, which was expectedly unsatisfying except for the ice cream.


And that's pretty much it. Here's a video of me trying to feed Dave ice cream like an airplane. Kate accidentally took this because she doesn't know how to use Dave's camera.




So that's Toronto. I feel like such a small town person whenever I visit there. Like you know how you can hold the entire map of a city like Kingston inside your head, yet in Toronto that's impossible. Frustrating. Also, the whole improv and artistic community is overwhelmingly large. Dammit, when do I get to grow up?

End Scene.

Improv Show Cast

What an awesome picture. Props to our photographer Steve.

Kate, Irene, Thom and Kristin are missing.

We also took individual headshots. I'm going to print mine on glossy paper, sign it, and hand it out en masse to Japanese school girls. [drool]

Fame, Performance and Halloween Costumes

So, for this halloween, me and two friends (Matt Reid and Matt "Schomberg" Clayton) had an epically awesome costume, as seen below.

We're plastic toy army men, the kind you get by the dozen, probably last seen in toy story. We would go around and pose everywhere for Halloween.

Our schedule was as follows:
FRIDAY - Kidnap someone from class and thus make a scene, Ritual
SATURDAY - Night-time Parties. Walk Around
SUNDAY - Rest
MONDAY - Walk around campus on actual Halloween, make more of a scene.

This costume is undeniably cool. Lots of people have said so, and I know so. We went out on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I think over 200 pictures were taken of us (not including ones we took). Here's another



So, eventually we became famous. We would walk into parties a few houses down the street from one we had just left, and people would be like: "I heard of you, someone at another said they saw you." - this was on Saturday night However, fame is not without a price. We were all wearing thick rubber, the only material that would hold the fourteen cans of glossy green spray paint that we used on ourselves. This was hot and sweaty. Our helmets were heavy, we couldn't sit down because our pants were too tight, actually Schomberg and I tore ours later, our face paint rubbed off, and we couldn't carry alcohol around.

A costume like this, with such an investement in time and money ($40/person?) means you have to make sure you really enjoy it. By the third day, Monday, where we planned to get into the Journal, our campus newspaper, we felt like living statues who make a living this way.

It began to feel more like an ordeal, a job, than something we did for fun.

Me, looking like I'm having more fun that I actually am.

Fortunately we did actually get our picture in the journal, and then even more people knew about us. So, I've been hearing alot of congratulations.
Saturday night was our big walkabout, where we heard a bunch of comments, which would get repetitive after a while. The most unusual was "Are you scuba men?" which I don't think I will forget for a while. Such is fame.
All in all, I'd say it was worth it, definitely, but it certainly sucked at the time. Beauty is pain.


Other Awesome Costumes I saw or heard of:
- Eight Oompa Loompas, with song
- Village People, with song
- Rock Paper Scissors (who I never saw, damn)

On (my) personality

As I have been aging, maturing, etcetera, I have always noticed people tend towards certain things they enjoy, often my left alone as I do or am interested in almost anything. I think the science of psychology defines these differences as "personality", why people differ. Sometimes I've had to resort to defining what I don't like.

THINGS I DON'T LIKE
- watching sports

Shit, that's a short list.

Anyway, I've been wondering: can people change thier personality? Not in the practical sense that I want to do it, but more so in the sense like does it happen. In mythological narratives (I am using that in the archetypal sense - 8 mile is a mythological narrative) people seem to come rushing out of the womb with an installed personality, which pre-determines the rest of thier life. It seems like things they do as a kid are premonitions for what they will do later. Is personality really that set?

I'd think its more malleable, at least using myself. I think I've changed, although not drastically, over several years, especially if you use the Four Colours thing (Orange, Gold, Green, Blue). While Green has always been one of the two top, Orange and Blue have moved around in there. The only one that has never really been there is Gold, which is confusing because I seem to be attracted to Gold people.

THINGS I'M NOT
- Gold

Again, a short list.

This personality thing worries me then. If everyone else is sort of easily defined and slottable, what the fuck am I doing everywhere at once yet nowhere? Because I mean if you aren't specifically something then you are nothing, right? Of course, I'm asking rhetorical questions, one because no one is going to answer in text conveniently if I ask a regular question [schizophrenic crisis] and two, because I'm asking them because they are silly questions. I do stuff, lots of varied stuff that's really inter-disciplinary, but not nothing.

So I geuss I'm not going to get some easy answer and path coming straight out of the womb towards my pre-defined goal. However, if I have some sort of tragic struggle for existence, I'd rather have it for a specific thing than for the answer to the question "what am I?"

JOBS I THINK I WOULD ENJOY
- Television/Film Director
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Game Design/Developer/Writer
- Science Journalist
- Wise hobo
- Mathematics Researcher
- Modern Artist
- Improv Performer (The Improv Show doesn't count - something I get paid for)
- Psychology/Human Factors Researcher
- Astronaut (the kind that actually builds stuff, doesn't do crappy experiments)

But why do I feel I need to "define" what I want to do? This is the existentialist crisis moment, and that was another rhetorical question.

This brings up stuff about immortality I have been thinking about. I'll write about it later.

Step 1:I have an attendance problem.

I've realized lately that I have a problem attending class, as you can see by the lovely figure on the right. I haven't had this problem since first year, I geuss Engineering Physics was more stringent with attendance. I geuss I can owe this to my remarkable ability to coast through learning and learn everything well at the last minute. Also, they are Mech courses right now. Also, its a boredom problem - I get bored easily, as anyone who knows me knows.

Oddly, nothing bad has come of this yet. I am a little frantic on assignments, which I dont like. Most of my time that I should be in classes I have spent on sleeping, The Time Project, Improv Show stuff, or trying to write.

If I'm going to be going through a 12-step program for this (I don't even know if this is really a problem), then I can look back to first year, when I realized that I could read the Chemistry notes in half an hour instead of them being presented to me in 50 minutes, and at the same time be less bored. I have always gone to classes that I really enjoyed, however. Like Semiotics and Communication, History of Popular Music, Electromagnetics, Algebraic Structures, Fluid Mechanics, Differential Equations.

-Fin-

I wrote this

I wrote this for the Time Project:

"It's raining sideways."
"Why did you bring me here?"
"This is where I am going to live from now on."
"I would hate it if this weather wouldn't stop."
"You don't have to visit."

This is a 5-line part of a 7-scene mini play we constructed. I feel proud of it as a moment.

Snippets of Dialogue

Anne is in the kitchen, mixing something. Apple Pie is cooking in the oven. Dustin Enters

Dustin: That pie smells great. I want to rub it all over myself.
Anne: Yeah.

Dustin puts some dishes on the growing pile, rearranging them so that they are less precarious. The time spent doing this could be just as easily spent on actually washing the dishes. He then heads back up the stairs to his room. Once Dustin is at the top of the stairs

Anne: Was that an American Pie reference?

[Pause]

Dustin: No. That was a really long delay.
Anne: I know I'm tired.
Dustin: Good job though

COMMENTARY:

Normal I do make pretty awkward references like this, just so this makes this piece of conversation more understandeable. It was alot funnier in person.

Now I am going in the pool with a kayak.


In other News, I love how this has turned into a Micro-Blog, with quickie-posts.