22 hours ago, I played in a free improv Workshop at Bad Dog Theatre.
21 hours ago, I saw Globehead Theatre Sports at Bad Dog. They were okay.
19 hours ago, I sat down to watch Second City: Reloaded sketch show, and then improv. For the long form improv, I gave the suggestion (and only suggestion) of "Destruction".
14 hours ago, I started driving back to Kingston, after dropping off an old friend I hadn' seen in a while who shares my birthday.
13 hours, the other two guys in the car and I start trying to tell the best worst joke.
12 hours ago, I arrive in Kingston, and sleep/
6 hours ago, I wake up and return the rental car. It was a full-size Buick with faux wood interior. Upon returning it, I felt as if I became younger by 60 years.
5 hours ago, I ate eggs, 40% raisins and OJ while watching a bad horror movie, while reading in Scientific American about Tsunamis.
4 to 3 hours ago, I cleaned my room, checked email, got stuff ready for the rest of the week. I've decided that I'm not doing any work until tommorow.
2 hours ago, I ate lunch.
For the last hour, I've been listening to Feynman's Lecture on Physics while becoming progressively more stoned.
Does this last 24 hours say alot about me (that's what I intended when I started writing this). I think it says about my days off.
A few years back, when I lived in British Columbia still, I read alot of the Myst Books, and generally was obsessed with the Myst Universe. The most intriguiging part was the possibility of world creation based on simple, self-consistent rules. No restraint on real world physics. This may not have been the intention of the Miller brother's lasting effect, but its what I have.
I was reminded of this yesterday I think when I remembered of a particular world I created, and wrote down.
I often wonder what the essence of science fiction is - is it creating a world, populating it with characters, and then placing the literary video camera up to this world. In this case, the work is front-end heavy. Lord of the Rings would be an example of this. OR, is it the other way around: A simple world, with most of the work ongoing as the plot continues. In this case, the work is continuous. I imagine most science fiction television shows are like this. In my opinion, its much more fun to do the front-ended work, as I am better at it, and at least imaginative enough for it.
So this world I created was situated on a gas giant. Ideally, I would like this to be possible with normal-universe physics, but some stretchings would have to be made, maybe. So, a gas giant. There is a planetary surface, but for the humanoids I care about, it is far too low and too far away to be of concern, or to even be visible. The core of the planet is metallic, liquid even, and conducts strong electric currents, producting a strong magnetic field. We see this on Jupiter today. Now, here comes the cool part. Suspended, high above the planet's core, in a region of habitable atmospheric pressure and density and temperature, are clusters of large superconducting quasi-metallic rocks, ranging in size from 1 km to 10 m, with some soil/plant toppings. The superconductivity may occur due to some cooling process, as a results of bombardment from an unusual radiation environment, whatever, but it is borderline possible. The superconductivity is what causes the suspension in the strong magnetic field (just look up superconductors). Imagine standing on a 10 m rock, jumping up and down and feeling it jiggle just a little bit. Imagine traversing a crude bridge between neighbouring rock islands.
I imagine life on this planet could start airborne, depending on the atmosphere, and somehow migrate to the rocks, build up plant life. Actually, reading Guns, Germs and Steel hs given me a great perspective on the development of civilization. I'm thinking now, there is no incentive for animals to grow. So, how about I induce a spin in the rocks, meaning that the plants have to rotate to capture the sun, beginning the development of mobility and metabolism.
I've noticed a pattern in myself - namely that I am lazy and impatient when it comes to almost anything. I try to get the most for the least amount of work. Now that I'm writing this, this reminds me about Atlas Shrugged, which I'm currently reading, but that is another matter.
The point is, I think I need to fix this. I've always had a problem of not living in the moment. Despite years of improv training and performing, I still have trouble recognizing the present for what it is. This brings me to the sort of person I am today - reasonably well connected in many many different circles, having tons of superficial acquaintances, having a large skill set, etc. I feel spread too thin. I don't know if life is supposed to have some central focus or not, but everything is really blurry. I spent thirtyish minutes today reading job descriptions and figuring out what I'm doing this summer, which is one of the most dehumanizing and disheartening tasks ever, yet somehow I enjoy it a little bit.
This blurriness leads to me being lazy. I developed a certain level of passive aggressiveness - listen, listen, listen, consider, and then make a small contribution that tilts things slightly in your way. What is wrong, man? I think I'm afraid of confrontation for some reason, some deep-seated reason I don't feel like going into. Fuck.
This all leads to the title of this entry - "Looking for other Hills". My lazyness and passive-agressiveness and lack of presence in the moment leads to me, if I am not absolutely pleased with a situation, to look for a better situation. This applies to almost everything for me: relationships, friends, disciplines (haha), fads, habits, hobbies, jobs. This stems from my belief that in a world as large as ours, the possibilities are so diverse that any reasonably-motivated person can, instead of taking the time to fix/work on something, easily look out and find anything better as their choice. When I get tired/bored of something or someone, I just stop paying attention to them instead of actually confronting them. As I write this, I realize more and more how much of a douche I am.
This is changing now (making a phone call). I'm grabbing life by the horns.
Promising more positive entries in the future, Dustin
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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
I am a Master's student with the Dynamic Graphics Project at the University of Toronto. I do unusual theatre projects, from the completely improvised to the technologically enhanced.
I make interactive digital media.
